Whatever she was going to say, the words died on her lips as Muta came stumbling frantically from the inner room, making painful strangled noises in her throat. She grasped her mistress by the stola and tugged at her, in a way that no normal household slave would ever dare to do. It was evident that she wanted her to come, and urgently.
‘What is it, Muta?’ Secunda was already following, and — since there was clearly some emergency — I came along as well, through a little anteroom, which led out to the rear and where querns and bowls and sweeping-brooms were stored, into a little sleeping room beyond.
It was a small room by any standards and it seemed smaller still for the Roman bed in it: a simple wooden bed-frame with a palliasse, not unlike the one in which I had spent the night before. Beside it on the floor was another smaller mattress, clearly made of straw, where I imagined Muta slept herself. On it sat Paulina, happily engaged in drawing patterns on her piece of slate and not even glancing up as we approached. It all seemed very tranquil but Muta was clearly very agitated still.
‘What is it, Muta?’ Secunda said again.
The slave-woman pointed to the window-space. The shutter, if there was one, had not been put in place and the room looked out onto the grounds. I went across to see. To one side was the gate, and on the other the pasture-field and the wood beyond. Nothing was moving out there except a tranquil cow. I shook my head. I didn’t understand.
Muta held one hand out at the level of her waist and made a motion as if running on the spot. We frowned at her, and then understood her at the same instant. I cried out, ‘Lavinia! She should have been in here. What has happened to her?’ just as Secunda said, ‘She must have recognized that slave-girl from the gig and taken fright.’
More pointing at the window.
‘She ran away through there?’
Emphatic nodding.
Secunda looked at me. ‘We shall have to find her, citizen — whether those slaves from Glevum learn of it or not. If she gets in the forest, the gods know how she’ll fare. She’s not used to walking anywhere alone and there are bears and wolves about. And Paulinus has just gone out to feed the beasts, he isn’t here to help. Oh, Vesta and all the household gods preserve the girl! We cannot even be sure which way she might have gone. Did you see her, Muta?’
Muta shook her head. She pointed from herself to the intervening room and made a motion as of sweeping up. I had noticed that there was a bundle of tied brooms in there.
Secunda looked frantic. It was the first time I had seen her other than serene. ‘Then it must have been the window. I don’t know where to start. If only Paulina could tell us what she knows.’
Muta squatted down beside the deaf girl, leaning very close. She pointed to her eyes and then the window-space and made that running motion that she’d made before. Paulina beamed. She took the slate and smudged it with her sleeve, half erasing what she’d drawn on it. She took the chalk and started drawing something else.
‘It’s no good,’ Secunda said. ‘She doesn’t understand…’
But Muta had held up a warning hand. She pointed to the slate. It was a childish drawing but unmistakeable. It was a little building with a sort of doorway at the front. Secunda was about to turn away again and start the search, but Muta seized the chalk. She drew a sketchy picture of a cow.
Paulina rubbed it out and drew what looked like a long fat table on two spindly legs. She stared at it a moment, as if dissatisfied, then drew a spiral at one end of it.
I frowned at it a moment and then had an idea. Very gently, I took the chalk-stone from the child and gave the thing a head. I looked at Paulina, who smiled delightedly. I tried a pair of ears, and then a flattened nose — and the ‘table’ had transformed itself into a pig.
Paulina was grinning as though her face would burst. She took my arm and dragged me to the window-space where I could see the byre. It was not much like the picture she had drawn, but she pointed to the slate and then to it and then made the running motion which she’d seen Muta make. There was no doubt at all what she was telling us.
‘Lavinia’s hiding in the pig-byre,’ I announced, but the others had already worked it out.
‘Muta, go and find her. Better still, go and find the master and get him to come here. He can go and tell her that we know where she is, but that she can stay there until the gig has gone. You’d better warn him that the land-slaves mustn’t move the pig back to the byre. That sow’s a heavy beast. If it turns on Lavinia, she will certainly get hurt.’
Muta nodded and disappeared at once in search of her master. Secunda turned to me. ‘So I ask you once again, are you going to betray her, citizen?’
I could not answer her. ‘Do I not have duties, lady?’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘I am being paid.’
‘Duties to whom, exactly, citizen? You know now that the girl that we have taken in is not the child of Cyra and Lavinius, but of a Silurian widow who entrusted her to us.’ She held out those lovely pale white hands to me. ‘Libertus, you are a man of some intelligence. You will see that there is little to be gained by returning a girl — whatever her legal status may have been — to a cruel man who has in any case announced that he has rejected her. If she were dragged back there she would find herself at best obliged to sell herself to slavery — or at worst, reduced to being a beggar or a fugitive. I cannot believe that you’d connive at that — or even that you would tell Lavinius the truth about her parentage. Think what would happen to Cyra, in that case. It would serve no purpose, human or divine. Better that he simply believes the girl has run away.’
I have heard lawyers argue with less force. I looked at her with even greater admiration than before. ‘You have a point, of course,’ I said, slowly. ‘Lavinius has no natural claim upon the girl and he has publicly renounced his legal one. And as you say, her mothers — if I may use the phrase — were both content that she should stay with you.’
She could see that I was weakening and she sealed it with a smile.
I found myself saying, by way of self-excuse, ‘Besides, I was not actually required to find Lavinia at all — it was simply that I chose to do so while I had the chance.’
‘Then you will not betray us?’
‘That might depend,’ I said untruthfully, ‘on what you tell me next.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Secunda had recovered something of her tranquillity. She sat down on the bedframe and — watching Paulina who was busy with her drawing, as if nothing had occurred — said soberly, ‘We owe you a proper explanation, I suppose. What do you want to know?’
I looked round for a seat where I could sit, myself, but there was nothing in the room except a little clothes-chest with an oil-lamp on top and the straw mattress where Paulina was. I leaned against the wall. ‘Tell me how Lavinia escaped the lodging-house. Did she really climb through the window-space, as she just did here? When I first realized that she hadn’t run away, I thought the cloth-rope through the window was a ruse, intended to mislead.’
Secunda gave the smile that would excuse her anything. ‘You are quite right, citizen. The nursemaid made it and put it there (having made sure that there was no one watching in the court, of course) but not until her daughter had safely gone. We had taken Lavinia with us — she was hidden in the travelling box, asleep.’
I frowned. ‘But I thought you had your so-called slave-boy with you when you went? Several people mentioned seeing him — though nobody recognized him as the Lavinia they knew.’
‘That was not Lavinia, of course. That was a pauper’s child that we had hired for just an hour or two. His parents were delighted when we wanted him. We kept him with us till we were out of town, then let him go again and sent him home. He could not believe his luck. But by that time Lavinia was beginning to wake up.’