The thought unsettled him. As did the girl's proximity. She stood too close. He could feel her soft breath on his neck. He stared at her lower lip, full and moist and sensuous.
He stepped back, drew down his bloody sleeve, murmured a thank-you, and wanted to ask again how she knew the Barbarians would not search for them in this cave. But he was held by her blue eyes. He saw the smudges of dirt on her cheeks. Recalled how she had fought her attackers. "Night is upon us," he said. "We will need a fire."
Ulrika sat wearily on the cold dirt floor and watched Sebastianus strike the flint and coax a flame out of a pile of dried leaves. He had collected stones and placed them in a circle for a campfire, and now he added twigs and pieces of wood. "Thank you," Ulrika said.
"For what?" He concentrated on laying the sticks. The girl was filling his thoughts in a way that made him uneasy. He knew it was not just her proximity. Sebastianus suspected that if they were a thousand miles apart, he still would not be able to rid his mind of her. Aside from Ulrika's beauty, her grace and femininity, there was a curious strength about her—the way she had flown at the Barbarians with a dagger, and then had held her emotions together as they searched for a safe hiding place. Now, quietly watching him with those compelling blue eyes.
"For saving my life," she said.
"As long as you travel with my caravan, you are under my protection. It is my duty to see that you reach your destination safely. When you turned up missing from our camp, I put a party together to go looking for you." He didn't look at her as he added, "I was furious when I realized you had left. I had to send the caravan on ahead while I put together a search party."
When Ulrika trembled and wrapped her arms around herself, Sebastianus unclasped his blue cloak and draped it around her shoulders, drawing it snugly tight. In the flickering firelight, Ulrika saw the pewter pin that held the cloak at the throat. It was a beautiful Gallic design.
Sebastianus saw how it caught her interest. "That was given to me by a widow in Lugdunum. A man in the neighborhood was making unwelcome advances and she had no male relatives to protect her. So I paid the man a visit. He will not bother her again."
His words reminded Ulrika of something Timonides had said outside the city of Masilia, when Sebastianus had gone into town that night, bearing gifts. "My master has friends all over the empire. He takes care of people who have no protection. He need only make it known that this man or that woman is under the care of Sebastianus Gallus the merchant trader, and that person is safe."
Ulrika had asked what these people gave Sebastianus in return and Timonides had said, "Their friendship."
As Ulrika touched the fashioned metal, she received a brief vision of the widow who had given him this gift—a pretty woman left alone by a husband who drank too much—and Ulrika knew that the Greek astrologer had spoken the truth when he had said that all Sebastianus asked in return was friendship, for she sensed that there had been nothing more between Gallus and the widow.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
Sebastianus poked the flames with a green stick. "I became separated from my group and met an old woman who told me a Roman girl had come through here recently, a girl on her own. The old woman directed me to the stream. Why did you leave the caravan? Why not wait until we reached Colonia?"
"I wanted to warn my father's people."
Sebastianus finally looked up, firelight reflected in his green eyes. "Warn them of what?"
"Gaius Vatinius had a plan that would ensure his victory." She explained about the dinner at Paulina's villa, the secret strategy Vatinius had bragged about. "But I came too late."
Sebastianus absorbed her remarkable tale while silently building a warm, bright fire. He looked across the flames and saw how pale she was in the hot glow, how she trembled, not from cold but from shock. She had seen a battlefield strewn with corpses. She had traveled a great distance to be reunited with a father she never knew, only to be told he was dead.
"You are very courageous," he said.
"I am very reckless. I could have gotten myself killed. I could have gotten you killed. I'm sorry."
"At least you brought us to the safety of this cave. You knew those men would not come in here. How did you know?"
She mutely shook her head and looked at her hands.
"I have food," he said, reaching for his travel pack. "You must be hungry."
When she did not respond, he turned to her, to find Ulrika with her back to him and to the fire, her eyes delving the darkness at the rear of the cave. "What is it?" he asked.
"I thought," she began, but then turned around, shaking her head.
Sebastianus brought out coarse bread and sharp cheese, cutting off chunks with his knife and handing them to Ulrika. As she nibbled delicately, staring into the flames, Sebastianus noticed that her eyes flickered toward the cave entrance, beyond which lay a dark and forbidding forest. He knew she was not worried about their stalkers coming back. The look in her wide, blue eyes was haunted, as if she were seeing images not there.
She is back on the battlefield, he thought, searching for her father ...
"What will you do now?" he asked. "Stay here and perhaps search for survivors of your father's family?"
"I do not know what I will do now. I was so certain when I left Rome that I would find answers here. Yet I am more confused than ever." She thought for a moment, holding him in her gaze with damp eyes. You must return to the place of your beginning. "I do not know if there is anything, or anyone, here in the Rhineland for me. But if I return to Rome, I will be expected to marry." She bit into the bread and chewed. "Are you married, Sebastianus Gallus?"
He shook his head. "I am never in one place long enough to be a good husband and father. I have a villa in Rome, but I am rarely there. Sometimes my journeys keep me away for years. What woman would want that kind of husband?"
He fell silent then, and found himself held captive by a pair of frank, blue eyes. He gazed at Ulrika across the golden flames of the campfire, and felt unaccustomed yearnings stir deep within him.
Breaking away from the spell of her eyes, Sebastianus cleared his throat, looked at his hands, and then surveyed their saturnine surroundings. "This cave evokes a memory from my boyhood in Galicia, when I was thirteen years old. There was a man, Malachi, who owned the largest vineyard in the area. He was fat and rich and my brother Lucius and I had heard our father say that Malachi was cruel to his slaves and animals. We did not like that. So Lucius and I would sneak among Malachi's vines and eat his grapes until he chased us off with a whip. One night we crept into his vineyard and stole bunches of ripe grapes, taking them into town and selling them. When Malachi complained to our father, he gave us the thrashing of our lives. This meant revenge. Our plan involved a cave very much like this one."
Ulrika kept her eyes on Sebastianus as he spoke.
"Lucius and I dug a pit just inside the cave's entrance and filled it with pig manure. And then we ran past Malachi's house, making sure he heard us, exclaiming about treasure we had found in the cave. Because he was greedy, or so we thought, we knew he could not resist following us. We paraded in and out of that cave carrying bags, knowing Malachi was watching. And then Lucius and I loudly agreed that we had enough treasure and should go home."