‘So what’s Birkita’s plan?’ asks Julia, the following evening as they sit on their bunk.
‘Boudica’s uprising was in either 60 or 61 AD. It’s not known for sure. Let’s assume it was 61 AD. Also, that it happened in the spring or summer because that was when people did their fighting in those days. Let’s assume early summer when the British are defeated and late summer by the time Birkita has been shipped to Pompeii.
‘She’s going to learn as much as she can. She is going to learn Latin so she can get around. She is going to understand the geography of the world so she can figure out where she is and where she needs to get to. She’s going to accumulate some money. Then, when she feels she has enough, she is going to run away, go down to the docks, find a ship that is going to Britain and pay the captain to take her home.’
‘It’s a pretty thin plan,’ says Julia. ‘I don’t mean that as a criticism of you or us or our book – just that there’s lots that could go wrong with it.’
‘It’s a thin plan all right,’ agrees Suzanne. ‘She doesn’t have many options.’
‘Which of us does?’ says Julia.
The thought makes them go silent. At length, Julia asks, ‘Do you think the war will end this year?’
‘If even a fraction of the bonkes are true then it will.’
‘Do you believe them?’
‘I try not to think about it. Just get through every day. It’s what I did in the attic.’
‘Imagine when it does,’ says Julia. ‘What will you do then?’
Suzanne shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. Whenever I think of it, I try not to think of it.’
‘But what if we think about it together?’ asks Julia.
‘OK.’
‘So imagine – the war is ended, the Germans are defeated. We are free again.’
‘And we’re here in Theresienstadt?’
‘I suppose so. Let’s take it from here. Would you go back and finish your studies?
‘I don’t think so. I can’t imagine the thought of spending more years cooped up in some place – even if it was a library or a university. I think I’d travel. What about you?’
‘I wouldn’t go back to Amsterdam,’ says Julia. ‘That’s for sure. There’s nothing for me there.’
‘Maybe not for me either ... now.’
Suzanne is thinking about her parents. Julia has an image of her own mother and father. Where did they go? What happened to them? The image stays in her mind for a moment and then she banishes it.
‘Would we finish the book?’ she asks.
‘Julia – of course we’d finish the book. And we’d find a publisher.’
‘I was thinking,’ says Julia. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if it got made into a movie?’
‘And you played Birkita,’ adds Suzanne.
‘That would be unbelievable,’ says Julia.
The girls go quiet again.
Then Suzanne asks, ‘Why do you want to talk about all this? Here? Now?’
‘Because I don’t want to lose you.’
The words are out before Julia has had time to think about them.
‘I don’t want you to go out of my life. I would want us still to be friends after this is all over. I really like you, Suzanne.’
‘And I really like you,’ Suzanne says, lifting the glasses off her nose, putting them on her head and looking at Julia in that blinky way she has when she’s without them. Julia asked her once what it was like – to see the world in that way. ‘Most of the time, it’s a pain,’ Suzanne told her. ‘I’d love to have normal sight like most people. In my next life I’ll be an eagle. But sometimes it’s really beautiful – like a painting by Renoir or Monet.’ Suzanne has asked if she knew any of their pictures. She doesn’t. Suzanne said they will see them after the war.
‘I’m glad,’ Julia says.
Somebody announces that it will soon be lights out. The girls go to the bathroom, wash, brush their teeth. They climb back onto the bunk and settle in under their luxurious three blankets. They lie facing each other. It is what they normally do while they try to remember whose turn it is to spoon first.
‘I think it’s me on you,’ says Julia.
Suzanne continues to gaze at her. The silence lengthens. Suzanne seems to be waiting for Julia to say or do something.
When Julia doesn’t, Suzanne just turns over.
Chapter Ten
Birkita’s Plan (Julia)
Birkita had counted four moons since she arrived in Pompeii. Winter came. But it was not the kind of winter she had known. There was no snow, no frozen rivers or pools with thick layers of crunchy ice on top. No bitterly cold, rainy days when all you wanted to do was huddle by the fire and eat hot food and drink ale. Instead the weather got colder but there were still sunshine and blue skies. It was no different from summer really – except there wasn’t the great heat.
Everything here was wrong. Back in her old life her day had been tied to the sun. She woke when the first hint of daylight started to creep nervously into the hut. The first thing she always did was to go outside and see the sun. Make sure it was still there. What if a day happened when it didn’t rise? But it always did.
In winter – she could still picture this so clearly – the grass and bushes and leaves would be white with frost, the air thick and crackling with cold, the sky the faintest of blues. The black figures of birds would flap across her eye line and she would watch as the sun rose until it became a blood-red disc in the sky.
Summer was so different. The ground would be warm after the heat of the previous day and the only slightly cooler night. There would be mist low in the hollows and spread across the land like the breath of the gods. Birds would be twittering and singing madly – celebrating the warmth, the abundance of food, life itself. All the colours would be pale shades of their more vivid selves. And then would come the sun.
At first, light the colour of the centre of daisies in the east, as though a fire burned just below the horizon. Then a small orange bar colouring the edge of the world. It was the same vivid orange she had seen on butterfly wings. And finally, in all its glory the great glowing orb lifting itself up and pouring its blessings down on everybody.
How her body, her whole being ached for that time and place. And how she detested this one. Everything about it was so different from her old life. She no longer thought of ‘home’ now. She had no home. There was just her old life. Sometimes it seemed as though that time and all those people – her mother and father, her brother and sister-in-law, their children, even Moon and Sun – had all been just a dream, or a story told around the fire one night. She found too that their memory was becoming more and more faint. She could no longer remember their voices, picture their faces, recall the colour of their eyes.
It was late morning and she was still in bed in her cubicle. Her eyes were closed – trying to go back to sleep or feigning death – she wasn’t quite sure which. She had been working until after dawn, had slept an exhausted sleep and been woken when the sounds out on the street became loud as lunchtime approached. She hated the way her days no longer followed the sun – in fact, the way they spat in its face. She slept when the sun woke; she was awake long after it had gone. She hated the people who had imposed this on her. She was revolted by what she was forced to do every day.
‘In about an hour,’ a voice said outside.
It was Cassius, the first of the two bodyguards. Birkita’s cubicle was one of the two beside the front door. Cassius was right outside talking to somebody on the street.
‘Try to keep it in your pants until then,’ Cassius said and the other man laughed.
The night after Antonius, Cassius had come to her. It had been her first full day in the lupanar. A slow day. Four, five, six men – she couldn’t remember. After the first couple she was just in a daze. Eventually, Flavia had said that they were closing and Cassius had locked the door. Birkita’s groin was in agony. Somebody had raked their nails down her back and only now was she feeling the pain. She lay on her bed in her cubicle, facing the wall. She tried to sleep, to forget.
But then the curtain rustled. She thought it was Flavia. But it was Cassius.
‘Hello, new girl,’ he said.
She rolled onto her back wondering what new horror this was. Cassius smiled.
‘We have a tradition here in the lupanar,’ he said. ‘The master gets the first bite of the cherry. Then I get the second.
‘You’re too late,’ said Birkita. ‘There have been plenty of others today.’
He continued to smile.
‘Not where I’m going there haven’t.’
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
‘Face down,’ he said.
Birkita tried to shake off the memory. It was time to get herself ready.
She got up and stretched. Overhead, through the small barred window that gave on to the street, smells wafted in – food being cooked; shit and piss, animal and human. The cubicle where Birkita lived and worked was slightly longer than she was tall. Along one wall was a stone bed with a thin mattress upon it. After that it was less than two paces to the window. There was a table upon which lay a tiny hourglass, a simple oil lamp for after dark, a bowl, an empty water jug and a small wooden chest in which she kept the few possessions she had. She opened it now to take out the blanket she used for work and to fold away her sleeping blanket. She laid the blanket on top of the mattress.
She slipped her feet into her sandals and pushed past the curtain that screened the cubicle. Outside in the corridor, Cassius was at the door still chatting with somebody. He moved aside briefly so that Albinus the water boy could come in from outside. He carried a large earthenware amphora of water half as tall as himself and struggled under the weight. Birkita said hello to him – she never talked to Cassius if she could avoid it. Then she walked down the corridor to the toilet. Returning, she washed in the water that Albinus had brought in and changed into her other red toga. She would wash the first one later. Albinus looked in and handed her some food on a plate – some fruit, cheese, bread.
‘Lunch, Birkita,’ he said cheerily.
‘Eat up,’ called Cassius over his shoulder. ‘Nobody likes a scrawny whore.’
He laughed, as did the man he was talking to.
She hated Cassius. During her first few days here she had eaten nothing. Looking back on it, she wasn’t sure whether it was from revulsion at what she had to do or because she wanted to get her revenge by starving herself to death. Either way, after a couple of days, Cassius had noticed it and must have told Antonius. The result had been that Flavia had come to her and coaxed her into eating. Sly Cassius. Fawning Cassius. She would kill him if she ever got the chance.
More than anyone else, more than the men who came to her, it was Cassius whom she hated. He tormented her constantly. ‘Just one word from me,’ he would say to her, ‘just one word is all it needs and you’ll find yourself doing what you do – but in the arena.’
He threatened that he would bring some of his friends and they would all enjoy her together. For a while, the terror of these threats kept her from sleeping. But after a while she saw that they were actually idle boasts. Cassius would have had to pay for this and he would never have paid for something which – on his own – he could get for free.
She sat on the edge of the bed while she ate. Apart from Flavia, Cassius, Crispus the other bodyguard and Albinus, the aquarius, there were five girls in the lupanar. There were two girls from Syria – twins. They occupied the two cubicles on the same side as Birkita. Sometimes customers asked for the two of them together. Opposite Birkita in the biggest cubicle was a girl called Claudia. She had been there the longest, Flavia told her. At one time, she had been the most popular girl there but she had become pregnant and had found out too late to have an abortion. When the child was born, just before Birkita arrived, it had been removed from her, taken somewhere and left to die. Flavia told Birkita that this was the Roman way. Ever since then Claudia had become more and more silent and withdrawn. She too had stopped eating and was becoming ‘scrawny’. Birkita could see that Claudia was in serious danger of incurring Antonius’ anger. Birkita had tried to talk to Claudia, to warn her but it was clear that Claudia was both completely aware of the risk she was running and, at the same time, quite indifferent to her fate.
‘I’ve tried to tell her,’ Flavia said, ‘but she won’t listen. Any more complaints and I won’t be able to save her.’
The last girl was called Bakt and came from Egypt. She had arrived just before Birkita. She had the most beautiful face that Birkita had ever seen – straight black hair, perfect creamy skin, beautiful lips, deep eyes. Of all of them she seemed the least bothered by what they had to do. She kept to herself and seemed to live a lot of her life inside her head. It was something Birkita wished she could do.
She dreaded the thought of what the day would hold. Things had been quiet this week but you never could tell. Some days, for no apparent reason, it could be unbelievably busy. Cassius would let in the first customers in the middle of the afternoon and from then on would come a succession of faceless men. Some talked, some didn’t. Some were nervous, others were aggressive, hard. There were those that had washed and were scented and those who stank. Some looked as though they were disease-ridden. Almost all of them had bad teeth and vile breath that reeked. Birkita didn’t know which disgusted her more – when they lay on top of her and put themselves into her or when she had to give them fellatus or when she had to submit to the other things they asked for.
Sometimes, a group of men came and asked to use the upstairs room and have several girls. Antonius wanted to hold more and more of those sessions, according to Flavia. He made a lot of money on them, overcharging for his cheap wine and for food brought in from down the street. Those sessions were generally the worst. The men became drunk and aggressive. Flavia told Birkita about a time the group of men had become so bad that they had done all sorts of damage to the upper room and Cassius had had to throw them out. A girl had nearly died and been good for nothing afterwards. Antonius had been furious about having to pay for the repairs.
‘What happened to the girl?’ asked Birkita.
Flavia looked at her, an expression of irritation on her face.
‘She could hardly walk. Her face was a mess. You couldn’t put her in front of clients. What do you suppose happened to her?’
Birkita had been involved in a number of these sessions. In some of them, several men would use one of the girls at the same time. All the girls would end up covered in bruises, with bite marks on their body and – usually – bleeding. There hadn’t been one of these for nearly a month now but you never knew from day to day when Antonius might arrive and announce that such an event was to take place.
Normally, he wasn’t around very much and Flavia pretty much ran the place. Apparently, he had several lupanars around the city but this was his biggest. Flavia told Birkita that Antonius had been some kind of moneyman in the army, responsible for paying the soldiers. He had left the army with a pile of money which he had invested in lupanars. While he was generally not there for most of the time it was open, he always arrived near the day’s end to pick up the takings.
Birkita applied chalk powder to her face to whiten it. Then she dabbed some wine dregs onto her cheeks and rubbed them in to produce a pink effect. Finally she blackened around her eyes with soot as Flavia had taught her and touched some perfume made from rose petals to her neck, her throat, between her breasts, on her belly and the insides of her thighs. Just as she was finishing, Flavia clapped her hands and called the girls out into the corridor. A few moments later, Cassius let the first customer in.
He was little more than a youth – thin, spotty and nervous.
‘Now sir, which of our beautiful girls would you like?’ Flavia began her patter. ‘We have them from all corners of the world. Syria, Aegyptus, even as far away as Britannia. Take a look. What do you fancy, this fine day?’
Birkita smiled, as did the other girls. She pouted, pushed her breasts forward, and pulled up her toga to show her thigh. The spotty youth made a very short show of trying to choose, but in reality he chose the first girl he looked at. Birkita’s heart sank – it was she. However, her smile widened as though she had just received a great surprise, she took his hand and led him into her cubicle.
‘How much are you going to spend?’ she asked, in the Roman tongue.
‘How much is it?’
‘Depends on what you want – fellatus, full sex, half and half.’
‘What’s half and half?’
‘Some of each.’
‘I’ll have that.’
‘That’ll be twenty asses.’
The spotty youth looked shocked.
‘That’s a lot. It’s more than I was –’
‘You don’t have it?’
If he didn’t, Birkita’s next question would be to ask how much he did have.
‘No, I have it.’
‘Would you like wine?’
‘Is that extra?’
‘Two asses.’
‘All right.’
‘Would you like to buy me one?’
The spotty youth gulped and nodded.
Birkita went to the curtain and called to Albinus to bring her two cups of the house’s best wine. Returning with them, she asked, ‘What would you like to call me?’
‘Wha – what’s your name?’
‘That doesn’t matter. While you’re here I can be any woman you want me to be.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Aurelia,’ he said.
Birkita often wondered about all these other women whose names were mentioned here and whom she briefly became. Who was Aurelia? Some wealthy woman whom the spotty youth admired from afar? Some girl his own age who lived in the house next door? The mother or older sister or aunt of one his friends?
She passed him the wine and then held out her empty hand for him to give her the money. The coins felt warm and damp, as though they had been clamped in his fist. She quickly checked that all the money was there and then, lifting the lid of the chest, dropped the coins into a bowl she kept inside. She upended the hourglass. By the time she turned back, the spotty youth had gulped down half the wine. She undressed while the spotty youth watched her with wide eyes.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked with a smile.
He drank down the rest of the wine and nodded. Birkita could almost have felt fond of him. He reminded her of her brother Banning when he was that age. She pushed the thought away.
When she was naked, she motioned to the spotty youth that he should sit on the bed. She knelt down, lifted the knee-length tunic he wore and went to work.
Birkita kept one eye on the hourglass. When the sands ran out, she stopped what she was doing, got up and climbed onto the bed. She lay on her back and indicated that he should take off his clothes. He undressed and got on top of her. He went to kiss her and she let him. Flavia said that men liked kissing and while not every lupanar allowed it, Antonius said his girls should do it. As the spotty youth entered her and began to pump her, Birkita closed her eyes.
‘Aurelia,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, Aurelia!’
She moaned and whimpered and uttered compliments and encouragement as Flavia had taught her to do but her mind flew away.
It flew back to Britain and she imagined finding the bull Roman, taking him captive. She would bring him to exactly the same spot where he had killed her brother and his family. There, she would crucify him. She pictured his face as the nails were driven into his wrists. What he would look like as he hung from a cross looking down at her. She wondered how long it would take him to die. He was big and strong. He would take a long time. Much longer than the time it had taken Banning. More than a day, she thought. Maybe two. She hoped so. And she would stay there at the foot of the cross for all of it. She would revel in the bull Roman’s suffering. She wondered if he would die bravely. She thought not. Like all bullies, he was a coward, she thought. He would grovel, weep, plead for mercy.
‘I love you, Aurelia. I love you,’ the spotty youth was saying as his tempo increased until finally he came to a shuddering halt.
In the end he had taken very little time. Birkita lay there for a minute or so until his breathing returned to normal and then she gently eased herself out from under him.
‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked as she began to dress.
‘It was amazing. What about you?’
‘Unbelievable. You’re an incredible lover. Aurelia is a very lucky woman.’ They were the same phrases she always used.
The youth looked not just spent, but sad.
‘Was it your first time?’ she asked.
‘First time with a –’ He stopped.
‘So you know that if you enjoyed it, it’s lucky to give the girl something extra?’
The youth gave her an incredible five asses. It seemed to be the rest of the money he had.
‘I hope you’ll come again,’ she said as he left.
She was pretty sure that he wouldn’t – he had spent far more than he had intended. But at least he couldn’t say he was unhappy.
And so the day wore on. It was a slow day. She had two other customers – a big man with a red angry face who hurt her, and one of the smelliest men she had ever had to endure. It grew dark. After the lamps were lit, Albinus brought her some hot food from the cookhouse down the street. As she sat on the edge of the bed and ate it, she thought through her plan again. There was so much that could go wrong.
She had waited four moons because she had needed to learn a little of the Roman tongue. She had that now. She had also learned something of the layout of Pompeii. Most importantly, from talking to customers, she knew where the harbour was. She had only been there that one time – the day she arrived – but she knew that once she escaped from here, if she went steadily downhill, she would come to where the ships were. Anyway, sometimes, depending on which way the wind was blowing, she could smell the salty, watery air and knew the direction in which to go.
She had earned some money. Her line about ‘you know it’s lucky to give the girl something extra?’ hadn’t always been successful. A lot of men were mean bastards but then there were some like the spotty youth who could be taken for a ride. Even with handing half the money over to Flavia, Birkita still had managed to put together a pile of coins. She kept them not in the wooden chest, but in a small hole she had managed to burrow out between the stone bed and the wall. She had no idea if it was enough to pay for a passage home. She would have to take a chance on that. Basically, she had decided that she would be prepared to fuck the entire crew if it was a case of getting away from here.
She had also needed time to study the routine in the lupanar. She had that now too. The event that signalled the end of the day was when Antonius showed up to collect the money. He would wait around for a while. As long as there was even the sniff of a customer who would pay, the lupanar would stay open. But eventually Antonius would collect the takings and go. According to Flavia he lived in another part of the city.
Once he was gone, Flavia sometimes left too – she lived in a room in a house up the street. With her gone, either Cassius or Crispus – only one of them was ever on duty – would close the front door and bar it from the inside. Two mattresses would be brought down from the room upstairs. Albinus slept on one which he placed in the central corridor near the toilet. Cassius or Crispus slept on the other and it was positioned right in front of the door, blocking it.
At first, Birkita had despaired when she had seen this arrangement. To get out, someone would have to either wake or kill the man sleeping in front of the door. But it didn’t take long for Birkita to realise that while Crispus took his duties very seriously and performed them to the letter – he was terrified of Antonius – Cassius was a different proposition.
Cassius appeared to have three interests: chatting with his friends – he seemed to know everyone in Pompeii – drinking and women. His job at the lupanar enabled him to enjoy all three.
It turned out that if he got the chance, he would drink steadily through the day. It was in this that Birkita had seen the first dawning of an opportunity. Through Flavia, Antonius kept a strict watch on the consumption of the wine that was sold to the customers. This meant that there was no way that Cassius could have this without paying for it – which he couldn’t afford. And he was too mean to pay for it in any of the local taverns. So Birkita had arranged from him to have a supply.
When she asked a customer whether they wanted wine, many said yes and in addition, they would often buy her one as well. She never drank any of it – she hated the Roman drink just as she hated everything Roman – and so she would save hers and after the customer had gone, give it to Cassius, if he was on duty. Otherwise, she gave it to Albinus or to one of the other girls. Cassius was a big man with a huge capacity, but if they were busy, she could give him enough that, by the end of the day, he was quite groggy.
This was where the sex came in. When Cassius was on duty, he rarely went to sleep on the mattress. As far as he was concerned, one of the perks of his job was that his working day always ended with sex. So he would go to one of the girls’ cubicles – a different one every night – and have sex. After a noisy orgasm and with enough wine inside him, Cassius could be relied on to spend the next few hours out cold. Often he slept well into the morning, only being woken by Albinus just before he unbarred the door to Flavia’s loud knock.
Here then, was the opportunity.
It would have to be a day when Birkita was very busy, when lots of customers asked for wine and bought her one and which she would then pass on to Cassius. After Antonius and Flavia had gone and Cassius had had his sex and was asleep, there was a period of time in which she might escape. All of that still left Albinus, but Birkita always tried to be nice to him and to treat him well. Occasionally she bought him little treats from the cake shop down the street. The girls were allowed to go that far, provided Cassius or Crispus went with them. Birkita hoped that when the night came, Albinus would stay silent while she unbarred the door and stole out of the lupanar.
If he didn’t, she had thought of that too.
There was a customer from whom she had bought a knife.
Chapter Eleven
Birkita’s Plan Again (Suzanne)
There was one other complication.
Apart from a busy day resulting in enough wine to make Cassius drunk, Albinus keeping quiet or being killed, Birkita having enough time to get to the harbour, finding a ship that would take her to Britannia and having enough money to pay for her passage, there was one other thing that had to fall into place.
That first night that Flavia came to Birkita had not been the only one. Rather, it had turned out to be the first of many. As well as having to give sex to Cassius from time to time, Birkita also had to have sex with Flavia.
Flavia rarely had to take customers. In all the time she had been there, Birkita had only seen it happen twice. As a result, it seemed to Birkita that Flavia had a pretty easy life. When the end of the day came and Birkita was literally fucked to exhaustion, she then had to find the energy to be an enthusiastic lover to Flavia. Not that it happened every night. But two or three nights a week, Flavia ended up spending the night with Birkita in the bed in the upstairs room.
At first, she had shouldered this as just another burden. And as her plan began to form, she had added it to the list of conditions that would have to be met before she could escape. As well as all the other things, it would have to be a night when Flavia went home.
But after a while, a strange thing began to happen. Birkita found that she didn’t mind when Flavia came to her. Apart from getting out of the cubicle which she hated and the more comfortable mattress upstairs, Birkita liked being in bed with Flavia. In comparison to any of the men, she was gentle and tender; she didn’t just use Birkita as some kind of empty vessel to be filled up. After they had made love, Birkita would often fall asleep in Flavia’s arms and Birkita found she slept deeply and had nice dreams, feeling safe in a way that she hadn’t since she’d been made a slave.
She had a sense that Flavia cared about her. It was a feeling she had forgotten – that there had once been people in her life who loved her and who looked after her. It wasn’t long before she found herself wondering throughout the day whether Flavia was going to come to her that night. Eventually, she looked forward to it and would be disappointed on the nights when it didn’t happen.
So that as her plan began to take shape, she found herself picturing something else.
Birkita felt that she no longer had a home – a place to which she could return. Yes, she would escape – or die in the attempt. The gods could take her; she wasn’t going to live the rest of her life here. Assuming she did get away she would go to the land of her birth and exact her revenge. But after that – what?
There was a good chance she would be a fugitive after killing the bull Roman and even if that wasn’t the case, she felt there was no place for her in a land where there were Romans. But maybe she could find a place where the Romans hadn’t come and spread their poison. And maybe ... maybe ... Flavia would come with her.
Birkita pictured them together living in a hut by a stream in a forest. There was birdsong. The stream sparkled in the sunlight. They had a small garden where they grew vegetables and had some fruit trees. There were chickens and a pig and they kept bees for honey. Sometimes, they hunted for meat. They caught fish and baked bread. It was a vision which Birkita spent more and more time thinking about. As men sweated over her and pushed themselves into her, her mind would fly away to this faraway world which had now come to fill many of her waking hours.
But to make this dream come true, she would have to tell Flavia about it.
It was the night of the shortest day. Flavia had come to her and they had made love. It was afterwards and they were lying in bed naked. Birkita lay in the crook of Flavia’s arm – something that Flavia said she liked – while she absent-mindedly stroked Birkita’s breast and played with her nipple.
‘What was it like – where you lived?’ asked Birkita.
‘It’s so long ago now.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘Yes, I remember. The land was beautiful. There were forests and rivers and plenty of animals to hunt. We were free and had no shortage of food or drink – even in winter. The children were happy and played all the time. Men and women loved...’
Flavia’s voice trailed off.
‘Did you love?’ asked Birkita.
After a silence Flavia said, ‘There was a girl. We used to steal away to the woods. There we would lie amongst the flowers or in summer, in the water.’
‘Was she very beautiful?’
‘She was beautiful to me. We were going to run away and find a peaceful place to live. Then the Romans came.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She became a slave – just like me. The last I saw of her was in a long column of us captives marching through a forest. She had golden hair so I could see her up ahead of me – a long way off. She was looking back trying to see me. Her face was bleeding where they had hit her. That was the last time I saw her face. I never saw her after that. I don’t know what became of her. If she’s alive or dead now, I don’t know. But she’s dead for me. I’ll never find her again.’
‘Were you warriors?’ asked Birkita.
‘We learned to use weapons and such but we had never used them in anger. There wasn’t much fighting. It was a time of peace with most of the neighbouring tribes. If any trouble did break out – somebody stole cattle or something – the men took care of it.’
A thought suddenly occurred to Birkita.
‘What’s your real name? It’s not Flavia.’
‘No, it’s not Flavia. My parents called me Sirona.’
‘Sirona,’ repeated Birkita, rolling it around on her tongue and tasting the word. ‘I like it.’
‘I liked it too,’ said Flavia in a voice that sounded lost and distant.
She had stopped playing with Birkita’s breast. Birkita put a hand across and stroked Flavia’s belly down to where the hair began.
‘That’s nice,’ said Flavia dreamily.
‘Would you go back there?’ Birkita asked.
‘In a heartbeat. It would be changed I’m sure. It wouldn’t be like it was. But to go back there ... why, it would be like being born again. To get out of this place. Not to die here.’
Birkita stopped stroking.
‘I’m going to escape,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me?’
She had expected Flavia to be more shocked. Instead, she almost sounded bored. And there was also a hint in her voice of the tone she used when she was instructing the girls to do something.
‘It’s not possible.’
‘It is possible.’
‘It’s not. And even if it was, you would get caught and then ... well, you know what would happen then.’
‘If it was possible,’ Birkita said, ‘if it was – would you come with me?’
‘To where?’
‘Anywhere. Back to Gaul. Britannia. Any place but this shithole.’
Flavia went silent. Birkita knew that she might just have ruined whatever chance she had of escaping. Even if Flavia didn’t tell Antonius, she would be on her guard now. If Birkita escaped, Flavia was bound to suffer in some way. She might even have ended up in the arena herself. It was too big a risk for her.
Birkita saw now the terrible mistake she had made. She was – or had been – a warrior. But Flavia wasn’t. There had been some people like that in Birkita’s village – one or two girls, one man. It was like they had been born gentle. The man would probably have become a druid. The women? Who knew? It mattered less with the women. She had assumed that Flavia would be prepared to take the risk. To Birkita it was just part of being a warrior. In fact, once she had decided to escape, it had been as though her power – which she had lost that day they had first put chains on her – had started to return. It had been like a drink, flowing back into her.
But it was a terrible risk she ran and while warriors took such risks all the time, not everyone was a warrior. Flavia clearly wasn’t. Birkita had misjudged her completely and now her plan was stillborn. Dead before it began.
Flavia lay still, staring at the ceiling. Birkita wanted to say something but she didn’t know what to say. What would undo the damage she had just done? Outside, the sky was showing the first hint of the day’s colour. A cart was wheeled past on the street, the man pushing it whistling. A cock crowed. And a second time. And a third.
‘Don’t. Please don’t try to escape,’ Flavia said. ‘It will only go wrong and you will die a terrible death.’
‘Better death than this,’ Birkita said without thinking.
Instantly she wished she hadn’t.
‘No,’ said Flavia. ‘No, you are wrong.’
With that, she rose from the bed and began to dress, her back turned to Birkita.
Chapter Twelve
Flavia Changes Her Mind (Julia)
For the next few days Birkita lived in terror. If Flavia spoke to her at all it was only to issue instructions about work. Nor did Flavia come to her when the day was over. For more than a week, Flavia didn’t invite her into the bed upstairs. It had never happened before.
The courage that Birkita had been painstakingly building up, spurred on by the vision of her idyllic life with Flavia, had evaporated. Now she found herself wondering when they would come for her. Whenever either Cassius or Crispus approached her, it was almost like her heart froze. When Antonius came into the lupanar her mind ran riot as she pictured herself being taken away and thrown into some awful dungeon. Then she would emerge, blinking in the sunlight, into the arena to die in a ghastly way for the entertainment of the crowd. The lupanar, with its horrible bed that was her home and workplace, its smell of candles and sweat and stale bodies and the toilet and semen, had suddenly become the dearest place in the world to her.
A few days into the month that the Romans called Januarius Birkita was lying awake in her cubicle. She was struggling to get some sleep, something that had pretty much eluded her since she had told Flavia of her plan. She changed position for the umpteenth time. Beyond the curtain, the lupanar was asleep. Albinus and Crispus were on their mattresses in the hallway, the latter snoring and making a sound like a cricket. The girls were silent in their cubicles except for Bakt, the Egyptian girl, who sounded like she was having a nightmare. Flavia had gone home. It was just after sunrise. Pompeii was hardly stirring with only the occasional sound floating in from the street. There were still hours before the lupanar would be open.
Next moment came a loud thumping of a fist on the front door.
‘Open up! Open up!’
It was Antonius’ voice.
Birkita’s heart leapt with terror. She glanced up at the barred window. Crispus was right outside the curtain. There was no escape. In the hallway, Crispus groaned as he began to unbar the door. Birkita heard the hinges squeak as it was opened.
‘Wake them!’ Antonius said. ‘Gather them all together. Now!’
Birkita had rarely heard Antonius speak and when she had, his voice had always been quiet, soft-spoken. Actually, she found he had a very boring voice. She had never heard him like this. As Birkita rose from the bed, she knew that there was only one option left for her. Quietly she lifted the lid of the chest, reached in and found the knife. Holding the handle in the palm of her hand, she laid the blade across her wrist and along her arm. He would not take her alive.
She pushed past the curtain.
Out in the hallway, the other girls were appearing. They were in various states of undress, hair tousled, yawning and wiping sleep from their eyes. Crispus and Albinus stood by the wall, almost at attention. Antonius, flanked by Flavia and another girl that Birkita had never seen before, stood in front of the door which had been closed again. Cassius stood behind the three of them covering the door. The Syrian twins, Claudia, Bakt and Birkita stood close together, as though by doing so it would give them some protection. Antonius’ face, which was normally very pale, was red. He looked at each of the girls in turn. Birkita was unable to hold his gaze. She looked down at her feet.
‘Here in the lupanar,’ Antonius began, ‘do you think I treat you well? Cassius – what do you think?’
‘Very well, master,’ said Cassius.
Birkita glanced up. Cassius was clearly glad to be on Antonius’ side of this exchange. Cassius looked at each of the girls, just as Antonius had done. Antonius continued.
‘You have a place to live, good food, you get to sleep a lot of the day, you have clothes, there is wine. What do you think, Albinus? Are all these things true? ‘
‘They’re true, master,’ said Albinus uncertainly, evidently unsure of where this was leading.
‘But whether you are slaves or freemen, our world is a world where there must be give and take. Nothing is for free. And so in return for a place to live and the food and the sleeping and the clothes and the wine, I ask you to do some things for me. And so,’ said Antonius, smiling very unpleasantly, ‘we have a contract.’
‘I have to say that I think your side of the contract is not all that difficult. I have to find the money to provide all these things for you and in return ... well, some days you have little or nothing to do. You spend a lot of time on your back –’
At this Cassius snorted with laughter. Antonius turned and glared at him.
‘In short, I think it is a fair contract. In fact, if anything, I think I have the harder side of the bargain. What would you say, Flavia? Is it a fair contract?’
‘It’s a fair contract,’ said Flavia dully.
Birkita noticed Flavia for the first time. She looked very pale and clasped her hands together in front of her. And she had a black eye that Birkita only noticed now that Flavia had moved her head.
‘It’s more than fair, master,’ chimed in Cassius, trying to make up for his snort of laughter earlier.
‘More than fair. Do you hear that from one of your own? It’s “more than fair”, he says. Now of course, if somebody were to break that contract, that wouldn’t be good, would it? Would it, Cassius?’
‘No, master.’
‘If I were to stop feeding you or throw you out on the street or take away your fine clothes, I would be breaking the contract. Isn’t that true?’
It’s not clear whether Antonius intends the question to be rhetorical but nobody replies anyway.
‘But you could also break the contract,’ he goes on.
Birkita glanced across at Bakt who was looking intensely bored as though all she wanted to do was to get this over with and go back to bed.
‘How could somebody break the contract, Flavia?’
‘If they tried to leave.’
Flavia said the words so softly that they were hardly audible. Birkita tightened her grip on the dagger. She would plunge it into her heart. She knew there would be terrible pain. But it would be over in a few heartbeats. And then there would be nothing.
‘If they tried to leave,’ Antonius repeated. ‘If they tried to leave.’
He paused as though considering this.
‘But somebody could stay here and still break the contract, couldn’t they?’
The question wasn’t directed at anybody. It was as though he were talking to himself, thinking out loud. The effect was like an actor on a stage. In all the time she had been here, Birkita had never heard him say so much.
‘If somebody didn’t put their back into the work they had to do. If somebody didn’t do an honest day’s work, that would be breaking the contract too. Wouldn’t it, Flavia?’
Birkita sensed a change in direction. Where was this leading? Had Flavia done something?
‘They would,’ said Flavia, becoming more and more mouse-like. Birkita had never seen her like this.
‘Somebody here has broken the contract,’ Antonius announced.
What had Flavia done?
‘Somebody here is not putting their back into the work. And we have tried to fix this problem, haven’t we, Flavia?’
‘We have.’
Flavia’s voice was little more than a croak.
‘But I’m sorry to say it hasn’t worked. So now we have to find new work for that person to do. Let me introduce you to Domitia.’
With a careless wave of his hand, Antonius indicated the new girl. She was tall and very thin. She had large breasts and long red hair that tumbled down to her waist. Her face was plain enough but Birkita could see how men would like the long body, the breasts, the red hair. Domitia stood, hands clasped looking down at the floor.
‘Domitia wants to become part of our contract, don’t you, Domitia?’
Domitia acted as though she hadn’t heard. Birkita realised she couldn’t speak the Roman tongue. Antonius glanced at her, irritated that she hadn’t responded and that it had spoiled a piece of his performance. He continued.
‘But as you know, we only have space for five here and so if Domitia is to come, somebody has to go.’
Suddenly there was an anguished cry. Birkita glanced across at Claudia. Her face, which had been dull and expressionless for as long as Birkita had known her, had suddenly come to life. It showed fear. It was as though she had just woken up or come out of a trance. She looked around like a cornered animal. But Cassius was already moving from his place near the door. Claudia tried to move away from him, to push her way through the other girls, but there was no space in the cramped hallway. Anyway, Cassius moved with surprising speed and had reached her and taken her upper arm in his hand the size of a ham.
‘No,’ Claudia said. ‘No.’
Antonius smiled again, scanning their faces.
‘Yes, I’m afraid Claudia is going to take up a new line of work. Something to which she might be more suited. Something that, whether she likes it or not, she’ll be forced to put her back into.’
‘No! Please, master! No!’
‘Shut up, bitch!’ said Cassius, turning to Claudia and slapping her hard across the face. The blow drew blood from her lip.
‘Next week there will be a Games,’ Antonius went on.
He was like an actor coming to the climax of his performance. ‘My friend Sextus who organises the gladiatorial contests –’
‘No, master – please!’ Claudia interrupted again.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Cassius said, slapping her twice, back and forth. Her nose started to bleed and she began to cry.
‘My friend Sextus has decided it’s time for something new. So he’s putting together a team of women gladiators.’
Claudia’s eyes widened in horror. All the other girls looked appalled.
‘They’re training even as we speak,’ said Antonius. ‘Claudia will be joining them. And Sextus has told me that he’ll be making sure she puts her back into it.’
Antonius made an upward nod of his head and Cassius dragged Claudia towards the door. Her legs seemed to go from under her but it didn’t make much difference to Cassius.
‘Get the door, Crispus,’ he said and then both men, with Claudia between them, disappeared out the door and into the street.
Antonius looked at them each again in turn. Then, without another word, he turned on his heel and went out.
Birkita and the other girls looked at Flavia. Nobody spoke. Birkita fingered the knife, praying that it wouldn’t fall out of her hand. Relief flooded into her like sunlight suddenly appearing from behind a cloud. Whatever else had happened, Flavia hadn’t told on her.
Then Flavia said, ‘Birkita – you take the big room that Claudia used to have. Domitia will take yours.’
She clapped her hands.
‘Come on now. Hurry. I want it all done before we open.’
Flavia took a step or two and Birkita noticed that she seemed to be limping and wincing when she moved.
The new cubicle was slightly bigger than Birkita’s old one. She retrieved the money she had saved from its hiding place and put it in her chest. It would have to do for now until she had time to find or make a more secure place.
Flavia never came near her, instead spending most of the day with Domitia. The day turned out to be one of the busiest they had had and Birkita was exhausted when she finally, painfully was able to fall into bed. She immediately fell into a deep sleep. Some time later she became aware of a hand shaking her by the shoulder. With some difficulty she rose from the depths where she had been sleeping.
‘Shhh,’ a voice said.
Birkita opened her eyes to yellow light.
It was Flavia, with a candle in one hand.
‘Come,’ she whispered. ‘Upstairs.’
Groggily, Birkita pulled herself from the bed and followed Flavia.
She’s moving like an old woman.
In the upstairs room, as Birkita closed the door behind her, Flavia set down the candleholder on the small table beside the bed. Then she turned to face Birkita and shrugged off the loose gown she was wearing. Birkita gasped.
In the soft candlelight, there were red stripes right across Flavia’s breasts and belly and thighs. The weals looked like they had been done with a cane. Slowly she turned around to show the same on her back.
‘Antonius,’ she said, turning back again to look at Birkita.
‘Why ... What happened?’
‘That’s just the way he is. Oh, he’s never been warm or friendly. But he is usually business-like. Sometimes even polite. But then out of nowhere – this.’
She spread her hands wide as if to display her body.
‘Then he is like an animal. And I never know what I have done or not done. And I don’t know from one moment to the next which Antonius I will be having to deal with.’
Flavia was almost in tears.
‘At least this time he gave me a reason. He said he’d started to hear complaints from customers about Claudia and why hadn’t I dealt with them.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘I didn’t get a chance to say anything. He told me to undress and ... I suppose I’m lucky he didn’t have me scourged. That would have been the end of me. And do you know what he did then?’
Birkita shook her head.
‘He gave me some ointment – aloe to put on it. Said he didn’t want any customers seeing me like that.’
‘I’ll put it on for you,’ said Birkita.
‘Birkita,’ said Flavia. ‘I’ve changed my mind. We have to escape. Otherwise we’ll die here.’
She shook her head.
‘Sooner or later. We’ll die.’