For Life or Until (Love and Warfare Series Book 1)

by Anne Garboczi

  Sweat collected on her palms as the foreign place hedged her in. She forced herself to breathe. The entrance to one room hung open, its curtain swishing in the wind. “What room’s that?”

  “The tablinum, my office.” He took her hand. “I need to show you the household accounts there so that when I leave next week, you’ll be able to complete them.”

  “Leave?” She grabbed for his other hand. He couldn’t leave her here, not in this stifling prison surrounded by who knew what.

  “Just for three weeks. Trade plan business in Germania.”

  Her back went as stiff as his cuirass. She dropped her voice. “Please, don’t.”

  “Have to.” He wrapped his arm around her.

  Half closing her eyes, she steeled herself not to rip away. She didn’t care that she was in a foreign town crawling with filth. Didn’t care that no village or family supported her here and even the trees grew unfamiliar leaves. Didn’t care that she would be all alone, without him. Tears welled in her eyes. “While you’re gone, can you talk to your legate or whoever it is you work for about a transfer to Britannia?”

  “I just got here. Requesting any transfer would look irresponsible.”

  “Oh.” She stared at the purple tile beneath her feet that twisted in the image of a nine-headed monster.

  “It’s for the Empire.” He smiled at her as he caressed his hand across her back.

  A lone tear dribbled down her nose. She didn’t want the Empire. She wanted him. The metal of his armor scratched her skin as she stepped out of the circle of his arms.

  Ness knelt by the money box in the tablinum and tried one key after another. Like every other day of the last six weeks, the metal grated but refused to budge. She wiped sweat from her brow and shifted to the ledger on the stool beside her. She stared, yet again, at the blur of numbers, foreign abbreviations, and smudges.

  Before Aquilus had left, he’d handed her this ledger. He’d told her to complete the household accounts, take care of some business at a villa, restock for the slaves, and more. She winced.

  She knew how to read Latin, more or less, but numbers? How was she supposed to do anything without the key to the money box? She cast a longing gaze outside where bees circled flowering herbs in the peristyle. Her Britain transplants also sat in that rectangular garden, but the weeping things slumped forward, withering in the heat.

  Quiet as the mice that scurry around grain bins, the porter moved through the grass in the uncovered courtyard. She’d already asked for his help and he’d played ignorant.

  Slumping further, she stared at the shapes of the symbols. Aquilus’ “omega” looked like a small bird waiting to fly away. What did “XI” mean?

  “Here, Mistress.” A lad of maybe twelve stood in the doorway. He extended a rotten pear splayed on an oversized plate.

  She stared at the pear. “What about bread?”

  “The housekeeper used the last scoop of grain yesterday morning.”

  She glanced toward the money box. An attentive husband would have realized his wife couldn’t do household accounts without the key. She turned to the boy. “What have you had to eat?”

  “Cabbage.”

  “You need more food than that. Where’s the housekeeper?”

  The boy pointed to the outlying kitchen.

  She marched by him and, still holding the plate, the boy followed. The tiles pounded under her feet.

  Heat rose from the clay oven in the kitchen, filling the room with smoke. The housekeeper sat near it, her squat knees spread apart, hands in what looked like the remains of a pastry as she spoke to a young woman.

  The woman, who dangled a child from one arm, cried. “But he’s got to have milk.” The poor babe shrieked.

  “Feed him then.” The housekeeper ran her finger around the dish and then stuck the whole appendage in her mouth.

  “I’m sick, I tell you. I have no milk for the child.” The smoky haze cleared for a moment. The woman’s eyelids puffed out from her pallid face.

  The housekeeper shrugged. “Providing food’s the mistress’ job now.”

  “That savage?” The young woman might wear the attire of a slave, but she certainly knew how to radiate disdain.

  Ness coughed.

  Both women whipped about. The young woman’s hands trembled and red crept up her face, but the housekeeper placed her thick fingers on her hips.

  “Where is the key to the money box?” Ness pointed back across the garden hedges.

  The housekeeper shrugged. “What would I know of a key, Domina?”

  “You ran this house for over a year while Aquilus worked in Britannia. Don’t tell me you did that without money.”

  “Why don’t you have one?” The housekeeper shoved her dull hair behind her ear with sticky fingers.

  “You don’t have to hate me. I’m only trying to help.” Ness looked at the young woman.

  With a glare, the woman shifted her babe higher in her arms. Red rimmed the pitiful child’s eyes.

  No babe starved under her watch. Swatting away the smoke, Ness stood to her full height. “Come with me.”

  The housekeeper and the lad followed after her as she marched into the tablinum. There stood the box, as unyielding as ever. She kicked the iron hinges that bound the cedar wood into its boxed prison. The useless keys rattled on her belt. She glanced to the atrium where a hole in the roof let water down into the shallow pool below. What if she climbed to the top of the roof and dropped the box through the hole? Surely then those hinges would give way.

  Sweat collected on her neck beneath her loose hair as she glanced over the shelves of scrolls and table covered with wax tablets. She’d searched this room two score times in the last weeks and not discovered a key. Glancing to the atrium, she calculated the distance from clay-tiled roof to the gleaming pool.

  What if she broke the roof? Perhaps this box had remained in the Paterculi familia for generations and her husband would not wish to see it smashed.

  Ness shook her head. She couldn’t let a babe starve. Aquilus would understand.

  Her knee hit the tile by the box as she dropped to the floor. She looked up at the lad. “Help me lift.”

  The boy seized the other side.

  Digging her hands into the metalwork, she braced her legs. “Ready?”

  The lad nodded.

  “Here goes.” With a mighty shove, she forced her legs up. Her arms felt as if they would tear from their sockets as the box balanced between them. The weight yanked at her fingers. She gasped for breath and struggled to keep the thing high.

  With a cry, the lad fell, feet twisting under him. As his end tilted, the box tore from her hand. With a mighty crack, it slammed against the boy’s leg.

  She gasped. Grabbing the circular handle, Ness pulled on the box.

  The others merely watched. The boy whimpered.

  “Help me. The boy’s hurt.” Gasping for air, Ness strained against the weight.

  The housekeeper wrapped one squat hand around the other handle. The box shifted.

  Straightening up, Ness pushed sweaty locks out of her face. “Bring me bandages and two straight sticks. Tell the porter to find an ax or sledgehammer or something and crack open that box.”

  The housekeeper crossed her arms. “The master wouldn’t approve of tampering with his box.”

  “If the master deigned to come home once in a while, then perchance he’d have the right to an opinion.” She knelt over the boy. The gash on his leg had stopped bleeding, but his ankle twisted strangely. She probed the area with her fingers. A bump swelled around the bone. Ness gritted her teeth. Broken.

  Tears glistened in the lad’s eyes. He dug his fingernails into the floor grout. Face screwing up, he groaned.

  Reaching down, she touched his cheek. “I’ll be right back and set the bone. Then the pain will get better.”

  A tear slid down the bridge of his nose. “Promise?”

  “Promise.” She sped through the doorway. The recalcitrant po
rter stood in the atrium, clutching sticks and a bandage. Seizing them from him, she swept back toward the open tablinum.

  “Ness,” a voice called from the back courtyard.

  She spun. Her breath caught. The stucco of the main house’s arched doorway framed Aquilus’ figure, his tunic still covered with the dust of the journey, his helmet and scale armor slung over one arm. “Aquilus.”

  Placing the armor aside under the storage portico, Aquilus moved forward. His sturdy sandals smashed against the tile as he entered the house. He swept her into his arms and smiled at her. The sharp edges of his armor dug into her as his dark eyes lighted up the way she’d remembered.

  Ness groaned. She’d made a disaster of the accounts, now a babe starved and a boy cried in pain from a broken leg. They needed to tear up these wretched ‘go to Rome’ orders and return to a post in Camulodunum. Aquilus spent most of his time in Germania anyway, so it’s not as if the Empire needed him here.

  Huffing, the housekeeper stomped across the atrium. Like a snake, she went right to Aquilus. “We’ve had no bread, master, and a child cries for lack of milk.”

  The housekeeper hadn’t seemed so concerned about the child a quarter hour before.

  Aquilus turned his head.

  “If you had let me take care of the household accounts as before, none of this would have happened.” The housekeeper emphasized her words with a rotund hand.

  He looked at Ness. “Is this true?”

  “Yes, because you didn’t give me the key to the money box. I have a porter prying it open at the moment, and a boy’s broken his leg. So, if you’d like to rescue the porter and help me set a bone, you’re just in time.” She rested one hand on Aquilus’ chest as she eyed the staves the porter had brought. They looked too long for binding the lad’s leg. She might need a knife.

  The sunshine in Aquilus’ face faded swiftly, leaving the cold winter of garrison barracks. “What makes you think you can set a leg? And it’s no difficult feat to ask the housekeeper for the key.”

  “I’ve done it with horses a dozen times. Cedric first showed me when Kingcup stumbled two winters ago.” She pressed her lips together. She shouldn’t have taken Kingcup on that barge. The poor mare had come down with the fever and retched until her insides clung to her ribs before she died.

  Aquilus beat her to the open doorway. He glanced down at the boy and motioned to the porter. “Send for a physician.” He picked the ledger up. “You’re saying nothing’s been completed since I left?”

  “You didn’t give me the key, so unless you wanted me to take up burglarizing patricians’ villas….” She knelt over the boy. Since Aquilus had entered, the boy had ceased groaning, but he clenched his teeth. She felt for the right spot on the bone.

  “I told the housekeeper to give it to you,” Aquilus said, more matter-of-factly than he should given the broken bone and starving babe.

  Ness glanced at the doorway. The squat housekeeper filled the lower half with her body. “What’s your justification?”

  “You didn’t ask.” The woman crossed her arms.

  Liar. “I asked.” The breeze flushed the putrid smell of the streets into Ness’ nostrils as she examined the lad’s leg.

  “I’ve been with the familia twenty years. Are you suggesting that I would subvert the mistress of this house?” The woman directed her words to Aquilus, who bent over the figures.

  Working her fingers across the boy’s flesh, Ness found the break.

  Aquilus turned and highlighted a portion of the ledger with the edge of his hand. “The numbers here are wrong.”

  “You expected them to be right? I’m a farmer, not a domina.” She took a firm grip on the boy’s ankle and steadied his leg with her other. “Now hold the boy’s leg for me.”

  “You can’t just order me.”

  “You’d prefer the boy never walks again?”

  “Or you wait for a Hippocratic bound physician rather than attempt a blundering patch-up affair.” A lotus tree rose outside the window behind Aquilus, but he spoke as brusquely as if he stood in a barracks.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “My work is not blundering, and a child’s in pain.” With a yank and a gasp from the boy, she straightened the leg.

  The lad’s chest quivered. She laid a hand on his shaking ribs. “It’s all right. The worst is over.”

  With a smile for the boy and the exact opposite for her husband, she placed the staves on either side of the boy’s leg and started wrapping. “By next full moon, you’ll be good as new.”

  “Do you not know how to sum?” Aquilus’ voice carried across the space separating them. “Look here, under the grain bill. The numbers are run into the villa expenses and here. Is this stain an IX or an IV?”

  “If I knew, there wouldn’t be a stain. Can you open the money box? The babe cries from hunger.” Standing, she extended her hand to the boy.

  Aquilus raised his eyebrows in an unfriendly shrug, but he set the ledger down and inserted a key in the money box. “This is a significant amount of denarii. If you’d been careful with it, there wouldn’t be a babe starving.”

  “Well, there is, and you could take a little more interest in people.” Ness scooped up the extra bandages. A crooked break ran across the colorful floor tiles where the money box had landed.

  “I have more important things to do.”

  “More important than helping people survive?” She let go of the boy’s hand. The staves clunked against the floor as he took a wobbly step toward the door.

  “There’s more to survival than bread.” Aquilus gestured across the tablet-strewn table. “The province in Germania is in dire need of trade reform.”

  She averted her gaze. She had people to help, even though they hated her. As for this husband of hers, he obviously cared more about foreign wars than her or the slaves in his household.

  “Domina.”

  She grimaced. Did he know the Latin title irritated her? Domina. It signified a married woman, but it had no flavor. When the housekeeper called her that she felt like she’d lost herself and was just some Roman man’s wife. When he used the title, it sounded worse, as if he asserted preeminence.

  He handed the money to her and she moved to the doorway.

  “Ness.” He caught her hand.

  She twisted back.

  His forehead moist from the Mediterranean air, he smiled at her and pulled her closer. His hand surrounded hers, dark skin against light. He ran his fingers through the ends of her free-falling hair.

  “What about a welcome home?” He played with the weave design of her belt, touching the spot where the household keys hung. With a smile, he slipped the money box key on the hook alongside the other keys.

  These past weeks had stretched out in dismal loneliness, the stone walls built to keep robbers out forming a seal as bleak as any prison cell. Tears formed in Ness’ eyes. “You’re weeks late and you didn’t even write.”

  “I missed you.” He launched the words like the spring breeze that tugs at the clothes and face, begging one to frolic.

  “Why do you go?” Could there be an answer to that question, a reason large enough to justify leaving one’s wife alone in a foreign land?

  “I told you, Germanian trade plan.” He touched her other hand with his, traced the veins on her ink-stained skin.

  She touched him back a little. Did he have any idea how charming he was? She hoped not.

  “Another year of work, and I’ll finish it.” He fastened his gaze on her face. He looked at her like he would never stop, looked at her like he loved her.

  Her frustration started melting irrationally fast. “Then what?”

  He laughed. “I’ll obtain a promotion, find a new way to serve the Empire, and someday be consul.”

  She jerked back. “Consul! Isn’t that second to the Emperor?”

  Aquilus tightened his arms around her, holding her close. She could see her reflection in his eyes. He ran his finger down the slope of her temple. “For pr
estige, yes, but a governor has more real power. I want a province governorship too, only you have to be consul first.”

  She stared at him. “You think you can do anything?”

  He laughed again. Releasing her, he flicked his fingers against the tail of her belt. “Of course.”

  She sighed. Oh, for a man like Cedric who contented himself with a full fall crop, rather than this Alexander the Great who needed to conquer the world.

  “Did you want to tell me the rest of that story with the horse that broke its leg and Cedric? I know you miss your brother.” Aquilus caressed her shoulder.

  For the thousandth time, Cedric was not her brother. If she said that aloud, though, she’d have to explain who Cedric actually was. “No, it was a lethargy-inspiring story anyway.” She pried herself from Aquilus’ embrace to go buy milk.

  Chapter 4

  Ness eyed the heavy door. Inlaid silver and gold mixed with extravagant purple on the acacia frame. The porter, who had sullenly accompanied her across the city, raised his hand and knocked.

  Though the slave boy still needed constant nursing, this morning before Aquilus went to the courts and the Senate, he’d asked her to attend this gathering of noble women. Ness touched her hair, which felt strange bound up in Roman style. Her linen stola bunched at the belt, hanging crookedly across her Roman tunica.

  A meek-faced man swung the door open and motioned her inside. A lavish atrium opened up to many doorways covered by ornate curtains. The man bowed deeply and swept a curtain aside.

  The doorframe felt cold to her touch as Ness forced one foot into the dimness within the noisy room. Eight or nine women sat on couches while slaves served food.

  “Domina Paterculi?” A younger woman stood, her curled hair piled so high her neck must ache. Heavy jewels tugged at the woman’s ears and silk and gold shimmered across her entire body. Cosmetics thick enough to whitewash a tomb caked the woman’s face.