The Lion and the Lark (21 page)

     “What is it?”

     “Your quaestor Ardus Cappius has sent word that some of the renegade Iceni have broken through the fort wall.  You are needed at the barracks immediately.”

     Scipio closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

     “Has anything been taken?” he asked.

     “Weapons from the arsenal.  Broadswords, some  short spears and javelins...”

     “
Scuta
?” Scipio inquired.

     Ariovistus nodded.  The large, well made Roman shields which covered a man from chin to knees, reinforced with brass bosses, were what the Iceni lacked most.

     Somebody was very smart.    

     The general stood and addressed Lucia.

     “I want you to stay at home and have cena with your mother.  We will discuss this matter further in the morning.  You may go.”

     Lucia rose from her seat.

     “What are you waiting for?” Scipio snapped at her, when she hesitated about leaving.

     Lucia lifted her skirt with one hand and fled.

     When she was safely back in her bedroom she sat on the edge of her bed and chewed her fingernails nervously.

     She had to get word to Brettix.  She didn’t know what her father had planned for him, but it wouldn’t be good.  The Iceni emergency, fortunate from her perspective, would probably occupy her father through the night, which meant that she had until morning to reach Brettix.

     She had to make sure that Brettix was gone by the time her father found a spare moment to deal with him, and she couldn’t trust anyone enough to take such a message for her.

     She would have to walk out to the garrison stables and tell Brettix herself.

     Lucia made plans in her head all through dinner with her mother, nodding and smiling as Drucilla chattered about her layout for a spring garden (a suitable fantasy to get her through the hard winter.)  When Drucilla went off after dinner to meet with the prospective gardener, Lucia slipped back to her room and got out her warmest clothes.  She made a pile of them and shoved them under her bed, planning to take a route that was safe enough by full moonlight once she was dressed and ready to go.

     She knew a secret way out of the fort, and after her parents were asleep she was going to use it.  There was a hole under the wire reinforced fence directly behind her house, and it was just out of sight of the posted guards.  She had used it before when she wanted to take a forbidden night ride, and had filled it in carefully with rocks so her father would not notice it.  If she dug it out again she could crawl under the fence, and then it was a simple matter of slipping through the high timber gates when they were opened to admit a new arrival or permit a departure.  Traffic came and went at all hours; she would have to be patient, but sooner or later a large enough contingent would allow her to pass through unnoticed.  She was small and fast and could make herself unobtrusive when she chose, a trick she had learned in childhood to escape the wrath of her father.

     Her plan would take time, but she had executed it before for lesser reasons.  When it came to getting what she wanted, Lucia had the patience of Caesar, waiting and circling the fortification at Alesia while the trapped Gauls starved.

     She changed into her nightgown and got into bed, listening for the sounds that would indicate her mother had retired.

CHAPTER eight

     Brettix took off his boots and lay down on his bunk.  The room in which he lived above the stables consisted of little more than a bed and a chair and a scarred wooden table, but he didn’t need much else.  The fireplace was huge, taking up almost all of one wall, and he got his wood as well as his meals from the groom in the stables.  He was warm and well fed, at the expense of the man he was plotting to destroy, so he should have been content.

      But that man was also Lucia’s father.

     He hadn’t seen Lucia since the day she finally made the jump, and he didn’t know if he would be employed by the general much longer.  Lucia’s horsemanship was improving daily, and he may have scared her off with his sudden burst of affection the last time he saw her.  The loss of the job  didn’t bother him; he had already learned enough to mastermind a break through the fort wall which should have taken place already.  If all went well it would result in some stolen Roman weaponry for his men.  But he had come to depend on his sustained contact with Lucia and he didn’t want to think about losing it.

     He had discovered on the days between lessons that time hung heavy on his hands when he didn’t see her.  She had been a bright spot in a dreary frozen  landscape.  With Lucia gone there was nothing left to live for except his campaign against the Romans, and he was learning that the object of hatred lost its malignant luster when it wore a human face.

     The Roman face he knew best was Lucia’s.

     The wind howled through the chinks in the stable walls and he pulled the sheepskin pelt at the foot of the cot up to his shoulders.  He was too tired to get up and renew the fire, so it burned low as he fell asleep.

     It was a bunch of burning embers when he was roused by pounding on the door at the top of the stairs which led down to the stable.  He sat up, his heart leaping in his chest, wondering if one of his Iceni comrades had been arrested at the fort and given him up to Scipio.

     Then heard Lucia’s voice and he bolted from the bed, knocking over a chair in his haste to get to her.  He ripped open the door and found her standing on the raw wooden landing, blue with cold, her feet soaked through, shivering too hard to say anything more than his name.

     “Lucia!” he gasped, still struggling with the confusion of sleep as he seized her hands and dragged her into his room.  “
Tuatha da dann
, you’re half frozen!  What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

     She shook her head, her teeth chattering.  He realized that the questions would have to wait until she had regained her equilibrium.  He righted the chair and dragged it next to the fire, then stripped her of her shaggy woolen cloak and wet sheepskin boots.  Her bare feet were alarmingly white; he had seen frostbite many times and once she was seated he quickly pinched one of her toes.

     “Do you feel that?” he asked.

     She nodded, shivering.

     He sighed with relief and left her long enough to fan the fire, adding chips from a basket next to the hearth to get it going strong again, then piling on logs when it was blazing.  The warmth rapidly dispersed into the room, but when he saw that her clothes were also damp and she was still shaking he said, “Lucia, you have to undress all the way.  I’ll give you my tunic to wear.”

     She rose obediently and stripped, turning away from him.  He had a quick glimpse of her slender naked back as he handed her his warmest shirt, which fell past her knees once she had slipped it over her head.  She sat again as he seized his jug of corma and poured some of it into the kettle hanging over the fire.  When it was heated he poured it into a wooden cup, handing it to her and dropping his sheepskin over her lap.

     She sat staring into the fire, sipping slowly, her rigor lessening until it ceased altogether.  When he saw that she had recovered he knelt next to her and asked gently, “Lucia, what happened?  Why did you walk all the way out here on such a cold night?”

     She looked at him, her dark brown eyes huge in her pale face.  “My father knows,” she whispered.

     “Knows what?”

     She looked away from him, then back.  “My bodyguard, Larsendt, the man who rides with me when I come for the lessons?”

     Brettix nodded.

     “He saw you kiss me that last day we were together and he told my father.”

     Bretix sat back on his heels, his expression changing as he thought over what she had just related to him.

     “What exactly did your father say to you?” he finally asked her, his tone sober.

     “He said that he was sending me back to Rome, but he tried to pretend that it was because I was bored or not keeping my mother company or something.  When I argued with him he became angry and admitted that Larsendt had spied on us.”

     “I’ll have to take care of that Swiss the next time I see him,” Brettix said savagely.

     “Please, Brettix, don’t do anything to him, it will just make this worse,” she said, tears springing into her eyes.

     “All right, don’t worry about it.  What else?”

     Lucia took a deep breath.  “I had to come here tonight and warn you because I don’t know what my father is going to do.  Under Roman law you could be prosecuted for a crime,
stuprum
, which carries the death penalty for any slave having a sexual relationship with a free woman.  In the colonies the military commander is the chief prosecutor of the courts, so he could have you arrested any time.”

     “I kissed you, Lucia, that’s all.”

     “Do you think that’s going to stop my father? You’re in danger, Brettix, and it’s all my fault.”

     “Why is it your fault?  I embraced you...”

     “You never would have done it if you didn’t sense that I wanted it.  I didn’t think of the consequences for you, just of my own selfish...”

     He put his hand over her mouth, cutting off the flow of speech.  “Let’s just say it was both of us.  Now listen to me.  Do you know if your father gave the order for my arrest?”

     “No, the soldiers would have been here by now if he had.  He’s dealing with some trouble with the Iceni tonight, that’s why I knew I had to come now to give you a chance to get away.  He will probably get to you in the morning.”

     “All right.  I’ll have to go now, and I’ll have to take a horse from the stable.”

     “Take Stella, she’s the sturdiest and she already knows you.  The groom sleeps like the dead in the back room, you should be able to get past him with no problem.”

     Brettix nodded as he looked around the room, thinking about what to take with him; he already knew that the groom slept heavily.  He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on his boots, saying to Lucia, “You can’t wear your cloak, it’s still wet.  I have an extra one, it’s threadbare but it will have to do.  If you wear two tunics under it you should be all right just for the trip back to the fort.”

     Lucia stared at him.  “I’m not coming with you, it will slow you down.  You have to get out of here right now, Brettix, haven’t you been listening to me?”

     “I’m not leaving you here to greet your father’s arrest squad,” Brettix said dryly.

     “He won’t kill me.”

     “Lucia, will you please just listen?”

     She took a breath and nodded.

     “If we go double on Stella there’s still a chance you can slip back into your house unnoticed,” Brettix said.  “With just one horse missing Scipio won’t know that you came here to warn me, he’ll just know that I’m gone.  It will be a lot easier for you if he doesn’t suspect that you were involved in my disappearance.  What he wants is for us to be separated, and once he sees that I’ve left I think he will calm down.  He will assume that he scared me off and that we won’t see each other again.”

     “Will we?” she asked quietly, her eyes searching his face.

     He opened his arms and she ran into them.

     “I’ll be back,” he said into her ear, holding her tightly and kissing the top of her head.  “Trust me.”

     When she stepped back he tilted her chin up and kissed her gently.  “Now hurry and get dressed, we’re wasting time.”

     She obeyed him, donning the extra garments as he handed them to her.

“Where will you go?” she asked him.

     “I have friends not far away,” he said vaguely.  “Don’t worry about that, I’ll be fine.  But I’m concerned that you will be sent to Londinium before I can get back to you.”

     “I’m not going to Londinium.”

     He looked at her.

     “I will be too ill to travel,” she said, and winked at him.

     He grinned.

     They both wrapped up as warmly as possible in the garments available, hiding Lucia’s discards in a chest, and then crept down the stairwell to the stable.  Lucia checked on the groom as Brettix led Stella out of the barn and into the cold night air.

     “He’s asleep?” Brettix asked, as she joined him.

     She nodded.

     “Ready to go?”

     “I’m ready.”

     They mounted, Lucia behind Brettix and clinging to his waist, and the horse slowly picked her way over the frozen ground between the mounds of snow, heading back to the garrison.

     If the temperature was disregarded it was a beautiful night.  It was clear with a nearly full moon and millions of stars, and the air was as still as the figures on an Alexandrian urn.  There was no sound except the horses’ hooves and their breathing, which caused clouds to form before their faces as they rode.  The trip took much less time on horseback, and when the fort came into sight Brettix reined Stella in and slipped to the ground, reaching up to help Lucia dismount.