by Ruth Downie
“That’s not it,” he said. “We’re looking for a wax tablet.”
“Yes, sir,” said the youth, “but is it the actual tablet you want, or just what was written on it?”
Ruso paused. “You mean you can remember what was written on it?”
“No, sir.” The youth held out the parchment. “But I’ve got my notes. It was hopeless with two of us trying to work on it at once, so I copied it out.”
Ruso scanned the document and read aloud, “Dearest girl, when your sweet lips meet my eager-” He looked up. “This isn’t it, surely?”
“Oh, no, sir! That’s a poem. The other side.”
He turned it over and flattened the curve against the wall with his thumbs to reveal two lines of text in fresh black ink. As far as he could recall, the shapes echoed those of the original. They even curved down toward the foot of the document at the right-hand end.
The tall apprentice was leaning over his shoulder. “Why didn’t you say you’d got that, stupid?”
It was a good question, but not one Ruso was inclined to waste time on. “Young man,” he said, placing his hand on the short apprentice’s shoulder, “You are a hero.”
The blush shot upward. The youth mumbled something about Doctor Valens insisting they always took notes. For a moment Ruso even felt a rush of gratitude toward Valens and his ability to teach by lecture, if not by example.
“Will it do, sir, or do you want us to keep on looking?”
“This will do,” said Ruso, tightening the roll of the parchment. “This will do very nicely.”
20
As the carriage trundled northward, it occurred to Tilla that before she met her husband she would never have thought of traveling undefended through the territory of a southern tribe. Especially not that of the Catuvellauni, notorious for trampling all over their neighbors until the Romans had come and put them in their place. Naturally the Catuvellauni, untrustworthy as ever, had then switched sides and become staunch supporters of the emperor.
Among all his other warnings this morning, the Medicus had told her not to mention any of this to anybody in Verulamium. As if she would be such a fool! The last thing she wanted to do was remind them that their warriors’ resistance to Rome had finally crumbled when a treacherous queen of her own tribe had betrayed their leader. Such shameful deeds were best left unspoken. She was part of a new world now. She was the well-traveled and respectable wife of a man who worked for the procurator.
The vehicle jolted through a pothole. Tilla leaned back against the blanket she had folded to cushion the carriage wall and closed her eyes. No one in her family had ever been south of Eboracum before. She tried to imagine what they would think if they could see her now. What would she say to them about her marriage? They would never understand how easy it was to drift once you were away from home: how small compromises seemed right at the time, and how you could find yourself on the far side of a river with no clear idea of when you had crossed it.
Was that what had happened to Camma?
When she had some privacy, Tilla would tell Christos about Camma and the baby and the missing brother. He was supposed to be able to hear you no matter where you were, but just in case he had no power here across the sea, she would find out where the gods of the Catuvellauni were worshipped and make an offering to them too.
The baby who was not the husband’s was asleep in a box tied to the seat beside his mother, lulled by the steady clop of hooves and the rumble of the wheels. He was swaddled in the cloths and bandages Tilla had brought back from Gaul. Camma seemed to think she carried baby clothes about with her because she was a midwife, and she had not bothered to explain. Still, if that disgusting gritty medicine had worked, she would have a use for them herself before long. If the gods were kind, she and the Medicus would have their own home too. The red crockery gleaming on the table would remind them of Gaul and they would have a pair of iron fire dogs framing the hearth like the ones in the house where she grew up. Outside there would be a vegetable patch, and some hens, and-
“You have been kind to me, sister.”
Tilla returned to the present. “Anyone would have done the same.”
Camma had pulled a strand of hair forward and was chewing the end of it. “I was afraid nobody would help. I thought I would die.”
“You were in need,” Tilla pointed out. “Of course people would help you, even here in the South.”
“And now you are leaving your husband behind to come with me, when I don’t deserve it.”
“It’s nothing,” Tilla assured her, wondering if Camma was about to explain the rift with her own husband. Instead, the Iceni woman glanced down at the shrouded figure laid out along the floor of the carriage. “A man who collects taxes is never liked,” she said, “but somebody must do it.”
“Doctors are not much liked, either,” offered Tilla. “A few bad ones and they all get the blame.”
It was not until Camma said, “I thought he must be a doctor,” that Tilla remembered she was supposed to be keeping that quiet.
“But now he is an investigator,” she added.
“If you say so.”
“It is only a job,” said Tilla.
“So is collecting taxes.”
They were passing a couple of thatched round houses. A woman was working at a loom set up outside one of the doors. Behind her, fat skeins of brown wool were hung to dry on lines slung from one porch to the other. It reminded Tilla of her childhood.
Camma said, “I can’t believe he is gone. The medicine makes me sleep, then I wake up and it has all still happened.”
“Have you thought about a name for the baby?”
There was no reply.
Whoever was supposed to mend the road after the winter had not done it very well. The carriage lurched as a front and then a back wheel went into the same hole. The baby’s eyes opened. Camma checked the cords that held the box onto the seat. Satisfied they were secure, she leaned forward so the driver could not listen. “You will be asking what an Iceni woman is doing among the Catuvellauni.”
It would not have been Tilla’s first question, but considering the old enmity between the tribes, it was a good one.
“When we get there I expect someone will tell you about my famous ancestor.”
There was only one famous family among the Iceni, headed by a woman who had seen her people bitterly wronged by Rome and taken revenge. Tilla realized she was staring at her traveling companion. “You are-”
“She was my great-grandmother,” said Camma. “Whatever they tell you about all of my family being hunted down after the battle is a lie.”
As Tilla digested this she continued, “What do you do with an ancestor like that? Everyone watches you. Everything you do has meaning.”
Tilla gazed out of the carriage. Farm carts and passenger vehicles were going about their business with scarcely a guard in sight. The verges were spattered with primroses and beyond, sheep were grazing with their lambs. A small villa was poised on a southern slope to catch the sun and the occasional drift of smoke marked the site of an isolated farm. She tried to picture Camma’s ancestors and their allies thundering up this road with Londinium in flames behind them and Verulamium undefended in front.
They said that Boudica had lost control of her warriors. That her forces had butchered anyone who could not run fast enough. Old people. Women. Children. They said too that the soldiers who should have fought to save Londinium had marched away and abandoned it.
“I was sent to Verulamium in payment of a debt,” continued Camma. “I was accepted to show that the past is buried and forgotten. An Iceni princess can marry a Catuvellauni leader. Look, we are all modern Romans now!”
“Not where I come from,” said Tilla, understanding at last why Camma had married that angry old man. “Most of my people would rather be who we have always been.”
“Do your people know about our Great Rebellion?”
“Everybody knows.”
C
amma gave a small nod of acknowledgment, like a princess accepting a compliment. “In Verulamium,” she said, “mothers tell their children that if they’re naughty, Boudica will come and get them.”
Nobody had come out of the great rebellion with much glory. Thousands had not come out of it at all.
There had to be better ways. Caratius must have believed that when he married an Iceni woman. Christos believed in loving his enemies. Her own Da had believed that if you ignored the Romans for long enough, they would go away. He had always refused to learn Latin because before long there would be nobody left to speak it to. But Caratius had been betrayed by this beautiful Iceni wife. Nobody here seemed to have heard of Christos. And now Da was in the next world with the rest of her family, and the Romans were still here.
The pace of the horses changed. Looking out, Tilla saw they had reached the crest of a long hill. The driver was slowing the team to walk them down the other side.
Camma said, “You know what it is to have a good man.”
“He is the best one I’ve found,” Tilla agreed. “So far.”
“Asper was a man who knew what it is to be an outsider,” Camma said. “To be part of one thing when everybody around you is part of something else.”
“That is a hard way to live,” said Tilla, who had often felt the same way herself.
“When he first came to the house I brought him wine from my husband’s store. He noticed I was pale. He asked if I was unwell.”
“I see,” said Tilla. Perhaps Asper had fancied himself a doctor.
“Lots of men only talk to women to show how important they are themselves. But when I met him again, he remembered what I had said before. And he didn’t look at me in the way that many men look at women when their families aren’t around.”
“And how is that?”
“Picturing them with no clothes on.”
Tilla had spent long enough living in army lodgings not to argue with that, but it was sad to find a woman so easily impressed.
“You must think me very weak.”
Guessing the rest, Tilla said, “I think you were very lonely.”
Camma shrugged. “When I knew about the child, I tried to do the right thing. I left the house and went to live in town. I told Caratius we must divorce.” She sat back and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “People talked,” she said. “Women said things. Men looked at me in the street. Nobody wanted to be my friend. I wanted to leave, but Asper had a contract and they said he must carry it through.”
“I’m surprised.”
“He said there might be a way out but it was best for me not to know what it was.” She shook her head. “This is all my fault! If I had been stronger-”
“No it is not.” Tilla insisted. “Things like this happen all the time. Wrongs are done. People get angry. There is a divorce, compensation is paid, and they marry somebody else. The man who is wronged does not murder other men, and if he does, that’s his choice. It is not the fault of the woman.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I never liked Caratius,” Camma said. “And he never liked me. He talked to me as if he was addressing a meeting, and he was a wilting weed in the bed. But I never thought he was a bad man.” She shook her head. “I’m tired. Everything is going round too fast in my mind, and I can’t catch hold of it. I never dreamed he would do something like this.”
“An old man like that must have had help. Asper and his brother would have fought back, surely?”
“Oh, he would do nothing himself!” Camma looked surprised at the suggestion. “He would just give the order. And many of his people will say he did the right thing.”
Tilla said, “I shall ask my husband to speak up against him.”
“Your husband must do what the procurator says,” said Camma. “The procurator won’t care about any of it as long as he gets the tax money.”
Tilla felt her spirits sink. It was true: The Medicus would insist on following his orders. “So, she said, wondering if the procurator’s orders could be made to serve a better purpose, “if the money is missing, where is it?”
Camma pushed her hair away from her face. “I suppose Caratius said it was stolen to explain why Asper and Bericus disappeared.”
“So did he take it himself?”
Instead of answering the question Camma said, “I was awake most of the night waiting for them to come back. When the sun rose and there was no message, I knew something terrible had happened.”
This was looking more and more like a planned and vicious murder by a jealous husband. “How can you live in Verulamium with no friends if he is still there?”
“Where else can I go?” Her voice was barely audible above the noise of the carriage. “I sent a message to my family months ago. They told me I had brought shame on them, and not to come back. They said I should have the baby taken away.” She looked up. “How could I do that?”
When Tilla did not answer, she said, “I should have been stronger. Everything has slid into a pit.”
“You have just brought a new life into the world, sister, and you’re very tired. When you are recovered, you will see things differently.”
Camma said, “Perhaps. Perhaps Bericus will be found alive and my family will want me back and your husband will make Caratius tell the truth about what he did.”
“All this is possible.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “But Julius Asper will still be dead.”
The carriage rolled on northward, carrying home the dead father and the live son.
Suddenly Camma said, “There is one good thing about being in Verulamium.”
“Yes?”
“Every time he sees me, Caratius will be reminded of my curse. Even with his fine clothes and his horses and his proud speeches, that man will be afraid!”
They were words of courage. Glad to see Camma so animated, Tilla reached for her hand. “I will curse him as well, sister!” Too late, she remembered that back in Gaul she had promised Christos to give up that sort of thing. “And then I will pray for him to repent,” she added.
“We will both make him repent!” agreed Camma, grasping Tilla’s hand in both of hers. “We will seek justice from the gods, and together we will make him sorry he is alive!”
For the first time since they had met, she smiled. Even with the purple shadows beneath her eyes, it was easy to see why two men had fought over this woman.
Tilla did not want to stomp on this brief spark of happiness by telling Camma she had not meant that sort of repentance. As the carriage pulled in at the halfway stop, it occurred to her that she had just managed to disobey both Christos and the Medicus at the same time.
21
By the time Ruso entered the Forum it was approaching midday, but the sky was dark and the air cool. The buildings that surrounded the vast rectangle of open ground on three sides provided little shelter, and a fresh breeze was flapping the covers of a handful of market stalls huddled in a corner by the Great Hall. Ruso had barely begun the search for Albanus’s School for Young Gentlemen when he felt a cold splash of rain. Within seconds stallholders and shoppers were rushing to take cover.
Ruso heard the shrill chant of childish voices above the drumming of raindrops on roof tiles. He could not make out the words, but from somewhere among the ragged assortment of sounds rose the indomitable rhythms of poetry.
He found a dozen or so small boys seated cross-legged beneath a colonnade that, in another time and another place, would be there to protect them from the sun. They were facing an expanse of lime-washed board on which Albanus had painted the lines they were supposed to be reciting. Fluency and volume reached a crescendo as Hercules grabbed a half-human monster so tightly that its eyeballs fell out. Once the violence was over, the class lost interest. There was a scuffle at the back.
“Stop!” cried Albanus.
The chant faltered into confusion.
Through the downpour Ruso could ma
ke out Hadrian’s statue high on its plinth, holding out one dripping hand as if he were commanding the rain to cease. He was having no more effect than Albanus.
“I said, stop!” Albanus stabbed a finger at the board. “Start again from here. Vattus, if you pull his hair again I shall make everyone stay behind while I beat you.”
By the time the class was dismissed, the shower had passed. Albanus looked startled as Ruso emerged from behind a pillar. “I’m afraid I haven’t found your missing men, sir.”
“Never mind,” said Ruso. “I can see you’ve been busy. And one of them’s turned up dead, anyway.”
Albanus dipped a brush into a bucket of water and began to scrub Virgil and lime wash off the boards. “Frankly, sir, I don’t seem to be having much success with anything. My father hardly ever had to resort to beating. He just gave his pupils The Look and they did what he told them.”
“The Look?”
“I don’t seem to have inherited it, sir.” Albanus emptied the bucket into the nearest drain and tossed the brush back inside.
“Never mind,” said Ruso. “Recommend a good bar and I’ll buy you a drink. I want to show you something.”
Albanus, who had downed his wine with remarkable speed, put his wooden cup back on the stained counter of Neptune’s Retreat and perused the new copy of the letter with “To Room XXVII” clearly legible at the top. The apprentice had carefully transcribed it onto a fresh tablet: one that bore no references to kissing. “It’s a bit messy,” he observed.
“The man was on his deathbed when he wrote it,” explained Ruso. “And this is a second-generation copy. So if it doesn’t make any sense, don’t worry. But do you think it’s a language, or just gibberish?”
Albanus looked up. “Well, yes, sir. It’s certainly a language. It’s Latin.”
“Latin?” Ruso was incredulous. He had seen some terrible writing in his time, much of it produced by his own hand, but never anything this bad. “Can you make any sense of it?”
Albanus squinted at the wax and held it at the right angle for the light to fall across the surface. “Urgent help needed. Inn of the-” He hesitated. “Something to do with the moon?”
