set off across the Forum. He did not look back.
Atticus stood still for a moment longer and then retrieved his horse, dismissing the soldiers as he did so. He mounted and looked to where Septimus had crossed the Forum but the centurion was lost from sight. Atticus spurred his horse and turned towards the Viminal quarter.
He reached the house with ease, recalling each corner of the familiar journey. As he tethered his horse outside Hadria’s house, the intervening year fell away. His knock on the outer door was answered by a servant Atticus did not recognize, and he saw suspicion in the servant’s eyes as he looked upon the tall stranger with a scarred face and intense green eyes. That suspicion was compounded when Atticus spoke, his unusual accent marking him as a non-native. The servant admitted him warily, leading Atticus to the open-roofed atrium that stood before the inner rooms of the house.
The servant asked him to wait. Atticus walked around the rainwater pool in the centre of the atrium. During his time away from Rome he had thought of Hadria almost every day, evoking her in his mind’s eye, placing her within specific memories to capture the essence of her beauty, but trying always to keep his emotions in check, never knowing for sure when he would see her again, the great distance between them an abyss that only fate could cross. Now, that moment of reunion was but seconds away and his feelings for her swept over him.
Hadria appeared in a blur of movement, racing into the atrium, her head turning as she sought him out. Atticus looked at her intently, taking in every detail. She was different from the image that had sustained him over the previous year. Her brown hair was darker and shoulder length, framing her face to accentuate her sea-grey eyes. Her gaze possessed a steely determination, as if she was somehow more self-assured.
Hadria’s face lit up as she saw Atticus across the tranquil pool, and she skirted around its edge to run into his opened arms. She breathed in the smell of him, letting it fill her memories, and when she broke his embrace to kiss him, the intensity of the contact drew blood from her lip that mingled with the taste of him. She had lived moments like this before, when he had returned from other campaigns, but each time felt like the first, the surge of emotion overwhelming her. She drew him ever closer, not daring to trust her senses and believe that he had returned once more.
Hours later, Atticus sat at the edge of Hadria’s bed and looked out at the sun falling behind the Quirinal Hill. He felt a light touch on his lower back and he looked over his shoulder and smiled. Hadria was stretched across the bed, her hair cascading across her face, giving her a dishevelled look. He fell back into her arms. He kissed her tenderly, acutely aware of how fragile her naked body looked, but as she moved against him he felt the strength in her slender limbs.
‘The messenger will be here soon,’ he said, and she nodded. Septimus was home, which meant she would be summoned to see him. The anticipation of seeing her brother safe and well was coloured by having to leave Atticus.
‘Can you wait until I return?’ she asked.
‘There’s not enough time,’ he replied. ‘I will need to leave the city before they close the gates at sundown if I’m to return to Ostia.’
‘You could stay here for the night,’ she smiled.
‘But your aunt, is she not here?’
‘She is, but she knows of you,’ Hadria replied casually.
Atticus was shocked by the revelation. He had thought that Hadria was striving to keep their relationship secret until she felt the time was right to tell her parents.
‘I have been resisting my parents’ efforts to have me remarried,’ she explained. ‘That raised my aunt’s suspicions, and with so many servants in this house there are few secrets. She confronted me months ago and I revealed my love for you.’
‘Has she told your parents?’
‘No,’ Hadria replied. ‘She agreed to keep my secret as long as I agreed to tell my parents of our relationship when next you were in Rome.’
‘Then I must accompany you tonight,’ Atticus said.
Hadria shook her head. ‘My father is away from Rome for another week,’ she said. ‘When he returns we will stand before him, together.’
She smiled in anticipation and Atticus embraced her once more, not wanting her to sense the doubt he felt in his own heart. Hadria’s father, Antoninus, was a former centurion of the Ninth Legion, a Roman of the equestrian class. He had always treated Atticus with shifting levels of respect and contempt, his admiration of a fellow commander vying with his suspicion about Atticus’s heritage. Now Atticus would stand before him as his daughter’s suitor, and only Antoninus could decide which instinct would hold sway.
Scipio looked slowly around the candlelit walls of the dining room, studying the familiar murals, which told the story of Aeneas’s heroic flight from Troy and the journey that took him to the shores of Italy, a simple thread of history that led, generations later, to the founding of Rome. Scipio smiled, remembering how — as a child — this private room had been forbidden to him by his father. He had defied that prohibition many times, sneaking in to view the legend that enthralled him; but even now, although his father was gone, Scipio still felt echoes of the fear that had marked each secret visit to the room.
The sound of approaching footsteps caused Scipio to stir and he looked to the doorway. A moment later, his wife, Fabiola, entered. She was wearing a simple woollen stola and the modesty of the garment strongly accentuated her classical beauty, her dark brown eyes reflecting the candlelight that flickered as she glided on to her own couch. She held out her hand and Scipio took it, his thumb stroking the back of her tapered fingers. She smiled demurely, nodding indulgently at his offer of wine.
Scipio called out to the doorway and immediately servants swept into the room bearing fresh fruit and cooked meats, each placing their platter in turn on the low square table between the couches. As they left Fabiola began to talk of inconsequential matters, keeping her tone light and sweet, pausing in her conversation only to refill her husband’s wine goblet, her words carefully chosen to relax and amuse.
As Fabiola spoke she felt a keen sense of expectation rise within her. That Scipio had chosen to have dinner in the private dining room could only mean that he wished to seek her counsel, and she longed for her husband to put an end to her idle chatter and reveal his inner thoughts. In the past, their discussions within the house had been overheard by servants who had been paid spies of Duilius’s, a betrayal that Fabiola had exposed. She remembered how he had had those spies brutally tortured and put to death. She paused for breath, and as she did so Scipio spoke.
‘In response to the deaths of Paullus and Nobilior, the Senate has voted to hold emergency consular elections next week.’
Fabiola nodded in reply but remained silent.
‘This may be my opportunity,’ he mused, and he looked intently at his wife.
Fabiola took a moment to gather her thoughts. ‘I agree there may never be a better time,’ she said.
Scipio nodded. ‘But I had not thought to run for the consulship for at least another two years,’ he cautioned. ‘If I strike now and fail, it will cost me any future chance.’
‘Now or in the future, a protracted electoral campaign would be difficult.’ Given your past disgrace, she almost said, but she continued seamlessly. ‘The senators who are allied to you are weak men, subject to their passions. The loss of the fleet is a crisis that favours your oratorical skills. If you fan the flames of their fear and uncertainty, they will support you.’
Again Scipio nodded. He had surmised as much, but to hear Fabiola’s endorsement strengthened his resolve. He gazed at her over the rim of his wine goblet, filtering her words through his own thoughts, and found no flaw in his plan, although it was fraught with risk. Duilius was sure to oppose him, perhaps with a ‘new man’ candidate of his own, and there was still a large block of undeclared senators between the two existing factions in the Senate. He looked at his options again, examining them from every angle, slowly spinning the goblet in his hand, creating a tiny vortex in the deep red wine.
Fabiola watched Scipio in silence, confident that her words had been of use to her husband, sensing that he was close to a decision. The struggle of the past year had been exhausting for both of them, the countless evenings entertaining political guests in the main dining room of the house, each banquet carefully orchestrated to persuade and cajole senators into Scipio’s camp. Fabiola recalled how often she had fawned over men who were but a shadow of her husband in order to secure their support. That struggle had borne fruit in the partial resurrection of her husband’s political strength, but it was insufficient compensation for Fabiola: she yearned for the time when
