The handsome Roman was still regarding her. He was younger than she had thought at first, and she liked his smile. “Where are you bound, maiden?”
“To the house of Macellius Severus, sir; these girls are to be given into his care -”
“Ah, so these are the children.” For a moment he frowned, then the quick smile once more lit his eyes. “We are well met, then. I am myself bound there; may I be your guide?”
He reached out one hand, and the older girl placed her small one within it, smiling up at him.
She looked at him a little dubiously, but he swung the child up to his shoulder, and hearing the little girl’s laughter, Senara decided that he must be of a kindly nature after all.
“You hold her as one well used to children, sir,” she-said, and though she asked no further, he replied, “I have three daughters of my own; I am well accustomed to little ones.”
So, she thought, he is married. Is he one of us? After a moment she said, “Tell me, sir, are you then a member of Father Petros’s flock?”
“I am not,” he replied, “but my wife is.”
“Then, sir, your wife is my sister in Jesus, and thus kin to me.”
His lips twisted rather sardonically at this, and she thought, He is too young to smile so bitterly. Who has hurt him so?
“You are very kind to escort me,” she said aloud.
“It is no trouble. Macellius is my father, you see —”
They were approaching a fine-looking house near the walls of the fortress, white-washed and tiled in the Roman style. The Roman knocked on the gate, and after a moment a slave pulled it open and they passed through a long hallway into an enclosed garden.
The Roman asked, “Is my father within?”
“He is with the Legate,” the man replied. “Go in and wait for him, if you will; he should be getting back just about now.”
It was in actual fact only four or five minutes till Macellius arrived. Senara was not sorry to see him, for the younger of the children had wakened and begun to fret. Macellius turned them both over to a buxom and kindly slave woman who would look after them until the foster parents he had chosen for them came. He thanked Senara, and asked her politely if she needed an escort to return.
Senara shook her head quickly. At the Forest House they thought she had taken the girls to relatives of their mother in the town. Returning with an escort of Roman soldiers would have put the fat in the fire for certain. It would have been nice, though, if the younger Severus could have escorted her home – she thrust the thought away.
“Will I see you again?” he asked, and a little tremor of excitement ran through her.
“Perhaps at one of the services.” Then, before she could make a fool of herself entirely, she slipped away through the door.
Julia Licinia never did anything by halves. One night in April she asked Gaius to accompany her to an evening service in the Nazarene temple in Deva. Though their marriage had become a polite fiction, she was still the mistress of his household, and Gaius felt bound to support her. He had considered divorce, but could see no point in hurting Licinius and his children in order to marry some other Roman girl.
He was not in sufficient favor with the Emperor to make an alliance with a family of his party, and to ally himself with the opposition could have been dangerous. Though the elder Macellius said little, Gaius knew that the conspiracy was growing. If the Emperor fell, all would be changed. It seemed to Gaius better to put off worrying about his personal future until he knew whether he had one.
Since the Nazarene temple had been, in part, purchased with the proceeds of the jewels Julia no longer seemed to wear, Gaius was curious to see what sort of value she had got for her money. By the time they set out they were quite a large party; not only Gaius and Julia, but the little girls and their nurses, and what seemed like half the household. “Why do we have to have all these people with us?” Gaius demanded, not altogether good-naturedly. He and his family would sleep that night at the house of Macellius, but his father did not have room for their whole staff.