Slave Princess. Juliet Landon
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eleven, so it had always been to her goddess she had turned more than to the older village women who would have claimed an intimacy more for status than genuine fondness. Friendships and rivalries were thickly intertwined in her incestuous society, and to stay on the edge was often safer.
Florian was setting out his other purchases for her inspection, delighting in each item as much as if they were for himself. He shook out lengths of linen much finer than anything Brighid had ever worn, soft, sumptuous, flowing rivers of fabric in white and cream, blue-green and palest madder-dyed pink. Draping them over her shoulders to judge them against her hair, he tilted his head to one side, then threw a heap of scarves over them to add sparkle, a deeper tone, a texture of fringes and tassels. ‘Do you know, domina,’ he said, ‘with that jewellery, this is going to look amazing. Quite unique. Nobody will be able to copy this look. Nobody.’
At last, Brighid began to see what the Tribune had seen from the start. At her father’s insistence, she had adopted other aspects of the Roman life, the language and learning, but never the appearance. Not until now, when nothing of her woollen plaid showed under the shimmer of fine linen, had she realised what the effect would be. As Florian continued to ply her with ribbons and braids, goat-kid purses and pairs of soft openwork sandals, the Tribune himself climbed aboard to see how his denarii had been spent, making Brighid’s heart leap to see his admiration, quickly concealed, and to hear his restrained compliment that she would surely raise a few eyebrows at Lindum.
‘Is that what you aim for, Tribune? To raise a few eyebrows?’ she asked, striking a graceful pose with arms full of cloth.
‘Yes, Princess. Why not? Better to be unique.’
Florian agreed. ‘But that’s exactly what I said, sir. Unique.’
Lazily, Quintus glanced at him without a smile. ‘Yes, my lad. And when you’ve finished in here, you can come and tell me what you’ve spent and how many extras you purchased while you were about it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Including that lad you brought back with you. He seems to think he’s a fixture. What’s he for, exactly?’
Florian coloured up, his eyes darting over the fabrics. ‘He’s … er … for me, sir. He helped me to choose the domina’s shrine and explained to me which one was Brigantia. And then we found that … well … that we liked each other. Sir. He’s very well spoken. Travelling down to Aquae Sulis, like us. I didn’t think you’d mind.’ His expression seemed to turn inwards. ‘And I don’t like sharing my mattress with people I don’t like. And if you’re going to be with.’ He glanced at Brighid.
‘Enough! You’re a rascal, Florian. I ought to beat you.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Give him something to do. I don’t want hangers-on in my party. He can stay as far as there and no further, so don’t get too attached to him. He’ll have to work his passage.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Now you and the Princess had better cobble something together before we reach Lindum. Use the green. Did you buy threads?’
‘I bought a workbox for the domina, sir. She has nothing.’
‘Hmmm! Right.’
It appeared, after Quintus’s departure, that Florian’s purchases were rather more extensive than he had implied, for the workbox contained several extras for Brighid’s personal use: scissors and tweezers, hanks of threads and needles, two brass mirrors, one large and one small for her purse, combs of bone and ivory, a pair of coloured glass bottles with stoppers, a pot of lip salve, two horn spoons and a bone-handled knife, two pewter dishes and bowls, a silk cushion, and her own Samian-ware beaker with hares chasing round the sides. And a basket-woven stool with a lid, to keep things in.
For her under- and over-gowns, no shaping was needed, each piece being little more than an oblong fastened together along shoulders and arms with small clasps, gathered into the waist with long ribbons that crossed over and under the breasts in a most seductive fashion. It being so different from her usual baggy shapeless garment, Brighid felt compelled to conceal various personal assets under the casual drape of a scarf. But Florian pulled it away, insisting that she need not be so coy when every fashionable matron would gladly show off what Brighid had, and more. ‘They bind themselves up,’ he said, admiring Brighid’s beautiful firm bosom, ‘to keep them from falling all over the place.’
‘Florian … please!’
‘It’s true. You go in and come out in all the right places. Why hide it?’
The notion was not unfamiliar. There had been women in the village who hid very little, women taken noisily to her father’s bed by night and condemned by day for their whores’ tricks. Yet his daughter he had always kept close and safe from all censure. Here, well away from his influence, he could neither approve or disapprove of how she looked. Here, she could be a woman at last. Now, it would be what the Tribune wanted, and secretly what she wanted too. The admission shocked her.
Taking the largest mirror of polished brass, which must have cost a good deal, she studied the transformation, the blue-green reflected in her eyes, the poised and shapely figure swathed in clinging folds, the gold-edged bands outlining her form, the fine white palla draped over her shoulder. ‘Good, Florian,’ she said, with a shy smile.
‘Like it?’
‘Except for the hair. That won’t do, will it?’
‘No. Sit over here by the light. We can soon fix it. Hold the mirror.’
With the heaps of cast-off clothes, fabrics and accessories piled around her feet, she sat and watched how he combed her waist-length hair, taking two fine plaits away from her temples to join the rest which he pulled into a large thick braid twined with ribbons. His hands were deft, and it was obvious that the art of dressing a woman’s hair was well known to him, and soon the braid was being coiled and pinned on top of her head in a sleek bun that accentuated the length of her neck. More than ever, the exquisite structure of her face and head were revealed, adding another layer of refinement to what was already graceful.
She knew without being told that, as a slave, she would not be dining with the Tribune or taking any part in the socialising. But from a distance she would be recognised as his woman, and she had agreed to play the part, whatever the cost to her pride. She would not shame herself by forgetting that she was a high-born Brigantian, for that was what he wanted her to be. A Princess. A prize worth having. Owned by him. Envied by others. Unique and rare. It was a compromise she never thought she might have to make when the man from the Dobunni had sought her for his wife only a few weeks ago.
Once she was alone again and the clutter of dressmaking packed away, Brighid turned her attention to her shrine, devoting the next slow mile to the one whose grace she felt had been forfeited for too long. In this, she exaggerated the situation, for Brigantia’s attributes were not only great wisdom but also the gentle arts of healing, culture, poetry and all things domestic, and surely there was no goddess better placed to look with pity upon her subjects than this northern deity whose Roman counterpart was the esteemed Minerva. Brighid herself knew of this exalted connection, but in the hillfort beyond Eboracum, it had meant little to her. She had been born on her goddess’s feast day, Imbolc, the first day of February, when any kind of Roman connection had been too far away to contemplate. Then, the goddess had been offered prestigious sacrifices as thanks. Now, Brighid had nothing to offer except the flowers and her devotion.
It seemed to be enough, for the peace that came with the goddess’s approval brought both tears and smiles to Brighid’s eyes as she blew out the candles for safety’s sake and then sat to consider her immediate future as well as possible uses for the tweezers. There was a limit to which this Romanising fiasco could go, she told herself, placing them at the bottom of her drawstring purse.
As mile after mile of flat land and vast skies flowed sluggishly past, putting time and space between everything that was dear to her, Brighid regretted the loss of the high tors, the