In my panic to get away from the woman I tripped over one of the mud-shoes and it came off. I had to sit and put down the knife so that I could tie it on. My fingers were slippery and clumsy. At last I managed to tie the thong. I rose unsteadily to my feet just as she reached me. We both lunged for the knife, but I got it first and squelched away as fast as I could.
Looking back, I saw her still lying where I had left her. She was shaking her fist at me, but I could tell she was exhausted. I almost felt sorry for her and as soon as I reached relatively dry land, I took off the mud-shoes and held them up to show I was leaving them for her.
I wasn’t leaving her the knife though. That might come in handy.
I shaded my eyes against the last rays of the setting sun. No sign of Dinu.
I feared the worst.
Looking further inland, I saw some low mud-and-thatch huts on my right and some clay beehive-shaped things on my left with smoke coming up from some of them. Beyond them was more smoke, a kind of low-lying smog.
That must be Londinium, or rather Southwark.
That was where the blue-eyed girl had been buried and probably lived too.
That was the way I needed to go. The only problem was that the path to the beehive structures was blocked by two people coming towards me: a little man with a wispy beard and a boy about my size. The boy’s eyes were red and swollen, which made him look a bit like a pig. They both wore loincloths a bit like the Tarzan mop-rag I had on underneath my tunic.
It seemed that decent clothes were hard to come by in Londinium.
As they got closer I could see from their angry expressions that they weren’t coming to help me.
I waved my knife at them and shouted, ‘Desiste!’
They stopped and frowned at each other. Later I realised I’d used the singular imperative as if I only wanted one of them to stop. Maybe they had been confused. Or maybe they were as frightened of me as I was of them. After all, I had a knife and they didn’t. Now barefoot, I ran straight towards them and they jumped aside, staring at me wide-eyed.
I kept going across the scrubby ground towards the beehive buildings, only stopping when I nearly fell into a big round pit filled with water. I saw a wooden ramp going into it and noticed chunks cut out of the grey mud. It was a kind of clay quarry. Maybe they were making pots. Or roof tiles.
The thick mud was drying on my legs and arms; I was starting to feel like the Thing, that Marvel superhero who is made of rock.
The sun had almost set and a quick glance confirmed that nobody was around so I went down the ramp and washed off as much of the mud as I could.
I came out, shivering and dripping. Now I was coated in a thin film of grey but at least I didn’t look like the Thing any more. I peeked around one of the clay beehives to see if Dinu had appeared yet. He was nowhere to be seen.
But the mud woman was.
She had reached dry ground, replaced her mud-shoes and was now talking to the man and the boy and pointing towards my hiding place. They turned to look, but I shrank back out of sight. Next time I looked, all three of them were heading away from me towards the mud-and-thatch huts.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I edged around my beehive to see two skinny men in grubby tunics bending over the base of another big beehive. They were shovelling pieces of wood into a space underneath it. I could see the red glow of coals inside.
It must be a kiln, for baking pots. Thankfully, the men didn’t notice me as I backed away and hid behind one of the other kilns, gratefully soaking up some of its warmth.
Up above, the first star had appeared in a dark blue sky along with a thin sliver of moon.
Leaning against the kiln, damp and barefoot, I prayed that age-old prayer.
Star light, star bright,
First star I see tonight
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have the wish I wish tonight:
May I survive and find the girl
Return back home and get five mil.
The sound of men’s voices made me tense all my muscles, ready to run.
But it was only the kiln-slaves going away, luckily in another direction.
I realised that if anyone saw me wearing nothing but a damp slave’s tunic and with a knife in one hand, they would probably assume I was a crazed runaway. They would attack first and question me later.
I badly needed a belt for my knife, but had no idea where I would find one. Then I remembered my loincloth. I put the knife on the ground, reached up under my tunic, undid the knot and pulled out the rag. Using my knife, which was disturbingly sharp, I cut the rag into three strips. I stretched them out, which was not difficult as the weave was so loose. Next I tied the strips together at one end, used my heel to anchor the knot to the ground and wove the three strips into a plait. I knotted the other end and was relieved to find this braided rag was long enough to go around my waist. Once I had tied it, I realised I could tug up my damp tunic to let a flap hang over the makeshift belt. This raised the hem of the tunic to just below my knees rather than almost to my ankles, making walking much easier. It also made a kind of pouch down the front of my tunic. For a moment I considered dropping the knife down there, but it was not a folding knife, and the razor-sharp blade might cut me.
In the end I stuck the knife between the belt and tunic. Now I felt like a Halloween pirate, but that was better than being a half-naked Tarzan.
Meanwhile, it was getting darker.
I needed somewhere safe and warm to sleep. Probably best to stay where I was. I guessed it was almost mid-summer and that it would be light again in a few hours.
So I found the warmest kiln, the one the slaves had recently stoked, and I lay on my side, curving my damp body slightly so that my thighs, belly, chest and cheek were pressed against the warm clay. The ground beneath me was baked hard as concrete, but at least it was dry. My empty stomach gurgled loudly, but I was too exhausted to take any notice. I fell asleep almost at once.
I dreamed I had gone back in time to Pompeii and was sleeping next to a mini-volcano. Then I dreamed that men were shouting questions at me and kicking me.
The mini-volcano had been in my dream.
The kicks and shouts were real.