Retalio

by Alison Morton

‘Lúkas is a bit of an oddball, but seems very well travelled. He knows Berlin and Prague and Bratislava well, even Marienbad and Budapest. I think he has connections on the Russian border. Maybe he’s a smuggler!’ She laughed. ‘I don’t need to know, Aurelia. He’s kept this place ticking over for the past five years, so I’m content. He turned up one day on an old motorcycle, a kid of sixteen, seventeen, confident as God. I’d just sacked the previous caretaker who’d been selling off doors and decorations to a second-hand architectural dealer. Lúkas goes off sometimes, but only ever for a few days.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t sell this place, it’s entailed under fideicommis to Joachim, then his children, and we both know that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘Perhaps he can adopt?’

  ‘That’s up to him. It’ll go back to the state eventually if no heirs present themselves.’

  * * *

  In April, we’d applied to the New Austrian court for a formal declaration of ownership for the Biedermeier house. Not a squeak came from Livilla Vara’s legation protesting it was Roma Novan government property when the notice was published in the New Austrian government gazette. I knew Cornelia from the Paris legation had invited Vara to lunch in the town on the morning of the Floralia riot, but I hadn’t had time to examine her report in detail and read between the lines.

  I questioned Cornelia about it when we were preparing the paperwork for the final court hearing which was due on the last day of July. She’d smiled at me and said, ‘Once I had insisted her guard sit away from us, I merely reminded Vara of a few essential facts of political life.’ She’d refused to explain further. To my surprise they granted ownership within ten minutes. We put the Biedermeier house up for sale immediately to create a financial reserve.

  Now settled in our new accommodation – I refused to call it home – we pressed on with our take-back plans. Volusenia, fully recovered, started training the troops hard. I thought she was optimistic as we were still just over the hundred, but she was concentrating on turning them all into special forces mini squads capable of operating in full isolation.

  Working with Cornelia, I coordinated our relationships with European and North American governments. I worked long hours throughout the summer, often influencing and persuading across time zones. Sometimes people were on holiday or at conferences and I had to chase them through different intermediaries.

  We didn’t have good or bad relations with the Eastern European countries and my contacts reported no particular concern from them. Our legation in Moscow, which I hadn’t visited, was as neutral as the administration there. But North America was different. The French-speaking countries of Quebec and Louisiane sided with their European colleagues in ‘la francophonie’, France and the Helvetian Confederation, and gave us their support. Canada followed its British partner in the Transatlantic Federation, but the EUS was strangely aloof. When I spoke to her two months after Floralia, the Washington nuncia reported continued polite interest from the American administration, but no enthusiasm for supporting us.

  ‘I’m sorry, consiliaria, but I’m still getting a blank wall here,’ the nuncia said. ‘The EUS External Affairs Department are being very reticent. One of the assistants to their deputy secretary, a smart kid just out of Harvard called Hartenwyck, even made an allusion to the possibility of treating us as a stranded embassy.’

  I sucked in my breath. The EUS had a practical policy about the recognition of governments. When I’d written to their president’s protocol chief a month ago, he’d replied that the question of recognition did not arise; ‘We conduct relations with the government in place.’

  I had to assume that was exactly what they were doing with Caius’s illegal regime. And that tied in with Caius’s presence at Langley before the coup.

  ‘Not to worry, consiliaria,’ the nuncia’s voice came through the encrypted telephone. ‘I told Mr Wet-Behind-The-Ears Hartenwyck that as we’d bought the plot for the legation in 1792 from Governor General Franklin, over seventy years before the EUS became an independent state, we were perfectly entitled to stay here and grow cabbages in the garden if we wanted to.’

  I laughed at her robust attitude, but she was right. She’d fight it through every national and international court if necessary. And the Americans knew it.

  17

  Just over five hours after talking to Washington, I struggled into wakefulness. I had to get more sleep; my working hours were so irregular. Quirinia’s face hovered over me. I pushed up onto my elbows.

  ‘Here, drink this.’ She sat down on the chair she must have pulled over from the other side of the room. She watched as I devoured the warm tea.

  ‘Some marvellous news.’ She was smiling, no, grinning like one of Bacchus’s naiads, very un-Quirinia-like.

  ‘What? Caius has surrendered himself or fallen on his sword?’

  The grin faded back to a smile.

  ‘No, you silly. Don’t you remember you have a daughter? She’s been pregnant? Well, no more. Marina was delivered of a daughter two hours ago. Both are well, William Brown says, and Marina is resting now.’

  Oh, Juno. I gulped the last of the drink down and reached for my clothes.

  ‘No, go and bathe,’ she said. ‘Marina will be fast asleep for another few hours.’

  * * *

  ‘How does it feel to be a grandmother, Aurelia?’ I could almost hear William Brown chuckling down the phone line. I felt like an old woman of eighty this morning, so didn’t comment.

  ‘Is she well? Truly?’

  ‘She’s tired, but the doctors aren’t worried. She just needs to rest and regain her strength. The baby was quite big, a healthy eight pounds.’

  Gods, over three and a half kilograms. No wonder my poor child was exhausted, bearing a giant.

  ‘I must congratulate her when she wakes,’ I said. ‘Please ask her to call me as soon as she feels up to it.’

  My arms almost ached with a longing to cradle Marina in my arms. She was little more than a child herself despite her twenty-one years. But, of course, Marina was thousands of kilometres away, sleeping in a hi-tech American hospital bed, monitored to the last hair on her head with beeps and electronic displays. Her daughter would be wrapped in a cellular blanket and lying separated in an open transparent plastic box at her bedside, not snuggled up to her mother and not surrounded by her family.

  Downstairs, Silvia rushed to kiss me and congratulate Family Mitela on the birth of the new heir. The phut of a champagne bottle being opened and congratulations flying through the air filled the room. Volusenia, Nuncia Cornelia, young Aquilia and Sella stepped forward with Quirinia. The noise quietened down.

  ‘Aurelia Mitela,’ Quirinia began in a formal tone. ‘The Twelve Families ask if you accept your daughter’s child into Family Mitela.’

  ‘I accept her.’ I only wished I could be there with Marina. I wanted to pick the child up, to claim her and receive her into my family so she could be raised a Roman.

  ‘Then we welcome her into our number. We are only six Families here including your own, but I speak for all of us. We shall enter her name in the record book in eight days’ time if she still lives.’

  I bowed to each of them. A tiny tear ran down my cheek. In normal times, I would have been at my daughter’s side, the whole Twelve would have been there. The entire Mitela tribe would have been present at Domus Mitelarum at the baby’s naming day next week with the house overflowing with food, drink and celebration. My throat hurt as I gulped down my sadness. Nevertheless, I raised my glass to them all and thanked them formally.

  * * *

  Eight days later, Quirinia and the other Families representatives gathered round in a semi-circle behind me as I initiated the link to the Brown home in New Hampshire.

  Marina herself answered. I could see the bookshelves of William Brown’s study in New Hampshire behind her as the black and white image settled. My daughter was dressed formally, her hair bound up above a pale but perfectly composed and made-up face. I wanted to pull he
r to me and hug her, but I had to speak the traditional words.

  ‘Salve, Marina Mitela. I trust you are well. Do you have any news for me?’

  ‘Salve, domina,’ she replied in a clear voice. ‘I wish to present my daughter to you.’ She reached to the side and brought a bundle towards the camera. Screwed up features and tiny bubbling lips in a pink face. My heart leapt.

  ‘What is her name?’ I said.

  ‘She is named Carina and is fully healthy.’

  ‘Then I accept her into the Mitela Family.’ I swallowed hard. ‘I regret I am not able to tie the bulla around her neck myself. Please do this as my proxy.’ Marina laid the child down and brought out the gold bulla and chain I’d had made by a Viennese goldsmith and sent by courier. She held it up to show me, then fastened it around the baby’s neck. I looked down for an instant, then glanced up at Marina to see her kissing the child’s forehead. The baby’s response was to gurgle. I got up from my seat to allow the other Families representatives to gather round to congratulate Marina. I caught Junia’s eye; she smiled and gave me a nod as I wiped a few tears from my eyes, then sniffed. I should be there with her, not living such an important event through technology. After a few minutes, the cluster of well-wishers dispersed and I slid back into the seat and stared into the monitor.

  ‘Are you really well, Marina?’

  ‘Yes, Mama, honestly. They were wonderful in the hospital. I’m a little tired, but I expect that’s normal when you are up in the night. William has arranged a nurse to help me for the next few weeks.’ Her face became solemn again. ‘Thank you for the formal welcome for Carina. I know how busy you are.’

  ‘Darling, I couldn’t miss this. And this is what we are fighting for. I will come and see you as soon as I can.’

  ‘How is Miklós?’

  ‘He… He’s away at the moment.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I didn’t have anything to add.

  ‘And William?’ I said.

  She turned and beamed to her left. William’s face came into view.

  ‘Hello, Aurelia, how are things?’ He was smiling in that half-jokey, half-solemn way that characterised him.

  ‘Let’s not talk about me,’ I said. ‘Let me offer my heartiest congratulations on the birth of your daughter. She looks beautiful.’

  The beautiful one then bawled her head off and Marina excused herself and carted the baby off out of view. William slid into her place and I heard the door shut.

  ‘That’s a lovely name that Marina’s chosen.’

  ‘She called ‘Carina’ to her just after the baby slithered out, but as she’ll live her life here, we’ll call her Karen, Karen Brown.’

  No, William Brown, I thought, she’ll be recorded as Carina Mitela in the family records, whatever you may think.

  ‘She’ll retain her Roman name, though, and when she visits us, I’ll tell her about her family history,’ I retorted.

  ‘Of course,’ he said smoothly. But he didn’t understand. He wasn’t Roma Novan.

  * * *

  Reassured that my child and her child were both well, and that photographs were on their way to me, I settled down to the minutiae of planning. Our activity and confidence grew over the next few months. The leafleting and propaganda campaign were progressing well now that we had a small but dedicated print room. But the most dangerous part was travelling back into Roma Nova. The monitoring stations reported show trials, executions and increasing draconian laws. And we had a steady stream of refugees. Burrus had taught us to screen everybody much more carefully, but we were starting to gather professional middle-class people who would have left a great deal behind. It must be getting grim now for them to run. But they brought talents and skills which only strengthened our capabilities.

  I started my international lobbying again and achieved some informal economic sanctions at the European level as well as at the League of Nations. Governments would hopefully look twice before doing business with the new Roma Novan regime. Unfortunately, our documentary proof and photographs were circumstantial although our communications intercepts helped. But the EEA president sighed at our meeting and said he had no control over the business sector and could do nothing until there was proof Caius’s regime had broken international law.

  A British investigative journalist had sent back some grim photos and camera footage from Roma Nova before disappearing. Caius Tellus dismissed the images as staged exaggeration by criminal elements and tried to reassure the international community his government was investigating the reporter’s disappearance but few believed him. I pitied the poor reporter’s family; unlikely they’d see him again.

  Vibianus’s staff was compiling dossiers from the refugees’ stories; it was providing the jigsaw pieces to gradually build up the whole picture, but it was slow work. The positive result was that questions were being asked in the European press at last and on the broadcast media. Opinion was wavering about Caius in Europe, but not in the EUS.

  ‘From the snippets we’ve picked up on the intercepts, we’re pretty sure the Americans are supplying Caius. Not overtly, of course, but nothing else explains why he’s still solvent,’ Volusenia said at the council meeting in August.

  ‘Well, he has the silver, of course,’ I chipped in.

  ‘Does he, though?’ Quirinia asked. ‘We’ve been monitoring transactions as best we can and the volume seems to have decreased steadily. It looks as if it’s dropped to nearly fifty per cent of the previous twelve months. I’m sorry I can’t be more exact.’

  ‘My friend Prisca Monticola was the head of the Silver Guild until just after the coup,’ I said. ‘She was thrown out, of course, but she’s been sending occasional letters via the poste restante office in Vienna. She hasn’t once mentioned production or trading, only family chit-chat, her aunt’s cat and household stuff. Knowing her, she’s still keeping an eye on anything to do with silver, even from the sidelines. I’d have thought she would have hinted if it was going downhill.’ I paused. ‘Actually, I haven’t heard from her for over five weeks.’

  Vibianus looked up from the notes he was taking. ‘Excuse me for interrupting, consiliaria, but do you still have those letters?’

  ‘Yes, of course, but they’re personal. Nothing to do with anything silver or politics related.’ I made a point of looking at my watch. ‘Can we get back to the agenda?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to be discourteous.’ He smiled his diplomat’s smile. ‘She may very well be using the silver traders’ code. It’s a form of confidential communication. It’s not only military and political organisations that use codes.’

  ‘Explain.’

  ‘As you can imagine, silver is vulnerable to theft. To prevent information getting out about caravans, or mint deliveries, the miners and traders in the fifth century developed a system of codes. It didn’t rely on substitution or mathematical formulae, but everyday phrases with set meanings.’ He glanced at me. ‘It’s not designed to circumvent the transaction and reporting regulations in force these days, just a way of enhancing security and passing on market news.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘My mother’s family were traders and she taught me some of it when I was considering becoming an apprentice in my uncle’s business. I, er, stuck it out for a year.’

  ‘Oh, gods, have we been missing vital intelligence?’ I said. The rest of the council stared at Vibianus.

  ‘Well, don’t just sit there waiting for flies to nest in your mouth, Major, go and fetch Monticola’s letters,’ Volusenia barked at me.

  We abandoned the rest of the meeting and Vibianus started working on Monticola’s letters minutes after I set the envelopes down on the table. Like a good bureaucrat, he carefully started a new page on his notepad, sorted the envelopes by date and opened the first one.

  Volusenia paced up and down the office, disappearing into the garden every so often. The rest of us sat in various positions of unease on the group of chairs in the meeting room and waited.
I couldn’t bear it after an hour and a half and joined Volusenia in the courtyard.

  ‘Anything?’ she said, glaring at me.

  ‘Not yet. He’s rough-drafted some and is collating the rest. I have months of them – a good dozen and a half.’

  ‘Pluto in Hades! If only you’d recognised them for what they were.’

  ‘Don’t get at me – it didn’t occur to me this code system could exist.’ I scowled at her. ‘And while we’re on it, stop calling me Major and ordering me around like one of your barrack pets. I’ve relinquished my military role definitively.’

  ‘Ha! Touchy, aren’t we? Well, as it’s a national emergency you’re still on the active list until released by the imperatrix. You’re stuck.’

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

  ‘When you’re as short-handed as I am, you’ll understand why. We’re training up a new officer corps by promoting some of our own people and co-opting some of the new arrivals that have at least three years’ service in their background, but there are few who have practical combat leadership experience on the ground and you’re one of them. We won’t need a foreign minister when we invade, but I’ll need an effective ground commander to lead the troops.’

  I said nothing, but kept walking by her side.

  ‘I apologise if I’ve been inappropriate. I’m only a rough old soldier,’ she said gruffly.

  I laid my hand on her shoulder. ‘No, I apologise for being sensitive. Anxious times for all of us.’

  But she was right. That evening I decided to divide my time between the political work and training with Volusenia’s troops.

  * * *

  I’d sent everybody to bed at midnight, but Vibianus worked on, hunched over the table. The only sign of fatigue he showed was when I brought him a cup of tea at six the next morning. He stretched his arms out then raised his right hand to his face, drew his thumb and fingers together across his eye sockets to meet in the middle. He took a deep breath.