“WHAT IS YOUR NAME?” Veris asked as he sliced away the leather stitching that had been holding slave’s leather cuffs permanently about his wrists.
The slave looked at Veris, surprised. “Rafael,” he said.
“Do you prefer to speak your mother tongue?” Veris asked, dredging up the smattering of old Hispanic he could remember.
Rafael winced. “Not the way you speak it,” he said in Greek.
Veris shrugged. “It has been a while,” he confessed. He climbed into the cart. “Hurry up,” he said. “My time is limited and this stop has put me behind.”
Rafael hesitated. “Up at the front?”
“Why not?”
“That’s not where slaves are supposed to sit.”
Veris lowered the reins. He turned to look down at Rafael. “What did you think I was doing when I took those cuffs off? Adjusting your clothing? You’re free, Rafael. You’re not a slave anymore. I don’t own slaves. I never have and I never will. But I do need your help with some work I have to do in Constantinople. You need my help because you don’t have a thing to your name but the clothes on your back. So will you get into the god-damn cart, already?”
Rafael’s face crumpled and he reached for the cart, to hold himself up. He took a deep breath. “Constantinople?” he said, his voice shaky. He climbed up and settled next to Veris on the bench. “Whatever you say, my lord.”
“Call me Veris,” Veris said shortly as he got the cart underway. “I’m no lord. And keep an eye on the road. You have a good memory, or Baradaeus wouldn’t have had you involved in his crooked little dice games. You have to remember the way to Constantinople.”
“Yes, Veris.”
Veris glanced at him. “No questions? Just ‘yes Veris’?”
“Thousands. But you said you were in a hurry.”
“We’re going to be sitting on this plank for the next two days at least. I think Baradaeus and whoever owned you before that has killed too much of your natural personality. I’ll start first, then. Where were you born, Rafael? How did you become a slave and how did you end up in Asia Minor?”
Rafael stared ahead, silent. He remained mute for so long that Veris thought he was refusing to answer. Then finally, he cleared his throat. “This is a story you care to hear…Veris?”
“It was not an idle question. Why?”
Again, Rafael paused overlong before answering. “No one has asked me these questions before.”
“Ever?” Veris frowned, staring down at the horse’s back as it worked. He was keeping it to a steady canter, which was asking too much of it, but walking pace would have killed his own nerves sooner when he knew that Constantinople—and Brody and Taylor—was a mere twenty minute flight away in modern terms. Three days at this ancient pace was bad enough.
He looked at Rafael when no answer emerged. Again.
Rafael’s expression was one he recognized with a jolt. He had seen it on Brody’s face from time to time. It was the expression of a man appreciating freedom. For Rafael, it was just hitting him for the first time.
“Take a deep breath,” Veris advised. “Several of them.”
Rafael clutched at the edge of the bench, his knuckles whitening, the tendons in his pale wrists tightening. He breathed heavily as Veris advised, choking a little as he battled his emotions. Veris stayed silent, giving him as much privacy as he could.
Finally Rafael lifted his head. He kept his gaze on the road ahead. “It has been nearly fifteen years, I think. This morning, when I rose from my sleep, I would never have predicted that by nightfall I would be a free man.”
“Such is life, Rafael. There are kinks in the road so we can’t see too far along. It makes life interesting.”
Rafael turned his head. “Or are the turns in the road to disguise what is coming so we are not dismayed by it?”
“You don’t strike me as a pessimist.”
“I do not understand that word.”
Veris explained the meaning.
“I see. Life is teaching me to be a pessimist. Behind every turn in my road, so far, has been nothing joyful.”
“Until today,” Veris pointed out. “Yet despite the grimness, you have chosen to keep stepping around the corners, haven’t you? Doesn’t that mean you keep hoping for good, not bad, each time you reach a bend?”
Rafael grinned. “True. I suppose I’m not a true pessimist, or I would have given up and killed myself years ago, knowing that nothing but bad awaits around every corner.” Then he blinked. “This is a very strange conversation to be having.”
Veris shrugged. “What conversation would you rather have? You’re intelligent, able to reason and self-aware. Philosophy is an interesting subject at any time and you have a subjective viewpoint that always fascinates me.”
“Filos…?” Rafael screwed up his eyes. “You are a scholar?”
“Of several sorts,” Veris agreed. “Philosophy is the word you’re trying to repeat. We were discussing it, although you weren’t aware of it.”
“We were?” Rafael rubbed at his wrist thoughtfully. “Pessimists, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You started talking about something else, to take my mind off myself.”
Veris smiled. “Yes.”
“Why would you do that?”
“It is the kind thing to do, when someone is feeling emotional pain. It gives them time to recover.”
“Emotional pain?”
“You were hurting.”
Rafael considered it for a moment. “Yes,” he said simply.
Veris nodded. “That is emotional pain.”
Rafael turned on the seat to study Veris. The silence lengthened again.
“You have a question?” Veris finally prompted.
“If I may?”
Veris nodded.
“You are a Northman, are you not?”
“I am.”
“You are a long way from home.”
“As are you,” Veris pointed out.
“Not from as far away as you. You have the shoulders, the wrists….and you have a sword and knife. You carry yourself like one. You are a fighter, no? A soldier?”
“I was, once.”
Rafael nodded. “Fighter. Scholar. Yet you come from Pergamum, as the road leads nowhere else but there. You weren’t there as a patient. You’re not sick. Are you a doctor, too?”
Veris sighed. “Sort of.”
“You’re driving a cart loaded with goods that you’re happy enough to defend on your own, so you’re not just a soldier, you’re a very good fighter.” Rafael lifted his hand. “Fighter, scholar, doctor.” He held up three fingers. “Have I missed anything?”
Veris grimaced. For a reason he couldn’t pin down without deeper thought, he was reluctant to lie to Rafael. Perhaps it was something to do with his recent status as slave, which reminded him vividly of Brody. Veris’ prevarication emerged awkwardly. “I’ll point anything else out if I remember it.”
Rafael cocked his head, studying Veris. “Then, exactly how old are you?”
* * * * *
Twelve hours later, Taylor stared defeat in the face. Again.
Matthew hurried into the same room she had been hauled into the night before, to face her once more. Only this time, Taylor had Kale at her side and the head guard of Matthew’s household, Bardas, standing with spread-footed ease, his hand on the pommel of his sword, to her right. Two of his guards stood behind them.
Taylor straightened herself up as Matthew strode into the room, a roll of papers in his hands and a frustrated look on his face. “I hear Bardas found you strolling about the city with a single slave at your side, and in the Hippodrome area, too!” His jaw clenched in sudden fury. “Is it not enough that I must punish you for disobedience the evening before, but you must force me to repeat the lesson the very next day?”
“I took my slave with me,” Taylor pointed out. “I am armed. I was well veiled and covered and spoke to no one.”
Matthew’s hand clenched, crimping the book he held in his fist. “You are supposed to be here, preparing to accompany me to the races this afternoon!”
“I will be suitably ready in plenty of time,” Taylor assured him.
“That is not the point!” Matthew bellowed. “I have had three different people report to me on your presence near the Hippodrome! Three! You are supposed to care for my reputation, wife!” His face, with the clean-lined jaw and high cheeks, was suddenly red with choler and white lines bracketed his mouth.
Taylor sank to her knees and bowed her head, knowing she had to restore his dignity somehow. She had to repair the damage. She’d had no idea the speed gossip could spread in a city without phones or Wi-Fi, or that something as simple as walking through streets with only one slave could be seen as such a brazen act. She’d screwed up badly.
“I beg your forgiveness, husband,” she said as contritely as she could manage. “When I saw the beauty of the day and the sun, I forgot, for a moment, my proper place and wanted only to enjoy the fresh air. I will not forget again.”
She heard his indrawn breath, just before his hand caught her chin and lifted it. The red in his face was fading. He nodded. “I can understand the need for air and freedom. But you’re young. You’ve time to learn to override these impulsive acts of yours. Go and prepare for the races. I need you by my side today, more than ever.”
Kale helped Taylor to her feet and hurried her away. Taylor realized she was shaking. She had been expecting another blow. She had been braced for it. She shuddered in Kale’s hands.
“He’s a kind husband, most days,” Kale whispered approvingly.
Kind or not, his insistence on Taylor maintaining his reputation had robbed her of her chance of finding Brody before the races began and letting him know where she was and whose life she had fallen into.
The ache to touch him and reassure herself that Brody was alright was like a heavy weight in her chest.
And where was Veris now? Had he even reached what would become Dover in the centuries ahead, to find some cockle-shell little boat to cross the treacherous Channel to the mainland?