Emer slammed the pepper grinder down on the table as he left, and the kitchen staff reluctantly returned its attention to its own affairs.
“He baits you like that because you won’t have him,” Thais said quietly.
“He has no right. And no business to talk to me of the master.”
“Forst likes Master Correus,” Thais said. “There’s not a slave in this house who doesn’t. But I think maybe you like him a little too much, and there’s nothing for you but hurt in that if you pin your hopes too high.”
“I’m not such a fool as that,” Emer said.
Thais sighed. Emer was still pretty, with the flaming hair and pale freckled skin that so many of the Gauls and Britons had, but she was six-and-twenty, and she’d never had a child. The older you were when the first one came, the harder it was.
“Then why not have Forst, child? You don’t hate him or you wouldn’t walk with him. Or are you thinking that now that Master Correus’s woman is dead that he will look for you again when he comes home?”
“No! I mean yes, I am sure he will look for me, but it isn’t that. And yes, Forst attracts me.”
The cook was mincing herbs and waved his cleaver in the air. “Are you thinking that talk cooks dormice?” he snapped.
Emer put a lid on the dormice and went to set them in the second oven. Thais stirred her brew until Emer came back to the table with a knife and a basket of apples.
“Then take Forst, child, while you still can. You should have a man of your own who can give you children. The master will let him marry you if he asks him.”
Emer jabbed a paring knife into an apple and began to core it. “I don’t doubt it! I was born a slave, of slaves who were allowed to marry. It hasn’t been so bad, I suppose – I’ve never known anything else, not like Forst. But I will not breed children who will be born that way, and I have told Forst so.”
Thais gave her a sharp look. “I wondered once if you were not carrying Master Correus’s child.”
Emer put her apple in an earthenware tray and picked up another. “No.”
Thais looked at her closely.
“It was Forst’s.”
* * *
When the dinner was over, the last guest departed and the last pot scrubbed, Emer hung her dishcloth up on a hook and gave the kitchen a final look. The lamps were almost guttered, and the moon was coming in through the open door. The dormice rustled sleepily in their pot. The kitchen cat gave them a perfunctory glance – she knew there was a wire screen across the top – and trotted purposefully into the garden. Emer closed the door behind her and went out through the cabbage rows to the road that led past the upper pasture to the stables.
Forst was leaning on a paddock fence, watching a pair of young mares drowsing head to tail, whisking away the bugs that droned and zoomed in the warm air. He turned as she came up and put his hands on her, feeling her move at his touch under the light tunic.
She didn’t say anything, but wrapped her own arms around his back and turned her mouth up to his. He slipped his hands between them and cupped her breasts, hard, and she pushed against him, needing him now, wanting him.
He knew I would come tonight, she thought. I always come. So does he. One hand was between her legs now, pushing through the folds of her gown, while the other was spread across her backside, holding her against him. She pushed her own hands under his tunic and felt him harden as she touched him.
He took his mouth from hers and pushed the stable door open with one shoulder. She followed him, her breath coming faster now, and her gown rucked up and tangled in her belt above one hip; above one white leg and the soft copper-colored hair beside it. Forst pulled the gown up slowly and tucked it into her belt at the other side. He ran his fingers through the red hair, downward, and she gasped and sank back in the straw.
He pulled his own tunic up, tucking it into his belt, and she lay back in the straw, knees apart, and watched him – with a tight aching pain between her legs because she wanted him so. His body was hard and scarred with old wounds, and his manhood stood out in front of him like a rod. Emer moaned, and he leaned over her and took the pins from the shoulders of her gown, pulling it down over her breasts so that only her belly was covered. She licked her lips, and he put one hand between her legs and watched her face as he moved his fingers inside her.
She cried out and put her hands on him, trying to tease him into her, wondering if he felt anything or only did it to see her like this, hungry and without control.
He put his mouth over one breast, his hand still between her legs and his teeth biting hard into the nipple. She tilted her head back in the straw and clutched his hand into her with her thighs. Suddenly he pulled his mouth from her breast, gasping, and pulled her legs apart with both hands, and she felt him drive into her, long enough and thick enough that it hurt on the first stroke, but she didn’t care. She swung her hips up, pulling her knees back toward her, feet above his back, knowing only that she wanted him, all of him, even if it pulled her apart. It didn’t. It never did. After a few seconds her passage expanded to fit him, and then there was only the feel of him inside her, drawing out that other feeling that was like no other, that would come to her in dreams, when there had been no chance to get it this way, and wake her, shaking, in the night. She wrapped her arms around his back, pushing herself upward to take him deeper into her, and let herself go, abandoned to that feeling, until it exploded into climax.
A moment later Forst shuddered and groaned as he reached his own climax. He groaned again and buried his face in her hair, still inside her. She lay still, just liking the feel of him in her.
Finally he heaved himself up and rolled over in the straw beside her. “Why? Why like this in the barn like a whore?”
Emer sat up and slapped him. “Because I need a man the way you need a woman. And if that makes me a whore, what does it make you?”
“Then why not marriage?”
“I am a slave. I will not breed more slaves. I am not a cow.”
Forst turned his back on her, exasperated. He had been a grown man before he had been a slave. To him it was only another condition in life. To Emer it was an unchangeable state of mind. She had never been anything else. It colored everything she did.
“If you do not like things as they are, then do not walk with me anymore,” Emer said. Her gown was still rucked up and falling from her shoulders, but her face was icy. She looked for the pins in the straw. “I will find another.”
“No.” Forst turned over and put his arm around her, pulling her down against him. “No. I will take you this way if it’s all there is, and I am sorry I called you names. You won’t find another man who makes you feel the way I do.”
“You are very conceited,” Emer said, her face against his chest.
“Could you?”
“No.”
Forst chuckled and rubbed his face against her hair. “Maybe you love me.”
“Maybe I do,” Emer said sadly.
* * *
It was a moon-filled night, restive and wakeful. Appius Julianus leaned against the sundial in the garden and looked up at the statue of Athena for advice. As usual, none was forthcoming. Her pale marble face was immobile in the moonlight, and she plainly did not care what his problems might be. At the moment, he thought ruefully, they seemed all to be entwined, like a nest of snakes. A four-year-old mistake, compounded by another he had had with him for five-and-twenty, if Helva could ever really be considered a mistake. Appius sighed. Helva was forty now, although disinclined to admit it, and if her gold hair had lost a shade of its brightness, there was no more gray in it than she could deal with with a pair of tweezers, and her face and body had lost none of their bright, butterfly charm. She was a pet, cossetted, spoiled, and disciplined only occasionally, a joy just to watch, and an infernal nuisance when she set her mind on something. She could still stir his blood for him the way she had done when he had first clapped eyes on her in a slave market in Gallia Belgica and had yiel
ded to an impulse alien to his practical nature – to have that bright extraordinary beauty to himself, his alone. But he was twenty years her senior, and in the way of passing time, the blood stirred less now than it had in those wild early days when Appius had been a legionary legate and Helva had followed the army with him, and sung to him at night and kept him awake in bed until dawn, and wheedled from him every gift and favor her acquisitive nature could desire. Then Correus had been born, the same day on which Appius’s patrician wife, Antonia, had presented him with Flavius, and Helva’s tactics had undergone a subtle shift.
She has an eye to the main chance, Appius thought without regret. Helva had never loved him, and he had never demanded that she should. The older Correus had grown, the more she had pinned her hopes on Appius’s love for their son, against the day when his physical need for her should fade. It was the babies, Flavius and Correus, rather than Appius’s visits to Helva’s bed, which had brought Helva and Antonia into a diplomatic war that tonight had showed every sign of escalating into open arrow fire.
Antonia was a descendant of Marcus Antonius himself, and duty to husband, hearth, and class was etched on every bone in her body. She was not a particularly hot-blooded woman, and if Appius wished to disport himself with a slave, that was his right and, no encroachment upon her own position. Appius suspected she had been just as glad to have his ardor transferred to other quarters occasionally. She had even been fond of Correus and had taken him under her maternal wing when it became plain that Helva’s usefulness as a mother was minimal. But never – never – could anything be allowed to dislodge Flavius from his rightful place, or to let a slave-born son outshine her own. When Helva had turned her catapults in that direction, Antonia prepared to return fire, and Appius felt like ducking.
Hostilities had erupted this evening almost as soon as the dinner guests had gone. Flavius had taken Aemelia off to bed as soon as it was decently possible, and Helva, who had naturally not been included in the dinner party, had made her appearance in the atrium, trailing a piece of embroidery at which she had been sporadically at work for months.
“How nice to have Flavius home again,” she said, beginning to set delicate stitches into her work. She was dressed in one of her best gowns, Antonia noted with irritation, and more than enough jewelry to open a shop. Just in case a strolling guest should happen to catch sight of her in the garden, she had said demurely when Antonia had informed her that her attire was unsuitable for a meal in the servants’ hall. “It wouldn’t do for the master’s guests to see me looking all anyhow.” Since the master’s guests weren’t supposed to see her at all, this was a debatable point, but beneath Antonia’s dignity to pursue. Helva generally managed to drift through the gardens or past a doorway at the right moment. Tonight she had managed to insinuate herself into the predinner small talk in the gardens and prattle artlessly to a senator about her son in the Centuriate. There was something, Appius thought, watching the senator practically begin to salivate, to be said for the Eastern custom of keeping women swathed to the eyes in veils.
Now she settled herself on a couch in a flutter of pale draperies and smiled benignly at Antonia. “It must be wonderful to see him again.” A sigh. “I do miss Correus.” The implication that unlike Flavius, Correus was single-handedly holding the heathen back from the empire. “Such a shame that Flavius won’t be able to hold a field command anymore, but not his fault, of course. I do think he’s come through it all wonderfully. And lovely for you to have him home in Rome from now on.”
“Flavius is perfectly capable of holding a field command or any other command,” Antonia said. “There are very few things for which the little finger is a necessity. Flavius is on the staff of the praetorian prefect, which is so important that it is practically an appointment from the emperor, but of course you couldn’t be expected to understand such matters.”
Helva smiled. “No, I’m afraid politics are beyond me. I must content myself with understanding the active-service army well enough to follow my Correus’s career.” Appius had made his own name as a field commander. Helva would lose no chance to point out which son was following the paternal footsteps most closely.
“Yes, I’ve always thought it best to concentrate on matters within one’s own sphere.” Antonia’s voice was placid, condescending. Legally, of course, she had every right to have Helva beaten within an inch of her life to teach her better conduct, but since she was the mother of an adopted son of the house of Julianus, that was unthinkable. Helva was a slave and not a slave. She owned enough jewelry and other property to have bought her freedom ten times over if she had wanted to, which she didn’t. She was quite comfortable as she was, concerned only to see that Correus’s career advanced sufficiently to maintain that comfort after Appius’s death.
It was at this stage in the conversation that Appius had beat a retreat into the garden. He had had quite enough advice on Correus’s career lately. A letter from Sextus Julius Frontinus, who had once served under Appius Julianus and now had the gall to tell him how to manage his children; another from his daughter, Julia, mostly about the baby, and advising him solemnly to make no protest over the adoption if he didn’t wish to push Correus into “something desperate,” whatever that meant; and a third from Flavius, written a year ago, and followed up tonight with a short, pointed interview.
I have misjudged him, Appius thought, remembering Flavius hissing in his ear while his mother and Aemelia’s backs were turned, “Have you released Correus from that damned promise yet? And if not, why the hell haven’t you?”
He should have given Flavius the chance to stand on his feet in his own way, Appius thought. And he had nearly taken that chance away from Flavius forever by making Correus his keeper. Flavius had the Demetae to thank that he hadn’t, Appius suspected. Ironic, that. But what do I do about Correus?
Appius looked up at the statue of Athena. “You might share a thought, you know. Just this once.” She stared across the rose garden.
Appius let himself out by the far gate, where the statue of Priapus stood, member jauntily erect, fertility personified, caretaker of all that grew. “Your help I don’t need,” Appius said, bowing respectfully as he walked by the little god. “You got me into this.”
The night was warm and still, brightly moon-washed. The pasture fence and wooden bee boxes showed white against the grass. The only sounds were the myriad insects humming in the tall growth by the roadside and the crunch of his sandals in the gravel.
In the stables, the air was steamy and smelled of horse. Appius stopped and ran a hand down a bay stallion’s nose. The bay whickered and danced about the stall expectantly.
Why not? Appius unwrapped his toga and draped it carefully on the loose box door, where the bay slobbered on it. Appius, in his undertunic, got a bridle from the tack room and swung up on the bay’s bare back making as little noise about it as possible. The horsemaster, if he was about, would without doubt come bustling forward with offers of saddles, assistance, and advice on the danger of the master’s breaking his neck. Appius turned the bay’s nose south to where a wide dirt road skirted the lower pasture down to the chariot track. Beyond the banked oval track was a training ring with poles and barrels for practicing fast turns, and an assortment of banners, spears, and other distractions designed to unnerve a green horse. A series of jumps had been left standing in the grass verge beside the road, and Appius kicked the bay into a canter.
The bay bunched his muscles and flew over the first jump, landing almost noiselessly in the grass, and gathered himself for the second. It was like having wings. Appius gripped the horse’s broad back with his knees and settled down to enjoy himself. An owl swooped across the skyline and dove into the grass of the lower pasture, coming up again with something in its talons. The world looked much simpler by moonlight, Appius thought, reining the bay in to a trot beyond the last jump. The bay was sweaty; he was going to have to rub him dry. And bathe himself, he thought, as his thighs started to itch from the s
alt. He could see the dim shapes of horses moving toward them across the pasture, and he pulled the bay’s head around before he could quarrel with that gray devil Correus had sent, who was at home now with a harem in the lower pasture.
At the stables Appius slid off the bay’s back and turned him into the loose box, looking for a rag with which to rub him down. There was one hanging on a hook by the stall gate and he set to work in the half light from the open doors.
Someone with a lantern came around the corner and halted abruptly as its light fell on the bay’s stall. “I’ll do that if you like, sir,” Forst said.
Appius noted with some amusement that there was a cudgel in his other hand. “Thank you, I can manage. Were you looking for horse thieves?”
“Yes, sir.” Forst hung the lantern on a hook and propped the cudgel against the wall.
“You’re extremely alert.”
“I was walking, sir. I felt restless.”
Appius nodded. “So did I. There is something in the air tonight, I think.” He gave Forst a long look over the bay’s back. Except for the hair, he wouldn’t have known him for the man he had bought four years ago to teach his sons to speak German and fight the way the Germans fought. The knowledge had served them both well on the Rhenus frontier, and since then Forst had been assistant to Alan, the time-expired cavalryman who was horsemaster for the remount herds. (The chariot ponies, which were the other half of the horse farm, were Diulius’s province.) Forst could speak Latin now, and he no longer frightened the other slaves, but what was under that civilized exterior, Appius had no idea. “Did you find some solution to your… restlessness in the night?”
Forst shook his head. “No, sir.” He stood against the wall, arms crossed on his chest. “Only to accept a thing, if it won’t be changed.”
Appius didn’t prod him for details. They were not his business. “I, also. We seem to have reached a common understanding by moonlight. Sit down, man, I’m not the emperor.”
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