Free The Sacrifice Stone by Elizabeth Harris Page B

that was why the marriage failed, I don’t know. But it seems likely; it was difficult enough to be the sort of husband she obviously wanted with my legionary duties to perform — and perform well at that, I wasn’t finished with promotion yet — without that other business. It gave me a guilty conscience, I suppose; although my logical mind accepted I’d done the right thing, a more emotional, susceptible part of me kept seeing that man die because I’d told the truth.
    I think Carmandua found me distracted, and I imagine I appeared unloving. If I did, it was unintentional. I thought I did love her, although I’m not sure now that I knew the meaning of love then.
    Anyway, lack of love or not, we had a son. He was the sort of boy I’d have ordered, if that were possible: gutsy, funny, sunny-natured yet with a stubborn, independent streak so broad that he and I came often to blows during his turbulent childhood. We called him Marcus, after my father — the old man would have appreciated his grandson. Carmandua and Marcus lived in a house in the settlement — a pretty decent house, too, I saw to that — and I spent what little time with them I could.
    Marcus was twelve when I finally came out of the Legion. By then, he was the only good thing left in my marriage, and, although I went through the official Roman ceremony that made Carmandua my wife in the Empire’s eyes, it was really only for Marcus’s sake. She and I were at loggerheads as to what we should do next: I wanted to take my family back to Italia, where my money grant on quitting the army would enable me to build up my father’s farm into something even more prosperous. Carmandua, predictably, said she had been a wife and a mother for enough years in her own homeland to have got used to it and she didn’t want to go anywhere else.
    It was stalemate. She didn’t want to leave, I couldn’t bear to stay on. It was partly my pride, I admit it — how would you feel if you had to go on living in a place where you’d been a senior officer, a man of importance, when now you’d been reduced to the status of just another citizen? Well, maybe you’re more tolerant than I am, but I had to go.
    To her credit, Carmandua agreed to give Italia a try. It was a brave decision, to travel right across the Empire when to date she’d been no further than a score of miles from home, and I did my best to make the journey as smooth and as comfortable as I could. Still, she hated the sea trip — if it’s true that both Caesar’s and Claudius’s troops baulked at crossing the water from Gaul to Britannia, my poor wife was equally terrified at leaving her homeland and sailing into the unknown. Not so my son: his excitement conquered his seasickness, and he’d have sailed the ship himself if they’d let him.
    I don’t want to dwell on our time in Italia. I’ll just say that, although the farm reached new heights within the first year and I could have been as happy there as it’s possible for a man to be, Carmandua didn’t settle. Never mind why — it’s too complicated anyway, and I, a mere man, can’t hope to understand how friction with her mother-in-law, lack of a common language with the local people and constant, unmitigating homesickness can make a woman so miserable. That’s what Carmandua said, anyway, although I think I did understand. Even though I didn’t love her, I felt very sorry for her.
    I don’t know what we’d have done, for in the event no decision had to be taken. One bright day, when Marcus and I had gone walking in the hills, he climbed one tree too many — ‘I’m stuck, Dad!’, he shouted from the top of its slender trunk, laughing at his predicament.
    ‘Idiot! And just what would you have done if your father were not here to help, hmm?’ I replied, heaving myself up from lazing in the sun to get him down.
    He made some daft joke about landing in trouble again for more ripped clothes, and we were still laughing when he missed his