Beyond the Wall Read online

  And yet she knew them.

  In her dream she stood looking at the rowan, the red berries growing in such profusion that they weighed down the branches. She drank in the sight of it, breathing in the cool, clear air, thrilled with its familiarity. And then her heart began to pound faster. The women had come.

  They had no form. Or rather, she could not see any. They were just out of sight. If she could only turn her head fast enough, she’d catch them. Yet she was frozen to the spot. She could neither move nor speak but only listen, and this appeared to be all they desired.

  Their voices wreathed about her. Tender, gentle murmurings, not in Latin – in a forgotten tongue. A language Titus Cornelius Festus had forbidden any slave to speak.

  She struggled to understand them. The words were like those that her mother had whispered in the darkness of the hut. She recalled the sounds but not their meaning. It was so long since Cassia had heard her mother’s voice, so long since she’d died! She reached for understanding but it was beyond her. If she could stretch her mind, push her memory a little further… Yet the harder she tried to grasp it, the more the sense eluded her.

  Moment by moment the women grew more irritated by her stupidity. They were frustrated. Angry. Their disappointment pierced Cassia but she could do nothing. They pleaded, as if by begging they could make her understand. There was something they wanted. Something she must do. But she had no notion of what. And so they began to vent their fury. At her back there were shrieks. Hissed curses. They rang in her ears and she woke wearied and confused, scarcely knowing where she was or how she had come there. For a moment she feared she was running mad, that pain and guilt over Rufus was turning her mind inside out. A desperate loneliness washed over her. There was no one who she could turn to for help. No one she could talk to.

  No one but Marcus.

  XII

  The Roman did not show his face the first day, nor the second. The hours stretched long and thin on the third and still he didn’t come.

  Rootless and friendless, Cassia felt she’d become transparent. Insubstantial. She might be carried away by a strong wind.

  Gaius kept her busy, and she was glad of it. Winter was approaching and the herbs the pharmacist needed for the dead months ahead had to be dried and powdered. She listened to his instructions, did as he asked, said nothing. But all the time she yearned for Rufus. Yearned too for the company of the men she’d worked alongside. Silvio, who’d been like an older brother; who she’d fought and played with as a child; who’d laughed and joked and called her “my lady Boudica” and “my queen”. Who’d looked so stricken when she’d been sent to the master. How painful it was to think that she’d never see him again!

  The pharmacist’s clients called on a daily basis and she made up salves and draughts according to his orders. In addition she was sent to fetch bread from the bakery and cheeses from the shop a hundred paces along the street. On top of that there was the huge, unfamiliar labour of working for a man who had no other slaves. She was clumsy with a broom, an inept cook and an inefficient housekeeper. But he seemed not to notice.

  On the fourth day she was told to leave the house and deliver a remedy to a woman who lived on the other side of the city.

  Her new master’s directions were clear and precise: she was to head due west, and then south at the third crossroads. Directly opposite the barracks there would be a villa with a painted door and a mosaic on the step showing a picture of a dog. That was where she should deliver the salve. She must take payment, and on her return journey buy meat and vegetables from the market for their supper. The weather was growing colder and Gaius had a desire to eat something warming that evening. A stew, he said. And he expected her to make it.

  She had no difficulty following his directions. She recalled Marcus’s words and kept her head down, walking with purpose as though she knew her precise destination, meeting no one’s eyes, looking too busy to stop or chatter.

  It did not prevent unwelcome attention. An attractive young woman, out alone? There were comments. Catcalls. Lewd propositions. Offers of money. As the streets got more crowded she was jostled, and sometimes she felt a hand snake out to pinch her flesh. By the time she delivered the parcel, she was overheated, sweating, her heart thumping against her ribs. How was she ever to feel comfortable in a place like this?

  She would have returned to the villa at once, but she’d been told to go to market. There the press of people was even closer. More pinching. More obscene suggestions.

  To escape the thickest of the crowds she went to the quieter stalls, but there she discovered another problem. She didn’t understand how to haggle for goods. She’d never had to handle money before, she didn’t know the coins’ value any more than she knew the cost of the things she’d been asked to buy. In the end she had to hold out a hand and allow the stallholder to pick the coins from her palm, not knowing whether he was an honest trader or not.

  They were mostly not.

  She ran out of money when she’d bought only half of what she’d been supposed to. The butcher had sold her gristly, half-rotten meat. The oil was rancid. The vegetables, mouldy. Looking at her meagre purchases, she felt like a child – so ignorant, so foolish! Once more she longed to see Marcus: there was too much to learn. She needed advice. She wanted information. But could she trust him to give it to her?

  Hot and distressed though she was, she’d noticed the streets of Londinium crossed each other at right angles. When she’d passed the Forum she’d seen that the road from it ran in a straight line all the way to the bridge. There had been no need for him to take her along the dockside or that street lined with brothels. So why had he? And why was he now keeping away from her?

  Unhappy and confused, she walked towards the market’s exit. But then she passed a throng of women who were gathered at one of the popular butchers’ stalls and all thoughts of Marcus were forgotten.

  “… the north.”

  It snagged in her ears although she didn’t know why. She stopped.

  “All along the frontier, I heard…”

  “Coming down from the hills, across that wilderness…”

  “Swarming like flies the other side of the wall.”

  “… harrying our men…”

  “Our soldiers!”

  “Barbarians!”

  “Savages!”

  “Boil their enemies alive, I heard.”

  “No!”

  “Worse than that. My man was stationed up there before he retired.”

  “Mine too. They sacrifice their captives, he said. Eat their livers.”

  “Eat their hearts.”

  “Cut off their heads. Stick them on poles the birds to peck at.”

  “Eat their own children when they’ve a mind to, I don’t doubt.”

  “They’re animals.”

  “Worse than animals.”

  “It’s about time our lads sorted them out once and for all. Torch the whole place. Burn it down to ashes.”

  “What’s the Emperor thinking?”

  “They need reinforcements. He wants to get a couple more legions up there. Crush them. Wipe them out.”

  “They should kill the lot of them. Everyone north of the wall. They want to clear them off the land. They’re nothing but vermin.”

  There was a chorus of agreement, and then the women moved on to other topics. Their stories had sent fear prickling down Cassia’s spine. But something else stirred in her heart too.

  They had talked of a frontier. A wall. The land on the other side sounded like a wasteland, teeming with wild barbarians. Bloodthirsty savages. Vermin, they’d called them. As if they were a plague of rats.

  Boudica was dead. Britannia had been defeated long before Cassia had been born.

  But now – for the first time – she began to understand that the whole world was not ruled by Rome. The mighty Empire had a limit. And there were people beyond it that lived free.

  The idea scared and thrilled her in equal measure.


  XIII

  That same evening Marcus called on Gaius with an order for different remedies for several of the soldiers in the army barracks. The pharmacist was in the garden, inspecting his herbs. Cassia was in the kitchen, struggling to make an edible meal from the foul ingredients she’d bought earlier that day. When Marcus came in, her heart soared.

  He sniffed. Frowned. Lifted the lid and peered at the mess of stew in the pan.

  Cassia was almost in tears. “He sent me to the market. He asked me to make him a meal.”

  “Ah…”

  “I didn’t know what to do!”

  “How much did you pay for the meat?”

  “I don’t know. I held the coins out. I don’t understand the money.”

  “You were robbed! Didn’t you suggest a lower price?”

  “No! Is that what I should have done?”

  “Yes. Every time. Never accept the first amount you’re told. Halve it at least. And this… Couldn’t you tell the meat was rotten?”

  “I didn’t think to look.”

  “Throw it away. Quickly, before he smells it. I’ll go now.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’ll bring something from the tavern. He’ll never know the difference.”

  “I’ve spent everything.”

  “I have my own money.”

  Marcus was as good as his word. She’d emptied the stinking mess into the latrine and was busy washing out the cooking pot when he returned.

  Pouring what he’d bought from the tavern’s bowl into the pan, he asked, “Didn’t your mother teach you how to cook?”

  “No,” Cassia snapped. Her mother was too raw a subject to talk about.

  “And yet you don’t look like a lady of leisure. You haven’t been lying idle on a couch these last few years.”

  She didn’t answer, but he persisted. “What were you before you came here?”

  He’d been nothing but kind. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth – the words died on her tongue before they could be uttered. The silence stretched out until at last he said, “Ah … don’t trouble yourself. I don’t intend to ferret out your secrets. Tell me them when you wish. If you wish. Meanwhile, I can see I’ve a lot to teach you if you’re to survive in Londinium.”

  The next day he went with her to market. They stood at one of the four entrances, Marcus pointing out quietly which were the popular stalls. “The key is to watch. See over there. That trader flirts, that one teases. That’s how they build the loyalty of their customers. But you’re not a middle-aged matron that needs flattering, are you? Look – that’s where the canny people buy their meat. No nonsense. No showmanship. Just fresh meat at a fair price.”

  They neared the stall and he made her listen for a while – observing other customers – until she felt sure what coins made a fair exchange for which goods. He didn’t trade for her, but kept a watchful eye, only intervening if she made a mistake.

  And then later – in his own lodgings – he taught her how to cook a basic stew. Or he tried to. When it came down to it, it seemed that he was as bad a cook as she was. He burned the meat and boiled the vegetables to within a hair’s breadth of their lives. After an hour he conceded defeat, declared that the art of cooking was best left to those who knew how to do it and took her back to Gaius’s house via the tavern, where she bought the meal she later reheated and served to her master.

  After that, Marcus called on Cassia on an almost daily basis. Sometimes he brought her a gift: small things, chosen to please her and make her smile. A shell from the docks, a stone picked up in the street. Once he came with a bead of lapis lazuli that had dropped from a wealthy woman’s necklace. It was the colour of bluebells; the colour of her brother’s eyes. Soon after the turning of the year he brought her the first snowdrop of spring.

  It was not the robust friendship she’d had with Silvio. It was more like a courtship, she thought, and yet he never touched her. He was always courteous. Warm, friendly, maybe a little flirtatious. Sometimes she’d catch him gazing at her, as if transfixed, but he made no demands and seemed to have no expectations.

  Once, she asked him why he’d led her to Gaius by way of the dockside and the brothels. He’d smiled, a little red-faced. “I knew the danger you were in,” he said. “But I didn’t think you’d believe me if I tried to explain. I thought it best to show you where lone women sometimes end their days.” It seemed reasonable enough and she pressed him no further.

  He often asked her about her past but she told him nothing. It was too painful to speak of Rufus. And besides, there was some deep instinct of self-preservation that made her keep it to herself. She became adept at turning the conversation on to other matters: things she’d heard in the street, things she’d seen in the market. She demanded to hear his stories of gods and monsters. Of Perseus, slaying the Gorgon Medusa. Of Ulysses escaping from the Cyclops under the belly of a sheep.

  Cassia looked forward to his visits. They were a welcome break from the dull routine imposed by Gaius. When she was sent out to deliver salves or remedies, she and Marcus walked the streets together and his talk was engaging. He spoke of his own childhood in Rome. He told her of his travels, too, of the rough country that lay on the Empire’s side of the wall and the vast bleak expanses of hill and heather that lay beyond. Of the tribes in the far north he knew little, although she pressed him for information: he said only that he’d seen the occasional prisoner – men so wild they’d chew their own hands off rather than remain in chains, “the way a fox will bite through its own leg if it’s snared”. He was interesting. He made her laugh. She enjoyed his company. She would almost have craved for more than that but whenever he drew close, the scent of his oiled skin would catch in her throat. Juniper. Titus Cornelius Festus. The stink of Rome. Of decadence. Of debauchery.

  As the weather warmed and the herbs began to emerge from their winter sleep, Cassia grew restless. She felt confined. Constrained. Her yearning to see Rufus, to have him with her, had not dulled and, as the days grew longer, the pain of his absence grew worse.

  Marcus seemed as restless as she was. He was young. Energetic. He’d been too long in the same place. One morning he announced that his months in the city were over.

  “I’ll go north soon. The colder the weather, the more people suffer from it. There are people all along the wall prepared to pay well to cure the ills brought on by damp and cold.”

  Cassia listened with some irritation. He was a man and a Roman – he could go wherever he pleased. But she could not. She would have to remain in the city, labouring, keeping her head down. Avoiding attention.

  And there would be no visits from Marcus to relieve the tedium. How would she manage?

  XIV

  The whole of that winter, Cassia’s dreams troubled her. They were always the same. The women, calling to her in words she could not understand. Each morning she woke frustrated and angry.

  But she was not the only one plagued by nightmares during the long dark months.

  A storyteller may slip through time and across distance with a single word or phrase.

  Back.

  To the estate of Titus Cornelius Festus. Who had not been resting easy in his bed either.

  He had been so sure the bitch would be caught.

  The night she’d bitten him – after she’d run – he’d lain on the floor too shocked, too stunned to do anything but clutch the side of his head, feeling the stump, hot blood oozing between his fingers. His mind would not accept the reality of what every sense was telling him: that he had been maimed.

  Maimed? Maimed, and by a slave! By a girl whose life he’d spared! Who he’d fed and clothed for years. And at what expense?! Is this what a man got for being merciful?

  When he found his voice, he had screamed for his steward, but his cries were so frantic, so alarming they brought every house slave in the villa running. They did not bring his wife. But no matter.

  The girl would be hun
ted down. When they dragged her back – by Jupiter and all the gods on Mount Olympus, he would skin her himself!

  Every slave on the estate had expected to see her humbled within the hour. Sickened by the knowledge of what would follow, a pall had hung over the huts.

  But Cassia had not been dragged back.

  As that night stretched on and still she did not appear, there was a little whispering.

  And when at first light the steward went in search of the keeper of hounds he came back white-faced and shaking, with a story that would have chilled the heart of an emperor let alone Titus Cornelius Festus. After that, the whispering became a murmuring.

  She had injured the master! Bitten the bastard’s ear off! She had set a wolf pack on her pursuers! She had bent wild animals to her will. And she herself had got clean away. She had vanished. Become invisible.

  There had always been something special about the girl, the other slaves muttered. The very fact she’d been allowed to live proved that. And on the night she was born – do you remember? – at the very moment she came into the world in a flood of blood and water wasn’t the statue of Neptune overturned? What did it mean?

  The slaves couldn’t decide. But night after night they talked of it.

  Titus Cornelius Festus, on the other hand, knew exactly what Cassia was.

  A witch. A demon.

  Proof, if any more were needed, came when his ragged wound festered. Foul-smelling pus oozed from the stump of his ear. She had cursed him!

  He called for a soothsayer, he called for the healer but neither could help. For days he lay in a sweated fever. And he dreamed of Cassia. Kneeling. Meek and submissive, her mouth open, smiling, showing her teeth. Which suddenly clamped shut.

  Each time he woke with a scream.

  The master had lain in his bed for ten full days and nights. When the heated sweat and shaking abated, his ragged ear was a throbbing reminder of what had occurred.

  The fever left him. The dreams did not. They continued all winter long. He didn’t visit the brothel in town. He didn’t send for any of the house-slaves. He didn’t even look to his wife. The girl had unmanned him. He was wretched. Angry. The healer had mended his body, but not his mind. That, he supposed, he must do himself.