The infant gave a loud burp, which brought a big smile to Fulmina’s face and she sat down on the other side of the peat fire cradling him in her lap. ‘Where did you find him?’
‘Upstream, near the edge of the Barbinus ranch.’
That made Fulmina glower, for they had been forced to sell their farm to the wealthy Cassius Barbinus and any use of the name always upset her. ‘I won’t ask what you were doing up there yourself,’ she hissed angrily. ‘I dare say you were singing to the gods again, you drunken oaf.’
Clodius wanted to explain that it had been an accident, with one harmless drink leading to another. He had the Feast of Lupercalia as an excuse, but experience told him to remain silent on that score. ‘It’s a good two leagues away from any road. He wasn’t meant to be found.’
‘What makes you think the people that abandoned him came from the road?’
‘Hoof prints. Two horses, at least, I’d say. He must be a sturdy fellow, though he’s well wrapped up. If they’d bothered to undo those swaddling clothes, he wouldn’t have survived through the night.’
‘Poor little mite,’ said Fulmina, beginning to unwrap him so he could be washed. ‘Is that water warmed through yet?’
Clodius poked his finger into the top of the pot. ‘Nearly. It wasn’t just the cloth though. There’s shade all along that riverbank. They put him in one of the few spots that gets any sun once it has topped the mountains. I think that’s really what kept him going till I turned up. The question is, what are we going to do with him?’
Fulmina had the cloths open, exposing the top half of the child’s pink body with the stump of the umbilicus red and angry. As she removed the rest she cooed, ‘There, there.’
Clodius squatted down and poked gently at the fire, his back to his wife. ‘Somebody went to a lot of trouble to hide him. Not much point in raising a bairn that no one wants. Whoever sired him wouldn’t thank us for rearing him to manhood and then givin’ him back, always supposing we can find out who dumped him in the first place.’
‘Somebody wants him back,’ said Fulmina. ‘And badly at that.’
‘Naw!’ scoffed Clodius. ‘There are any number of places to expose around here if you want the child to live. You certainly don’t go hiding him in the middle of nowhere…’
Fulmina spoke without anger, almost gently again, except for the note of urgency. ‘Shut up, Clodius Terentius, and look at this.’
Clodius turned slowly, straight away catching the glint of the chain, plus the flash of the eagle in Fulmina’s fingers, and stood up quickly to take a closer look. It was beautiful, even to an eye unused to examining precious objects. On top of the gold, all the bird’s features were picked out in fine engraving.
‘Someone wants this child raised, Clodius. This is a mark to identify him, as well as a sign to tell whoever finds the boy that the person who brings him up is in for a reward when he’s taken back.’
‘That’s gold,’ said Clodius, as he took it off her, fingering the feathers on the wing. He felt the small indentation in the back and turned the object over to examine it. Fulmina was looking at him strangely, trying to see if he was playing the fool, for she had only ever seen one piece of gold in her life, a charm on the wrist of the local praetor’s wife. It had flashed in the sun the day the magistrate crucified the slaves of a rich fellow who had been murdered. Quite an event that; all the women, young and old, had noticed that golden charm, and conversation was made up, for months afterwards, of endless wishful thinking about a life that could include such luxuries.
Clodius, though, had been a soldier, and that was all old sweats talked about. Booty, generally in the form of gold and silver and usually slipping through their fingers by the merest whisker of fate. Fulmina took the eagle back, emulating Clodius in the way that she ran the charm through her fingers. She gave a small gasp, as if she had hurt herself, but quickly recovered as Clodius leant forward to touch it again, his eyes wide with greed and wonder.
‘Perhaps your singing to the gods and asking them for favours hasn’t all been in vain, husband. Perhaps we have come into some good fortune at last.’
‘I wonder how much it’s worth?’
‘What?’
Clodius was so busy looking at the gold he mistook Fulmina’s surprised reaction for a real question. ‘The gold charm. If we sell it, would it provide enough to buy another farm?’
She scowled. ‘Tend that pot before it cracks, you fool!’
Clodius hauled the pot out of the fire. Some of the water spilt on his hand and by its heat he knew that he had got to it just in time, which brought forth a sigh of relief. A pot like this, fired in a charcoal kiln, was worth a bit, a valuable item that they would find impossible to replace. Then he smiled; sell that charm and they could probably afford a dozen pots like this, perhaps even a beaten copper one. He turned to carry the water over to his wife, who had laid the tiny infant on the rough top of the wooden table. The baby kicked with both legs and thrust its arms in the air, pushing against Fulmina’s hands.
‘My,’ cooed Fulmina once more. ‘We have a little fighter here.’
She proceeded to bathe the little fellow, gently removing the dark streaks of dried blood from his body. Now well fed, the tot seemed to be enjoying it, gazing at Fulmina with those steady blue eyes, and gurgling happily.
‘Well, what do you think?’ Clodius demanded.
Fulmina didn’t take her eyes off the child. ‘Think. About what?’
‘About what?’ said Clodius impatiently, feeling that his good fortune in finding the child allowed him a little licence to berate his wife. ‘What have we just been talking about?’ He put out his hand and lifted the eagle so that it lay in his palm. ‘How much is it worth?’
That made Fulmina stop her bathing. She stood up and stretched to her full height. This still left her a good head shorter than her husband. ‘You’re a fool, husband. All you can think of is selling this thing so you can have enough money to carry on with your drinking.’
‘That’s not true. I asked if it was enough to buy a farm.’
‘You drank away one farm, Clodius,’ she sneered. ‘I daresay you could easily manage to drink away another.’ Fulmina reached up and tapped the side of his head. ‘Think for once and try and see past the first flask of wine. Somebody exposed this child in a secret place so he would not be found, but whoever put this charm on him wanted him to live. How many people round these parts could afford to own something like this?’
Clodius shrugged.
‘Not many, husband, and how many of them would have had a child since the sun went down last night?’ She stopped talking, watching the slow look of comprehension cross her husband’s brow. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to find that out if we ask around. Then we’ll know.’
‘What happens then?’
‘One thing at a time, husband. Let’s find out who this little fellow is, then we can decide what to do.’ She lifted the charm out of Clodius’s palm. ‘Whoever it is might pay more than the price of this to see him grow up to manhood.’
‘Fourteen years is a long time, Fulmina. Another mouth to feed.’
His wife fixed him with a glacial stare. ‘We can manage it, that is if you stay off the drink and get some kind of work. You made a pig’s ear of raising our brood, let’s see if you can do a better job on this one.’
Clodius knew when he was beaten, knew when it was time to make a tactical withdrawal and his golden rule was always to change the subject. ‘Well, if he’s staying with us, he’ll need a name. What are we going to call him. What about Lupus, since he was born on the feast-night of Lupercalia.’
Fulmina looked down at the charm. The eagle flashed, seeming to be truly in flight. ‘Not Lupus, husband. With a charm shaped like this, what else can we call him but Aquila.’
They asked all over the district. There were often disagreements about exposing children, even those that were deformed, for in a world where a husband’s word was law, it was the father’s sole decision, even if the mother virulently disagreed. In that case the wife would arrange for a particular family to “find” the child and pay for them to raise it. With luck, and a discreet approach, they might find someone willing to pay them for rearing Aquila. At the very least they would elicit a promise of a future reward. Clodius was sent as far afield as he could walk in a day, but there was no evidence of a well-born lady, or the wife of some rich merchant or rancher, giving birth in the district. Travellers and traders on the road could not help either and gradually, as the weeks went by, the search petered out.