Kelli Stanley - The Curse-Maker

We kept kissing while I kicked the door and laid her gently on the bed. Then my mouth traveled lower down her breasts to below her belly, until she objected.

“Ardur-what-no-”

“Shhh. Trust me, my love. Trust me.”

The happiness I felt when she gasped with pleasure, and gave herself over to it, helped cleanse some of the guilt and washed away a little of the pain. It was equaled later when we were both crying out, not with sorrow, but with a love that was our whole life. Toward morning, we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

* * *

I woke up before dawn. Gwyna nestled in the crook of my arm, hair tousled and curling on my chest. She groaned and stretched and opened an eye.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning to you. How do you feel?”

She blushed. “Like a loose woman.”

Some anemic moonlight filtered in from the small window. She sat up and stretched again, making a shadow on the wall.

I yawned. “You feel nothing like a loose woman. I’ve had a few.”

She threw her pillow on my face, and I reached up and pulled her down on my chest again.

“Ardur.”

“Yes, love?”

“What-what do you think happened last night?”

I sat up in bed, set her in front of me. “A fraud, Gwyna. Someone put Faro up to it. Someone’s trying to hurt us.”

Her face held doubt as if she were reluctant to let it go. That was the problem with cons like Faro’s. That’s what made them so evil.

“Darling-listen to me. None of that-none-was real or true. Please believe me.”

She lowered her eyes and shook her head. “All-all right, Ardur, but who-who knew about me?”

“Philo, for one. Sulpicia, for another.”

“Sulpicia? Philo, I can understand-I-I asked him about it-said a friend of mine-”

“He would’ve guessed it was you, and Sulpicia may’ve had-I don’t know-some similar experiences. Maybe she recognized how you felt. She seemed to-well, be sorry.”

Gwyna looked over at me with a little of her normal spirit. “When I want her pity I’ll ask for it.”

“The point is that they knew, and maybe other people-women-could guess. Everybody except your doctor husband, of course. Too busy sticking his head up-”

Her fingers brushed my lips. “Shhh. I don’t want to hear it. It’s over.”

“It’ll be over when I’m done with Faro. I’m sorry, but I think I ruined all the rest of our social life in Aquae Sulis.”

“What did you do?”

“I told Materna to shut her face before I shut it for her.”

She shook her head. “We can’t forsake appearances. That might be exactly what they want us to do. Give up going to the baths, give up Aquae Sulis. We can’t, Ardur. Or we’ll let them win.”

“That’s fine. We’ll go to the baths. I’ll wear a toga. But I’m still going to handle it in my own way.”

My jaw hurt. Gwyna ran a finger down my cheek. “Ardur-don’t put yourself in danger. I know you want to hurt Faro.”

“I don’t want to hurt him. I want to kill him.”

She lay stomach down on the pillow and propped herself up with her elbows. The view of her cleavage distracted me.

“What about Bibax? Where does he fit in?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t-goddamn it. Shit!”

“What is it?”

“I was supposed to meet Calpurnius last night at the spring. At the fifth hour.”

“You were busy at the fifth hour.” She gave me a half-smile.

My tongue was slow. “We were both a little-busy-last night.”

I set her in my lap. She wove her arms around my neck, and started to make a few noises when I buried my face in her breasts. Then a knock sounded at the door.

I looked at Gwyna, and she smiled. I was breathing hard.

“What?! What the hell is it?”

A thin voice came through the wood. “So sorry, sir-but there’s someone here-very important-need you.”

That’s all I got. Lineus was too well bred to be any louder. A lesson in deportment I never quite mastered.

“Just wait a goddamn minute!”

Gwyna climbed off of me and put her feet on the floor. “Go on, Ardur. It must be something serious. We have”-she leaned over and brushed her lips against my neck-“we have the rest of our lives.”

It felt almost as good to hear it as it would to prove it. I still grumbled when I threw on a dirty tunic and laced some sandals halfway on my feet. She was getting dressed more carefully.

“Go on. I’ll meet you in the dining room.”

I kissed her cheek, then opened the door with unnecessary violence. It made me feel better.

Lineus was hovering in the background. “Please, sir-it’s very important.”

“It better be. Who’s here?”

“A gentleman, sir. A Philo. He said you’d know him by that name.”

Philo? At my house? This early?

“What time is it?” I asked Lineus abruptly.

“Not even the first hour of morning, sir. He arrived just a few minutes ago.”

I grunted and strode into the dining room. Philo was sitting in a chair, looking immaculate as ever. Did he go to sleep like that?

The expression on his face was the kind you saved for the cases you couldn’t help.

“Arcturus-I’m sorry to wake you-”

“What is it?”

“It’s-it’s a priest.”

My stomach knotted up, and I knew what he was going to say before the words started to form, and then I saw them come out with a terrible kind of slowness, as if he were speaking underwater.

“They found him-just half an hour ago-in the drain. He’s been murdered.”

Calpurnius. Goddamn it. Cui fucking bono.

Philo walked beside me, stride for stride, echoing my own anxiety. There wasn’t much light to see by. Dawn was wearing black today.

The cool breeze from the western hills blew through the yellow dust and yellower leaves, sweeping them in flurries down the worn stone paths, toward the one place in Aquae Sulis everything ended up. The baths.

Bibax died next to them; Calpurnius died underneath them. Others died from deals made, curses cast, and money furtively handed over into a ready palm-all around the blue-green waters of Sulis. She must wonder why the hell she bothers.

The good doctor said little. The ragged light, playing hide-and-seek with the clouds that threatened rain, caught the fine lines in his face and dug them into crags. He looked his age today. I can’t say it bothered me much.

Octavio had fetched him out of bed in a panic. Philo had in turn fetched Papirius. No one knew who to blame for bringing Grattius. The three of them were waiting for us with various degrees of impatience by the large drain, along with a smaller man in filthy robes, obviously terrified.

The drain was typical Roman engineering-efficient, well built, and designed for maximum exploitation of resources. In this case, it let Papirius and company exploit the goddess.

My eyes traced the path of the pipes. Up above, somebody opened a sluice at the top of the spring. The sacred waters-carrying sacred gold and other donations to the Sulis Mutual Benefit Society-rushed through pipes and emptied into this drain via a wide terra-cotta channel. The drain was made large enough for men to walk through and clean or repair it-or pick up anything Sulis left behind.

Other pipes ran from the baths into the same system. I expected the spring was cleaned nearly as often as the pools were. No one bathed in it, but then nobody threw gold necklaces in the caldarium, either.

Octavio’s torch flicked orange light in everyone’s faces. I brushed it away, and it bounced on the brick walls and made teasing little shadows that promised to tell me what I wanted to know.

I asked: “Where is he?”

Papirius answered, distaste on his face. He clutched his long mantle, raising it several inches off the ground. The head priest was clearly not impressed with the temple sanitary system.