Retalio

by Alison Morton

  ‘And what would your little friend say if you didn’t come back?’

  ‘He’s not little.’

  She smirked. ‘Well, you know best in that department.’

  I swatted her arm with the back of my hand and grinned. ‘He’s my companion of fifteen years and in this place my contracted spouse, so some respect, please.’

  She grinned back. ‘All the more reason to stay and enjoy his, er, company.’

  I grasped the top of the low wall with both hands and leant forward.

  ‘I know you mean well, but I cannot ignore the call of going back. Roma Nova is in my blood, my heart and my head. It’s not simple duty. It’s as if Mitelus himself is standing beside me, from the end of the fourth century. He’s wearing his chain mail lorica, gladius in his right hand, gripping his scutum shield in his left. And behind him all the later Mitelae, armed, ready for their battles.’

  ‘Have you been at the brandy again?’

  ‘No, and you know it.’ I stood up. ‘Marcella Volusenia, this is my battle in my generation and I won’t shirk it.’

  ‘You look so happy, Aurelia, at the moment. I think you’re wrong to go, but I’m not going to stop you. If I’m honest, the troops couldn’t have a better commander.’ She chewed her lip. ‘But if you get caught or injured, I’ll come after you so hard, you’ll wish you were already dead.’

  ‘I’m trembling with fright.’ But my body was singing already with the adrenaline coursing through it.

  Part II

  EXPLORATION

  19

  I dozed on the train from Vienna to Graz, at least I tried to. Last night, Miklós had made love with me so tenderly, I had wept, but he kissed the tears away.

  ‘You have to go. I know,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to try and persuade you otherwise, but be very careful, Aurelia. Roma Nova is a brooding, destroyed place now. Trust nobody – friends won’t still be friends. If they are your true friends, they’ll be in camps or prison.’

  I was repelled at his cynicism; it couldn’t be that bad.

  I shivered as I left his bed, dressed and trotted back to the kitchen in the main building to eat a warm breakfast with the others. Junia Sestina nodded at me as I poured my coffee.

  Typical for October, it was fresh at six in the morning as we waited, dotted along the main Vienna southbound platform dressed like all the other commuters. The women carried small suitcases and the men black leather briefcases like accountants.

  Two and a half hours later, we left the Graz station in ones and twos as if setting off for another boring day at the office. Four hours after that, now in walking gear, Atrius and I were climbing down the foothills onto the Roma Novan high alp. How different it was from the last time I was here, only a few kilometres to the east, shot by Caius with my life’s blood seeping out of me. I shivered, but it may have just been the cool mountain breeze.

  We rested overnight in a remote barn that the earlier recce groups had found and provisioned. Swapping into the more traditional clothes worn these days in Roma Nova, plus farmers’ boots and cloaks, we started off for the city at five the next morning carrying heavy baskets of vegetables on our backs.

  ‘Are you sure we don’t look like something out of a previous century or two?’

  ‘You’re going to be shocked how things have changed. And don’t, for Mars’ sake, backchat any men, especially men in uniform or wearing rebels’ armbands.’

  ‘I was at the briefing, optio,’ I said in my coldest voice.

  ‘Yes, I know, but first-timers are rarely ready for it.’

  I was too annoyed to answer. He knew I wasn’t an amateur, so why was he treating me like one? I had the answer at the first village we came to. The dangling body, hands tied behind it, was a black silhouette against the late morning sun. As we approached the village centre, I saw it had been a woman. Her trousers were daubed with red paint and so was her face. The remains of her shirt flapped in the breeze. She had been flogged.

  ‘Keep it together,’ Atrius growled as I gagged. ‘Look down at the road and walk as if your feet hurt.’

  I leaned on my walking stave, stumbling along the pavement which had several potholes. I glimpsed left and right, but there wasn’t a single person around. The small general store was boarded up and the inn looked as if it hadn’t had a customer for years. The garage had the notice ‘No more petrol’ dangling at an angle from the middle pump.

  Something bumped into my legs. A young girl, six or seven, barefoot, in tunic and short jacket. Her eyes were huge, unlike her body. She said nothing, just held her hand out, hesitantly.

  I crouched down.

  ‘What do you want, darling?’

  ‘Eat.’

  I set my basket down. In a flash, her arm went in, she grabbed a carrot and ran off.

  Atrius pulled me up. ‘Let’s get out of here before anybody sees us.’

  We walked in silence until we reached open fields. I stopped by a tree, fell on my knees and was sick. The lid on my basket burst open and vegetables scattered all over the road. Atrius wiped my face and gave me some water from a third-hand plastic bottle. My stomach had stopped spasming and I was about to stand up when I heard a vehicle approaching.

  ‘Stay down, pretend to still be sick.’

  A dusty black van with ‘RMN 7th District’ hand-painted on the side pulled up, braking sharply.

  ‘What are you two up to?’ A male voice. I heard the car door slam, then saw a pair of boots and black trousers.

  ‘My mother’s sick, she’s just chucked up her breakfast.’

  ‘She’s got food to waste, spewing it all over the public highway? You want to give her less to eat.’ I heard laughter from inside the van.

  My arm was wrenched up and I was hauled to my feet. A man, about forty, with an inbuilt sneer under a nose that dripped looked at me as if I was a piece of stock.

  ‘She looks too well fed,’ the first man said and poked my stomach. I was about to retaliate, almost by instinct, when Atrius grabbed me by the waist and shook me.

  ‘She’s a lot skinnier than before I sent her out into the vegetable fields, sir.’ He laughed.

  ‘Good man,’ the man said and patted Atrius on the shoulder. ‘Show me your papers, while we’re here.'

  I glanced up at Atrius. I had no papers. Nobody had given me any. Merda. How could the mission team have forgotten something that simple? My stomach spasmed again and I retched.

  ‘That looks all in order. On your way, then, and keep the old bat in line.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Atrius bobbed his head as the man climbed back in his seat and they drove off. I scurried around and gathered up the vegetables. We stared at them until the last dust swirl had swallowed the car up.

  ‘Kindly explain to me what happened there.’

  ‘We have to keep moving. Let’s go.’

  ‘We’re not going anywhere until I get a few answers. First of all, you can drop that huffy, abrupt manner. We have to act in character, but do not carry it over when we’re alone in the middle of nowhere. May I remind you I was leading undercover operations while you were still shitting your nappies.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Accepted.’ We started walking again. After a few minutes, I asked, ‘Why haven’t I got any papers?’ I glanced over at him. ‘I mean, they didn’t seem too worried.’

  He gave a short, hard laugh. ‘You’re a woman – you don’t count. You’re a footnote on mine.’

  * * *

  The mansio we stopped at for the night was comfortable, but dirty. At the evening meal in the large dining room, we sat at the long benches eating our stew, which was mostly vegetables with the odd lump of chewy meat. Food at these roadside hotels had always been plain, but this was ridiculous. The clerk was sullen as he assigned us beds in the dormitories, but took Atrius’s solidi without comment. Caius’s grim features decorated some of the coins, but Severina’s nervous portrait smiled from the five solidi note.

  We
reached the city mid-morning the next day and went straight to the market. I remembered to stay slightly behind Atrius and keep my head covered with a scarf. Instead of the noisy, sometimes boisterous, seething mass of a year ago – shoppers, traders, hucksters and tourists, all pushing past and exchanging insults and greetings – it was dead. Instead of over two hundred stalls, there couldn’t have been more than thirty. One or two had a good selection of fruit and vegetables at outrageously inflated prices, several were selling second-hand irons, toasters, hairdryers and electrical toys for just a few solidi each. Others displayed curtains, sheets, towels and tablecloths; all neatly folded, but faded. Grey faces, desperate faces, worn clothes and even some people without shoes or boots. It looked like the third world.

  The macellum doors were guarded by two tall figures in maroon carrying riot gear. Why? It was only a shopping centre.

  ‘Atrius.’ I tugged on his cloak. ‘Why are the vigiles guarding the macellum?’

  ‘Because of the food riots. Now only the privileged can enter.’

  ‘Juno.’

  ‘Come on, here’s our contact.’ And he headed for a stall on the opposite side of the plaza with nearly empty plastic trays of root vegetables being rearranged by a grumpy-looking man with thinning black hair and a lined face. We introduced ourselves as Prima and Secundus.

  ‘You took your time getting here,’ he said to Atrius, ignoring me. ‘Well, show me what you’ve got.’

  Atrius signalled me to take my basket off and give it to the man.

  ‘Well, don’t dawdle, woman, lift mine down.’ I stared at him for a second or two. What did he think I was? He was perfectly capable of dropping his own carrying basket to the ground. He gave me a fiery look, and I suddenly realised what was expected. I reached up, strained my arms at the weight. I handed the basket to the stallholder and backed off, keeping my head down.

  ‘Oh, Pluto,’ mumbled Atrius.

  I looked sideways. Vigiles, and carrying nightsticks in their hands.

  They stopped very close to us. I shrank against Atrius.

  ‘Papers.’

  As one read them, the other, taller one prodded at the vegetables we had brought, then upended my basket, covering the vegetables in another layer of dust. I didn’t move, not wanting to break our cover, but I seethed inside.

  ‘Well, pick them up, then,’ the tall one ordered.

  I grabbed the basket and started running after the rolling vegetables. I bent over to pick some up and the next minute I was sprawled on the ground, eating dirt. The bastard had kicked me in the bottom. And the two of them were laughing. I counted to ten. Then again. I got to my knees and eased myself up. I scrabbled around for the rest of my vegetables, but kept the two vigiles in front of me. My first thoughts were only of how I wanted to beak every bone in their laughing, bullying bodies. Then I wept for my Roma Nova, the misery around me, the hanged woman, that starving child. When I stood up, the tears were flowing freely.

  * * *

  ‘Here, drink this.’ A smile and a friendly voice at last. The woman held out a mug of black tea. ‘Sorry, we’ve run out of milk, but at least we have some sugar.’

  I looked down at the quarter-filled creased paper packet on the table, but shook my head. I couldn’t rob people of such luxuries. Four of us were crowded in a top floor room of a nineteenth-century block of flats. Atrius and the other man perched on the edge of a single bed. The end of a second bed against the far wall was just visible behind the edge of an old chintz curtain hanging from a rail on the ceiling. In the corner was a small basin and cooking unit. The table and two chairs where the woman and I sat were solid, if scratched. Bright sunlight from the roof light cheered up the whole room, but it was still a poor place.

  The vegetable seller had brought us here after winding through the streets and cutting through courtyards and one passage even I didn’t know. Atrius and I had trudged up three flights of stairs in the old block whose floors became shabbier as we ascended.

  ‘My brother,’ the woman nodded at the younger man. ‘He studies engineering at the Central University and I’m graciously allowed to stay with him as his servant. They chucked me out, of course.’

  ‘Marcia was top of her law class in her last year,’ piped up the young man. ‘So unfair.’ His face looked like that of a fighting dog.

  ‘Sextus,’ she said, ‘leave it.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Let’s get on.’ Marcia looked at me. ‘Prima, you’re on the palace cleaning detail tomorrow morning. Our contact is the housekeeper.’ I stared at her. Did she mean my old friend Drusilla who had helped me escape from Caius last year? ‘She’s a tough bird, but clever and a firm friend,’ Marcia continued. ‘She’ll get you into the first consul’s office, but warns she’ll have to deny you if you get caught. If that happens, she’ll be in trouble, but might get away with a whipping.’

  ‘A whipping?’ I stared at her and gripped the base of my throat. ‘You don’t mean like flogging?’

  ‘No, they only flog men. Whipping’s for women until first blood, so only a few strokes usually.’ She looked at me, puzzled. ‘Didn’t they brief you about that?’

  Volusenia had mentioned that ancient punishments, including corporal and capital punishment, had been introduced as standard. Phobius, Caius’s sidekick, had threatened to flog me last year, but I hadn’t believed he really would have carried it out. The reality of a woman with her hands tied above her and attacked legally with a whip until her back bled revolted me. I shivered.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Prima,’ Marcia said sharply. ‘If you’re going to wobble at the sound of a mild punishment, you’ll be useless going near any of the work colonies. And that’s where they’ll send you if you get caught.’

  I nodded, but didn’t reply. She turned to Atrius next.

  ‘Secundus, you’ll continue as a vegetable seller and deliver to the palace in the morning. You’ll have to sign Prima in as she’s on your ID card. Once in the kitchen, ask for a glass of water. The red-haired sous-chef, Paulus, will pass you through and kit you out as a steward. After that, you’ll have to find Prima on your own. Be a little careful with Paulus – he’s brittle. He’s very talented as a chef, but he’s working under duress to stop his wife being sent to a colony.’

  Marcia took hold of my hands and inspected them. I’d spent part of the evening in the barn rubbing gravel all over them to redden them, and jamming dirt into my nails. She poured the rest of the tea out of the teapot into a bowl and thrust it at me.

  ‘Soak your hands for at least half an hour in this, then rub it into your face.’

  * * *

  That afternoon, I fished out the three fat envelopes we’d hidden in the bases of our bags. Climbing on Atrius’s shoulders, I stashed them in the loft space above the ceiling in the communal bathroom.

  The next morning, we slipped out of the building just before six. In the market square, a long queue had already formed outside the main baker’s shop and a slightly shorter one along the front of a butcher’s. It was mild, more than was usual in October.

  We picked up baskets from the grumpy market trader, Atrius’s larger one half filled with vegetables, mine full of fruit, and made our way on foot up the hill to the Golden Palace. Only a couple of vans, a legionary personnel carrier and the odd car were about. A bus chugged up the hill overtaking us; it was full of grey faces at the grey windows.

  At the service entrance, armed nationalist guards thumbed Atrius’s ID, searched his face, took their time, presumably to make him anxious. I stayed in his shadow, content to be ignored. Eventually, they told Atrius to sign in a register on the side table and add me on the same line.

  One guard thrust a card attached to a lanyard at me.

  ‘Make sure you wear that at all times. You don’t want a whipping, do you?’ He leered at me. I retreated behind Atrius and looked suitably cowed.

  We made our way down to the kitchen and domestic area. Gods, it was so familiar, but the corr
idors were dingy, dirty marks on the door frames, the stone flags on the floor stained and chipped. How could Drusilla let it get into this state, if she was indeed still the housekeeper?

  ‘You, with the vegetable baskets. I haven’t seen you before.’ Atrius froze at the voice behind us. I shrank back against the wall, eyes down, but watched sideways.

  ‘No, sir,’ Atrius bobbed his head. ‘Fulso is sick and asked me to do the delivery. I’m his nephew, Secundus.’ He proffered his ID which the guard read.

  ‘Let’s see inside your baskets.’

  We had to take every vegetable and piece of fruit out. The guard picked over my fruit and helped himself to two apples.

  ‘Who’s the woman?’

  ‘My mother. She’s a cleaner here.’

  ‘I don’t remember her, but they all look alike to me.’ He barely glanced at me. ‘Pack all this crap up and get on your way. I’ll have the same tomorrow and maybe her as well.’

  ‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’ I whispered as soon as I was sure we were out of earshot. Atrius merely grunted.

  We knocked at the kitchen door and on cue the sous-chef beckoned us in.

  ‘You come with me,’ he said to Atrius, then looked me up and down. ‘The woman should report to the housekeeper, next door along.’

  I knocked on the housekeeper’s door, heard ‘Come’ in reply in a harsh tone. Pluto. That didn’t sound like the Drusilla I knew, but Marcia had told us the housekeeper was on our side. I took a deep breath, turned the handle and stepped into the room. The woman at the desk looked up and I was shocked to see how dull her eyes were in a face that drooped. Dark brown shadows filled the dips under her eyes. It was Drusilla, the one who had looked after me and helped me escape last year, but a very diminished one. Her original brown head of hair was now half grey.

  ‘Oh, the new cleaner?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said in my normal voice.

  She jerked her head up, searched my face, then sat back in her chair.