The villagers’ own attitude toward mixed bathing was a surprise to Perennius. They had obviously expected all five of their guests to share the big tub simultaneously. Christ cultists had something of a reputation for strait-laced behavior. There were scores of variant cults, however – the priest’s mention of the two Ophitics living in the valley was an example. Certainly there was nothing about the villagers’ demeanor to suggest that they thought of common bathing as anything more than an exercise in cleanliness. Prurience required a level of sophistication which seemed blissfully lacking in the valley.
“Here, sir,” said one of the women who was guiding them. Father Ramphion was busy elsewhere, it seemed. The woman opened the door of a dwelling. She stepped aside quickly so that Perennius would not brush her as he
entered. The shutters were thrown back from the unglazed window. The front room’s southern exposure lighted it brightly. The room was not clean, exactly – nothing with a dirt floor and a thatched roof could ever be clean in an absolute sense – but it had been swept out only minutes before. A haze of dust motes clung to the air, and a heavy-set woman with a straw broom stood panting outside the door. This was obviously an occupied dwelling whose owners had been whisked away with all their personalty to make room for the strangers.
Perennius ducked as he stepped inside. In general, the roof was high enough for him – it would not be for Calvus – but the thatching sloped down from the back where it joined the hillside.
“Beds will be brought shortly, sirs,” a villager said through the open window. Its sill and the door jamb showed that the walls were of stones a foot thick. They had been squared ably with a pick or adze but without any attempt at polishing. The craftsmanship impressed the agent even before he stepped into the room adjoining to the rear and realized that it had been entirely carven into the rock of the hill.
“Look at this,” Perennius murmured to Calvus as the tall woman moved to his side. The agent ran his palm down a wall that was plumb enough to suit a temple architect. Its surface showed that it had been hacked from living rock with a pick. The incredible labor involved had not caused the job to be skimped, either. The ceiling of the back room was high enough that Calvus could stand upright.
The room was somewhat less dark than the agent would have guessed. Some light entered from the front room. There was no door separating the two rooms, only an open archway cut in the wall. Besides that, there was a slanting flue cut in the ceiling to exit from the hillside at some point above the thatching of the front extension. The flue was narrow, but it let in enough light to see by, even this late in the evening. The back room had been cleaned with the same thoroughness as the front. Its walls were colored the soft, indelible black of soot from the hearth sunk in the middle of the floor. Not only would the
inner room be warmer in the winter, the arrangement avoided the dangers implicit when thatched roofs covered open fires as they did in most rural areas.
“You may leave your burdens here,” one of the villagers called from outside. “They will be safe.” After a moment, she added, “They would be safe anywhere in the valley.”
Perennius had insisted on carrying a pack as heavy as any of the others did – any of them besides Calvus. The suggestion made him feel suddenly as if the straps were trying to ram him into the soil like hammer blows on a tent peg. The process of shrugging off his load was more painful than the carrying of it had been. He had been suppressing the latter pain over many harsh miles of goat track.
“Do you ever feel like settling down yourself,” he asked the bald woman in Latin. “Just saying the hell with it, I’ve done all the job one man can do, the rest can try fighting it for a while?”