‘We had no control over-’
‘We’d have left without you. Maybe we still will.’ He strode over to the heap of luggage. ‘Is all this yours?’
‘Only the essentials.’
Mago pushed into the heap. ‘Look, Uncle. There’s furniture in here!’ He shoved boxes off an exquisitely polished table. ‘Nice stuff.’
Rina winced. ‘That is an heirloom, in my family for generations.’
Now Mago found Nelo’s stack of artwork. He lifted a canvas, ripped off its packaging of thick paper, and theatrically flinched back. ‘Oh, good, Nelo brought his pictures!’
Nelo stepped forward, fists bunched. Alxa grabbed his arm.
Barmocar said, ‘Well, you’re going to have a job fitting all this into your cabin. Which is that.’ And he pointed at the rear of the caravan, to a single battered-looking passenger cart.
Rina felt her own temper rise. ‘Is this all that the bones of the Virgin Herself bought me?’
Barmocar shrugged. ‘It was a buyer’s market, wasn’t it? We Carthaginians have always been traders. It’s business, that’s all. Nothing personal.’ And he eyed her, waiting for her response.
This was only the beginning, she realised. She dug deep inside herself, seeking patience. She was not without resources. Once she got through this bottleneck of the journey to Carthage, she would build a new life, a new position, and then she would wipe the grin off the face of this plump, foolish, cruel man. For now, she smiled. ‘What would you suggest we do with the rest of our luggage?’
He glanced at the heap of goods. ‘Sell it to the porters, if you can. Dump it. I don’t care.’
Nelo stepped forward, still fizzing with anger. ‘I won’t leave my paintings.’
Mago laughed. ‘Then stay here and eat them, Northlander.’
‘I won’t leave my work, Mother.’
‘Silence. You’re not a child. You can see how things are. If you aren’t going to be any use just shut up. Alxa.’ She hauled a leather trunk from the heap of luggage and opened the buckles on the straps. ‘Help me. Whatever we can fit in here, we take. Nothing else. Clothes, a few sets of everything for each of us. And anything small and valuable. Jewellery — the money bags-’
‘Yes, Mother.’ Alxa at least seemed to understand; she started opening boxes and cases, hastily pulling out clothes and other goods.
There were far more clothes than could possibly fit in the trunk. Well, they could wear some, Rina thought, a few layers each. They might need that during the cold nights of travelling to come.
Nelo stared at his work, his face ashen.
Rina relented. ‘Take some of it. One canvas, your best. Your most recent sketchbook, and your earliest. That will go in the trunk. And take a blank book.’
‘What?’
‘And your styluses and crayons. I suspect we’ll be seeing some remarkable sights before this journey is through. Raw material — that’s what you artists are always looking for, isn’t it?’
The steam caravan departed not long after dusk, and travelled through the night.
Rina woke at dawn. She had slept in her seat, huddled under her cloak. She felt stiff, sore, and cold, despite her layers of clothes. The caravan was still moving. Alxa slept, lying on the opposite bench with her head on her brother’s lap and her feet on their single trunk. Nelo had his sketchbook open, and was staring out of the window. When he saw his mother was awake he drew his finger down one of the window’s small panes, and showed her a thin rime of frost under his fingernail.
The caravan rattled through one halt after another as it passed down the track, heading steadily south. The tremendous plain of Northland rolled past, rich, intensively managed, studded by flood mounds and criss-crossed by roads and dykes and canals. It was all but impossible to believe that all this would long have been drowned under the chill salt water of a rising ocean if not for the genius of long-dead Ana and her heroic generation, and the ingenuity and dedication of all those who had followed. And, Rina wondered idly, how would the story of the wider world have differed if not for the saving of Northland?
But had it all been for nothing? For the signs of Pyxeas’ longwinter were visible all across the landscape. Banks of snow in the shaded hollows, even at midsummer. The telltale grey of ice on the wetlands where last year’s reeds, brown and dead, were still frozen in place, and wading birds struggled to feed. Even the leaves on the trees, the oak and alder and ash, were pale and shrunken. In the communities around the caravan’s halts she could see the damage done by the winter, houses of wood and stone smashed in by snow, the stumps of ancient trees hacked down for long-burned firewood.
The eeriest thing was the absence of people. Rina saw houses untended and unrepaired, and no threads of smoke rising from the fires. In one place she saw deer wandering through the big communal hearthspace, nibbling at the thatch of collapsed houses, undisturbed. The deer themselves looked gaunt, their ribs showing. Where were all the people? Gone — south, probably, in flight from the cold, just as she was leaving Northland herself.
Still the caravan rattled on, rarely stopping, such was Barmocar’s haste to get this long journey done. The cabin did have a privy with a vent to release waste through the floor, and running water from a tap, and a food box with dried meat, scrawny bits of fruit, bread, Northlander dried cod. Rina forced herself to eat every scrap, even the bread, the signature product of the farmers, disgusting, tasteless stuff that every Northlander knew would wear away your teeth.
They were all weary and feeling none too clean by the time the caravan reached its final halt, at a small port on the southern shore of Northland, at the Cut. Just as last year when Rina had travelled with Pyxeas, here the polyglot party were to embark on a flotilla of riverboats and make for Parisa. Boats were waiting, but not enough of them, and the transfer was messy and hurried. Now it was the turn of others to shed prized possessions for the lack of room on board, and to fume at Barmocar for his terrible service after extracting such high fees for the privilege of the journey.
Parisa itself, as they approached along its great river, was much as Rina remembered from last year, but even more crowded. Smoke rose everywhere, and people camped in shacks of rubbish on the quayside. The party was supposed to disembark here and proceed south overland across Gaira to Massalia, a port on the Middle Sea and a Carthaginian dependency. But when the lead ships tried to put into dock they were blocked by a small boat rowed by a team of oarsmen, to Barmocar’s fury.
A uniformed official stood up in the boat. He wore a thick mask over his mouth, as did the oarsmen. In the argument that ensued, shouted across the river water, it emerged that the Carthaginian flotilla had to make for the island at the centre of the river. There the passengers could disembark, but the ships would have to turn around and leave immediately. None of them would be allowed into the city proper.
The reason for all this caution was the subject of rumour that swirled around the ships in half a dozen tongues: ‘Plague. It is in the city.’ ‘No, not yet, but they fear it. .’
Barmocar and his companions argued about how difficult this was going to make life, but it was clear the official wasn’t going to back down. The oarsmen in the boat were armed, and Rina saw troops drawn up on the quayside, all wearing face masks, clearly ready to repel anybody who tried to land.
So they disembarked on the island. Rina, with her children and their single trunk, had to spend the night in a dusty, empty, cold warehouse, sharing the bare floor with perhaps fifty others, surrounded by snores and farts and the sheer animal stink of people who had been travelling too long.