This is a passage from the start of my new series. My hero is interrupted and alarmed. My heroine’s plans go awry.
Cornelius Tullius Laeca lay relaxed in the hot bath, his shoulders against the side wall, his buttocks on the shelf below the water, and his long legs stretched out before him. He was currently the only patron of the inn’s private bath house, which was probably just as well, because he was a large man, and the three baths—cold, warm, and hot, each in a separate room—were all small.
According to the innkeeper, he was within a day’s ride of Londinium. He should be there tomorrow. Perhaps he should consider buying a slave. The innkeeper, like others on this trip down from Britannica’s north, had been taken aback to find that Cornelius was travelling without any. There were no slaves in an army fort, and what Prefect of an auxiliary cohort would want soldiers at his elbow every minute?
Not Cornelius. A couple of orderlies had cared for his kit and his rooms, and if he had needed anything else, one of his centurions would produce a legionnaire with the appropriate skills.
He could have done with one of his orderlies on this trip, even if just to manage his luggage. But of course, he no longer had orderlies. A new prefect led the 10th Lycians, and Cornelius had a civilian position waiting for him in Rome. A temporary position. Just until he was assigned to a legion as one of its tribunes. Mama had written that Uncle Rufus was working on it.
His toes touched the shelf on the other side of the bath when he stretched out his good leg. He could do with someone to wrangle his luggage, fetch his dinner, do all the little things he had never needed to think about.
Now for the other leg. It stretched with only a minor pull on the scar tissue. And when he bent the knee to bring it as far up towards his torso as he could manage, it went nearly all the way. Better. His thigh still had a ragged line of red, nearly a span long, with both sides marked by red blobs where the stitches had pulled it back together. Evidence that the northern tribes were not as peaceful as Rome liked to claim. The medicus who had sewed him up had assured him that he’d get full use of the leg back if he exercised it, and apparently the man knew what he was talking about.
It was probably time to call for one of the bath slaves to assist him again with the strigil. Cornelius could hear them chattering in the exercise room on the other side of the wall. He had already, between leaving the warm pool and getting into the hot pool, had a good basting with oil and a scrape all over with the strigil. Now he’d stewed for a while in the heat, he’d get the slaves to repeat the strigiling and then dip back into the cold.
In a minute. His bones, weary from the long day of trouble, had relaxed in the hot water and moving seemed like more trouble than it was worth. He stretched his arms along the sides of the bath and let both legs float upwards.
Then a noise had him lifting his head and looking towards one of the walls. He’d never heard anything like it—a long chord played on some instrument he could not identify. A whole array of instruments, he corrected himself, as his hair stood on end and his skin seemed to vibrate to the sound.
It was swelling, building to a crescendo, and suddenly a tunnel appeared in the middle of the wall. Before he had time to do more than narrow his eyes to sharpen his vision, something was rushing along the tunnel toward him. A speck. No, a figure. A woman. And then the tunnel blinked out of existence and the woman remained, standing on the tiles against an unblemished wall.
A lady, he amended, wrapped in a palla of fine golden wool with a broad border of a blue a few shades darker than the tunic she wore beneath. A goddess, given the way she had arrived, but then would a goddess be staring at him as if she’d never before seen a man in his bath?
Perhaps he had fallen asleep and this was a dream.
“What manner of being are you?” he demanded, “and how did you come here?”
She blinked a couple of times, and the hand that was not holding her palla crept underneath it. “Allow me to introduce myself, honoured sir. I am Flavia Elizabeth MacDonald, daughter of William MacDonald, of the Aotearoa tribe.”
He had never heard of a goddess called Flavia whatever it was. Her Latin was execrable. It had never occured to Cornelius that a foreign god might speak Latin with an accent.
Her manners were good, though, and he would not want to insult her. Who knew what she was capable of doing? Even in a dream, an patrician of Rome should be mannerly. He straightened. “Greetings, revered lady. I am Cornelius Tullius Laeca, son of Cornelius Tullius Laeca, of the Esquilina tribe. By what manner of sorcery am I honoured by your presence?”
She waved to the door. “Is that the way out?” she asked. “I am not here for long, and I would like to see Rome before I am called back. I shall leave you to your bath.”
Rome? “Rome is many weeks away, your worship,” he told the apparition. “We are in Verulamium, in Britannica.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Verulamium? Britannica?” Her voice rose on the second word.
One of the bath slaves appeared at the door. “Sir? Is there…” He trailed off as he realised that another person was in the room—one who had not entered the bath house by the door into the exercise room—the only outside door.
“Go away,” Cornelius told him. “I will call you if I want you.”
The slave bowed and backed away out of the room, not removing his eyes from the lady.
“You expected Rome, Lady Flavia?” Cornelius commented. This must be a dream. A goddess whose transport had been misdirected? Ridiculous. “Then your tunnel has brought you to the wrong place.”
“My tunnel?” Her eyes lit up with interest. “You saw me arrive in a tunnel?”
Was she going to try to convince him otherwise? Cornelius knew what he had seen.
“A tunnel,” he insisted.
“I saw nothing,” she said. “Saw nothing, heard nothing, could do nothing. I stepped into the portal and then nothing. Until suddenly I was here.”
“A long tunnel,” he insisted, though it sounded as if she was merely commenting on a different experience rather than disagreeing with him. “You came towards me very fast, but without moving your feet. And there was a sound. Music.”
“Fascinating,” Flavia commented. “None of Janet’s instruments recorded a tunnel. Or, for that matter, the darkness.” She sighed. “I suppose I should have a look at Verulamium, then. But I did so want to see Rome.”
“It is after sundown, lady,” Cornelius pointed out. “The city is not safe after dark.” That probably sounded foolish to Lady Flavia. What did a goddess have to fear from the kind of scum who preyed on the weak?
But the lady grimaced. “Bother. This is not turning out the way I expected.”
“I can show you the inn if you wish,” Cornelius offered, responding to the disappointment in her face and voice. She was a very pretty goddess, and this was the most peculiar dream he had ever had.
Her face brightened. “If it would not be too much trouble,” she said.
Cornelius got his legs under him. “If you’ll give me a minute, lady,” he said, as he stood up, the water now only waist deep.
She was standing at the steps end of the baths, and for a moment he was tempted to exit by the shelf so he could keep his distance. He squelched the cowardly thought. If she had god-like powers, she could smite him from any distance. He headed towards the steps and began his ascent, keeping an eye on the lady.
She had taken a fold of her palla and put it over her head, turning away to show him her back, but not before he saw the colour flood her face. If it wasn’t ridiculous, he would think her embarrassed to be alone with a nude man.
“Lady?” he said. “Are you well?” Perhaps she was just hot, all wrapped up like that. “You will be cooler if you take the palla off, my lady.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, and let the palla drop so it draped from her elbows.
Before Cornelius could continue past her, he felt a sudden tug at his neck. His amulet—the spiral he and his friends had chosen to symbolise their friendship and commitment—was doing its best to fly away from him to Flavia, pulling the plaited leather cord hard against the back of his neck.
The lady made a choking noise and stumbled towards him. He had only enough time to notice that an amulet she was wearing was reaching for him when the two amulets touched. The lady fell against him as both cords fell back against their wearers, and the pressure on the back of his neck released.
Flavia was a lovely armful, no higher than his chest but beautifully curved. He looked down onto her dark curls and reminded himself that she controlled a vast magic he did not understand. “Lady? Are you well?” He had said that before, he remembered.
She turned to face him and then set herself back from him while retaining her hold on his forearms, as if she needed the help to balance. She rubbed at her neck, where a red mark showed how strongly the leather had pulled. A pat on the cord was followed a search along it with both of her hands. Had it not held an amulet? If so, it held one no longer.
“It’s gone,” Flavia said, her voice shrill with panic. “My spiral. It is gone.”
“I’ll help you look,” he offered. “What did it look like?”
She met his gaze. Perhaps it was the lamp light that shot gold flecks through her dark brown eyes. “Like yours, except older,” she said. “Much older. A bronze coil with a tiger stone.” She dropped her eyes to his chest. “Just like yours. Cornelius Tullius, I think your amulet swallowed mine. Now what am I going to do?”
