35. Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

L aura

I’m yanked from a deep sleep by Varro’s excited shout. “Laura! Wake up! Look what I found!”

Groggily, I sit up in my sleeping bag, rubbing my eyes. “Let me guess… the keys to a yacht that’ll take us home?”

Varro’s grinning like a kid on Christmas morning, holding up several tins of anchovies. “Even better! We can make garum!”

I blink, trying to process this information. “Garum?” I’ve studied ancient Rome for over a decade. I know two things about the fermented fish sauce: the Romans put it on everything—kind of like ketchup—and it reeks.

“Garum makes everything taste better!” He’s practically bouncing with excitement. “I found an old pottery container outside. It’s perfect for fermentation.”

As Varro explains the garum-making process, I struggle to match his enthusiasm. We’ve been in the cottage for weeks now and it wasn’t an accident those anchovies took him a while to find. Just the picture on the tin makes me want to hurl. I hid the containers in the bottom of the food bin for a reason .

He chops the anchovies and mixes them with salt in a large bowl, his hands working with practiced ease.

“The salt draws out the liquid from the fish,” he explains. “Maybe in the spring we’ll find some wild herbs and can add them to the mixture for flavor. Origanum , anetum , maybe some faeniculi if we can find it.”

Oregano, dill, and fennel? What are the odds? I watch, fascinated despite myself, as he transfers the mixture to the old pottery container we painstakingly cleaned. “And then what?”

“Now, we wait.” Varro’s eyes are gleaming. “For months, the mixture will ferment in the sun. The fish breaks down, creating a delicious liquid.”

I wrinkle my nose at the thought. “Months? Varro, you shouldn’t expect me to eat that. The smell alone…”

He laughs, a deep, rich rumble that never fails to warm me. “Don’t worry, Laura. More for me. Though I bet I can change your mind once it’s ready.”

“Fat chance,” I mutter, but I can’t help smiling at his enthusiasm.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this. Because of the smell, there were laws about how close to the city one could produce garum.”

“I didn’t know that, but…” I take a dramatic whiff, “I believe you.”

As the days pass, the garum becomes a constant presence in our lives. Varro checks on it regularly, stirring the mixture three to four times a day. He even found a few herb packets that were lying around the old compound, discarded from old pizza MREs. He couldn’t wait to return to the cottage to add them to the sludge. The smell, pungent and fishy, permeates the area.

“By all that’s holy, Varro,” I groan one particularly smelly afternoon. “Can’t we move that… farther from the house? ”

He looks up from where he’s tending the garum, his brow furrowed. “But then how would I protect it from animals? Or the weather?”

“Come on! No animal would come within a hundred yards of that thing.” I sigh, knowing he has a point about the weather. “Fine. But you owe me big time for this.”

Varro grins, his eyes gleaming at having won this round. “I’ll make it up to you. Perhaps I’ll teach you some gladiator moves.”

“Oh joy,” I deadpan, but I can’t help laughing. Frankly, with so little entertainment on our little island: dancing, teaching him English, and literally watching the fire at night, learning some fighting moves might not be such a terrible idea.