Pandora by Anne Rice Read Free Book Online Page B

uncontrollable fits. But time was running out on me. In fact I’d been eligible for marriage since I was twelve.
    At this time, we were all standing together at the foot of the Palatine Hill, watching a most sacrosanct ceremony—the Lupercalia—just one of so many festivals that were integral in Roman life.
    Now the Lupercalia was very important to us, though there’s no way to relate its significance to a Christian’s concept of religion. It was pious to enjoy such a festival, to participate as a citizen and as a virtuous Roman.
    And besides it was a great pleasure.
    So I was there, not so far from the cave of the Lupercal, watching with other young women, as thetwo chosen men of mat year were smeared with blood from a sacrifice of goats and then draped in the bleeding skins of the sacrificed animals. I couldn’t see all of this very well, but I had seen it many times, and when years before two of my brothers had run in this festival, I had pushed to the front to get a good look at it.
    On this occasion, I did have a fairly good view when each of the two young men took his own company and began his run around the base of the Palatine Hill. I moved forward because I was supposed to do it. The young men were hitting lightly on the arm of every young woman with a strip of goatskin, which was supposed to purify us. Render us fertile.
    I stepped forward and received the ceremonial blow, and then stepped back again, wishing I was a man and could run around the hill with the other men, not an unusual thought for me at any time in my mortal life.
    I had some sarcastic inner thoughts about “being purified,” but by this age I behaved in public and would not on any account have humiliated my Father or my brothers.
    These strips of goatskin, as you know, David, are called
Februa
, and February comes from that word. So much for language and all the magic it unwittingly carries with it. Surely the Lupercalia had something to do with Romulus and Remus; perhaps it even echoed some ancient human sacrifice. After all, the young men’s heads were smeared with goat blood. It gives me shivers, because in Etruscan times,long before I was born, this might have been a far more cruel ceremony.
    Perhaps this was the occasion that Marius saw my arms. Because I was exposing them to this ceremonial lash, and was already, as you can see, much of a show-off in general, laughing with the others as the company of men continued their run.
    In the crowd, I saw Marius. He looked at me, then back to his book. So strange. I saw him standing against a tree trunk and writing. No one did this—stand against a tree, hold a book in one hand and write with the other. The slave stood beside him with a bottle of ink.
    Marius’s hair was long and most beautiful. Quite wild.
    I said to my Father, “Look, there’s our barbarian friend Marius, the tall one, and he’s writing.”
    My Father smiled and said, “Marius is always writing. Marius is good for writing, if for nothing else. Turn around, Lydia. Be still.”
    “But he looked at me, Father. I want to talk to him.”
    “You will not, Lydia! You will not grace him with one small smile!”
    On the way home, I asked my Father, “If you’re going to marry me to someone—if there’s no way short of suicide that I can avoid this disgusting development—why don’t you marry me to Marius? I don’t understand it. I’m rich. He’s rich. I know his Mother was a wild Keltoi princess, but his Father has adopted him.”
    My Father said witheringly, “Where have you learned all this?” He stopped in his tracks, always an ominous sign. The crowd broke and streamed around.
    “I don’t know; it’s common knowledge.” I turned. There was Marius hovering about, glancing at me. “Father,” I said, “please let me speak to him!”
    My Father knelt down. Most of the crowd had gone on. “Lydia, I know this is dreadful for you. I have caved to every objection you have raised to your suitors. But believe you