“He tells me you have not had your marriage blessed after the custom of our people.”
“We were married in Gaul,” she explained. Perhaps the old man’s sky-blue eyes were dim. Perhaps he would think it was a bird. Then she remembered that he had recognized her across a crowded market.
“And so far,” he was saying, “you have no children.”
“There is plenty of time,” put in her husband. As if either of them believed that time would make a difference.
She caught his eye and glanced down at the Thing, then back up again. A faint expression of puzzlement flitted across his face, but Senecio was speaking again and he turned back to pay attention.
“I have been thinking,” Senecio continued, “that as an old friend of your mother and one who can remember your family, it would be a duty and an honor to offer that blessing.”
Her husband took her hand and bowed. The wretched Thing dangled forward as if it were in flight, then landed back against his chest. “We are the ones who are honored, sir. Thank you.”
If her hand had not been trapped in his, she might have reached up and dropped the Thing back inside his tunic. He could have worn something like that around the army base, but what sort of man arrived to meet his wife’s family friends for the first time with a model of a flying penis strung around his neck? She could imagine what fun Enica and the one with the lisp would have passing that on. She tried squeezing his hand, but he merely squeezed it back, his warm grip showing how pleased he was with the way he thought things were going.
Senecio was speaking again. Something about the Samain festival and how many guests would be there to share the feast and the bonfires. “And there will be a full moon, which will bring you good fortune.”
Her husband seemed confused. She explained again in slower British, hoping she had got it right. “He is offering to give us the blessing at the Samain feast, on the fourth night after this one.”
Only afterward, when Senecio had limped off to his bed, did she find out why her husband had said, “Ah!” as if this was a surprise, and not an entirely pleasant one.
“I thought that was it,” he said. “I thought that was the blessing. I didn’t realize he meant a whole ceremony.”
How could he have imagined that was it? His understanding must be worse than she thought. “There will be singing and dancing and lots of food, and if we are lucky Senecio will make us a special poem, and there will be big bonfires because it is Samain.”
“I’m not sure I want our marriage blessed on the night when the dead walk.”
“When the walls between the living and the dead melt away,” she corrected him. “And you will enjoy it when you get there. Now, tell me. Where did you get that?”
He glanced down in the direction of her accusing stare. “Oh, that! Somebody lent it to me.”
He was wearing it specially. A winged penis. To meet his wife’s people.
She would never understand Romans.
“It’s supposed to bring good luck,” he said, as if that excused it. “That reminds me. There’s bad news about Valens’s father-in-law.”
Chapter 8
Ruso survived a night in a native bed, although without his native wife. It was something Tilla might have warned him about, but didn’t. She seemed to be annoyed about something. Instead he had been offered a bracken-stuffed mattress and some blankets behind the wicker partition that denoted the men’s area. Senecio did not join them.
He had lain awake for what seemed like hours listening to sounds that might be rodents or might be Conn creeping across from one of the other beds to knife him where he lay.
Where was his sword? What would he do if they didn’t give it back?
He finally dropped off to sleep only to be woken by whispering from behind some other partition. This was followed by giggling and the unmistakeable sounds of sex. In a house with no proper rooms, everybody could hear everything that went on.
And on.
He hoped the sounds were nothing to do with Virana. The sooner that wretched girl was handed back to her family, the happier he would be. Meanwhile he would be obliged to put up with the embarrassment of some enthusiastic native ceremony with the old man making up poems about them and everyone singing those interminable ancestor songs that Tilla used to sing in the kitchen at Deva to frighten the mice away. He rolled over on the lumpy bed and tried to go back to sleep, but the gasping and grunting was annoyingly out of time with the rhythm of Conn snoring, and then almost as soon as it was over a child started to cough.
He considered getting up to find Tilla, but it was dark, he had no idea where she was, and besides, he suspected he was not entirely sober. He could hardly stumble around the house waking up sleeping bodies to find out which one he was married to, and it seemed Tilla had no plans to come and fetch him. Valens was right: No good came of mixing with the wife’s friends and relations.
He woke feeling bleary and foolish. Nobody had attacked him in the night. Conn returned his sword as he left. Ruso dismissed the murmur of “I am no happier with this friendship than you are, Roman,” as an attempt to salvage some British pride. Whatever the son thought, he had the old man’s approval.
Had he been feeling brighter on his walk back to the fort, he would have enjoyed the sound of the birds celebrating another sunny morning. He would have savored the smell of fresh bread from the ovens over in the ramparts. Unfortunately he felt more like the dead hen that was still lying on the desk.
Pertinax was still alive. “No hemorrhage, no excessive swelling, no unexpected pain,” reported Valens. He was annoyingly cheerful, having persuaded the deputy to stay awake at the bedside while he himself just dropped in a couple of times to check that nothing more needed to be done. “He’s taken some poppy but he’s lucid enough to insult me.”
“That’s good news.”
“Hm.” Valens settled himself on the pharmacist’s table. “You look done in. Good night, then?”
“Absolutely,” Ruso lied, hoping he did not smell of stale beer and farmyard. He pointed at the hen. “Why is this thing still here?”
“Ah!” Valens looked pleased with himself. “I found out about that. I think your clerk should be returning very soon. He’s on cook duty tonight so he arranged to buy a decent dinner from some chap with local contacts. A man called Mallius turned up half an hour ago wanting to be paid.”
“When did Candidus arrange this?”
“Some time ago, I think,” said Valens, unhelpfully vague. “So tell me, exactly how mad and manipulative are these people of Tilla’s?”
“I’m not sure,” said Ruso, who was not going to breathe a word to Valens about the wedding blessing. “The eldest son’s a nasty piece of work but the old man means well enough. I think he’s genuinely concerned about Tilla. Do you mind?” He pointed at his friend’s footwear, restraining the urge to cry, “Boots!” in the outraged tone adopted by Serena on the rare occasions when she and Valens were in the same room and speaking to each other.
“Sorry.” Valens swung his feet down from the stool and made a halfhearted attempt to brush off the clumps of dried mud. “Apart from Pertinax it’s been pretty quiet. Your centurion dropped in to ask what I thought of an invisible rash on his neck, and there was one admission in first watch with chest pains. Probably indigestion. He’s in Room Five.” Valens glanced at Pandora’s cupboard. “I wasn’t sure what to do about notes.”
Ruso sighed. “Nobody is.”
“Perhaps Albanus will give you a hand when he turns up.”
“If he’s not too busy trying to find his nephew.” Ruso’s brief nostalgia for the days when he had enjoyed Albanus’s willing and intelligent assistance was interrupted by the sound of approaching voices. Rising above them, the scurrying of feet culminated in a thump on the door before it burst open to reveal the rumpled fair hair and pink cheeks of his deputy, Gallus, who declared, “Sirs, it’s the legate!”