The thought of Caelius looking at her made my temples hurt. I stood up to leave before I couldn’t. She stood up, too, and pressed herself into me, reassuring me with the weight of her body against mine. Her fingertips sank into the flesh of my arm.
“Be careful, Ardur. I don’t want to lose anyone else that I care for.”
The grinning skull of Vibius Maecenas was breathing down my neck. I held her at arm’s length.
“I have to find Rhodri.”
She stiffened, and backed away. It got chilly again.
“If he’s innocent I can help him! Running away won’t solve anything-I might be the only chance he has. Tell me where he is, Gwyna. I know you know something.”
She turned her back. “No. Get out.”
“What-”
“I said get out. And we don’t need your charity. I’ll manage-something else.”
“But-”
“Get-out!” She finally turned to look at me, her eyes flowing with tears, her face blurred with pain and anger.
“I thought you cared about me-I thought you loved me!”
“I do love you! I’m just trying to-”
“Get out! Get out! Get out!”
She shoved me through the door, and when I stepped outside she shut it with a violent clang that I was sure rang through the shuttered house. From her room, I could hear the sounds of sobbing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The weather outside matched my mood. The sun had teased us on the way here, whispering promises of warm days, lovely sunsets, and happy endings. The sun was a liar. I leaned against the door and grimaced. Not hail, not snow, not even decent sleet. Some ungodly cross of rain and dirt and mud and filth was raining down in sheets, pounding the pocked and rutted streets into submission. My toga would never be the same.
With a groan, I pried myself off of Gwyna’s door, and sank into the mud. The cold, liquid dirt squirted between my toes, and the ankle boots gave up their last breath and died. Draco trudged ahead of me through the murk. It was still about two or three hours before sundown, but no one was counting.
The rain froze my toes. I couldn’t feel the mud anymore, or even the waterfalls cascading down my back. I couldn’t feel anything except what I didn’t want to feel, and that was a hell of a lot more uncomfortable than the weather.
She was obviously protecting Rhodri. She must still care for him. But what she said, what she did.… A donkey and a cart crawling by on all fours flung some of the road in my mouth. It tasted better than what I was thinking. Goddamn it. She wasn’t lying. Not completely. There was more to it than that.
The voice said: “Remember Dionysia.”
It was a resigned tone, one that said it knew this would happen all along. I hated the tone, and I didn’t care much for the voice, either.
“I was eighteen years old! And Dionysia was … well, you know what Dionysia was. That doesn’t make Gwyna a liar. I know all about using people. I know all about lying.”
It whispered this time. “To yourself, maybe. But where women are concerned …”
I swatted some mud at it, and a chunk clung to my lobe like an earring. Gwyna was no Dionysia. Or Julia, for that matter. Dionysia was a sophisticate; Julia a spoiled, oversexed child. Gwyna was a native-a Trinovantian!-and she had a family to think of. She was a fiercely loyal woman, loyal to her father, her people, her country-
“Her lover?”
I was getting tired of the argument. Why couldn’t I just shut up? Wasn’t the weather misery enough? I stepped in a puddle, and tried to drown myself.
I remembered how she felt. How she smelled, how she looked. She was hiding something, but it wasn’t about us. She could still be loyal to Agricola. And her father. She could still be in love with me-and want to help Rhodri. Maybe she was protecting him in the only way she knew how: by keeping her mouth shut. And maybe I wasn’t the only one looking for him.
Even if Rhodri were innocent, he knew something, saw something, and it was something dangerous. Maybe Rhodri had to run. Maybe Rhodri was being set up.
I needed to find him. There was a chance he was guilty, and Gwyna knew it. Maybe her loyalty went that far. But loyalty didn’t make her a liar about us. And at that moment, standing in the mud and rain, I didn’t give a damn about anything else.
A smile cracked through the mud on my face, and I swam ahead to catch up to Draco. The voice scurried to a dark corner. I had the uneasy feeling we’d be talking again soon.
* * * * *
Home was somewhere up ahead. The rain slacked off as the weather got colder. The drop in temperature made the mud harder. I felt like one of those trick Silenus statues you crack open to find another statue inside. If I peeled off enough layers, maybe I’d find a cleaner, brighter Arcturus.
I was thinking about not thinking about Gwyna. So I thought about Maecenas. I was wondering who killed him.
Rhodri had a personal motive. But he also had a damn good reason for not stealing the papers. All he had to do was wait, and Domitian’s orders would do what a few thousand natives couldn’t. Any enemy of the governor would’ve toasted Maecenas and those papers with the finest Aminnian.
Funny how Urien hadn’t asked about them. For a man who liked gossip so much, I figured he’d want to know whether he’d be getting a new governor. He was quick enough to point out that the governor’s friends and allies were the strongest suspects. But he never asked if the papers were found or delivered.
And what about the mithraeum? The murder took place on the New Year. And the Syrian was trussed with a native knot. And Rhodri and Madoc both knew a lot more than innocent men should. I’d like to find out how.
Maybe the Christians did it, whoever they were, wherever they were. Maybe they wanted the Romans and natives to start killing each other again. But why take the papers? Isn’t the numen you know better than the numen you don’t know?
And then there was Caelius. I’d like it to be him. He’d told Maecenas about Gwyna, and had acted as Urien’s broker. But why would he kill the Syrian or steal the papers? And why wouldn’t he-or anyone else-have stolen the money?
I chewed my muddy lip. There was a personal motive to kill Maecenas, and political motives to steal the papers, but not by the same people. Maybe we were dealing, as Bilicho thought, with multiple crimes. A murdered man, a stolen document (but not stolen money?), and a desecrated temple?
Then I was home.
Nothing looked as good as my door. Maybe not quite nothing. I needed a warm fire and clean clothes, surrounded by a peaceful household of order and harmony. When Draco pushed on the door, it opened. Something was wrong.
I could see his jaw set, as if a sculptor were making final adjustments to a clay mold. He fumbled through the dripping wool to his old gladius, and removed it. He motioned for me to stay behind him, but as he entered the waiting room I pushed him aside. The sound of barking was coming from the triclinium.
I sloshed quickly through the hall, and paused in the doorway, the drip-drip-drip of the unbearably heavy toga dropping in rhythm with the labored breaths of Draco, behind me.
The dining room was in an uproar. Velox and Ludens were running around the couches, nearly tripping Brutius, Coir and Venutius, and barking at one of Fera’s kittens, which was contemplating a tapestry of Alexandria in the corner. In the center of it all was Bilicho, propped awkwardly on a couch, with a too large cloth around his head that had too much blood on it.
I plowed through the slaves.
“Venutius, bring some warm water. Brutius, get my surgical bag from the examination room. Coir, go with him to make sure he finds it.”
I turned to Draco, who stood in the middle of the floor, huge, wet, and confused. “Change your clothes.”
The puppies and the kittens looked at me, waiting for orders. “You-be quiet.”. Then I looked down at Bilicho, who was faintly smiling.