Destiny's Children - Coalescent. Part 10

The boy was about eighteen. His tunic was short and extravagantly colored, and he had it pinned over one shoulder by a silver brooch, leaving the other shoulder bare. He had the family coloring, and his features, as wide and blunt as Carta's or her uncle's, could not have been called handsome. But as he bowed to Regina, wordless, his gaze was intense.

She felt something stir inside her: something warm, even exciting-and yet tinged with the fear and disgust she had first known when confronted by Septimius's drunken l.u.s.t. She turned away, confused.

She was aware of the boy's gaze following her.

As Carta, Severus, and the others unloaded the cart, Carausias took her to the room where she would sleep. It had a plain tile floor and green-painted walls. To Regina's dismay there were two beds in here, along with small cupboards and trunks. "Will I share with Carta?"

"Well, no." Awkwardly he said, "Carta and, umm, Severus will want to be together. I've opened up another of the rooms for them, where the roof isn't too bad . . . You will share with Marina."

"With theservant ?"

He stiffened. "Marina is a good woman, and she is clean and quiet. I am sure you will be fine." He hesitated. "Look-Carta has told me what happened. I know things have been difficult."

"I am grateful for your hospitality-"

He waved a hand. "It doesn't matter. I will ask Marina to sleep elsewhere, just for a while, until you find your bearings. Even the kitchen, perhaps. She's a good soul; she won't mind . . . You can have the room to yourself for a bit. How would that be?"

She took a step into the room. "Thank you."

"Would you like to rest? If you need to bathe-"

"No."

"When it's time to eat-"

"Could I eat in here? In my room?"

Carausias seemed taken aback, but he spread his broad hands. "I don't see why not. I'll send Carta to talk to you later."

"Yes. That will be fine . . ." She shut the door on the kindly little man, and receded into the darkness and silence with relief.

She curled up on one of the couches-the one that smelled more fresh-and slept until Carta came, with a small bowl of water for her to wash and clean her clothes.

That first day she emerged only to use the latrine in the little bathhouse. Carta brought her food, mildly reminding her that she would be welcome to eat with the family. Regina stirred from the couch only to set up herlararium , just an improvised little shrine in an emptied-out cupboard, with the threematres standing sullen and silent at its center. She lit a candle beside them, and gave them bits of her food and the watered-down wine that came with it.

They wouldn't indulge her forever.

On the second day Carta forced Regina out of the room, and walked her in a slow circle around the courtyard, showing her the layout of the house.

"Here we have thetriclinium -" It was the Latin word for a 'dining room,' deriving from the couch that ran around three sides of the room. The mosaic floor was intact, and the walls' painted designs, mock pillars, and glimpses of fabulous gardens, were clean and neat, though they looked faded. In one corner of the compound was a still grander room, but it was cluttered by low tables and cooking implements, pots, pans, and heaps of crockery and cutlery; a row of narrow-based amphorae leaned against one wall.

"This was a reception room," Carta said a little wistfully. "Now it's a kitchen. It even had underfloor heating, but Carausias says you just can't get the workmen to maintain it. Anyhow the cooking keeps it warm enough. And the courtyard faces south, you know; in the summer it's quite a sun trap . . ."

There were private rooms along the two remaining sides of the courtyard, a small bathhouse, and a narrow staircase that led down to the family shrine. The house was a grand place, if not as grand as her parents' villa had been. But it had obviously seen better days. Many of the rooms were boarded up, and one showed signs of a fire.

As they walked she saw a flash of color, a lithe movement on the far side of the courtyard. It was the boy, Amator. He had been tracking them, watching her with that heavy, liquid gaze.

Regina repaired to her room as soon as she could get away from Carta.

On the third day there was a knock on the door. She opened it, expecting Carta again. It was Carausias.

He smiled at her, his hands folded over his belly. "May I come in?"

"I-"

Before she could resist he had stepped through the doorway. He glanced around at the room, her little piles of clothes and effects, and nodded respectfully at herlararium . "I'm terribly sorry, my dear, but I'm afraid Marina needs her room back. She's hardly comfortable sleeping in the kitchen. And besides she's out of clean clothes."

"Fine," Regina snapped, and she sat on her bed, arms folded. "Let the servant back in. I'll sleep in the kitchen. Or in the stable with the horses."

"Now, that's absurd." He crouched before her, his features softened in the gloom. "We only want to make you feel welcome. Welcome and safe."

"I don't want to be here. I don't want to be withyou ."

He looked hurt. "Then where do you want to be?"

"In Rome," she said. "With my mother."

He sighed. "But Gaul is full of barbarians, my dear. I don't think anybody is going to be traveling to Rome for some time. Not until things settle down. And in the meantime," a little more sharply, "perhaps it's time you made the best of it."

She laughed at him. "Whatbest ? There is no best. I'm stuck here in thisdump . And-"

"But this dump is all that's available," he said, his voice steady but firm. "Listen to me now.

"Not long ago I and my wife and my son, all of us, were servants, like Marina. We worked on a villa, not far from the town walls. When the troubles began, things got difficult for the owners. They were extravagant, and they didn't want to stop their spending, even when their savings ran low. They tried to sell us-sell us all,to work as farm laborers-but we were not slaves. In the end the owners fled, taking everything of value from the villa-the money, the jewelry, the pottery, even much of the furniture. But they abandoned the buildings, and the land. And us.

"And so we took over. We began to work the land ourselves. We brought in our relatives and friends to live on the farmsteads. We soon had a surplus, which we brought into the town to buy goods for ourselves. This is only three harvests ago.

"After the second year we had acc.u.mulated enough to be able to buy this town house, from an owner desperate to flee to Londinium. Though stewards still run our villa, it is safer for us within the walls.

"We have done well. There are only ten houses like this left within the walls of the city, and of those, three are empty. No doubt things will settle down, when the Emperor overcomes his troubles. But in the meantime, we will do what we Catuvellaunians have always done. We will work hard, and we will support each other, and we will get by."

He stood up. "You are not even Catuvellaunian. But Carta has brought you here. I am inviting you to become part of this family, this community. You will have to work hard, for we all must work. If you do, you are welcome. If not-well, we can't even afford another servant. You must understand this." He stood over her, waiting.

At length she said, "The kitchen."

"What?"

"I'd like to go to the kitchen. Please."

He seemed nonplussed. But he said, "Very well." He held out his hand.

Marina was working in the kitchen, making lunch for the family. There was a rich smell of fish sauce, which Marina was mixing into a salad of legumes and fruit. She was a stolid, cheerful-looking woman of about thirty. She wore her brown hair pulled back in a simple bun. She smiled at Regina, apparently not offended at this stranger who had stolen her room for so long.

Regina looked around. Shelves had been fixed to the walls over grand, fading paintings; on them were stacked mortars, colanders, cheese presses, and beakers, flagons, platters, and bowls of metal, gla.s.s, and pottery. The amphorae leaning against the walls had once, according to their inscriptions, contained olive oil, dates, figs, fish sauce, and spices from the east. Now, much repaired, they contained nuts, wheat, barley, oats, and the flesh of animals and fish, salted, pickled, or smoked.

There was no oven, but a hearth had been set up in the middle of the mosaic floor, and a chimney cut crudely into the ceiling. No fire burned today, but soot stained the paintwork of the ceiling and upper walls. Many of the mosaic's tesserae had been cracked or charred by the heat. A gridiron was set over the charred patch, with a large cauldron suspended from a chain above it. Regina could see that the mosaic had featured a girl, slim and pale, surrounded by leaping dolphins.

Marina nodded to a quern stone, set up in the corner of the room. "We need flour. I'll bake some bread later. Do you know how to use the stone? . . ."

And so Regina, under Marina's instructions, sat on the floor and began to grind wheat. The familiar, eternal smells and sounds of the kitchen soon immersed her, and as she worked at the stone, her muscles tingling with the unaccustomed effort, she felt her obsessive thoughts dissolve.

She hardly noticed when the tears started.

Marina did, though. The servant came to embrace her, patting her back, making sure she didn't make a mess of the few gritty handfuls of flour she had managed to produce.

The next day Carausias took Regina for a walk through the town. They were to go shopping in the Forum.

They set off in bright midmorning-it was a cold, clear, crisp October day-but Carausias warned Regina she had to be alert. "You were protected in your villa, and even on the Wall. But in the town it's different. People don't behave very nicely. There are plenty who'll slit your purse-or slit your throat for their trouble . . ."

Regina listened. But she had found her way around the Thin Town, and had endured similar warnings from Aetius since the age of seven.

The town, surrounded by its walls, was shaped like a lozenge. It was crisscrossed by a grid pattern of streets, dominated by the road from the north that pa.s.sed through the town toward Londinium in the south. A great arch spanned the Londinium road. Regina stared at this monument of carved marble, more ornate than any single structure she had seen in her young life. But ivy and lichen clung to its face, obliterating the inscription on the lintel, and a bored-looking crow hopped about on its guano-streaked carapace.

Near the arch the road pa.s.sed close by a very strange building. It was an open s.p.a.ce bounded by a semicircular wall several times her height, with steps leading up to its parapet. It was, said Carausias, the theater. When she asked if she could climb the steps, he agreed, smiling indulgently.

The steps were wooden, and were old and broken. At the parapet she found herself looking down into a bowl. Sloping terraces were covered by semicircular rows of wooden seats, now broken and stained. At the front was a stage like a little temple, fronted by four slim columns. The only performers on the stage right now were mice, a pair of which scuttled from pillar to pillar.

Carausias followed, wheezing a little with the exertion. "You could seat four hundred people in here.

And the plays-some of them went over my head, but I liked thefabula togata , the comedies, likeThe Accusation andWhat You Will . And then there were the farces-my late wife was especially fond ofThe Vine Gatherers -how we laughed at that one, where the fellow with the grape basket falls over, and . . ."

None of this meant much to Regina. She only knew what a play was through her readings with her grandfather. The theater was full of rubbish, a compost of rotting food waste and rubble and smashed pottery and even what looked like the bloated corpse of a donkey, all littered by the dead leaves of autumn. The garbage was rising like a slow tide up the bank of seats, and when the wind turned, a stench of rot hit her.

Carausias sighed, plucked her sleeve, and led her down the stairs.

They cut down a side street, heading for the Forum. This street was lined with shops. They were long, narrow buildings, set very close together, with workshops and dwellings in the rear sections. Peering inside, Regina recognized a butcher's store, a carpenter, and a metalworker; the butcher's was doing the briskest business. But several of the shops were closed up.

Carausias said regretfully, "Here, only a few years back, you could buy the finest pottery-imported if you want, even Samian, but the stuff from the west country and the north was just as good and a lot more affordable. Now you can't get new pots no matter what you pay; we just have to make do and mend, until the Emperor sorts himself out." He eyed her. "What about you, Regina? Have you thought how you'd like to occupy yourself when you're older? Perhaps you could learn pottery. I bet this shop could be bought for a song . . ."

Regina had no idea how pottery was made, but imagined it must involve sticky messes of clay and a lot of hard work. She said politely, "I don't think I'd be enough of an artist for that, Carausias."

They reached the Forum. It was an open square, crowded with stalls of canvas and wood. People thronged, buying and selling, immersed in a cloudy stink of spices, meat, vegetables, and animal dung.

Chickens ran clucking, chased by grimy-faced children.

But around this melee the Forum was surrounded on three sides by small temples and colonnaded walkways. And on the fourth side was a great hall, constructed of brick, flint, and mortar, and roofed with red tile. It loomed over the rest of the town. Regina gaped. Aside from the Wall itself she had never seen anything built on such a scale.

Carausias gently tucked his finger under her chin and closed her mouth. "Now, you must be careful, for if the villains see you are distracted-"

"Is it a temple?"

"No-although the Basilica does host a shrine to the Aedes, the tribal G.o.d, as well as shrines to the Christ and the Emperor. Look-can you read the inscription up there?"

She squinted, trying to make out the chipped Latin markings: "TO THE EMPEROR t.i.tUS CAESAR VESPASIAN, SON OF THE DEIFIED VESPASIAN. . ."

"This is the Basilica. It is here that the town council meets, that the court settles disputes, that offices of tax and census operate-there are schoolrooms, too."

Under the imperial administration, the towns had been the center of local government. Nowadays, though the tax system had pretty much imploded after the rebellion during Constantius's reign, the local landowners kept up the court system and were discussing ways to raise levies to keep up the town's amenities, like the sewers, the baths, and the Basilica itself, which were slowly falling into disrepair.

These would all be temporary measures, of course, Carausias continued to insist, until the Emperor resolved his difficulties.

"But people ought to show a little more civic responsibility," he complained. "Nowadays people will sink endless amounts of money into their villas or town houses, while they let the sewers of Verulamium go to ruin. There has always been a tension in your Roman between civic responsibility and a veneration of the family, living and dead. In times of hards.h.i.+p he retreats to the family, you see. But how does he think the soldiers who protect him will be paid, if not for taxes, and how will taxes be collected, if not for the towns? Eh, eh? And that's whyI pay for keeping up sewers and water pipes and all the rest. I know where my interests lie . . ."

Regina wasn't much interested in this.

Carausias and Regina moved through the Forum, checking the stalls. They were particularly seeking spices, olive oil, and above all pottery. But they found little but local produce. Much of the commerce was conducted in kind-meat for vegetables, a bit of secondhand pottery for some shoe nails-though some people, including Carausias, used handwritten scrips.

The fruits and vegetables on display looked poor to Regina. She fingered a bunch of spindly, discolored carrots. Carausias said dismissively, "You get folk from the town moving out into fields not tilled since their great-grandfathers were alive. They haven't the first idea. And this is the result . . ." Regina put down the carrots guiltily. They had come from a stall manned by a thin woman with sallow, dirty skin, and protruding teeth. A swollen-bellied child clung to her leg.

When they had done their shopping, mostly unsuccessfully, Carausias led her back to the Londinium road, and they walked away from the Forum, heading farther southeast.

They came to a temple. It was set in a place where the main road forked, and it had been shaped by its location into a V shape, a triangular courtyard before a purple-painted building.

There was a scent, like wood smoke. Regina sniffed. "That's lovely."

"Burned pinecones." Carausias watched her carefully. "Do you know what this place is? What about the inscription?" Set over the main entrance to the courtyard, it was a dedication to thedendrophori of the town. "That word means 'branch bearers' . . ."

"I don't understand."

Carausias touched her shoulder. "Child, Cartumandua told me what became of your father."

She felt her face close up.

"This is a temple to Cybele, who is popular here. I myself come here to wors.h.i.+p . . . If you would like to come inside-"

"No," she snapped.

"You should make your peace with the G.o.ds-and with your father's memory-and with yourself."

"Not today."

"Well, perhaps that is wise. But the temple will always be here, waiting for you. Shall we go and see what Marina has prepared for supper? And we still have water to fetch . . ."

He took her hand and they walked together, back through the grubby bustle of Verulamium, toward home.

At Carta's insistence she had brought her scrolls and tablets with her from the Wall. Carta said that she should try to keep up her studies, for it was surely what Aetius would have wanted.

At first she tried. She would study in the courtyard of the house, or in her room when Marina was working. But she had to work alone. There was n.o.body here who could tutor her. For all his obvious business ac.u.men and firm grasp of people, Carausias was no more educated than his niece, and beyond telling anecdotes of half-remembered plays from a decade before, he could not help her. He certainly couldn't afford to hire a tutor.

Gradually she got bored with her solitary studying. And as the weeks wore on, the days shortening as winter approached, the work came to seem less and less worthwhile. Who was ever going to care if she remembered lists of emperors and their accession dates or not? n.o.body in Verulamium was sure who thecurrent emperor was.

And then there was Amator to distract her.

One day, as she was trying to study in her room, Amator came wandering in. "Study, study, study," he teased her. "All you ever do. You're soboring ."

"And you are a lazy clod with nothing better to do than annoy people," she shot back, repeating one of his father's taunts.

He strolled to Marina's bed. Grinning at her, he got to his knees and felt about in the s.p.a.ce beneath the pallet. "Aha!" he proclaimed in triumph, and he pulled out a bit of b.l.o.o.d.y rag. It was one of the loincloths Marina used to pad herself during her periods. He sniffed the dried blood and rubbed it against his cheek. "Ah, the scent of a woman . . ."