quite.
Chapter One
Near Cremona, Italy
October, AD 69
We should flip a coin to see who gets her first,
Palakus said.
The tall barbarian soldier threw me a wink and a roguish grin as Ateas, his fellow commanding officer, scowled.
Beside me, Mother gasped and clutched my arm convulsively. Oh, Marcella! My poor, poor girl! You should have killed yourself when you had the chance! Before these two brutes have the chance to despoil you again…
Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. What will your uncle say when he finds out?
Lady Pulcheria, there will be no killing,
Ateas growled at her.
I understood his frustration. This wasn’t the first time we had had this conversation with my mother today.
And Mother's description of him as a brute was unkind, I thought. Even if the big, dark-haired man did look exhausted, unshaven, and thoroughly disgruntled.
He was also quite intimidating in his helmet and armor, an officer's red wool cloak stretched over his broad shoulders.
But as I now knew very well, he was anything but brutish. Neither was Palakus, his twin, who looked just as large and intimidating.
In fact, the two Skatha men had proven themselves unexpectedly gallant earlier today, when I had offered myself to them as a war prize in return for the safety of my mother and young sisters and our household slaves.
Ateas glared at his brother, who smirked back.
"And Marcella will share my tent tonight, said Ateas.
You'll have your turn tomorrow night, Palakus."
Palakus shrugged good-naturedly. Just as well,
he said, airily. I have patients to attend to, after all.
I remembered that he had mentioned he was the auxiliary unit's medical officer.
He looked at me and gave me a flirtatious smile that showed even white teeth. "Until tomorrow, dulcissima. Promise me you won't agree to marry my brother before then."
I don't think there's much danger of that,
I replied.
We'll see,
murmured Ateas.
I found his confidence disquieting, and I already felt off-balance after what had happened between us earlier today.
It was sunset, and we stood in the midst of a camp that had been set up in a big field next to the Via Postumia.
We had spent the afternoon traveling east along the highway, away from the huge cloud of smoke that hung over the walled city of Cremona, which had been our home.
A few hours ago, in the midst of my wedding to the loathsome Gaius Petronius Turpilianus, the city had fallen to the legions loyal to General Vespasian in the civil war currently racking Italy.
When we had fled the city, we had witnessed soldiers attacking citizens and setting fire to shops, houses, and apartment buildings as the victorious troops of the Third Gallica and Seventh Galbiana legions sacked Cremona.
When Ateas had called a halt for the night, the men had tended to their exhausted horses first. These now grazed peacefully beyond the cluster of tents of the hastily erected camp, in company with the mules that pulled the wagons.
Then Ateas and Palakus, as commanding officers of the auxiliary unit, had distributed the thin bronze plaques of honorable discharge from the Roman army, along with the plaques that granted each of their men Roman citizenship as a reward for their military service.
While they were doing this, to the accompaniment of cheers and boisterous jests in Latin and Skathi, the dozens of camp followers had unloaded the wagons and set up the camp with swift, practiced efficiency.
In short order, they transformed the large field into an orderly encampment with neat rows of tents. Some of the men dug latrines at a distance from the tents and lit the first cooking fires.
Uncertain of our status among the soldiers—were we prisoners? slaves? or honored guests?—Mother, my sisters Secundia and Tertia, and I, along with the other members of our household, remained in close proximity to Ateas and Palakus.
It had been a very long, very strange, and exhausting day for all of us.
Ateas and Palakus's men had fought a battle that had begun yesterday and continued all through the night, ending with the defeat of Emperor Vitellius's forces by the legions of General Vespasian.
Cremona had surrendered, and the victorious legionary soldiers, their auxiliaries, and a host of camp followers had streamed through the city's open gates. They had immediately begun to plunder, pillage, burn, and kill everything in sight.
With the looters had come the Skatha cavalry unit. They had found us first, and I had caught the fancy of the two Skatha commanding officers, Ateas and Palakus.
Driven by the dual desires to escape my bridegroom Turpilianus and to protect my mother and younger sisters, I had struck my bargain with Ateas and Palakus in return for safe escort out of the city and to the frontier settlement of Carnuntum, where my uncle served on the staff of the governor of Noricum Province.
The Skatha had kept their word. Protected by twenty mounted men and accompanied by our neighbors, who had also thrown themselves on the mercy of the Skatha auxiliaries, we had escaped Cremona unharmed.
Leaving the city in flames behind us, we had traveled for the remainder of the daylight hours along the Via Postumia in the direction of Aquileia, which lay to the east.
Since none of us knew how to ride horses, the members of our household had been packed into a large wagon amidst folded tents, looted furniture, and bags of grain.
Mother and some of the older slaves had spent most of the jolting journey in a state of shock as the walls of Cremona shrank in the distance, until only an ugly smudge of smoke on the horizon marked what had once been a proud and prosperous city.
Our majordomo, Stephanus, had sat straight and tall in the wagon, his graying hair ruffled by the breeze of our passage, tears streaming down his cheeks as his jaw muscles clenched.
My sisters Secundia and Tertia, not fully comprehending the magnitude of
