‘But he will be!’
‘Probably, yes.’ He took a deep breath, trying to quell his own temper. ‘Why the hell do you care so much about the fate of one warrior? Because your mother was Carvetti? It might have escaped your notice in Lindum, but the Caledonians are no friend to the tribes south of the wall.’
‘This has nothing to do with the Carvetti! It’s about what’s right and slavery is wrong!’
‘Not according to Rome.’
He turned and walked a few paces away, feeling bone-weary all of a sudden. It had been a difficult morning and the last thing he wanted to do was argue, especially when she seemed so determined to cast him as the villain. It was a long way from the reunion he’d been hoping for...
‘Did your family keep slaves?’
He glanced back over his shoulder. She was still staring at the spot where he’d been standing, her face flushed with emotion now.
‘I didn’t have a family, remember?’
‘The people you lived with, then.’
‘I lived with one of my father’s old soldiers and his wife and children. They hardly had the money to keep me, let alone anyone else.’
‘So you’ve never had slaves?’
He frowned. Something about the way she asked the question told him there was more to it than just curiosity, as if his answer really mattered to her...
‘No.’
She closed her eyes briefly and he almost turned back before thinking better of it.
‘I ought to go and check on the men. As for the rest, I’m only following orders, Livia. My conscience is clear.’
He stalked out of the villa, struck by the uncomfortable realisation that he was lying.
Chapter Nineteen
The morning was cold and bright. Livia could sense it through the window shutters, though she waited until she was certain Marius had left the room before opening her eyes. She’d been in bed, as close to the wall as possible, when he’d come back the previous evening and she’d been determined not to get up again until he’d left. She didn’t want to speak with him. Until she’d calmed down, it was far better for them to keep out of each other’s way as much as possible.
She was still furious. When he’d only been talking about leading a patrol north, it somehow hadn’t seemed so dreadful. He’d said that he’d only been going to look around, but the fact that he’d been fighting—fighting!—her mother’s people made her as angry as if he’d attacked her himself. It didn’t help that she knew he was only doing his duty. In his mind, he was protecting Rome, holding the frontier, working towards his ambition of becoming Senior Centurion. It wasn’t his fault that he’d married a woman with mixed allegiances. He didn’t even know. Because she hadn’t told him, not before their marriage or yesterday when she’d had the chance.
The thought brought with it an unwanted stab of guilt, although surely he’d guess the truth soon enough if she kept on behaving the way that she was. She couldn’t help it. How could he talk about the boy’s future so casually, as if slavery was acceptable just because Rome said so? He’d even called him a barbarian, as if he were just as prejudiced as every other Roman! Which perhaps he was and she’d simply been too blinded by attraction to see clearly before. In any case, she certainly couldn’t tell him the truth now. Their whole situation was unbearable. She’d wanted to visit the wall for almost as long as she could remember, thinking it was where she belonged, but now she was trapped, caught between two sides in a war. Was that where she belonged? If it was, then she’d prefer to belong nowhere.
At least Marius had never kept slaves himself. She’d been unable to shake Julius’s opinions on that subject—had actually shocked him by giving Porcia her document of manumission on the very day he’d purchased her as a gift—but then she’d given up hoping that he might change. She’d been unable to do anything for his other slaves either, ending up as powerless as she’d ever been in Tarquinius’s household.
Well, this time, she decided, she would do something. She didn’t know what exactly, but she wasn’t going to stand by while anyone was treated as less than a human being. Marius wouldn’t appreciate her interference, but there was no harm in making sure the boy was all right, surely?
She got to her feet and dressed with a new sense of purpose, trying to ignore the musky male scent of the blankets as she climbed across them, collecting a few items before marching determinedly out of the villa and across the fort. A few auxiliaries nodded to her as she passed and she nodded back, glad to see them all back safely, though struck with a twinge of disloyalty, too. She pushed it aside. Tending to the enemy didn’t mean that she cared any less about them, but someone had to do the right thing and make sure the prisoner was properly looked after.
‘I’ve brought some food.’ She spoke to the guard outside the prison, prepared for an argument that never came as he immediately stepped aside to let her in.
The prison wasn’t a single large room, as she’d expected, but a series of cells lined with wooden bars, all of them empty except for the last where the warrior was leaning against the wall in one corner, his eyes closed. Judging by the bandage around his left arm, his injuries had already been tended to. So had his comforts. There was a pile of blankets around him, as well as a cup of water, a jug and an empty plate to one side, and she felt a fresh pang of guilt for having misjudged Marius. Again. Whatever else he intended to do with the prisoner, he clearly wasn’t mistreating him.
She crouched down, bringing her eyes level with the warrior’s, though up close he looked even younger. His skin bore traces of woad, giving him an odd, bluish pallor, while his chest was decorated with a series of intricate, interlacing tattoos. She lifted her eyes to his face, looking for some semblance of her own features. There were no obvious physical similarities between them, but there was still something, a feeling of kinship that meant she couldn’t ignore or abandon him. For all she knew, they might be related.
‘Are you awake?’ She dragged the words from her memory, the Caledonian language her mother had taught her, and his eyes snapped open at once.
‘I’ve brought you some food.’ She rummaged in her bag and held out a chunk of bread. ‘I thought...’
She didn’t finish the sentence as he sprang forward suddenly, reaching between the bars and grabbing her forearm.
‘You speak my language?’