Successio (29 page)

XXXVIII

Nicola was buried in the foreigners’ cemetery outside the city two weeks later. I’d called her mother and met her at the airport. At the ceremony, Janice Hargreve looked tired, but in a strange way peaceful, content even. She hesitated as she held her hand out to Conrad and dragged her eyes up to his.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

Still holding her hand, he drew her to him and held her for a few seconds.

‘It’s over now, Janice,’ he said and took her arm. Quintus and I stood in the shade of a cypress and watched them walk along the broad gravel pathway back towards the entrance.

‘How are you, Carina? Really?’ Quintus asked. He looked better, still wearing a neck brace, but not really leaning on his cane. He held my arm as we followed Conrad and Janice slowly back to the cars. His family recorder and his assistant followed at a discreet distance.

‘I don’t know. I know that sounds lame, but I don’t. I think the anger won’t go for a while. I’ve forgiven Conradus, I can’t do anything else, but I know Nicola’s changed us, maybe more than we think.’

*

Stella spent a few days in hospital before she was released by the court on compassionate grounds to convalesce in the country. She returned to the rehabilitation centre after a week to continue her sentence. I went to visit her after she had settled back in.

As she came into the director’s room, I saw she still had traces of scratches and grazes over her face and arms. She didn’t smile, but her face was solemn rather than sullen like before.

‘Sit down, Stella,’ I said as she hovered there, one hand grasped in the other, fingertips worrying the skin on the back of the other.

‘I want to say something first.’ She pulled her shoulders back, looked over at the window, then dragged her eyes back to my face. ‘Aunt Carina, I want to thank you for saving my life. I know you don’t like me, you think I’m useless.’

‘Stella, I—’

‘No, don’t deny it. Please.’ She gulped. ‘I don’t think I’ve been a very likeable person, to be honest.’ She put her hand out to grab the back of a nearby chair. ‘I didn’t know what I was supposed to do half the time. Everything seemed to be happening in a different world and I couldn’t grasp any of it. I felt so pathetic – exposed – when Nicola had me.’ She gave a smile that was not a smile, one corner of her mouth drooping. ‘I should have taken more notice of what people wanted to teach me those few weeks I spent in the PGSF.’

She sat down on the chair and folded her hands in her lap and looked thoroughly miserable.

‘What do you want to do, Stella?’

‘I want to stay here, but they won’t let me after my two years are up. I mean, Mama and the Council and all the rest of them.’

I reached out and touched her hand.

She brought her face up. Her eyes were shining as if somebody had injected some life force in an inanimate object.

‘I love it here. This is my real world.’

And she burst into tears.

I gave her a few minutes to get herself together. I walked over to the director’s desk and logged on to check something.

‘There is a way,’ I said after a few minutes. I laid my hand on her shoulder and looked down into her eyes, still full of tears. ‘It’s happened in other countries but I don’t know if any Roma Novan has ever done it.’

*

Two months later, I accompanied her into the Senate house where a special meeting had been convened. I’d been more than surprised and a little touched that she selected me as her formal supporter for today.

I watched Silvia across the floor sitting upright in her carved chair. She was pale and her eyes moist, but she listened gravely as if she hadn’t heard Stella practise it fifty times before.

In a low, but dignified voice, Stella Apulia stood in front of members of the Senate and the House of Representatives and made a formal renunciation of her inheritance in favour of Hallie. Some of the more conservative politicians looked shocked and one muttered her disapproval, including the word ‘coward’. She was rewarded by a look from the imperatrix like the falling iron fist of Vulcan.

Poor Stella had geared herself up to this ordeal and didn’t need a load of hassle. But she ignored it, the only sign of having heard it a double blink. She thanked the dual assembly, bowed to her mother and somehow managed to exit without running. I gave her a straight A+ for courage.

*

Conrad continued with the counselling and was eventually discharged from the court. The following week, he took himself off on a walking tour up in the mountains north of Aquae Caesaris and spent two months afterward at the boot camp I’d trained at years ago.

When he returned, I was sitting in the atrium reading through a company report when I heard his footfall. I looked up and watched the cat-like walk as he approached. He practically bounced. He was tanned, the lines around his eyes had faded and except for the white hair, he looked younger. But it was the smile that showed me he’d healed inside.

We settled down to living at a slower pace and Conrad took on some of my business affairs. But he surprised me, and himself, when he rammed decisions through sometimes with a ruthlessness acquired from his military life and made me laugh when he told me how he’d made some of the bean counters jump.

*

The biggest shock was Allegra. I’d settled her down on our favourite couch in the atrium to talk with her about the scene at the old castle. I figured that now a few weeks had passed, she would have gained some perspective. But I worried that it had been another toxic experience for her.

‘It’s fine, Mama. Really. I don’t need “time to talk” or any of that.’ She glanced over at me. ‘In fact, I enjoyed it. It was exciting. When I threw that rock at Nicola, it wasn’t just revenge or anything babyish. I was doing something powerful to help.’ She looked out of the atrium glass door over at Nonna’s roses, now on their second run of blooms. ‘In fact, I wanted to talk to you about something. I know I’m not sixteen until November so you’ll have to give your consent, but I want to join the auxiliaries and go through the legionary
cursus
.’

My face must have stayed fixed for several seconds. I ran through my head what she’d said. My daughter wanted to join the military reserve and then follow the tough training preceding a full-blown armed services career.

‘Allegra, this is a big, big decision. What about your plans to travel, to go to university? You could join the auxiliary cadets there and see if you like it enough to make such a choice.’

‘You and Dad travelled enough when you were in the PGSF, not just postings, but exercises abroad and holidays. It’s really not a problem.’

She took my hand. ‘I looked at death straight in the face up on that wall. I knew in a second that if I survived I wasn’t going to waste time trying other things out when I knew what I wanted. You knew that the instant you met Dad all those years ago in New York. Now it’s my turn.’

Also by Alison Morton

INCEPTIO

Book I in the Roma Nova series

New York, present day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe.

Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made family. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus, who rescued her in America, isolates her.

Renschman reaches into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it…

PERFIDITAS

Book II in the Roma Nova series

Captain Carina Mitela of the Praetorian Guard Special Forcesis in trouble – one colleague has tried to kill her and another has set a trap to incriminate her in a conspiracy to topple the government of Roma Nova. Founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman dissidents and ruled by women, Roma Nova barely survived a devastating coup d’etat thirty years ago. Carina swears to prevent a repeat and not merely for love of country.

Seeking help from a not quite legal old friend could wreck her marriage to the enigmatic Conrad. Once proscribed and operating illegally, she risks being terminated by both security services and conspirators. As she struggles to overcome the desperate odds and save her beloved Roma Nova, and her own life, she faces the ultimate betrayal…

Coming Soon...

AURELIA

Book IV in the Roma Nova series

1960s Roma Nova, the last Roman colony which has survived into the 21st century. Aurelia Mitela is alone – her partner gone, her child sickly and her mother dead. Forced in her mid-twenties to give up her beloved career as a special forces Praetorian officer and struggling to manage an extended family tribe, businesses and senatorial political life, she slides into depression.

But her country needs her unique skills. Somebody is smuggling silver – Roma Nova’s lifeblood – on an industrial scale. Sent to Berlin to investigate, she encounters the mysterious and attractive Miklós, a known smuggler, and Caius Tellus, a Roma Novan she has despised, and feared, since childhood.

Aurelia discovers that the silver smuggling hides a deeper conspiracy and follows a lead into the Berlin criminal underworld. Barely escaping a trap set by a gang boss intent on terminating her, she realises that her old enemy is at the heart of all her troubles and pursues him back home to Roma Nova...

Praise for ROMA NOVA

INCEPTIO

Book I in the Roma Nova series

“Terrific. Brilliantly plotted original story, grippingly told and cleverly combining the historical with the futuristic. It’s a real edge-of-the seat read, genuinely hard to put down.”

–
Sue Cook
, writer and broadcaster

“I loved it! Intriguing, unusual and thought-provoking. Karen develops from a girl anyone of us could know into one of the toughest heroines I’ve read for a while. Roma Nova was a world I really wanted to visit – and not just to meet Conrad – vivid and compelling. A pacey, suspenseful thriller with a truly dreadful villain, I can’t recommend
INCEPTIO
enough.”

–
Kate Johnson
, author of
The UnTied Kingdom

“Tense, fast-paced and deliciously inventive, Alison Morton’s
INCEPTIO
soon had me turning the pages. Very Dashiell Hammett.”

–
Victoria Lamb
, author of
The Queen’s Secret

“Gripping. Alison Morton creates a fully realised world of what could have been. Breathtaking action, suspense, political intrigue…
INCEPTIO
is a tour de force!”

–
Russell Whitfield
, author of
Gladiatrix
and
Roma Victrix

PERFIDITAS

Book II in the Roma Nova series

“Alison Morton has built a fascinating, exotic world! Carina’s a bright, sassy detective with a winning dry sense of humour. I warmed to her quickly and wanted to find out how she dealt with the problems thrown in her path. The plot is pretty snappy too and gets off to a quick start which made it easy to keep turning the pages. There are a fair number of alternative historical fictions where Rome never disappeared, but for my money this is one of the better ones.”

–
Simon Scarrow
, author of the Eagle (Macro and Cato) series

“I can’t resist an alternative history and Alison Morton writes one of the best. Powerful storytelling, vivid characters and a page-turning plot makes Alison Morton’s
PERFIDITAS
a must read.”

–
Jean Fullerton
, author of the historical East London novels

“Pure enjoyment! A clever, complex plot set in the beguilingly convincing fictional country of Roma Nova. Scenes and characters are sometimes so vividly described that I felt I was watching a movie. This compelling tale rendered me inseparable from my copy right up to the last turn of the page.”

–
Sue Cook
, writer and broadcaster

SUCCESSIO

Book III in the Roma Nova series

“If there is a world where fiction becomes more believable than reality, then Alison Morton’s ingenious thrillers must be the portal through which to travel. Following in Caesar’s footsteps, she came with
INCEPTIO
, saw with
PERFIDITAS
– and has well and truly conquered with
SUCCESSIO
!”

–
Helen Hollick
, author and Managing Editor Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews

“Alison Morton has done it again.
SUCCESSIO
is the latest in her series of powerful tales of family betrayals and shifting allegiances in Roma Nova. Once again, I was gripped from start to finish.”

–
Sue Cook
, writer and broadcaster

About the Author

Alison Morton grew up in West Kent. She completed a BA in French, German and Economics and thirty years later a MA in History. She now lives in France with her husband.

A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, she has visited sites throughout Europe including the
alma mater
, Rome. But it was walking on the mosaics at Ampurias (Spain) that triggered her wondering what a modern Roman society would be like if run by women…

Find out more about Alison’s writing life, Romans and alternate history at her
blog
, on
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and chat to her on
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If you enjoyed
INCEPTIO
,
PERFIDITAS
and
SUCCESSIO
, please do leave a review on the online store you bought this book, or on reader site
Goodreads
. It needs only be a line or two, but will be very much appreciated!.