"You can walk," he commented instead.
"I can hobble."
"Savia suspects me of torturing you. Tomorrow I'll bring my horse, and you can ride behind me back to Tiranen. There's a meeting of the clans I've got to go to, and you're strong enough now to finish your recovery there."
She was surprised at her own disappointment. She liked the quiet of the crannog. She liked being alone with Arden outside the crowded and noisy hill fort. But certainly her place was back where she could be found and rescued, wasn't it? "Planning another abduction?"
He didn't rise to her provocation. "There's rumor of trouble."
"What kind of trouble?"
"None that concerns you, yet."
"You haven't heard from my husband?" She was annoyed he wouldn't confide in her and couldn't resist asking it.
"I told you he won't move against us."
"Marcus isn't afraid of you." She insisted on it without knowing why.
"But he's afraid for you, Valeria, and because of that he's afraid for himself. As long as you stay alive, he retains his office. If you die, his future is in peril. By capturing you, we've captured him."
The thought depressed her. "You pick on a woman to defeat a man?"
"What kind of man is so easily defeated?"
She had nothing to say to that.
"Is it really so bad, my clan and my crannog?" he persisted.
"It's not my home."
"What if it was?"
Here was his weakness, and it gave her an opportunity to sting him. "You know I could never belong here. Never belong to you." There. She'd said it.
"Celtic women belong to no man. And yet you do belong here, among the free. It relaxes you, I can see it. I know we don't have your fine things, but we do have great spirit. We have each other."
"So do Romans."
"I admire your loyalty, but you have to be realistic. Your husband might worry for you, be embarrassed by your capture, even miss your company. But he won't risk his career when he doesn't love you."
"You don't know my husband's heart!"
"I know the emptiness of yours. He's not in love with you because you aren't with him."
"The presumption of you!"
"Why are you always upset by simple truth? I didn't abduct you, I rescued you, from an arranged marriage and Roman ambition."
"Now I should thank you?" She was flushing.
"You enjoy this crannog. I can see it on your face."
She turned away. "This is dinner, not a lifetime."
"Sometimes a dinner is all a lifetime allows." He stood close, lightly touching her arms. She trembled. "Come, you know I've treated you well. Let's eat, not argue, and let the Wall take care of itself for an evening."
The simple food was good, her body ravenous. How could such a meal taste better than an elaborate banquet? How could a rude hut seem as comfortable as a Roman mansion? They chatted for a while of simpler things, of the hunt and horses and history of his clan, and let the wine numb their frustration and desire.
At length they pushed themselves back from the food. He was watching her more lazily now, seemingly content to drink in her features in the candlelight. It both flattered her and made her nervous. She still looked like a bruised pear and wished she was prettier, and yet also wished he wouldn't look at her at all. She'd promised her fidelity to Marcus! Yet she wanted Arden to want her, if for no other reason than to turn him down.
How mixed-up she felt.
"You pretend to know a lot about love," she said finally.
His smile was wistful. "That's because I've been in love and know how terrible it can be, this thing that all young women long for."
Suddenly she saw it. There'd been a romance. "When?"
"Before, when I was in the Roman army." His gaze was lost in memory.
"Please tell me what happened."
He shook his head. "I don't tell it to anyone. It's bitter, not sweet."
"But you must to me."
"Why?"
"You must trust me."
He was amused. "Why must I trust you?"
"Because I must trust you, the two of us alone, a thousand miles from Rome." Each the other's prisoner, Kalin had said.
He knew what she meant: the price of friendship, or something deeper. He considered, then shrugged. "Her name was Alesia."
"A pretty name."
"Just why I first noticed her I can't truly say. By the time I saw her, I'd marched past a thousand women, or ten times a thousand women. She was pretty, almost as pretty as you, and had a kind look, and yet that doesn't fully explain it. I'd seen other women equally pretty, and equally kind. There was simply a peculiar radiance to that moment, a trick of light that made me feel directed by the gods. Have you ever experienced it?"
"No."
"The setting sun had backlit clouds beyond the Danube, turning them black, and the Roman shore was golden. Alesia was fetching water, her back straight and neck erect, the jar balanced on her head, and the light turned her shift white and translucent. I remember her steps, small and careful, the slim silhouette of her form, and her manner, graceful and chaste. I walked past without stopping, on an errand to buy some wine for my comrades, but something made me look back."
"You fell in love." She was envious.
"We hadn't said a word, and yet I lost my heart. I wanted not just to possess her but to know her, to protect her, to besiege her heart."
Valeria swallowed.
"She glanced back at me," he continued, "and with that our fates were sealed."
Where was this woman? She couldn't ask that yet. "Why were you in the army?"
"My family was rich and had come to partial accommodation with the Romans. We had lands south of the Wall. We tried your civilization, but it trapped us in debt. When my father couldn't pay the Bite, he was arrested, and our lands were confiscated. When he went to Rome for justice, he was ignored and died of illness. My mother died of grief. I was left with revenge. So I joined the legions." "You joined the empire you hated?"
"Not hate, not at first. I was young enough to think that perhaps it had been my father's fault, because he wasn't Roman enough. I Latinized my name to Ardentius and marched where the army told me. At first, everything Roman seemed grand. I heard the roar of the mob at the Coliseum. I guarded generals who dined at the villas of Italian millionaires. I prowled the wharves of Ostia, where all the wealth of the world comes and goes. My first impression was yours. Rome was universal and eternal and necessary."
He made it seem false. "It's brought order to the world." "And slavery, poverty, and hollowness. Cities so great they can't feed themselves. Taxes no one can afford to pay. Army life was callous, and the Romans I met were a soft, spoiled people, ignorant of who they ruled and unwilling to fight. They got tribute from places they couldn't name."
"Yet you took their pay and wore their clothes and slept in their barracks."
"For a while. When I knew enough to beat you, I wanted out." "With an Alesia, after your twenty-year enlistment?" "No, I wanted Alesia then, when I saw her on the grassy bank of the Danube. Not that part between a woman's thighs, which can be bought by soldiers for a coin, but her, to end the loneliness of the legions. I found her owner, Criton the leather maker, and began bargaining for her freedom. I trailed her to the market and to the river, finding excuses to talk and help carry her things. She was frightened of disappointment but alive with hope. I told her about life here, how the sun in summer seems to linger half the night and stars in winter are thick as snow. I told her we'd never be treated as equals within the empire-I an alien and she a slave-but that here we could make a free and happy life." "She believed this?"
"Her eyes, Valeria! How they ignited with the promise of it!" The woman said nothing. Was she herself some kind of replacement for this slave woman? Had she been captured to replace a memory?