Retalio

by Alison Morton

  The shrill bell of the telephone pierced my gloomy thoughts. I stared at it. The exchange was functioning at Castra Lucilla, but I thought all the wires had been cut to the farm. Priscilla must have somehow got an engineer to reconnect them. It rang again. I stretched out and lifted the handset.

  * * *

  Six and a half hours after I left the central interrail station in Roma Nova city, I arrived at Maria-Theresia-Hauptbahnof. How easy it had been before the rebellion to hop on a short-range flight and be in Vienna in fifty minutes. Now, every plane in Roma Nova, whether single-seater or international passenger jet, had been commandeered into state service.

  I looked round the station concourse expecting it to look different, but of course it didn’t. We might have lived a surreal life here in exile, but the rest of Vienna had gone on as usual. I picked up my hire car at the station kiosk and paid with my Soane’s account card. The Roma Novan banking system was operating on a very restricted basis and I couldn’t risk not having a car. I was tempted to call in at the Argentaria Prima branch here and give the manager a piece of my mind for his refusal to release my and Quirinia’s accounts eighteen months ago, but that could wait.

  When the tower of the Jagdschloss came into view I slowed down, crawling up the rest of the drive like an apprentice. I parked in the forecourt and looked around. Windows shut, lights off, doors padlocked. It was tidy, but lifeless. Had I done the right thing coming here? I bit my lip. Suppose… No, I couldn’t afford to suppose. I grabbed the car door handle and pushed the door open. The slam echoed round. Pulling myself up straight, I strode through the back towards the keeper’s cottage. No lights there either. Was there anybody here at all?

  In the stable yard it was silent except for snuffling noises from one of the old stable blocks. Then I heard a neigh. I peered towards it and saw a weak light. Probably Lúkas, the caretaker. I didn’t want to meet that grumpy young man. Disappointed to my core, and my eyes filling, I turned away. The sun was sinking and my boots clattering on the cobblestones made the only sound in the cold gloom.

  ‘Aurelia!’

  I stopped. My heart clenched. Could it be?

  ‘Aurelia, where are you going?’

  I turned slowly, dreading that the owner of the voice wasn’t him.

  The luxuriant black curls had disappeared. A one-centimetre fuzz covered his head. His face was lined, tired, brown shadows round the eyes. But his tall slim figure was unbowed and the light in his dark eyes undimmed.

  ‘Miklós,’ I said in a breath.

  * * *

  The warmth of his arms thawed my heart as well as my body. Since the take-back five weeks ago I’d worked like an automaton; the tough, efficient minister, cajoling the new imperial council, herding the Twelve Families, remotivating my own staff, reconstructing my businesses. I hadn’t even had time to book a flight from Vienna to the EUS to see my granddaughter. But all the time, my heart was empty. Only as I’d fallen asleep at night had I cried for Miklós. What would White’s bastards be doing to him?

  When the nuncia had phoned me at the farm giving me the news that he would be freed the following week, I’d hardly registered what she was saying about negotiations, damages and confidential agreements. As there were no international commercial flights yet to Roma Nova, he would be escorted onto a plane to Vienna. She gave me the flight number and trusted that was satisfactory.

  * * *

  He stirred under me. I felt his fingers run up and down the skin of my spine. I gave myself up to the sheer pleasure of the soft electric tingle. When I opened my eyes he was staring up at the ceiling.

  I pulled myself up onto my elbows.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. When White’s heavies took me away I thought they’d force me to my knees and put a bullet in the back of my head. Tellus had made you break your honour. I knew how much that would hurt you.’ I lay down on him, nestling my head in the hollow below his neck. ‘Yes, they roughed me up and manacled me like an animal in the back of their plane. When we reached the prison, they shaved my head and put me in a cell by myself for two weeks. Two weeks. And all for a smashed up relay station which shouldn’t have been there anyway.’ He stroked my back.

  ‘Oh, Miklós.’ He’d been uncomfortable enough at the two hours in the interview room at the Landeskriminalamt after Sándor’s death. Two weeks’ solitary would have been hell.

  ‘I did it for you, of course,’ he said. ‘I knew how important it was to stop them coordinating any resistance.’

  ‘You made the whole operation work, you and your horse troops. You’ll receive a hero’s reception when you come back to Roma Nova.’

  He didn’t reply, but kissed me on the top of my head and made love to me as tenderly as I’d ever known.

  The bed was empty when I woke early next morning. I smelt leather polish. The cottage was warm now from the rekindled stove. I pulled on his shirt and found a pair of old sandals by the bed. Miklós was sitting at the kitchen table, a bridle and a rag in his hands, a pot of polish nearby.

  ‘You’re up early,’ I said.

  He smiled, but it didn’t show in his eyes. He said nothing but moved to the stove and set on water for coffee. As he fiddled with cups and spoons, his back to me, I saw his whole figure move almost jerkily, not with the usual slow grace.

  ‘Miklós, what is it?’

  ‘I can’t,’ he said, not turning round. ‘I can’t come back with you.’

  I shook my head. I must have misheard him. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Not now. Not ever.’ His voice was hardly above a whisper.

  Despite the warmth in the cottage, I shivered. I strode over to the worktop and took his arm to ease him round.

  Oh, gods.

  A spasm went through my stomach. His face was drawn, his skin dull, almost grey, like a corpse’s. He said nothing.

  ‘I know you’ll have some things to tidy up here—’ I said, filling the silence.

  ‘It’s not that. I’ve always found living in a city stifling. I can just about bear it when we’re on the outskirts like this. After that cell in the EUS…’ He shuddered.

  ‘Miklós, please don’t leave me. I need you more than I ever did before.’

  He took me in his arms and clasped his hands behind my waist. ‘You know I will love you until I’m dead. That will never change. But I can’t live with you in Roma Nova.’

  ‘No! Your place is with me and mine with you.’ My voice became shriller. I couldn’t help it. I gripped his shoulders hard, not caring if it hurt him.

  He put his finger on my lips. ‘Your first love has always been Roma Nova and it still is. You’ll die with its name on your lips. You have so much to do there now and so many people depend on you. Your duty and your life is there.’

  ‘You’re saying that our life together is over and we’ll live separately?’ I stared at his eyes, trying to see if he’d tired of me but all I saw was sadness and, I thought, love. I blinked hard and tried to catch my breath and calm my heart. My head said he was right about my love for Roma Nova, but my heart was breaking for both of us.

  He ran the back of his fingers down my cheek. ‘I’ll be travelling much of the time but I’ll keep a base here and we’ll meet from time to time.’ He looked straight into my eyes. ‘If you want to.’

  I wriggled in his embrace and he released me. I turned, crossed my arms across my chest and stared at him.

  He said nothing, just looked out of the window. I felt numb. I couldn’t move. I was enveloped in disbelief. After the struggle of the past two years, the snatched time together, his unswerving support and love, it was ending like this.

  Well, to hell with him! I ran back to the bedroom. I stamped around getting dressed, heaving my clothes on and thrusting my feet in my boots. I snatched up my coat and bag and stopped in the hallway just by the kitchen door frame. Outside, the orange ball of the rising sun sent fiery light into the kitchen, onto the table, the stacked plates, the polished bridle and on
to Miklós’s face. He looked ten, no, twenty years older. He looked up. Sadness? Tension? No, it was fear.

  What in Hades was I doing?

  Leaning back against the worktop, he’d crossed his arms and was now looking down at the tile floor. A strong man, now he looked wounded, crushed. This was the man I loved, my soulmate. My heart flooded with love and a strong desire to protect him, even from me.

  I stepped into the kitchen, dropped my things onto a chair and folded him into my arms.

  ‘I’m sorry, so sorry,’ I murmured.

  ‘As am I.’ He locked me into his arms.

  ‘I couldn’t go and leave you with my bad temper.’

  He pushed a lock of my hair back from my forehead and kissed it. ‘You wouldn’t be the passionate and determined woman you are without it,’ he said, then smiled.

  I’d lived without him before and I could do it again. Oh gods, could I do it? ‘I don’t understand your decision, but I accept what you say,’ I lied.

  He gave a little chuckle and I blushed.

  ‘Perhaps you will one day,’ he said. ‘You must go and do your duty now, Aurelia. They need you. But come back to me whenever you can. Call me and I’ll be here, waiting for you.’

  * * *

  You can follow the adventures of Aurelia’s granddaughter, Carina, and discover how she came from the EUS to fight her own battles in Roma Nova and pursue her own love story. Here’s the first:

  INCEPTIO

  Would you leave a review?

  I hope you enjoyed RETALIO, the danger, adventures and passions.

  If you did, I’d really appreciate it if you would write a few words of review on the site where you purchased this book.

  Reviews will really help RETALIO to feature more prominently on retailer sites and let more people into the world of Roma Nova.

  Here’s the link:

  RETALIO

  Very many thanks!

  Historical note

  What if Julius Caesar had taken notice of the warning that assassins wanted to murder him on the ides of March? Suppose Elizabeth I had married and had children? If plague hadn’t rampaged through Europe in the fourteenth century? Or if Christianity had remained a Middle Eastern minor cult, or Napoleon had won at Waterloo? If we dive into an alternative timeline where history took a different turn, who knows what might have happened?

  * * *

  RETALIO goes back to the mid 1980s in an alternative Europe where the small but tough country of Roma Nova has survived since the break-up of the Roman Empire. But these are the dark days of the Great Rebellion when Roma Nova has been taken over by a charismatic tyrant.

  * * *

  The whole concept of a society with Roman values surviving for fifteen centuries is intriguing, but I have dropped background ‘history’ of Roma Nova into the novel only where it impacts on the story. Nobody likes a history lesson in the middle of a thriller! But if you are interested in finding out more about the mysterious Roma Nova, read on...

  * * *

  What happened in our timeline

  Of course, our timeline may turn out to be somebody else’s alternative one as shown in Philip K. Dick’s The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the story within the story in The Man in the High Castle. Nothing is fixed. But for the sake of convenience I will take ours as the default.

  * * *

  The Western Roman Empire didn’t ‘fall’ in a cataclysmic event as often portrayed in film and television; it localised and dissolved like chain mail fragmenting into separate links, giving way to rump provinces, local city states and petty kingdoms. The Eastern Roman Empire survived until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Empire.

  * * *

  Some scholars think that Christianity fatally weakened the traditional Roman way of life. Emperor Constantine’s personal conversion to Christianity in AD 313 was a turning point for the new religion. By late AD 394, his several times successor, Theodosius, banned all traditional Roman religious practice, closed and destroyed temples and dismissed all priests. The sacred flame that had burned for over a thousand years in the College of Vestals was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins expelled. The Altar of Victory, said to guard the fortune of Rome, was hauled away from the Senate building and disappeared from history.

  * * *

  The Roman senatorial families pleaded for religious tolerance, but Theodosius made any pagan practice, even dropping a pinch of incense on a family altar in a private home, into a capital offence. And his ‘religious police’, driven by the austere and ambitious bishop Ambrosius of Milan, became increasingly active in pursuing pagans.

  * * *

  The alternate Roma Nova timeline

  In AD 395, three months after Theodosius’s final decree banning all pagan religious activity, four hundred Romans loyal to the old gods, and so in danger of execution, trekked north out of Italy to a semi-mountainous area similar to modern Slovenia. Led by Senator Apulius at the head of twelve prominent families, they established a colony based initially on land owned by Apulius’s Celtic father-in-law. By purchase, alliance and conquest, this grew into Roma Nova.

  * * *

  Norman Davies in Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe reminds us that:

  …in order to survive, newborn states need to possess a set of viable internal organs, including a functioning executive, a defence force, a revenue system and a diplomatic force. If they possess none of these things, they lack the means to sustain an autonomous existence and they perish before they can breathe and flourish.

  * * *

  I would add history, willpower and adaptability as essential factors. Roma Nova survived by changing its social structure; as men constantly fought to defend the new colony, women took over the social, political and economic roles, weaving new power and influence networks based on family structures. Given the unstable, dangerous times in Roma Nova’s first few hundred years, daughters as well as sons had to put on armour and heft swords to defend their homeland and their way of life. Fighting danger side by side with brothers and fathers reinforced women’s roles and status.

  * * *

  The Roma Novans never allowed the incursion of monotheistic, paternalistic religions; they’d learnt that lesson from old Rome. Service to the state was valued higher than personal advantage, echoing Roman Republican virtues, and the women heading the families guarded and enhanced these values to provide a core philosophy throughout the centuries. Inheritance passed from these powerful women to their daughters and granddaughters.

  * * *

  Roma Nova’s continued existence has been favoured by three factors: the discovery and exploitation of high-grade silver in their mountains, their efficient technology, and their robust response to any threat. Under pressure from the Eastern Romans, they sent an envoy to stop the Norman invasion of England. (1066 Turned Upside Down, pub.2016.)

  * * *

  Remembering the Fall of Constantinople, Roma Novan troops assisted the western nations at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to halt the Ottoman advance into Europe. Nearly two hundred years later, they used their diplomatic skills to forge an alliance to push Napoleon IV back across the Rhine as he attempted to expand his grandfather’s empire.

  * * *

  Prioritising survival, Roma Nova remained neutral in the Great War of the twentieth century which lasted from 1925 to 1935. The Greater German Empire was broken up afterwards into its former small kingdoms, duchies and counties; some became republics.

  * * *

  Despite the legal reforms in the mid 1700s, there was little fundamental change in Roma Nova’s governance. Until the late 1970s, tough female rulers drawing on centuries of experience and backed by the Twelve Families had provided active, solid if traditional leadership. But in the early 1980s a weak imperatrix had opened up the opportunity for a power-hungry charismatic demagogue and his brutal nationalist movement. They seized power (INSURRECTIO).

  * * *

  Now the Roma Nova refugees and exiles must
lick their wounds and decide on their future. But Aurelia Mitela, former foreign minister and imperial councillor, left to die by her nemesis, Caius Tellus, has been rejected by the exiles and has little hope of escaping from her nemesis or of seeing her beloved Roma Nova again.

  THE ROMA NOVA THRILLER SERIES

  * * *

  The Carina Trilogy

  INCEPTIO

  Early 21st century. Terrified after a kidnap attempt, New Yorker Karen Brown, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Renschman or fleeing to mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother's homeland in Europe. Founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety, at a price. But the enforcer, Renschman sets a trap knowing she has no choice but to spring it...

  PERFIDITAS

  Falsely accused of conspiracy, 21st century Praetorian Carina Mitela flees into the criminal underworld. Hunted by the security services and traitors alike, she struggles to save her beloved Roma Nova as well as her own life. But the ultimate betrayal is waiting for her…

  SUCCESSIO

  21st century Praetorian Carina Mitela’s attempt to resolve a past family indiscretion is spiralling into a nightmare. Convinced her beloved husband has deserted her, and with her enemy holding a gun to the imperial heir’s head, Carina has to make the hardest decision of her life.