“This is February,” I reminded him. Though we were too near to the straits for snow, the chill had settled in my bones. The villa he had rented for me was damp and draughty—a house built by people who refused to believe it would ever get cold. Not surprising, I thought glumly, since the town of Drepanum, just down the coast from Nicomedia and across the strait from Byzantium, was a popular resort to which the court escaped during the summer heat. In winter, it had only the spa with its hot springs to recommend it.
“Britannia is colder—” he began, the plates of his cuirass creaking as he turned. I had not yet become accustomed to how he looked in uniform, but it was clear to me that the merchant he had played in Eburacum was only half the man Constantius was meant to be.
“In Britannia,” I retorted, “they build their houses to keep out the cold!”
“It’s true that it was summer when I was here before,” he capitulated, looking through the opened shutters at the rain that was dimpling the waters of the lily pool in the atrium. For most of the past two months it had rained. He turned to me again, suddenly serious.
“Helena, did I do wrong to take you from your homeland and drag you all the way here? I was so accustomed to the army, you see, and all the officers’ wives who have travelled with them from post to post all over the Empire, I never thought that you were not bred up to this kind of life, and might… not…” He shrugged helplessly, his eyes fixed on my face.
I swallowed, searching for words. “My love, you must not mind my complaining. Don’t you understand? You are my home now.”
His bleak gaze brightened, like the sun breaking through clouds. I had a moment to admire him, then he took me in his arms, carefully, for we had already learned that his armour could leave bruises, and for the moment, I was not cold any more.
“I must go,” he said at last, murmuring the words into my hair.
“I know…” Reluctantly I stepped away from his warmth, trying not to remember how soon he would be gone indeed, on the Palmyran campaign. The overlapping plates of the cuirass scraped slightly as he bent to pick up his heavy coat. I noted with sour satisfaction that it was a byrrus, the hairy, hooded kind we made in Britannia.
“By the time you reach the city, you will be wet through,” I told him, not entirely sympathetically.
“I’m used to it,” he grinned back at me, and I realized that not only was this true, but that he actually , liked confronting the weather.
I accompanied him to the entry and opened the door. Our house was halfway up the hill above the main part of the town. Tile roofs and the marble columns of the forum gleamed through drifting veils of rain. Philip was holding Constantius’s horse, an old woollen mantle drawn over his head against the rain.
“I am sorry, lad—I did not mean to keep you waiting!” Constantius reached for the reins. As he started to mount, there was a squeak, and the horse, a skittish chestnut gelding, tossed its head and swung away. Constantius wrestled it down, and Philip made a step with his laced hands so that his master could swing a leg over the beast and settle himself between the horns of the military saddle.
But I was no longer watching. That odd squeaking noise had come again, or perhaps it was a whimper. My searching gaze fixed on a pile of debris swept against the corner of the wall by the overflow from the gutter. Had it moved, or was it only the wind? I picked up a twig blown down by the storm and bent to poke at the pile. It quivered, and suddenly I was staring down at a pair of bright black eyes.
“Helena, take care! It might be dangerous!” Constantius nudged the horse closer. From the rubbish came a faint but unmistakable growl. Bending closer, the debris proved to be a sodden huddle of hair, as if someone had lost a fur cap in the rain.