Retalio

by Alison Morton

  ‘All right, turnip head, get off.’ Atrius touched his forelock like a good peasant and stepped down, almost missing the lower step. I shuffled after him, not making eye contact with the trooper. Outside, there were three more of them. Two were checking papers. My heart thudded faster. Our ID was good, so we should pass. The fourth nat stood there, seeming relaxed but searching faces. I kept my eyes down. I cursed myself I hadn’t put my grey contacts back in; my eyes had been too sore from tiredness. If I had to look up, I’d be stuffed. Few had the bright blue of the Mitelae. Hades.

  The nat snatched Atrius’s papers from his hand, glanced at me, then back at the papers. He was taking too long. Atrius grabbed me round the waist.

  ‘This is my Ma. I look after her, but she’s a bit shy.’ Then he giggled.

  ‘Simple as you, is she?’ The nat sneered as he thrust the papers back at Atrius. We turned to get back on the bus, but the fourth man stepped forward.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Pluto in Tartarus.

  ‘You, the woman. Show me your face.’

  I narrowed my eyes and opened my mouth to look as slow as Atrius.

  ‘Unusual colour.’

  Merda.

  ‘The rest of them can go. These two stay.’

  In the second after the other passengers had shuffled back up the bus steps, Atrius leapt forward, floored the fourth man, then one of the others. I hitched up my skirt, swung my leg and gave a full kick to the groin of the third one. He staggered back against his colleague and both fell heavily on the road.

  ‘Into the trees,’ I shouted. We dived into the copse, weaving between the trees. After two minutes, my breath was heaving, but I ran on, trying to keep up with Atrius’s long strides. About twenty metres further up, sheltered still by the dark of the morning, and the nats’ light shining in the other direction, we ran back out and sprinted across the road and dived between two dock buildings. We stopped for a second to catch our breath and listen for pursuit. Hopefully, they were bumbling around in the trees, but it wouldn’t keep them for long.

  ‘Let’s get through and up the hill,’ Atrius panted.

  ‘Agreed,’ I replied. ‘To the caves.’

  Then a storm broke along with the dawn. We pounded through the old dock quarter in the freezing rain, listening all the time for pursuit. The domed cobblestones reflected the pools of dull street light. We only slowed to a walk when we saw the odd lorry and occasional docker.

  Most ships loaded and unloaded in the new complex Justina had opened eight years ago. Gods, that seemed a lifetime ago. The formal ceremony, a band playing its heart out, children with flowers, the new docks manager bobbing in front of Justina and proudly introducing his new staff all lined up on the red carpet, the priest strutting back and forward with blessings, speeches and finally shouts of ‘Ave Apulia’ had been followed by an alcohol-fuelled celebration into the small hours.

  Two figures came towards us, heads down against the hard rain. They carried nightsticks in their hand. Hades, vigiles. But they were hurrying. Their radio buzzed and they stopped to listen. I grabbed Atrius’s arm and pulled him round the corner of the next warehouse. It was built tall and loomed over the street, its defunct loading arm not quite touching the one opposite. We waited and listened. Rain poured onto our faces and fell off our chins. One of the vigiles spoke back into his radio, confirming they’d seen nobody but they’d keep an eye out for a man and woman acting suspiciously. We shuffled along to the warehouse door and flattened ourselves against it. I silently thanked the gods and the old builders that it was recessed. After a minute, we crept back to the corner. The vigiles were disappearing into the wet gloom.

  ‘We have to cross the open yard with the train tracks to get to the bottom of the castle hill.’ I glanced left towards the bonded area gate. A kiosk lit by a yellow light was occupied by two figures. The spotlight shining from its roof didn’t reach beyond ten metres. If we were quick, they wouldn’t see us, especially in this rain.

  ‘Let’s just do it. Those damned nats can’t be far behind us.’

  I took a breath and launched myself. Atrius’ footsteps sounded behind me. Once across the yard, we edged round the base of the hill. At last we found a small gap where the wire fence had parted from the ground. Scraping and grazing our skin, but not caring, we heaved on it to make a hole big enough to wriggle through. Atrius bent it back into place as best he could to make it look undisturbed, but our priority was to get up the damned hill. I unclipped the cumbersome skirt now sodden and heavy with the rain. Atrius raised an eyebrow, but smiled when he saw I had my walking trousers on underneath. I rolled the skirt up and stuffed it behind a bush.

  Thirty minutes later, we rested spreadeagled on the steep slope just west of the old castle ruins. Neither of us said a word. It had been a hellish climb; the rock was slippery and the thin layer of earth and grass turned to mud, trickled through our fingers, up our sleeves and spattered in our faces. My limbs trembled with the effort. The good news was that the rain had stopped. I took a deep breath, nodded at Atrius and pressed my feet on the ground to push myself on. We emerged in trees to the side of the castle visitor car park. I leaned back against one tree trunk and took sips from my water flask. Atrius crawled forward to the edge of the tree line. By the time he came back, I’d recovered my breath.

  Behind the castle, around fifty metres away, rose a sheer rock face dotted with cave entrances. Some had been built across, even with doors and the odd window. Sometimes used by homeless people and those who lived on the margin, they often housed runaways and petty criminals. The vigiles used to raid them from time to time when the newspapers complained about ‘lawless elements’.

  ‘There’s plenty of scrub in front of the caves, but we’ll probably have to climb up to find an empty one. Some of them look occupied.’ He glanced at me. ‘Jupiter knows what sort of welcome we’ll get.’

  ‘With the nats after us we don’t have any other option.’

  23

  We reached the first level easily, apart from a few scratches, but I was more worried at being spotted in the early light than caring about grazed skin and broken nails. I would have given anything for a rope ladder, though. The small cave we reached first was damp, lichen grew on the walls and it stank of human liquids and stale smoke.

  I felt round the back for any passageway to other caves; many of them were interconnected. No such luck.

  ‘I know it’s vile in this hole, but we must stay covert during the day and get some rest,’ I said. I could hardly see Atrius’s face, but his figure outlined against the sunlight was slumped. We settled as far away from the foetid back of the cave as we could without being visible from the outside and fell asleep almost instantly.

  I woke, uncomfortable and longing to stretch, but I couldn’t move. Something pressed hard against my throat. It pinched my skin along a narrow line. A knife. And from the weight on my back, somebody was kneeling on it.

  ‘Slow, real slow,’ a male voice rasped.

  I lay stock still. It was light outside, but all I could see was the gravelly floor, blurred. The pressure on my back eased and the pinch of the knife edge on my throat skin receded.

  ‘Now sit up careful and slow like a good girl.’

  I rolled over. As I struggled up a hand gripped the back of my neck with the strength of a vice.

  ‘Now, on your feet and hands on your head.’

  The grip on my neck lessened marginally as I stood up. A man’s grip. I smelt sweat and smoke. To my side stood a young woman looking frightened but trying not to, and by the entrance two more carrying thick staves.

  I blinked hard to clear my eyes. In front of me was a sturdily built middle- aged woman, dressed in boots, khaki trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and cloth waistcoat. A revolver that should have been in a museum was parked in an equally old-fashioned holster. Her face was as workmanlike as her clothes and carried a stern expression.

  ‘We don’t take kindly to trespassers – what do you wan
t?’

  I glanced around. Atrius stood to the side, hands on his head and flanked by two men dressed like this woman. I looked back at her.

  ‘We’re refugees.’

  ‘What from?’

  Who was she? Some kind of local militia raiding these caves? She was obviously in charge of these people so probably not, as a woman, part of the nationalists’ regime. A criminal gang? Or possibly a dissident or even a resistance group?

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘That’s for me to ask you. Now answer the question.’

  The fingers tightened on my neck. I couldn’t even cough.

  ‘We’re running from the nats,’ I croaked.

  ‘That doesn’t take a lot of working out,’ she said and snorted. ‘You’ll have to give me something better than that to stop us slitting your throats and dumping your bodies over the cliff.’

  Her eyes hardened. She was fast losing patience. One of the men by Atrius unsheathed his knife, a long-bladed hunting knife which gleamed even in the faint light. Atrius tensed. We were two to their seven. And they were armed.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘We’re part of a reconnaissance group operating from outside Roma Nova.’

  ‘Oh? I haven’t heard of anything like that.’

  ‘Well, you’re not exactly on the inside track for news, are you?’ I said.

  She took a step nearer until her face was within centimetres of mine.

  ‘Don’t get arsy with me.’ Her voice was low, but steely.

  ‘Then cut us a bit of slack. We don’t know who you are. You could be an unofficial citizens’ militia working for Caius Tellus to draw in resistants. Unlikely with a woman like you leading it, but he’s a devious sod.’

  ‘And what do you know of Tellus?’

  ‘Probably more than you do,’ I retorted. She opened her mouth to speak, but I held my hand up. ‘My name is Aurelia Mitela and he’s been my enemy since we were both children. There’s very little he wouldn’t do to get hold of me.’

  She stared at me. Her eyes widened, full of surprise and shock. The hand grip on my neck vanished. I put my own up to rub it, then looked at the woman.

  ‘Now I’ve delivered myself into your hands, don’t you think it would be courteous to tell me who you are?’

  * * *

  Her name was Lucia Palia. She’d owned and run a small engineering company.

  We'd followed our captors, clambering up to a much bigger and drier cave two levels up, thanks to a rope ladder, and were now sitting in a circle on metal storage boxes and sipping black tea.

  ‘I suppose we should have been more prepared when that bastard took over.’ Misery coated every word she spoke. ‘I thought that if we kept our heads down we’d be okay,’ she continued. ‘I’d only visited the lawyer to sign over the firm two days before.’ Her eyes were full of anger. ‘It was only going to be on paper. My accountant knew that. A man I could trust, I thought. He was the one who denounced me to the nats.’

  She looked towards the open end of the cave, then shrugged and focused on me again.

  ‘A dozen of those black-uniformed thugs stomped in one day, right onto the factory floor. They made straight for me. Paulus, my foreman, stepped in front of me, but they knocked him down. Two grabbed me and shoved me out through the door. Then they marched me across the yard, through the factory gates and threw me onto the street. Literally.’

  I touched her forearm in a gesture of sympathy just below a red scar reaching up to her elbow.

  ‘My ex-accountant is now in the black pit of Tartarus where we threw him,’ she continued in a flat voice. She gestured at the women and men around us. ‘These are what’s left of my loyal workforce. Some stayed on in the factory, fearful for their families. I don’t blame them. We’re in contact with some of them now and again, when we go to, er, forage for food and other supplies.’

  ‘So are there any other groups like yours?’ I said.

  ‘There’s another one, based three caves along, all women. We say salve, but that’s about all. One thing they told us was that there’s another, much larger group at the top level.’

  ‘I suggest we arrange a meeting with them,’ I said.

  ‘Why? We can manage on our own perfectly well.’

  ‘I’m sure you can at present, but for how long? The nats will eventually get round to clearing the caves. You can be sure of that. And you know yourself how ruthless they can be.’

  She said nothing, but looked at me like a bull resisting sacrifice.

  ‘Lucia, we must take Roma Nova back before these bloody people become embedded. Each week, each month they stay in control, the harder it will be for us to dig them out. Already the vigiles are becoming brutalised and absorbed into the nationalist ethos. People are despairing and giving in, thinking there’s no hope. Time is against us. This is why we’re here, to make contact with those who refuse to join the regime. We must form active, but coordinated resistance that will be vital to the take-back.’

  ‘Yes, but meeting these other cave-dwellers… We’re only fourteen, domina. I think the women’s group is about the same, perhaps less. We know nothing about the other one. They may be in the hundreds.’

  ‘Well, one step at a time. When would it be a good time to visit the first group?’

  * * *

  Two stern-faced young women with crossed arms and braced legs looked down as we clambered towards their cave the next morning. Neither lifted a finger to help us as we reached the entrance. We pushed the greenery aside and heaved ourselves over the edge of the opening. A double metallic click of a weapon being cocked.

  ’What do you want?’

  ‘Some common courtesy would be a good start,’ I said as I stood up. ‘Who is in charge here?’

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  I blinked. I knew that voice. A very slim figure, her face gaunt, with hollow cheeks and large brown eyes sunk in the sockets, stepped forward. She pushed a strand of brown hair laced with white back behind her ear. Her hand stopped halfway down and she stared at me.

  ‘No!’ she cried and launched herself at me. I folded her into my arms. She clung to me and sobbed as if she were a tiny child come home to her mother after years apart in a hellhole. Eventually, she looked up. ‘Why have you come here? It’s far too dangerous.’

  ‘I’ve come to ask for your help, Claudia Cornelia, to serve Roma Nova at my side, just like old times.’

  Claudia, my young assistant at the foreign ministry aeons ago, in fact only thirteen months ago. Then she’d been a sleek twenty-one-year-old. Now she looked like a malnourished woman in her forties.

  ‘They burst into the bunker under the foreign ministry and dragged us all to a warehouse for two days. They shouted at us, beating us when we didn’t answer. We had little water and no food. They gave the men the option of continuing and quite a number did. They disappeared the next day. We all pretended to be low-level clerks and, Juno be praised, all the women and the remaining men played along. They shot the security chief Fulvia in front of us all. One of the young girls shrieked and threw up over one of the nats, so he shot her. We had to clear the bodies away and dig their graves in the grass by the car park.’

  She turned away and was silent for a few moments.

  ‘Eventually, they shoved us into a lorry and took us out to a field north of the city and made us build a work colony.’ She looked down at her hands, scarred and gnarled like an old woman’s.

  ‘The guards were nats. You can imagine what happened to us as women imprisoned there.’ Her voice was toneless.

  I took one of her damaged hands and pressed it.

  ‘One day, two months after we’d built our hut, a car turned up and out stepped my cousin Octavius dressed up in one of those nats’ black uniforms. I was working on the driveway, raking gravel over the tar surface with another woman, so I kept my head down. I couldn’t have borne it if he’d seen me. He was such a snot. I’d snubbed him at the last Family Day.’ She trembled
. ‘Then the camp governor came over to me with Octavius in tow. He ordered me into the car. I just stared at him and the governor slapped my face and told me to jump to. I wanted to hit back, but I’d had one beating. Never again.’

  ‘What happened next?’ I asked.

  ‘Octavius didn’t say a word for three hours, but drove to his farm near Brancadorum. He took me into the kitchen, told the housekeeper to wash the stink off, clothe me and find me a bed. I was to help her in the kitchen and keep out of everybody’s way.’

  She turned to me. The light from the harsh afternoon sunlight emphasised the hollows in her face.

  ‘He didn’t show me a scrap of affection nor even acknowledge that I existed, but he saved me, consiliaria.’

  ‘So why are you here, Claudia, and not safe on your cousin’s farm?’

  ‘You, of all people, ask me that?’ She raised her eyebrow in the old way, the supercilious Cornelia way, and I smiled to myself.

  24

  The women’s cave was smaller than Lucia’s but better organised with a sitting area furnished with rough stools and a table cobbled together from an old door and packing cases. A cooking area just below a natural vent in the rock boasted a paraffin stove, heat spreader, two pans and a stack of tin plates and cutlery. And at the back, a passageway through a curtain led to another cave laid out as a sleeping area.

  ‘We’re nineteen, all women, but four are out foraging at the moment. Two are former vigiles, three military, the rest are office workers and artisans. They’ve all been damaged in some way. Some are still fragile. Two I doubt will ever recover. But they’re safe here.’ Her voice was almost defiant. But she must have known they were living on borrowed time.

  ‘Will you let me speak to your group?’

  ‘Of course, consiliaria.’ But she gave me a glance that was a mix of wariness and curiosity.