There were private rooms along the two remaining sides of the courtyard, a small bathhouse, and a narrow staircase that led down to the family shrine. The house was a grand place, if not as grand as her parents’ villa had been. But it had obviously seen better days. Many of the rooms were boarded up, and one showed signs of a fire.
As they walked she saw a flash of color, a lithe movement on the far side of the courtyard. It was the boy, Amator. He had been tracking them, watching her with that heavy, liquid gaze.
Regina repaired to her room as soon as she could get away from Carta.
On the third day there was a knock on the door. She opened it, expecting Carta again. It was Carausias. He smiled at her, his hands folded over his belly. “May I come in?”
“I—”
Before she could resist he had stepped through the doorway. He glanced around at the room, her little piles of clothes and effects, and nodded respectfully at her lararium. “I’m terribly sorry, my dear, but I’m afraid Marina needs her room back. She’s hardly comfortable sleeping in the kitchen. And besides she’s out of clean clothes.”
“Fine,” Regina snapped, and she sat on her bed, arms folded. “Let the servant back in. I’ll sleep in the kitchen. Or in the stable with the horses.”
“Now, that’s absurd.” He crouched before her, his features softened in the gloom. “We only want to make you feel welcome. Welcome and safe.”
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be with you.”
He looked hurt. “Then where do you want to be?”
“In Rome,” she said. “With my mother.”
He sighed. “But Gaul is full of barbarians, my dear. I don’t think anybody is going to be traveling to Rome for some time. Not until things settle down. And in the meantime,” a little more sharply, “perhaps it’s time you made the best of it.”
She laughed at him. “What best ? There is no best. I’m stuck here in this dump. And—”
“But this dump is all that’s available,” he said, his voice steady but firm. “Listen to me now.
“Not long ago I and my wife and my son, all of us, were servants, like Marina. We worked on a villa, not far from the town walls. When the troubles began, things got difficult for the owners. They were extravagant, and they didn’t want to stop their spending, even when their savings ran low. They tried to sell us — sell us all, to work as farm laborers — but we were not slaves. In the end the owners fled, taking everything of value from the villa — the money, the jewelry, the pottery, even much of the furniture. But they abandoned the buildings, and the land. And us.
“And so we took over. We began to work the land ourselves. We brought in our relatives and friends to live on the farmsteads. We soon had a surplus, which we brought into the town to buy goods for ourselves. This is only three harvests ago.
“After the second year we had accumulated enough to be able to buy this town house, from an owner desperate to flee to Londinium. Though stewards still run our villa, it is safer for us within the walls.
“We have done well. There are only ten houses like this left within the walls of the city, and of those, three are empty. No doubt things will settle down, when the Emperor overcomes his troubles. But in the meantime, we will do what we Catuvellaunians have always done. We will work hard, and we will support each other, and we will get by.”
He stood up. “You are not even Catuvellaunian. But Carta has brought you here. I am inviting you to become part of this family, this community. You will have to work hard, for we all must work. If you do, you are welcome. If not — well, we can’t even afford another servant. You must understand this.” He stood over her, waiting.
At length she said, “The kitchen.”
“What?”
“I’d like to go to the kitchen. Please.”
He seemed nonplussed. But he said, “Very well.” He held out his hand.
Marina was working in the kitchen, making lunch for the family. There was a rich smell of fish sauce, which Marina was mixing into a salad of legumes and fruit. She was a stolid, cheerful-looking woman of about thirty. She wore her brown hair pulled back in a simple bun. She smiled at Regina, apparently not offended at this stranger who had stolen her room for so long.
Regina looked around. Shelves had been fixed to the walls over grand, fading paintings; on them were stacked mortars, colanders, cheese presses, and beakers, flagons, platters, and bowls of metal, glass, and pottery. The amphorae leaning against the walls had once, according to their inscriptions, contained olive oil, dates, figs, fish sauce, and spices from the east. Now, much repaired, they contained nuts, wheat, barley, oats, and the flesh of animals and fish, salted, pickled, or smoked.
There was no oven, but a hearth had been set up in the middle of the mosaic floor, and a chimney cut crudely into the ceiling. No fire burned today, but soot stained the paintwork of the ceiling and upper walls. Many of the mosaic’s tesserae had been cracked or charred by the heat. A gridiron was set over the charred patch, with a large cauldron suspended from a chain above it. Regina could see that the mosaic had featured a girl, slim and pale, surrounded by leaping dolphins.
Marina nodded to a quern stone, set up in the corner of the room. “We need flour. I’ll bake some bread later. Do you know how to use the stone? …”
And so Regina, under Marina’s instructions, sat on the floor and began to grind wheat. The familiar, eternal smells and sounds of the kitchen soon immersed her, and as she worked at the stone, her muscles tingling with the unaccustomed effort, she felt her obsessive thoughts dissolve.
She hardly noticed when the tears started.
Marina did, though. The servant came to embrace her, patting her back, making sure she didn’t make a mess of the few gritty handfuls of flour she had managed to produce.
The next day Carausias took Regina for a walk through the town. They were to go shopping in the Forum.
They set off in bright midmorning — it was a cold, clear, crisp October day — but Carausias warned Regina she had to be alert. “You were protected in your villa, and even on the Wall. But in the town it’s different. People don’t behave very nicely. There are plenty who’ll slit your purse — or slit your throat for their trouble …”
Regina listened. But she had found her way around the Thin Town, and had endured similar warnings from Aetius since the age of seven.
The town, surrounded by its walls, was shaped like a lozenge. It was crisscrossed by a grid pattern of streets, dominated by the road from the north that passed through the town toward Londinium in the south. A great arch spanned the Londinium road. Regina stared at this monument of carved marble, more ornate than any single structure she had seen in her young life. But ivy and lichen clung to its face, obliterating the inscription on the lintel, and a bored-looking crow hopped about on its guano-streaked carapace.
Near the arch the road passed close by a very strange building. It was an open space bounded by a semicircular wall several times her height, with steps leading up to its parapet. It was, said Carausias, the theater. When she asked if she could climb the steps, he agreed, smiling indulgently.
The steps were wooden, and were old and broken. At the parapet she found herself looking down into a bowl. Sloping terraces were covered by semicircular rows of wooden seats, now broken and stained. At the front was a stage like a little temple, fronted by four slim columns. The only performers on the stage right now were mice, a pair of which scuttled from pillar to pillar.