‘Plague?’ I cried, my voice louder than intended. ‘Like a contagious plague?’
People around me shrank back and Lollia hissed, ‘Shhh!’ She and Plecta both made the sign against evil by poking their right thumb between the first two fingers of their right fist. ‘Of course the plague was contagious,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t you have plagues where you come from?’ Her breath in my ear made me shiver.
‘No,’ I murmured. ‘What happened?’
‘It was horrible. People had blood coming from their noses and ears and even their eyes.’
I stared at her in shock. She must have taken my shock for interest because she told me more.
‘The sick people were so thirsty that they could never drink enough.’ Her voice was still low. ‘It was as if all the water in the world could not satisfy them. The wells and fountains were full of dead bodies. Then there were pits full of corpses. The priests sprinkled white powder on them and burned them.’
‘It sounds like the zombie apocalypse,’ I muttered to myself in English. But of course the word apocalypse is Greek, and she looked up sharply.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was like the apocalypse. First my mother died, then my two sisters. Then grandparents, uncles, aunts. It seemed like the end of the world. But somehow my father and I survived.’
We had reached the amphitheatre and were in a queue of people shuffling towards the entrance.
‘How?’ I said. ‘How did you survive and not the others?’
‘My lucky knife,’ she said. ‘Pater gave it to me for my ninth birthday, three days before the plague struck. I didn’t realise until later. Now I will never take it off.’
‘Why did you come to Londinium?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s as far as we could get from Lepcis Magna, where all those terrible things happened.’
‘Was the voyage hard?’ I asked.
‘You must know the answer,’ she said. ‘But yes. It was cold and wet. Even the ship was crying.’
‘The ship cried?’
‘Yes. She was always groaning and squeaking. We had to sleep in a shack called a cabin, like a wooden hut on deck.’
‘Tell him about the sea-monster,’ said Plecta.
Lollia said, ‘Once we saw a sea-monster. The sailors called it Leviathan.’
‘Were you with them?’ I asked Plecta. ‘I thought everybody in Lepcis Magna died.’
Lollia put her arm around Plecta. ‘We stopped at many ports along the way, and Pater bought Plecta at the slave market of Massilia. I had come down with a fever and he wanted a girl or woman to nurse me.’
‘How long were you on the ship?’ I asked.
‘Almost three months.’
I couldn’t imagine that. I think the longest journey I have ever taken is ten hours.
‘Look, mistress!’ cried Plecta. ‘We are here!’
Sure enough we were going through an arch into Londinium’s fine stone amphitheatre.
I was about to see real Roman gladiator games.