Love Is in the Air (36 page)

It signaled the goddess Vesta’s displeasure. Even the youngest Roman babe knew that when Vesta’s ire was stirred, suffering befell Rome.

Yet this was not Brutus’ concern. His duty lay at the Forum. He did his best to stay out of the Virgin’s affairs. Brutus tried to turn away before he was recognized, but one of the Vestal’s retainers waved him over. Despite his sense of urgency, there was no declining an invitation by one of the Virgins.

The curtains parted to reveal Symphia, the eldest Virgin. Brutus inwardly cringed. This one was no neophyte to the order. Even though Virgins were required to serve only thirty years, this Vestal had taken a lifelong vow. She knew the political landscape of Rome and navigated it better than many Counsels had. Symphia had survived two civil wars and seemed able to outlast another if need be.

Brutus inclined his head so as not to meet her eyes. “Great Mother, are you in need of assistance?”

“They already fetch another horse.”

“Then I shall give you my humblest prayers and—”

To Brutus’ surprise, Symphia reached a wrinkled hand out and laid it upon his arm. “It is not your prayers I wish to garner, but your support.”

For a moment, Brutus was stunned into silence as the Virgin retreated behind the curtain. Before he could stammer an answer, the Vestal’s young assistant spoke. “She will call upon you when she has need.”

Brutus’ frustrations reached a zenith. “I have official—”

“You reap the fruit of Rome only through the Virgin’s grace. If Vesta has need of you, would you deny her?”

The muscles of his jaw clenched. How could anyone, let alone a senator, answer such a question? For six centuries of prosperity, the Virgins had kept the Sacred Fire burning in the Temple of Vesta. No one, not even Caesar, could deny the Virgins. There was nothing to do but ascend.

With a curt nod to the acolyte, Brutus tried to rush toward the Forum, but the crowd would not part. Clearing his throat, Brutus tried once again to push his way through, but the stalled populace stood slack-jawed, entranced.

Brutus turned back to the carriage, and even he gasped. The great stallion had slumped to the ground. Its precious blood streamed down the cobbled street. It was one thing to have a Virgin’s horse injured, but it was quite another to have her favorite steed die upon The Sacred Way. From the look of his fellow travelers, they felt as if Rome herself were bleeding.

Despite his most pressing appointment, Brutus found himself shouldering his way toward the downed beast. The attendants were of little use. Each bandage soaked through before they could tear another.

Trying to keep his tone civil, Brutus knelt down. “You must tie one above the injury.”

The young boy was near tears. “Nothing will stop the bleeding.”

Brutus was no physician, but he had served several years in the Spanish campaign and witnessed enough wounds to know how to stanch the flow. “Give me the cloth.”

Before Brutus could tie it properly, the stallion next to them began pawing at the ground.

“Quiet him!” Brutus hissed between clenched teeth.

The young attendant tried, but the huge horse kicked at the Virgin’s carriage. The beast’s hooves broke through the thick wood and a strangled cry came from the carriage.

“Untie him!” Brutus yelled to the boy, but the child was too afraid, and he barely had the bleeding under control. Surveying the crowd, he found a burly-looking man. “You there! Get the stallion away!”

At first the gruff plebeian seemed oblivious to Brutus’ entreaty. Then the stallion twisted in his harness and nearly knocked the man down. The near miss must have awakened the man from his shock, for he lunged forward and rapidly untied the great steed from the harness. Cooing like an experienced horseman, the plebeian coaxed the stallion away from the smell of blood.

Rapidly, Brutus tightened the tourniquet and stanched the bleeding. Still, the stallion’s eyes rolled back in its head, and its nostrils flared as if the great horse had raced the entire track of the Circus Maximus. Running his hand gently down the leg, Brutus examined the wound. For so much blood, the tear in the skin was but a nick.

Using the corner of his robe, Brutus cleaned the blood from the area. How could this tiny injury create such a flow? How did the horse injure itself in the first place? The wound was on the
inner
surface of the leg. How could a stray nail from a shop have cut it there? Investigating further, Brutus found the answer, as the air rushed from his lungs.

“Get the Vestal to the Temple!” Brutus shouted to the attendant. The boy was still wringing his hands over the second stallion. The child could not understand the danger that his charge was in.

Turning to the crowd again, Brutus pointed randomly to pedestrians. “You, you, you! Take the yoke. Pull her to the temple.”

The plebeians snapped to attention, but did not move. It was unheard-of for mere common folk to attend the Virgins. Even this frightened young boy must have been the son of a senator, or else he would not be part of the Vestal’s entourage.

“Now!” Brutus shouted.

The young attendant had recovered his color and stomped over to Brutus. “How dare you! No one but—”

The boy’s words died as Brutus showed him the tip of the poison dart that had penetrated the stallion’s thick hide.

The bloom rushed from the child’s face, but he managed to stammer to the crowd, “Yes, quickly. Pick up the yoke.”

With the permission of the attendant, people streamed forward and took up the wooden harness. Within seconds, the carriage was heading up Capitoline Hill to the Temple. The crowd followed the carriage as if it were a beacon on a dark night. Suddenly Brutus was left on the empty street with a dying horse.

He was startled when a voice boomed to the right of his ear. The burly plebeian stood over Brutus, staring at the poison dart tip, shaking his head.

“Nothing good will come of this. Nothing at all.”

* * *

Syra shielded her eyes as the oxcart jerked to a stop. The sun blazed overhead as if the globe were angered at the world. She strained to witness for herself this great city of Rome that everyone worshipped, but all that lay before her was a long line of carts, much like their own.

Far off in the distance, a speck flickered on the horizon. It looked nothing but dusty and soiled. This could not be Rome. But why, then, had they stopped? Where else would the miles upon miles of carts be headed?

Where else would
she
be headed? Syra could not remember a time, not even running down a hillside of heather in her native land, when she did not know that she would find her feet upon Roman soil. Her soles seemed to crave it. Of course, she had always assumed that her entrance would be most grand, upon a dark stallion, her sword raised high above her head. Not stripped down to a coarse toga, chained to a rickety oxcart.

Frowning at the notion, Syra did not hear Rax’s approach until the butt of his whip knocked the back of her head so hard that her chin snapped forward and struck the rough wood of the cart. Lips cracked from weeks on the road split open.

“Keep to the cart, wench!” the slave driver bellowed.

Syra’s arm cocked back, ready to snatch that ridiculously small whip from the slaver and plant it in an extremely uncomfortable orifice, but Navia put a restraining hand on her arm.

“It would not be worth it.”

Still, Syra strained at the metal that chained her to the creaky cart. “I will be the judge of that.”

Navia’s hand moved to the barely healed wound on Syra’s forearm. “It was not worth it that time. It will not be worth it now. Not so close to auction.”

“Why? So that Rax might fetch a higher price?”

“No. So that someone besides the whorehouses will bid upon you.”

Letting out a hiss, Syra looked at the woman who had just saved her from another whipping. If either of them had to worry about the whorehouses, it was Navia. Dirt streaked her worn face. Her tiny feet were a mass of blisters. There was no way the girl would be sold as a house slave. No, the only thing this girl looked good for was lying on her back to give a centurion a few rides until she gave out completely.

Worse, Syra had noticed the weeks of Navia’s sour stomach and was certain that the Spanish girl was with child. Despite her usual disdain for others, Navia had grown upon her, so she had held her tongue, not wanting to give away the girl’s condition. If Syra had, Rax might have sold her off to the first whorehouse they stumbled upon. She might not be able to free them, but at the least, Syra could delay this young girl facing such a life.

Anger rose in the back of her throat.

Damn them. Damn them all. Roman and Spanish.

If Syra were still free in Spain, then bards would have written a different story. But she was a slave like any other. Her fate in someone else’s hands.

CHAPTER 3

The ground baked through Brutus’ leather sandals. Even for Rome, it was unseasonably hot for February. Brutus looked up at the sun. The sphere was red-hot and seemed to be flying across the sky this morn. He had stayed with the Virgin’s stallion until its last breath had given out. By then, the high priests had arrived and demanded a retelling of the entire sordid tale. With his pristine white robes splattered with blood, Brutus had borrowed the plebeian’s rough-spun toga and struck out again for the Forum.

Brutus had thought cutting across the market would avoid the knotted mass of citizens in the open-air court near the Rostra, but he had been wrong. If anything, the crowds had swelled with the temperature. Commerce bustled in the heart of Rome.

Canvas awnings flapped in the breeze as merchants hocked their wares, but you could barely hear them over the hammering of workers repairing the back wall of the Forum. While Caesar had brought on this devastation, the general seemed most desperate to build the city back to its former glory.

Earlier this morning, Brutus had seen Rome through the eyes of a true patriot. Now, having to shuffle his way through the dusty market, he saw what Rome had really become—congested and tired. Brutus surveyed the distant horizon for some respite, but found only dusty trails left by desperate farmers. During the civil war, the aqueduct just north of the city had ruptured, and the surrounding area had been without its water supply for weeks now. Engineers and slaves worked day and night to shore up the breaches, but the water could not be allowed down the channel until the entire length was repaired. Which meant that for the next few weeks, things would be dusty, noisy, and congested.

This was not the city of his youth. As a child, Brutus had strolled across the Plaza under a canopy of palm trees. Despite being a native of the capital, Brutus had always been amazed at the sheer beauty of the temples and statues. Dozens of white marble figures used to reach up to the heavens in supplication. Now, between the civil wars and certain heroes falling out of favor, there were but a half dozen motley statues lining the avenue. Rome was in distress, and it showed.

“A copper, sire?” a beggar asked, eyes downcast.

In his makeshift toga, Brutus had nothing to give the poor man. Dressed in rags, the beggar sat upon the hot stones, unflinching. One arm missing, and his left leg mangled. Another victim of Rome’s latest civil war.

On another day, Brutus might have rushed past this man, but not this day. Not with the sight of the Vestal’s stallion dead in the street still at the front of his mind. No, he needed to wash that memory away with an act of altruism, and hope that Vesta watched.

“You there,” Brutus called to the nearest market stall.

The shopkeep leapt at the chance to make a sale. “Yes, sire?” the pudgy man wheezed after sprinting from his stall.

“What is the largest coin you have?” Brutus asked.

“I am sorry?” The merchant seemed genuinely confused.

“Let me see your purse.”

The man snatched his goatskin wallet out of Brutus’ reach. “And who might you be that I should open my purse to you?”

Brutus was in no mood for a lecture on the class structure of the Empire, so he grabbed the wallet from the man’s thick fingers, plucked out a gold coin and tossed it to the invalid. “Use this to go home.”

The injured man looked incredulous at his luck and stared at the glittering coin. “Thank you, sire.”

Before the shopkeep could sputter an insult, Brutus consoled him. “Do not worry, good man. Call upon the Temple of Saturn, and you will be paid in kind, with interest.”

The pudgy man squinted hard. “How do I know they will pay?”

“Hush, man. Do you not recognize our benefactor?” the injured man interjected, showing the face that graced the gold coin.

Ever since Caesar had returned, the state’s coinage was struck with his own image and those of his Praetors. Brutus felt uncomfortable with such a distinction. There were some honors that you should leave to the gods.

The merchant’s eyes widened when he realized that Marcus Brutus, the man emblazoned on the coin, stood before him. “Forgive me, Senator. I did not—”

“There is no trespass. Seek the temple, and you will be recompensed.”

Leaving the men behind, Brutus hurried up the hill and entered the public gardens. The date trees, already laden with fruit, shaded the rich soil. Here, Brutus could almost imagine the glory of old, when the Republic was strong and united in purpose.

Climbing the steps to Pompey’s theater, Brutus felt his stomach tighten. The Senate was already well into its debate. It was the highest breach of protocol for a legislator of such rank as Brutus to miss an important session. Bounding the steps two at a time, he nearly ran into one of Caesar’s personal guards.

“Hold there,” the armor-plated soldier announced.

Normally Brutus would have brushed past him, but clothed in a commoner’s wool, the guard raised a sharp spear.

“Stand aside.” His tone must have carried enough authority, for the guard’s offensive stance wavered. The soldier recognized the Praetor, for the man’s face flushed even more red than his helmet’s feather plume, and he stepped aside, bowing his head.

“Forgive me, Senator.”