Barbarian Princess

by Barbarian Princess (retail) (epub)

  Correus drained his wine cup – they had been refilling it all evening whenever he set it down – and thanked them gravely. He stood up carefully and followed Julius to his tent, looking wistfully at the moonlight shining on the orderly tent rows along the way, set out carefully cohort by cohort, each century with its commander’s tent at the end. His helmet and lorica sat waiting for the morning by the door flap of his own tent. He put the leather wreath around his helmet crest and lay down on the camp bed in the tent. Someone else would have the tent tomorrow, he thought tiredly, and the fun of following Julius Agricola north. But he knew, watching the moonlight slide through the tent flap and silver the heather wreath on his helmet, that that wasn’t what was on his mind.

  * * *

  In the morning he had a bad taste in his mouth and the father of all headaches. The sun was like the bright flare of an open furnace door. He hadn’t felt drunk. It was painfully clear that he must have been, anyway. He hurt all over, like sunburn. A fitting state in which to go say good-bye to Ygerna.

  She would be seventeen now. He gathered Antaeus’s reins into his hand. Another year gone by while he had buried his head in the army. She would have found a man by now, with luck. And he could take her a nice present and pat her head like an old uncle and run for Misenum. A magistrate’s son, British born like herself, who would understand her. Or a tribune, lolling out his army hitch in Aquae, on the lookout for a presentable mistress. Correus’s mouth tightened. No, Ygerna would know better than that. Ygerna should be married. Have babies, a home, some place to settle in, finally. He kicked Antaeus into line beside the empty supply wagons making the southward trek back to Deva, the jumping-off point for the western column. They had a cavalry escort, Vettone tribesmen from Spain, bright in blue and scarlet trappings and singing cheerfully in the morning sun. A lark danced above them, amusing herself in the air currents.

  Julius reined his pony in behind Correus, looking sourly at the lark. Silly bird. It wasn’t going to be any fun at Misenum, he thought. It was closer to Rome, of course, but Julius didn’t like anything that went on water. He’d have the choice of being seasick with the master or twiddling his thumbs for weeks on end in the fleet barracks. And they’d be leaving the lady, he thought, thinking of the grave by Isca River. That didn’t seem right somehow. And the other one – Julius shied away from contemplation of Ygerna. He had never quite dared ask the centurion what had happened that summer in the hills, but somehow he’d given up any thought of looking sideways at her himself after that. They were going to Aquae Sulis on the way to Portus Adurni, and if Julius knew anything of the centurion, he’d be in Typhon’s temper from there to Misenum. Maybe he’d join up himself, Julius thought, watching the troop horses and their jaunty riders trotting beside the wagons, singing and looking pleased with themselves. The centurion had offered often enough, but somehow Julius had never seen much use in it. He’d seen as much of the army as he wanted to in Correus’s service, and without having spears stuck in him for the view. Well, he thought, resigned to Fate, he’d see what turned up at Misenum first.

  The sun drew full up above the Brigantian Hills, and the cavalry started singing something that had the fast clip-clop of a pony’s hooves on the open road, and the lark dived down out of her dance and swooped ahead of them, flittering her wings.

  * * *

  Ygerna was older. No taller, but with the child entirely gone from her face. She had on a salmon-colored gown and carnelian eardrops that made her white face and dark hair look like something drawn with ink. She looked at Correus consideringly and dismissed the slave who had admitted him with a little shooing motion of her hand.

  He stood awkwardly, with his helmet under one arm, while the slave departed. The slave cast him a dark look from the doorway.

  “He thinks it isn’t respectable,” Ygerna said wryly. “Aunt Publia’s gone to the baths for the afternoon.” She gave Correus a half smile and sat down.

  “Ygerna, I—” he looked at the floor, feeling like a fool. Sisyphus was still struggling uphill with his rock.

  “It’s all right,” she said, her voice prim. He realized she was speaking Latin to him. “We never made any promises. We didn’t think there would be much use in it, did we – back then?”

  “No. May I sit down?”

  “Of course,” she said gravely, and patted the couch beside her.

  He sat carefully, so that his greaves wouldn’t scratch the pale satin upholstery. “Are you… all right here?”

  “Well enough.” She shrugged and flicked a hand at the pale painted walls and the good furniture.

  “Good. I hoped…” His voice trailed off. He felt as if he were running around in one of his own nightmares, and all words were the wrong ones.

  “Correus, what are you doing here?” She asked it in British, and there was a bite in her words and her eyes snapped at him. She was Ygerna at thirteen again, threatening to make a magic and curse him.

  “I’ve been transferred,” he said baldly. “To Misenum. I came to say good-bye.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am leaving,” he said again.

  “No, why say good-bye?”

  “Because…” She was watching him now, her face intent. “Because of the trail from Dinas Tomen,” he said, goaded. “Because we were a part of each other once. Because I care what happens to you!”

  “Why don’t you marry me off?” she snapped. “That would make it tidy! The Mother knows Aunt Publia’s been trying!”

  “Ygerna—”

  “Some nice boy from the farms around here – then you wouldn’t have to worry! You and whoever it is that you think would make you a better woman than me!”

  “I did hope you’d get married,” he said. “Stop spitting at me. You should get married. You deserve more than I gave you.” He ran a hand through his hair, feeling exasperated and cornered. “And there isn’t any other woman.”

  She stood up and glared at him. “Come here. I want to show you something.” She went through the far door with a swish of silk skirts, her mantle trailing its salmon stripes and pale fringe unnoticed on the tile behind her. She didn’t look back, and Correus picked up his helmet and followed her.

  She swept through an open doorway at the end of the corridor and looked at the maid who was dusting perfume bottles on a carved shale table. The table’s legs had wild eyes and open mouths and tails that writhed up to support a marble top. The maid hovered, blinking curiously at Correus, who stood uncertainly in the doorway.

  “Get out,” Ygerna said. The maid fled, clutching her feather duster, and Ygerna shut the door behind her and dropped the bolt across it.

  “Sit down.”

  “Yes, Princess,” Correus said gravely, and she grinned at him but only for a moment.

  “I wanted to talk somewhere where I could yell at you if I felt like it,” she said, and dropped down onto the bed with one foot tucked up under her. There was a chair nearby, a flimsy, feminine wicker affair, and Correus sat in it gingerly.

  “Misenum,” Ygerna said thoughtfully. “That is in Italy.”

  “The coast. On the bay of Neapolis.”

  “What gives you the right to stick your nose in my life again, if you are going to Misenum?”

  “Maybe I don’t have any right.”

  “The trail from Dinas Tomen? Is that your right?”

  “That was a long time ago,” he said firmly.

  She didn’t say anything to that, just sat there on the bed, with her foot curled under her like a cat, and looked at him, and the Roman gown and the crimped Roman curls disappeared, and he saw her again by firelight, with her hair like a dark curtain down her back, and the five-petaled flower of a priestess tattooed between her breasts. White breasts, turned upward to his hand, and white legs pale against his spread cloak…

  He felt it reach out for him like an old familiar magic, a sidhe-magic out of the hills, and he put out a hand to push it back.

  Ygerna stood up and began to pull
the pins from her hair, letting it fall around her in a tangle of dark waves. It was like watching her undress, and he thought that she knew it. He could see the line of hip and breast beneath her gown. He thought that she knew that, too.

  “Ygerna, stop it!”

  She shook her head, and the hair swung behind her lazily. “I would rather that you remember me like this, and so remember that I am not a Roman.”

  “That has always been plain enough,” he said, trying to make a joke of it. “Witch.”

  “Maybe.” She reached for the carnelian pin at her shoulder.

  “Ygerna!”

  “I still have the mark. See.” She let the gown slide free from her shoulder so that the five-petaled flower, paler now, showed against the skin. “They say that if you want something badly enough, the Mother will give it to you. You may be sorry she did, but she will give it all the same. I asked her for you.”

  “Stop it!” He was on his feet now.

  “When I was thirteen.” She took a step toward him and took his hand. She put it against her breast and held it there, feeling his fingers clench into her skin. “You know, you could leave now, Correus,” she said thoughtfully. “If you wanted to.”

  “Damn you!”

  She tilted her head back until her eyes met his. “Take off your lorica,” she whispered.

  They vanished, all his pious intentions blown away in the smoky cloud of her hair. He unbuckled the straps of his lorica and set it aside and was lost. Lost in the old magic of the Silure hills, in the twilight sidhe-dream that making love to Ygerna always seemed to him, lost in a tangle of salmon-colored silk and white legs on her bed. She pulled him down beside her and after that there was very little need to coax him. Forgetting servants and Aunt Publia, he slipped Ygerna’s gown free and pulled his own tunic over his head. She touched the drop of amber that hung around his throat with a gleam of triumph in her eyes.

  He pulled her close, watching that little light in the black depths of her eyes, under the winged brows. She had laid a trap for him, but he didn’t care, not now, not with the feel of her breast under his hand, and the sharp bones of her hips against him. Later, he thought, he would care… Enough to break him, maybe.

  I was right! The knowledge of it sang in her blood as she wrapped her arms around his back. I will have that to remember, anyway. And maybe… just maybe, it would shake loose whatever it was that made him make love to her with such a hunger and then slam closed the door between them. But probably it wouldn’t. It would be enough, she told herself, to have that precious piece of knowledge. She cried out as she felt him go into her and buried her face in his collarbone. Knowledge dearly bought. All her life long, what man would ever be able to live up to Correus?

  Afterward she lay beside him and watched the pattern that the honeysuckle vine outside the window made on walls and ceiling. “I am not thinking that this will change your going to Misenum,” she said finally.

  “No.”

  “It is only that I wanted to know something.”

  “Well, now you know,” he said sadly. “What good does it do either of us?” He sounded drained, his voice gray, defeated.

  “That now you will tell me why,” Ygerna said.

  He didn’t bother to ask “Why what?” He said, “Fear,” dully, and stared at the ceiling.

  She sat up cross-legged in the bed and stared at him. “What?”

  “Fear,” he said. “Freita. My wife. I saw her die. I loved her as much as I love you.”

  She didn’t stop to gloat over that. “I don’t understand.” Her voice was questioning, prodding gently.

  “I have nightmares.” He watched the ceiling, and the visions came parading out for him. A man with a knife, and Freita with a cold, still face and a gown soaked with blood. “She died because she was with me.”

  “She died because she was in the governor’s bed,” Ygerna said.

  “She died because she followed the army,” Correus said flatly. “I won’t take another woman to live in a hut on the frontier and die with a knife in her.”

  “Misenum is not the frontier.”

  “Misenum won’t be forever. There will be another war, and a frontier.”

  “Shouldn’t you ask what I want?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Correus said. “I can’t. And how happy would you be if I took away and left you in Rome to be safe? With my family?”

  “Not very,” Ygerna said frankly. “I survived my uncle and your governor, Correus, and I survived this war. I will survive your frontier.”

  He shook his head and watched the horrors that walked on the ceiling. “I can’t.”

  She swung her legs off the bed and stood up, snatching up her gown. Her hands and her voice were shaking as she jammed the pins into the shoulders. “There are some things that are worth being afraid of, Correus. This isn’t one of them!”

  She turned on her heel and threw the door open and then slammed it closed behind her, leaving him alone to fumble for his tunic and armor, before the servants blundered in or Aunt Publia finished her afternoon gossip in the baths.

  She was gone when he crossed the atrium, but the gray and white cat – Freita’s cat – stuck one foot up over her ear and looked at him under it. He found his way to the door and closed it behind him.

  The evening sun splashed across the paving stones in the street outside, and up the next street two auxiliary-men turned arm in arm into a wineshop, singing:

  …So come and take me hand and watch

  the moon arisin’

  And roll in me arms in the clover.

  XX Pompeii

  Flavius lounged in the rose-colored courtyard of the best inn in Pompeii, his long legs stretched out in front of him on the rose red tile, and his helmet pulled a little over his eyes. The old fig and pomegranate trees made a cool splash of shade across his corner of the court, and the herb garden at the center was thick with bees. There was a plate of fruit and sweetcake and a cup of wine and honey on the stone table beside him, and the inn’s serving girl had left a cloth over it to keep the countless insects that zoomed and buzzed in the August air from falling in. He wore his parade tunic and military sandals, but his cuirass and greaves were in his rooms on the inn’s second story. The helmet was more to keep the sun out of his eyes than a concession to military regulations.

  For the next week or two, he thought with relief, he wouldn’t be required to appear plated like a tortoise at every waking moment. For a man who hated armor so much, the army was a highly impractical career, he thought lazily, watching the bees droning in the peppermint. He was going to enjoy the next few days. The emperor’s business at Misenum was concluded, and no one wanted him anywhere in particular until the end of the month. And Correus was due into Misenum, probably foaming at the mouth at being dragged away from his British campaign. Flavius had left a message with the commander at Misenum and a promise of dinner as amends.

  The square shadow of the innkeeper fell across the tiles. “There is a commander of marines waiting to see you, sir, but I felt perhaps I should ascertain—?”

  Flavius pushed his helmet back on his head and looked up. “What did he say?”

  “I’m afraid he was rather… uncomplimentary, sir.” The innkeeper had been the majordomo in a gentleman’s house before he bought his freedom, and his dignity was mighty. “He, uh, declined to give his name, but he has quite a look of you, sir. Would he be a relative, perhaps?”

  Flavius grinned. “He would. I expect he would also be in a temper. Well, bring him in. And I want your best dinner. Was he alone?”

  “Quite, sir.”

  “Then we’ll want some entertainment, too, I think. Those twins – the ones who dance.”

  “Uh, to dance only, sir?” The innkeeper coughed discreetly.

  Flavius thought about the British girl, who might or might not account for his brother’s temper, and about Aemelia, patiently awaiting his return in Rome, but out of reach for the moment. “To do whatever seems to sugg
est itself,” he said. “I’m not quite sure at the moment.”

  The innkeeper nodded sagely, hands crossed across his stomach. “Certainly, sir. One never knows quite how an evening will go.”

  “No,” Flavius said. “Indeed one doesn’t. You may send the commander to me here. Perhaps I can take the kinks out of him before dinner. It would be a pity to waste your lobsters.” He pulled his helmet down over his eyes again and appeared to sink into thought.

  * * *

  Pompeii was a luxurious town. In the height of the summer season, the twenty thousand residents jostled elbows with almost as many holiday-goers who had come to soak up the sun and the sea breezes and the famous fruit and Pompeiian cabbages that flourished in the fertile volcanic soil around Mount Vesuvius. In the off-season, Pompeii was a town of farmers and fishermen and good, solid businessmen who took their profits seriously. There was a thriving wool trade and factories for Pompeii’s two famous exports – perfume of roses, and garum, the concentrated fish sauce that was a Roman dining staple all over the empire. It was all very important, Pompeiian business – Salve lucrum was a not uncommon inscription for the entrance to a businessman’s home – but the citizens of Pompeii happily put the fortunes which such work afforded them into the pleasures of their leisure hours. The city supported more than forty bakeries, twenty wineshops, and well over a hundred small eating places. Architects and artists did a thriving business year-round, and the rebuilding that had been done since the great earthquake of Nero’s reign was accounted some of the finest town design in Italy.