by Paul Waters
‘We are all slaves before God,’ she retorted. But the force had gone from her voice. I saw her long neck redden, and knew that in our war this battle was mine.
‘I trust,’ she continued, turning from my gaze and fingering the ivory rosette on the couch-end, ‘you will reflect on your position here, and reconsider. Now leave me. I will not be treated with contempt in my own home. You may be sure my husband will hear of this, when he returns.’
And so I left her.
She may have been a slave before her god, but she was mistress of the house, and made sure the servants felt it.
The cook, a burly Spaniard, was her constant enemy and the only one of the staff who dared speak back to her. She would have dismissed him, but she knew good cooks were hard to come by, and liked to impress her friends with the elaborate dinners he prepared. He knew it too.
‘What is for dinner?’ she would demand.
‘Roast kid with figs, lady, and woodcock and goose eggs.’
‘I don’t want that.’
‘Then you will have to make do with a dish of beans and dripping.’
‘We will have the roast kid.’
And so, between them, there was an uneasy bristling truce.
The slave Patricus, who was so infirm he should have been laid up with a nursemaid of his own, she sent out on the smallest whim in any weather – to take a note to a friend; to inspect a newly arrived shipment of linen at the forum and return with samples; or to run petty errands for Albinus. To her maids she was sharp and violent and bullying. At the least slip she would scream abuse, slap them, and send them sobbing to their bedchambers at the back of the house beside the woodstore.
I was spared the worst of this. I believe, behind her disdain and hatred, she actually feared me.
On appointed days each month, and on certain holy days, she attended gatherings with other Christians, and sometimes afterwards I would glimpse her mumbling invocations to herself, kneading between her fingers a string of little black beads. But I never saw a sign of the fearsome rituals the farm-lads had scared me with – dismembered human victims, blood-drinking, or the kissing of dead men’s bones; and, in time, I came to suppose these must after all be the inventions of ignorant minds, as Sericus had told me.
One day, when she had called me to her rooms on some matter, I noticed a thing that had not caught my eye before. Half-hidden in an alcove behind the silk hangings there was the faded fresco of a youth, his delicate hands outspread, his dark eyes looking calmly across the crowded opulence. Though it was striking, I wondered she had not had the image painted over, for it was old naive work, almost jarring to the eye after the fashionable clutter. There was something about this solemn figure with his sad eyes and knowing smile that stayed in my mind, and later I asked Claritas the housemaid about it.
My question seemed to amuse her and she even smiled. She knew at once what I was speaking of. He was, she said, the chief hero of their religion, and for my aunt to paint over him would be thought an impiety.
By such small things did I come to understand Lucretia.
There were certain virtues which she set much store by. One of these she called humility, a strange word to make a virtue out of, reminiscent of lying in the dirt, but which the Christians had taken for their own. This particular virtue was something, she told me, that I lacked; and, after I had refused to obey her and see the bishop, she took it upon herself to teach me. She gave instructions that I was to eat my meals alone, so that I could reflect upon my selfishness; and she ordered the cook to serve me slops.
Suffering is a great teacher, she informed me. But I did not go hungry. The cook tossed the slops to the dogs, and instead served me with choice portions of meat or spiced fish, intended for Lucretia’s table. And the house-slaves, seeing we shared a common enemy, became my friends and allies.
So much for my instruction in humility. But chief among my aunt’s virtues was what she called purity, or chastity. The purest act of all, it seemed, was to renounce marriage and live alone in some wild place, or in selfchosen exile shut up with other Christians. I heard this first from Albinus and, amazed, I asked, ‘But who will give the farmers sons, or breed soldiers for the army?’
‘Salvation lies in the death of the body,’ he primly answered.
I gave him a sidelong look, to show I knew he was lying. He was always trying to deceive me with such absurd stories. I knew him better by now than to let him make a fool of me.
Soon, however, I was to hear more about chastity.
I was woken one morning by a scream of rage coming from Lucretia’s rooms. I bolted upright in my bed; the noise came again, ringing through the house, followed by Albinus’s wheedling voice, strained and high-pitched.
They were quarrelling. I went down to find my friend the cook, who would be sure to know what had happened. But before I reached him, there was a hiss from behind a storeroom door.
‘Hello Albinus,’ I said smiling. ‘You are up early. Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘Shut up,’ he snapped, pulling me by the elbow. ‘Come with me, I want to speak to you.’
He led me with many a backward look through the rear courtyard and out by the servants’ door at the back, into the narrow alleyway behind. Then he turned to face me.
‘What have you told her?’ he demanded.
I said I did not know what he was talking about.
He eyed my face suspiciously, then cried, ‘So it was that gossiping bitch Volumnia, after all. I knew it!’
I had seen Volumnia often at the house; she was one of Lucretia’s most frequent visitors, a bony middle-aged woman who wore wigs of straw-coloured hair shorn from German slave-women. She and Lucretia talked together of the Church, when they were not reviewing in hushed, glowing-eyed whispers the wrongdoings of their friends.
‘What has she done?’ I asked. But he just ignored me, and stood frowning, with his finger in his mouth, biting his nail.
A fine drizzle had started to fall and I did not have my cloak. It was cold, and I was in no mood for his riddles. I turned to go inside.
‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ he cried.
So I turned back, cocked my head, and stood leaning against the brick wall with my arms folded. By the time I had heard him out the drizzle had turned to rain and my tunic was wet through. But it was worth it, for what I heard.
Albinus had been seen in one of the notorious gambling dens of the city, the ones behind the theatre, in the close company of a street-trull. Before the night was out, word had got back to Lucretia, and when he came slinking back before dawn, she had been waiting.
All this took him some time to relate, because every few words he would break off the tale and launch into a volley of self-righteous curses, stamping his boot on the cobbles. He cursed Volumnia particularly, calling her a slack-tongued vixen, a sour-faced traitorous bitch, and other such things.
‘Do something right,’ he said, ‘and she never notices; but just put one foot out of step and her hawk-eyes are on you. I don’t know what business it is of hers anyway. She has spies everywhere. And now half of London will know.’
I said, trying to look serious, ‘But I didn’t think you spent time with whores, Albinus.’ Actually this was not quite true. Over the past months he had not been able to resist confiding to me his drab fantasies. That he should have done something about it came as no surprise. In the end, as men say, a hammer needs an anvil.
‘She’s not a whore,’ he answered with a sniff. ‘She was short of money, that’s all. She had left her purse at home and so I gave her something, and bought a flask of wine because she was thirsty. But she’s a nice girl. And it’s not true that she stole my purse, as Mother thinks. She picked it up because it looked like hers; anyone could make such a mistake.’
‘She stole your purse as well?’
‘No! Not stole! Why don’t you listen? Anyway I got it back; but Mother doesn’t see it that way . . . What’s the matter? It’s not funny, Drusus! It won’t take lon
g for the bishop to find out – I expect Volumnia will pay him a special visit, curse her! She ought to keep her beak out of other people’s business.’
One of the kitchen cats came sidling up, a balding black and white creature. Albinus gave it a vicious kick, sending it scrambling over the wall with a resentful squeal.
‘Will you see her again?’ I asked.
He pulled himself up and gave me an arch look. ‘Maybe, if I choose to; anyway, that’s my secret, she’s my girl and you needn’t think you can—’ He suddenly broke off and leapt almost as high as the poor kitchen cat. The door had snapped open. Lucretia’s head appeared in the gap.
In a low, dangerous voice she said, ‘Get inside, Albinus, now!’ Then she vanished, leaving the door ajar. She hated to be seen in the street without a retinue or a litter, in case she was taken for a slave, or one of the dockyard women.
Albinus gaped at me. ‘Do you think she was listening?’
Seeing his face, I could contain myself no longer. I coughed and spluttered into my fist. ‘I cannot tell. But she’s waiting. You’d better go and find her.’
Lucretia sent the bishop a flask of Egyptian oil in a delicate fluted bottle of Phoenician glass, stoppered with a cap of white silver; the bishop, after consideration and prayer, decided the scandal could be forgotten and, shortly after, at the time of a Christian holy day, amid much celebration in the household from which I was excluded, Albinus was made a Reader.
Uncle Balbus was still away in the north, and so heard none of it. Each morning I attended his office, and most afternoons I went walking with Sericus, out across the bridge, to the open smallholdings and plantations to the south and east.
Now that our past lives were lost to us, we both missed the open spaces – the silent paths, and woodlands, and towering skies. Although, in London, I was surrounded by noise and people and activity, yet I perceived for the first time that there is no worse solitude than the company of strangers.
Whatever Sericus felt, he did not speak of it. Since the news of my father’s death he no longer talked of the past; and when we walked together he spoke only of small, seemingly insignificant things – the birds and animals, the farmsteads and hamlets along the way – like a man who treads carefully on the surface of a frozen lake, lest the ice should crack and the chill waters engulf him.
But one day soon after, in the midst of winter, our minds were wrenched from these concerns.
We were making our way back to the city, following a farm track, when up ahead, where the track joined the high road, we saw a crowd gathering – carters, men with mules, foot-travellers.
‘Run ahead and see what it is,’ said Sericus. ‘If there is trouble, we will go by another way.’
I sprinted off. The men had gathered at the crossroads, beside an old shrine. There was a stone watering trough, and leaning beside it a lone soldier, holding forth to the rest. His body and scarlet cloak were mud-spattered; clearly he had travelled far, through bad terrain.
He stooped to splash his face and neck at the trough. A young farm-lad stood beside him, holding his helmet for him while he washed, looking grave and full of moment. I knew the boy by sight – he belonged to the nearby villa – and seeing me he gave a grim nod of acknowledgement.
‘What news?’ I asked, stepping up.
He answered in British, the language of the land.
‘The Saxons is what. They have landed at Richbor-ough. The man here says the fort has fallen.’
Others were pressing round, coming along the path from the hamlet beside the villa. A red-faced man in a farrier’s apron cried, ‘That cannot be! Who ever heard of Saxons coming in winter, or taking fortresses? They are no more than raiders and cattle-thieves.’
‘Believe what you want, friend,’ said the soldier. ‘I know only what I saw, and what I got from the men on the road, retreating from Richborough. I was on my way there myself, for a tour of duty.’ He gave a bleak laugh, adding, ‘No need for that now.’
The farrier laughed, and with a mocking look asked, ‘Did they bring siege-engines in their longboats then?’
‘You think I am here to joke with you? If you want to find out how the fortress was taken, go and ask the men who should have been guarding it – the ones who decided to spend the day fishing in the river instead. Even fortresses fall, when no one is minded to defend them. It seems our men caught a bigger fish than they expected.’
Sericus, who had come up beside me, asked if word had reached the city yet. The soldier said the others of his troop had gone ahead to inform the Council. ‘As for me, I’m going the other way . . . My father has a farm on the Medway, and no one else will think to warn him. Word is that raiders have landed all along the coast, even as far as Dover.’
‘It is no more than hearsay,’ shouted the farrier, who all this time had been grumbling and murmuring at the back. ‘There have been rumours of Saxons all year. This will come to nothing, like all the others.’
The soldier looked at him. ‘You know a lot, for a stay-at-home. Well I hope you’re right, because if you’re not, then there is nothing between the coast and here to stop them.’
Men started to glance around, thinking, no doubt, of their private concerns: their families, their farms, their savings stashed at home under some kitchen pot. Already, across the flat land in the middle distance, where the roads meet at the southern approaches to the bridge, the traffic was building – and it was heading only one way: northwards, to the safety of the city walls.
The crowd began to fragment and scatter.
‘Let us go back,’ I said to Sericus, ‘here, rest your weight on me.’
He had grown less easy on his feet of late.
In the days that followed, a stream of citizens arrived, each carrying what he could in wagons, or on his back. The Saxons had descended on the coast at a time when the seas were normally quiet. Richborough fort had fallen; Dover was cut off, and the raiders were swarming over all the land between, torching farmsteads and putting to the sword, or carrying off into servitude, those too foolish or too slow to flee inland.
Just as the soldier had said, the roads to the coast were unguarded. No one knew how far the barbarians had advanced, or how many there were.
But there was worse to come; and it was my uncle Balbus, returning at last from York, who brought the news. The great northern frontier wall had been breached all along its length, and the fearsome painted Picts had come sweeping south. The troops at the undermanned border forts, seeing themselves about to be surrounded, had lost their nerve and fled. The enemy had been left to plunder at will.
Balbus, abandoning his own slow carriage, had been forced to part with a fortune to secure a swift light gig from a York merchant with an eye to the main chance, who knew a terrified rich man when he saw one. He arrived filthy from the road, to a house that was already like an upturned ant-nest. Lucretia sobbed, and went to the cellar to bury her jewels. Balbus retired to his study, and sat with his head in his hands, staring at the wall. Amid the chaos and panic, only the slaves seemed to retain any composure.
Terror did more damage even than the Saxons. The country-folk flocked to the city, abandoning their homes and crops. A few brave souls stood fast, intent on staying until there was sure news of the enemy’s approach. Of these, some managed to bring in the harvest and turn a good profit on it, if their slaves and farm-hands had not fled to the hills. Nor did we begrudge them what they made, for if they were caught, the Saxons showed no mercy.
They killed, it seemed, for the very joy of killing. They burned what they could have possessed for themselves. It was as if they hated the very idea of civilization.
In London, the Council convened. The magistrates voted to send a fast messenger by the long western route where the barbarians had not yet penetrated, to beg Constans for help. We went about our business out of habit, and because there was nothing else to do. Then, one blustery dawn near midwinter, they arrived.
I had just walked into my uncle’s office
s and was talking to Ambitus when shouts of alarm echoed along the street. We broke off and looked at each other, knowing what it meant, then ran out and joined the rush to the walls, and gazed out from the ragstone crenels with all the rest.
The Saxons had penetrated as far as London: never in men’s memories had such a thing happened. They came not as a fearsome army, as I had imagined in my mind’s eye; but as scattered bands of dishevelled men, wandering without order, tall and flaxen-haired under their pillaged Roman helmets, clad in damp half-cured fur, unwashed from the day they were born.
A great silence fell over the city. The gates were closed; the ramparts, though old and crumbled and neglected, would keep the Saxons out. But we were hemmed within, unarmed citizens without an army, like men stranded on an island in the midst of a dangerous sea. We watched smoke pluming from the outlying farmhouses; then, when they were done with that, they burned the fine suburban villas on the south side of the river, which lay beyond the walls.
Next day, one of their black longships appeared on the river. We watched as it put in at the deep-water dock and carried off from the warehouses what they could bear away, setting fire to the rest. The flames were fuelled by oil from the jars they smashed; there must have been a few sacks of spices among them. All that day, wafting over the city with the smoke, came the exotic scent of coriander and roasted cinnamon.
One of the Roman ships, a large merchantman, had not managed to get away, its captain being too fearful to run the Saxon gauntlet to the open sea. Nor could he move upriver to the safer waters of the city dock, where the walls would protect him, for the keel of his vessel was too deep. He stood with the rest of us and watched grim-faced as the barbarians, their sport at the warehouses done, turned their attention to his ship. It was, he said, his own property, a lifetime’s investment. Now he waited to see the first flames lick the rigging.
But no flames came. Then someone, one of his deckhands, cried, ‘Look, she’s casting off!’