Her husband was silent, and Annia stared into the room’s darkness for a moment before continuing.
‘I know what you’re thinking, Julius. You’re wondering why she didn’t get rid of the baby while it was still unformed.’
‘I-’
‘An abortion? How could she? She was a doctor, Julius, sworn to care for her fellows and never to knowingly do harm. She could never have murdered an innocent child, and that’s all there was to it. She planned to have the baby and then have it adopted, find a family without children who longed for such a gift and pass the infant to them. We would never speak of it again, and Marcus would never be any the wiser.’
‘She’d have kept it from him?’
Annia laughed softly at his incredulity.
‘I’d have kept it from you, if the emperor had chosen to put his child in my womb. Look at what’s resulted from him discovering the truth! What sane man takes to these streets at midnight dressed in no more than a tunic? If she’d lived it would have been better for him never to have known, never to have the scars of his family’s destruction reopened.’
‘If she’d lived?’
‘We thought her delivery would be simple enough, after the ease with which she had the first one, but the baby was too big, and refused to turn, and when she called for help it was too long coming. The doctor who attended her was no better than a butcher. He got the baby out by cutting her open, but she lost too much blood. She died in my arms, her eyes wide with the pain, and as she slipped away she made me promise to care for the child. I swore an oath, Julius, an oath to raise the baby as my own.’
He wrapped his arms more tightly about her.
‘And what else were you to do?’
Silence fell over them.
‘What happened? Is he wounded?’
Dubnus shook his head at the question, shepherding Marcus into the walled garden with an arm around his back, physically supporting the Roman while the man who had been waiting for them closed the gate. The smell of herbs and fragrant blooms was strong in the warm air, a vivid counterpoint to the iron stink of spilled blood from his gore-streaked tunic.
‘He took on a dozen street robbers with nothing more than his bare hands.’
The Briton raised a hand to forestall the veteran’s anxiety as Cotta stared aghast at the gore caked across the Roman’s tunic and body.
‘It’s all other men’s blood, but he’s pretty much burned himself out in the doing of it.’
Cotta sized up the man whose long-dead father had employed him to educate his son in the fighting skills of the legions from the age of ten, assessing his exhausted posture and blank, empty eyes. He snapped out a command at one of the retired soldiers who formed the tight-knit company of men he had brought to the Tungrians’ close family on their arrival in Rome the year before.
‘Fetch me the hot water from the kitchen, and all of the towels! Here, let’s get him onto that bench.’
The younger man sank gratefully onto the seat, his body trembling with reaction to the mayhem he had visited on the street robbers. Cotta stood over him in silence, staring down at the man he had tutored in the use of blade and point as a boy, when Cotta himself had only recently retired from legion service.
‘Get that tunic off.’
Taking the garment he passed it to Dubnus with a meaningful glance.
‘Be better if this went onto the fire, I’d say. The less evidence of this night the better, if the Urban Watch come asking questions.’
His man returned with a pail of water warmed over the kitchen fire and took the bloody garment away for incineration, and the former centurion knelt in front of his friend, wetting a towel and working at the drying blood that coated Marcus’s face and limbs.
‘How many did he kill?’
‘There were three corpses on the cobbles when we left, and another man trying to stop his guts from falling out without the wits to know that he was already dead.’
Cotta shook his head, putting a finger under the Roman’s chin and lifting his head to stare into the half-closed eyes.
‘And why? You’ve no idea, do you? If one of those street scum had got lucky and stuck you with a blade, you could be dead now, and for no better reason than you’re filled with rage you can’t turn on anyone who actually matters.’
He worked with water and towels until his friend’s body was completely clean, then wrapped him in a military cloak and handed him a beaker.
‘Wine and warm honey. Once you’ve got that down your neck you can eat this bread. And no arguments.’
Acquiescing to the commanding note in his former trainer’s voice, Marcus drank deeply, nodding slowly in response to Cotta’s harangue.
‘I know … it was pointless … stupid … but …’
‘You couldn’t help yourself.’
The Roman nodded, drinking deeply again, shivering with reaction to the night’s events.
‘No.’
The veteran looked down at his former pupil for a moment.
‘And is that it? Or are you going to be stupid enough take it to the streets again tomorrow night?’ Marcus looked back at him with an expression of pure misery. ‘I’m serious, boy. Tonight was the easy one, with no one out there any the wiser to the fact that a lone aristo out after dark on his own could be anything other than easy meat. By tomorrow morning the word will be out there, and you’ll not only get yourself killed but lead these men into the same trap. Is that what you think you owe them, a meaningless death in a city that’s not even their home?’
The younger man shook his head slowly, and Cotta dropped into a squat to look into his eyes, grimacing at the pain in his knees.
‘No. You owe them better, and you know it. Swear vengeance on the men who killed your wife by all means. I’ll sacrifice alongside you, and make common cause with you, but you’ll hold that vengeance for the right time, and not waste it in a meaningless slaughter of men who never had any part in Felicia’s death.’
Marcus nodded wordlessly, leaning his head forward onto Cotta’s shoulder. The veteran took a gentle grip of the hair at the back of his former pupil’s head and pulled it away from him until he could stare into the younger man’s eyes.
‘And if that’s not enough to keep you from throwing your life away, I’ll remind you that there’s something altogether more precious than any thought of revenge. Your son.’
The younger man stared back at him, tears welling in his eyes.
‘Exactly. Do you want Appius growing to manhood without ever having known his father, even if your friends manage to spirit him away to safety with every praetorian, urban watchman and gang member hunting for them?’
‘No. I owe him — them — better than that.’
The veteran soldier nodded.
‘Yes you do. So when that bastard Cleander summons you and Rutilius Scaurus to the palace, and gloats over your agony like the animal he is, will you hold back your anger or will you buy his life at the cost of your own, and that of the Legatus?’
‘I won’t enjoy the rank of legion legatus for much longer, Centurion Cotta, any more than you’ll be a centurion.’
Cotta leapt to his feet with as much dignity as his knees allowed, saluting crisply, but Gaius Rutilius Scaurus waved a dismissive hand.
‘No formalities, please Cotta, not at this time of night and under these circumstances. How is he?’
Marcus stood, saluting his senior officer.
‘I’m tired, sir. It’s been a trying day.’
Scaurus nodded, his face an expressionless mask.
‘Trying is one word I might have used. Devastating is another. Go to bed, Tribune, and sleep as long as you need to. And when you wake, come and see me to discuss the last of Centurion Cotta’s questions. I expect we’ll be called to the palace tomorrow, now that Cleander knows we’re back and has allowed a day for your wife’s death to sink in. He’ll be wanting to see your face, I expect, and see what havoc his machinations have wrought on you.’