I fill the air between us with polite words. ‘So, this research of yours. What is this research?’
He shrugs. ‘Some people would think it’s very boring. My study is to evaluate the nature of being a Christian when to follow the Christian way was to be a heretic. In the time before the great Roman Emperor Constantine. In the time before the Roman world took it on itself to define Christianity and convert the world.’
It’s hard to know what to say to that.
He catches my blank look and laughs. ‘I know! Who cares? It is of the past. I should be studying how to make the world a greener place, no?’ He nods at the waitress – a sturdy girl in dungarees – as she puts coffee down before us. ‘But you? Why are you here in Agde?’
I smell the round warm smell of the coffee. ‘It’s a kind of . . . accident. I was brought here by my partner because I have a sickness. He thought it would make me well.’
His close, forensic gaze reminds me of Billy. ‘You look tired, Starr, but not sick. You’re sick in the heart, perhaps?’
Even I know it’s a mistake to talk to a stranger like this. I look around. ‘I have to get back to the house, I think.’
‘And where do you stay here in Agde?’
‘On the rue Haute. The house is called Maison d’Estella.’
His look sharpens. ‘Ah, I know this house of Pierre d’Estella. It is very old. On the high citadel. By the Parthenon.’
I have to smile. ‘Parthenon!’
He nods vigorously. ‘There was a temple to Aphrodite there on the high point in the old Greek city. And in the same place when it was a Roman city there was a temple to Venus. Just along from the house of the Roman Governor. These two cities – the Greek and the Roman – would be on the lower levels in the hole in the road you investigated at the suggestion of Madame Patrice.’
I frown. ‘How can you know all this?’
He ducks his head to finish his coffee. ‘You forget, dear lady. Me, I’m a student of those ancient times!’ He stands up. ‘Now you must go back to the Maison d’Estella and look out again over this city, whose layers you are peeling like an onion.’ He pauses. ‘You found that house because of the name? It is like your name, is it not?’
My turn to shrug. ‘A coincidence. Just a coincidence.’
We walk through the town and part at the Café Plazza. He shakes hands with me and then, to my surprise, kisses me three times on the cheek in the way I’ve noticed here. Left, right, and then left again. ‘Au revoir,’ he says. And somehow I know this is a message as well as a farewell. Till we meet again.
There is not to be an end.
When I get back to the house, it’s empty. After the heat of the early afternoon outside the shadowy courtyard is cool. I pour myself some lemonade and – suddenly hungry – I butter a hard chunk of bread left over from breakfast and sit outside eating it at the wooden table.
And now Siri sweeps back into my mind like a warm breeze off the river. Siri. I reflect on how long it took her to be born and how kind the midwife was, how patient; how I apologized for not being good at this thing that some women do so easily.
I remember listening to my mother pottering round my tiny flat, keeping out of the way, just as I’d asked her to. I remember the midwife sitting with me into the early morning hours knitting a jumper for her son, waiting for that fulcrum point where Siri really wanted to come and my body felt a proper willingness to squeeze her out. I remember thanking God that my colleague at the magazine had managed to fix me up with a home birth. By now, I thought, in hospital they’d have been doing all kinds of things to haul Siri out. They’d have had instruments out, for sure. But that night my midwife told me that all it took was patience.
Then at last Siri joined me in the world. The fact that my mother was in the next room made me swallow the grunts and roars as, with a final heave, Siri came! She was here, with me in the world, outside my body. She let out this very polite, yelling cry of surprise and the midwife washed her face and wrapped her in a linen cloth. Then she laid my baby on my breast with her face close to mine, squeaking and muttering like a kitten.
‘Not hungry yet,’ said the midwife. ‘Tired herself out getting out of there, poor pet.’
I stared down at Siri’s round, pink face and the rim of hair standing up from her head like a black crown. The midwife, busying herself at the other end of my body dealing with the afterbirth, glanced up just as my baby opened her big black eyes and looked straight, straight into mine. My body was engulfed by what felt like waves of electricity as we recognized each other.
‘Ha!’ said the midwife. ‘Been here before, has that one!’
That was when my mother pushed her head round the door. ‘That’s it, then? Did I hear someone cry?’ She came in with a big mug of tea. ‘Aren’t you a clever girl?’ She kissed my sweating brow. Then pulled back the linen cloth. ‘And isn’t this a very pretty . . .’
‘. . . Girl!’ I said.
‘I thought so,’ she said.
Then the midwife, suddenly looking very tired herself, started to pack her bags and baggages. ‘Kip for me,’ she said, smiling down at me. ‘We did well there, kid.’
‘What’s your name, Miss Clark?’ I said. ‘What is your name?’
‘Siri,’ she said. ‘I know, I know! But my Mum’s Swedish pen-friend was called that. You know what mothers are.’
‘I do now!’ I said, touching my sweating cheek against that of my new daughter. ‘I do now.’
THIRTEEN
Punishment
Led by one of the Governor’s guard, the harbourmaster made his way through the garden on to the colonnaded terrace that looked down towards the harbour. Helée was sitting on a stone bench, his hunting dogs at his feet. Like many Romanised Gauls, Helée relished the hunt.
The harbourmaster stood, holding his round cap, his face nut-brown under the pale line which marked the place where his hat normally protected his massive forehead. His heavily greased hair was pulled back into a cue.
Helée nodded, gesturing towards a low stool by the bench. When the harbourmaster sat, his knees almost came to his chin. He had to look up to the Governor to make his report. He reported on the weather, the fish catches, the imports and the exports, the markets and the census. Behind him, by the wall, the scribe scratched away on his tablet.
It was all good news. The Governor nodded his dismissal. The harbourmaster sat on, turning his hat in his hands.
‘And was there something else, Harbourmaster?’ said Helée. He’d learned early in his army career that a kind of tough courtesy got you quite a good way with such people, who – being only a hundred years from barbarism – were as jumpy as a startled hind, only rather more dangerous.
‘Well, your honour. I did hear that your honour’s son is becoming very popular with these cures of his and all. News of it is shouted right across the province. I hear he cured your honour of a very bad affliction.’
Helée bent his head. ‘That is so, Harbourmaster. He is becoming a fine doctor.’
‘So many fine arts are at his fingertips, your honour.’
Helée stood up and his dogs got to their feet, ears pricked. ‘Was there something of concern for you, Harbourmaster?’
‘He did attend to my own dear son, your honour, but to no avail.’ The harbourmaster squeezed even harder on his hat. ‘Well, your honour, a certain thing does concern me. It concerns me that these wonders are performed alongside invocation to the Nazarene, the one some of the Greek lads down on the dock call the Christ. The young master makes the mark of these Christians when he performs these miracles.’
Helée scowled and moved to grab the harbourmaster by the folds of his cloak and up off his feet. The dogs growled, their tails low. Then he dropped the harbourmaster, brushed his hands, one against the other and shouted for his guard who were lounging outside the door. ‘Here! Kick this fellow down to his hovel at the harbour and kick him on to a ship where he may cure his concerns with a bit of hard rowing. He resents my so
n for not curing his son and he blasphemes against the Emperor and blasphemes against my house.’ Helée stood there and watched his guards kicking and pushing the harbourmaster all the way down the hill. Then he shouted at the door for someone to bring his son. ‘. . . And the Corinthian!’ he bellowed. ‘And while you’re at it you may request that my wife attends me.’
Later, standing before a red-faced Helée, neither Modeste nor Tib denied that they invoked the Nazarene to aid them in their work. Helée moved in closely to Modeste who took half a step backwards. ‘Is this what you do, Corinthian? You take my son and make my very blood blaspheme against the Emperor and our god Emperors? Our great Emperor has toiled to purge the army of these savages, putting them down like the vermin they are. They’re like the monster whose head you cut off and two grow on its place.’ He was terrible in his rage, spitting his words into Modeste’s face.
‘Messire, the Empress . . .’ began Modeste.
Helée put up a hand. ‘Utter no more blasphemies, Corinthian!’ He turned to the guard. ‘Shut away this blasphemer, teach him not to insult his Emperor. He needs a hard lesson. He’s only fit for meat for the arena.’
The guard hustled Modeste away, grasping him with a handful of his gown.
‘Father!’ pleaded Tib. ‘Please!’
Helée turned on his son. ‘And you! You’re in for the best thrashing a boy may endure for doing this in my name.’
‘Helée!’ murmured Serina, who was standing by Tib. ‘The boy gave you back your sight. Remember . . .’ The delicate objection in his wife’s voice enraged Helée further. Unlike him, she was Roman by birth, and sometimes this sat between them like a drawn sword.
‘The spawn of the Underworld possess their magic I do not doubt!’ He loomed over her and she shrunk away from him. ‘You! You’ve not been listening to this traitorous gabble about the Nazarene? Tell me you haven’t, woman!’ There was a keen question in his voice.
She stood up very straight, her gown falling back in its graceful folds, one hand on Tib’s shoulder. ‘I am faithful to the Emperor and faithful to you, Helée. But the boy and the Corinthian mean no bad things. They cure and help people. The boy is only eleven. He is my son. He is our son. I love him. You love him, Helée.’
Her husband’s smile was like a fox baring its teeth. ‘Then your motherly love must hold him tight, madam, while I will beat this heresy out of him. He must give it up.’
He had his guard tie the boy to one of the columns in the courtyard. Serina placed her head on the stone beside that of her son so he could only see her face. She clutched one shackled hand tightly.
Helée took a whip from the guard’s hand. From another part of the villa they could hear Modeste crying out in agony. ‘Do not hurt Modeste, Father. Do not!’ said Tib in a clear voice.
That was when Helée struck Tib three times with a whip, making the boy grunt with pain. ‘Do you renounce this heresy?’ He barked the words into Tib’s face. The boy shook his head, tears flying down his face, glittering in the rays of the low afternoon sun.
The dogs growled.
Helée handed the whip to his guard. ‘Here, make him see sense, will you? Three strokes and ask him the question again.’
Then he strode off, dragging a protesting Serina with him.
The guard, a middle-aged Gaul, who had watched the boy grow up from birth and had witnessed his healing wonders, laid on the whip with a much lighter hand than his master, making sure the snap and crack occurred before the whip flicked the skin off the boy’s back.
After twenty-one such strokes he reported to his master that neither the boy nor the Corinthian would recant. ‘There is one thing, sir. I have to say the boy’s strips are healing up as soon as they are laid. Curious thing, that!’
Helée clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘Give the boy to his mother. How will I explain this? How?’
The next day Helée had Tib and a limping Modeste brought to him and pronounced his judgement. The two blasphemers were to be set in a boat and banished from his sight, to be left to the wilderness where the boars and the bears might take their fill of them. ‘You are my son. And now you must be an example to others. I will not have this poison in my house.’ He turned to the guard.
Helée, from his high terrace, watched as the pair was marched down to the harbour surrounded by a unit of his guard. Tib had to help Modeste, who was badly injured from his beating, although he himself had not a mark on him. Serina and her ladies walked alongside in silence, the skirts of their gowns trailing in the dust.
The tumult and noise of the harbour came to a stop as slaves and the harbour men put down their ropes, left their pulleys and stood in silence watching the little procession. From his terrace Helée’s sharp soldier’s eyes observed his wife as she embraced both her son and the Corinthian and handed them over to the substitute harbourmaster, who lifted them bodily into a small boat that boasted only a mere slip of a sail and two oars.
Helée made his way out of the house and stood halfway down the hill, watching. He watched as Serina – who had clearly prepared for this – had her ladies put packages of food aboard, along with the leather pouches that they both carried with their cures. Last came a male slave with Modeste’s boxes. She glanced up the hill at the still figure of her husband. He bowed his head, acknowledging her small defiance.
The boat pushed off and the man and the boy started clumsily to row upstream, watched by a silent crowd. Then, at a nod from Serina, one of the seamen jumped aboard and another followed him. They took the oars from Modeste and Tib and started to row the boat for them. A cheer went up amongst the watching people who admired the courage of the seamen. Who knew what punishment the Governor would exact for such an act?
His face expressionless, Helée turned away and marched up the hill. In the house he called on members of his guard to strip down the boy’s eyrie of any remaining blasphemous documents and take them outside to burn them. They returned to say that the room had already been stripped and there was no sign of documents or other traitorous items. It was empty.
FOURTEEN
Philip and the Small Red Hat
I’m sitting in the courtyard munching strawberry jam on another chunk of breakfast bread when the big door opens and Philip and Mae tumble through, laughing. They look at me in surprise. I might be the turtle I saw this morning, swimming down the centre of the canal. Philip actually looks up at the window of the eyrie, where he expected to find me and now looks back down at me as though I’m the ghost of myself. ‘You’re eating! My god you’re eating, Estella!’ He staggers and steadies himself with a hand on Mae’s shoulder.
Mae giggles. ‘Yeah, honey-Starr. You’re eating and we’re drunk.’ She puts an arm round his waist and guides him to a chair. He’s the one more worse for wear.
Philip sits back and looks at me through half-closed eyes. ‘You’re eating!’ he repeats, his voice full of dark, self-pitying accusation.
I take another bite. ‘It’s not against the law,’ I say with my mouth full.
‘Against Philip’s law,’ says Mae. ‘Our Phil is a man of the law, i’n’he? Rules the table, rules the court, rules the world!’ She giggles and busies herself finding a cigarette in her handbag.
Philip’s head drops slowly and he closes his eyes. His face is slack and he looks vulnerable. To be honest, it’s quite good to see him not in charge. I wipe the crumbs from my lips and look at Mae, who’s trying to connect her lighter with the end of her cigarette. ‘So what happened?’ I say.
Mae sits up straight, takes a long drag of her cigarette and pulls herself together. She’s like a dog shaking itself, righting itself when it gets out of the water. Or rather a bitch.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘What’s happened is this . . .’ Another drag of her cigarette. Then the words come out in smoke on one long breath. ‘We go to Cap d’Agde, take a look at the market, and take the kids down around the hurdy-gurdies. Then down on that nudist beach, take a look at a few naked women stretched out there
, you wouldn’t believe it, Stells. All shapes . . .’ She takes a breath. ‘Then we have a swim. Then it’s too hot so we have a long lunch and Billy takes the kids for an ice cream and Phil and I have more lunch. Well, more pastis. And more. Then Billy comes back and we’re pissed. And he shovels us all into the car, and he’s just shovelled the two of us out at the car-park down at the Jeu de Ballon. He’s mad at us. Mad! Tells us to get back here and get to bed before he gets back here with them. That we’re scaring the kids.’ She giggles and takes another draw on her cigarette. ‘Not together. Bed, that is.’
Philip opens an eye. ‘Estella! You’re eating!’ he mumbles.
I’m grinning despite myself. ‘You’d better do what Billy says, Mae. Get Philip to bed. Not your bed, of course! I’ll keep Billy down here.’
She screws out her cigarette on my bread plate, stands up, and gives me a mock military salute. ‘Yeah, ma’am! Keep Billy at bay, mind!’ She pulls Philip to his feet then pushes and pulls him through the salon and up the stairs. Then I can hear her through the open window in the main bedroom as she pulls off his shoes and tells him to sleep it off, darling, before she trips on her high heels through to the bedroom that she and Billy share.
I pour myself some more lemonade, still smiling to myself at Philip’s antics. And wait for Billy.
You know that Siri and I met Philip quite by chance. Siri was three or four and we were still living in my old flat and one night it got to ten o’clock and she’d woken up. She was always easy enough to quieten. All it took was warm milk with real chocolate, grated and sprinkled by her own chubby hand.
No milk . . . She looked up at me, shaking her head.
‘No worries,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to Mr Patel’s.’
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