The Forest House (27 page)

“I must admit I'm curious.” What sort of husband had she drawn? One escapade could be condoned, but if he was the type who habitually went after women, she was not sure she wanted him.

“Then run along, daughter,” her father said. “I must say, if
he
doesn't like
you
he too will be hard to please.”

In sudden panic Julia remembered she was wearing an old tunic, and that she had combed her hair very sketchily.

“Like this?” she asked. Flustered, she tried to adjust the folds of her dress to hide a berry stain.

“I'm sure it's you he wants to see, not your taste in gowns,” admonished her father fondly. “You look perfectly lovely. He knows that you're my daughter, and that's really what matters. Run along and see what you think of him. Don't be silly, child.”

Julia knew there was no appeal. Licinius was a kind father, even indulgent, but when he had once made up his mind, she could not tease or coax him out of it.

 

Once more Gaius heard the soft sound of girlish laughter, and for some reason he thought of Odysseus surprised on the beach by Nausicaa and her maidens; he could only stare as the girl herself slipped out from behind one of the flowering trees and came towards him.

A girl? A child, Gaius thought at first; for although he himself was not tall, the girl who entered barely reached his shoulder; she had a small well-shaped head with thick dark curls, loosely knotted at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were dark too, and met his fearlessly. She had evidently been eating berries, for her fine white wool tunic, and her lips, were stained pink with berry juice. His father had said she was fifteen, but she hardly looked more than twelve.

“You are Julia Licinia?”

“I am.” She looked him up and down. “My father's promised me to some half-Roman barbarian, and I came here to have a look at him. Who are you?”

“I'm afraid I'm that half-Roman barbarian,” he said a little stiffly.

The girl surveyed him coolly, and he felt as if he were waiting for some verdict of tremendous import; then she giggled.

“Well, you look Roman enough,” she said. “I was prepared for some great blond barbarian whose sons would never look Roman born. It is true that our Governor's policy of teaching the sons of chieftains Roman arts and manners had been quite successful,” she added consideringly, “but those of us with Roman blood must not forget to whom the Empire belongs. I would bear no babes whose portraits would look out of place among those of my ancestors.”

Roman or Tuscani blood?
Gaius wondered cynically, remembering that Licinius came from the same Etruscan country stock as his own father, and owed his rise in rank to merit, not ancestors. Those common origins were no doubt part of the bond. Gaius thought of Cynric, who was also half Roman, however unwillingly. At least he, Gaius Macellius, looked what he was supposed to be, and his father had spared no pains to have him accepted as such.

He said dryly, “I suppose I should be grateful that I pass your inspection.”

“Oh, come,” she said, “I am sure you want your sons to look like proper Romans no less than I do.”

With a sudden pang he wondered,
And what of Eilan's child?
Would he be as fair as his mother, or show his father's breeding in his face? He made himself return Julia's droll smile. “Oh, I'm sure all our sons will be Roman and brave.”

They were laughing together when Licinius returned. He peered, as if for confirmation, at Julia's rosy face, then said, “That's settled, then.”

Gaius blinked as his prospective father-in-law clasped his hand, feeling as if some great siege engine had run him down. But there was only Julia, small and smiling, at his side. She looked so harmless, like a child.

But she isn't,
he thought. One meeting was enough to convince him.
Far from it. Harmless is the last word I'd use for her.

“Of course,” the Procurator said, “a wedding like this cannot be put together quickly.” He was trying to be jocular. “People would certainly think that Julia had somehow misbehaved, being married off at a moment's notice to a stranger from nowhere. Local society and my family must have a chance to know and value you.”

That was exactly the point of this wedding, Gaius thought wryly, except that he was the one who had misbehaved. But he could see that Julia would not want to be hurried into marriage with—as the Procurator had put it—a stranger from nowhere. She must be given a chance to be married as a respected member of her own community. And the delay would give him a chance to catch his breath and figure out what to do. Perhaps on closer acquaintance the girl would decide she did not like him after all, and even his father could not blame him for not marrying her then.

Licinius tapped the scroll from Macellius. “Officially, this transfers you to detached duty under my command. You may not think a young officer needs to know anything about finances, but when you come to command a Legion, you'll find your job easier if you know something about the system that keeps your men shod and fed! No doubt you'll find it easy duty after the frontier. It's not Rome, but Londinium is growing, and the women will make much of you with all the young officers on the Governor's staff gone off to the North.”

He paused, and fixed Gaius with a hard stare. “It goes without saying,” he added, “that there will be no improper behavior while you are here—” The Procurator went on, “You will live with Julia under this roof as if she were your sister, even though I will gradually let it be known that she has been your promised wife from infancy. But until after the ceremony—”

“Father,” Julia protested, “do you really believe I would so disgrace both you and myself?”

Licinius's eyes softened as he looked at her. “I should hope not, girl,” he growled. “I just wanted to make it clear to this young man.”

“I should hope not indeed,” Gaius muttered. But there was little danger; he found it hard to believe that Julia would ever be overcome by emotion. She was certainly different from Eilan, who had thought of his best interests before her own, and now was suffering the consequences.

Would they now hasten her into a marriage of convenience with someone more “suitable” as they were trying to do with him? He suddenly pictured her, beaten or bullied into compliance, tearful, wretched, perhaps weeping. She was, after all, of noble birth as the Britons counted such things, and an alliance with her family could be considered advantageous—as this marriage with Julia would be politically advantageous for his father—and, he supposed, for him.

But I am sure that if they try she will refuse it,
he thought then.
She has more integrity than I.
Ecstatic as his union with Eilan had been, there had been moments when she had almost frightened him. Or perhaps it was his own response that had made him afraid.

Julia smiled with an appearance of timidity. It was, Gaius thought, assumed for her father's benefit; the last hour had taught him that anything less timid than Julia—except maybe one of Hannibal's war elephants—would be hard to imagine. But maybe her father still thought of her as a shy child; fathers were the last to know what their children were really like.

But that made him think of Eilan again; her father had trusted him, and look what had happened; he could not fault Julia's father for being more careful.

 

The duties of an officer attached to the Procurator's staff turned out to include a number of tasks which would probably have been easy for Valerius, but which for Gaius, whose tutor had been pensioned off several years ago, were as stressful to the mind as his first weeks in the army had been for his body. Fortunately these tasks were often interrupted by assignment to escort duty for visiting dignitaries.

He was not much used to cities, but he soon learned to find his way around well enough. Gnaeus Julius Agricola, the Governor, had instituted a program of building of which Londinium had been the first beneficiary. The Britons had been a pastoral people, whereas Roman life centered around the city, with its shops and baths, its games and theaters. A bridge linked Londinium with the south and other roads stretched away to the north and westward. Along these arteries came trade from every corner of the province, and the ships that anchored at the wharves carried goods from all over the Empire.

Shepherding the strangers gave him an excuse to explore, and expose him to visitors of high station. When Gaius got up the nerve to ask him, Licinius said that he had planned it that way.

“For of course, if this marriage is successful—” he said, and broke off without finishing the sentence. “You know, I have no sons, no child at all but Julia, and if things went as they should, she should be allowed to succeed me, and perhaps even attain to senator. But of course a woman, no matter how capable, can only bestow her rank on her husband. That is why it pleases me so much that she should marry the son of my oldest friend.”

Only then did Gaius really understand Macellius's plan. Married to Julia, Gaius could legitimately aspire to the position for which his father's injudicious marriage had disqualified him. He would not have been human—nor Macellius's son—if he had been indifferent to the possibilities. Living in Londinium had already altered his perspective, and he was beginning to understand what he would have been giving up if he had run away with Eilan. Had she been ill used? He could only hope she knew that nothing on earth—short of his father's will or the threat to Eilan herself—could have made him abandon her.

He had not realized that Julia was aware of his troubles until she brought up the subject herself.

“Father told me,” she said after the evening meal when they were sitting on the terrace together watching the late summer sunset gild the basilica's dome, “that you were sent here because you had formed some sort of alliance with a native woman, the daughter of a proscribed man. Tell me something about her. How old was she?”

Gaius felt his face flame and coughed to cover his confusion. It had never occurred to him that her father would have told her; but perhaps it was just as well to get things clear between them.

“A few years older than you are, I think.” In truth, he supposed that Julia must now be just the age Eilan had been when he first met her. Though otherwise they were utterly different, Julia had the quality of innocence he had first loved in Eilan.

The Procurator had kept him busy, and so had local society. It was a heady experience for a young man of mixed blood. He had told his father once that he was not ambitious, but that was before he had realized what rewards wealth, and the right connections, could bring.

Julia smiled at him kindly. “Did you care very much about being married to her?”

“I thought I did. I was in love. Of course I had not met you then,” he said quickly, wondering what love could possibly mean to Julia.

She looked at him, long and steadily. “I think you should see her again before we are married,” she said, “just to be certain that you are not going to pine for her once you are married to me.”

“I have every intention of being a good husband—” he began, but Julia either misunderstood or chose to pretend to. Her eyes were too dark; he could not read them. Eilan's eyes had been clear as a forest pool.

“Because,” she said straightforwardly, “I do not want a man who would rather be married to someone else. I really think you should see her again, and find out what you want your life to be. Then, when you come back, I'll know that marriage with me is really what you want to do.”

She sounded like her father, he thought grimly, when he was negotiating a contract; she sounded as if she thought marriage was a career. But then, brought up in the capital as she had been, that was probably exactly what she expected it to be! And what other career could there be for a Roman woman? What could she know of the fire that pulsed in the blood when the Beltane drums began, or the longing that ate at the heart like the music of the pipes the shepherds played on the hills?

In any case, his father had made it impossible for him to see Eilan; no doubt even Julia would be horrified if she heard that his beloved was the local equivalent of a Vestal Virgin. But Julia was already making plans, and once again Gaius felt as if he was in the path of a cavalry charge.

“Father is going to send you north with despatches for Agricola—”

Gaius raised one eyebrow, for he had heard nothing of this, but it did not really surprise him. Julia was the darling of every clerk in the
tabularium,
and when a change in orders was contemplated, they were always the first to know.
And the last one to know is always the man most concerned!
he thought.

“On your way you can make time to see this girl. When you come back you will be quite, quite sure that you would rather be married to me.”

Gaius suppressed a smile, for she did not know as much as she thought if she imagined he would have much time for side trips on government service. But perhaps he could manage something; already his blood beat faster in his veins at the thought of seeing Eilan again.