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“No, not home,” he said. Had he been followed? He was certain he had not. Possibly to Gamus’s shop, but nowhere else.
“You are an experienced soldier. I trust that you know when you are being followed. I trust you to protect this house.”
“Yes, Father. I am sorry,” Marcus said.
“We will hope that there will be no repercussions on this particular escapade,” his father said. “We will speak of it no more.”
“Thank you, Father.” His father was the paterfamilias and was owed respect. Marcus had no trouble showing that respect. He felt it deeply.
“Eventually, this place will be yours,” his father said, his tone no longer chastising.
Marcus was relieved. “Yes, I know that, Father, but you and Mother have many, many good years left.”
His father laughed at this. “Your mother would like nothing more than to spend the rest of her days here saving babies. I can’t say that I blame her. Her work is good.”
Marcus raised his eyebrows at this. His father noticed.
“Father, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not sure that saving a few babies is going to make a dent in the thousands of babies that are taken into slavery.” The words that had been swirling around in his brain had finally found a voice. Marcus felt uncertain about his thoughts.
“You may be right,” his father said, without judgment. “But we are called to help those within our reach. If everyone could just help those that are put in front of them, think of what a wonderful world we would live in.”
Marcus considered his father’s words. Was he right?
“When I was a young man,” his father continued, “I felt the same way you do, son.”
Marcus’s eyes widened in surprise. It made him feel better that even his father had doubted.
“But as I get older,” his father said, “I understand God’s call on our lives to be less grand and, instead, very personal. We are called to minister to the ones God puts right in front of us. And we are wrong to give up because we can’t save the entire world. We may not end infant exposure in the Roman Empire, but each life we save is precious.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Marcus said.
His father nodded. “I hope one day to retire to the estate in Britain. I wouldn’t mind going home to finish out my days.”
His father had been born in Britain, where his father’s grandfather had arrived with Julius Caesar and decided to stay. His grandfather had established a thriving trade between Rome and Britain, and maintained a villa in both places. Marcus’s father brought his mother to Britain to help manage the estate built on land that had been bought with olive oil. He liked the simplicity of life in Britain.
“How was our villa in Britain when you saw it last?” his father asked.
“Prospering,” Marcus said. “The crops were thriving, the sheep reproducing and making enough wool to make an army of capes.”
“If only we had someone who knew the secret of making those capes,” his father said. “We could make a fortune.”
They strode out the back garden and into the field beyond. Marcus wanted no listening ears around when he spoke with his father about Annia.
But his father was called back by a client and was forced to return to his office.
Marcus would have to wait.
He looked out over the fields, hoping to catch a glimpse of Annia. He wasn’t certain, but he had a feeling she would be drawn to the fields, and not to the work inside the house.
“Are you looking for something, master?” It was Basso. Her wise old eyes missed nothing.
“The young woman I brought in last night. Is she well?”
“Yes, your mother set her to work with the sheep.” Basso smiled.
“The sheep?” Marcus asked. It seemed an odd assignment.
“Yes, at her request. It seems she was raised in Britain and knows something about sheep.”
Marcus remembered the street skirmish. She had fought like one of the blue-skinned warriors, though minus the poisoned darts. He scanned the field but didn’t see her.
“Thank you, Basso,” he said. “Your flowers are, as usual, the pride of the family garden.”
She smiled appreciatively. “It’s a tricky business,” she said, “tending medicinal herbs. Some must flower to unleash their healing powers, and some must not. I have to be aware of each individual plant, and watch them as if they were a yard of two-year-olds.”
Marcus laughed, and Basso turned back to tend the flowering medicinal herbs in the inner garden.
He was glad she turned. Marcus didn’t want Basso to see his fast gait and guess how much he wanted to see the girl again.
But nothing escaped the notice of Basso. “Why so eager?” she called out to him.
Marcus had to smile.
“I like sheep,” he said, laughing.
“Is that it?” she said, and chuckled. “Go along with you, then.”
He walked to the sheep pen, but the only one there was young Lucia and her waterlogged toddler, Julius.
“Well, little Julius,” Marcus said, bending down to talk to the little boy who seemed not the least bit disturbed by his sodden state. “What happened?”
The boy stuck his thumb in his mouth and gazed solemnly back at Marcus.
“He fell in our spring-fed stream, and thank God, Annia can swim. She saved him.”
Julius sucked his thumb and nodded, waving his fingers for emphasis.
Marcus laughed, but was immediately sober. “How frightening that must have been for you,” he said to Lucia.
“Not really,” Lucia said. “The truth is, I didn’t even realize what had happened until Annia fished him out.”
“Where is Annia?” Marcus asked as casually as he could muster.
“I don’t know. She gave Julius back to me, said something about dogs barking and then snatched up her baby and sprinted for the olive groves. The woman is like no one I’ve ever met. She swims like a fish and runs like the wind. Who is she, really, and where is she from?”
“That, my friend, is a very good question,” Marcus said. The less the women knew about one another, the safer they all were.
“Well, when you find her, let me know,” Lucia said. “I need her to teach me how to take care of the sheep.”
“It looks as though you’ve got your hands full looking after your own little lamb,” Marcus said, indicating Julius. “Are you sure you don’t want to find something inside the inner garden to do? Might it be safer there for your little one?”
”Perhaps I should consider harvesting the flax. That field is the farthest away from the water,” Lucia said, shaking her head.
Marcus laughed and headed toward the olive grove. The silvery-green leaves and gnarled trunks comforted Marcus. He had spent many happy boyhood days in the shady grove, imagining himself a soldier.
“Annia?” he called, but there was no answer. He walked among the trees. Where could she be, and why would she be hiding?
The olives would not be ready to harvest for another two months. What could she be doing out here?
He thought again about what Lucia had said about Annia hearing dogs barking and understood her fear.
Just then he heard the baby cry, a tiny mew, followed immediately by Annia. “Shh,” she whispered, “it’s all right.”
She was very close.
“Annia,” he said, and heard her sharp intake of breath. “I am alone. No one else is here. The dogs bark at everyone who comes to the front gate for my father. No one knows who you are but my mother and me. Please don’t be afraid.”
Annia crept out from behind an olive tree, her infant in her arms. He wanted to comfort her.
“And how do I know I can trust you?” she asked, her eyes dark and serious.
“I don’t know how to prove myself to you,” he said, calmly, evenly, looking deeply into her soft brown eyes. “All I can say is you must try to trust me.”
His encounter with Janius gave him some insight into her fear. Most of the women felt safe and secure behind the thick concrete-covered stone walls of the villa. He wondered if Annia would ever feel safe.
She looked at him warily. Then glanced beyond him—it seemed she needed to verify the truth of his words.
Her gaze returned to study him. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “I think I can do that.”
He relaxed a bit and was suddenly overcome with a very uncharacteristic lack of assurance as to what he should say next.
But she spoke for him. “Now,” she said, “why don’t you come help me shear some sheep?”
Just like that, she shifted from a frightened deer to a cheerful companion. He admired her verve.
He laughed, and tired though he was, he followed her to the sheep. There would be plenty of time for sleeping in the afternoon. For now, he was going to enjoy her company and maybe learn something about shearing sheep.
And he was going to think of a way to put Janius off the trail of this woman and her baby. Permanently.
Chapter Five
The presence of Marcus calmed her, and she was able to focus on the task at hand. Shearing sheep.
The shears were dull. Annia sent Lucia to the kitchen with them and a request to have the cook sharpen the shears with her stone.
Lucia was happy to get Julius as far away from the stream as possible.
Meanwhile, Annia directed Marcus in the fine art of sheep bathing.
“We have to bathe them before we shear them,” she said. “We need to get rid of all the excess matter in their coats that might dull the shears.”
Apparently, whoever had been in charge of the sheep had not paid attention to this nicety.
“That sounds reasonable,” Marcus said, nodding agreeably and awaiting further instructions. She liked that he was willing to learn from her. Most men resisted instruction from a female.
“Where is your sheepdog?” Annia asked.
Marcus seemed surprised by the question. “I think all the dogs are in the atrium,” he said.
“Not those dogs,” Annia said, “your sheepdog. The one that is trained to herd sheep.”
“I don’t think we have an actual sheepdog,” Marcus said. “Our coin comes from olive oil, not sheep. I think all of our sheepdogs are in Britain.”
She raised a quizzical eyebrow but didn’t have time to question him further about her homeland. Instead, she had a challenge in front of her. One that was proving to be more difficult than she expected. She tried to remember if she had ever bathed sheep in a stream without a sheepdog helping her.
She hadn’t.
“Well, it looks as though you’re chosen,” she said to Marcus.
“Chosen for what?” he asked.
“To be the sheepdog,” she said.
She hoped he was as affable as he pretended to be. If not, this was going to get very interesting very quickly.
“You are going to run behind those bedraggled creatures you call sheep and drive them, one at a time, into the stream.”
He looked at her for a moment and then burst out laughing. “You want me to play the sheepdog?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
Marcus shook his head. “I’ve done many things for women. But never this. Pretending to be a sheepdog to these bedraggled sheep?” he said, cocking his head to one side and grinning.
”Yes,” she said, then continued her instructions. “When I finish giving the beast a quick dunk in the spring, you are going to need to drive her right back into the pen.”
Marcus grinned. “Are you trying to make a fool out of me, or is this what must happen?”
Annia smiled. He really had never worked with sheep.
“Well, you may look a little foolish,” she said, “but the sheep will be washed and ready for shearing.”
Annia was quick to fashion a hanging cradle for baby Maelia.
First, she removed the bronze pin that secured the long, blanketlike palla to the shoulder of her short-sleeved shift, her stola.
Scribonia’s gift, the palla, was long and octagonal, made of a finely woven lightweight wool. It was perfect for fashioning into a makeshift cradle on the lowest branch of an ancient olive tree that grew alone a few yards from the stream.
She felt Marcus’s admiring eyes on her makeshift cradle, and had to laugh.
