Defy the Eagle (25 page)

Jilana awoke the following morning to discover she was not alone in the bedchamber. A young girl sat on the single, hard chair in the room, staring at Jilana with avid curiosity.

"Centurion Tarpeius sent me," the girl explained in a bright voice. "I have brought you a clean stola to wear while I launder your own clothes. I am Faline."

Jilana managed a weak smile and sat up, clutching the sheet to her breast. "Centurion Tarpeius?"

"You met him last night," Faline reminded her. "He said I was to let you sleep, but since you are awake, are you hungry?"

While Jilana nodded, Faline scurried off the chair and out of the room. A moment later she returned carrying a silver tray laden with fruit, fresh bread, honey, preserves, cheese and wine. She set the tray on the table beside the bed and reached behind Jilana to plump up her pillow. Jilana sat upright and tucked the linen around her as securely as possible. The tray came to rest upon her lap and Jilana was shocked to discover that she was ravenous. She sampled the bread and preserves first and then proceeded to investigate the other delicacies. Faline half-filled a cup with wine and cut it with water from a second jar while her charge ate.

"When you are finished, I will take you to the bath. Centurion Tarpeius sends his apology that he could not provide you last night with the bath you requested."

Jilana paused in mid-bite and looked into Faline's guileless eyes. Apparently the centurion had not disclosed her ignominious arrival. Jilana was grateful for his consideration.

When Jilana was finished with her meal, she dressed in her old stola and followed Faline to the public baths. There she was steamed, massaged, oiled and strigiled until the last ache disappeared from her muscles and she felt deliriously clean. The stola Faline slipped over her head was of soft, light wool dyed a pale green; its excess length was caught up by a leather belt decorated with bronze. Faline discarded Jilana's stained shoes with a disdainful wrinkling of her nose and offered in their place a pair of heeled sandals, dyed a deeper green than the stola, with low side pieces that were fastened with criss-cross thongs and tied at the ankle. It was when Faline stepped back to admire her handiwork that Jilana became aware of the muted conversations going on around her and the frosty looks sent her way. Since none of the other women in the bath knew her, indeed, had not bothered to introduce themselves, their reaction puzzled Jilana. Next, Faline took a brush and comb to Jilana's freshly washed hair and worked the snarls from its length. Faline's ministrations brought back memories of Caddaric—their lovemaking in her family's bath, his patient labor with her hair—and Jilana sought refuge in conversation with Faline.

"The clothes are from the centurion," Faline replied in response to Jilana's question. "He bought them from my mistress this morning. He will be most upset that the gown is too long."

Surprised that the centurion had gone to so much trouble on her behalf, Jilana brushed aside the matter of the gown's length. "Who is your mistress, Faline?"

The brush ceased its movement and Faline leaned down to murmur against Jilana's ear, "She is the mistress of Suetonius Paulinus."

A rush of blood warmed Jilana's cheeks and she bent her head to study the weave of her gown. That explained the reaction of the other women. No doubt they recognized Faline and had determined that Jilana was of the same ilk as Suetonius' mistress. Well let them, Jilana decided with a resurgence of spirit. She lifted her head and looked haughtily around the room until even the coldest gazes fell away. These women knew nothing of her, of what she had endured, and she would soon be on her way to the port of Londinium to take ship for Rome. Let them think what they pleased and Hades take them!

Upon leaving the bath, the two women found the street filled with people and Faline grasped Jilana's arm to keep from being separated. They stepped into the street, intending to return to the garrison but the flow of traffic was

against them and they made little progress. "Where are they going?" Jilana questioned when they were rudely jostled aside yet again.

"To the temple," Faline panted. Smaller than Jilana and clutching Jilana's soiled clothing as well, she fared much worse in fighting the tide. "Every morning since we learned of the rebellion, the priests have sacrificed an ox to Claudius."

Jilana tried to force a path through the human wall in front of her. Beside her, Faline lent her slight weight to the effort but to no avail. They were firmly repulsed and Faline was in imminent danger of being trampled underfoot. "'Tis senseless," Jilana decided. Covering Faline's hand with her own, she turned back the way they had come.

Propelled forward by the crowd, they traveled to the heart of the city where the temple stood. Faline stumbled as they were pushed up the steps and only Jilana's firm grip kept her from falling. There was no gradual slowing, as was usual in a crowd. One minute she and Faline were being borne along and the next they were motionless, backed against one of the towering marble columns that rose to the ceiling and formed the colonnade. In front of her, above the heads of others, Jilana could just see the stone altar which had been set in front of the entrance to the anteroom and the fire which blazed upon it.

"Every sacrifice has been the same," Faline informed her. "The organs of all the sacrifices have been free of blemish or disease, a good sign. The augur says that is a sign that the Divine Claudius will see to it that Camulodunum will be spared the rebellion. Do you believe him?"

Jilana forced herself to nod, but secretly she harbored doubts that the late Emperor Claudius had ascended to the heights where Jupiter ruled. Her thoughts were diverted by the arrival of the priests and the highly decorated sacrifice. The ox stood docilely before the altar while the priests washed their hands with sacred water and dried them on linen cloths, and even before the herald's ritual command for silence, the only sound was the steady music of the flute. Their heads covered with the folds of their togas, the priests took up the square wooden platter that held the mola salsa, the sacred flour mixed with salt, and sprinkled the mixture between the horns of the animal and onto the sacrificial knife. Two attendants stripped the ox of its decorations while a third drew a knife along the animal's back from head to tail. The high priest began to chant the prayer, and as his voice rose, so did the tension of the assemblage. Jilana's fingers curled into the palms of her hands as the prayer rose to a final crescendo and she stared, transfixed, as a junior priest advanced upon the altar with a hammer in his outstretched hands and stood to the right of the animal.

"Do I strike?" The lesser priest's traditional question sucked the air from Jilana's lungs and she barely heard the high priest's affirmative reply. With a lithe movement, the priest swung the hammer high above his head and dealt the ox a well-aimed blow which stunned the animal and brought it to its knees. An image of Caddaric falling beneath her own blow replaced the scene in front of Jilana and the pain that mental image caused sliced through her heart. She closed her eyes, willing the vision away, and when she opened them again the ox's throat had been cut. A murmur of appreciation rose up from the people at the clean kill and Jilana drew a shuddering breath. She had never witnessed the sacrifice of so large an animal and she quickly averted her eyes as the priests began the task of dismembering and dissecting the ox. The internal organs were removed. They were, examined and found free of disease or blemish. And, as Faline had said, the augur repeated his prediction of safety for Camulodunum. The organs and pieces of the carcass were now put into the flames for the god's consumption. The odor of burning meat spread and Jilana turned aside as it reached her nostrils and made her feel distinctly lightheaded.

Around Jilana conversation had broken out, voices punctuated with laughter as people hurried to reassure each other that they were surely safe from the Iceni rebellion. But in spite of the bright words there was an underlying despair among the Romans that made Jilana nervous. Without waiting for the ceremony to end, or to see if Faline followed, Jilana forced her way through the crowd toward the street. She ignored the angry looks and caustic insults directed her way, conscious only of an overwhelming need to get away from the temple and the death it represented.

By the time she extricated herself from the crowd and could breathe fresh air, Jilana was pale and shaken and covered with a cold film of perspiration. Remembering Faline she looked back, and was trapped in a vision so terrifyingly real that she could not breathe.

Flames rose from the roof of the temple, consuming wood with a ferocious crackling that drowned out the sounds of the dying. Bodies littered the steps of the temple, their blood staining the marble steps. At the head of the stairs, a group of men employed a battering ram against the closed double doors of the temple. As section after section of the roof collapsed, more screams were heard and the men and women who walked the street with their bloody swords dangling from their hands laughed.

"Mistress?"

Jilana gasped at the touch on her arm and she looked down at Faline's questioning face. Faline! Jilana jerked her gaze back to the temple and felt the earth rock under her feet. All was exactly as it had been—the temple, the crowd, the priests, the flames rising from the altar. She shivered despite the morning sunlight, the cold emanating from the very marrow of her bones. There was no refuge here, only certain death. Boadicea would come, and when she was finished the capital and all its inhabitants would be dead; Jilana knew this with the same dreadful certainty that had possessed her when she had dreamed of Mona.

"Mistress?" Faline said again and Jilana forced her thoughts back to the present.

"I must speak with the centurion," Jilana said in a hoarse voice.

"He would be with his men," Faline answered with a frown. "At work on the earthwall."

"Show me," Jilana ordered.

"Nay, mistress." Faline's eyes widened in shock. "The centurion said I should return you to your room."

Jilana shook her head and whirled away. "I must speak with him, Faline. Tis vital."

Wondering what to do, Faline stood uncertainly in the street as Jilana walked away. The centurion would surely be angry if she allowed Jilana to continue alone, and yet he would be just as angry if Faline accompanied Jilana to the earthwall. With a heartfelt sigh, Faline started after Jilana. She would stay close enough to keep Jilana in sight but far enough away to avoid the centurion's wrath. She was, after all, only a slave, and if she did not have a care for herself no one else would.

As Faline had predicted, Jilana found Centurion Tarpeius reviewing the progress of his defenses, and had she been less upset she would have seen his normally austere expression turn grim at her approach. Hadrian muttered a word of dismissal to his aide and sent a warning glare at three legionaries who had paused in their labors to appreciate Jilana's arrival. When the soldiers had returned to work, Hadrian allowed himself the luxury of turning his own admiring gaze toward the young woman. Last night she had been disheveled, travel-worn and badly treated by his command; he had pitied her and taken her under his protection because honor demanded it. The stola had been purchased from the governor-general's mistress for the same reason. How could he have known that the color would prove a perfect foil for the hair that now shimmered red-gold in the sunlight? At thirty-eight years of age—twenty of which had been spent in his country's service in the far-flung reaches of the Empire— Hadrian had never met a woman who stopped the breath in his throat the way this one now did. With an effort, he subdued that unexpected surge of emotion and by the time Jilana reached him, Hadrian wore his usual stern expression.

"Greetings, mistress." Though he did not unbend enough to smile, there was a soft note in Hadrian's voice.

"Centurion." Jilana inclined her head slightly. "I must speak with you."

Hadrian shifted uncomfortably on the single crutch supporting his injured left leg. "Can it wait until the noon leal, mistress? Certain details here require my attention."

"Nay, it cannot," Jilana interrupted. "Please, Centurion, 'tis important."

With a grunt of resignation, Hadrian nodded and led Jilana away from the working men to a spot of relative privacy. "Very well, mistress. Now tell me what is so urgent it could not wait."

Jilana clasped her hands in front of her, uncertain how to begin, how to convince this man that she had not taken leave of her senses. "Boadicea will come to Camulodunum."

Hadrian looked at her questioningly. "You have remembered more than you told me last night?"

"Nay." Jilana shook her head. "But I know she will come. You must evacuate the city, Centurion, or all here will be killed."

A chill presentiment raced down Hadrian's spine at her words, but he shook it off. "You are overwrought, mistress. You need to rest and in a few days..."

"In a few days we will all be dead," Jilana cried. Her outburst drew curious looks their way and Jilana forced self to speak calmly. "The city is doomed, Centurion, but there is still time to save the people. Surely there are other cities nearby, perhaps even a legionary fortress, which afford more protection than Camulodunum."

Hadrian cut off her speech with an impatient gesture. "So I am to evacuate the several thousand citizens of this city because you doubt the protection it affords," he inquired angrily. "And how, mistress, am I to protect a column of that size with less than three hundred legionaries when you doubt I can use those same soldiers to protect a town that will soon be surrounded by a defensible rampart?" Hadrian drew rein on his temper, knowing that his anger stemmed, in part, from the fear that he would not be able to defend the city. "Forgive my outburst, but you must see that I cannot abandon the possibility of saving both Camulodunum and its citizens simply because one young refugee thinks she knows Boadicea's mind."