She shook her head. “No. I meant, what is your nation?”
He spoke with more care. “Rufus and I—Cymriu, the dwellers call that country. It is part of the same island as England, is the last of the ancient Britain, best for me because nobody there would mistake me for English. Rufus doesn’t matter, he’s my old retainer, he’s gone by the nickname so long that he’s well-nigh forgotten any else. I, though—Cadoc ap Rhys.”
“I’ve never heard of those lands.”
“No,” he sighed, “I didn’t expect you had.”
“I’ve a feeling you’ve traveled more than you just said.”
“I have wandered quite widely, true.”
“I envy you,” burst from her. “Oh, I envy you!”
He raised his brows. “What? It’s a hard life, often dangerous, always lonely.”
“But free. Your own master. If I could fare like you—“ Her eyes stung. She swallowed hard and tried to lay hold on the tears before they broke loose.
Turned grave, he shook his head in his turn. “You do not know what becomes of camp followers, Svoboda Volodarovna. I do.”
Understanding washed over her. “Y-you are a lonely man, Cadoc,” she said around a thickness. “Why?”
“Make the best of that life you have,” he counselled. “Each in our own way, we are all of us trapped in ours.”
“You too.” Your strength must fade, your pride shall crumble, in one more blink of time you will go down into the earth and soon after that your very name will be forgotten, dust on the wind.
He winced. “Yes. Thus it seems.”
“I’ll remember you!” she cried.
“What?”
“I— Nothing, nothing. I am shaken and weary and, and I think a little drunk.”
“Do you wish to sleep till your clothes are ready? I’ll stay quiet— Svoboda, you weep.” Cadoc came around the table, stooped over her, laid an arm across her shoulders.
“Forgive me, I’m being weak and, and foolish. Not myself, please believe me, not myself.”
“No, certainly not, dear venturer. I know how you feel.”
His lips brushed her hair. Blindly she turned her head toward him, and knew he would kiss her. It was gentle. Her tears made it taste like the sea.
“I am an honorable man, of sorts,” he said against her cheek. How warm were his breath, his body. “I’d not force you to anything.”
“You need not,” she heard through the great soft thunders.
“I depart shortly after dawn, Svoboda, and your marriage awaits you.”
She gripped him hard, nails into his coat. “Three husbands I have had already,” she told him, “and sometimes, at the lakeside, the spring feast of Kupala— Oh, yes, Cadoc.”
For an instant she saw that she had let out too much. Now she must somehow answer his questions, with her head awhirl... But he gave her his hand, it was as if he lifted her to her feet, and went by her side to a bed.
Thereafter she was again in a dream. Her wanting him had come over her as a torrent. If she foresaw anything whatsoever, it was a slaking. He was not a big man, but he might be strong, he might take a while to finish, long enough, and then she could topple into sleep. Instead, he took the robe from her through a time that swayed on and on, and guided her to help him off with his garb, always his fingers and his mouth knowing what to do, what to evoke; and though the bed was narrow, when he brought her down upon it he still stroked and touched and kissed until she wailed for him to open the heavens and unloose the suns.
Afterward they caressed, laughed, japed, spread two straw ticks on the floor that they might have real room to move about, played, loved, his head rested between her breasts, she urged him anew and yet anew, he swore he had never known the match to her and the believing of him was a tall fire.
The glass in the window grayed. Candles had burned down to stubs. The smoke of them drifted bitter through a chill that she finally began to feel.
“I must see you to your lodging,” he said in her arms.
“Oh, not at once,” she begged.
“The fleet leaves soon. And you have your own world to meet. First you will need rest, Svoboda, dear.”
“I am weary as if I’d plowed ten fields,” she murmured. A giggle. “But you did the plowing. You rascal, I’m hardly able to walk.” She nuzzled the silky beard. “Thank you, thank you.”
“I’ll sleep soundly on the ship, myself. Afterward I’ll wake and remember you. And long for you, Svoboda. But that is the price, I suppose.”
“If only—”
“I told you, the trade I follow these days is a bad one for a woman.”
“You come home from it after the season, don’t you?”
He sat up. His face seemed as gray as the light. “I have no home any more. I dare not. You couldn’t understand. Come, we must hurry, but we needn’t ruin this that we’ve had.”
Dumbly, she waited while he dressed and went to get her clothes from Rufus. The thought trickled through her: He’s right, the thing is impossible, or at least it would be too brief and become too full of pain. He does not know, however, why he is right.
Her garments were wet after washing. They hung clammily. Well, with luck she could get to her room unnoticed. “I wish I could give you the silk robe,” Cadoc said. “If you can explain it away— No?” Maybe he would think of her when it passed to some girl somewhere else. “I also wish I could feed you. We’re under time’s whip, you and I. Come.” Yes, she was hungry, faint with hunger and weariness and ache. That was good. It pulled her spirit back down to where she belonged.
Fog hazed and hushed the streets. The sun had belike risen, but barely, in the east that Svoboda had forsaken. She walked hand in hand with Cadoc. Among the Rusi, that simply meant friendship. Nobody outside would know when the clasp tightened. Few people were around thus far, anyhow. From a passerby Cadoc learned the way to Olga’s dwelling.
They stopped before it. “Fare gladly, Svoboda,” he said.
“And you,” was all she could answer.
“I will remember you—“ his smile twisted— “more than is wise.”
“I will forever remember you, Cadoc,” she said.
He took both her hands in his, bowed above them, straightened, let her go, turned, and walked off. Soon he was lost in the fog.
“Forever,” she said into the emptiness.
A while she remained standing. The sky overhead was clear, brightening to blue. A falcon, early aloft, caught the light of the hidden sun on his wings.
Maybe it’s best that this was what it was and nothing more, she thought. A moment snatched free, for me to keep beyond the reach of the years.
Three husbands have I buried, and I think that was release, to pray them goodbye and see them shoveled under, for by then they had wasted and withered and were no longer the men who proudly stood beside me at the weddings. And Rostislav had peered at me, wondered, accused, beaten me when he got drunk... No, burying my children, that was the worst. Not so much the small ones, they die and die and you have no time to know them except as a brightness that goes by. Even my first grandchild, he was small. But Svetlana, now, she was a woman, a wife, it was my great-grandchild who killed her in the birthing.
At least that was the final sorrow. The villagers, yes, my living children, they could no longer endure this thing that is I, that never grows decently old. They fear me, therefore they hate me. And I could no longer endure, either. I might have welcomed the day when they came with axes and clubs to make an end of the thing.
Gleb Ilyev, ugly, greedy little Gleb—he has the manhood to see past strangeness, see the woman who is neither child of the gods nor creature of Satan but is the most lost and bewildered of any. I wish I could reward Gleb with better than silver. Well, I wish for much that cannot be.
Through him, I have found how to stay alive. I will be the best wife to Igor Olegev that I am able. But as the years pass, I will befriend somebody else like Gleb, and when the time comes, be will find a n
ew place, a new beginning for me. The widow of one man can many again, in some town or on some farm well distant, and nobody she knew will think it is altogether outlandish, and nobody she comes to know will think of questions she dares not answer. Of course, the children must be left provided for, such as are not grown. I will be the best mother that I am able.
A smile winged by.
Who can tell? A few husbands of mine may even be like Cadoc.
Her dress clung and dripped. She felt how cold she was, shivered, and walked slowly to the door of the house.
VII. The Same Kind
1
Habit dies hard, and then from time to time will rise from its grave. “What do you really know about this drab, Lugo?” asked Rufus. He spoke in Latin such as had not been heard for centuries, even among churchmen of the West.
Nor had Cadoc used that name for a span longer yet. He replied in Greek: “Practice your living languages more. Get your terminology right. The word you used scarcely fits the most fashionable and expensive courtesan in Constantinople.”
“A whore be a whore,” said Rufus stubbornly, though he did change to the modern tongue of the Empire. “You been, uh, in-vest-igating her, talking with people, sounding ‘em out, damn near since we got here. Weeks. And me left to twiddle my thumb.” He glanced down at the stump of his right wrist. “When’re we going to do something?”
“Perhaps quite soon,” Cadoc answered. “Or perhaps not. It depends on what further I can learn about the lovely Athenais, if anything. And on much else, to be sure. I am not only overdue for a change of identity, we are both overdue for a change of occupation. The Rus trade is spinning faster and faster toward ruin.”
“Yah, yah, you’ve said that plenty often. I’ve seen for myself. But what about this woman? You haven’t told me nothing about her.”
“That is because patience in disappointment is not among your excellences.” Cadoc paced to the single window and stared out. It stood open on summer air, odors of smoke and tar and dung and hinted fragrances, noise of wheels and hoofs and feet and voices. From this third-floor inn room the view swept over roofs, streets, the city wall, the gate and harbor of the Kontoskalion. Masts raked upward from the docks. Beyond glittered the Sea of Marmora. Craft danced on its blueness, everything from bumboats shaped like basins to a freighter under sail and a naval dromond with oars in parade-ground step. It was hard to imagine, to feel, the shadow under which all this lay.
Cadoc clasped his hands behind his back. “However, I may as well inform you now,” he said. “Today I have hopes that I’ll reach the end of the trail, or find that it was a false scent. It’s been maddeningly vague, as you’d expect. So-and-so tells me that somebody else once told him this-and-that. With difficulty, because he’s moved, I track down Kyrios Somebody Else to verify it, and to the best of his dim recollection that is not quite what he told So-and-so, but from a third party he did once hear— Ah, well.
“Basically, ‘Athenais’ is the latest name the lady has taken. No surprise there. Name changes are quite usual in her profession; and of course she prefers to obscure her origins, the fact that she was not always the darling of the city. I’ve established that, earlier, she worked as Zoe in one of the better brothels over in Galata; and I am practically certain that before then she was on this side of the Golden Horn, in the Phanar quarter, as a less elegant girl calling herself Eudoxia. Beyond that, the information is slight and unreliable. Too many people have died or otherwise disappeared.
“The pattern has been the same, though, an outwardly affable but actually secretive woman who avoids pimps—at worst, formerly, she paid off as necessary—and spends no more on fanciments than she must. Instead, she saves—invests, I suspect—with an eye to moving up another rung on the ladder. Now she is independent, even powerful, what with her connections and the things she doubtless knows. And—“ Despite the dull houndwork that lay behind, despite the coolness he kept m his tone, a tingle went along Cadoc’s backbone, out to his scalp and fingertips. “The trail reaches at least thirty years into the past, Rufus. It may well be fifty or more years long. Always she is youthful, always she is beautiful.”
“I knew what you was after,” said the redbeard, unwontedly low, “but I’d stopped thinking you’d ever find it.”
“I too, almost. Seven centuries since I came on you, and nobody before and nobody afterward, for all my searching. Yes, hope wears thin. Maybe today, at last—“ Cadoc shook himself, turned about, and laughed. “I’m soon due at her place. I dare not tell you what a few hours there cost!”
“Have a care,” Rufus grunted. “A whore be a whore. I go find me a cheap ‘un, ha?”
Impulsively, Cadoc reached into his pouch and gave him a fistful of silver miliarisions. “Add this to your own coins and enjoy yourself, old fellow. A shame that the Hippodrome isn’t open just now, but you must know several odeions where the performances are bawdy enough for your less elevated moments. Just don’t talk too loosely.”
“You taught me that, you did. Have fun. I hope she turns out to be what you want, master. I’ll use a bit o’ the money to buy you a good-luck spell.” That seemed to be about as much as the prospect could move Rufus’ stolidity. But then, Cadoc thought, he lacks the wit to understand what it will mean to find another immortal—a woman. At least, immediately; it may dawn on him later.
I don’t suppose I quite understand it yet myself.
Rufus went out. Cadoc took an embroidered mantle off its hanger and fitted it over the fine linen sakkos and be-jeweled dalmatic that enrobed him. On his feet were curly-toed shoes from far Cordova. Even for an afternoon appointment, one went to Athenais appropriately dressed.
He had already gotten his hair cut short and his beard shaven off. Fluent in Greek and familiar, after much prowling, with the byways of the city, he could pass for Byzantine. Not that he would try to do so unnecessarily. It wasn’t worth the risk. Rus merchants were supposed to stay in the St. Manio suburb on the Galata side of the Horn, crossing the bridge to the Blachernae Gate by day and returning at evening. He was still listed among them. It had taken a substantial bribe as well as persuasive chatter to get permission to take lodging here. He was not actually a Rus, he told the officials, and he was ready to retire from the trade. Both statements were true. He had gone on, mendaciously but persuasively, about certain new arrangements he had in mind, which would be to the profit of local magnates as well as himself. In the course of generations, given an innate talent for it, one learns how to convince. Thus he won freedom to pursue his inquiries with maximum efficiency.
The streets throbbed and clamored with traffic. He followed their steepnesses to the Mese, the avenue that, branching, ran from end to end of the city. Down its width on his right he spied the column that upbore Justinian’s equestrian statue in the Forum of Constantine and beyond it, just glimpsed, the walls of the Imperial palace grounds, senate house, law courts, Hippodrome; the domes of Hagia Sophia; the gardens and shining buildings on the Acropolis: glories raised through lifetime after transient lifetime.
He turned left. Brilliance flowed with him and glowed from the arcades that lined the thoroughfare. Plainness was nearly lost in it, workmen, porters, carters, farmers in from the countryside, priests of the lower orders. Even hawkers and strolling entertainers flaunted fantastic colors as they shouted what wonders they offered; even slaves wore the liveries of great households. A nobleman passed by in his palanquin, young dandies whooped in a wineshop, a troop of guardsmen tramped with mail agleam, a cavalry officer and his attendant cataphracts cantered haughtily behind a runner who shouted and elbowed people aside, banners flew, cloaks and scarfs billowed in a brisk wind off the sea, New Rome seemed immortally young. Religion yielding to commerce and diplomacy, foreigners were plentiful, be they suave Muslim Syrians, boorish Catholic Normans, or from lands farther and stranger yet. Cadoc was content to vanish into the human flood.
At the Forum of Theodosius he crossed over to its northern corner, ignoring the s
ellers who cried their wares and the beggars who cried their need. Where the Aqueduct of Valens overlooked the roof-decked hollow it spanned, he paused for a moment’s breath. The view swept before him, down to rampart and battlements, the Gate of the Drungarii, the Golden Horn full of its own farings, and across those waters hills green with growth, white with the houses of Pera and Galata. Gulls yonder made a living snowstorm. You can tell a rich harbor by its gulls, thought Cadoc. How much longer will this many fly and mew here?
He thrust sadness from him and continued north, downhill, until he found the house he wanted. Outwardly it was an unpretentious three-story building, hemmed in by its neighbors, the facade rosy-plastered. But that was ample for one woman, her servants, and the revelries over which she presided.
A bronze knocker was made in the form of a scallop shell. Cadoc’s heart skipped a step. Had she recalled that this Western Christian emblem of a pilgrim once belonged to Ashtoreth? The fingers with which he rattled it were damp.
The door opened and he confronted a huge black man in Asian-like shirt and trousers—an entire male, likelier hireling than slave, well able to remove anyone whom his employer found objectionable. “Christ be with you, Kyrie. May I ask what is your desire?”
“My names is Cadoc ap Rhys. The lady Athenais awaits me.” The visitor handed over a piece of parchment bearing the identification, given him when he paid the price to her broker. That woman had had to decide first that he was suitably refined, and still she had told him no time was available for a week. Cadoc slipped the doorman a golden bezant—a little extravagant, perhaps, but impressiveness might help his chances.
The Boat of a Million Years Page 15