‘c’. Not confectioners. Cobblers.
‘But you know what it’s like at sixteen. You meet this young bookbinder and think, yes he’s the one for me, and you have glorious visions of a few years down the line when he’s got a shop of his own, men working under him and magistrates climbing over each other to come through the doors, because they wouldn’t trust their vellum to any man but Dexter…’ Maria’s tirade ended in a hawking sound in the back of her throat. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have married beneath me,’ she said.
By the time she’d stopped to evict an imaginary stone from her shoe, Claudia was behind Iliona and Titus’s rig. The Cretan girl’s bangles jangled louder than the harnesses on the two mules and their voices were low, so Claudia couldn’t catch what they were bickering about. Only that, like everyone else, they were less than happy with the situation though whether, as with Maria and Dexter, that encompassed their marital status, who could say?
Peppery smells wafted out of the spice merchant’s cart, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin and mustard, as well as a tantalizing hint of more exotic resins and gums, such as myrrh and terebinth and mastic. Claudia wondered how it was that Iliona managed to override them and retain only the scent of the herb which cascaded down her native Cretan hillsides. When Iliona threw her hands in the air, her bracelets of gold and crystal and glass sent out tunes to rival a troupe of travelling musicians, Claudia smiled to herself. Iliona may have left the island, but the island had never left her.
She wore only shades of lilac, be it from the palest, almost white, to the deepest violet, to remind her of the crocus which grew nowhere else but on Crete and brightened up the winter from November through to when it was time to weed the grain fields. The embroidery on her bodice invariably represented griffins or bulls.
‘Now what, eh?’ Claudia heard the slipper-maker mumble to the glass-blower, when the first of the gaggle reached the bottom of the valley.
Good question. According to Theo, the directions his dead comrade had been given were specific. Zigzag down the gorge and cross at the wooden bridge. Here you’ll find the road turns back on itself and you simply follow the river upstream for five miles, then take the first fork leading right. After that it’s more or less a straight run to Vesontio.
‘So you admit you knew we were separated from the main delegation?’ Maria shot straight for the jugular, and for once Claudia agreed with the old bag. Somewhere along the line, Theo and his fellow legionaries must have become aware that they were the only three soldiers around, which is why they’d had to rely on third-hand information from Helvetians who had no time for Rome.
Claudia shivered, and it was not from the cold (anything but, in this humid ravine.), it was because she had begun to appreciate just how carefully this strategy had been planned.
‘Once the army realizes we took the wrong road,’ Theo assured the worried group, ‘they’ll come after us.’
‘And what happens when they reach the part which has fallen away, eh?’ one of the drivers piped up. ‘By the time they’ve built even the most rudimentary—’
‘Rope bridges will see them across swiftly and safely,’ Theo began, but Maria cut him short.
‘Then why didn’t we make a rope bridge ourselves and go back the way we came in, if it was the wrong road?’
Love her or hate her, thought Claudia, there are no flies on the bookbinder’s wife.
‘Because our ropes went down with the pack mules,’ Theo said miserably, managing to look an appealing thirteen, despite the preponderance of armour, and Claudia was convinced more than ever that the order the procession had travelled in had been carefully contrived. The pack mules going down had been no accident. ‘I propose we make camp here, at this crossing. It’ll be dark in less than three hours, therefore we’ll have to
‘But you know what it’s like at sixteen. You meet this young bookbinder and think, yes he’s the one for me, and you have glorious visions of a few years down the line when he’s got a shop of his own, men working under him and magistrates climbing over each other to come through the doors, because they wouldn’t trust their vellum to any man but Dexter…’ Maria’s tirade ended in a hawking sound in the back of her throat. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have married beneath me,’ she said.
By the time she’d stopped to evict an imaginary stone from her shoe, Claudia was behind Iliona and Titus’s rig. The Cretan girl’s bangles jangled louder than the harnesses on the two mules and their voices were low, so Claudia couldn’t catch what they were bickering about. Only that, like everyone else, they were less than happy with the situation though whether, as with Maria and Dexter, that encompassed their marital status, who could say?
Peppery smells wafted out of the spice merchant’s cart, cinnamon, cardamom, cumin and mustard, as well as a tantalizing hint of more exotic resins and gums, such as myrrh and terebinth and mastic. Claudia wondered how it was that Iliona managed to override them and retain only the scent of the herb which cascaded down her native Cretan hillsides. When Iliona threw her hands in the air, her bracelets of gold and crystal and glass sent out tunes to rival a troupe of travelling musicians, Claudia smiled to herself. Iliona may have left the island, but the island had never left her.
She wore only shades of lilac, be it from the palest, almost white, to the deepest violet, to remind her of the crocus which grew nowhere else but on Crete and brightened up the winter from November through to when it was time to weed the grain fields. The embroidery on her bodice invariably represented griffins or bulls.
‘Now what, eh?’ Claudia heard the slipper-maker mumble to the glass-blower, when the first of the gaggle reached the bottom of the valley.
Good question. According to Theo, the directions his dead comrade had been given were specific. Zigzag down the gorge and cross at the wooden bridge. Here you’ll find the road turns back on itself and you simply follow the river upstream for five miles, then take the first fork leading right. After that it’s more or less a straight run to Vesontio.
‘So you admit you knew we were separated from the main delegation?’ Maria shot straight for the jugular, and for once Claudia agreed with the old bag. Somewhere along the line, Theo and his fellow legionaries must have become aware that they were the only three soldiers around, which is why they’d had to rely on third-hand information from Helvetians who had no time for Rome.
Claudia shivered, and it was not from the cold (anything but, in this humid ravine.), it was because she had begun to appreciate just how carefully this strategy had been planned.
‘Once the army realizes we took the wrong road,’ Theo assured the worried group, ‘they’ll come after us.’
‘And what happens when they reach the part which has fallen away, eh?’ one of the drivers piped up. ‘By the time they’ve built even the most rudimentary—’
‘Rope bridges will see them across swiftly and safely,’ Theo began, but Maria cut him short.
‘Then why didn’t we make a rope bridge ourselves and go back the way we came in, if it was the wrong road?’
Love her or hate her, thought Claudia, there are no flies on the bookbinder’s wife.
‘Because our ropes went down with the pack mules,’ Theo said miserably, managing to look an appealing thirteen, despite the preponderance of armour, and Claudia was convinced more than ever that the order the procession had travelled in had been carefully contrived. The pack mules going down had been no accident. ‘I propose we make camp here, at this crossing. It’ll be dark in less than three hours, therefore we’ll have to
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