One With the Darkness (9 page)

She must get to them before his restraint burst, before Agrippina went too far, but Livia couldn’t find a path through the writhing couples on the floor….

Livia sat bolt upright in her bed, gasping. Beside her, Jergan rose to a crouch with a snarl, sword drawn. She couldn’t get her breath.

They both looked around the dim room, the doors and windows outlined in lines of sunlight from the day outside. Nothing.

“It … it was a dream,” Livia choked. But was it? It felt more real than any dream.

Jergan looked disgusted.

She swallowed. “Put up your weapon and go back to sleep.”

“It is daylight out,” he observed, sheathing his sword. “Do you not rise?”

“I am sensitive to sunlight. I sleep during the day and rise at night. Therefore, so will you.”

His eyes narrowed as he examined her. Finally, he grunted and lay back down.

Livia lay back, too. But she couldn’t shake that silly dream. It wasn’t really frightening in the same way the horrors she’d lived through frightened her—the wars, the earthquakes, the torture of innocents. It was just so …
real
—almost like a memory. She saw every splash of the fountain, the sweat on the lovers’ bodies. She smelled their perfume, and underneath, the scent of musky desire in the air. The sense of impending disaster had been overwhelming. She’d been afraid for her slave, as though he were the most precious thing in the world.

Jupiter and Juno, but she was getting to be an old woman about dreams. She lay back down. But sleep was long in coming. Finally she heard the soft buzz of her slave, returned to slumber. He must be exhausted. The sound was vaguely comforting, as though she had heard that gentle snore for decades, not just for a few hours. She closed her eyes, sighing, and let his rhythmic breathing carry her to sleep.

5

L
IVIA LAY THERE
, half-asleep, feeling full, her thoughts lazily coming round to consciousness. Something was happening today. Something exciting. Was today the day she and her friends could finally act against Caesar? No, it wasn’t that. Other steps must still be taken before the plot could come to fruition. Was it…?

Diana the Huntress save her, she was filled with anticipation because she had a new slave.

Her eyes popped open. He lay beside her bed on the carpet, still asleep. The muscles in his shoulders, chest, biceps, were smooth, quiescent. But he looked powerful nonetheless. The bandage on his shoulder only accentuated his latent strength. Yet his eyelashes were as long and as thick as a girl’s. They made him look vulnerable. His hair had dried into a heavy mass of midnight waves that flowed down his back and matched the curling hair on his chest and belly. His hand still caressed the pommel of his precious sword. She felt a … a longing when she looked at him that she could not explain. It wasn’t just sexual, though certainly he roused her.

It was that feeling that she knew him, had always known him. Ridiculous, of course. How could one feel like that about someone one had met only last night?

But she did. He was honorable. Courageous. He would
be a fine leader. But he also had softness inside him that would make him a tender lover, a good father. He was protective. He would be a staunch provider.

Where was all this coming from? She couldn’t know these things about him.

He must have felt her watching him, for his eyes blinked twice and opened. She saw the realization of where he was come into them. He jerked up on one elbow, breathing hard. Perhaps his nightmare wasn’t one experienced while sleeping. He looked around the room, dim with the dusk outside, and slowly mastered his breathing. His gaze, steadier now, came back to her.

“Are you feeling stronger?” She cleared her throat. Why should she feel nervous?

He nodded brusquely. He seemed to have forgotten the lessons of last night. He set his lips, apparently determined not to give her the satisfaction of polite address.

She sighed. She would need him for a few days at most, until the plot was brought to fruition. Then she’d free him and send him on his way back to his homeland. She couldn’t let him serve in her house as a freedman like her other servants. Not this man. A few days. But these few days looked to be long ones.

“Come,” she said, rising.

Jergan slipped the wooden clogs onto his feet. The soles were still bruised and swollen.

Catia heard her stirring and opened the door. She had a pair of sandals at the ready. Livia stopped to let Catia tie them and thanked her. Then Livia motioned to Jergan and went out through the evening to the little house beside the
thermae
with water sluicing through it in a stone-lined trough. She used the facilities first, then emerged and motioned for Jergan to do the same.

He looked uncertain as he poked his head inside the door.

“Go on,” she said. “Relieve yourself.”

He shot her a look of surprise. Roman plumbing was apparently an innovation. “It’s amazing what a little civilization can do,” she muttered.

When he was done he ducked outside again, looking perplexed. “How is this done?”

She raised her brows.

He ground his teeth, then took a breath. “How is this done, my lady?”

“We are on a hill,” she said, turning back to the house. “If we were not fortunate enough to have a spring with sufficient water volume on the property, we would need a series of pumps run by slaves.”

She would have callers soon. There was no time for a bath. “See Lucius Lucellus,” she ordered as she went to dress. “Just off the kitchen. He will no doubt have procured a tunic of sufficient size for you.”

J
ERGAN WAS EAGER
to talk to her majordomo. The man had been freed. Jergan found him sitting at a small wooden table off the kitchen. He pored over an unfurled scroll by lamplight.

Lucius looked almost guilty as Jergan surprised him. “My owner told me to see if you have procured clothing.”

Lucius nodded as he hastily rolled the scroll. It looked very old. The edges were torn and crumbling. “Come this way.”

In a storeroom of some kind, Lucius held up a blue tunic and a strip of white flax. “Use this strip to tie your loincloth, and buckle the leather belt outside the tunic.” He measured the tunic against Jergan’s frame with his eye. “This had better be big enough. It was the only one
I could find. I’ll have to have others sewn specially for you.”

“It looks to fit,” Jergan muttered. He unbuckled his belt and took the strip of cloth. Now to ask his questions. “You are a freed slave?”

Lucius nodded. He was past middle age, with eyes that drooped in a perpetual look of sorrow, and graying locks. “She freed me.”

“How is it that your name is the same as hers?”

“When a slave is freed he takes his master’s name. All her freedmen are named Lucellus.”

She had freed others. This boded well. Jergan pulled the tunic over his head. It was sleeveless and came almost to his knees. Now for what he really wanted to know. “Why do you still serve her?” When belted, the tunic reached mid-thigh. It was made of thin wool fabric, dyed dark blue and coarse. But these southern winters could not hold a candle to the ones he was used to. It would be enough to protect his body from the cold.

“A master who frees a slave may command his services still, but she does not. I stay because I want to serve her.”

Jergan would want to set a thousand leagues between him and his slavery if ever he could. “You have nowhere to go?” The man spoke with only a slight accent Jergan didn’t recognize. But he had to have a home.

“I have been in Rome for thirty years. I understand it. The only family I have is here. My sister. Her son. I have bought their freedom with what I earn from Livia Quintus Lucellus.”

He didn’t seem happy about it. Indeed, something seemed to be making him nervous. His gaze stole to the scroll laid out upon the table. He stared, distracted. Coming to himself, he ripped his gaze from the scroll, took a breath, and held out two leather wrist guards. Jergan slipped them
around his forearms. Lucius jerked the leather thongs tight in the lacings.

Jergan started to ask what he had done to earn his freedom, but Lucius interrupted him. “Enough questions,” he snapped. “You are still a slave. Remember that.” He handed Jergan his sword, its belt, and some boots and motioned him from the room.

At the door, Jergan glanced back and saw Lucius return to his scroll, a look of great perturbation on his face. Could household accounts mean so much to him?

Jergan strapped on his weapon, but he carried the boots. He couldn’t imagine putting them on his bruised feet.

As he came through the house, he saw that the door to his owner’s bedroom was open. She had her back to him. Her maid was winding a dusky green wrap shot through with iridescent threads around her. A
palla
, they called it. Her tunic left one shoulder bare. The whiteness of her skin was remarkable. It was almost translucent. And the delicate bones in her shoulder, the graceful curve of her neck, made her look incredibly … feminine. He paused, transfixed.

The maid snuffled. That caught his owner’s attention. “What is it, Catia?”

“I’m sorry, my lady. I did not mean to …”

She lifted her maid’s chin. “No, tell me, Catia, what makes you cry?”

Jergan slipped to one side. He could still see the two through the crack between the door and the doorjamb.

“It is my mother, my lady.” The maid spoke hesitantly. “Her master beats her.” The floodgates broke and the maid rushed on. “But she is too old to scrub floors. She has many talents. She bakes wonderful bread. She sews with tiny, elegant stitches. But that awful man who runs her master’s
house makes her work on her hands and knees, and says she isn’t fast enough.”

“Oh, Catia,” her mistress said, holding the girl’s shoulders. Livia’s voice was drenched with sympathy. Jergan wished he could see her face. “I thought you were buying her freedom.”

“I am,” Catia managed, as sobs began to take her. “But he has set her price high, and … and I haven’t enough. I … I went to see him yesterday. And that’s when I saw my mother….”

“How much do you need?” His owner’s voice was calm, sure. “Stop crying now and tell me. Did he quote a price?”

Catia snuffled. “Fifty. Fifty dinars for an old woman.”

“Ridiculous. But go to Lucius now. Tell him to make up whatever you still need of the fifty dinars. I have need of a seamstress. She can work in my household until she decides what she wishes to do with herself. Lucius will go with you and arrange the whole.”

There was a stunned silence. Jergan craned his head around the doorjamb. Catia seemed frozen. Finally she took a quick sharp breath, blinked twice, and raced from the room, calling, “Thank you, thank you so much, my lady,” over her shoulder. “I’ll send Helena to help you with your jewels.”

The maid passed Jergan in a blur. He heard his owner mutter, “Brute.”

Oh, this woman was puzzling, all right. Was she the same one who had said only last night that she would require him to spill his seed under her eyes? Then she had seemed so heartless it was easy to hate her. Today she had done a kind and generous thing. Hating was not so easy.

He cleared his throat and stepped into the room.

She looked up and surveyed him. He had never felt so much like property. “Will you be warm enough? It is January after all.”

“I would hardly call this a winter,” he said by way of answer. Then he remembered and added, “My lady.”

“You will tell me if you require a cloak.”

He would rather die.

An older woman bowed her way into the room. “Helena,” his owner said, “can you get me some bandages?” The woman nodded and hurried off. Livia motioned to the bed. “Sit, Jergan.”

At least she hadn’t yet ordered him to put on the boots. What she did was turn to the delicate table that held hairbrushes and inlaid and silver boxes and many little glass jars with cork or glass stoppers. She picked up a tiny blue glass bottle in the shape of an amphora and upended it in her hand. Again she knelt in front of him and rubbed the contents into his feet. The feeling of confusion had found its way into his belly, and below.

“Your feet are better today,” she remarked. “Though I expect the prospect of wearing boots is a bit daunting. Still, the cobblestones will only make your cuts and bruises worse.”

Helena entered with several rolls of gauze. “Excellent,” his owner said. Jergan watched her as she wrapped his feet with them. “This should make the boots less onerous.”

It did. When he shoved his feet into the boots, he had to admit the gauze padding helped. He laced them as she watched him. They came up over his calf. She seemed to be waiting for something.

Ahhhh.
“Thank you.” He didn’t mean it to come out so much a growl. “My lady.”

“You’re welcome, Jergan.” She turned and picked up some dangling earrings from the little table and put loops
of wire through her ears. She had pierced them like the barbarians from the south. “Now, we have some senators to entertain.”

“S
END YOUR SLAVE
away, Lady Lucellus,” the old man said, “that we may talk freely.”

Jergan stood behind his owner, hands clasped behind his back.

“I wish my slave to stay by me,” she said to the three old men who stood about her as she reclined on a chaise covered in intricately embroidered fabric. One of the men was the one who had attended her at the slave market last night, the one she had called Titus.

“Do you not trust us?” one of the others asked. “You are safe with us.”

She turned a glowing smile his way. “Of course I trust you, Marcus Belius. But who knows but that the Praetorians might not burst through the portico at any moment?”

“I wonder you trust him.” This was from Titus. “If he’s tortured, he could betray us all.”

“But I do trust him, strangely.” She glanced back at him and he saw a kind of wonder in her eyes, a confusion. “He must know what is at stake so he can value the trust placed in him.”