It was Cassia who was startled. Cassia who dropped the cup she was holding. It hit the floor, spilling of red wine over her master’s robes.
He reacted immediately. At once a stream of foreign words erupted from his mouth. He hardly knew whether they were those of a real language or whether it was something he’d made up on the spur of the moment. The tone of his invective was convincing enough, either way.
His hand was up. He had to strike her. But there was a moment’s delay. A moment’s stillness. Their eyes connected and he hesitated.
He must do it! Not to do so would be fatal. Her own expression urged him: come on. Do it. Do it now. Do it, or we’re both lost.
And so he hit her. Hit her as a master would hit a clumsy slave. A smack across the face with the flat of his hand. A smack so hard that her teeth clamped on her tongue and she fell backwards onto the floor. And when she was down? A kick to the belly.
He was careful. It was for show, the sole of his foot connecting more with the floor than with her flesh, making a loud slapping sound, jarring his nerves from foot to knee.
She’d known it was coming. They both knew the blow had to fall.
But it took all of his willpower for Marcus not to drop to his knees and beg her forgiveness.
Felix had turned away. He was muttering to himself, “Not him. Not him. Old fool. What’s wrong with your eyes? Just another bloody foreigner.”
The danger had passed. For now. Cassia got to her feet. Marcus raised his hand as if he’d strike her again. So she cringed and cowered as any slave would. Picking up his cup, she went creeping off like a beaten dog as if to look for more wine.
And then she slipped from the villa, and disappeared into the night.
XVIII
The streets of Rome were thick with manure. Each night carts were driven in to clear them and, earlier that day, Marcus and Cassia had been to find one of the shit collectors to make a modest proposal.
They had not spoken to the first man they’d passed, nor the second. The first seemed too honest to be bribed, the second too watchful. The third, however, proved ideal.
Sitting in the tavern, loudly setting the world to rights, from across the street they judged him to be an indolent man with a grudge against the world. Moreover, when they casually strolled past, they could see his cart was ill-kept. Rotten planking was clearly visible in one corner and that would serve their purpose well.
They had split up then. Marcus had walked the block and then come from the opposite direction. He sat alone, the grieving widower, appearing uninterested in what was happening at the next table. It was Cassia who approached the shit collector, buying him a drink, sitting beside him and saying quietly, “I wish to hire your cart for tonight, man.”
He’d turned and looked at her with suspicion. “Why?”
“For a joke.”
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Not for the likes of me. But my master thinks himself a great wit.” She took a long draught from her own drink and then spoke the full name of Marcus’s father. “Primus Aurelius Aquila. Have you heard of him?”
The shit collector spat on the ground. “Arsehole, from what I hear.”
“My master – who must remain nameless – would agree. Aquila is his rival in business. And in politics.”
“What does a man like that want with my cart?”
“Not the cart. The contents.”
“Oh?”
“Yesterday, Aquila abused my master. Right there in front of the Emperor! Said excrement was pouring from my master’s mouth.”
“He said the bastard talks shit?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Between you and me? Yes. But now my master wants to pay him back in kind. He wants a load to be dumped on Aquila’s front doorstep.”
“Haven’t they got better things to do?”
“Apparently not. He’ll pay you well for this.”
“Go on then. What am I to do?”
“You bring your cart. Leave it in the side street – the one nearest to the river. You need have nothing more to do with it. But you’re to tell nobody. I’ll empty its load when the time’s right. And I’ll bring the cart back to you in the morning.”
“I want the money now.”
“You’ll have the money when the cart is delivered – with a full load, mind. Not before.”
And now Cassia would be waiting in the street for the cart to come.
Inside the atrium of his family home and praying that he wouldn’t encounter Felix again, Marcus began weaving through the crowds. He staggered just a little, giving the impression that he was drunk, but trying hard to appear sober. That he was keen to get through the atrium and into the gardens on the other side so he could breathe fresh air and steady himself.
But once he was in the shadows, he took a different route. Out of sight of guests and slaves he took off the sandals that slapped so hard and noisily on the marble floors and then darted sideways. Ascended the stairs. Along the corridor. Through one room. Then another. Towards his father’s bedchamber.
He’d drunk nothing at all that evening, and yet the floor seemed unsteady under his feet. Shadows loomed, the walls closed in. It had the strange, disproportionate feel of his dreams.
The noise of the party repelled him. Men shouting. Girls screaming. Music. His father’s guests, increasingly intoxicated, increasingly lecherous.
He paused for a moment. From the end of the corridor he could just see over the wall and down into the street. The muck cart had arrived. The shadowy form of Cassia was on it, working frantically, shovelling shit from one side to the other. Ramming the spade’s iron blade between the rotten boards, making a breathing hole.
He must find his sister. And swiftly.
He hadn’t entered his father’s room since the incident with Phoebe. After that, it had been off limits. He felt a terrible sense of apprehension when, heart thudding, he pushed the door open and walked inside.
And oh gods! There was a girl in there. Not kneeling, but sitting on the bed, her arms around her chest, her head bowed. She did not look up. Merely curled in on herself as if by not looking she could wish herself away from here.
He knew at once it was not Phoebe. She had yellow hair and this girl’s was black. She had obviously been put here to pleasure his father when the guests had left. Or perhaps she would be brought out earlier than that, for their entertainment.
He could do nothing for her. He had to force himself to go back out, to shut the door. The image of that helpless girl seared itself to the backs of his eyes. He had to forget it. He couldn’t help them all! Come on, Marcus. Find Phoebe. Where is she? Suppose his father had tired of her? Suppose she’d been sold? Suppose this whole venture was too late?
Panic propelled his feet, but he didn’t lose any of his caution. He looked into room after room and didn’t find her.
The slave quarters, then?
Back through the myriad chambers, ducking into the shadows each time he thought he heard a slave’s footsteps. Back down the steps. Through the atrium. Out into the gardens. Around the side of the villa. To the slave dormitories by the rear wall.
They were empty. Deserted. Every slave was occupied attending to the party guests.
Every slave but one.
Phoebe was there, alone in a corner. Curled under a blanket on the floor, a tallow lamp smoking by her side. Threads of her yellow hair caught the light. Glimmers of gold in the darkness.
She lay still. Asleep, he presumed. He approached slowly. Cautiously. He didn’t want her to cry out in surprise.
He crouched down; spoke her name.
She was awake, but looked at him with no recognition. He was a stranger to her and yet she showed no fear. Only resignation. Dead eyes stared into his.
“It’s me. Marcus.”
A little life seemed to stir in her then. Her brow furrowed. “Marcus?” she repeated.
“Yes.”
Sh
e looked dazed, as though not sure if he was real or part of a dream.
“I’ve come for you,” he said.
A look of infinite weariness passed across her face. “He wants me? Now?”
“No! I do.”
She recoiled. “You?”
Gods! She thought he was going to do to her what his father had. “No!” he exclaimed. “Not that. Never that.”
“What…?”
“Run away. I know a place. Somewhere safe. He’ll not find you.”
She shook her head. “There is nowhere.” She was looking at him as if he was simply spinning one of the fanciful stories he’d told as a boy.
“I have been there. I have seen it with my own eyes. The place exists and I can take you there.”
“Where?”
“The far north of Britannia. Beyond the Empire’s border. It will take us a long time to get there. But when we reach it … you’ll be free, Phoebe.”
“Free?” Her mind seemed to wrestle with the concept.
“Free. I swear it. Will you come? Please…”
An awful silence. Drawn out. Thinner and thinner, until it finally snapped with her softly whispered “Yes.”
“Quickly then.”
He was expecting her to leap to her feet. But she moved like an old woman, sitting up slowly and with such difficulty she grunted with the effort. When she pulled off the blanket, he saw that she was grotesquely bloated around the middle.
Pregnant. Ready to drop. Hades! He’d never considered that possibility.
As Phoebe struggled to get up, he was startled to see a small face staring at him through the gloom. One so like his own he wondered if he was imagining things.
And then he realized it was a child. No more than one or two years old, he guessed. She must have been asleep at Phoebe’s back. When her mother stood, she whimpered.
“Ssssh!” Phoebe put a finger to her lips.
The girl raised her arms, asking to be picked up, but with her huge belly Phoebe couldn’t manage it.
“This is Marcus,” Phoebe whispered. “He’ll carry you, Julia.”
A child too? That complicated matters.
But there was no time to debate. They needed to be on their way. He lifted the girl, and with Phoebe waddling awkwardly beside him they left the slave quarters.
Close behind them, in the far corner of the grounds there was a door from the garden to the street. A great heavy thing of oak and iron, bolted from the inside so that brigands and thieves couldn’t pass through. It had a lock too, the key kept hidden among his father’s possessions, but Marcus knew from his childhood it was a simple thing, easy to trigger with a bent nail.
He set the child down on the path. His hands were shaking as he unfastened the gate. The bolts squeaked in protest, but the party was so noisy it wouldn’t be heard from the house. Keep calm, he urged himself. Breathe. He took the bent nail and tried to force the lock. As a boy he’d only ever tried it in daylight, with Phoebe standing guard. Then, it had seemed easy. Now, in the dark, he couldn’t see what he was doing. He dropped the nail. Had to scrabble around for it on the ground. Found it. Tried again. Sweat was beading on his forehead, running into his eyes.
And then he felt a click as the lock yielded.
They were through the door. And there – a few paces away – was Cassia and the cart. Without a word, Marcus lifted the child onto the back of it. Helped Phoebe climb in. Cassia made no comment to him either about the child or Phoebe’s swollen belly. She simply told them, “Lie down. There. Face to the floor. See the hole? Breathe through that. Keep still.”
The moment Phoebe and the child were lying down she threw a length of cloth over them and began to cover it with shit so they’d not be seen.
Marcus didn’t move until she barked at him. “Get back through. Bolt the gate.”
He did as she ordered him. Bolting. Locking. Leaving the gate and slipping back through the gardens and into the party.
That was that, he thought. It was out of his hands now.
But when he reached the house, it seemed the party from Palmyra were readying themselves to go home. He fell in with them as they left and they – already so far gone on drink and debauchery that they barely recognized each other – paid him no heed. They wound their way along the straight avenue of cypresses, staggered through the gates into the street and down the hill.
Ahead of them, Cassia had the cart underway. The oxen were moving, but each time she came to a pile of dung on the street she made them pause so she could scrape it up with the shovel and add it to her load.
Marcus and the Palmyrene merchants were almost level with it when there was a commotion from behind. A cry. A woman’s call. Then a man’s. Slaves were shouting, one to another.
And then another voice cut through them all. His father’s, hot with anger.
“Phoebe! Phoebe!”
Yells. Commands. Feet, running through the gardens and into the street. Slaves, with torches held high, scurrying in different directions.
Though fear slid along his spine, Marcus paused, surveying the scene with the mild curiosity of a bystander, no more.
Cassia too looked back down along the road. Before long she was approached by one of the slaves who’d been sent in pursuit of the fugitive. “Did anyone pass this way?”
Cassia shrugged, as if utterly indifferent. “This is Rome, man,” she said.
“So?”
“People passing all the time.”
“A runaway slave? A woman. Pregnant. Child with her.”
“Maybe…” she said slowly. “What’s it worth?”
There was a moment of scrutiny while he assessed whether she had information or was simply trying her luck. He decided she was a chancer. Turned away. Looked at the drunken merchants and realized they weren’t even worth asking.
Cassia shrugged. The cart went on its way, unexamined and undisturbed.
The men from Palmyra also walked on, and Marcus went with them. At the end of the street they went one way, and Cassia with her cart and hidden cargo went the other.
It was a warm night. As it trundled out of sight, Cassia walking beside, shovelling piles of muck as she went, Marcus was suddenly seized with fear that the heat of the night and the stench might suffocate Phoebe and her daughter.
Yet he could do nothing but stroll through the streets, a drunken reveller on his way home to bed. He parted company with the merchants at the bottom of the hill and returned swiftly and quietly to the villa, where he waited for the cart’s arrival.
It seemed an age before the sound of iron-clad wheels on stone heralded Cassia’s approach.
Nothing was said that could be overheard by a watchful neighbour. No torches were lit, no lamps carried. The cart was brought to a halt, and though the oxen huffed and blew, there was no other sound.
In silence Cassia and Marcus scraped aside the muck. When they pulled back the cloth, there was a dreadful moment in which Marcus feared they had indeed killed his sister. Phoebe lay horribly still. But then there was a soft cough. A pained, indrawn breath. She was weakened, dizzied, gasping for fresh air, but alive, thank the gods!
It was dark as pitch. Marcus bent down to pull Phoebe up, then lifted Julia from the floor. The child was limp, as if the stench had made her faint. Slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, he hoped that was all it was. That she’d revive given time and fresh air. Cassia had Phoebe’s arm and was helping her down from the cart. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Marcus steered his sister into the villa.
It was Cassia’s job to drive on then, to pass through the city gates and empty the load onto a heap at the edge of the farmland that skirted the city walls. From there, to drive it back to the man she had borrowed it from. It was a task that Marcus knew would take her all that remained of the night.
XIX
A silence descended when the door of the villa was bolted behind them.
Terrible awkwardness coupled with crushing fear. The seriousness of what
he’d done hit Marcus like a hammer to the head.
Until now the reckless excitement of planning the scheme with Cassia had fuelled him. The fire had burned so bright!
But now it had died, leaving cold ash – and the wreckage of the woman who had once been his dear sister.
Pregnant.
Mother to a small child.
It drummed inside his head.
Pregnant.
Mother to a small child.
Julia.
His niece.
And … also … his younger sister.
His father. Getting children on his daughter.
There weren’t enough curse words in the world to cover that.
Phoebe had been a stranger to him these last ten years and now that dark gulf seemed to yawn between them. He had not the faintest idea of how to cross it.
“Sorry,” he wanted to say.
But sorry for what?
It was more than what his father had done. More than his own failings. It was the way men were. It was the Empire. The gods. It was all so very wrong. “Sorry” didn’t begin to cover it.
So he said nothing. And neither did she.
Instead he busied himself with making her comfortable. Brought her water to wash with. Fresh clothes. Tore his cloak in half and fashioned a makeshift tunic for Julia. Burned the slave garments they’d both been wearing. Brought them food. When they’d eaten a mouthful or two, he pointed to the bed where the dazed, dead-eyed pair could sleep for what was left of the night. At her mother’s bidding, Julia curled into a ball on the mattress. Only then did Phoebe at last break the silence.
“That was no muck-shoveller,” she said. “Who’s helping you?”
Tears pricked the back of Marcus’s eyes. Phoebe had always known what to say; what question to ask to draw a story from him. With unswerving instinct she’d hit upon the one thing they could speak of freely. It was easy to talk of Cassia and the land of the Wolf People. Far, far easier to describe what lay ahead of them than discuss what lay behind. He sat beside his sister on the bed while Julia slept. Told her most of Cassia’s tale. And a little of his own.