Cast Not the Day (8 page)

But, not content with what had been allotted to them, they had quarrelled. There had been civil war; and in the end only two sons remained, Constans in the West and Constantius in the East, ruling the empire between them.

‘That,’ said Sericus when he told me, ‘is where our troops went. They were summoned to go and fight in this needless war. And now, though the war is over, I doubt they will return.’

Constans had purged the Western court at Trier, exiling or beheading the most able of his conquered brother’s generals and advisers.

As for my father, he had never cared for court intrigue. He had served under the old emperor Constantine, and had retained his position under his successor. When Constans had taken over in the West, he had offered to resign, or stay, as the new emperor required.

But even this had been taken as a sign of disloyalty. At Trier, the sycophants and schemers had whispered day and night into Constans’s ear: yes, my father claimed he was loyal – but loyal to whom? Gaul, having been ravaged by years of barbarian incursions, was weak. But the British province was prosperous, well garrisoned, and had a history of independent action. Who could say, they insinuated, with so many troops at their disposal, what the leading men of Britain might do? Was the emperor prepared to take such a risk?

Constans, when it was put to him in such a way, decided he was not. So he had summoned my father, who had been foremost among those leading men; and, one day in winter, when the clouds hung low over the bleak imperial residence at Trier, he had signed the order for his execution.

Balbus announced he had business in York. He would be gone for the winter, visiting his contacts and clients, and asked me to see to a few matters at the office while he was away.

It was a kindness of sorts. He had no power in the house, where Lucretia ruled; but the office was his own domain. I saw him off, walking with him to the northern gate, where his carriage was waiting. The journey would have been easier by sea; but like everyone else that year, he was avoiding the coastal route, in case of Saxons.

Next morning, Lucretia’s attack began. I was in my room, dressing, when there was a tap on my door. It was Claritas the housemaid, to say the Mistress wished to see me, and was waiting in her private sitting-room.

I finished dressing – without hurrying, I confess – and went downstairs.

I found her pacing in front of her new turquoise couch – a recent gift from Balbus, an expensive item imported from Italy, with fine worked ends inlaid with ivory, and dainty silver stag’s feet at the base.

‘Ah yes, Drusus,’ she said, not meeting my eye. ‘I saw Bishop Pulcher yesterday. He wishes you to call on him.’

I looked at her in disbelief.

‘Please tell him, madam, that I have more important business to attend to.’

She ceased her pacing and spun round. Her beads and bracelets jangled.

‘Important business? Listen to you, boy! Do you set yourself above me now? You will do as I ask.’

‘He wanted me to join his cult. I will not.’

Her face stiffened. I had spoken sharply back at her, without the fawning she took for proper deference. Even so, no one had told me the Christians disdain the word
cult
, which they reserve for followers of other gods than theirs – of Mithras or Isis or the Great Mother.

‘You may have gulled your uncle,’ she snapped, ‘with your melancholy air, and your fine aristocratic manners, but I am not such a fool. The bishop is a friend of mine and a great help to our family; I will not have him treated with disrespect.’

‘He asked me to make a choice. I have made it. That is all.’

‘And who are you,’ she said in a low, venomous tone, ‘to set yourself against the Church?’

It was a question I should never forget, and on which I spent many years brooding and formulating an answer. But then I merely said, ‘I am not his slave, madam, nor anyone else’s.’

‘We are all slaves before God,’ she retorted. But the force had gone from her voice. I saw her long neck redden, and knew that in our war this battle was mine.

‘I trust,’ she continued, turning from my gaze and fingering the ivory rosette on the couch-end, ‘you will reflect on your position here, and reconsider. Now leave me. I will not be treated with contempt in my own home. You may be sure my husband will hear of this, when he returns.’

And so I left her.

She may have been a slave before her god, but she was mistress of the house, and made sure the servants felt it.

The cook, a burly Spaniard, was her constant enemy and the only one of the staff who dared speak back to her. She would have dismissed him, but she knew good cooks were hard to come by, and liked to impress her friends with the elaborate dinners he prepared. He knew it too.

‘What is for dinner?’ she would demand.

‘Roast kid with figs, lady, and woodcock and goose eggs.’

‘I don’t want that.’

‘Then you will have to make do with a dish of beans and dripping.’

‘We will have the roast kid.’

And so, between them, there was an uneasy bristling truce.

The slave Patricus, who was so infirm he should have been laid up with a nursemaid of his own, she sent out on the smallest whim in any weather – to take a note to a friend; to inspect a newly arrived shipment of linen at the forum and return with samples; or to run petty errands for Albinus. To her maids she was sharp and violent and bullying. At the least slip she would scream abuse, slap them, and send them sobbing to their bedchambers at the back of the house beside the woodstore.

I was spared the worst of this. I believe, behind her disdain and hatred, she actually feared me.

On appointed days each month, and on certain holy days, she attended gatherings with other Christians, and sometimes afterwards I would glimpse her mumbling invocations to herself, kneading between her fingers a string of little black beads. But I never saw a sign of the fearsome rituals the farm-lads had scared me with – dismembered human victims, blood-drinking, or the kissing of dead men’s bones; and, in time, I came to suppose these must after all be the inventions of ignorant minds, as Sericus had told me.

One day, when she had called me to her rooms on some matter, I noticed a thing that had not caught my eye before. Half-hidden in an alcove behind the silk hangings there was the faded fresco of a youth, his delicate hands outspread, his dark eyes looking calmly across the crowded opulence. Though it was striking, I wondered she had not had the image painted over, for it was old naive work, almost jarring to the eye after the fashionable clutter. There was something about this solemn figure with his sad eyes and knowing smile that stayed in my mind, and later I asked Claritas the housemaid about it.

My question seemed to amuse her and she even smiled. She knew at once what I was speaking of. He was, she said, the chief hero of their religion, and for my aunt to paint over him would be thought an impiety.

By such small things did I come to understand Lucretia.

There were certain virtues which she set much store by. One of these she called
humility
, a strange word to make a virtue out of, reminiscent of lying in the dirt, but which the Christians had taken for their own. This particular virtue was something, she told me, that I lacked; and, after I had refused to obey her and see the bishop, she took it upon herself to teach me. She gave instructions that I was to eat my meals alone, so that I could reflect upon my selfishness; and she ordered the cook to serve me slops.

Suffering is a great teacher, she informed me. But I did not go hungry. The cook tossed the slops to the dogs, and instead served me with choice portions of meat or spiced fish, intended for Lucretia’s table. And the house-slaves, seeing we shared a common enemy, became my friends and allies.

So much for my instruction in humility. But chief among my aunt’s virtues was what she called purity, or chastity. The purest act of all, it seemed, was to renounce marriage and live alone in some wild place, or in selfchosen exile shut up with other Christians. I heard this first from Albinus and, amazed, I asked, ‘But who will give the farmers sons, or breed soldiers for the army?’

‘Salvation lies in the death of the body,’ he primly answered.

I gave him a sidelong look, to show I knew he was lying. He was always trying to deceive me with such absurd stories. I knew him better by now than to let him make a fool of me.

Soon, however, I was to hear more about chastity.

I was woken one morning by a scream of rage coming from Lucretia’s rooms. I bolted upright in my bed; the noise came again, ringing through the house, followed by Albinus’s wheedling voice, strained and high-pitched.

They were quarrelling. I went down to find my friend the cook, who would be sure to know what had happened. But before I reached him, there was a hiss from behind a storeroom door.

‘Hello Albinus,’ I said smiling. ‘You are up early. Couldn’t you sleep?’

‘Shut up,’ he snapped, pulling me by the elbow. ‘Come with me, I want to speak to you.’

He led me with many a backward look through the rear courtyard and out by the servants’ door at the back, into the narrow alleyway behind. Then he turned to face me.

‘What have you told her?’ he demanded.

I said I did not know what he was talking about.

He eyed my face suspiciously, then cried, ‘So it
was
that gossiping bitch Volumnia, after all. I knew it!’

I had seen Volumnia often at the house; she was one of Lucretia’s most frequent visitors, a bony middle-aged woman who wore wigs of straw-coloured hair shorn from German slave-women. She and Lucretia talked together of the Church, when they were not reviewing in hushed, glowing-eyed whispers the wrongdoings of their friends.

‘What has she done?’ I asked. But he just ignored me, and stood frowning, with his finger in his mouth, biting his nail.

A fine drizzle had started to fall and I did not have my cloak. It was cold, and I was in no mood for his riddles. I turned to go inside.

‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ he cried.

So I turned back, cocked my head, and stood leaning against the brick wall with my arms folded. By the time I had heard him out the drizzle had turned to rain and my tunic was wet through. But it was worth it, for what I heard.

Albinus had been seen in one of the notorious gambling dens of the city, the ones behind the theatre, in the close company of a street-trull. Before the night was out, word had got back to Lucretia, and when he came slinking back before dawn, she had been waiting.

All this took him some time to relate, because every few words he would break off the tale and launch into a volley of self-righteous curses, stamping his boot on the cobbles. He cursed Volumnia particularly, calling her a slack-tongued vixen, a sour-faced traitorous bitch, and other such things.

‘Do something right,’ he said, ‘and she never notices; but just put one foot out of step and her hawk-eyes are on you. I don’t know what business it is of hers anyway. She has spies everywhere. And now half of London will know.’

I said, trying to look serious, ‘But I didn’t think you spent time with whores, Albinus.’ Actually this was not quite true. Over the past months he had not been able to resist confiding to me his drab fantasies. That he should have done something about it came as no surprise. In the end, as men say, a hammer needs an anvil.

‘She’s not a whore,’ he answered with a sniff. ‘She was short of money, that’s all. She had left her purse at home and so I gave her something, and bought a flask of wine because she was thirsty. But she’s a nice girl. And it’s not true that she stole my purse, as Mother thinks. She picked it up because it looked like hers; anyone could make such a mistake.’

‘She stole your purse as well?’

‘No! Not stole! Why don’t you listen? Anyway I got it back; but Mother doesn’t see it that way . . . What’s the matter? It’s
not
funny, Drusus! It won’t take long for the bishop to find out – I expect Volumnia will pay him a special visit, curse her! She ought to keep her beak out of other people’s business.’

One of the kitchen cats came sidling up, a balding black and white creature. Albinus gave it a vicious kick, sending it scrambling over the wall with a resentful squeal.

‘Will you see her again?’ I asked.

He pulled himself up and gave me an arch look. ‘Maybe, if I choose to; anyway, that’s
my
secret, she’s my girl and you needn’t think you can—’ He suddenly broke off and leapt almost as high as the poor kitchen cat. The door had snapped open. Lucretia’s head appeared in the gap.

In a low, dangerous voice she said, ‘Get inside, Albinus, now!’ Then she vanished, leaving the door ajar. She hated to be seen in the street without a retinue or a litter, in case she was taken for a slave, or one of the dockyard women.

Albinus gaped at me. ‘Do you think she was listening?’

Seeing his face, I could contain myself no longer. I coughed and spluttered into my fist. ‘I cannot tell. But she’s waiting. You’d better go and find her.’

Lucretia sent the bishop a flask of Egyptian oil in a delicate fluted bottle of Phoenician glass, stoppered with a cap of white silver; the bishop, after consideration and prayer, decided the scandal could be forgotten and, shortly after, at the time of a Christian holy day, amid much celebration in the household from which I was excluded, Albinus was made a Reader.