6

When it felt like I had walked a hundred kilometres, it started to get dark. I was feeling even more scared than before, when we came to a huge farm. The ogre pushed me through the gates in the direction of a man standing outside a long, low building. The ogre walked towards the man and they talked for a long time. The ogre pointed at me and then pointed back along the road. I guessed he was telling the story of Tilly’s escape and I hoped they wouldn’t consider it worth their while to go looking for her.

After a while, the ogre pushed me towards the building. I saw that the door was held closed by a big plank of wood that slotted into two pieces of metal on either side of the door frame. The ogre raised the plank of wood, opened the door and shoved me inside. Behind me, I could hear the thud of the wooden plank falling into place once more. For the first time, I felt a glimmer of hope. If Tilly was somewhere nearby, maybe she could come and open the door and release me as soon as the two men went away.

I turned to face the room. Many pairs of eyes were staring at me. It was like the first day in a new school – only a million times worse. There were maybe twenty women and girls in the room, ranging from children who looked a lot younger than me, right up to women old enough to be my mother. Some of the younger girls giggled. The ones my age looked bored, and the older women looked at me with some sympathy.

One of the older women came over to me. Her face was thin and wrinkled, but she looked kind. She said something to me in Latin.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t understand.’

She smiled and said something in what sounded like a different language.

I shook my head. ‘Sorry,’ I said again.

She patted my arm and then pointed at herself and said ‘Marca.’

That was clear enough for me. I pointed to myself and said ‘Lauren.’

The woman put her hand over her mouth and laughed.

‘Lau-ren,’ she said.

I nodded and smiled. I really didn’t want to be hanging out here for long, but while I was, I figured it was no harm to have a friend or two.

Marca took my arm. I tried not to wince as she put her hand on the part that was still sore from when the ogre had pulled me through the wood. She led me to a line of low, narrow beds at the back of the room. Most had a few belongings on them, but one was bare except for two small, light blankets. Marca pointed at it. I wondered if I should lie down, then I figured that was a bit stupid as no one else was in bed. So I pulled Tilly’s schoolbag off my shoulders and put it on the bed. That must have been the right thing to do because Marca smiled and led me to the centre of the room. She sat on a bench next to a table and began to talk to the woman next to her.

I sat down and looked around properly. Everyone was dressed much the same, in greyish, knee-length tunics, so I felt a bit stupid in my royal blue school uniform. On their feet, everyone was wearing leather sandals that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the window of our local shoe shop.

It was totally weird. All these women had to be slaves, but they didn’t seem to mind very much. There were no chains, and no one was crying or moaning or trying to escape. Everyone was just getting on with stuff. Some were sewing, some were fixing their hair and some were sitting on the floor playing a game with stones. A group of girls my age were standing in a corner chatting. They could have been hanging out at the end of my road at home – I half expected one of them to pull a phone out from under their tunics and start texting.

Then a door at the back of the room opened and two women came out carrying huge trays of food. I thought there might be a stampede, but everyone very politely and quietly came to sit at the table. The trays were passed round and everyone took some food. Marca turned to me and smiled. She took a piece of bread from the tray and handed it to me.

‘Panis,’ she said.

‘Panis,’ I repeated, and she smiled.

The she reached out and took a boiled egg from the tray.

‘Eggus?’ I said, making everyone at the table laugh.

Marca handed me the egg. ‘Ovo,’ she said.

I repeated the word after her and she smiled again. I like learning new words, but I so didn’t want to be hanging around long enough to actually need them.

I ate the egg and the bread, and drank some sweet juice from a wooden cup.

After the food was cleared away, Marca talked to the other women and I took the opportunity to check out the room properly.

It was long and narrow. Apart from the door I’d come in, there were only two other doors in the whole place. I looked through one and saw a small kitchen area, where some women were rinsing out cups and tidying away the leftover food.

The other door was half open and I peeped through. It was dark, and at first I couldn’t see much. A few women were sitting on a bench that ran round three sides of the wall. They were chatting and laughing. I wondered why they had chosen to hang out in such a smelly room. Then, as my eyes got used to the dark, I realized that the bench had holes cut in it. While I was trying to take this in, two more slaves came in and, taking no notice of me, began to pull up their tunics. One waved at me and pointed at the empty hole next to her. Suddenly I understood. I shook my head and backed away quickly, hoping that Tilly would rescue me before I needed to go to the toilet.

There were a number of openings in the wall of the main room – windows without glass. They were too narrow for me to fit through, but just in case someone extremely skinny showed up, there was also a big metal bar across the centre of each.

Clearly there was only one way out of this room, and it was blocked by the heavy plank of wood.

The situation would have been completely hopeless – if I didn’t have a clever, brave friend on the outside, just waiting for her chance to whisk me away to freedom.