by Paul Waters
In the warehouse, men were unpacking crates of glassware, separating each delicate piece from its straw lagging and setting it down on a long bench, where a clerk was busy marking each item off against the manifest. Balbus picked up a flask of cherry-coloured glass and turned it in the light, nodding to himself and making satisfied grunts.
‘Good, good,’ he said, showing me. ‘Fine work; no blemishes. One can never be sure nowadays, with the barbarians marauding over Gaul, and all the good craftsmen leaving. There is always a market for quality pieces like this.’
He set it down and moved on to inspect the rest: embossed dishes and wine-cups; a wide-brimmed fruit-bowl of clear crystal; a pair of fine worked lamps of yellow glass, decorated with garlands. When at last he was satisfied we walked on into the body of the warehouse, between the aisles, and he pointed out bales of wool from Spain, dusty slabs of veined Tuscan marble, tall red-earth amphoras filled with wine from Italy or Sicily, or fish sauce shipped around the coast from Cadiz.
I stared, and touched, and asked him what he would do with it all.
‘Most,’ he explained happily, ‘I shall sell to my contacts in the province. I have agents in York, Lincoln, Colchester and in the cities in the west.’ He tapped his nose and smiled. ‘But the best I keep for my own shop in the forum.’
He seemed pleased at my interest, and taking up a stick he sketched a map in the dust. ‘We are here,’ he said, indicating the western corner by my foot, ‘and here is the Middle Sea. That is Rome, and over there – yes there! that’s right – is Arabia.’ Mostly, he explained, he imported from Gaul or Spain or Italy. ‘But if I can bring a spice cargo from the East, it will be worth more than all the rest put together.’
I crouched down, staring in wonder, and asked how long it took to sail so far.
‘Twenty days, with fair weather.’
He traced the route with the stick: Alexandria in Egypt, through the Middle Sea by Africa or Sicily, past the Pillars of Hercules and then up along the treacherous coast of Spain and Gaul.
‘Soon,’ he said, ‘I shall have funds for such a trip, and it will make me rich.’ His eyes flashed as he imagined it.
As for me, I gazed at the whorls and sandy curves at my knee, seeing oceans and painted ships and magnificent cities. Here was something I could dream of. I asked him how often he went to these places.
‘Go to them?’ He looked surprised. ‘Why, not at all, why should I? I am much too busy for that.’ He knew only Britain, he said, and Gaul, and that was more than enough for him.
Back outside, a wide-girthed troopship had come up with the tide, high in the water, unladen. The crew were furling the great sail and preparing to throw the lines.
The shaven-headed foreman stepped up. ‘How many more?’ he said, eyeing the ship with a frown. ‘The Saxons know an unguarded house is easiest robbed, even if the emperor has forgotten.’
But Balbus looked sharply at him. ‘Watch your tongue, Gaius. Do you want to scare the boy with your foolish dockyard talk? Take no notice, Drusus. There have been no Saxons for three years, nothing but a few stray ships, and the garrison commander himself has promised we have nothing to fear.’
‘But I’m not afraid,’ I said.
There was a pause. The foreman grinned at me, showing his black teeth.
‘No one is afraid,’ said my uncle crossly. ‘We gave the Saxons a gift of gold last time, and they promised not to return. Have you no work to do, Gaius? I don’t pay you to stand about gossiping. Come along, Drusus.’
Glancing back for a last look I saw the foreman shrug his shoulders, hawk loudly, and spit into the water. Then he turned and launched a volley of abuse at the dust-caked stevedores, who were calling out and joking with the men on the troopship.
Summer drew on. In the fields beyond the city walls the farmers brought in the harvest, and I adjusted to my exile, like a man who grows used to lameness, because he must.
I spent each afternoon helping my uncle, at his offices, or down at the docks, or at his fashionable shop of perfumes and fine wares under the forum colonnade.
He knew that better-born men looked down on him; but did not care, so long as he grew rich. He had no time for learning, other than what he perceived he could use, and made jokes about my early-morning lessons with Sericus, saying he saw no point in them: I could count, and read a manifest; what need more?
He assigned me tasks, saying I would learn by doing. At first I had thought, if I found myself at a loss, the clerks at his office would help me. But that was before I understood them.
From the outside, they appeared obedient and dull and timid, like a field of sheep. But now I was among them I discovered their lives were riven with feuds, bitter jealousies, and complicated intrigues. When I needed help, they were suddenly too busy, or, worse, they would affect to explain, only to confuse me. It did not take long for me to realize, as I saw them smirking and making eyes at their colleagues, that this game amused them and they wanted me to fail.
All except one. The others, out of spite, gave him the nickname Ambitus, because he worked hard, and because he laughed at their backbiting. But he wore the name with pride, saying that if they wanted to mock him for trying to make something of himself, then that was the least of his concerns.
He was a small-boned youth with a clever monkey-like face and close-cropped black hair. His example held up a mirror to the others’ laziness and stupidity, and they hated him for it. He did not care. He had his own plans, which did not include them.
When he saw me struggling, Ambitus came to me and said that I must ask him if ever I needed help. And so it was that he became my first friend in London.
Some mornings, every small matter – a tiny error in an inventory, a mislaid scroll or tablet, a late delivery – would send my uncle into a fury, making him bang his fist on the long clerks’ table, and rage and curse.
When I asked Ambitus what was wrong he said, ‘You ought to know more than anyone.’
‘Is it me?’
‘No, not you. He likes you. It is her. Nothing he does is enough. She has him like this.’ And with his small brown thumb he made a motion of squashing an insect on the bench.
But Balbus’s outbursts were like summer squalls. One waited, and kept one’s head down, and they quickly passed. He was not choleric by nature, and, in his way, he was big-hearted. The same, however, was not true of my aunt.
She perceived slights everywhere, and brooded on them till she had worked herself into a frenzy of incandescent rage. She accused the house-slaves of trying to thwart her, and of laughing behind her back. The Christians claim they are all one another’s brothers and sisters: rich and poor, freeman and slave – even the wild Saxons, who delight in slaughter, and would kill us all. Yet I have never seen one person treat another with such habitual lack of humanity as Lucretia treated those who served her. She did it because she could, because she had power over them; and they, since they had no choice, swallowed her abuse and took her blows meekly.
But they gained their revenge in other ways, making it look like an accident: they overheated the water for her bath, and I would hear her hoarse, enraged voice screaming through the house with impotent fury; they spoiled the food when she wished to impress her friends with a lavish dinner; they spilt water on the charcoal of her pretty ornamental brazier, so that it filled the room with acrid smoke.
Her friends, over whom she lorded it in the most shameless way, she suspected of falseness, and of liking her only for her money. But that year, as Ambitus dryly explained, her main complaint was the house. Balbus dishonoured her, she said, because he was content to live on the eastern side of the city, though he knew very well that she hated it. It was not fashionable; all her friends – Volumnia, Placentia, Maria – lived better, and did he not see how they made her feel it, with their polite comments and tolerant smiles and pitying faces? Volumnia had even commented on the smell, one day when the wind was blowing up the river. How could Balbus cause her to suffer so? Th
e humiliation was making her ill.
In most matters, Balbus accommodated her whims. But in this one thing he was adamant: he liked the house and the suburb; he wished to be close to the city docks, among his friends and fellow merchants, who would not look down their noses at him. He would not move.
At first, when I went out each day with him, Lucretia had been glad to see me go, thinking the lowly work must be a misery and humiliation to me; for she had formed the opinion, without justification and without evidence, that I was a spoiled, pampered brat.
She was less happy when she realized I did not care about the dull work, and even enjoyed the diversion. After that, scarcely a day passed when she did not summon me to her private sitting-room, with its silk hangings and plush cushions and clutter of gilded furniture, to complain of my wickedness. Why had I scrubbed the walls of Sericus’s room without her permission – did I suppose I now owned the house? Why had I spoken disrespectfully to Albinus of the bishop, who was a dear friend of the family? What had I been muttering about to Claritas the housemaid in the courtyard? What had the cook been saying about her?
If I said nothing to these outbursts, she accused me of being sullen and recalcitrant. If I answered her, she complained that I was insolent.
One afternoon, when I was sitting with Sericus in the damson courtyard, I wondered bitterly what my uncle could find to like in such a woman.
Sericus glanced up from the scroll that lay spread across his lap and mine and said, ‘He is losing his hair and going fat. And she is young.’
This was tart for Sericus, but we had been reading Terence that day, which always put him in a good mood.
‘It seems a poor trade then,’ I said. ‘I had rather have no wife at all than one like that.’
‘Yes, well; his choice is not yours. There are some men for whom the bloom of youth is everything.’
He said no more, and we bent our heads back to the scroll.
But presently, when he thought I was not looking, I saw a private smile pass across his old lined face.
It is in the nature of youth to hope. During those first months, whenever I heard a knock on the door, or a carriage in the street, my ears pricked up, listening for the messenger with the summons from my father to return home. But the weeks passed, and no messenger came, and as autumn advanced I ceased to say to myself each morning, ‘Maybe today.’
One day, when the first winter storms had closed the sea-lanes and Balbus was at home more than he cared for, I swallowed my pride and asked if he had heard news of my father.
He shook his head and ruffled my hair. ‘Perhaps soon, my boy; perhaps soon. I expect we shall have something of him in the spring.’
But though he had spoken kindly, I noticed he did not meet my eye.
He had told me, soon after I arrived, that more than one hundred thousand people lived in London. It seemed an almost impossible number to be gathered all together. The best place to live was westwards, on higher ground across the stream called the Walbrook. It was this fine suburb that Lucretia coveted, with its large mansions, high walls, and hidden gardens. And it was the old dock quarter, whose noises could be heard even from the house, that she detested most of all – a warren of steep shadowy alleyways, climbing the hill between tenements, taverns, brothels, and cheap eating-houses.
After dark, the torchlit streets seethed with ship-workers and river bargemen, and anyone who preferred to make their purchases, or their sales, under cover of night. And when they had filled their bellies with drink, they emptied their purses at the gambling dens and whorehouses, where companions were to be had at any price, and of either sex.
As for my uncle Balbus, his interest was solely the business at the docks, not the entertainment in the streets behind – as he told me himself, many times, and at some length. But one morning, as we were walking down the narrow stepped street to the river to see off a barge of Samian ware, a coarse-featured girl leered from a window and enquired when he was coming to visit her again.
‘The foolish blind trollop,’ he cried, hurrying away, ‘she mistakes me for someone else, of course. I expect she is drunk. Has she no shame?’
I agreed, and looked away smiling.
When, later that morning, we made our way back, I noticed he was careful to go by a different route.
If Albinus wanted something from me, he would demand my immediate attention; otherwise he ignored me. Although his mother doted on him, there were times when they would quarrel, and then he would enlist me as his ally against her, telling me in vehement tones that he hated her.
At first, being lonely, I was quick to trust, and mistook these advances for friendship. But as soon as their squabble was made up, he would once again turn against me; and if I had been foolish enough during that time to confide in him, I found he had stored away this knowledge as a squirrel stores acorns, to use against me when it suited his purpose.
His slyness he got from his mother; but whereas her every waking moment was driven by ambition and resentment, he cared for nothing. He was lazy and slovenly; he would lie in bed until midday unless she sent a slave to rouse him; he washed himself only when told, and never exercised his body. Just the sight of such dissipation was a kind of discipline to me.
Lucretia’s life-work was the promotion of Albinus in the Church, and this task she pursued with unfailing single-mindedness.
She would make secret, expensive gifts to the bishop; and when my uncle found out, I would hear them in his study, him remonstrating and pleading, and her yapping back at him.
She always won these bouts, for after hours or days of her silences and sulks he would grumpily declare, ‘Oh, let the bishop keep the silver casket’ or, ‘Curses on it, take those silks to him if you must’ or, ‘Yes, I shall send the amphora of Moselle, have Patricus see to it.’ Afterwards, all would be calm and honeyed smiles, until the next time.
Never have I met a cleverer politician. She knew when to grant her favours, and when to withhold them. Ambitus was right. She spun him like a top.
I took little notice, not realizing that I was soon to become a tool in her great scheme. But that winter, one early grey morning, she summoned me to her rooms.
‘I have a small errand for you,’ she said, setting down a dish of sweets she was eating. ‘I wish you to go with Albinus.’
I had arranged, that morning, to go with Balbus to his shop in the forum, to meet his agent from Colchester, who was at that time visiting.
‘He no longer needs you,’ she answered briskly, when I reminded her of this. She began plucking at the beads of her bracelet, and did not meet my eye. ‘Now do not stand disputing with me. My hairdresser is waiting, and Volumnia and Maria are coming for dinner.’
Albinus, when I found him already dressed in his boots and winter cloak, was equally tight-lipped. ‘Come along, then you’ll see for yourself,’ was all he would say. He even attempted a smile. I should have guessed then that he was up to something.
‘Are you coming or not?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, I’m coming.’
We set out west through the city, taking the street past the stone-gated entrance to the forum, then over the Walbrook and into the old quarter of shabby houses built on rising ground around the fort. The place had once been fashionable, before the wealthy citizens had moved out to the more spacious suburbs. Now the houses were run-down and subdivided.
‘This way,’ said Albinus, striding ahead.
We passed a group of women washing clothes at a fountain-house, conversing at the top of their voices in a pidgin mix of British and barrack Latin. Children stared from open doorways. Ahead, over the roofs, I could see the old towers and walls of the fort, with tufts of stone-crop growing in the crumbling mortar.
I wondered again what business Lucretia could have here, and what part I had to play in it. I was about to call out to Albinus when we rounded a corner at the top of the hill and emerged into a wide, open square, planted with linden trees.
I glanced about
. I could see the square had once been fine. The northern side was dominated by a half-ruined temple. Gimcrack timber houses spread around its stone base. Some of the lindens had been felled, leaving gaps like broken teeth.
‘What is that place?’ I asked, calling to Albinus.
He tossed his head. Sneering he said, ‘Diana’s temple, what’s left of it. But it will soon be gone, and good riddance when it is.’ He spat, to show his disgust.
But I walked off across the precinct and climbed the ancient steps. The tall doors under the columned porch were gone, and in the grey light I could see the inner walls had been stripped of their facing marble, leaving bare red brick.
‘Come away from there!’ cried Albinus, who had held back.
He was standing beside a doorway built into a high wall. The door stood ajar. As I crossed to him, I saw that within there was a paved forecourt, and a low sprawling building behind. The walls were rough and undecorated. Pieces of sculpted marble, pillaged from the ruined temple, had been crudely mortared in between the brickwork.
‘This way,’ he said, beckoning. ‘There is someone who wants to meet you.’
I eyed him suspiciously. ‘Meet me? Who wants to meet me?’
‘Oh, it’s only the bishop.’
I stared at him, then looked again at the squat, ugly building behind.
‘The bishop?’ I cried. ‘Are you mad, Albinus? What business do I have with him?’
I pulled back; but he caught me by the sleeve.
‘You can’t go now! He’s expecting you. What shall I tell him – that you were afraid, and ran off like a girl?’
He was right: I was afraid. In my mind I was imagining every sort of horror. But before I could answer, or pull away, a door across the forecourt opened and a gaunt black-cloaked figure stepped out.
‘Who’s that?’ I said, staring. Already the man had seen us. He was approaching, treading across the flags with odd tiptoe steps, like someone picking his way across a muddy field. ‘Is that him?’