by Judi Curtin
‘Was there a colosseum in Campania?’ asked Tilly. ‘And do you think that might be it?’
‘You’re supposed to be the history expert,’ I said. ‘But there’s definitely something happening in there. Pity there’s not a sign and a board in lights to tell us what’s on today.’
‘Should we go in for a look?’
I shook my head. ‘No! We’re runaway slaves.’
‘Technically, I’m the only runaway. You’re just lost.’
‘Do you fancy trying to explain the difference to a sword-wielding Roman who doesn’t speak our language and thinks we should be gladiators?’
‘Er, maybe not.’
Tilly allowed me to pull her away and we walked on for another while.
Soon we were so tired we couldn’t walk any more and I was very close to tears. Even though Tilly was trying to be brave, I was fairly sure she felt exactly the same as I did.
‘I wish Saturn was with us,’ I said for the hundredth time. ‘This would be a really good time to ask him to take us back home.’
‘What happens if we never go back home?’ wailed Tilly.
‘I’ve been wondering that too,’ I said. ‘But time travel is kind of complicated, and I’m not exactly an expert.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘I was hoping you had an idea.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m all out of ideas. I –’
‘Tilly!’ I screeched.
She grabbed my arm.
‘What is it? Who is it? Is it the ogre? Where is he?’
She followed my gaze and then gave a big, happy sigh.
Felix was walking towards us with a huge smile on his face. I’m not sure what the etiquette about hugging slaves is, but right then I didn’t care. I raced over and hugged him tightly, stopping only when Tilly pushed me away so she could hug him too.
‘Are you hugging him because he’s going to rescue us, or because you fancy him?’ I asked when she finally let go.
Tilly went red. ‘Maybe a bit of both,’ she said.
Then we followed Felix, and after only a few minutes we were back at the caravan. Felix tapped on the door and Prima came out.
Her eyes were red and her face was streaked with tears. Tilly and I hugged her and we tried to explain what had happened. I got out one of Tilly’s exercise books and drew a picture of the scariest man I could, brandishing a sword. In front of him, I drew Tilly and me running away from him.
‘Prima doesn’t seem to understand,’ I said. ‘I wonder why?’
‘Maybe because that looks just like my hockey coach when we aren’t playing well enough for him,’ said Tilly, giggling.
Tilly took the exercise book from me, and even though her picture was quite good, I had to get back at her, so I said hers looked like my dad doing a spot of gardening on a Sunday afternoon.
In the end, I had no idea if Prima understood what we were trying to say, but she seemed glad to see us and that was good enough for me.
She pointed to a stone jar containing cool water in a basket in the caravan, and Felix poured us all a drink before we climbed back in.
‘I’ve had a very long day,’ said Tilly. ‘I hope we’re going back to the villa.’
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Home sweet home.’
17
When the caravan stopped, we were on the side of the hill that I’d seen from Prima’s house.
We climbed out and looked around. It was a beautiful place. The hill was lined with fields of lemon and olive trees. We could see the city spread out in front of us, and in the distance the sea sparkled in the sunlight.
Tilly sighed. ‘This has to be the most perfect, peaceful place on earth. Prima’s lucky to live here.’
Felix brought blankets from the caravan, and spread them on the ground in the shade of a huge tree. Then, while Prima, Tilly and I sat down and admired the view, he spread out a picnic.
‘The food here’s OK,’ said Tilly, as she stuffed her face with cheese and bread and cold meat. ‘But how come we’ve never had proper Italian food? How come there’s no pizza, or bolognaise, or carbonara?’
‘How am I supposed to know?’ I said. ‘Maybe they haven’t been invented yet.’
When we’d finished eating, Felix took out his musical instruments and played some music. Tilly pulled her tin whistle from the bottom of her schoolbag and played two tunes. They must have sounded a bit weird to Felix and Prima, but they clapped politely and smiled.
Then Felix gathered up the picnic stuff and carried it back to the caravan.
Tilly put her tin whistle back into her bag.
‘Do you think Ancient Rome is ready for this?’ she said, as she pulled out her mobile phone.
She handed the phone to Prima, who looked at it for a long time. She turned it over and over in her hands. She rubbed her fingers gently over the buttons.
Tilly took the phone back and switched it on. She looked at the screen. ‘Still no network available,’ she said. ‘I wish the Romans would get their act together and put up a few mobile phone masts.’
She put on a Tetris game and tried to show Prima how it worked, but failed miserably. Prima kept trying to catch the falling shapes with her fingers, squealing whenever the phone made a noise.
‘Give it to me for a sec,’ I said in the end. ‘Let’s try something different.’
Tilly handed the phone to me and I went to the ringtones page. I pressed a button and a tinkly version of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’ washed over the hillside.
Prima jumped to her feet in surprise, and Felix came running over to see what was happening.
Tilly and I laughed. Then Tilly handed the phone back to Prima and showed her how to scroll down to hear different tunes.
Prima beamed, and after a few minutes, she handed the phone to Felix. Felix was clumsy at first, but quickly got the hang of it. Then he kept going back to what appeared to be his favourite tune. Soon Tilly and I were singing along – ‘Don’t worry, Be Happy’.
‘That poor boy,’ said Tilly after the tenth time he’d played it. ‘Has he any idea what he’s listening to? He’s a slave in Roman times. How can he not worry? How can he be happy?’
I smiled at her. ‘I’m a slave in Roman times, and right now I’m happy.’
‘That is sooo different,’ said Tilly.
Before I could answer, the music stopped in mid-tune. Felix shook the phone gently and held it to his ear, but not surprisingly, nothing happened.
Tilly took the phone and glanced at the screen. ‘I wonder what’s the Latin for “I think the battery’s dead and I seem to have left my charger in another millennium”?’ she said.
I didn’t answer. Back when I was on the Titanic, I was very upset when my phone’s battery died, but here on this pleasant, peaceful hillside, with Tilly, Prima and Felix, it didn’t really seem like such a big deal.
A dead mobile phone wasn’t interesting even to Ancient Romans, and soon Felix went and sat on a narrow stone wall and looked out over the sea. To our surprise, Prima went and sat next to him, and minutes later they were deep in conversation. Their faces were just centimetres apart and they were gazing steadily into each other’s eyes.
‘OMIGOD,’ I said. ‘She likes him. She really, really likes him. She was only pretending to be bored when Felix was reciting that poetry.’
‘That’s sooo romantic,’ said Tilly. ‘Prima’s parents wouldn’t approve, so she has to pretend not to notice him, even though they’re madly in love.’
‘And she had to pretend she wanted to show us the sights of Campania, when what she really wanted was to spend time with Felix away from her parents’ prying eyes.’
‘It’s like Romeo and Juliet!’
‘I think Romeo and Juliet ended kind of badly,’ I said.
Tilly looked at Felix and Prima, who seemed so happy and so right together.
&nbs
p; ‘Then it’s not like Romeo and Juliet,’ she said firmly. ‘It’s like … well, I don’t know exactly; it’s like some love story that has a happy-ever-after ending.’
It was nearly dark when we got back to Prima’s place. Felix took the horses round to the stables at the back of the house, and the rest of us went inside. Prima’s parents were sitting in the courtyard. Prima went and kissed them, looking like the perfect, obedient daughter.
‘They’re probably planning to marry her off to some boring old senator or something,’ said Tilly. ‘What would they say if they knew she was hanging out with the staff?’
‘I sooo don’t want to think about that,’ I said. ‘I’m kind of glad we don’t have a language in common. At least Prima’s parents can’t ask us any awkward questions.’
When we went to bed that evening, Saturn was already curled up on his cushion on the floor.
‘You’d never believe the day we had,’ I said, but he didn’t seem to care. He just blinked once and fell asleep, and seconds later, Tilly and I did the exact same thing.
18
We stayed at home for the next few days, and I was happy about that. Our day out had been fun, but it had also been totally scary and I wanted a few days with nothing more worrying than strange food to bother me.
The time passed quickly. We hung around the house and did sewing and music and stuff. Sometimes we played with Secunda and sometimes we swam in the pool. It was like a very weird, very relaxing holiday.
Then one afternoon, we were sitting in the shade of the courtyard. Tilly was helping Prima to unravel mistakes in her sewing and I was playing with Secunda, when all of a sudden, I felt slightly dizzy. It was like I’d just stepped off a boat and the ground was swaying under my feet.
‘Did you feel that?’ I said to Tilly.
She looked up from her sewing.
‘So you felt it too?’
‘Omigod,’ I said. ‘Where’s Saturn? Are we going back home?’
Tilly pointed to where Saturn was asleep under a chair.
‘I know I haven’t done a whole lot of time-travelling,’ she said, ‘but that didn’t feel anything like a time-travel episode. That just felt weird.’
She tapped Prima on the arm and waved her fingers in the air. Prima smiled and went back to her sewing.
‘If Prima’s not worried, then I suppose we shouldn’t be worried either, right?’ said Tilly.
‘Right,’ I said.
But a second later, the same thing happened again, and this time Saturn miaowed loudly and leapt into my arms.
Tilly raced over and hugged me. ‘Don’t go without me, Lauren,’ she said. ‘I so wouldn’t like to be stuck here on my own.’
‘And I so wouldn’t like to have to explain to your dad that I’d lost you in Ancient Roman times,’ I said.
But ten minutes later, we hadn’t gone anywhere. The sun was still shining, Saturn was curled up asleep and the birds were singing.
Everything was perfect.
Wasn’t it?
But the next day, the same rocking thing happened during dinner. Tilly nudged me and we both watched as a bowl of jelly trembled in front of us, like it was afraid of something.
‘What do you think might be happening?’ I said to Tilly.
She shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re building a new road or an aqueduct or something and it’s making the ground shake.’
‘But what if it isn’t that?’
‘You worry too much, Lauren,’ she said. ‘Look around you. No one’s worried except for you.’
She was right. Julius was talking to Livia. Prima was feeding salad to Secunda and the slaves were slaving away as usual.
The next day was bright and sunny, just like all the days we’d spent in Roman times. I was getting a bit bored and was kind of hoping we might go out somewhere, but after breakfast, we followed Prima to her mother’s room.
‘Yay!’ said Tilly. ‘Looks like we’re going to have another fun day of embroidery.’
I’d been reading more of the history book.
‘You know girls here get married in their early teens,’ I said. ‘At least Prima will be able to escape soon.’
‘Yeah, but she won’t be escaping with Felix, will she? What will poor Felix do without her? And what will she do without Felix?’
We’d been paying more attention since our big day out, and we kept coming across Prima and Felix whispering in corners and smiling over private jokes.
‘I wish we could do something to help them,’ I said.
Tilly sighed. ‘So do I, but you might as well put it out of your mind. We’re slaves, we don’t speak the language and any minute we could wake up and find that we’re thousands of years away from here. There’s nothing we can do.’
I knew she was right, but that didn’t make me feel any better.
We did some more embroidery and then we had to endure Prima’s music lesson.
‘This is no fun,’ said Tilly, when the awful screeching noise had stopped and we could talk again. ‘We do the same thing every single day.’
I agreed. I wasn’t sure I could face too much more of this boring existence.
‘Should we think about trying to get back home?’ I said.
Tilly nodded. ‘I’m thinking that too. Let’s just stay one more day and try to remember stuff.’
‘What do you mean “remember stuff”?’
She grinned. ‘If it’s still Friday when we get back, we’re going to have to do that history project, and we could do it on the Ancient Romans. We’ll be able to get top marks without even opening a book, or switching on our computers!’
I thought about it. It would be stupid to waste this opportunity.
‘One more day,’ I agreed. ‘One more day and we’re out of here.’
After lunch, Prima, Tilly and I went to sit in an outside garden overlooking the sea and the city. Prima was pretending to teach us the names of the flowers in the garden, but we knew the real reason we were there. Felix was nearby, mending the wheel of the caravan, and he and Prima kept giving each other soppy, loving looks.
‘Oh, look, Lauren,’ said Tilly after a while. ‘There’s a fire over there on the hill where we had the picnic the other day.’
I looked to where she was pointing and gasped.
Suddenly it was as if I’d been looking at life through a fogged-up window, but now the fog was gone and everything was clear.
Much too clear.
‘O-mi-god!’ I said.
‘What?’ said Tilly calmly. ‘Have you broken a fingernail or something?’
‘This is serious,’ I said. ‘Look at all that smoke and ash. It’s just like the picture in our geography book. You know, Tilly, I don’t think that’s an ordinary hill. I think it might be a volcano.’
‘Cool,’ said Tilly. ‘I’ve never seen a volcano before. It’s lucky there aren’t any planes to be grounded by the ash cloud. Maybe progress isn’t always a good thing. Maybe –’
Then she saw the look on my face and she stopped talking.
‘I have a horrible feeling that city down there might be …’ I began. I was so scared, I couldn’t get the last word out, but one look at Tilly’s face told me that she knew exactly what I was thinking.
‘It’s …’ she said.
‘It’s …’ I said.
And finally we found the strength to say it together.
‘It’s Pompeii!’
19
A few minutes later, Tilly and I were still hugging each other and trying to stop shaking.
‘Maybe we’re wrong,’ said Tilly, pulling away from me. ‘When we asked Prima what this place was called she said it was Campania.’
‘That might be the name of the region or something,’ I said. ‘And anyway, who cares what the city is called? I bet that volcano is called Vesuvius, and if it is, we’re in a whole lot of trouble.’
&
nbsp; ‘I don’t know much about it,’ said Tilly. ‘The story of Pompeii isn’t in our history book.’
‘I know heaps,’ I said. ‘Dad read a book about Pompeii once when we were on holiday, and he kept telling us all about it. It was totally boring.’
‘But you listened anyway, right?’
‘Well, sort of. I can remember him telling us that for days before Vesuvius erupted, there were warning signs, but everyone ignored them.’
‘That could have been the weird shaking we’ve felt over the past few days,’ said Tilly. ‘That must have been a sign, and I’m so not ignoring it. We have to get out of here. There’s no time to waste.’
‘That’s for sure,’ I said. ‘Anyone who delayed got buried by the ash, and that doesn’t sound like much fun.’
‘So where do we go?’
‘That bit I remember,’ I said. ‘Most people who got away, escaped by boat. We have to get to the harbour.’
‘So what are we waiting for?’
We both jumped up and ran over to Prima. I knew she couldn’t understand me, but I babbled away desperately anyway.
‘It’s a volcano,’ I said. ‘It’s going to erupt any minute! Get your parents and Secunda. Tell them it’s an emergency. Tell them we have to go immediately. If we don’t leave right this minute we’re going to end up lying in the streets for tourists to take pictures of in a few thousand years’ time when cameras have been invented.’
While I was talking I was waving desperately towards the smoking volcano, but Prima didn’t seem to understand.
‘Tell her, Felix,’ I said. ‘She’ll do anything you say.’
Felix looked up when he heard his name, but unfortunately he didn’t understand me either and he quickly turned back to fixing the caravan wheel.
‘Let’s try Julius and Livia,’ said Tilly.
We each grabbed one of Prima’s arms, and Prima let herself be pulled to the courtyard where her parents and little sister were sitting in the shade.
While Tilly tried to explain, I grabbed an exercise book and a colouring pencil and began to draw. I drew the volcano spewing smoke and ash. I drew Pompeii with collapsed buildings. I drew lots of little stick figures lying in the streets. It was like the most bizarre game of Pictionary ever. Except when time ran out there was going to be a lot more to lose than a silly game.