A Villa Far From Rome

by Sheila Finch

  “You haven’t looked.”

  Lucia pouted but left the room. Antonia closed her eyes and thought about Rome.

  A few moments later – had she drifted into sleep? – she heard someone at the door and opened them again.

  “Guest,” Old Nev said, one of the few Latin words she’d mastered in all the months since Antonia had arrived.

  She sat up, hands flying to her hair. She wasn’t prepared to meet guests.

  “It’s only me,” a familiar voice said behind Old Nev.

  “Gracila?”

  The Roman woman, dressed for riding in boots and cloak, came into the room carrying her small girl. “I’m pleased to see you recovered from your sickness Antonia.”

  “I’m so happy to see you! It’s been far too long. Please, sit down and Delamira will fetch food We have to pantomime everything to Old Nev – ”

  “Thank you, but no.” Gracila set the child down. “We won’t stay long.”

  “I wish you would! I’ve missed you.”

  “How is your throat? I heard that your Greek magician did something terrible to it – but you are well now?

  “Magician indeed! I might well have died without his knowledge.”

  She displayed the healing scar to her friend’s examination. She became aware that Gracila wasn’t smiling.

  ”Oh, my dearest friend!” She held her hands out to Gracila, drawing her down onto the couch beside her. “What can it be? Tell me.”

  “The sickness was particularly hard on the very old and the very young. Like Caelius. Some didn’t live.”

  “But – not Caelius? Not your son?” She read the unwelcome answer on her friend’s face. “No. Oh, surely no!”

  “Marcus is taking it very hard. He adored his son.”

  She put her arms around Gracila and let her friend weep. This was devastating news. Whatever could it have been that took the old and the young but let her survive? She remembered Gracila saying something about legionaries joining the Second Augusta from Palestine, and the young slave who’d hung around them and died. Caelius was the same age as Lucia. What terrible fate had the gods sent that struck soldiers and small children – and why? She should make a special sacrifice to Minerva in the new temple to safeguard her own child..

  “I’ve come to say goodbye,” Gracila said. “I’m going back to Pompeii.”

  “Of course. You need time to heal from such a horrible loss.”

  “No. You don’t understand. Marcus is sending us away.” The tears were gone; she spoke calmly. “We were never married, you see. The legion doesn’t allow ... Well. With Caelius dead, he doesn’t see the point of keeping us here. His son was everything to him.”

  “But the little one – your daughter. She’s his daughter too!”

  “You know how it is, Antonia. He wanted a son.”

  “But what will you do in Pompeii? How will you survive?”

  “I’ll do what I was doing when I met Marcus, I imagine.”

  Gracila spoke casually, but she sensed the well of despair under the calm words. For the first time, she saw the bitter lines around Gracila’s eyes and mouth, the grey that twisted through her dark hair, and realized that in Marcus’s eyes she was too old to bear another child for him. It was unjust, but she knew that was the way of a Roman man.

  “We have to leave now before the bad weather sets in,” Gracila said. “Once the winter storms come, the sea captains won’t be so eager to make the crossing.”

  “Tiberius should talk to Marcus. Tiberius could make him change his mind.”

  “I think you saw at Yule how little power your barbarian king wields with Rome.”

  “But he’s a Roman citizen too –”

  Gracila shook her head. “Besides, I think Marcus has other plans.”

  * * *

  After Gracila had gone, Antonia went to find Tiberius.

  He was sitting at a small desk in the original part of the house where he used to conduct the affairs of the tribe, a room he’d threatened the builders to leave out of their plans for destruction. The servant who’d been lighting oil lamps against the late afternoon shadows went away. He was still angry that the emperor was paying to build a new villa for them. “And what will we owe him for this?” He’d rejected her answer that the emperor wanted a good life for his daughter. How angry he’d be if he ever found out the real reason Nero was building this villa! Minerva defend them from having to face that day.

  Tiberius looked up from a letter as she entered, his expression distracted as if he didn’t remember who she was. Then clarity returned and he inclined his head politely to her.

  How old he looked in the lamplight! His face had retreated into new lines and creases, and surely his hair had whitened since before her illness? Something stirred in her at the sight of this new vulnerability she saw in him, not love, certainly, but a form of caring. If her life had been changed by Nero’s actions, she realized how much his had too.

  “Tiberius, Gracila Pavonia is going back to Rome. Marcus has sent her away. Why would he do that? What can it mean?”

  “You know his son didn’t survive the sickness.”

  “I do now. But how does that explain anything?”

  “I think the centurion has plans to advance his status.”

  “How does sending Gracila and his daughter away help with that?”

  “She wasn’t his wife –”

  “That I know! The legion doesn’t allow –”

  “Lady,” he said patiently. “I’m not your enemy. You don’t need to fight me all the time. This is Roman law.”

  She wanted to argue, but he was right, and an argument might lead to things slipping out that she’d regret. “I apologize. But how could he have plans that mean sending Gracila away? It doesn’t seem just.”

  “This isn’t easy on any of us.”

  “I’ll miss Gracila!”

  Instead of replying to that, he said, “What will happen now to Delamira?”

  “What do you mean? Gracila gave her to me.”

  “There are no slaves in my house. Those who serve here are free.”

  “Then I’ll free her! What difference will it make?”

  “Good.” His expression softened. “I understand being here isn’t easy for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  Before Septimus Severus arrived with the plans to build a grand villa, intended for Nero to inhabit, as she now knew, she’d been resolving to do better in the position the emperor had consigned her to. She couldn’t do anything about the politics of Rome – and nothing would come of it anyway. But she could take control of her own life, starting now.

  “You were busy. I’ve interrupted you. Is there something I could do to help?”

  He looked up at her, surprise showing in a frown that he quickly hid. “I’m seeing signs that disturb me.” He held up the document he’d been studying when she came into the room. “A messenger just delivered this letter from the garrison in Noviomagus. A call for more taxes to fund the legion and pay for our ‘protection against the predations of hostile tribes.’”

  “Which hostile tribes?” Determined as she’d been to be of help, this sudden sharing of his concerns surprised and confused her. “I didn’t think Rome had trouble with anyone here right now.”

  “Nothing beyond the ordinary day to day squabbles and grudges,” he agreed.

  Pull yourself together! she scolded herself. Here was a chance. “I may not be very schooled in government, Tiberius, but I learned a few things in my father’s house. Centurions are not responsible for collecting taxes or raising them.”

  “Not in Rome, certainly,” he agreed, laying aside the stylus he’d been using to make notes. “Not even in our larger cities that have a procurator provinciae.”

  “I don’t understand this. Doesn’t Rome fund the legions?”

  “Normally. But the emperor has just committed a significant amount of money to build a magnificent villa here. Don’t think Marcus Favonius hasn’t notice
d that.”

  Were the two things connected in reality? She understood without the need for him to explain, that how real the connection might or might not be would hardly matter if the centurion suspected it. If Aron was right, the money was not for her sake or Tiberius’s, but that would hardly matter to the centurion feeling the loss of support for his troops.

  “I imagine this exercise in wielding power is the centurion’s first step in demonstrating his worthiness to be promoted to higher command,” he added. “I don’t know how far his ambition stretches.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I can do very little. I’ll ride out again tomorrow.”

  “But you have so recently returned –”

  “I must take the news of these taxes to the Regni myself. They won’t be popular. I’ll start with the farmers and merchants close to town, before the weather changes. If we’re blessed with a good summer, I’ll venture further away. The sooner this gets done the better.”

  Relief swept over her. He’d be far away and too busy to think about the real reason Septimus Severus had been sent to build the new villa. If he knew that, she couldn’t be sure he’d be able to contain his anger, with possibly terrible consequences for them all. She turned her attention to her own anger at the centurion for sending her friend Gracila away. Such a short time ago she’d harbored daydreams – She understood that her view of the centurion had been that of a moonstruck girl. Now she saw him in daylight.

  She left Tiberius at his desk before he could see the warmth she felt spreading across her face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The meeting he’d planned with sheep-herders didn’t start well. He hadn’t expected it to be easy, but sullen silence was harder to deal with than argument. There was always a certain amount of friendly rivalry between cattle folk as his family had traditionally been and sheep folk, but he sensed a more serious undercurrent here. He’d spent several days riding from one argumentative group to another, sullen with grievances.

  The herders sat in a circle around the fire which the wife of the chief among the herders had built against the chill that arrived with a heavy rain, and the small house was thick with the smell of burning peat and unwashed bodies crowded together. An honest smell, one he much preferred to the perfumes Antonia had been wearing since her visit with Gracila. He knew most of them by sight if not all of them by name; he’d always made it his purpose to know his own people. The chief herder, he remembered now, as the older man gazed across the fire at him, was the brother of Epilus who’d become his enemy on the Council of Elders. They shared the same hooded eyes full of barely concealed aggression.

  A young woman brought him the cup of wheat beer. Acknowledging his rank, she left it with him instead of waiting for him to drink then passing it on to the next man. He thought of Gallus and his love of Celtic beer; for himself, he would’ve preferred a Roman wine.

  “This is no easy sacrifice I ask of you.” He gazed in particular at the younger men, the ones he knew were most resistant. “It sounds much more heroic to take up knives and cudgels and defy the Roman tax collectors. But I would remind you of the lesson Boudicca learned, that the legions have swords and far-flying arrows and catapults hurling iron balls and battle chariots. I saw this myself. We Regni – farmers and herdsmen and craftsmen – stand to lose our lives in futile rebellion.”

  He thought of the potters he’d visited yesterday, a woman and her two daughters, too busy to give him their undivided attention, their stolid, expressionless faces sweaty from the heat of the kiln. He remembered the earthy smell of wet clay that caked their fingers. Life was hard, the mother said, stoking the kiln fire, since the death of her husband three years ago. They showed him the pots they were making, and he praised the delicacy of the vessels, the intricate patterns of the decoration, the smooth glaze. They spoke of the wonderful new road the legion was building that would eventually link Noviomagus with Londinium, giving them a much larger market for their pots. No pleasant task to bring the potters the news, but it was his duty. Hot-headed as any man, they’d rebel and reach for the knives before anyone had a chance to stop them. And the Romans would massacre them. He bought a pretty jug for Breca from them, thought again and bought another for Antonia, stowing them both in the saddlebag on Stormfellow.

  After leaving the women, he’d sheltered for the night in a pig-herder’s hut, the man – hardly more than a boy – obviously unable to pay whatever tax he was assessed now. Remembering, he sighed. So many stories like that.

  “As your leader, a friend with your well-being at heart,” he said now to the sheep-herders, “I urge you to consider that the way forward is to cooperate with the Romans, to learn from them whatever good there is to be learned.”

  He tried to catch the eye of each of the men in turn, reinforcing their tribal unity with him. Several of them refused to meet his eyes – not a good sign. They didn’t share his opinion of the benefits of Rome. Some of them had probably been supporters of Boudicca’s cause, more popular in the countryside than in the towns. And they would remember which side he’d been on.

  The chief herder’s round-house was almost as big as the one Breca’s uncle had built on the island. The small settlement of two family houses and a rectangular building to house the unmarried younger men had been built high on the Downs with views that stretched all the way from the sea almost to the border with the Atrebates. A ditch around the houses held in the settlement’s chickens. A brown and white stallion, half wild by the look of it, cropped the grass inside an enclosure; he’d noted that the boy who took Stormfellow’s reins didn’t put him in the same enclosure as the other horse. Hundreds of sheep stood patiently on the rolling pasture land, enduring the rain, their unshorn backs dark and sodden.

  It was a lonely, windy life up here, away from the market center in Noviomagus, the public baths and the new arena. These herders weren’t even close enough to other Regni villages for companionship. He wouldn’t be able to stand it for long himself; he’d grown too accustomed to Roman amenities. But he’d lived like this in his youth, in his grandfather’s house, and again when he’d traveled with the legions. A hard life produces hard men, and hard men are difficult to convince they should pay more of their small wealth in taxes. He understood their reluctance.

  “We see far up here,” the chief herder said, breaking a long silence. He was an old man with long white hair in braids; when he narrowed his eyes to look at Togidubnus through the smoke, he was the very image of his brother Epilus. “We’d know if anyone tried to breach our borders. We’ve seen nothing that calls for extra defensive measures.”

  Several of the men nodded at that.

  He understood how thin they found the Roman excuse of defense against intruders. He was inclined to agree with them but for the memory of the Belgae prisoner, warrior in Boudicca’s lost cause and stubbornly hostile to the Roman settlers. They’d made an agreement under the mistletoe to keep the peace, and a good Celt would keep it. But what if there were more like him, angry younger sons chafing under the twin restraints of lack of power in their tribes and Roman rule? When he’d been a young man, he’d been full of fire too. If he hadn’t become convinced that the only sane path for the tribes’ future existence was cooperation with Rome, he might’ve been that rebel the centurion had captured.

  “What do they plan to do to us if we can’t raise the money?” a man with a long scar on his face demanded. “Take away our flocks? I’d like to see a legionary herding sheep!”

  There was laughter at that. They were sheep-herders, not warriors. But they were also quick-tempered Celts, not given to listening to logic at the best of times.

  He sipped the beer, then passed the cup on, wishing they’d added honey to it the way the folk down on the coast did. Bees didn’t thrive up here on the windy hillsides where a rough grass grew and few flowers other than clover. He realized he knew nothing about bee culture, and should learn.

  “Rain’s stopped,” a t
hin, pinch-faced young man, the chief herder’s son, announced. “You should leave now.”

  He couldn’t let the deliberate incivility pass. He stood, aware of the resentment in the young man’s eyes. “Do not suppose that peaceful words mean weakness.”

  “Shouldn’t our king defend us against thieves, even if they are Roman?”

  The chief herder rose to his feet too, upsetting a platter of dark bread and sheep cheese. He struck his son on the cheek. “You will not insult our king under my roof!”

  The men were all looking at him, waiting to see how he would react. Most of them – the older ones – showed by their expressions their disapproval of the young man’s disrespectful words. But not all. He hadn’t chosen to be made king, nor did he use the title, but the damage had been done the day Nero bestowed it on him. There was no right action for him here. He turned abruptly and strode out of the roundhouse – a breach of courtesy that signified his displeasure.

  The old herder followed him. They stood looking out over the wet Downs, now sparkling in a shaft of sunshine. The smell of wet turf, wet wool and air as sharp as crystal filled his nose. Somewhere up high, a lark began to sing, and in the distance he heard the call of the cuckoo. Soon, full summer would be here and the cuckoo would fall silent, her work planting her babies in other birds’ nests over for the year. Much like Nero had planted a bastard in his nest, he thought. A girl, splashing through puddles in her bare feet, brought Stormfellow to him.

  “Forgive my son,” the old man said.

  He looked steadily at the old man, Epilus’s brother. How far could he trust this family? “Forgiven.”

  “The young ones are restless and hard to control.”

  “Understandable.” He hoisted himself onto the horse’s back. “But a dangerous attitude to encourage. Rome is powerful, and not given to tolerance for rebellion. See to it that you keep your young ones under control.”

  The old man patted Stormfellow’s neck and went back inside.

  * * *

  Two more groups of herders, one with a mixed herd of sheep and goats, were all he could manage to visit in one day. He was getting too old for this sort of extended surveying of his territory; his muscles complained and his bones creaked. But he felt an urgent need to carry the news himself and not allow his folk to be ambushed by the arrival of the tax collector accompanied by legionaries. He knew too well how Rome dealt with those who opposed her will.