The Baby and the Battlefield

Chapter Forty-Nine: Outside the Temple Precinct (Part II)

Please Note: Remember how this is rated PG-13? And notice how this is the continuation of the same chapter from the last Wattpad part? Good. Carry on, then.

As the picture in the external link does not come with a caption, I figure it's a good idea to tell you what you'll be looking at if you chose to click on it. The photograph shows the recently excavated grave of a very young child (probably just under a year old), from the Vatican Necropolis. The burial dates to the late first or early second century A.D. Note the almost complete egg in the photo, just below and to the right of the baby's pelvis. I believe the original source of the picture is Zander Pietro and Paolo Liverani's book "Le Necropoli Vaticane".

Petro looked at Tsuga in complete and utter shock. "What?"

His stomach did a few odd things while his mind did somersaults. This was unexpected. He felt like everything he thought was true was false – Tsuga wasn't some sweet little priestess who had grown up protected by the temple, and she wasn't the hard-working, determined, but naively innocent young woman he had thought he had seen. She had done things she shouldn't have; and there was – or had been - a child, to prove it.

"Shh!" Tsuga said, glancing around the room. Fortunately, no one had noticed the two of them, sitting in their quiet corner. "Please, it isn't - it isn't something I like to talk about."

“Was that the other person – the other person, besides Flora Salix - that you loved but couldn't save?”

Tsuga nodded, then turned her attention back to her beer. Petro waited expectantly, waving one of the barmaids to come and refill Tsuga's mug when he realised she had set it down empty. He felt strange. Dizzy, maybe even a little nauseous – but his burning desire to know the whole story was stronger than his nausea. Tsuga sipped at the beer, then finally wiped the foam from her upper lip.

"It was one of those men I was telling you about. The ones who will give you somewhere warm to stay, and food to eat, if only you'll give them something in return. He was the only one, actually.”

Petro nodded, indicating to Tsuga that she should go on. If this story were true, at least there was only one man. That was easier to deal with than the alternative.

“I was - I was sixteen, and naïve, and hunger really does make you do things you wouldn't have dreamed of otherwise. My brother, who had raised me since I was small, had died in early autumn. I was alone, and hungry, and it was beginning to grow cold and – and I – I acquiesced. If I had only waited a little longer, maybe I'd have managed, somehow. After all, it was less than a year later the Florae found me, and somehow decided that I was clever enough to be useful to them. Clever enough and unhappy enough, perhaps."

Petro looked down at his mug of beer, shaking his head at the thought. She had been little more than a child, herself, then. And not really like the women he had wanted to visit. Those women were prostitutes, yes, but a prostitute was a businesswoman of a sort, and protected by the law. It sounded like poor little Tsuga had almost sold herself as a slave – she had catered to some man's whims in exchange for food and a roof over her head, without holding any rights of her own, as a married woman would. It was hard to imagine someone as determined as Tsuga being frightened and hungry enough to agree to that.

It occurred to him that, despite her past, Tsuga had still turned him down. Repeatedly. Even when his intentions had been totally and completely honourable. He frowned as jealousy hit him like a wave. But like a wave, the jealousy receded. She had been desperate, and young, and foolish in her past. In the present she behaved, well, properly. He suspected the more grown-up Tsuga was as sensible and loyal as she seemed.