Terra Incognita

12

Tilla paused at the top of the slope, taking in the sight of the broad meadows and the river snaking between the willows and dividing around the little islands. Home was just beyond the wooded ridge on the far side of the valley, not yet in sight. Perhaps that was a good thing. She would not spoil this moment by thinking about what she might find there. Instead, she would enjoy the memories of paddling in those stony shallows with her brothers and the other children while their parents exchanged goods and gossip at the market.

She had assured the medicus that this valley was beautiful, but in truth the memory of its beauty had faded with use. Now, seeing it basking in the afternoon sun, with the skylarks spilling music into the air like silver and the yellow splashes of gorse on the hillsides celebrating her return, she wanted to shriek with delight and run laughing down the road, leaving behind the sour-faced soldiers still tramping in their miserable column like a row of iron wood lice.

Instead she took in a deep breath of the precious air and told herself, “I am home!” before walking on, keeping pace with the baggage train. She had a duty to make sure Lydia was safe. Lydia would not be running around laughing today. Her man would not be running for a long time. Perhaps never. This morning he had been a healthy young Roman with a new daughter and a steady trade as a carpenter with the legion. By midday he had become a body lying in a cart with a crushed leg that the medicus had covered up so as not to frighten him. She tried not to think about what the medicus might have done to him while other men held him down. She had assured Lydia that her master was a fine doctor. This had seemed to comfort her. Evidently the girl knew very little about surgery.

She shifted her bruised arm to ease the ache that echoed the blows from the centurion’s stick. She would ask the medicus for some salve tonight. Perhaps she would also ask him to explain to the centurion that she had nothing to do with the accident, and that she was not in league with Cernunnos the horned god or with Taranis the god of thunder against anybody. The figure had simply appeared to her in answer to her prayers for another woman’s safety. It was not her fault if he had come back the next day and brought about a terrible accident. And if he had a face that was vaguely familiar, what of it? She must have seen him in a dream.

“Is that it?” Lydia was clutching the side of the cart with both hands and peering at the buildings on the low rise beyond the river.

“Yes.” Tilla followed her gaze, seeing the familiar mud brown rectangle of the fort and the jumble of thatched houses that spread out from it like a stain. The clang of a smithy echoed across the valley, interrupted by the distant whinny of a horse.

“It’s very small.”

Tilla had to agree. Yet the fort had not seemed small when she lived here. It had seemed massive and ugly and overwhelming.

She could make out tiny figures moving along the streets outside the fort. She wondered if she knew any of them. How many of the girls she had grown up with had been seduced by Roman money? What had happened to the girls who should have married her brothers?

She would not think about her family. She would not think about them because when she did, the sparkling river and the birds and the splendid yellow of the gorse became a hollow joy: a reminder of all that she had lost.

The civilians who had traveled with the Twentieth were barely across the bridge when a gaggle of residents-mostly women of assorted ages, sizes, and colors-surged down the slope to greet them. Bags were grabbed, with or without the owners’ permission. A blather of multi-accented Latin promised fine rooms, dry rooms, cheap rooms, rooms with no bother with the neighbors, rooms with good views of the river, snug and secure rooms, nice quiet rooms, rooms handy for the shops, rooms only a short stroll from the waterspout… Nobody, Tilla noticed, even bothered to try the local tongue. These women were living their lives on the land her own people had farmed for generations, yet now it was she who was the stranger.

The mule’s bridle was seized by a shawled woman with badly bleached hair who assured them in Latin that she had a very comfortable loft room, and they should hurry now before someone else took it. “Close to the baths, over a very respectable eating house,” she assured them, tugging the animal past an official-looking inn and up the slope toward the houses while the driver protested in vain.

She did not release her grip until she had led them past the wooden ramparts of the fort, taken another turn down a side street and reached the grand doors of a gleaming white bathhouse. She waved an arm toward a snack bar opposite with an awning sagging over a couple of outside tables. “A week’s rent in advance,” she said, “and the back of the loft is yours.”

“I have no money,” whispered Lydia.

“Don’t worry,” Tilla assured her. “I know who has.”