The Adventures of a Roman Slave

by Lisa Cach

  A murmur went through the hall, and bodies pressed for a closer view. I was standing on the stone floor, but saw that there was indeed a dais on the other side of the carriage. Terix rose from his bow and put out his hand for me. I laid mine lightly atop his and let him lead me to the dais stairs: my vision was hampered by the veil that covered my face from brow to chin, and his guidance left me free to focus on my flowing movements.

  The murmurs grew louder as I climbed the stairs with Terix and more people could see me. My hair was pulled back in tight braids, and pinned to my head with more gold. I wore nothing between the veil on my face and a girdle of gold links at my hips, through the center of which a long white cloth was looped, making a skirt that hung to my feet at front and back, but left my legs with their tattoos as bare as my breasts. Between the black-blue spirals on my body and the multitude of gold adorning my limbs, I must have made a fine spectacle.

  There were a dozen people I did not know on the dais, and whom I could barely see through the veil. Clovis was there, though, and Basina.

  Now came the part we had rehearsed. I was given a gold goblet to drink from—plain water, to my disappointment—and then I was to pretend to be communing with higher powers. No one had ever told me what I looked like when in a trance, except that my eyes turned to a glowing copper. It would have been helpful to know what else happened. Did my limbs go stiff? Did I arch my back? Did my head roll?

  Basina had instructed me to stretch out my arms and stare straight ahead, then speak my prophecy in Phannic. “Priest” Terix would then “translate” my words to Latin for a high-ranking Christian priest named Remigius to relate to the crowd. Remigius was a disinterested party, his religion followed by few if any of the Franks, and thus he was trusted not to embellish for any one Frank’s benefit.

  I was to put my arms straight out? Pah. That hardly seemed sufficient for the occasion. Basina had no imagination. These people wanted an oracle, not an effigy.

  I swept my arms out like wings, then brought them together, crossed, before my face and then slowly sank into a squat and began to make a flutelike noise in the back of my mouth, as high-pitched and fluttering as birdsong. Indeed, I’d taught myself this trick in an attempt to talk to birds, when I was a child.

  I rose from my squat, stretching my arms above me as I did so, my chirpings growing louder and more strident, until I was making the piercing call of a hawk, my hands stretched up to the heavens hidden beyond the beamed roof of the hall.

  And now for some acrobatics. Just a little, to give them something to look at.

  I gave several sharp hunting cries as if traumatized by my visions, and then melted backward, bending my back and reaching out with my arms until I felt my hands touch the dais. As I arched in front of the hall, a fragile human bridge poised on tiptoes and fingertips, I realized that my plan to go into a handstand posed certain problems. Namely, my gold girdle and skirt would fall off my hips. I didn’t care about the nudity, but it seemed an undignified event for a demigoddess, to have her girdle flopping about her armpits and her skirts flapping in her face.

  I could pull myself back upright, but my belly muscles, I’d just discovered, were suffering from my night with Clovis, and were unwilling to cooperate.

  Mouse farts.

  There was no way out but down.

  I put on a great screeching show of birdcalls, relying heavily on ravens with their raucous caws, and slowly collapsed onto the dais.

  I saw Basina glaring down at me.

  Yes, well, seers were known to be peculiar. She should have expected the unexpected.

  The dais floor seemed as good a place as any to deliver my proclamations, so I shouted out the first of them, in Phannic: “I want wine with my dinner!”

  No one could understand me, so it didn’t matter what I said. Terix was the one who had had to memorize his lines, in order to recount my vision to Remigius. Terix, more sensible of his skin than I was of mine, stayed true to his script and spoke of a rumble of thunder. Remigius repeated the Latin words for everyone to hear, and then translated into Frankish.

  “I want naked, virile young men to attend me at my bath,” I shouted. And why not?

  Terix dutifully “translated” my words.

  And so on.

  There was a stirring and a change in the atmosphere of the hall when Terix got to the part about the snake being cloven in two, and blue blood spurting out. Angry murmurings emerged, quickly countered by tones of gleeful satisfaction.

  I might not know what the vision meant, but the Franks did. It was an odd feeling, to be the one who “knew” the future and yet to have no idea what was coming. The symbols I saw were meant for other people, not me.

  Someday I’d have to think more closely on that, and what it said about whether I should share my visions with others or hoard them inside where they could do no harm.

  “I like it when Clovis licks my cunny!” I shouted. “And he has a marvelous thick rod!”

  Terix spoke of lightning striking Clovis, Remigius repeated, then translated . . . and the hall erupted in violent chaos. I heard steel being drawn, shouts, flesh striking flesh, pounding footsteps, screams, the lowing of the frightened cows. Metal striking metal.

  Terix grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet; there were twice as many people on the dais now, and all were fighting or fleeing, their motions a blur from behind the veil. A man lunged toward us, short-sword drawn, his mouth screaming something in Frankish. Bone leaped on him from behind, snarling, taking him down and sinking his massive jaw onto the man’s neck, snapping it.

  “The carriage roof,” Terix said, and led me to the edge of the dais. I ripped off the veil and together we jumped the small gap, landing on the wood planks of the roof just as the cows tried to bolt. The roof was a small ship in a sea of violence, and we huddled together upon it, clinging to the edges, as the cows dragged us from the worse of the tumult.

  As quickly as the violence erupted, it ended, and two men stopped and calmed the cattle. As the churning in the great hall stilled, I followed the eyes of everyone else and saw the man from my vision, as big as a tree. There were no teeth tied in his hair, but the small ivory squares sewn in neat geometric designs on his tunic, and the black hair fringe at the tunic’s hem, told tales I dare not hear. His arm was raised, and from his fist dangled the head of a man.

  A cheer throbbed through the hall.

  The headless body on the floor had a blue snake embroidered upon the shoulder of the tunic.

  The man climbed the steps to the dais, carrying the head in one hand, his bloodied sword in the other. He came before Clovis, who stood straight though his tunic was slashed and he was splattered with blood. The man held the head out to Clovis, the blood dripping from the severed neck.

  The hall went silent.

  The man spoke in Frankish. “Gods, what’s he saying?” I complained under my breath, just as the Christian priest, Remigius, poked his balding head out from inside the carriage. He must have taken refuge there when the fighting started. And no wonder: he had the pudgy body of a scholar, not a fighter.

  Terix reached down and shook the priest’s shoulder, making him jump. “What’s the fellow with the head saying?”

  As soon as Remigius realized he wasn’t about to have his own head sliced off, he translated for us. “I give you Danoweg of the River Franks, he whose symbol is the blue water snake. He who tried to strike you down in your own hall. He who would deny the words of the daughter of Nerthus, which proclaim that you, and only you, Chlodowig, son of Childeric and descendant of the great demigod Merovech, are to sit upon the Lightning Throne. I pledge my strength and my tribe to you, for now and eternity.”

  The man placed the head at Clovis’s feet, then dropped to his knees and offered his sword up to Clovis.

  The Lightning Throne.

  Ah.

  I couldn’t have g
iven Clovis a more optimistic prophecy, than that he would be struck by lightning.

  I no longer wondered why he’d come as soon as I said it.

  It was all over but the feasting, and even that was taking on a weary air by the end of the sixth day after Clovis’s coronation as king of the Salian Franks. His people had sat him upon a massive throne of blackened oak: the Lightning Throne, formed from an ancient oak tree charred by lightning. The Franks took that legendary lightning strike to have been a blessing from their god of storms and strength, Donar.

  The bloodshed in the great hall seemed to have reassured the Franks of their choice of Clovis to lead them, as if it had been a necessary sacrifice that showed the will of their gods. I got the sense that they may have been suspicious of a transition of power that went peaceably, without at least one rival losing his life.

  Clovis was too engulfed in the securing of alliances to have time for me, beyond pulling me close when he fell into bed in the middle of the night. Whatever caring he felt, he displayed by posting guards over me: whether to prevent me from fleeing, or to protect me from those who might wish to kill or steal his pet seer, I did not know. Probably both.

  The Franks accepted that the daughter of Nerthus was half human, and I was allowed to dine in the great hall with the rest of the revelers. My companions were often Terix and, unfortunately, Basina, but I also broke bread with Remigius, Audofleda, and the tooth-and-hair man, who I learned was a king in his own right, of a place called Cambrai. He was a cousin of Clovis, his name was Ragnachar, and he looked at me with a lust to which I was not immune.

  The thorough plowing that Clovis had given me had sated me for only a day, after which the hunger for touch returned with fresh force. That hunger was my constant companion, a gnawing need that neither food nor wine could appease. In desperate moments I brought release with my own hands, but it was a meager shadow of the joining I craved. I wanted the skin of another next to mine. I wanted a man’s mentula filling me. His seed moistening me. I wanted his mouth on my breast, his cock in my hand. What was my finger flicking on my stamen, compared to that? I didn’t even see a vision, when I pleasured myself; that’s how shallow a joy it was.

  So when Ragnachar looked at me with hunger in his eyes, I looked back and saw the tall, muscled thickness of his body, his legs like logs, and his arms as thick as my waist. His face was buried beneath a brown beard, but what I could see of it was pleasing enough. There was no fat on him, only a great mass of muscle layered on a broad frame. I thought his bones must be as thick as a bull’s.

  I wondered if his rod was as large.

  It was an idle lust on my part, and without intent. Whenever I spied Clovis and Ragnachar together, I was struck by their differences. Clovis might look lanky as a barn cat next to the bear that was Ragnachar, but it was Clovis whose stance subtly bespoke command. He had stepped into his role as leader as if born to it, and was maturing before my eyes. He was relaxing into his new power, and appeared calmer and more confident than while his father had been alive.

  Ragnachar, like most of the Frankish nobles, could speak Latin. I’d learned from Remigius that Christian monks and priests made it their mission to spread the faith in their god, and sought to civilize the barbarians by teaching them to read, write, and speak the mother tongue. He himself had once tutored Clovis and Audofleda.

  The barbarians took the free education, knowing it to be useful; the religion, they ignored. Except for the women, Remigius had said, looking meaningfully at me with his soft brown eyes. The women were the spiritual heart of any people, and where they led, their husbands and children would follow.

  Remigius seemed an intelligent man, but he was mad if he thought that I, of all women, could be lured to his faith.

  I was in the great hall now, sitting near the end of a long table, Bone at my feet, Terix across from me. A musician plucked a lute, the melody so strange to my ears that I could not tell if he did it well or poorly. A scattering of men and women, their dogs and their children, milled about the hall talking and drinking, or put their heads on their folded arms and slept at a table. Babies cried, and children shrieked and threw tantrums, signaling their exhaustion. Even Terix had had enough, judging by the shadows under his eyes.

  At least he wasn’t wearing his turd outfit anymore. I myself was back in Audofleda’s rust-colored gown.

  “Did I tell you how Basina and Childeric met?” Terix suddenly asked, emerging from his contemplation of his mug of mead.

  “On a battlefield, slicing the throats of the wounded?” It sounded like fine entertainment for one of Basina’s temperament.

  “Nearly. Audofleda told me that Childeric was banished from the Franks for several years, and went to Thuringia. Basina was wife of the king there. When Childeric’s banishment ended, he came home and took over the tribe. Basina followed him. When she got here and Childeric asked her why she’d left her husband, she told him and everyone listening that it was only the strongest man who deserved her loyalty. He was flattered enough to keep her.”

  “Or he saw that she wasn’t the type of woman it was wise to disappoint.”

  “She does look like she’d happily eat your liver for breakfast, doesn’t she?” Terix said. “Audofleda is terrified of her. Not that she says so, but she shrinks into herself when her mother is around. The light goes out of her eyes.”

  “I hope you’re being careful, Terix.”

  “I haven’t touched her.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Well, just a little bit. Her skin’s so soft, and she’s as innocent and eager to please as a puppy . . . It would be cruel to say no.”

  I shook my head. “And you berate me for my lusts.”

  “It was no more than kisses, Nimia, I swear it. And a little fondling. Harmless!”

  And there she was, Audofleda. I watched her scan the room, and her gaze land on Terix. She lit up, her face glowing, and hurried toward the table, hesitating only for a moment when she saw that I was there, too. When Terix looked up and saw her, the same sunny glow illuminated his features.

  Uh-oh.

  Lust was one thing, easily displaced. But love? It was a path to grief.

  Audofleda sat at the end of the table and looked shyly at me. “I’ve wanted to apologize to you, Nimia, for those things I said when we first met. I know now that you did my father no harm.”

  “You do?” I blinked at her, thinking she did not look like a girl who had learned the truth: that her mother and brother had smothered her father in his bed.

  “Terix explained it all to me.” She cast an adoring look at him, then turned her big blue eyes back to me. “He is very loyal to you, and I know that no one as sweet and funny and tenderhearted as he is could be loyal to anyone who was not good.”

  I stared at Terix, who had the grace to blush.

  “Can you tell my future?” she asked, leaning forward and putting her hand on my forearm. “Can you tell me whom I’ll wed?”

  “I . . . I don’t know if I could. I don’t know that you’d want to hear the answer, either. The future is rarely what we expect. Or wish for.”

  “Could you tell me at least if I’ll be happy?”

  As I looked into her eyes, and felt her warm hand on my arm, I felt the essence of her. This wasn’t anything I’d experienced before, but somehow her openness allowed me to see into who she was, and what paths she would tread. I caught a glimpse of understanding: that the road we took into the future was half of our own making.

  “You’ll be happy,” I said, my voice sounding far away to my own ears, “if you choose to be. Events will not be as you wish, but you will rise above them and find your joy. If you choose to.” I put my hand over hers and squeezed, suddenly feeling it imperative that she hear me, and remember. “Your happiness in any situation will be your choice, Audofleda. Your choice.”

  She pulled her hands away
. “Th-thank you?” She turned worried eyes to Terix.

  I hoped that she would remember my words, and that someday she would have reason to silently thank me.

  Before we could say more, Clovis joined us. His winter eyes took in the way that Audofleda and Terix leaned toward each other, and their glances of reassurance. His lips quirked in amused disdain, and then his gaze narrowed on Terix, who was too absorbed in Audofleda to notice.

  “Yes, Clovis?” I said, hoping to distract him from whatever murderous thoughts were slicing through his head.

  He turned to me. “I need you.”

  Lovely words, with so many meanings . . . both good and bad.

  I stood and linked arms with him, guiding him away from Terix and Audofleda. We walked toward the great doors, open to the late-afternoon air.

  “What is it?” Up close and in daylight, I could see the strain in his face. The kingship had not, perhaps, been as easy for him as I’d thought. He looked tired.

  “What does Sygarius expect of me?” he asked. “Do you know?”

  “I know some.” I knew because I’d told Sygarius a mix of lies and truth about Clovis, to conceal my own misdeeds. “He thinks you a, er . . .”

  “A what?”

  “A hotheaded simpleton.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “He said you were a ‘mere boy.’ He’s going to be surprised that you gained the crown.”

  “Does he think me loyal to him?”

  “He knows you did not respect your father, nor Childeric’s choice to serve Sygarius for money.”

  Clovis swore. “That’s unfortunate.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s going to be much harder to conquer Soissons if he’s already on guard against me.”

  I was silent, trying to take in what he was saying. “You are only six days a king, and already plotting to invade Soissons?”

  “I’ve been ‘plotting,’ as you put it, since I was old enough to understand that we were mercenaries, and not the rulers descended from gods that I thought. I was raised with tales of my grandfather Merovech, who was the son of a Frankish queen and a quinotaur—”