The most spectacular new building turned out to be a chapel. It had a concrete roof of elaborate curves. It turned out this was intended to model the tents within which Moses’s flock lived while crossing the desert. Beneath that startling roof the interior space was bright, littered with fragments of red and gold from the long stained-glass windows, and there was a smell of incense.
I felt oddly uncomfortable. The school still retained its profoundly religious core, within a shell of reform and renovation, persisting through the decades, an old, dark thing surviving.
Ms. Gisborne seemed to sense my unease, and from that moment in the chapel she grew oddly hostile.
“Tell me — when was the last time you were in a church?”
“Two weeks ago, for my father’s funeral,” I said, a bit harshly.
“I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “Was your parents’ faith strong?”
“Yes. But I’m not my parents.”
“Do you regret having had a Catholic education?”
“I don’t know. It was such a huge part of my life — I can’t imagine how I might have turned out if I hadn’t.”
“You will have left school with a strong moral sense, a sense of something bigger than you are. Even if you reject the answers, you keep the questions: Where did I come from, where am I going? What does my life mean? ” She was smiling, her face strong and assured. “Whether you turn away from the faith or not, at least you have been exposed to its reality and potential. Isn’t that a legacy worth taking away?”
“Do you think your secretary will have finished by now?”
“More than likely. You know, I’m surprised you came here, searching for this mysterious ’sister.’ “
“Why? Where else would I go?”
“To your family, of course. To Gina. Perhaps you aren’t very close. Pity.” She led the way out of the chapel, back across the compound to the main block.
* * *
The secretary, Milly, had indeed come up with a stack of old preschool records. Forty years old, they were sheets of yellowed paper, some ruled into columns by hand, closely handwritten or typed, and kept in battered-looking box files. Somewhere there must be similarly dusty fossils of my own school career, I realized bleakly.
Ms. Gisborne riffled through the boxes briskly, running a manicured nail down rows of names. I could see she was getting nowhere. “There’s nobody with the surname Poole in here,” she said. “You can see I’ve looked a year or two to either side of—”
“Perhaps you could try another name. Casella.”
She frowned at me. “What’s that?”
“My mother’s maiden name. Maybe that was how she registered the child.”
She sighed and closed the box file. “I fear we are wasting our time, Mr. Poole.”
“I have the photograph,” I said plaintively.
“But that’s all you have.” She didn’t sound sympathetic. “There are many possible explanations. Perhaps it was a cousin, a more distant relative. Or simply another child, a playmate, with a chance resemblance.”
I struggled to say what I felt. “You must see this is important to me.”
She stared at me, an intimidating headmistress faced by an awkward student. But she turned back to the first of her box files and began again.
It took her five more minutes to find it. “Ah,” she said reluctantly. “ Casella. Rosa Casella, first attended nineteen sixty-two …”
I found my breath was short. Perhaps on some level I hadn’t quite believed in the reality of this lost sibling after all, even given the photograph. But now I had a kind of confirmation. Even a name — Rosa. “What happened to her?”
Ms. Gisborne riffled through a couple of pages. “When she reached primary school age she was transferred — ah, here we are — to an English-language school in Rome …” She read on.
I sat there feeling, of all things, jealous. Why should this mysterious Rosa have had the benefit of an education in some fancy Roman school? Why not me?
Abruptly Ms. Gisborne dropped the pages back in the box file and closed it with a snap. “I’m sorry. This is too irregular. I shouldn’t be telling you this. The connection is only through what you claim was your mother’s maiden name—”
I guessed at another connection. “This school in Rome. Was it run by a Catholic order?”
“Mr. Poole—”
“The Puissant Order of Holy Mary Queen of Virgins?”
“Mr. Poole.” She stood up.
“It was the Order, wasn’t it? That was the name you just read.” It was a strange situation. I couldn’t understand her sudden hostility when we had gotten to the records of the Order. It was as if she were defending it — but why I had no idea. Perhaps she had something to hide. I stabbed in the dark. “Does this school have links to the Order, too? Is that why you’re suddenly so defensive?”
She walked to the door. “Good day to you now.” As if by magic Milly opened the door, apparently waiting to throw me out.
I stood up. “Thanks for your time. And you know — you’re right. I will go see Gina. I should have gone there first.” I smiled, as coldly as I could. “And if I find out anything that embarrasses your school and its murky past you can be sure I’ll broadcast it.”
Ms. Gisborne’s face was as expressionless as a statue’s. “You are an unpleasant and flawed man, Mr. Poole. Good day to you.”
And as the big school door was closed against me, unpleasant and flawed was just how I felt — along with a big dose of good old Catholic guilt.
Guilty or not, on the way home I used my cell phone to book a flight to Miami.
Chapter 9
The journey south from the Wall, through a dismal, closed-in British autumn, was a blur, a bad dream. It was nothing like the adventure with Aetius, five years earlier. This time the three of them — Regina, Cartumandua, and Severus — weren’t even riding in a proper carriage but in a crude, dirty, stinking cart used for carrying hay and cattle muck. In five years the road had decayed badly, with the roadside ditches clogged with weeds and rubbish, the waystones tumbled, smashed, or stolen, and potholes where the locals had prised cobbles out of the surface for building materials. The way stations and inns seemed a lot more run-down, too.
But Regina didn’t care.
She sat in the back of the cart with Cartumandua, wrapped in her cucullus, hunched over on herself, with the three matres clutched to her belly. She didn’t talk, wouldn’t play games, and was reluctant to eat. She wasn’t even afraid, despite Severus’s constant, gloomy warnings of the danger they faced from bacaudae. These wanderers who plagued the countryside were refugees from failed towns and villas, or barbarian relics of beaten-back invasions, or even former soldiers who had abandoned their posts. The bacaudae were symptoms of the slow breakdown of the diocese’s society, and all had to be assumed a threat.
She slept as much as she could, though her dozing was interrupted by the jolting of the cart. At night she lay on straw-stuffed pallets, or sometimes just on blankets and cloaks scattered on dirt floors, listening to Severus’s drunken fumblings at Cartumandua. Sometimes she stayed awake all through the night, until the dawn came. At least she was alone in the dark. And if she stayed awake she had a better chance of escaping into the oblivion of sleep during the misery of the day.
But when she did sleep, each time she woke she was disappointed to be back in this uncomfortable reality, the endless, meaningless, arrow-straight road surface, and to the fact that she was alone now, alone save for the matres — and perhaps her mother, who had abandoned her to go to Rome.
* * *
At last they approached a walled town. The town was set beside a river, on a plain studded with farmsteads. Beyond the town a hillside rose steeply, with a scattering of buildings on its flanks and at its summit.
The town’s wall was at least twice Regina’s height. It was faced with square tiles of gray slate, but in places the slates had decayed away or had been stripped off, exposing a core of big rub
ble blocks set in concrete, interspersed with layers of flat red bricks. It would have been dwarfed, of course, by the great northern Wall.
They came to a gate, a massive structure with two cylindrical towers topped with battlements. There were two large entrances through which the road passed, and two smaller side passages, evidently meant for people. But the side passages were blocked with rubble, and one of the big archways had collapsed.
A man stood before the gate, blocking their way. He wore the remnants of a soldier’s armor, strips of tarnished metal held in place over his chest by much-patched leather bands. He was armed — but only, comically, with what looked like a farmer’s iron scythe. Severus negotiated. As a former soldier he had a basis of contact with the gatekeeper, and they shared dull, incomprehensible details of assignments and ranks and duties.
From the walls other men watched, men armed with swords and bows. They peered down speculatively at Regina and Carta. Regina stayed hunched inside her cloak, trying to make herself shapeless and insignificant.
Old soldier or not, Severus had to pay a toll to be allowed into the town, at which he grumbled loudly. The cart rattled through the gateway, jolting over debris. The wall was thick enough that the gateway was a kind of tunnel, and the clatter of the horses’ hooves echoed briefly.
When they emerged into the light again, they were inside the town — but Regina’s first impression was of green. Away from the road almost every bit of land was farmed, given over to orchards and vegetable gardens. Animals wandered: sheep, goats, chickens, even a pig rooting at a broken bit of the roadway. People bustled, adults and children walking or running everywhere, all of them dressed in simple woolen tunics and cloaks. There was a strong stink of animals, of cooking food, and a more powerful stench underlying it all, the stench of sewage.
It wasn’t like a town at all. It was a slice of countryside, cut out by the wall. But here and there grander structures — arches, columns — loomed out of the green, and threads of smoke lifted to the sky.
Under Severus’s direction the cart nudged forward cautiously through the crowd.
Carta murmured to Regina, “Well, we have arrived. Do you know where you are?” When Regina didn’t answer, she said, “Do you even care?”
“Verulamium,” Regina snapped. “I’m not stupid.”
Carta smiled. “But I would call it Verlamion. This was the town of the Catuvellauni, my people. In the days when we battled Caesar himself, under our great king Cymbeline …”
“I know all that. So you’ve come home.”
“Yes.” Carta leaned and faced her. “But it is my home,” she said. “I am no slave now.”
“Am I to be your slave, Cartumandua?”
“No. But you are a guest here. You will remember that.”
Regina turned away, not wanting to be with Carta, not wanting to be here in Verulamium, not wanting to be anywhere. But even she was impressed when the cart pulled up at a grand town house, set at the corner of two intersecting streets. A central courtyard was bordered by an open cloister lined by slim columns. In the courtyard itself was a small hut that might have been a porter’s lodge, but it was boarded up. There were some signs of dilapidation, but the white-painted walls and the red-tiled roofs were mostly intact.
Three people came out of the buildings. An older man and a woman were similarly dressed, in plain woolen tunics, but the younger man wore brighter colors. The woman, it turned out, was a servant, called Marina. She helped Severus remove the horses’ harness, and led them away to a small stable outside the main compound.
“Marina is a servant, but not a slave,” Carta murmured in Regina’s ear. “Remember that.”
The older man, beaming, embraced Carta. But he seemed to shun Severus. He turned to Regina and bowed politely. “Cartumandua wrote to tell me all about you. You’re very welcome in our home. I am Carta’s uncle — the brother of her mother. My name is Carausias …” He was a short, stocky man, shorter than Carta, with the big, callused hands of a farm laborer. He had Carta’s dark coloring, deep brown eyes, and broad features, though his neatly cropped black hair was shot with gray, and his wide nose was flattened and crooked, as if it had been broken.
“And this is my son. His name is Amator.”
The boy was about eighteen. His tunic was short and extravagantly colored, and he had it pinned over one shoulder by a silver brooch, leaving the other shoulder bare. He had the family coloring, and his features, as wide and blunt as Carta’s or her uncle’s, could not have been called handsome. But as he bowed to Regina, wordless, his gaze was intense.
She felt something stir inside her: something warm, even exciting — and yet tinged with the fear and disgust she had first known when confronted by Septimius’s drunken lust. She turned away, confused. She was aware of the boy’s gaze following her.
As Carta, Severus, and the others unloaded the cart, Carausias took her to the room where she would sleep. It had a plain tile floor and green-painted walls. To Regina’s dismay there were two beds in here, along with small cupboards and trunks. “Will I share with Carta?”
“Well, no.” Awkwardly he said, “Carta and, umm, Severus will want to be together. I’ve opened up another of the rooms for them, where the roof isn’t too bad … You will share with Marina.”
“With the servant ?”
He stiffened. “Marina is a good woman, and she is clean and quiet. I am sure you will be fine.” He hesitated. “Look — Carta has told me what happened. I know things have been difficult.”
“I am grateful for your hospitality—”
He waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter. I will ask Marina to sleep elsewhere, just for a while, until you find your bearings. Even the kitchen, perhaps. She’s a good soul; she won’t mind … You can have the room to yourself for a bit. How would that be?”
She took a step into the room. “Thank you.”
“Would you like to rest? If you need to bathe—”
“No.”
“When it’s time to eat—”
“Could I eat in here? In my room?”
Carausias seemed taken aback, but he spread his broad hands. “I don’t see why not. I’ll send Carta to talk to you later.”
“Yes. That will be fine …” She shut the door on the kindly little man, and receded into the darkness and silence with relief.
She curled up on one of the couches — the one that smelled more fresh — and slept until Carta came, with a small bowl of water for her to wash and clean her clothes.
* * *
That first day she emerged only to use the latrine in the little bathhouse. Carta brought her food, mildly reminding her that she would be welcome to eat with the family. Regina stirred from the couch only to set up her lararium, just an improvised little shrine in an emptied-out cupboard, with the three matres standing sullen and silent at its center. She lit a candle beside them, and gave them bits of her food and the watered-down wine that came with it.
They wouldn’t indulge her forever.
On the second day Carta forced Regina out of the room, and walked her in a slow circle around the courtyard, showing her the layout of the house.
“Here we have the triclinium—” It was the Latin word for a ‘dining room,’ deriving from the couch that ran around three sides of the room. The mosaic floor was intact, and the walls’ painted designs, mock pillars, and glimpses of fabulous gardens, were clean and neat, though they looked faded. In one corner of the compound was a still grander room, but it was cluttered by low tables and cooking implements, pots, pans, and heaps of crockery and cutlery; a row of narrow-based amphorae leaned against one wall. “This was a reception room,” Carta said a little wistfully. “Now it’s a kitchen. It even had underfloor heating, but Carausias says you just can’t get the workmen to maintain it. Anyhow the cooking keeps it warm enough. And the courtyard faces south, you know; in the summer it’s quite a sun trap …”
There were private rooms along the two remaining sides of the courtyard, a
small bathhouse, and a narrow staircase that led down to the family shrine. The house was a grand place, if not as grand as her parents’ villa had been. But it had obviously seen better days. Many of the rooms were boarded up, and one showed signs of a fire.
As they walked she saw a flash of color, a lithe movement on the far side of the courtyard. It was the boy, Amator. He had been tracking them, watching her with that heavy, liquid gaze.
Regina repaired to her room as soon as she could get away from Carta.
On the third day there was a knock on the door. She opened it, expecting Carta again. It was Carausias. He smiled at her, his hands folded over his belly. “May I come in?”
“I—”
Before she could resist he had stepped through the doorway. He glanced around at the room, her little piles of clothes and effects, and nodded respectfully at her lararium. “I’m terribly sorry, my dear, but I’m afraid Marina needs her room back. She’s hardly comfortable sleeping in the kitchen. And besides she’s out of clean clothes.”
“Fine,” Regina snapped, and she sat on her bed, arms folded. “Let the servant back in. I’ll sleep in the kitchen. Or in the stable with the horses.”
“Now, that’s absurd.” He crouched before her, his features softened in the gloom. “We only want to make you feel welcome. Welcome and safe.”
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you.”
He looked hurt. “Then where do you want to be?”
“In Rome,” she said. “With my mother.”
He sighed. “But Gaul is full of barbarians, my dear. I don’t think anybody is going to be traveling to Rome for some time. Not until things settle down. And in the meantime,” a little more sharply, “perhaps it’s time you made the best of it.”
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