Her Roman Protector

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.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked.

“You are very easily impressed,” she said, “that or you haven’t been around many mothers with babies. Though when I think about it that seems odd since your mother has a house full of them.”

“I haven’t been here long,” Marcus said.

“Really?” Annia said. “I thought you were born and raised here.”

“Off and on,” Marcus said. “But I joined the service as soon as I could, a bit before my seventeenth year. I finished my twentieth year in the service this year and came home to plan what I will do next.”

“And what will that be?” Annia asked, hoping in spite of herself that it would be something close by.

Ironically, this man—who had come to her private abode with an armed guard to take her baby—made her feel safe.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “Now, tell me which sheep you want to start with.”

Annia turned her attention back to the sheep. It was clear he did not want to talk about his future plans.

Was it because there was a woman involved? Was he promised in marriage to someone?

It made sense. He was young and handsome enough to land any woman he wanted. His parents probably had the perfect young woman picked out for him.

Why should she care? She shouldn’t. But she did. She would like to know that this man, whose company she was beginning to enjoy, was not thinking about another woman.

Stop this foolishness. You will never remarry. You don’t want to. You aren’t interested in men. Marriage was the most miserable state you’ve ever experienced. You were forced to be with a man who didn’t love you, who said you looked like an elf, not a woman, who kept you only for your dowry.

She shook off that downhill spiral of thoughts, shed her stola and marched down to the stream clothed only in her tunic.

She found a sandbar and positioned herself on it.

“All right,” she said, “send in the first victim.”

Marcus walked into the pen and chose the closest sheep.

He positioned himself behind the dirty sheep and pushed her forward.

She circled back around behind him.

He tried it again.

The sheep circled around behind him.

He looked up to see Annia laughing at him.

“You think this amusing?” he yelled, positioning himself behind the sheep once again.

His yelling had an unintended effect. The startled sheep surged forward. He bolted with her, and all the other sheep followed.

The sheep lopped along wildly in the opposite direction from the stream.

“You make a poor sheepdog,” Annia said, laughing until tears streamed down her cheeks.

He ran to catch up with the sheep and tried herding them as if he were a sheepdog, barking orders behind them, “Move, go, go.” Finally steering them all back into the pen so he could start all over again and perhaps get it right.

Once inside the pen, he looked over at Annia, who was still laughing. “I think I can do it now,” he said, laughing with her.

This time, he was careful to position himself behind one sheep and slam the gate quickly behind himself before the other two escaped.

When the sheep made it into the stream, Annia wrestled her down into the deeper water, careful to hold her shaggy fleece so that she didn’t float away. Annia scrubbed the filthy coat as best she could, then guided the flailing sheep safely to the shore. She watched Marcus try to herd the sheep into her pen.

He ran like a crazy man, whooping and clapping to herd her.

When the sheep was safely fastened in her pen, he looked up at Annia.

“How did I do?” he asked.

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll make a sheep farmer out of you yet.” He really seemed to care what she thought. It made her happy.

“Just what I’ve always wanted to do,” Marcus said, “grow up and be a sheep farmer.”

She laughed, and he brought the next sheep out.

When all three sheep were washed and ready, Lucia, trailed by Julius, arrived at the pen with newly sharpened shears.

“I hate to send you back in again, but I forgot something. Can I get you to go back and get some old cloths to pat them dry?” Annia asked.

“I’m happy to,” Lucia said. “Going back and forth keeps Julius busy. He likes going on errands. It keeps him from straying.”

Lucia’s happy smile brought yet another pang to Annia’s heart.

She missed her boys.

Would she ever see them again?

Before she was divorced and sent away, the boys, at ten and six, were jolly, joyful things, always getting into scrapes in the back garden, trying to catch some bird or small animal for their make-believe wild jungle.

They’d heard of the wild jungle from some of the slaves. The boys had worked hard to make their own.

Tears smarted in Annia’s eyes.

Marcus noticed. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said, wiping the stray tear from her cheek. “Just missing my boys.”

“Your boys,” Marcus said, “they mean a lot to you.”

“The world,” Annia said.

Marcus thought of the brown-eyed child peering at him from the window at the top floor of the villa of Galerius Janius earlier this morning.

The child was loyal to his mother, that was clear.

There was nothing Marcus would love more than reuniting Annia with her two boys. His father might be right. Perhaps God called His people to help others, but only one at a time.

Right now he had to make a plan to get Janius off their trail. As soon as they finished shearing the sheep.

“You start with three shears down the belly,” Annia said after she had wrestled the first sheep to her back and wedged the sheep’s head securely between her legs.

Quickly and expertly, she sheared. “See?” she said. “First, you hold the skin taut with your left hand, and three quick shears, and you are finished with the belly.”

She held up the wool for him to examine, then tossed it beside her.

“This is the tricky part,” she said, and gingerly sheared between the sheep’s legs.

“Next, you roll her over a bit, and three more shears gets the back leg, then the tail, the neck and the shoulder.”

She cut expertly, and very soon there was a pile of wool beside her. After she laid the sheep down one more time and sheared up the back, she checked the sheep’s face for leftover hair, and the task was complete.

She made it look so easy and even fun that he wanted to try it. He wasn’t certain why, but suddenly it seemed important to him to please her.

She helped him out, but it wasn’t as easy as it looked.

“Look,” she said, flipping the sheep to its back, “now you stand over her, and secure her head between your legs, like this.”

She placed her hands on Marcus’s legs, parting them just enough for the sheep’s head, and then pulled the sheep between them, and with her sure hands squeezed his knees back together around the sheep’s head.

“See,” she said, looking up at him, “it’s easy.”

He tried to focus on the sheep. It wasn’t easy.

When she looked up at him to see that he understood how to hold the sheep, he opened his eyes wide and nodded. “Yes,” he said, a little too eagerly, “I get it.”

He could smell the sweet scent of her hair. Was that lavender?

He had forgotten the fragrant pleasure of women who smelled good. In Rome, the custom was a daily bath. Sadly, this was not true in the rest of the empire, and the smells of dirty human bodies had sickened him time and again as he traveled through crowded conquered cities.

But this sweet smell, sweet touch... This might be what he had returned to Rome for.

But no, he thought. She has three children, she is divorced—she is not what I planned.

Perhaps planning was not the answer.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had so enjoyed a morning. Watching Annia shear the sheep was something he would never forget.

She was a small woman, but she was strong and agile, made obvious by the way she was able to hold the sheep down to shear them.

The sound of barking dogs cut through his ruminations.

He checked Annia and was relieved to see that she was so busy with her shearing that she had heard nothing.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “We need bags for the wool.”

She nodded her approval without looking up, and he left.

The hair on the back of his neck was raised. The barking of the dogs did not sound normal.

Usually, they barked and were silenced by the slave as soon as the visitor entered the house.

But this time, he heard the dogs chasing someone through the villa, barking madly. The sound was coming closer. Marcus pulled out his gladius and ran.

He ran inside the walled garden and slammed the outer door securely behind him. He stood guarding it.

The only entrance to the back fields was through this wooden door. A stone wall surrounded all of their fields, built by his great-great-grandfather during a time when the empire was not yet an empire and fields were not secure from foreign invaders.

No one would get past him and through to Annia and her baby. No one.

A clatter of footsteps on the stone-and-marble floors, then soft padding as the intruders, followed by the slaves and barking dogs, hit the grassy garden.

“Stop. Stop, I say.” Marcus could hear two of the house slaves yelling at the top of their lungs, in hot pursuit of someone.

The first thing in his line of vision was a young boy, no older than ten, chased by barking, slathering hounds, followed close behind by a group of panting house slaves.

The boy feinted to the right and left and lost them around a curve of rosemary hedge. Marcus had to admire the boy’s skill.

Who was he? He looked so familiar.

No. It couldn’t be.

The boy caught sight of him, and ran at him, teeth bared, fists raised, ready for the kill.

Marcus dropped his gladius and held his hands out to catch the boy.

But the boy was more clever than that.

He pulled a knife from his belt, and now Marcus had to somehow wrestle the knife away from the boy without cutting himself or the boy in the process.

The slave that grabbed the boy from behind was unprepared for the blade, but the boy did not wish to waste it on the slave.

He aimed and threw, and had Marcus not looked up from the slave’s hands to the boy’s arm, he might have been hit squarely between the eyes.

The boy’s skill was undeniable.

Marcus ducked, and the knife pinged into the wooden door, quivering.

The slaves had the boy on the ground now, and would have made short work of him.

“Stop,” Marcus said. “Let him go.”

“Let him go?”

“Yes,” he said.

“But he tried to kill you.”

“Yes,” Marcus said, “I know. He believes himself to have good reason to do so.”

The boy struggled on the ground. “Murderer,” he shouted when his face was no longer buried in the dirt. “Kidnapper. May your skin be blighted and your children die in their mother’s womb. May your days be full of pain, may your death be horrible and your afterlife worse.”

“A mouthful for such a small boy,” Marcus said, whistling admiringly.

“I’m not small,” the boy said.

When Marcus signaled once again for the slaves to let the boy go, he ran straight for Marcus and would have gouged out his eyes had Marcus not been prepared for the assault.

“Go get Annia,” Marcus ordered one of the slaves.

“Who is Annia?” the slave asked.

The boy grew still.

“My mother?” he asked, his voice quavering.

“The new woman we brought in last night with her baby.”

The slave moved through the door behind Marcus.

“So you are the slave trader,” the boy said through clenched teeth.

Marcus held him securely, his arms crossed behind him. The boy was stronger than he looked, just like his mother, and just as quick and lithe.

“You look very much like your mother,” Marcus said.

“No,” the boy said.

The moment Marcus relaxed his grip, the boy slipped from Marcus’s grasp and bolted for the open door.

Marcus watched him run past the slave and into his mother’s arms, knocking her to the ground with the force of his crazed embrace.

Marcus knew they were both crying, and he called the slave off.

“Leave them be,” Marcus said. “They have much to talk about.”

Marcus walked into the villa, trying to remember what it was that had brought him in.

The bags. That was it. He needed bags for the sheep’s wool.

His father met him halfway down the villa walkway.

“I think we need to talk,” his father said, and pulled Marcus into his study.

“Who was the child?” his father asked.

“The son of Annia, the woman we brought in last night.”

His father looked past him into the atrium where water flowed peacefully into the impluvium from the openmouthed cherubs.

“I fear this child spells trouble for us all,” he said.

“Yes,” Marcus said, “but the trouble began before the child came, though he has certainly multiplied it. One of my men reported to me this morning that Galerius Janius—the man who ordered the baby exposed—does not believe she was actually exposed.”

“Do you think he will come looking for you?” his father asked.

“He already has,” Marcus said. “In the barracks. There is no danger of him following me home. The men don’t know where I live,” he added.

“And the boy?” his father queried. “How did he find you?”

“I think he must have followed me from his father’s house. I saw him watching us from the window when I reported to the father that the deed was done.” Marcus squirmed uncomfortably on the small wooden folding bench that sat in front of his father’s massive ivory-inlaid ebony desk.

“Do you think anyone followed him?” his father said.

“I don’t think so,” Marcus said, “though I can’t be sure.”

“Well,” his father said, “we must do what we can to protect the other women and children we have housed here. We can’t risk the lives of so many.”

“What do you propose, Father?” Marcus asked.

“They must go.”

“Go?” Marcus repeated. “But where?”

“Far from here,” his father said.

“Give me two days, Father. I think I might be able to come up with another solution.”

His father studied him. “You are an experienced soldier. Battle-hardened and wise. But something about this woman... Otherwise, why would you risk so many lives?”

Marcus felt his stomach tighten. “I know what it must seem like to you, Father, but I think that a better plan can be found. And you needn’t worry. She is not the right woman for me. But it is a matter of honor to protect her.” He believed his own words. She was not the right woman for him. But she was lovely.

“Make it fast, son,” his father said. “You have no time to lose.”