Marcus, to all intents and purposes now her master, sat on a much finer mount. As slave, it was Cassia’s job to lead the packhorse, but – thank the gods! – the animal was old and steady and knew his job so well that the rope remained slack in her hand as he followed along, his chin almost resting on her thigh.
Cassia’s balance was good, but riding required more concentration than she’d expected. As they passed through the streets of Londinium it occupied all her thoughts and for that, she was grateful. How they would get onto the estate; how she would spirit Rufus away from under her old master’s nose – well, those were matters they hadn’t decided. They were problems that could be solved as they travelled, Marcus said. Opportunities would present themselves. They’d seize what Fortune offered.
They neared the bridge. The river was unusually high, almost lapping at the planks and completely covering the marshes on the far side. The water had reached the moment of stillness before the tide turned. It lay glassy and unmoving and, when the sun began to crest the horizon, the whole river was turned blood red. Cassia shivered.
But if it was an ill omen the soldiers on the bridge were blind to it. They greeted Marcus by name.
“Are you off on your travels so soon?”
It was inevitable that he would stop a moment to talk to them. Cassia kept her head down, her hood pulled forward, shading her face.
She felt him glance in her direction before replying, “I’ve big plans this year. I’ll take advantage of the good weather.”
“Get rich quick, huh?” said the first soldier.
“He’ll drink it away, same as ever,” joked the second.
Marcus protested, “You’re wrong. I’ll be a man of substance some day, you’ll see.”
There was a moment’s pause, then one of the soldiers said, “If you’re after easy money you’d do better to stay in the city.”
“Oh?” asked Marcus. “Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? It was the talk of every tavern.”
“I was busy last night.”
“I’ll bet you were. Was she blonde or brunette?”
“Rosa from the waterfront? Or Paulina near the Forum?”
For what felt like a very long time the soldiers compared the talents of the various whores of their acquaintance. Marcus laughed along with them before finally protesting his innocence. “You do me wrong. I was simply preparing for my journey.”
“More fool you.” The soldier lowered his voice, but it was loud enough for Cassia to hear and his words chilled the blood in her veins. “There was a slave girl escaped from her master yesterday. She’s running loose in the streets. A real looker, by all accounts. He wants her back. He’s prepared to pay a pretty reward for her, too.”
“How much?” asked Marcus. Cassia tensed.
“Five thousand denarii,” the soldier replied.
Marcus whistled. But he didn’t seize her. Didn’t turn her over to the soldiers. Didn’t appear to make a connection between the girl who’d escaped yesterday with one who’d been in the city all winter. Instead, he said, “She must be the best whore in Britannia to be worth that much.”
Cassia wished she could block her ears. She must give no sign that their talk was of any concern. She was a boy now. Only the reddening of her skin under the walnut juice gave any indication of her discomfort.
“Wouldn’t mind a taste, eh?”
“Virgin, I heard. Or she was when she ran away.”
Marcus laughed. “She’ll not be one by now. And he’ll not pay for soiled goods. No, I’ll put my faith in selling cures to lonely wives and rich widows. That’s the way I plan to make my fortune.”
“Good luck to you.”
After bidding the soldiers farewell, Marcus gave the command and Cassia urged her pony on. Her stomach was churning but she had to ride at a steady pace, the packhorse plodding along beside her, its drool running down her thigh.
It was only when they’d crossed the Tamesis and were well out of the soldiers’ sight that Marcus spoke to her. They were on a stretch of empty road when he reined in his horse and waited for her to draw level. Softly, he said, “I apologize.”
She didn’t reply. He was helping her. He’d asked her no questions. She could scarcely complain about his behaviour. And yet he seemed to feel the need to explain himself.
“I was only saying what they expected to hear,” he murmured. “I’m a tradesman. I have to rub along with other people no matter how vulgar they are. It’s an act, nothing more.”
“I understand that.”
“Good. Well … be warned. There’ll be plenty more of that kind of thing in the coming days. You’re a man now. Better get used to the way we talk when we’re alone.”
There was no chance for more conversation. A flock of geese was being herded along the road towards them. At their back the loud wheels of a cart heralded the approach of more traffic. Marcus turned his horse and went on. Cassia rode behind, eyes fixed on his back.
She was puzzled. He had been so careful with her, so tender and courteous all winter long! To hear him talking to the soldiers – to hear him sounding so coarse – was a revelation.
She’d thought she knew him. But the man she’d seen on the bridge had worn an entirely different face. An act, he said, but how could she be sure? Which was the real Marcus?
XVIII
They travelled slowly that day. The road was busy; a steady stream of traffic going to Londinium. Besides the geese, they met a flock of sheep and later a herd of scraggy-looking cattle. Each time they had to wait by the side of the road for the animals to pass. By the time stragglers and strays had run off and been rounded up, they seemed to spend more time stationary than on the move.
There was still an hour or more of daylight when the sky turned leaden and rain-sodden clouds bloomed like bruises overhead. It had started to spot with rain when a roadside inn came into view. They had covered only half the distance to the villa, but stopping for the night seemed preferable to riding on beneath a gathering storm.
They were on public view and so Marcus treated Cassia as any passing stranger would expect: with the cool indifference of master to slave.
The remedies that had been loaded so carefully into the panniers were too precious to leave unguarded. After Cassia had rubbed down the horses to Marcus’s satisfaction, he took himself inside to eat and then to sleep. Cassia was left in the stables to mind both beasts and cargo. While the animals had a generous quantity of hay she had only a little rye bread and goat’s cheese from the supplies Marcus had purchased in Londinium the day before.
The storm had broken by the time she settled down to eat, and soon she found herself joined by a pair of stable lads, slaves to the innkeeper. They were friendly enough. Eager to share food and gossip with a stranger.
It turned out that the inn where Cassia and Marcus had stopped was the selfsame one in which Titus Cornelius Festus had stayed on his way to purchase Cassia’s replacement. It was inevitable that there would be talk of him. What Cassia found more surprising was that there was also talk of herself.
“You should have seen him!”
“Great fat bugger, wanting to get his end away!”
“Imagine being poked by that.”
“No wonder his last one ran.”
“She never got caught, that one. Vanished into thin air, they say.”
“I heard she set a pack of wolves on the man sent to fetch her. Got ripped to pieces, he did. Him and his boy.”
“There were signs when she was born. A great storm, just like this one. Flooded the whole place. Knocked Neptune’s statue right over.”
“There were dragons in the sky.”
“Never!”
“My old mother saw it. Honest.”
The tales went on, growing more and more fantastical. Cassia listened, apparently agog, and the boys’ stories continued to tumble out until their yawns came more often than their words. They crawled off to sleep in the loft. Cassia settled herself in the stal
l with her pony but it was a long time before she could sleep. She had a strange sense of disembodiment, as though she was seeing herself across a great distance. The stories she’d heard that evening were entirely removed from the reality of herself. It was odd. Unnerving. Somehow she was becoming a creature of legend.
She was sleeping, curled on the straw in the corner, when Marcus crept in and shook her awake. She jerked upright, back pressed to the wall, her hands claws – ready to rake his face.
“It’s me. You’re safe,” he said. His speech was slurred, but she relaxed.
As soon as he saw her hands go down, he squatted, meaning to rest on his haunches, but the quantity of wine he’d imbibed threw him off balance and he landed hard on his buttocks.
He grunted, then sighed, before saying, “While you’ve been sleeping, I’ve been working hard on your behalf.”
“You’ve been drinking.”
“Sometimes it’s the same thing.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ve been finding out how things lie on the estate where your Rufus is kept. It’s the villa of Titus Cornelius Festus, isn’t it?”
“You know it is.”
“By strange coincidence he stayed here two nights ago. According to the landlord, he has a … personal problem … that’s known to flare up on occasion.”
“What of it?”
“They say he’s gone to Londinium. Some business transaction or other. He’ll stay there a week or two, no doubt. But I gather his wife remains at home.”
He looked at her. Smiled knowingly. “If he suffers a personal affliction, she will too.”
“So?”
“Fortune is smiling on us. We have a remedy in that pannier that will help. We won’t have to creep onto the estate like thieves. We’ll go openly, in broad daylight. While I’m selling a salve to his wife, you can do what you need to. Will that give you enough time?”
XIX
They travelled on the next day. By late afternoon, Cassia found herself riding back onto the estate she had fled from a few months before.
On either side of the road that led to the villa, there were slaves working in the fields.
Her heart leaped to see that Rufus was there – she could see his red hair in the distance near the line of trees that marked the beginning of the forest.
But there was the steward, supervising. She could not ride up to her brother without him noticing and demanding an explanation. And there was no reason that one boy slave would approach another at his work. Her disguise was good, she thought, but the steward had known her all her life. The risk that he would see through it was too great. She would not escape a second time.
To be so near her brother, yet so unable to do anything, strained every nerve. She’d have to come back at night – to creep into the roundhouse. But did he still sleep in the same place now she’d gone? Had he found another shoulder to rest his head on? How could she find and wake him without disturbing every slave in the huts?
Marcus gave the command and Cassia was sent riding ahead to announce that a renowned healer was passing by and was the household in need of remedies?
As Marcus had predicted, he was invited inside for a consultation with Livia Tertia, the master’s wife.
Cassia’s head was full of her brother, and yet she couldn’t help but see how very skilled an actor Marcus was. Last night, with the men in the tavern, he’d been so loud, so noisy, so full of friendship and good cheer. She’d heard him while she’d been in the stables trying to sleep. But now, with Livia Tertia, he was courteous, respectful, polite. The way he should be.
Cassia had never seen the wife of Titus Cornelius Festus as anything other than a smudged blur on the far-distant horizon. The woman had banished her from sight when Cassia was just a child and – as a result – had grown into a mythical monster in her mind. Livia Tertia was a screeching harridan. A thing of wild tempers and furious sulks. A slattern who shared her bed with the master.
But now, here they were in the same room. Breathing the same air. The creature of Cassia’s imagination melted into mist.
Livia Tertia was small. Sick. Her hands shook and her voice trembled. She was riddled with pain, and only a small part of it physical.
Alone in Londinium, Cassia had sometimes felt herself dissolving. She recognized in Livia Tertia a woman clutching at threads. Trying to hold them around herself to maintain some semblance of what she’d once been.
The master’s wife talked with Marcus not of ailments or cures, but of the terrible weather in Britannia. The damp. The cold. The grey skies. Of how she missed the heat of her homeland. The olive groves. Lemon blossom. The azure sea.
And he listened. His head inclined to the left, nodding, sighing in sympathy as she carried herself back to different times. She’d been married at twelve to a man she’d never met. Taken away. Never seen her mother or her sisters again.
Marcus spoke little, and when he did, he only asked questions that prompted her to reveal more.
After she’d been talking and he’d been listening an hour or more, the old slave Flavia came in with a tray of victuals. She set it down. Left the room. The conversation flowed on.
Another hour passed and then – with Marcus’s prodding – Livia Tertia started to speak of the only good thing that had come of her marriage. Her son. Lucius. Of the illness that had killed him. How she feared the gods had mistakenly taken him instead of her…
At that, Marcus coughed. Said – very gently – “The Jews would say that the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons.”
Livia Tertia flinched. Turned away. Turned back. Stared at Marcus with panicked eyes.
Gently, so gently, he ventured, “And perhaps also on their wives?”
Blanching, she whispered that yes, yes indeed. She suffered.
“I can help you.”
At that, Livia Tertia dismissed her slaves from the room. After a nod from Marcus, Cassia also scurried away.
Cassia had always moved in a different world to Livia Tertia’s house slaves. She was faintly amused to notice that they took themselves off only a short distance. They were discreet, they were stealthy, but they remained within earshot so they could hear every last word. Details of the mistress’s private consultation would reach the roundhouses long before nightfall.
Cassia had never thought to feel sympathy for Livia Tertia. But she was surprised now to feel a pang of pity.
Gah! She couldn’t afford that. Crush it, crush it!
There was a job to do.
She went in search of Flavia and found her in the kitchen, alone.
She didn’t know the woman. And yet there had been that one kiss. There was a bond there that was deeper than reason.
The old woman’s spirit had been crushed many years before. She was hopeless, helpless, devoid of joy, devoid of any expectation but death.
And yet something extraordinary happened when Cassia laid her hand on Flavia’s arm and said, “Don’t you know me? I’m Cassia. I’ve come back.”
Cassia feared Flavia would faint, or scream, or both. The old woman clasped a hand to her mouth. She paled. But her eyes! Some ancient fire was reawakened in them. There was wonder. Excitement, as well as shock.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“For my brother. For Rufus. I’ll take him with me. To freedom.”
“Where? How?”
“I have no time to explain.”
“The danger…”
“Sshh!” Cassia put her fingers to the old woman’s lips. “Please. Can you get word to him?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him I’ll meet him where we played Boudica. The Emperor’s clearing. He’ll know. Can you do that without anyone else hearing?”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’ll wait there as soon as it’s dark. Tell him to slip away only when it’s safe. He can’t be followed. We can’t be found.”
XX
Cassia burned to see her brother, to have him once more under her protection
. But things could not be hurried. Once Marcus’s consultation was completed, they left the estate, proceeding south towards a town where Marcus had told Livia Tertia he would find more customers.
The day was warm, the horses slow. They had gone only three miles or so before Marcus said it was time to stop for the night.
They found a tavern and as soon as the horses were settled, as soon as Marcus took his place among the drinkers and started loudly regaling them with stories, Cassia slipped away.
A slave lad out alone: she dared not go along the road in case she was taken for a runaway. Instead, she cut through the fields of the estate that neighboured that of Titus Cornelius Festus.
It was dark when she reached the woods, but her feet knew the tracks and the trees and carried her straight to the clearing. Here she’d stood, playing the mighty Boudica. And now what was she? A woman disguised as a boy. A woman in the debt of a Roman. A stranger fate than she could ever have imagined.
The moon came and went as clouds scudded across it. There was the far-distant howl of wolves.
She waited. And waited. And Rufus did not come.
Where was he? Why was he taking so long? Surely the slaves must all be sleeping by now?
Was that it? Had he been unable to keep himself awake?
Poor Rufus! Some days he’d fallen into a doze on his feet as they’d walked back from the fields.
Suppose he didn’t come?
Could she creep into the huts herself? But where would she find him?
In an agony of indecision Cassia paced, grinding leaf mould to dust beneath her feet.
It was not until the sky started to lighten that she finally heard the heavy tread of feet on dead leaves.
Rufus came into the clearing.
But he was not alone.
Beyond the Wall Page 7