Read Online A Roman Ransom by Rosemary Rowe - Free Book Online Page A

is absolutely the reverse of what I would advise. He’s given in to their demands, without making the least attempt to find out who they are, and he has no guarantee that they will do anything they promise. We don’t even know how the kidnapping was done. He has consulted the chief priest of Jupiter, whom I can hardly contradict, and I don’t see how I can help at all. And my head is aching dreadfully, as well.’
    ‘My poor husband.’ She came over and patted my pillows with her hands. ‘It is time for you to rest. Don’t concern yourself too much. You just do what you can. Marcus cannot overtire you with his demands while Philades is on hand to take your part. And a few days up at the villa can only help your health. Philades as good as told us so.’
    ‘If that doctor had told you that it would improve my health to be dangled from the ankles in a stream, I believe that you would have it done at once,’ I grumbled. ‘I would rather do my resting here, with you and Junio to look after me.’
    ‘It will be a rest for me, as well,’ she said, and that so shamed me with my thoughtlessness that I made no more objections to the move. When the litter came (a substantial affair, a sort of bed suspended on a frame, with leather curtains all round it to exclude the draught), they brought it right up to the roundhouse door. I submitted to being bundled on to it – carried by four of Marcus’s slaves as though I were a sack of hay or corn – and wrapped in blankets like a newborn child. It was a lengthy business even then. The medicus fussed around me with his herbs, and I was forced to drink another horrid draught before I left. I did, however, score one little victory.
    ‘If I am well enough to leave the house,’ I whispered to Junio, as they prepared to lurch me to the door, ‘then I am well enough to have an oatcake. Give me one, and never mind what the medicus might think. I’m supposed to be your master, after all.’
    He vacillated for a moment, but then he grinned. He gave me a ferocious wink and as he tucked the blankets round me on the litter, he slipped a little oatcake into my hand and pulled the outer covers over it.
    ‘Don’t choke yourself,’ he whispered, as he dropped the curtain and gave the signal for the bearer-slaves to move.
    It is not more than a mile from my roundhouse to the villa, a pleasant enough walk on a summer day with the forest stretching round on every side, but this afternoon the journey seemed to take an age. A carried litter is a bumpy ride, even when the bearers are taking all the care they can. Today each rock and pothole and tree root in the path seemed to send a fresh shock through me, and even with my blankets I was shivering and cold. I was glad when we reached the junction where our little lane meets the main military road, and the worst of the swaying and the jolting ceased. We settled to a rhythmic steady bounce.
    After that it was just a question of enduring it. The doctor’s potion had numbed me to a dream-like state, but I did just manage to keep awake enough to work my right hand free and nibble at my oatcake till I’d finished it. I was not really hungry in the least and I hardly did it justice, but it was a gesture of defiance and somehow it made me feel a little more myself. Though a little queasy, too, in truth.
    I shut my eyes.
    At last the bouncing stopped. I felt a sudden draught and was aware of someone lifting the curtain, but by the time I opened my eyes again, the curtain had fallen back into place. I was in a semi-stupor by this time but I could hear voices some way off, and I assumed that we had halted at the villa gates. The impression was strengthened, a moment afterwards, when I felt the litter being lowered to the ground. I lay back, waiting for someone to come and lift me out.
    Nothing happened. More voices. I used my free hand gingerly, and lifted up the curtain at my side to see what was delaying us.
    We were still outside the villa. Very close