Gaius’s mouth slowly closed again. Eilan pregnant! Eilan, carrying his child! He remembered the sweetness of her mouth and the softness of her body beneath him and swallowed, scarcely hearing his father’s next words.
“I will not soon forgive you for putting me in a position where we cannot even make honorable amends, but, as things are now around here, I cannot even order you to marry her.”
“But I want to —” Gaius began.
Macellius shook his head. “The South would explode as it did twenty years ago if the people heard of it, a fact of which the old man is very well aware. He’s already wrung a concession on the levies out of me, and I daresay it won’t end there. But at least he shall not use you against me. I have told Ardanos you were in Londinium, and that, my lad, is where you shall go. I’ll give you a letter to Licinius, and with luck not see you again until you are properly married.”
Gaius heard him in disbelief. “Married? But that’s impossible!”
“We’ll see about that,” snapped his father. “Can you think of any other way to undo your folly? Ardanos has promised they won’t hurt the girl, provided you stay away from her, and I can’t think of any better way to make certain you never go near her again. You know that Licinius and I have talked of this, and dowry and settlements will be no problem. If she will still have you after this, you will marry that girl.”
Gaius shook his head, trying to find words to protest, and his father glared at him.
“You will.” he commanded softly but with so much concealed anger that Gaius did not dare protest. “I’ve gone to too much trouble to save you from your own folly to let you destroy yourself now. You set out in half an hour.” His father scribbled his signature on a roll of papyrus and looked up at Gaius. “If you refuse I don’t know what they’ll do to the girl. You might try thinking of her for a change.”
Gaius stared at him, trying to remember the Roman penalty for a Vestal who broke her vows; as he recalled, they buried them alive. He realized abruptly that nothing he could say would be taken as anything but self-defense. Indeed, he could endanger Eilan’s life. Fear for her dried up the words in his throat.
Macellius rolled up the letter, sealed it, and handed it to his son. “Take this to Licinius,” he instructed. “My orderly Capellus will go with you,” he added. “I have already sent word to him to pack your things.”
Within the hour, Gaius found himself on the road to Londinium with the massive figure of old Capellus at his side. All his attempts to begin a conversation were politely, but firmly rebuffed. When, almost desperate, he offered the man a bribe – he had to stop, to get word somehow to Eilan – the big man only snorted.
“No offense, sir, but your father told me you’d probably try that, and he paid me well to see you didn’t go nowhere but directly to Londinium. And I works for your father and I don’t want to be out of a job, see? So you relax sir, and do like the Prefect says. When you think it over, sir, it’ll all be for the best, see?”
The journey to Londinium took the best part of six days. By the third day Gaius’s natural optimism had begun to reassert itself, and he watched with increasing interest the neat villas that were springing up across the land. He could see now how untamed the West Country was still. But this ordered landscape was what the Empire was meant to be. He admired it, but he was not sure he liked it.
It was nearing dark when they passed the city gates and drew up in front of the Procurator’s mansion, set between the Forum, where the treasury offices were located, and the new palace that Agricola was building, with its ornamental pools. He had been to Londinium several times as a child, and when he assumed the toga and officially became a man, but never since Agricola had become governor there.