“I am so ashamed,” he said. “These last ten years … what I have done … what I’ve thought…”
“Hush. We both did what we were compelled to do. There was no choice for either of us until now.”
A few words and she had absolved him. He was more grateful than he could express. He said only, “We have a long journey ahead. I’ll leave you to rest.”
But before he could stand, Phoebe grabbed his arm. She was trembling suddenly and a grim, deadly earnestness contorted her face. “If we don’t get there … if we get caught—” she pointed at her sleeping daughter— “will you kill her?”
Marcus didn’t answer.
Phoebe persisted. “I took my mother’s place. She’ll not take mine. She’d be better dead. I’d have strangled her when she was born if I’d had the courage. But I couldn’t do it.”
Marcus exhaled, a long hiss of air between his teeth.
“You carry a knife,” she said. “A knife is quick. Kill her first. Then me. We can’t go back.” Phoebe’s eyes burned into him. “Swear you’ll do it. Promise.”
How could he refuse? Though his heart felt like a stone in his chest, Marcus took his sister’s hands in his and swore that if the time came, if they were caught and could not escape, then yes, he would kill them both.
While Phoebe and her daughter slept, Marcus sat and waited for Cassia’s return.
Shortly before sunrise, stinking and sweating, she was back. He had never been more delighted to see her. As he approached, arms wide, she gestured to her shit-covered clothes. “Don’t! Look at me! I need to get clean. I must be turning Roman. I’ve never been more ready to bathe!”
He ignored her. He needed to feel her warmth. Breathe in her scent along with the stink of manure. Reassure himself that this was real.
He held her until her muffled protests finally reached his brain.
“Let me go. You’ll break my ribs.”
And then he fetched her water and a cloth. While she washed, they talked about what they were going to do next.
They’d paid a month’s rent in advance but had intended to stay for no longer than it took to find Phoebe, get her safely out of Rome and themselves back on the road to Britannia.
But it was plain to both of them that Phoebe’s pregnancy was in its final stages.
“Her belly makes her so conspicuous!” he said. “There’ll be notices painted on walls all over Rome. He’s bound to offer a reward. Every pregnant woman will be under suspicion.”
“You think we should wait until the baby comes? Women usually scream when they give birth, Marcus. How will we explain that to the neighbours?”
“I don’t know. But after the baby comes it would be easier to disguise her.”
“And her daughter?”
“She’d fit into a pannier. A basket, almost.”
“But will she stay still? She’s very young. And what about the baby? No one can ask a newborn to keep quiet.”
“But it could be drugged.”
“Drugged?” Cassia looked aghast.
“Only until we’re clear of Rome, no longer than that.”
“With what?”
“Opium. A drop on the tongue. Enough to keep it asleep while we get away.”
“And endanger its life?”
“No more than being caught would,” he said. “She has made me swear to kill them both if that happens.”
Cassia was quiet for a while. “Yes,” she said at last. “There are worse things than death. For a woman, certainly.” Another silence fell between them, but then she asked, “Suppose we took them out of here now, while the baby is still safe – and quiet – in her belly. Could we disguise her as a man?”
“No man was ever pregnant!”
“Oh, but there are fat Romans. My old master’s stomach was nearly as large as hers.”
“I don’t know. It would need a certain swagger to be convincing. Phoebe hasn’t your courage, Cassia. I don’t think we can ask it of her.”
They debated back and forth, but ended up feeling as though they were running in circles. By the time Phoebe and her child woke, no solution had presented itself.
XX
It was vital that nothing in the rented villa appeared to have changed that morning. Anything out of the ordinary would be noticed and they could not risk curious looks or gossip. Bone-tired though he was, Marcus went out into the city as he had every day since they’d arrived.
He was on edge, he supposed. His every sense was heightened. As he walked through the neighbourhood, he became aware of sounds that he’d paid no heed to before.
Women’s chatter. Women’s laughter. Following him down the street. From a balcony above there was a giggle, swiftly stifled. He looked up and there were two of them, staring at him. One matronly and plump. The other, unmistakeably her daughter. Young. Attractive. Of marriageable age.
She smiled. Flushed. Turned away.
Modest enough, but obviously interested in him.
He went on his way wondering if it had been a mistake to adopt this disguise. In Rome, he knew a widow was a thing to be shunned.
But a widower? A young man, with money? His mask of grief would not keep people away for ever. It seemed he was already becoming a thing of interest. Maybe, even, an object of desire.
In the villa, Cassia was preparing food when she felt a small hand tug at the hem of her tunic. The little girl, Julia, had approached in silence and now looked up at her with fear-widened eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
Julia didn’t speak but pointed to the room in which she’d slept with her mother. When Cassia turned, she saw Phoebe sheened with sweat, squatting on her haunches in a pool of water.
The decision had been made for them. It seemed the baby was already on its way.
Marcus had said Phoebe’s courage did not match her own. He was wrong, Cassia thought, as she watched the woman in her labours. Though the pains made every muscle tense, every sinew stiffen, every vein stand proud of her skin, she made not a sound. She had balled the hem of her tunic in her mouth and bit down on it with each contraction. Only her breathing told Cassia how much pain she was in.
Her daughter stood in the doorway whimpering with terror.
“She’s not ill,” Cassia told her. “Don’t be scared. The baby’s coming. You’ll help me, won’t you?”
She stoked up the fire. Put water on to heat. Fetched linen cloths. Tore them in strips. Set Julia folding and refolding them simply to take the child’s mind off what was happening to her mother. And then all Cassia could do was wait.
It didn’t take as long as she’d expected.
When Rufus was born, it seemed to last an eternity. But maybe that was because she had been young and frightened and unable to do anything but watch.
This birth was mercifully short. One moment Phoebe heaved and strained and the next an infant was expelled in a gush of warm liquid, plopping like a warm fish into Cassia’s waiting hands. Without a word, she did what she’d seen women in the slave quarters do to a newborn infant. She wiped its impossibly ancient-looking face with a dampened cloth, checking mouth and nose were clear, so it could take its first breath. Dimly registering that it was a boy, she placed him on his mother’s chest.
Moments later, clutching her son to her, Phoebe gave another heave and the afterbirth was passed.
Taking her knife, Cassia cut and knotted the baby’s cord.
At that point he opened his mouth, drew in a deep breath, and began to cry.
It was not loud, but there is no sound on earth like that of a newborn baby. Here, in a quiet neighbourhood, coming from a rented villa where only a grieving widower and his slave were meant to reside, the sound could spell disaster.
For half a heartbeat Cassia and Phoebe looked at each other in horror. But then Cassia let out a yell followed by a curse. She kicked over the vessel of water, sending it clattering across the room. Julia curled into a ball, hiding her face against her knees, but Cassia could not help it.
For all their sakes she had to mask the noise of the baby’s cries. She carried on swearing and cursing herself so any of the neighbours that heard would think she was a slave who’d had an accident with some domestic task or other.
Her efforts at drowning out the baby’s cries were assisted by a cat, which – no doubt attracted by the smell of blood – had leaped onto the wall. Cassia shouted as though she’d lost her temper. “Mangy fleabag! Get away! Get out of here, you old bugger. Oh Hades! Have you shat in his bed? Oh, what will Master say? He’ll have me flayed alive.”
She continued yelling angry nonsense until the baby was suckling. It seemed a long time before all was quiet once more.
When Marcus returned, he was stopped in the street by a neighbour, an elderly gentleman outraged at having his afternoon nap disturbed.
“Your lad was making a terrible racket in there. He needs a good beating.”
Marcus had been up all night and with the shadows beneath his eyes looked like a man on the edge of insanity. The neighbour clearly thought him incapable of administering the required discipline.
“Want me to come in and whip him for you?”
“No … really, that won’t be necessary.”
“Don’t you go letting him get away with it, mind. You show him a scrap of mercy and he’ll be robbing you blind by the end of the week. Lads like him need keeping in their place and the rod’s the only way to do it.”
When Marcus finally got through the door, he and Cassia had to go through the pretence of a beating for the neighbour’s benefit. He took a stick to a bundle of cloth and she yelped convincingly in response.
Phoebe’s daughter watched.
“Poor child,” said Cassia when they were done. “She must think she’s entered a madhouse.”
“It’s no worse than what she left behind, trust me. In time she’ll thank us for this.”
“If we can get her out. It’s a long way home.”
Marcus took Cassia’s hand. Squeezed it. Both knew they needed to leave Rome and the Empire as fast as was humanly possible.
They had started to draw attention to themselves. And with a newborn baby in the house, matters could only get worse.
XXI
The birth had been easy. The recovery was not.
Phoebe bled. Much more than Cassia’s mother had done. Much more than she’d seen any woman bleed after giving birth. As soon as one bucket of cloths was washed and dried, another was soaked through.
It was fortunate that the villa’s small garden contained overgrown beds of plants that were both culinary and medicinal. Cassia boiled brews of raspberry leaves and spooned them into Phoebe’s mouth while Julia stood by her mother’s side, eyes wide with fright.
In the days that followed, cooking and washing and worrying was all Cassia seemed to do. The leaf tea helped to stem the alarming flow of blood, but she was well aware that it left them with another problem. Raspberry was so associated with women’s troubles. How could they explain to the landlord that his male tenant had stripped every plant in the garden down to a bare stem?
No fever followed the birth and for that Cassia thanked the Mother Goddess. Yet Phoebe was severely weakened and there was no cure for that but time and rest. The very two things that were not possible.
Marcus too was worn out with worrying. They could not risk the baby crying and so, reluctantly, both Phoebe and Cassia had consented to his purchase of opium. The infant slept soundly. Too soundly. When awake, it was not feeding as it should. If they did not get away soon, he feared that Phoebe’s rescue would condemn her baby to death by starvation.
In the city streets, each building he walked past seemed daubed with notices describing his sister and her child and offering a reward. A reward that increased with each passing day. Every tavern heaved with men speculating on where the runaway was and how she might be captured. As time went on the talk got louder and more threatening.
How were they to make the journey back to Britannia? Not on foot. In her weakened state Phoebe could not even walk across the villa’s atrium. Ride then? But his sister had never sat astride a horse and – even if her balance was good – she would be in danger of fainting with the effort. A cart then. Perhaps they could pull off the same trick they had played with Rufus? But no. Phoebe could not pose as a corpse with a newborn infant that needed frequent feeding.
But all this was ridiculous in any case! There was no point solving the matter of how they were to travel until he’d solved the problem of how they were to get out of the villa unobserved. He was increasingly aware that the neighbourhood women watched his every move. They would not even get the length of the street. He needed some almighty distraction so all eyes would be turned the other way while Phoebe and her children left. But what? He beat his brain to pieces but his ingenuity failed him. He was out of ideas. Well then. She could be moved out at night, he supposed, but even that was a risk. They had been lucky before, but would they be again? He was beginning to feel Fortune had deserted him.
Fortune. The goddess, Fortune.
He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind thumped into his back, knocking Marcus off the pavement and into the street. He barely noticed. His mind was suddenly ablaze.
He’d been so busy thinking of his own problems he’d given no thought to the city’s rites and rituals. It was almost midsummer. His heart started to beat faster. There was a festival fast approaching that could be of use to them.
“In two days’ time,” he told Cassia that evening, “offerings will be made to Fortune. The whole of Rome leaves the city. Vast crowds cross the Tiber to the Vatican fields. And then they try out the new harvest’s wine. Thousands of people, all on the move, Cassia. And not one of them sober…”
XXII
They had only two days to prepare. But that was all the time they needed.
Marcus purchased a carpentum – a covered carriage suitable for the transportation of a Roman who was wealthy but not outrageously rich. He carefully selected one that was not so opulent it would attract attention, yet not so run-down that it could not make the journey. He paid for it but refused to have it delivered to the villa. Instead he arranged to have his slave collect the vehicle on the day of the festival.
And then he went in search of sound horses that could pull it. Again, he paid and told their owner the same story – that his slave would come for them two days hence.
Next, there were minor details that would nevertheless be the key to success: suitable clothing. Jewellery. A wig.
And then it was a matter of waiting for the time to pass, hoping and praying that nothing would happen that might cause them to run sooner than they planned.
Fortuna’s festival dawned. A day of noise. Of celebration. From the moment of sunrise there was a hubbub and tangible excitement even in the villa’s usually quiet neighbourhood. People, dressed in their finest clothes, poured from their houses and into the street. Soon the roads were choked with a multitude that flowed like water down Rome’s hills, across the Tiber and out to the Vatican fields.
Only when they were certain that the houses around them were empty of people, only when the neighbourhood was quiet, did Cassia leave the villa.
She collected both horses and carriage without incident but knew it was not permitted to drive a vehicle through the city in the hours of daylight. The streets were too crowded in any case for her to get through.
When darkness came, she set off, and for the first part of her journey she was still going against the human tide. But little by little it turned as drunken Romans began staggering back from the Vatican fields, over the Tiber’s bridge and home to their beds. Full to bursting with fresh-made wine, many of them retched and emptied their bellies onto the ground. The stink in the warm night air was vile.
But Cassia knew from long experience the off-putting effect of certain stenches on the curious. The rotting corpse of a dead animal had saved Rufus from being looked at too closely. Perhaps she could make use of what Fortune had pro
vided?
Stopping briefly she pulled off her cloak and pressed it into one of the many pools of vomit that dotted the streets. She threw the cloak into the back of the carriage and then drove the horses on. With that smell rising surely no one would look too closely when there were passengers inside?
She reached the corner of the road where the villa lay. It was quiet. Most of the revellers had not yet returned home. And those that had were lying, insensible, in their beds.
Marcus had been looking out for her. The moment she reined the horses in she heard the creak of the door. Then he was there, coming along the street, a sack in either hand that he threw to Cassia. While she stowed them beneath the seat, he went back to the house. He came out with Phoebe, one arm around her waist supporting her, the other cradling the baby. After lifting them both into the carriage, he returned for Julia.
As soon as he and the little girl were safely inside, Cassia urged the horses forward. Phoebe’s face was covered by a hooded cloak. She slumped into one corner, Marcus in the other. To a casual observer they would look like drinking companions who had fallen into a stupor. Julia and her baby brother were lying between them concealed under Cassia’s stinking, vomit-soaked cloak.
They were heading towards the city gate when a man hailed her and asked her to stop.
“Where are you going?”
She jerked her thumb at her passengers. “Taking them home.”
“Give us a lift, lad. Go on. You’re heading my way. And their wits are so addled they’ll never even notice.”
She couldn’t refuse without causing a scene. Cassia nodded and shifted along the seat to make room. He climbed up beside her.
Her heart thudded hard against her ribs. She had to force herself to remain calm. Having him on the cart might help matters, she thought. They would look even less like fugitives. If only the baby did not wake, if only the child did not stir. If only he didn’t ask any awkward questions. All would be well. It had to be.