The Lion and the Lark (25 page)

CHAPTER nine

     Lucia vomited violently into the basin her mother held and then fell back against the bed.  Drucilla dabbed at her daughter’s forehead worriedly, then wiped Lucia’s lips with the same cloth.

     “When did this start?” Drucilla asked.

     “During the night,” Lucia whispered, trying to look as ill as possible.  She didn’t add that she had carefully mixed salt and water and wood ash into a potion and swallowed the noxious brew before her mysterious ailment began.

     “You look green,” Drucilla said.  “I’m going to tell your father to send that Greek here, I’ve heard he’s still at the fort tending Dolabella’s pregnant wife.”

     Lucia sat up.  “No mother, please.  I don’t want him poking me, I dislike that man.  His accent makes me nervous.”

     “He has a Greek accent, which is very pleasant to the ear.  You would do well to cultivate some Greek friends, they have made advancements in philosophy and medicine and mathematics which put the rest of the world to shame.”

     “That didn’t prevent us from conquering them,” Lucia said darkly, stifling a yawn.

     “So they are not soldiers,” Drucilla said, shrugging as she filled a bedside carafe with water from a jug.

     Lucia stared.  “You should study history, mother.  The great Alexander was a Greek and he conquered the known world.”

     “He was a Macedonian, which is an entirely different thing,” Drucilla said irritably.  “His father was a barbarian and his mother was a crazy woman who cast spells with snakes and told him he was really the son of their god Hercules.”

     “I guess it didn’t hurt him,” Lucia said dryly.

     “Don’t argue with me, Lucia.  I was speaking of the civilized present day Greeks, not the ancient warriors, and you know it.  I don’t know why you have to debate every point with me like Cicero holding forth in the forum...” She stopped talking as Lucia was sick once more, grabbing the basin from the stand and holding it under her nose.

     “I’m sending for Pallas,” Drucilla said.

     Lucia grabbed her wrist as she moved away.  “I will not see him, Mother.”

     “Lucia, be sensible.  Who knows what kind of fevers these Celts are passing around?”

     “I don’t have a fever.  I am merely sick at my stomach and it will pass,” Lucia replied weakly, wishing that she had consumed just a little less wood ash.

     There was a knock at her door and her father entered, wearing his loose

sleeping robe.

     “Ariovistus tells me that you are ill,” Scipio said to his daughter, eyeing her narrowly.

     “She’s been vomiting since well before dawn,” Drucilla said.  “I want Pallas to take a look at her.”

     Scipio studied the slight figure in the bed. 

     “Leave me alone with her,” he said to his wife.

     Drucilla looked at him in surprise.

     “I want to have a few words with my daughter in privacy,” Scipio said to Drucilla, widening his eyes.

     Drucilla shook her head, muttering to herself, and swept out of the room.

     Lucia watched her father approach her bed and then sit down in the chair next to it.

     “This came upon you rather suddenly, didn’t it?” Scipio asked her archly.

     “Yes.”

     “Fortuitous timing, wouldn’t you say?”

     Lucia didn’t reply.

     He looked around the room.  “I noticed that you haven’t done any packing.”

     “I was waiting for you to tell my mother that I was leaving,” Lucia shot back at him evenly.  “Apparently she doesn’t know anything about my imminent departure.”

     Scipio folded his arms and sat back in his chair.  “I didn’t tell her because I just learned that the major pass leading south to Londinium is blocked with snow.  There will be no traveling through it until the weather improves.”

     His daughter’s expression changed as she reacted to that piece of information.

     “That’s right,” her father said, nodding.  “You staged this little demonstration for nothing.  I hope that whatever emetic you used will not do any permanent damage.”

     Lucia folded her hands on the sheet, not looking at him.

     “And now it seems your horse trainer has disappeared,” Scipio added in a wondering tone.

     Lucia met his eyes reluctantly.

     “I don’t suppose you have any knowledge of that,” her father said sarcastically.

     “Why don’t you ask Larsendt?  He seems to know everything that goes on around here.”

     “Let’s leave your bodyguard out of this.  I just want you to know that I am posting that boy as a runaway slave, with a full description and a reward offered for his return.”

     “You won’t find him on your own, and the Iceni won’t turn him in no matter what you offer.  Honor is more important to them than any amount of money.”

     “Quite the defender of the natives, aren’t you?  Do you know how many Roman lives they have cost us?”

     “They’re fighting for their own country, as you would do if an outside invader conquered Rome.”

     Scipio held up his hand.  “I am not going to debate politics with a lovesick teenager besotted with the rippling muscles of a hulking, wild haired Celt.  I should have known better than to take him on, none of those people are to be trusted.”

     “What about Ariovistus?  You trust him.”

     “He’s a Trinovante!  They have always been our allies.”

     “They’re Celts first.”

     “What is that supposed to mean?” Scipio demanded.

     “None of the Britons are happy that we are here, Father.  Don’t you feel that?  Doesn’t it bother you?”

     Scipio shrugged.  “I’m used to it.  I’ve been a senior officer with an occupying power all of my adult life.  The strongest are often not the best loved.”

     “Is that what you tell yourself?” Lucia said disgustedly, turning her head away from him.

     “Now you listen to me,” Scipio said, his temper rising.  “Your mother may be taken in by your histrionics but I am not.  I don’t know where that runaway has gone, but you probably do, and if you think that you are going to sneak off and meet him someplace you are sadly mistaken.  You are confined to this house, you will go nowhere.  And if I find him, I will see that he is charged with stuprum.”

     “You can‘t do that!  He hasn’t done anything!”

     “He has offended ME!” Scipio shouted.  “He put his hands on my daughter, a woman engaged to be married to a respectable husband!  And when I get MY hands on that
sicarius
  he will wish that he never met you.  Crucifixion, I assure you, is not an easy way to die.”

     Lucia gripped the top of the sheet, her knuckles going white with tension.

     “I hate you,” she whispered.

     “Then join the group,” Scipio said, making a sweeping gesture.  “According to you, everyone else hates me too, so it will not damage my reputation to tie that boy to a cross and make an example of him for the whole native population.”

     “And have everyone know that your little girl was playing around with a  drooling barbarian?” Lucia said challengingly, trying a new tactic.

     She knew she had scored a hit when her father’s face turned purple and he was too furious to speak.

     The door to the hall opened and Drucilla swept in, her eyes darting between her daughter and her husband.

     “What is going on in here?” she demanded of Scipio.  “I could hear you from the kitchen.”

     Scipio rose from the chair abruptly and stalked to the window, ignoring the question.

     “Do you imagine that all this yelling is helping her?” Drucilla asked, speaking to her husband’s back.

     After a long pause Scipio turned around to face both them.  He had almost regained his usual composure.

     “I think that Lucia and I understand one another,” he said in a strained voice, and walked out of the bedroom.

     Lucia punctuated his departure with another grab for the basin, and her mother took the place her father had vacated in the chair.

     Bronwen was folding clothes into a chest in her bedroom when Claudius appeared in the doorway.  He swept his cloak from his shoulders and tossed it onto the bed, pulling her into his arms.

     “Oh, you smell wonderful,” he said, nuzzling her neck.  “All morning I was thinking about last night, until I just couldn’t stand it any more.”  He kicked the door closed behind him and kissed her cheek, then her nose, then her mouth.

     “What did you say to get away?” Bronwen asked, as the midday sun streamed through the window, casting a shaft of pale wintry light across the floor.

     “I told Ardus I had something to do at home,” he said.  He grinned.  “I just didn’t tell him what it was.”

     “I think Ardus knows,” Bronwen said, as he undressed her, kissing each part of her body that he uncovered, dropping her garments on the floor.  Then he stripped quickly, his clothes following hers in a scarlet shower.  When he was naked she reached for him and they dropped back together onto the bed, his body enveloping hers.

     He kissed her again, and she responded so ardently that he raised his head, looking down at her.  He saw the coppery hair fanned out like strands of silk on the sheet, the lips moist from his kisses, the light eyes already half closed with passion. 

     She reacted to his slightest caress like a pile of kindling touched with fire.

     “What?” she said, puzzled by his hesitation.

     “Nothing.  I like to look at you when you’re...”  He stopped.

     “Hungry?” she suggested, and he laughed softly.

     “Yes, hungry,” he said, his smile fading as she traced with a slender finger the angry ridge of tissue that covered his recent shoulder wound.  It was still slightly swollen and would gradually fade to a pink-white scar, like the others.  She lifted up suddenly and kissed it.  He held her head against him, his hand lost in the mass of her red gold hair, until he could no longer endure the delicate feathering of her lips on her skin and pushed her down to the bed.

     She whimpered with pleasure as he slid his hands beneath her and pulled her up against him; she wrapped her legs around his hips, sighing as he made love to her, straining restlessly under him.

     “What do you want?” he finally said thickly.  “Tell me.”

     She moaned in response, digging her fingers into his shoulders.

     “Say it,” he gasped urgently, barely able to speak.

     Bronwen whispered into his ear and he drove into her wildly.  They raced to a headlong conclusion that left them both drained and drowsy, half asleep before the bedroom fire, which burned all day long.  They lay together in dreamy lassitude until a trumpet sounded distantly and Claudius stirred, moving to the edge of the bed.

     “That’s the
apparitor
 marking the noon hour,” he said, reaching for his tunic on the floor.  “I have to get back.”

     “Don’t go just yet,” Bronwen murmured, sitting up and clutching his arm.

     He shrugged into the garment and then bent over the bed to kiss the tip of her nose.

     “Duty calls,” he said.

     “I wish you weren’t in the army,” she said, pulling the sheet up to her chin and watching as he donned the rest of his clothes.

     “If I weren’t in the army we would never have met,” he said logically, buckling on his weapons belt.  “I wouldn’t have sailed to Britain on a pleasure cruise.”

     “Why not?  We have such a bracing winter climate.”

     He chuckled.

      “You were supposed to leave for Londinium today,” Bronwen said suddenly, remembering.  “What did you tell Scipio?”

     “I didn’t have to tell him anything.  He received word last night that the southern pass is blocked with snow, but the delay shouldn’t be long.  They’re sending a team out to clear it today.”  He favored her with a sidelong smile.  “But I did put in a request for joint domestic housing for the two of us in Londinium.”

     “What did the general say?’”

     “He hasn’t seen it yet.  I gave it to Ardus.”

     “I can imagine what he said,” Bronwen observed gloomily.

     “Never mind what he said,
mea voluptas
.  You just worry about keeping me happy.”

     “I think I know how to do that,” she replied, favoring him with a catlike smile.

     “Hold that thought,” he said, swinging his cloak over his shoulder and blowing her a kiss with his free hand.  “I will see you tonight.”