JULIA PRIMA
By Alison Morton
Publication Date: August 23rd, 2022
Publisher: Pulcheria Press
Page Length: 335 pages
Genre: Historical fiction
“You should have trusted me. You should have given me a choice.”
AD 370, Roman frontier province of Noricum. Neither wholly married nor wholly divorced, Julia Bacausa is trapped in the power struggle between the Christian church and her pagan ruler father.
Tribune Lucius Apulius’s career is blighted by his determination to stay faithful to the Roman gods in a Christian empire. Stripped of his command in Britannia, he’s demoted to the backwater of Noricum – and encounters Julia.
Unwittingly, he takes her for a whore. When confronted by who she is, he is overcome with remorse and fear. Despite this disaster, Julia and Lucius are drawn to one another by an irresistible attraction.
But their intensifying bond is broken when Lucius is banished to Rome. Distraught, Julia gambles everything to join him. But a vengeful presence from the past overshadows her perilous journey. Following her heart’s desire brings danger she could never have envisaged…
Excerpt
Asella, Julia’s body servant, and Julia herself reminisce about Julia’s mother and father
‘I did not mean to be disrespectful to your father, domina. Prince Bacausus is a good man who treated my mistress well.’ Asella’s eyes softened. She’d accompanied my mother when she’d left her tribe to marry the young warrior prince my father had been. Father had been fighting against the tribes raiding across the Danuvius as part of the Legio II Italica based at Lauriacum. He’d led his men across the river into tribal territory and captured the local chieftain himself.
Asella said he’d stood as proud as the Christians’ Lucifer and demanded the chieftain’s surrender. If he gave himself up, the tribespeople would be spared. Given the overwhelming number of Romans armed to the hilt, the chieftain acquiesced and was led away as a captive. Then my father saw the chieftain’s daughter, Suria, defiant and trembling with rage at her father’s fate. Asella said sourly that he might have won the fight against the father, but it was at that moment he surrendered to the daughter. He said she had to be part of the surrender bargain and held out his hand. The daughter – who would become my mother – had stared at him long and hard, but stepped forward. She knew her refusal would mean disaster for the tribe. Asella told me that my mother had gone very willingly and had never regretted her decision, but she became homesick from time to time and would ride all the way up to the Danuvius River and watch across it for hours.
I remember Asella nursing my mother when she was dying. The medicus from the military camp had given her poppy seed draught to relieve the pain but shook his head when my father raised his eyebrow in question. I watched my father’s shoulders slump as he turned and trudged back to his tablinum and drew the curtain across to forbid any possible visitors.
Asella’s cousin had appeared at our door the next day without warning. Her face looked like any other tribeswoman’s, but she wore a boldly patterned dress with bells and fringes at the edges of an overtunic. The fibula holding her cloak at the shoulder was silver, but with fantastic and frightening animal shapes and the gold torc round her neck the most intricately twisted that I’d ever seen. Her belt looked like metal skulls linked together and a pouch hung from it on the right side. The most normal thing was her hair, dark and gathered at the back with ring-headed pins sticking out. She fixed me with dark grey eyes buried deep in her face. I felt she was reading my soul, then she ignored me as she greeted Asella who bowed to her and called her Talusia. They’d disappeared down the corridor together towards my mother’s room, leaving me alone, feeling a mere bystander.
Only when my father threatened to slice the cousin in half if he wasn’t permitted to see his wife did she let him, and me, into my mother’s room. Her poor face, so thin, her skin stretched across her cheekbones. I had fallen to my knees by her bed, ignoring the herbal smells from the brazier, the tribeswoman crooning and the other people in the room, and I took her hand. Warm tears ran down my face. I was supposed to be an adult at sixteen, but at that moment I was a tiny child desperate for her mother to never leave her. She turned her head slowly and looked at me.
‘Julia,’ she’d said softly. This thin croak wasn’t her voice. Hers should be assured, positive and warm. But it was her hand, even though it felt like skin with only bones and sinews underneath. ‘I’m so sorry to leave you. I wanted to see you with a good man and strong children.’ Her fingers curled round mine as if she tried to grip them, but her touch had no strength.
‘Matir,’ I said, my throat parched. ‘Don’t tire yourself.’
‘My Julia, listen. When you find a man who pleases you, marry him in the way of my people. And please your father and marry as the Romans, but not as their new god.’ Her eyes glowed for a moment. ‘Promise me!’
‘I promise, but—’
Her eyes fluttered as she searched my face.
‘I hope I have been a good mother to you,’ she whispered, then sighed and looked up at the ceiling. After a minute she turned back to me. ‘Now, farewell. Let me speak to your father. He is a noble and courageous man, and kind. Honour him.’
The last sight I had of my mother alive was of my father kissing her mouth in the Roman way to take her breath, her essence, into him. Then he’d stroked her forehead and run his fingers over her eyes to close them.
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Alison Morton writes award-winning thrillers featuring tough but compassionate heroines. Her nine-book Roma Nova series is set in an imaginary European country where a remnant of the ancient Roman Empire has survived into the 21st century and is ruled by women who face conspiracy, revolution and heartache but with a sharp line in dialogue.
She blends her fascination for Ancient Rome with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, historical and thriller fiction. On the way, she collected a BA in modern languages and an MA in history.
Alison now lives in Poitou in France, the home of Mélisende, the heroine of her latest two contemporary thrillers, Double Identity and Double Pursuit. Oh, and she’s writing the next Roma Nova story.
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Thank you for hosting Alison Morton today. Much appreciated. xx
ReplyDeleteAlthough it's poignant, this is one of my favourite scenes in the book. I hope your subscribers enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it.
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