The Roman Lady's Illicit Affair

by Greta Gilbert

  ‘Cousin Ertola?’

  ‘Girls, come and meet your cousin Ven!’ A handful of young women emerged and stood behind the woman, the youngest of whom stared up at Ven with enormous unblinking eyes.

  ‘Armea, give your cousin a proper greeting.’ The girl gave a lavish bow while Cousin Ertola shouted over Ven’s shoulder.

  ‘My cousin Ven has returned!’ she cried joyously. ‘Come, everyone! Meet my cousin!’

  Ven turned around discover several dozen souls standing all around him. A tall, heavily tattooed woman stepped forward and gazed at Ven doubtfully.

  ‘I am Adamanta, wife of Tenus, the late leader of this settlement,’ she stated. ‘And you are?’

  ‘I am Ven, son of Tovin and Enica. I hail from this very soil.’

  ‘No other kin travel with you?’ asked the woman.

  ‘None at all,’ said Ven. He thought of Vita. ‘I am sorry to hear of your loss.’

  The woman grunted. ‘There is no time for condolences. The Romans have begun to swarm like bees in our territory. They took my husband’s life only a month ago, along with many others.’

  ‘What reason?’ asked Ven, feeling his teeth begin to clench.

  ‘Governor Nepos doubled his tribute demands without notice. Sent out a cohort from Vindolanda. They tried to steal an entire herd of our cattle. We had to fight back.’

  ‘How many dead?’ asked Ven.

  ‘Too many,’ said Adamanta. Ven looked out at the gathering of Brigantes—a collection of the very old and the very young. ‘Is that why there are no warriors here?’

  Adnamata narrowed her eyes. ‘Obviously I am a warrior.’ She glanced at her bandage-wrapped hand. ‘I am merely wait for my injury to heal. I will then join the others at the hill fort where they are currently amassing.’

  ‘Are you planning another raid?’

  ‘Not a raid—a proper fight this time. The last stand of the Brigantes.’

  ‘Allies?’

  ‘Not a one,’ said Adamanta, her lips a thin line. ‘It seems that all the southern tribes have been purchased.’

  ‘And the northern ones?’ asked Ven.

  ‘Enemies all. They cannot be trusted.’

  ‘Without allies, it will simply be the last of the Brigantes.’

  There were several loud gasps, but Adamanta’s stare was unwavering. ‘There is no other choice. When we resist their demands, they threaten to enslave us, but when we fulfil their demands we become slaves already. Will you not help us fight back?’

  ‘Listen to me,’ said Ven. ‘The Brigantes can prevail, but not without allies. We need the tribes of the far north on our side—the Votadini and the Selgovae and the Damnonii and all the rest.’ The Caledonii, he thought.

  ‘Those tribes would never come to our aid,’ said Adamanta.

  Ven shook his head. ‘I am not skilled in battle, but I am skilled with words, and if your chieftain will allow me, I am certain I can help forge such alliances. It is your only hope. I can also mingle with the Romans. Get information.’

  ‘You wish to wield words?’ Adamanta looked Ven up and down, then frowned. ‘A waste of good warrior, I say.’

  ‘Just listen to the man, Adamanta,’ said Ertola. ‘Perhaps he can help.’

  Adamanta pursed her lips. ‘Why did you come here, Ven of Rome?’

  ‘I am searching for a woman,’ he admitted, for he knew he could not lie. ‘She was stranded on the coast south of Londinium a few months ago—a short, stout woman with brown-green eyes.’

  Ven noticed the little girl standing beside Ertola tug on her mother’s skirt.

  ‘Stop, Armea!’ said Ertola.

  Meanwhile, Adamanta was shaking her head. ‘So you did not come to defend your threatened tribe?’

  ‘I confess that I did not understand the threat until today,’ said Ven. ‘So, no, that is not why I have come.’ Ven remembered Titus’s parting words. It is the way you live your life that makes you who you are. ‘But I tell you now that it is why I will stay.’

  Ertola put her hands together delightedly, and there were soft sounds of approval from the people all around. Ven felt his spirit swell. Now that he had said the words aloud, he understood the truth in them. He had spent an entire life doing penance for what he had lost. Now, finally, he had been granted a chance at redemption.

  ‘Then what does it matter whether or not you find this woman you seek? Are there not bigger challenges to pursue now? The safety of your kin?’

  ‘I will help the Brigantes,’ Ven repeated. ‘I give you my word.’

  ‘Then you are welcome here,’ said Adamanta. She stepped back and gave him a deep bow.

  Ven was ushered by Ertola and her family to a small roundhouse just outside the settlement. When Ven stepped inside, he was surprised to discover several tables and chairs, a large raised bed and a finely appointed hearth currently occupied by a lidded pot.

  ‘This home belonged to one of the men we lost,’ Ertola explained. ‘We have been loath to clean it.’

  ‘I am so sorry, Cousin,’ said Ven.

  ‘I am just happy that the gods have sent you to us,’ said Ertola. She kissed Ven’s cheek. ‘Make yourself at home now. We can speak more in the morning.’

  Ertola and her girls swept out of the roundhouse without seeing young Armea hiding behind one of the chairs.

  ‘What are you doing there, little one?’ asked Ven, catching sight of the girl.

  ‘I know where the Roman lady is,’ she whispered.

  Ven’s stomach jumped into his throat. ‘I beg you to tell me,’ Ven whispered back.

  ‘My mother says I cannot say it aloud,’ said Armea.

  Ven crouched down. ‘Then perhaps you can whisper it in my ear.’

  * * *

  When Ven first sighted the woman, she was standing over a large granite stone, attempting to grind grain. She stood outside a large roundhouse at the far end of the hill fort, struggling with her task. She was lifting the grinding stone too far off the pestle stone, not letting the stones do the work. Her sandy brown hair fell forward, covering her face.

  But why was a woman grinding grain at all? Was that not why they attached donkeys to grinding wheels? And why did she labour outside the dwelling on such a cold winter’s day?

  Ven walked closer, hoping she would not notice his interest. It had been only days since Armea had told him about the half-Roman, half-Caledonii woman residing in the northernmost Brigante hill fort. According to Armea, the woman had been gifted to a Brigante chieftain by scouts many months ago.

  Still, Ven was careful not to cling to an unlikely hope. Armea was a girl of only ten who seemed to delight in secrets. There was no telling what kind of falsehoods she might tell for her own amusement.

  Ven pulled his cloak around him against the chill. The night before, there had been a light snow and the sky remained grey and threatening. Many of the hill fort’s denizens were returning early from the market held in the nearby fort of Coria and there was a tumult of moving horses and people shuffling goods from carts.

  A man wearing a chieftain’s golden torc and an array of fine furs swung down from one such cart and shouted something at the woman, though Ven could not determine what he said. She nodded vigorously and returned to her task.

  It seemed clear the woman was a slave. A Brigante man would never have berated his wife so publicly and a Brigante wife would have never taken such a scolding without returning a scolding of her own. Besides, only a slave would be relegated to doing work outdoors on a chilly day like today.

  The man unhitched one of his donkeys and lead it behind his house. At least that explained the reason for the woman’s thankless task. Grinding grain was a donkey’s work, but clearly the donkey had been away that day.

  As Ven stepped closer, his heart moved slightly up into his throat. The first thing he noticed w
as her hair. It was longer than before, but she had pulled it back behind her ear, leaving her neck almost entirely exposed. He knew that neck. He had once rubbed it gently.

  The woman remained bent over her task, but he could see the small details of the lower part of her face. Those lips—so shapely and clever. He understood those lips, for he had kissed them once.

  Stepping closer still, he noticed her rather serious nose. It pointed sternly to her lips, which she discreetly moistened with her tongue. Lust shot through him.

  It had to be her, though there were several differences in her appearance that worried him. Her jaw, for example, was still as soft and round, but there was a slight hollowness to her cheeks. Her arms were thinner, too, and the tunic she wore seemed rather loose, despite the warming garments she wore beneath it.

  She looked very much like Vita, but there was less of her.

  Tears welled in his eyes. She had been made into a slave, had been subject to privation and hardship and all manner of laborious works. Though the tribes of Britannia were easier on their slaves than the familias of Rome, the position was still a miserable one, and part of him prayed the woman was not Vita and that he was mistaken.

  Then she looked up at him.

  Gods, it was her. Her face was like a cracked egg: he could see the fissures of hardship, the lines of endurance. Still, her brown-green eyes had not lost their shine, and when they locked with his own eyes a small explosion took place inside his heart.

  She cocked her head in disbelief. ‘Ven?’

  He put his finger to his lips and shook his head gravely. Every part of him wanted to take her in his arms, but he could not do it. Too much enthusiasm would convey her value to him and as it was he was not sure he had enough coin to purchase her.

  ‘You there,’ he said. ‘Do you belong to the owner of this house?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, squelching a smile on the verge of explosion. She bowed meekly.

  ‘Get him for me now, woman. I wish to make a deal.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  He insisted on carrying her across the threshold of his small roundhouse, a journey of less than six paces, and she laughed as he settled her down on top of his bed of furs.

  ‘Why do you laugh?’ he asked, feigning confusion. ‘Is it not Roman custom for a man to carry his bride across the threshold of his home?’

  ‘But we are not in Rome, nor am I your bride.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, his eyes flashing. He bent to kiss her lips, then changed direction at the last moment, planting a kiss on her forehead instead. He bent to start a fire.

  She stood in the middle of the room, blinking. ‘I am finding it difficult to believe I am not living inside a dream.’

  ‘Do you require some sort of proof?’ he asked.

  ‘I believe I do.’

  He switched to Celtic. ‘Chroesawer, duwies,’ he said. Welcome, goddess. Returning to Latin, he gestured to the low platform of his fur-lined bed. ‘Now take off your shoes and have a rest. I think you will find the bed especially soft.’

  Vita was happy to do as she was told, stretching out atop his furs and marvelling at the near-instantaneous warmth they granted. ‘I feel as if I am floating on a cloud,’ she said.

  ‘I have been floating on a cloud since I met you.’

  Vita smiled and shook her head. ‘First rhetoric and now poetry?’

  ‘Goose feathers,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That is what you feel beneath you. The bed mat is stuffed with them.’

  Vita nuzzled against the down-filled pad, feeling luxurious. During her enslavement at the hill fort, one of her duties had been to stay awake beside her owner’s hearth each night, feeding the flames until all six members of his family were asleep.

  She had been granted the use of a fur for the cold hours and had mostly kept warm, but it did not change the character of the floor of the dwelling. It was always hard, always cold. ‘I do not think I ever want to leave this bed,’ she said.

  ‘That is a relief, because I do not ever want you to.’ He was bent beside a pot perched on a metal grate over the central fire. ‘You are my guest for life.’

  ‘Guest? But you paid the chieftain good coin for me. Do you not own me?’

  He laughed. ‘On the contrary, Vita, I fear it is you who owns me.’

  He lifted the pot from the flames and poured a creamy liquid into a cup, which he placed on the table beside the bed. Exiting through the thick hide door, he returned in seconds with an armful of logs, which he dropped into a container beside the fire. ‘I may have to go cut some more wood,’ he remarked, studying the half-full container.

  ‘You must have travelled over ten miles today. Are you not exhausted from the ride?’

  ‘Not at all.’ His eyes danced in the firelight, making her stomach dance, too. ‘Let me go see what more I can gather,’ he said and stepped outside once again.

  * * *

  When he returned, he dropped an armful of branches on to the logs, filling the container. ‘There,’ he pronounced. ‘Enough wood to last us all night.’

  All night, she thought. It was impossible to believe. Just yesterday she had gazed up at the grey winter sky, certain that its colour would never change. But now here he was and they had all night.

  ‘I did not believe this day would ever come,’ she said. She felt a tear slide down her cheek. ‘I nearly lost hope...’ She studied his face. It was as she remembered it, still as handsome and unexpected as the first day she saw it. Big eyes, broad cheeks, wide mouth. A playful grin and a nose too smart for its own good.

  ‘I would never have ceased my search for you, you know. Our reunion was as inevitable as the sunrise.’

  ‘You did not doubt that you would find me?’

  ‘Never once.’

  ‘But how did you know I had not died?’

  ‘I just knew. I cannot explain it.’

  ‘I tried to forget you,’ Vita said. ‘I tried so very hard, Ven. I longed for you. I made myself miserable.’

  ‘You tried to turn your heart to ice. It is what a slave must do.’ Ven smiled. ‘Unfortunately, your heart is warmer than most.’

  ‘I have learned that what my heart wants is often very different than what my mind wants,’ Vita said.

  ‘What I have learned is that the world can change in an instant and that all we have is this moment. We must seize it.’

  ‘Carpe diem?’ She shot him a sly grin.

  The small room was already warm from the heat of the fire. Its smoke seeped through the high thatched roof like water through a sieve. Vita pretended fascination with the disappearing smoke while Ven removed his tunic and undershirt and placed them over a chair.

  Now he stood before her wearing only his trousers, which were tied low around his narrow hips, revealing two remarkable, downward-plunging sinews that she felt certain came together somewhere beneath the cloth. Those fascinating bridles of flesh acted as a kind of frame for his stomach muscles, which were stacked like logs up the length of his torso.

  They were so thick and strong, those muscles. How much she wished to climb them.

  And so she did, with her eyes. They led her northwards, deep into the untamed territory of his broad chest. There a forest of curly hair spread over the contours of two thick, muscular plates. She longed to run her fingers through that soft forest, then to bury her nose in it and breathe deeply.

  But for now she only lay back in admiration. He had grown stronger and more substantial since she had last seen him. His arms had certainly thickened. So had his chest. It seemed to bulge with latent force, as if he might be able to hold back an entire tribe of angry ex-husbands.

  He stared down at her thoughtfully. ‘Just look at us: a Roman and a barbarian, both taken from their homelands, both enslaved, both freed by the other. I think we are the only
two people in Britannia who have lived such strange fates.’

  ‘Perhaps in all the civilised world.’ She glanced around her. ‘Does a dirt-floor roundhouse in northern Britannia still count as the civilised world?’

  He laughed. ‘I hope not. I do not plan to behave in a civilised manner at all tonight.’ His eyes flashed and there went her stomach again.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked, glancing at the cup on the table beside her.

  ‘Honeyed goat’s milk,’ he said. ‘It is even better with biscuits, but am afraid I am a terrible baker.’

  ‘And I am a terrible cook!’

  ‘I do not believe that.’

  ‘My mother refused to teach me. She said that cooking was a skill for slaves, and that her daughter would never be a slave. Life is strange, is it not?’

  He held the cup out to her. ‘Drink now. You are far too thin.’

  Vita put the cup to her lips, keeping it there long after she had finished drinking in order to discreetly watch him pull down his trousers.

  She had heard that the Celtic warriors sometimes went to battle completely naked. Now, as her very own Celtic warrior stood before her in only a loincloth, the reason seemed clear: it was to inspire awe.

  ‘How long have you lived in this house?’ she asked. She lifted the cup to her lips once again, but accidentally gulped the liquid, resulting in a spasm of coughs.

  ‘Are you all right, Vita?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Perfectly fine,’ she sputtered, stealing another glance at him. It is fascinating how the size of your desire seems to be testing the threads of your loincloth. ‘You were saying about the house?’

  ‘I have lived here for only a handful of days,’ Ven replied. ‘I was fortunate my cousin remembered me.’

  ‘And if she had not remembered you?’

  ‘She would not have given me this house. It belonged to a warrior who died.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear. How did he die?’

  ‘He was killed in a fight...with a Roman soldier.’