She Walks in Shadows(52)

We approached the fort in silence. Engatius did not enjoy being shown up by anyone, let alone a slave girl. He nudged his horse to a trot as soon as he glimpsed the first man-made structure — a row of wooden hovels leaning drunkenly upon each other — and pranced on ahead. Saddlebags weighted with wine and food slapped against the flanks of his white mount.

A garrison had been dispatched here in the warm summer months, when days were long and game plentiful. It was spring now and as best I could tell, the legionnaires had not finished erecting the vicus, nor bounded the stables with more than a few rickety planks. The granary was a squat stone enclosure, waist-high, lacking a roof.

I would have thought my understanding of our destination wrong, were it not for the two watchtowers overlooking the sod wall, or the praetorium between them.

Engatius dismounted into a puddle. In Calleva, where Engatius had purchased me, roads were paved and awnings shaded the doorways of the poorest homes. We would have been hard-pressed to skulk to the door of a villa without some servant to intercept us.

Here, the Doctor rapped his knuckles against the wooden door three times before there was the slightest inkling of human life.

“Who’re you?” A soldier’s silhouette filled the gap. His uniform had seen better days. Dark patches pocked the bronze plate and his woolen tunic was torn at the sleeve. Although he towered over Engatius, the grip he held on the hilt of his sword was that of a frightened recruit.

I wondered which of the North’s many dangers could instil such dread in a grown man.

“Marcus Engatius, physician and friend to your general. Is … he not here?”

One of the horses whinnied.

The soldier’s gaze locked onto mine. Contempt was the prevailing Roman sentiment for my people, but I saw surprise in the legionnaire’s eyes, as though he could not fathom what might bring a plainly Pictish woman back to her ancestral home.

“May we come in?” Engatius entreated, shivering at our host. “We’ve been riding with the rain for days.”

That broke the soldier’s fascination with me. He welcomed the Doctor inside and directed me to the stables.

As soon as the door swung shut, I led the horses around the villa and freed them of their saddlebags behind a small shed. A wooden plank kept the worst of the rain from their heads. Damp scrub grass would do to feed them.

I wanted the animals near. Something about this thick, oppressive night made me both anxious and excited. This was the closest I’d come to the Highlands since I was a girl. I could all but smell the pine and heather.

Inside the villa, a different scent pervaded — that of corruption and death.

Calleva had accustomed me to scores of slaves bustling in and out of kitchens, baths and bedchambers. Their absence spiked my pulse. I took stock of the foursome of soldiers in the atrium and felt their eyes creep down my body with equal circumspection.

Just as I gathered my courage to ask where I might find my master, Engatius’ voice echoed through the silent villa.

“Seonag, I need you!”

Relief washed over me. I tracked the Doctor’s inimitable timbre through the tablinum with its carved writing tables and padded stools. The courtyard beyond it was striated with the shadow of sandstone colonnades, yet the fish ponds reflected only darkness, a faint flicker of movement trapped in the shimmering pools.

Weighted down with our saddlebags, I shambled awkwardly across the tile floor, momentum carrying me past the bedchamber door before I could ask permission.

“Stop right there,” a stern voice reprimanded.

The brutal slam of a wide palm to my ribcage halted me in my tracks. Its owner glared with brown eyes set in a scarred, indubitably Roman face.

“Let her through, General,” Engatius urged. “She has my potions. Your wife needs smelling salts. Has she been ill long?”

“Every night since ….” The Roman caught himself. “Yes, a while. The trance takes her at midnight.”

At once forgotten, I skirted around the General to bring my master his medicaments.

The bedchamber was a small room with a wide entrance and a vaulted ceiling. A bedroll in the entryway told me a slave had been assigned to the General’s wife. There was no trace of her now. The mistress of the house lay on the bed, her eyes moving rapidly behind closed lids.

“Spirit of Hartshorn,” the Doctor told me sharply.

I rummaged through the bags, my fingers combing through powdered lemon plant, rose petals soaked in wine, dried laurel, poppy seeds, aniseed to treat the bite of a scorpion — and yes, finally, the blue vial of liquid Hartshorn.

Marcus snatched it from my hand and uncorked the concoction. He was comparatively tender with the General’s wife, holding her head up so she might inhale.

Her nostrils flared.

The General cleared his throat. “They tell me sometimes, she wakes in a cold sweat. Sometimes, not at all.”

“‘They?’” I repeated, before I could quell the impulse.

The furrow between the General’s brows deepened. “The slaves.”

“Have they abandoned you?”

He crossed his arms across a barrel chest. “Is this relevant?”

“I think she’s coming around,” announced Engatius, in a tremulous voice.

Indeed, the General’s wife blinked her eyes open with some effort. Her sinister kohl-black gaze found mine first, then her husband’s.