20. Talented Aida

Carrying a sack of props, Drusilla Fabiana glanced up at the old castle of Pethens turned into an entertainment hub since the Scipios took over some ten years ago. 

Stripped of sentries, archers, and crossbows, the crenelated bailey was now clad in ivy, and the surrounding moat a patchwork of water lilies. Garbed in the tinsel of the art world and the high society it served, the expansive castle suggested little of its previous denizens, whose bones had long turned to dust that nourished the soil on which life continued to flourish. 

Outside the castle were camped boys and girls rehearsing for their tryouts. Clustering in a pack around an old eucalyptus tree that had withstood all the changes as if a relic from a different time, some girls chit-chatted about General Julius Gaius. They called him a Renanian daydream. 

Drusilla passed through them, pursing her lips as she forewent a chuckle. 

Sing poorly. Dance on clumsy feet. Whatever you do, don't get picked. Don't make another oath to the Scipios. 

Xeator's words rang between her ears. Backlit in twilight, his ash blond hair glimmered and cast a veil over his diamond-cut face. Those emerald eyes sought her, almost pleading. Be safe, he added at length, then regarded Anthony before they parted ways outside the desolated cottage halfway up a jagged ridge.

She dropped the props outside a tent where they were intended. 

A song drifting from the tent pulled her attention. She recognized the dulcet voice of rich timbre tinkling in vowels with warbles unlike others that brought one before the Gods. Must it be Aida, a young woman with freckles that moved like butterfly wings when she smiled and no last name. 

Narrowing her gaze, Drusilla drank the voice that prickled her skin. Beneath a hillslope outside the castle spread a lustrous sward, circled by shrubs of hydrangeas milk white and lilac. They were the favorite of Consort Laelia, Prophetess of Pethens, or so Drusilla had heard. All the venues the Prophetess frequented had their yards bedecked with the flower on that account, and because she frequented many places, Pethens begot the moniker, the Garden Capital. 

But Drusilla preferred how it used to look: clean cuts of lands fashioned in the spirit of men who traveled light, with real cries of buzz and pain reverberating around the fighting pits or archery ranges. She closed her eyes. 

Not much she could remember from the time before her father was demoted, being the scapegoat of Marcus Uranus for having lost the Second Huronic War. All she knew was that Consul Claudius allowed Father to take a post at his residence in Pethens where she and Aemilia grew up. And growing up, it had been her favorite pastime to watch men and boys combat in tournaments and games. She wished she could join them while watching from afar. The weapons swooshing in the air, the shadows somersaulting on the meadows, the thirst for life fizzing behind bare teeth, and among the apparitions of the past she could have forgotten, somehow, she remembered Consul Claudius' son, the ash blond boy with the brightest smile for all the world to see. Xeator reminded her of him somehow. Time and again, she entertained the prospect of them being the same man. Time and again, she had to shake her head. Despite the ash blond hair, the emerald eyes, and the arrow-straight nose, Moon Xeator walked the earth like a wraith with a smile only skin-deep. But what did she know about either the boy or the man anyway?

The song stopped. 

Behind her closed lids, ashes of the past rose and gyrated slowly to generic shapes of men, then shattered to a bloom of motes as someone grabbed her arm from behind. She snapped open her eyes. Aida was grinning at her. 

"Hey, butterfly girl," she said, "didn't see you there." 

"Guess what," Aida whooped, her freckles spreading over the faint blush across her cheeks. "I think I may actually have a shot! Drouet seemed to like my voice! He said he had never seen such talent! Me! Can you believe it?"

"Drouet Decimus Titus? The playwright?"

"Yeah!"

"You call him by his name now?"

"Well, he insisted."

"Uh oh." 

"What?"

Shading a hand over her eyes, Drusilla glimpsed the poor young woman, dazzled and swooned. "Have you heard about General Julius?" She tried to change the subject. "He's the talk of the town now! And what an accomplishment for someone so young! I mean who cares if he's married and way out of my league? I can dream about that one all day!" 

It caused a more meager reaction than she had hoped for. Aida hummed and simpered, drifting into a reverie. 

Drusilla puffed her cheeks, shaking her head. Aware that nothing she said could shake Aida out of her trance, she pulled a basin from a small heap of sundries and shoved it in the other woman's arms. "Help me with something, yeah?" 

Aida withdrew her straying eyes. "Sure, but what do you need?"

Drusilla winked and towed her by the hand. 

Next to a fountain nearby, she boiled water in a cauldron and handed Aida a long pestle. While Aida churned, she mixed in ashes of burned nuts and beechwood with a slab of tallow rendered from goat fat. 

"Gross!" Aida screwed up her eyes at the bubbling fat, covering her nose with a free hand.

"Well, you gotta do what you gotta do," Drusilla said and chuckled. "I need a different color for my hair." She ladled the solution back into the basin. Once it cooled from boiling, she lay supine and dunked her hair inside.

"But I like the natural color of your hair!" Aida widened her eyes. "Why on earth would you do this?"

To get your mind off the bloody playwright, of course. The solution tingled her scalp. Drusilla wriggled her limbs. Overhead, swarms of clouds shifted in shades as they scurried away like a murmuration of birds. "I want my image to fit the role I want," she drawled languidly at length. 

Aida tucked her knees to her chest. "And what role is that?" 

"A buffoon." 

"But why?" 

Drusilla smacked her lips at a loss. Because only by appearing ugly and foolish could she protect herself from the predatory eyes once she rejoined the Scipios. And only by working for the Scipios could she gain access to venues exclusive for patricians here in the capital. It dawned on her just now what Xeator was implying with the look in his eyes. He knew she would act on her own, and he was pleading for her not to. 

But how could she not, knowing her sister was last seen in the capital? The more she had sleuthed around, the stronger her premonition grew about an undertow out of her depth. Either dead or alive, Aemilia must be somewhere, and she had to find her. But if she failed – and she likely would – she didn't want Xeator or Anthony to sink with her. That's the last thing she could do for them. 

She turned her head to Aida, who was looking curiously at her.

"Do you actually want to sing for the Scipios, Aida?" she asked after a long pause. 

The other woman nodded first, then dropped her eyes. 

"You sure you know what you're getting into?" 

She faltered, glancing up at Drusilla, then shook her head. "I know one thing though," she murmured, turning her obsidian eyes over the shoulder at the other end of the sward. "Up on the stage, I didn't need to act. It's the only time I got to be me. My feelings for the characters were real, and my reactions to the crowds, too. I was free to be real in fiction! But once I stepped off the stage, I must act again. I must act social and smile like a darling." 

So sweetly spoken, her words punched Drusilla in the heart and left a dent. Lifting herself on an elbow, she turned her face to the other woman. 

"Before I came here," Aida continued, huddling her knees. "I had been a barmaid for six years. Men came to the tavern and cried while they listened to me sing. They told me how I reminded them of their dead wives or children, the love of their life when they were a younger man, or the girl they never had. But it's always about them. Nobody listened to me, nor wondered a tad about me. Who am I? Have I loved someone? What is it I want for this life? And why would they? I don't even have a last name." She pinched her lips. 

The sun hid in and out of tumbling clouds, beneath which grass rippled in fleeing stripes of shades. A sudden flush rose to Aida's cheeks. 

"Drouet was the first," she crooned, her head tilting. "He knew it without me saying that singing was my carapace, and behind the songs about others, I sneaked in pieces of me. He saw me behind the carapace." For a splinter of a moment, her obsidian eyes brightened at that which could only be the hopeless mirage of hope. 

Drusilla scraped her teeth on her upper lip. She should warn her friend, she thought. But of what? She had no evidence against the playwright Aida clearly fell head over heels for. All she had was a hunch. And if she told her to stay away from him on account of a hunch, she'd only come off jealous. After all, nobody liked to be told, and we only wanted to be inspired. Drusilla didn't know what to say that would inspire the other woman to stop swooning over a man who must have, in some insidious ways, inspired her. So, she said nothing. 

Forcing a smile so as to act supportive, she found herself deliberating on the act called life. Her hair dye dribbled, some darkening the earth, some staining her linen.