who grasped her tight.
* * *
Marcus Sergius hadn’t expected to find her so quickly, but he thanked the one God that he did.
Only Marcus could keep this baby safe, but he hadn’t the time to explain that to her.
The woman struggled like a bear. He held her tightly against him, careful not to crush the infant. He felt Annia’s warmth through his thin leather chest-plate. The baby nestled beneath Annia’s protective arm, her other arm pinned safely beneath his.
She kicked his shins, her legs surprisingly strong, though her moccasins were too soft to cause any real damage. She tried to bite through his leather breastplate.
She was nearly successful.
“Give me the baby,” he said to her. “I won’t hurt her.” He tried to keep his voice level and calm, but he found himself jumping with each vicious little kick.
“You won’t hurt her?” she said, jeering. “No, you probably won’t. She wouldn’t be worth much on the slave market if you damaged her.”
This was not going as he intended.
He had managed to successfully separate himself from the eight new recruits, but at any moment one could appear. They were young and stupid. None had seen battle. Each thought soldiering glamorous.
Young fools. He hoped they would never see the horrors he had seen in Britain against Caratacus and his guerrilla warriors.
Could she understand if he tried to explain that he had a safe place for her baby? The fury in her voice and the steely anger in her eyes told him what he needed to know.
Perhaps he could take her with him. No, that would be too dangerous. She was beautiful.
And that very beauty would be noticed. Someone would see him accompanied by such a lovely slave carrying a baby.
No, he had to take the baby and leave her here. He would come back for her later.
It should have been easy. He thought back over his plan. It usually worked. It had worked many times before. He went into the house in the dark of night. He took the baby. He sent his young recruits to rest at the local eating place under the auspices of needing to be alone while he exposed the baby at the vegetable market.
But what really happened, that is, what really happened on every night except for tonight, was that instead of taking the baby to the vegetable market to be picked up by slave traders, he took the baby to his mother.
His mother took the teachings of the Master very seriously when He said to care for widows and orphans. She left the widows up to someone else, but she set it as her life’s mission to care for orphans, specifically the babies that would most certainly become slaves or die if left on the rubbish pile.
And her strong, handsome son, home from the war and conveniently placed as the commander in charge of the Vigiles, was the perfect accomplice.
But Annia was different. He had never come in contact with a mother who fought so immediately for her baby. Usually, the husband ordered the wife drugged with poppy juice so that she was unaware of exactly what was taking place.
Of course, this was the first baby he had taken from a divorced woman. It was also the first he had taken so long after birth. Usually, the marriage was intact, and the husband simply did not want to divide his wealth with another child. The child was taken at birth, and the wife complied because she feared losing her marriage.
A stomp on his toe brought him back to the very real woman in front of him. He was going to have to render her unconscious. He knew this, but he did not want to follow through. It was the only way he was going to be able to get her baby to a safe place without attracting any further notice.
He would have to act quickly. He placed his fingers on her jugular and pressed. He held her other arm down, and kept the arm on the baby.
He caught her when she fell, untied the baby and left the woman there. He knew she would awaken very quickly, and he had to be gone when she did.
The baby slept, but Marcus took no chances. He sprinted through the dark back streets of Rome as if he were going to the market. But, instead of turning at the road leading to the forum, he doubled back around the baths and ran as quickly as he could to his mother’s house.
He had no time to explain why he was dumping the baby unceremoniously in the ostiarius’s arms. The elderly man who watched the door was accustomed to such wriggling bundles.
Marcus couldn’t let the woman stay on these streets alone at night. She could be captured or worse. Anger filled him at the thought of the things that could happen to her.
He had to reunite her with her baby.
He turned as quickly as he could and sprinted back to where he had left her.
She was gone.
Dear God, he prayed, please let her be safe.
He passed street after street with no sign of her. He tripped over a family sleeping outside in one alley and scattered a group of young street urchins in another.
Where could she have gone?
He retraced his steps, this time more slowly. Had someone taken her? Had he gone past her? Did she know a different way to the place where babies were exposed? Was she thinking of another place of exposure?
And then he realized that she had probably already reached the forum and was searching in the offal for her child.
How could he be so stupid? He had seen how quickly she ran. Why hadn’t he gone there first?
Now it was he who was sprinting as if his life depended on it. What made this woman so important? He tried to convince himself he would have done the same for anyone, but he knew differently. Something about her haunted eyes, her quick-thinking ruse. Here was a woman who gave it all, held nothing back.
When he heard a group of men laughing and heard her scream, he moved swiftly in.
The men were circled, one holding her by the hair, another holding a lantern up to her face.
“What have we here?” the man holding her asked. He was large, probably a blacksmith or shipbuilder, someone accustomed to using his body for hard work. His muscles glinted in the firelight, and the group of men surrounding him waited.
But they waited like hyenas who watch prey caught by a lion. They would take their turn only after he had his fill.
Marcus knew he would have to be very careful.
“So there you are, you little minx,” Marcus said, striding into the center of the circle, his voice as deep and loud as he could make it.
It had the intended effect, startling the men with its volume.
Even the blacksmith, or whatever he was, jumped a little, but he maintained his grasp on her hair.
“Running from me once again. You thought you could get away this time, did you?” Marcus strode into the group of men breaking through them as if he were the emperor himself.
