Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [162]
“The emperor is the source of all justice,” he said with a laugh, “and you’d better remember it.” But he noticed that when he said this, the girl looked at the ground so that he would not see the disbelief in her eyes.
He found that he enjoyed questioning her more and more – not because he understood the things she told him about her all-powerful God; but because he was fascinated to watch the passion with which she believed them.
That winter however, a new development began at Sarum which occupied all his thoughts for some time and caused him almost to forget the girl again. It was Numex who started it when he shuffled into his presence one day and suggested: “Why don’t we improve the villa at Sarum – make it a proper Roman villa?” And when Porteus began to explain the problems of bringing in specialised workmen, the Celtic craftsman shook his head and said: “But I can do all those things now.”
To his astonishment, Porteus discovered that it was true: the Celt had studied the Roman workmen so carefully that he had, without anyone’s knowledge, already designed a simple hypocaust system for the villa that would work perfectly well, and even a small bathhouse which could be supplied from a water tank fed from a stream on the slope above.
“And we can have a mosaic, with a figure of Neptune, and dolphins,” the little fellow went on excitedly, “just like the one you’re planning at Aquae Sulis. I know how to do that too.”
Porteus laughed, but he gave the idea serious consideration; and when he discussed it with Tosutigus, the chief could not wait to begin.
“At last,” he cried, “we’ll have a Roman villa to rival Cogidubnus’s!”
In fact, Porteus had been thinking along similar lines himself in recent months. There was no shortage of money for such an undertaking: indeed, the estate, together with his new salary was making the family so rich that they could have built a small palace if they chose. Already he had engaged an expensive tutor for his sons; and he had begun negotiations to buy a plot of land within the town of Venta Belgarum so that the family could build a house there and take part in the busy life of the new provincial capital. But more important even than the question of money was something else.
For the visit of Marcus and Lydia had had a profound effect on him and had made him change his attitude to Sarum. Seeing the two Romans had made him realise how far from them he had drifted.
Everything I have is in Sarum now, he had admitted to himself after they had gone. The estate, his wife, who would never live in Rome, his children, his position. His plan to leave this place was only a delusion. And if this was so, he thought, then it was time to improve the place. We may not be Roman, he decided, we may be half-Celtic provincials, but we can be civilised.
Now he threw himself into the new work, adding rooms, expanding the courtyard, planning every detail with Numex as carefully as if it had been the great baths at Aquae Sulis itself. To Maeve’s annoyance, whole floors were ripped up, walls pulled down, and for months the villa became so uninhabitable that she and the children decamped to the old Celtic farmstead. But each time Porteus inspected the work, the round red face of Numex, his thin hair coated with chalk and grime, would emerge from some hole in the ground to announce: “We progress. Just give me time.”
It was during this process of digging that Numex made a discovery. To his surprise, he found that his pick encountered stone under the main room of the house, where he had expected only to find chalk or clay. Again and again as he cut through the soil this happened, until he found