by Ruth Downie
Their embrace was awkward, the hooded girl careful to keep her right arm concealed beneath her inconspicuous gray cloak. "I must go," she said, fingering her acorn necklace before raising the sack to her shoulder. "While the road is empty."
"Don't forget!" Sabrann waved an arm in an easterly direction, raising it to indicate distance. "Beyond the bridge, after the oak tree, take the track to the left. You must be careful not to stay on the road any longer than you have to."
The hooded girl stepped onto the gravel surface. When she turned, Sabrann was already on her way back to the houses. She was alone on the road once more.
Three days earlier, the walk to this place from Deva had tired her more than she had expected. She had been relieved to be offered water and, after the briefest of introductions, summoned to the big house to be inspected by the grandmother, who was head of the family
Led over to face a chair near the fire, she had knelt in the bracken that covered the floor. As her eyes adjusted to the familiar gloom of a house with no windows, she found herself being peered at by a wizened old woman with sparse white hair pulled back behind large ears.
"Darlughdacha," said the old woman, repeating the name that had been shouted into one of her ears by her interpreter, the girl Sabrann. The grandmother shared the girl's strangled accent and her speech was distorted by the absence of teeth to trim the ends of the syllables, but the name was clear enough. "Daughter of Lugh," continued the grandmother. "Why have you come to us? Do we know you?"
"I spoke with a woman who was born near here, grandmother!" shouted the young woman who had been Tilla for a few weeks, and before that had been nobody for so long that being addressed by her own name now made her feel that someone else must be kneeling beside her. "Her name is Brica! She told me I could find people of honor here!" It was difficult to shout without sounding angry.
"It's no good," said Sabrann. "I have to shout everything right into her ear."
The old woman, realizing that she was missing something, turned to Sabrann, then squinted at her and frowned. "Where is your hair, girl?"
Sabrann grinned. "I pinned it up!" she shouted, twisting to show the back of her head and miming a stabbing action with her fingers, then turning back to shout, "Hairpins!"
The grandmother shook her head in disbelief. "This will all come to an end when you have a husband and some proper work to do!" She aimed a forefinger at Tilla. "What did she say?"
Sabrann leaned close to the old woman again and shouted, "She has heard that we are people of honor!"
"Yes," snapped the old woman, "but who says so?"
Sabrann hesitated before shouting, "Brica, grandmother!"
"Aha!" The woman smacked one blue-veined hand onto the blanket that was tucked around her knees. "So, my brother's family remember what honor is!" The chin rose and the creased lips clamped together.
After a pause they opened again. "I hear Brica's man is losing his sight," she declared. "The gods are just."
Behind her back, Sabrann gave Tilla a look that was somewhere between weariness and apology. Tilla prayed silently to the goddess that she would not be turned away because of someone else's quarrel. She had nowhere else to go.
Sabrann bent down again. "She asks hospitality for nine nights!" she shouted. "Until her arm is healed! Then she will leave!"
"Why does she not go to my brother's family?"
"Because she seeks people of honor!" yelled Sabrann, clearly embarrassed at her grandmother's rudeness. "She does not want to stay with friends of the Romans!"
The grandmother plucked at the edge of the blanket, tugging it higher up on her lap, then returned her attention to the figure kneeling in front of her. "Tell me, daughter of Lugh," she said, "who are your family?"
Relieved, Tilla who was now Darlughdacha again had begun the business of naming her tribe, then her parents and her grandparents and her great-grandparents while the old woman frowned and put in occasional questions about brothers and cousins and who was married to whom and who had fought beside which warriors and eventually they found the connection they were both seeking: an obscure second cousin who had once sold cows to the old woman's late husband's brother. "Now we know who you are," declared the woman, nodding with satisfaction. "You are welcome to stay with us while your arm heals, Daughter of Lugh, child of the Brigantes. You may sleep with this one who stabs herself with hairpins."
Tilla inclined her head. "It is an honor, grandmother."
"She says it's an honor!" yelled Sabrann.
Extra bracken had been hauled from the drying racks and thrown down to make a bed on the floor of the small house where the unmarried girls slept. On that first night, comfortably fed, stretched out on a borrowed blanket, covered by the medicus's cloak-she would have to get rid of that, a problem she would think about later-Tilla had lain listening to strangers chattering in her own tongue. She rolled over to watch the glow of the firelight. A hound had wandered in earlier and settled close to the warmth. One of its ears twitched and it gave a sudden shudder as it dreamed. It occurred to her that there must be mice, and to her surprise it also occurred to her that she did not care. She took a deep breath, savoring the familiar smells of wool and wood smoke and muddy dog. As she thought, "I am happy," she was aware of a voice nearby in the darkness suggesting, "Perhaps she is sleeping."
"Are you sleeping, daughter of Lugh?" demanded a second voice.
"Shh, Sabrann!" urged a third girl. "Don't wake her!"
She closed her eyes and said nothing. She did not want to answer questions about where she had come from. She did not want to think about where she was going, or what she might find when she finally reached home. She wanted to lie here, in this bed, and remind herself over and over again: I am free.
The questions had followed soon enough, though, as had the expressions of sympathy when they found out her family was dead and her arm had been broken when she tried to defend herself against a Roman merchant who had brought her down from the north to sell her.
It was as much of the truth as it was safe for them to know, and it would have satisfied them, if only a Roman officer had not arrived that afternoon on an elderly horse and announced that he had come to look for a woman.
The blank expressions with which he was faced were a defense the family had used many times. In truth several of them understood what he was saying and all grasped what he wanted, but none chose to reveal that the woman he sought was inside a house not ten steps from where he stood.
The Roman had finally given up and tramped back through the gateway. It was not until he was out of sight that the arguments started.
By this time the men had arrived, summoned from the fields by those nearest to home who had heard the dogs.
Their guest, it seemed, had lied to them. (Her objection of "I told no lies!" was ignored.) She was a runaway. It was against the law to harbor runaways. She must go.
No, insisted other voices, she must stay. She was a Brigante, true, but not a complete foreigner. She was nearly one of their own people. It was a matter of honor not to betray her.
Tilla, realizing she was not expected to be a part of this argument, slipped back inside the house and sat by the door, listening as indignation rose on both sides of the debate. A couple of the women tried to intervene. Nobody took any notice.
Someone cried that it was a disgrace to deny hospitality to an injured woman.
"Her master is a healer. Let him deal with it."
"Her master is a Roman!"
"She has brought the army to our doors!"
"One man on an old horse?"
"Romans are like rats. Where there is one there are more."
"What if they decide to search the houses?"
"What, for one slave?"
"Enough!" It was the voice of the old woman, quavering but loud enough to silence the debate. "Enough," she repeated. Tilla wondered who had gone to fetch her and how much they had managed to explain. "The girl will stay here tonight. We will discuss this matt
er after dark. You all have work to do. Go."
The arguers did not bother to mute their grumbling as they dispersed, and Tilla overheard someone say, "She's not his slave, you fool."
"He said ancilla. Ancilla means slave."
"Never mind what ancilla means. She's not his slave. She's his woman."
The evening meal was finished. The other girls had gone to mind younger brothers and sisters. The adults had carried rush lights across to the big house and closed the door behind them. Tilla was squatting by the fire in the girls' house, busying herself grinding corn while she waited to be told her fate. It was a job that could be done, albeit slowly, with one hand.
As the stone scraped and rumbled round on its base she thought about the people she had left behind. She thought about the girls at Merula's, and the boy Lucco, who did not know that it was forbidden to eat swan, and Bassus, and Stichus with the ginger-colored hair, and the woman she had got to know at the bakery. She thought about the pregnant Brica whose man might lose his sight, and the handsome doctor who always smiled at her, but mostly she thought about the medicus, who hardly smiled at all. She supposed he was smiling even less now. It served him right. Behind her back he had made arrangements to have her sold. At first she had not believed Bassus, but later she had arrived back inside the fort with the shopping and there he was, standing in the street outside the hospital, chatting to the medicus as if they were old friends. That was when she finally understood what the medicus had meant when he had told her she would be useful to him. He had mended her arm not out of kindness, but out of greed. Instead of going to his house to prepare supper, she had turned around, made her way back out through the east gate, and kept walking.
The dog lying beside her suddenly lifted his head and turned toward the door. Moments later, a hinge creaked and a figure slipped in.
"My cousins are seeing to the little ones," announced Sabrann. "And my aunt is shouting for the grandmother." She dropped the sack on the ground. "I brought you some more corn, daughter of Lugh."
"Thank you."
It was the first time they had been able to speak privately since the argument erupted. Sabrann said, "They are talking about you."
"I know."
"I would have you stay."
"Others would have me leave."
Sabrann reached a hand inside the sack and trickled a fistful of corn into the hole in the center of the stone. "He was quite good-looking," she observed.
Tilla tightened her grip on the handle and carried on swiveling the top stone back and forth in a half circle over the lower one. "Who?"
"Your Roman. And not as short as most of them."
"No," Tilla agreed, stilling her arm as the girl reached a hand forward to scoop up the speckled flour that was trickling out from between the stones to form little mounds on the cloth.
Sabrann dropped the handful of flour into the bowl. "Are you his slave?"
The stone began to move again. "He thinks so."
"Did you go inside the fort?"
"Yes."
"Is it true what they say about the granary?"
Tilla frowned. "The granary?"
Sabrann nodded. "Everyone says they have a great big building filled with enough corn to stuff themselves for a year."
"It's possible. They like making great big buildings."
"Can you imagine how many families that would feed? And still they take the taxes."
"Is this why your grandmother is angry with Brica?"
"It was bad enough my great-uncle's family chose to trade with the army. Now one of them allows a soldier to father her children." Sabrann paused to watch the stone's movement around and back. "They say," she said, "that most of them have to pay women to lie with them."
"They speak the truth."
"Why would any woman do that? I would never do it."
"If you thought they would kill you," said Tilla slowly, "you might consider it."
The stone ground away and back, away and back before the girl murmured, "Forgive me. Everyone says I speak before I think."
Tilla shook her head. "No need. The goddess was protecting me. The medicus is not like that."
"People are saying you are his woman."
There was a grating sound from the millstones. Tilla let go of the handle and flexed her stiff fingers. "People are wrong."
Sabrann reached into the sack and gave a sudden giggle. "Can you keep a secret?"
"Always."
"Before we sent the corn tax in, we all took turns spitting in it."
Tilla smiled. "This was to wish them luck?"
"Of course." Sabrann cupped her hands to trickle more corn into the opening. "The boys wanted to piss in it, but Da said they would notice the smell. And they'd see it was damp. Spit, you can stir in."
Their eyes met, and both girls grinned.
"Your medicus might be eating spit," observed Sabrann.
"Good luck to him," said Tilla, seizing the handle and scraping the millstone faster back and forth on its half circle.
"My cousin could put a curse on him for you if you ask," Sabrann offered.
"Your cousin has the power of words?" Tilla had no intention of enlisting the cousin's help. If there were any cursing to be done, she would do it herself. Fortunately Sabrann, who was nodding eagerly, did not seem to have noticed that she had dodged the question.
"Not ten days ago," announced Sabrann, "my own cousin made a whole squad of soldiers fall over."
Tilla's hand paused. "How did she do that?"
"She was carrying water up to the house when about a hundred and fifty of them came running past, all squashed up together like they do, and you know how they stare at you?"
Tilla nodded.
"My cousin was tired of being stared at so she spoke a curse. And the moment the words were ended one of the soldiers tripped and all the ones behind him landed on top of him in a big heap. And when they got up one of them couldn't walk and had to be carried away with his leg strapped up. We were all laughing so hard we had to run and hide behind the fence."
"Daughter of Lugh!" It was a man's voice.
Enjoying the tale, they had noticed neither the dog nor the door announce his arrival.
Tilla got to her feet. "I am here."
"I am to take you to the grandmother."
There must have been twenty people gathered around the fire in the big house. The grandmother sat straight-backed in her chair and motioned for Tilla to kneel in front of her.
"Daughter of Lugh," she said, "everyone here has spoken about you. Now I wish to hear you speak for yourself."
Tilla got to her feet, brushing the bracken off her knees. She looked around at all the faces turned toward her, silent in the flickering firelight. She took a deep breath, raised her hands, and began a song.
"She is singing!" shouted a woman in the grandmother's ear.
"I know!" snapped the grandmother. "I can hear it!"
She sang some of the story of her ancestors. She sang a blessing on the grandmother and her family. And she sang a farewell.
69
Even at this distance, Ruso could hear the roar from the amphitheater. The sports must be well under way; some of the Twentieth burning off energy and the others merely reaching a height of excitement that would wash over the town like a wave when the exit gates opened.
At Merula's, they were getting ready for a busy night. Bassus and Stichus were outside nailing the torches into their brackets ("Bastards pinch 'em else"). A few early customers were in, being served by Mariamne. Daphne was lumbering up the stairs with a pile of fresh sheets.
Behind the bar, Merula was tasting the offering from the hot drinks cauldron. She winced. "Not enough cinnamon," she snapped to a girl who was lining up jugs behind the bar.
Ruso reached for his purse as he approached. Merula saw the gesture, and her scowl gave way to a professional smile.
When he had settled his bill he said, "I need a word with Chloe."
The frown returne
d. "She's not working at the moment."
"I just need to give her a message."
"She's ill."
"I'm a doctor," Ruso pointed out.
The lines around Merula's mouth deepened, but she waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen. "If you can get her back to work," she said, "I'll be the one paying you."
Unusually, both doors of the kitchen were propped open, but despite the passage of air, the smoke and steam still made Ruso cough. One end of the table was covered in dirty bowls and discarded onion skins, and at the other a pale squad of uncooked pies was lined up ready to march into the oven. None of the staff who were attempting to work and argue at the same time took any notice of him. Ruso suspected that the decision to sell the kitchen slave on the eve of one of the busiest nights of the year had not been a popular one.
He rapped on the side door that led to the room where the girls slept, paused briefly, and then strode into the room.
A figure in one of the lower bunks rolled over to face him. The face was red and wet. The eyes were swollen with weeping.
"Chloe?"
"Don't come near me!"
"Chloe, about Lucco-"
"He's gone! They took him away!"
"I know."
"They promised I could keep him! They promised!" She sniffed violently. "He's all I've got!"
"I've seen him."
Chloe did not appear to have heard. With a sudden movement she swung her feet to the floor and leaped at him. "You did this!" she shrieked, pounding him with her fists. "You did this!"
Ruso made a grab for both arms and held them still. Instead of pulling away, Chloe thrust her distorted face into his. "You couldn't keep your nose out!" she wailed. "You had to show off what you'd found out, didn't you?"
Ruso held her at arm's length and looked her in the eye. "Sit down, Chloe," he ordered, "and listen to me."
"I won't sit down! Lucco is my life! It's your fault he's gone!"
"My fault?"
"Why did you have to interfere?" she shrieked. "Look what happened to Phryne! Everything you do causes trouble!"
"SIT DOWN!" roared Ruso, pushing her roughly onto the bed and narrowly missing banging her head on the top bunk.