Ruso and the Root of All Evils

17

‘Not that one. The big one on the left — no, not that big! — down a bit.’

Tilla marvelled at the patience of shopkeepers. At first she had feared the girls were about to spend money the Medicus did not have. But by the time they had left a second salesman to reconstruct his disrupted display, she began to understand the game. In the faint hope of a sale, the shop staff would be obliged to pass over shoes and hairpins and earrings and necklaces and wait while the girls tried them on, craned their necks to see the effect in mirrors, giggled and then declared that this wasn’t quite what they were looking for: how about that one just above it?

‘This would suit you, Tilla,’ suggested Marcia, holding up a delicate gold chain with blue and green stones.

Tilla shook her head. ‘I am not buying today.’ Or any other day.

‘Try it on,’ urged Marcia, reaching across to drape it around her neck. ‘It’s just right with your hair. Go and look in the mirror and tell me that isn’t made for you.’

Tilla took off her hat and picked up the shop mirror. She was conscious of the salesman’s cynical gaze from behind the counter. They both knew she was only being allowed to sample the goods because he did not want to offend the young ladies. Still, it was not every day she had a chance to wear costly jewellery. She straightened her shoulders and eased down the neck of the dreadful yellow outfit with her forefinger so the stones would lie flat against her skin.

It was not a good mirror. Careless customers had damaged the polished brass surface, and the serious young woman staring back at her was softened around the edges by a thousand tiny scratches.

‘So,’ she said, watching herself frown and trying to repress the smile that followed, ‘you think a barbarian should wear one of these?’

‘Very nice, miss,’ offered the salesman. The girls said nothing. She wondered if she had offended them with the ‘barbarian’ remark. She put the mirror back on its ledge and glanced around, seeking their opinion.

They were not there. She blinked and looked around again. It was a small shop — just a lock-up booth built into the front of a house — and there was nowhere to get lost. Apart from the man behind the counter, she was quite alone. It seemed the girls had grown tired of waiting for her and moved on.

She stepped out into the street to look for them. A heavy hand landed on her shoulder. ‘Forgot something, miss?’

She had not noticed the guard outside the door. His grip tightened as she squirmed, trying to catch sight of Marcia’s green stole. To her surprise there seemed to be hardly anybody about. A rattle of shutters told her that the coppersmith’s shop opposite was closing. ‘I must go,’ she said, reaching behind her neck to grope for the fastening of the necklace.

‘Cash only,’ said the voice behind her. ‘No credit, and our master don’t take offers.’

‘I don’t want to buy it,’ she explained, struggling to find the fastening.

Behind her was a shuffle of leather soles on flagstones. ‘Let me help, miss.’

She felt a hand lift one of her plaits. ‘That’s a very expensive item, miss,’ said the salesman. ‘You don’t look to me like you could afford to buy it.’

‘I am not stealing,’ she insisted loudly, wondering where the sisters had gone. How long would it be before they realized she was missing? ‘I don’t want to steal. I forget I am wearing it. I have to go with those girls.’

‘Third one this week,’ said the doorman.

‘A lot of ladies forget to take off expensive items and wander out by mistake. That’s what we keep the door staff for, see?’

‘Well, now I am remember,’ said Tilla, her frustration spilling over into a struggle with the Latin. Arguing was so much easier in British, when she did not have to think about the words. In British, she would be able to tell this man what she thought of him. But there was nobody for hundreds of miles who could translate. ‘Keep your necklace,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’

‘Funny accent,’ said the salesman. ‘Can you understand what she’s saying?’

‘Nah,’ observed the doorman. ‘We don’t talk like that round here, miss.’

‘We’re about to put the shutters up for lunch,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘You can stay and explain it to us.’

Tilla took a long, slow breath. They were probably just teasing her, but in a strange land she had no way of guessing from their tone. Keeping her voice as steady as she could manage, she said, ‘Let me go. My friends will vouch for me. Their family is very important.’

‘Really?’

Was that a note of doubt in his voice? ‘Their father is Publius Petreius who built a big temple with an inscription. When everyone hear that you make one of their guests prisoner alone in this shop, how many rich ladies will want to come here and buy things?’

She hoped the fumbling at the back of her neck was undoing the fastener and not a prelude to something worse. Moments later she felt the stones slither across her throat as the necklace was removed. ‘There you go, miss,’ said the salesman, as cheerfully as if he had been trying to help her from the start. ‘Try and remember next time. If your friends come back we’ll tell them you were looking.’

Tilla stood on tiptoe at the crossroads. There was no green stole in sight. Neither of the women she stopped to ask had seen two girls answering the right description.

She turned right by the shrine on the corner, hurried on to the next crossroads and then right again. She thanked whatever gods might be listening that the Romans were so fond of squares and rectangles. If she kept choosing the same direction in this ants’ nest of narrow lanes, she would find herself at the other end of the jewellers’ street, and perhaps meet the girls coming back to find her.

She glanced into the few shops that were open as she passed: a weaver’s, a merchant selling perfumed oil, a meat stall, a scribe bent over his copying … no green stole in any of them. No green stole on any of the customers lolling at the shady counter of the bar, either. She passed a narrow alleyway where someone was playing a tune on a whistle. All she could see in the shadows were three curious dark-eyed children and a hen peering at her from behind a line of limp laundry.

The next open door had a picture of a smug-faced man painted on the wall beside it. The man was attached to an eager phallus which appeared to be beyond his control and, at the far end, beyond his reach as well. The Medicus’ sisters definitely wouldn’t be in there, and Tilla felt a momentary pity for the girls who were.

She could understand neither where the sisters had gone nor why. It was hard to believe that they would walk off in the middle of a conversation, or that they could vanish so completely and so quickly. She had heard tales of young women being stolen, of course: everyone had. Snatched up by gods, or ghosts, or more likely by humans with evil intent. But surely someone would have noticed two people disappearing at once? And surely Marcia would have had something to say about it?

It was hard not to conclude that the girls had deliberately run off and left her.

None of the figures chatting on the communal seats of the latrine was familiar. Back out in the glare of the street, she realized she was no longer wearing the straw hat that the Medicus had bought her. After a moment’s thought she remembered taking it off in the jeweller’s shop. She sighed. She was not going back there. The hat was lost.

The slave-girl sweeping the paving stones in the grand square of the Forum knew nothing. The knot of women standing on the fringe of a poet’s audience told her they had no money for beggars. Neither the silversmith’s slave nor the boy selling fancy sandals knew anything. If Marcia and Flora had passed this way by choice, Tilla was certain they would have paused at those stalls. According to the attendant, who refused to let her in to look around without payment, they were not in the bath-house, either.

Pausing at the next fountain, she borrowed a cup from a friendly young woman with a black eye and gave herself a long drink. Then she asked which local god might be inclined to help a foreigner who had lost something she was supposed to be looking after.

‘You could try Isis,’ suggested the woman, pointing across the street at a small shrine gifted with several bunches of lavender. ‘I pray to her for protection sometimes.’

Tilla glanced at the black eye. ‘And does she answer?’

The woman ran her forefinger lightly along her bruised cheekbone. ‘Well,’ she conceded, ‘he hasn’t killed me yet.’

With nothing else to give, Tilla unfastened the knife from her belt and laid a lock of blonde hair amongst the lavender before setting off again on her search.

The city slaves who had the unenviable task of dredging the sacred spring had no more idea about Marcia and Flora than the ducks preening their feathers under the balustrades. (Even the sacred spring, Tilla noticed, had been trapped into a rectangular stone pond. The god of the spring had taken his revenge by turning the water pea-green and cursing it with a bad smell.) ‘Try going up the hill, miss,’ suggested one of them. ‘You’ll get a better view.’

The view after she had slogged up the hill was indeed better, but no more useful. The guards at the nearby tower had no information to offer except that, for a special price for pretty girls, they could let her climb up to the top and enjoy a finer view still.

Tilla threw herself down in the shade of a pine tree, pausing to straighten out the creases from Arria’s cast-off tunic. She surveyed the vast sprawl of red roofs stretching out in front of her. The pale oval in the distance must be the amphitheatre, where men would soon be trying to murder each other for the entertainment of the townspeople. Down there, somewhere in that cruel city, were two girls whose mother had sent them out under her protection.

She stood up, brushed away the dead pine needles that had made patterns on the backs of her calves and decided there was no point in wandering about. If the girls had been taken, they would be hidden. If they had drifted off, they knew their way far better than she did. She would go back to the Augustus gate and hope they turned up in time for the cart the Medicus was sending to fetch them. If they did not, she would stay there to wait for them and send the driver hurrying home with the message that they were lost.

She could imagine what the stepmother would have to say about that.