style="font-size:15px;"> Porcia, her maidservant sitting opposite, sounded on the verge of hysteria. Despite the presence of an armed escort, the girl had been a bundle of nerves ever since leaving Lindum a month ago. Perhaps with good reason, Livia thought grimly. Her own anxieties had been gathering in strength the closer they travelled to Coria, though for very different reasons.
And now this! Whatever this was... She felt a shiver of fear, as if an icy claw had pierced its way through her chest and was clutching her heart, making her feel cold all over.
‘I don’t think so.’ She leaned over, trying to see out of the carriage window, but whatever was happening was taking place at the head of their small procession. ‘I don’t hear any fighting.’
‘What if it’s Caledonians?’
‘They’re on the other side of the wall. This side is under the Pax Romana, remember?’
‘Barely.’ Porcia’s bottom lip trembled. ‘They say only savages live this far north.’
‘Who say so?’
‘Civilised people. Romans...like us.’
‘Like us.’ Livia repeated the words sceptically. ‘Well then, it must be true.’
Not that now was the time to be debating the merits of Roman society with her maidservant, she admonished herself, though somehow the words themselves gave her courage, forcing the claw to relax its grip slightly. If civilised Roman society said that she ought to be afraid then she’d be more than happy to prove civilisation wrong.
In any case, there were still no sounds of combat, no clamour of weapons or shouting. If they were really under attack from Caledonians or outlaws, surely they’d know it by now?
‘Stay here. I’ll go and see what’s happening.’ She slid herself out from beneath the sleeping child. ‘Take care of Julia for me.’
‘Shouldn’t we wake her...just in case?’
‘No.’
Livia shook her head emphatically, bending over to press a kiss into the spiral curls of the little girl’s hair. It was every bit as wild and untamed as hers had been at that age, as well as the same shade of blazing copper red, a legacy from her own mother that she wished Julia might have avoided.
If only her daughter could have had dark hair like Julius, she thought regretfully. If only Julia could have looked anything at all like him, then mother and daughter might never have been in their current perilous situation. Julia might have been a rich heiress and she an independent widow, safe from her brother—half-brother, she corrected herself—Tarquinius and his scheming. Strange how great a difference something as trivial as hair colour could have on a person’s life...
She straightened up again, dismissing the thought as unhelpful. Now wasn’t the time for regrets. Now she had bigger problems to worry about and she had to be brave for her daughter as well as her terrified maid.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, I’m sure of it.’
She squeezed Porcia’s hand reassuringly and then climbed down from the carriage, glad to be out of the confined space for a while, no matter what the circumstances. It was more comfortable than horseback, better for Julia, too, but her muscles were still cramped and stiff from so much prolonged inactivity. Cautiously, she looked around, searching for some sign of an enemy attack, but there was none. On the contrary, it was hard to imagine a more peaceful, springlike scene than the one before her. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and shining for the first time in days, warming the air and giving the woodland road along which they were travelling a fresh, almost sparkling appearance. The trees on either side were starting to bud, too, if not yet bloom, and the birds within chirruping loudly, as if to celebrate the fact that the long, hard winter was finally coming to an end.
It was a whole different world to the makeshift camp they’d left, shivering and cold that morning, as if some enchantment had fallen over the carriage during her brief nap, turning the hours into weeks. But then time seemed to have been working differently during the seemingly endless days of their journey north. Hardly surprising when they were travelling as far from Rome as they could possibly go, following the great road beyond Eboracum to the very limits of the Empire and the great wall built less than a century before by the Emperor Hadrian—a massive eighty-mile structure stretching from one side of the country to the other.
Despite the relentless pace of their journey, however, there’d been days when she’d had the uneasy feeling they might be travelling for ever, trapped in some never-ending loop. Then again, there’d been days when she’d hoped that they might never arrive in Coria, one of the northernmost settlements of the frontier. Being sent to marry a stranger of her half-brother’s choosing wasn’t an experience she’d relished the first time. It certainly hadn’t been one that she’d wanted to repeat, yet now it was happening all over again, barely two months after Julius’s funeral, as if her past were repeating itself in the present and she was powerless to do anything to stop it.
How many more times would Tarquinius use her as a bargaining tool? she wondered. How many more times must she be humiliated? Bad enough that he had so much power over her life, but now he was controlling Julia’s, too. Her only hope was that her new husband might prove a different kind of man to Julius. If not, then it was surely only a matter of time before her second marriage turned just as sour as her first... If he did prove to be different, however, then there was still hope. If he turned out to be good and honourable, then perhaps she could talk to him, perhaps even tell him the whole truth about herself before Tarquinius got a chance to interfere.
Of course, that was supposing they survived their current danger and made it to Coria in the first place. Not that it sounded very dangerous, she reassured herself, heading around the front of the carriage in search of Tullus, the leader of the small band of men entrusted with delivering her safely to her new husband. She could already hear his voice at the front of her escort, talking calmly enough—in Latin, too, which was another good sign—though oddly without his usual bravado.
She caught sight of his back at last and then stopped, rooted to the spot in amazement at the view before her. The road was blocked by tens upon tens of Roman soldiers, a whole century of them by the look of it, all standing in perfect formation and dressed in full military regalia, shields and spears at the ready, as if they were marching into battle. They looked even more impressive and imposing than the ones she’d seen on parade in Lindum, their burnished shoulder plates and polished helms gleaming like molten gold in the spring sunshine. And there at the front, wearing a transversely plumed helmet that immediately signalled him out as a Centurion, stood their leader, the man—surely it had to be him—that she’d come to marry.
‘Oh!’
She didn’t intend to utter the exclamation aloud, but it came out anyway, too loud in the silence that greeted her arrival, and the Centurion’s gaze shifted towards her, sweeping briefly over the long folds of her stola before their eyes met and held. For a few moments he didn’t move. Then he inclined his head, courteously enough, though his gaze never left hers. His eyes were dark, she noticed, like pools of black tar, deep and mysterious and compelling, though the expression in them looked strangely arrested.
‘Livia Valeria?’ He broke the silence at last.
‘Yes.’
This time her voice sounded too quiet as she forced her feet to move forward again. She couldn’t think
