There were three reasons for visiting the market garden. First: Phoebe herself, who would have heard about Helena and who was overdue for an introduction if I ever wanted a bowl of her rocket soup again. Second: so we could leave Geminus at the nearby mansio where the dead Censorinus, and possibly his centurion pal Laurentius, had stayed. Pa could not nowadays visit the market garden due to what passes for tact in our family; instead he was instructed to make himself at home at the inn, buy the landlord a large one, and find out what the soldier (or perhaps two soldiers) had been up to. The third reason for going was to investigate my brother's store.
Much is made of the Great Roman country estates staffed by thousands of slaves for the benefit of absentee senators. You hear less about subsistence farms like the one my mother's brothers ran, but they are there. Outside Rome itself and many another town, poor people scrape a living for large families who swallow any profit, slogging away, year after year, with little more than bad tempers to show for it. At least on the Campania there was decent soil, with fast roads to a voracious market when anything grew.
That had been how my parents met. On a trip to Rome, Ma had sold Pa some doubtful brassicas, then when he went back to complain, she coyly let him take her for a cup of wine. Three weeks later, with what must have seemed at the time like country acumen, she married him.
I tried to explain the set-up to Helena as we drove down the track. 'My grandfather and Great-Uncle Scaro originally shared the farm; now at various times one or two of Ma's brothers run the place. They are a raggedy set of characters, and I can't say which we'll find here. They are always going off for a foreign love affair, or to recover from a fit of remorse because their cart ran over a grass-cutter. Then, just when someone is delivering twins on the kitchen table and the radish crop has failed, they arrive home unexpectedly, all eager to rape the goatherd's teenage daughter and full of mad ideas for horticultural change. Be prepared. There's bound to have been at least one ferocious quarrel, some adultery, a dead ox poisoned by a neighbour, and a fatal accident in the nuttery since I last came. Unless Uncle Fabius discovers he had an illegitimate son by a woman with a weak heart who is threatening a lawsuit, he counts the day lost.'
'Isn't it rather inconvenient on a farm with work to do?'
'Farms are lively places!' I warned.
'True! We must expect people who spend all day dealing with Nature's bounty of life and death and growth to have seething emotions to match.'
'Don't mock, woman! I spent half my childhood on this farm. Whenever there was trouble at home we were sent here to recuperate.'
'It sounds the wrong place for a rest!'
'People on farms can handle trouble as easily as pulling salad leaves: Let me continue with the briefing, or we'll arrive before I've done. At the centre of all this strife, Great-Auntie Phoebe occupies the hearth like a rock, making polenta that would halt an epidemic and holding everyone together.'
'Your grandfather's sister?'
'No, she's his unmarried second wife. My grandmother died early-'
'Worn out by the excitement?' suggested Helena.
'Don't be romantic! Worn out by childbearing. Phoebe was a slave originally, then Grandpa's comfort for years. It happens all the time. For as long as I can remember they shared one bed, one table, and all the hard work my uncles had no time for because of their fascinating social lives. Grandpa made her a freedwoman and was always intending to marry her, but never got around to it-'
'I see nothing wrong with that, if they were happy,' said Helena, in a stern voice.
'Neither do I,' I replied, suavely deleting any tone of criticism. 'Except Phoebe is ashamed of it. You'll find her very diffident.'
Helena thought all my stories a joke until we got there.
Great-Auntie Phoebe was spinning imperturbably beside the hearth. She was a small, sweet, round-cheeked woman who looked as frail as grass but had more strength than three grown men. This was just as well, since while the others were being introspective about their personal lives she had to harvest cabbage and turn a fork in the manure heap. Not so much lately. She was probably eighty, and had decreed that delivering a calf was now beyond her dignity.
She had a passionate interest in our entire family, based on the fact she had nursed most of us through colic and adolescence. Festus had been her favourite, needless to say. ('That limb!')
Uncle Fabius was away from home for dark reasons no one would specify.
'Same trouble again?' I grinned at Phoebe.
'He never learns!' she whispered, shaking her head.
Uncle Junius was here, spending his time complaining about the absent Fabius. Well, his free time anyway. His main energy was taken up with a rapidly failing carp-farm and his efforts to seduce a woman called Armilla, wife of a neighbouring, much more prosperous, landowner.
'Leading him on?' I demanded, showing Helena how to read the code.
'How did you know?' clucked Phoebe, breaking off her thread.
'Heard it before.'
'Ah well!'
There had been a third brother once-but we were not allowed to mention him at all.
All the time we appeared to be talking about my uncles, the real subject under scrutiny was my new girlfriend. It was the first time I had brought anyone other than Petronius Longus (mainly because I used to come on holiday when both the grapes and the girls were ripe, with obvious intentions to enjoy both).
Helena Justina sat, dark-eyed and gracious, accepting the ritual scrutiny. She was an educated girl, who knew when to curb her ferocious temperament or else condemn us to thirty years of the family accusation that she had never wanted to fit in.
'Marcus has never brought one of his Roman friends to see the farm before,' commented Great-Auntie Phoebe, letting it be understood that she was referring to my female acquaintances, that she knew there had been many, and that she was relieved I had finally found one who must have displayed an interest in growing leeks. I grinned amiably. There was nothing else to do.
'I'm very honoured,' said Helena. 'I've heard a lot about you all.'
Auntie Phoebe looked embarrassed, thinking this must be a disapproving reference to her unsanctioned relationship with my free and easy grandpapa.
'I hope you don't mind if I mention this,' Helena went on. 'About sleeping arrangements. Marcus and I usually share a room, though we are not married, I'm afraid. I hope you're not shocked. It's not his fault, but I've always believed a woman should keep her independence if no children are involved:'
'That's a new one on me!' cackled Phoebe, who apparently liked the idea.
'It's new to me,' I replied, more nervously. 'I was hoping for the safety of respectability!'
Helena and my great-aunt exchanged a witty glance.
'That's men for you-they have to pretend!' Phoebe exclaimed. She was a wise old lady whom I held in great affection, even though we were not related (or more likely because of it).
Uncle Junius grumpily agreed to take me to the store. On the way out, I noticed Helena staring curiously at the little semi-circular niche where the household gods were displayed. There was also a ceramic head of Fabius, with flowers reverently laid before it by Phoebe, who always honoured the memory of any absent uncle (except, of course, the one who was not talked about). She had another bust of Junius on a nearby shelf, ready for the honorific treatment the next time he flitted. Back in the niche, between the conventional bronze statues of dancing Lares bearing their horns of plenty, lay a dusty set of teeth.