had given him heavily muscled shoulders and upper arms. How could hands so powerful have felt so gentle when they held her earlier? His deep, sculpted chest narrowed towards the waist where a thin line of dark hair ran down a flat stomach to disappear somewhere she tried not to think about. She noticed a fresh scar across his ribs and had to stop herself reaching out to touch it. Closer inspection showed other smaller scars: indents and barely noticeable pale lines that spoke of narrow escapes from danger. Disturbingly, the heat she had experienced earlier returned, accompanied by a liquid feeling low in her body.
‘Are you going to help me or sell me in Colonia’s market?’ Valerius asked lightly, conscious of but not unhappy with her inspection. He knew the figure he cut, and took pride in it, but not to the point of arrogance. All the muscle in the world wouldn’t stop a well-flighted arrow or the edge of a blade.
She tossed her head, swinging the plaited tail from left to right and reminding him of a colt he had once seen frolicking in a field. ‘You were right,’ she said dismissively. ‘It is just a scratch, but you were a fool to allow yourself to get so close to a boar.’
‘Two boars,’ he announced, just to see her reaction. He wasn’t disappointed.
‘Two?’
‘Big ones. Enormous.’
‘How big?’ she demanded, and the wound was forgotten as he described the hunt and how the second boar had come so close to avenging his sibling. She made little ‘mmm’s of concern at just the right places and her face came closer and closer to his as he talked. Eventually she was so close that it became impossible to do anything but kiss her. When their lips met there was no resistance, just a soft and entirely natural moulding as he tasted her sweetness and the clean tang of freshly torn mint that made him wonder if she had prepared for just this moment. At first her lips stayed closed, but as the seconds passed and the thunder in his head grew louder she opened her mouth to draw him deeper and he felt as if he were being swept away in a swollen river torrent. It seemed right that his hands should move to her waist below the cloak and from there upwards…
‘Stop!’ She took a step away. ‘We can’t. It is not… right.’
‘How can it not be right?’ He heard the frustration in his voice, and knew that in another six words he would destroy everything he had won so far. But the thunder was still pounding inside his head and his tongue seemed to belong to someone else. ‘We-’
She gently placed the first finger of her right hand on his lips, and with her left hand took his.
‘Come,’ she said, and drew him beneath the boughs of the oak tree, where the sod rose thick over the roots and the grass remained dry despite the rain. She pushed him down and recovered the cloth pack. Among other items it contained a stoppered flask, the contents of which she used sparingly to clean the wound on his shoulder, dabbing gently with a corner of the cloth to clear away the dried blood.
‘A waste of good wine,’ he protested, reaching for the flask.
She held it away from him. ‘A man, a woman and wine are not a good combination,’ she said, clearly speaking from a well of experience. ‘Later.’
‘Later?’
‘When we have found my father, or Cearan. When it is more… seemly.’
He grinned and lay against the oak, feeling the rough bark against the skin of his back. Her hands worked delicately around the wound and he found himself more at ease than at any time since he had landed on Britain’s shores. It was as if they had always been together. Or they belonged together.
‘Your father is a fine man.’ He said it purely for the pleasure of hearing her voice, but her reply surprised him.
‘My father has forgotten who he truly is. He embraces every new Roman fashion and dismisses the old ways. We sacrifice to Roman gods and sleep under a Roman roof on Roman beds. The wine he drinks is shipped from Gaul, but it is Roman wine. The look in his eyes when he talks of his ambitions frightens me. He will never be satisfied.’
‘You talk as if you hate Rome, but you are here… with a Roman.’
She stared at him and he became lost in the depths of her eyes. ‘I am here with Valerius, a young man whose company I enjoy and whose origins I try to forget. It seems to me that Romans think strength is everything.’ She reached out absently to stroke the muscle of his right arm. It was a gesture of pure, unthinking affection which instantly took the sting from her words. ‘When I was young, I had a friend, the son of one of my father’s tenants. We grew up together, played in these woods and swam in the river; I shared my first kiss with Dywel.’ Valerius instantly resented Dywel and the time he had spent with Maeve that he could never share. ‘He herded his father’s cattle, took them out to pasture in the spring and kept them fed during the winter. Then the Romans came. My father had stayed at home when the young men rode off to join Caratacus in the west, so his estate was largely spared. But eight years ago they divided up the land all around us. They said the pasture was no longer my father’s to graze his beasts upon and that he could not water them at the dew pond. My father had other pasture and other water, but Dywel’s farm was on the far edge of the estate and his father was poor. He defied the Romans.’
‘What happened to him?’ Valerius asked, already knowing the answer. He remembered Falco’s words: Things were done, when Colonia was founded, that do none of us credit.
‘They cut Dywel’s throat with a knife.’
‘I am sorry. Your father should have taken his case before the magistrate.’
Maeve gave a bitter laugh. ‘That is a very Roman thing to say. Dywel was a Celt. Roman justice is for the Romans.’
He could have protested that she was wrong. That Roman justice was the best in the world: the product of a thousand years of lawyerly debate, discussion and study. But he didn’t. Because he realized she was right.
A shout rang out from the woods to their left and Maeve’s head whipped round like a frightened deer. ‘Here,’ she said urgently, thrusting his shirt into his hands. As he stood up to shrug it over his shoulders she poured most of the wine away and took a loaf from the bag she had been carrying and tore it in half, throwing one of the halves into the bushes. She did the same with a large piece of meat. ‘Bite it,’ she ordered, pushing the portion she’d retained into his mouth. He did as he was told, trying to speak as he chewed.
‘Gghwy?’
‘Because I stumbled upon you when you were lost. You were hungry and weak from loss of blood and we stayed until you were fed and felt strong enough to move. Quickly!’
She gathered up the cloth bag and thrust the remains of the food inside. When that was done, she studied him critically, brushed some leaves and grass from his back and turned to go.
‘Maeve?’
She turned back with a look of annoyance that faded when she saw the leather pouch he had retrieved from his belt. He held it out to her, and she hesitated for a moment before taking it, but when she did she smiled and lifted her head to kiss him lightly on the lips. He stood there grinning long after she disappeared into the trees.
XIX
While autumn lasted, Bela the dark-haired young Thracian auxiliary commander kept his men on constant patrol in the forested areas to the north of Colonia, but although he reported occasional signs of disturbed ground and evidence of gatherings in woodland clearings, he found no solid evidence of the subversion Valerius suspected and Castus feared. He passed on the information without comment and drove his troopers all the harder.
When it arrived that year, winter came quickly and it came hard. Frost turned the ground unyielding as stone and the cattle in the fields smoked as if they were on fire before the herd boys drove them into the huts where they and those who farmed them would provide mutual warmth during the following months. The city’s aqueduct quickly froze and Valerius ordered a squad of legionaries to be on constant duty at the river below Colonia, breaking the ice as it formed to ensure a supply of water for the citizens. Nature was relentless and the centurions were forced constantly to rotate their shivering, exhausted men. The frost brought the First’s road-building duties to an end and Valerius and Julius came up with endless fatigues and exercises to ensure their soldiers stayed fit and alert. Joint exercises with the militia became a regular feature and Valerius’s respect for Falco and his veterans grew with each passing week. They even took part in route marches together, though this was one area where the men of the First cohort understandably excelled both in speed and stamina.
