Caveat emptor

42

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.