Cato 03 - When the Eagle Hunts Read Online Free Page A

will do nicely, for now.'
    Macro shrugged. 'See to it, Cato. Find somewhere quiet. I'll get the drinks in.'
    While Macro steered a way through the throng to the bar, Cato looked round and saw that the only place left was a rickety trestle table flanked by two benches, right by the door they had just entered. He pulled back the end of one bench and bowed his head. 'There you are, ladies.'
    Boudica curled her lip at the roughly hewn furniture presented to her, and might have refused to sit had her cousin not quickly nudged her forward. The younger woman was called Nessa, a brown-haired Icenian with blue eyes and round cheeks. Cato was well aware that his centurion and Boudica had arranged for her to come along to keep him distracted while the older couple continued their peculiar relationship.
    Macro and Boudica had met shortly after the fall of Camulodunum. Since the Iceni were nominally neutral in the war between Rome and the confederation of tribes resisting the invaders, Boudica was more curious than hostile towards the men from the great empire across the sea. The town elders had rushed to ingratiate themselves with their new rulers and invitations to feasts had flooded into the Roman camp. Even junior centurions like Macro had found themselves asked to attend. On the first such night he had met Boudica. Her forthright nature had appalled him at first; the Celts appeared to have a distastefully egalitarian attitude towards the gentler sex. Finding herself standing next to a centurion, who in turn stood next to a barrel of the most powerful beer he had ever encountered, Boudica wasted no time in grilling him for information about Rome. At first her open approach inclined Macro to regard her as just another of the horse-faced women that made up the majority of the higher class of Briton. But as he endured her questioning, he slowly became less and less interested in the beer. Grudgingly at first, then more willingly as she artfully drew him into a more expansive discussion, Macro talked to her in a way he had never before with a woman.
    By the end of the evening he knew he wanted to see more of this lively Icenian, and stammered out a request to meet again. She gladly assented, and extended an invitation to a feast being held by her kinsman the following night. Macro had been the first guest to arrive and stood in embarrassed silence by the spread of cold meats and warm beer until Boudica arrived. Then he watched in horror as she matched him drink for drink. Before he knew it, she had slapped an arm round his shoulder and was hugging him tightly to her. Looking round, Macro observed the same forwardness in the other Celtic women and was trying to reconcile himself to the strange ways of this new culture when Boudica planted a boozy kiss on his lips.
    Momentarily startled, Macro tried to break away from her powerful embrace, but the girl had mistakenly taken his writhing as a sign of his ardour and merely tightened her grip. So Macro gave in and kissed her back, and on the alcohol-saturated wings of passion they had collapsed under a table in a dark corner and fumbled the evening away. Only the limp side effects of the beer prevented the consummation of their mutual attraction. Boudica had been decent enough not to make an issue of it.
    They continued to meet almost daily from that point on, and sometimes Macro invited Cato to join them, mainly from a sense of pity for the lad, who had only recently seen his first love murdered at the hands of a treacherous Roman aristocrat. Quiet and shy at first, Cato had been slowly drawn out by Boudica's infectious sociability and now the two could hold a conversation for hours. Macro felt himself being slowly frozen out. Despite Boudica's claim that she only had relationships with grown-ups, Macro was not reassured. Hence the presence of Nessa — at Macro's suggestion. A girl Cato could get stuck into while he continued wooing Boudica.
    'Does your centurion often frequent places like