The others guffawed at the joke, then One Eye pulled at his ear lobe.
‘You’re still in arrears,’ he said, shrewdly surveying the mess, ‘by fifty sesterces, don’t forget.’
‘You’ve destroyed my stock, my equipment, my shed,’ the fish smoker whispered. ‘You’ve left me with nothing, not even our baby’s birthday dinner.’
The woman looked round, to see jars of beans smashed and trampled, oil jars kicked over, even the bread that she’d baked bore a footprint. Her daughter was one year old today and even her honey cake had been scoffed by the thugs. Then without warning her own face was pinched in the thug’s hand and she screamed.
‘Pretty piece,’ he leered. ‘Can’t be more than seventeen. I’m sure you’ll find ways of settling the debt.’
‘Leave her alone,’ her man yelled. ‘Take your filthy hands off her, you hear!’
‘Me?’ sneered One Eye, brushing him off. ‘I’ve no use for a pregnant sow, but I tell you, boy, there’s men who likes ’em like that.’
‘You dirty bastard-’
‘Now, now,’ the thug laughed, crunching over the debris and deaf to the young woman’s whimpers, ‘I’m merely opening your mind as to different ways of raising the cash you owe. Don’t be too hasty to dismiss the idea.’
And with that, he and his gang strode back up the path towards Spesium as silently as they came. The young man staggered outside to inspect the damage.
The smoke house had gaping holes in the wall. They could be patched.
The doors were smashed, their hinges thrown in the lake. New could be bought.
The dog had been clubbed, but it was a mastiff with a head like a stone. It would recover.
Slowly, he nodded to himself. He’d worked hard to establish a reputation for plump, juicy smokies and for that reason he hadn’t minded handing over a small part of his income to nameless individuals for what was known as ‘protection’. In time he hoped to sell to Atlantis, so he didn’t complain, even when the price for protection crept up. So what, if it meant postponing building a proper house for a while? Life was sweet. He wore no man’s shackles, ran his own business, had the love of a good woman, one child and a second on the way, this time maybe a son? It would happen, he felt, in good time, the house and cart and the smallholding.
But not at fifty sesterces a month. That was over half his income.
The bastards were bleeding him dry.
He was not alone, of course. The baker-they put weevils in his flour, killed his donkey until in the end he found it easier to succumb. Now he received chicken-feed to manage the very business he’d set up, his own profits siphoned off. The wheelwright, too-his solution was to take his boys out of school to earn the extra money, and the fish curer knew there were more, many more. Shops changing hands for a pittance, families weeping as they packed up and left town…
Well, humble fish smoker or not, he would not be driven away like the others. He was not a fighting man, but if that’s what he had to do, so be it, he would learn to use a bow and swing a sword. His woman, child and unborn son were worth fighting for and when he found the bastard who was masterminding this, he’d kill him. So help him, he would gut him like a mullet and smoke him for days over oakwood.
‘We must leave.’ Her whisper was so faint that at first he did not catch the words. ‘Did you hear me? We must leave now.’
‘Never,’ he said firmly, kicking at the mangled fish with his bare toe. ‘We’re young, we can rebuild and I swear on the life of my daughter you won’t be driven to prostitution to pay off this so-called protection. But I must make a stand.’
‘I’ve put our clothes in a bundle, let’s go.’ She tugged like a mouse at his sleeve, and forcing a smile, he turned to put his arm round her and draw her towards him.
Instead his arm froze.
‘What is it?’ he rasped. Her face was grey, she looked thirty years older, and something had died in her eyes. Involuntarily he shivered.
‘Come,’ she said, and he saw she was clutching an old towel rolled into a ball and a beaker whose handle had just been smashed off.
A thousand leeches sucked at his blood, draining every single drop. ‘Where is she?’ The words became snagged on his lip. ‘Where’s the baby?’
Skidding in his panic, he raced back into the tiny hovel, where feathers from the ripped bolster floated in the smoke-filled air as his feet crunched over the shattered furniture. In her cot, sleeping, lay his baby daughter, one white feather on her chest, and the young man scolded himself for being so jumpy. Gently he leaned over the cradle, inhaling the milky soft smell of her and smiling at the pink, button nose.
‘It’s all right, pumpkin,’ he crooned. ‘Daddy’s here, it’s all right.’
But it was not all right.
As he lifted his child, the tiny blonde head lolled backwards and her little arms fell limp-and he knew, then, what he had known the second he had looked at his woman.
His baby was dead.
Suffocated in her mother’s terrified embrace.
For several long seconds, he stared at his child, before laying her back in the cot and tenderly tucking her in. After several long minutes, he leaned over and kissed her rosebud lips.
When the revellers in Spesium finally stumbled back to consciousness, they awoke to an animal howl from the lake end of town.
XVII
In the dark, dry serenity of Carya’s grotto, Claudia munched on a hunk of Sarsina cheese, redolent of the lush Umbrian fields of its homeland, and paused from time to time to pour water down her throat, either inside or out, it didn’t matter, both were sensational. Here, the slope of the cave muffled any eerie howlings which came from over the lake, filling the void with the hypnotic drip-drip-drip of the water nymph’s tears, and soon Claudia’s eyelids became weighted…weighted with lead…
‘Are you deaf as well as stupid, boy?’
The nasal whine, shriller still in anger, jolted her into wakefulness and instinct made her retreat into the corner where it was too dark to make out much more than reflected ripples on the wall and the white blur of Mosul’s priestly garb, but the slap did not need to be seen. Neither was it necessary to see Leon’s face to appreciate the impact of Mosul’s wrath, the lad’s groans were expressive enough.
‘How dare you’-thwack-‘come down here’-thwack-‘when I have forbidden it.’ Mosul was puffing from effort, Leon was gulping back sobs. ‘Out, you little shit, before I take the buckle end of this belt to your hide.’
‘I only wanted to help-’
‘Out! You hear me?’ Another octave higher and Mosul’s voice would have shattered glass. ‘Out!’
Memories blasted back, crushing hearing, sight, every known sense. Bitter memories. Of a leather strap biting in flesh. Of pain. White-hot pain. And an uncle, her mother’s brother, beating obedience into a small, orphaned child…
In the darkness, Claudia cringed and curled herself into a ball. Go away. Go away. But the uncle would not go away, not until his arm tired, although if she made herself small, she could hide. Hide inside herself and seek refuge against the bristly cheek of her father and it didn’t matter he was dead. Tight in a ball, she was his again. Safe and protected…
Through the tears-stinging tears, salty tears, not the make-believe tears of a nymph-Claudia became aware of Leon, stumbling out of the cave, whimpering like a whipped mongrel. Of the mole-eyed priest, glancing several times over his shoulder before leaning into the cistern. Finally, his hands swished the water, then he, too, was gone and soon the dancing ripples moderated their rhythm and Carya’s grotto was calm once again.
Scrubbing her face with the back of her hand, Claudia crawled out of her hiding place and cupped trembling hands in the water, but the water was sour and the darkness no longer a haven. Nevertheless she counted to twenty before striding out of the cave, and when the tub of a priest glanced up from the shrine, he saw a young woman skipping up the red marble steps without a care in the world, tossing back her curls as she improvised silly words to a popular festival tune.