Soldier of Rome: The Last Flavian: The Artorian Dynasty, #4 by James Mace

Author:James Mace
Format: epub

Chapter XV: Weddings and Portents

Scene of a Roman wedding, taken from an ancient sarcophagus

The British Museum

Gavius Lucifer, it turned out, was now betrothed. On days when he wasn’t protecting the emperor, one of his estates, or observing the drills of his guardsmen, he looked to the next generation of the gens Gavii. Because he and Tiberius rarely saw each other, owing to their varying duties within the capital, it was a full month after the engagement that Lucifer finally broke the news to his young friend. This consumed much of their morning conversation as they took to their horses, following the Via Nomentana, just north of the Castra Praetoria.

“Please, tell me all!” Tiberius said with enthusiasm. “Who is she? Does she come from a good family?”

Lucifer chuckled softly. “Patience, my friend. We have plenty of time. Her name is Herminia. She is widowed but childless. Her marriage proved short-lived when her husband died of a painful stomach ailment scarcely a month after. He did leave her with a respectable sum. She’s lived in the house of her younger brother, Lucius Herminius, a magistrate in Ostia, these past ten years.”

“Ten years,” Tiberius echoed. “How old is she?”

“Thirty-two. A fully mature woman, though still well within child-bearing years. She and her brother are cousins to Tribune Vorenus, one of my peers within the Guard. He knew I intended to start a family and that his cousin remained a widow with no suitors.”

Tiberius scrunched his brow. “I don’t know whether remaining unmarried for so long, especially after so brief a marriage, speaks to her quality or her brother’s.”

“That occurred to me as well, and I questioned Vorenus about it. He said Herminia simply had no desire to remarry, thinking maybe the gods cursed her. I don’t really know. She lives comfortably in her brother’s house with his wife and children. Lucius has his own heirs and, so long as she remains unwed, he keeps Herminia’s inheritance from their father, which would otherwise serve as her dowery.”

“And how does he feel now that you two are betrothed?”

“Don’t mistake me,” Lucifer said. “He loves his sister dearly and doesn’t wish to impinge upon her happiness. But if she expressed no desire to marry, then he was in no rush to lose part of his family’s fortune. Vorenus introduced me to both of them simply as one of his newest colleagues. He kept Lucius occupied, leaving Herminia and I mostly alone. She’s quite agreeable with a fair countenance. She was more curious about my life along the frontiers. She wished to hear about the Rhine and Danube, if the rumours about Germans being giants was true, that sort of thing. The only awkward moment came when she learned I was with Legio XXI in Pannonia. To tell the truth, I don’t know if it was more difficult for her or I.”

“You once told me you would never run from your past,” Tiberius reminded him.

“Nor would I allow it to own the rest of my life,” Lucifer added.

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