Lucia Victrix

by E. F. Benson

  ‘Oh, and look at Tray A,’ said Georgie. ‘All those pieces of clay tobacco-pipes. I didn’t know the Romans smoked. Did they?’

  Lucia gave a slightly superior laugh.

  ‘Caro, of course they didn’t,’ she said. ‘Tray A: yes, I thought so. Tray A is from a much higher level, let me see, yes, a foot below the surface of the ground. We may put it down therefore as being subsequent to Queen Elizabeth when tobacco was introduced. At a guess I should say those pipes were Cromwellian. A Cromwellian look, I fancy. I am rather inclined to take a complete tile from the continuation of the air flue which I laid bare this morning, and see if it is marked in full SPQR. The tile from the street, you remember, was broken and had only SP on it. Yet is it a vandalism to meddle at all with such a fine specimen of a flue evidently in situ?’

  ‘I think I should do it,’ said Georgie, ‘you can put it back when you’ve found the letters.’

  ‘I will then. To-morrow I expect my trench to get down to floor-level. There may be a tesselated pavement like that found at Richborough. I shall have to unearth it all, even if I have to dig up the entire kitchen-garden. And if it goes under the garden-room, I shall have to underpin it, I think they call it. Fancy all this having come out of a smell of gas!’

  ‘Yes, that was a bit of luck,’ said Georgie stifling a yawn over Tray A, where he was vainly trying to make a complete pipe out of the fragments.

  Lucia put on the kind, the indulgent smile suitable to occasions when Georgie did not fully appreciate her wisdom or her brilliance.

  ‘Scarcely fair to call it entirely luck,’ she said, ‘for you must remember that when the cellar was dug out I told you plainly that I should find Roman remains in the garden. That was before the gas smelt.’

  ‘I’d forgotten that,’ said Georgie. ‘To be sure you did.’

  ‘Thank you, dear. And to-morrow morning, if you are strolling and shopping in the High Street, I think you might let it be known that I am excavating in the garden and that the results, so far, are most promising. Roman remains: you might go as far as that. But I do not want a crowd of sightseers yet: they will only impede the work. I shall admit nobody at present.’

  Foljambe had very delicately told Georgie that there was a slight defect in the plumbing system at Mallards Cottage, and accordingly he went down to the High Street next day to see about this. It was pleasant to be the bearer of such exciting news about Roman remains, and he announced it to Diva through the window and presently met Elizabeth. She had detached the tiger-skin border from the familiar green skirt.

  ‘Hope the smell of gas or drains or both has quite gone away now, Mr Georgie,’ she said. ‘I’m told it was enough to stifle anybody. Odd that I never had any trouble in my time nor Aunt Caroline in hers. Lucia none the worse?’

  ‘Not a bit. And no smell left,’ said Georgie.

  ‘So glad! Most dangerous it must have been. Any news?’

  ‘Yes: she’s very busy digging up the kitchen-garden –’

  ‘What? My beautiful garden?’ cried Elizabeth shrilly. ‘Ah, I forgot. Yes?’

  ‘And she’s finding most interesting Roman remains. A villa, she thinks, or more probably a temple.’

  ‘Indeed! I must go up and have a peep at them.’

  ‘She’s not showing them to anybody just yet,’ said Georgie. ‘She’s deep down in the asparagus-bed. Pottery. Glass. Air flues.’

  ‘Well, that is news! Quite an archaeologist, and nobody ever suspected it,’ observed Elizabeth smiling her widest. ‘Padre, dear Lucia has found a Roman temple in my asparagus-bed.’

  ‘Ye dinna say! I’ll ring up, bedad.’

  ‘No use,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Not to be shown to anybody yet.’

  Georgie passed on to the plumbers. ‘Spencer & Son’ was the name of the firm, and there was the proud legend in the window that it had been established in Tilling in 1820 and undertook all kinds of work connected with plumbing and drains. Mr Spencer promised to send a reliable workman up at once to Mallards Cottage.

  The news disseminated by Georgie quickly spread from end to end of the High Street, and reached the ears of an enterprising young gentleman who wrote paragraphs of local news for the Hastings Chronicle. This should make a thrilling item, and he called at Mallards just as Lucia was coming in from her morning’s digging, and begged to be allowed to communicate any particulars she could give him to the paper. There seemed no harm in telling him what she had allowed Georgie to reveal to Tilling (in fact she liked the idea) and told him briefly that she had good reason to hope that she was on the track of a Roman villa, or, more probably, a temple. It was too late for the news to appear in this week’s issue, but it would appear next week, and he would send her a copy. Lucia lunched in a great hurry and returned to the asparagus-bed.

  Soon after Georgie appeared to help. Lucia was standing in the trench with half of her figure below ground-level, like Erda in Wagner’s justly famous opera. If only Georgie had not dyed his beard, he might have been Wotan.

  ‘Ben arrivato,’ she called to him in the Italian translation. ‘I’m on the point of taking out a tile from my hot-air flue. I am glad you are here as a witness, and it will be interesting for you. This looks rather a loose one. Now.’

  She pulled it out and turned it over.

  ‘Georgie,’ she cried. ‘Here’s the whole of the stamped letters of which I had only two.’

  ‘Oh, how exciting,’ said Georgie. ‘I do hope there’s a QR as well as the SP.’

  Lucia rubbed the dirt off the inscription and then replaced the tile.

  ‘What is the name of that plumber in the High Street established a century ago?’ she asked in a perfectly calm voice.

  Georgie guessed what she had found.

  ‘My dear, how tarsome!’ he said. ‘I’m afraid it is Spencer.’

  Lucia got nimbly out of the trench, and wiped her muddy boots against the box-edging of the path.

  ‘Georgie, that is a valuable piece of evidence,’ she said. ‘No doubt this is an old drain. I confess I was wrong about it. Let us date it, tentatively, circa 1830. Now we know more about the actual levels. First we have the Cromwellian stratum: tobacco-pipes. Below again – what is that?’

  There were two workmen in the trench, the one with a pick, the other shovelling the earth into a basket to dump it on to the far corner of the potato-patch uprooted by Elizabeth. Georgie was glad of this diversion (whatever it might be) for it struck him that the stratum which Lucia had assigned to Cromwell was far above the air-flue stratum, once pronounced to be Roman, but now dated circa 1830 … The digger had paused with his pick-axe poised in the air.

  ‘Lovely bit of glass here, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I nearly went crash into it!’

  Lucia jumped back into the trench and became Erda again. It was a narrow escape indeed. The man’s next blow must almost certainly have shattered a large and iridescent piece of glass, which gleamed in the mould. Tenderly and carefully, taking off her gloves, Lucia loosened it.

  ‘Georgie!’ she said in a voice faint and ringing with emotion, ‘take it from me in both hands with the utmost caution. A wonderful piece of glass, with an inscription stamped on it.’

  ‘Not Spencer again, I hope,’ said Georgie.

  Lucia passed it to him from the trench, and he received it in his cupped hands.

  ‘Don’t move till I get out and take it from you,’ said she. ‘Not another stroke for the present,’ she called to her workman.

  There was a tap for the garden-hose close by. Lucia let the water drip very gently, drop by drop, on to the trove. It was brilliantly iridescent, of a rich greenish colour below the oxydized surface, and of curved shape. Evidently it was a piece of some glass vessel, ewer or bottle. Tilting it this way and that to catch the light she read the letters stamped on it.

  ‘APOL,’ she announced.

  ‘It’s like crosswords,’ said Georgie. ‘All I can think of is “Apology”.’

  Lucia sat down on a neighbouring bench, panting with
excitement but radiant with triumph.

  ‘Do you remember how I said that I suspected I should find the remains of a Roman temple?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes: or a villa,’ said Georgie.

  ‘I thought a temple more probable, and said so. Look at it, Georgie. Some sacrificial vessel – there’s a hint for you – some flask for libations dedicated to a god. What god?’

  ‘Apollo!’ cried Georgie. ‘My dear, how perfectly wonderful! I don’t see what else it could be. That makes up for all the Spencers. And it’s the lowest level of all, so that’s all right anyhow.’

  Reverently holding this (quite large) piece of the sacrificial vessel in her joined hands, Lucia conveyed it to the garden-room, dried the water off it with blotting-paper, and put it in a tray by itself, since the objects in Tray D, once indubitably Roman, had been found to be Spencerian.

  ‘All important to find the rest of it,’ she said. ‘We must search with the utmost care. Let us go back and plan what is to be done. I think I had better lock the door of the garden-room.’

  The whole system of digging was revised. Instead of the earth at the bottom of the trench being loosened with strong blows of the pick, Lucia, starting at the point where this fragment of a sacrificial vessel was found, herself dug with a trowel, so that no random stroke should crash into the missing pieces: when she was giddy with blood to the head from this stooping position, Georgie took her place. Then there was the possibility that missing pieces might have been already shovelled out of the trench, so the two workmen were set to turn over the mound of earth already excavated with microscopic diligence.

  ‘It would be unpardonable of me,’ said Lucia, ‘if I missed finding the remaining portions, for they must be here, Georgie. I’m so giddy: take the trowel.’

  ‘Something like a coin, ma’am,’ sang out one of the workmen on the dump. ‘Or it may be a button.’

  Lucia vaulted out of the trench with amazing agility.

  ‘A coin without doubt,’ she said. ‘Much weathered, alas, but we may be able to decipher it. Georgie, would you kindly put it – you have the key of the garden-room – in the same tray as the sacrificial vessel?’

  For the rest of the afternoon the search was rewarded by no further discovery. Towards sunset a great bank of cloud arose in the west, and all night long, the heavens streamed with torrential rain. The deluge disintegrated the dump, and the soil was swept over the newly planted lettuces, and on to the newly gravelled garden-path. The water drained down into the trench from the surface of the asparagus-bed, and next day work was impossible, for there was a foot of water in it, and still the rain continued. Driven to more mercenary pursuits, Lucia spent a restless morning in the Office, considering the latest advice from Mammoncash. He was strongly of opinion that the rise in the Industrial market had gone far enough: he counselled her to take the profits, of which he enclosed a most satisfactory list, and again recommended gilt-edged stock. Prices there had dwindled a good deal since the Industrial boom began, and the next week or two ought to see a rise. Lucia gazed at the picture of Dame Catherine Winterglass for inspiration, and then rang up Mammoncash (trunk-call) and assented. In her enthusiasm for archaeological discoveries, all this seemed tedious business: it required a great effort to concentrate on so sordid an aim as money-making, when further pieces of sacrificial vessels (or vessel) from a temple of Apollo must be lurking in the asparagus-bed. But the rain continued and at present they were inaccessible below a foot or more of opaque water enriched with the manure she had dug into the surrounding plots.

  Several days elapsed before digging could be resumed, and Tilling rang with the most original reports about Lucia’s discoveries. She herself was very cautious in her admissions, for before the complete ‘Spencer’ tile was unearthed, she had, on the evidence of the broken ‘SP’ tile, let it be known that she had found Roman remains, part of a villa or a temple, in the asparagus-bed, and now this evidence was not quite so conclusive as it had been. The Apolline sacrificial vessel, it is true, had confirmed her original theory, but she must wait for more finds, walls or tesselated pavement, before it was advisable to admit sightseers to the digging, or make any fresh announcement. Georgie was pledged to secrecy, all the gardener knew was that she had spoiled his asparagus-bed, and as for the coin (for coin it was and no button) the most minute scrutiny could not reveal any sort of image or superscription on its corroded surface: it might belong to the age of Melchizedeck or Hadrian or Queen Victoria. So since Tilling could learn nothing from official quarters, it took the obvious course, sanctified by tradition, of inventing discoveries for itself: a statue was hinted at and a Roman altar. All this was most fortunate for Elizabeth, for the prevailing excitement about the ancient population of Tilling following on the gas and sewer affair, had rendered completely obsolete its sense of having been cheated when it was clear that she was not about to add to the modern population, and her appearance in the High Street alert and active as usual ceased to rouse any sort of comment. To make matters square between the late and the present owner of Mallards, it was only right that, just as Lucia had never believed in Elizabeth’s baby, so now Elizabeth was entirely incredulous about Lucia’s temple.

  Elizabeth, on one of these days of April tempest when digging was suspended, came up from Grebe for her morning’s marketing in her rain-cloak and Russian boots. The approach of a violent shower had driven her to take shelter in Diva’s house, who could scarcely refuse her admittance, but did not want her at all. She put down her market-basket, which for the best of reasons smelt of fish, where Paddy could not get at it.

  ‘Such a struggle to walk up from Grebe in this gale,’ she said. ‘Diva, you could hardly believe the monstrous state of neglect into which the kitchen-garden there has fallen. Not a vegetable. A sad change for me after my lovely garden at Mallards where I never had to buy even a bit of parsley. But beggars can’t be choosers, and far be it from me to complain.’

  ‘Well, you took every potato out of the ground at Mallards before you left,’ said Diva. ‘That will make a nice start for you.’

  ‘I said I didn’t complain, dear,’ said Elizabeth sharply. ‘And how is the Roman Forum getting on? Any new temples? Too killing! I don’t believe a single word about it. Probably poor Lucia has discovered the rubbish-heap of odds and ends I threw away when I left my beloved old home for ever.’

  ‘Did you bury them in the ground where the potatoes had been?’ asked Diva, intensely irritated at this harping on the old home.

  Elizabeth, as was only dignified, disregarded this harping on potatoes.

  ‘I’m thinking of digging up two or three old apple-trees at Grebe which can’t have borne fruit for the last hundred years,’ she said, ‘and telling everybody that I’ve found the Ark of the Covenant or some Shakespeare Folios among their roots. Nobody shall see them, of course. Lucia finds it difficult to grow old gracefully: that’s why she surrounds herself with mysteries, as I said to Benjy the other day. At that age nobody takes any further interest in her for herself, and so she invents Roman Forums to kindle it again. Must be in the limelight. And the fortune she’s supposed to have made, the Office, the trunk-calls to London. More mystery. I doubt if she’s made or lost more than half a crown.’

  ‘Now that’s jealousy,’ said Diva. ‘Just because you lost a lot of money yourself, and can’t bear that she should have made any. You might just as well say that I didn’t make any.’

  ‘Diva, I ask you. Did you make any?’ said Elizabeth, suddenly giving tongue to a suspicion that had long been a terrible weight on her mind.

  ‘Yes. I did,’ said Diva with great distinctness, turning a rich crimson as she spoke. ‘And if you want to know how much, I tell you it’s none of your business.’

  ‘Chérie – I mean Diva,’ said Elizabeth very earnestly, ‘I warn you for your good, you’re becoming a leetle mysterious, too. Don’t let it grow on you. Let us be open and frank with each other always. No one would be more delighted than me if Lucia turns out
to have found the Parthenon in the gooseberry-bushes, but why doesn’t she let us see anything? It is these hints and mysteries which I deprecate. And the way she talks about finance, as if she was a millionaire. Pending further evidence, I say “Bunkum” all round.’

  The superb impudence of Elizabeth of all women giving warnings against being mysterious and kindling waning interest by hinting at groundless pretensions, so dumbfounded Diva that she sat with open mouth staring at her. She did not trust herself to speak for fear she might say, not more than she meant but less. It was better to say nothing than not be adequate and she changed the subject.

  ‘How’s the tiger-skirt?’ she asked. ‘And collar.’ Elizabeth rather mistakenly thought that she had quelled Diva over this question of middle-aged mysteriousness. She did not want to rub it in, and adopted the new subject with great amiability.

  ‘Sweet of you to ask, dear, about my new little frock,’ she said. ‘Everybody complimented me on it, except you, and I was a little hurt. But I think – so does Benjy – that it’s a wee bit smart for our homely Tilling. How I hate anybody making themselves conspicuous.’

  Diva could trust herself to speak on this subject without fear of saying too little.

  ‘Now Elizabeth, she said, ‘you asked me as a friend to be open and frank with you, and so I tell you that that’s not true. The hair was coming off your new little frock – it was the old green skirt anyway – in handfuls. That day you lunched with Lucia and hit your foot against the table-rail it flew about. Grosvenor had to sweep the carpet afterwards. I might as well trim my skirt with strips of my doormat and then say it was too smart for Tilling. You’d have done far better to have buried that mangy tiger-skin and the eye I knocked out of it with the rest of your accumulations in the potato-patch. I should be afraid of getting eczema if I wore a thing like that, and I don’t suppose that at this minute there’s a single hair left on it. There!’

  It was Elizabeth’s turn to be dumbfounded at the vehemence of these remarks. She breathed through her nose and screwed her face up into amazing contortions.