Marfisa and Rolandus travelled for several days in a northerly direction, passing Ravenna, Patavium and Aquileia, until they crossed the Alps. From there they turned south-east and, taken the ferry on the river Savus, they surpassed the towns of Siscia, Sirmium and finally Viminiacum. 

It was a peaceful, if thought-provoking, journey. Whenever Marfisa thought she was alone, she took out of her bag the golden apple that Madalgarius had given her. She looked at it and regarded it but found no rest. He was inside her thoughts, and she could think of nothing else. 
Different thoughts were running through Rolandus' mind. Horses were unreliable on top and dangerous underneath; and as much as nothing had ever happened as long as he rode on Marfisa's lap, he did not trust Rolandus at all to approach Phazanius. 

Could he caress it? Maybe not. Not least because it would barely reach his belly. Maybe he could have befriended it with food, because the little catizus was really afraid to be around such a creature. He did not like the way he was pawing here and there. He always seemed on the verge of meditating something. Never trust a horse. Nobody trusts a horse. 

In reality there was nothing wrong with Phazanius. He was a very quiet horse. He had probably been emotionally neglected now that Marfisa had another male in her thoughts, but he was certainly well kept and polite. 

However, sharing something with him nicely and feeding him was always a good idea, but Rolandus had nothing around that he could... with which he could feed him. He tried to look. He tried to search, but there was nothing but jars containing oil or wine to be sold in who knows what port, and tightly sealed. And no matter how much he rummaged through his rucksack, he had nothing that would fit.  

Should I go and look on the deck of the ship, if there is something the horse can eat? Or first of all, should I ask the sailors if they have anything for the horse to eat? Thought Rolandus. 

That they had anything for him seemed unlikely. He had seen no fodder anywhere in the ship and the only food he had was the little grass on the side. Normal grass cut from who knows what meadow, but that was no good for a horse. He needed real fodder: rye, barley and spelt, mixed with broad beans and vetch, or similar substitutes, so as to have a healthier diet. It was no surprise that Marfisa made a fuss about getting on that ship. Rather, she would have made the overland journey to think of Phazanius' health. 

Rolandus had had to beg her to take the ferry: it was faster, there was fodder to be found once docked and above all it would allow Rolandus to stay off the saddle. 

He started rummaging in Marfisa's rucksack where he managed to put together two apples and a pear. Once he handed them to the horse, he bit them without even smelling them: first the pear, then the two apples. He was visibly very happy. It was not surprising because he was really very hungry. Not that he lacked food or Marfisa had made him lack it, but you should have seen him when Marfisa had first seen him. 

It seemed like he hadn't been fed well in who knows how long. There had been food in the barn where they had found him, but not unlike that ferryman had not bothered to feed him in a healthy way. He was not well, and it could not be ruled out that he had digestive problems.  He had had back problems, possibly due to overexertion. His hooves, on the other hand, were in very poor condition and seemed to have not received treatment for quite some time. Now that he had Marfisa as his owner, however, he had become a sturdy and much healthier horse. 

"Easy, easy!" said Rolandus, seeing Phazanius eating rapidly. "If you eat like this, people will think you are Medulfa's horse instead of Marfisa," but Phazanius ate the pear and the two apples without any restraint and was now calmer. 

He let himself be approached. Rolandus wanted to check him more carefully. You know... make sure of the usual things you check with horses. What he saw Marfisa always do with her horse. He checked the teeth: they were in excellent condition. Everything looked fine.  

He took his dagger and set to work, removing the dirt and pebbles that were left in the hoof and cutting out the growths. 

"There, there, take it easy! For I have seen Marfisa do it many times. See, I'm a good boy so... don't eat me or whatever you horses do to us catizi." 

Phazanius looked at him sideways with a certain diffidence and not an ounce of snootiness. He made a puff and seemed to say: "Who do you think you are? Marfisa? Have you ever used a dagger? Ever touched a hoof?" But in the end, he let him clean all four of his hooves, then with his muzzle he patted him on the shoulder in thanks. 

Having finished befriending the most dangerous member of the trio, Rolandus returned to Marfisa. She was still intent on observing the golden apple, whose reddish-blonde glow lit up her face and seemed to be isolated from everything around her. 

Rolandus remained looking at Marfisa until she turned in his direction. It was at that point that he said to her: "It is getting dark. I asked the captain what he does during the night. Whether he stops or continues on to Halmyris. The river is placid, the wind is good, and he likes the lamps." 

"Is this a riddle?" said Marfisa. 

"No, he simply likes to navigate by orienting himself through the stars. I think he originally sailed on the sea. However, I'd like to inform you that we'll be arriving soon anyway and that.... Halmyris and Peuce do not have a good reputation. I say this in case you ever want to go home to Rome, instead of chasing Madalgarius." 

"I don't think I'll be going home anytime soon..." said Marfisa, "...but thanks for the concern. Besides, I'm not sure I'm the one afraid of Peuce." 

"What? I'm not the only one who's heard strange rumours on that island," said Rolandus. 

"Yes, but quite a few catizi live on that island. You of all people should feel safe," said Marfisa. 

"Yes, but I am from Thule... or rather, my father is from Thule. I am indeed from Rome," said Rolandus. 

"Don't be a child, I'm sure nothing will happen to us on that island..." said Marfisa, "...or at least I think so." 

"...!" 

Marfisa laughed, then said, "Don't worry. We only need information about Madalgarius from the catizi of Peuce. The city of Halmyris should be enough for us. Besides, my brother’s wife lives here, and I don't recall anyone ever getting the evil eye from her." 

Rolandus sat down next to Marfisa on the opposite side of the horse. 

"May I ask what you are thinking about?" said Marfisa, placing herself a little closer to the catizus. 

"It is so strange to see you in love with a man. You are a woman... vivacious, to use polite terms. So it makes me strange to see you attach so much importance to a man you barely know, considering how many others you used to invite to your home." 

"That's not true. I have never thrown you out of the house after one night... unlike the others," Marfisa replied, almost indisposed at that statement. 

"Marfisa!" said Rolandus like an older brother scolding his little sister. "We know very well that what you feel for Madalgarius, goes far beyond what you felt for me." 

Marfisa did not answer immediately and remained silent for a moment, then said: "I don't know. Is this feeling in my chest normal? I don't see him beside me, and that makes me sick. So many others I can have, but none besides him I want to be with me. Is what I feel normal?"  

"Surely it's not normal to leave everything for a person you barely know, but after all you've never been attracted to normal things."  

Rolandus gently took the golden apple from Marfisa's hand and looked at it, then said: "where this comes from there are incredible wonders and unspeakable horrors. I do not know where it originated, but you and I know that you were destined one day to explore the Hercynia forest and investigate its arcane mysteries. We are only substituting a forest close to us for something more distant... and potentially dangerous, much more dangerous." 

Marfisa laughed and felt more relieved. 

"You are indeed a friend," said Marfisa wiping away a tear. 

Marfisa stood in thoughtful silence for a moment, then straddled Rolandus. She stood for a moment looking into his deep blue eyes, then removed her robe and revealed her prosperous breasts.   

"Are you sure you want to do this?" said Rolandus.   

"I am sure we will be able to be quiet," replied Marfisa. 

"If you feel like it, I have no problem, but I wasn't referring to that." 

"Madalgarius is not yet my fiancé." 

Rolandus said no more: he reached out his small hands and touched her soft, wide breasts. Marfisa clutched at him, but immediately noticed that Rolandus was not reacting. 

"...?" 

"..." 

"...?" 

Rolandus gave a puff, then said, "Marfisa... I'm perfectly capable of understanding when you don't feel like it." 

Marfisa lowered her gaze and immediately became more unsure.

"You know. Until a few days ago, I would have worried about not having certain cravings, but now..." Marfisa clutched her arm, trying to calm her mood, "...apparently love is changing me and I'm not sure I want to change, said Marfisa confused and worried." 

Rolandus got up and gave her a small kiss on her cheek, then said: "It just means that you have found someone who is very important to you, and I am very happy for that." 

Rolandus took Marfisa's shirt and helped her dress. 

"A friend to the end," said Marfisa. 

"What can I say? I like to be close to those who have been close to me," replied Rolandus. 

***  

It was almost midnight. Arriving at the next corner of the river, one could see Halmyris and the river port where the ferry would stop to deliver its cargo. Marfisa was resting, crouching in a corner and using her backpack as a pillow. 

Rolandus on the other hand had stayed awake. He strolled back and forth on the deck of the ship, occasionally looking up to gaze at the stars. They were beautiful, although he was unable to name them or use them for orientation.  

Moving back and forth, he noticed the boat slowing down: over and over again he turned his back to the horizon, only to notice how objects in the vicinity no longer disappeared as quickly as before. 

Someone in the distance could be seen waving a lamp at the end of a dock along with two other people. Was this to indicate that they should stop there? That's what it looked like, but the people on the dock and the ship's captain just talked. 

I didn't think it should take that long, Rolandus thought, it shouldn't take that long. Anyway, I'd better start waking up Marfisa. 

The catizus went below deck and with gentle jolts freed Marfisa from the arms of Sleep. 

"How many hours have passed? I was dreaming," said Marfisa rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. "I must have fallen asleep." 

"It must have been a very nice dream. I mean, you were sleeping really placidly." 

It was the early hours of the morning, but it was still dark, and the boat was not yet docked. 

"I wonder what's taking them so long?" said Rolandus. 

"There were apple orchards near the river. I wonder if it's possible to buy some apples?" said Marfisa yawning. 

"Yes, also because the ones you had ended up in Phazanius’ stomach," said Rolandus. 

Finally, a rope was cast, and the ferry docked. There was movement and men began to unload crates and jars. 

Marfisa put the reins on Phazanius and they stepped onto the dock. 

Marfisa stopped one of the unloaders and asked if he knew where he could find stables in town for his horse, while Rolandus poked around. 

It was while snooping that he noticed another ship docked at a nearby dock whose last crates were being loaded and, coincidentally, contained apples. 

He approached with caution. When one had his size, it was always best not to assume that someone had seen him. But the people there were used to catizi and one of them, leaning over the crate, bent down to listen to him. 

"Do you know if it is possible to buy apples?" asked Rolandus. 

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to ask Mrs. Livia," said the man, pointing to a catiza with brown eyes and blond hair pulled back into two pigtails. 

She wore a black shirt under a brown jacket, both made of a durable but poor fabric. She could have been mistaken for a poor commoner, but the dress was finely decorated with white embroidery and pieces of leather. 

Rolandus had never seen such a combination. He could not tell whether this Livia was a vagabond who had found a well-paying job and decided to decorate her own clothes, or whether she was a wealthy person who wanted to show off her status but knew she could not wear clothes vulnerable to dirt and wear in that place. Either way, she seemed to be the one giving the orders. 

Rolandus looked at the apples: they piled them up, crushed them, and then accumulated the apple juice in a kind of cider fermentation plant with everything that goes on in this kind of plant.  

There was a small alembic on a table, and there beside it they already had a lot of barrels full of cider already processed and others waiting to be processed. 

There was a series of numbers on the side of those barrels, perhaps the warehouse where they were to be stored. On the table, on the other hand, there was a kind of shipping document indicating the customers to be supplied, the quantities and delivery dates.   

As much as his presence went unnoticed, it could not be ignored for long, especially since in Halmyris hardly anyone would mistake him for an overly curious child or son of a local worker. 

"May I help you?" asked Livia with slightly provincial Latin, but all in all good. 

Rolandus was synthetic and Livia went to the back of the workshop where there were a couple of wooden cisterns and from a table near it she took two small kegs. They were a kind of wooden tumbler the size of a pint with a wooden handle and sealed on both sides by a white ceramic stopper. Two pints of freshly made cider in two elegant watertight containers. They were blue and along with them he also had two apples. Rolandus extended a couple of coins.  

In the meantime, Marfisa was talking to a stable hand and checking that the stables had real forecourt and the spaces had been properly built. 

"When Madalgarius marries her, she will end up eating and living extremely healthily," said Rolandus, staying away. 

He watched her swing left and right as if she were still on the boat, until she had finished talking to the stable boy, then he approached her. 

"Lucky horse yours!" said Rolandus. 

"Come now, Phazanius is a good horse. He deserves to be treated well," said Marfisa. 

"Those rather? What are they?" 

"These are a gift for us," said Rolandus, handing one of the two mugs. 

Marfisa opened the keg puzzled. She looked inside: she could see the moonlight reflecting on the liquid. It was not full, only three quarters of a moon, but it reflected beautifully and invitingly. 

Marfisa sniffed its content. It smelled of apple, but it was a drink she could not identify. 

"Never tried cider, have you? Try it, try it. You won't get drunk. I promise," said Rolandus. 

"And so it was that Marfisa drank, waking up in an unknown place and without a purse," said jokingly Marfisa, before taking a deep sip. 

"I also went to get a couple of apples, in case Phazanius has, I could check if he wants more apples or anything," said Rolandus. 

The horse's ears perk up. His eyes widened and he stretched his head towards Rolandus enough to startle him. 

"Did you by any chance taught him the word apple?" said Rolandus, hiding behind Marfisa who replied: "taught? He knows a lot of words... when it suits him." 

Phazanius continued to stretch his neck, and Rolandus handed him one of his apples as one would do in front of a dangerous criminal armed with a dagger. 

He handed him an apple, Phazanius sniffed it and then took it gently between his teeth. 

"Good boy, good boy. Crunch that one and not my hand. Be a good horse," said the catizus.  

Marfisa took a sip of apple cider. It was very strong for a not very alcoholic drink, but it was still less than any wine Marfisa had ever drunk. 

"Well, we'd better start walking. The road at night is not the best place to get tipsy," said Marfisa. 

"I agree! Only... do you know where to go to find a hotel?" 

"I was thinking of asking my half-nephew, who is supposed to live near the harbour, but given the hour I don't know how appropriate that is" said Marfisa. 

"Half-nephew?" said Rolandus. 

"He is the son of one of my half-brothers. The ones my mother had before she married my father. So I guess Fossegrimus is my half-nephew..." said Marfisa, "...in any case, I didn't have time to write him a letter, so I don't know how happy he will be to receive us. Otherwise, we can wait for the sun to rise before presenting ourselves to him, and then ask him where his mother lives. She should be happy to accommodate us." 

"At worst we can sleep in a hotel" said Rolandus. 

Rolandus lifted his gaze. Halmyris stood on a hilltop, stretching not too far from the gulf to which it gave its name. There one could see its basilica in the distance: a symbol of Roman civilisation. 

Beneath the shadow of misty Halmyris, however, loomed its maritime quarter, where the old military barracks and harbour stood. 

It was a wide network of straight and fast streets. Blocks of houses looked in all directions and stood neatly in well-constructed islands, as one would expect from an urban civilisation. There was not a trace left of the old wood and mud houses, nor was there any house left that did not now have glass windows. 

Halmyris lay just south of Danube and north of the Gulf of Halmyris. It had been an important commercial hub and supply centre for the army. North of the river, on the other hand, lay the island Peuce, as large as the island of Rhodes and covered with a thick mane of pine trees, which seemed untouched by human hand, although Marfisa and Rolandus knew it was inhabited.   

They waited at the harbour, drinking their cider and gazing at the mysterious island of Peuce or the stars, until the candles of the streetlamps went out and the moonlight made way for that of dawn. 

Despite the picturesque appearance of the harbour, Marfisa became impatient to knock on her nephew's door. The seafaring district was... not exactly worthy of a Roman citizen. 

Despite its history, Halmyris had suffered greatly from an earthquake and its harbour had silted up, remaining unusable long enough to doom the city, and the condition of the houses was a tangible sign of that. 

Marfisa would not have been surprised if there were more empty houses than people, nor did it seem that (apart from the cider factory) there was any business that was not related to fishing or fish farming, judging by the smell of fishing that permeated the streets. 

When they crossed the road along the river, they could see that many roofs had completely collapsed. There were also some large square villas with sloping roofs that no longer existed. Most of them were well away from the water and one or two appeared to be in a moderately healthy condition. Sticking their necks out inland, they saw that some of the roads were rough and grassy, except for the one leading from the harbour to Halmyris. 

The deterioration was worse near the riverfront, although in the middle of it they could make out the white tower of a fairly well-preserved brick structure that once housed a water clock that no longer worked. The harbour, long since clogged with sand and now only functioning for a few docks, was enclosed by an ancient stone breakwater on which the tiny figures of a few seated fishermen could be seen. If that was the condition of the small river port, Marfisa and Rolandus dared not imagine what the seaport on the other side of Halmyris was like. 

They advanced quickly until they came to a house inside the sixth alley along the river. That is, if house was the right term for it. With an old, pitched roof and the upper floor visibly sticking out, it looked more like an abandoned ruin. 

"Are you sure your half-nephew lives here?" said Rolandus. 

"I don't... more than before," replied Marfisa. 

"How rich is your family, you said?" said Rolandus. 

"Look he doesn't live here. He just said he wanted a place to be alone with his girlfriend, without his parents," said Marfisa. 

"Yes, but maybe he could have been a little less cheap," said Rolandus, nervously taking a few steps into the alley. 

It was a rather unusual scene. Not so much the alley itself, but that a relative of Marfisa's lived there. The house in question seemed the darkest and most abandoned. Little light shone through the narrow gap above their heads and the further they walked from the main street, the more they seemed to enter an underwater world, whose little light made way for strange blue and greenish colours. 

When she knocked on the door, Marfisa was almost nervous. A sort of trembling had taken possession of her: as if all the rumours about Peuce's catizi were about to materialise in front of that door. The one who opened the door for them, however, was not Marfisa's nephew, but a creature that will cause them no few mysteries.