Semper Fidelis

Chapter 6

Wherever two main roads met there were soldiers, and wherever there were soldiers there were women, and wherever there were soldiers and women there would sooner or later be small boys, and one of the great delights of small boys was to watch the roads for the arrival of weary civilians and then descend upon them like a cloud of midges.

On the way into the fort, Minna had slapped at the grasping hands and shouted insults in Latin. The small boys called her names in British that she did not understand, which was just as well. When Tilla emerged from the gates a short while later, still struggling with damp bags and boxes of medicines but no longer with a wagon to put them in, she was glad she had not joined in the trading of rude words. It made it less likely that the scrawny, barefoot helper she now chose to escort her to the official inn would run away with her luggage. In case he was thinking of it, she looked him up and down and said in British, “Don’t I know your mother?”

Perhaps encouraged by this connection, or perhaps in the hope of a larger tip, he gave her a commentary on the sights of Eboracum as they passed. Tilla, however, was not interested in knowing where Demetrius, the famous grammarian, used to teach, or how to find the temple of Mithras or the bar where the deaf wheelwright had murdered his wife’s mother. What she wanted to do was get out of the wind and rain. What she wanted to know was whether the official mansio was better than the ghastly centurion’s quarters she had just been offered inside the fortress.

She shuddered at the memory of a kitchen spattered with mouse droppings, a dining room with a gray fan of damp spreading out from one corner, and a lone and worm-eaten cupboard with the door hanging off. She supposed that once it was clear the previous legion was not coming back, the few troops left to garrison Eboracum had looted the unused buildings and then abandoned them. The cupboard was probably too damp to burn.

“This is it!” announced the boy.

Tilla gazed at a wooden building on a prime corner site. It was obviously a bar, well used and properly maintained. It was also very obviously a whorehouse. Watching them from the shelter of the doorway with his one good eye was a man shaped like a bear.

“Ah,” said Tilla.

The boy swung one of her bags toward a freshly painted slogan on the wall outside. “Look!”

“Yes,” said Tilla, squinting past the hair blowing into her eyes. “Are you sure this is the-”

“I can tell you what it says!” announced the boy. “It says, ‘Lucina, Pamphile, and Hedone welcome our heroes from the Sixth Legion.’ Lucina is Mam’s special work name.”

“‘We speak Latin,’” added Tilla.

The boy looked at her in amazement. “You can read?”

“A little,” confessed Tilla, who was still not sure it was a good idea.

The boy called across to the doorman, “Is Mam around?”

“Working.”

The boy shrugged and apologized to Tilla, who said, “We mustn’t disturb her.”

He took up the bag again. “I’ll take you to the mansio now.”

Evidently nothing worth telling her about had happened on the next street, possibly because hardly anyone was living there. A shop was offering bread along with a pile of unidentifiable meat, a box of cabbages, and five cheeses arranged in a pyramid on a tray, but at the moment she had no use for any of them. Nor for the shoemaker on the corner, who broke off from his work to offer instant repairs and grease to keep the rain out. A third shop seemed to be offering the sorts of things soldiers collected in barracks and then found they could not carry with them when they left: an old carved chair, a birdcage repaired with twine …

The official inn was just beyond the east road, and it was a surprise. Its walls were bright with fresh white limewash. Its doors were in place. Its windows had glass, its roof looked intact, and there was no sign of women or cabbages for sale inside. Two slaves in matching cream-and-brown tunics rushed forward to take her luggage. Relieved, she paid the boy more than she should have, and they were both happy.

The slaves took her to a downstairs room that looked out over the dripping courtyard garden. It was not cheap, but it smelled clean and it had all the things she needed: two narrow beds, two lamps, one table with a jug and bowl, and a wicker chair with a faded scarlet cushion. Better still, there was no sign of anything with more legs than herself living there already.

The slaves bowed and retreated. She opened the boxes of medicines to check that none of the bottles was broken and that the linen bags were dry after their journey, then slid them away under the beds. There was nothing to replace or refill: They had barely been used on the trip so far. She pulled her sister-in-law’s letter out of its safe place, tucked away in her tunic, and left it in the middle of the table.

She had no idea what the letter was about. Marcia’s writing was like nothing she had ever seen before. She had given up trying to make out anything beyond Dearest Gaius. Gaius was what the family called him. Dearest was what they added when they wanted something. No wonder he was putting off looking at it. That was one of the bad things about being able to read: people could nag you from a great distance.

She washed her face and pulled a comb through her hair before twisting and pinning it tight at the nape of her neck. The pleasure of a proper wash and dry clothes would have to wait: she must face the weather again to catch the shops and the shoemaker before they closed, and perhaps have a quiet word with the bar staff before Lucina and her friends were busy selling their wares in a language that all men understood everywhere.

She hurried around the covered walkway that enclosed the courtyard garden, patting the purse slung from her belt. She was reassured by the chink of several large but not very valuable coins. They would be enough for bread and boot grease and whatever else she would need to buy to get into conversation. With luck, the tradespeople would spread the news that a very experienced and skilled army doctor was staying at the mansio for a few days, along with his wife who was a midwife. Both would be available for consultation when his military duties allowed, and their fees were very reasonable. In amongst the curious, the desperate, and the ones who had fallen out with the local healers, there might be people they could actually help, and who would be willing to pay.

Two matching slaves emerged from one of the doors ahead of her. They paused to let her pass and bowed at exactly the same time. She was wondering whether they held bowing rehearsals in spare moments, when she heard a voice inside the entrance hall that was familiar but not welcome.

“And a private kitchen!” it was saying. “A proper kitchen, that is, not just a brazier in a corridor somewhere. The cook needs space to prepare the tribune’s food. He is very particular about his diet.”

It seemed Accius’s staff had not been impressed with the housing inside the fort, either.

Tilla glanced round the courtyard. There must be a way out that did not pass through the entrance hall. One of those doors must lead to the street, but which? Now that she needed them, the bowing slaves had disappeared. She wondered whether to go back to the room, then realized how ridiculous it was for an officer’s wife to be hiding from someone else’s slave. Pulling her hood up over her head as if it were blustery indoors as well as out, she stepped into the entrance hall. The tribune’s housekeeper was still in full flow.

“Ah! There you are, madam!”

Tilla clenched her teeth. She had spent most of the journey listening to Minna and the driver competing to see who could find the most to complain about. She had silently added Must understand about speaking only when spoken to to the list of qualities their future slave must have when they finally got around to buying her. Or him. The disagreement was one of the reasons they were still paying the neighbors back at Deva for the services of a borrowed kitchen slave. The other was that most of her husband’s earnings went back to his family in Gaul.

“Here I am,” she agreed politely. Minna might be a slave, but her master was a powerful man-as she never tired of pointing out.

“I was just explaining, madam,” Minna continued, “that house over in the fort is a disgrace. I’ve never seen anything so filthy in my life.”

Tilla bit back Then you are a very lucky woman.

“I see you weren’t prepared to put up with it, either, madam.”

“I am staying here,” said Tilla, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of agreeing.

“You see?” Minna demanded of the manager, as if the state of the military accommodation were his fault. “It’s not even good enough for the natives!”

As Minna carried on (“My master is a tribune, not just some passing centurion!”), Tilla felt the blood rising in her cheeks. Not even good enough for the natives? One of the local staff-who were probably listening somewhere out of sight-ought to hide a frog in the wretched woman’s bed. Better still, a cow pie. Perhaps she would do it herself.

Instead of telling Minna to go away and use the servants’ entrance, the manager was promising her that the very best suite was being prepared at this moment.

“Well, I hope they’re doing it properly. I know what you people are like.”

Tilla paused in the doorway to give the manager a sympathetic glance, but his face was still a mask of politeness. She said, “I shall be out for a little while, and I may have some visitors later.”

The manager bowed. “Yes, madam.”

“I will come back for dinner.”

“We shall look forward to it, madam.”

She made her way down the steps outside, leaving Minna complaining that it wasn’t as if the soldiers hadn’t known her master was coming. Perhaps she thought the poor man might feel sufficiently outraged to go up to the fort and berate the Twentieth Legion for negligence.