There was no funeral feast, either at the cemetery or afterward. The women returned to a silent house. No neighbors called to ease the long wait between the burning and the hour tomorrow when the ashes would be cool enough for burial. The empty shoes were still in a pair by the door, ready for a man who no longer needed them.
Camma was still in this world, but her eyes were dull and her mind was filled with dark clouds. She lay slumped on the couch, seemingly unaware of the baby at her breast. Tilla clattered the shutters open and apologized to the household gods for leaving them with the smell that still lingered despite yesterday’s efforts with the scrubbing brush, and then apologized to Christos for paying attention to them. Over the sea in Gaul, people would have said she ought to choose one or the other. Here, she was not so sure.
Camma said suddenly, “We should have stayed to say good-bye to Bericus.”
“The men will look after him.”
“Poor Bericus. I prayed to Andaste, but it was too late. He was already gone.”
Tilla said, “The brothers will be together in the next world,” and Camma’s eyes filled with tears.
When the baby drifted off to sleep, his mother settled him in the box and wandered down the gloomy corridor toward the bedroom. Tilla stood over him, watching the flicker of his eyelids and marking each tiny rise and fall of the blanket with his breathing. She tried to imagine how desperate a woman would have to be to leave a helpless baby in the care of strangers and follow her man to the next world.
He might not sleep for long. She must use the time well. She began to count on her fingers all the jobs that needed to be done. Suddenly overwhelmed, she reached for a darned sock that had fallen behind the couch. It was too big to belong to Camma. She went to the little room where Bericus had slept and added the sock to the loincloths and spare trousers and three tunics and an old belt lying in an untidy jumble on the bed. Asper’s clothes must be in the next room with Camma. All of that, like naming the baby, was a problem for later.
She must do one job at a time.
First, water.
She walked down to the corner water pipe clutching the buckets and pretended not to notice the way the conversation died as she approached. In response to her question, the women said they did not know of any followers of Christos in the town. In fact they had never heard of Christos.
Back in Gaul, the brothers and sisters would have seized this chance to share the good news. Tilla, feeling she had enough problems already, decided to leave Verulamium in ignorance for a while longer.
She had let the water fill too high. Trying not to spill any, she crouched to pick up both buckets and made her way slowly back along the uneven cobblestones of the street, all the while wrestling with the problem of how, now that she had gotten herself into this, she was going to get out of it again.
Be careful how much help you promise.
Helping a woman in labor was only natural. Supporting a woman who had been bereaved and wronged- especially by the Catuvellauni-was a good thing to do. But should she have waved Camma and her baby good-bye at the gates of Londinium with good wishes and a blessing and gone back to minding her own business?
You can’t fight her battles for her, Tilla.
He was wrong: She had not wanted to get involved. She had wanted to believe that Julius Asper was faithless and that Camma would have a better life without him. Instead, she had somehow ended up demanding justice for him in public and helping to curse the local magistrate.
Once the word spread about Camma and the pyre, it would be even harder to find someone to take on the job of housekeeper. Perhaps a message could be sent to the Iceni about the baby. Maybe if they understood how desperate their princess was, they would relent and allow her back.
In the meantime, the neighbors here were unlikely to be much help. The workshop next door was owned by a pair of elderly bronzesmiths. On the other side, the woman had grudgingly given her a light when she could not find the flint yesterday and insisted on telling her that if anything was wrong next door, it was not their fault. “You tell that woman if she’s got any complaints, it’s nothing to do with us.”
“What sort of complaints?”
“It’s not enough we have to put up with the tax man and his fancy woman,” the neighbor had said, ramming Tilla’s proffered stick of kindling into the fire and waiting for it to catch. “You should have heard the goings-on in there the other night. I never heard anything like it. That other one-what’s her name?”
“Grata?” Tilla suggested.
“Voice like a fishwife. Language. They even woke Father up.”
“She was all alone and there were frightening people outside.”
The woman ignored her and leaned across the hearth to shout at a pile of blankets in the corner, “Didn’t they, Father?”
The blankets shifted and a white head emerged. “What?”
“All that shouting next door. They woke you up.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“Nothing. She’s just leaving.”
And that was before Camma had tried to join Asper in the next world. It seemed that even if her mind were restored to order, an incomer who had betrayed a local husband and allied herself with a tax collector believed to be a thief would be at the wrong end of any queue for help.
43
Ruso knew that the tongue of the Britons boasted a rich vocabulary of insult. He was unable to translate much of it, since his wife used it chiefly when she was too exasperated to continue in Latin, but he recognized it being shouted across Verulamium’s Council chamber as the door guards moved aside to let him enter. His arrival went unnoticed by the thirty or forty quarreling men within, who between them were wearing more togas than he had seen together for years. It struck him that, unusually for the Britons, there was not a woman in sight.
Ruso lingered just inside the entrance, letting the din wash over him while he waited for a suitable moment to present himself. The air smelled of hair oil and musty wool. The plain walls around him were adorned with a series of engraved bronze plaques crammed with what he supposed were the rules of the Council: presumably the constitution dictated by Rome when the town had been granted permission to govern itself. It was an illustration of how far these remote island peoples had come. Or been led by the nose. He was not sure which.
A pale clerk was standing to one side, stylus poised to note any decisions. It looked as though he would be waiting a long time.
Ruso managed to catch odd phrases about the honor of the magistrates, the honor of the town, and something to do with “when the emperor comes.” Finally, “You were there when it was decided!” was followed by a familiar voice shouting, “Against my advice!”
A couple of councillors sat down in disgust, allowing him to see Caratius seated in a metal-framed chair at the front. His expression was grim. Gallonius, less exposed and more authoritative than he had been at the baths, rose from a seat beside him and clambered up onto a small podium. His rich voice was impressive but his words were drowned by the furore, and under the circumstances a toga had not been the best choice of garment. In fact, a toga was not the best garment for anything that Ruso could immediately think of, and Gallonius was having trouble keeping his under control. Every time he forgot it and raised both hands to emphasise his point, the heavy wool slid over his arm toward the floor and he had to grab it to maintain some dignity. Someone had attached it to his elegant cream tunic with a secret pin, but the pin was now exposed as the fulcrum of a lopsided tangle of fabric hanging off one shoulder. As he tried to wrench it back into position, someone shouted, “Just take it off, man! You’re only a butcher!”
So Gallonius must be the councillor whose country estate supplied overpriced meat to the mansio. He raised both arms again and bellowed, “Silence!” but nobody took any notice.
“The question is,” insisted someone else above the confusion, “What are we going to do?”
“Silence!” shouted Caratius, leaping out of his chair to intervene at last. “This is-”
His voice was drowned beneath a cacophony of shouts and jeers. He gesticulated to the clerk, who reached
