Call to Juno (A Tale of Ancient Rome #3) (10 page)

Marcus frowned. “Are you speaking of being made dictator, sir? I don’t think . . . it would be difficult for me to argue . . .”

The general squeezed the decurion’s shoulder. “I know. There would be howls of protest that there’s no crisis for such power to be granted to one man. I only ask for my term to be extended. The Senate may well break with precedent given the circumstances.”

The Aemilian’s grimace deepened. Such a request was unlikely to be granted.

Camillus did not seem to notice his unease. “You must also break the news that Vel Mastarna is now king. He is no ordinary ruler. We must be wary.” He clapped Marcus on the back. “I have faith in your ability to gain your father’s support. It’s time you thought to your future as well. You’re thirty and have served in the army with distinction for ten years. You should stand for election as a military tribune. Your war record rivals mine at your age. And when I add my support and my friends’ to those of Aemilius’s, you’ll be sure to be elected this winter. I will help you canvas votes.”

Marcus straightened. Pinna smiled, recognizing his pride. The promise of advancement was seductive. Her Wolf knew how to stroke a man’s ego while feeding his ambition.

“And tell no one in camp of what Artile has said. I wish to know the Senate’s decision before I raise the men’s hopes.”

Artile twisted each ring on his fingers in turn. “Please, Furius Camillus. Without you at my side, I might be executed when I set foot in Rome.”

Her Wolf adjusted his balteus so the lanyard lay precisely on the diagonal across his chest. Then he placed his helmet on his head, buckling it beneath his bearded chin. “I’ll send a message to the Senate that you have ambassadorial status. As such, your presence is safeguarded.” He glared at the seer. “I face ridicule for putting my faith and support behind you. Our fates are now joined, priest. You better not be wrong.”

E
LEVEN

Pinna savored the times she could massage the general, but he was not the only soldier she tended. Every day she would call on Claudius Drusus to change his dressings.

The knight’s body had been rent from shoulder to groin by Vel Mastarna in the Battle of Blood and Hail. When Marcus had ridden through the retreating Roman troops to find his best friend, he’d thought Drusus was dead at the feet of the Etruscan. It was a miracle that the Claudian had survived.

She could not forget seeing Marcus return to the camp with Drusus slumped in front of him on his horse. The decurion had been fraught as he begged her to save his friend.

Death hovered over Drusus, ready to steal his breath. Marcus stayed almost as close, visiting him whenever free from his duties. His vigil made him pale and drawn as he also recovered from the injury to his forearm sustained in the conflict.

In truth, the wounded Drusus should have been sent home to be cared for by his family. Instead Marcus insisted a warrior would want to die on a camp cot rather than in a soft bed. “You’re the one who has the most to lose if he dies, Pinna,” he said. “He lives, or I will tell Camillus that you were a whore.”

The wound was gruesome. She thought there wouldn’t be honey enough to soothe it or wax enough to seal the bindings. Every day she checked for pus or blackened, dying flesh. The length of the gash was such that it was unlikely some part of it would fail to be infected.

The cut was not the only damage that had been inflicted. His shoulder had been dislocated, his collarbone smashed, and some of his ribs broken. The pain kept him immobile. Drusus’s groans were pitiful each time he shifted on his pallet. She hated how he strove to stifle his moans when she wiped away encrusted blood. She would have preferred him to voice his agony. The restraint of sound seemed only to emphasize his torment.

Before the battle, hating him had become a habit. She knew Drusus loathed her, too, for he had once raped her. Although, as a prostitute, she could not assert he’d committed such a crime. That did not mean she didn’t have power over him. The knowledge that she could reveal his baseness to her Wolf made him nervous and bitter. There would only be contempt for a man who needed to force himself upon a whore. And Drusus longed for the general’s admiration. He couldn’t afford for Pinna to provide a reason to Camillus to overlook him for promotion. And so, until the battle, they’d been locked in a tense struggle, each balancing the secret of the other and fearing exposure.

The night in the lupanaria still haunted her—a nightmare from which she would often wake in panic. How Drusus had clamped his hand over her face as he’d abused her, making her feel like nothing, filling her with terror that she might suffocate.

Yet her disgust for the russet-haired Claudian had now receded. His anguish touched her. Where once he’d been menacing, he now was vulnerable.

The fever came on the second night. As evening fell, his temperature rose. His skin burned to the touch, and he groaned with both the hurt of the slashed skin and the soreness in his bones. When she peeled back the bandages, she was dismayed to see the section of the wound on his hip was seeping, the skin around the knots swollen and red. She implored Mater Matuta to save him.

In his delirium, he clasped her hand, his fingers bands of iron, his voice rasping and low. She bent her ear close to his mouth.

“Don’t leave me, Caecilia.”

She frowned. In his confusion, he thought she was the love of his youth. A love that was dangerous and forbidden.

Drusus’s call to the traitoress brought memories flooding back of when she’d first met him. Not the brutal encounter in the lupanaria but a year earlier. Back to a night where ghouls squabbled with ghosts for space in the graveyard of the Campus Martius.

Seeking shelter from a storm, she’d spied Drusus lurking in the sepulcher of his Claudian family. Marcus had been with him. She’d been astonished to watch Drusus engrave a curse onto a defixio lead sheet, then hammer it into the wall. Black magic was the practice of women and the weak minded, not of rich warriors. And when Marcus had read the curse aloud, she’d stifled disbelief to hear it was Vel Mastarna’s destruction that Drusus sought.

Pinna’s confusion doubled when Marcus departed from the tomb. Alone in the dark, the Claudian was not finished invoking the spirits. Weeping, he’d engraved a love spell on a second defixio. It was an enchantment to regain the love of a girl who’d chosen an enemy.

Pinna’s knowledge gave her power. Wasn’t the knight also traitorous for loving Aemilia Caeciliana? And a death penalty awaited those who used the dark arts to kill a man. What kind of warrior resorted to magic instead of using a sword? She’d threatened to display both defixios on the speakers’ platform in the Forum, but Drusus had paid her to keep silent. Yet when he later stumbled upon her in the brothel, he’d not believed she would continue to keep her promise.

The fevered man’s grip tightened around her hand. “Say you love me, Caecilia.”

Pinna stared at him, uncertain how to respond. Deciding whether to lie. And in that moment, she no longer hated him but felt only compassion. She could not let a dying man slip into the void without comfort.

“Hush,” she whispered, wiping his brow with a cloth. “Rest now. I love you.”

“Forever.”

She hesitated. “Forever.”

He’d closed his eyes.

The fever had continued. She paled to think she would lose him and so also lose Camillus. And her resentment that Marcus should expect her to heal a near-mortal wound tripled—so too her worry that she would fail.

On the fifth day, he woke clear eyed but weakened. He didn’t seem to remember seeking a declaration of affection. Instead he scanned her face as she lifted his head so he could sip some water. “Why are you helping me, Pinna? I thought you of all people would leave me to die.”

“Thank Marcus Aemilius for that. He convinced me,” she said brusquely, then her voice softened. “Whatever spite there is between us, I would not see any man suffer as you have.”

By the time Pinna returned from the sanctuary, it was early afternoon. Drusus was lying on his back on his pallet.

“My lord, wake up.”

He opened his eyes, wincing as he eased himself to sitting. The movement started him coughing. “I’ve been waiting for you. You said you would remove the last of my stitches today.” As always she noticed the slight stammer in his voice when he was agitated.

“I was with the general.” She knelt beside him and lifted his tunic over his head. There was no modesty between patient and nurse. An intimacy had grown between them. At first he’d resisted being dependent upon her, embarrassed at his helplessness. After a time a familiarity grew between them as she spooned food into his mouth, washed him, and cleaned his ordure. She knew every inch of his body without them being lovers.

His torso was bandaged from chest to groin. She was pleased to see there were no bright spots of fresh blood to indicate the sewn flesh had ruptured. “I’ll unpick them now. But you must promise not to try and do too much afterward. It will take you time to regain full strength.”

Businesslike, she unwound the strips of cloth, keeping the strapping on his ribs and dislocated shoulder intact. As she leaned across him, her breasts brushed his chest. She edged back, being more careful not to touch him, but as her hands moved down toward his thigh, she noticed he had hardened. He grabbed his tunic and covered himself, face scarlet. It was a curse of his, the unbidden betrayal of emotions by his skin.

Pinna also blushed. “Well, at least we’ve discovered full strength in one part of your body.”

Drusus raised his head. For the first time since they’d met, they shared a smile.

Once the seam along his flesh was exposed, Pinna examined the wound. The bruising had faded to yellow. She was proud her needlework was neat. The scar would not be stretched or deformed. Relieved his erection had calmed, she gently touched the remaining stitches from hip to groin, checking whether she could remove them. She was conscious he was watching her.

“How old are you, Pinna?”

“Twenty.”

“The same age as my sister,” he murmured. “And tell me, how old were you when you became a night moth?”

She stopped inspecting the wound, unsure as to why he would suddenly seek to know her history. “Eleven.”

He winced. She knew it was not from pain.

“How could that be? Where were your parents?”

She sat back on her haunches. “My father was a soldier forced into bondage. My mother and I became whores because we were destitute.” She made to rise. “I don’t want to talk about it. I need to fetch some tweezers.”

Drusus placed his hand on her shoulder. “Wait.”

She settled back on her heels. “What is it you want from me? Why do you ask these things now?”

He took her hands. His were large and bony, the knuckles pronounced. This time they were gentle. “I’ve been thinking. You saved my life as much as Marcus did. Many a warrior dies from infection once the battle has ended. I need to make matters right between us, Pinna. Can you forgive me for what I did to you?”

She stared at him. The hesitancy in his voice revealed his sincerity. “You changed my life, my lord. That night in the graveyard, you gave me bronze enough to allow me to register as a brothel whore. I never planned to expose you. You did not need to fear me.” She lowered her voice. “You did not need to rape me.”

“I’m sorry, Pinna. Believe me.”

She eased her hands from his, aware her Wolf would not want another man touching her.

He must have realized he’d also trespassed. His stutter deepened. “It was because she haunts me.”

“I understand, my lord. You were punishing her by punishing me.”

Her answer started him coughing. She waited for him to regain his breath.

“When I had that fever, I heard Caecilia saying she loved me. Was that you?”

“Yes.”

“You showed kindness. Why so?”

“I thought you were dying.”

He frowned at her bluntness. “You have to understand, it’s not entirely Caecilia’s fault. If my prick of a father had died sooner, I could have married her. Instead, consumed with choler, he ensured I was denied happiness. She was plebeian by birth. Not good enough to marry his patrician son.” He paused, then went on. “I liked the laughter in her. But she was too inquisitive about the world of men. More interested in politics than a woman should be.”

Pinna was shocked he would attempt to excuse a traitoress. He did not wait for her to respond, though, still dwelling within his memories.

“When Caecilia escaped to Fidenae, I thought it was because she wanted to come back to me. But it was Mastarna she loved.” He pounded one fist against his palm, startling her. “She plunged a blade into my heart—stab, stab, stab. Do you know how impotent I feel? Reduced to writing spells to curse him and bewitch Caecilia to love me? And all the time I know that he is holding her in his arms, taking her to
his
bed.”

Pinna frowned. “You should have cursed her instead that night. Don’t you realize she will never love you? That you need to forget her?”

“Yes, but at least I can kill him. I will not fail next time. I plan for my curse to come true—‘I consecrate Vel Mastarna to damnation. May his mind and soul be tormented, his body twisted and shattered, his tongue cut out, and his ears and eyes pierced by hot pokers. And if he has, or shall have, any money or inheritance, may they be lost, and his entire house be stricken with disaster and destruction.’”

She shivered just as when she’d first heard the words read aloud in the tomb. “You condemn her also, you know.”

He nodded, eyes pained. “That’s my torment.”

She rose, uncomfortable with his despair. “I’ll get those pincers. And some mint for your cough. You’ll need to keep still while I’m unpicking the knots.”

Drusus grasped her skirt. “Wait. You comforted me when you thought I was dying. Why are you good to me?”

“I’ve seen another side of you, my lord.”

“So you’ll tell no one—about my love spell for Caecilia?”

She eased her hem from his fingers. She understood. If she ever lost her Wolf, the pain would be like a cut no poultice could ever heal. “All I want is to be with the general. To be respected. I was once the daughter of a soldier. That’s how he sees me.”