The Lion and the Lark
Page 10
Bronwen’s head dropped to his shoulder as he crossed the room; his scent, a combination of heated male flesh and his body oil, intoxicated her. She rubbed her nose on the fine material of his tunic, inhaling deeply. When he sat with her on the edge of the bed she undid the clasps at his shoulders and kissed the smooth, bare skin she exposed, running her hands down his chest as the woolen blouse puddled at his waist. He closed his eyes and let her explore him, his respiration increasing as she traced his flat nipples with a searching finger, then rubbed her palm across the fine black hair on his chest. When he could take no more he pushed her flat on the bed and loomed above her, his dark eyes filling the room.
“Why did we wait so long?” he said thickly, bending to embrace her again. “Why did we allow our pasts to come between us, when we could have had this from the beginning?”
He felt her stiffen in his arms and realized that he should not have spoken. When he drew back to look at her he saw that her expression had changed.
“What?” he panted. “What is it?”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t do this.”
He was undone; he merely stared at her in consternation, barely able to catch his breath.
“It’s wrong,” Bronwen moaned.
“Why?” he demanded. “Bronwen, we’re married, by the rites of your own people. There is nothing to stop us.”
“I can’t forget who you are, where you came from, why you’re here. I did for a few moments, but... I was confused. You are handsome and we have been thrown together in this unnatural situation. It’s to be expected that something like this would happen.”
“That’s all you think this is,” Claudius said incredulously, “the proximity of two youthful bodies?”
“It must be,” Bronwen responded, pulling away from him, not meeting his gaze. “You are a Roman officer and my natural enemy.”
“You are your own enemy,” he said, releasing her so suddenly that she fell back on the bed. “Are you saying that what happened to your mother ten years ago is more important than what is happening between us now? If I can put aside our differences, why can’t you?”
“Because you are the conqueror and I am the conquered,” she replied simply, her lower lip trembling.
“I have not conquered you,” he said quietly, his mouth still swollen from her kisses. “Is that why it’s so important to torment me, to show me that at least one Iceni won’t buckle under to the Roman will?”
“If you’ve been tormented, so have I,” she replied softly.
“By what?”
“By the knowledge that I have desired a man whose embrace would defile me.”
There was a silence for a long moment before he repeated dully, “Defile you?”
“I feel that I should take another bath because you’ve touched me,” she said quietly.
He stared at her, his mouth working, then picked up his cloak and threw it over his shoulders.
“You don’t know what you want,” he said hoarsely. “You can’t face the fact that you need me, so you punish me for your own desires. You’re a child in a woman’s body. Grow up.”
He left the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.
Bronwen ran to the door after him, but stopped on the threshold, unable to call him back. She slumped into the chair by the fire and put her face in her hands.
When the sun rose she was still sitting there, staring into the cold, dead ashes on the hearth.
Lucia ran the horse full out at the barrier, but Stella refused it at the last moment. The horse stopped short and the girl sailed over the animal’s head, landing with a resounding thump in the straw.
Brettix rushed from the sidelines and knelt next to Lucia on the floor of the paddock. As he turned her over he saw that her eyes were closed and he shook her shoulder. Tears began to seep from under her lids as he watched and he said anxiously, “Are you hurt?”
The long dark lashes lifted and she said bitterly, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Brettix relaxed. She wasn’t in pain. She was humiliated.
“I’m not enjoying this, Lucia. I want you to learn, but you’re just doing it wrong.”
“And I suppose you’re the only one who knows how to do it right,” she said flatly, sitting up and dusting off her breeches.
“The horse senses your reluctance,” he said gently. “You have to take command and lead her into the jump or she will always balk.”
“You sound like my father,” Lucia said disgustedly.
That surprised him. “How so?”
“I don’t want to marry the man he has chosen for me and the general thinks I have to be managed for my own good. I can’t possibly know my own mind and have to be coaxed gently in the direction of what’s best for me, just like that stupid horse.”
“And what is best for you?” Brettix asked quietly, extending his hand to help her to her feet.
“Marriage to a wealthy old man I hardly know and certainly don’t want to know any better.”
“Back in Rome?”
Lucia nodded. “My father can only see that I will have the status of a great lady and be well provided for, so nothing else matters.”
“Don’t you want to be a great lady?” Brettix asked.
“Like my mother?” she said rhetorically.
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I can’t change my father’s attitude. He thinks that once I am settled and have babies I will see what a fool I was and turn into the typical Roman matron, living for her children.”
“If you survive bearing the first one,” Brettix said darkly.
Lucia nodded dismally, stroking Stella’s neck.
It was the lot of women to have little choice about their destiny, in Britain or in Rome, Brettix thought.
“Do you want to try again?” he said to Lucia, to change the unhappy subject.
She smiled and mounted the horse. She was cantering around the ring when Brettix saw Ariovistus standing just inside the door of the barn, watching them.
He got Lucia’s attention and pointed to the slavemaster.
Lucia made a face, but slowed the horse and dismounted, handing him the reins. She went over to Ariovistus and had a short conversation, then returned to Brettix.
Ariovistus favored Brettix with a long, searching look before he left the barn.
“I have to go home,” Lucia said, disappointment in her tone. “My father is having a reception for his officers tonight in honor of the Saturnalia and I must help my mother prepare for it.”
“What’s Saturnalia?” Brettix asked. Whenever she mentioned anything to do with Roman culture or the army he always followed up on it, even if it seemed insignificant.
“It’s the feast of abundance which is celebrated in Rome every December. There it goes on for a whole week. The granaries are opened, the priests make public sacrifice to the god Saturn, and all civic roles are reversed for one day. Slaves eat at the master’s table and no one wears the toga. Everyone wears the pilleus, the cap of a free man. We give each other false gifts, paste candy and fruits made of paper to signify that nothing is as it seems. Slaves are permitted to gamble with dice for the one day and they are waited upon by their masters. Order is restored the next morning. It’s fun.”
“We have a day like that, Samhain , on the first of November. It used to be the most festive time of the year. The barriers between the world of the living and that of the gods and the dead disappeared for one day, and all the laws of this world were thrown into chaos.” He paused. “Your father’s predecessor said we got too wild during it so he forbade all our religious celebrations.”
“The people at home quite lose their minds during Saturnalia too. Maybe we are not so different after all,” Lucia said, laughing. “Will you come again tomorrow?”
He nodded.
“My escort is waiting to take me back to the house. I’ll see you here then, tomorrow at midday?”
He nodded again and w
atched her leave the barn, a small, erect figure disappearing through the large wooden doors. He looked around the paddock and began to remove the clay obstacles from the center of the ring, placing them against the walls.
He should leave this job, he thought. Though he had picked up some valuable information, including that which had enabled Parex to slip over the garrison wall and kill Scipio’s quaestor, it wasn’t working out exactly as he had planned.
He was becoming attached to the girl. She was spoiled and self centered and everything else he had expected, but she was also surprisingly sweet, asking him often if his room over the stables were comfortable, bringing him extra blankets and warm clothes from the house and sweetmeats from the Scipio table. He told himself she was a child but he couldn’t quite convince himself that it was true. She might be dressed like a boy when he saw her, but she wasn’t one. He’d had enough contact with her to know that her flesh was yielding and inviting, her skin soft, and that her luxuriant hair smelled alluringly of the myrrh Roman women used to curl and plait it.
She was a woman, young but ready, and each day brought him closer to a confrontation with that fact.
He shoved a clay block out of his way, and as he looked down he saw a glittering object half concealed in the straw. He bent and picked it up, recognizing the silver amulet Lucia wore around her neck; it must have come off during her fall from the horse. It was a Celtic design, Baltic amber encircled by a ring of lapis lazuli. When he’d asked her why she wore native jewelry, she replied that Maeve who used to work in her kitchen had given it to her for good luck.
So this girl whose jewel chest was undoubtedly stocked with the finest gems wore a trinket given to her by a widwife her mother suspected of being a witch.
Lucia was certainly a puzzle.
Brettix stood with the necklace in his hand, trying to decide what to do with it. If he just left it in the barn any of the workmen or grooms who came in after him might find it and take it. He didn’t think it was worth very much but the girl obviously valued it for reasons of her own.
On the other hand, if he brought it to the Scipio house he might be able
to overhear something at the party; Lucia had said the garrison officers were coming to it. It was unlikely. They usually spoke too fast when they talked to each other for Brettix to grasp much and they used an upper class accent and a sophisticated vocabulary which further impeded his understanding. But he wasn’t doing anything more important and it was worth a try.
He couldn’t quite admit to himself that he also wanted to see Lucia again.
He delayed, watering the horses and straightening the stalls, then took Stella and rode to the garrison, announcing to the guards that he was Scipio’s trainer and on his way to return an item the young Scipiana had left at the stables. They examined him and the necklace, then let him pass as night was falling over the fort.
Once Brettix reached the house and tied up his horse he realized that he was much too early to listen in on the festivities; the Romans dined late and it was clear that none of the guests had yet arrived. He went to the kitchen door anyway, knocking and trying to explain to the skivvy who opened it that he wanted to see Lucia. His Latin was not equal to the task and he was about to be turned away when the door to the hall was opened by a house slave. Through it he saw Lucia talking to a servant and before he could stop himself he had called out her name.
She turned and looked at him in surprise, moving forward to pass through the kitchen and take both of his hands.
“Brettix, what are you doing here? Come inside, you must be freezing out there.” She threw the skivvy a disapproving glance and pulled Brettix into the warmth of the house. They stood looking at one another for a long moment and then realized at the same time that the servants were all on the alert, pretending to continue their homely tasks while watching them covertly.
“Let’s go into the tablinum,” Lucia said abruptly. She led the way through the hall to the elevated parlor which faced the atrium and the front entrance, with the alae, or household shrines, on either side of it.
Brettix looked around him, trying not to stare. He had never been in a Roman house before, and although this one was very modest by native Italian standards, it seemed sumptuous to him. The tiled floors and tapestry hung walls bespoke a luxury never attempted or dreamed of in an Iceni home, even that of his father the king; he felt too large and clumsy, as if he might crush a delicate inlaid table or upset a porcelain vase. When Lucia bade him to sit he perched uneasily on the edge of a brocade couch, afraid that if he gave it his full weight he might collapse it.
“Did you want to speak to me?” Lucia asked him politely, sitting in a chair across from him.
He looked at her; she was already dressed for the evening in a sapphire blue gown with a sky blue diploidion draped over one shoulder, fastened at her waist with a sapphire pin. Gold bobs set with the same stones dangled from her ears, and her hair had been curled about her face with a hot iron and then piled into a loose knot on the top of her head. It was a simple style by comparison with that of most Roman women, but it was elaborate for her, and the transformation it worked was impressive.
“You look beautiful,” he said in Latin, and at the word pulcher she flushed deeply, pink color flooding into the olive toned skin of her cheeks and neck.
“Thank you,” she said.
Brettix held out the necklace he had found and said, “You lost this at the paddock. I was afraid to leave it there, one of the workmen might have picked it up and kept it.”
“So you brought it all the way here tonight,” Lucia said wonderingly, accepting it. “How thoughtful. You could have kept it until our next lesson, you didn’t have to go to so much trouble.”
“I thought you might need it,” Brettix mumbled unconvincingly, unable to meet her eyes.
A woman came through the atrium briskly and then stopped short, her eyes widening alarmingly when she saw the two young people sitting together.
Both stood instantly, as if called to attention.
“Lucia!” Drucilla Scipio said, aghast. “What in the name of the furies is going on here? Who is this man?”
Brettix could see that this was Lucia’s mother. She was about forty and dressed far more richly than her daughter, but the resemblance was marked.
“This is Brettix, who has been giving me riding lessons. He came to return a piece of jewelry that I misplaced at the stables,” Lucia said, striving for a calmness in her tone that she did not feel.
Her mother’s dark gaze went to the necklace in her hand. “That barbarian trinket! I’m sure that senile old hag put a curse on it. He should have buried it as an offering with the rest of the trash his people throw into those shafts they’ve dug. As if you could reach the gods by burrowing directly into the underworld. They’re all such children. Who is that goddess they’re always praying to, the one who is supposed to assure them final victory over us?”
“Andrasta,” Lucia said quietly, surprised that her mother knew so much about the local religion, which Drucilla regarded as a collection of infantile fantasies.
“Yes, well, she’d better look sharp, their victory seems a long way off to me. And tell this one here to take that thing away. I don’t want it in the house.”
Lucia glanced at Brettix. He couldn’t understand fully what her mother was saying, of course, but the older woman’s waspish tone was obvious.
“I want it, and Father said I could keep it,” Lucia said firmly. “It was kind of Brettix to return it.”
“Your father indulges you too much. And why do you have this man in here? He’s a servant, Lucia, you should have seen him in the kitchen. If you had to see him at all.” Drucilla examined the hulking Celt with distaste. “Why are they all so big?” she asked no one in particular. “And all that wild hair is so unattractive, he looks like a brigand.”
“He’s the horse trainer, mother, the one Ariovistus brought back from Magiolagos. I’m sure father told you about him.”
“Let’s go, Brettix,” Lucia said, her voice trembling. She led the way back to the kitchen and then ordered everyone else out, turning to him when the rest of the servants had departed.
“I’m so sorry about my mother,” she said quietly in Celtic. “No wonder you hate us so much.”
Her expression was miserable, her kohl rimmed eyes brimming with tears.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told her gently. “Whatever she said, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does,” she whispered. “It matters to me.”
The door to the alley burst open and a slave boy came through it, his arms loaded with logs. His expression changed when he saw Lucia and Brettix, and he stammered, “Excuse me, mistress, I was just bringing these in for the fire in the triclinium.”
“Go on,” Lucia said, nodding for him to pass through the room. When he had left she said tersely to Brettix, “There’s no privacy in this house, it’s like living in the middle of the forum on market day.”
“I should go,” Brettix said, backing away from her.
“Don’t leave yet,” she said.