They walked aimlessly around the courtyard. Still it was unbearably hot; still there was no sign of her mother. More than ever Regina wanted something to take her mind off her parents and their incomprehensible, endlessly disturbing problems. She almost missed her lessons: at least her thin, intense young tutor with his scrolls and slates and tablets would have been company.
After completing three futile circuits of the courtyard, still trailed by a passive Cartumandua, a strange impulse took hold of Regina. When she came to the doorway to the old bathhouse — instead of passing it as before — she just turned and walked through it.
Carta snapped, “Regina! You aren’t supposed to be in there …”
And so she wasn’t. But neither was her mother supposed to be in bed when the sun was so high, neither was a tenant like Trwyth supposed to withhold his taxes from the Emperor, neither were peculiar lights supposed to flare in the sky. So Regina stood her ground, her heart beating fast, looking around.
The roof of the bathhouse had burned off, but the surviving walls, though blackened and their windows unglazed, still stood. They surrounded a small rectangular patch of ground, thick with grass, weeds, and small blue wildflowers. This forbidden place, out of bounds for her whole life, was like a garden, she realized, a secret garden, hiding in the dark.
“Regina.” There was Carta, in the doorway, beckoning her back. “Please. Come back. You’re not supposed to be in there. It’s not safe. I’ll get in trouble.”
Regina ignored her. She stepped forward gingerly. The soil and the grass were cool under her bare feet. Rubble, broken blocks of stone from the walls, cluttered the floor under the thin covering of soil, but she could see them easily, and if she avoided them she was surely in no danger. She came to a patch of daisies, buttercups, and bluebells. She crouched down in the soil, careless of how her knees were getting dirty, and began to pick at the little flowers. She had a vague notion of making a daisy chain for her mother; perhaps it would cheer her up when she eventually awoke.
But when she dug her fingers into the thin layer of earth, she quickly came to hard, textured stone beneath. It must be the floor of the bathhouse. She put her flowers aside and scraped away the soil with her hands. She exposed little tiles, bright colors — a man’s face, picked out in bits of stone. She knew what this was; there was another in the living room. It was a mosaic, and these bits of stone, brick red and creamy white and yellow-gold and gray, were tesserae. She kept scraping, shuffling back on her knees, until she had exposed more of the picture. A young man rode a running horse — no, it was flying,
for it had wings — and he chased a beast, a monster with the body of a big cat and the head of a goat. Eager to see more, she scraped at more of the soil. Some of the picture was damaged, with the little tiles missing or broken, but -
“I thought I’d find you here. The one place you aren’t meant to be.” The deep voice made her jump. Aetius had come into the bathhouse through a rent in the ruined wall at the back. He stood over her, hands on hips. He wore a grimy tunic; perhaps he had been riding.
Cartumandua said, “Oh, sir, thank the gods. Get her out of there. She won’t listen to me.”
He waved a hand, and she fell silent. “You’ll be in no trouble, Cartumandua. I’ll be responsible.” He knelt down beside Regina and she peered into his face; to her relief she saw he wasn’t being too stern. “What are you doing, child?”
“Grandfather! Look what I found! It’s a picture. It was here all the time, under the soil.”
“Yes, it was there all the time.” He pointed to the young man in the picture. “Do you know who this is?”
“No …”
“He’s called Bellerophon. He is riding Pegasus, the winged horse, and he is battling the Chimaera.”
“Is there more of it? Will you help me uncover it?”
“I remember what was here,” he said. “I saw it before the fire.” He pointed to the four corners of the room. “There were dolphins — here, here, here, and here. And more faces, four of them, to represent the seasons. This was a bathhouse, you know.”
“I know. It burned down.”
“Yes. There was a sunken bath just over there, behind me. Now, don’t you go that way; it’s full of rubble now, but the bath’s still there, and if you fell in you’d hurt yourself and we would all be in trouble. We used to have water piped in here — great pipes underground — our own supply from the spring up on the hill.” He rapped at the mosaic. “And under the floor there is a hollow space, where they used to build fires under the ground, so the floor would be warm.”
Regina thought about that. “Is that how it all caught fire?”
He laughed. “Yes, it is. They were lucky to save the villa, actually.” He ran his finger over the lines of Bellerophon’s face. “Do you know who made this picture?”
“No …”
“Your great-grandfather. Not my father — on your father’s side.” She dimly understood what he meant. “He made mosaics. Not just for himself. He would make them for rich people, all over the diocese of Britain and sometimes even on the continent, for their bathhouses and living rooms and halls. His father, and his father before him, had always done the same kind of work. It’s in the family, you see. That was how they got rich, and could afford this grand villa. They were in the Durnovarian school of design, and … well, that doesn’t matter.”
“Why did they let it get all covered over?” She glanced around at the scorched walls. “If this bathhouse burned down all those years ago, why not rebuild it?”
“They couldn’t afford to.” He rested his chin on his hand, comfortably squatting. “I’ve told you, Regina. These are difficult times. It’s a long time since anybody in Durnovaria or anywhere near here has wanted to buy a mosaic. In the good days your father’s family bought land here and in the town, and they’ve been living off their tenants’ rent ever since. But they really aren’t rich anymore.”
“My mother says we are.”
He smiled. “Well, whatever your mother says, I’m afraid—”
There was a scream, high-pitched, like an animal’s howl.
Regina cried out. “Mother!”
Aetius reacted immediately. He picked her up, stepped to the doorway over the scattered dirt, and thrust Regina at the slave girl. “Keep her here.” Then he strode away, his hand reaching to his belt, as if seeking a weapon.
Regina struggled against Cartumandua’s grip. Carta herself was trembling violently, and it was easy for Regina to wriggle out of her grasp and run away.
Still that dreadful screaming went on. Regina ran from room to room, past knots of agitated servants and slaves. She remembered that her father had been in the living room with his tenant and his figures. Perhaps he was still there now. She ran that way as fast as she could. Carta pursued her, ineffectually.
So it was that while Aetius was the first to reach Julia, his daughter, Regina found Marcus, her father.
Marcus was still in the living room, on his couch, with his tablets and scrolls around him. But now his hands were clamped over his groin. Red liquid poured out of him and over the couch and tiled floor, unbelievable quantities of it. It was blood. It looked like spilled wine.
Regina stepped into the room, but she couldn’t reach her father, for that would have meant walking into the spreading lake of blood.