he pushed himself up. ‘Shit!’ he shouted. ‘Even with my eyes shut, I can’t keep it up.’ He kicked the woman sharply in the side. ‘Get up, you filthy slag. The rest of you, get dressed.’
His legs were pale and hairy. He buckled his belt, looking at his men. ‘No silver, gold, lads? Nothing?’
‘Nothing, boss,’ Scarface said. ‘We looked in all the usual places. But hang on.’
The pain was so unexpected, so sudden and so intense I can recall it now and wince. Scarface wrenched the silver earring from my left ear, the earring I’d been given when–– That does not matter now. But my left ear lacks its lobe.
I felt the sting, the blood trickling down my neck. Scarface held up the earring. ‘At least there’s this!’ he chortled.
‘Keep that bauble if you like,’ Tertio said. ‘Let’s get out of this dump. It stinks.’
And they were gone as suddenly as they had come.
I was working in the fields this morning, clearing irrigation channels. Macro, my bailiff, many years ago gave up trying to stop me working with the men. He knows by my dress what I intend, and simply accepts it. Yesterday it was my patched brown woollen tunic, my old straw hat and boots. That meant work, manual work.
First we had to mend the water wheel. I loved wading out to it in the middle of the dam, cool water in the softness of the morning when the larks and finches sing.
The water wheel was my idea. We use it to move water uphill to a feeder tank. From there, the water has enough head to flow right through the fields – if the channels are clear. Before we built the wheel, the lower fields were dry and yielded much less.
But it is, I accept, a fiddly thing, constantly going wrong. This time, it had slewed on its axle, so its buckets were picking up hardly any water. I unhitched the mule that turned the wheel and gave its bridle to Macro.
‘We need to grease it more often, Macro, at least once a week. Have you enough tallow?’
‘Yes, Scipio.’
‘Well, give me some.’ Holding a jug of tallow I waded to the wheel. ‘The wedges have split,’ I shouted to Macro. ‘They got too dry. Bring me some more, will you?’
‘How many?’
‘Four should do – oh, and a mallet, please.’
I fixed the wheel, and waded back as the dragonflies darted on the water. I stood on the bank, watching the wheel turn and the drops of water dance. I thought of my trial, of the judgment. When will it come? Dragonflies, I thought, will dance. Water will be wet, regardless.
For days afterwards, Secunium was silent. I saw people when I went to the well, the latrines, but no one spoke. I worked, hoeing and irrigating beans. There is a peace that comes from the life of the body, not the mind. When a man can think no more and feel no more, all he can do is be silent, and let his well of life refill.
As it must be all over the world, the life of peasants is governed by the rhythm of the earth. Awake at first light, eat, work, eat, sleep a little during the hottest hours, work, eat, sleep when the sun goes – where does it go? – down.
I had never lived like this before. I have not since. I felt the sun beat on my back as the hawks wheeled overhead and the flies buzzed round my bloody ear.
I worked alone. Even Sosius kept to his hut; until I saw him walking towards me in the field on the fourth day, or was it the fifth?
I stopped, put down my hoe, looked up and wiped the sweat from my forehead. Sosius came nearer, stooped, I saw, his step not neat but shambling. I have seen men walk like that when drunk. As he came closer, I saw his shirt was torn across the chest. It and his face were covered in soot. I did not understand.
‘Come with me, Teacher’ was all he said, in a weak and faltering voice.
‘But what––’
‘Just come.’
I followed him back across the field where the soil I had just watered was beginning to steam in the strengthening sun. Back on to the path that wandered through the acacia bushes, the brambles and the thorns and opened out back at the well. From there we walked in silence up the street that was Secunium, shabby, dirty, poor. From such as these, I thought again, Rome’s greatness comes. She is the sum of many parts, lives lost, hearts broken, pains borne.
There were, I saw, no fires burning. Even the dogs were still. Sosius passed his hut, then went on past mine up to the end of the village where the abandoned huts were, roofless and forlorn.
He stopped outside one of them. He didn’t look at me, just said, ‘In there, Teacher, in there.’
I went in. Sulcipia’s body was still swinging, very slightly, on the rope across the beam from which she had hanged herself. Her head lolled forward, her limbs were slack. She seemed a puppet, or a doll.
I have seen many, many dead. None has moved me like Sulcipia, whom I hardly knew. Aristotle says of Oedipus that his tragedy is so powerful because first you fear for Oedipus, and then you fear for yourself. This old woman, who had nothing, had, it seemed, her pride. To any passing soldier, pedlar, merchant, Sulcipia’s would seem a life not worth living. But she had her heart, I thought. Simple, no doubt, ignorant, uncomplicated, but still hers, still free somewhere beyond the drudgery of her days. Those men who came had broken it. Since it was all she had, that she could not bear.
She was a small woman. Her belly swung almost level with my shoulders. I took the knife from my belt. I put my left arm round her thighs and, reaching up, I cut her down.
I blinked as I came from the darkness of the hut to the blinding light, dead Sulcipia in my arms. Sosius was standing where I had left him. He still did not look up.
‘Will you …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Will you bury her for me?’
‘Of course, but …’
‘We cannot bury a’ – he could not manage the word ‘suicide’ – ‘those who have taken their own life.’
‘I understand.’
Sosius looked up. ‘Now I am truly alone.’ He was crying, I saw, silently. ‘It was the shame, the shame. She could not bear the shame.’ He turned, and walked away.
I was the rest of the day burying her. I chose a place high above Secunium, a shelf on the hillside. The ground was hard and stony, yet I had to dig deep to keep her from the dogs.
As I dug, I thought what I might do to mark her passing, what I might want for mine. When I stood up to rest my aching back, I saw the vultures, already wheeling high overhead. How do they do it? I wondered. Does death
