CHAPTER TWELVE
Aulus rolled onto his back with that same angry feeling which had been with him since the first night he came home. The trouble was he could not bring himself to blame his young wife for her lack of interest, he being so much older than she. And that difference in age grew more marked with each passing year, a fact that had been made so much worse by the long separation of his proconsular service in Illyricum. He knew her skin was dry, so the sweat on his body seemed to mock him. She would not perspire, all the effort was from him, and had been for years.
‘I’m sorry, Aulus.’
‘Why do you sound so sad?’
‘Because I am. Because I cannot give you what you need.’
Aulus rolled back onto one elbow, his body above hers. He ran his hand over her firm breast, just brushing the nipple. Claudia, her eyes shut tight, gave an involuntary shiver. ‘It’s not as though you cannot feel. I thought time would be enough to heal you. I prayed that our life would be as it once was.’
She laughed softly, but it indicated misery, not happiness. ‘The perfect Roman couple, both of the finest stock despite the difference in age and a touch of Sabine blood in my past. A mature and garlanded warrior entwined, in the strictest marriage form, with his young bride. I think your old friend Lucius Falerius should be jealous.’
Aulus was perplexed. It was rare for Claudia to offer anything other than the persistent apology. ‘Is that not enough?’
‘It ought to be.’
His voice betrayed the anger he fought so hard to conceal beneath his habitual calm exterior. ‘That’s not what I asked!’
She opened her eyes and looked into his, then reached up and touched his face. ‘No woman has the right to demand more than a husband like you. You’re a gift from the gods.’
‘Yet you reject that gift at every turn,’ he snapped. ‘We hardly speak to each other during the day, you wander the house as though your mind is elsewhere, without guests we dine in near silence and here in bed you’re like a statue. Yet tonight, when Lucius sought to reproach my views, you leapt to my defence.’
‘I don’t know why you bother, Aulus.’
He spoke almost without feeling, determined to hide both the depth of his passion plus the guilt he felt for what had happened to her in Spain. ‘I bother because I love you.’
‘Any other man would have put me aside, perhaps for another wife.’
His hand wandered up from her breast to her throat. ‘I have the right to kill you, Claudia, if I so wish.’
‘I won’t struggle, Aulus, and I’ll gladly release you from the need to return my dowry.’
She had not meant her words to sound churlish, but the right tone for what she was trying to say eluded her.
‘Why!’ he shouted, stung at last to outright anger, his hand involuntarily closing round her windpipe. ‘Why?’
Her shoulders started to heave. Aulus saw she was crying and he released his grip, his head fell on her shoulder and he spoke softly, his words muffled by her skin. ‘Why?’
She strained to keep her voice level. ‘How glad I am that you are angry, husband. I often wish that you would show anger more often.’
When he replied the thickness in his own throat was obvious. ‘I need some kind of explanation, Claudia.’
‘Something died in me, Aulus. Something vital! For all your efforts you cannot revive it and I tell you now that is the last word I will say. I shall not speak of it again and if you wish to respond, do so by showing your anger. I hate your pity more than I hate anything in the world.’
With that Claudia turned her back on him, eyes tight shut as she recalled that day of the battle. She thought it odd that she could never remember the faces of those murderous tribesmen intent on raping her, even if she could quite easily recapture the feelings of loathing and disgust she had felt at the time. It was as if the change in her life was so total that she had blocked them out, as if the flashing falcata blade had sliced through the two separate parts of her existence, forever separating them. That decapitation had halted everyone, so the only sound she could hear was the sobbing and muffled screams of those women less fortunate than she. As her saviour helped her to her feet, wrapping her nakedness in a cloak of rough wool, his height became even more obvious. She barely came up to his chest and even through the dust in the air and the odour of death which surrounded her she had smelt him, a musky fragrance of fresh perspiration that had never left her memory. Then he had spoken, in perfect Latin, in a deep and harmonious voice to ask her if she was suffering from any pain.
‘No,’ Claudia had replied, aware, as the aches of her violation began to make themselves felt, that she was lying. Her arms hurt from the way she had been dragged around, her chest and back from the pummelling of the pushing and shoving. She could feel where her hair had been tugged till it nearly parted from her scalp and the throbbing by her eye she suspected had come from a blow to the side of the head.
‘Look at me.’
Claudia fought her own inclination to respond, as a way of stating defiance, a way of showing this barbarian she was not there to obey commands, but another force seemed to exert a more telling pressure that brought up her head. What struck her first were the eyes, large, piercing and bright blue, set in a face that was bronzed, not blackened by the sun, his hair golden and long. His hand came up slowly to touch her cheek right at the point where it now throbbed and those blue eyes closed while the face took on a look of deep concentration. Almost immediately Claudia felt the pain ease, and within seconds it had gone completely. He spoke swiftly as the eyes opened again, in a tribal argot she could not understand.
Claudia was subjected to a series of mixed emotions. She knew she had this man to thank for saving her honour — very likely her life — and she could not help but be impressed by his presence, the effortless ease with which he commanded respect, yet he was clearly an enemy, so she felt she should despise him. It was an emotion she tried very hard to conjure up, only to find that when she spoke her voice sounded meek.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Brennos, the leader of the Celt-Iberians. I have told them to take you to our camp. You will be treated with all respect. Anyone who harms a hair on your head knows he will have to face me.’
‘The other women?’ Claudia asked, sure that every man was already dead.
‘Are of no interest to me. They do not have a Roman general for a husband.’
Isolation, in an unlit tent made of animal skins, allowed Claudia’s thoughts to run riot. She sat in the only chair, every possible scenario played out in her imagination: Aulus riding into the Celtic camp to rescue her; the same rescuer dragged in chains and defeated, to be burnt in a wicker cage before her eyes. In her head armies clashed and both sides won and lost, with her own possible fate mixed with the heat and blood of battle. What would Brennos do with her? Had he saved her from his fellow barbarians only to despoil her at his own leisure? Would she be sacrificed to one of their heathen gods? And through all of this two images fought for supremacy: first the face of Aulus, swarthy skin, black eyes, grave with his pepper and salt hair, concerned for her well-being, and second that of Brennos. It was not so much his face but his presence, a power of personality so great that she could still smell him, still hear his voice and the touch of his healing hand. The sounds from outside grew as night fell, plunging the interior of the tent into a pitch darkness that only served to enhance her disquiet, wandering from being brave to near panic and back again. Sleep proved impossible, every time she closed her eyes the image of those who had died that day leapt up like accusers. Opening them was little better; she felt as if their ghosts were in the tent, crowding in on her, demanding to know why she was alive while they had perished.
The growing clamour outside went some way to alleviating this, her confused and solitary state making it easy to translate the shouted sounds of a language she did not understand into her own native Latin. Individual voices predominated, interspersed with the sudden roars of acclamation. Then there was only one voice, angry, starting out even and rising steadily to a shout, soon to be joined by others in what seemed to be disagreement. More voices were added to the dispute until no one person could be heard, then the tent flap was hauled back, and Brennos, carrying a flaring torch, entered.
He was still coated in the dust of the day’s action, the great decapitating sword at his side, dressed in a loose smock and leggings held in place by the thongs of his sandals. As he stuck the torch in a metal sconce Claudia observed again his salient features, mentally recognising that he was extremely handsome, with his height, his broad shoulders and the lean, tanned face. That was before she sharply reminded herself he was the enemy of both
