Much as he would have liked to toss the offending piece of cloth out of the window, it was just one of the things he had to accept when he threw in his lot with Rome. At least the toga was woolen, and so was the tunic he would wear beneath it. Though the April wind blew chill and rainy he would not freeze.
Sighing, he allowed himself to be bathed and shaved by his freedman, slipped into his tunic and sandals, and then set to work trying to figure out how to drape the thing. After a few moments his father, his face gone so wooden that Gaius felt sure he was suppressing a grin, took the toga away from him. Deftly he arranged the pleats of white wool to hang down in front of the left shoulder, adjusted the drape across the back and under his son’s right arm, and then drew the remainder carefully across his chest and over the left shoulder in the other direction so that the folds were draped gracefully over his arm.
“There now.” He stepped back and surveyed his son indulgently. “Stand up a little straighter and you could pose for a statue.”
“I feel like one,” Gaius mumbled, afraid to move lest the whole arrangement come undone. This time his father did laugh.
“Never mind; it’s natural for a bridegroom to be nervous. You’ll feel better when it’s all done.”
“Did you?” Gaius asked abruptly. “When you married my mother, were you afraid?”
Macellius stilled, and for a moment his eyes clouded with remembered pain. “I felt joy when she came to me and every day of our lives together until she was gone…” he whispered.
As I did when Eilan lay in my arms…Gaius thought bitterly. But I have consented to this mummery, and have no choice but to go through with it now.
The sight of the haruspex who had been called in to take the auspices for the marriage did nothing to improve his mood. In the noon sunlight the man’s bald red head and long skinny legs made him look like one of his own chickens and Gaius was cynically certain that whatever spots he found on the entrails of the unfortunate fowl would indicate it was an auspicious day. With most of the dignitaries of Londinium standing about it would be exceedingly inconvenient to cancel the festivities. In any case, the augurs had already been consulted weeks ago to select the proper day.
The atrium, its pillars twined with greenery, was crowded with what seemed to be an appalling number of people; he recognized a couple of wrinkled prune-faced elderly dowagers whom he had met in Licinius’s house several times over the last few months. He noticed that they really smiled, if not actually at him, at least somewhere in his direction. Maybe they were happy for Julia; if they only knew how mixed a bargain she was getting they would frown!
In due course the sacrificer declared it a very good day for a wedding and offered congratulations. No day on which Julia had decided to be married would dare to be unfavorable.
There was a little murmur as the sacrifice was cleared away and the bride entered on her father’s arm. Gaius could see little but the hem of her white tunic beneath the crimson flamma, the famous veil. One of Licinius’s secretaries unrolled the marriage contract and began to read in a nasal drone. Most of it had been completed at the ceremony of betrothal: the amount of the coemptio which Gaius was offering, and the sum which Julia would bring to the marriage, the fact that she was to remain “in the hand” of her father as a legal part of his family, and would retain her own property. It had been explained to him that these days that arrangement was more usual, and no one would think the less of him. There was a provision that he could not divorce Julia except for “grievous misconduct,” which must be attested by at least two noble matrons. Gaius would have laughed if anything now could have made him laugh; anyone less likely to misbehave than the dignified Julia, he simply could not imagine, and she had made it too clear that she wanted this marriage to jeopardize it. Even her sober demeanor today could not hide the triumph in her eyes.
“Gaius Macellius Severus Siluricus, do you agree to the terms of this contract, and are you willing to take this woman as your wife according to the law?” his father asked then. Gaius realized that they were all looking at him, but still it seemed an endless time before he could say the words.