Retalio

by Alison Morton

  I stepped out of the back of the car, pushing the passenger door shut. The driver’s companion, my bodyguard, was by my side as I approached the black railings on the edge of the property. The house with its grey slate roof looked a little smarter since the day Miklós and I had left it; no police striped incident tape, the windows gleamed and tubs with daffodils and just-budding tulips stood each side of the front door. I released the breath I hadn’t realised I was holding. Although I’d been weak recovering from the gunshot wounds and we’d had to live with an armed bodyguard, I would always treasure the weeks here with Miklós. I’d had no responsibilities, he’d been determined to look after me and we’d had time to love each other, sometimes fiercely passionate, other times just folded into each other’s arms in warm contentment.

  Just as I was going to turn away, the door opened. My heart thudded. Miklós? But a stout man in his late fifties, blond hair turning grey and a frown on his face, stood in the doorway.

  ‘Ja, bitte?’ he challenged.

  ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you,’ I said. ‘I used to live here, with my… my husband.’ What a strange word. ‘I just wanted to see the house again. Sorry.’ I fished out my Hungarian passport from my handbag, opened it and held it up against the railings. He came down the pathway to the gate and peered at it, then glanced at my face.

  ‘Oh, I see.’ He almost smiled. A woman, her face slightly anxious, appeared in the doorway, then walked up to join him. It was such a quiet neighbourhood, my visit was probably the event of the week. She leant over and whispered to him. He nodded and she disappeared. She returned and handed him a small packet.

  ‘I was going to take this to the land agent next week,’ he said as he passed it through to me. ‘But it says “Urgent” so you might as well take it now.’

  He passed it through the railings. The padded bag was about twenty by fifteen centimetres with a typed label addressed to ‘Aurelia Mitela c/o Farkas’. I could feel a rigid box inside. The couple looked at it, then at me, but I wasn’t going to satisfy their curiosity. I thanked them and we returned to the safe house where I stopped in the hallway and opened the packet. The pure white top of the cardboard box it contained disarmed me for what lay inside.

  * * *

  I shuddered as I awoke. A light at the side of me. Gods, there was a ton of bricks on me. No, it was bedding. I reached a hand out to throw some of the stifling weight off.

  A figure rose from a chair by the window.

  ‘Oh, thank Juno!’ Quirinia grabbed my hand and burst into tears. ‘I know the doctor said you’d sleep it off, but I was so frightened you’d die.’

  ‘Quirinia?’

  She released my hand and darted to the door, opened it and spoke to somebody outside. She came back to my bed and helped me to a glass of water.

  ‘I know I’ve been stupid and selfish,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I would have been devastated to have lost you. Will you forgive me?’

  ‘Quirinia, you know I will. Welcome back, my friend.’ I smiled at her and I felt an invisible weight lift off me.

  The door burst open. Volusenia stood on the threshold stiff, frowning and radiating anger like the senior Fury.

  ‘What in Hades were you playing at, sitting out in the garden for hours in this freezing weather? If Consiliaria Quirinia hadn’t found you, we’d be building your pyre once we’d defrosted you. For the gods’ sake, you can be sentimental on your own time, not Roma Nova’s.’

  Quirinia stared at her. I concentrated on the ceiling.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’m not answerable to you, Colonel, so rein your temper in,’ I retorted.

  ‘No, you’re answerable to a far higher authority than me, the people of Roma Nova.’

  I struggled up onto my elbows. ‘The box, the packet addressed to me with the white box. Did you find it?’

  ‘This?’ Quirinia opened the drawer on the bedside table. ‘It was on the stone bench at your side when we found you.’

  ‘Push the door to, Colonel,’ I said. She gave it a good shove. I sat up and glanced from one to the other. ‘Come closer.’ I opened the box, but not the sealed transparent plastic bag inside.

  Quirinia went white. ‘Oh, gods. Oh gods,’ she shrieked and clamped her hand over her mouth.

  Volusenia look grimmer than ever if that was possible, but her eyes flickered in reaction. She recovered first. ‘Why have you been sent a severed finger and whose is it?’ She laid her hand on my shoulder. ‘Not your companion’s?’

  ‘No, thank Juno. The ring on it belongs to my cousin, Fabianus, Severina’s husband. And the scar… You see the scar running down the length of it? That’s the result of him pinching his older sister’s gladius when we were children. He almost lost the finger.’ Then it hit me. ‘Oh gods, Caius was there, sneaking around when it happened. The bastard.’

  'What a foul thing to do, desecrating a dead body,’ Volusenia said.

  ‘If Fabianus was dead at the time.’

  Both women looked at me, shock on their faces. My fingers trembled as I closed the box on the miserable thing.

  ‘I must get up,’ I said, scrabbling for the sheets and blankets, but Quirinia pushed me back.

  ‘No, at least a good night’s sleep before then. I’ll have them bring us some supper up here.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ I gave in, not because of her stern tone of voice, but because my legs felt like wool and my head a block of wood. The three of us stared in silence at the box, fully absorbed by the physical manifestation of Caius’s cruelty.

  After a few moments, Volusenia coughed. ‘If you wish to keep the ring, consiliaria, I will dispose of the remains myself.’

  ‘But not one word to anybody, especially Silvia.’

  ‘Mars, no,’ Volusenia replied. ‘We tell her nothing.’

  ‘Tell me nothing about what?’ came a young voice.

  Hades! Silvia stood at the half open door.

  11

  ‘You have no right to keep secrets from me, I’m the imperatrix!’

  At that moment she looked like nothing more than a spoiled teenager stamping her foot.

  ‘Darling, we didn’t want to upset you.’ I put my most conciliatory voice on.

  ‘Upset? My life is a complete upset. Death, no, murder of my entire family, fleeing in terror for my life, living hand to mouth in this horrible house with a guard watching my every move and you all expecting me to be on my best behaviour all the time. Of course I’m bloody upset!’ She glared at us all in turn.

  ‘I apologise, domina,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Aunt Aurelia. Just tell me the truth. I must be able to trust you to do that.’

  ‘You’re right, of course, but—’ I glanced at Volusenia and Quirinia who both nodded. I gave her the brief details of how I came to have the sad remains of her father’s finger.

  ‘Show me.’ Her voice was as neutral as the expression on her face. She didn’t flinch, but her lips almost disappeared as her mouth retreated into a tight line for a few moments.

  ‘On the night of the fires, I kissed my mother and Julian farewell,’ she said. ‘I knew in my heart I might not see either of them again. Dad had gone to see that dreadful man without even a goodbye.’ She gulped as a single tear ran down her face. ‘I haven’t got any bodies to burn but I will honour him with the rites of the dead. That’s the least I can do.’ She wiped her hand across her face, then straightened up, turned and left without giving us another look, closing the door quietly behind her. When I shuffled past her door later on my way to the lavatory I heard sobbing.

  * * *

  The whole exile group gathered in the garden the following evening around a tiny pyre; we pulled the stone bench into service as an altar. It was so sad, it was almost ridiculous. We were diminished even in our rituals. Silvia was stone-faced as she lit the makeshift torch and set it to the small pyre. With no priest in our group, I led the prayers as head of Fabianus’s birth house. Desperate not to let Silvia down by
hesitating, I drew on my past Senate speeches to make up what I couldn’t remember. Silvia and I walked round the burning pyre the requisite three times and watched as it flickered and smoked.

  Quiet crying and murmuring broke into the silence and people pushed forward to throw small tokens onto the fire as libations. The gods knew they had little to give, but they gave nevertheless. Calls of ‘Vale Mitelus, vale Apulius’ grew into shouts. The flames roared, now fuelled by the libations. The babel of voices grew and rose to shrieks. The ground pounded with stamping feet. Then came the throbbing of a chant. Ultio! Ultio! Ultio! Revenge – they wanted revenge.

  Gavinus, my former estate manager, the gentle engineer, snarled and shouted as well as any of them. Even Quirinia, the practical accountant, was caught in the emotion and waved her arms like a professional mourner. My throat was dry, not just from the smoke. I shouted, chanting with the rest of them. We could have been back in the primitive ancient times, even before kings reigned in Rome.

  Silvia stood rigid in front of the pyre, tears streaming down her face, arms raised and, contorted with rage and grief, the ugliest look I’d ever seen on a young girl.

  Then she screamed, ‘Delendus! Delendus! Delendus!’ She was invoking total destruction on Caius Tellus.

  * * *

  Catharsis was how psychiatrists described it, but exhaustion followed. As I walked down the stairs and into the entrance hallway the next morning, I noticed that people were moving quietly, looking ahead, but not talking. Perhaps like me, they were trying to absorb what had happened last night. I followed others into the former ballroom where Silvia stood at one end watching people file in. A solemn, drawn expression on her face made her look twice her age. She waited until everybody had settled themselves on the chairs with merely a glance at me as I joined Volusenia and Quirinia on the front row.

  ‘People of Roma Nova,’ Silvia began. ‘Thank you for joining me last night in honouring my father’s memory. I think it helped us relieve some of our sadness and anger. Now we must use our energy to drive out the cruel disease in our beloved country.’ She panned around the faces. ‘I can’t believe Roma Novans really want Caius Tellus’s regime.’

  Cries of ‘No!’

  Her face relaxed slightly, almost into a smile. ‘My grandmother Justina was tough and uncompromising. But she never killed, she was never underhand or terrorised anyone. She cared for her people. I believe even Caius Tellus’s own supporters will realise how wrong and unnatural his regime is. Aurelia Mitela and Colonel Volusenia say we must find out what is going on there and start preparing for our fight back.’ She placed her right hand over her left breast. ‘I vow to you now, with the gods’ help, to put myself at the service of all my people. So that we can free them and given them their lives back, or we’ll die in the attempt.’

  Volusenia leaned over and whispered to me, ‘I think at last we have an Apulian with some steel in her spine.’ I nodded and rose to my feet with her and the rest of the exiles to applaud the imperatrix.

  * * *

  Edward’s lawyer had managed to shortcut the procedure for obtaining residency status by going through Herr Goss and coaxing temporary protected status documents out of the New Austrian government within three weeks. This not only quashed any more moves to deport us, but let us travel outside New Austria and more importantly re-enter the country.

  Now the exiles weren’t going to be handed back to Caius’s regime legally, Volusenia stepped up security on Silvia, convinced he’d try to snatch her. Silvia at his side, however unwilling, would legitimise his regime. It had caused ructions enough last year when he’d captured me and announced that, although no longer the head of the senior Family, I was now his ‘companion’. People had started to think the Twelve Families supported him. If Caius forced Silvia to legally contract with him, it would double our task, if not kill it dead.

  The council of eight tasked Volusenia to head a steering group to develop a plan to retake Roma Nova; she co-opted Quirinia, Calavia and a male logistics specialist who was married to one of the PGSF optiones. He’d been a transport manager; he knew every road and back way in every part of Roma Nova and had followed his wife out.

  In the meantime, I spent a few days in London including a visit to the head office of Soane’s Bank. We were going through solidi at a fierce rate and I needed to liquidate some of the assets I’d exported there before the night of the fires. Juno Moneta knew how many sale certificates I signed in those austere premises. The portraits of my great-grandfather and various great-uncles and cousins seemed to be frowning down at me as I liquidated long-held assets. David Soane, who had now taken over in London, gave no opinion.

  * * *

  On my return to the Vienna safe house, a soak in a hot bath and something to eat were my first objectives. But as soon as I’d greeted the guard inside the door, and picked up my case to go up to my room, Volusenia cornered me.

  ‘I know you’re busy doing everything else, consiliaria, but we need some political animals of some sort – a few senators or even a junior magistrate or two would do. If what we’re working on succeeds, what in Hades do we do once we get back? That bastard Caius took the country over by gradual political manipulation and we need people as crafty as him on our side.’

  'I’ll put some senators on the shopping list when I next go to the Roma Nova shop, shall I?’

  Volusenia stared at me.

  I rubbed my hand across my forehead and down over my face.

  ‘I’m sorry, that was unnecessary. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m a bit tired from the travel. Gods, I’m so unfit. I need to start training again or I’ll never keep up.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve let yourself get out of condition. No excuse for it.’

  I stared at her with resentment, guilt and tiredness. When in Hades had I had the luxury to trot round the pavements?

  ‘Gods, Volusenia, you must have been a holy terror for your troops.’

  ‘I still am. Don’t underestimate me. You’ve never officially resigned, Major, so be careful I don’t recall you and start loading you up with training weights and make you work for your living.’

  I grinned at her, my headache receding, but she just harrumphed. I glanced up the ornate Biedermeier staircase, then sideways to check for eavesdroppers. ‘Look, Marcella Volusenia, we’re a tiny group, we don’t have the critical mass to retake a border post.’ She gave me a Vesuvius look. ‘Well, a district castra, then. We’ll never succeed without a strong resistance movement inside Roma Nova. Too many people still support Caius.’ I looked away. ‘We may have to wait months until we’re ready.’

  ‘No! We need to strike before his system is embedded. Otherwise, people will just accept it and get on with their lives, like all occupied peoples.’

  ‘Yes and no. If the rumours are true about these hellhole work colonies and the executions we’ve heard about, people will stop supporting Caius fairly rapidly. What we need to do now is to develop an information network to counter his lies and propaganda.’

  12

  Before I wrote one word of any take-back plan, I had to rid myself of one last piece of pollution from Caius – the damned slave ring. I’d vowed to wear it until I went back to Roma Nova as a reminder of the brutality we were fighting, but in a way I had returned. This was the true Roma Nova; a tiny group of exiles compared with the one and a half million inhabitants in the country itself, but a group that represented its true values. I found Numerus in his office.

  ‘Have you got five minutes, some strong cutters, a chisel and hammer?’

  It took an hour and my wrist was bleeding and bruised despite the rags I stuffed round it as protection. We had to find the old blacksmith’s anvil in the stables in the end. I gave myself another few minutes, some strong tea and a slug of brandy to recover.

  * * *

  I drafted in Lentilius, Silvia’s protégé, to work with me on the counter-information campaign; he had good common sense and knew what would appeal to ordinary working people as
well as those who had served in the military. They’d be afraid and we needed to give them reassurance as well as ask for their support. Of course, not everybody, however patriotic, would want to risk themselves and their families. We’d be unrealistic to expect that. All we needed was enough.

  The logistics specialist on the steering group said that, as we had no planes to drop leaflets, we’d have to do it the dangerous way – smuggle them in to distribution points inside Roma Nova with the risk of the couriers and local distributors getting caught. He didn’t say another word after that. But we agreed to buy a small litho printing press and prepare leaflets ready for the time when it became practical, and safer, to distribute them.

  At least we could listen to what was going on now in Roma Nova. William had set up new electronic systems for us, but we couldn’t use our two monitoring points as broadcast stations, or it would give away their locations.

  Volusenia disapproved of me leaving the relative safety of Vienna when I scheduled a trip in one of the second-hand vans we’d acquired. At her insistence I took a couple of guards with me. We drove south-west for a couple of hours, parked under trees, then trekked on foot through the snow for another kilometre to the monitoring post she’d set up east of Graz. Cleverly, it was disguised as a mountain rescue communications relay station. A second listening post one was two hours west, on the site of Virunum where Julia Bacausa, the mother of the first Apulians, had been born in the fourth century. Perhaps that was sentimentality or perhaps it was because it was one of the highest hills around. It was masquerading as an archaeological dig and had just opened up again now it was April. Between the two of them we were able to listen in to vast chunks of the communications spectrum used in Roma Nova.