Curses and Smoke (13 page)

S
he awoke in the dark, aware of Tag’s deep, rhythmic breathing. The sky was still black, but she didn’t know for how much longer. She’d better return to her
cubiculum
. Carefully, she extracted herself from beneath the arm he’d flung over her, and he rolled onto his back. How much younger he looked in sleep, more like the boy she remembered.

Her gaze traveled over his barely clothed body, and she fought the impulse to run her hands down the length of his lean, carved torso. But that would be cruel. He’d been right to stop them from going further, and it wouldn’t be fair to wake him in such a manner. And yet her fingers itched to feel the smooth warmth of his chest and abdomen.

Her eyes pricked and grew hot as she stared at him, trying to imagine leaving him to marry Vitulus. How would she bear it? Maybe they really could run away together. Maybe it was possible. But inside, she knew she had no sense of what it would take to live outside the compound, no sense of how they could disappear so that he wouldn’t be recaptured and punished as a runaway slave and her reputation ruined forever.

With a sigh, she gave him a soft kiss on the mouth. He muttered what sounded like her name as she pulled away. With one last longing look, she backed out of the enclosure and slapped her thigh for Minos, who stretched first his front, then his back paws at her feet.

“Home,” she ordered. She grabbed his collar for guidance through the inky darkness.

Just as they neared the wall leading back to their compound, she released his collar. She expected him to race toward the house, but he froze, one paw up, as something rustled in the undergrowth. “Come on, boy,” she whispered. “No time for hunting. We need to keep going.” She moved ahead through the brush.

Then Minos, with a loud whine of excitement, launched himself through her legs at whatever creature he’d spotted. The force of his lunge sent her flying and she landed hard, rolling her ankle. “Gods, Minos!” But the dog was gone.

When Lucia tried to stand, she gasped, then cursed under her breath at the pain. Well, she had no other choice but to push through it. She had to get back before Metrodona discovered she hadn’t slept in her bed. At the sound of her limping gait, Minos came crashing through the brush, smiling and wagging his tail.

“Bad boy,” she said crossly. “Look what you’ve done.” But the dog continued grinning. “Home,” she repeated, sighing. Minos stayed nearby as she hobbled. The sky was turning purple.

Once in her own bed, she heard the first stirrings of slaves rising to their predawn work.
Thank you, Diana, for helping me return to my room undetected
. She prayed for sleep.

It did not come. She stared up at the low ceiling of her
cubiculum
in a daze. How could one day contain so many horrible events — learning the truth about her mother’s suicide and her baby sisters’ exposures; having her best friend’s husband dismiss and belittle her in front of everyone; and now turning her ankle in the dark….

The worst was thinking about her abandoned sisters. She knew exposure was practiced, but no one ever admitted to it. And now, her own father? Had his grief over his lost son so warped him that he would throw away daughters until he got the new boy he wanted? And poor
Mater
— used like a brood mare. Now that she recalled it, her mother did always seem pregnant, and always tired and worried too.

What about the babies? She covered her eyes against the image of her newborn sister, waving her little arms, all alone on a rubbish heap outside the city. Did wild animals get her? What about slave traders, who often searched for abandoned infants to rear for sale later? What if a brothel owner took her? That very moment, all of her little sisters could be enduring abuse worse than death across town or in some foreign hovel, simply because of what her father
wished
.

Gods, if she had known, could she have put a stop to it? Could she have joined forces with her mother to convince her father to accept what the gods had given them? Could she have found the means to recover the babes and pay someone to care for them until he softened?

Everybody had lied to her. Everybody. Even her mother. Tag was the only one who had told her the truth.

*  *  *

Someone was shaking her. “
Puella?
Lucia? Are you unwell?”

She opened her eyes. Metrodona. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” her old nurse said, the loose skin under her chin waggling. “I call for the healer next if you don’t wake up this time. It is very late in the morning!”

“Oh.” Lucia threw off her blanket and stood, forgetting about her ankle, then fell back on her bed with a cry of pain.

“What … what is this?” Metrodona asked with wide eyes, inspecting her swollen flesh. “When did you do this? You had no such injury when you went to sleep!”

Lucia stared dumbly down at her foot. Should she just say she fell when she used the
latrina
in the middle of the night? But then Metrodona would grill her about why she hadn’t woken her. Without thinking, she blurted, “It must have happened while I slept.”

“What do you mean?” Metrodona said. “That is impossible.” The old woman’s eyes widened. “Unless you were visited by a daemon! Have you angered a daemon?”

Lucia suppressed a smile and widened her eyes, glad she had accidentally hit on one of her nursemaid’s endless superstitions. “I don’t know,” she said, adding a small quaver of fear to her voice. “It happened in a dream.”

Metrodona came closer. “A dream? Tell me.”

“I dreamt that Minos and I were running through the woods in the dark, and he saw a rat and darted through my legs to pounce on it. I fell hard,” she said, screwing up her expression as if trying to recall a fading image.

“Where were you headed in your dream, child? And why were you hurrying? I must speak with the dream interpreter, and he will need to know this!”

“I was running through the woods back to … to my body,” she said. “In the dream, I saw myself sleeping in my
cubiculum
, and I was rushing to join myself because something terrible was going to happen.”

Metrodona put a knobby hand up to her mouth.

Lucia forced an expression of fear on her face. “Metrodona,” she said quietly, “do you think it means something?”

“Of course it does! It is very rare for both worlds to combine like this.” Her eyes lit up. “The rat! What color was it?”

“Gray. Maybe black,” Lucia said. “The creature moved fast.”

“Oh! Oh, my. I am sure the interpreter will have a lot to say about this!” She shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“If you want to head to the marketplace now to find him, you may,” Lucia said. “I won’t need you — I won’t be going anywhere today.”

“Yes, yes. But first let us get the
medicus
to look at your ankle. I will help you with your morning ablutions and then get the healer, yes?”

Lucia nodded, hoping it would be the younger one.

H
e got hit three times during the blocking exercise. By Quintus. The man who couldn’t hit an ox if it was trussed up and stuffed and painted red. He
had
to focus.

Yet Lucia’s comment about running away together had lodged in his mind like a splinter. He couldn’t shake it. He’d thought about running away before, of course, but always dismissed it. Runaway slaves were branded and beaten to within an inch of their lives if they were caught. But the idea of running away
with
Lucia, of living a life
they
chose together, had grabbed him by the throat and wouldn’t let go.

A house slave came to speak to Pontius. “Tag!” the overseer called. “Yer needed in the main house!”

Quintus looked at him and laughed. “
Eheu
. That is one guilty look. What’d you do, boy? Besides abandoning your post last night, anyway.”

Frozen in fear, Tag said nothing.

Quintus stepped close. “I did not report to your master that you ran off from attending me last night,” he said in a low voice, “if that is what you are worried about.”

Tag blinked. “I did not run off. You fell asleep in your host’s home. I needed to be back here to attend to my duties as healer.”

Quintus waved his hand. “Still, whatever it is, I will back you with Titurius if you need it.”

Tag looked at the patrician, wondering at this sudden “solidarity.”

“I am not as terrible as you think I am,” Quintus continued. “Truly. You might be surprised.”

“Tag!” yelled Pontius. “What are ye waitin’ fer?”

“Er … thank you,
Dominus
,” Tag said to Quintus and moved away. He dropped the wooden
gladius
, then grabbed his tunic and shrugged into it as he jogged after the house slave. His heart pounded with worry. If someone had told Titurius about the time he spent with his daughter, it would all be over. Seeing Lucia, training to win his freedom, everything.

He caught up with the house slave. “Where am I needed?” he asked.

“Women’s quarters,” he said. “The young
domina
has been hurt.”

“Hurt? What do you mean?” Had her father found out and beaten her?

The man shrugged. “It’s all I was told.”

The house slave steered him into a small side garden where Damocles stood talking to Metrodona. Castor dug in the dirt at his feet. No Titurius. Tag released a breath.

“The younger healer is here,” called the slave as he turned and left.

“Ah, finally,” Damocles said. “I sent for you some time ago.”

Castor ran to Tag, grinning, waving an imaginary sword. “Did you hurt someone today?”

“No, Castor,” he said. Turning to his father, he asked, “What has happened?”

“Lucia turned her ankle,” Damocles said, moving aside to reveal her sitting on a stone bench. She smiled shyly at him. His chest swelled with relief. He moved toward Lucia, but Damocles grabbed his son’s arm and, with surprising strength, dragged him far enough out of earshot that they could speak in private.

“You
told
her about her mother?” he hissed under his breath. “Why would you do such a thing, son? The master made us all swear she was
never
to know what really happened!”

“She has a right to know,” Tag whispered back.

“She has been demanding I tell her everything. She wants to know who gave her mother the poison —”

Tag blanched.

“She wants to know if all of the infants were really alive at birth. She wants to know who took the babies to the rubbish piles outside the gates! And all manner of things we can’t know, like if the babies really died or if some slave trader picked them up. This is a horrible thing for a girl to have to consider right before she gets married! If
Dominus
finds out she knows, neither of us will survive.”

If
Dominus
finds out about a lot of things
, Tag thought,
none of them would survive
.

“What are you two discussing?” Metrodona called out. “My mistress is waiting!”

“Just poultices, Glykeria,” Damocles called.

Tag blinked. Glykeria? Wasn’t that Lucia’s mother’s attendant? The old woman had died soon after her mistress took her own life. How could his father be so lucid one moment and then make a mistake like that in the next?

They moved back to the women. “Tag will treat the ankle, Cassia,” Damocles continued, calling Lucia by her mother’s name. Tag and Lucia exchanged a look. “I have to get back to the cook’s child, who is having trouble breathing.” He turned and walked away.

Castor grabbed Tag’s hand. “Can I stay with you instead of following your
apa
?” he asked. “I don’t like it anymore when he thinks I am you.”

Tag closed his eyes for a moment. “Yes, you can stay.”

When he approached Lucia, she smiled up at him again, her cheeks flushing. Warmth washed over him, but there was something else too — a fierce wanting that ground and twisted his gut so hard he could barely breathe.

Castor, it seemed, was also mesmerized. “I like your lights,” the child blurted.

Lucia blinked and looked at the boy. “What?”

“The ones in your eyes that dance when you smile,” he said, flushing to the tips of his ears. “I want to marry you when I’m growed up.”

Metrodona boxed the side of his head gently. “Stupid boy!” she huffed. “You are a slave. Ladies can’t marry slaves. Now stop your nonsense and let the
medicus
check her ankle!”

“Right,” Tag said, watching Lucia gently brush the hair off the little boy’s forehead, the child wriggling in pleasure. “How did it happen?”

Metrodona rattled off the story Lucia had concocted, and he tried to act suitably impressed. But inside, he hated the idea of her making her way through the woods in the dark all alone. She should have woken him.

Lucia turned to her nurse. “Metrodona, go to the market to talk to the dream interpreter now. I am anxious to hear what he says.” She nodded toward Tag and Castor. “The healers here will take care of me.”

Castor pulled on Tag’s hand, whispering with awe, “She called me a healer too.”

Tag squeezed his hand. “May I see the injury?” he asked after Metrodona left, moving faster than he’d ever seen the old woman move before.

As Lucia extended her ankle, he bent on one knee and cradled her heel. It looked terrible, swollen and purple. Could it be broken?

“Were you able to — in this dream,” he added for Castor’s sake, “were you able to put any weight on it after the fall?”

She nodded. “It hurt, but I could still walk on it.”

“Can you put any weight on it now?” he asked. She stood, but he could see her jaw clench in pain. He bade her sit again.

“How are we going to treat it?” Castor asked, looking up at him. Tag caught the “we” and exchanged a smile with Lucia.

“First we will need cool clay dug up near the cistern, for cooling the injury,” he said. “Then we will need the leeches to bleed the injured area to further reduce the swelling —”

“No leeches!” Lucia cried. “Please!”

“Fine. I’ll make some small cuts instead. We will also need linen bandages to wrap the foot for support,” he added. “But let’s start with the cool clay first,” he said, turning to Castor. “Have the gardener dig some up near the cistern. Tell the cook to mix mustard powder into it, then bring it to me. After I bleed her, we will cover the ankle in the mixture. Do you understand?”

Castor nodded, gave Lucia a shy grin, and flew out of the small garden.

Tag watched him go, then turned to Lucia. Was he really alone with her? Inside her own
home
?

“I would have walked you back,” he said under his breath, pretending to continue examining her foot.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

He shifted positions, still keeping his head down as if working on her foot. “Lucia, why was Cornelia trying to arrange something between you and Quintus?”

She sighed irritably. “She thinks if I get Quintus interested in me, Father would break the betrothal to Vitulus and switch it to him.”

“He has … Has he tried to kiss you?”

“Tag.” She put a hand over his on her ankle, leaning forward as if inspecting the joint. “I have no inclination toward him at all,” she whispered. “I only want you.”

He released a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. It was bad enough to know he would lose her to Rome, but to lose her to Quintus was unthinkable.

“I also wanted to thank you for last night,” she added shyly.

He didn’t know what she was thanking him for — for comforting her after the disaster at Cornelia’s house, or for making sure they didn’t do anything she would later regret? Probably both.

He wanted to tell her he was sorry that Cornelia’s husband was such a fool and that she had to learn from him what really happened to her mother and her baby sisters. That if he could, he would take her away from this cursed home and protect her. That he would never expose a child she wanted to keep. But it all got clogged in his throat, because he could make
none
of that ever happen.

So instead, he caressed her injured foot and quietly answered, “You’re welcome.”