The Far Time Incident Read online

  And what had pushed one of the four people on our list of suspects—Gabriel Rojas, Erika Baumgartner, Steven Little, Jacob Jacobson—to the point where they felt that the only way out was to send us on a one-way trip?

  19

  Feeling refreshed, if not completely clean, we headed back into the changing room wrapped in the towels. The baths were getting busier now and, among the dozen or so bathers and bath attendants, I saw a couple of familiar faces. Faustilla had just walked in, Sabina trailing behind her. The girl gave us an inviting smile—“Yoolia! Helena! Avi-gail!” Grandmother and girl, sweaty and dusty from putting the shop to rights, claimed an empty niche in the wall. As they took off their sandals, I noticed that Faustilla’s heels were cracked, her toenails stained and misshapen. It wasn’t only from old age. Sabina’s were like that as well.

  As if sensing my gaze on her, Faustilla turned to look at us. Her glance rested lightly on me, then Helen—disinterestedly, for we were, after all, foreigners and not very rich ones at that—then finally on Abigail. Her eyes lingered on Abigail, who was lacing a sandal, for a long moment, a calculating look on the old woman’s face.

  With a shrug I bent down to lace up my own sandals. I was in danger of becoming something of a people watcher myself. First I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Secundus’s proud face, and now I was having trouble ignoring Faustilla. “I get the feeling Faustilla doesn’t like us very much,” I commented, straightening back up.

  Abigail was studying the intricate designs on the vaulted ceiling. “Sabina is nice, though, isn’t she?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Helen replied. “We know very little about the complexities and nuances of Pompeii society. After years of being at somebody’s beck and call, Faustilla is now a freedwoman—can you imagine what that must be like? It’s customary for slaves to tack on the praenomen and nomen of their former master to their own name after being freed. This family didn’t.”

  I probably wouldn’t have, either, I thought.

  “I just wish she were a little nicer to Sabina,” said Abigail.

  “I’m sure she has the girl’s best interests at heart. Practical skills, like Faustilla’s herb growing and ointment making, are essential if the girl is to marry and find a place in society. We can’t impose our twenty-first-century sensibilities on them without any regard for this time and place and their station in life.”

  At Helen’s words, I resolved to be more understanding of Faustilla. As we headed out, I saw her dip one corner of the sleeve of her dress into the cold basin to scrub a stain off. Though it didn’t seem any less hygienic than rinsing soiled body parts, the deed struck me as particularly off-putting.

  The men were waiting for us on the busy street outside the baths, looking impatient. They’d all had a shave, Xavier’s missing beard leaving a pale pink crescent on the bottom half of his face. “Lunch next,” he said.

  “What are these meatbally things?” Kamal asked, eying one of them. The leather satchel by his side hid some of our twenty-first-century indispensables, namely pencils and paper and Abigail’s Polaroid camera with its last pack of film. We were in the tavern across the street from Secundus’s shop. The chief had asked to go there, saying he wanted to familiarize himself with the neighborhood.

  “It’s a fish-and-egg mixture,” Xavier said of the meatballs.

  “Ugh, fish,” Abigail said.

  Kamal tried one. “They aren’t bad.” There was also salad, bread, seasoned olives, dried figs, and cheese that looked very much like ricotta. The proprietor had followed us over to our table. He tipped a rooster-shaped flask to pour grape juice into bronze cups for us. He seemed to know Xavier very well and gave the professor a hearty pat on the back as he left to attend to other patrons, leaving the flask on the table.

  “By the way, Julia, what happened to your glasses?” Xavier asked and downed much of the juice in one long sip.

  “They were fake,” Abigail answered for me.

  A motley collection of locals had given us the usual people-watching stare as we made our way to the last empty table, with Abigail garnering most of the attention due to her short blonde hair and her youth. I picked up one of the bronze cups—had it been more elaborately designed, I would have called it a goblet—and took a sip as conversation resumed at the other tables. It wasn’t grape juice. Wine, watered down and lukewarm. I took a second sip. It was refreshing in its own way. “I wore them to project an aura of efficiency and competence,” I explained to Xavier about the glasses.

  “She thinks she’s baby faced,” Nate said.

  Before Xavier could say anything, Helen pitched in, “I know what you mean, Julia. When I first started out as a graduate student, I only wore pants, never skirts. I still got treated differently.”

  “Never by me, Helen,” Xavier said, popping an olive into his mouth.

  “No, never by you, Xavier.” They were the first kind words I’d heard them say to each other since we’d arrived.

  “And I wore ties to impress you, remember that?” Xavier said, then ruined the whole thing by adding, “I was quite foolish at that age.”

  Helen’s facial expression didn’t change, though I thought I saw a muscle above her right eye give a slight twitch.

  Kamal lifted up his cup and sniffed the reddish liquid inside. “Is this wine?”

  “I figure it’s safer to drink than plain water,” Xavier said.

  “I think I’ll get something else. Uh—Professor, can I have a denarius or two…?”

  “The denarius is a silver coin. You don’t need that much.” Xavier put his cup down and opened the coin purse hanging on his belt. “Here, have an as.”

  The as was a copper coin a bit larger than a quarter.

  Kamal got to his feet, said, “Abigail, come and translate,” and they wove their way around tables to the front of the shop, leaving Xavier to explain, “I have to confess I brought I few coins with me. I didn’t want to arrive with completely empty pockets. I obtained authentic coins from, shall we say, rather unsavory sources—don’t lecture me about the antiquities black market, Helen, this was a special case. Anyway, I noticed that one of the coins I brought was minted in September of this year. I meant to hold off on using it until then, but accidentally paid with it for a snack at a gladiator match.”

  Helen clicked her tongue in disapproval.

  “How were the women’s baths, Julia?” Xavier asked with the clear intention of changing the subject.

  “Social,” I said. “We ran into Sabina and her grandmother. Faustilla doesn’t seem to like us very much—except maybe for Abigail.”

  Xavier chuckled. “She might be thinking that Abigail would make a good second wife for Secundus.”

  I almost choked on a fish ball. “What? But he’s a good twenty years older than she is.”

  “More like ten or fifteen, Julia,” said Nate. “Besides, what do you care? Don’t forget that you’re married to me and therefore off limits to Secundus.”

  “Very funny,” I said. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “If it makes you feel better, Faustilla’s never liked me either,” Xavier said. “Secundus lets me borrow the cart to peddle my wares around town when he’s not using it to pick up fish or deliver garum jars—you’ve seen them, the thin, long-necked ones. Faustilla thinks it’s unnecessary wear and tear on the cart and the donkeys. Abigail would fulfill one of her goals for her son, a second marriage. Her other goal is to convince him to move to Rome, where Primus, her firstborn, lives. She’s been arguing that the sacking of the shop is a sign, like the increasing earthquakes, that it’s time to leave.”

  “I don’t know about the first part, but she’s right about the second,” Helen said. “Secundus would be wise to listen to his mother in this instance.”

  “Everyone would be wise to listen to their mothers,” said Kamal, who was back with Abigail and a different drink, something thick and sweet smelling. I hoped Abigail hadn’t heard the bit about being good marriage material.
“Mine told me to go into medicine, not grad school to study physics. She thought time travel would lead to trouble—and here we are, stuck in the past.”

  “Then there’s the matter of Sabina,” Xavier went on as Abigail and Kamal sat back down. “Faustilla thinks I’m encouraging the girl to behave outside her station in life because I’ve bought her an abacus and a couple of reading scrolls. Which is nonsense. Behavior outside her station in life must already be part of Sabina’s temperament, or History wouldn’t have allowed me to give her the scrolls and the abacus in the first place, not that I can offer that explanation, of course. Secundus approves. Sabina learned how to read and write from the children of the household they served. A waste of time in Faustilla’s opinion. Sabina is of marriageable age. She should be learning useful skills.”

  Abigail snorted at this.

  I decided not to ask what useful skills were. Sewing and such, no doubt. Probably cooking, too. I scratched the spot on my finger where I had cut it on the cat-eye glasses yesterday. It had started to itch.

  “Well, now that we’re clean and fed,” said Nate, who had downed the food and wine with impressive speed, “and have discussed all the reasons Faustilla doesn’t like us, we need to get on with the business of finding a suitable place to bury our cheese-and-cracker-package note.”

  “Cheese-and-cracker-package note? What is this?” Xavier asked.

  Nate explained.

  “Contamination of an archeological site, Helen?” Xavier asked in a clear attempt to needle her.

  Nate hurriedly answered before Helen could say anything. “We need to get the message to someone at St. Sunniva—someone who can be trusted—so that they’ll know what happened to us.”

  “I have the utmost confidence in Rojas,” Xavier said. “Address the note to him.”

  Nate shook his head. “I’d like to hide it where archaeologists can find it and forward it to the police or St. Sunniva campus security. You can help us there, Professor, with your knowledge of the town,” he added.

  We left the tavern somewhat tipsy (except for Xavier, who had acquired a tolerance for the wine, and Kamal, who hadn’t drunk anything alcoholic), and headed in the direction of the Forum to seek a good hiding place for the message.

  “Okay, that’s kind of odd,” Abigail said, stopping almost at once. She signaled across the street with a nod of her head.

  “Is that one of those, what are they called, Porta Potties? The Roman version?” Kamal asked.

  Across the street, a man stood with his back to us, relieving himself into a large vat sitting on the sidewalk. None of the locals paid him the least bit of attention. A moist stench emanated from the neighboring workshop, spreading across the street.

  “It’s a fullery,” Xavier explained. “A laundry and cloth-dyeing workshop. The urine is used for washing clothes. Passersby contribute it and the urine is thrown in a tub with some other stuff, then slaves work the clothes with their bare feet, like grapes at a winery.” I caught sight of a large tub inside where three slaves were doing exactly what Xavier had described. He added, “Secundus’s old master ran a fullery in Nola, and Secundus and his extended family worked in it, including Sabina from a young age. There was a matter of a debt that had gone unpaid by Secundus’s late father. They were technically indentured servants, not slaves, but practically speaking there’s little difference. When the master died, his will released the family from the debt, and Secundus returned to his father’s trade, garum making. He likes to say that, in comparison with the fullery, he doesn’t mind the smell of fish or garum one bit.”

  “We better move along, we’re starting to attract attention,” Helen said, looking like she was itching to pull her notebook out of the leather satchel slung across Kamal’s shoulder and take copious notes and sketches of the fullery. Her long hair had dried tangled below her shoulders, her face was sunburned, and her arm was probably still sore from yesterday’s fall, but Helen Presnik didn’t seem to mind any of it.

  “Abigail, do you have the camera?” she asked as we left the fullery behind us.

  “It’s in Kamal’s bag. I almost left it back at the tomb, thinking it might get wet in the baths.”

  “I took good care of it.” Kamal tapped the leather satchel. “Stuffed it under my clothes in the changing room. We figured no one could steal the bag with its modern contents anyway.”

  “—but that wasn’t the real reason,” Abigail went on. “I’m feeling weird about it, right? Usually I have no problem snapping pics or shooting footage of locals, even though I know they’re long since dead. It’s bothering me this time, I can’t explain why. It’s almost like we’re intruding.”

  “It’s certainly been bothering me,” I said, thinking of those deep eyes of Secundus’s.

  “I know why,” Helen said. “It’s because the people we usually see or meet on our time travels may have years yet to live—ten, twenty, thirty. Aside from famous historical figures, we have no idea what their fates will entail. Here—it’s like there’s a sword waiting to fall.”

  The description was apt. A sword waiting to fall and nothing we could do about it. The moving finger writes.

  “I’m hoping Sabina and her family will leave town at the first rumble from Vesuvius,” Abigail said optimistically.

  “There’s a chance that Secundus might have to leave sooner than that. Primus has been by again asking about the rent,” Xavier said.

  “Primus?” Nate asked.

  “Not the brother in Rome. The slave of one Gnaeus Alleius Nigidius Maius.” Xavier threw out the long name with the ease of one who’s had months of practice.

  My ears perked up as I parsed the long name. “Nigidius? Is he related to our tomb family?”

  “I believe the Nigidii are his birth family, yes. But that tomb isn’t of interest to him anymore. He was adopted by the powerful Alleii family, which must have been in need of a male heir, and now he prefers to go by Alleius Maius. He’s a local bigwig, a politician—the kind that puts on gladiatorial games. He owns rental property around town. I’ve seen him in the neighborhood—a portly fellow of about my age. Since Secundus was late with his rent, Alleius Maius sent his slave Primus by—”

  “Wait. Can we call him Nigidius even though he wouldn’t like it? I’m having trouble keeping track of all the names,” I said.

  “Nigidius, then. An Oscan name, by the way, one which predates the Roman takeover of the town a century and a half ago.” Xavier went on, “If he forces Secundus to vacate the property, Secundus will have no choice but to sell off his wares and make his way to Rome to join his older brother.”

  “That would certainly make Faustilla happy. Why don’t we invite them to come with us?” I suggested as we let a cart pass and then crossed the street via the stepping-stones.

  Helen shook her head. “We shouldn’t try to meddle.”

  “Shouldn’t we at least attempt to save them? Even if—no, especially if they aren’t destined to survive?”

  “Destined is the wrong word,” said Xavier, sounding a touch fed up with my perseverance.

  “To change their fate, then.”

  “Fate isn’t the right word either.” This from Helen.

  “Fine, what is the right word?”

  “Their future, the world’s past,” Helen said.

  “It’s all twisted together, isn’t it?” Kamal said as we passed under a wide arch and into the Forum. “Like some temporal Möbius strip. From our twenty-first-century perspective all of this already happened a long time ago, that man who was using the urine vat, that group of children playing by the temple, that woman hurrying somewhere.” He pointed. “History, as chiseled into stone and in the documented record that society keeps. And yet we’re here watching it happen. I told my parents I couldn’t study medicine because I don’t like the sight of blood—who does, really?—but my mother, like I said, was sure time travel would be worse. Disturbing, confusing, strange.”

  “Yeah,” said Abigail.

  Th
e hot afternoon stretched on, made somewhat bearable by an offshore breeze; the six of us were temporarily time-stuck at one end of the Forum, near the stately marble temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the triad at the top of the god food chain. Xavier had been playing the part of tour guide, pointing out the Basilica, or town hall, and a temple that housed bronze statues of the twins Apollo and Diana; to the other side was a large marketplace and a long hall built by Eumachia, town priestess. All around us were brightly painted equestrian statues, toga-clad citizens, beggars crouched in dark corners, children playing hide-and-seek, and shoppers haggling with merchants who were hawking shoes, cloth, jewelry, gladiator figurines, and, most disconcertingly, in one large area, slaves.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Julia, and there’s nothing we can do about the slaves for sale or trade here,” Xavier informed me, forestalling the comment I was about to make. Helen was taking the opportunity to grab a quick sketch of the gabled roof and garland-decorated columns of the temple of Jupiter. “This area will be damaged by the Allied bombing of 1943,” she explained. “We can include the sketch with the note. Abigail, see if you can get a photo.”

  “I know that there’s nothing to be done,” I said to Xavier. “I was merely going to lament about it.” What I really wanted to do was to holler at the top of my lungs, “Can’t you see what’s coming? Flee, all of you, now, before it’s too late. Heed the signs of the earthquakes, of the failing fountains, go. There is still time.” Not only had there been another small earthquake, but something was making its way into the water pipes, lowering the pressure to a trickle in many neighborhoods. The well-off woman with the multiple chins had told Helen about it at the baths. It was another sign. The clock hands were moving closer to midnight. A bull sacrifice had been made as an attempt to regain the good will of the gods, the woman had said.

  I commented on the futility of this.

  Xavier shrugged. “All the blood sacrifices of animals, the ritual reciting of prayers, the vows and offerings at the temples… They’ve worked so far, haven’t they? Rome is great.”