So Do I

Gaius came in through the vestibulum with a small bundle held against his chest in both hands.

“By the gods.” Cato’s voice rang off the painted walls. “I sent you to Vesta for the ash. Not to the arena.”

The boy did look as though he had come back from the sand, and on the losing side. A thin red scratch ran across one cheek. His tunic had torn at the shoulder and fallen open on one side as far as the girdle, so that half his chest lay bare to the April air. Only the bundle had come through untouched, its cloth still knotted fast.

“You cannot imagine.” Gaius was dragging in his breath in great gulps. “The whole of Rome was there.”

“Give it to me.” Cato held out both hands and waited until the boy had laid the bundle across them. He drew it in against his chest. Only then did his eyes go to Gaius. They passed from the scratched cheek to the torn shoulder, and his nostrils narrowed. “Wash yourself before you set foot in the atrium. Nothing unclean crosses that threshold today.”

Cato carried it across the atrium to the lararium and laid it on the ledge beneath the painted serpent, before the small figures of the household gods. He turned the knot so that it faced outward. For a moment he stood before it with his hands at his sides, as though he might bow to it. Then he turned towards the small courtyard.

At the impluvium he stopped a boy whose broom had left a trail of grit along the rim of the basin, and stood over him while he swept it a second time. In the corridor he took the laurel branch out of Phoebe’s hand, dipped it in the bowl and shook it lightly over the paving himself.

“Like this. Not as if you were watering cabbages.” He put the branch back into her hand and went on.

He stepped into the slave courtyard and stopped. The straw had come. It stood in bundles against the wall beside the kitchen door, so close to the threshold that loose wisps had drifted onto the step. Through the doorway came the red glow of the hearth, where Brenna had been baking since before first light.

“Hercules! Who put these here?” Cato’s eyes swept the courtyard. Every head bent closer to its work. “Whoever did this is fit for the fork. Let me find him, and he will remember the rod until next Parilia.”

Cato gathered an armful against his chest and carried it the whole width of the courtyard, set it down beneath the corridor roof against the far wall, then went back for more.

When he came back with the second armful, Janet was standing beside the straw.

“What is all this for?”

“The fires. For the leaping.” Cato let the straw fall and straightened, knocking his fist a few times against the small of his back. “What else would it be for?”

“The leaping?” Janet’s brows rose almost to her hairline. “Since when do you allow leaping in this house? The last time I jumped a Parilia fire, I was…” She tilted her head and counted. “Ten. In Campania.”

Cato’s face was perfectly bland. “This year, we leap.”

“May I ask why?” Janet folded her arms. Of all the household, she alone had never learned to lower her eyes before him.

Cato let out a long breath. His eyes travelled once round the courtyard, and Janet’s followed them, from the kitchen door to the straw beneath the corridor roof and back. Satisfied that no one was near, he bent his head towards her.

“That barbarian boy should see how Rome keeps her birthday.”

He drew back and squared his shoulders. Then he turned once more to the heap of straw.

---

Sam sat on the rim of the little fountain in the small courtyard with Grace in her lap. The doorways had already been hung with green, and the smell of laurel lay over the herb beds.

She had broken a short sprig from a laurel bough on her way down. Now she dipped it into the falling water and closed Grace’s fingers around the stem.

“Up it goes.”

The sprig went up and came down in an arc, and a spray of bright drops flew out across the paving. For a breath Grace sat quite still. Then she shrieked. Sam guided the little fist down into the water again and up, and the drops scattered over the herb beds and across Sam’s knees. One caught Grace on the cheek. She screwed up her eyes against it, and when she opened them she was laughing so hard that she toppled sideways against her mother’s arm. Sam looked down at the small face, wet and shining and helpless with laughter, and let out a small sigh.

“Celebrating Rome’s birthday?”

The words came from behind her, in her own tongue. The voice that spoke them had not yet broken, and the coldness sat strangely in so high a voice.

Sam turned. Skaara was leaning against a column with his arms folded across a chest too narrow for the pose. His chin was tilted up, and he looked at her down the length of his nose.

“Young master.” Sam wiped the water from Grace’s cheek with her thumb and rose with the baby on her hip.

“What is your tribe?” Skaara’s eyes had gone to her hair.

“Tencteri.”

“Ha. The Tencteri. They never could keep hold of their own horses.”

Sam let the words go by. For a breath or two she watched the water falling into the basin, and when she spoke, it was almost to Grace. “Caesar wrote that eight hundred of our horsemen once put five thousand of his to flight.”

Skaara pushed himself off the column. “Eight hundred horsemen. And where were they when the Romans took you?”

Sam did not answer. On her hip Grace had begun to beat the wet sprig against her mother’s shoulder, and the cold drops ran down inside the neck of her tunic.

Skaara’s gaze passed over the baby and came to rest on the curve beneath Sam’s girdle. “Our women die before the Romans can take them.” He spat on the paving at her feet and was gone.

Sam closed her eyes and drew one long breath, then sat back down on the rim.

She had heard it told as a child, sitting cross-legged with the other young ones on the beaten earth of the old headman’s longhouse, with the hearth between her and the teller. The Cimbri had gone south over the mountains, he said, and when their men broke and fled back towards the wagons, their own women met them there with blades and cut them down. Then the women strangled their children, and hanged themselves from the wagon shafts. Around the fire most of the listeners sat without a word. Here and there a man struck his thigh, or grunted his approval into his beer.

That night, when she had been put to bed, she lay awake behind the wicker partition. Her father’s voice came low. “If it ever comes to that here, you live. You and Sam. There is nothing more important than staying alive. Without it, all is lost.”

Her mother said nothing that Sam could hear.

After a long while her father spoke again. “And if I run, please do not cut me down.”

On her lap Grace was straining towards the fountain, the sprig held out in one small fist. Sam leaned forward and lowered her until the leaves touched the water. Grace beat the surface with all her strength, and the water leapt up in bright handfuls around them both.

Sam’s hands tightened about the small waist. A splash caught her full in the face, cold enough to make her gasp, and she laughed before she could stop herself.

She thought she knew now what her mother had not said that night.

---

“Pales, keep sickness from this house. Keep the wolf from the fold. Keep the water sweet and the store full, and turn every harm away from us.”

Jack stood before the brazier with his face to the east, where the sky above the colonnade roof was already darkening, and his hands lifted high. Four times he said it, and four times the household gave the words back to him. Skaara stood straight at his left hand, a pace back, with his arms at his sides and his eyes on the coals, and said nothing at all. Cato, a step behind them both, spoke the words loudest. Behind him came Sam with Grace on her hip, and Janet beside her with Cassie’s hand in hers, and Philemon and Brenna close at their backs. The rest of the household filled the colonnade, the kitchen women and the house boys, Phoebe among them with her head bowed.

Sam repeated the words under her breath. Against her shoulder Grace babbled along with the household.

When the last of the murmur had died away, Jack nodded to Cato. The atriensis brought the dish from the lararium and held it out. Jack took the first cake, then a second, and turned to Skaara, who received it in both hands. Then Gaius took over the dish and carried it from Cato to Sam, and on down through the household.

Sam took a small bite. It was sweeter than the cakes Brenna sent up at dinner. Had it been so before? She could not tell.

Twice before she had stood through this rite, though not always in this place. The first year she had stood at the back of the household beside Phoebe, and through the whole of the prayer she had not uttered a word. All she could think of was the night that would follow it. Last year she had already been given her place beside Janet, but she had barely lasted to the end. The first months with Grace had drained her, and the Dominus had sent her back to the bedchamber the moment the prayer was done.

The household was moving round her. Sam found that she had been standing quite still, and that Jack was beside her.

“Tired?” He lifted Grace from her arms. “Go and rest, if you need to. You do not have to be here for all of it.”

“It is fine.” Sam shook her head and followed the others through to the peristyle. Jack came after her, bouncing Grace in the crook of his arm.

In the peristyle Gaius had already put the torch to the straw. There were two heaps of it, laid a little apart on the bare paving, already burned down to a low, crackling bed. Cato stood beside the fountain with a full bucket at his feet. Across the garden Skaara stood alone beneath the colonnade, at the edge of the firelight. He watched the others leap, and did not come a step nearer.

Janet came over to her at a half run. “I know you would like to. But not this year.” Her eyes went to Sam’s belly.

“Mamma! Sam! Come and watch me!” Cassie was shouting from beside the fire.

Janet caught Sam by the elbow and towed her across the paving towards it.

Beside the smaller fire Cassie stood between Gaius and Phoebe, one hand in each of theirs. They counted together, ran her at it and swung her up by both arms, and she sailed over the low flames with her feet drawn up clear of them. She came down on the far side and shrieked.

Sam watched Cassie’s laughing face, lit red and gold by the fire. Beyond the flames, Beyond the flames, Jack stood by the fountain with Grace held against his chest. He was holding one small arm out towards the fire and murmuring into her ear. He swayed a little with her as he spoke, and did not once look away from her face. The corners of his eyes creased with a smile he did not often spend. Then he looked up and found Sam, and the creases deepened. She did not smile back.

Were they the same eyes? The same that had travelled over her that night, while he sat in his chair and she stood naked and shaking before him, knowing what was coming.

Do not fight me. Or it will be worse.

She could still hear it. Now the same mouth was pouring silly words into their daughter’s ear, and making the baby shake with laughter.

It had not been so very long ago, had it?

---

Grace was still wide awake when Jack brought her up. She had come in from the fire with her cheeks hot and her eyes enormous, and when he passed her to Marcia in the bedchamber she twisted round in the nurse’s arms to look for him, crowing at the top of her voice. Marcia bore her off towards the nursery. It would be a long while yet before she slept.

Jack sat down on the edge of the bed. Sam was straightening the coverlet, for the third time by his count. Before that she had squared the tablets on the mensa and refolded the tunics on the chest, which had been folded already. She had even carried his soleae from the foot of the bed to the doorway, and then back again.

“What did he say to you?”

“Sir?” Sam’s hands stilled on the coverlet for a heartbeat, then went on smoothing it.

“The boy. He said something to you.” Jack watched the back of her head. She was bent low over the bed, and he could not see her face. “You have not been yourself all day.”

“Nothing, Sir. Nothing that matters.” Sam straightened and went to the chest, and shook out one of the tunics she had just folded.

Jack bit back a curse. He crossed the room in three strides, took her by the arm and turned her round.

Sam went utterly still.

He knew that look. Where he had last seen it, he did not let himself think. His hand fell away from her arm.

Jack put a pace of floor between them. “He is a guest, yes. But there are rules in this house.” He lifted a finger. “No one walks about under my roof insulting the mother of my child.” The hand swept out through the air. “Least of all some whelp out of a barbarian…”

His hand stopped where it was, then came slowly down to his side. “I did not mean it like that.”

“Then what did you mean?” Sam held the tunic against her chest, but she did not lower her eyes.

“I…” Jack’s hand went to the back of his neck. For a moment he was a boy again, standing before the grammaticus with the morning’s lines gone clean out of his head. Sam’s stare was not bringing them back any faster. Curse that boy.

“No — let go!” Skaara’s high-pitched voice carried through the dark.

“You can explain your spells to the Dominus.” That was Cato.

Jack was at the doorway at once, more relieved than worried.

In the small courtyard Cato had Skaara by the arm, the boy twisting against his grip. Cato’s other hand held a knife. A few fig branches lay on the paving at their feet, their cut ends weeping white. Around them the household was gathering, drawn by the noise.

When Jack reached the foot of the stairs, Cato shoved the boy forward, and Skaara stumbled.

“Domine, I found him in the peristyle.” Cato held out the knife. “He had this. He was cutting branches from the fig tree.” His voice dropped. “I would wager he meant to curse the house.”

“No! I not…” Skaara’s eyes darted from Jack to Cato and back.

Jack took the knife into his palm. A short, single-edged blade, its hilt worn smooth to a hand much larger than the boy’s.

He had been told the boy’s things were gone through on the Campus Martius, before he was ever brought here.

“I not do bad thing!” shouted Skaara, his fists clenched at his sides.

“Then what were you doing?” Jack turned the knife over in his hand.

Skaara’s eyes went round the ring of faces, the kitchen women in their night tunics and Phoebe with a lamp held high. He shut his mouth.

Someone passed Jack’s shoulder without a sound. Sam stooped and took up one of the fig branches from the paving, and the sap from its cut end ran white over her fingers. She looked at it, and then at the boy who would not speak.

“Sir.” She went to the foot of the stairs, and Jack followed her. Behind them, Cato’s eyes narrowed.

“He was not cursing the house, Sir,” Sam said under her breath.

“Then what was he doing?” Jack took the branch from her fingers and held it to the lamplight.

“It is a rite from home, Sir. A way of speaking to our gods when one is far from them.”

Jack let out a breath. “He should never have had this with him.” He weighed the knife in his palm.

Sam’s eyes were on the knife. “I will bring it to you myself, Sir, once we have finished the rite.”

“Once we have finished the rite?” Jack’s brows went up.

“Let me see to it. If you will allow me.” Sam held his eyes.

Jack watched her for a long moment, then he put the branch back into her hands, and the knife after it, hilt first.

He turned to the household crowding the courtyard. “Go back to your beds.”

The ring of faces began to thin. Cato did not move. “Domine…”

“You too, Cato.” Jack was already on the stairs.

Cato’s eyes went from Sam to the boy, and his mouth thinned. He followed the last slave out of the courtyard.

Sam crossed to Skaara and gathered up the fig branches. “Come with me, young master, if you will.” She said it in their own tongue, and turned away before he could answer.

The boy stood where he was for the space of a breath. Then he strode after her.

Sam stopped in the open heart of the peristyle, where the moonlight lay on the paving and shivered in the basin beneath the falling water. She knelt and laid the branches down, and the knife beside them.

“Will you finish them?”

Skaara knelt across from her. He glanced at her once. Then he took up the knife and cut the branches into slips no longer than a finger, scoring a mark into each with the point.

“The fig is sacred to the Romans,” Sam said softly. “Next time, cut from the apple, or the cherry.”

The knife went on scoring. He gave no sign that he had heard.

When the last marked slip fell among the others, Skaara swept up a fistful of them from the paving. A hand closed over his.

“A child does not cast.”

Skaara’s head came up. “You are no Bructeri.”

“No. But I am the nearest you have here.”

His fingers loosened, and the slips spilled back onto the stone. Sam drew the sudarium from her girdle and spread it on the paving. She swept the slips onto the white linen, then took up Skaara’s knife and turned her palm to the moon.

Skaara’s eyes widened.

“The gods give nothing for nothing.” She drew the blade across her palm and held her hand over the cloth until a few dark drops had fallen among the slips.

With her other hand she gathered them up and lifted them high, towards the moon. “Donar, look down. A son of the river asks. No land is beyond your sight.”

She cast them up. They came down in a soft clatter, some on the white linen, some on the stone beyond it.

Sam closed her eyes and took up three slips from the linen, one at a time. She laid them on the stone in front of Skaara.

Skaara bent low over the slips and read the marks by the light of the moon. A grin broke over his face before he could stop it. He untied the little leather pouch from his belt, the one that held his bones, and dropped the three slips in among them.

When the pouch was tied shut, Sam began to gather the scattered slips back onto her sudarium. Skaara watched her.

“Are you not going to ask what I asked Donar?”

“Do you wish to tell me?” Her hands did not slow.

He gave no answer. When at last he spoke, it was to the paving. “I did not curse the house.”

Sam folded the linen over the slips and laid the knife on top of the bundle. Then she pushed herself up with one hand on her knee. “I never thought you did. You had weightier things to ask.” She held the bundle in her good hand. “Young master. You know I must take this.”

Skaara’s eyes fixed on the knife. “It is my father’s.”

“The Dominus will only keep it for you.” She paused. “And you have had your answer.”

Skaara nodded slowly and turned away towards his room. He had gone a few paces when he stopped, and stood with his back to her. When he came round at last, his eyes found the fountain and the fig tree before they found her.

“Tencteri, I owe you.”

Then he was gone from the peristyle.

Sam watched him go. Then she looked down at her palm. The cut was shallow, but blood still welled along it. Her sudarium would have bound it, had it not been wrapped round the slips and the knife. She closed her fist. With luck he would not see it, and once he slept she could find the unguent.

When she drew the curtain aside, Jack was already there in the doorway. “You were a while.” He looked her over. “All well?”

“Yes, Sir.” Sam held out the bundle, the knife lying on top of the folded linen.

Jack took the knife and held it to the lamp. He studied the point, then looked at her.

Sam’s closed fist went behind her back. A child’s trick. Foolish.

Jack took her by the wrist and drew the hand out from behind her. Her fist was still closed, but there was blood in the creases between her fingers.

“Let me see.” There was no anger in it.

Sam’s fingers loosened. “It is part of the rite.”

“With your blood?” His thumb stroked her wrist.

Sam pressed her lips together.

“Sit.”

She sat on the edge of the bed. Jack went to the basin and came back with a wet cloth and a small jar, and sat down beside her. He laid her hand open on his own and cleaned the blood from her palm and fingers. He came to the cut last, and slowly. Each time the linen crossed it his brow tightened. Then he unstopped the jar and smoothed the unguent along the wound with one finger.

It stung. After Grace, it hardly counted.

“It is not deep.” He did not lift his head. “Do not bind it. Keep it dry, and it will have closed by morning.”

Sam watched him in the lamplight. When he looked up, she turned her eyes away.

“Anything else I should know about?”

“No, Sir.” She fixed her eyes on the jar.

“Sam.” His voice had gone quiet. He lifted a hand and laid it against her cheek. “I wish you would tell me.”

She met his eyes then. “It is only…” The words would not come easily. “Seeing him. It brings things back.”

“Ah.” His hand fell from her cheek and found her good hand instead. “I suppose it would.” He looked down at their linked fingers. “What I said, before. I did not mean… It is only that sometimes I forget.”

“So do I.”

He looked up. She was smiling at him a little, but her eyes were wet.