Chapter Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The moment Alaric left, exhaustion hit Julia hard. She slept again; when she woke, it was full-on day. A tray of food was sitting on the table by the bed: fruit and soft cheese, bread and honey; a pitcher of thick, cold milk and one of sweet wine. Not long after, a large wooden tub was hauled into the room—large enough to fit a man and full of steaming water. Julia sank down in the tub, the heated water closing over her head.
She loved him. And he knew it now. He had not said it back, not in so many words, but— I’ll put in the ground any who try to come between us . Surely that meant what she thought it did?
She leaned her head against the edge of the tub. It was far too easy to lose such happiness—and then where would she be? She tried to force away her fears. That Alaric might die. That the Romans might come for her at last. That he might forswear her, betray her. Take another to his bed. Was this what happiness meant? Living in endless fear that she might lose it?
Carefully, with the ruthlessness born of the high court in Ravenna, she considered how to hold on to this love.
Let me make this place safe for you. He had not said he loved her, but that was something he had said. Julia understood there was danger. But surely not so much danger? He did not trust her or take her seriously. Perhaps if she showed Alaric that she understood the problems his people faced—she could change that.
She was about to sink back into the water when a sound arrested her attention. A thrown stone, striking the wall of the building. Someone outside was trying to get her attention.
Julia hauled herself out of the bath, pulled on a robe, and went to the window. A man stood staring up at her, his face hidden in the hood of a cloak. Even so, she knew him.
“Bromios! What are you doing here?”
“I’ve nowhere else to go. Your husband rousted Ataulf out of bed like a common thief and cast him outside the walls.” He held up both hands, prayer-like. “Julia, I am asking as a friend. Shelter me. Protect me. Speak well of me to your husband.”
“You don’t have to ask.” Julia cast her eyes over the fallen-in rooftops, to the great aqueduct, its crumbling arches looming over the labyrinth of streets. “But first I need your help.”
* * *
“He’s going to kill me,” Bromios muttered, for perhaps the twelfth time since he’d helped her climb down from the window. “He’s going to carve out my liver with a dull knife.”
“No, he won’t,” Julia soothed. “I’ll handle him.”
She could practically hear his eyes rolling. “I’d be better off in the wilderness.”
Julia drew the hood of her cloak over her head, praying no one would recognize her. The citadel gate rose up before them. Guards leaned on their spears, looking bored. They barely flicked her a glance before they were out and through.
The road down from the fortress took several careening hairpin turns to the city below. The cobblestones were uneven and slippery, worn smooth by centuries of traffic. Julia wondered how on earth she’d survived that gallop.
The buildings inside the citadel had been in relatively good repair. But beyond the protective fortress walls, the city had been badly damaged. The houses were hollowed shells, cloth stretched across walls to give some semblance of shelter. Filthy water trickled sluggishly through piles of trash. Everything smelled of rot and sickness. There were few people in the streets—those she saw had a starving, desperate look to them.
As they reached the bottom of the hill, Julia paused. A child stood at the mouth of an alleyway. She’d never seen anyone look that hungry.
Bromios sounded peevish. “Just where are we going?”
“There.” Over the roofs of the ruined buildings, on the other side of the city, the aqueduct loomed.
* * *
The sun had risen high in the sky by the time they managed to reach it. Past houses rotting on their foundations. Soaring marble homes stood next to charred wrecks with missing roofs, sodden cloth strung across teetering walls, barely keeping out rain. All the fountains had stopped running. Trash was piled high in the gutters and alleys, no cleansing streams to carry it away.
Even so, up close, the aqueduct was breathtaking. Julia loved its perfect symmetry—a man-made river encased in soaring arches in the sky, supplying the city’s lifeblood of fountains and wells. It was dry now, arches crumbling. Broken rock piled up at the structure’s base. Julia thought of its roots in the far-off hills, the pipes and the drop-shafts and settlement tanks. No doubt it was all badly damaged and in need of repair.
“I wonder what shape the higher levels are in.” Before Bromios could stop her, she was clambering up to the first archway, finding footholds in the rough stone.
“Julia, come down from there at once , or I’ll—”
She ignored him. The structure was rotten in places; several times her handhold crumbled and showers of rocks clattered to the broken cobblestones. It was not as dry as she’d thought—water dripped down from the heights above, dark and rusty. Even so, Julia was able to clamber up one level and stand under the first row of great arches. Bracing her arms against the stone, she stared out over the city.
It was breathtaking. As ruined as it was, this was her city now. From here she could see the broken rooftops, the warrens of streets, the great marble mansions all clustered beneath the far wall. Among the squares and plazas there were dry cisterns and fountains, laid out in lines over the city’s underground pipes. This was fixable. It was a thing she could do .
And if she succeeded, maybe she could prove herself to him.
“It’s not so bad up here,” she called down. “Come up and look for yourself.”
“Absolutely not,” Bromios said.
She turned back, glancing up to see whether it was feasible to try going up another level. But her attention was caught by a rising, agitated shouting in the next square over, beyond a line of crumbled buildings.
A seething riot.