The Far Time Incident (29 page)

“Why only that part of Pompeii?” I asked.

“It hasn’t been excavated yet. In 2011, I mean. I theorized that I’d have more freedom of movement than in areas that had already been thoroughly explored and documented.”

“Makes sense,” said Kamal, who was sitting cross-legged on the professor’s bed.

“Xavier, you’ve been contaminating a future archeological site for six months,” Helen said, aghast.

“My presence has left only traces. I’m living as a local, doing what they do. I’m a single bee in a beehive, a worker ant in an anthill. The didgeridoo is the only nonessential item I brought along, and I chose it because it’s wooden and therefore will not survive the eruption. I’ve played it a few times for Secundus and Sabina, by the way. Other than the didgeridoo, everything I brought with me is made from perishable or time-accurate materials…except for—well never mind that.”

“Except for what?” Helen wanted to know.

“I said never mind.”

“Xavier, you’re not keeping anything from us, are you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe you could play the didgeridoo for us one evening, Professor, before we leave,” Abigail suggested in a clear effort to diffuse the tension. The instrument stood propped up against one wall.

If we didn’t manage to connect with Dr. May in Rome, the professor would have time to play it for us on many an evening, I thought but did not say.

“You said you had a tough time getting this stuff past Oscar—how did you do it?” I asked as we carried the woolen
sacks and the silks down to the ground floor, leaving a trail of peppercorns on the steps.

“You wouldn’t believe what you can hide in a down jacket, Julia.”

The tavern across the street from Secundus’s shop was bustling with locals who were out for dinner, a dice game, a celebration, their faces illuminated by table lamps. Shouting a bit to be heard above the din and cacophony of voices, Xavier explained to us that except for the owners of luxury villas, Pompeians lived in small apartments with no kitchens, like his own rental quarters, and ate out—in taverns, snack stands, marketplaces. It was in the villas of the wealthy, like Nigidius and Scaurus, that slaves prepared food in small kitchens and served it in elaborate dining spaces with couches instead of chairs. It all sounded very—Roman.

“Is there pork in this?” Kamal asked of the stew the tavern proprietor had doled out for us. At the table behind us, four locals, fisherman perhaps, played some sort of gambling game, one of them rubbing a phallus-shaped good-luck charm that hung around his neck before each throw of the dice. To my admittedly untrained ears, it sounded like they were speaking something other than Latin, and Helen hissed, “Oscan,” under her breath and looked like she would have given an arm and a leg for an audio recorder.

“It’s goat. I can’t complain about the local cuisine,” said Xavier, then proceeded to do so. “It’s just that I’ve been missing some foods.” He ticked off items on the fingers of one hand. “Coffee. Potatoes. Tomatoes. Pumpkin pie. Chocolate. I ate as many pumpkin pies and chocolate bars as I could before I left.”

“No tomatoes? But we’re in Italy,” I protested.

“Tomatoes are a sixteenth-century import to Europe from North America,” Helen explained. “Same with chocolate.”

“Interesting,” I said, marveling at History’s quirks. I dipped some bread in the stew, then had to drop it in. “Ow.”

“What is it, Julia? Stew too hot?” Xavier asked.

I shook my head, staring at my right hand.

“My finger hurts where I cut it on my glasses when we arrived on Vesuvius.”

“Let me see,” Helen said. “Looks a bit red. It might not have been a good idea to go to the public baths with an open cut. Why don’t you pour some wine on it as an antiseptic?”

“Rinse it in saltwater tomorrow morning before we leave,” Abigail suggested. “In the sea.”

Kamal looked away. “Ugh, let’s not talk about this at the dinner table.”

I took Helen’s suggestion and poured a tiny bit of wine on my hand, earning a puzzled look from one of the game players at the next table. Kamal’s squeamishness aside, since we were already talking about a medical issue, I took the opportunity to say to Xavier, “You don’t seem ill. Except for being a bit thinner.”

“It’s all the walking I’ve been doing. And the change in diet. I have to say, I think something in the food itself—perhaps the lack of sugar—is helping to control my symptoms. All those pumpkin pies and chocolate bars I ate before I left probably didn’t do my body any favors.”

“
Ad multos annos!
” came the cheerful call from a nearby table. A quartet of locals raised their cups in celebration. “It’s someone’s birthday,” Helen explained.

“I’d like to try garum,” Nate said out of nowhere.

“It’s flavoring the olives, I believe,” Xavier said, nodding toward the side dish. “But if you want the undiluted thing—”

“I expect it’s similar to Thai fish sauce, which I’ve cooked with, but I’d like to be sure. It might have motivated Scaurus’s act of intimidation and I always like to experience everything related to a possible crime. It’s why I wanted to come on a STEWie run when I thought we were investigating your murder, Dr. Mooney.”

“Even if we figure out who did the damage to Secundus’s shop, we might not be able to tell him,” I pointed out.

“Maybe we have more leeway because the whole damn place is going to go up in flames anyway, in October or November.”

Xavier got up, went to the counter, and came back with a small dish filled with a reddish-brown liquid. The chief took a whiff, then downed a good bit of it, all without a change of expression.

The rest of us stared at him.

A sweaty redness broke out where his brow met his hairline and spread to his nose and cheeks and down to his square jaw. He coughed violently and grabbed his cup and downed the wine. “More,” he croaked.

Xavier hurried to pour more wine for him.

After the red tinge in Nate’s cheeks had subsided, I asked, “Well?”

“Piquant. And salty. Very salty.”

Merriment and melody emanated from the neighborhood bars and taverns in the warm Pompeii evening as shopkeepers closed up for the night. Secundus’s shop had been shuttered, but the side gate had been left unlocked for us. “I obtained a second room for the night from Secundus in exchange for some of my wares,” Xavier explained, sounding pleased with himself. “Ah, there’s the man himself.”

Secundus had been attending to something on the upper floor. The clay lamp in his hand illuminated his way down the steps, his sandals tap-tapping on the wood. On his heels was Celer, moving his squat body down in a sort of swinging motion. The scruffy brown dog’s name, pronounced with a hard
k
, translated to “Speedy” in what was clearly meant to be a joke. The bags under Secundus’s eyes seemed deep in the flickering lamplight, but he greeted us warmly. The shop had been mostly set to rights, except for the stains on the floor and the walls. Celer gave us a lazy look, then toddled off into the darkness of the garden. Under the pear tree was where, after further discussion, we had decided to bury the message for Dr. May at the next opportune moment.

As Xavier and Secundus chitchatted, I found myself unable to meet the garum maker’s eyes. Guilt on my part. How had Xavier managed to spend six months here knowing what he knew?

“Tell him I’d like to examine the side gate more closely in the morning,” Nate said. “After our visit to Scaurus—and Nigidius, too. Why not.”

I threw a glance in the direction of our two grad students. “Wait, I thought we’re leaving in the morning? I’d like to help him out, too, but we have a responsibility to the students. We don’t know how long it will take us to reach Rome. We’ll undoubtedly keep getting time-stuck, like in the pomegranate orchard.”

Kamal looked like he was about to say something, but Abigail beat him to it.

“We’re not kids, Julia,” she said angrily. “We can be told—things—even if they are bad, right?” She was pointedly not looking at Xavier Mooney. “And we can certainly decide for ourselves if we’re willing to stay a day or two longer to help Sabina and her father. We have plenty of time to get to Rome and meet up with Dr. May.”

I was reminded once again that Abigail had no family other than the large scholarly one she was part of at St. Sunniva, where she had found a place after leaving her foster family at age seventeen. It wasn’t that there was anything
wrong
with them, she had once told me. They were nice and all, but she had felt like a visitor the whole time she lived there. Sometimes those things worked out well, and sometimes they didn’t. That was true of any social contract, I remembered thinking at the time.

Abigail was still eying me defiantly.

“Does everyone feel this way?” I asked the group. My hand had started to throb, I noticed. Hopefully the wine had helped disinfect the cut.

It was unanimously agreed that we would stay as long as it took to figure out who had ordered the sacking of Secundus’s shop—Scaurus, the town’s top garum maker, or Nigidius, the landlord.

During our conversation, Secundus had been standing by silently. I imagined that for him it was like watching a soap opera in another language, with the characters arguing over intangible things. He nodded as Helen explained our decision and said something back, a cascade of swift sounds rolling off his tongue. I wondered if that was how we sounded to him. With a small bow, he went into the shop. We heard the sound of the jars being rearranged on a shelf. At least something had survived the intruder’s wrath.

“What did he say?” I asked Helen.

“He would like to know who did it, if only to spit at the man’s feet—or, better yet, to have a curse tablet made.”

“Wow, how does that work?” I asked.

Xavier replied before Helen could. “You write down the name of the person you want to curse, the details of whatever nasty thing you’d like to have happen to them, and what you
promise to your god of choice or underworld spirit in exchange. Then you drive a nail into the tablet, right into the name of the person you’ve cursed, and take it to a tomb or temple.”

“Yikes,” I said.

“And if your wish comes true, you bring your offering as promised. It’s all very quid pro quo. Oh, here’s Faustilla. I’ve asked her if she has a poultice or salve that might help your hand, Julia.”

Faustilla tut-tutted over the swelling index finger of my right hand. She pulled me into the back room and sat me down on a stool, Helen trailing along to translate and Abigail to hold the lamp. As Faustilla rummaged among the small jars and vessels, finally choosing one that held a pea soup yellow powder, Sabina came in from the curtained area to see what the commotion was about. Under her grandmother’s supervision, she was given the task of sprinkling water into the powder to moisten it.

When the mixture had turned into a goopy yellow paste that met with Faustilla’s approval, the old woman sloshed some vinegar on my hand, then dabbed on a liberal amount of the mixture. That being done, she turned and gave Abigail a frank stare. After a moment she asked Helen a question.

Abigail’s mouth popped open. Helen’s eyes crinkled a bit, but she translated for me. “Faustilla wants to know if Abigail’s recently been sick and if that’s why her hair is so short.”

“You better explain we’re leaving for Rome soon,” I said, forestalling Abigail’s answer.

“Roma,” said the old woman, recognizing the word, and then began a long monologue.

Helen translated while Faustilla continued to work on my hand. “She’d like to see Rome one day. Her son—her firstborn, her pride and joy—went there to seek his fortune and a wife… She’s not sure exactly what he’s doing, but no doubt something
important. He is busy and does not have much time to arrange for a letter to be written and sent to his mother. She is blessed that the gods gave her a younger son to take care of her.”

It struck me that Faustilla didn’t exactly treat her younger son like she appreciated him.

As Celer waddled in from the garden and made himself comfortable by my feet, Faustilla added something, her voice rising and falling. Abigail’s cheeks were getting pinker by the minute.

“She is lamenting the fact that Secundus doesn’t have a son of his own. She has been urging him to take a new wife, but he won’t listen. Your daughter—she means Abigail—she wants to know if she’s unattached. If so, she and her son might make a good match.”