To Love Again - Bertrice Small [19]
“The Celtic festival you mentioned. It is celebrated the first day of May, master. There is no other spring festival of note.”
“How appropriate,” Quintus Drusus said with a brief smile. “I married my wife on the Kalends of June. Our son was born on the Kalends of March. Now on the Kalends of May I shall achieve the beginnings of my destiny. I do believe that the number one is a lucky one for me.” He looked at the two Gauls. “I will dim the lamp a moment. Go out by the garden exit, and behave yourselves. Both of you! You must have easy access to the house when my cousin and his family are here. If you have been causing difficulties, the majordomo will send you to the fields. You are of no use to me in the fields.”
In the morning, Quintus Drusus sent messengers to his father-in-law in Corinium, bidding him come, and to his cousin Gaius, inviting him and his family to the new Drusus’s name day and purification. It was not until they arrived for the celebration that Gaius Drusus Corinium and his family learned of the deaths of Antonia’s two older sons.
“Ohh, my dear,” Kyna said, kissing the young woman on both cheeks, “I am so terribly sorry. Why did you not send for me? My mother and I would have come. Cailin too. It is not good for a woman to be by herself in a time of such great sorrow.”
“There was no need,” Antonia said softly. “My little ones are safe with the gods. Quintus has assured me of it. There is nothing I can do for them. I must think of the baby. Quintus will not have a slave woman nursing him. I cannot distress myself lest my milk cease. That would displease Quintus very much, and he is so good to me.”
“She is mesmerized by him,” Cailin said in disgust.
“She is in love with him,” Kyna answered.
“I think it very convenient that Sextus Scipio’s two sons are now gone,” Cailin noted quietly.
Kyna was truly shocked. “Cailin! What are you saying? Surely you are not accusing Quintus Drusus of some unnatural act? He loved those two little boys and was a good stepfather to them both.”
“I accuse no one of anything, Mother,” Cailin said. “I have merely observed the convenient departure of Antonia’s little boys. You must admit that it can but suit Quintus that only his own child is left alive to inherit one day all he has gained.”
“Why, when you speak of Quintus,” Kyna asked her daughter, “are your thoughts always so dark, Cailin?”
The girl shook her head. “I do not know,” she answered honestly. “My voice within warns me against him, calls to me of some nameless danger, yet I know not what. I thought when he married Antonia, these feelings would evaporate, but they have not. If anything, they have grown stronger each time I am in Quintus’s presence.”
“Are you jealous, perhaps, of Quintus’s marriage?” Kyna probed. “Is it possible that you regret your decision not to wed him?”
“Are you mad, Mother?” The look of distaste on Cailin’s beautiful face told Kyna that she was definitely on the wrong track.
“I only asked,” Kyna said apologetically. “Sometimes we regret what we have refused, or thrown away.”
They were called into the atrium, where the family altar was set up. Proudly, Quintus Drusus bestowed his own praenomen, or first name, upon his son. Gently he hung a beautiful carved gold bulla about the baby’s neck. The locket, held together by a wide spring, contained a powerful charm within the two halves that would protect its wearer until he became a man. With the dignity befitting the patriarch of a great family, Quintus Drusus intoned prayers to the gods, and to Mars in particular, for this was the month of Mars. He prayed that Quintus Drusus, the younger, would live a long and happy life. Then he sacrificed a lamb, newborn on the same day as his son, and two snow-white doves to honor the gods so that his prayers would be favorably received.
Once the religious ceremony was over, the celebration and feasting began. Each member of the Gaius Drusus family had brought the baby a crepundia. Crepundia were tiny toys made of gold or silver in the shapes of animals, fish, miniature