hear. The procuratore and his crew edged closer.
Clodia faced the man before her and drew a breath. “Will you protect me?” she asked aloud, knowing he was not permitted to speak. Then, impulsively, she stretched to the tops of her toes whispered in his ear, “And will you obey my command, when the time comes?”
Clodia noticed the man’s chest moving. His lips tightened. Glancing down, she perceived a new fullness in his loincloth. Was it a slave’s wrath he now fought to suppress? Or had her words somehow aroused him?
“Clodia, have you decided?” asked Davena, rejoining her sister.
“What?”
“Are you unwell, sister? You look red as wine.”
“No, I’m fine. It’s just the heat.” Clodia fanned her face with her hand.
“By Juno’s peacock, Clodia, why did you not bring a fanner?” Davena motioned to a feather-bearing slave. Then she regarded the man. “So it is this one, then?”
“Yes.”
Davena studied the man closely, her eyes scanning the entirety of his body. “With a little training, he shall make a fine guard,” she concluded. Then she lowered her voice and nudged Clodia. “He seems quite willing to rise to the occasion.”
“Do not be ordinary!” Clodia exclaimed. Still, her heart would not stop beating.
“Really, Clodia. You should try to enjoy him. You cannot stay in mourning forever.” Davena held out her gardenia. “But are you sure you will not reconsider our invitation? Come live with me at Father’s villa? It would be safer, you know. Sensible.”
Sensible, indeed.
A move to her father’s villa would be extremely sensible. Sensible for Davena, who made no secret of her unending boredom. And sensible for her father, whose newly-widowed daughter now carried with her the wealth of a great general’s estate—a dowager to be properly managed.
But Clodia was not to be managed, not anymore. She smiled back at her sister, then shook her head. “Gratitude, dear sister, but I should like to stay in Rome.”
“Then you are mad,” Davena said, pulling the gardenia back to her nose. “But do your worst. Father will have a new husband for you soon enough.”
Clodia watched Davena walk away, wishing to explain her plan, to make her sister understand. She loved Davena dearly. But sharing would not be safe. Davena was notoriously indiscreet. Even now, she was discussing Clodia’s intended purchase with a well-dressed woman Clodia recognized from the Esquiline.
Davena was speaking so excitedly that Clodia did not notice the procuratore, who had arrived by her side and was inspecting the man. “Now here is a gladiator,” he announced, clasping his hands together as if beholding a sacrificial bull. “Mark this one,” he told his assistants.
Clodia gathered herself, then stepped forward. “I’m sorry, honorable Procurator,” she said firmly. Then she held up her coin purse, heavy with aurei and denarii. “He is already taken.”
Chapter Two
It was a long way from Iceni to Rome—a hundred days’ journey or more. His father had told him that much when he was a boy. Still, Artair had somehow known that he would see the famed city one day—whether in triumph or in bonds.
What he had not expected was this...woman. When he felt her warm breath in his ear, an odd feeling had awakened inside him, a kind of yearning. It had been years since he had been near a beautiful woman. Before the Romans had defeated his people, before his world had been torn apart, he had made love to a girl in the forest outside his village. It was a memory so old, he scarcely recognized the hunger.
It was of no consequence. As he walked obediently behind her—no fewer than five steps, as he had been instructed—he let his desire fade, and in its place grew a feeling as bitter as it was familiar.
Spoiled Roman woman. How dare she purchase him? He was for the arena. Couldn’t she see that? The procuratore had been just seconds from marking his flesh, had even called him “gladiator.”
How many beatings had he endured for such a chance at glory? How many snaps of the whip across his back? As a gladiator, he would show the thieving hordes of Rome the true worth of an Icenian warrior. He would rage and battle and win his freedom, or at least die with honor.
And she had taken that from him, all in a single quill stroke.
Calm yourself, man. He could feel the sweat trickling down his neck. You will find another way out.
As they walked, Artair tried to commit their route to memory, but he quickly became confused. The city was a maze. Giant concrete and stone buildings stood like cliffs along the winding cobblestone streets. Stifling, narrow walkways yielded to large, busy piazzas where shopkeepers shouted at throngs of passersby, and troops of plump gray pigeons alighted to steal their dinners from piles of rubbish.
Artair marched in a retinue of slaves that surrounded the two women. Several other slaves followed, carrying a large, empty litter. Artair had never seen such a thing. It appeared to be designed to carry a person. Were the aristocrats of this fabled city so heavy with wealth that they did not deign to walk on their own two feet?
Artair wondered if he, too, would be obliged to carry such a litter. He had suffered many indignities in the nine long years since his capture, but he had never imagined himself—a proud Icenian warrior—reduced to a beast of burden.
Perhaps it was Rome’s final jest. The first had come long ago, at the battle of Manduessedum, his queen’s final stand. His family murdered, his tribe erased, he had battled and raged until all strength had departed his body, and all thought his mind. He lay on the battlefield, covered in blood, and the Roman legionaries left him for dead.
But dead he was not. When consciousness returned, Artair took refuge in the forest, where he taught himself to survive. For years he wandered, lost in the wild, his anger festering inside him like a deep wound. Why me? Why keep me alive? he demanded, but the gods of earth and sea gave no answer.
The boy became a man, and the man in due course found himself in the North—in the land of the Brigantes. It did not matter that he was an Iceni, an ancient enemy. Their leader hated Rome as much as Artair did, and vowed to keep the Romans out of the North at any cost. Artair was ready to pay that cost; indeed, he yearned for it. Every day, he instructed the Brigante warriors in the Iceni arts of sword and steed. And every night, he dreamed of vengeance.
But when the Romans finally came, they came not as warriors, but as thieves. They invaded in the night, burning the village, setting the Brigante warriors in shackles before they could even unsheath their swords. Then there was the dark hold of a ship, a slave market south of the Rhine, and, finally, a brick factory owner from Pompeii, who paid well for strong men. “I shall get five years out of you before you die,” he had told Artair, smiling. What would his new domina tell him now, he wondered, with that same wicked Roman smile upon her lips?
They arrived at a crossroads. The women kissed, then the older of the two stepped inside the litter and pulled the curtains shut. In an instant, the entire retinue was gone, and Artair was alone with his new domina.
“Well, then,” she said. “Let us go home.”
She walked quickly, as if trying to outpace the passing of the day. Her black hair was tied in a tall, plaited bun and fastened with two ivory pins that crossed like miniature swords. Rivulets of sweat made their way delicately down her slender neck, sending a pang of unexpected lust through Artair’s bones.
In another life, she would have been mine, he thought. A prize of Artair, great-grandson of Antedios, the last of the great high kings of the Britons. In another life, he would have simply taken her down to the Tiber and enjoyed her on the sand.
But that was not this life, Artair reminded himself. In this life, he was the property of this woman’s husband, surely some corpulent government