“Marcus, meet Cordelia, my wife,” Lugo said. “Marcus” was a safely frequent name. Rufus bobbed his head and grunted. To her: “We must get busy at once. Perseus will see to the necessities. I’ll join you when I can.”
She stared after them as he guided his companion off. Did he hear her sigh? Abrupt fear stabbed. He had gone forth with hope aflutter in him, a hope so wild that he must keep denying it, scolding himself for it. Now he saw what the reality might lead to.
No, he would not think about that. Not immediately. One step, two steps, left foot, right foot, that was how to march through time.
The Low Room was downstairs, a part of the cellar that Lugo had had bricked off after he acquired this house. Such hideaways were common enough to draw scant attention. Often they were for prayer or private austerities. In Lugo’s tine of work, it was clear that he could have use for a place secure from eavesdroppers. The cell was about ten feet square and six high. Three tiny windows just under the ceiling gave on the peristyle garden at ground level. The glass in them was so thick and wavy as to block vision, but the tight that seeped through met whitewashed walls, making the gloom not too dense at this moment. Tallow candles lay on a shelf beside flint, steel, and tinder. Furnishings were a angle bed, a stool, and a chamber pot on the dirt floor.
“Sit down,” Lugo invited. “Rest. You’re safe, my friend, safe.”
Rufus hunched on the stool. He threw back the cowl but clutched the paenula around his tunic; the place was chilly. His red head lifted with a forlorn defiance. “Who the muck be you, anyhow?” he growled.
His host lounged back against the wall and smiled. “Flavius Lugo,” he said. “And you, I believe, are a shipyard carpenter, unemployed, generally called Rufus. What’s your real name?”
An obscenity was followed by: “What’s it matter to you?”
Lugo shrugged. “Little or nothing, I suppose. You could be more gracious toward me. That rabble would have had the life out of you.”
“And what’s that to you?” The retort was harsh. “Why’d you step in? Look here, I be no sorcerer. I want naught to do with magic or heathendom, me, a good Christian, a free Roman citizen.”
Lugo lifted a brow. “Have you absolutely never made an offering elsewhere than in church?” he murmured.
“Well, uh, well—Epona, when my wife was dying—“ Rufus half-rose. He bristled. “Dung o’ Cemunnos! Be you a sorcerer?”
Lugo raised a palm. His left hand moved the staff, slightly but meaningfully. “I am not. Nor can I read your mind. However, old ways die hard, even in the cities, and the countryside is mostly pagan and from your looks and speech I’d guess your family were Cadurci a generation or two ago, back in the hills above the Duranius Valley.”
Rufus lowered himself. For a minute he breathed hard. Then, piece by piece, he began to relax. A smile of sorts responded to Lugo’s. “My parents come o’ that tribe,” he rumbled. “My right name, uh, Cotuadun. Nobody calls me aught but Rufus any more. You be a sharp ‘un.”
“I make my living at it.”
“No Gaul you. Anybody might be a Flavius, but what’s ‘Lugo’? Where you from?”
“I’ve been settled hi Burdigala a fair number of years.” A knock on the plank door was handily timed. “Ah, here comes the excellent Perseus with those refreshments I ordered. I daresay you’ve slightly more need of them than I do.”
The majordomo brought a tray of wine and water flagons, cups, bread, cheese, olives in a bowl. He put it on the ground and, at Lugo’s wave, departed, closing the door behind him. Lugo sat down on the bed, reached, poured, offered Rufus a drink not much diluted. His own he watered well.
“Your health,” he proposed. “You pretty near lost it today.”
Rufus took a long swallow. “Ahhh! Bugger me if that don’t go good.” He squinted through the dusk at his rescuer. “Why’d you do it? What be I to you?”
“Well, if nothing else, those proles had no right to kill you. That’s the job of the state, after you’ve duly been found guilty—which I am sure you are not. It behooved me to enforce the law,”