Her father approached, his expression filled with an appreciation she knew was false. “Why thank you, soldier. Who may I thank for this good service?”
“Terentius Marius Atellus. This is my optio, Domitius Quintus Victor.”
Victor’s expression stayed closed and wary, and he didn’t speak.
The centurion left his horse and reached up for her. As he settled her on her feet, his entire body brushed along her length. Once more, pleasant shudders coiled in her body. At the same time, trepidation made her heartbeat faster. She pulled back from the centurion and hurried away to stand by her father. She started to unhook the cloak.
“Keep it, Adrenia. I will purchase another,” The centurion said as he mounted his horse.
Her father’s expression slipped from pleasant to angry in a disturbing flash as he glared at her. Then, almost as if she’d imagined it, his gaze returned to fatherly concern. “My dear, why are you wearing his cloak?”
“She was in the elements unprotected.” The centurion’s voice was terse. He glanced up at the sky, which had turned darker with the approach of more storm clouds. “Where I come from, women are provided such necessities.” He turned his horse so it faced her father, and the inflexibility in his eyes matched her father’s.
“Of course.” Her father’s voice came without rancor, his nod deferential. “My daughter is a weaver. She makes her own clothing.”
The front door opened with a loud squeak, and her mother stepped out. She stood next to Adrenia and dwarfed her with considerable height. Large for a woman, she was taller than her husband by a couple of inches. The centurion and the optio both saluted her.
Terentius nodded. “Good day, madam.”
Her mother’s lips went firm with disapproval. “What is going on, Brigomalla?”
“Nothing to concern yourself with, Ulpia,” Adrenia’s father said. “These men assisted our daughter along the road and brought her home to us.”
Her mother’s frosty eyes warmed as she walked closer to the centurion’s horse. Her voice went throaty, almost seductive. “Thank you kindly. Our daughter is indeed precious to us. She shouldn’t be out alone.”
“My thoughts exactly.” The centurion’s gaze lacked the warmth Adrenia had basked in earlier. “Come, Victor. We’re off to the fort.”
With last salutes, the soldiers drew the horses around and left. Adrenia’s entire body braced for what would come. The inevitableness of it beat in a slow, painful way inside her heart. Once the men reached a sufficient distance away, her mother and father turned toward her.
Her mother’s mouth curled in derision. “You, whore. You never, ever wear a soldier’s cloak unless you’re his bitch.”
Adrenia fumbled with the broach. A stinging slap cracked across her cheek, whipping her head back. Reeling with dizziness, Adrenia fell on her butt to the ground and looked up at her mother with pure hate. Blood welled up Adrenia’s lip and dribbled onto the cloak. No. No. She imagined the centurion’s anger if he knew she’d soiled his cloak.
“He insisted I wear it,” Adrenia mumbled.
Her father stood over her, his expression filled with coldness. “Are you his bitch, Adrenia?”
She winced at the pain in her lip and the freezing, slicing tone in his voice. She felt a tremendous need to defend the soldier after his kindness to her. “He’s a gentleman and did nothing improper.”
“Get up.” Her mother glanced warily at her father, as if suddenly afraid. “Get up and go into the house. You’ll clean and cook tonight. Your sisters and their husbands will be here in two hours.”
Aching in every bone, Adrenia stood slowly. She unhooked the cloak, holding the broach in one hand and draping the heavy wool over her left arm. When she went inside and headed for her room, she ached with the horrible knowledge that she’d experienced something wonderful. Terentius, as she would think of him privately, had talked with her and touched her the way no man had before. As her fingers felt the rough, warm weave of his cloak, she wondered what god or goddess had sent him to her, only to have him leave. Foolish wants she couldn’t remember having before assaulted her as she spread the cloak out on her bed. The large cloak almost covered the entire surface and draped over the edges. She sat on the bed and listened wearily to her mother’s voice droning outside the house. She drank in the overwhelming thoughts swirling unfettered in her mind. Three words pounded in her skull and chased away all aches, pains, hunger, and worries.
Terentius Marius Atellus.
She drew in a deep breath and remembered how he smelled. Musk. Leather. Powerful male. An entity almost foreign. Oh, she’d seen attractive men before, even a few pleasant-looking soldiers from the auxiliary at the fort. Still…none had stirred inside her something new, awakened a part that once aroused could never be suppressed or forgotten.
She smoothed her hand over the rough cloak. Amazing that mother and father hadn’t taken it from her. When the front door opened, she rose to her feet and prepared to face an interminable evening. A small smile touched her mouth as did a gentle light in her heart. No matter what happened this evening, she would have this small treasure to remember always.
Her parents stalked into her doorway, their frowns deep and hateful.
Her mother reached out and snatched the broach from Adrenia’s hand. She smiled. “This is beautiful. Gold perhaps?”
Her father took it in hand and turned it this way and that. “No. It is bronze. Cheap.” His gaze assessed Adrenia before he tossed it at her. It hit her in the stomach and landed on the floor. “You may keep it. Since it was probably your only payment for being his whore.”
Anger sliced deep inside Adrenia, and her silence shattered. “I. Am. Not. His. Whore.”
She leaned over to pick up the broach, and her father grabbed her by the shoulders. He hissed his recrimination in her face. “You are lucky I don’t pen you up with the hogs.”
Shaking with rage, Adrenia’s fingers tightened on the broach painfully. “Do it. Why don’t you just do it?” She jerked out of his grip and tried to walk away.
He grabbed her by the arm, his grip biting until she gasped. An answering loathing boiled in his eyes. “Ulpia, get the knife.”
Caught between a staggering fear and dejected apathy, Adrenia allowed him to drag her into the main room. She dropped the broach in the process. Impotent fury at herself roiled inside Adrenia. Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut?
Her father threw her a disdainful glare, but didn’t speak as he shoved her into the table, and her stomach hit the edge. Her breath whooshed out, and she gasped for air. Powerful hands held her down, and then she realized that her mother had returned with a huge knife her parents seemed very fond of.
“Hold her down, Ulpia.”
Ulpia complied as Adrenia’s father held the knife in front of Adrenia’s nose.
“No!” Adrenia struggled. “What are you doing?”
“Punishing you for your filthy mouth. Since you’ve let a soldier soil you, you no longer need your crowning beauty. You’re used goods, my dear.” Her father almost growled the words.
Fear she’d tried hard to restrain screamed upward as her father grabbed her ponytail. He yanked it upward, pulling harshly at her scalp.
He sawed.
She screamed.
“Strange lot,” Victor said as they passed the actual villa.
The villa appeared close to five acres in spread. A very decent size for a citizen veteran to own.
Terentius, though, barely heard his optio’s comment. “What?”
“That girl’s family is odd. So is she.”
“Hmm.”
“Is that all you can say?”
He usually didn’t spill his innermost thoughts to anyone, not even Victor, but this time words slipped from Terentius without his usual restraint. “Her father may be clever, but he’s brutal.”
“So?”
“He mistreats women.”
“How do you know?”
Terentius sl
owed his horse. The animal plodded while Terentius’s thoughts ran at lightning speed. “Adrenia’s mother has bruises all over her arms.” He turned a quizzical gaze on Victor. “Didn’t you see them?”
“They’re farmers. They work hard. Maybe she’s overworked the crops or fell.”
“That’s shite and you know it. They were bruises made by a man’s fingers. I’ve seen that type of injury before.”
“I did not think anything of it. My father regularly beat my mother and me. My five brothers too.”
Terentius winced at this new information. “Do you beat women?”
“Not women.” Victor shrugged, and quietness came into the brute’s eyes. “Now you must tell me what you plan to do about the girl.”
Terentius pondered, his thoughts turning full time back to Adrenia. “Did you see how she stood her ground with us? She might have run at the sight of us. My gut tells me something is wrong. Very wrong in her family.”
“What do you plan to do about it?”
“Nothing this minute. We’ll pay a call to this Cordus at the villa and in the next few days once we’ve settled at the fort we’ll see how Adrenia fairs.”
“Why do you care?”
As the horses picked up the pace, Terentius didn’t have a reasonable answer. “She intrigues me.”
“Really? I thought she was too—”
“Thin. I know.” Terentius threw his optio a grin. “You didn’t have her in your arms.”
Victor’s perplexed expression filled with amusement “She is very skinny.”
“Sweetly small. She could use more meat on her, but I felt her breasts on my arm.” Just the thought of her breasts cupped in his hands hardened his cock to granite. Yes, he would like that very much.
“Tonight we’ll find female companionship, and you’ll forget the tiny Adrenia.”
As Victor urged his horse to go faster, Terentius yelled after him, “You can screw all you want. I’ll sleep.”
But he knew dreams of Adrenia’s shining eyes and plump lips would haunt his night. Urgency built inside to find an excuse, any reason, to turn his horse around and ride back to her. To see if the steady desire still boiling in his blood would disappear at the sight of her.
Somehow he knew she needed him and in those minutes together they’d connected.
Then he remembered she was a Briton, not a Roman citizen. A woman below his station. Britons had broken his world when he was sixteen. He shouldn’t care whether she lived or died. Resolved to slake his lust as Victor planned, Terentius shoved thoughts of sloe-eyed Adrenia right from his head.
Chapter Three
“Mankind have been created for the sake of one another.
Either instruct them, therefore, or endure them.”
Marcus Aurelius
Roman Emperor (AD 161–180), AD 121–AD 180
A Day Later
After Terentius and Victor dismounted from their horses, they stood for a second and took in the villa before them. Terentius had reason to be impressed. While not as large as his family’s former villa near Deva, Cordus had done well for himself. Obviously his many tenants, including Brigomalla, sprawled across the lands in rectangular houses and roundhouses, while Cordus enjoyed the features of a full estate. Terentius knew this one would feature baths, at least one kitchen, and prominent public rooms. In fact, if Terentius was right, the octagonal-shaped building attached to the far end of the villa might be a bathhouse. He’d heard of massive villas that would outstrip this one, like the one just west of Noviomagus. Still, this complex sprawl showed that a military veteran could do well for himself.
Terentius and Victor walked into the entrance once the slave at the door admitted them. They followed the slave into the atrium, and Terentius saw this structure was much bigger than he’d first realized from looking at the outside. The slave that had taken their introductory papers left them standing while he rushed to find his master.
Victor turned in a circle. The black and white mosaic floor showed birds, a lion, lizards and snakes. Frescos with elaborate colored architectural views lined the walls. Panels laden with isolated figures were marked off by borders and featured pavilions and mythological figures. In the center of the atrium, water filled a rectangular impluvium. An opening in the roof allowed water to fall into the impluvium. To one side of the room ruby-colored curtains flapped in a slight breeze that sailed through the wide opening into public rooms.
Victor was wide-eyed. “Fuck me. I haven’t seen a place like this in some time.”
Terentius remembered his family villa and it filled him with homesickness, a feeling he couldn’t remove no matter how many years went by. You cannot return home. No, he had no true home as a soldier. He went wherever duty took him.
Above a niche were carved words. Victor said, “Pro salutem redditum ac Victoria. For health, the return and victory.” He smiled. “Those are words I can live by.”
“And I. Come. We are rude exploring this private area.” Terentius returned to the atrium and Victor followed, of course.
The large, shaggy-haired slave came back into the atrium. “Please, sirs. If you’ll come through this way to the courtyard, the dominus will meet you there shortly.”
They followed the slave through the curtains into a long hall with several rooms lining the hall. Beyond lay an open courtyard. They stepped into the open air, and the slave left them.
Terentius took in the two fountains that trickled in the center, their intricate square mosaic basins filled with interesting depictions. One showed a woman’s head, the hair flowing all around her as if she, too, floated in the water. The other mosaic showed several fish cavorting. Bronze statuettes of Bacchus, cupids and satyrs on pedestals lined the colonnaded overhang. Though winter season came soon, various shrubs and flowerbeds decorated the courtyard.
Several seconds later, a short man strode into the area, his slave in tow. “Come in, come in, legionnaires. Welcome.” He stopped in front of them and nodded. “I am Decimus Caelius Cordus.”
Terentius and Victor saluted the military veteran. The man wore a tunic and fine robes. His balding head held salt and pepper hair along the back, his dark eyes sharp, his nose equally imposing. Time hadn’t been kind to Cordus. Though Terentius had heard Cordus was fifty, winkles lined his brow and his jowls drooped. Though not fat, he obviously ate well.
“Your estate is very well appointed, sir,” Terentius said.
The villa owner smiled and led the way out of the courtyard and towards the main living area. “Please, call me Cordus.” Cordus stopped in an elaborately colonnaded area, paintings of nymphs and naked figures cavorting in a marginally civil fashion. “Gaius Fabius Rufus speaks highly of you in his letter, but I heard of your arrival yesterday.”
“Sir?” Terentius asked.
“My daughter heard from one of my tenants, and one of them heard of your coming from another tenant.”
“Good. We are popular men already,” Victor said.
Terentius speared him with an exasperated look. “Commander Rufus has known us but a day.”
Victor waggled his eyebrows. “Great news travels fast.”
Cordus chuckled. “Come this way. I’ve ordered refreshment for us all. My wife and daughter will join us shortly, if you don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” Terentius said.
Terentius and Victor followed, and when they alighted in the room, Terentius couldn’t help but admire the wealth in front of him. The high ceiling had an elaborate decorative design showing naked, chubby women Terentius knew Victor would like. His thought was confirmed when Victor gazed up at the ceiling and smiled.
“Splendid decoration,” Victor said as he stared.
“It’s original decoration from when I had the villa erected ten years ago,” Cordus said. “My wife didn’t like it so much, but she’s used to it.”
Several long benches and couches spread around the room. Tables decorated with ornaments, namely busts of famous people, and a bust of Cordu
s himself lay around the room. Terentius wondered if he would ever feel arrogant enough to have a bust made of his own visage. He shook his head. Not likely. A breeze ruffled through the room and stirred silken off white curtains. The room abounded with sumptuous touches that showed that Cordus had spent lavishly but must have kept a great deal of wealth in hand. Nothing looked worn or unkempt.
They settled on the sumptuous couches, one for each man. Plenty of room to put their feet up if they wished. When Cordus clapped his hands, two young boys about thirteen came in with platters of food and wine goblets. Cordus took one goblet for himself and a plate piled high with finger food. Terentius took the wine and food, as did Victor. Cordus dismissed the boys. An oil lamp shaped like a penis burned in one corner to stave off the wintry lack of light. On the other side of the room an incense burner also shaped like an erect cock sent a pungent order into the air. Terentius’s nose wrinkled at the strong scent.
“This is the room where we’ve had our orgies,” Cordus said.
“I beg your pardon?” Terentius said.
Cordus’s thick, bushy grey brows tilted in amusement. “That line always breaks the silence. We don’t have orgies here. My wife wouldn’t allow it, and I can’t say I’d want my daughter exposed to such a thing.”
“What a shame,” Victor said.
Terentius flinched, and Cordus’s eyes widened.
“I mean,” Victor rushed to say, “what a shame that you can’t have an orgy without your wife or daughter finding out about it.”
Cordus’s booming laugh eased Terentius’s muscles, which had tightened like lute strings. Damn Victor. The man never knew when to shut up.
“That’s what I like in a soldier. A man who says what he’s thinking without regret.” Cordus leaned forward and pinned them both with an amused look. “I haven’t been out of the army so long I can’t remember what it’s like.”
“You have a big family?” Terentius asked after taking a sip of wine. It tasted of quality better than what his status as a centurion of the Primi Ordines could expect to drink when billeted with his own legion.
For a Roman's Heart Page 4
