Vita Brevis (13 page)

“We came for a baby-minder,” he reminded her.

“And a boy of the Dumnonii!”

“The boy must be a criminal to be shipped as a slave, wife. They’re a peaceful tribe.”

“They are my people!”

The Brigante might have been one of her people: The Dumnonii were a tribe from the far southwest where, as far as he knew, there was nothing but sheep and a few tin mines run by contractors. He doubted Tilla would have any ties there. But it seemed any part of Britannia could look like home from this distance.

Ruso felt as uncomfortable as he always did about the idea of human beings standing to be assessed for sale like animals while desperately hoping they would be taken to a kind home. It was not ideal, but it was hard to see how else slaves could be distributed. “We came for a baby-minder,” he reminded her. “Don’t get their hopes up. It’s not fair.”

The look she gave him was not even one of reproach. It was the look of a woman who knew what it was to be bought and sold.
What she did not know, he reminded himself as he grasped her by the arm, was what it was like to be doing the buying.

The auction of a middle-aged weaver carried on above them while a smiling dealer stepped forward to bow to Tilla and offer her the two Britons at a special price. It would save her having to bid against some of those ruffians out there, who had no respect for decent people. He evidently did not expect her to be able to read the word
RUNAWAY
on the label tied around the neck of the skinny Brigante, nor to notice that the acne-sprinkled Dumnonii youth had the sullen expression of one not used to taking orders.

Ruso told the dealer they had come to buy a woman.

After more bowing and smiling, the Brigante woman they were promised turned out to be Catuvellauni. Tilla was not impressed. Evidently the solidarity of exiled Britons did not extend to the Catuvellauni. He could not remember why her tribe did not trust them, but it was bound to be a reason that went back generations and owed more to passion than logic.

“We don’t have to have a Briton,” he reminded her. “I’ll see if there’s a Greek. It would be good for Mara to learn another language.” A proper, useful language.

“The Briton is fertile, sir,” the dealer assured him. “And a hard worker.”

“We do not want one that is fertile,” Tilla told him. “We want one that is kind and knows her place and keeps her word. Who else do you have?”

The woman swayed slightly. Her face was pink from standing in the sun. Her hair had been dyed to make her look younger. For a moment the bloodshot gray eyes met Ruso’s own. Then she squared her shoulders and looked away.

The Catuvellauni were longstanding allies of Rome. Whatever personal disaster had led her here, he had no doubt the woman understood everything they were saying about her. “Open your mouth for me,” he urged, her obedience confirming her grasp of Latin. He checked her teeth and tongue and eyes and ears as he would any other recruit. “Now bend down and touch your toes.”

“Husband, we do not want—”

“Does she look healthy to you?”

“She’s in the prime of life, sir!”

“I wasn’t asking you,” he told the dealer. “Tilla?”

“She is Catuvellauni.”

“We can wait for a Greek if you prefer.” He turned to the slave and said in her own language, “Have you looked after small children?”

The woman brightened. “I cared for the farm manager’s children back in Britannia.”

“Can you cook?”

“I can cook, sir.”

“Of course she will say that!” put in Tilla, who had once told him the exact same lie herself.

It was the cue for the dealer’s practiced speech about his famous six-month guarantee.

“We’ll see,” said Ruso, taking his wife by the arm and leading her away. He was not going to buy the first slave they saw.

Half an hour later, the Catuvellauni woman became his legal property. Pointing out that the woman was nearer forty than the alleged twenty-five had got him a discount, and he had spent little more than half of the money Accius had lent him. He was hurrying across to collect the documents and pay the tax when Tilla said, “Nobody has bought the runaway Brigante. Or the Dumnonii boy.”

He pretended not to hear.

“The Brigante will go to the mines.”

He said, “He should have thought of that before he ran away.”

“I ran away,” she reminded him.

“That’s not the same thing at all.”

“Why?”

“We have the slave we want. We don’t need a man.”

“But they are my people!”

It was unfair. He drew her aside and hissed, “Wife, I have neither the time nor the money to buy every slave you feel sorry for! Even if I could, what will we feed them on? Where will they sleep?”

“If I might intervene,” murmured a voice, “it’s not advisable to have too many slaves from the same province under one roof. You never know what they’re—”

“Simmias!” exclaimed Ruso before Tilla could say anything. “Simmias, this is my wife, Tilla. A renowned healer back in her native Britannia. If you have any patients needing a midwife, Tilla
will be happy to help. Wife, our new friend is going to recommend some useful contacts for buying specialist medicines.”

Perhaps seeing the expression on Tilla’s face, Simmias swiftly handed over a battered wax tablet on which he had scrawled several names, and retreated.

“All from one province is only bad if you do not speak their tongue,” Tilla insisted.

“We don’t need extra slaves. Especially ones who can chat to each other all day and can’t do anything useful. One of those is a runaway and the other one looks like a wet afternoon in winter. You have to think ahead when you buy people!”

“I am not talking about lots of extra slaves,” she pointed out. “I am only talking about two, and I will see to it that they work to pay you back.”

“Doing what?”

“They’re both keen workers, sir!”

Ruso turned to glare at the dealer. “It’s none of your business.”

But it was, of course, precisely that: his business. Unabashed, the man named a price which was close to the remaining money in the purse, and doubtless far more than he would have got from anyone else.

At the same moment as Ruso said, “No,” Tilla took him by the arm and said in a voice bright with innocence, “Oh, husband! Ask the nice man if he can take two hundred off, then you could afford them!”

The nice man gave Ruso a look that said he knew it was a game, and that he also knew he was much better at it than some newcomer who was fool enough to bring his wife to the slave auctions. Ruso gave him a deliberate stare of indifference. The dealer’s face cracked into a grin, leaving Ruso’s features stuck in the indifferent stare just a fraction longer than was appropriate. He had the distinct feeling that the man was laughing at them both.

“Just for you, mistress,” oozed the dealer, “I’ll go down to eight hundred.” He gave a dramatic sigh. “I never could resist a beautiful lady, sir. You’re very a lucky man.”

Tilla supposed she must have once looked like two of their new slaves did on the long trudge back to Kleitos’s lodgings. They were gazing up openmouthed at the gleaming temples and palaces that competing emperors had crammed into the center of the city. The Brigante was different. He shambled along, clutching his little bag of possessions with one of the new mattresses slung over his shoulder, and barely glanced up from his own bare feet. As if he had seen all of that marble splendor before and he did not care to see it again.

Tilla was not interested, either. It did not do to remind yourself all the time of how small you were and how little you mattered in this place, even if you were a citizen of Rome and a mother and an owner of three slaves when your husband had only wanted to buy one.

She swallowed. Three slaves. She would have felt terrible leaving these fellow Britons to their fate with the trader, but in truth Dumnonia was a very long way from her own people, and there might be a good reason why the boy had been sold. The woman was from a tribe that was not to be trusted, and now it turned out that the Brigante came from the other end of the territory and had
never heard of anyone in her own family or even the name of the Corionotatae. She dared not look at her husband.

Buying the slaves had seemed the honorable thing to do. In their place, it was what she would have prayed for. She knew what it was to be a possession in someone else’s homeland, doing her best to shut her thoughts away and forcing her body to endure through the long dreary seasons when no rescue came.

She knew, also, how little could be kept secret from a slave. Even if they did not speak, they would watch and listen. Then they would talk among themselves, because that was what slaves did, and if they were not loyal—as many slaves were not—they would talk to other people too.

She had made her husband invite these strangers to share their small lodgings, and suddenly she did not want them there herself.

They trudged up the hill beside the bathhouse. Several times she turned to check that the woman, Narina, was carrying Mara properly, and fought down an urge to snatch her back. Then the sight of the men with the mattresses and a glimpse of a girl crossing the street with a wicker chair balanced on her head brought on another worry. What would happen if they were wrong about Doctor Kleitos and his troubles, and the family decided to move back home again? Her own household would be crammed back into some horrible lodging house with three extra mouths to feed.

As they approached the Vicus Sabuci, an even worse fear gripped her. What if someone had left another barrel outside the door?

They turned the corner. A group of women with shopping baskets were strolling away along the arcade, blocking the view. Tilla held her breath. They passed the point where the barrel had been left, and she gave thanks out loud before she could stop herself. When her husband asked her what was the matter she said, “It is nothing,” because indeed it was. Nothing! There was nothing there in the shade of the arcade.

The body had been taken away. The priest had purified the apartments. There was no new barrel, and there was no lost wandering spirit to haunt them. She must put all that behind her now. It occurred to her that there were no patients waiting, either. She hoped other people would also be able to put the body business behind them. It had not been a good start after all.

Phyllis was coming down the apartment steps as they passed. She pointed to the slaves in surprise and mouthed, “Three?”

Tilla gave a vague shrug and a smile as if it were a mystery to her too, and hurried indoors.

Her husband was already giving orders to the skinny Brigante. “I want you on duty just there, outside the door,” he said. “Stand straight, take messages, and don’t let anyone in unless my wife says so. If anyone tries to deliver a barrel, report it to her straightaway.”

The man mumbled, “Yes, master,” as though he were asked to watch out for barrels every day and had grown weary of it.

Tilla said, “Why? Where will you be?” but her husband was not listening.

“Look encouraging,” he was saying, “and try not to put the patients off. If we don’t get paid, you don’t eat.”

“Patients, master?” The Brigante seemed to have woken up at last and was eyeing the scarred surface of the operating table.

“We are both healers,” Tilla explained.

Suddenly everything went dark. She staggered backward. Her husband shouted. She crashed into the table and hit the floor. There was something big and bulky on top of her. She could hear the frightened cries of her baby.

“Mara!”

Someone dragged the mattress off her.

“Mara!” She pulled herself to her feet.

“She is safe!” called the slave woman, bringing her forward. Mara’s arms were outstretched toward her mother, who took her and quieted the crying. “It is all right, little one. Mam is fine. Nobody is going to hurt us.”

The Dumnonii boy was standing in the corner clutching two mattresses and looking confused. The Brigante and her husband were gone. Tilla rubbed her bruised hip. “What happened?”

Narina said, “That Brigante threw his bed at you and ran away.”

While Tilla was still digesting this, her husband reappeared from the street, breathless and shaking his head. “Lost him down an alleyway,” he said. “I’ll get a slave finder to pick him up.” Then, glancing at the other two new arrivals, he said, “Anyone else frightened of doctors?”

The Dumnonii looked blank. The woman said, “No, master,” but her gaze
too was darting around the surgery like that of a nervous animal.

“We’re not going to ask you to help with operations,” her husband assured them.

The Dumnonii was still holding on to the mattresses and looking from one person to another. Tilla recognized that expression: the one where you hoped you would work out what was being said before it became obvious that you didn’t understand or, worse, before you got into trouble because you had missed something important. She guessed the seller had trained him to answer the questions a buyer was likely to ask. “Narina,” she said, “there is a jug of fresh water in the kitchen. Please pour us all a drink.”

Moments later everyone was clutching a cup as if they were all at some sort of awkward party. Her husband was issuing orders. “Narina, my wife will tell you what your duties are. Esico, I want you to clear up in here. Roll up the loose bandages. Collect all the empty bottles and jars and boxes together and give them a good wash and a scrub clean, and wipe down all the shelves. Sweep the floor with damp sawdust, then fill as many lamps as we’ve got oil for. When you’ve finished that to my wife’s satisfaction, she will give you enough money to go to the baths for a cleanup and a decent haircut and shave. And at some point you need to work out where you’re going to fit your bed into the surgery tonight.”

Tilla opened her mouth to point out that the dealer had surely made everyone wash before the sale and there was nothing wrong with Esico’s hair, then realized that since there was not much for an unskilled helper to do, getting rid of him for a while was no bad thing.

“Back from the baths straightaway or there’s no supper,” he told him. “Got that?”