Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [165]
Porteus was not only moved. His imagination was fired: when she spoke, he saw in his mind’s eye visions of the desert from which her stories came, and trying to apply what he heard to himself, he gave her an account of his quarrel with Suetonius in such grandiose terms that he emerged from the story almost like one of her own ancient prophets crying for justice for his people; and the girl believed in him and loved him for it.
This experience was Porteus’s first and only glimpse of the religious and spiritual world; and though he only dimly understood it, he sensed its power. How different this small dark girl was from his wife; how deep her passion for her God compared with Maeve’s easy pagan ways. As the months passed and the affair continued, it seemed to him that his love for the Hebrew girl was unlike anything he had known before.
He tried to be discreet about the affair, but it was foolish to think that the other servants in the little house did not know; and one morning when Numex arrived unusually early and came in to wake his master, he found the girl in his bed. Numex said nothing. He quietly went out of the room, waited outside, and made no reference to the subject afterwards, so that Porteus did not know what he thought of it, or if he told anyone what he had seen.
But whether it was Numex who had talked or the news had travelled by some other route, it was not long before his love for the slave girl was known at Sarum, as he was to discover when he returned there after a longer absence than usual during the summer.
He did not hear it from Maeve. Indeed, his wife gave no sign at all that she knew he had been unfaithful. When he arrived, she greeted him affectionately and led him gaily into the house where she had prepared a splendid meal. She fussed over him and the children and that evening, when they were alone, she made passionate love to him.
Only one thing surprised him: Tosutigus was absent from their meal. Nor did the chief appear as usual the following day, and when Porteus asked where he was, Maeve told him that her father was busy at his farm and dismissed further questions with a shrug. The next evening the same thing happened – and now there could be no mistaking the message: Tosutigus knew. But Maeve seemed unconcerned, and went happily about the house as though nothing were amiss, so that Porteus marvelled at her self-control. Two more days passed; he decided it would be wiser not to go to see Tosutigus, although by failing to do so he was indicating his own guilt; but the chief’s angry absence made him feel so awkward that he finally told Maeve that he must return to Aquae Sulis for a while. Still she said nothing, and when they parted she kissed him and waved goodbye with a happy smile as though they were lovers parting for only an hour. He admired her for it.
But when he had gone, her face took on a grimmer look.
She had learned about the affair some time before, not from Numex, but from others who had seen the pair together. At first, for several days, she had felt rage and mortification; then, to her surprise, she had experienced something else – a sudden, searing passion for him, as great, perhaps greater than any she had felt when they were first married. The thought of the other girl in his arms made her tremble and grow pale; she felt an aching pain in her stomach; she wanted him. She almost forgot her children now, and spent hours inspecting her own body, looking anxiously for flaws that would make him prefer the slave girl to herself. She was even about to travel to Aquae Sulis to confront Porteus and make him give up the girl.
But first she had consulted some of the older women at Sarum whose advice she had relied upon since her childhood and they had counselled her differently.
“If you throw out the girl, he’ll only find another,” they told her. “There are better ways of holding a man, other remedies.”
“What remedies?” she asked.
And carefully the wise old women told her what must be done.
When Porteus and Numex