With a guttural scream, Eric grabbed another handful of bones and raised his arm. Aquilus seized Eric’s hand. Why did he get the feeling he would be making his son read Horace hundreds of times before the boy reached manhood?
Stepping forward, Ness grabbed both boys. Wryn quieted immediately at her touch. “I’m ready now.”
Aquilus’ lips twitched as he watched her cast overeager glances toward the door. “You don’t want to pack?”
Ness sighed and let the kicking Eric slip down. “I suppose I have to.”
She looked so beautiful standing there, a disgruntled expression on her face. His heart pounded faster. “Ecce, if you don’t want to, don’t. I can buy anything you need when we get there.”
Then Ness smiled—smiled at him. That hadn’t happened in many weeks. Perhaps convincing her to look on him with favor wasn’t as hopeless a cause as Thermopylae.
In less than an hour, they’d mounted horses.
Aquilus cinched his breastplate tighter as he, Ness, and the twins walked off the plank into Camulodunum. Sand crunched under his feet and, in front of him, the sun sank toward the square ridges of Legate Vocula’s dwelling. “I need to see the legate. Do you mind waiting?”
Ness shrugged.
“I can find you lodging first if you’d rather. The garrison owns a few officer houses.”
Ness shook her head and crashed on an abandoned barrel. “I’ll wait.”
Leaving her, Aquilus wound his way through familiar buildings. A few storage crates had been moved and one barracks boasted a new roof, but little else had changed.
When he came to the officer’s stone complex, a legionary showed him into Vocula’s office.
Underneath a capstone archway, Legate Vocula sat at a table, fingering a missive that bore Lucius’ seal. Vocula startled. “Tribune Paterculi? I’m… surprised.”
Why? Lucius had written that he was coming. Aquilus brusquely inclined his head. “I presume the governor told you my purpose in coming?”
Legate Vocula coughed, highlighting the narrow angles of his gray face. “Yes.”
“Can I meet with you tomorrow to explain how Britannia will be served by my trade plan?”
“Still protecting the natives? Very noble of you, I’m sure.” Legate Vocula parted his teeth in an odd smile. “But I’ve been busy. I might need a few weeks to consider.”
Aquilus suppressed a groan. Efficiency had been Vocula’s only virtue and now Vocula stalled the same as Lucius? “I’ll go back to Germania then. Write the governor when you’re ready to consider.”
Legate Vocula raised a hand to halt him. “I have a better idea. The legion is conducting an extensive dock project half a day’s journey to the west. If you could supervise it, just for a day or two, I could catch up on administrative work and have time to consider your plan.”
Aquilus gave Vocula a skeptical look. He scanned the man’s immaculate table and organized shelves. Vocula used to complain that his tribunes were lazy if their documentation came in more than two shifts late. Also, decurions, or perhaps centurions, supervised ship loading, not legates. “You want me to supervise a ship loading?”
“Consider it a favor from one officer to another.”
Aquilus narrowed his eyes. Was Vocula growing so old as to lose his senses? Still, Lucius had insisted that he get Vocula’s approval. “Very well.”
When Aquilus exited to the street outside the garrison, the chill river mist struck his face. Men bustled across the docks, backs weighed down by crates and bundles. A few paces away from the river, Ness sat surrounded by overturned casks.
Gold hair whipping in the fishy breeze, she gripped Eric in her arms and struggled to wrench a piece of refuse from his hands. Wryn whimpered from his seat one cask away.
Stepping over rotting wood, Aquilus reached for Wryn. As he touched Wryn, the boy reached back.
Ness clamped her hand down on Wryn’s arm, fire in her eyes. “I’ll get him.” She shoved between them, blocking his access to the child with her shoulder.
Aquilus scowled. “I will hold my son.”
For one moment, she went rigid, her gaze as defiant as Caratacus when he met Emperor Claudius’ invading force. Then, with as much distaste as if he’d asked to murder the child, she stepped aside and released Wryn. “Suit yourself. That’s what you always do anyway.”
Wryn stopped whimpering when he took him in his arms. Holding the child, Aquilus led the way to the garrison-owned dwellings. As they followed broad streets to the fortification, a few merchants called out wares.
Wryn pointed eagerly to a fisherman swinging a line, an old woman strumming a lute, and a wolfish-looking dog. “What’s it? What’s it?”
Aquilus looked at the building the boy pointed at. He laughed. “That’s a tavern, Son. Paterculis stay away from those.”
In a few moments, they reached the garrison again. He exchanged some words and money with a centurion to gain a key to the house.
Though the house lay outside the garrison fortifications, flat brick walls lent a distinctive Roman flavor. Wryn still in his arm, Aquilus twisted the key.
The brick exterior gave place to square walls, wood furniture, and a bit of dust. He stepped out of the entranceway, letting Ness enter. “Will it do?”
A strand of her hair blew in the wind as she looked around. She walked to the next room where east-facing windows illuminated a yew wood couch.
“Down!” Eric drove his little foot into her stomach. Letting out a gasp of air, Ness doubled over and the boy struggled free of her arms.
“Eric, you don’t act like that.” Voice stern, Aquilus stepped to the boy and knelt to his level. He clamped a hand on Eric’s shoulder.
The boy burst into tears.
“You have no right to correct him.” Ness snatched Eric up and pressed him against her chest with both arms. The boy lay his tear-stained face on her shoulder and subsided.
“He’s my son.”
“No, he isn’t. You were giving him away to Cassius.”
He hadn’t chosen which boy, or even wished to agree to Cassius’ request, despite Ness’ accusations. Casting his gaze to the plaster ceiling, he stood. Before the twins grew too many years older, he would be imparting some civilization to his barbaric sons, even if Ness preferred her children assaulting her.
Chapter 23
Mist and rain invaded the garrison-owned house as Ness shoved the door open. She let Wryn slip from her arms and prayed Eric hadn’t done anything too disastrous while in Cornelia’s care.
Blinking rain out of weary eyes, Ness scraped soggy autumn leaves off her boots and checked under her cloak to ensure the hardbought scroll remained undamaged. Her breath came heavier as she fingered the parchment. Firm black letters outlined the divorce agreement to end a confarreatio marriage, her name and Aquilus’ both there in writing. The only thing the scroll lacked was a signature.
She pressed her tongue against her teeth and willed her heart to stop racing. She couldn’t even sign for another four months. Why had she hired the scribe to draw up the parchment?
Ness threw herself on the red wool covering the couch and wished she didn’t know the answer to that question.
She feared she was losing her nerve, becoming just like those Roman women who would tolerate any injustice from a man as long as he made life financially easier, expressed some interest in his children, and spared her a few scraps of affection.
She didn’t care that Aquilus had spent the last evening before he left on Vocula’s mission playing with Wryn while she tended a retching and miserable Eric. Wryn didn’t just look like Aquilus, the boy even moved his hands the same way and tilted his chin at the same angle while making the exact same expression. Her heart twisted over itself just like last week when she’d seen them together.
Ness clenched the scroll, making a wet fingerprint on it. Aquilus had agreed to sell Eric. He’d do something else abominable to her or her children if she stayed. Shoving away all thoughts but sleep, she sank into the padde
d couch to catch a few moments of rest before Eric or Wryn inevitably created mischief.
A fitful sleep swept over her along with scattered dream images.
Wind blowing across her face. Sun making her skin almost gold. She reached out and clasped a dark hand. The sun glinted off Roman armor. “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia—where you are master, there will I be mistress.” She felt her mouth move with the Latin phrase.
Slapping her hand across her lips, she tried to stop herself. The words whipped out of her mouth, flung to the far reaches of the sky.
The blue sky turned dark. “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia.” The words howled in the wind as thunder gathered and rain fell. She huddled under her cloak hood, hands on her ears, but the noise heightened until it almost deafened her.
A heavy footstep sounded in Ness’ consciousness. She groaned and opened her eyes. “Cornelia?”
“You look like you saw a ghoul.” Cornelia flopped on a chair.
Ness grimaced.
“Bad dream?” Cornelia asked, mouth full of an unidentified substance.
Ness nodded.
Cornelia began tapping a melody on the armrest.
Clenching the couch’s edge, Ness tried to banish the memories of her wedding day. “Do you think dreams have significance?”
Rolling her eyes, Cornelia shoved deeper into the chair and crammed more food in her cheeks. “Messages from the gods? No. Your own wit and reason get you through this world, not some Mount Olympus dweller.”
Ness watched the poorly built plaster above Cornelia’s head rain one dust particle at a time.
“It’s like that philosopher said. Men happened into existence and since then they’ve reasoned their own paths through the world.”
A sound resembling a stampeding cattle herd started as the twins hurtled into the room. Eric jumped on Ness with a shout. She moved him away from the parts that hurt the worst, mostly her stomach, and rolled her eyes at Cornelia. “So, you trust the reason of men who just happened into existence?”
With a harrumph, Cornelia stalked away and, for an equally irrational reason, the twins ran after her. Ness reached for the wool by the couch. The tangled mess stared back at her. She twisted it, trying to make it fall in even ropes like Enni’s had. She’d sold one blanket so far, a small start for the business she intended to create.
For a moment, Ness closed her eyes. She saw those hands clasped again, just like in the dream. Ness squirmed on the couch. Her fingers brushed the divorce scroll. Was she making the right choice?
The babe rolled inside her.
“Can’t you grow faster?” As if he did not like censure, the child kicked back against the muscles of her stomach. He. The child must be a boy. She couldn’t bear a daughter.
Wincing, she pressed her hand against her swollen stomach that would soon leave no doubt of the truth.
She shifted her gaze to Aquilus’ shelf of scrolls, each one marked with the Paterculi eagle locked in combat with a raven. Signet ring pressed down in hot wax, the mark embedded in the molten stuff created that seal which meant property of Tribune Aquilus Salvius Paterculi, an unmistakable sign marking his own.
She felt like the seal had been stamped on her body, seared into her large and still growing midsection.
A key tumbled in the front door’s latch. Aquilus must have returned from Vocula’s mission.
The wool fell from her lap as she scrambled for a place to hide the scroll. Her gaze landed on the shelf. She stuffed the scroll in with hundreds of others. When had Aquilus found time to pack all those scrolls?
Soon, Aquilus’ footsteps sounded in the entranceway. The door’s hinges creaked and then he stood beneath the doorframe. “Good morrow.”
“Salve.” She kept her gaze on the wool, but her wits refused to focus on the intertwined thread. She couldn’t let his presence unsettle her or make her wish to forget that he’d tried to sell Eric. She couldn’t allow herself such weakness, but she always did.
As he crossed the room, he glanced down at the mass of already-finished rug covering her lap. “You did that?”
She nodded.
“Skillful work.” His voice held approval, something he rarely extended to her.
Ecce, now she remembered. The traditional Romans thought working wool the model employment for patrician women. Pity, she did so hate to do things he approved of.
“Is it for the boys?” Standing behind her, he sorted through scrolls.
She shook her head. “I’m selling it in town.”
A frown creased his mouth. “You’re not a tradeswoman.”
Oh, for a wall to beat her head against. “Bernice managed a shop once.”
“She’s from an equestrian family.”
“And that woman in Rome, the stout one, she managed her villa’s financial assets.” Ness pushed the rug off her legs.
“Managed. She didn’t get into the wine vats and tread the grapes. Besides, I don’t approve of everything that goes on in Rome these days. Back in the Roman Republic—”
Just her fortune, she’d married a Roman who thought that rule-filled, soul-crushing, women-subjugating Rome was too liberal.
She flopped back on the couch. Living with Aquilus was like camping on the wrong side of enemy lines. Though she did congratulate herself on her recent discovery that holding her tongue and doing whatever she wished behind his back was a much more effective, if significantly less satisfying, way of conducting business.
The ball of wool slipped off the rug, tumbling across the dusty floor as it unwound all her labor. She sprang from the couch.
Her fingers closed on the tumbling ball. Her back protested as she made to stand up again. All at once, she felt Aquilus’ gaze on her.
A puzzled expression in his eyes, he opened his mouth slowly, an unusual thing for him. “Are you carrying my child?”
Finally, he noticed. She’d begun to think she’d feel the pangs of birthing pains before he took his nose out of Germanian parchments long enough to realize the fact. “It surely isn’t anyone else’s.” She hurled the ball of wool back on the couch. “Unfortunately.”
His hands dropped to his sides. A look of wonder crossed his face.
He didn’t have to look so awed. What would he care if he was a father once over again?
“How long have you known?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Since the summer.”
He looked at her face, looked down to where the child grew, and looked back at her. His eyes filled with an emotion she couldn’t read. “You should have told me.”
Why? So, he’d not have to make the effort to pay the woman he’d got with child enough attention to realize what he’d done? She’d retched thrice a day for six weeks while living under the same roof as him without him noticing. “Yes, because that went so well last time.”
Grabbing her wool, she swept out of the room.
Aquilus flung himself off the horse, threw the reins to a handy auxiliary, and crossed the street to his own house. More stalling from Vocula and another five days supervising ship loading had not improved his temper.
A half-witted legionary could perform the job and Vocula couldn’t even have the ships loaded at the regular dock, but demanded he load them at a remote place half a day’s journey from town.
The dust of the road covered him as he pushed the door to his house open. Eric ran toward him screaming.
Swinging the boy up, he came face-to-face with Ness. Saddlebags hung over her shoulder. He blinked. “Where are you going?”
“To see my family.” Her stance radiated defiance.
He supposed that did make sense, but she could have told him rather than just disappearing. “How long will you be gone?”
Shrugging, she grabbed Eric out of his hands. “Mayhap a week. Mayhap two. It’s not like you’ll miss me.” Wryn trailed after her as she moved toward the door.
The morning sun glinted off the ring on her left-hand ring finger and she hadn’t mentioned divorce in months. Maybe this child wo
uld draw them together. Weren’t women supposed to be warmhearted when they had a babe? He’d missed the birth last time, but he’d be there this time.
He dropped his gaze to her midsection. “Is traveling safe at present?”
“Who are you worried about, me or your child?” She sounded cynical about the truth of either option.
“Both.” He gazed at her. He still couldn’t quite believe he had two sons, and now he was to have a third child? Would the child be a boy or a girl, dark like him or fair like Ness?
Who would this new person be? A soldier? A politician? Both? The babe would have to be a boy for that. He wished she’d wanted to tell him rather than making him stumble upon the fact.
Her voice broke his reverie. “Don’t worry. I’m not a Roman matron. I’m used to exertion.”
He gazed skeptically at the woman in front of him. She stood straight, feet spread in a mutinous stance that seemed strangely incongruent as the wind caught the skirt of her Celtic dress and molded it to her body, outlining the curve of the growing babe.
How could she be even more beautiful when she was with child? He didn’t know, but she was. As firmly as her eyes radiated purpose, she still didn’t look a prime candidate for horseback riding.
Yet, it was what she wanted, so he nodded his acceptance of her plan. “Have you procured guards yet? You are always free to take legionaries from the garrison.”
He indicated the guard house across the street with his thumb. Perhaps, after all, he did hope for a girl child. One that looked like Ness with the sunshine in her smiles when she was content, which Ness normally wasn’t.
“I don’t need guards.” Grabbing Wryn’s hand, she pushed past him.
“Wait.” Aquilus stepped in front of her on the cobblestone path. “It’s a day’s journey. Riding alone isn’t safe.”
“I’ll ride fast.” With a disgusted look heavenward, she kept moving.
“You’re taking guards.” He didn’t raise his voice, but she would obey him. He’d worked in this section of the country for a year and caught and tried many roadside ruffians during that time.
She shook her head. “I’m not arriving at my village like some aloof domina. This is my country. I can take care of myself.”
For Life or Until (Love and Warfare Series Book 1) Page 30