As I stepped out onto the wooden planks of the walkway I asked myself if I really needed shoes.
Then I saw a rusty nail poking up from one of the uneven planks and muttered to myself, ‘Yes, Alex, you need shoes.’
I glanced both ways to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped off the boardwalk and hurried across the gravel road, dancing with every painful step.
Heavy clouds had gathered overhead and it was even darker in the cobbler’s shop than it had been in the first shop. I heard tapping down below, and once my eyes adjusted I saw a man sitting on the floor in cobbler’s pose, hammering a wooden block between his feet. Behind him ran a low counter with pairs of leather shoes laid out on it. Of each pair, one shoe was right side up to show the top and the other upside down to display various patterns of hobnails on the sole.
‘Salve,’ said the cobbler in a nasal tone and I did a double take. He had a leather nose on a strap around his head. I did not want to know what was – or wasn’t – underneath.
‘Salve,’ I replied politely. ‘Cupio haec.’ I want these.
I pointed to a nice pair of sturdy-looking shoes. They were orange leather with matching leather laces. The hobnail pattern on the base formed an arrow. I reached down the front of my tunic and showed him some of the little coins people had tossed at me.
The cobbler laughed as if I had just told a very funny joke. Then he bent over, reached into a basket on the floor and held up a single leather shoelace. I guessed he was saying that was all my coins could buy.
I fished down my tunic again and found three more tiny coins.
He giggled and held up another shoelace.
Wait! Where was that little silver coin? I was pretty sure silver was worth more than copper-alloy.
I sucked in my stomach and pulled the plaited belt away from my waist.
A tiny ping! sounded as the coin struck the brick floor. I bent and managed to nab it before it rolled into the shadows.
I put the coin on the low counter and saw his eyes widen. That meant silver was good. Once again, I pointed at the shoes I wanted.
He lifted his chin for no and pointed to a pair of leather flip-flops.
I also tipped my head back and pointed to a shoe halfway between the flip-flops and the orange shoes. This one was essentially a single piece of leather with a thong that pulled it together over the top of your foot and was then long enough to be tied around your ankles. It had no nails for grip and it would leave part of the top of my foot exposed, but would be better than the flip-flops.
‘Carbatinas cupis?’ said the man, pointing at it. So that type of shoe was called a carbatina.
‘Ita,’ I replied. Yes.
The man looked at my bare feet, then reached behind the counter and pulled out a slightly smaller but similar pair and held them up.
‘Bene,’ I replied. Fine.
The noseless cobbler held up a finger as if to say, ‘One moment.’
He plucked a brush from a hook on the wall, knelt in front of me and started to brush the mud off my bare feet. It tickled and I couldn’t help laughing. The man started laughing too. When my right foot was relatively clean, he put on the shoe and tied it, then looked up at me. I smiled happily and held out my left foot. He brushed it too, and we laughed some more. When he had tied both shoes he stood up and tapped the brush on the door frame to clean it. Then he turned to face me.
‘Tibi placent?’ he said. Do they please you?
I almost nodded, but remembered just in time that a nod could mean no, so I answered in Latin, ‘Yes. They please me.’
The cobbler grinned broadly, revealing no front teeth. Then he held out his hand and said something back to me. I guessed it meant, ‘We have a deal.’
Remembering how to do an authentic Roman handshake, I reached for his forearm. But when my hand went past his he looked confused and took a step back.
I smiled and tried again, reaching for just below his elbow. ‘Quid agis?’ he cried. That I understood: What are you doing?
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. I held out my hand and he shook it in the normal way.
So Hollywood had got it wrong.
And so had Martin.
I turned to exit the shop, then turned back. ‘Can you tell me where I might find a knife-seller named Caecilius?’
‘Caecilius?’ he repeated.
‘Yes, Caecilius.’
He gave this a good few moments of thought, then tipped his head back for no.
‘Bassus ferrarius?’ he suggested. I had no idea what this meant, but I repeated it a few times, thanked him and headed out of the shop in my new shoes.
The carbatinae were better than bare feet, but I could still feel the gravel of the road through the thin layer of leather. I suspected I had paid too much for them.
It had started to rain and people with hoods were putting them up.
By doing my humble namaste hands and asking several passers-by and shopkeepers ‘Bassus ferrarius?’ I gathered that ferrarius meant a blacksmith, and Bassus was the name of one. I finally found him standing on the muddy road outside his shop hammering a piece of red-hot metal. He was a shaggy man in a leather apron, with the worst case of pink-eye I had ever seen.
When he paused in his work I asked him where I could find an ivory-and-iron knife. He shrugged, which I guess meant the same thing then as now. He had never heard of Caecilius either.
So Martin had been wrong about that too. He had given me bad intel.
Really bad.
It was raining harder now and the blacksmith went inside his shop, but I stood where I was, feeling a growing sense of dread.
Martin hadn’t warned me that people’s Latin was almost unintelligible.
He hadn’t told me that the streets were like rivers of mud studded with gravel.
He hadn’t told me that Roman Londoners were riddled with disease.
He had described people wearing togas and driving chariots, but I had not seen one toga or a single chariot.
The information he had given me was wrong too. There was no Caecilius selling bone and iron knives here in Londinium. Or at least not at this time.
Then there was the bogus Roman handshake he had told me about.
The one in all the movies.
And in that moment I realised the truth:
Martin had got all his information from movies.
He hadn’t gone back in time at all.