‘You should have come to me.’
‘Oh, Mother, that’s ridiculous. What could you have possibly done? No, I found my own way.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Nothing too terrible, don’t worry.’ On impulse she took her mother’s hand. ‘I’m still a maiden of Etxelur. Still chaste.’
With great care, Rina showed no reaction.
‘But I got to know Carthage. I mean, the real city. Not as it exists in the imagination of the suffetes and the elders and the tribunes. Not even the priests know what’s going on, I don’t think. Mother, the bread ration, such as it is, doesn’t reach half the people it’s supposed to. There’s a whole population who have been simply abandoned. Yet they’re still there — many of them in a huge slum city outside the walls beyond the western gate. There is terrible corruption out there, terrible cruelty.
‘But most people are decent. I started to see the ways they help each other. One has room to take in an orphan, and does so. Another has a sort of food that her own child can’t eat because it sickens her, so she gives it to the family next door. There’s no fresh water but for a couple of dried-up springs, and even they are polluted by sewage, but they get organised, and dig latrines and sewage channels. Now we have doctors and nurses who can at least advise the sick. Of course it all depends on food, and there’s a dwindling supply of that, and in the end. . Well, I suppose it’s best not to think about the end.’
‘So this is what you’re doing. You’re in the middle of this network of — of helping.’
‘I’m educated, Mother. I can organise things on a bigger scale than most. Write things down, work out the numbers. And I’m a Northlander. I’m not in any of Carthage’s factions or cliques. That helps, I think.’
She had become a woman Rina barely knew, so much had she grown just in the few months they’d been in Carthage. She was still not seventeen. ‘Oh, Alxa! The risks you must run, of disease, of robbery. .’
Alxa smiled. ‘Mother, there’s always a risk. But people know me. I’m the Ana. If anybody tried to hurt me there would be a hundred to step in and protect me.’ Alxa patted Rina’s hand, as if she was the parent, Rina the child. ‘Besides, what choice is there?’
‘The family would be proud of you. But I wish I could spare you this!’
Alxa pulled back and stood up. ‘What would you do, hide me in a broom closet? I wanted to tell you — well, that I’m fine. Now you must go. Himil told me about your demanding boss.’
Rina could barely bring herself to stand and leave her. ‘Give my love to Nelo if-’
‘If I hear from him, I will.’
They embraced again, and it was over. Rina let Himil lead her out of the tavern and back up the hill towards Barmocar’s residence.
It was only then that it occurred to Rina to wonder why Alxa had arranged to see her now, and not before.
Rina returned to the Barmocar property without being spotted. She presented herself on time at Anterastilis’ bathroom, where a maid had already filled the mistress’ deep sunken bath with hot water sprinkled with salts and balm. Anterastilis herself was not yet present. Rina took the time to change into the sheer shift she used for this work, and to wash her face and neck.
Anterastilis bustled in, staggering slightly, evidently drunk. ‘By Melqart’s left ball, that rabble on the council go on and on. And the way they drink! Oh, help me with this, you dozy woman.’
Rina clapped her hands to dismiss the maid, who closed the door behind her, and helped her mistress loosen her robes, held in place by pins and buttons. Soon the folds of hugely expensive purple-dyed cloth slipped to the floor, and Anterastilis stood revealed in the girdle of bone and linen that held her figure in something like the shape it had been when she was younger, Rina thought cattily, with a prominent bosom and tight waist. Now this garment was unlaced from the back and discarded. Anterastilis, who was a little over forty and perhaps ten years younger than Rina, was full-breasted but flabby, with folds of flesh rolling from her belly, and sagging buttocks and thighs dimpled with fat. Not for her the privations suffered by the rest of Carthage, Rina observed, not for the first time.
Anterastilis stretched, yawned, belched, and allowed Rina to lead her by the hand to her bath, where she climbed down the steps into the hot water, sighed and settled back. Rina took sponge and pumice stone and rubbed at her flesh. Rina could smell spiced meat on her breath, and wondered what the meat could possibly be. Dog, perhaps?
‘That rabble on the council,’ Anterastilis murmured sleepily. ‘Only come here for my husband’s cellar, I’m sure of it. And because he lets them fight. .’
The way the young dominated life in Carthage had been among the most profound shocks for Rina on arriving here. Back in Northland she’d known the theory, of course. Farmers routinely died young. The women died of backbreaking toil and relentless child-bearing, the men died in the course of hazardous sports like hunting, or of fighting in wars, and everybody just died of famine or the diseases they caught from their animals. Even in the cities, even in the long-gone good times, more had died than were born, and the population depended on immigrants from the countryside. The result was a city that felt to fifty-one-year-old Rina like a playpen full of squabbling children. Even their councils fizzed with youthful aggression. Barmocar, in fact, was among the most elderly still serving-
‘Ow!’ Anterastilis slapped her face with a wet palm, hard enough to sting. ‘You pinched me, you useless sow!’
‘I am sorry, sorry,’ Rina mumbled, head lowered. Concentrate, Rina — concentrate! For if you earn enough disfavour you will be banished from here, and then how will you live?
With the bathing done, Rina helped Anterastilis out of the bath. Rina took special care, wary of the woman’s drunkenness; a fall would be disastrous, for Rina. She walked Anterastilis to the massage table. This was a slab of marble heated from beneath by a system of furnaces and pipes that circulated hot steam — a primitive contraption by Northland’s standards, but effective enough. Anterastilis lay on her back, a pillow under her head, naked, and closed her eyes.
Rina warmed her hands on the slab, and took oil jars down from the shelf. These were exotic products from the mysterious countries of the east, and even now Rina had no real idea what most of them were, but she had quickly learned which her mistress preferred, and how they were to be applied. She began with handfuls of a gelatinous oil applied to Anterastilis’ heavy stomach, Rina’s strong hands kneading the flesh. Then another handful for Anterastilis’ collarbones, and then the breasts themselves, which sagged to either side as if deflated.
This was the moment when Anterastilis would let her know how she wanted the session to proceed.
Sure enough Anterastilis pushed Rina’s hands away, and as she massaged her own heavy breasts, Rina moved down to her thighs, which parted softly Rina worked the oil into the flesh of the thighs, teasingly, slowly moving up to the folds of her sex.
Rina had no idea if this was merely sexual, if Anterastilis was a woman unsatisfied by her husband who demanded such services from all her maids, or if it was the kind of power display Rina had endured from Barmocar. Anterastilis’ motives made no difference to Rina. She had to perform these hateful acts anyway, for it was that or the street. She was an Annid! But the sheer repetition of it had taken her to a numb space beyond degradation.
Anterastilis seemed tired, as well as drunk. The session was proceeding more quickly than usual, and maybe she wanted to get it done before she fell asleep. Rina was relieved. There were times when her mistress asked her to use a variety of aids, expensive items carved of ivory, applied to her vagina or anus. Now, as Rina pushed her fingers inside her, Anterastilis moaned, and reached up to grab Rina’s small breast, squeezing it painfully through her thin shift.