Cast Not the Day (15 page)

‘He’s not one to talk of such things. But he was miserable; that much was clear. That night he thought you’d found a girl – we all did – and what harm is there in that? But I suppose he was hoping for something else, and when you didn’t come back, day after day, he took it badly . . . It must have been quite a girl, to keep you away for so long.’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t that.’

‘Then what?’

‘Something happened. I don’t remember, Equitius . . . or only parts. I can’t speak of it. I was drunk.’

‘Who was not?’ – and, when I said nothing – ‘Tascus, that great wit, told him you had tasted better wine than his. He always manages to say the wrong thing. After that, when I told Durano to go and look for you, he said he was not your keeper. But I think he was afraid of what he might find.’

‘I wish he had come looking.’

He gave me a long, considering frown. ‘You are a hard one to fathom, young Drusus. I would have sworn . . . but never mind. Durano is not the kind who snatches food from another’s table. He might have been fond of you, but he has his pride.’

He drew his breath to say more; but instead he glanced up frowning. I followed his gaze. We had rounded the corner. Ahead, at the bottom of the street, there was some sort of commotion, and as we approached, a group of soldiers came stumbling out of a tavern and began shouting ribald abuse at the innkeeper. I could hear him from somewhere inside, yapping angrily back at them.

‘They will be in for it,’ said Equitius, ‘drunk when they’re supposed to be packing.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘In the morning, with the tide.’

‘So soon?’ I said wretchedly. I looked up into his face, which cost me some effort. But there would be no other chance, and so I said, ‘It is my fault. I did not know my own mind.’

He reached out and rubbed my shoulder, and gave me a smile.

‘Do not trouble yourself overmuch. What’s done is done. After all, it is in some men’s natures and not in others’. Durano should have guessed. He will get over it.’

I nodded at this. But in truth his words had fallen wide of the mark. It was not my nature that had held me back, I saw it now. It was something else: a weakness, a shyness, a fear of showing my naked, barren soul to another.

He had been right: though I was young, I was not so young I did not have some sense of what Durano was about. If I had minded, I could have withdrawn; yet I had remained by my own choice, bathing in his attention, learning from him, filling my days with his company. And, during it all, whatever he may have hoped for in his heart, he never demanded anything from me in return.

What right had I, I asked myself, to feel aggrieved? Though I knew my spelling and grammar and numbers, to my own heart I was a stranger. I had learned to fight, and liked to think myself brave. Yet, through it all, I had not the courage to face myself. I shook my head. Durano had not asked, and I had not given. Was I really so blind?

We were drawing close to the rabble from the tavern. One of them, falling-drunk, called out to Equitius because he knew him.

Equitius cursed under his breath. ‘Listen,’ he said, stopping in the street, ‘you don’t want to get caught up with this lot.’ He looked at me. ‘Shall I say anything to Durano?’

One of the soldiers cat-called; and when I looked, made a lewd unmistakeable gesture. I suppose he thought I was some clinging bath-boy Equitius had picked up and could not shake off. My face burned. It filled me with shame to be taken for such a creature.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Leave it.’

‘As you wish. Well, I must go.’

He hesitated. Then, leaning forward he kissed me on the cheek; and outside the tavern the drunken soldiers cheered, and whistled through their fingers.

Three days passed. I could not settle to anything.

Equitius, in his straightforward way, had shown me what I could not, or would not, face. I felt the absence of my friends. I realized, now that it was too late, that I had assumed Durano would be waiting when I was ready to return. I grieved – for time wasted, and words left unsaid.

But then Balbus received the deeds to his new villa, and announced he had hired a pleasure-barge to take us upriver.

‘Leave me in London, sir,’ I said.

But he cried, ‘No, no; come and enjoy yourself, my boy; you have been looking peaked these past days; the change will do you good.’

The barge was my aunt’s idea. She summoned her friends to see her off, and they stood on the quay beside the dock-workers, vying to outshine one another in their fine jewels. Volumnia was at the front, in a low-cut dress and an array of rubies set in Keltic silver, wearing one of her blonde German wigs. She cast a pinch-faced glance at me, and snapped her head away when I looked. I was loathed by all Lucretia’s friends.

The oarsmen pushed out. Lucretia took her place under the garlanded canopy, and I went to sit at the front beside the anchor, away from her ceaseless chatter.

At another time, I daresay an escape from the city would have pleased me. But I was in no mood for Lucretia and Albinus. As for the villa, I took little interest, not knowing then what it would bring for me. It was a pretty enough place, run-down, with rain-stained, pink-washed walls, set within an old orchard. It lay down a dusty track, about a mile from the river. A small tributary brook flowed on the eastern side, shaded by a thick line of rowan and willow.

We passed under the gateway, into a walled inner court thick with unkempt bushes of yellow honeysuckle. The stables and outhouses, which filled one side of the courtyard, stood abandoned and broken; but the agent, on my uncle’s orders, had travelled ahead to tidy the main house. Hearing our approach he came hurrying from within – a dapper, fast-talking city man – just as Lucretia was stepping down from the curtained carriage.

She scowled at the stained and flaking walls, and the ruined outhouses dense with brambles and nettle. ‘What are all these plants?’ she enquired, fluttering a hand at the chaos and decay.

‘An aspect of farming, madam,’ answered the agent quickly. ‘It can soon be cut back if the lady requires it, and of course the house can be repainted . . . But we were advised’ – with a nod at Balbus – ‘that you may wish to make changes, to modernize and decorate, and with a new mistress such as yourself, who is known in London for fashion and refinement, I did not think it my place to impose my own tastes upon the property without consulting you.’

Her aggressive expression softened. The agent, seeing she was taken in by this patter, continued talking, at the same time conducting her to the porch, where the servants were waiting in an obedient line. I left them and wandered off to explore. Albinus came following grumpily behind.

He had sulked all the way from London, and bickered with his mother. He hated the country; why had she forced him to come, when he had things to do in the city? The motion of the barge made him feel sick. He was too hot. He was hungry. He was bored. Eventually Lucretia, reclining on a pile of silk cushions under the canopy, while she picked languidly at a bowl of sweets, snapped at him that he was spoiling her special day, which she had looked forward to all year, and if he was hot he had better put his hat on. At this he threw the hat in the bilge and came up to the bow to sit with me, and grumbled under his breath about her.

So today he was my friend. Now, seeing me wander off, he came trailing after me, with many a backward resentful glance at his mother.

‘Wait, can’t you!’ he cried as I stepped out beyond the courtyard.

I waited, kicking at the grassy pathway while he snatched, cursing, at his sandal strap, trying to free a stone.

To the east, following the edge of the grounds, the brook looped round a low, wooded hill and disappeared northwards between fields and woodland towards the river. Nearer the house, in what must once have been gardens, there were overgrown remains of terraces and crumbled trelliswork. The whole place had an air of lush desolation, and I half expected, if I dug through the rampant shrubs, to find forgotten dried-up fountains and the marble plinths of statues.

‘Where are you going?’ demanded Albinus. He glanced back at the house. Through the courtyard archway, the servants were unloading Lucretia’s baggage. I could see his mind working in his sulky face: she liked to know where he was. He was considering whether to tell her, or punish her for being sharp with him. After a moment he sniffed and hurried on after me, slapping irritably at the overhanging branches as they caught his hair. Just then the desire to irk her was uppermost.

The path narrowed and steepened. We came to steps cut into the rock, old and foot-worn and soft with moss. On one side, down a slope of rowans and fern, I could see the brook glittering in diffused shafts of sunlight. Someone had built a dam of boulders and branches, and a pool of clear water had formed behind, a perfect place to swim.

‘You swim if you want to,’ muttered Albinus. ‘I’m not going in there.’

He hated water like a cat.

We went the other way, climbing the steps. At the top of the hill the path opened into a clearing dominated at its centre by an ancient brown-barked yew, surrounded by oaks and twisting hazel. I paused and looked about. There was a pleasing balance to the place, like the precinct of a temple.

Albinus, meanwhile, had gone wandering off, and after some moments I heard him call out, in a voice tinged with disgust, ‘Come here! Look at this!’

He was standing on the far side of the yew, beside a great block of rectangular stone, frowning down at it. The sides were rough and lichen-covered; but the surface, I saw, had been carefully smoothed, and at the edge there was a shallow channel.

‘It’s an altar,’ he said, twisting his face with distaste. He traced his chewed finger-end along the line of the groove. ‘See? This catches the blood, and over there is the run-off. Filthy pagans! I hate it here. Why did Mother choose this place?’

Lucretia, in her haste to acquire a country villa, had not thought it necessary to come and view; and Balbus, who was not interested, had left everything to the agent.

I picked at the pale-green lichen. As I turned, something caught my eye. On the ground lay a garland of forget-me-not, bound with a sprig of straw. The flowers had scarcely begun to wilt.

Deciding it would be best to keep this find to myself, with a tap of my foot I eased the little garland out of sight, into a thicket of tall grass at the base of the stone. But Albinus had an eye for the surreptitious. ‘What’s that?’ he cried, snatching it up. He peered at it; then cast it to the ground and trampled it with his heel.

‘Why do that?’ I shouted at him.

‘It’s horrible! It’s an offering, no doubt from one of those miserable house-slaves. I thought there was something sly about them. Wait till Mother hears; she will turn them out before nightfall.’ It was an aspect of Lucretia’s religion not to have any servant in the house who did not believe, or profess to believe, what she did. At the house in London, only the Spanish cook seemed to have escaped this rule.

Albinus now became suddenly animated. He began pacing up and down, peering about in the sun-dappled clearing in case there was something else to find. The sun had scorched his nose during the journey, leaving a red blotch between his brows. His thin lips were pressed closed with indignation – an expression he got from his mother – and as he strutted about he prodded clumsily at the undergrowth with his foot. He looked, I thought, like some light-hating creature, dragged out unwillingly in daytime from its lair.

I said, ‘You don’t have to tell her, you know. It was just a garland, just flowers. Anyone could have left it.’ Then, deciding to employ a little of his deviousness, I picked up the trodden flowers and added, ‘If we wait a few days we may discover who left this, for surely they will return, and then you will catch them.’

He narrowed his eyes at me. After a moment his mouth formed into a smile.

‘Yes, a trap,’ he said. ‘You shall keep watch and report what you see. Do you understand? And then I’ll decide whether to tell Mother.’

‘Just as you say, Albinus.’

I walked off. After a moment, with a cry for me to wait, he followed.

We arrived back at the villa to a great commotion. The servants were rushing about, looking fearful and bewildered; from within I could hear Lucretia’s scythe-like voice, lashing out, and the agent in between, attempting to reason with her.

I thought at first it was something the servants had done; but as I entered through the atrium I heard Lucretia shout, ‘I don’t care if it is fine work or not, get rid of it. I shall have no sleep till it is gone. I cannot rest with it here.’

She must have heard us. She rushed from one of the inner rooms, followed by the pale-looking agent and Balbus.

‘Where have you been?’ she cried at Albinus. ‘Did you not hear me calling?’ This was mere ritual complaining; her heart was not in it. Albinus started to answer, but she pushed past him through the doorway behind, into the dining-room. ‘See this obscenity!’ she cried pointing, her voice rising in pitch as her anger possessed her, ‘I cannot bear it! I will not live in a house that is not decent.’

Full of curiosity, we followed her in through the high doorway with its pilasters of red marble.

The dining-room was spacious and light-filled, part square, part oval, with a large curving bay facing westwards and bathed in afternoon sun. There were couches and a table – for the dining furniture had come with the house. Where the dust-sheets had been removed, I could see the decorated cushions of rich dark-red damask, with a pattern of ivy-twined urns picked out in green and gold.