After Rome (7 page)

They lived in snug town houses, most of which were constructed of timber. To give a Roman appearance the exterior walls were often clad in brick, then plastered and painted in Mediterranean colors or made snowy with lime wash. Roofs were covered in red tile, which like the brick was manufactured locally. Clay pits were as profitable as stone quarries and just as hard on the slaves who worked in them.

At the higher end of the social scale residences sometimes were built of stone and mortar, and were exceedingly spacious. Each stood in regal isolation in its own walled garden. The formal hall was the primary area for entertaining, but usually a smaller lounge was available for more intimate gatherings. In addition there would be a dining room, from five to ten bedrooms, several multipurpose anterooms, a separate kitchen and a servants' wing. The latrine might be an earth closet in a corner of the garden, but an indoor urinal was provided for the master of the house and his male guests.

Some prosperous Romano-British families also owned sprawling country villas several miles beyond the city walls to allow them to escape from the stresses of urban life. The term “villa” was understood to include both a magnificent residence and the vast acreage on which it stood.

All under threat now from an invasion of foreigners. Barbarians.

Vintrex had planned to enlarge the fortifications of Viroconium and establish a local militia. But before he could put his plans into action his family had been shattered by the revelation of his affair with his brother's wife. Domitia's death had followed within weeks. The emotional upheaval seemed to paralyze Vintrex. Half-finished sketches for raising the city walls and building watchtowers lay forgotten on his drawing table. Incomplete lists of potential recruits littered the floor.

Cadogan recalled the exact moment he had decided to leave Viroconium. Several days earlier, Vintrex had sent him to a stonecutter south of the city with instructions to order the marble for Domitia's tomb. “I cannot bear to do it myself,” Vintrex had said.

When he arrived at the stonecutter's workshop Cadogan was told there were no samples to inspect. “Pure white marbles like Parian and Carrara are no longer available at any price,” the young man was informed. “They were imported from the Roman colonies and that trade is gone now. I can provide a fine-grained limestone, if you want, though most of my customers say it's too expensive for the quality. Still, the only alternatives are…”

Cadogan had only half listened, standing under an awning while the autumn rain drummed above him and the stonecutter droned on and on, moving from a litany of complaints about the business climate to a recital of his mother-in-law's health problems. At last Cadogan said he must discuss the matter with his father before making a decision, then mounted his horse and rode back to the city.

He had made straight for the nearest tavern, where he was offered an inferior wine that had never known the advantages of a sunny Mediterranean hillside. He had drunk the sour liquid without really tasting it, while trying to block out the banal babble of the men around him. No one was saying anything important. No one ever said anything important.

Tied to a weathered stone hitching post outside, the mare had waited patiently in the rain.

At last Cadogan could no longer put off the moment. He had ridden through the streets at a walk, but even so, reached home sooner than he wanted.

Like a jewel set in its setting, the house where he was born stood against a backdrop of dark cedars. They provided a dramatic contrast to red-tile roofs and gleaming white walls. In a style introduced by the Romans, the main body of the house was composed of rectangular blocks enclosing a hollow square. The principal rooms opened onto the central court, known as an atrium, which was open to the sky and provided light and air to the interior. The exterior walls of the house had few windows and none at the front, thus eliminating street noise.

The private residence of the chief magistrate presented a deliberately blank face to visitors.

Bypassing the formal entrance at the side, Cadogan rode around to the servants' wing and the stables beyond. Whatever normal life remained in his father's house was to be found in the stables. Spirited horses and fragrant hay and rowdy stableboys laughing at bawdy jokes. Kikero, a splendid rooster with russet head and iridescent blue-green plumage on his back and wings, strutting around the place lording it over his harem of hens.

Vintrex was standing at the gate of the stable yard. He and his steward were discussing the proposed placement of Domitia's tomb. They looked up as Cadogan rode toward them. The two men were a study in contrasts. Vintrex, the carefully fed and highly educated product of ten generations of selective Romanization, had a noble forehead and refined features. But the years were not being kind to him. His gums were drawing back from his teeth; his flesh was sagging on his bones.

Esoros, on the other hand, possessed the wedge-shaped nose and deep eyes of a true Celt. His was a face that knew how to endure. Vintrex had once said of him, “My steward remembers everything and forgives nothing,” but held him in the highest regard—a compliment Esoros returned by trying to speak like his master. The precise diction of the court and the forum sounded strange from his lips.

As Cadogan approached them, Vintrex had glowered at his son. “Who gave you permission to ride that ancient beast? She's an embarrassment.”

“She's mine, Father, I don't need anyone's permission to ride her. She may not be young anymore, but she's still the best horse in the stable.”

“Dispose of her!” Vintrex demanded. “I don't want to see her on my property again!” A vein throbbed visibly in his temple.

Cadogan had dismounted and handed the reins to a stableboy. “Take good care of her,” he said under his breath, then turned to face his father.

The conversation that followed was not pleasant.

When Vintrex was told there was no white marble for the tomb, he was furious. He had berated his son in front of Esoros. “Did you even go to the right stonecutters? I seriously doubt it, I know a lie when I hear one. If you had any initiative you would have found the marble I sent you for, and at a decent price, too. But no; you prefer to drift through life with your nose in books. Wasting your time rereading dead words. How can I be proud of a feckless overgrown boy? What good are you to me at all?”

Stung by injustice, Cadogan had lost his own temper. Old wounds, the natural detritus of the relationship between father and son, were opened afresh. In the rising heat of their quarrel Cadogan eventually blamed his father for his mother's death. Vintrex countered by claiming Domitia's poor health dated from Cadogan's birth. The quarrel had come to an abrupt end when Vintrex shouted at his son, “While you are under my roof you will do what I say, when I say, exactly as I say, and nothing else! You are my
son
!”

“I am not your
property
!” Cadogan had shouted back at him. “Not anymore!”

After giving the matter deep thought for several days, one night Cadogan waited until everyone was asleep, then padded silently through the house. Collecting his personal belongings, including the things he had inherited from his mother and a list of household items he thought he might need. Before dawn he had loaded everything onto two packhorses and commandeered a porter to take charge of them. Before he rode out of the stable yard he had snatched up Kikero, bound his legs together and carried the surprised rooster with him on the bay mare.

Cadogan was drunk with a sense of freedom.

He had wandered the forested hills northeast of Viroconium until he came upon a sloping meadow skirted by oak and ash and alder. The land was unoccupied. There was adequate grass for his mare and a sparkling stream at the foot of the hill, and it was only a few miles to a small village. The first time he visited the village for supplies he could purchase some hens for Kikero.

Cadogan knew at once that he had found his sanctuary. A place where he could read, and dream, and commune with God, without being criticized.

When the packhorses were unloaded he had sent them back to his father with the porter. His final instruction to the weary servant was, “Tell Vintrex he will never see my mare on his property again. Nor me either.”

Then he set to work.

Creating a home for himself proved harder than he anticipated.

At first he had envisioned a country estate in the Roman style. Like his parents' property in Viroconium, his house would be built around a courtyard open to the sky. The floors would be decorated with mosaic tiles. Cadogan planned to outfit a separate room for every household function, including a chamber for Christian worship, following the custom introduced under Emperor Constantine. In 313 Constantine had made Christianity the official religion and its Roman version the official version throughout the empire.

Cadogan's new home would have light and comfort and a place for God. In the quicksilver air of a forest clearing he almost sensed a Presence; in the shadowed silence of the trees he almost heard a Voice. Away from the bustle and distractions of the city he was certain he could find the tranquility he longed for.

The residence in Cadogan's imagination was very beautiful. Before he fell asleep lying on a blanket on the ground he talked in his head to Viola, telling her about the home he would build for the two of them. When she saw what he had accomplished, she would relent and return to him. In his dreams it seemed possible.

Reality did not conform to dreams. The stream that was to supply his water abandoned him. One morning it sparkled and sang. The following morning it was dry; the very stones in the streambed were dry. After some searching he found a trickle of water meandering off in another direction entirely. To his consternation, even that meager supply disappeared two days later.

When he went searching for an alternate water source he discovered that the nearest river was more than a mile away. He had no idea how to construct a viaduct. It was the sort of thing the Romans had known. In the end he had been forced to dig a well; three wells, in fact, before he finally struck water.

Nothing had worked out as Cadogan expected. Adapting to the materials at hand was only the first in a long chain of compromises that gave Cadogan a sneaking satisfaction.

Vintrex would not have approved. He considered compromise a sin.

The elegant multiroomed stone-walled villa became a timber cabin with no inner courtyard, no reflecting pool, and no tiles on the roof. Only sod and thatch to keep out the rain. At night Cadogan had to bring Kikero and his small harem inside to protect them from predators, and he learned to be careful where he put his feet. Yet he was proud of his achievement. Sometimes, after Cadogan had completed a task, he reached out and touched the well-set log, the perfectly smoothed plank, and said, “There now. There now.”

His home was not modeled on anyone else's ideas; it was shaped by its setting and his need. Its flaws and virtues were his own.

As he and Quartilla emerged from the forest and he saw the fort waiting for him, his heart leaped. At that moment he could think of nothing he would change. He broke into a trot, anxious to be under his own roof again.

He stopped short when the door creaked open.

 

CHAPTER FOUR

After handing his cape and the stallion's reins to Meradoc, Dinas ducked his head to enter through the low doorway. Brecon and Ludno followed, chanting in unison, “May the spirits of the martyrs be with us.”

The room was dimly lit by one fat beeswax candle in a tall iron holder. It took a few moments for Dinas's eyes to adjust to the darkness. When he realized that Ludno and Brecon had dropped to their knees beside him, he knelt too.

Dinas had not prayed in years. He struggled to remember the words he had once known by heart; the forms he had forgotten when he decided to forget about God. Aware that the others might be watching, he bowed his head over folded hands and silently moved his lips.

The only sound was that of three men breathing.

Keeping his head down, Dinas covertly examined the interior of the chapel. There was no ornamentation of any kind. His parents, like other Christians of their class, had a special room in their home set aside for worship. A whole series of priests had conducted services in a dignified apartment plenished with the finest accoutrements the family could afford. Vessels of gold and silver were supplied for the Eucharist. Colorful tapestries depicting stories from the Bible were hung on the walls.

As a small boy Dinas had loved the vivid scene of Daniel in the lions' den, with bones and human skulls lying scattered about.

The interior of the martyrium of Deva was paneled with well-polished wood but there were no hangings on the walls. The only furniture was a narrow oak table covered by an altar cloth of bleached linen. The chapel contained nothing more except the candle in its holder, a carved crucifix on the wall—Dinas recognized the artistry of Brecon—and a faint, spicy fragrance, almost but not quite like sandalwood.

I was right, Dinas thought; Deva is far too poor to be worth my interest. If the local Christians owned anything of value their shrine wouldn't be so ostentatiously bare.

Ostentatiously?

The word caused an itch in his brain.

He unconsciously cracked his knuckles while he concentrated on clearing his thoughts. An image of the half-abandoned marketplace slowly appeared behind his closed eyelids. Every detail was as clear as if he stood in the town square. There was nothing ostentatious about the poverty in Deva, it was real. The market was the proof of that. Yet from his own observations he knew commerce had not ceased. Someone always had something to sell; others always wanted to buy. Men like Ludno would find ways to make a profit.

Opening his eyes, Dinas surveyed the interior of the chapel again. He noticed a minute deviation in the color of the wood paneling behind the altar. His thoughts narrowed to a sharp focus. Like a man crossing a river on stepping stones, one at a time, he followed a series of seemingly unrelated facts to a single conclusion. Walked around it in his mind, looking at it from all sides.