Lucius and Cass were still talking softly as her jumbled thoughts gradually settled into stillness. For a brief moment she was aware that something important had just drifted past her. It was the sort of unexpected clarity that sometimes lit the mind in the middle of the night: an understanding usually followed by the thought, I must remember that in the morning, but already when she tried to catch it, it was gone.
70
The morning light was barely outlining the shutters when Ruso opened his eyes and remembered two things: firstly that Tilla was not here and secondly that this was the day of the games, and he had not yet given Tertius’ money to the aunt. Since he could hardly stroll on to Lollia’s property without greeting her, he supposed that would mean yet another meeting. Arria would be proud of him.
Later, watching the early sun gild Lollia’s hair as she took the two coins from him to give to Tertius’ aunt, he wondered where that same sun would find Tilla and Cass this morning. He had already spoken to the household gods on their behalf. Since the gods could not be relied upon to act unaided, as soon as he had discharged his duties at the amphitheatre, he was going to hire a decent horse and ride to Arelate.
Making his way back across the olive grove in search of breakfast, it occurred to him that, until recently, if he had ever felt in the mood to marry again, he would have been searching for someone exactly like Lollia Saturnina. Now, distracted by worries about Tilla, he could not recall a single word of what she had just said to him.
71
They were on the barge, and he was telling her she must not get her words muddled up. Calvus and Stilvicus. Calpreo and Ponto. Repeat after me. Pons, Pontis, Ponticorum, Ponticuli, Ponticissimissimus. You must learn to speak Latin properly in a peaceful country, Tilla!
The widow who had lamed his horse was catching up with him now, leaping over the rows of amphorae with her hair streaming out behind her. Tilla tried to follow, but her feet were mired in the grape juice, and as soon as she pulled one free she remembered the other one and found it was stuck again. She knew she should pray for help but she could not remember the right words in Latin, and then the drowned ship’s captain who was lying in the corner of the winery woke up, pointing at the knife in his chest with two fingers and laughing. With a huge effort, she leaped out of the trough, fled across the winery, crashed her forehead into the beam of the winepress and found herself lying on the ground underneath a big wooden box, stunned and terrified.
A familiar voice said, ‘Are you all right, miss?’ She tried to remember where she had heard it before.
‘You forgot where you were,’ said the stable lad. ‘There’s no room to sit up under here. Is your head all right?’
She ran a hand over her forehead and decided it was. Then she lay back beneath the cart and allowed her mind to poke at the edges of the fear, proving to herself that it could not rise and swallow her. It had been a dream: a confusion of all the things that had happened to her. She was getting everything and everybody mixed up, especially the nasty men. Lucius had told them how one of the investigators had frightened the children by waving the stumps of his fingers in their faces. The other one … had nothing to do with it. The other one was some Onion-breathed sailor who thought it was funny to terrify innocent women and who had lived to regret it, but not for long.
She saw again the twin fingers of Onion-breath stabbing towards her eyes in that horrible bar. His fingers had not been missing, just tucked away in the palm of his left hand when he had pretended to be Copreus …
She narrowly missed banging her head on the cart again.
‘Lucius, wake up! How many fingers does this investigator man not have?’
‘Uh?’
Cass’s sleepy voice repeated the question.
Lucius grunted, ‘Two.’
‘Which hand?’
‘What’s for breakfast?’
‘Close your eyes,’ insisted Tilla, leaning over the side of the cart so he could see her upside down. ‘See him in your mind. Which hand?’
Lucius yawned. She ducked out of range as he stretched his arms into the early-morning air.
‘Think!’ she urged.
Cass, seeing the expression on Tilla’s face, said, ‘This might be important, husband.’
‘Um … right.’
‘Tell me what else he looks like. And the other one.’
Lucius gave a grunt of protest, then slowly described the heavy build and the cropped hair and the tattoos.
Tilla recalled the description they had been given of Ponticus by the grim-faced Phoebe. ‘Is the other one short, about thirty years old, with a clever face and he wears a ring with a red stone?’
Lucius frowned. ‘If you already know, why are you waking me up?’
She said, ‘Calvus and Stilo. Ponticus and Copreus. They are not drowned, Cass! Lucius has met them at the farm, and the Medicus is back in Nemausus asking questions about the things they have done.’
‘Holy gods,’ said Lucius, pushing strands of hair out of his eyes and sitting up. At last he seemed to have understood. ‘Wake up, wife. We need to get back and warn Gaius.’
72
The youth in the usher’s tunic stepped out in front of them. ‘Ladies only up here, sir!’
Ruso fixed him with a glare that suggested if he did not get out of the way, he would shortly find himself tumbling down the several flights of steps that the remnant of the Petreius family had just toiled up. ‘I’m escorting these ladies to their seats,’ he growled.
The youth glanced both ways along the corridor. Failing to spot any other officials amongst the spectators clambering around the stone labyrinth of the amphitheatre, he stepped smartly aside with ‘Of course, sir!’ as if this had been his intention all along.
The crush of people thinned as they climbed the final steps. Eventually the four of them stood blinking in the morning sun, staring out across the vast oval whose circumference was alive with the hubbub of spectators settling in for a day’s entertainment.
Arria glanced up at the canopy stretched out above the curving rows of benches. ‘Well, at least we shall be in the shade.’
‘I told you,’ said Flora. ‘It said on the notices. Shades will be provided.’
‘We’ll sit down here,’ announced Marcia, starting to pick her way along the front row before anyone could argue.
Arria called after her, ‘We’d be more private higher up, dear!’
‘I want to see!’
Arria pursed her lips and turned to Ruso as if to say, what can I do with her?
Marcia settled herself next to an aisle on the front tier of seats and flung the green stole sideways as far as it would reach to prevent any other hopefuls sitting too close before her family caught up. Ruso, who found the narrow space between the benches and the parapet no easier to negotiate than the stairs, edged along through the gap and finally unslung the sack of supplies from his shoulder. Arria busied herself pulling out the contents. Marcia leaned her elbows on the parapet and stared down at the small figures of the slaves raking the arena, as if glaring at an expanse of sand dotted with bushes in pots — presumably the forest for the morning’s wild animal hunts — would give her some clue about how events would unfold later in the day.
‘I don’t know why we have to sit up here,’ she grumbled. ‘We can’t see a thing.’
Flora grabbed a cushion from the bag and knelt on it, scanning the tiers of seats above them to see if she recognized any of the other females edging along the rows and snatching up their skirts to scale the stone steps.
‘Would you like a cushion, dear?’
When Marcia did not reply, Arria leaned around Flora and tapped her on the knee. ‘Do take one, dear, the seats are very hard.’
Marcia snatched the cushion with an ‘Ohh!’ of exasperation and slapped it down on the seat as if she were swatting a wasp.