Helena stripped off all her normal jewelry, leaving only a silver ring I once gave her. She then put on a pair of large, surprisingly trashy earrings. If these were some old lover's gift, she did right to ditch the swine. More likely, they were a present from one of her mother's attendants. Her muted clothes were her own, and might have revealed her status, but she had hitched them up awkwardly and trussed them under her bosom with a complete lack of grace. She looked as if she possessed neither closet slaves nor hand mirror, nor even taste. She was no longer herself. Well, that was fun for me.
Don't get me wrong. This was foolish and dangerous. I knew it. Two excuses, Legate: one, Helena Justina, daughter of the senator Camillus, was a free woman. If she wanted to do something I could not stop her, any more than her noble father ever had. Two, she was right. As part of a couple, I would be much less conspicuous.
Add to that, we were both bored silly with being well-mannered visitors. We yearned for stimulus. We both enjoyed shared adventures-especially when we sneaked off without telling anyone, and when we knew if we had told them, they would all disapprove hysterically.
We slipped out of the residence. Our departure was spotted, but when staff gave us a second look we just kept going. There was no point borrowing Aelia Camilla's carrying chair. It would draw attention to us. We could manage on foot. Wherever we were going in this town would be close enough to walk.
I was getting my bearings. Londinium had not been developed by addicts of Hippodamus of Miletus and his structured gridiron street plans. It never grew from a major military base, so it lacked form and it lacked town walls. Instead of a four-square pleasing pattern, the T-shaped development followed one line across the river, then sprawled untidily in two directions, with houses and businesses ribboning along important roads. There were very few developed plots behind the few main streets.
On the north bank, two low hills were divided by several free-flowing freshwater streams. Industrial premises had been sited along the banks of the main stream. The forum stood on the eastern hill, and most of the new wharves lay at the foot of that particular high ground. Beyond, on the western hill, there must be houses amid perhaps further commercial premises, and I had seen what looked like smoke from bathhouse furnaces. Apart from major imports and modest exports operating from the wharves, this was a town of potters and tanners. Even among the houses, empty spaces were farmed. I had heard livestock as often as the marsh birds or the gulls following traders' ships.
A straight arterial road led downhill from the forum, direct to the river. There it passed a landing stage for ferries and what would one day be the bridgehead. Crossing at forum level was what passed for the main road, the Decumanus Maximus, with a secondary east-west highway halfway down to the river. Helena and I took that road for a short while and crossed the forum approach.
The patchy development continued. Residential plots had sometimes been rebuilt with new brick houses or otherwise left as blackened patches of burned ground. It was almost fifteen years since the Rebellion, but recovery was still slow. After the tribes' massacre, a few escapees must have returned to claim their land, but many had died without descendants- or with descendants who could no longer bear the scene. The authorities were reluctant to release land that appeared to have no owner. A land registry had existed, which prevented a free-for-all. There was plenty of space here anyway. Making the decision to sell off plots where whole families had died would be sorry work. So it might be decades before all the gaps in these stricken streets were filled.
Helena took my hand. "You're brooding again."
"Can't help it."
"I know, darling. One day all trace of what happened will vanish. It would be worse if everything had been made good immediately."
"Insensitive," I agreed.
"One of the saddest things I ever heard," Helena mused gently, "is how the governor raced here to assess the situation, just before the furious tribes arrived. He knew he had insufficient troops and would be forced to sacrifice the town to save the province. So he closed his ears to pleas, but allowed those who wished to accompany him and the cavalry. Then, we were told afterwards, 'Those who stayed, because they were women, or old, or attached to the place, were all slaughtered.' Some people were attached to Londinium, Marcus. It made them stay to face certain death. That's heartrending."
I told her they were idiots. I said it gently. What I thought was worse, but she knew that. There was no need to be coarse.
Looking around, as we searched to rediscover the sad bar called the Shower of Gold, it seemed perverse for anyone to feel sentimentality for this town. The community had no aediles to oversee street cleaning or repairs. A few far-from-graceful porticoes offered red-tiled roofs, not so much for shade as storm protection. Lights were a luxury. In a couple of hours I would be getting out of here fast.
"Is that the place?" asked Helena.
"You've never been here," I muttered.
"No, but I can read a signboard, darling."
I peered at the crude fresco, with its vague representation of light streaming through a tip-tilted window. The paint had weathered so much I was surprised Hilaris ever spotted the name. We went in. The lintel was low-slung. Most customers must be midgets with rickets.
The serving girl, whose short legs I remembered, was missing. The taverner himself stared at us as we entered. He seemed to wonder what we wanted, coming in his bar, but that's regular. It happens in Rome too. To serve the public requires a special type: unwelcoming, obtuse, inaccurate with coinage, and very deaf when called. Some informers are no better equipped. But most do have good feet. His were embossed with corns, and he had at least one toe missing. I could see this because there was no counter; he just perched on a stool.
We found our own table. Easy-there was only one. Since we were supposed to be a couple traveling, Helena took the purse from me and went to order. I sat and smiled, like a man who could not manage foreign currency and who would drink more than he was used to, if his wife let him loose.
She dropped the fresh-off-the-boat routine immediately and chose her own approach. "I don't think we'll have wine today. I hear yours suffers from interesting additives!"
"What do you mean?"
"Bodies."
"Word gets round," replied the landlord dourly. "So what happened?"
"Nobody saw." He spurned gossip It could have been for the sake of his establishment, had it any reputation to protect.
"We just had to come and see the scene… Have you any fresh fruit juice?" Even I winced. Helena was forgetting she was in Britain.
"We only serve wine." Her request was out of place, but he held back any sarcastic riposte. Too sophisticated-or just too much effort.
"Oh, we'll risk it!"
"Nothing wrong with our wine. The man drowned in the well," the dour fellow corrected her.
"Oh! Can we see the well?" she demanded excitedly.
He gestured to the yard door, pushed a jug at her, and left us to our own devices.
Helena went out to peer quickly down the well, then came back to our table with the jug.
"Cups, darling?" I teased, playing to a nonexistent audience, but the landlord had brought them, with overobvious efficiency. "Thanks, Legate!" I poured and tipped a cup to him. He gave me a brusque nod. "Sorry," I murmured sympathetically. "You must be sick of sightseers."
He made no comment, only sucked a blackened tooth. He went back to stand in silence among his amphorae in a corner, staring at us. I would normally have tried chatting with other customers-but there were none. And it was impossible to talk to Helena while the man was listening.