The Far Time Incident (24 page)

“We all solve puzzles of one kind or another,” Nate said. He and I were accompanying Xavier back into town, having left the others behind in the Nigidii tomb. Helen was still livid, Abigail was sulking, and Kamal was more than willing to let us do the walking in the midmorning heat while he took snapshots. We had left the donkeys in the shade of the tomb, the chestnut-colored one chewing on thin grass and the spotted one staring at us with sad eyes.

“Puzzles,” the chief went on as we walked through the town gate. “Small ones, large ones. Julia, you solve office and personnel problems on a daily basis. In police work, it can take anywhere from a few months to a year or more. And in scientific research—”

“In science, solving a problem in a single year would be considered extraordinary,” Xavier said. “You might get lucky, of course, but more often than not you have to count in decades, if not lifetimes. Even if a solution strikes suddenly—
Eureka!
, like with Archimedes—it’s preceded by years of study and rumination. Take Fermat’s Last Theorem. In 1637, Pierre de Fermat wrote in the margin of a copy of
Arithmetica
that he had a proof of the theorem but it was too long to fit in the margin. It wasn’t until almost four hundred years later that the
theorem finally found a proof at the hands of mathematician Andrew Wiles of Princeton and Oxford. He was knighted for his accomplishment.”

“How long was it then?” Nate asked as we turned a corner into an alleyway.

“Hmm, Chief Kirkland?”

“Wiles’s proof, would it have fit in the margin?”

“No. It’s over a hundred pages long. There is a sense of unease in Pompeii,” Xavier added as we navigated a segment of the road where a trench had been dug up to fix water pipes probably damaged by the recent earthquakes. “There are repairs going on all over town, practically on every block. The older folks remember the big earthquake of seventeen years ago and the damage it did. They’re worried about another big one, what with all the tremors.” We passed the entryway to an elaborate villa. Unlike some of the others that had the word
HAVE
—“Welcome”—spelled out on the floor mosaic just inside the threshold, this one featured
CAVE CANEM
—“Beware of the dog”—and a mosaic of a chained guard dog with bared teeth. Beyond, I caught a glimpse of a fancy atrium and a colonnaded garden, where the real dog could perhaps be found; what other riches and decorations waited inside were blocked from the view of mere passersby like us. Shops and tiny living quarters faced the street all around the block, serving as a buffer between the villa at its center and the rest of the world. This seemed to be the standard arrangement throughout the town.

We had stopped by a second entrance, which was not at all like the fancy one we’d just passed—a plain wooden gate, it was just wide enough for a cart to fit through. “Wait here. Let’s make you presentable first and then you can meet Secundus.” As Xavier pulled the gate open and walked through it, I caught a glimpse of a small stable and a garden.

“You know what’s really odd?” I said to Nate as we waited for the professor to return.

“Being stuck in the past with no way to get home?”

“That, and not knowing why someone did this to us. We’re back to square one now that we know that Dr. Mooney’s disappearance is unrelated.” Next door was a small shop selling foodstuffs from an open counter. The brightness of the midmorning sun made it difficult to see much deeper into the shop, but I thought I caught a glance of someone sweeping the floor. Directly across the street, a proprietor readied his tavern for the day, and farther down there was a street fountain. Only a thin trickle ran out of the open mouth of a theatrical mask, a tragic one. It was unsettling. I pulled my mind back to what I was saying. “I keep thinking I’m the one who was targeted. Abigail said she feels the same way. Kamal, too. And Helen. But if it
is
me, I don’t know what I might have done. It keeps eating at me, though. I wish I could keep a professional detachment like you do.”

He had been leaning against the wall next to the gate, his bare ankles crossed under the cloak. He straightened up at my words. “No, trust me, Julia, it’s personal,
very
personal. I’m barely—with some effort—managing to keep myself professionally detached. There is a reason why officers aren’t supposed to work on crimes committed against themselves. Just like a lawyer shouldn’t defend himself in court, or a doctor should not try to diagnose—herself,” he added quickly, as if he was worried I would judge him on his choice of pronouns.

“I’m not sure that’s true in every case,” I said, digressing from the subject at hand. “I, for one, do all my own paperwork and taxes. And though I have never seen his house, I’m sure Terry keeps it as immaculate as he makes mine every Tuesday. And my neighbor, Martha, is a retired horticulturalist who does
her own gardening… I wonder why it’s suitable to apply your work skills at home for some professions, but not for others.”

“Speaking of skills, Julia, I’ve been wondering about something.”

“Yes?”

“What about dinners?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“What do you do when you invite someone over for dinner at your house?”

Was this a roundabout way of asking me out on a date? If so, it was a very odd way of doing it. The timing wasn’t so great either. “Uh—I’m still not following,” I said.

“You said you don’t cook. Do you never have people over for a dinner party?”

“Oh, that. I get events like that minicatered.”

“Minicatered?”

“I get delivery from the Panda Palace over on Main or pick up something from Ingrid’s on Lakeshore. And I throw in some wine and ice cream, too,” I said, conscious of sounding a touch defensive. “And I
can
make coffee.” From instant packets, I didn’t add.

“I never picked up any of the languages my grandparents spoke—if I had been more enterprising I could have learned four—but my father’s mother, Mary Kirkland, taught me to cook. If we can get our hands on the right spices, I can make shrimp curry, my favorite dish, for us.”

“Thanks. Uh—it sounds spicy.”

“I’ll make it mild.”

“Are there any basic skills that you lack, Chief Kirkland, or are you good at everything?”

I half expected him to say yes, but he thought for a moment and said, “I’m terrible at gift wrapping. Birthday presents,
Christmas presents, doesn’t matter. Even square ones like jigsaw puzzles come out looking like shapeless blobs.”

“I can teach you. You measure out the paper, fold the edges, tape, then add a ribbon and curl it using a scissor blade—”

“The nearest Hallmark store is two millennia away,” said Xavier, who had returned. He had a lit lamp in one hand, and with the other he was hugging against his chest a wicker basket filled with clothes. He passed the basket to Nate, then motioned for us to follow him. We walked through a one-room stable, and into a small courtyard planted with several fruit trees and a tiny herb garden. To one side, a sunny spot held three jars sunken into the ground, like at the villa on Vesuvius’s slopes, for the fermenting layers of fish, salt, and herbs that Xavier had mentioned. I’d expected there to be a smell, but there wasn’t. A crudely executed painting on one wall—flowers, birds perched on tree, a bubbling fountain—made the garden seem larger than it really was.

“In here.”

It was cooler inside, with the heat of the day kept out by the thick stone walls. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness. Herbs and drying flowers hung from racks. Tables held stoppered jars and earthenware vessels filled with mysterious liquids and pastes. Something simmered in a pot sitting on a tripod brazier, releasing a sharp, acrid smell into the room. To one side, a curtain cordoned off what I guessed was a sleeping area.

“We’re behind the shop. Secundus’s mother concocts ointments and salves in here with herbs from the garden. This way.”

I caught a glimpse of a bald man of medium height sweeping with a twig broom before Xavier led us up a narrow staircase to the upper story of the house. A balcony overhanging the street fronted two doors. Xavier opened the second and motioned us in, closing the door behind us. The sliver of light coming in through the slit that served as a window didn’t do much to illuminate the
dark, dingy space, explaining the need for the lamp in Xavier’s hand. Its small halo of light caught the didgeridoo, propped up in one corner against the wall. (I supposed you had to bring a little bit of home wherever you traveled. I decided to ask Xavier later, at a more private moment, what else he had brought with him. I was sorely missing soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste, not to mention toilet paper.) Xavier set the lamp on a small table, the only piece of furniture in the room other than the bed. The bed was a simple affair, a wooden frame supporting a straw-filled mattress. In one corner were a couple of large, unwieldy sacks—Xavier’s silks and spices. The room, like his office, smelled of a Thanksgiving feast.

I looked over the clothes in the basket we had brought up. Xavier explained, “I purchased a few things from the household downstairs. We can pick up stuff for the others on our way back. That’s Sabina’s mother’s dress,” he said of the somewhat faded, but carefully folded blue linen dress I had pulled out of the basket. Before I could ask who Sabina was, he and Nate left the room so that I could change. I made a little pile of the cloak, my boots, skirt, and blouse, then donned the dress and a pair of sandals I found in the basket. After lacing up the sandals, which fit reasonably well, I tried to figure out what to do with the two cord-like, woven belts that had come with the dress. I tied one around my waist and had just dropped the extra one back into the basket when the door opened and a dark head poked through. “Salve.”

It was the girl I had seen in the villa courtyard, the one with the abacus. I waved her in. She said one more word, “Sabina,” and looked at me expectantly. I assumed that was her name and replied in kind. “Julia.” She closed the door behind her and repeated that, but with a soft
j
:
Yoolia
.

There was a double-sided ivory comb in her hand, and she held it up, then motioned me over to Xavier’s bed. Looking
around, I realized that the room contained neither a mirror nor a chair. I sat down at the foot of the bed. The girl commenced brushing my hair by the flickering of the lamp. A simple ritual, the brushing of hair, one that had remained unchanged through the centuries. The delicate tines of what looked like a family heirloom kept getting caught in my thick strands, but it was still a very touching gesture.

As she moved around me, I noticed an amulet hanging on a thin leather strap around her neck. (I’d been brushing up on my knowledge of deities since we’d arrived—Greek, Roman, Egyptian, they were all over Pompeii in large numbers. Xavier had been very informative. The early Roman spirits of fields, streams, and the home and hearth had merged with the Greek deities from Mount Olympus into one large family, which absorbed new gods and goddesses as state borders grew, explaining why there was a temple of Isis in the middle of the town. To add to the mix, kosher garum was available for purchase and Xavier mentioned that he might have spotted a wall graffito referencing a small, new monotheistic cult, but he wasn’t sure.) The amber crescent moon that hung over Sabina’s wheat-colored dress I recognized as Diana’s—
Dee-ahna
, goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth. The girl’s dress was a simple one, two rectangles sewn together, leaving space for the head and arms, with a belt at the waist. The soft light of the lamp revealed the strong arms underneath. Like her kin downstairs, this was a working-class girl.

After ten minutes or so, Sabina stepped back to take a look at her handiwork. She frowned, as if displeased with something, looked around, and spotted the extra belt where I had dropped it back into the basket. I pointed to the one I had already tied around my waist. She nodded as if to say, “Yes, but that’s not all,” and wrapped the other one just under my bust line.

“Oh,” I said. “Never would have thought to put it there.”

Lastly she loosely draped a thin, rectangular piece of material, like a cross between a scarf and a shawl, over my shoulders.

“Thanks,” I said. I bundled up my twenty-first-century clothing under her curious gaze. She didn’t seem too surprised that a traveler from far Britannia might not know the local customs regarding proper dress, but I suspected that she had to be curious about the strange material of my skirt (rayon), not to mention the plastic shirt buttons and the zipper on my boots.

We stepped back out onto the terrace, my hair looking much better than it had since our arrival. Nate said, “What took you so long?” and went in to change. He emerged a minute later wearing a light-brown tunic, pretty much like a long sleeveless T-shirt with a belt tied around the waist. His strappy leather sandals were a good two sizes too small and his toes stuck out uncomfortably. I repressed the urge to giggle, not at the outfit but at his obvious discomfort at how revealing it was. The tunic reached about midthigh.

“Pants—why don’t they have them?” he mumbled.

“The climate is mild. Pants may be worn in Britannia, where we’re from, but not here.” Xavier went back into the room to stuff our clothing bundles under the bed.

Once that was done, we headed back downstairs. Nate paused at the top of the narrow staircase and said quietly, “I’d like to take a look around the shop, examine the scene of the crime.”

“Yes, I’d like your opinion,” Xavier said, his voice not at all low, from the bottom of the stairs. “By the way, I told Sabina’s father that Julia here—nice Roman name, by the way—that Julia is my niece, and that you’re her husband.”

“What?” Nate and I said simultaneously. Xavier added as we came down the stairs, “I explained that you’re in town from
Britannia with your two young adult children and an older relative. It seemed like the easiest solution. Why, is there a problem?”

I was glad Helen wasn’t there to hear herself described as an “older relative.”

Xavier remembered to add, “I’ve explained that you don’t speak a word of Latin.”