Ruth Downie - Caveat emptor

“Do your people know about our Great Rebellion?”

“Everybody knows.”

Camma gave a small nod of acknowledgment, like a princess accepting a compliment. “In Verulamium,” she said, “mothers tell their children that if they’re naughty, Boudica will come and get them.”

Nobody had come out of the great rebellion with much glory. Thousands had not come out of it at all.

There had to be better ways. Caratius must have believed that when he married an Iceni woman. Christos believed in loving his enemies. Her own Da had believed that if you ignored the Romans for long enough, they would go away. He had always refused to learn Latin because before long there would be nobody left to speak it to. But Caratius had been betrayed by this beautiful Iceni wife. Nobody here seemed to have heard of Christos. And now Da was in the next world with the rest of her family, and the Romans were still here.

The pace of the horses changed. Looking out, Tilla saw they had reached the crest of a long hill. The driver was slowing the team to walk them down the other side.

Camma said, “You know what it is to have a good man.”

“He is the best one I’ve found,” Tilla agreed. “So far.”

“Asper was a man who knew what it is to be an outsider,” Camma said. “To be part of one thing when everybody around you is part of something else.”

“That is a hard way to live,” said Tilla, who had often felt the same way herself.

“When he first came to the house I brought him wine from my husband’s store. He noticed I was pale. He asked if I was unwell.”

“I see,” said Tilla. Perhaps Asper had fancied himself a doctor.

“Lots of men only talk to women to show how important they are themselves. But when I met him again, he remembered what I had said before. And he didn’t look at me in the way that many men look at women when their families aren’t around.”

“And how is that?”

“Picturing them with no clothes on.”

Tilla had spent long enough living in army lodgings not to argue with that, but it was sad to find a woman so easily impressed.

“You must think me very weak.”

Guessing the rest, Tilla said, “I think you were very lonely.”

Camma shrugged. “When I knew about the child, I tried to do the right thing. I left the house and went to live in town. I told Caratius we must divorce.” She sat back and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “People talked,” she said. “Women said things. Men looked at me in the street. Nobody wanted to be my friend. I wanted to leave, but Asper had a contract and they said he must carry it through.”

“I’m surprised.”

“He said there might be a way out but it was best for me not to know what it was.” She shook her head. “This is all my fault! If I had been stronger-”

“No it is not.” Tilla insisted. “Things like this happen all the time. Wrongs are done. People get angry. There is a divorce, compensation is paid, and they marry somebody else. The man who is wronged does not murder other men, and if he does, that’s his choice. It is not the fault of the woman.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“I never liked Caratius,” Camma said. “And he never liked me. He talked to me as if he was addressing a meeting, and he was a wilting weed in the bed. But I never thought he was a bad man.” She shook her head. “I’m tired. Everything is going round too fast in my mind, and I can’t catch hold of it. I never dreamed he would do something like this.”

“An old man like that must have had help. Asper and his brother would have fought back, surely?”

“Oh, he would do nothing himself!” Camma looked surprised at the suggestion. “He would just give the order. And many of his people will say he did the right thing.”

Tilla said, “I shall ask my husband to speak up against him.”

“Your husband must do what the procurator says,” said Camma. “The procurator won’t care about any of it as long as he gets the tax money.”

Tilla felt her spirits sink. It was true: The Medicus would insist on following his orders. “So, she said, wondering if the procurator’s orders could be made to serve a better purpose, “if the money is missing, where is it?”

Camma pushed her hair away from her face. “I suppose Caratius said it was stolen to explain why Asper and Bericus disappeared.”

“So did he take it himself?”

Instead of answering the question Camma said, “I was awake most of the night waiting for them to come back. When the sun rose and there was no message, I knew something terrible had happened.”

This was looking more and more like a planned and vicious murder by a jealous husband. “How can you live in Verulamium with no friends if he is still there?”

“Where else can I go?” Her voice was barely audible above the noise of the carriage. “I sent a message to my family months ago. They told me I had brought shame on them, and not to come back. They said I should have the baby taken away.” She looked up. “How could I do that?”

When Tilla did not answer, she said, “I should have been stronger. Everything has slid into a pit.”

“You have just brought a new life into the world, sister, and you’re very tired. When you are recovered, you will see things differently.”

Camma said, “Perhaps. Perhaps Bericus will be found alive and my family will want me back and your husband will make Caratius tell the truth about what he did.”

“All this is possible.”

“Yes.” She sighed. “But Julius Asper will still be dead.”

The carriage rolled on northward, carrying home the dead father and the live son.

Suddenly Camma said, “There is one good thing about being in Verulamium.”

“Yes?”

“Every time he sees me, Caratius will be reminded of my curse. Even with his fine clothes and his horses and his proud speeches, that man will be afraid!”

They were words of courage. Glad to see Camma so animated, Tilla reached for her hand. “I will curse him as well, sister!” Too late, she remembered that back in Gaul she had promised Christos to give up that sort of thing. “And then I will pray for him to repent,” she added.

“We will both make him repent!” agreed Camma, grasping Tilla’s hand in both of hers. “We will seek justice from the gods, and together we will make him sorry he is alive!”

For the first time since they had met, she smiled. Even with the purple shadows beneath her eyes, it was easy to see why two men had fought over this woman.

Tilla did not want to stomp on this brief spark of happiness by telling Camma she had not meant that sort of repentance. As the carriage pulled in at the halfway stop, it occurred to her that she had just managed to disobey both Christos and the Medicus at the same time.

By the time Ruso entered the Forum it was approaching midday, but the sky was dark and the air cool. The buildings that surrounded the vast rectangle of open ground on three sides provided little shelter, and a fresh breeze was flapping the covers of a handful of market stalls huddled in a corner by the Great Hall. Ruso had barely begun the search for Albanus’s School for Young Gentlemen when he felt a cold splash of rain. Within seconds stallholders and shoppers were rushing to take cover.

Ruso heard the shrill chant of childish voices above the drumming of raindrops on roof tiles. He could not make out the words, but from somewhere among the ragged assortment of sounds rose the indomitable rhythms of poetry.

He found a dozen or so small boys seated cross-legged beneath a colonnade that, in another time and another place, would be there to protect them from the sun. They were facing an expanse of lime-washed board on which Albanus had painted the lines they were supposed to be reciting. Fluency and volume reached a crescendo as Hercules grabbed a half-human monster so tightly that its eyeballs fell out. Once the violence was over, the class lost interest. There was a scuffle at the back.