The Shit Roman Villa
A short story...
The senior archaeologist stood before the trench, flanked by his graduate students. The wind whipping in off the Atlantic was ruffling his sparse, greying hair; he’d no doubt have been chilled to the bone had it not been the height of summer. One day in the not too far distant future, digs such as these would be beyond his ageing bones, and he’d be relegated back to his desk at the university, or worse, to the cottage he shared with his wife.
But right here, right now, this was where he was.
“So we have a mystery,” he told the students. “Or actually two mysteries.”
He let the words hang for a moment.
“We have here the remains of a Roman Villa in Cornwall. Mosaics, underfloor heating, the works.”
“Except the Romans didn’t settle in Cornwall,” said one of his students. Nice girl. Clever. “They had military encampments and mines, but no villas.”
“Which is mystery number one. And then we come to mystery number two. Which is?”
This time his words hung for several seconds before another of the students ventured an answer.
“It’s a bit shit?”
The senior archaeologist chuckled at the description which was, while not the one he would have thought to choose, very much correct and to the point. “Yes. It’s a bit shit. Sloppy, in a way that is utterly unlike the Romans. But implausible in two distinct ways as this villa is, it nonetheless, was here. The question is why?”
“Could it have been built at the tail-end of the Roman occupation?” suggested a third student. “When civilisation was starting to break down and skills might have been in short supply.”
“Yeah, but there’s nothing later we’ve found than the second century AD,” pointed out the girl who’d originally answered him. “Most recent thing we’ve got is a coin marked with Marcus Aurelius. That’s well over two hundred years before the end of the occupation.” She looked straight up at the senior archaeologist. Piercing blue eyes. Earnest. “What do you think? You’ve got a theory, right?”
The senior archaeologist acknowledged her question with a rueful smile. “As a matter of a fact I do.”
“What the fuck’s that?” screamed Bruceti. After thirty years serving the Romans as an auxiliary soldier in the Cohors IV Gallorumin regiment, he’d thought retirement back to his native Dumnonii people would be a breeze, aided as it was by the coin he’d bought back with him.
But reality was failing to live up to expectation.
The builder, Searigis, blinked owlishly. “It’s one of them right angles you told us about. You know, like this.” He bought his hands up before him, placed with roughly a quarter of a turn between him, mimicking the gesture Bruceti had made when trying to teach him the concept of a right angle.
“It’s supposed to be fucking square,” wailed Bruceti, jabbing angrily at the junction of two walls whose meeting was clearly not anything like square.
All he’d wanted was a little villa like the ones he’d seen on his travels. The chance to live like the other half lived, the other half being the Romans of course. Nothing fancy, just a few rooms. A nice mosaic. A hypocaust to keep his feet warm in the winter. A little atrium maybe. But that was before he’d realised there are some things money can’t buy, and a competent British builder was one of them.
Searigis shrugged. “Well it’s square ish. How square does it have to be?”
“Squarer than that!”
“Look, I’ve only ever done round things. You know where you are with round. Strong. Simple. Can’t go wrong.”
Silent settled. Bruceti had faced off against angry Caledonian tribes. Twatted druids in the mountains of northern Cambria. Hell, he’d served on the Germanic frontier and some of the bar fights there had been legendary. But through all of that, he’d never come closer to tears than now. Seargis, by contrast, seemed content to an extent that made Bruceti want to punch him. But he couldn’t. In the name of the gods, Jupiter, Minerva, and Brighid, why had he paid him so much upfront?
“We could tear it down and start again,” suggested Seargis, lazy, uncaring indolence in every syllable. “But that’d cost you, and who’s to say we’d do it any better. I’m thinking we should just carry on, yeah?”
Bruceti gave him a nod. He was too upset to speak.
Seargis slapped him on the back. “It’ll be fine.” The builder paused, eyes flicking from side to side as he went though some kind of mental checklist. “Oh, you said you wanted a mosaic floor in the main room?”
Faint hope flickered in Bruceti’s heart. “You’ve found someone who does mosaics?”
“No. But I’ve got a mate who does tattoos and he’s up for having a go!”
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