Still, the Forum, the beating heart of the town, was as crowded as ever. Regina plunged into its noisy, smelly melee with a will.
Regina was popular with the Forum vendors, if only because she was younger than most of them. There were few young people to be seen in town nowadays, and fewer still with money. The town had never been able to sustain its own population numbers; infant mortality had always been too high for that. But because there was no work for them to do anymore, the flow of immigrants from the countryside had long dried up. Anyhow Regina played on her youth and energy for all it was worth, ruthlessly haggling with middle-age men who should have known better.
The stalls nowadays sold mostly fruits, vegetables, and meat from the local farmsteads, gardens, and orchards. There were very few manufactured goods for sale. But sometimes there were treasures to be found. A shipment of brooches or scents or fabrics from the continent might find its way here, or the contents of a town house or villa would be sold off by its owners, who had decamped in search of a better life elsewhere.
Today, in her rummage through the stalls, she was lucky. She found a shawl made of bright yellow wool that its vendor swore had come all the way from Carthage, and even a set of rings — only bronze, but one of them was set with an intaglio, a cut stone once used by some grand lady to seal documents. She was able to pay for all this in coin, though she had to pass up a pretty iron brooch in the shape of a hare, for its vendor insisted on payment only in kind.
After that, bursting with energy, she raced back to the town house. Everybody knew Amator was home, and Carausias was beaming that his son, so long away, had returned. Regina yelled for Cartumandua. On a day like today it was only Carta, trained by Julia herself at the villa, who could help Regina prepare for her party.
Regina ran to the room she still shared with Marina, and threw her purchases onto her bed. She rummaged through her cosmetics and jewelry. She was running out of space on the little wooden shelves she used to store her things, so she shoved the three little matres out of the way and spread out her newest brooches, trying to decide which was the brightest. Beside the jewelry the matres looked like what they were, just dull lumps of crudely carved stone.
Once she had finished her chores in the kitchen, Carta came to help Regina with her toilet. She brought hot water, towels, and a scraper to cleanse Regina’s skin. She used tweezers, nail cleaners, and ear scoops to ensure that every part of her was perfect, and she patiently braided her hair. And she dripped perfume onto her skin, scooping it out of little bottles with a bronze spoon. Meanwhile Regina went through her growing collection of hairpins and enameled brooches, beads of glass and jet, and rings and earrings, trying to decide what to wear.
But as she prepared charcoal — she ground it up in one of her own most precious possessions, a tiny mortar and pestle small enough to be held between thumb and forefinger — Carta let Regina know how much she disapproved. “To spend good money on brooches and hairpins and shawls! You know what Carausias is saving for …”
Things had gone from bad to worse in Britain. It was just as Aetius had tried to explain to her, long ago. There had been a great wheel of state taxation and spending, with the towns at the hub; but now that wheel was shattered. The towns had lost their key functions as center of revenue collection, administration, state expenditure, distribution, and trade. And now that money was disappearing altogether, nobody could buy fancy pottery or ironware or clothing, and the towns’ manufactories had all but collapsed, too. Carausias and the other landowners had a deepening dread that the towns were simply becoming irrelevant to the lives of the people in the countryside, on whom, in the end, everything depended.
Meanwhile, without pay — as Regina knew too well — even the standing armies of the north and the coasts had dispersed. It was said that some of their leaders were setting themselves up as kinglets in their own right. Seeking security, the Verulamium town council had even tried to contact the civitates, the tribes of the north and west who had always stayed somewhat independent of the Empire, content to pay the Emperor’s taxes. But there wasn’t much leadership to be had there, either, and there was much bloody conflict between factions and rival bands. It was as if Britain, amputated from the Empire, were withering like a detached limb. There was no obvious solution in sight, not until the Emperor returned to sort everything out.
In Verulamium things were peaceful for now, if a bit shabby, despite wild rumors from the countryside of roaming bacaudae and vicious barbarian hordes. But sometimes, even to Regina who tried not to think about all this, it felt like the calm before the storm.
Meanwhile Carausias was hoarding all the coinage he could get his hands on.
He hoped to secure passage for the family from Britain to Armorica. This was a British colony in western Gaul, where a cousin of Carausias’s had a villa. There the imperial mandate still ran strong, and it was a refuge for many of the elite and wealthy from Britain. And there, as Carausias put it, the family could “ride it out until things get back to normal.”
But Carausias needed coins. Whereas the economy of the towns was mostly run by barter nowadays, the captains of the few oceangoing ships that still called at Londinium or the other main ports would accept payment only in the Emperor’s coin — and, it was said, at exorbitant rates at that.
That was why Carta was scolding Regina. “It would break Uncle’s heart if he knew—”
“Oh, Carta, don’t nag me,” Regina said, pouting into her hand mirror to see if her black lip coloring was thick enough. “You can’t get this sort of stuff for a handful of beans. You have to pay for it. And it is my money; I can do what I want with it.”
Carta stood before her, mixing the charcoal with oil on a little palette. “Your allowance is a gift from Carausias, Regina. He means to teach you some responsibility with money. But it isn’t yours. You must remember that. You came here from the Wall with nothing but the clothes on your back …”
Which was true, as she had learned over the years. Poor Aetius had had nothing but his soldier’s salary and a few meager savings. Even his chalet under the Wall had, it turned out, belonged to the army. Nobody knew what had become of her family’s money. It wasn’t a pleasant subject to be reminded of. Sometimes Regina regretted throwing away that dragon brooch of her mother’s. She could never have borne to wear it, but at least she could have sold it, and had a little of her mother’s wealth.
But all this was a bother. “I know all that,” Regina said crossly. “I just want to have a little fun, just for one night. Is that so much to ask? …”
Carta sighed, put down her cosmetic palette, and sat with Regina. “But, child, yesterday was just one night, too. As will tomorrow be. And the next night, and the next … What about the future? You don’t keep up with your share of the chores, in the kitchen, cleaning, in the stables.”
Regina pulled a face. She found her future hard to imagine, but she was sure it wasn’t going to involve mucking out stables.
Carta said, “And what about your studies? Aetius would be disappointed if he could know that you’ve all but given them up.”
“Aetius is dead,” Regina said. But she said it brightly, as if it were a joke. “Dead, dead, dead. He died and left me all alone with you. Why should I care what he would have thought?” She got up and skipped lightly. “Oh, Carta, you’ve become such an old woman! I’ll deal with the future when it comes. What else can I do?”