6
The baby’s squashed features held an expression of puzzlement, as if he would work out what had just happened to him if he lay quietly and thought about it for long enough. Tilla lifted a loose strand of his mother’s hair-the same color as his own-from his face without waking her, and bent to kiss the top of his head. Then she tucked the bundle of soiled bedding and washcloths under one arm, picked up the basin of water, and nudged the door open with her foot.
Downstairs, she could hear muffled voices from Valens’s consulting rooms. Her husband’s was not among them. He had gone out to talk to a man in an office about hunting for the baby’s missing father.
Still faintly surprised every time she took a step and found that the floor was not rolling beneath her feet, she made her way to the back of the house. The slave boy rammed the dirty linen into the top of a bag that smelled as though someone should have taken it to the laundry days ago, and then flung the contents of the bowl out the back door into a display of last year’s dead plants.
On the way back upstairs, Tilla wondered again what had happened between Valens and Serena. This could not be a planned absence. A grand house like this, with consulting rooms and corridors and more beds than people, was impossible to manage without the staff to run the kitchen and trim the lamps and sweep the floors and beat the mats. Or to open the shutters and let some light into the upstairs rooms so that guests could see to unpack.
Camma was still asleep. The baby’s eyes were closed. Tilla watched to make sure he was breathing, then went back to her own room to fold the heap of clothes she had tipped onto the mattress in her hunt for something clean for the woman to wear. She crouched down and shoved the crate of crockery out of sight under the bed. With luck, they would soon have enough money for lodgings where there would be room to use it. She lifted a second box onto the mattress and unbuckled the strap.
Inside was a collection of swaddling bandages and little tunics and soft leather bootees. Cushioned in the middle of a small folded blanket was a pottery feeder with a baby-sized spout. All were items that her new sister- in-law in Gaul hoped never to need again. “They’re hardly worn,” she had said, insisting Tilla take the box as they were tying the last of the luggage onto the farm cart and countering her objections with, “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be needing them soon!”
The words had been spoken with the casual incomprehension of a woman who had five healthy children.
Her husband had also told her that a baby would happen before long, and that he was not worrying. For some reason this was supposed to reassure her. But she did worry, because even though he was a medicus, he did not know the whole of the story.
There were things that a man might think he should be told when a woman agreed to marry him. She had chosen not to mention several of them. But lately one had floated up from the depths of her past like a bloated and long-dead frog surfacing in a pond after the ice had melted. She fingered the sheepskin of a little boot and wondered if the gods were angry with her.
She had not lied to him. Not about that, anyway. She had tried to drop hints, but he had not understood. She was not sorry. Men were unreasonable about that sort of thing. Especially Roman men, who seemed to have one standard for women and another one for wives, as if wives were not women but were creatures that arrived wrapped and packaged straight from the heavens with no past-except perhaps being somebody else’s wife, which was respectable enough. Roman females were, it seemed, expected to spend their early years waiting to become wives. After that it was their duty to boss the servants about, make things out of wool, and produce lots of children. It was perhaps no wonder that they sometimes lost their tempers and flounced off, taking the servants with them.
She had spun yet another fleece and made a few braids on the journey-there was not much else for a passenger to do on board ship-but she had no servants to boss, and instead of children, she had produced only a monthly disappointment.
Across the sea in Gaul, she had tried the herbs and charms that worked for other women. She had prayed to Christos too. It had annoyed the Medicus, and perhaps it had annoyed Christos as well. All through the chill of winter, the medicines had failed and the prayers had been ignored-perhaps because she was neither sorry for her sins nor ready to forgive her enemies.
Now that she was back on her native island, things might be better. Even if her own goddess could not hear her down among the Southerners, there would be other gods that she could bargain with. Gods who were not interested in sins or forgiving people. Gods who would not care what you had done last time you were with child. Gods who would reward you for helping other women bring new life into the world, and would perhaps understand how hard it was for you to give their babies back to them.
The apprentices seemed happy to watch mother and baby for her while she went out. Valens had promised he would keep an eye on them. He had politely not mentioned that an hour ago she had told him to get those boys out of the room right now and clear off himself.
She stepped out into the cool air of a bright spring afternoon. The great cities of Gaul had smelled dusty and sweaty, but this place smelled of fish and woodsmoke, sewers and stale beer. She followed an old woman and a heavily laden donkey down the narrow street to where the breeze was chopping up the surface of the Tamesis into jewels.
The great river had sunk into the middle of his channel since this morning. Gulls were perched on the masts of ships that lay beside the wharf at odd angles, like stranded fish, waiting for the tide to lift them off the mud. Ahead of her, a slave was positioning a sign above a warehouse door. She dodged aside as his companion stepped back to see if it was level. A youth overtook her, trundling an empty handcart that bounced and boomed with every bump in the road. Over the din, a soldier and a dark-skinned man were arguing across a stack of barrels. Nobody paid her any attention. Nobody stared at her blond hair or commented on her clothes. She was home.
Just past the bridge, a woman was dozing beside a fish stall. Tilla watched as a chunk of bread slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. A couple of pigeons pattered toward it, but Tilla got there first. She shook the woman by the shoulder.
The woman jerked to attention and cried in Latin, “Fresh in this afternoon, lovely mackerel! Oysters from Camulodunum!”
Tilla pressed the bread into her hand and said in her own language, “You dropped it.”
The woman blew on the bread, examined it, and wiped at the dust with a grimy fist before trying again in British with a strong Southern accent. “Fresh mackerel for you, miss? Oysters? Eels?”
“No fish,” said Tilla. “I am a stranger here. I’m looking for three people. The first is a man of thirty-four named Julius Asper. Brown hair and a scar under one eye.”
The woman shook her head. “Never heard of him.” She had never seen Julius Bericus, either.
“Never mind. Can you tell me of a woman who helps other women?”
The fish seller looked her up and down. “Well, it’s not childbirth. Flux? Husband trouble? Abortion?”
When Tilla did not answer, she said, “Barren, is that it?”
“That is between me and the gods.”
“There’s a centurion’s widow beside the bathhouse,” suggested the woman, not sounding very confident. “That’s where the officers’ wives go. But I hear old Emer has powerful medicines.”
Tilla wondered briefly what her husband would make of her seeking old Emer’s opinion and decided it was another thing he need not know. “Where can I find this Emer?” she asked.
7
The expenditure clerk with no front teeth was of little help, but the clerks of the income department in the procurator’s office were clearly delighted to be allowed to discuss the latest scandal instead of sitting hunched in silence over their ink pots. Julius Asper was swiftly confirmed as the tax collector for Verulamium, with a description matching the one Camma had given. The existence of a brother was a matter of some debate, although all were convinced they would have noticed a man with half an ear. What was without doubt was that Verulamium had been due to deliver seven thousand five hundred and thirty-two denarii three days ago. It had not arrived. This was
