“Yes. Why didn’t you write me?”
They looked at each other. Bilicho gave me the worried mouth, the one I used to see every time he woke me from a nightmare. No one could shake me out of this one.
“Well, it was a gradual thing. Started back in July. Gwyna-Gwyna started acting strange. Coir did less and less. It got worse, but by then we knew you’d be home.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Stricta stared at him for a few moments, then looked away. He picked at a tooth, and his eyes flickered.
“I-I don’t know. Wish I did. She started to get distant, kind of lost, like, in July. Acting like she didn’t care where she was. Not dressing, eating just enough to keep skin and bone together, but not … enjoying it. Not enjoying anything, from what I could tell. Never unkind, of course, but just-not caring. Real sad, sometimes. Hefin said he heard her crying all the time, and that’s when I took him home. He’s been here about a month.”
He shook his head, his wrinkled face drooped in pity. “I’m sorry, Arcturus. We both are. She’s just not herself.” He looked over at Stricta and said, in a soft voice I’d never heard before, “Reminds me a bit of you, love, when I was first looking after you.”
Stricta reddened a little, looked away, and squeezed Bilicho’s hand.
“It’s my fault. I left her in May. I left her when Agricola’s boy died.”
They both understood and were quiet. I coughed, but it sounded more like a sob, even to me. Bilicho turned his head, and Stricta hurried to the kitchen. I wiped my eyes and looked at Bilicho, who was studying a spider on the wall. I cleared my throat to let him know it was safe.
“So what are you going to do?”
I told him about leaving Agricola, the army-about what it would mean for both of us. First, there was Aquae Sulis, and a chance to help Gwyna. Maybe it would let her see again. Let her find herself again.
“Best thing for her. Don’t worry about Hefin, we’ll keep him for you. I’ll make sure he’s schooled. One thing at a time for you-Gwyna comes first.”
He didn’t want to let the boy go. The thought hit me like a bathhouse brick. He wanted a family. Maybe Stricta couldn’t have children-not surprising, considering her background. And Bilicho, my own stubborn, protective, bashful Bilicho, wanted a family.
“There’s no one I’d want to look after the boy more than you. However long I’ll be-however long it takes-consider Hefin your son. I know she feels the same.”
His brown, weather-beaten face flushed with purple. We looked at each other, shuffled our feet, cleared our throats. Stricta recognized male emotion and walked in from the kitchen to save us.
“Arc-tur-us. You will need another housekeeper, yes?”
“Venutius is out looking for another slave this morning.”
“Sioned’s husband died three months ago. She is not a slave, of course, but she would work for very little-especially for Gwyna.” She smiled at me, and the smile lit the spareness of her face and made her beautiful.
“That would be perfect. Do you know where she is?”
“She lives not far from here. I will ask her to see you.”
I stood up. “I’ll send word when we reach Agricola’s villa. Thank you both. For everything.”
Bilicho slapped me on the back, and Stricta said: “I’ll get my cloak and find Sioned.”
We stepped outside together. Then she turned to me, urgency on her face.
“Arcturus. Please be patient with Gwyna. This is not your fault. Do not blame yourself.”
I stared at her. “Do you know something? Something that would help?”
She hesitated. She came to see Gwyna, Venutius said so. What did she know?
The brown-green eyes were deep. They wouldn’t lie to me, but neither would they give up their secrets. Or my wife’s.
“She will let you know what will help. But give her time. Make her live again, taste life again.” She squeezed my hand. “You did so for me, once.”
With those words, the former slave, the woman who’d been kept as a whore in the lowest of whorehouses, moved off with the grace of a dancer in the imperial court.
* * *
I hired a gentle black gelding for Gwyna. When I came home and told her we were leaving for Aquae Sulis in the morning, she raised her eyebrows.
“You must have a positive obsession with bathing, Arcturus. First you take a bath before you come home, and now we’re traveling halfway across the country to take more.”
When I asked her if she felt physically able to travel, she got a little sharper: “I’m tired, not a cripple. I can keep up, if it’s so important to you.”
“It is important to me, Gwyna. To us. I think a change of air would do you good.”
She shrugged. “Air is air. But, as I said, if it’s important to you…” She let it trail off with the understanding that she was merely doing her duty.
When Sioned came by later in the afternoon, a look of pain-and strangely, of fear-crossed Gwyna’s face. She greeted the old woman and turned to me.
“Arcturus, do you mind if I take a warm bath? I’d like one before we travel, and you can make arrangements with Sioned.”
The old lady squinted hard at Gwyna, her broad, plain face severe with worry. “What’s the matter with the young mistress?”
More demand than question. I gave her a truncated version of nothing. There was nothing I could tell her-she could see the obvious for herself. She agreed to stay on out of loyalty to Gwyna, and probably a desire to find out if I was beating her. I gave her Coir’s old room.
The next morning Gwyna was up before I was. I dreamed she was sitting beside me, her hand stroking my face like she used to. When I opened my eyes, she was dressed in traveling clothes and heading out the door.
A sardonic smile when she saw the gelding. Nimbus didn’t think much of him, either, but he was a plucky little horse, maybe down on his luck. That made him part of the family.
The trip was uneventful. We kept a steady pace through the main road, taking a less traveled path through the Great Plain. She ate the food Venutius packed without complaint, just as she ate the plainer food we found at farms and inns, too.
Pluto, the little black gelding, was steady. Nimbus gradually grew to like him. I caught her giving him a nuzzle once, when we stopped for a rest in a meadow.
Gwyna showed emotion only once. There was a place on the Great Plain I wanted her to see. Not many farms around it, though plenty ringed the downland, with wheat and barley and flax growing like the buttercups. She could see it from a distance, and I knew she was curious.
“Arcturus-what is that? Those stones-”
“No one knows, Gwyna. They are the oldest of the Old Ones.”
She looked at me then, almost like herself. She was excited. “Can we see them?”
A light rain fell, and the green downland hummed with crickets. Wild hares dug in the soil, making large warrens, some of them older than the Romans in Britannia. Dark birds flew overhead, lighting on the giant rocks that rose up from the Earth like fingers, grasping at the sky.
Gwyna dismounted, walking up to one of the large blue stones, taller than any man. Silent, reverent touch. She walked the circle, in and out, laying her hand on each one in turn. There were tears in her eyes.
“Thank you, Ardur,” she whispered.
When we left the Plain that evening, her mask was firmly in place. But I could see it was a mask, hiding something ugly. Something she didn’t want me to know.
CHAPTER FOUR
I opened my eyes, watched the sunlight glisten on the river below. The strange sound of laughter-female laughter-was floating from Agricola’s house.
I ran up the path, unceremoniously throwing open the door. She was lying on one of the governor’s elegant couches, smiling … her hand lightly touching the arm of Lucius Valerius Philo.
There was someone else with him I couldn’t see at the moment.
“Arcturus?”