By now I grasped that she had supposed we had at last reached some kind of understanding. She had offered me a truce, which I in my stupidity could not even recognize, let alone accept. She was as generous as I was crass. I would have liked a chance to tell her I was sorry. She would not, or could not, give me the chance.

The time came when to wait there any longer would subject her to scandal. She had hired me to protect her from that. The only thing I could do for her was to walk away.

XXXVII

In the morning I dressed, packed, then banged her ladyship’s door as I went by. She did not appear until I was sitting on the step outside the mansio buffing my boots with goose-grease. She stood slightly behind me. I strapped on my boots slowly to avoid looking up. I had never been so embarrassed in my life.

Helena Justina stated crisply, “We shall both be happier if we end our contract now.”

“Lady, I’ll finish what I began.”

“I won’t pay you,” she said.

“Consider your contract ended!” said I.

I would not allow myself to abandon her. I seized her luggage whether she liked it or not and strode ahead. A sailor handed her quite decently onto the boat; no one bothered about me. She marched off and stood in the prow by herself. I lounged on deck with my feet on her baggage.

She was seasick. I was not. I walked up to her.

“Can I help?”

“Go away.”

I went away. That seemed to help.

All the way from Gaul to Italy those were the only words we said. At Ostia, in the morning crush, she stood next to me while we waited to disembark. Neither of us spoke. I let her be buffeted once or twice by other passengers, then I moved her in front of me and took the buffeting myself. She stared straight ahead. So did I.

I walked down the gangway first and commandeered a chair; she brushed past and climbed in by herself. I flung my baggage on the opposite seat, then travelled in a separate chair with hers.

We were entering Rome in the late afternoon. Spring now, and traffic increasing on the roads. We stopped for a hold-up at the Ostia Gate, so I paid a boy to run ahead and warn her family she was on her way. I walked forward, craning at the hold-up that was jamming the Gate. Helena Justina put her head out of the window of her chair as I went by. I stopped.

I went on looking up the road. After a moment she asked quietly, “Can you see what it is?”