not even ask to see our bodies?”
“She said she had cremated you both, and even gave me a container of ashes. I interred them with your family,” he finished helplessly. “I thought you would want it that way.”
The macabre humor of it struck Cailin, and she laughed. “I suspect what you interred was a container of wood, or charcoal ashes,” she said, draining her cup and pouring herself more wine.
“How is it that you know Jovian Maxima?” he suddenly demanded.
“Because he bought me in the slave marketplace, and brought me here,” she told him coolly. “Are you certain you wish to know more?”
She was not the same person, he realized, but then how could she be? He nodded slowly, then listened, his face alternating between anger, pain, and sympathy, as she told her tale. When she had finished, he was silent for a long moment, and then said, “Will we allow Antonia Porcius to destroy the happiness we had, Cailin Drusus?”
“Ohh, Wulf,” she replied, “so much time has passed for us. I thought you would stay with the lands that were my family’s. I believed you would have taken another wife by now, and had another child of your loins. How could I have ever believed that we would meet again here in Byzantium, or anywhere on this earth?” She sighed, and lowered her head to hide the tears that had sprung into her eyes from nowhere, it seemed.
“So you went on with your life?” he asked her, almost bitterly.
“What else was I to do?” she cried to him. “Aspar rescued me from this silken Hades, and freed me. He sheltered me, and loved me. He has offered me the protection of his name despite incredible odds. I have learned to love him, Wulf Ironfist!”
“And have you forgotten the love that we shared, Cailin Drusus?” he demanded fiercely. Reaching out, he pulled her roughly into his arms. “Have you forgotten what it once was like between us, lambkin?” His lips gently touched her brow. “When Antonia told me you and the child were dead, I was devastated. I could not believe it, and then she was handing me that damned container of ashes. I returned to our hall and buried them. I tried to go on with my life, but you were everywhere. Your very essence permeated the hall, the lands! And without you there was nothing. None of it meant anything to me without you, Cailin. One morning I awoke. I took my helmet, my shield, and my sword, and I left. I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew that I must get away from your memory. I wandered the face of Gaul into Italy. In Capua I met some gladiators at a tavern. I enrolled in the school there, and once I began to fight, I quickly became a champion. I had no fear of death, you see. That fear is a gladiator’s greatest enemy, but I did not feel it. Why should I? What did I have to lose that I had not already lost except my life, which was now worthless to me.”
“And did you escape my memory in your combats, in a wine jug, or in the arms of other women, Wulf Ironfist?” she asked him.
“You have been ever with me, Cailin Drusus. In my thoughts and in my heart, lambkin. I could not escape you, I fear.” He held her close, breathing in her scent, rubbing his cheek against her head.
The stone that her heart had become when she saw him again began to crumble. “What do you want of me, Wulf?” she asked him softly.
“We have found one another, my sweet lambkin,” he told her. “Could we not begin again? The gods have reunited us.”
“To what purpose, I wonder?” she answered.
He tilted her face up to his, and his mouth slowly closed over hers. His lips were warm, and so very soft, and as the kiss deepened, Cailin’s heart almost broke in two. She still loved him! Worse. She loved Aspar, too! What was she to do? Unable to help herself, she let her arms slip up and about his neck.
“I no longer know what is right, or what is wrong,” she said helplessly. “Ohh, cease, Wulf! I cannot think.”
“Do not!” he said. “Tell me you do not love me, Cailin Drusus, and I will help you to escape Villa Maxima now. I will leave Constantinople, and you will never see me again. Perhaps it would be better that way.