Call to Juno (A Tale of Ancient Rome #3) (15 page)

SIEGE

E
IGHTEEN

Caecilia, Veii, Winter, 397 BC

Winter had arrived. With the braziers stoked high, the bedchamber was warm once the heavy curtains had been drawn across the doorway. Returned from kissing her children good night, Caecilia drew back the drapes a fraction, hesitating before entering, drawn to watch Vel in his nightly routine.

In the flickering light of the lamps, he stood at a pedestal table of waist height. His movements were ordered and precise. He removed the gold torque from his neck and dropped it into a bronze cista, closing the canister’s lid. Pouring warm water from a pitcher into a ewer, he added a few drops of perfume from a flask. Then he stripped off his heavy woolen chiton. The broad purple scar that sliced his chest in a diagonal was dark against the smoothness of his olive skin. He wrung a cloth and wiped himself down.

Even after long years of marriage, Caecilia never tired of admiring the broadness of his shoulders and chest. There were strands of gray in his dark, curly, cropped hair, but his body showed few signs of aging. It was honed, his buttocks and thighs sturdy and taut, the muscles of chest and abdomen defined. And she loved grazing her lips over the battered contours of his face, the scar from nose to lip, and the dark stubble that stippled his chin.

His brooding anger at her revelation about the dice throw had lessened as the winds from the north grew colder, rattling the pigskin membranes of the windows and whistling through the drafty halls of the palace.

His forgiveness was a blessing. Until then he’d been distant despite holding her before they fell asleep and kissing her lips upon waking. Then the tension had eased. He’d become devout, joining her in appeasing Nortia. His piety should have been reassuring, yet she fretted. Was it because the fragility of their life had been accentuated? After all, she’d defied a goddess.

He did not carry the golden dice any longer. She did not mention them, not wanting to blow upon the coals of an argument that had already cooled.

Caecilia pulled the curtains aside and entered the chamber. Vel glanced past her. “Where’s Cytheris and your hot water?”

She placed her mantle onto a wall hook, untied her snood, and shook out her hair. “I had a bath instead.” Stepping close, she trailed her finger in a line down his chest to his navel. “I thought you could help me undress.”

A smile curled on his lips. “With pleasure.” He tried to unfasten one fibula brooch on her shoulder with fumbling soldier’s fingers.

“Do you need some help?”

“Yes.” He concentrated on the easier task of untying the sash at her waist. The blue chiton slid to the floor, revealing a fine woolen slip beneath. He kissed the base of her throat. “Too many layers in winter.”

She hunched her neck, his breath tickling her. “Finish the task.” She laughed, urging him to unlace the shoulder strings so the shift also fell.

Naked, goose bumps rose on her flesh after the warmth of the clothes. She tried to press against him, but he stopped her, turning her around so her back leaned against him. She murmured, “What do you want?”

He covered her hands with his and placed them over her bosom. She felt her nipples harden beneath her touch. A tremor ran through her as he kept her palm steady against one breast and guided the other hand down, caressing the curve of her hips and her belly. “This is what I want,” he said. “Soft skin, firm flesh.”

She sighed, arching her head back against his shoulder, absorbed in the sensation of feeling her own body. He continued to move her hand down until her fingers reached her smooth-shaven mound. She was wet, ready as he was, his erection hard against the small of her back and her buttocks.

“This is what excites me,” he whispered as together they stroked her. She relaxed against him, responding, the anticipation unbearable, until he lifted her in his arms and laid her on the mattress. He edged off her slippers, nuzzling her toes and insoles, then rested her ankles on his shoulders.

“This way first?” he said, leaning forward and easing into her. She stretched her arms over her head, her hair a nimbus around her, not needing to reply.

She loved the time afterward. Once the lamps had been extinguished and there was only the glow of the braziers, she would snuggle next to him under the weight of the plaid blankets. Lying on her side, she would rest her head on his chest. She felt secure, loving how he made her believe she was beautiful even after the birth of four children. And with the rush of the day behind them, they could find comfort in sharing concerns: politics and the people, court intrigues and family dramas, and, of course,
the ever-present pressure of an enemy entrenched beyond the perimeter of the city.

Tonight, Mastarna was quiet and pensive. She raised herself on her elbow to look at him. “What is it, Vel? Is your arm aching?”

“It’s nothing.”

She was dubious. The flesh had healed, but she was not so sure the bone had knitted properly. “You can tell me if your arm is hurting. I will not think you less of a man for such an admission.”

He smiled. “It’s strong enough to bear your weight when I carry you to bed.”

She studied the dark circles beneath his eyes. “I’m serious. Do you need some valerian to help you sleep? You barely rest for more than a few hours each night.”

“Don’t fuss. It’s not the physical pain that keeps me from sleeping.”

Caecilia searched his face. “Then what worries you?”

“Do you remember when I once told you that every warrior drags a host of dead men in his wake? In my case, it’s not just my enemies. I dream of my men lying wounded and dead.”

“You must stop blaming yourself for the defeat.”

He sat up, leaning against the beech headboard. “Who else is to blame, Bellatrix? Camillus and Genucius used a strategy that I once used on Roman generals. Luring me to fight head-on against one army while another attacked from the rear.”

She also sat up, slipping her arms around his waist. “You survived, Vel. You will have another chance to square the score.”

He wrapped his arms around her and sighed. “I should never have been made king. We still sit here surrounded. If supplies of food don’t reach us soon, I fear we might be starved into surrender.” His hug tightened. “It’s been months since we’ve been able to conduct funeral rites in the necropolis. The dead are trapped with us. What if I cannot deliver this city? What if there are more ghosts clamoring for vengeance against me for my failures?”

“What do you mean ‘more ghosts’?”

“The men I led into a massacre. Their souls wander tormented on a battlefield that now lies covered in snow. The maimed would have been stabbed by spears and mutilated by sword, limbs and genitals hacked from them, and heads cut off and spiked on lances to be paraded in mockery. Why wouldn’t my troops haunt me? A commander who survived while they were denied the honor of a funeral, their bodies left to rot instead of being cremated, their path to the world of the Beyond barred. Forever made phantoms.”

Caecilia was stunned. He’d never given her a glimpse into his anguish. She was ashamed she’d not considered he would be assailed by such guilt, thinking him inured.

Until the Battle of Blood and Hail, she’d never witnessed carnage. On that day, she stood on the heights of the wall and watched Vel attacked. As hail rained down, she’d experienced the sight and smells and sounds of warfare. And most horrific of all, the stack of corpses heaped at the double gates, men denied refuge by a king who wanted Mastarna and his tribe massacred. The horror had been vivid and visceral. For weeks she’d constantly relived what she’d witnessed until she’d taught herself to stow the visions in the back of her mind. “I’m so sorry, Vel. I did not realize.”

He lay down again, guiding her to join him, drawing the covers around them. “My fear is not only of death, Bellatrix. It is that I’ll be defeated and disfigured. To be made a specter that never finds peace.”

She stroked his stubbled cheek. It was rare for him to talk of his fears and doubts. “Why are you speaking of this now? It’s not like you to be preoccupied with death.”

He covered her hand. “You defied Nortia. I can’t conquer Rome while confined in this city. What if she punishes us? What if you and our children die because of me?”

The sick feeling returned. The fear she’d caused her family to be doomed had beset her as autumn faded and there was no sign of the siege lifting. She made offerings to Nortia every day: sweet gifts of flowers and honey to woo her. But after a time, she decided not to surrender to melancholy that Fate would not forgive her. She gripped Vel’s fingers. “Nortia will be placated. Uni will protect us. Thefarie will break through enemy lines. You’ll march on Rome. I refuse to give up hope.”

Vel kissed her fingers. “My warrioress.”

She nestled beside him again. “Remember the Atlenta pendant that Thia now wears? You first gave it to me and told me the huntress and her husband were turned into lions by the goddess of love? We will be lions, Vel, together forever.”

He pressed his lips to her hair. “That’s only a story. And those lovers were transformed because they offended the deity. I’d rather hold you for eternity as you are. To believe we will meet again in Acheron is a consolation. And Fufluns will protect us there.”

At his mention of the wine god, a sharp pulse started in her temple, echoing her heartbeat. She was afraid of the violent and wanton ways required to secure Fufluns’s protection. And Artile had taught her a judgment day awaited her in the Rasennan Beyond, where demons and monsters hindered the journey, a peril that threatened a promised haven. She believed in a simpler ending, a merging of her soul with the Good Ones. She whispered, “Do you want me to desert my father’s religion?”

“No, Bellatrix. I promised you I would never do that.”

She placed his hand on her breast, her own upon his chest. “Because I will love you until my heart ceases beating.”

His tone was wistful. “And my love for you will continue after I have taken my last breath.”

His words hung heavy between them.

Vel turned on his side away from her, drawing her arm across him. “Let’s go to sleep.”

After a time she heard the shallow rise and fall of his breath as he slept. But peace was denied her. She lay on her back to stare at the ceiling, the laurel leaf pattern distorted in the wavering light of the braziers. The gloomy talk had reminded her of another ghost, and a danger in not believing in the Afterworld.

Slipping from under the bedclothes, she stepped down from the footstool, feeling the chill floor beneath her feet. She grabbed her mantle from the wall hook and wrapped it around her, padding across to the pedestal table. She lifted the handled lid from the ornate bronze cista and rummaged inside. Her fingers touched the golden dice. She pushed guilt aside and continued searching. At the bottom of the container, she found what she sought: a gold-and-onyx ring. Vel had not worn it for years. It was a gift from Seianta, his first wife.

Her thoughts turned to the Mastarna family tomb outside the sacred boundary. In it lay a sarcophagus with a sculpture of man and wife locked in an everlasting embrace. Mastarna and Seianta. Their terra-cotta image impervious to time. No such casket existed for Vel and herself. The war had prevented the commissioning of such a memorial.

Was Seianta waiting for her husband in Acheron even now? Was the Rasennan couple destined to be reunited?

When Caecilia had first married Vel, she’d shared him with Seianta while the dead girl haunted him. She’d felt her presence in their bed as surely as flesh and blood had lain between them. He claimed his love had ended long before Seianta died. Their affection challenged when their little girl, sickly and weak, had been granted only one year of life—their union broken after the death of their deformed son. The Tarchnan girl hated Vel for denying her what she believed was the chance for their children to become lesser gods through the Calu Death Cult. For each to become one of the Blessed.

Caecilia placed the ring into the cista, covering it with his other jewelry. Shivering, she climbed back into bed, molding herself against him. In reflex, he rolled over, encircling her in his arms without waking.