“Wild men don’t need oil. Come here.”
She smiled and ignored me and said nothing. Her dress was getting wet, and I was getting out of control. I tried to take some deep breaths while she used her hands to spread oil on my back and chest. Then she went lower.
“Gwyna-!”
“You can control yourself, Ardur. You’re a doctor, remember?”
I gritted my teeth. Finally, she finished, and started gently scraping with a strigil. The sound of it against my skin seemed loud, but my breathing was even louder. I couldn’t look at her anymore.
“Get in and rinse.”
I did as she directed, saying nothing. I swam to the other side and back. I needed the exercise. She was waiting with an open towel when I stepped out, and patted me dry. I was red all over, and not from the hot water.
“One more thing.” She guided me to a folding chair. “Sit down. I’m going to shave you.”
“What-”
“I’m quite good at it.” She coated my days-old beard with oil, and deftly picked up a razor from a tray. “Lean your head back.”
She was very good at it. Little by little, she scraped the dirty beard away from my chin and neck and upper lip. Then she rinsed me off with water-squeezing a towel and letting it run down my cheeks this time-and with her hands rubbed some oil into my entire face.
When she was done, she took me by the hand and led me through the back entrance directly into the bedroom. She stood before me, her silk gown clinging to her body, her hair damp and slightly curly from the moisture.
My hands were trembling. I started to undress her, but I couldn’t stop them from shaking. She helped, and stepped out of her stola. I stood and looked at her.
I said: “Turn around.” She did. But before she could complete a circle, I’d picked her up, and placed her on the bed, and her body was as I’d dreamed it would be. The moon blushed, and I didn’t care where we were going, so long as I was with her, and I forgot everything but the taste of her skin and the smell of her hair and how very, very good it was to be alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I woke up before dawn, and she was pressed against me, warm against my skin. I caressed the small of her back and her shoulders, and found her hips, and pulled her closer. I could feel her nipples. They were hard and I was getting there. She pushed herself on top of me, and then her hands were busy and then her mouth, and then she put her hands above her head, and mine were busy, too.
I made it last for as long as I could, which was never long enough. We clung to one another, her body hot, damp with the moist perfume of her skin still draped on mine. We went back to sleep.
I got out of bed late that morning, and thought: I could get used to this. But Agricola’s face hung over us, and the face of the man who’d give anything to be in my place. And the other face, too, the strangely familiar man with the unfamiliar god, alone, staring at a wall, waiting for death and deliverance. So we got up and went in to breakfast.
Bilicho and Stricta were already there. The floor was still warm from the night before, though I doubted it would ever feel as cold as it used to. They were smiling, I was smiling, Gwyna was smiling, and we all looked ridiculous.
I said: “Brutius, tell Draco to come in here when he’s through with his exercises.” I could hear him outside, grunting. At least I hoped he was doing his exercises.
The food surprised me . Boiled eggs, fried wheat cakes, dates and dried plums. Maybe Venutius liked having more mouths to feed. Or maybe Gwyna hid the garum.
Hefin ran in like Hannibal was chasing him, and his sister hushed him, and told him to eat in the kitchen with Venutius and Brutius. He sulked a little, and threw us a couple of resentful looks on the way out. What the hell was I going to do with a ten year old? I bit into a wheat cake and decided to think about it later. After Maecenas. After Caelius. After we talked to Urien, and settled everything. And after I found out what happened at home while I was getting my kidneys crushed by Lugh.
“All right, Bilicho-start at the beginning, five days ago.”
He looked ten years younger when Stricta smiled at him like that. Bilicho. Venus was going to get a big offering this year.
He swallowed the date in his mouth, and sipped some mulsum. “Not a lot to tell, Arcturus-I hope you’re not disappointed. I never had the chance to follow up.”
“Just tell me what happened.” I wrestled my eyes away from Gwyna’s hand reaching for a plum.
“Well-the first thing I did was-was check on Stricta.” He turned red and looked at her. “I was worried someone might figure out she was at the temple. The priest didn’t like me much, but when I told him I was your freedman-the doctor who’d been there before-he let me see her.” He fumbled for her hand. “She was too thin, and I could see she wasn’t sleeping. I told her you were away, and things were moving fast, and to be careful. Then I left.”
“Next?”
“I went to see a silversmith I’d met once-remember that poison case a couple of years ago? Anyway, I figured he might know something about a mine and Maecenas without me trying to look up records. He didn’t have anything, but he gave me the name of a lead dealer-a middleman, he buys up leaky pipes and old metal and then melts them down and probably resells them as new. Anyway, he was more helpful.”
He sipped again, and wiped his mouth. Stricta still didn’t have much of an appetite, but she’d at least eaten a date and a cake. The raw edges of her face were beginning to smooth out. Bilicho leaned into her, and brushed her leg without knowing it, as if to make sure she was still there.
“He knew the Syrian by description, not by name. Said he used to buy lead from him. Our Maecenas was a mine contractor-probably the kind that underbids the lease from the government, then hires the cheapest labor or slaves about to croak their last in order to turn a profit.
It was a good mine, too, somewhere in the hills near Aquae Sulis. The dealer’s geography wasn’t as specific as it might’ve been. At first the mine threw up some ore, but it ran out of silver about a year ago-lead was lead was lead. That’s when Maecenas leased it. There’s been a glut on the market, though, and it closed down about four months ago.”
“Did your lead merchant know if Maecenas had any other business interests?”
Bilicho shrugged. “He was a little vague. Thought he’d remembered something about a perfume warehouse in Africa. He wasn’t sure.”
“Was the mine leased by Maecenas alone, or was he part of a societas?”
“I didn’t ask. Does it matter?”
“It might. I’d like to know who his business partners were, if he had any.”
He nodded. “I’ll try to find out.”
“So then what did you do?”
“Well, I was near the forum, so I thought I’d go see a banker and ask him about the money. There’s one that doesn’t cut your left leg off to mortgage the right one. Naturally, he does a small business, but I figured he’d know who’d use coins like that. On the way to his shop I ran into Mollius.”
Draco came in from the back, breathing hard, and looking nervous. I called him over. “Sit down, Draco. I want to hear what happened when I was gone.”
Coir was nowhere in sight. I snuck a glance at Gwyna. She was smiling again. I pulled my eyes away. Bilicho bit into an egg and somehow made it noisy. Then he continued.
“So Mollius said he’d ask around about Caelius, because you’d told him what Caelius had done.” He looked at Stricta like she might break. “He wanted to help, and that gave me more time with the argentarius. Then we split up, and I got to the shop.”
“What did the argentarius say?”
“Not a lot. He wanted to see the money, but you had it locked up, and I knew better than to show cash to a banker. Gold makes ‘em go into rut, even the good ones. So Gleuco-that’s his name-starts to pick his teeth, and hem and haw, and says he hadn’t known Maecenas himself, you understand, but he was very surprised to find him carrying that much money, and that only a few of the large financiers would carry that much, the ones that could do business with equestrians and senators, not like him who had to be content to loan money to freedmen and slaves, and he went on like that for a while.