Januaria was of the same opinion, and also that it was high time my lady learned to behave as befitted her station in life – this when she caught Gwytha cleaning out the pool in the atrium.
Gwytha pointed out that as a freedwoman her station in life was far below that of her housekeeper, who had been free all her life.
Januaria was indignant. ‘And you a chief’s daughter! I was born British and I’ll die British, the Mother be praised, and so will you. The Roman may be master here now, but that doesn’t change what we were born!’
‘Nor what we’ve become,’ Gwytha said, turning back to her scrubbing.
‘It’s what you’re born that counts, my lady,’ Januaria said tartly, ‘and I’ll thank you to remember it. Now give me that scrubbing brush and take yourself off to your loom. I’ll not have the centurion finding I’ve been letting you scrub out pools.’
Justin she tended to regard as something only slightly less omniscient than the Delphic Oracle in all circumstances and when Gwytha, somewhat irritated at this apparently blind faith in her husband s powers of judgment, remarked that the circumstances of his marriage hardly argued a cool head in a crisis, Januaria answered firmly that the centurion had behaved exactly as a gentleman should, and would hear no further argument on the matter.
She rapidly became a power in the household, exercising over her new family and its friends the same domination she had had over her late charges. Hilarion and Lepidus she treated much as she had her former master’s schoolboy sons, with more regard for their youth than their rank – when she spoke of ‘the centurion’ it was always Justin she meant.
Aside from Justin, only Licinius commanded Januaria’s deference. Him she regarded with an admiration approaching awe. The ability to save a man’s life through medicine was to her a gift close to the powers of the gods.
Under her domination the little household settled down, at least on the surface, to something approaching domestic tranquility. Justin, under the watchful eyes of his friends, also appeared to settle back into the old routine.
On the fourth day of this uneasy peace, Favonius, with the lack of good sense which only a firm conviction of being in the right can bring, tackled Justin again on the subject of putting an end to his marriage, and a much-tried Justin picked him up and pitched him in a horse trough.
He then strode off to the bathhouse, leaving Lepidus, who had been coming to report, to help the spluttering victim to his feet.
Favonius was furious, but being thrown in a horse trough was very different from being punched in the jaw, and he retained enough care for his dignity not to take the matter to his superiors. Thereafter the disapproving element decided that Centurion Corvus was incapable of being reasoned with, and simply ostracized him.
Justin made it clear that this arrangement was to him the most agreeable one possible, but the armed truce did little to help the already strained relationship among the officers of the Ninth.
VIII
Hilarion
It was clear and cold in the north, and the afternoon light hung like amber in the bare branches of the trees as a cloak-wrapped figure slipped through the door hangings and into the snow-enshrouded wood.
Pausing at the crest of the nearest hill, Vortrix looked back once over his shoulder and then crouched carefully in the snow. He took a deep breath and, steadying himself with his good arm, reached out with the other for a small branch lying at his feet. He lifted it a bit, not with the grip of his fingers, but by slipping them under it until the branch rolled onto his palm. He straightened his back and brought the piece of wood higher, wincing as the movement pulled at the crimson scar on his forearm and twisted it until he almost yelped.
He let the branch back down again, rocked back on his heels and regarded it grimly. A twig cracked behind him, and he swung around, balancing on his good arm, to find the old priest of his clan panting with the exertion of making his way up the hill and looking, Vortrix thought, like a mother hen with one lame chick.
‘My Lord Vortrix, what are you doing?’
‘Sitting on this hill, as you can see, and hoping to be left alone for a change. Can’t I come out for some air if I’ve a mind to?’
‘No, not without telling me where you’re going, you can’t,’ said the old priest with a surprising amount of spirit. ‘You may be the High King, my young lord, but you’re sick all the same. If you ask me, it’s a miracle that you’ve lived at all, and you’ve no right to worry me half to death by disappearing.’
‘And if I had told you, you would have come with me, now would you not?’ Vortrix inquired softly, his blue eyes taking on that dangerous gleam which at another time the old priest would have heeded. ‘And maybe, just maybe,’ Vortrix went on, ‘I might have wished to be to myself, and to think, without you to come chattering in my ear with your opinions and your potions.’
The old man came closer and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘It is in my mind that that is not all you’ve been doing. You’re sweating like a horse. If you’ve been trying to use that arm, my lord, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.’
‘Oh, is it so? I have as much use of my arm as I have need of, old man!’ He picked up the stick with his bad hand and flung it furiously in the old man’s face.
The old priest had seen Vortrix in a rage enough times to know when it was prudent to let a matter drop. He turned and clambered unhappily back down the hill. Still, the boy had more use from that arm than he had thought.
Behind him, the High King lay in the snow, clutching his maimed arm, his face running with tears and contorted with the agony of trying not to scream.
* * *
The winter that blanketed Britain lay with a lighter hand on the lands of the south, and Justin’s mother was propped on a couch in her elegant little house at Antium, decorated only with the lightest of fashionable wraps. She clutched a letter in one frail hand and fanned herself with the other. She looked at the letter again and lay back and closed her eyes.
‘That boy will drive me to my grave,’ she announced weakly. ‘Take that thing away and bring me a cup of wine,’ she added to the maid who was hovering distractedly at her side, attempting to thrust a perfume flask under her mistress’s nose. ‘I’m not going to faint, you silly woman. Oh, that boy…’
Julia Valeria did not ordinarily allow herself to become agitated about anything – it upset the careful balance of her facial muscles and consequently restored some of the years which she painstakingly removed every morning at her dressing table – but she felt that this was a special occasion.
She was a fond mother but not an overpowering one. Having launched her only son on a respectable career which could, with the intelligence and ability which he was held to possess, lead to great things, she was content to sit back and concentrate on her own life for a change. Following a soldier husband all over the Empire had been a trying sort of life for a woman of her temperament, and although she had mourned her husband’s passing, she had been only too happy to return to civilian life. Her husband’s will, plus a small inheritance of her own, had been sufficient to allow a single woman to live in a comfortably fashionable style, if she practiced a few economies where they didn’t show. Providing for a growing son had been something of a strain on the budget, and although she missed him, it had been a definite financial relief when Justin was old enough to embark on a career. She had done without a great many things for the better part of a year to establish him as she thought fit, and had then sat back to enjoy herself.
Judging by his letters and a few flying visits home, he had seemed to be very happy in the Army – just like his father – and to be rising rapidly. She couldn’t for the life of her understand this desire to go careening all over the world, living in the most uncomfortable fashion and letting barbarians throw spears at you. Influential friends said, however, that they had heard good things of Justin and predicted a brilliant career for him. The arena episode at Hippo Regius and his subsequent demotion had worried her, but
the same influential friends had said that it merely showed he had spirit, and it would do him no harm to cool his heels in Britain for a year. They promised a few good words in the right places when the time came, and, all in all, it looked as though Justin was going to be a credit to her.
And now this. His whole career brought to a sliding stop all because of a pretty little barbarian (now that she thought of it, he hadn’t even said she was pretty) and Justin’s idiotic sense of responsibility. If he’d just consent to give the girl a nice present and send her packing… Julia Valeria gave that idea no more than passing consideration. It was obvious from his letter that he had no intention of doing any such thing, and she knew her son too well to have any illusions about his changing his mind. Pigheaded, just like his father, with a conscience that cropped up at the most uncomfortable times…
There were only two possibilities – to brazen it out or to somehow conceal his wife’s background from general knowledge – and she had neither social position nor money enough to get away with either one. This was clearly beyond the scope of even the most influential of friends, unless she should suddenly strike up a close friendship with the Emperor, she thought disgustedly. She would give an extra large offering to every god she could think of, but she didn’t see how they could help much either, unless they could manage to strike the wretched girl dead of a plague.
She opened her eyes to find the maid again hovering at her side with a cup of wine. ‘Marcus Claudius the praetor has called, lady. Shall I send him in?’
‘No! Tell him I can’t see him. Tell him I’ve been taken ill. Tell him I’ve fallen into fits, I don’t care, but I can’t possibly see anybody now. I shall go away and become a priestess and live on an island with a herd of goats… I shall… oh, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Go mad, probably. And what am I going to tell old Vehilius Gratus? We’ve been talking about his daughter for Justin ever since… send the man away and bring me something to write with immediately.’
The maid brought her writing implements and she scribbled a number of short notes to anyone she could think of who might help. Why had she sent the praetor away? As the most influential of her friends, there might be something he could do.
‘Have these taken round at once and get me my chair. I’m going out.’
My baby, she thought mournfully, reflecting on Justin as a chubby, beaming infant, being sick on her best stola. Justin as a small boy, falling out of a tree onto a visiting senator. Justin as a twelve-year-old with a collection of frogs that escaped one night in the middle of a banquet. All these disasters were somehow very endearing at a distance.
‘That awful girl… she probably wears trousers or something. She’ll probably feed him on barley gruel and sour milk or whatever it is they eat in Britain… and what am I going to tell old Gratus?’
* * *
Justin trudged wearily home through the late January snow with a letter from his mother under his tunic. She was taken aback, but wanted him to do whatever he felt was right, but was he sure this was the right thing, and what would he like her to tell their friends? Of course she wanted to do just as he wished, but it was going to be a little difficult. Did women really wear trousers in Britain and did he think he could get her used to wearing a tunica? On the whole, her letter read much as he had expected – horrified, determined not to alienate him by letting him know it, and with a strong undercurrent of hysteria running through the whole. It was a pity he couldn’t show it to Gwytha. It would tell her more about his mother than Justin could ever hope to, and the bit about the trousers would amuse her. But it would also bring home to her exactly what marrying her had meant to him. She knew that, of course, but there was no point in throwing it in her face. It seemed to be always topmost in her mind anyway, he thought sadly. Alone with him, she invariably did everything he asked, but it was as if the soul was gone out of her, or locked behind a door to which he had no key.
So the letter stayed in his tunic when he came in at noon and stood damply steaming in front of the brazier in the atrium. He had something else in his tunic, though, and he pulled it out as Gwytha got up to take his cloak. Januaria was hobnobbing with a crony down the street.
‘I… I brought you something.’ He handed her a little bag of silk and watched her as she opened it and took out a pair of gold eardrops shaped like stags’ heads.
There was a flash of pure happiness in her face as she stood turning them over in her hand. ‘I’ve never had anything half so fine,’ she breathed, and then unexpectedly she kissed him.
‘I thought they were pretty,’ he said and paused, somewhat at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected them to please her so. The words, when they came, proved to be the wrong ones. ‘They’re the badge of my family.’
‘Oh.’ Gwytha stepped back. ‘I… I must see to the baking,’ she said in a queer voice. ‘And… and thank you. They are very nice.’ She fled into the kitchen.
Justin listened for a minute, but he didn’t hear any noise from the kitchen. Whatever she was doing in there, it wasn’t baking.
Oh, damnation! He snatched up his cloak. He couldn’t even make a guilt offering – he had been thinking about his mother’s letter when he bought them – without having her see through it. Why did she have to be so damn sensitive?
In the storeroom, Gwytha sat miserably on a sack of flour, staring at the eardrops. Why did he have to make gestures? The front door slammed hard, and she rose and went back to the atrium. Fighting tears, she set her loom to clicking back and forth, a lulling rhythmic sound to blank out, at least for the moment, the bitter memory of Justin’s face as he swore by his own gods to live with her forever.
She forced her mind to drift with the chatter of the loom, but the carefully circumscribed paths of her daydream shifted invariably to forbidden ways… the image of her mother, in her corner by the hearth, constantly weaving – a cloak for Gwytha’s father, or his father, or one of Gwytha’s brothers – and Gwytha herself, with a little loom of her own, practicing her patterns on a smaller piece.
Now, after thirteen years of slavery in the Roman world, she sat at her own loom and wove a cloak for a Roman husband. It was a deep, military scarlet, edged in dark gold, and the gold thread, she had thought when she selected it, would set off his eyes… golden eyes, bright and changeable as a hawk’s…
Januaria returned, rabbit in hand, to begin dinner, and Gwytha banished her husband’s falconlike good looks from her mind, trying to set it spinning on less bitter pathways.
An infuriated howl from the garden roused her. Januaria, she knew, was masterminding the rabbit in the kitchen, so she pulled her cloak around her shoulders and let herself out, to find the grey and white cat who had wormed his way into Januaria’s affections in the last few weeks and had apparently decided to take up permanent residence, indignantly cleaning a shower of snow from his ears.
‘Sorry. I seem to have started an avalanche.’ Hilarion perched, legs dangling like a friendly spider, on the wall above.
Gwytha scooped up the cat and peered up at him. ‘What are you doing up there?’
Hilarion produced a snowball from under his cloak with a faintly embarrassed air. ‘Lepidus,’ he said. ‘I saw him coming this way. You must think I’m about eight years old.’
‘Not at all,’ Gwytha said cordially. ‘Nine at the least. You are bored, aren’t you?’
‘Extremely. Justin’s teaching his catapult crew to spell his name out in rocks or something, and Licinius is consorting with an Egyptian potion peddler who looks like a beetle and is full of a lot of large talk about the influence of the stars. He’s always hoping to find out about a new disease.’
‘Don’t you mean a new cure?’
‘Oh, Licinius isn’t particular. The scientific mind, you know. He’s writing a book. Can I come in? This snow is beginning to soak through my clothes.’
‘Come along then, and Januaria will find something to warm you.’ She was grateful for the interruption.
Hila
rion scrambled down and followed Gwytha into the house, making his apologies to the cat, who glared at him balefully but allowed himself to be scratched between the ears. Gwytha called to Januaria and sent her to the storeroom to fetch wine while Hilarion flopped down beside the brazier and eyed the loom admiringly.
‘For Justin?’
‘Yes. His old one is wearing thin.’
‘I envy him,’ Hilarion said. ‘My mother has my wife all picked out,’ he added, and favored her with a brief, unflattering picture of the young lady in question.
‘Shall you marry her?’ Gwytha set the loom clicking again.
‘Not for worlds. I’ve told my mother so, but she will keep thinking I’ll come round when I’m older. She’ll get the idea eventually.’
‘Poor girl,’ Gwytha said. ‘I hope then that some other man may ask for her.’
‘Is it so important, to be married?’ Hilarion asked.
‘It is for a woman,’ she said grimly. ‘What has she to do else?’
‘That must not be overly pleasant. To have to be married, I mean.’ Hilarion was startled. He had never really considered the girl’s side of the question before.
‘It depends on whom you marry, I expect. In my tribe, a girl’s father gives her where he chooses, although many are willing to listen to her preferences in the matter. And at the least she gets a man who wants her.’ There was a bite to her voice on the last sentence, he thought, but it faded out again. ‘Is it the same in Rome?’
‘I expect so. I don’t really know much about Rome. Most of us don’t come from there, you know. Roman citizens are scattered from one end of the Empire to the other.’
‘And yet I think you all count it as home?’
‘In one way, yes. I think it’s the place that you’re born that you want to go back to in the end, but Rome is – it’s hard to explain. It’s the center of things. In one way, it is the Empire.’
The Legions of the Mist Page 14