Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [45]
Gradually, after two or three stilted and embarrassing attempts at striking up a conversation, a rapport of sorts had developed. Iola, younger than Vicki by six months, but in reality by about a lifetime, was a shy and introverted girl, who clung to her mother's skirts quite literally. Though one or two of the things that she said made Vicki sense that beneath the opaque exterior was an imaginative and playful soulmate just waiting to burst out.
On the morning of her second day with the Georgiadis family, Vicki began to explore the world of the Greeks into which she had been so unwillingly thrust. Iola offered, in the spirit of their new-found friendship, to take Vicki around the local market streets. Actually, Vicki suspected, her parents had told Iola to do this. Whatever, at least it meant that she would see a little of Iola's world, and that could only be a good thing.
In reality, it wasn't. Within minutes Vicki was bored to tears with a seemingly endless round of 'this is the butcher, and this is the baker'. She nodded and smiled whenever Iola looked in her direction, but she longed for something exciting to happen. Vicki was also introduced to Dorothea and Damian, the immediate neighbours of the family. They were, as with most of the people she met, seemingly good-natured and friendly. Damien, she learned, made pottery whilst his wife was a bookbinder.
They chatted about trivialities for several moments, and both of the neighbours were interested in Vicki telling them about Britannia. So Vicki lied through her teeth, using a mixture of outrageous stories and the few facts that she remembered from her studies about the Romans in Britain or that she had learned from Barbara's frequent verbal essays on the culture that surrounded them.
Poor Barbara.
Vicki kept coming back to that...
The girls left the house of their neighbours just as a rank of Roman soldiers marched by on the other side of the cobbled street. Iola froze, her hand gripping Vicki's arm tightly and making Vicki yell out in surprise and pain. One or two of the soldiers gave the girls an ominous glance, but they were obviously on their way to do something important that would most likely involve arresting or killing someone, so they moved off whilst Vicki and Iola watched them go.
'Whenever you see the Romans coming,' Iola hissed, despite the fact that the men were, by now, well out of earshot, 'get away if you can. Run for all you are worth. There are alleys and passages that can be used. Learn them, well.
If you have no obvious means of escape, then stand still, do not move, never avoid looking directly at them because that will make them suspicious. Above all, act as you would normally.' There was a terror in Iola's voice as she spoke what seemed to be a well-learned litany of rules. What she was telling Vicki wasn't a suggestion or an advisement, it was The Law.
Vicki was nonplussed. She knew that the Roman soldiers were a nasty bunch of black-hearted rapscallions. Quasi-Nazis with a sadistic streak a mile wide (at least according to Ian Chesterton on day one of their stay in Byzantium), they had bullied their way across most of Europe and large chunks of the Middle East. But surely their idea of suspected terrorists and insurgents didn't include a couple of teenage girls? 'Why, what will they do to us?' Vicki asked, expecting anything but the answer that she got.
'If the luck of the Gods is with us, and I mean by that, real luck,' Iola said softly looking at her shoes and visibly shaking at the thought, 'four or five of them will take us into a side-yard and take their pleasure upon us. If we are not so fortunate, they shall probably kill us for mere sport.'
Vicki began to laugh. Then she saw that Iola was completely serious and was appalled. 'They do that?' she almost screamed.
Ì have seen such things happen with my own eyes,' the girl confirmed. `Many, many times. To friends of mine. To Greeks. To Jews. To the Bedouin. Life is cheap in Byzantium. Life is cheap everywhere that the Romans are.'
Vicki didn't know what to say.