From the walls other men watched, men armed with swords and bows. They peered down speculatively at Regina and Carta. Regina stayed hunched inside her cloak, trying to make herself shapeless and insignificant.
Old soldier or not, Severus had to pay a toll to be allowed into the town, at which he grumbled loudly. The cart rattled through the gateway, jolting over debris. The wall was thick enough that the gateway was a kind of tunnel, and the clatter of the horses’ hooves echoed briefly.
When they emerged into the light again, they were inside the town — but Regina’s first impression was of green. Away from the road almost every bit of land was farmed, given over to orchards and vegetable gardens. Animals wandered: sheep, goats, chickens, even a pig rooting at a broken bit of the roadway. People bustled, adults and children walking or running everywhere, all of them dressed in simple woolen tunics and cloaks. There was a strong stink of animals, of cooking food, and a more powerful stench underlying it all, the stench of sewage.
It wasn’t like a town at all. It was a slice of countryside, cut out by the wall. But here and there grander structures — arches, columns — loomed out of the green, and threads of smoke lifted to the sky.
Under Severus’s direction the cart nudged forward cautiously through the crowd.
Carta murmured to Regina, “Well, we have arrived. Do you know where you are?” When Regina didn’t answer, she said, “Do you even care?”
“Verulamium,” Regina snapped. “I’m not stupid.”
Carta smiled. “But I would call it Verlamion. This was the town of the Catuvellauni, my people. In the days when we battled Caesar himself, under our great king Cymbeline …”
“I know all that. So you’ve come home.”
“Yes.” Carta leaned and faced her. “But it is my home,” she said. “I am no slave now.”
“Am I to be your slave, Cartumandua?”
“No. But you are a guest here. You will remember that.”
Regina turned away, not wanting to be with Carta, not wanting to be here in Verulamium, not wanting to be anywhere. But even she was impressed when the cart pulled up at a grand town house, set at the corner of two intersecting streets. A central courtyard was bordered by an open cloister lined by slim columns. In the courtyard itself was a small hut that might have been a porter’s lodge, but it was boarded up. There were some signs of dilapidation, but the white-painted walls and the red-tiled roofs were mostly intact.
Three people came out of the buildings. An older man and a woman were similarly dressed, in plain woolen tunics, but the younger man wore brighter colors. The woman, it turned out, was a servant, called Marina. She helped Severus remove the horses’ harness, and led them away to a small stable outside the main compound.
“Marina is a servant, but not a slave,” Carta murmured in Regina’s ear. “Remember that.”
The older man, beaming, embraced Carta. But he seemed to shun Severus. He turned to Regina and bowed politely. “Cartumandua wrote to tell me all about you. You’re very welcome in our home. I am Carta’s uncle — the brother of her mother. My name is Carausias …” He was a short, stocky man, shorter than Carta, with the big, callused hands of a farm laborer. He had Carta’s dark coloring, deep brown eyes, and broad features, though his neatly cropped black hair was shot with gray, and his wide nose was flattened and crooked, as if it had been broken.
“And this is my son. His name is Amator.”
The boy was about eighteen. His tunic was short and extravagantly colored, and he had it pinned over one shoulder by a silver brooch, leaving the other shoulder bare. He had the family coloring, and his features, as wide and blunt as Carta’s or her uncle’s, could not have been called handsome. But as he bowed to Regina, wordless, his gaze was intense.
She felt something stir inside her: something warm, even exciting — and yet tinged with the fear and disgust she had first known when confronted by Septimius’s drunken lust. She turned away, confused. She was aware of the boy’s gaze following her.
As Carta, Severus, and the others unloaded the cart, Carausias took her to the room where she would sleep. It had a plain tile floor and green-painted walls. To Regina’s dismay there were two beds in here, along with small cupboards and trunks. “Will I share with Carta?”
“Well, no.” Awkwardly he said, “Carta and, umm, Severus will want to be together. I’ve opened up another of the rooms for them, where the roof isn’t too bad … You will share with Marina.”
“With the servant ?”
He stiffened. “Marina is a good woman, and she is clean and quiet. I am sure you will be fine.” He hesitated. “Look — Carta has told me what happened. I know things have been difficult.”
“I am grateful for your hospitality—”
He waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter. I will ask Marina to sleep elsewhere, just for a while, until you find your bearings. Even the kitchen, perhaps. She’s a good soul; she won’t mind … You can have the room to yourself for a bit. How would that be?”
She took a step into the room. “Thank you.”
“Would you like to rest? If you need to bathe—”
“No.”
“When it’s time to eat—”
“Could I eat in here? In my room?”
Carausias seemed taken aback, but he spread his broad hands. “I don’t see why not. I’ll send Carta to talk to you later.”
“Yes. That will be fine …” She shut the door on the kindly little man, and receded into the darkness and silence with relief.
She curled up on one of the couches — the one that smelled more fresh — and slept until Carta came, with a small bowl of water for her to wash and clean her clothes.
That first day she emerged only to use the latrine in the little bathhouse. Carta brought her food, mildly reminding her that she would be welcome to eat with the family. Regina stirred from the couch only to set up her lararium, just an improvised little shrine in an emptied-out cupboard, with the three matres standing sullen and silent at its center. She lit a candle beside them, and gave them bits of her food and the watered-down wine that came with it.
They wouldn’t indulge her forever.
On the second day Carta forced Regina out of the room, and walked her in a slow circle around the courtyard, showing her the layout of the house.
“Here we have the triclinium—” It was the Latin word for a ‘dining room,’ deriving from the couch that ran around three sides of the room. The mosaic floor was intact, and the walls’ painted designs, mock pillars, and glimpses of fabulous gardens, were clean and neat, though they looked faded. In one corner of the compound was a still grander room, but it was cluttered by low tables and cooking implements, pots, pans, and heaps of crockery and cutlery; a row of narrow-based amphorae leaned against one wall. “This was a reception room,” Carta said a little wistfully. “Now it’s a kitchen. It even had underfloor heating, but Carausias says you just can’t get the workmen to maintain it. Anyhow the cooking keeps it warm enough. And the courtyard faces south, you know; in the summer it’s quite a sun trap …”