Ruth Downie - Tabula Rasa

She scooped up a spoonful and drew back as it touched her lips. “Ach! This is still hot! Is this why you spilled the drink?”

He said, “I didn’t want to spit it out.”

“They would have thought you were rude,” she agreed. “Now they just think you are a man who is desperate for beer.”

The meal had ended. People were moving about the house: men going out to fetch firewood and check the animals; women throwing down bedrolls in the shadows beyond the partitions and urging children to have one last drink, one last wee, and be sure to wash dirty hands and feet. At last Virana had the chance to get up and help, and had come back with the news that these people knew Cata, who was lucky her jaw was not broken, and that another girl had run away some time ago and nobody knew where she had gone.

“That is what happens when you choose the wrong man,” Tilla told her. From behind one of the partitions she could hear the repeated whuf of someone punching a feather pillow into shape. The evening had gone better than she had feared. Her husband was on the far side of the fire listening to Senecio with the slightly cross look on his face that meant he was tired and having to concentrate to understand.

Then Senecio was beckoning her over to join them, and that was when she spotted the Thing for the first time, and forgot all about long-suffering girlfriends.

“I have been speaking with your man,” Senecio told her.

“I am glad of it.” Tilla tried to not to stare at the Thing. It was stark and obvious now that it had slipped outside the cream wool of her husband’s best tunic.

“He tells me you have not had your marriage blessed after the custom of our people.”

“We were married in Gaul,” she explained. Perhaps the old man’s sky-blue eyes were dim. Perhaps he would think it was a bird. Then she remembered that he had recognized her across a crowded market.

“And so far,” he was saying, “you have no children.”

“There is plenty of time,” put in her husband. As if either of them believed that time would make a difference.

She caught his eye and glanced down at the Thing, then back up again. A faint expression of puzzlement flitted across his face, but Senecio was speaking again and he turned back to pay attention.

“I have been thinking,” Senecio continued, “that as an old friend of your mother and one who can remember your family, it would be a duty and an honor to offer that blessing.”

Her husband took her hand and bowed. The wretched Thing dangled forward as if it were in flight, then landed back against his chest. “We are the ones who are honored, sir. Thank you.”

If her hand had not been trapped in his, she might have reached up and dropped the Thing back inside his tunic. He could have worn something like that around the army base, but what sort of man arrived to meet his wife’s family friends for the first time with a model of a flying penis strung around his neck? She could imagine what fun Enica and the one with the lisp would have passing that on. She tried squeezing his hand, but he merely squeezed it back, his warm grip showing how pleased he was with the way he thought things were going.

Senecio was speaking again. Something about the Samain festival and how many guests would be there to share the feast and the bonfires. “And there will be a full moon, which will bring you good fortune.”

Her husband seemed confused. She explained again in slower British, hoping she had got it right. “He is offering to give us the blessing at the Samain feast, on the fourth night after this one.”

Only afterward, when Senecio had limped off to his bed, did she find out why her husband had said, “Ah!” as if this was a surprise, and not an entirely pleasant one.

“I thought that was it,” he said. “I thought that was the blessing. I didn’t realize he meant a whole ceremony.”

How could he have imagined that was it? His understanding must be worse than she thought. “There will be singing and dancing and lots of food, and if we are lucky Senecio will make us a special poem, and there will be big bonfires because it is Samain.”

“I’m not sure I want our marriage blessed on the night when the dead walk.”

“When the walls between the living and the dead melt away,” she corrected him. “And you will enjoy it when you get there. Now, tell me. Where did you get that ?”

He glanced down in the direction of her accusing stare. “Oh, that! Somebody lent it to me.”

He was wearing it specially. A winged penis. To meet his wife’s people.

She would never understand Romans.

“It’s supposed to bring good luck,” he said, as if that excused it. “That reminds me. There’s bad news about Valens’s father-in-law.”

Ruso survived a night in a native bed, although without his native wife. It was something Tilla might have warned him about, but didn’t. She seemed to be annoyed about something. Instead he had been offered a bracken-stuffed mattress and some blankets behind the wicker partition that denoted the men’s area. Senecio did not join them.

He had lain awake for what seemed like hours listening to sounds that might be rodents or might be Conn creeping across from one of the other beds to knife him where he lay.

Where was his sword? What would he do if they didn’t give it back?

He finally dropped off to sleep only to be woken by whispering from behind some other partition. This was followed by giggling and the unmistakeable sounds of sex. In a house with no proper rooms, everybody could hear everything that went on.

And on.

He hoped the sounds were nothing to do with Virana. The sooner that wretched girl was handed back to her family, the happier he would be. Meanwhile he would be obliged to put up with the embarrassment of some enthusiastic native ceremony with the old man making up poems about them and everyone singing those interminable ancestor songs that Tilla used to sing in the kitchen at Deva to frighten the mice away. He rolled over on the lumpy bed and tried to go back to sleep, but the gasping and grunting was annoyingly out of time with the rhythm of Conn snoring, and then almost as soon as it was over a child started to cough.

He considered getting up to find Tilla, but it was dark, he had no idea where she was, and besides, he suspected he was not entirely sober. He could hardly stumble around the house waking up sleeping bodies to find out which one he was married to, and it seemed Tilla had no plans to come and fetch him. Valens was right: No good came of mixing with the wife’s friends and relations.

He woke feeling bleary and foolish. Nobody had attacked him in the night. Conn returned his sword as he left. Ruso dismissed the murmur of “I am no happier with this friendship than you are, Roman,” as an attempt to salvage some British pride. Whatever the son thought, he had the old man’s approval.

Had he been feeling brighter on his walk back to the fort, he would have enjoyed the sound of the birds celebrating another sunny morning. He would have savored the smell of fresh bread from the ovens over in the ramparts. Unfortunately he felt more like the dead hen that was still lying on the desk.

Pertinax was still alive. “No hemorrhage, no excessive swelling, no unexpected pain,” reported Valens. He was annoyingly cheerful, having persuaded the deputy to stay awake at the bedside while he himself just dropped in a couple of times to check that nothing more needed to be done. “He’s taken some poppy but he’s lucid enough to insult me.”

“That’s good news.”

“Hm.” Valens settled himself on the pharmacist’s table. “You look done in. Good night, then?”