'So do Romans.'
'I admire your loyalty, but you have to be realistic. Your husband might worry for you, be embarrassed by your capture, even miss your company. But he won't risk his career when he doesn't love you.'
'You don't know my husband's heart!'
'I know the emptiness of yours. He's not in love with you because you aren't with him.'
'The presumption of you!'
'Why are you always upset by simple truth? I didn't abduct you, I rescued you, from an arranged marriage and Roman ambition.'
'Now I should thank you?' She was flushing.
'You enjoy this crannog. I can see it on your face.'
She turned away. 'This is dinner, not a lifetime.'
'Sometimes a dinner is all a lifetime allows.' He stood close, lightly touching her arms. She trembled. 'Come, you know I've treated you well. Let's eat, not argue, and let the Wall take care of itself for an evening.'
The simple food was good, her body ravenous. How could such a meal taste better than an elaborate banquet? How could a rude hut seem as comfortable as a Roman mansion? They chatted for a while of simpler things, of the hunt and horses and history of his clan, and let the wine numb their frustration and desire.
At length they pushed themselves back from the food. He was watching her more lazily now, seemingly content to drink in her features in the candlelight. It both flattered her and made her nervous. She still looked like a bruised pear and wished she was prettier, and yet also wished he wouldn't look at her at all. She'd promised her fidelity to Marcus! Yet she wanted Arden to want her, if for no other reason than to turn him down.
How mixed-up she felt.
'You pretend to know a lot about love,' she said finally.
His smile was wistful. 'That's because I've been in love and know how terrible it can be, this thing that all young women long for.'
Suddenly she saw it. There'd been a romance. 'When?'
'Before, when I was in the Roman army.' His gaze was lost in memory.
'Please tell me what happened.'
He shook his head. 'I don't tell it to anyone. It's bitter, not sweet.'
'But you must to me.'
'Why?'
'You must trust me.'
He was amused. 'Why must I trust you?'
'Because I must trust you, the two of us alone, a thousand miles from Rome.' Each the other's prisoner, Kalin had said.
He knew what she meant: the price of friendship, or something deeper. He considered, then shrugged. 'Her name was Alesia.'
'A pretty name.'
'Just why I first noticed her I can't truly say. By the time I saw her, I'd marched past a thousand women, or ten times a thousand women. She was pretty, almost as pretty as you, and had a kind look, and yet that doesn't fully explain it. I'd seen other women equally pretty, and equally kind. There was simply a peculiar radiance to that moment, a trick of light that made me feel directed by the gods. Have you ever experienced it?'
'No.'
'The setting sun had backlit clouds beyond the Danube, turning them black, and the Roman shore was golden. Alesia was fetching water, her back straight and neck erect, the jar balanced on her head, and the light turned her shift white and translucent. I remember her steps, small and careful, the slim silhouette of her form, and her manner, graceful and chaste. I walked past without stopping, on an errand to buy some wine for my comrades, but something made me look back.'
'You fell in love.' She was envious.
'We hadn't said a word, and yet I lost my heart. I wanted not just to possess her but to know her, to protect her, to besiege her heart.'
Valeria swallowed.
'She glanced back at me,' he continued, 'and with that our fates were sealed.'
Where was this woman? She couldn't ask that yet. 'Why were you in the army?'
'My family was rich and had come to partial accommodation with the Romans. We had lands south of the Wall. We tried your civilization, but it trapped us in debt. When my father couldn't pay the Bite, he was arrested, and our lands were confiscated. When he went to Rome for justice, he was ignored and died of illness. My mother died of grief. I was left with revenge. So I joined the legions.' 'You joined the empire you hated?'
'Not hate, not at first. I was young enough to think that perhaps it had been my father's fault, because he wasn't Roman enough. I Latinized my name to Ardentius and marched where the army told me. At first, everything Roman seemed grand. I heard the roar of the mob at the Coliseum. I guarded generals who dined at the villas of Italian millionaires. I prowled the wharves of Ostia, where all the wealth of the world comes and goes. My first impression was yours. Rome was universal and eternal and necessary.'
He made it seem false. 'It's brought order to the world.' 'And slavery, poverty, and hollowness. Cities so great they can't feed themselves. Taxes no one can afford to pay. Army life was callous, and the Romans I met were a soft, spoiled people, ignorant of who they ruled and unwilling to fight. They got tribute from places they couldn't name.'
'Yet you took their pay and wore their clothes and slept in their barracks.'
'For a while. When I knew enough to beat you, I wanted out.' 'With an Alesia, after your twenty-year enlistment?' 'No, I wanted Alesia then, when I saw her on the grassy bank of the Danube. Not that part between a woman's thighs, which can be bought by soldiers for a coin, but her, to end the loneliness of the legions. I found her owner, Criton the leather maker, and began bargaining for her freedom. I trailed her to the market and to the river, finding excuses to talk and help carry her things. She was frightened of disappointment but alive with hope. I told her about life here, how the sun in summer seems to linger half the night and stars in winter are thick as snow. I told her we'd never be treated as equals within the empire-I an alien and she a slave-but that here we could make a free and happy life.' 'She believed this?'
'Her eyes, Valeria! How they ignited with the promise of it!' The woman said nothing. Was she herself some kind of replacement for this slave woman? Had she been captured to replace a memory?
'What I hadn't anticipated was the jealousy of Lucullus, the centurion who commanded my unit. He hated happiness because he was incapable of it himself. The man was piggish, with that kind of animal cunning that thrives in the army. He'd tried a particularly insidious form of the Bite, demanding that his soldiers give him a portion of their pay to be granted any leave. Their families, crops, and financial affairs were hostage to his greed. This went too far, and the others persuaded me to speak for them to the cohort commander. Lucullus was reprimanded, his pay fined, and his power curbed. I was a hero for a day. Then my comrades forgot. Lucullus didn't.'
'You're an idealist!' Arden was the kind of man her politician father had always disparaged. The senator said empires were sustained by accommodation and that self-righteous men caused grief. Valeria had secretly disagreed. She thought people should believe in something, but her father would have called her foolish.
'I see things clearly,' Arden went on, 'which is a curse. Anyway, word of my intentions toward Alesia came to Lucullus, as it must. Nothing is secret in the army. Reports that Ardentius the troublemaker was about to spend all his savings to buy a slave's freedom caused my commander much amusement, and then much thought. He went to Criton and bribed him to tell when and how I was going to buy the girl. Then he came to a grove of poplar where Alesia waited, arriving before I did. He seized her, embraced her, whipped her, raped her, and burned her-all to get back at me.' 'Oh, Arden…'
'She hanged herself for shame. I'd come with a wedding present and found a corpse.' His voice was hollow. 'What present?'
He swallowed, looking away from her eyes. 'That silk you're wearing.'
She blushed, suddenly alarmed at the gift. Horrified. Flattered. Confused. It felt as if it were on fire.
'I won it for a deed in battle. I've had no one else worthy of it until now.'
'Arden…'
