He drained it swiftly and said bluntly, “So you are to be married. You have the look of a woman who has prospered, and one who is well-loved.”
“And you who loved me for my lands left those lands quickly enough. You told me you had tired of fighting, but perhaps a gladiator earns more coin, and certainly he has better privileges than a mere soldier in the legions,” Cailin countered. She had been mad to come, and madder still to believe there was anything left between them.
“How came you to Byzantium?” he asked her.
“In the hold of a slave galley out of Massilia, Wulf Ironfist,” Cailin said harshly. “I was walked the length of Gaul to get there. Before that my time was spent in a drugged state in a slave pen in Londinium.” She gulped at her wine. “I believe our child lives, but what Antonia did with it, I cannot say. Were you even interested enough to find out?”
“She said that both you and the child had perished in the ordeal of childbirth,” he defended himself, and then went on to tell her of what had transpired when he had gone to Antonia’s villa to bring her home.
“What of our bodies?” Cailin said angrily. “Did you not even ask to see our bodies?”
“She said she had cremated you both, and even gave me a container of ashes. I interred them with your family,” he finished helplessly. “I thought you would want it that way.”
The macabre humor of it struck Cailin, and she laughed. “I suspect what you interred was a container of wood, or charcoal ashes,” she said, draining her cup and pouring herself more wine.
“How is it that you know Jovian Maxima?” he suddenly demanded.
“Because he bought me in the slave marketplace, and brought me here,” she told him coolly. “Are you certain you wish to know more?”
She was not the same person, he realized, but then how could she be? He nodded slowly, then listened, his face alternating between anger, pain, and sympathy, as she told her tale. When she had finished, he was silent for a long moment, and then said, “Will we allow Antonia Porcius to destroy the happiness we had, Cailin Drusus?”
“Ohh, Wulf,” she replied, “so much time has passed for us. I thought you would stay with the lands that were my family’s. I believed you would have taken another wife by now, and had another child of your loins. How could I have ever believed that we would meet again here in Byzantium, or anywhere on this earth?” She sighed, and lowered her head to hide the tears that had sprung into her eyes from nowhere, it seemed.
“So you went on with your life?” he asked her, almost bitterly.
“What else was I to do?” she cried to him. “Aspar rescued me from this silken Hades, and freed me. He sheltered me, and loved me. He has offered me the protection of his name despite incredible odds. I have learned to love him, Wulf Ironfist!”
“And have you forgotten the love that we shared, Cailin Drusus?” he demanded fiercely. Reaching out, he pulled her roughly into his arms. “Have you forgotten what it once was like between us, lambkin?” His lips gently touched her brow. “When Antonia told me you and the child were dead, I was devastated. I could not believe it, and then she was handing me that damned container of ashes. I returned to our hall and buried them. I tried to go on with my life, but you were everywhere. Your very essence permeated the hall, the lands! And without you there was nothing. None of it meant anything to me without you, Cailin. One morning I awoke. I took my helmet, my shield, and my sword, and I left. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that I must get away from your memory. I wandered the face of Gaul into Italy. In Capua I met some gladiators at a tavern. I enrolled in the school there, and once I began to fight, I quickly became a champion. I had no fear of death, you see. That fear is a gladiator’s greatest enemy, but I did not feel it. Why should I? What did I have to lose that I had not already lost except my life, which was now worthless to me.”
“And did you escape my memory in your combats, in a wine jug, or in the arms of other women, Wulf Ironfist?” she asked him.
“You have been ever with me, Cailin Drusus. In my thoughts and in my heart, lambkin. I could not escape you, I fear.” He held her close, breathing in her scent, rubbing his cheek against her head.
The stone that her heart had become when she saw him again began to crumble. “What do you want of me, Wulf?” she asked him softly.
“We have found one another, my sweet lambkin,” he told her. “Could we not begin again? The gods have reunited us.”
“To what purpose, I wonder?” she answered.
He tilted her face up to his, and his mouth slowly closed over hers. His lips were warm, and so very soft, and as the kiss deepened, Cailin’s heart almost broke in two. She still loved him! Worse. She loved Aspar, too! What was she to do? Unable to help herself, she let her arms slip up and about his neck.
“I no longer know what is right, or what is wrong,” she said helplessly. “Ohh, cease, Wulf! I cannot think.”
“Do not!” he said. “Tell me you do not love me, Cailin Drusus, and I will help you to escape Villa Maxima now. I will leave Constantinople, and you will never see me again. Perhaps it would be better that way. Our child is lost to us, and the life you lead here in Byzantium is a better life for you. Civilization suits you, lambkin. You know the rough destiny facing us back in Britain.” Yet despite his words, he held her close, as if he could not bear to let her go.
Cailin was silent for what seemed an eternity, and then she said, “The child might yet live, Wulf. I somehow feel it does. What kind of parents are we that we do not even seek to find our child?”
“What of this Flavius Aspar? The man you are to wed?” he asked. “Is there not enough between you that you would remain here with him?”
“There is much between us,” she replied quietly. “More than you can possibly know. I give up much to return to Britain with you, Wulf Ironfist; but there is much waiting for us in Britain. There are our lands, which I have no doubt Antonia has appropriated once more; and there is the hope of finding our child. The land has a certain meaning for me. Aspar’s love, however, far outweighs it. It is our child that tips the balance of the scales in your favor.
“Once, and it seems so long ago now, we pledged ourselves to each other in wedlock. Our marriage would not be recognized by those in power here in Byzantium should I choose Aspar over you. It was not celebrated within their church. But the vows we made in our own land are sacred, and I will not deny them now that I know you live. I am a Drusus Corinium, and we are raised to honor our promises not simply when they are convenient, but always.”
“I am not a duty to be done,” he said, offended.
Cailin heard his tone. She smiled up at him. “No, Wulf Ironfist, you are not a duty, but you are my husband unless you choose here and now to renounce the vows we made to one another in my grandfather’s hall that autumn night. Remember before you speak, however, that in denying me, you deny our lost child to us as well.”
“You are certain of what you are saying, lambkin?” he asked.
“No, I am not, Wulf Ironfist,” she told him candidly. “Aspar has been good to me. I love him, and I will hurt him when I leave him; but I love you also, it would seem, and there is our child.”