Vita Brevis

by Ruth Downie

  “I know I said that,” he admitted, wishing he hadn’t. “But things have changed. Apart from Phyllis’s husband telling her to stay away from you and Sabella’s husband wanting to evict us, three big ugly men are coming here tomorrow to collect more money than we’ve got. We can’t expect the Christos people to be around next time, we can’t afford to hire guards, and we’ve been offered a safe place for Mara. We should take it.”

  When she did not reply he said, “If you don’t want to go there, Narina can take her.”

  “But she is my baby!”

  “Do you want her here, then?” he asked. “When those men come back?”

  She flung the spoon down in the bowl. “It is not fair!”

  “No,” he agreed, wondering why she had imagined that it might be.

  More than once, he had watched his wife lavishing the attention on Mara that she had at least occasionally lavished on him in the past, and wondered Why did I agree to this? But then when he looked down at Mara’s wispy hair and vulnerable little face he realized that it didn’t matter why he had agreed to parenthood: He was just going to have to keep on doing his best at it until he found a young man good enough to take over the job of protecting her in marriage. And the gods alone knew where one of those might be found. He said, “I’m not going to order you to go, Tilla. But I may order Narina to take Mara.”

  She bowed her head and pinched the bridge of her nose as if her head was aching. He supposed that back in Britannia, when women went out armed with spears and swords there was always some grandmother or aunt left behind to mind the little ones. Then he remembered a terrible account he had read somewhere of a battlefield where a hungry baby was found crying at its dead mother’s breast, and wondered if he was wrong.

  Outside in the street there was a burst of laughter that rapidly deteriorated into a cough. Ruso held his breath, waiting to see if the cougher would call in for some medicine. The noise faded into the distance. With every sniffle and limp that passed the door, he was becoming more convinced that patients were deliberately passing them by because of gossip about the goings-on here.

  “At home,” she said, “the children are often there when the soldiers come.”

  It was true. He had seen children caught up in raids on civilian property. Whatever the troops did, it was messy. If they showed mercy it could be exploited as weakness. If they didn’t, the Britons had yet another cause for seething resentment.

  “They have nowhere to hide,” he said. “We have somewhere. And Squeaky and his men aren’t soldiers with an officer to keep them in check.”

  “If we go there,” she said, “Those men have won.”

  “I don’t care! I’m not putting our child in danger just so we can keep living in this apartment.”

  She said, “My people are always asking themselves this question about their home. Do you not remember the song?”

  “Remind me.” The best part of most of Tilla’s ancestor songs was when they ended: a moment that was usually far too long coming.

  “Some of my people wanted to leave when they knew the Legions were coming. But the rest of the people said, ‘No, we will stay here, because here is all we have. The soldiers will come. They will steal our crops and take many of our lives, but if we are patient, they will also go. The winter will pass into spring, and when the peace comes, there will be a home for our children and our children’s children.’”

  “Wife, your people are hundreds of miles away across the sea.” And, he wanted to add, you cannot base a rational decision on a song full of ridiculous bravado. Especially one with a tune that reminds you of autumn nights with old friends, when you were warmed on the outside by the bonfire and on the inside by too much beer.

  “We stand our ground,” she declared.

  “Kleitos knew more about what’s going on here than we do, and he ran. Now it looks as though Simmias has run too.”

  “Kleitos was not Brigante.”

  “And this isn’t Britannia,” he reminded her, regretting his promise not to order her to go. He had hoped the concession would persuade her to see sense. “Besides,” he added, “refusing to move hasn’t always worked too well for your people.”

  “We stand our ground,” she repeated.

  “Whoever composed that song was just guessing at how the story will end. The soldiers haven’t gone. They’re still there.”

  She lifted her chin. “And so are my people.”

  He sighed. Since her brief flirtation with being a Roman wife, Tilla seemed to have become more stubbornly British than ever.

  “This is our home,” she told him. “Tonight Narina can take Mara across to Accius’s house to be safe. But if anybody wants me out—the neighbors or Sabella’s husband or Squeaky and his friends—they will have to carry me.”

  Rather than point out that Squeaky would have no difficulty in carrying her, he went to see if Accius wanted more water. When he returned to the kitchen Tilla was busy emptying the shelves of all their wedding-present crockery. She said, “Promise me you will never tell your family where this went. How much do you think we will get for it?”

  Very little, he supposed, since she would have to sell it quickly. He did not say that. Neither did he voice his own suspicion that paying Squeaky and his cronies might encourage them to come back for more. At least she was not hatching some mad scheme to try to fight them off. He said, “I’m sorry things haven’t turned out the way you’d hoped.”

  She paused, caressing the smooth rim of a cup with one finger. Then she put it back on the table with the others. “I have more than I ever hoped for,” she told him. “I have a husband and a baby. These …” She indicated the crockery. “These are just things.”

  The hug took her by surprise.

  “What is that for?”

  “Oh … nothing.” He stepped back, eyeing the skinny girl he had bought in a back street, who had turned into this proud and brave and beautiful and exasperating wife.

  “Then don’t interrupt. I want to get this sold, and then I am going to see that poor motherless girl who wants to marry Accius.” She bent down and pulled a fistful of fresh straw out of the hole she had slit in one of the new mattresses, then dropped it onto the top bowl in the box before reaching up to add the next one to the stack.

  Just as she finished packing, Accius’s steward arrived with a hired chair. The bearers bundled him in, pulling the curtains shut on him so that nobody in the street would know who was in there groaning.

  56

  Ruso could have got a better price back in Britannia, but if he had had the sense to stay in Britannia, he wouldn’t have been selling his kit anyway. He turned away as two smug-faced Praetorians carried the box away down the corridor. These are just things. In their place was a second fat purse of coins.

  A braver man would have made more of a stand over being blackmailed. Since there wasn’t a braver man available, he would add this to the money from Simmias and the money from the sale of the crockery, and they would have more than enough cash to pay off Squeaky.

  Ruso strode away from the barracks and cut south through the gardens on the way to the headquarters of the undertakers.

  “Doctor!” Lucius Virius floated into the room with what might be the nearest thing he could manage to a welcoming smile. “So soon.” The smile faded. “Not bad news, I hope?”

  “Not for your staff,” Ruso told him. “I’m about to give them quite a lot of money.”

  The eyebrows drifted upward. “Really?”

  “To be honest,” Ruso confessed, his hopes rising, “I’m not sure what the lad’s name is. Big frame, small voice. He and a couple of friends came to visit the other day. After I’d been to see you.”

  Lucius Virius’s face twitched, as if it was waiting to be told what expression to adopt.

  “He seemed to think I’d been making things difficult for you,” Ruso continued. “But I want you to know that I haven’t. So I’ve come to reassure you personally, and to pay the compensation
he requested.”

  Lucius Virius’s head drifted down into a nod of acknowledgment, but his continuing silence suggested he still didn’t know what Ruso was talking about.

  “I was wondering,” Ruso continued, sending up a silent prayer that the man wouldn’t just take the money and have him chased off the premises, “if we could agree a discount for early payment.” He slapped a heavy pouch of coin onto the table. “Since I’ve saved him the trouble of coming to collect it tomorrow.”

  The head bobbed up and down with more enthusiasm at the sight of the money. Lucius Virius was certain something could be arranged. How much, exactly, would the doctor consider a fair amount?

  Ruso scratched one ear with his forefinger. This was going rather better than he had expected. Whatever Lucius Virius knew about the illegal supply of bodies for dissection, it was clear he didn’t know anything about Squeaky’s attempts at extortion.

  The thing was, Ruso explained, his wife and several of the neighbors had been rather alarmed by the first visit and had begged him to make sure there wouldn’t be another. “Your man and his friends are very large and very loud,” he pointed out. “I’m sure they don’t mean to be, but there it is. So I’d be grateful for his and your personal assurance that whatever we agree today is the end of it. Then I’ll be able to promise everyone that they won’t be back.”

  There was a pause while Lucius Virius might have been weighing up the damage that Squeaky’s behavior could cause to the reputation of his business. Or he might have been wondering what sort of price Ruso might fetch if he were nailed up inside a barrel. Finally he said, “Excuse me one moment, Doctor,” and flowed out of the room as if propelled by a strong current.

  Ruso was left alone with a large sum of money and a display of dried flowers. He tried to concentrate on what he should say next, but was unable to push away thoughts of the conversation Lucius Virius might be having at this moment, and what Squeaky’s response might be, and what sort of instruments might be stored here for the entirely legal disciplining of slaves.

  There were footsteps crunching toward him across the yard. The door opened and the room shrank as Lucius Virius was followed in by Squeaky.

  “Doctor,” Lucius Virius began with uncharacteristic vigor, “let me say how grateful we are to you for coming here to reassure us in person.”

  Squeaky was looking from one to the other of them.

  “My employee and I have discussed your kind offer,” Lucius Virius told him, “And I must apologize for the misunderstanding. It seems someone had been wrongly informed that a payment was owing.”

  Ruso swallowed. They were going to cancel it? Just like that, after one meeting? After all the trouble he and Tilla had gone to?

  “However …”

  No, they weren’t.

  “… my employee was given some very worrying information about a slander that, if it were allowed to pass unchecked, might affect our reputation and the renewal of our contract with the city authorities.”

  “It didn’t come from me,” Ruso told him.

  “Yes, it bloody did!” put in Squeaky.

  Lucius Virius put a hand on his arm. “My young friend is very keen to defend the reputation of the business. I’m afraid he’s been a little overenthusiastic. But you see, we can’t have slander circulating unchecked. And our source was very reliable.”

  “Simmias made it up to get you off his back,” Ruso told Squeaky. “He doesn’t want a home visit from you any more than Kleitos did.”

  Lucius Virius glanced at Squeaky. “Someone visited Doctor Kleitos?”

  “That was Birna,” put in Squeaky, “but Kleitos had gone.”

  Ruso added, “Simmias tried to deflect everything onto me.”

  “Doctor Simmias?” Lucius Virius sounded as though he could not believe it. “I must have a word with him when I see him.”

  Squeaky shuffled uncomfortably. “It wasn’t him who told me this one was trouble.”

  Lucius Virius got there first with “Then who was it?”

  Squeaky scratched his head and looked embarrassed. “I’ll tell you later, boss.”

  Ruso said, “I think I have a right to know who’s been spreading lies about me.”

  Lucius Virius held a hand out between them. “Doctor, I’m sorry you have been inconvenienced. Whoever it is, I will see they are spoken to. Now, please allow me …” He held out his other hand, which contained a fat purse not unlike the one Ruso had been about to hand over. “Perhaps you would allow me to make a small gesture on behalf of the business, with my apologies to your wife and neighbors. Can I hope the matter will now be forgotten?”

  Ruso took a step back. “I don’t want your money,” he said, not sure what was being bought. “I want you to promise me that from now on this man and his friends will stay away from my family.” Then as an afterthought, he added, “And from Simmias.”

  Lucius Virius inclined his head. “I think we can promise that, can we not?”

  Squeaky said, “We were defending the business, boss.”

  “But, as I’m sure you’re delighted to find,” Lucius Virius told him, “the doctor is not an enemy.”

  “I’m very delighted, boss.”

  Ruso said, “Simmias didn’t turn up for work last night. Do you know where he is?”

  Lucius Virius raised his eyebrows toward his chastened employee. “Do we know where he is?”

  But Squeaky did not. Or so he said.

  57

  Horatia still looked pale, but her hair had been combed and her dark mourning clothes were neatly arranged. She said she was pleased to have a visitor. “Yesterday it was everybody, now it’s nobody,” she confided. Tilla noticed the jet bracelet hanging from the girl’s thin wrist as she pointed to the seat beside her. As Tilla joined her under the bower, Horatia declared she was chilly and sent the round-faced slave girl to fetch her stole. As soon as the girl was gone she whispered, “Quick, tell me! Is he all right?”

  “Accius?”

  “They told me he was ill. I’ve been so worried! All this talk of poisons! I should have told him to be careful.”

  “He wasn’t ill,” said Tilla. “He was drunk. He seemed all right this morning.”

  “You’ve seen him? What did he say?”

  “He is never going to drink wine again.”

  “Anything about me?”

  But before Tilla could reply, the servant was back to wrap the stole around her mistress’s shoulders.

  “Do stop sniffling, Gellia!” Horatia snapped. “It is not your father who has died! If I want miserable-looking people around the house I will send for the mourners!”

  The girl apologized, but the sniffling carried on. Horatia sent her to stand farther away. “Another week of nothing but glum faces to put up with before the funeral feast,” she said. “And then a whole twelve months dressed like this. I feel like a Vestal Virgin that’s been buried alive.”

  Tilla asked if there were anything she could do to help, but Horatia’s only suggestion—that she should send the new guardian back home—was impossible. “It’s not as if he’s ever shown any interest until now. He hardly recognized me, even though we’re cousins. He thought I was still about ten. And now he’s in the study with Creepy Cossus, going through all the records of the business, and Firmicus is walking around like a thundercloud because he always takes charge when Pa’s away—I mean when he was … Oh, dear.” She twisted the bracelet around her wrist. “Sorry. And the bodyguard’s run away. Not that it matters. Pa doesn’t need him now, does he?”

  Across the courtyard, the round-faced girl was still standing to attention. The tears were trickling down her cheeks and dripping from her chin. There were dark wet blobs on her gray mourning tunic, under which the thickening of her pregnancy was beginning to be visible.

  “I won’t marry him, you know,” Horatia said suddenly. “I’ll kill myself first.”

  “Have you said this to your cousin?”

  “He says I’ll get used to it.
I can stave them all off until the mourning period is over but by then Creepy Cossus will have his fingers so deep into the business that there’ll be no way to prize them out.”

  Tilla said, “I am so sorry.”

  “Everyone is sorry!” Horatia cried. “Why don’t they just do the one thing that would cheer me up, and let me marry Accius?”

  Tilla said, “I don’t know. Things are not done this way where I come from.”

  “I tried your husband’s lettuce,” Horatia’s voice was calmer now. “I don’t think it did any good, but I washed it down with a lot of wine, so who knows?”

  “You look stronger today than you did in the funeral procession,” Tilla told her, “but your slave girl is still very upset. Would you like me to talk to her?”

  “Give her some lettuce,” Horatia suggested.

  Tilla was getting to her feet when she heard Horatia say, “Is it true there are medicines that are also poisons if you use too much of them?”

  “There are,” Tilla agreed. “But if you ask me about them, I will have to tell your cousin. And Accius.”

  “I thought you were on my side!”

  “I am.”

  “You don’t understand. I can’t marry that man. If they try to make me—”

  “I understand this,” Tilla interrupted, “but no man is worth dying for. And there are far worse things than being married to a man you do not love.”

  “How would you know? You don’t do things this way where you come from.”

  So then Tilla sat down again and spoke softly, and as busy slaves flitted in and out of the garden around them she told of the raid on the family farm, and how the leader of the men who had killed her family took her as a slave and used her for his pleasure. “All this is past and gone,” she said. “I do not speak of it often. There are more and more days when I do not think of it at all. But when I was there, I saw no end to it. I wanted to die and join my own people in the next world. And then I thought, if I die, this man has won. So I waited. And then one day the gods smiled on me again and I escaped. So, no, I do not know how things are done here. But do not tell me that I do not understand.”