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Marcus lets his fingers wander, admiring, across the bared expanse of Esca’s muscled shoulder, tracing the blue whorls that span the sun-browned skin, noting how the pattern shifts and changes as the sinews beneath flex with the steady motion of Esca’s breathing, and occasionally with tiny shivers where gooseflesh raises in the wake of his touch. His own body is lax and warm, still thrumming with the receding echoes of pleasure, and he forces his drooping eyelids open to let his gaze linger a little longer on the sight of Esca naked and asleep, sprawled on the checked woolen blanket here in the long grass by the river—unguarded in a way he rarely permits himself to be, and only in their company.
It’s high summer now, the bees buzzing in the brambles above the riverbank, and they have reached the moment where the season almost seems to pause, like an indrawn breath—the moment of respite that falls when the spring’s lambs are weaned and grazing and the first round of haymaking complete, but the frenetic rush of the main harvest is still yet to come. The days are bright and warm, the weather less changeable now, and the work of the farm is done by mid-afternoon as often as not, while the evenings stretch out long and lazy. There’s time left over to swim and sport in the grass while the sun is still high in the wide blue sky, and Marcus is more than a little smug with the knowledge that it's their exertions here, and not any labor in the fields, that have worn out Esca so thoroughly.
Marcus is still dozing, arm is stretched over his eyes to block the afternoon slant of the sun, when the sound of singing reaches him from somewhere not too distant. He smiles, waiting, and just a handful of heartbeats pass before Cub comes loping down the hill, tail thrashing with delight. He circles them and sniffs at their abandoned clothing before bounding down to the river’s edge and splashing right in, sending great arcs of water up to catch the sunlight and dazzle, drops of it catching in the greying fur on his muzzle and glinting like sparks. The snatches of sound grow stronger as Marcus rouses himself, until he spots the bright amber of Cottia’s hair as she crests the hill, descending barefoot to her husband and their lover.
Her hand is stained pink from the raspberries she’s picked along the walk from their half-built farmhouse, and her lips are red and sweet when she bends to kiss Marcus, her palm cool against his shoulder. Esca stirs in his sleep and subsides again, so she contents herself with a brief peck to his ear, setting the basket of berries on the blanket without a word and following Cub down to the river for her turn. Busy at her weaving, she’d been the one to shoo the two of them off to swim a few hours before, knowing full well how they’d occupy themselves afterwards.
At the water’s edge, Cottia draws her shift over her head in one fluid graceful motion, and slips into the rushing stream. Marcus watches his wife swim, graceful as a salmon, her skin smooth and unmarred—it always intrigues him, that striking contrast to the scars that mark his own body, and Esca’s too, although those stand out less starkly amid the vivid pattern of his tattoos. He knows that this will change, later or sooner, that she’ll gain her own marks—whether merely those of time, or, if the gods should bless this little family of theirs, battle-scars of a different nature, lines stretched dark and then fading silver across her belly. If the child comes out with dark hair the matter will be simple enough, and if comes out with its head burnished russet-brown instead, well, he’ll praise to anyone in earshot the strength of its mother’s bloodline. Either way, it will have a Latin name and a British one too—on that the three of them are agreed.
Esca stirs again, waking now, and props himself up on a shoulder with a sleepy, amused hum, the grey of his eyes glinting as he catches sight of Cottia and Cub in the river below.
“Cottia brought us some berries,” Marcus tells him, plucking one from the basket and offering it to his smiling mouth, stealing another kiss in its wake.
Cottia tires of swimming before Cub does, and tramps back up the bank to join them, stretching out at their side on the sun-warmed wool. Marcus is still tracing the lines of Esca’s tattoos as they talk about the shed that wants re-daubing and the men they'll need to hire for the harvest, and she catches him at it, laughing.
“Do you wish me painted, too?” she asks, teasing, and Marcus blushes.
“I like you as you are,” he tells her, “and as you shall be.”
Cottia hums, considering. “My mother had a spiral here,” she says after a moment, tapping her brow. “And a spandril over her left hip.”
Marcus says nothing, having learned it is better to avoid comment on the subject of Cottia’s mother, who did not attend their wedding, though Valaria sent word, and has not come to visit, either here on the farm or on any of their rare visits to Calleva.
“Do all Iceni women wear tattoos?” he asks, instead.
“Not all,” she tells him, “but many, especially after they marry. When I was a child we used to draw patterns on our arms with ash from the fire. But I think I should prefer to have mine on upon the breast or the shoulder, now. Like our Esca’s.”
“Lend me a sewing-needle after supper, lwynoges, and I’ll give it to you,” Esca tells her, serious as an arrow.
Marcus blinks. “Really?” He’s not sure which of them he’s asking, but Cottia nods, firm, as if this is a conclusion reached long ago and he is merely being informed about it as a courtesy.
“You married a Briton,” she reminds him. “If you invite a wolf to your hearth, will you complain when it howls at the moon?”
“And when we are next in Calleva, and your aunt accompanies you to the baths?“
Cottia shrugs, unbothered. “Let her see. What can she do about it? I belong to this house now, not hers. Let her know I was never Camilla, no matter what she called me under that roof.”
They speak no more of it there by the river, but later that evening, after they’ve eaten the rest of the berries and some fresh apples and the remnants of the venison stew Cottia had left heating in a pot on the banked coals in the hearth, Esca pulls a little pot of woad out of a chest, and sits cross-legged before the oil lamp.
“There’s still light enough to work by,” he says. So Cottia comes and sits before him, tying up her hair and loosening her tunic until it falls in a puddle of linen around her hips, leaving her bare from her neck to her waist, and offers him her sewing needle.
It feels to Marcus like the culmination of something—the quiet conspiracy that had arisen between the two of them long ago, when he lay in his sickbed under the knife of Rufrius Galarius. That alliance, formed in his absence, is what laid the necessary ground for Esca to find his place in this marriage. Their accord is a source of comfort to him, for sometimes he finds his thoughts snagged with worries like a cloak caught in the blackthorn—the fear that he might have trapped them in a life not of their choosing, a different kind of enslavement than the one that had delivered Esca to his side, but a form of bondage all the same. Here on the farm they are all free and equal, but something dims in them both when they enter the stone walls that ring Calleva now. Perhaps that’s why Cottia wants this—a permanent sign, a declaration that while she may be married to a Roman citizen, she belongs to this land still, like some part of him will always belong to the thyme-scented Etruscan hills. It seems fitting enough, after all—since the man smearing the dark-blue paste over her shoulder is a citizen too, but one whose bared chest will always proclaim him a warrior son of the Brigantes.
Marcus watches them, quiet, while Cub comes to curl at his knee, as if he’s aware the occasion deserves an audience. Cottia doesn’t flinch at the bite of the needle, there in the soft place just below her collarbone where he likes to rest his mouth, panting, after he’s spent. Once or twice he’s left a purpling welt on her in just about that spot, giving like for like in the frenzy of their joining—for like the vixen she resembles, she is inclined to nip and bite as she takes her pleasure. Esca, too, has left marks on her before—faint dusky smudges in the shape of his fingers, bruised from the strength of his grip as she rides him. But none of them so permanent as this.
The pattern begins to take shape, a spiral emerging dark against pale skin beneath Esca’s careful hands. The curves of life, Marcus thinks, recalling an enameled shield-boss, and as he watches, his fingers begin to trace the same pattern on Cub’s brindled fur.