The Barbarian's Mistress (12 page)

‘Now m
mmy dear, I will have you taken to your apartment. What has happened to your hair? It seems a lot lighter than I remember it. Bathe, dress in more suitable clothing, and then join me for a mmmidday mmm…eal. Then this afternoon we can go into Pompeii and mmmake this contract binding. I can’t wait!’ Severus’ grin seemed too broad, and somewhat insincere. There was something in his eyes she didn’t like. Was it suspicion, doubt? Did he think he was getting damaged goods?

Without another word, she followed the slave from the room, her back straight and her head up. This was her new life now. It was far better than the one her mother had planned for her, but it was far less than what she’d hoped for. Severus didn’t seem nearly as gentle and sweet as she remembered him. Had having her signed, sealed and delivered to his door, allowed him to drop his shy mask? Did he not have to pretend to court her now that she was his?

Did everyone in her life wear masks?

Chapter Ten

Vali sat in a tavern just off the forum, drinking deeply of the rough brew he’d purchased. It was just midday, and he’d been drinking for over an hour, trying to get the strength to leave. But the idea of taking a ship now, with Anniana only a few miles away, seemed impossible.

But impossible, was staying here when she didn’t need him anymore. Impossible was having feelings for someone who was so far above him the very possibility of them being together was ludicrous. Impossible was being worthy of her love.

He climbed awkwardly to his feet, and staggered for the door. He’d had enough. He had a lot of money on him, and if he was drunk, he’d be an easy target for thieves. He hadn’t come this far to lose everything now.

That’s when the sky exploded and the ground beneath his feet fell away. Terrified, Vali toppled to the ground and looked toward Mount Vesuvius. What had only a few hours ago been a thin column of smoke that scattered fine ash around the base of the mountain was now a thick, grey trunk of darkness rising high into the sky, billowing out like one of the flat topped pines he and Anniana had sat beneath just days before. He swore loudly and profanely in a random combination of his native tongue, Greek and Latin.

Desperate with fear, he scrambled to his feet and ran back along street toward the Vesuvius Gate. Something was about to happen, something bad. And he needed to get to Anniana. He needed to protect her from what was to come.  He couldn’t let Vulcanus
, or the giants, take his woman now, not after all he’d done to save her. No god would be so cruel as to play cat and mouse with them this way.

There was already debris from fallen buildings blocking parts of
the road, and milling crowds were looking up at the mountain and pointing. These were an added obstacle in his path. In stunned horror, people watched the billowing grey cloud rising higher and higher into the sky.

‘Vulcan
us awakes!’ he heard more than one person cry, as he raced through the narrow streets, heading toward the mountain he could see in the distance above the wall of the town. He had reached Vesuvius Gate by the time the small pumice stones and ash began to rain from the sky. The light sleet of ash was becoming a hail storm, and the air was thick with smoke.

Eyes stinging, Vali br
oke into a long-legged run once he cleared the congestion at the gate. He didn’t try to dodge the falling stones, he simply pulled his cloak up over his head like a tent to protect himself from the worst of the onslaught.

By the time he reached the villa he was gasping for breath and covered with ash and burns. He ran up th
e stone steps to the front door and pushed it open without knocking. He had to find Anniana.

Inside, the sound of the hail of small stones pelting the roof was deafening. Slaves were dashing around like ants in a disturbed nest. He grabbed the closest by the arm.

‘Where is your new mistress?’

‘In the tablinum with the master,’ the terrified slave
-girl replied.

He released her arm
and headed for the room he already knew. As he opened the door and entered, he saw Anniana reclining on a couch, nibbling nervously on a piece of bread. Severus was lying on the other couch, chattering away loudly over the din.

‘Anniana, come. You can’t stay here. The mountain is about to explode.’

She heard him over the noise and her eyes flew open wide. Then she was on her feet, running toward him.

‘Anniana, stop! Don’t be absurd. This will all be over shortly. You are safer inside than out. Sit down and behave like a patrician, not a terrified slave!’

Vali felt his temper flare, but he held it back. It was up to Anniana to decide what she was to do. He couldn’t force her to leave, not when this man had a greater claim to her than he did.

Anniana had stopped as Severus had instructed, and she looked back at him, trying to decide what to do.

‘Severus, her father entrusted her safety to me. She is not yours yet, and I believe she isn’t safe here with you at this time. I’ll take her away from the mountain. If it quietens, then I’ll bring her back. Your first concern should be her safety.’

‘Who are
you
to tell mmmme what mmmmy first concern should be. I have lived on Vesuvius all mmmmy life. The gods play their games at times, but it is never serious. If you take Anniana out there
you
will risk her life.’

‘Less than if she stays here. Anniana, will you come?’ he turned to the girl, who was poised on tip toes, leaning toward him.

When their gazes connected, he read her sudden decision there. Trust! She trusted him to keep her safe. She crossed the short distance to his side.

‘I’m going with Vali, Severus. I’ll come back when this is over. But for now, I want to be away from Vulcanus. I had a dream last night that is coming true. Please, come with us. It isn’t safe here.’

‘Don’t be a little fool, Anniana, talking of dreams as if they’re real! Go if you mmmust. I will be here when you come back, your face red with emmm…barrassment for mmmaking such a fool of yourself. I mmmay take you back. It will depend.’ There was no grin now on his plane face. His eyes burned with fury and indignation.

Vali took Anniana’s hand, and led her out of the room, just as a large rock broke through the edge of the atrium roof and lobbed into the impluvium pool. Wat
er washed out, soaking the pumice-covered tiles.

‘We need something to protect our heads,’ Anniana said, as he drew her toward the front door.

He turned to look at her. ‘What?’

She shook her head, her mind considering possibilities. ‘Pillows, we need pillows that we can tie to our heads like that headdress you gave me. Wait here!’

She let go his hand and took off down the hall. He was hard pressed not to follow her. He was terrified that once out of his sight anything might happen to her, and he might not see her again. But before he could think to follow her, she was back with two plump pillows and two long lengths of fabric.

‘Kneel down for me. I want to see how this might work.’

He did her bidding, amazed with how clear thinking she seemed to be in the circumstances. He laughed at her ingenuity. There was something to be said for intelligence in a woman. It was almost as valuable as beauty and courage. Where had the little mouse gone?  In her place was a determined goddess. 

With the hold-all still thrown over his shoulder, his sword and dagger at his waist, Anniana placed the pillow on his head and bound it in place with the cloth. Then she brought the ends under his armpits from the front, and tied it in a knot at his back. He lifted the hold-all out of the way so he could more easily get at it if he needed to.

‘How’s that?’ She yelled over the deafening noise, as she studied her handy-work.

For the first time Vali noticed t
he slaves had all disappeared. Hidden under beds, he expected.

He moved his head to see how much mobi
lity he still had. It was enough. Nodding, he took the other pillow from her hand. Placing it on her head, he bound it with the cloth, as she had done. When he’d finished he grinned at her like a fool. Even in such an outlandish outfit she looked beautiful. His heart swelled with love for her.

‘Come on then. We have a ship to catch.’

They both looked ridiculous, he most of all, as he was covered from head to toe in grey ash that made him look more ghost than man.

Anniana
grinned at him cheekily, as if catching his insane levity. Then she gave him her hand, and let him lead her away from her husband and her new home.

Anniana had never been so terrified in her life. She coughed and gagged, as she breathed in the ash and small airborne pellets. Her eyes were stinging and watering so badly she could barely see. Trying to walk on the small, round stones that were piling up on the ground was becoming a nightmare. More than once she wrenched her ankle as her sandal shot out from under her.

‘I wish there was some other way to Stabiae. Cutting through the town is b
ecoming more and more difficult,’ Vali yelled at her, as they moved toward the Pompeii.

‘How much time would it add if we went straight down to the river and followed it out to the harbour?’ Anniana yelled back over the sound of pelting stones.

‘Instead of walking along the bluff to the town and then down, you want to circle around Pompeii completely? Probably add about half an hour to the trip. But then, the roads are getting harder to traverse, and if we get caught in the town, it might take longer than that to get out again. All right, we’ll try it.’

They scrambled over the stones that were quickly disguising the path down the mountainside. With the darkening sky and smoke, it was getting harder and harder to get a clear sense of where they were going.

They separated from the growing crowds making their way toward the township, and created their own path down to the river. Then they followed it toward the harbour. It was exhausting work, and Anniana had been forced to hold on to Vali so that she didn’t lose her footing.

By the time they reached Stabiae they were fighting the crowds to get to the docks. Anniana fell in behind Vali, letti
ng his size and weight force their way through so she could follow in his wake.

The docks were in chaos. Several had collapsed. The sea was a spewing caldron, and most of the ships were moving out to sea. Vali stopped suddenly. Anniana slammed into his back.

‘What?’ she cried, peering around his bulk, trying to see what the problem was.

‘The ships are all gone. The last one just left the dock. We haven’t got a chance. And the way that sea is looking, I doubt it’s any safer out there than on shore, anyway.’ She heard the despe
ration in his voice as he thought aloud through the possibilities.

Just then the sky seemed to grow ev
en darker, and the hail of pumice stones grew heavier, with a volley of larger, sharper rocks joining the fall. The sun was completely hidden behind the cloud of billowing smoke now. She coughed and spat out more tiny stones.

Vali turned her around and did something with the material tied to her back. There was a loud rip. Suddenly he spun her back to him, and suspended a fine piece of the cloth over her nose and mouth, tucking it into the cloth holding the pillow to her head.

‘The sand dwellers cover their faces like this to keep their lungs clear,’ he yelled into her ear as explanation. She nodded and did the same for him, tearing a strip of the fabric away at the back so he could put it across his mouth and nose.

Anniana immediately noticed the difference. She could breathe again. Her eyes continued to water and sting, but at least she could breathe.

‘We can either follow the coast line around the point or we can go inland, trying to keep to the road to the south from here. But the roads are quickly disappearing under the blanket of stones and ash. If we lose the path, who knows where we’ll end up? It’s not like we can use the sun to navigate by. Or we could follow the river to one of the other inland ports to the south.’

‘The river is a pretty easy thing to follow. It won’t disappear like the roads,’ she said.

‘I think the hail is going to start to affect the depth of the river soon. You can see how low the tide is getting.  But yes, the river seems the most definable landmark. Let’s go.’

The stone and ash barrage didn’t let up as they scrambled along the river’s edge. People seemed to be heading off in every direction. No one seemed to have any sense of where it was best to go. Every so often, another earth-shattering quake would hit them, and they’d be sent sprawling to the ground.

Anniana kept her head down as she walked, her hand firmly attached to one of the ends of the cloth tied around Vali’s back. She wondered many times, when she fell down and had to scramble up again, whether their attempt at escape was simply a fool’s errand. It might well be that the gods were destroying the whole world, and there was no safety to be found anywhere.

She remembered hearing about the new cult that followed a Christ. They believed a Judgement Day was coming that would return Jerusalem to its past glory. Maybe this was Judgement Day.

But no amount of conjecture was going to solve their problems. All they could do was pick a direction and keep putting one foot in front of another, until they couldn’t go another step.

They’d begun to climb, sometime after Anniana had lost track of the time, and the river had turned from a deep, wide watercourse into a stream. The hail of stones had been left behind and they could have taken the pillows off their heads, but Vali said it was easier to carry them
as they were. So they’d trudged on until the ash eased and the air cleared.

Finally, when it was too dark to see where they were going anymore, Vali called a halt and they took shelter beneath a wide branched pine tree next to the stream. The ground here was not covered in stones. The grass was soft and very welcome, as they collapsed onto it.

Vali pulled the water-skin from the carry-all and offered it to her. He’d had to fill it several times on their journey, as thirst was as much their enemy as ash and stones. Anniana swallowed down the water and handed it over to the tall ghost at her side. She smiled tiredly at the sight he made.