Retalio

by Alison Morton

  ‘I’ve done them all and written a summary and report of the most salient points. Perhaps I could take the liberty of asking you to present them to the council. I feel I must go and lie down for a little while.’

  He finished his drink, set the cup down and stumbled to his feet as if his legs had forgotten how to work. I put my hand out to steady him, but he shook his head, turned and left. I picked up the sheaf of paper. His rounded handwriting on the first pages had degenerated into a scrawl, but perfectly readable.

  * * *

  ‘The first two are chit-chat,’ I said to the council later that morning. ‘There’s nothing hidden that Vibianus could spot and he was keen to find something – they’re the first he tackled. But at the end of the third one, Monticola makes a throwaway reference to our time in Berlin, except what she says isn’t quite true.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Volusenia said.

  ‘We left the reception at eight and went to eat at an Italian place in Savigny-Platz, not lunch at the Hotel Adler.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t remember properly?’ Quirinia said.

  ‘That’s what I thought. But that was the night she almost had her head blown off by a gangster. Not something you’d forget. But I didn’t think anything of it, we had so much going on here. Vibianus has noted she used the German word for eagle, Adler, not difficult to see the connection to “Aquila”.’

  ‘Hardly a secure code,’ Volusenia said.

  ‘No, but Vibianus says it’s one of a number of opening words meaning a message follows.’ I picked up the fourth letter. ‘Here’s the first message: “State confiscation. Black forecast. Avoid trading.” Pretty straightforward, I’d say. The next one is, “Breaking network. Implementing production slowdown.” Then “Production seventy-two, distribution fifty-nine, stockpile.” Vibianus writes this means production is at seventy-two per cent on the previous quarter and only fifty-nine per cent is being distributed. They’re finding some way of hiding the difference.’

  I laid the sheet of Vibianus’s notes on the table. Silvia, at my side, stifled a yawn, but she picked up the sheets and examined them.

  ‘Juno, if she and the others get caught, Caius will have them slaving on the silver-face at Truscium itself,’ Quirinia said. ‘But a significant blow to his finances.’ She almost purred.

  ‘The next few are reports of output,’ I continued. ‘It’s falling all the time. This one says, “Full hostile audit. Arrests”, then three months ago, “Mercenary takeover”. Until Vibianus wakes, I don’t know what that signifies. The last letter from her five weeks ago contains these phrases, “Crisis. Grave personal danger”. This is why I got you all up at this time. Given all this valuable information, we can’t leave her dangling – we have to get her out.’

  Nobody spoke for a few seconds.

  ‘Obviously it’s regrettable that’s she’s in such a situation,’ Volusenia said. But we can’t organise a snatch squad to save one non-strategically important person, however prominent.’ Her tone was measured, almost sympathetic.

  I took a deep breath to soak up some of the fury rolling through me. Then another to grasp some balance before I spoke. I glared at Volusenia, nearly hating her.

  ‘Prisca Monticola has risked everything to get these messages out. The gods know what danger she’s put herself in to even acquire this information, let alone send it out. Even you, Colonel Volusenia, must have a distant memory of how bloody difficult it is to gather intelligence let alone communicate it. Or is it so long ago that you’ve forgotten?’ I heard the biting sarcasm flow out of me.

  Silvia gasped, Quirinia laid her hand on my forearm, but I ignored her, locking eyes with Volusenia. The others shrank back into their chairs.

  ‘You will withdraw that remark, consiliaria,’ she bit back.

  ‘Or what?’

  ‘Aurelia—’ This time Quirinia shook my arm, but I ignored her.

  Volusenia refused to break, her eyes boring into mine.

  ‘Stop!’ Silvia cried. She leapt to her feet. ‘Please stop.’ I wrenched my gaze away from Volusenia to Silvia, refocusing my eyes after the hard glare. Silvia’s cheeks were flushed in a white face and she looked ready to burst into tears.

  ‘How can we do anything about this if you just fight all the time? I thought you were supposed to be helping me.’ She turned and ran off, with Lentilius scurrying behind her. Just as he reached the door he turned, stared at me, then narrowed his eyes as if thinking something through. What on earth was that about?

  * * *

  I pounded round the edges of the Jagdschloss former pleasure gardens now showing the wilting leaves of winter vegetables. This October was surprisingly warm and clear. As I turned along the east side, the horizontal white sunlight nearly blinded me. But that wasn’t why my eyes were damp. Prisca and I had not only bonded because of the attack in Berlin, we had met regularly for theatre or a simple meal. Each time we’d met we’d instantly reconnected, often laughing our way through to the early hours. I’d sponsored her daughter on an exchange to a silver processing company in Birmingham in England. She wasn’t only a sounding board, someone to commiserate with or congratulate, she was my friend. I stopped and dragged breath back into my lungs. I would not abandon her, whatever Volusenia said.

  * * *

  I apologised to Silvia for my rudeness, but not for my point of view. She gazed at me with wide eyes, but a firm mouth and a defiant chin.

  ‘I understand, Aunt Aurelia, but you’re the one who says we have to take the wider view and not to let our personal feelings interfere with our goals.’

  Gods, she was brutal as only a seventeen-year-old could be.

  She relaxed her face a few millimetres.

  ‘I’m sorry, but there are so many in similar situations. The best thing for everybody is to take back Roma Nova as quickly as we can.’

  I’d taught her too well.

  18

  After a training session drilling field tactical basics into people who’d forgotten anything they’d ever learnt in their two-year compulsory service, I made for the bar corner in the barracks section mess and downed a large brandy. It wasn’t French, but the local stuff. It stung as it coursed down my throat. Nevertheless, I took a refill. As I raised the glass to my lips, another figure in olive green sat down on the stool beside me. Calavia.

  ‘Major.’

  ‘Hello, Pia.’ I nodded at her.

  ‘Bit early, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t you start,’ I shot at her. ‘Sorry.’ I looked down at the counter. ‘I’m fed up, tired and cross. Ignore me.’

  ‘I heard the colonel had given you a hard time. She’s quite correct. We have so few resources, even with the recent influx.’

  True, we were up to just over fifteen hundred now. Quirinia had split them into vici, or village communities with separate councils to make administering them more manageable. But they were hardly an invading army – a third of them were too old or young.

  ‘I know. Subject closed,’ I said and returned my attention to my glass. But I burned inside.

  Pia Calavia looked round the room; the steward had disappeared. We were alone. She fixed her gaze on the bar counter.

  ‘You know Colonel Volusenia’s been sending groups over the border? Just as a test.’

  I hoped my mouth didn’t hang open. And Volusenia had had the nerve to castigate me in open council.

  ‘And how long has this been going on?’

  ‘A couple of months.’ Calavia glanced up. ‘And only in groups of five professional troops like Junia Sestina and only for a few hours. The colonel went herself last week for the day. Now she’s planning a four-day one next week.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought you ought to know, but she’s so worried about losing you.’

  ‘Hades take her, what right has she to baby me? Well, there’s one extra going.’

  I caught Volusenia in the garden, puffing on her post-supper cigarette.

  ‘You’ll die of those things if you manage to survive your f
our-day holiday in Roma Nova next week.’

  She broke into a coughing fit.

  ‘Who?’ she rasped. ‘Oh, bloody Calavia, I suppose. You two are as thick as thieves. I’ll talk to her later. Wonder how she likes scrubbing floors with her toothbrush?’

  ‘Don’t take it out on her. What in Mars’ name were you doing, gallivanting off like some cowboy without Council’s permission?’

  She threw the butt in the hedge. ‘Security.’ She touched her shoulder. ‘This taught me to be cautious since Burrus. I was going to inform the council at the next meeting,’ she grumped.

  We walked on in silence. At the garden wall I stopped and looked out over the parkland. ‘It’s a positive step, no question. And I’m going with them next week. It’s planned already – you can’t refuse me. Besides, we need proof for the international courts to get tighter sanctions imposed. I know who to contact and what to look for.’

  ‘Out of the question,’ she snapped. ‘And don’t try and change my mind.’

  ‘Look, Volusenia, I’m not arguing. I go.’

  I turned and stalked off, leaving her calling my name.

  I got to Silvia before she could, but she wouldn’t budge either.

  ‘If Colonel Volusenia says no, then I must respect what she says.’ She sighed. ‘Sometimes, you make this really difficult for me. I respect you and your guidance, and your love, but I can’t give in to you all the time. We daren’t risk you being caught or even injured.’ Her eyes pleaded with me. ‘Please, Aunt Aurelia, don’t.’

  She twisted her fingers together as if she was asking to go out with friends to a late-night party. If only she was – that was what she should be doing at seventeen.

  ‘Darling, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s the last thing I want to do.’ I touched her cheek with my fingers and gave her a smile.

  I knew in my head they were both right and I would have said the same thing, but that made me more angry inside.

  * * *

  The next day, I was training with Junia and her group. Our task was to approach the keeper’s cottage without being detected. Maybe it would provoke a reaction from him. I hadn’t seen him to speak to for a couple of weeks although I’d seen a figure riding a horse along a bridleway a week ago.

  The dozen trainees were fit enough but they hadn’t yet developed the instinct for stealth. Out of seven attempts they set the proximity alarms off four times. Junia creased her eyes into slits and her lips almost disappeared. Her chest heaved with frustration.

  ‘You’re a bunch of imbeciles – dead imbeciles, so perhaps the world is safer now,’ she hissed at them. ‘We’re staying here until midnight, if necessary. If it goes past that, I’ll decimate you myself.’

  We stood in the shelter of trees across the way from the keeper’s cottage. She glanced at me. ‘Major, would you mind showing them how it’s done?’

  I cursed Junia in my head, but nodded at her. I grabbed a stave with a shoulder strap, which acted as a substitute rifle, from the nearest recruit and edged forward to just behind the tree line. Junia was using a random pattern proximity alarm that Brown Industries had supplied us with. Mars knew where the coverage was.

  I crouched down and skimmed the stretch of ground. The cover was poor – in the back garden a half-metre-high hedge, vegetable patch with the remains of squashes and tomato plants, two rows of parallel bamboo canes for runner beans, but now no growth. Leaves and late fruit covered the apple and pear trees – we were in October after all – but not one of the trunks was a person wide. And there were two unshuttered windows overlooking the garden. Several had attempted this red herring and failed.

  The front courtyard was a nightmare – total exposure. The ground to the windowless side wall was open, but only ten metres and the wall would give shelter. Five seconds max to cross to it. I stood up, shouldered the fake rifle and launched myself.

  Back to the wall, I slithered along to the corner. No alarm scream. Nothing. Crawling along the ground, I cleared the first window opening and approached the door. I stood, fake rifle ready, took a breath and grasped the door handle. I felt a slight resistance as the spring in the handle mechanism contracted, but it made no noise. I eased the door open a few centimetres to slide in and met a double-barrelled shotgun in my face.

  Miklós, my beloved companion whom I’d left in the city, was sitting on a wooden carver, a small table with a half-full glass of beer at his side. The chair was placed facing the front door. He wore countryman’s clothes and a smug smile. My heart thudded, not from the sprint to the cottage. I took a half-step forward, put my hand out, but he didn’t move towards me. Instead he took another sip of his beer, but kept the barrels pointing in my direction. I let my hand drop. Disappointment welled up through me. He didn’t want to touch me.

  ‘I thought somebody would get through eventually,’ he said. ‘I’ve been watching you all afternoon. Pathetic.’

  ‘Really?’ I hadn’t seen him for months and he wanted to play word games. But his eyes sparkled. He burst out laughing. He broke his shotgun, laid it on the table in that graceful way of moving I knew so well and stood up. In one movement he stretched out his arm, grabbed me by the waist, brought my free hand up to his lips and kissed the back of my fingers. The fake rifle fell from my fingers and clattered onto the tile floor.

  ‘Miklós.’

  ‘Yes, wife?’ and he laughed that rich, sexy laugh again.

  I waved my hand feebly, but my heart was thundering. He brought his lips down on mine, crushing them. I grasped the edge of his waistcoat. I no longer cared if I breathed. I would be happy to die of pleasure at this very moment.

  Which is precisely when Junia Sestina clattered in with her heavy boots.

  * * *

  ‘I thought your soldier friend’s eyes were going to burst out of their sockets,’ he said and chuckled. ‘Her face was as red as the sunset when she left.’ He pulled me back down, his arm clamping me across the back of my waist. I thrilled to the touch of his warm skin, the faint down on his chest, even the scar of the bullet I had put through him near fifteen years ago.

  He drew the coarse cotton sheet up over us. This wasn’t the most comfortable bed I’d ever lain in, but that wasn’t important. Neither were the plain furnishings or floral curtains in the caretaker’s cottage.

  I flicked my fingers on Miklós’s cheek.

  ‘How long have you been here, amusing yourself at our expense?’

  I tried hard not to sound accusing.

  He traced his fingertip down my bare spine as I lay on top of him in the bed. I shivered at the soft electrical sensation.

  ‘Only since yesterday.’ He smiled up at me. ‘This time.’

  ‘What do you mean, “this time”?’

  ‘I come and stay with Lúkas now and again. It’s convenient for my business.’

  ‘Why? Who is he to you?’

  Miklós sighed. ‘Aurelia, stop being a Praetorian. You’re not interrogating me. He’s a young man close to me. Just accept it.’

  I seized his wrists. ‘Tell me! Oh gods, he’s not your son, is he?’

  ‘And what if he were?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Use your brain, woman. He’s twenty-four, I’m thirty-eight.’ He laughed. ‘He’s a cousin. You met him when he was nine. He was the boy who gave you my rose at the airport.’

  I released him and propped myself up on my elbows. I’d been flying back to Roma Nova to pursue Caius who was targeting my daughter, then a child of five. Miklós had disappeared, but had wished me good hunting on the note attached to the rose. I searched Miklós’s face which was solemn now, then I looked away. He gave a long sigh and ran his fingers down my spine.

  ‘You’re going hunting him again, aren’t you?’ he said in a low voice.

  I nodded, then buried my face in the space at the base of his neck.

  * * *

  ‘Surely you don’t want to go on this routine exercise now?’

  Volusenia was trying
to sound reasonable. It didn’t suit her. We walked on towards the back garden wall. The sun was warm for October with not even a light breeze to dilute it. The parkland was green and lush again, having recovered from the hot summer. Its softness was a complete contrast with the brutal place we were planning to go.

  ‘It makes no difference,’ I said. ‘If it’s as routine as you say, then how can it be risky?’

  ‘I’m so fed up of trying to explain to you that I’m almost ready to let you go and Mercury take the consequences!’

  ‘Look, this is an important intelligence gathering mission with specific targets. You say you can get me into the palace. Well, who better to find the evidence we want on Caius? I’ve handled more government paperwork than you’ve been on exercises.’ Volusenia went to speak, but I continued. ‘Yes, I have. I’m uniquely placed to identify exactly what we need to show the international community and tighten the rather pathetic sanctions currently existing against Caius.’

  She was silent for a few moments then glanced up at me. ‘Your daughter’s baby is only a few weeks old. Don’t you want to go to the EUS and see her?’

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Marina and her husband. They completely support my decision to remain here.’ I tilted my chin up at Volusenia. My heart had been wrenched at that decision but, strangely, it was Marina who had been most insistent during our last telephone call.

  ‘I am only one daughter, Mama. You must stay for all daughters of Roma Nova, including the imperatrix. Silvia needs you more than ever.’ She’d gulped, then said, ‘I have some friends here now and William is taking the best care of me. I want my child to be able to come back to a free Roma Nova, not be condemned to be an exile.’

  I could hardly reply, my throat had tightened so much; then transatlantic static had ended our call.

  Volusenia’s voice pulled me back into the present.