Lucius had already told them about the surprise arrival of the investigators as they had driven out of Arelate. He was now giving Cass a repeat account of exactly what they had said to him and what he had said back. Lucius’ part in the story was getting bigger every time he told it. She caught the sound of a yawn. Cass must be weary after all that lying awake worrying about spiders, but she was still loyally pressing her husband with questions as if he were the cleverest, bravest and most interesting man in the world. And then what happened? And what did you do? No, really? So what do you think will happen about the dogbane?
Lucius moved on to describing his trials during his search for them in Arelate, and how he had visited all five of the marine shipping offices, ‘but nobody could remember seeing you’. Tilla could hear the accusation in his voice. She saw now that she had gone about everything in the wrong way. She did not understand how things worked here. She had never even heard of marine shipping offices. No wonder she had failed. They had found neither the mysterious Ponticus that Lucius had come to warn them about nor any real trace of the ghostly Captain Copreus.
She was lucky they had not been pursued for knifing Onion-breath in the bar. She supposed she would have to tell the Medicus about that before one of the others did. It was not the sort of thing a Roman looked for in a woman. She was willing to bet that the widow next door had never killed a man in a bar fight. Even the old wife had used poison, so that she could pretend she hadn’t done it and the Medicus could imagine that he believed her.
Tilla trapped the far end of the cloak between her feet and tugged it down. She wondered what the Medicus had said to the investigators. She saw now what a terrible mistake this trip had been. She should have stayed back at the farm, loyally supporting him as if she thought he too was the cleverest, bravest and most interesting man in the world. That was what Roman men seemed to want. Instead, afraid of looking a fool over dinner and convinced she could do something about Cass’s brother when everyone else had failed, she had run away.
Tilla yawned and shifted the bag that she had folded into a lumpy pillow. The Medicus had once asked her to marry him. She had refused. He would not ask again now.
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,
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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.
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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.’
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