Hadrian's wall by William Dietrich Read Free Book Online Page B

stone quay of Londinium. The handmaiden was the one bit of home Valeria had brought with her: nag, chaperone, and anchor. Savia knew Valeria's heart better than her mother did and cared more for propriety and promptness than Valeria did. The heaving sea had silenced the slave for two days. Now she was regaining her voice.
    "I'm waiting for a ferry suitable to our station," Clodius said irritably.
    "You're waiting the day away."
    Valeria looked to the city. Londinium appeared civilized enough, she judged. Masts bristled from a thicket of lighters along a quay crowded with bales, barrels, sacks, and amphorae. Beyond the parapets rose the domes and red tile roofs of a respectably sized Roman capital, greasy smoke creating its own pall beneath the overcast. She could hear the rumble of urban commerce and smell the charcoal, sewage, bakeries, and leatherworks even from the water. Somewhere within would be baths and markets, temples and palaces. A long wooden bridge crowded with carts and couriers crossed the Tamesis a quarter mile upriver. On the river's southern shore was marshland, and in the distance low hills.
    Such a gray place! So far from Rome! Yet the sight of it filled her with anticipation. Soon, her Marcus! She thought Clodius was making too much of the absence of the official barge, which was just the latest of the indignities any long journey inflicted on travelers. It wasn't as if her future husband could be on hand to greet them anyway. He'd be at his fortress, seeing to his new command. But within a fortnight…
    "We simply need to be prudent," Clodius stalled. "Britons are coarse. A third of the island remains unconquered, and what we rule remains rude."
    "Rude, or simply poor?" Valeria bantered.
    "Poor from poor initiative, I suspect."
    "Or by taxation, corruption, and prejudice." She was unable to resist the temptation to bait the boy, a habit her mother said was deplorable for a Roman girl of marriageable age. "And these Britlets of yours prevented Rome from conquering their entire island."
    It was supper-table talk picked up from the dining room of her father, and Clodius thought it slightly disreputable that a woman spoke so openly of politics. Still, he enjoyed her attention. "Rome wasn't stopped, it chose to stop, so built his wall to fence away what we didn't want and keep what we did." He took on a lecturing air. "Don't doubt it, Valeria, this is a promising place for a military officer like myself. Trouble gives soldiers a chance for glory. Marcus too! But I don't have to admire the cause of such trouble. By their very nature, Britons are rebel and rascal. The commoners, I mean. The upper class, I'm told, is acceptable."
    "You seem quite the expert for a man who hasn't stepped ashore yourself," she teased. "Perhaps you should stay on the boat. I could tell my fiance that Britannia wasn't up to your standards."
    In truth, Valeria was apprehensive herself, her teasing a mask for her own anxieties. She was homesick, though like any good Roman woman she wasn't about to admit such weakness. She barely knew Her intended husband, who'd seemed kind during their tentative meeting and quick betrothal in Rome but also big and quiet and, well… old. Certainly she'd never been intimate with a man. Never managed a household. Knew nothing about children. Was she ready to be a wife? Mother? Matron? What if she failed?
    "Obey your husband," her father had instructed her. "Remember that duty is the steel that sustains Rome."
    "Am I not to love him as well? And he to love me?"
    "Love stems from respect," he'd intoned, "and respect follows duty."
    It was the kind of admonition she'd heard a thousand times. Girls dreamed of romance. Parents plotted career and strategy.
    Valeria looked up at the wet sky. Early April, the landscape an eruption of green, and still this cold cloud! Was it ever truly warm here? Come winter she'd see her first snow, she was sure of it. She was as anxious to get ashore as Savia was, and tired of