Epilogue

Eleven Years Later

The servants were loading the last of the trunks, and the villa stood almost empty, looking somehow smaller than Emma had always thought, shrunken. She stood out of the way, dressed for traveling in a hooded mantle and stola and gartered leggings, blonde braid falling down her back. Couldn't decide if she wanted to gather up every memory of this place that she could, or close her eyes and never look back. Even if they did return to Rome at some point in the future, it was unlikely they'd be living here. Emperor Hadrian was dead, had died last month, and his successor, Antoninus Pius, was determined to expand the fortunes of the empire in far-off Britain and Caledonia. For this he needed a new territorial governor, and for that he needed competent administrators. When he asked David Aurelius, it was not precisely a request.

Emma was well aware that this apparent honor did not come without a sting in the tail. Well-respected, long-serving praetors urbanii were not plucked from the heart of Rome and banished to the back of beyond, in one of the empire's most peripheral provinces, unless there was good reason for it, and as Antoninus had otherwise left intact most of Hadrian's bureaucracy, she suspected that Gaius Flavius Cassianus' hand was pulling the strings. But so it was. David was named the new governor of Britannia, and they faced a long overland journey north to Londinium, the trading post and bustling merchant colony that served as the capital. Emma knew very little about their destination except that it was said to be foggy and green and temperate, a stark change from the sun and sea and heat of Rome, a thousand miles and a thousand more, everything she had ever wanted in leaving, to see the furthest corners of the empire. And yet when it came –

She was crying again. She smudged the heel of her hand angrily across her eyes, swallowing hard. When her father first told her the news, she'd objected to leaving, but he had gently told her that he and her mother thought it was best, it truly was, that she accompany them to Londinium and leave the past in the past. And David Aurelius was paterfamilias, had power over his children as long as he lived, and hence Emma could not legally refuse. Perhaps it was for the best, after all. She was almost thirty, unwed, clearly an old maid, used goods. A fresh start couldn't be the worst, somewhere nobody knew them, knew her. It was just –

She didn't want to leave her son.

Foolish, she reminded herself. Foolish. Marius Henricus Maximinus had just marked his tenth year, a lively and engaging and precocious boy with a mop of black hair and dancing blue eyes, doted on by the childless, well-to-do plebeian couple who had adopted him at birth. He knew Emma only as the noblewoman who had taken an interest in his patronage and education, and would see him on festivals and feast days, or on a few occasions when she came to call on his parents. He had no idea about the rest of it. How she'd carried him for nine long and lonely months in seclusion at the villa, almost as if she was in prison, far away from the watching eyes and gossiping tongues. Watched her belly grow, felt him kicking, brought him forth in blood and pain, then been told that it was best for everyone that she not see him again. To give him his best chance, he would never know that he was born the bastard son of a scandal and a slave. He could still grow up and contribute fruitfully to Roman society, without that cloud hanging over his head. It had taken her two years to argue for even being able to see him, strictly as his patroness.

Young Henricus would never know. No one would. How for months afterwards her body had been raw and agonized and tender and throbbing, knowing only that it had borne a child and then lost it; she hadn't even held the baby before they took him away, not wanting to make it worse. Gods, she had been naïve. There was no way not to. But this – leaving and knowing that she might never have another moment with him at all, ever again – was the worst.

She didn't even know if it was possible for her to start over in Londinium. It had been so long since she had even tried. After she had returned from her exile, it was to be greeted with the news that Baelius had been shipped off to Gaul in some official capacity or other, with vague promises and excuses about the wedding being postponed until he was prepared to support her in fitting style. Thus it went on for over a year, until the news finally arrived that the wedding was now postponed forever due to Baelius heroically perishing in a border skirmish against the Goths. To her confusion, Emma had grieved. Perhaps it was due to her feeling so lonely that even he would have been some company. Yet every time she thought about coming out from behind the walls that grew higher all the time, she couldn't face the prospect.

And so, year after year had gone by. One much the same as the next. She became ever more a hermit. Did not want anything to do with high Roman society, with her mother's insistence that they should try to find her a new match before she became altogether too old, with anyone's well-meant efforts to break her out of her shell. Sometimes it felt that all she was living for were those few scattered days with Henricus. Leaving him hurt more every time.

Aye, then. She should go. Eleven years had passed. Even if Killian had made it back to his homeland alive, he was either wed to another woman or dead in a ditch, slaughtered as a Celtic rebel. Like as not, he barely even remembered her. Londinium was far closer to Hibernia than was Rome, but Emma couldn't think of that. It would only hurt her more. There was a hope, the faintest thread, that she'd reach Britain and somehow find him, that he'd hear of the new provincial governor's name and put two and two together, but that was nothing more than a girlish fantasy. She couldn't believe it. Couldn't let herself. Even if, after all this time, she had never stopped loving him. Never would.

The last things were aboard. It was time to go. She swallowed shakily, bracing herself, then was interrupted by a sudden, boyish shout. "Mistress Aurelia! Wait!"

Her heart choked her throat. She turned around, clutching her fingernails into her palm, to see Henricus running toward her, his adoptive parents strolling behind. "Wait," he panted again. "I wanted to say farewell before you go."

Emma, not trusting herself to words, nodded. She knelt to his level, grasping his shoulders, and looked into those blue eyes that gazed back so innocently, unwitting. "Be good," she told him. "I'll return to Rome in a few years, you know, and I'll want to see that you're making good progress in your studies, your plans to be a general and command a legion."

"Aye." Henricus nodded earnestly. "I'll be a great warrior, a hero. I'll make you proud."

I am sure you will. I am sure. "Listen to Mistress Milia," Emma managed. Regina had announced that the rest of them could do as they pleased, but under no circumstances did she intend to exile herself to the backwater of Britannia. One of the few who knew the truth of Henricus' birth, she had taken an unexpected shine to the lad and had promised Emma that she would be as a second mother to him. "She'll be sending me letters, on how you're faring."

Henricus nodded sadly. "I know. I still wish you didn't have to go."

Emma searched his face, tried to find anything, any words a ten-year-old boy could hear, anything he could know without destroying his world. When he's older, she told herself. When I return. But to hell with protocol, with appearances, with the gestures a patrician noblewoman should make to a plebeian's son, she reached out and gathered him into a brief, hard embrace. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding tight, and she closed her eyes as her shoulders shook, hot tears seeping out under her lashes. In that moment, the world could have ended and she would not have cared, but eventually it had to go on. She let go and stepped back and managed a smile for him. "Be good," she whispered again. "Be good."

Henricus nodded, looking somewhat tremulous himself. Emma looked and looked, trying to cram all those missing years into the span of a few moments, but at last she had to turn away. Pulling up her hood to hide the tears still streaming down her face, she crossed the courtyard and climbed into the cart with her parents. Watched and watched as her son grew smaller and dwindled, waving until he was out of sight, as they rolled down Palatine Hill for the last time and out toward the great city gates, carts and beasts of burden, slaves and soldiers, setting out on the two-month journey to Britain. With the sunlight beating down, out of this life and this moment, moving on for the next one, with all the open road ahead of her.