Sabrann hesitated before shouting, "Brica, grandmother!"
"Aha!" The woman smacked one blue-veined hand onto the blanket that was tucked around her knees. "So, my brother's family remember what honor is!" The chin rose and the creased lips clamped together.
After a pause they opened again. "I hear Brica's man is losing his sight," she declared. "The gods are just."
Behind her back, Sabrann gave Tilla a look that was somewhere between weariness and apology. Tilla prayed silently to the goddess that she would not be turned away because of someone else's quarrel. She had nowhere else to go.
Sabrann bent down again. "She asks hospitality for nine nights!" she shouted. "Until her arm is healed! Then she will leave!"
"Why does she not go to my brother's family?"
"Because she seeks people of honor!" yelled Sabrann, clearly embarrassed at her grandmother's rudeness. "She does not want to stay with friends of the Romans!"
The grandmother plucked at the edge of the blanket, tugging it higher up on her lap, then returned her attention to the figure kneeling in front of her. "Tell me, daughter of Lugh," she said, "who are your family?"
Relieved, Tilla who was now Darlughdacha again had begun the business of naming her tribe, then her parents and her grandparents and her great-grandparents while the old woman frowned and put in occasional questions about brothers and cousins and who was married to whom and who had fought beside which warriors and eventually they found the connection they were both seeking: an obscure second cousin who had once sold cows to the old woman's late husband's brother. "Now we know who you are," declared the woman, nodding with satisfaction. "You are welcome to stay with us while your arm heals, Daughter of Lugh, child of the Brigantes. You may sleep with this one who stabs herself with hairpins."
Tilla inclined her head. "It is an honor, grandmother."
"She says it's an honor!" yelled Sabrann.
Extra bracken had been hauled from the drying racks and thrown down to make a bed on the floor of the small house where the unmarried girls slept. On that first night, comfortably fed, stretched out on a borrowed blanket, covered by the medicus's cloak-she would have to get rid of that, a problem she would think about later-Tilla had lain listening to strangers chattering in her own tongue. She rolled over to watch the glow of the firelight. A hound had wandered in earlier and settled close to the warmth. One of its ears twitched and it gave a sudden shudder as it dreamed. It occurred to her that there must be mice, and to her surprise it also occurred to her that she did not care. She took a deep breath, savoring the familiar smells of wool and wood smoke and muddy dog. As she thought, "I am happy," she was aware of a voice nearby in the darkness suggesting, "Perhaps she is sleeping."
"Are you sleeping, daughter of Lugh?" demanded a second voice.
"Shh, Sabrann!" urged a third girl. "Don't wake her!"
She closed her eyes and said nothing. She did not want to answer questions about where she had come from. She did not want to think about where she was going, or what she might find when she finally reached home. She wanted to lie here, in this bed, and remind herself over and over again: I am free.
The questions had followed soon enough, though, as had the expressions of sympathy when they found out her family was dead and her arm had been broken when she tried to defend herself against a Roman merchant who had brought her down from the north to sell her.
It was as much of the truth as it was safe for them to know, and it would have satisfied them, if only a Roman officer had not arrived that afternoon on an elderly horse and announced that he had come to look for a woman.
The blank expressions with which he was faced were a defense the family had used many times. In truth several of them understood what he was saying and all grasped what he wanted, but none chose to reveal that the woman he sought was inside a house not ten steps from where he stood.
The Roman had finally given up and tramped back through the gateway. It was not until he was out of sight that the arguments started.
By this time the men had arrived, summoned from the fields by those nearest to home who had heard the dogs.
Their guest, it seemed, had lied to them. (Her objection of "I told no lies!" was ignored.) She was a runaway. It was against the law to harbor runaways. She must go.
No, insisted other voices, she must stay. She was a Brigante, true, but not a complete foreigner. She was nearly one of their own people. It was a matter of honor not to betray her.
Tilla, realizing she was not expected to be a part of this argument, slipped back inside the house and sat by the door, listening as indignation rose on both sides of the debate. A couple of the women tried to intervene. Nobody took any notice.
Someone cried that it was a disgrace to deny hospitality to an injured woman.
"Her master is a healer. Let him deal with it."
"Her master is a Roman!"
"She has brought the army to our doors!"
"One man on an old horse?"
"Romans are like rats. Where there is one there are more."
"What if they decide to search the houses?"
"What, for one slave?"
"Enough!" It was the voice of the old woman, quavering but loud enough to silence the debate. "Enough," she repeated. Tilla wondered who had gone to fetch her and how much they had managed to explain. "The girl will stay here tonight. We will discuss this matter after dark. You all have work to do. Go."
The arguers did not bother to mute their grumbling as they dispersed, and Tilla overheard someone say, "She's not his slave, you fool."
"He said ancilla. Ancilla means slave."
"Never mind what ancilla means. She's not his slave. She's his woman."
The evening meal was finished. The other girls had gone to mind younger brothers and sisters. The adults had carried rush lights across to the big house and closed the door behind them. Tilla was squatting by the fire in the girls' house, busying herself grinding corn while she waited to be told her fate. It was a job that could be done, albeit slowly, with one hand.
As the stone scraped and rumbled round on its base she thought about the people she had left behind. She thought about the girls at Merula's, and the boy Lucco, who did not know that it was forbidden to eat swan, and Bassus, and Stichus with the ginger-colored hair, and the woman she had got to know at the bakery. She thought about the pregnant Brica whose man might lose his sight, and the handsome doctor who always smiled at her, but mostly she thought about the medicus, who hardly smiled at all. She supposed he was smiling even less now. It served him right. Behind her back he had made arrangements to have her sold. At first she had not believed Bassus, but later she had arrived back inside the fort with the shopping and there he was, standing in the street outside the hospital, chatting to the medicus as if they were old friends. That was when she finally understood what the medicus had meant when he had told her she would be useful to him. He had mended her arm not out of kindness, but out of greed. Instead of going to his house to prepare supper, she had turned around, made her way back out through the east gate, and kept walking.
The dog lying beside her suddenly lifted his head and turned toward the door. Moments later, a hinge creaked and a figure slipped in.
"My cousins are seeing to the little ones," announced Sabrann. "And my aunt is shouting for the grandmother." She dropped the sack on the ground. "I brought you some more corn, daughter of Lugh."
"Thank you."
It was the first time they had been able to speak privately since the argument erupted. Sabrann said, "They are talking about you."
"I know."
"I would have you stay."
"Others would have me leave."
Sabrann reached a hand inside the sack and trickled a fistful of corn into the hole in the center of the stone. "He was quite good-looking," she observed.