He hated himself for wanting her. He hated how his breath quickened at the sound of her sandals in the tunnel, how his heart hammered as the guard unlocked the gate. When she stepped into the cell, he willed his gaze to the floor, for he loathed how much he wished to see her face.
‘Cal!’ she exclaimed. She walked softly to the foot of his bed and stood before him, her small white feet curling in their sandals. ‘Oh, Cal, you are alive! Thank the Goddess Artemis! Cal? Why will you not look at me?’
He was a bad man. A selfish man. A man who had put his earthly desires above all else. And because of that, his friend was now dead. Remember Felix, he told himself. Remember Rhiannon.
She stood before him in silence for a long while. When she spoke, her voice was hushed. ‘The sun is already set, and it is so very cold outside.’ She crossed to the glowing brazier on the table at the other end of the cell. She was holding her hands over the lit coals. ‘These coals are such a wonder. I feel like I have not been warm in a month.’
Brutus had been just as cheerful when he had placed the brazier there an hour before. ‘In honour of your unlikely victory,’ he had said, revelling in his own generosity.
Cal wondered how much money Brutus had won yesterday from Cal’s unlikely victory. Three hundred denarii? Three thousand? Enough to add a few more rooms to his seaside villa and buy his daughter a new slave? Probably even more than that, for he had placed Cal and Felix among the expected losers, thus increasing his odds. He had probably known about the gladiatrices, too. The shameless blood merchant had probably suggested them himself.
‘I have also acquired your reward,’ Brutus had told Cal. ‘The one you requested. The weaver. She will be here soon. Eighty denarii for her. Can you imagine? But she will be yours for the night, to do with what you will.’ He had winked conspiratorially at Cal—like a father winking to his child after sliding him a honey stick.
Cal hated himself then, because in truth he had been overjoyed by the news. It was as if he were a dog who had just hunted down a pack of lions for his owner, then absently been tossed a bone.
‘I thought you had died,’ Arria said quietly. She was still rubbing her hands over the brazier’s smouldering coals, addressing her conversation to the wall. ‘When my master informed me that your lanista had purchased me for the night, well, I just—’
‘Felix died today.’
‘What?’ She turned.
‘Felix the Satyr. The one who occupied that cell just down the hall. He was my friend.’
She bowed her head.
‘It was my fault,’ he added. ‘I left him unguarded.’
And why had Cal left Felix unguarded? That was the real question. He did not wish to think about the answer, though it was standing right in front of him.
‘You cannot blame yourself,’ she said. ‘It was not your choice to fight.’
‘But it was my choice.’
‘How was it your choice?’ Her eyes caught the glow of the coals.
‘I chose to live. I fought for all this.’ He swatted at the air. ‘For you.’
She crossed to the foot of his bed and stood before him. Gods forgive him, he wanted nothing but to press his head against her stomach and lay his troubles at her feet. He breathed in, hating her smoky, woolly musk. It was too rich. Too enticing. And altogether too much like home.
She reached out and drew her thumb across his cheek.
‘Please do not do that.’ He pushed her hand aside and she recoiled.
‘Apologies, I only wished to—’
‘Two women died yesterday because of me,’ he said. ‘Their bodies were decorated with blue, do you understand? I could read the runes painted upon their breasts. They could have been Caledonii—my own country women.’
‘You are Caledonian?’
He cringed. He had not meant to reveal it. The more she knew of him, the more power she wielded. He could not allow her to conquer him—not if it meant that he would spend the rest of his days killing for sport. Nothing was worth what he had done yesterday in the arena. Nothing.
‘I cannot lie with you—not any more,’ he said. ‘I cannot do this any more. I just want to be with my wife. In the Otherworld.’
He watched the colour drain from her face, saw how she laboured to keep her breaths even. She had offered him one of the most precious things she had to give and he had just refused her. He might as well have taken a blade to her gut.
Not that any of what he said had been true. He wanted her so badly that he ached. He had even dreamed about her—hot, wicked dreams that he shied to recall. Even now, he caught a glimpse of her shape and felt himself awaken. He wanted to rip off her ragged tunic and take her right there, right against the wall, with the coals of the brazier smouldering in her eyes.
But the words had been spoken. He had stacked them carefully like a wall of bricks between them and waited for her to call the guard.
Instead she crossed back to the brazier and took her seat in the chair beside it. ‘Tell me about your wife,’ she said softly.
‘What?’
‘Tell me about her. What did she look like?’
It was the most unexpected thing she could have said.
‘Come now, Cal. If you are going to condemn me to lose my innocence to some old lecher, you can at least talk to me a while. What was she like?’
And there it was. No sharp words or pitiable tears. Just a simple question. Cal paused.
‘Was she tall or short?’
‘Ah, my wife was tall, almost my height,’ he said.
‘And?’
He closed his eyes. ‘She had long golden hair and eyes the colour of the sky. Her nose was large and she had a mark of Venus just here.’ He pointed to the side of his chin. ‘She did not smile much, but when she did it was like...’ He paused, flushing with the memory.
‘Like what?’
‘Like when the sails of a ship catch the wind.’
She grinned. ‘How did you meet?’
How had they met? It had been so long since he’d thought of it. ‘She was my best friend’s sister. We had known each other since before we could speak. When we came of age, our hands were bound in my uncle’s ash tree grove and we placed our oathing stone beneath its largest tree.’
She was nodding, encouraging him to go on. ‘We moved into the small house I had built for us at the grove’s edge. We had ten sheep, a cow and a large garden.’
‘It sounds like heaven,’ said Arria wistfully.
‘We had a useless old dog that was missing a leg. When I brought the sheep home each night the pathetic creature would wag its tail and my wife would smile and say, “Look! She is so happy to see you!”’
He laughed. It was the primary way his wife had expressed her love to him—through that ridiculous dog. But it had been enough.
‘My father once owned a small dog,’ offered Arria. ‘My mother hated the creature, but when my father left for the campaigns in Britannia, she cared for him tenderly.’
‘Before he became a gambler.’
‘When my eldest brother did not return from his military service, something in my father died. My younger brother did return, but my father does not see him. He sees only what he does not have.’
Cal shook his head. ‘So many Romans chase after Fortuna, not knowing that they already enjoy her favour.’
Arria peered out the high slit of window and caught sight of the rising moon. ‘Before I was enslaved, I was that kind of Roman,’ she said. ‘I did not know the world through the eyes of a slave. I pitied myself in my poverty and I condemned my father and brother for making it so. But now I understand that I cannot condemn them, for I have not seen what they have seen.’
It was perhaps the most thoughtful thing Cal had ever heard anyone say. ‘How did your eldest brother die?’
‘He was ambushed by a gang of Caledonian warriors on his way back to the fort at Eboracum. He was bludgeoned to death and his head placed on a stake.’
Cal gulped. He did not know what to say. Her eldest brother had likely been killed by men he knew.
‘And your wife?’ she asked, filling the silence. ‘How did you lose her?’
‘It was Roman soldiers,’ he muttered. ‘They looted our town and burned it.’
‘I see,’ said Arria and bowed her head. ‘And how did you become enslaved?’
His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I awoke the following morning, lying beside her. That’s when I felt the shackles being fastened to my ankles.’
‘You lay beside her all night?’
‘After that I was taken to the quarry.’
‘So how came you to the arena?’
‘There was an uprising at the quarry,’ said Cal. Twelve years of hatred pressed into a single afternoon. He had killed every Roman guard he could find, then gone in search of more.
‘Why do you shake your head? Do you regret the uprising?’
‘I could have escaped.’
‘Why did you not?’
He had not escaped because a hundred Roman soldiers had not been enough. Nor had a thousand. After twelve years of being treated like an animal, he had quietly become one.
She was watching him carefully. ‘You can tell me the truth.’
‘Because I enjoyed the killing,’ he admitted. ‘I loved slitting their Roman throats with their Roman swords. They are monsters, your glorious Roman men. Thieves. They boast of honour, but have none. They killed my wife! They killed my wife...’
He shook his head, trying to gather his wits. How little it all mattered now. How little he mattered. Three years in the arena and he was finished. Beaten. He had done worse than fail, he had turned his rage on undeserving foes. Without knowing it, he had become the monster everyone believed he was.
He gazed at the floor. ‘They make a desert and call it peace,’ he muttered.
His anger was gone now. They had looted it from him, harvested it like gold from the graves of ancient Caledonian kings. Enough. He would no longer kill for Rome’s entertainment. Nor would he hold out hope for some futile vision of revenge.
He was tired, so very tired. His head throbbed. His bones ached. His ears still rang with the clash of swords.
But it was not just battle that had tired him. It was her. She had kept him up at night. The woman with the brown eyes and shiny long braid and nothing left to lose. Since they had last met, he had thought of little else but her and had been unable to find peace. And now that she was here, his heart was at rest and suddenly all he wished for was sleep.
He lay back on the bed. ‘It is your fault, Arria,’ he muttered as oblivion took him. ‘It is all your fault.’
‘What is my fault, Cal?’
‘That I am not dead.’