Lepidus swung his legs from the bed and motioned for his sandals. ‘It is your own fault, Vita. If you had done your duty as a concubine, I would not have had to bother her. Now pack up my things and let us go find a ship. It seems my back has healed.’
Vita tried to make her heart into ice, but as she readied Lepidus for departure, her despair seemed to cook inside her, transforming into a barely controllable rage. ‘I will not leave until we can find Zia,’ she stated. ‘We must ensure that she is well.’
‘I would love to find that little whore myself,’ replied Lepidus, ‘but not to ensure she is well. The deserter deserves a good lashing and a nice big tattoo on her face.’
‘How can you say such things?’ cried Vita.
‘Shut up,’ Lepidus replied, then slapped her on the face.
Vita gathered up Lepidus’s things without seeing them.
* * *
When they finally reached the docks, she was not sure if there were black clouds on the horizon or if she was merely witnessing the state of her own soul. ‘Find out which ships are leaving for Britannia and when they plan to depart,’ Lepidus commanded. ‘And get a weather forecast—a good one.’
The old man must have seen the rebellion stirring in Vita’s eyes, for he motioned to Ven to accompany her.
‘Where is Zia?’ Ven asked as they approached the nearest ship.
‘Lepidus forced her to pleasure him late last night. This morning I could not find her anywhere. She is gone.’
‘Gods, no.’
‘It is my fault,’ Vita said. ‘If only I had awoken...’
‘It is Lepidus’s fault and no one else’s,’ Ven corrected. ‘We must get you away from him as soon as we can.’
Vita gazed up at the large cargo ship tied before them. Its name was surrounded with decoration—a tangle of leaves and branches in garish yellow and green. Pax, it was called.
‘It feels as if this journey will never end,’ Vita said, aware of Lepidus’s eyes upon them.
‘It will not—unless we devise our own ending,’ said Ven. He gazed at the horizon. ‘Those clouds portend stormy seas. This will be the most difficult part of the journey so far—especially for Lepidus.’
‘Good, I confess that I wish for him to suffer,’ said Vita.
‘Find me on our last night at sea,’ said Ven, then he turned to herald one of the sailors. ‘Tell me, sir, will this vessel be departing soon?’
They returned to Lepidus with good news: The cargo ship was leaving that morning, bound for the town of Gesoriacum in Belgic Gaul. There, it would take on more passengers and cross the channel overnight. In only ten days, if the gods and winds were favourable, they would be Britannia.
‘What about the weather?’ Lepidus asked.
‘Smooth sailing,’ Vita said.
* * *
The trip up the coast was wondrously tumultuous. The unsettled seas tossed the floating ‘basket’ as if it were a toy. It seemed that every time Vita went below deck, Lepidus had turned a new shade of green. She wondered if divine justice was at work.
On the ninth night of the journey, Vita waited until long after midnight to meet with Ven. After assuring herself that both Lepidus and the Scythian were well asleep, she stole over to the slave area and found Ven lying on the floor, wide awake. Saying nothing, she climbed the stairs to the deck and made her way towards the bow beneath the moonlight.
In minutes he was standing behind her, quiet as the breeze.
‘You are still thinking about Zia,’ he stated, reading Vita’s mind. ‘You fear the same fate.’
‘I cannot imagine what he must have done to her.’
‘She was fortunate. If she had been caught escaping, he would have whipped her to the edge of death.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Believe it? I have lived it.’
Vita fell silent, remembering the web of scars across Ven’s back. ‘It seems I have bound myself to a madman.’
‘So you have considered my proposal?’
Vita gripped the rails. She had done more than just consider it. ‘If he catches us, it will be the same fate for us, will it not? We will be lucky to survive his wrath.’
‘That is so.’
Vita took a breath. ‘How will we do it? And when?’
He reached his hand and covered hers. ‘You have just made me the happiest man in the world.’
‘And you have just made me the most terrified woman in Gaul.’
‘Not Gaul, Vita, Not any more.’ He gazed out at the distant horizon. ‘Britannia.’
Vita followed the moon path across the sea. Just beyond it she could discern the jagged profile of land: the land she had longed to see all her life. ‘My mother’s homeland,’ she whispered. ‘And yours.’
‘And also yours,’ said Ven. ‘Tell me, how well can you swim?’
* * *
Early the next morning, Vita tipped the chamber pot over the deck and eyed the land of Britannia: a rocky coastline followed by endless grassy hills. It was as her mind had always pictured it. Her heart nearly burst.
She returned below deck and fetched Lepidus a glass of water, which he promptly vomited back into the chamber pot. ‘We are nearing the coast now,’ Vita reassured him. ‘It will be over soon.’
In truth, she was reassuring herself. She fetched a wet rag for Lepidus, but instinctively dabbed it on her own brow. The wind remained diminished, but the seas still roiled beneath the ship. Soon she would be struggling beneath those riotous waves. She wondered how different they would be from the lazy currents of the Tiber.
‘Oars!’ shouted the captain and she could hear the whipping sound of the slackening sails. That was her cue.
She placed her hand over her mouth and feigned the heaves of sickness. ‘Excuse me, Lepidus, I believe I will be ill.’
She rushed up the ladder as planned, taking one last glance at Lepidus through the rails. He was lying on his mat as usual, heedless of her movements, but just beyond him the Scythian was wide awake. He caught her eye.
Curses, she thought, but there was no changing her course now. She quickly climbed the ladder and caught sight of Ven. There he was, just as they had planned—her tall, noble sentinel, ready to take her hand.
They barely acknowledged each other as they walked together slowly towards the bow of the ship. ‘The Scythian saw me,’ she muttered without turning her head.
‘Follow the plan,’ said Ven through his teeth. ‘No matter what you do.’
She did not look up. She did not wish to. She knew the shore was near and the sea nearer, and that soon she would be contending with both.
Just as they were arriving at the bow, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A figure was running towards them from behind. The Scythian. She lifted her leg over the bow just as Ven did, then felt a hand gripping her ankle. She heard a loud splash.
She was pulled back on to the deck, deafened by the thud of her own head against the wooden planks. She struggled to keep her wits. ‘Ven!’ she shouted, but he had disappeared.
A fist plunged heavily into her gut. Pain shot through her. She curled into a ball, trying to catch her breath, and once again caught sight of the Scythian. He was climbing over the rail, preparing to jump. Then he was gone.
Her head throbbed and her stomach burned with pain. She could see someone approaching her from several paces away. It was one of the sailors attempting to come to her aid.
He would quickly identify her and Lepidus would be alerted. ‘Follow the plan,’ Ven had urged her, ‘no matter what you do.’
She forced herself to her feet. Coughing for breath, she lifted one foot over the rail.
‘Stop that woman!’ cried the sailor. He was running towards her now, reaching out his hands. She lifted her other foot.
She plunged beneath the waves, n
early paralysed by the cold. Move! she told herself. She fought for the surface, vaguely aware of a shadow moving above her, a great wooden sea monster, its belly full of grain.
It was the boat itself. It was moving directly over her head. She kicked downwards, somehow managing to stay submerged as the great ship passed above her.
She came to the surface in a riot of coughs. When she had finally cleared her lungs, the ship was already nearly half a mile away.
She searched the horizon for signs of Ven, catching sight of two splashing figures nearly as far away as the ship. The two men appeared to be swimming directly for the shore. Ven was ahead: Vita could see his long arms tearing through the water, but the Scythian’s shorter, thicker arms were not far behind.
Vita tried to shout, but she had no strength in her belly to do it. Every breath she took was a labour and even kicking her legs seemed to pain her.
Still, she started towards the men, forcing herself to move her aching limbs. The more she swam, the further away the men seemed.
She tried to increase her pace, but her head throbbed and the blow to her stomach seemed to have sapped all her power. She was not really swimming, but treading through the undulating waves.
The ship was nearly out of view now and so were the men. Her strokes grew weaker and the shore seemed even further away.
She fixed her gaze on the nearest rock outcropping she could find onshore. It was moving rapidly to the right of her vision. Soon she had to turn her head in order to see the object at all. She was caught in a current for certain. She was being swept out to sea.
Chapter Eleven
When Vita opened her eyes, she did not at first know where she was. She blinked up at the sky, its crimson hue suggesting sunrise, and heard the crashing of waves. Was this the country of death? A crimson sky and a windswept beach?
She tried to lift her head, but it throbbed painfully—a very reassuring sign—and when she laboured to lift her neck a stab of heat shot down her spine. Blessed Neptune, she had not been swallowed by the sea. She was miraculously, painfully alive!
Ven. Where was he? What had happened? She struggled to recall. She rolled to the side and felt an ache in her stomach. Her limbs were so numb with cold that she did at first sense that she was lying on a bed of hard stones. Looking up, she realised that she had landed on a beachful of them. They answered each heave of surf with their cackling applause.
It came back to her all at once. The ship. Ven. The Scythian. She had hit her head and then sustained the Scythian’s fist deep in her gut. She had managed to throw herself overboard, but by then Ven and his pursuer were already halfway to the shore and Vita had been caught in a mighty current.
She remembered very little after that but fear. Then cold. Then, nothing.
She blinked up at the sky once again. Pushing hard against the pebbly ground, she managed to sit up. She touched her head. A bump the size of a plum had formed on top of it. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, which felt more tender still. Her whole body was shivering.
She willed herself to her feet. A road could not be far away. On the continent, all roads led to Rome, but here in the Empire’s most distant province, all roads led to Londinium, or so her mother had told her once.
It was the reason she and Ven had decided on Londinium’s main bathhouse for their meeting place. In case they got separated, they would seek one another at the baths. Whoever arrived first would wait for the other each day until seven days had passed.
After that time, if they still had not converged, they would assume the worst and they would never look back.
But surely they would find each other. Vita had no doubt that Ven had outswum the Scythian. And even if he had not, Ven could easily outrun the man on land, for his legs were nearly twice as long. It would be no contest at all.
Surely Ven was standing near Londinium’s bathhouse right now, watching from some shadowy alley. If she could just walk inland for a distance, surely she would find a road to take her to the city. How far could it be?
She pulled herself to her feet, noticing that her whole body was shivering. She glanced at the sky. Was it possible that the sunrise was getting darker somehow—perhaps obscured by a cloud?
She looked east and saw no sign of the sun. Looking west, she spotted a few last rays shooting upward. Sweet Diana, it was not sunrise, but sunset! She was going to have to pass a night in this place. She looked around her, wondering what tribe’s territory she had involuntarily invaded. Then again, she didn’t know how far she was from Londinium, a thoroughly Roman city. Surely there was little danger.
She wondered where she might take shelter for the evening and how she might get herself warm. She spied a large stand of bushes growing at the base of a low cliff not a dozen paces up the beach. Perhaps she could gather some kindling from them and try to start a fire.
Starting towards the bushes, she was reminded once again of her injured stomach. She bent like an old woman as she walked, and when she reached the bushes she collapsed beneath them to rest. The sun dipped lower. She gathered together as many dead branches as she could and was searching for a good fire board when she heard voices above her.
Men’s voices.
She dived beneath the bushes and attempted to cover herself with the branches.
She lay there for a long while, hearing her heart pound in her ears. Her stomach rumbled with hunger. Surely that was what had attracted the squirrel. It sneaked up beside her and began to chirp uncontrollably. ‘Get out of my territory!’ it seemed to say. ‘Wicked Roman!’
‘Shoo!’ Vita said. ‘Get out of here!’ But the squirrel only chirped louder. The men were very close.
‘Did you hear that?’ a man said in Celtic.
‘A woman’s voice, no?’ said another man. ‘From beneath those bushes, I think.’
Vita buried her head beneath the leaves, but it was no use.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ asked the first man.
‘It is...and she is ours.’
* * *
Was it Vita? He could not be sure. The woman was still too far away to see clearly and was further obscured by the pouring rain. He pulled the grain sack over his head and stole closer.
He had been waiting for Vita outside the busy bath complex for seven days now without a sign. He had slept very little and eaten not at all. He had hardly even moved. A shadowy alley with a view of the baths was where he lived and he had hardly moved from it.
Over the course of his vigil, his spirit had grown dimmer. Anger, impatience and doubt took turns commandeering his thoughts and, every day that passed, it grew harder to vanquish them. When he had awoken that final morning, he had nearly lost his hope. Now it was sunset.
But perhaps all was not lost. Ven watched as the woman stepped into the wide portico of the entrance. There was something so familiar about her. ‘Vita?’ he called to her, but she did not seem to hear him. He fell into step several paces behind her and soon was following her across the entry hall.
He pulled the grain sack from his head and kept his head down, trying to appear normal. She looked just like Vita from behind. She was short and curvy and walked with a lovely sway. She even wore her sandy brown hair in the same way—half-up and half-down, fixed with a pin.
The woman made her way towards the women’s dressing room and his thoughts raced. How many short, round, Roman women with pinned brown hair were there in Londinium?
‘Vita, is that you?’ he called again, but still she did not respond. She had nearly reached the dressing room entrance when he planted himself before her, blocking her path.
‘Ack!’ the woman shrieked, and Ven beheld her terrified face. It was not Vita’s.
‘Ah, my apologies,’ Ven sputtered, moving out of the woman’s way, but he had already drawn the attention of everyone entering the baths. He raised his head and glanced around him, further
displaying his slave’s tattoo.
‘You there,’ someone said. ‘Where is your master?’
Ven tried to find who had addressed him, but he could not discern the source. There were several men now staring at him with suspicion.
The reward for the return of a runaway slave was as high in Britannia as it was in Rome. That was his first thought. His second thought was that he was the tallest man in the chamber. And the only one wearing a slave’s tattoo.
‘Seize that man!’ someone shouted.
Ven dashed out of the baths as fast as his legs would take him, forgetting that a running slave was a guilty slave—whether in the wilds of Britannia or in the heart of Rome. He managed to escape the men from the baths, but in so doing had acquired several new pursuers. The more he ran, the more men ran after him, until it seemed that all of Londinium wished to give chase.
Ven splashed through the muddy streets, heading for the river. There was no other choice. If he could not lose his pursuers by the time he reached the docks, then he would simply disappear into the turbid waters of the Tamesis. It was how he had lost the Scythian in the end, after all. He had simply out-swum him.
But Ven’s legs did not fail him, nor did the rain, which helpfully obscured his escape. By the time he reached the shipyards at the south-eastern edge of the city, his pursuers had all but disappeared. The rain was coming down in torrents, soaking Ven to the bone. He hardly cared. He slowed to a walk in a low-lying area full of boats in various stages of disrepair. They littered the rain-washed shoreline like broken promises.
He let sorrow overtake him. He had failed to reunite with Vita. More than seven days had passed and she had not come. Even now, he could hardly believe it and had spent many long hours wondering what might have happened to her. Had she been abducted by tribesmen? Had she been returned to Lepidus for a price? Had she simply died at sea?
Turning away from the cemetery of ships, he made his way eastwards towards the deep-water docks. He refused to believe that she had died.
The Roman Lady's Illicit Affair Page 15