"That's a terrible thing to say!" Aurelia scolded. "And did you even think about who Nic is?"
Crispus stopped and faced me. "I'm sorry. No, I didn't. I guess I don't think of you as a slave."
"That's because I'm not one anymore." I eyed Aurelia with irritation. "It's who I was. Not who I am." Then I walked on ahead of both of them.
She tried to apologize that evening at supper, but my mind was elsewhere, so our conversation didn't get very far. There was a fine spread of food, but I barely ate any of it, and excused myself early, pleading exhaustion. I was beyond tired, but I had no intention of sleeping. Once the house quieted down, I was going to find Caela.
Since the others believed me to already be asleep, I was left alone for the night. I waited until there were no more footsteps outside, and then carefully opened my door. I crept through the atrium toward the entrance hall. Because of its weight, the main door made little noise when I opened it, and then, without a sound, I stepped out onto the road.
Having been so cautious, it was foolish of me to yelp so loudly when Crispus darted at me from one side and Aurelia from the other. Truthfully, I did more than yelp. I nearly fainted from surprise.
Once I recovered, I scowled, "What are you two doing out here?"
"A fine question, coming from the person sneaking out!" Aurelia retorted.
I started walking away. "I wasn't sneaking out. Just leaving, which I have every right to do. I'll be back by morning."
They caught up to me and continued walking on either side. "We're coming with you," Crispus said.
"You don't even know where I'm going."
"It's not the hardest thing to figure out." Aurelia shrugged. "Valerius told us about Caela. He said you seemed upset. Why didn't you tell us, Nic?"
I stopped and drew in a deep breath. "I don't know. Maybe I should have."
"Come this way." Crispus turned off the road back to his property. "We have a wagon waiting."
My knees locked. I wasn't willing to follow him just yet. "To go to the baths on the Appian Way? Nowhere else?"
Crispus smiled. "You assume everything I say is either a trick or a trap. What kind of life have you led?"
"Let's just say there's a reason I think that way." Then I paused and started walking again. "Thank you for this. I don't know if I could've found it in the dark."
We climbed into the back of a wagon and the driver steered the horse away. Crispus pointed to some sacks inside the wagon. "It's meat," he said. "I had them filled with as much as we had available. Your griffin might need to eat something."
"Thank you again." The more Crispus and his father did for me, the greater my debt to them. I figured they must know more than I did about how hard it would be to defeat Radulf. They wanted to build up that debt while they could.
At my side, Aurelia took my hand and gave it a squeeze. "I understand why you have to do this," she said. "That griffin saved your life. You want to say good-bye."
"Her name is Caela," I said. "And I'm not coming to say good-bye."
The drive to the baths was longer than I had anticipated. On foot, it would've taken more than half the night to get there, and that didn't even include the likelihood I would've gotten lost. For that alone, I was grateful to Crispus.
Once the baths came into sight, I warned Crispus to have his driver let us off at a distance. "From what I understand, Caela hasn't eaten for several days. In an ordinary meeting, she'd have no love for your horses, but especially not tonight."
He nodded and ordered the driver to stop where we were. That left us each hauling a sack of meat the rest of the way to the baths. With th
e bright moon above us, I was able to clearly see the red brick building, and the sight was astonishing. The entire structure was so wide that I had to crane my head to see it from one end to the other, and every side seemed to be lined with long rows of arches. Crispus said these were his mother's favorite baths, and that sometimes she would spend entire days here.
"Just bathing?" I asked.
"No, of course not." The smile on his face revealed his constant astonishment at how little I knew. It would've been insulting, except I was just as ignorant of the world as he suspected. Maybe more. "There are places to exercise, socialize in the gardens, or get a massage, and there are places to shop in the daytime. This one even has two libraries."
I chuckled. "I never thought about the baths as places to read."
"Well, she still spends most of her time in the water. My mother might be the cleanest woman ever to roam the earth."
We all laughed, and yet a part of me wondered about that kind of life. I hadn't been above ground for this long since I was sold to the mines, and even watching the sun from first light to sunset was a strange luxury. The idea that a person could spend an entire day doing nothing but lounging beside a pool, with nothing required of them, was completely foreign.