To Love Again - Bertrice Small [17]
Antonia had been recently chattering to him about possible matches to be made for his cousins, Titus and Flavius. They were already disporting themselves among the slave girls in their father’s house. The rumor was that one of them—and no one was certain which, for they were identical in features—had gotten a young slave girl with child. Their marriages could quickly mean children; another generation of heirs to the estate of Gaius Drusus Corinium.
And then there was Cailin. Her parents would soon be seeking a husband for her. She would also celebrate a birthday in the spring. At fifteen she was certainly more than old enough to marry. A powerful husband allied with his cousin Gaius—the thought did not please Quintus Drusus. He wanted the lands belonging to his benefactor, and the quicker he got them, the fewer complications he would have to deal with. The only question remaining in his mind was how to attain his goal without being caught.
Gaius and his family would have to be disposed of, but how was he to do it? He must not be suspected himself. No. He would be the greatest mourner at the funerals of Gaius Drusus Corinium and his family—and the only one left to inherit his cousin’s estates. Quintus smiled to himself. In the end he would have far more wealth than any of his brothers in Rome. He thought of how he had resisted the idea of coming to Britain, yet had he not come, he would have lost the greatest opportunity of his life.
“You look so happy, my love,” Antonia said, smiling at him as they lay abed.
“How could I not be happy, my dear,” Quintus Drusus answered his wife. “I have you, and so much else.” He reached out and touched her swelling belly. “He is the first of a great house, Antonia.”
“Oh, yes!” she agreed, catching his hand and kissing it.
Antonia’s sons, he thought, as he tenderly caressed his adoring wife. They were young, and so fragile. The merest whisper of disease could take them. It really seemed a shame that the sons of Sextus Scipio should one day have anything of his. But of course, Antonia would not allow them to be disinherited. Though she was not the best of mothers, she did dote on her children. Still, anything might happen, Quintus Drusus considered. Anything.
Quintus Drusus’s son was born on the Kalends of March, exactly nine months to the day his mother had married his father. The infant was a large, healthy child. Antonia’s joy at the birth of her child was short-lived, however, for the next morning, the two little boys born of her marriage to Sexus Scipio were discovered drowned in the atrium fish pond. The two slave women assigned to watch over the children were found together in most compromising circumstances; naked, entwined in a lascivious embrace, and drunk. There was no defense for their crime. Both were strangled and buried before the fateful day was over. Antonia was hysterical with grief.
“I shall call him Posthumous in honor of his brothers,” Antonia declared dramatically, large tears running down her cheeks as she gazed upon her day-old son. “How tragic that he shall never know them.”
“He shall be called Quintus Drusus, the younger,” her husband told her, slipping two heavy gold bracelets on her arm as he gave her a quick kiss. “You must not distress yourself further, my dear. Your milk will not come in if you do. I will not have my son suckling on the teats of some slave woman. They are not as healthy as a child’s own mater. My own mother, Livia, always believed that. She nursed my brother, my sister, and myself most faithfully until we were past four.” He reached out, and slipping a hand beneath one of her breasts, said with soft menace, “Do not cheat my son, Antonia, of what is his right. The sons of Sextus Scipio were innocents, and as such are now with the gods. You can do nothing for them, my dear. Let it go, and tend to the living child the gods have so graciously given us.” Leaning over, he kissed her lips again.
The nursemaid took