Celtic Fire

by Joy Nash

  “How, then?”

  Her lips opened, then closed. “I can tell you no more than that.”

  In the vicinity of Lucius’s heart, something broke. All this time Rhiannon had known how Aulus had met his death. She knew his murderers but had said nothing, even as he had bared his soul to her. The betrayal cut deep, though he supposed he should have expected it. He’d admired her pride and her loyalty, but she’d gifted neither to him. She would protect her people with her dying breath. And despite her deception, he loved her for it.

  He was worse than a fool. He was an idiot.

  “So Aulus was killed by barbarians,” he said quietly. “Your people?”

  Her silence was acknowledgment enough.

  “I will find my brother’s murderers. You will lead me to them.”

  “Nay. I will not.” She gathered her sodden skirt in one hand and took a step toward the stair.

  “Rhiannon.”

  She stopped, but didn’t look back.

  “I would have your loyalty.”

  Her spine stiffened. “I cannot give it to you.”

  “Then seek your bed with the rest of the slaves.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What did you do to Rhiannon?”

  Lucius’s exit from his bedchamber was halted by the agitated presence of his son. The hour was early; dawn was only a dull sheen in the cloudy sky. Had the boy been lying in wait all night? His hair was damp, the dark curls plastered to his forehead. The insect-infested pile of fur he’d claimed for a pet stood nearby. When Aulus staggered into the passageway, the animal issued a low growl.

  “I’ve done nothing to her. Why? Is she ill?”

  “She’s crying.” Marcus seemed almost ready to break into tears himself. Red patches adorned his cheeks and his eyes were unnaturally bright. “She’s huddled in the back of the storeroom, weeping, and nothing I say will make her stop.”

  A pang of guilt stabbed Lucius, but it was a small prick compared to the horror he’d felt when Rhiannon had admitted being a witness to Aulus’s death. His mind was still reeling from the shock of it. Once his sense of betrayal had settled to a dull ache, a new thought had arisen. His brother had been murdered by Celts, not mangled by a boar. Who in the fort had concocted the false report? And why?

  “Go to her, Father. Tell her you’re sorry.”

  “Marcus—”

  “She’s my friend.”

  Lucius started for the stair with Aulus limping after him. “Go begin your studies, Marcus.”

  Marcus drew a deep breath. “No.”

  Lucius halted, staring at his son in disbelief. The boy had never dared to defy him so openly. “I’ll repeat my order only once,” he said slowly. “Go to the library and take up your Aristotle.”

  “No. I’ll make you go to her.” Marcus launched himself forward, fists raised. Hercules, apparently sensing a romp, bounded forward at the same time. Lucius watched, stunned, as boy collided with dog and landed in a heap at his feet.

  He caught Marcus by the arm and hauled him upright. His tunic was damp, his body shaking. When the boy looked up, his eyes were not quite focused.

  “I … I thought you liked Rhiannon.”

  Lucius ignored the tightness in his chest. “She’s but a slave, Marcus.”

  “So was Magister Demetrius, long ago. He told me.”

  “True, but—” He broke off to take a closer look at the boy. The crimson flush on his face was not entirely due to emotion. His anger at Marcus’s outburst quickly turned to fear. “Marcus, are you feeling quite well?”

  “Well enough, but …” He frowned. “One moment it’s so hot I can’t bear it, the next so cold that I’m shaking.”

  Lucius pressed his palm to his son’s cheek. By Pollux, he was burning up. Looking up, he met Aulus’s gaze and was chilled to the bone by the expression he saw there.

  Marcus swayed and would have fallen if Lucius hadn’t caught him. “Where is Magister Demetrius?” he asked the boy.

  “Hospital,” Marcus mumbled.

  Lucius swept his son into his arms. He carried him to his own bedchamber and lowered him onto Aulus’s bed. Marcus gave a shuddering sigh and went limp.

  Terror blacker than a storm-ridden sea churned in Lucius’s gut. He covered his son with a blanket and made for the fort hospital.

  “More water. Hotter than before.”

  Rhiannon heaved the bucket of water to the stove and filled the boiling pot. “Marcus is worse?”

  Demetrius emptied the contents of a glass vial into the water, releasing the odor of spoiled eggs. “He grows delirious.”

  “And the fever?”

  “Increasing. There is a blockage of fluids in Marcus’s body. This purge should allow the humours to flow.” His hand shook so violently that the stopper missed the hole.

  Rhiannon took the vial and plugged it herself. “You fear for his life.”

  “This malady has claimed ten men since I arrived at Vindolanda. I could save none of them, neither with the medicines I brought from Rome nor the remedies you showed me in the hospital garden.” He rubbed his eyes. “Marcus is asking for you.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. Come with me above stairs. Perhaps your presence will sooth him.”

  “But Lucius forbade …”

  “Lucius left for headquarters an hour past.”

  “Oh.” He’d left his son’s side while the lad was so ill?

  She followed Demetrius to the upper level. Marcus lay in Lucius’s bedchamber, the shutters drawn tight against the day. The five braziers that had been set in a circle about his bed threw off waves of heat but little light. A thick, fetid odor hung in the air—a combination of herbs and vomit. A bucket of noxious fluids stood by the door.

  Bronwyn sat on a stool, closer to the door than the bed, and the expression on her face clearly said she wished to be elsewhere. At Demetrius’s nod she took hold of the bucket’s handle and disappeared through the doorway.

  “The chamber wants cooling,” Rhiannon said.

  “Marcus’s constitution suffers from an excess of water,” Demetrius replied. “Heat aids its release.”

  Rhiannon couldn’t fathom how anyone could hope to survive when already shut in a tomb. In her opinion, fresh air would be far more helpful. That and a potion brewed from mistletoe harvested from the branches of the sacred oaks near the Druid circle. She crossed the room swiftly and knelt at Marcus’s side. His face was dry and hot to the touch, his pulse far too rapid.

  “Marcus,” she whispered. Then, when he didn’t seem to hear her, “Marcus. ’Tis Rhiannon.”

  His swollen lids lifted, but it was a long moment before his eyes seemed to focus. “Rhiannon?”

  She entwined her fingers with his. “Yes, love. I’m here.”

  “Stay.” His eyes closed again.

  She murmured a healing spell and sought the lad’s soul with her own. When she found it, she held it tightly, appalled by how weak the spark of his essence was.

  “Raise his head,” Demetrius said, lifting the cup he had carried from the kitchens. “He needs to drink the purge.”

  “He is so weak. ’Twould be better to let him rest. Some cool air would help.”

  “Such a thing would surely kill him,” Demetrius replied. He advanced toward the bed, bearing the purge. Rhiannon slipped onto the cushions and cradled Marcus in her arms, lifting his head so he could take the healer’s remedy. Dear Briga, but he was hot! His head lolled to one side and he seemed hardly to know what was happening.

  Demetrius coaxed the liquid down his patient’s throat. Marcus sputtered but managed to swallow most of the vile brew. He slumped against Rhiannon, his breathing so shallow she had to bend her head to hear it.

  She stroked the curls from his forehead. Demetrius located an empty bucket. A moment later, Marcus groaned, then went rigid. Vomit spewed from his mouth, soaking the coverlet. A second stream, tinged with blood, landed in the bucket.

  The lad retched until Rhiannon feared fo
r his life; then he lay back, exhausted, muscles twitching, face a vivid scarlet. Demetrius sank heavily onto the stool as Rhiannon began clearing the soiled linens.

  “Now we wait,” he said. “Zeus knows there is little more I can do.”

  Lucius’s hand lay motionless on his bedchamber door for a long while before he found the courage to shove it open. When at last he did, the rank odor of vomit washed over him like a vengeful tide. Outside, the night sentry called the last hour before cockcrow.

  Marcus’s whimpering sounded from the bed. The piteous sound filled Lucius with relief. By some small favor of the gods, the boy had stayed alive during the long hours that his father had feigned industry in the fort headquarters, unable to face the sight of his only son lying on his deathbed. Lucius’s steps dragged into the chamber. Aulus, naked and battered, limped to the threshold and disappeared.

  Rhiannon half rose from the stool by the bed, then dropped down again as if Lucius’s sudden appearance had weakened her legs. Her fair skin was deathly pale save for the dark smudges under her eyes. Her hair was disheveled, her tunic soiled. The sight of her sent a fierce pain crashing through his chest.

  Her fingers were entwined with his son’s. The boy’s dog lay at her feet. As Lucius stepped forward, the ragged beast raised its head and thumped its tail once against the floor.

  “Why are you here?” he asked her. Before she could open her mouth to reply, Marcus cried out and wrenched his hand from Rhiannon’s grasp. He thrashed against his blankets, tangling them about his legs and arms as if wrestling a Fury.

  Lucius strode to the bed and quickly loosened Marcus’s limbs from their restraints. “Marcus. Lie still.”

  He began to shake. “Cold.” He opened his eyes and looked wildly about the chamber, his teeth clashing so violently Lucius thought they would shatter. “So cold.”

  Rhiannon retrieved the blanket from the floor and tucked it over the bed, though with the boy’s skin so hot it seemed a ludicrous thing to do. “Why are you here?” he asked again.

  “Marcus asked for me.”

  “Where is Demetrius?”

  “I told him to seek his bed, lest he collapse on the floor.”

  “But you stayed.”

  “Yes.”

  Lucius rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Leave now. Send another woman to tend my son.”

  She hesitated, then said, “None will come. They are too afraid.”

  Another moan drifted from the bed. Hercules’s head came up. Lucius bent over Marcus. By the gods. The boy’s face was as red as if he’d been stranded in the Eastern desert. His cracked lips parted, revealing a bloated tongue covered with a white sheen. His breath came shallow and rasping. A thick lump rose in Lucius’s throat. His son was dying.

  Rhiannon took a clean linen and dipped it in a bowl of water. She wrung it out and gently wiped Marcus’s face, murmuring in her native tongue as she worked. Then she drew back the blankets and repeated the procedure on his chest. The boy seemed to relax under her ministrations.

  She left the cloth draped on his forehead. Lucius sank onto the stool and without thinking caught Marcus’s hand in his own. He stared at the boy’s long fingers, so unlike his own blunt digits. He’d longed for a son who would be a warrior and a scholar. He’d gotten one who was an artist and a dreamer.

  Lucius wondered why he hadn’t been wise enough to cherish Marcus as he was.

  If he could, he would take back all the sharp reprimands and replace them with words of love. But now, even if such a thing were possible, Marcus was not lucid enough to understand.

  He spoke anyway. “Marcus, get well and I promise you may draw all day if you like. You can burn Aristotle for all I care.”

  Rhiannon’s soft voice sounded behind him. “Lucius, I …”

  Creaking hinges interrupted her speech, which was just as well. Lucius’s emotions were stretched to the breaking point. Any words Rhiannon spoke to him would surely cause him to snap.

  Demetrius’s weary footsteps advanced. The physician came to a halt at Lucius’s side and laid one gnarled hand on his shoulder.

  “Can you do nothing more?” Lucius asked him.

  “I am at the end of my wits, Luc. I’ve tried all the usual remedies, and some unusual ones as well, yet still the fever climbs.”

  Lucius’s brain felt numb. “He will die.”

  “Perhaps not. He is young and strong.”

  He eased Marcus’s hand onto the bed and rose, scraping the legs of his chair across the tiles. “Don’t lie to me, old man. Is there nothing else?”

  Rhiannon stepped into Lucius’s line of vision and placed one hand on his arm. “Lucius.”

  He looked at her and his gut twisted. Even haggard from lack of sleep and covered with the stains of a sickroom, she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever laid eyes upon. He forced himself to remember that her loveliness hid deceit.

  “Lucius, I know of an herb not found in the hospital plot. It is the remedy I used when the same illness struck my village last summer. All but the weakest lived.”

  He looked away from her, not wanting to trust, not daring to nurture the spark of hope she kindled.

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “You must!”

  “She has no reason to lie,” Demetrius put in. “Go on, girl. What manner of herb is it?”

  “My people call it mistletoe. I know of a place—an oak grove fed by sacred waters—where plants of great power thrive. I can bring the remedy to you.”

  “Lucius, it is worth a try at the least,” Demetrius said.

  He hesitated, but in the end his shoulders slumped. “Very well. I’ll order an escort to take you there.”

  “Nay. I must go alone.”

  His fragile ember of hope faded. “Do you think me a fool? There is no herb. You would use Marcus’s illness as an excuse to escape.”

  Demetrius made a sound of protest. “I cannot believe Rhiannon would do such a thing. She cares for the boy.”

  Lucius snorted. “Unfortunately I know all too well how deceptive she can be. No. She’s not to be trusted.”

  “Please, Lucius,” Rhiannon said. “I beg you. Let me go before—”

  Marcus let out a sharp cry, his spine arching from the bed. His limbs flailed, once again entangling with the blankets. Lucius sank onto the bed and gathered his son in his arms. The boy clung to his neck, whimpering, but his struggles eased with every soothing word Lucius whispered, until at last he lay still.

  An eerie peace swept over Lucius. He’d never before cradled his son in his arms, not even when Marcus had been a babe. How was it, then, that the sensation of the young body pressed against his seemed as natural as breathing?

  Demetrius retrieved the blanket from the floor and covered them both. “Rhiannon’s remedy is Marcus’s last hope,” he said. “Perhaps she will allow me, if not a guard, to accompany her.”

  Rhiannon hesitated, then nodded once.

  Lucius dragged a hand across his eyes. It came away wet. “Go,” he said.

  Rhiannon tipped her head back and took in the rain-washed scent of the forest in huge, lusty gulps. How she had missed it! She could hardly believe little more than a sennight had passed since Lucius had taken her from the battlefield. It seemed she had spent the better part of her lifetime enclosed by Vindolanda’s walls.

  The rain had passed, leaving the promise of summer warm and heavy in the air. Mist clung to the narrow forest trail. The large mare she rode was spirited, but well trained and responsive to her hand on the reins.

  Beside her, Demetrius grumbled atop his own mount. “I can’t abide horses. Never could. How far must we journey?”

  “Not far,” Rhiannon replied vaguely. “We’ll return before nightfall.” She cast him a sidelong glance. She should leave him now, while they were still close to the fort. If she waited until they neared the Druid circle, the healer might never find his way out of the forest.

  She eased toward a dense growth of underbrush, then said, “
I’m in need of a few moments’ rest.”

  “Rest? You’re but a girl and we’ve ridden only an hour.”

  She lowered her gaze, feigning embarrassment. “I didn’t mean that I was tired. The wine I drank before we left the fort …”

  “Ah,” he said, understanding. His birdlike eyes took on a wicked gleam. “Luc told me not to let you out of my sight.”

  She forced a small smile. “He cannot stand to look at me himself. Why burden you with the task?”

  His features softened. “It’s not a hardship, my dear.”

  Rhiannon turned away, blinking back her tears.

  “I’ve known Lucius more than twenty-two years,” Demetrius said. “I came to his household as a slave, bought on the occasion of Lucius’s eighth birthday to be his tutor.”

  “A slave? But Lucius respects you so.”

  “It’s not the label that defines the man, but his attitude and actions. In my mind I was always a free man. Within nine years of coming to Lucius’s father’s household, I had earned enough by my skill as a physician to purchase my freedom.” He smiled. “I beat out Lucius by a year. He had vowed to purchase me from his father and free me himself when he reached manhood.”

  “Why did you stay with him once you were free?”

  “Why indeed? You would think I might have returned to Greece. But I had no family there. By then Lucius and Aulus had become like sons to me.” He sighed. “Aulus was still young and in sore need of guidance. He was much like Marcus is now: generous, scheming, and forever falling into trouble.”

  “And Lucius? What was he like?”

  The healer sent her a knowing glance. “The dutiful son, always. Athletic, good with a sword, and a scholar as well. Intensely private. He guarded his emotions closely even then. Aulus was the only one who could truly reach him, but only in rare moments.”

  “I see.”

  “Now I sense you are the one who holds that power. Lucius knows not how to deal with that, I think.”

  “You’re wrong. He despises me.” With good reason.

  He snorted. “I’ve seen how he looks at you, girl. You’ve well and truly seduced him. In bed and out.”