7

Lydia stared at her brother-in-law, in shock. ‘Why have you come?’

He smiled, the shape of his mouth so like his brother’s it caught at her heart. ‘You think I’ve come across the whole world just to find you, Lydia?’

‘Yes, that is what I think!’ She held his gaze, her eyes sparking defiance.

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I am on a mission for the Emperor.’ The smile had quickly settled into a sneer of disdain. ‘Where is Gaius? I seem to have missed him on my way up the river.’

‘He’s not back.’ As soon as she said the words she regretted it. Now he would know she was alone and defenceless. Apart from the children. Romanus was standing behind his uncle, staring at him in awe.

Flavius stepped past her into the house and looked round. The slight flare of his nostrils was enough to make her see it through his eyes. His and Gaius’s parents, her parents, all from well-born senatorial families had had large, rich town houses in Rome with costly mosaic floors and elegantly carved furniture, attended by slaves. They were influential and powerful. When she followed Gaius round from country to country they had almost always had comfortable Roman-built houses, or lived in richly appointed quarters on large vessels as they plied their trade across the Tyrrhenian Sea. When they settled in Damascus, that house had been the grandest of all. They had loved it there, until Flavius had arrived to chase them away again. She followed his gaze around this, their home for the last thirteen years. It was large and well appointed for a round house, but, compared to a villa, it was so very small, built of timber and wattle and cob, thatched with reed. Their living quarters around the walls were curtained off with woollen hangings – ornate and beautifully woven, granted, but hardly substantial walls and now in the daytime drawn back. The central hearth was surrounded with simple stones. Outside in the kitchen hut, their utensils and pans and crockery were of fine workmanship, the imported wine they drank of the best quality, their olive oil and fish sauce for which Gaius had never lost his fondness, stored in elegant amphorae in stands near the cooking table. Their clothes were well made, the table and carved stools sturdy and attractive as were the beautifully woven wicker chairs, but to Flavius it must look as though they lived like peasants. She flushed uncomfortably. ‘We plan to build a villa here one day,’ she said defensively. His answering smile conveyed derision.

He turned and looked at Petra, who was reclining on a couch near the fire, swathed in rugs. ‘And who is this? Surely not the baby you had in Damascus?’

Lydia nodded, biting her lip.

‘And this is your son?’ He looked Romanus up and down again ‘He is much like my brother. Like me, I suppose.’ He grinned at her and turning, pulled up a stool, placing it next to Petra. ‘So, young lady. Why in bed at this hour? Are you not well?’

Petra shook her head. She appeared to have been struck dumb by the arrival of her uncle.

‘Please leave the children alone, Flavius!’ Lydia said sharply. Two dogs who had been lying watchfully by the fire rose to their feet. They slunk towards the doorway.

Flavius glanced at her mockingly. ‘Why, Lydia? That would be rude. Besides, I have gifts for them. My baggage is following. They hadn’t yet unloaded it from the boat when I found to my surprise that I had relatives in the area and decided I must come straight here. It is so strange that the gods should have sent me straight to your door, isn’t it. As I said, I come on the Emperor’s business, but how delightful that I should be able to settle my own at the same time.’ He pointed at another stool and gestured to the boy to bring it and sit next to him. ‘Come, Romanus. We need to get acquainted, young man. I shall make you my especial envoy. A young pair of legs and eagle eyes. You shall be my messenger and for your pains you will have a commission from the Emperor Tiberius himself and be paid.’

‘Romanus!’ Lydia’s voice was sharp. In the shock of seeing Flavius she had completely forgotten the reason for her son’s trip down to the mere. ‘Where is Mora? Did you bring the medicine for your sister?’

Romanus scrambled to his feet. He flushed scarlet. ‘Mama! Mora is away, but Cynan says he will tell her to come the moment she returns. And the medicine is in the dugout. I forgot! I’m sorry.’ He glanced apologetically at his uncle. ‘I will go back and fetch it. I will run all the way.’

‘Do so, please.’ Lydia walked over to Petra and laid her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. ‘It will not be long, sweetheart. Your brother can be there and back before dark.’

‘I doubt that!’ Flavius glanced out of the doorway. ‘It is already growing dull out there. It seemed a very long way to me.’ He shivered. ‘Surely it can wait till morning.’ He looked back at Petra. ‘What is wrong with the girl?’

Petra shifted uncomfortably in her rugs. ‘It can wait, Mama. Don’t make Romanus go out again. There is a little of the mixture left, isn’t there?’

But Romanus was already at the doorway. ‘I’ll go. It doesn’t matter if it gets dark. I can see by the stars.’ Before anyone had time to argue he ducked outside and disappeared. Flavius walked to the door after him and stared out. ‘What strange half light.’

‘It is dusk. The sun goes down slowly in these islands,’ Lydia said at last. ‘It is often so beautiful one can only stand and watch.’ She gave a rueful smile. Behind them a servant was moving round in the shadows lighting the lamps. She was fair-haired and slender, dressed much like Lydia in a woollen gown with leather boots on her feet. She threw more logs on the fire and gently added another rug to Petra’s shoulders. Flavius, after rising to pull the curtain across the doorway and blocking out the windy scene outside with a shudder had turned to watch, a speculative glint in his eye. ‘Is this girl a Briton? With a good wash she could be pretty!’

‘She is a member of our household, Flavius! And our friend,’ Lydia retorted briskly. She spoke to the young woman in an undertone, using her own language and the girl nodded with a glance at Flavius which looked anything but friendly.

Petra giggled. ‘Sorcha will bring her brothers up tomorrow if you are not careful, Mama,’ she said, using the same tongue. She looked insolently at her uncle. ‘Do you want her to send one of them to find Papa?’

Lydia stood for a moment looking down into the fire, torn with indecision. Then she looked up. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Please, Sorcha, will you do that? We need him here.’

Sorcha nodded. Grabbing a cloak from a peg on the wall by the door she threw it round her shoulders and ducked outside.

‘Sent her for reinforcements?’ Flavius sneered.

‘I have sent her to find Gaius,’ Lydia said crisply. ‘Presumably it is your brother you want to see?’

‘I’m in no hurry,’ he said. ‘The years have been kind to you. I admit that girl has young flesh and looks as though she would warm someone’s bed very nicely, but it’s you I have always loved.’

Petra let out a little gasp. Flavius glanced at her. ‘I am sorry, child. But it is best you know. Your mother was mine before ever your father set eyes on her.’

‘That is not true, and you know it.’ Lydia’s eyes were blazing.

‘Did I not befriend you first? Was it not me who brought you home to meet my family?’

‘I seem to remember, Flavius,’ she took, a deep breath, ‘that it was my sister you set your cap at. You were never interested in me until Gaius fell in love with me. You always wanted everything he had. The moment he showed an interest in me you dropped my sister and nothing would please you but that you took me away from him. But it didn’t work, did it! And it has never worked. I love your brother more than life itself and I always will. And I detest you. You know that. We have moved clean across the world to avoid you!’

‘And I have found you at last.’ Flavius sat down on a bench on the far side of the fire pit and stuck his feet out towards the embers. ‘There is only one person standing between us, my darling, remember that.’ He glanced across the fire at Petra who was staring at them open-mouthed. ‘So, you don’t remember the warm balmy nights in Damascus, child, when your mother and I dallied by the fountains while your father was away? Your birth came between us. It was very inconvenient.’

Petra was staring from Flavius to her mother and back. ‘Mama?’

‘Take no notice of him, Petra. It’s what he does best. Making trouble. Stirring up enmity between people. Lying.’ Lydia folded her arms as she stood looking down at him. ‘Perhaps you should leave, Flavius. You are not welcome in this house.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Flavius didn’t bother to look up at her. ‘You have a duty of hospitality to your brother-in-law, Lydia, and I will stay here as long as I need to. I need a drink. Can you stand up and fetch me one, child, or are you a complete cripple?’ His words were deliberately cruel.

Petra flushed scarlet. ‘I -’

‘Sit still, Petra,’ Lydia said sharply. ‘I will pour some wine for us all.’ She walked across to a side table. Taking three goblets from a shelf she poured wine from a jar, mixing into one the last of the medicine from the flask for Petra.

With her own goblet she went to sit down in a wicker chair as far from her brother-in-law as possible.

He drained his goblet at once. She saw him consider holding it out to her for a refill. He thought better of it and stood up himself, going across to the sideboard and picking up the jar. ‘I knew where you all were,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘That was the irony of being sent here. I’ve known for five years that Gaius had settled in the Pretannic Islands. I just could not be bothered to trek across the world to find you. I went to see the seer in Rome on my way back and she confirmed it, looking into her scrying bowl.’ Refilling his goblet for the third time he resumed his seat. ‘I’m still with the elite force of Herod Antipas in Caesarea. One of our jobs is to find people and it would hardly be a good recommendation if I could not find my own brother.’

‘So, if you did not come to find us,’ Lydia said coldly, ‘who did you come to find?’

‘A Jewish troublemaker. Tiberius is very insistent that the eastern Empire is strongly held. Where insurrection is seen to be brewing we clamp down on it hard and fast.’

‘And what is your Jewish troublemaker doing so far away from home?’ Lydia glanced at Petra to make sure she was sipping her wine.

‘Good question!’ Flavius grinned broadly. ‘He is something of a scholar, this young man. And a wanderer. I have followed him all over the place! First to Egypt, where he was too well-guarded to get near him, then he came back to Judea but before I knew it he was off again. This time he followed the silk road east, where I lost him for a couple of years.’ He frowned. ‘Then I heard he was retracing his steps. He took ship in Antioch, heading for Gaul, then I find he has decided to come across to Britannia to study with the druids here.’

‘And you think he has come to Ynys yr Afalon?’

‘I know he has.’

‘And now you have caught up with him, what do you intend to do? Nothing good, I am sure.’

Flavius smiled. ‘The enemies of Rome have to be exterminated, Lydia. For the greater good of all and sometimes in order to keep the peace they have to be exterminated secretly.’

‘So, you are nothing more than a hired killer.’

‘I am a soldier.’ He leaned forward to set his empty goblet on the ground at his feet. ‘But you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about what I intend to do when I find him. If he is innocent, he will be safe. I need to question him, that is all, and to find out what he is doing on these extensive travels of his. If he is as he claims nothing but a scholar I shall leave him to go on his way. All you need to worry about, my dear, is finding me a comfortable bed and a decent meal. I see no signs of either being prepared and I am hungry.’ He paused for several heartbeats, then he smiled at her. ‘It will be good to see you and Gaius again.’

‘Abi? Are you all right?’

Mat’s voice swam up out of the shadows of the round house and a dog’s cold nose touched her hand. Abi stared around her, blinking.

They had gone. Lydia and Flavius and Petra, the smoking fire, the smell of warm wine and herbs. She was in the windy orchard with Mat, his hair wildly blowing round his head, and the two dogs, panting at his heels; all three were looking at her in concern. She shook her head slowly. ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

Mat studied her face for a moment. ‘I saw you from the footpath. It’s just about time for a drink before supper, so I thought I would collect you on my way past. It’s time we initiated you into the local brew. A lethally innocuous-tasting scrumpy!’