The Far Time Incident (27 page)

The men were waiting for us on the busy street outside the baths, looking impatient. They’d all had a shave, Xavier’s missing beard leaving a pale pink crescent on the bottom half of his face. “Lunch next,” he said.

“What are these meatbally things?” Kamal asked, eying one of them. The leather satchel by his side hid some of our twenty-first-century indispensables, namely pencils and paper and Abigail’s Polaroid camera with its last pack of film. We were in
the tavern across the street from Secundus’s shop. The chief had asked to go there, saying he wanted to familiarize himself with the neighborhood.

“It’s a fish-and-egg mixture,” Xavier said of the meatballs.

“Ugh, fish,” Abigail said.

Kamal tried one. “They aren’t bad.” There was also salad, bread, seasoned olives, dried figs, and cheese that looked very much like ricotta. The proprietor had followed us over to our table. He tipped a rooster-shaped flask to pour grape juice into bronze cups for us. He seemed to know Xavier very well and gave the professor a hearty pat on the back as he left to attend to other patrons, leaving the flask on the table.

“By the way, Julia, what happened to your glasses?” Xavier asked and downed much of the juice in one long sip.

“They were fake,” Abigail answered for me.

A motley collection of locals had given us the usual people-watching stare as we made our way to the last empty table, with Abigail garnering most of the attention due to her short blonde hair and her youth. I picked up one of the bronze cups—had it been more elaborately designed, I would have called it a goblet—and took a sip as conversation resumed at the other tables. It wasn’t grape juice. Wine, watered down and lukewarm. I took a second sip. It was refreshing in its own way. “I wore them to project an aura of efficiency and competence,” I explained to Xavier about the glasses.

“She thinks she’s baby faced,” Nate said.

Before Xavier could say anything, Helen pitched in, “I know what you mean, Julia. When I first started out as a graduate student, I only wore pants, never skirts. I still got treated differently.”

“Never by me, Helen,” Xavier said, popping an olive into his mouth.

“No, never by you, Xavier.” They were the first kind words I’d heard them say to each other since we’d arrived.

“And I wore ties to impress you, remember that?” Xavier said, then ruined the whole thing by adding, “I was quite foolish at that age.”

Helen’s facial expression didn’t change, though I thought I saw a muscle above her right eye give a slight twitch.

Kamal lifted up his cup and sniffed the reddish liquid inside. “Is this wine?”

“I figure it’s safer to drink than plain water,” Xavier said.

“I think I’ll get something else. Uh—Professor, can I have a denarius or two…?”

“The denarius is a silver coin. You don’t need that much.” Xavier put his cup down and opened the coin purse hanging on his belt. “Here, have an
as
.”

The as was a copper coin a bit larger than a quarter.

Kamal got to his feet, said, “Abigail, come and translate,” and they wove their way around tables to the front of the shop, leaving Xavier to explain, “I have to confess I brought I few coins with me. I didn’t want to arrive with completely empty pockets. I obtained authentic coins from, shall we say, rather unsavory sources—don’t lecture me about the antiquities black market, Helen, this was a special case. Anyway, I noticed that one of the coins I brought was minted in September of this year. I meant to hold off on using it until then, but accidentally paid with it for a snack at a gladiator match.”

Helen clicked her tongue in disapproval.

“How were the women’s baths, Julia?” Xavier asked with the clear intention of changing the subject.

“Social,” I said. “We ran into Sabina and her grandmother. Faustilla doesn’t seem to like us very much—except maybe for Abigail.”

Xavier chuckled. “She might be thinking that Abigail would make a good second wife for Secundus.”

I almost choked on a fish ball. “What? But he’s a good twenty years older than she is.”

“More like ten or fifteen, Julia,” said Nate. “Besides, what do you care? Don’t forget that you’re married to me and therefore off limits to Secundus.”

“Very funny,” I said. “That’s not what I meant.”

“If it makes you feel better, Faustilla’s never liked me either,” Xavier said. “Secundus lets me borrow the cart to peddle my wares around town when he’s not using it to pick up fish or deliver garum jars—you’ve seen them, the thin, long-necked ones. Faustilla thinks it’s unnecessary wear and tear on the cart and the donkeys. Abigail would fulfill one of her goals for her son, a second marriage. Her other goal is to convince him to move to Rome, where Primus, her firstborn, lives. She’s been arguing that the sacking of the shop is a sign, like the increasing earthquakes, that it’s time to leave.”

“I don’t know about the first part, but she’s right about the second,” Helen said. “Secundus would be wise to listen to his mother in this instance.”

“Everyone would be wise to listen to their mothers,” said Kamal, who was back with Abigail and a different drink, something thick and sweet smelling. I hoped Abigail hadn’t heard the bit about being good marriage material. “Mine told me to go into medicine, not grad school to study physics. She thought time travel would lead to trouble—and here we are, stuck in the past.”

“Then there’s the matter of Sabina,” Xavier went on as Abigail and Kamal sat back down. “Faustilla thinks I’m encouraging the girl to behave outside her station in life because I’ve bought her an abacus and a couple of reading scrolls. Which is nonsense. Behavior outside her station in life must already be part
of Sabina’s temperament, or History wouldn’t have allowed me to give her the scrolls and the abacus in the first place, not that I can offer that explanation, of course. Secundus approves. Sabina learned how to read and write from the children of the household they served. A waste of time in Faustilla’s opinion. Sabina is of marriageable age. She should be learning useful skills.”

Abigail snorted at this.

I decided not to ask what
useful
skills were. Sewing and such, no doubt. Probably cooking, too. I scratched the spot on my finger where I had cut it on the cat-eye glasses yesterday. It had started to itch.

“Well, now that we’re clean and fed,” said Nate, who had downed the food and wine with impressive speed, “and have discussed all the reasons Faustilla doesn’t like us, we need to get on with the business of finding a suitable place to bury our cheese-and-cracker-package note.”

“Cheese-and-cracker-package note? What is this?” Xavier asked.

Nate explained.

“Contamination of an archeological site, Helen?” Xavier asked in a clear attempt to needle her.

Nate hurriedly answered before Helen could say anything. “We need to get the message to someone at St. Sunniva—someone who can be trusted—so that they’ll know what happened to us.”

“I have the utmost confidence in Rojas,” Xavier said. “Address the note to him.”

Nate shook his head. “I’d like to hide it where archaeologists can find it and forward it to the police or St. Sunniva campus security. You can help us there, Professor, with your knowledge of the town,” he added.

We left the tavern somewhat tipsy (except for Xavier, who had acquired a tolerance for the wine, and Kamal, who hadn’t drunk anything alcoholic), and headed in the direction of the Forum to seek a good hiding place for the message.

“Okay,
that’s
kind of odd,” Abigail said, stopping almost at once. She signaled across the street with a nod of her head.

“Is that one of those, what are they called, Porta Potties? The Roman version?” Kamal asked.

Across the street, a man stood with his back to us, relieving himself into a large vat sitting on the sidewalk. None of the locals paid him the least bit of attention. A moist stench emanated from the neighboring workshop, spreading across the street.

“It’s a fullery,” Xavier explained. “A laundry and cloth-dyeing workshop. The urine is used for washing clothes. Passersby contribute it and the urine is thrown in a tub with some other stuff, then slaves work the clothes with their bare feet, like grapes at a winery.” I caught sight of a large tub inside where three slaves were doing exactly what Xavier had described. He added, “Secundus’s old master ran a fullery in Nola, and Secundus and his extended family worked in it, including Sabina from a young age. There was a matter of a debt that had gone unpaid by Secundus’s late father. They were technically indentured servants, not slaves, but practically speaking there’s little difference. When the master died, his will released the family from the debt, and Secundus returned to his father’s trade, garum making. He likes to say that, in comparison with the fullery, he doesn’t mind the smell of fish or garum one bit.”

“We better move along, we’re starting to attract attention,” Helen said, looking like she was itching to pull her notebook out of the leather satchel slung across Kamal’s shoulder and take copious notes and sketches of the fullery. Her long hair had dried tangled below her shoulders, her face was sunburned, and
her arm was probably still sore from yesterday’s fall, but Helen Presnik didn’t seem to mind any of it.

“Abigail, do you have the camera?” she asked as we left the fullery behind us.

“It’s in Kamal’s bag. I almost left it back at the tomb, thinking it might get wet in the baths.”

“I took good care of it.” Kamal tapped the leather satchel. “Stuffed it under my clothes in the changing room. We figured no one could steal the bag with its modern contents anyway.”

“—but that wasn’t the real reason,” Abigail went on. “I’m feeling weird about it, right? Usually I have no problem snapping pics or shooting footage of locals, even though I know they’re long since dead. It’s bothering me this time, I can’t explain why. It’s almost like we’re intruding.”

“It’s certainly been bothering me,” I said, thinking of those deep eyes of Secundus’s.

“I know why,” Helen said. “It’s because the people we usually see or meet on our time travels may have years yet to live—ten, twenty, thirty. Aside from famous historical figures, we have no idea what their fates will entail. Here—it’s like there’s a sword waiting to fall.”

The description was apt. A sword waiting to fall and nothing we could do about it. The moving finger writes.

“I’m hoping Sabina and her family will leave town at the first rumble from Vesuvius,” Abigail said optimistically.

“There’s a chance that Secundus might have to leave sooner than that. Primus has been by again asking about the rent,” Xavier said.

“Primus?” Nate asked.

“Not the brother in Rome. The slave of one Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius.” Xavier threw out the long name with the ease of one who’s had months of practice.

My ears perked up as I parsed the long name. “Nigidius? Is he related to our tomb family?”

“I believe the Nigidii are his birth family, yes. But that tomb isn’t of interest to him anymore. He was adopted by the powerful Alleii family, which must have been in need of a male heir, and now he prefers to go by Alleius Maius. He’s a local bigwig, a politician—the kind that puts on gladiatorial games. He owns rental property around town. I’ve seen him in the neighborhood—a portly fellow of about my age. Since Secundus was late with his rent, Alleius Maius sent his slave Primus by—”

“Wait. Can we call him Nigidius even though he wouldn’t like it? I’m having trouble keeping track of all the names,” I said.

“Nigidius, then. An Oscan name, by the way, one which predates the Roman takeover of the town a century and a half ago.” Xavier went on, “If he forces Secundus to vacate the property, Secundus will have no choice but to sell off his wares and make his way to Rome to join his older brother.”

“That would certainly make Faustilla happy. Why don’t we invite them to come with us?” I suggested as we let a cart pass and then crossed the street via the stepping-stones.

Helen shook her head. “We shouldn’t try to meddle.”

“Shouldn’t we at least attempt to save them? Even if—no,
especially
if they aren’t destined to survive?”

“Destined is the wrong word,” said Xavier, sounding a touch fed up with my perseverance.