The Lion and the Lark (9 page)

     “I know you don’t want me, but you’re going to have me, in this house anyway,” he said tonelessly, rising.  “I’ll disturb you as little as possible, I’ll be away for most of the day anyway.  I assume you’ve brought your own servants with you?”

     Bronwen nodded.  “I asked to have Maeve come here with me from the general’s house, and also two of the Iceni girls who owe a tribal debt to my father.”
     “I’ll have a page from the barracks join the rest of the servants in the quarters at the back of the house,” he said.  “My personal effects have already been moved to the room next door.”

     They looked at one another.

     “Can you do this?” he asked her quietly.  “Do you understand that it will be difficult to keep up this...pretense?”

     “I understand that it will be difficult to pretend I have forgotten the long history of Roman oppression here and taken you into my bed,” she said tersely.  “But I can do what I must.”

     He looked at her for a long moment, then said,  “Very well.  I’ll leave you now and spend some time in the guest room off the triclinium, which I will use as my study.  I’ll return after you’re asleep.”

     Bronwen watched him go, his sword hilt flashing in the firelight as he went through the door.

     She noticed he had not left his weapons behind in the bedroom.

     Did he think she would run him through while he slept?  What was the point of this whole farcical wedding if the true Celtic plan was just to kill him?

     Bronwen got up and went to the chair where he had dropped his helmet and cloak.  She picked up the garment and ran it through her fingers.  It was triple weight wool, dyed deep red and trimmed with golden thread.  She wrapped it around herself and it dropped heavily to the floor, covering her bare feet.  She, like most of the Celtic women, was not short, but he topped her by several handsbreadths, which meant that for a Roman he was very tall indeed.

     Bronwen took off the cloak and replaced it where he had left it.

     The man was truly a puzzle.  He had behaved very well in a situation that would have allowed him to take full advantage of her if he had chosen to do so.  By contrast, she had conducted herself in a manner that it made her blush violently to recall. 

     Bronwen knew from the first moment she met the Roman that he desired her; the way he had looked at her outside Scipio’s house had left little doubt of that.  She had used that knowledge to taunt and humiliate him by standing naked before him and letting him feel the power her beauty exerted.

     Why had she done it?  They could have had the same conversation without her dramatic display of her body.

     She knew the answer and she didn’t like it.
     She was attracted to him.  She had taken the initiative to shock him and put him off so he wouldn’t come near her and test her resolve.

     Somehow Bronwen had known he would react as he did; there was a basic decency about him that had been apparent from the time they first met, no matter how much she denied it hotly and told herself that he was a Roman dog.

     Was it possible that this man was the exception to the rule, a career Roman soldier who saw the people his country had conquered as human beings rather than dirt under his feet?  She sensed confidence in him rather than arrogance, the satisfaction of achievement rather than an inborn feeling of superiority, and also a loneliness which spoke to her own.

     Bronwen crossed her arms on the fireplace mantel and closed her eyes, letting the warmth from the roaring blaze caress her legs through the thin silk gown.

     This was not how she had expected her life to go.  She’d been raised to think that she would be married off at the appropriate time to a prince of one of the other tribes, the Trinovantes or the Catuvellauni, perhaps the Belgae to the south.  She had remained a virgin well past the time when her friends were finding husbands and having children, waiting for her father, obsessed with the Roman occupation, to make the tribal alliance for which her wedding would be the seal.

     But this alliance was one she had never anticipated.  She had been married off to a prince, that was true, but a price of Italy, a favorite son of her people’s long time enemy.

     And now she had to live this lie in order to bring about his country’s loss of Britain.

     How had she ever wound up in such a situation?

     Bronwen moved back to the bed and climbed into it, wondering how long it would be before the Roman returned.

     But she was too tired to think about it for long.

     In just minutes, she slept.

     Claudius walked quietly down the hall toward the bedroom, noting the silence from the servants’ quarters and the low burning torches set in niches along the wall.  He had stayed in the study for a long time, trying to concentrate on the dispatches that needed his attention but instead thinking about the woman he had married only hours earlier.

     Would she stay the course, or had she slipped past the study while he pretended to work?  Had their short but pointed interchange driven her out the door?  Was she back with her father already, crying her eyes out and upsetting the delicate balance of the treaty?

     It was impossible to know.

     He opened the door and to his relief saw her ensconced in the bed, looking very small.  The fire had burned down and the room was getting cold, so he added two logs to the hearth before going to the side of the bed and gazing down at her.

     Her gorgeous hair fanned out under her head, and the sheet was drawn down to her waist, leaving her delicately rounded arms bare.  A sprinkling of pale brown freckles dusted her exposed throat, and the creamy skin there reminded him of how she had looked earlier when she stripped and confronted him.

     He turned away, pulling his pallet from under the bed and dropping it before the fire.  He took off his weapons belt and laid it at his side on the tiled floor, then stretched out full length and sighed deeply, staring moodily into the flames.

    He felt enervated, but his mind was racing madly and prevented the solace of sleep.

     He had to keep her calm and willing to continue with the arrangement, and that obviously meant keeping his hands off her.  He knew that her stripping for him had not been the seductive act of a strumpet, but the courageous act of a terrified girl who wanted to face down the thing she feared and have done with it.  The Iceni princess might be a Roman hater as well as a reluctant bride, but she was certainly no coward.

     All of which made him feel like the biggest bully on the training ground.  He had no taste for subjugation; he was at his best when able to meet a competent but faceless enemy on a level playing field.  He had always left when the battle was won and let others come in and set up the colonial system and work with the conquered.  This was the first time he’d been part of the military government of a defeated people, and now he had been ordered to live with one of them, to co-exist on a daily basis with someone who hated him fiercely.

     He had a strong feeling that hand to hand combat with the Phrygian horde would be an easier prospect.  He was no diplomat and he was no actor; he was a soldier.  To him, directness was a virtue and pretense an embarrassment.  He couldn’t purport to feel other than he did, so the only way to deal peacefully with the Celtic girl was to avoid her. 

     He planned to do that as much as possible.

     The girl rolled over and sighed, curling into a ball and shivering in her sleep.  Claudius got up and took his cloak from the chair, bringing it to the bed and dropping it over the sleeping girl.  As he tucked it under her chin he realized, with a dawning sense of amazement, that he still didn‘t know her name.

     Then he went back to his pallet and tried to go to sleep.

     Brettix shuffled along in his foot manacles, keeping his head down and hoping his face would be unrecognizable behind its full growth of beard.  The slave marketers who had captured him were a splinter group of the Catuvellauni who traded with the Romans and were regarded by their own people as little more than brigands.  They kept the columns moving, prodding their human goods with staves, and if they encountered resistance, whips.  The men and women for sale were herded into a huge shed in which a feeble fire, insufficient to combat the bone chilling cold, was burning.  But as the building filled up body heat began to warm the air, and by the time the first prospect was dragged unwillingly onto the elevated platform Brettix was sweating.

     The caller began to extol the virtues of the hulking Gaul who was up for sale.  Brettix, who was far back in the pack, had time to recall the series of events that had brought him to the slave market at Noviomagos, the “new land” on the coast of the
Oceanus Britannicus
  many leagues southwest of the Iceni territory.

     He had been left for dead after the skirmish at Drunemeton.  When he awoke on the field littered with bodies, pinned under a pile of corpses the dying warmth of which had saved his life, he realized that his comrades would have reported him as lost.  The head wound which had left him unconscious made him dizzy and disoriented for several days, during which time he was picked up and nursed by the slavetraders who put him on the block once his health was restored.  Healthy young Celtic males with broad backs brought a good price from Roman masters who were always looking for slaves, and nobody asked any questions.  

     Brettix hoped to keep it that way.  So far no one seemed to know who he was, and if bought he would escape at the first opportunity and try once more to get back home.

     The sale proceeded swiftly, with every color and form of human being passing before the eyes of slavemasters eager to please their Roman employers with a particularly judicious buy.  There were ruddy Caledonians from the far north, tattooed Ordovices from the west, Brigantes with whitewashed hair.  And from beyond the seas those captured by pirates: dark skinned Egyptians and Nubians and Numidians from Africa, all varieties of  continental Gauls from both sides of the Alps, golden Greeks and dark and slender Macedonians, sloe eyed Thracians with pierced ears and waxed hair.  Brettix watched the parade go by, waiting his turn, eager to see where he would wind up so he could plot his route home.

     Finally he was next.  As he walked up the stairs to the platform he heard a gasp from the front row where the most affluent slavemasters stood to get the best view.

     He looked back over his shoulder and locked eyes with Ariovistus, slavemaster to General Ammianus Scipio.

     Brettix felt a surge of hope which he tried to keep from showing on his face.  Ariovistus was a Trinovante, a nervous old man who worked for the Romans, as many of his tribe did.  But in this climate he was a fellow Celt, and the closest thing to a friend Brettix was likely to find.  As the caller described Brettix in Latin as a genuine find, surely the handsomest and strongest man in Britain, worth a first bid of at least fifty sesterces, Ariovistus raised his hand.

     Brettix proved to be very expensive.  The bids kept getting higher. Ariovistus was fighting off competition in the form of the slavemaster for a wealthy Roman matron from Londinium who was looking for company, as well as a trader who planned to sell Brettix again to a Parthian partial to blond boys.  Finally Ariovistus halted the bidding and told the caller in Latin that he wished a closer examination of the goods before he made his final decision.

     The caller stepped aside and allowed Ariovistus to approach the man on the platform.  He took hold of Brettix’ chin and pretended to examine his teeth.

     “Brettix, is that you?” the slavemaster whispered fiercely, his eyes wide.

     “Of course it is, will you just buy me and get this over with?” Brettix muttered, wild that he might miss this chance to get a free ride back to Iceni territory.

     “I’m not authorized to pay as much as this bandit is asking,” Ariovistus hissed, pretending to feel the younger man’s bicep.

     “Pay anything, my father will give it back to you tenfold,” Brettix snarled under his breath.

     “That’s enough,” the caller said, stepping forward again as he began to suspect that something was up between the goods and the prospective purchaser.

     Ariovistus, looking worried, resumed his place in the front row and proceeded to outbid everyone for the man on display.  He was awarded the prize, then handed over the money and stood by as Brettix was unshackled and led from the hut.

     “I am going to die when Scipio finds out how much I paid for you,” he moaned when they were left alone.  He was just beginning to realize the enormity of what he had done.

     “Will you stop whining?” Brettix retorted.  “I told you my father will get the money for you.”  He pulled his cloak about him as he felt the bite of the cold air once more.

     “You don’t understand.  I was supposed to be buying a horse trainer for Scipio’s daughter.  The general sent me all the way here from Camulodonum to get the best man to give her riding lessons.”

     The two men stared at one another as the same thought dawned in their minds simultaneously.

     “I can give riding lessons,” Brettix said calmly.  “I’m the best horseman in the tribe, ask anyone.”