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Chapter 35

After one of the most restful nights of recent memory, I rose to a new day and a new life in a new home. Helena would have it no other way but that I was to stay with them and become part of their household. Her welcome, so warm and effusive, was a healing balm to my bruised heart. To know that I had a place to live, friends to look after me, the protection of a man of authority and influence was beyond gratifying—it was more than anything I dared hope.

Just after breaking fast, the legate had spoken to Garan and the two of them had trooped off to the garrison to see the commander, returning later to announce that Garan was assured a place in the next round of training for new recruits. Garan, delight shining through his grin, took me aside to share his joy. “Legate Verica spoke well for me. It is thanks to him I have a place.”

“It’s what you wanted,” I told him. “I’m happy for you, Garan. Truly, I am.”

“But it is thanks to you I’m even here at all.” On sudden impulse, he seized me and pressed me to his chest. “And if not for you and your friendship with the legate, I would not have a place with the legion.”

“You’ve been a good friend to me, Garan, and I won’t forget it.” I could see I was embarrassing him, so I said, “What will you do now?”

“I’m to return home and winter there,” he said. “I will join the new recruits in the spring to begin my training at the garrison. After that . . .” he shrugged. “Who knows?”

“You’ll come see me when you come back, won’t you?”

“I will. I promise.”

“Good.”

“I’ve got to go now,” he said.

“Now?” I wondered. It seemed so abrupt.

“I want to share the news with everyone at home as soon as possible. The garrison commander is sending a cohort to Bryncadlys to bolster the troops at the caer. They are marching out soon, and the legate has arranged for me to go with them—that far, at least.”

“Your triumph is complete!” Reaching up, I gave him a quick kiss and pressed his hand. “I shall miss you, Garan. And I’ll hold you to your promise to come see me first thing you return in the spring.”

“Farewell, Aurelia.” Unable to think of anything else to say, he turned to go.

“Oh! Be sure to give Catia and Seisyll my thanks for . . . for everything.”

He nodded and assured me my greetings would be conveyed, then hurried across the courtyard and out the gate, giving me a last, cheerful smile and a wave before disappearing into the street.

I stood a long moment after he was gone, offering a prayer of thanks for his kindliness and care of me, his friendship and that of his family, and for strong protection for him and a safe return home. Aridius joined me then, and said, “Has he gone so soon? I meant to say farewell.”

I nodded. In that moment, I accepted that I would never see Garan again. His feet were on a different path now, as were mine.

Aridius saw the look on my face and said, “Take heart, Aurelia. His future is secure. The garrison commander is a good man. Garan will make a good soldier.”

I gave him what must have been a forlorn smile. “Thank you for helping him. It was his dream to serve in the legion.”

“Anyone who cares for one of mine is friend to me.” He started for the gate. “Now, I will beg your pardon, but I must go and tend to my affairs. The life of a legate is never dull. Tell Helena I will try to be home before dark.”

With that, he was gone, leaving Helena and me alone to talk and renew our friendship. We sat a small table in her bedchamber with a bowl of black berries between us and Ursa curled on a mat at our feet.

“I meant to come to you the day you left Viroconium,” Helena was saying. Bless her, she remembered my deafness and took care to speak so I could hear her well. “I wanted to see you again. I thought I might make one last appeal to your father to come to us for his recovery.”

“He would never have done it,” I told her. “The death of Proconsul Esico made his return to Venta all the more urgent—in his mind, at least. I wanted to see you, too. I would like to have said farewell.”

She pressed my hand. “I’m so sorry. I meant to come, as I say, but it was not to be.”

“I understand. Things happen. Plans change.”

Helena nodded. “Things do happen . . .,” her hands brushed the front of her mantle and I saw, for the first time the slight swell of her stomach. She noticed my glance, smiled, and nodded.

“You’re with child!” I gasped.

“I am,” she confirmed smoothing her hands across her belly. “And having a beastly time of it. Sick every morning and every night. I hope the child I carry is worth all the trouble it’s causing me.”

We quickly fell to discussing that and the disastrous conclave in Viroconium that had ended up costing my father his life—beginning with the day we all departed the civitas.

“That morning,” Helena continued, shaking her head. “As fate would have it, that was the morning my suspicions were confirmed. I was pregnant—and with a vengeance! I woke dizzy and sick to my stomach and sweating through my clothes, my head pounding. I couldn’t stand up for falling down. Couldn’t eat—couldn’t even look at food without throwing up.” She groaned at the memory. “I spent most of the day in bed sucking on a wet cloth.”

“Oh, Helena, if I’d known I would have come to you.”

“I did send a boy with a message,” she said, “but he was too late. You had already gone. A few days after we returned to Deva, I sent you a letter at Venta.” She looked at me wistfully. “I guess you never received it.”

“No, I didn’t,” I said, thinking that maybe the self-serving Lucanus intercepted it and neglected to pass it on to me. “But how are you feeling now? Has the sickness passed?”

“God be thanked, I think the worst is over—for the most part, at least. I still have a bad day now and then, but I am much better. Aridius has engaged a midwife and she looks in on me every—” She stopped. “Listen to me! Braying on and on. My pitiful inconveniences are nothing.” She dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “I want to hear about you, Aurelia. What happened after Tullius’ funeral?”

Well, this would be the shape of the next few days. We would rise and break fast together, Helena and I, and talk awhile before she apportioned the duties required for maintaining the busy house of a legate. She had three young serving women: Junia, the daughter of a veteran and his wife who lived in the town; Deidre, a lithe young thing from a nearby hill tribe; and Tatiana, who was born in some remote corner of the eastern empire I’d never heard of. The three of them lived in servant’s wing of the villa. There was also a young man only a few years older than myself; Jason was his name, an obliging lad who readily took on any chore asked of him without complaint, as he clearly hoped to advance his fortunes by working in the legate’s household. Then there was Nona, an older woman who served as both cook and substitute mother for the others. Nona lived in the town and usually arrived mid-morning with provisions needed to prepare the meals she had in mind; she assigned the chores to the others as need arose and, just as importantly, dealt with the never-ending stream of tradesmen who appeared at the gate with one or another item required by the kitchen.

For his part, Aridius was seen only fleetingly. He would have already disappeared by the time Helena, Ursa, and I sat down together each morning. Most days, he hurried off to Civitas House for the first of his innumerable meetings and consultations with officials of various stripes—including some from other provinces. He would return at dusk, or sometimes after dark, and often with a guest or two—a visiting dignitary or a local worthy—someone he felt duty-bound to entertain, or cajole into agreeing with some plan or other.

As the days passed, I began to conceive the notion that events of great import were taking shape in the region and beyond. Though, to be sure, it would be some time before I learned the nature of these actions and the tremendous impact they would have on my life and those who were growing ever more dear to me.

All that was yet to be. For now, it was enough to know that I had found a safe haven and a welcome among friends. I felt as one who had survived a terrible storm and could look upon a world cleansed anew by the ordeal. And Deva, it seemed to me, was just the kind of place to begin a new life: larger, busier, cultured, the life there more rich and varied than any I had encountered. The grandeur of the place—to my eye, at least—was enough to impress a girl from a small coastal town, enough to make me think that instead of a provincial civitas, I was living in the heart of Rome itself and that it was the Tiber flowing nearby, not the river Dee.

As I had no official duties or chores for the household, yet, I was free to roam where I would and made the most of my freedom, strolling wide streets lined with trees and gawking at the villas and houses—any one of which might have served a governor or procurator. I visited the port and saw boats and ships from places I never knew existed. I found busy markets with stalls and traders of all kinds: cheese from Gaul and the mountains of Lusitania and Baetica in Hispania; cloth from Arcadia, Massilia, and Mauritania; wine and oil and olives from Macedonia, Sicilia, Sardinia, and Gaul—places that all sounded strange and colorful and impossibly remote. Just wandering among the vendors and their exotic wares and cries to come and buy made me feel the utter immensity and complexity of an empire beyond my comprehension. It would, I imagined, take a lifetime to understand it, and then perhaps leave much undiscovered.

My wanderings were not without their share of mishaps. Much about the place defied easy understanding. The names of streets and places, the local speech and accent, the way the port intermingled with the town—one could turn a corner and see a ship at the end of the street!—made no sense at all. I expect the local folk, if they noticed me at all, saw a girl and a big furry dog wandering the town in a state of confusion.

“Don’t worry, Aurelia,” Helena told me one day after I got lost coming back from a simple errand, “it was the same with me when I first came here.”

Had I heard that right? “Did you say when you first came here?” Her words came as a surprise to me. “But I thought you were born in Deva.”

“Born in Deva?” she laughed lightly. “Far from it! I was not even born in Britannia.”

She then went on to relate that her father was a Goth of the Suevi folk in Iberia. “I was born in Gallaecia.” She shrugged lightly. “At least, that is what I was told.”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “Truly, I don’t.” She leaned forward and confided, “I was pledged as a hostage to my father’s overlord before I could talk. I was raised a fosterling.”

I stared at her, unable to believe what I was hearing. “That is horrible, Helena.”

“Oh, it wasn’t as bad as you might imagine,” she continued happily. “Giving and taking hostages is a common enough practice—a good way to ensure peace and good-will among rival tribes. My father was a prince of the Suevi tribe and owing fealty to King Hermeric. And, anyway, what was one small girl more or less?”

“But, your name . . .”

She put her head to one side. “What about it?”

“With a name like Helena, I thought . . .” Unable to say what I thought, I spread my hands.

“And no doubt you would be right in thinking whatever it was you thought.” She laughed again, shaking her head. “But no, no—life as we know is not always the straightest of paths. It could have been very hard for me—of course, it could. Things could have turned out very badly. I know that. But, God is good, and He was looking out for me. King Hermeric had a kingdom to rule, so he gave me in fosterage to a priest and his wife who lived in a nearby town. A loving pair, they were. And, as the wife was barren, she doted on me. They taught me to read and write, and schooled me in proper behavior and manners for a true Roman citizen. Helena is my foster name.” She shrugged. “I don’t even remember my birth name. When word came that my father had been killed in some battle or other—I must have been eight or ten at the time—Petronius and Lavinia adopted me.”

Overwhelmed by the wonderful strangeness of it, I could scarce make sense of what she was telling me. My aristocratic friend—the most cultured and refined woman I had ever met—born a barbarian! If anyone had told me that my best friend would be a barbarian fosterling elevated to the station of legate’s wife, I would not have believed it. Truly, the path of life was crooked indeed.

Only such a circuitous route could have led us to this place, I remember thinking. Where it would lead next, neither of us knew. For, other paths were about to converge with ours. The joining of these ways would bring changes no one could have foreseen.


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