Elodie Harper - The Wolf Den

She glances back to where Cressa was standing and gasps, scrambling to her feet in alarm. A man is remonstrating with her, trying to stop Cressa leaning on his goods, but she is stubbornly clinging on. Amara breaks into a run. The man is shouting; it looks as if he is about to grab hold of her. Amara yells at her to let go, and to her relief, Cressa steps away, but then, in a violent movement, she pushes an amphora over the edge of the harbour wall. Cressa goes with it, pulled so fast over the side, she is almost a blur. She must have tied her cloak to the handle.

Amara cries out in shock. She hurtles past people, knocking them aside in her desperation to reach the water’s edge, oblivious to their anger. At the docks, she flings herself onto her knees. “Cressa!” she screams, leaning over the side of the jetty. “Cressa!” Her heart is pounding, her mind unable to take in what she has seen. She stares at the waves, but there’s no sign of her friend, just foam and a slight disturbance of the water where she broke its surface.

Amara stands up, distraught, looking for help. The man who shouted at Cressa is standing beside her, staring at the water, as dumbstruck as she is. She grabs his arm. “Can you swim? Can you jump in and save her?” She is sobbing, hysterical, almost pushing him in the water in her urgency. “Please, do something! Please ! She’s going to die!”

The man shakes her off, furious. “That fucking bitch just stole some of my best olive oil! Do you think I’m going to risk drowning for some filthy, thieving whore?” He looks more closely at Amara, taking in her toga. “Were you with her? Do you have the same master?”

Amara looks again at the water. Its surface is almost calm now, as if Cressa never jumped in, as if she never even existed. Amara cannot swim. With every moment that passes, the chance of Cressa surviving recedes. If she’s not already dead. She realizes other sailors and merchants are starting to gather behind them, exclaiming to one another, excited by the commotion. Fear grips her.

“No,” she says, trying to hide her distress, to control her trembling. “I don’t know her. I’ve just seen her around.” Amara turns and walks as fast as she can without running, back towards the marine gate.

She can barely get through the words, she is crying so much. Amara pours it all out to Felix. They are alone, and he is standing close to her, grasping her arms to keep her steady. She wants him to hold her, to comfort her, to share her grief. Instead, he listens to the whole story without interrupting, his face impassive.

“You did well not to tell them you shared a master,” he says, when she has finished. “They would have made me pay for the oil. And Cressa had cost me enough already. Barely earned a penny in months.”

Amara is shocked out of her sobbing. Felix is looking at her, completely unmoved by her distress. His coldness should not be a surprise, but it still hurts, and with the pain comes the anger. She shoves him, blinded by rage. He steps back, and she hits him again, not a slap, but a punch. He is too quick for her, and she misses his face, catching his shoulder instead. “I hate you!” she screams. “You don’t give a shit about anybody! She died because of you, and you don’t care. You don’t feel anything. I hate you!” He dodges all her blows; she is too upset to aim straight. “I wish you were dead!” Amara shouts, catching hold of his clothes, trying to shake him. “I wish you were dead!” He grabs her right arm, twisting it behind her back. She cries out and drops instantly to her knees.

“You don’t get to tell me what I feel,” Felix shouts, his mouth so close to her ear it deafens her. He releases her with a shove, and she cradles her arm. “Stupid fucking bitch. Do you think I chose this life? Do you ?”

Amara says nothing. She has never questioned how Felix came to run the brothel. He seems made for it. He crouches beside her, agitated, and she shrinks away. “I was born here. Not here.” He gestures at the study, as if impatient with its existence. “Downstairs. You think I don’t know what it’s like? That I don’t understand?” His face is unrecognizable with anguish. “My mother wasn’t as brave as Cressa. Too much of a fucking coward to kill herself and spare her son.”

Amara doesn’t move, doesn’t dare say anything. She cannot imagine Felix will forgive her for seeing him like this, not when he realizes what he has just said. He is hunched over, and for the first time since she has known him, he looks defeated. She understands, watching him then, that however much she hates him, Felix will always loathe himself more. “My father, or the man my whore of a mother insisted was my father, ran this place,” he says. “He gave me my freedom, so I suppose he must have believed her. But not until I had served a long apprenticeship.” He is staring at the desk – presumably his father’s – when he says this. Amara thinks of his meticulous book-keeping, imagines him sitting there as a child, watched over by an older, nastier version of himself. Learning his trade. But then she remembers the graffiti on her cell wall.

Amara looks away from Felix, her breathing shallow. Is it possible her master was once a prostitute? That he lived the same life as Paris? She is afraid to speak, to remind him of her presence, but the growing silence is frightening too. “What happened to your mother?” she says, her voice small.

“She died when I was ten.” He is staring at the red wall, his eyes glazed. His grief is so palpable that Amara forgets herself. In that moment all she can see is the frightened boy who lost his mother, who was tormented by his father, and her heart aches for him. She touches his arm, her fingers gentle.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Felix is startled out of his own thoughts. “Don’t touch me,” he snarls, getting to his feet. Amara scrambles out of the way, afraid he will kick her where she sits. He stares at her, and they both know she can see the tears in his eyes. “Get out.”

She runs from the room.

Amara closes the door of the flat behind her, stands on the pavement, her back to the wood. She feels torn apart, almost as much by her confusion over Felix, as her grief for Cressa. She cannot bear to go into the brothel, to face Britannica, to make Cressa’s death real, to see her fall in the water again as she tells the others what happened. She lurches off down the street, walking quickly but without aim. Rufus comes into her mind, the way he holds her, tells her he loves her. But it would be unthinkable to disturb him at his own house, in the daytime, with her ugly whore’s tale of pregnancy and death. She almost takes the street that will lead to Drusilla’s house, sensing the courtesan would not turn her away, and yet, she doesn’t really know her. Amara’s feet know where they are taking her before she realizes it herself. The potter’s shop on the Via Pompeiana. To Menander.

She stands outside the shop, watching. He is there, laughing with another slave. A young woman. There is no sign of Rusticus. Amara feels a pang. Perhaps this is his girlfriend now. She has no right to mind what he does; she was wrong to come here and impose her grief on him. Menander sees her just as she is turning away, and he rushes from the shop.

“Timarete!” he calls, stopping her. He catches up, sees her face wet with tears. “I can’t talk outside the shop,” he says. “Wait here. We can walk to the fountain.”

Before she has time to protest, he has run back. Amara sees him talk to the slave girl at the counter who stares at her, curious, then fetches him a bucket.