Terra Incognita

57

Tilla had been surprised by the sudden cacophony of “Aemilia!” echoing around the hall of the bathhouse as a group of young women in the corner noticed their arrival. There had followed a flurry of greetings and compliments and surprise, as it seemed everyone needed to assure everyone else very loudly-in Latin-how lovely it was to see them and how Aemilia wasn’t looking at all terrible and she was being wonderfully brave and-finally-who was her friend?

“This is my cousin,” announced Aemilia, putting an arm around Tilla’s shoulders. “Her name is Darlughdacha.”

This seemed to cause some confusion. “Hasn’t she got a Roman name?” demanded one of the girls.

“Does she speak Latin?”

Tilla eyed the eager faces framed with fancy hairstyles and decided that she did not wish to hear her beautiful name mangled by the lips of strangers. “Tilla,” she said. “You can call me Tilla.”

Aemilia pulled up a stool and introduced her to each girl in turn, declaring the names as if she were proud to have so many friends.

“I remember you,” said Tilla, accepting the space on a bench beside a girl with a squint who was introduced as Julia but who had been called something very different when they had last met. She slipped back into the ease of her native tongue. “You lived in one of the houses near Standing Stone Hill. Your da used to work a lathe.”

The girl tossed her head and replied in Latin, “Oh, that was a long time ago! Now I live here in a proper house.”

“Julia has a son,” confided Aemilia. “Her man is with the Tenth. Like-”

Tilla saw apprehension in the faces of the other girls.

“-my poor Felix,” finished Aemilia. She gulped, and made a sudden grab for her purse. “We need some oil. Come and help me choose, cousin.”

As Tilla followed her cousin across the hall, she was almost sure the jumble of echoed voices around her held a hiss of, “She really doesn’t know, does she?”

Tilla adjusted her towel and leaned back against the wall of the warm room, closing her eyes to the sight of the painted dolphins leaping across the walls and, beneath them, the unpleasant things women were having done to themselves in the pursuit of elegance. She wished she could also close her nose to the stench of competing perfumes and her ears to the babble of voices laced with the occasional grunt from the massage couch and “Ow!” as the plucker of unwanted hairs delivered her own particular form of torture. The smell, the heat, and the noise were making her head ache. It was hard to imagine why anyone would want to come here at all, let alone turn up every day to be exposed and prodded by strangers.

She let out a long breath and let her head fall slightly to one side, mimicking sleep. Around her, the brittleness of the chatter became more obvious as she shut out the wide eyes and overeager smiles. It was as if, with few shared memories to link them, these women were so far apart that they needed to keep reassuring themselves by waving and shouting across the gap.

She thought of the long comfortable silences at home. The nights snuggled under warm blankets, listening to the low murmur of adult voices. The heavy crunch of another log being thrown onto the fire. The gentle trickle of beer being poured. Later, sometimes, the giggling and shuffling and gasping from her parents’ bed that she and her brothers were not supposed to hear.

A sudden wail followed by, “Sorry, miss!” brought her mind back to the bathhouse. This, perhaps, was what people who abandoned their ancestors and surrendered their souls to the foreigners became. Brittle shapes, clinging to one another and shrieking to drown the shame.

Her mind was drifting above the conversation around her when she heard a change of tone and realized an argument was starting.

“Look!” her cousin was insisting.

Tilla opened her eyes to see Aemilia tugging off her precious gold ring.

“Look!” she repeated. “It is my name. In Greek. Aemilia.”

The middle-aged woman standing over her gave a derisive laugh. “You can’t read Greek!”

“Can you?”

“No,” she retorted, “but I know what that says. It says, Long Life to Elpis. Ask anybody. That’s my ring. And you’re the little thief who pinched it from me last week.”