Ruso and the Root of All Evils

49

Brother Solemnis had hardly spoken a word since they had set off this morning. Tilla watched him from her none-too-comfortable seat on a bundle of hides in the back of the cart and wondered if he was praying for the protection of his god. On top of the usual carter’s worries about lame animals, breakdowns, bad roads, damaged goods and bandits, he had now been accosted by a barbarian woman and a stranger, demanding a lift to Arelate. She suspected he had only taken them because he was too frightened to refuse.

Cass was not much better company. She had chattered nervously as the cart first rattled and jolted them away from the farm. She had never been to Arelate. It was a big and beautiful town. The river was said to be huge. This would be an adventure.

As the sun rose higher, her excitement faded. When they passed a milestone she read ‘Nemausus, eleven miles’ as if it were a mark of loss rather than a sign of progress.

Tilla reflected that more and more these days she was thinking it might be useful to be able to read. Somewhere amongst the other letters chipped into the tall stone must be the good news of the diminishing distance to Arelate.

The milestone must have inspired Cass’s sudden ‘We won’t be back tonight, will we?’

‘We will find an inn.’ Had Cass only just thought of this? How fast did she imagine a mulecart could make a trip of over twenty miles?

Cass was chewing her lower lip. ‘What if they wake in the night?’

‘Galla will deal with them,’ said Tilla, guessing she was talking about the children.

‘I’m their mother.’

‘They will manage. They are used to Galla and they are not babies.’

Cass fell silent again. Tilla leaned back, closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was still travelling with the Medicus to a peaceful land of blue skies and gentle breezes where she would be welcomed into a new family.

‘Lucius will be furious.’

‘Lucius will have to learn to treat you better,’ insisted Tilla, secretly disappointed that so far neither the Medicus nor his brother had come after them.

Cass was saying something about ‘… divorces me?’

‘Of course he will not divorce you. He cannot afford a slave to do your work and nobody else would marry him.’

In the silence that followed, there was plenty of time to wish she had thought about that before she said it.

Cass said, ‘I hope somebody remembered to collect the eggs.’ When Tilla did not answer she said, ‘What if the slaves eat all the provisions?’

‘Then they will go hungry later.’

‘We should never have left home.’

‘We are doing a good thing,’ Tilla insisted, pushing aside the urge to explain that, if Cass had not turned up at the last minute, she would have abandoned the trip herself and been at the dinner to face the widow and all her money and watch the Medicus trying to make his difficult choice. ‘We will go and find somebody who knows about your brother’s ship.’

‘But what if — ’

‘Most of what if never happens. Pray to Christos for help. Galla says you can do it anywhere.’

‘If Galla hadn’t told you about Christos, we wouldn’t be here. When I get back Lucius will have her whipped.’

Tilla was glad she was not Galla. Somehow, everything was always her fault.

‘Anyway,’ continued Cass, ‘I can’t pray to Christos. You’ll have to do it. You’re not married.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Christos’ followers are supposed to obey their husbands.’

Tilla tried to picture the women who had been at the meeting and wondered if they had all been there with male permission.

‘I told my brother Lucius would never let me follow a foreign religion when we’ve spent all that money building Diana’s temple, so it was no good him telling me any more about Christos.’

The cart jolted in and out of a pothole. Cass pushed back one of the bundles that had slid sideways beneath her. ‘I should have let Lucius build a tomb.’

‘You can build a tomb when you go home.’

‘I tried to explain to him, but he wouldn’t listen.’

Tilla yawned and lifted Galla’s hat in the hope that some cool air might circulate around her head. She wished Cass would keep her worries to herself. It had all seemed so straightforward last night, in the enthusiasm of the singing and the cries of Amen, Sister!

‘We are doing a good thing,’ she repeated, wishing she was not doing it at all.