Retalio

by Alison Morton

  I heard Calavia gasp. When I glanced at her, her lips were parted, a surprised expression stamped on her face. So Turturus hadn’t told them that little morsel.

  The boy’s eyes bulged, then he slumped in the guard’s grip.

  ‘He tells a different story,’ Quirinia ventured.

  ‘Really? And what is that?’ I tried to keep the sarcasm out of my voice, but it was too late. Quirinia flinched.

  ‘We have to hear all sides, Aurelia,’ she snapped. ‘You said that yourself. Please sit down.’ Turturus shot a look at me, and quickly transferred his anxious gaze to Quirinia. She smiled in an encouraging way.

  ‘Now Turturus, tell the court – I mean, hearing – what you told me when you arrived.’

  ‘I didn’t know she would be here.’

  I sat arms crossed and stared at him. Even in this dim light, I saw his cheeks turn dark red.

  ‘Does that change your story, young man?’ Volusenia’s tone was fierce.

  ‘N—, No, ma’am, but she’s staring at me.’

  ‘Well, ignore her and speak up.’

  ‘I wanted to find out what had happened to my friends at the cadets’ training school. So I went to the nats. They took me to his number two, Representative Phobius, then the first consul himself. I was a bit scared when they asked me to follow her and Lieutenant Calavia. Anybody would be.’ He looked at me, then Calavia, and sniffed loudly. ‘The nats promised to reunite me with my friends if I did well. The first consul dismissed me after he’d called me in to see her when they’d caught her. I shut the doors behind me and asked Phobius to take me to where my classmates were. That was our deal. He just laughed, and threw me in a cell. Then they made me skivvy in the back kitchens. He was a right bastard, that cook.’

  I agreed with him about the cook, but I couldn’t remember seeing Turturus when I was there.

  ‘Continue,’ Volusenia ordered.

  The boy gave me a malicious look, then drew himself up.

  ‘Well, I didn’t see her, but I heard all sorts of stuff. I heard her voice once, bawling out the cook. He smacked us all afterwards. She was definitely in charge of the staff – I saw the order pinned on the staff notice board. And she was upstairs in the guest suite, one of the girls said. Typical patricians keeping together.’ He made a face, then gave a sly smile. ‘And she wasn’t sleeping alone, they said. One of them had to take the first consul a drink up in the guest room one morning and she was asleep in the bed.’

  The night he raped me. All three stared at me, Volusenia with a deep frown. Oh, gods. Hadn’t Numerus told them what I’d said to him when I lay in the hospital with three gunshot wounds?

  ‘Show them the ring around your wrist, Turturus,’ Quirinia said.

  The boy half raised his arm for a second, but there was no doubt what it was. Gasps came from the audience. Calavia stared, but Volusenia looked grim.

  ‘And tell everybody what it means, please,’ Quirinia said.

  ‘It’s what they put on slaves’ wrists there. An’ they can flog you an’ everything.’ He waved it around as if it were an emblem, a mark of passage.

  Cries of ‘no’, people pushing forward to see, crowding round the boy in sympathy and shock, forgetting what he had just said. Slavery had never been allowed in Roma Nova, not even in the first days. The guard was elbowed aside by the sheer numbers. A man put his arm round the boy’s shoulder, women grasped his other hand and arm. Protesting voices, full of indignation and disbelief grew louder every second.

  ‘Quiet,’ Volusenia roared. ‘Sit down. This is not a damned arena.’ Murmuring and mumbling, people drifted back to their seats, several darting hostile looks in my direction. I caught the word ‘traitor’ and ‘coward’ a few times. One man spat at my feet as he made his way back. Ironic that the collaborator was getting more sympathy than me. I stayed where I was, sitting upright, determined not to show how their words and actions hurt me.

  Quirinia’s expression was grim. Her voice cut through the babble. ‘On this evidence, we cannot conclude anything but the worst, Aurelia Mitela.’

  6

  I waited until the room fell completely silent.

  ‘Is this the “evidence” against me?’

  ‘First we had Calavia’s testimony,’ Quirinia replied. ‘Turturus arrived a few days ago and provided us with valuable corroboration.’

  Calavia went to speak, but Volusenia shook her head.

  ‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘I have a few observations, if I have the court’s – ah, no, the hearing’s indulgence.’ I raised an eyebrow and slowly panned round the faces.

  Quirinia gave a brief nod.

  I stood and walked to the end of the table near Turturus, but a few paces away from him.

  ‘Firstly, as I reported to ex-Senior Centurion Numerus when he visited me over three months ago while I was in intensive care, Caius Tellus raped me.’ I closed my eyes for a moment as the memory of the humiliating violation flooded back. ‘To him, it was a demonstration of power. He was under some delusion that once he had possessed me as an object he could do what he liked with me.

  ‘Secondly, he ordered me to run the household and assume duties as—’ I swallowed hard ‘—his companion. I refused. But the domestic staff were terrified, apart from the cook who was a bully. I intervened on that one occasion that Turturus refers to.

  ‘Thirdly, Caius Tellus has suspended much of the law. Citizens are liable to summary arrest. Tellus has ordered the dismissal of women from ministerial and government positions, uniformed services, magistrates, and teaching apart from pre-primary. When I left, all women business owners were being forced to sign over their assets to a male relative within thirty days. Do you really think that is my Roma Nova?’

  I rolled up my sleeve. The flesh on my arm shivered in the unheated room. The steel ring that designated me as Caius’s property glinted in the light.

  ‘Contrary to what Turturus asserts, being a patrician is no protection from being enslaved.’

  Gasps from the audience, but nobody came forward to comfort me as they had Turturus. I walked back to the bench without looking at any of them, sat down and folded my hands in my lap to stop them trembling. Perhaps Miklós was right; it was too soon and I didn’t have either the mental or physical energy to cope with this.

  Quirinia, Volusenia and Calavia huddled together arguing heatedly, but trying to keep it to a whisper. Suddenly Calavia slammed her hand on the table. She stood, jolting the edge of the table.

  ‘I’m not taking any further part in this shambles,’ she said. ‘I withdraw my testimony.’ She nodded curtly at Quirinia and strode over to the audience where she plumped herself down on a chair in the row behind me. I didn’t react outwardly, but even though I was bone-tired, my heart leapt at her words. Thank Juno, somebody had believed me. But Calavia, of all people? Thoughts and questions ran round my head, all enveloped in anger, but with her retraction, I sensed we were near the endgame. I had to keep a grip, whatever my nerves wanted to do.

  Volusenia turned her full-strength glare on Turturus. ‘You need to explain exactly how you got back here.’

  Turturus’s skin paled and he trembled. ‘The housekeeper gave me some boots and walking stuff. She told me to run through the side gate in the car park between patrols.’

  Gods, Drusilla, the palace housekeeper. She was still alive, or had been when this boy had fled. I closed my eyes for a few seconds and sent a silent prayer up to Juno. I sincerely hoped this waste of space hadn’t brought her under suspicion. I stood and turned to face him.

  ‘Something else I’m sure the hearing would like to know, Turturus,’ I said. Quirinia leant forward and opened her mouth, but Volusenia raised her hand in Quirinia’s direction, silencing her, then nodded at me to continue. ‘How did you convince the housekeeper to help you escape?’

  Turturus shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked away.

  ‘Well?’ Volusenia said. Her strong features were tightened into a stare that would fr
ighten the toughest soldier.

  He tilted his head at me. ‘I… I told the housekeeper I’d report her for helping her to escape if she didn’t help me.’

  The anger rocketed up through me. I went to hurl myself at Turturus but just in time remembered where I was and why I was here. I had to keep calm, at least outwardly. But this treacherous child had nearly put another loyal Roma Novan’s life in danger. Was there no end to it?

  The crack of a chair falling to the ground and heavy, slightly uneven footsteps marching across the wooden floor interrupted us. A tall figure, black-haired and with blazing blue eyes, marched up to Turturus and struck him full in the face. The boy dropped to the floor, his face covered in blood, and the man kicked him hard before the guard and Numerus grabbed him and pulled him away. Atrius, my comrade-in-arms, tortured by Caius Tellus’s punishment squad, was struggling to break away from the two men who restrained him. His breath came in short heavy gulps as his eyes spat fury at the boy on the ground.

  ‘Stand down, Atrius,’ I shouted, almost by instinct. I was by his side in a second and grasped his forearm. ‘Stop. It’s done.’

  He turned his head and I saw fury and agony mixed. He gulped and then took a deep breath. He stopped struggling against the grip the two men held him in. I nodded at Numerus, who released him, and I led Atrius back to my bench and pushed him gently down onto it. I remained standing, but laid one hand on Atrius’s shoulder to reassure him.

  ‘I think we can now conclude that Turturus’s evidence is flawed,’ I said in the driest voice I could muster in this room full of emotion. ‘If we were in Roma Nova in normal times, I would arrest him and send him to trial for treason. However, we are not. If we are to survive and then fight back, we need to develop a process and structure to deal with these kinds of circumstances.’

  ‘You take a lot on yourself, Aurelia, considering you are under proscription and outside this community,’ Quirinia shot at me.

  ‘I will, of course, await the hearing’s conclusions, Maia Quirinia,’ I said, exercising every ounce of constraint to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. ‘However, I rather feel the first was dealt with earlier and reversal of the second is the subject of this hearing.’

  I stared at her until she dropped her gaze and studied the table. Volusenia shook her head and gave a brief ‘Ha!’ in my direction. Quirinia shuffled paper and whispered to Volusenia, who nodded.

  ‘Please step forward,’ Quirinia said. Her whole demeanour and her voice were stiff with embarrassment.

  As I covered the space between me and my judges, Calavia and Styrax, the ex-legionary who had sat behind me, moved to my left and right. Styrax nodded at me and drew a little nearer. Calavia didn’t look at me, but stared straight ahead. I released my breath slowly, heartened by such support.

  ‘Aurelia Mitela,’ Quirinia started. ‘The Roma Nova Decuria of Exiles recognises your right of citizenship and withdraws its proscription.’ She swallowed. ‘It invites you to join the community of exiles.’ She stared at me for a second, a dull flush in her cheeks, then looked down at the table and brought her hand up to support her forehead. She looked utterly crushed. Before I could say anything to her, Numerus, my faithful supporter, had marched over and clasped my forearm in a military handshake and placed his other hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Welcome back, Major.’

  I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them to find his grey ones looking steadily at me. Through the hubbub surrounding us, I heard his words distinctly.

  ‘Thank Pluto you’re back. Perhaps you can kick some sense into these sorry-for-themselves idiots.’

  7

  ‘Let me through!’

  A young girl, red-brown hair flying loose round her face, was wriggling between people, gently pushing bodies apart where she needed to. Her drown eyes, normally steady, glistened.

  ‘Aunt Aurelia?’

  ‘Oh, gods, Silvia.’ I folded her into my arms and moulded her to me, almost crushing her. Silvia Apulia might be an emancipated adult of sixteen but she clung to me like any lost child.

  ‘I knew you hadn’t gone bad,’ she said into my shoulder. ‘Whatever anybody else said.’ She pulled back. ‘They wouldn’t let me answer your letters, although they let me read them.’

  ‘Well, that’s all finished now, darling. I’m here, where I belong, among my own people.’ I smoothed her hair. She grasped my hand and looked at me with a solemn face.

  ‘I cannot imagine how horrible it must have been to be so often in that man’s company. And him forcing you like that.’ She turned her head away.

  ‘I will never forget that, Silvia, and when we take Roma Nova back, there will be a reckoning between Caius Tellus and me.’

  ‘Do you think we can do it?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  * * *

  Calavia pulled the door open and almost snatched the tray of food and tea from the man who had knocked on the door. At least it broke the silence. Volusenia, Quirinia, Numerus and I perched on rickety fold-up chairs in what had once been a drawing room. The clean lines of the cornicing and the fireplace with running plasterwork decoration were filled with dusty neglect. I was sad to see how rough the parquet wooden floor looked as Calavia’s boots tramped across it. Silvia sat on the one good chair, but hunched in on herself as if she were the uninvited guest. I’d insisted she should be present. If we were ever to form ourselves into a government in exile, we needed a constitutional head. And she was the imperial heir.

  Eating delayed the inevitable for a few minutes. I set my plate down on the bare wood, then studied them one by one, but none of them looked back at me for more than an instant. Well, we’d be here all day if I didn’t start. I began with Quirinia.

  ‘In your letter, you invited me here to discuss the recent murder of a member of my household and the rumours of a connection with Roma Nova. The simple truth is that Caius Tellus sent an assassination squad to terminate me. Instead, they murdered my driver who was also a friend of my companion’s. The pugio they stuck through the poor man’s heart and the note they stuffed in his mouth leave absolutely no doubt.’

  Quirinia stared back at me, eyes wide and lips parted. She looked horrified. ‘The driver?’ she said after a few moments. ‘Why him?’

  ‘To make an example the ancient Roman way,’ I replied. ‘And also Caius’s way – remote terrorism.’

  The afternoon sun shining through the windows did nothing to dispel the dismay that Caius could strike at will, and across a national frontier. Calavia shifted in her seat and looked down at the floor. She’d tasted Caius’s brutality first-hand.

  ‘However, I’m sure you wanted to discuss more than that,’ I continued. ‘I would have been naive to have thought otherwise. Now you have accepted that I’m not a traitor and collaborator, we must plan for the future. We cannot sit here and let Caius dictate the course of Roma Nova.’ I paused. ‘Nor of our own lives.’ Quirinia glanced at me, then down again. Silvia stared at me like a fawn waiting to be dispatched; the two Praetorians sat back, stony-faced.

  Numerus was right; they looked completely disheartened.

  ‘Very well,’ I continued. ‘I would suggest we establish exactly who is here and what our assets are. It looks as if there are fewer than a hundred people here. I would have thought more would have arrived.’

  ‘I have a list, Major,’ Numerus offered. ‘But—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Others have been here, but were not admitted.' His voice dwindled to a mumble.

  ‘Roma Novans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why were they not admitted?’

  ‘They were a group from… from Castra Lucilla.’

  Dear gods. My estate manager and my people.

  ‘Led by a man called Gavinus?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, and looked at Quirinia.

  ‘And what has happened to them?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  I stood up, too angry to speak for a fe
w seconds. I folded my arms and paced around. Those loyal people, barely recovered from the attack by Caius’s thugs, escaping with their lives, leaving their homes and everything behind them they couldn’t carry in one bag, had been denied refuge by their own people. They’d set off at the end of the first week in October. We were now at the end of January. Juno knew where they were now. When I reached Quirinia, I stopped and glared down at her.

  ‘I suppose this was your doing? These people were desperate, but because of your prejudice against me, they’re out there holed up somewhere, probably sleeping rough, completely cut off from everything. Well done!’

  ‘You know the penalty for proscription applies to everything to do with the proscriptee!’ she shot back, her face a deep crimson.

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t their fault. Mars’ balls! This is a crisis of extreme proportions and you refused them shelter on a technicality. You should be ashamed of yourself.’ She flinched as if I’d struck her. I took a deep breath. ‘My first priority is to go and search for them. Do what you like in the meantime.’ I yanked the door open and was halfway out when Volusenia grabbed my arm.

  ‘Consiliaria!’ she said. ‘You cannot abandon your duty as senior minister and head of the Twelve Families.’

  ‘My duty, Colonel, is to those poor sods your cosy little decuria threw out on the street in the middle of winter. They are my familia.’ I removed her hand from my arm. ‘Don’t you presume to tell me my duty.’

  ‘Your place is here to lead the exiles,’ she replied. ‘Under the authority of Silvia Apulia, of course,’ she added as an afterthought. We both glanced down at the poor girl, looking totally bewildered.

  I dropped down and knelt down by Silvia’s dilapidated armchair. I took her hand. ‘I’m sorry, darling, we’re all being bad tempered, but you see I must go and look for them?’

  She nodded, then glanced at each of us in turn as if she didn’t know what to reply.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Calavia’s voice came from behind me. ‘It’s the least I can do. And your estate guard Sentia knows me.’