A Prisoner of Privilege by Rosemary Rowe

Author:Rosemary Rowe [Rosemary Rowe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

I need not have been concerned. ‘The litter is already paid for, citizen,’ one of the bearers told me as they set me down before the fortress gate, ‘Your slave has seen to it. His Excellence Marcus Septimus gave him the wherewithal, he said.’

Evidently that had impressed them (or perhaps it was simply my attire) because they didn’t try to charge me a second time – which they almost certainly would otherwise have done! I thanked them with a smile – though if they were hoping for a tip, they were disappointed. My poor purse was empty, by this time, except for that little phial in its leather pouch.

But I watched the litter thoughtfully as it picked up another citizen and trotted off again. Marcus was famously careful with his cash. Yet he’d paid for me to have a chair, when I could fairly easily have walked. He must be very keen indeed to have me here. And keen to have me soon. I turned towards the guard post at the gate.

I had not been at the garrison since the old commander left, and I was interested to see what changes there might be. From here, of course, there was no difference at all. The same surrounding walls, the same guard tower and rows of barrack roofs just visible within.

The only major alteration was in how I was received. Today I was greeted with courtesy by the man on sentry watch, and an escort orderly was promptly found for me. (I’d half-expected that, since I was not only togate, complete with fancy stripe, but announced by Fauvus – who had panted up at last, and who just had time to form the words before he was required to wait outside – as ‘Duumvir Libertus’.) But once inside the walls I was on familiar ground, conducted along the customary road, through the usual arch and into the same guard tower I had visited before.

The dimly lit guardroom on the lower floor into which I was ushered was also exactly as I remembered it. The same hard wooden bench for visitors beneath the window-space (there was even someone else already waiting there); the same bunch of off-duty junior officers warming their chilled fingers by the fire; and one of their fellows who had not yet been relieved, busily at work – at one of the same tables, on one of the same uncomfortable stools – scribbling a requisition order on a piece of bark paper. So far, so precisely as it was last time I came!

There was, however, one startling difference – so significant that I had to look twice to make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me. But there was no mistake – the person occupying the bench for visitors was none other than my patron, Marcus Septimus.

‘Master!’ I let out an involuntary cry. I could not repress it – I was so shocked to see him sitting there, waiting like any common citizen.

His Excellence has privileges due to

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