©2001 by WILDBEARIES

This story is based on characters created in the film, "Gladiator" and in no way intended to infringe upon those characters or the story of that film. References to real people are strictly the product of the writer's imagination and meant to entertain the reader.
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Twenty Seven

“I didn’t set out to get wounded, you know.” Maximus eyed his obviously angry wife as she came towards him with a small knife in her hand. Despite the fact that he knew it was to cut away his already ruined tunic, the spark in her eyes gave him second thoughts. “Ana!” he said loudly when she paid him no attention, grasping her wrist in his good hand.

She blinked and looked at him, really looked this time. “Yes?” Her mind was whirling - was she pregnant? Isis, she couldn’t remember when she’d last bled! Obviously she was upset about him and about Lucilla’s visit the week before, but could her irritation also be explained by the fact that she was carrying a child?

“Are you going to finish the job the arrow started, or just rip my clothing to shreds?” her husband asked, a half-smile on his face. He was relieved to see the angry glare had left her eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous," she scoffed, sliding the tip of the blade under the neck of his tunic. She deftly cut the threads at the shoulders so the garment fell down about his waist, then she slit the side seam and pulled the remnants of it off him. “I’ll give this to Gemma for the rag bag,” she commented, setting it aside. “Now, let’s get the trousers and boots off and wash the dirt off you so you don’t dirty up my bed linens.”

Before he could even reach to untie the laces at the waist of the trousers, she had yanked the knot loose and was shoving at him, wanting him to lift up so she could pull them off him. “Ana, give me a moment, please, cara.” He bent down to look into her face, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Why are you so angry with me?”

"I'm not angry with you!" she snapped, straightening suddenly, almost knocking him flat when her forehead clipped his chin. “Ow,” she exclaimed, falling backwards, rubbing her head, while Maximus’ eyes almost crossed as his head swam from the blow.

He shook his head to clear the twittering birds that had suddenly invaded his senses, and took hold of his wife by the hand, “Come here, cara, did you hurt yourself?” He knew he wasn’t at fault for either her bumped head or getting wounded, but he also knew it was often best to accept blame in these situations. Women could be so contrary to logic, he thought. To his surprise, his courageous, fiery little pocket Venus burst into tears and was shortly seated on his lap with her face buried in his chest - luckily on the good side - wetting him down thoroughly as she sobbed and clutched him about the waist. “Here now, what’s all this?” He patted her back, rubbed it, kissed the top of her head, all the while wanting nothing more than to lie back and go to sleep because he felt so weary.

It was the slight tremor Ana felt in his supporting arm that brought her out of her misery long enough to realize that her husband - her wounded husband - really needed a bit of rest and she was keeping him from it with her sudden hysterics. She sniffed and dashed the tears off her face, thoroughly embarrassed by her outburst. “Here, let me up - you need to lie down,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to get off his lap. She smiled at him, “You have to let go of me so I can get up,” she reminded him.

He shook his head and simply lay back, managing to pull her down onto the bed with him with his arm still around her. “Rest here with me,” he said in a low voice, “I need the comfort and, I think, so do you, cara.”

“What makes you think that?” she asked, still sniffling. She managed to pull the blanket up over them, which was good since Maximus was mostly nude. She tucked it around him, suddenly contrite. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked, sleepy now that everything was catching up to him. He fought to keep his eyes open, losing the battle until she nudged him. “Hmm, what?”

“I think I’m with child,” Ana informed him.

His eyes snapped wide open and he turned to look at her so rapidly that it pulled on his wounded shoulder, “Edepol,” he cursed, grinning through the discomfort, “What makes you think that?”

“Well, I’m not totally certain, but I’ve been so cranky and weepy the last couple of days, and earlier when I was in the kitchen washing my hands, Gemma asked me if I was breeding, because she thought I looked pregnant.” She didn’t add that Gemma also thought she acted pregnant more than looked it.

Maximus considered how women always seemed to know things and observe things that he, experienced as he was at things military, did not notice. He supposed it was because they spent so much time involved in what he liked to think of as strictly women’s territory - childbirth, child-rearing, fertility and making everything in a home run smoothly. Surely that was as complicated, as important as planning a battle or a siege, only with different weapons altogether. The gods knew, if these mysteries that women seemed to understand so instinctively were not seen to, if the home, for example, didn’t have the benefit of a woman’s wise guidance, everything came a cropper.

“Gemma is a wise woman,” he finally commented. He kissed his wife on the forehead where her brows were furrowed, “I’m sure if you are, we’ll know soon enough - and though it would please me greatly, dear one, understand that the children will come when they’re supposed to, so if it should be that you’re not pregnant now, you are not to fret about it.”

Ana considered what he said. She supposed he was trying to reassure her that he wanted children, but would be happy whenever they came, so she wasn’t to worry if she wasn’t pregnant now. This was good. It meant he would not throw it up to her should she suddenly get her courses or find that she wasn’t even off schedule to begin with. She leaned up and kissed him, nibbling at the beard just over the cleft of his chin. “I love you, Maximus.”

He smiled and gave her a squeeze, once again sliding irresistibly toward sleep, “As I love you, Ana.”

Ana managed to keep him in bed for the space of half a day, then gave it up as a lost cause when she counted back and realized that in the space of four hours she’d had to shoo him back upstairs to rest no less than six times. Furthermore, the constant parade of his officers coming and going was tracking up the clean marble floors of her house, not to mention distracting a couple of the younger maid servants. She had to admit that Antoninus and Drusus were handsome, but she did not want giggling girls hiding in the hallways hoping for a peek at one or the other of them as he strode in or out on whatever duty her husband had assigned to him.

“All right,” she announced, standing over her contrite husband, hands on her hips, “I surrender. Get up, get dressed, and go do whatever it is you think you have to do.”

“Thank you,” Maximus said, mentally thanking the gods for their quick response to his prayers. “I feel fine.”

He got up, pretending much more energy than he felt, hiding a wince when he put pressure on his wounded shoulder, not daring to ask for her help getting into a tunic. Finally, when he was hopelessly tangled in one, his damaged arm out of the sling but of no real use to him, she relented and got him untangled and decently dressed. “Give me your arm,” she barked. When he proffered that limb to her care, she tucked it back in the sling, made sure the sling wasn’t chafing him, and even buckled on his wide leather belt. “There, you’re at least presentable. Sit and I’ll help you with your boots.”

Maximus sat on the carved wooden bench and let her slide his boots on, tie the laces, and make sure they were comfortable. “Perfection itself,” he told her, thinking she did look adorable kneeling on the floor at his feet, especially since he could just see down the neckline of her dress if he leaned forward a bit. He smiled.

Ana rapped him on the kneecap with one sharp little fist, “Stop looking at my bosom and thinking about what you’d like me to do now that I’m down here.” She rose, smiling to take the sting out of her words. “Your hair needs combing.” She took his ivory comb, smoothed his hair, and examined him. “I suppose that will have to do.”

“It’s wonderful, thank you,” he said, kissing her briefly. He got to his feet, hugged her once, and was off down the steps, obviously pleased to be let out of captivity. He did, at least, take it slowly going down the stairs and not gallop down them like he usually did. Outside, he took a deep breath of early summer air and grinned at his surprised officers. "Released!" he exclaimed, and they all grinned in return. "Now, what's been happening besides what 'Ninus and Drusus have told me?"

Ana, looking out a window upstairs, huffed to herself at his obvious relief, but had to admit he was in good hands with his officers and at least they weren't dirtying up her floors any longer. She went to the kitchens with the ruined tunic for Gemma. When the housekeeper gave her a questioning glance, she shook her head, "Nothing yet, and I've not had time to study a calendar, so stop looking so hopeful."

Gemma smiled, hiding it behind the folds of cloth as she took the tunic to be washed. "Here," she said to one of the laundresses, "get the blood out of this and let's see if we can repair it for someone to use." She ignored the girl's dismayed expression at the grass stains, dirt and blood on the garment, that wasn't her concern. She went to talk to Ana's maid, to grill her about the mistress' courses.

Ana, meanwhile, was sitting at Maximus' map table, hunched over his calendar, trying to count back to when she'd last bled. It was before they'd left Emerita to come to the farm, she knew that much, but had it been before it by two weeks or four? That was the problem, she'd been so busy she really had not kept track. "Bahh," she growled, throwing down the stylus and wax tablet she'd been marking the number of days on, "I'm as witless as a one penny whore."

She would just have to think about it another time, when she'd had a chance to compose herself and get her brains unscrambled. She heard a child's voice outside and looked out the window. Lucius, come over to spend some time with his father. Despite her dislike of his mother, the boy himself was a darling, sweet child. Amazing, given that his uncle was a galloping lunatic and his mother, in her opinion, was about as witless as the whores she had maligned a moment before. To marry some other man when Maximus was the father of her child - what was wrong with her? Of course, she reasoned, if she had married Maximus, that would leave her - Ana - in a rather odd predicament. She giggled and went back downstairs to see to the midday meal. Her stomach was growling and she felt she could eat at least half a cow herself, given the chance.

"Gemma, get the tables set, I'm ravenous!" she announced from the kitchen doorway, and went to call the officers and other workers to the side yard for their meal.

"Breeding, I'm sure of it," Gemma commented to the meat cook, who nodded wisely back at her.

"Appetite like a young lioness," the other woman agreed, "always a sure sign."

They looked at one another, grinning, remembering the joy of having young Marcus running happily through the hallways of this house, and the general and his lady wife filling it with their joy. "It's time for that again," Gemma said softly, voicing the other woman's thoughts exactly.

"Past time."

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Copyright 2001 by wildbearies

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