In the Shadow

Maxima vidua drummed her fingers on the table.

She was quite angry, and did not know what to do about it.

Her dreams were clear. It was time to leave the city. She didn't know why, but she had to get out.

This shouldn't be a problem, should it? She was a widow - it was right there in her name, vidua. What was left of her name, anyway. A word no one bothered to capitalize, since widows were considered so low in society. At least she had money - and she no longer had a husband to ask pretty please any time she wanted to spend even a single denarius. When her husband, a former senator, took his own life rather than face the fact that he fornicated with the wrong venere volgivaga - prostitute, really, couldn't even give her the classification of "courtesan" - Maxima lost her last name, not that she ever had one of her very own. She had been known as the daughter of her father and his occupation, or as the wife of her husband.

He had contracted one of the diseases the red-clothed ones carried. She'd refused to have sex with him when he returned from Rome, since he had already been showing symptoms. Did he truly want her to die with him?

Most likely, knowing him. Thank all the gods she never had children with him.

But he took the honorable way out, stabbed himself with the sharpest dagger he could find. She was the one to find him, which saved his poor slave boy from having hysterics. And she followed the mos maiorum to the very letter: the public feasts for the whole town, the eulogies, the body lying in state in their house for a full ten days, the funeral procession with mourners, the sacrifices, the funeral pyre.

She was forced to do the final kiss. It was supposed to be on the mouth - she chose his forehead instead. The thick makeup they used to cover the pallor of death did not lessen her disgust, nor that the body had lain on its couch for so many days in the summer. She had to place Charon's obol in his mouth, and light the funeral pyre, and sprinkle the ashes with wine, and collect them in his funerary urn. Because they thought it was fine for a woman to be defiled by touching the dead, but none of her husband's male relatives wanted to deal with being unclean. She placed the urn in the tomb in his niche, where she noticed that the next niche had her name all ready for placement. She idly wondered if she could find the prostitute, take care of her till it was her time to die, and install her ashes in that niche instead.

She was glad she added a thing: she had tucked a tightly-wound scroll into his hand. No one questioned it, of course. Why would they? Giving her sentiments as a dutiful wife to her husband to take to the underworld was expected of such a distinguished family, was it not? She knew there were other messages tucked into the folds of his senatorial robe. And not a few curse tablets, she was certain. She let them alone. Hers would burn, and no one would know she had given him a poem from a vindictive poet: "In order to buy some slave boys / Labienus sold his garden; But now he has only / An orchard of figs." Fitting.

People flinched when the fire touched the purpure stripe on the toga, knowing the dye was authentic. The shimmery red, shot through with vibrant threads of blue-purple tekhelet color, faded to gray ash with the rest of him. It was worth more than the cost of all the funerary rites combined.

No expense spared for such a distinguished gentleman.

But apparently she was not allowed to enjoy her well-deserved widowhood. No sooner was the tomb sealed than her odious brother-in-law was camped on the doorstep, pressing his suit.

There was a greater likelihood of Jupiter Himself swearing to be chaste for all eternity than for her to be shackled to this braying donkey that walked on two legs!

One of the slave girls slid into her room, bringing a small repast. The food smelled heavenly, and her stomach rumbled in a very unladylike fashion. They ate the meal together. It would scandalize any proper Roman citizen to see this fraternization, but Maxima cared little for social conventions behind closed doors. Her slaves worked hard to keep this doma working properly, and the least she could do was make sure they could relax long enough to eat the food they themselves made. Bread, feta, eggs cooked in the shell, a few bites of fish left over from last night's dinner. She had ordered the slaves to treat her brother-in-law like an unwanted guest, not like a grieving relative who was overstaying his welcome. And under no circumstances were they to take orders from him. He was getting cranky, and it would soon boil over.

One thing she did order, was that none of the household were to eat garum. She knew there was something - wrong - with the popular fermented fish sauce, though she could not place what. Perhaps how it was prepared? But she knew those who consumed the stuff like it was over-watered wine were not as healthy as those who refrained, or only ate from makers that fermented it for a full ten weeks or more.

Figures that her donkey-in-law was demanding they serve it to him by the olla.

By Hera, this was vexing! She desperately needed to leave town, and she was trapped in her own house!

She was no Penelope, to weave her way out of this dilemma.

She must have been muttering under her breath again, because the little slave girl's eyes slid over towards her plate. "The temple of Juno Moneta stands open to prayer and pilgrimage," she murmured.

Ha!

She gave orders. They were followed with alacrity. The slaves were tired of the interloper as well, and they were nervous. The domina of the house was not the only person having nightmares concerning the town, so to be told they were taking pilgrimage - and taking most everything with them, of course - galvanized them to frenzied action.

Her donkey-in-law decided to stay in the house until her return. He even voiced aloud his plans to move his own slaves and belongings in while she was gone, since this house was so much nicer than his own. Her slaves were terrified when she agreed quietly, and left him to his plans. She had her own to implement.

And when he was a small dot on the horizon to Pompeii, they turned south. Not north.

There were other temples to Juno, and the two in Paestum were ancient. Built by the Greeks before Romulus and Remus founded their own city, when Juno was known as Hera.

And a much less arduous road to travel. Ercolano was much closer to Paestum than it was to Roma.

She did one final sacrifice at her husband's family's tomb before mounting a cart pulled by much nicer donkeys than the one who galloped around Vesuvius in anticipation of propitious offerings for a second marriage.

It was a beautiful day in Augustus, the nonus decimus. So calm, and still, that made the nightmares of the night before seem so far away. The dark dreams urged flight, so they did. It would take them fifteen days to reach their destination.

They were safely on the very far side of Salerno when the shakes began...