The gate was minor, a sally port in the bulwarks whose towers and battlements stood foursquare around Burdigala. Beside his spear, a sentry leaned half asleep against the sun-warmed stones. He was an auxiliary, a German himself. The legions were in Italy or out toward the frontiers, and mere skeletons of what they had once been. Meanwhile barbarians like this wrung leave from the Emperors to settle in Roman lands. In return, they were supposed to obey the laws and furnish troops; but in Lugdunensis, for example, they had revolted.
Lugo passed through, across the open pomoerium, into a street that he recognized as Vindomarian Way. It twisted among buildings whose flat sides crowded out all but a strip of sky, the lumpiness of its cobblestones slickened by stinking offal, an obscure lane quite likely going back to ages .when only the Bituriges squatted here. However, Lugo had m the course of time taken care to learn the entire city, old as well as new quarters.
Not many people jostled him, and they for the most part Shabbily clad. Housewives chattered together while they reamed laundry to the river, pails of water from the nearest aqueduct outlet, baskets of vegetables gotten at a local mar-. A porter came by under a load well-nigh as heavy what was in the donkey cart he met; he and the driver, trying to get past each other. An apprentice fetching Wool for his master had stopped to jape with a girl. Two Countrymen in ancient-style coats and breeches, probably cattle drovers, made remarks so accented and full of Gallic words that Lugo could hardly understand what he overheard. A drunken man—a laborer to judge by his hands, out of work to judge by his condition—lurched along in search of a frolic or a fight; unemployment had become rife as die upheavals of the past decade cowed an already decaying commerce. A meretrix in pathetic, bedraggled finery, seeking customers even this early, brushed against Lugo. Except for laying a hand over the purse at his waist he ignored her. A hunchbacked beggar whined for alms in the name of Christ and then, when likewise ignored, tried Jupiter, Mithras, Isis, the Great Mother, and Celtic Epona; finally he screamed maledictions at Lugo’s back. Shockheaded children in grimy smocks ran their little errands or played their little games. For them he felt a tug of compassion.
His Levantine features marked him out among them all. Burdigala was cosmopolitan; Italy, Greece, Africa, Asia had poured blood into it. Yet most dwellers remained what then- forebears must always have been, strongly built, roundheaded, dark of hair but fair of skin. They spoke Latin with a nasal intonation he had never quite mastered.
A potter’s shop, its front open on the wares and whirr of roe wheel, showed him where he must turn onto broader Teutatis Street—which, lately, the bishop was trying to make its residents call after St. Johannes. It was his quickest route through this maze toward Mother Thornbesom’s Lane, where lived the one he sought. Rufus might not be at home, but was certainly not at work. The shipyard had had no orders for well over a year, and its men were now dependent on the state for their bread; circuses amounted to an occasional bear-baiting or the like. If Rufus was out, Lugo was prepared to stroll around inconspicuously till he came back. Lugo had learned patience.
He had gone a hundred yards farther when the new noise reached him. Others heard it too, halted, stiffened, listened with heads cocked and eyes slitted. The majority began retreating. Shopkeepers and apprentices made ready to close doors and shutters. A few men licked their chops and drifted in the direction of the sound. Turmoil called their kind to itself. The racket loudened, muffled by houses and contorted alleys but unmistakable. Lugo knew it of old, the deep, racking growl, the yelps and hoots. A crowd was hounding somebody.
He realized with a chill who the quarry must be. For a moment he paused. Was it worth the risk? Cordelia, the children, he and his family might have thirty or forty years ahead of them.
Resolution came. He should at least go see whether the situation was hopeless or not. He pulled the hood of his paenula over his head. Sewn to the edge was a veil, which he drew down. He saw reasonably well through the gauze, but it hid his face. Lugo had learned preparedness.