“When did you find out about Caelius?”
“This afternoon, after the vigil left. He sent a message to my father. I came to you right after.”
An anger sharper than anything I’d ever known rose up in my throat until I thought it would cut me like Maecenas. “I’ll kill him myself before he looks at you again.”
She lifted her head and stroked my jaw. “My Ardur. You are not a Roman.”
“No, my love.” I looked down at her, and Galla’s battered face blended over hers. “Romans hate, too.”
We were quiet for a time.
And then she shifted her weight and swallowed hard and said: “I’ve got to tell you something.”
“What?”
She stood up, and was still for a moment. I could feel her will herself to look at me. I stood, too, and waited. She came to me, tentative, and touched my hand, to make sure I was still there. I wasn’t sure.
“I didn’t care if the Syrian did die. I was frightened, but only of being caught. I would’ve killed him if the murderer hadn’t. There was more than enough poison. He would’ve died in his sleep.”
I didn’t keep it from her. “I know.”
“And that doesn’t bother you? Doesn’t make you hate me?”
I brushed a stray lock of blonde from her forehead. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes pinpoints of blue, and she was breathing hard. She avoided looking at me again. I turned her face toward mine. Her lips parted, and again I drowned, dying, living, I couldn’t tell which and I didn’t care.
I tasted her skin and held her face between my palms. “We’re all killers, Gywna. Every one of us. We scratch out a life on a marble brick and wonder how our fingertips get bloody.”
I dropped my hands to her shoulders. I wasn’t talking to just her anymore. “Murder’s got a lot of names. In war, it’s called being a hero. The poor bastards in the arena aren’t killed, they’re executed. And if I run a knife across Caelius’ windpipe, I’m a criminal, too. Because what he did to Galla wasn’t a crime.”
Her shoulders were shaking. So were mine. “You learn to live with it. The anger and the hate and the cold right alongside everything else. It’s all related, like those incestuous gods we pretend to believe in. Love and hate. Two sides of the same worthless coin, the one we pay Charon to ferry us over, the price of being human. But it’s all we’ve got. We’re all we’ve got.”
She stroked my jaw again, and nestled in my lap, and my throat constricted, and to my surprise I felt tears on my face.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Bilicho and I sat up talking that evening. I’d be tired tomorrow, starting out before dawn for Camulodunum. We looked at the papyrus fragment again; I finally dug out the piece of fibula I’d found in Maecenas’ room. And we looked at the money. The money worried me.
Bilicho asked: “Are you sure you want to leave? Seems to me we should pay a visit to Caelius.”
I could feel my mouth tighten up again, along with my stomach. “We need more information, Bilicho. When I see Caelius, I want it to be for the last time. And I owe it to Rhodri.”
“And you promised Claudia.”
I looked up at him. “Gwyna. But even if I hadn’t, I’d need to find him.”
An awkward silence fumbled in for a drink. I sipped my mulsum, and waited.
I’d led in Gwyna earlier, and made everything obvious. I told him we were going to get married. Bilicho’s smile had slipped off his face so fast I didn’t have time to catch it. He looked around the room as if I’d said I was knocking down the house.
The shock wasn’t the best for him. Hell, it wasn’t the best thing for me, either, but everything was moving too fast and if I didn’t reach out and grab something I’d get dizzy and fall down. And maybe not get up again.
He reddened, and sipped his own cup. I’d made some more burnet drink, mixed with some defructum from last season, clover honey and a dash of valerian. He’d be out roaming the streets tomorrow, pretending to be back to normal. We all would.
“He can probably tell us more about the two men and the cart. What Galla knew that killed her.” He paused, and scratched his ear, and the brown eyes that met mine were creased with worry and a strange hesitation. “Are you sure-really sure-that Stricta … that she’ll be safe?”
“As safe there as she would be here. But check on the temple. Draco will be watching Gwyna’s house, too, so he won’t be too far if you need him.”
Bilicho leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. “I know what to do. And I’ll talk to the money men, throw some lines out about Christians, silver mines, Urien’s debts. Track that bastard Caelius. Talk to Mollius. Avoid Meditor like the plague he is. And I’ll try not to get knocked on the head again. I’ve got my reputation to consider.”
He grinned like it was yesterday. But his face loosened, grew somber again. Dark lines fell across his forehead, and he looked older than I remembered.
“I know how serious this is, Arcturus. Agricola doesn’t know whether to fight or run, whether to pound the natives in the ground or cut their chains off. You know I’m a simple man. I don’t have it in me to worry so much about the big things, the big people. Somehow, they come through it, if not in this life, then in the next. It’s you I’m worried about, you and-” He swallowed. “-Stricta and Coir and Brutius and Draco and this house and-”
“Bilicho. Nothing is going to change between us. You’re my best friend. You’ll always be my best friend, my right arm, and the thorn in my foot. I love Gwyna-she loves me. You’ll come to know her, to understand. And maybe-just maybe-you’ll fall in love one day. I pity the woman.”
His eyes were as warm and brown as a swig of ale on a hot summer’s day. The old Bilicho. He threw his head back and laughed until his head ached again, and for some unaccountable reason, he blushed.
* * * * *
Camulodunum was sixty-five miles away, by a good Roman road, but it would still take me a day and a half with a fast horse and no rest. The horse I borrowed from Agricola’s stables. The lack of rest I already owned.
She was a good grey mare, a little heavy in the flanks, about fifteen hands high. I loaded her lightly, with Brutius’ help, packing only a rug and a blanket, a water skin, a wine skin, and some hardboiled eggs and dates. She was a courier’s horse, used to traveling long distances, and knew how to pace herself.
The mare was the only good thing I’d brought out of the meeting with Agricola the night before. After watching Bilicho drift off to sleep, I walked to the palace in a hurry. I was by myself again, inhaling air that cut my lungs and knotted my insides like a first love’s first good-bye.
I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to be with Gwyna, and forget why I was walking so late, forget my friends, forget my house, forget my patron, forget myself, and most of all forget Caelius. My leg itched where the blood was pumping. I could taste his blood, see myself twisting his head until I heard his neck crack. I didn’t like how much I liked the sound.
Meditor smirked when I passed him on the steps to the back entrance, past the guards who waved me in. His shallow, stupid, gloating helped cool my head: I grinned in his face. He reddened, his eyes screwing into sow-like slits that bore into my back like termites in a fallen oak. My shoulder blades twitched, but I kept walking.
I understood the reason for the smirk when I reached Agricola. He was in his study, pacing, Avitus at attention in front of the fire, as if the governor had forgotten to take him out of the kennel. Priscus hadn’t arrived yet, and Saturninus was probably in a tavern, imitating the drinking and whoring habits of another general named Antonius-praenomen Marcus.
Agricola was uncharacteristically nervous, his hands clutching his tunic, his face haggard and etched in worry. The governor looked like an old man. The general was nowhere to be seen.