“And yet she is ill.”
Regina thought back and remembered how pale Carta had looked during Julia’s dressing. “But she was ill before the party. I saw her. Go ask her what’s wrong.”
“She was?” Still doubtful, Aetius released her hands. “All right. If you are lying, you know about it in your heart … Oh. ” His eyes widened, his huge head tilted back, and he looked up into the sky.
Startled, she looked up, too. It took her a moment to spot the light in the sky. It was right in the middle of the great band of stars — a new star, brighter than any of the others, flickering like a guttering candle. People drifted out of the villa, drink and food in their hands, and their chatter faded as they gazed up at the strange light, their faces shining like coins in the last of the twilight.
Despite the warmth of the evening, Regina suddenly felt cold. “Grandfather, what does it mean?”
“Perhaps nothing, child.” He folded her in his arms, and she pressed her slim warmth against his strength. She heard him mutter, “But it is a powerful omen, powerful.”
During the night, after all the guests had gone home, Regina heard shouting. The raised voices, oddly like the cawing of crows, carried across the still air of the courtyard to Regina’s room. It wasn’t unusual for her mother and father to argue, especially after wine. But tonight it sounded particularly vicious.
With that going on, she found it impossible to sleep. She got out of bed, and crept along the corridor to Cartumandua’s room. The night sky, glimpsed through the thick glass of the windows, seemed bright. But she avoided looking out; perhaps if she ignored that strange light, she thought, it would go away.
When Regina had been smaller she had often come into Carta’s room to sleep, and though it had been some months since she had done so it still wasn’t so unusual. But when Regina appeared in the doorway Carta flinched, pulling her woolen blanket up over her chest. When she saw it was Regina she relaxed, and managed a smile, dimly visible in the summer twilight.
Regina crossed to the bed, the tiled floor cold under her bare feet, and crawled under the blanket with the slave. Vaguely she wondered whom Carta had thought had come to her room, whom she was afraid of.
Even here she could hear the drunken yelling of her parents. Though it wasn’t cold, Carta and Regina clung to each other, and Regina muzzled her face into the familiar scent of Carta’s nightdress.
“Are you better now, Carta?”
“Yes. Much better.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What for?”
“For making you sick.”
Cartumandua sighed. “Hush. I’ve been ill, but it wasn’t your fault.”
“You’ve been stealing food again,” said Regina, softly admonishing.
“Yes. Yes, that’s it. I’ve been stealing food …”
Regina didn’t notice the strained tone of her voice, for, cradled in Carta’s arms, she was already falling asleep.
In the morning, there was no sign of her mother. Not that that was so unusual after a party. Servants and slaves moved to and fro, emptying lamps and cleaning away pots and sweeping floors. They looked tired; it had been a long night for them, too. The day was hot, much more sultry than yesterday, and Regina wondered if a storm was going to break.
Regina ate the breakfast of fruit and oats brought to her by Carta. There would be no schooling today, as a treat for her mother’s birthday. Carta, who seemed just as pale as yesterday, tried to distract Regina with games. But today her terra-cotta dolls and little animals of carved jet seemed childish and failed to engage her attention. Carta found a wooden ball, but they could find no third to make up a game of trigon, and throwing the ball back and forth between the two of them was dull. Besides, it was too hot for such exercise.
Bored, restless, Regina roamed, trailed by a weary Cartumandua. She didn’t find her mother, or Aetius, but at length she came across her father. He was in the living room, surrounded by his papyrus rolls and clay tablets. He was talking to a tenant, a thickset bearded man wearing a dun-colored tunic and breeches. Regina peered through an unglazed window; Marcus didn’t notice her.
Marcus looked as pale as Carta, and, hunched over his columns of figures, more strained than ever. Midsummer was the end of the rent year, and it was time for Marcus to collect the rent he was due for his land, as well as the Emperor’s taxes. But things weren’t going well.
The farmer said in his thick brogue, “We haven’t seen the Emperor’s man for a year or more — probably two.”
Marcus said doggedly, “I have kept the tax you paid me and will render it up duly at the next visit. Even if the system is sometimes — ah, inefficient — you must pay your taxes, Trwyth. As I must. You understand, don’t you? If we don’t pay our taxes, the Emperor can’t pay his soldiers. And then where would we be? The barbarians — the bacaudae — the Saxons who raid the coasts—”
“I’m no callow boy, Marcus Apollinaris,” the farmer growled, “and you show me no respect by treating me like one. And we haven’t seen a soldier for nearly as long, either. None save that grizzle-haired father of your wife.”
“You must not speak to me this way, Trwyth.” Regina could see her father was shaking.
Trwyth laughed. “I can speak to you any way I want. Who’s to stop me — you?” He had a small sack of coins in his hand; he hefted it and slipped it back into a pocket of his breeches. “I think I’ll keep this, rather than let you add it to your hoard.”
Marcus tried to regain control of the situation. “If you prefer to pay in kind—”
Trwyth shook his head. “I hand over half my yield to you. If I don’t have to grow a surplus to pay you and the Emperor, I just have to feed myself, and what a relief that is going to be. And if you go hungry, Marcus Apollinaris, you can eat the painted corncobs on your walls. You let me know when the Emperor next comes calling, and I’ll pay my respects. In the meantime, good riddance!”
Marcus stood unsteadily. “Trwyth!”
The farmer sneered, deliberately turned his back, and walked out of the room.
Marcus sat down. He tried to work through the lists of figures on his clay tablet, but quickly gave up, letting the tablet fall to the floor. He hunched over and plucked with his fingers at his face, chin and neck, as if for comfort.
Regina couldn’t remember any tenant speaking to her father like that, ever. Deeply disturbed, she withdrew. Cartumandua followed her, just as silently, her broad face impassive.
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.