‘Half a tick,’ the driver said, ‘let’s have those handcuffs off. They’re official issue. Some shiny arse will deduct the cost off our wages if we don’t take them back.’
Callixtus laughed. ‘Good thinking. You’re brighter than you look, Sergius.’ As the metal slid off my wrists, I let my arms flop away. From the sound level of their banter, they must have then turned away from the van doors. I opened my eyelids a millimetre and could see thick green bushes and trees. Sergius pushed into them.
Callixtus sat on the back edge of the van floor and lit up one of his newly acquired cigarettes. He blew out a cloud of smoke, stood up and looked in the direction Sergius had gone.
‘We’re dumping you here,’ he muttered. ‘For Mars’ sake, don’t make a sound. Act dead.’
‘Who you talking to, Callixtus?’ Sergius’s voice. Just by the van. How?
‘Gods, Sergius, don’t bloody creep up on me like that, you stupid sod,’ Callixtus said. ‘You’ll get yourself killed. And I wasn’t talking to anybody.’
‘Yeah? Well, it sounded like it to me.’
‘Let’s get on with it so we can get back home.’
‘Squeamish?’
‘Not one of my favourite jobs.’
‘Spect there’ll be more like it.’
‘I’m taller,’ Callixtus said. ‘Help me heave her onto my shoulder and make sure nobody’s nosing around.’
‘At half-six in the morning? You’re kidding.’
‘Do it.’
‘Keep your hair on.’
Sergius heaved on my legs and next second, I was upside down on Callixtus’s shoulder, trying to hang like a rag doll. My head swam as I swung to and fro while Callixtus walked into the wood. He dropped me down on the earth none too gently and nudged me onto my side with his foot. I was in such agony, it became numbness.
‘Let’s go,’ Callixtus said. ‘We don’t want any dog-walkers finding us.’
I watched them retreat, then Sergius suddenly turned and sprinted back. He thrust his hand under my jacket and swore. He stared at me, horror in his eyes.
‘She’s still warm.’
Still crouching over me, he pulled his handgun out and leapt up. I groaned as loudly as I could to warn Callixtus. But he had already pulled his own pistol out, complete with suppressor, and was aiming it at Sergius’s face.
‘You knew she was still alive,’ Sergius shrieked at Callixtus. ‘What’s your game? She your tart or something?’
‘You wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain,’ Callixtus said. His voice sounded tired as well as impatient.
‘Well, I’ll finish the job if you won’t.’ Sergius spun round towards me and stood over me, his pistol a metre away. His face was distorted, full of hate. I couldn’t move. Had I finally come to my end in a damp New Austrian park? The next second, he grunted and fell across my legs. Callixtus kicked him off me. And dropped to his knees.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Wonderful,’ I croaked. I searched his face. ‘Why, Callixtus?’ I gasped. ‘You gave me to Caius. Going to get a reward. Gods. Hot.’
‘Keep still. Help is on the way. I called an ambulance from the garage we stopped at.’
‘Why? Tell me.’
‘When the first consul thumped you on the face, on your wound, I thought that was harsh, but possibly justified. But I didn’t know he’d made you a household slave. Is that really happening in the city?’
He pleaded with me for it not to be true. I nodded my head.
‘Then he mentioned work camps. That sounded like those hellholes in Russia. He or his commanders never said anything to us in briefings or speeches. We were all going to have jobs, good ones, and respect.’
He looked away.
‘I know you think I let you down,’ he continued in a subdued voice, ‘but I thought he made a lot of sense.’
I tried to stretch my hand out to him but my muscles wouldn’t work.
‘I’ll stay here and give myself up to the New Austrians for killing Sergius.’
‘Self-defence,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ll testify. That turd – not worth it.’ I glanced over at Sergius’s body. It was moving. His hand grasped his pistol and raised it at Callixtus’s back.
‘C’llixtus! Behind you,’ I cried. I heard the shot, then passed out.
XXXVI
The smell told me I was in a hospital. Elysium, or even Tartarus, wouldn’t smell so antiseptic, crisp and sour. Humming and beeping. I was half-propped up on pillows. I moved my head, which made my chest hurt, so I panned around with my eyes. A notice in Germanic about washing hands, the white melamine top of a bed table reaching across the white coverlet, a folded screen. In an easy chair in the corner, dozing, was Numerus, former Senior Centurion Numerus, my comrade-in-arms. Now I knew I was safe. The tears rolled down my face in sheer relief. Ah, my cheek stung.
I watched him for a few minutes. The bruising I’d seen on his face had disappeared; his mouth was slightly open as he leaned against the back of the chair. The door opened and a nursing sister bustled in. Numerus jerked awake. I smiled at him.
‘Salve, Numerus,’ I said. It came out more as a whisper. He stared at me, then leapt up and grabbed my hand. The nurse tutted, but neither he nor I cared.
‘Ten minutes only,’ the nurse said and left us.
Numerus’s eyes shone and then dimmed. He let my hand drop.
‘Welcome back,’ he said, formally.
‘Back? Hardly arrived here last time before I went. Silvia, Volusenia – are they safe? Here?’
‘Yes, four days after you all left to find them. They had a hell of a time, but made it in one piece.’
I closed my eyes for a few moments.
‘Calavia, Atrius? Base party at Castra Lucilla?’
‘Yes, all here.’
‘Thank the gods.’
‘We thought you were all dead, then Atrius and Lieutenant Calavia turned up and confirmed you were alive, but—’ He stopped and looked away.
I took some shallow breaths and waited. He looked down at the floor and said nothing. What was wrong? We were all safe back. Despite the grim circumstances, surely it was something to celebrate?
‘What day is it?’ I said to break the silence.
‘The twenty-third of October. You were in a bad way when they brought you in, so they put you under for a week. The New Austrian police want to question you – three bodies in a public park, one of them female and raving in Latin, is a bit much for them.’
‘Did the men with me survive?’
He shook his head.
‘One of them wanted to finish me off. The other saved my life.’
‘Finish you off? Who shot you, then?’
‘Caius Tellus. The bastard. He told them to let me bleed to death.’ I turned my head away.
‘He shot you? But everybody says you were under his protection.’
‘What in Hades do you mean?’
Now he brought his eyes up and searched my face.
‘Calavia and Atrius said you were physically intimate with Tellus, his lover.’
‘No!’ I shrieked, then coughed. Pure agony.
‘That’s what they say it looked like. Tellus told them you’d decided to stay in Roma Nova and rule with him.’
‘Gods, how can they believe that?
‘I know what a manipulative bastard he is and I know you. But one of the palace staff has escaped and confirmed you were sleeping with him.’ He stared at me, his grey eyes like granite, and waited.
I was so shocked, I couldn’t speak.
‘I’ve known you a long time, Aurelia Mitela,’ he spoke at last. ‘I trust your word and know you would never willingly have sex with Tellus or even let him touch you. But the exiles are hurting. They’ve lost their homes, contact with their families, their property. They’re
destitute, most of them. Atrius has recovered physically, but inside he’s raging. He holds you personally responsible for his ill-treatment.’
‘Caius Tellus didn’t beat me physically, except for a few slaps, but he humiliated and assaulted me mentally and emotionally in every way he could.’ I looked away, attempting to keep a lid on the anger burning inside me.
‘So did you give in to him?’ His voice was hard, implacable.
‘He raped me, Numerus,’ I whispered.
‘Did you fight him as hard as you could?’
‘He threatened Calavia, Atrius, even Marina far away in the EUS if I didn’t comply.’ The warmth rose up my neck and into my face. I looked away. What else could I say? My head was swimming and tears ready to escape.
Numerus stood abruptly. He threw me a look of deep contempt, turned his back and marched out.
The nurse found me crouched in bed like an unborn child. I was pain. I felt her hand touch my forehead and heard several clicks of the drip switch before a sensation of heaviness pushed me into unconsciousness.
*
When I woke next, my head was foggy inside and it took a few moments to remember where I was. The face of a nurse with a starched cap perched on a head of grey-blond curls hovered over me.
‘That’s the last Roma Novan that comes and visits you if that’s what they do to you.’ Her face was hard, set like concrete.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ I said. ‘It was just a disagreement.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘He left these for you.’
Two letters with EUS stamps. From Marina and William. I tore the envelopes open and devoured the contents; they’d been so worried, but Numerus had written them care of William’s company with news of my survival.
The New Austrian police came to take my statement. They were courteous, but extremely curious. I told them I was a refugee and the first consul’s political troops had shot me trying to escape the repressive new regime. I asked for asylum and was surprised to receive forms to complete within days. Perhaps giving my cousin David Soane who ran Soanes Bank in Vienna and the New Austrian foreign minister, whom I knew on first-name terms, as referees helped.
I stayed in the hospital for two weeks and was then transferred to a convalescent home. When I asked who was paying for it, they wouldn’t say; just an anonymous donor, the administrator said. I was too tired to argue with him. Mercifully, the bullets had missed anything vital, and Callixtus’s first aid had stopped me bleeding to death. The tiara I’d stuffed in my top jacket pocket for Silvia was ruined, but it had saved my life. One of the ancient stones was smashed along with the hinges, but folded into three, it had deflected the fatal bullet. When he came to visit me, I asked David Soane to have it scrapped for the gold and remaining gemstones and the proceeds sent to the exiles.
But I was frustrated by how slowly my recovery was going. I tried hard not to think about everything that had happened to me in Roma Nova, especially about my surrender to Caius, and the accusations in Numerus’s eyes. When I woke up every morning weeping, the doctor insisted I talked to a therapist.
‘You are not progressing, Frau Gräfin Mitela. Unless you resolve what is in your head, your body will not heal itself.’
Just because Vienna was the headquarters of the famous Freud Centre, every doctor here thought he was a psychologist. But I couldn’t voice how much I despised myself. Perhaps the other Roma Novans here felt the same about me, which was why none of them had visited me, not even Quirinia, one of my oldest friends. I wrote to Silvia, but received no reply. I was wrapping myself in a cocoon of boredom and despair and I couldn’t decide whether I was happy or unhappy about it. In reality, I didn’t care.
I was returning from a gruelling physiotherapy session in the third week and was almost asleep as a porter rolled my wheelchair back to my room. The sound of arguing voices roused me and as we came round the corner into my corridor, I recognised the tall figure leaning over the ward sister. He was gesticulating, swinging a set of car keys from his index finger. He wasn’t using any of his charm, but was angry and frustrated.
‘Miklós! Oh, gods, Miklós!’
He spun round, stared for an instant, then ran to me. He threw himself on his knees, grabbed my hands and laid his head in my lap.
‘Aurelia.’
I stroked the beautiful curls on his head. I leant back and let out a deep sigh. After a minute, he looked up and wiped my tears away with his thumbs. He stood and took the wheelchair handles, edging the porter aside. He wheeled me to my room and closed the door. He sat close and I held his sinewy tanned hand and searched his face. The same strong cheekbones, the generous mouth, but now an angry expression.
‘They wouldn’t tell me where you were. That Calavia woman had me thrown out of the house the day she returned. She looked at me with such scorn in her eyes. She said you weren’t coming back, you’d settled in Roma Nova with Tellus. I didn’t believe her and after she had me escorted off the premises, I hammered on the door, but nobody answered. I went back the next day, but they wouldn’t let me in to talk to anybody. In the end, I waited until the old centurion, Numerus, came out and collared him.’
‘Numerus said nothing when he visited me in hospital. None of the others has come near me. Are they waiting for me to recover?’
He shrugged. ‘You’re better off without them. Old Numerus was polite, but wouldn’t say anything, even when I bought him drink after drink.’
‘He always had hollow legs.’ I smiled.
‘I went back to Roma Nova in the end.’
I dropped his hand and grasped my throat.
‘Oh, gods, no! I told you not to!’
‘I’m sorry I broke my promise, but did you expect me to sit in Vienna and do nothing?’
‘How? Did you go over the mountains?’
He laughed – that rich, deep, incredibly sexy laugh. ‘You don’t expect me to tell you my trade secrets.’
I flicked my fingers at him and he caught them and kissed the back of my hand. A soft electric tingle flowed out of my hand up my arm. He looked up at me through his long eyelashes and I caught my breath. If ever there was a reason to live it was here in front of me.
‘I stayed with one of my trading associates—’
‘Your smuggling friends, you mean!’
‘No, she’s just a middlewoman.’ He looked down, his face serious now. ‘She’s always had to work under the radar. She’ll just have to be even more careful than usual.’
He said nothing for a few moments.
‘I saw the Acta Diurna where you were named as Tellus’s companion. I knew it couldn’t be true. I just knew.’ He pressed my hand, then almost squashed it in his.
‘I was trying to protect Calavia and Atrius and get them released. Then he threatened Marina. I had to comply, I—’
‘Stop. You have nothing to apologise for.’
‘Miklós, I surrendered to him.’
‘No, you survived.’ He looked away, then back. ‘Sometimes, we have to do undignified or even dishonourable things for the best reasons. We can only make the choices available to us at the time.’ He stroked my cheek just below my eye. ‘I see the real Aurelia in there. A little bruised, perhaps, hurt and angry, but it’s still you.’
I held my arms out and he bent down and gently circled my body with his.
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. ‘Thank you for believing in me.’
*
I left the convalescent home a week later. Miklós drove me through the wet streets to a suburban house, whitewashed walls and grey slate roof surrounded by overgrown shrubs and trees. Black metal gates with pointed finials guarded the front entrance. He switched off the engine and we sat in the car waiting for the shower to finish.
‘I’ve bought this house with my share from my father’s farm,’ he said, looking straight ahead through the windscreen
covered in breaking rivulets of rain. ‘It needs some work, but nothing I can’t do. I know you’ll want to think about Roma Nova again one day. It’s in your blood. But for now it’s a home we can share.’
‘Everything I’ve known and loved has gone,’ I said, ‘except you. I love my country and its people, and I will never stop being a Roma Novan in my heart and soul. But now I need to heal.’
He folded me in his arms and I knew I was home.
ALSO BY ALISON MORTON
INCEPTIO
Book I in the Roma Nova series
New York, present day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe.
Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made family. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus, who rescued her in America, isolates her.
Renschman reaches into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it…
PERFIDITAS
PERFIDITAS
Book II in the Roma Nova series
Captain Carina Mitela of the Praetorian Guard Special Forces is in trouble – one colleague has tried to kill her and another has set a trap to incriminate her in a conspiracy to topple the government of Roma Nova. Founded sixteen hundred years ago by Roman dissidents and ruled by women, Roma Nova barely survived a devastating coup d’etat thirty years ago. Carina swears to prevent a repeat and not merely for love of country.
Seeking help from a not quite legal old friend could wreck her marriage to the enigmatic Conrad. Once proscribed and operating illegally, she risks being terminated by both security services and conspirators. As she struggles to overcome the desperate odds and save her beloved Roma Nova, and her own life, she faces the ultimate betrayal…
INSURRECTIO Page 29
