by Lisa Cach
Then, breaking through the buzzing of the swarm, a voice.
“Little bird,” he said.
My fingers stopped on the strings. I was afraid to turn. Afraid to see that he was really there.
“You’re more beautiful than ever.”
A shiver ran through me. I was alone here; how could I have been so stupid? There were nearly four dozen people who would protect me, all in the palace. And I had come here, to be alone.
I slowly turned.
Sygarius stood a few feet away. He wore a white Roman-style tunic with a red border, a short sword at his hip, and deep red sandals. His hair was shorn short, as befitted a Roman general.
He had more silver at his temples than I remembered, and the lines around his eyes had deepened. He was leaner and his skin more deeply tanned, as if he had spent his year of exile exercising out-of-doors rather than indulging in pleasures of food and flesh, as had been his wont in Soissons. There was a long scar on his arm, but the wound seemed to have done no lasting damage. I had expected to find him beaten, withered, but he looked stronger than before, his dark eyes as considering and intelligent as ever. He looked like a man with every intention of reclaiming that which was his.
I felt myself quiver.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked through dry lips.
“A fortuitous glance out the window as you headed to the path. So fortuitous, I could believe the gods meant it to happen.”
“We should not speak until tomorrow,” I said, the words sounding weak to my own ears. I tried to tell myself that his power had been stripped away, but all Sygarius’s power looked to be contained within himself, not the lands he had lost. If anything, he looked more dangerous than before. Adversity had sharpened him.
He flicked his fingers, discarding the notion. “Everything that matters can be said between us two. We are where everything begins, and everything ends, are we not, Nimia? We are the alpha and omega. Everyone else is empty noise in between.”
“You tried to end me,” I said, mustering my courage. “You ordered your soldier to kill me.”
“An unfortunate but necessary gamble that paid off for us both, far better than I could have hoped.”
He stepped forward, and I scrambled off the bench in alarm, darting away to the edge of the empty fountain.
Sygarius laughed and shook his head. “You think I would harm the mother of my son?”
My breath caught in my throat. “Who told you about Theo?”
“Alaric, of course. The man is judicious beyond sense. He felt it only fair that I not be surprised with the information tomorrow. Clovis was more clever than I’d give him credit for, sending you as his emissary to Alaric. Or was it Basina’s idea?” He didn’t wait for my response. “Basina could probably see better than Clovis what a spell you can cast on a man. You’ve cast yours on Alaric, haven’t you? He tells me he intends to marry you.” He came closer, and I forced myself to hold my ground as he touched my cheek, stroking it softly and then lifting my chin. “We both know that’s not going to happen.”
His eyes had darkened, and he drew so close that I could feel the warmth of his body in the air between us. His familiar scent enveloped me, and my treacherous body began to tingle.
I summoned defiance. “I think it might.”
His hand slid down my neck, the strength of it spanning my narrow throat, giving me a frisson of fear—it would take him but a moment to crush the breath from me—and then down to my necklace. His mouth quirked. “I recognize this bee. It’s part of the treasure I gave to Childeric, to calm him after that false prophecy you made.”
“They buried him with those bees—all but this one.”
“Thus making your prediction come true. Clovis must have found it useful to have a puppet prophetess to tell people the future he wants them to hear. I’ll keep that in mind when I retake Soissons and make you my queen.”
“I won’t be your queen. Alaric is in love with me; you think he’s going to let you have me instead, and give you an army to retake Soissons?”
“The man must have been like a child in your hands. All that Christian sexual repression . . . You gave him what he most wanted, didn’t you?” He released the necklace and lowered his hand to cover my breast. I trembled, leaning into his touch despite myself. “You gave him sex without restraint. And now lust and pleasure have blinded him to all else. But at heart Alaric is a man of reason, and the power of lust always fades.” He pinched my nipple between his thumb and the side of his forefinger, and my lips parted. “He’ll see soon enough that he needs me as a shield against the Franks, more than he needs you in his bed.”
I shook my head, struggling to think against the arousal he was stirring in my body. I should step away, put distance between us. . . . “If you know Alaric so well, then you also know he is a man of honor. He has offered his hand to me. He will not withdraw it.”
“His honor will argue that you, as the mother of my child, belong to me. If I offer to join his Christian faith and marry you in his church, do you think he will put himself before the formation of a Christian family?” His other hand moved over my hip, and around to my buttock. He traced the crack between my cheeks, and my cunny contracted. I felt the dampness of desire soak my folds. “Think you that he will see no honor in my vanquishing Clovis to retrieve my son?”
I felt a sinking dread. Presented to Alaric in such a way, what choice would Alaric have? He had been trained since birth to put the needs of his kingdom and his faith before his own. Alaric would be as helpless before Sygarius’s reasoning as I was beneath his touch.
“He doesn’t need you,” I tried, struggling against what was beginning to seem inevitable.
I felt the bars of a cage closing around me: Sygarius was in control of this situation, not me. I had come here to capture him and bring him in chains to Clovis, but instead, I was to be the one ensnared. I had walked into his hands, blindly confident that others would protect me, when I should have known that Sygarius would always be more dangerous than Clovis and Alaric combined. They were but boys playing king, compared to him.
“Alaric loves diplomacy over war,” I told him. “He will prefer bartering your return for peace with Clovis, to sending his men to fight for Soissons.”
“Poor little bird, you think you see all, but you see almost nothing. Gaul is filled with Romans; they did not vanish when the Visigoths took control. If Alaric wants a peaceful kingdom, he will choose Roman wishes and Roman allies, over the Franks. Enough of this talk, now.” His fingers stroked to the bottom of my crack and pressed inward, soaking my gown with my arousal. My hips pushed back against his fingers, my cunny wanting to take him inside. Sygarius chuckled. “I made a promise to you that I’ve yet to fulfill.”
“What promise?”
“That there would be pleasure for you after you became pregnant. My payment is long past due.” He sank to his knees and pushed the hem of my gown up to my hips. “I’ve had dreams of this.” He breathed deeply, his face at my loins. “The scent of home. It will always be mine, Nimia. First and last. You should never forget that.”
I clenched my thighs in one last show of defiance, but the effort only made it that much worse when a moment later he plunged his long, rough tongue into the narrow space where thighs and mound met. His tongue rasped against the hood of my stamen and parted my folds, then on the outward pull tugged back the hood. I cried out as his warm, wet tongue dragged against my exposed stamen. His grip tightened on my hips, holding me up as my knees weakened and my thighs began to part of their own accord.
His tongue plunged again and again, and when my thighs parted he bent his head lower and I felt him licking my gates, lapping up my desire as if it were the water of life. My hips rocked, and I looked down on his dark head in astonishment, unbelieving that I could so quickly fall back into pleasure at this man’s touch, and overwhelmed by a disorien
ting feeling of déjà vu.
My mind’s eye flashed to the vision I’d had, a year past, of Sygarius on his knees, licking my cunny. This was it.
Gods, help me. Is this what it had meant, that I would forever be slave to him, my body helpless with pleasure no matter how he touched me?
He wrapped one arm around my hips and held me firmly as his lips closed over my stamen and his tongue flicked. His other hand slipped between my thighs, and I felt two strong fingers shove up deep inside me. I whimpered in pleasure, his fingers thrusting as his mouth worked my peak, and my golden swarm surrounded me. I dug my fingers into his short dark hair, clinging to it to stay upright, my world spinning. Amid the buzzing of the swarm I heard the melody I’d been playing on the cithara, bringing the fountain nereids to life. In my mind I saw the whole garden turning green and lush again, water flowing from amphorae, the water spouting from the nymphs’ mouths like gurgling laughter.
It was as if the whole Roman world revived, and all of it from Sygarius’s tongue at my cunny, dragging me back into his sexual chains. The golden swarm hummed, and with dizzying clarity I saw myself at the apex of a vast turning point, touching not just my own life, but the life of all of Gaul.
Sygarius drew his fingers from me and with one last hard lick his mouth as well, and stood. He turned me around and bent me over so my hands were on the edge of the basin. He flipped my hem up to my waist, and I felt the head of his thick mentula touch my gates. My cunny pulsed and I moaned, wanting it so badly I couldn’t bear a moment’s denial.
Yet in that moment while he was poised at my entrance, his hands lifting and spreading my buttocks to get a better view of the labyrinth of which he would once again be master, my golden swarm showed me what would come if he took possession of me:
Soissons, his. The Franks, pushed back. The Visigoths, retreating into Hispania. Rome strengthening, expanding.
The Western Roman Empire would rise again.
Somehow I was the keystone in this arch of events, and this moment was when it would be set.
With a cry of self-denial, I wrenched away and spun around to face him. “No! I won’t be yours again.”
The surprise on his face shaded to amused disbelief. “You’ve always been mine. You always will be. You can’t help it, little bird.”
“I am not your little bird. And I was never yours. I am my own.”
He reached for me, and I danced away. It made him smile. “You know I have only to touch you, and you submit. You are mine.”
I shook my head and forced a laugh, though my body was weak with unsatisfied desire. “You still believe I wanted to come back to you in Soissons. I agreed to be bait, Sygarius. I knew of the plan to ambush you all along.”
He shook his head. “You didn’t.”
“Clovis is my lover. He has been my lover, since before your grand rites of Dionysus, where you thought you deflowered me.”
He laughed. “You forget, little bird: I pierced your hymen. I brought forth your virgin’s blood.”
“You pierced a sac of chicken blood, shoved inside my cunny. I tricked you. We tricked you, and laughed about it.”
He paled.
“ ‘Touch me not, for Sygarius’s I am,’ ” I taunted. “Do you remember that, inscribed on my torc? Yet Clovis touched me, as deep as he could thrust his mentula, while I lay on my back on the floor of the pressing room and urged him on.”
His jaw tensed, his paleness given way to the darkening hue of rage. “I’ll make you pay for that deception.”
“I’d like to see you try. Alaric will give you over to me, and I shall haul you back to Clovis in chains. To Clovis, my lover—the man who had me before you, and who will have me after. My alpha and omega.”
His mouth was a narrow white line of fury. I had cut him deeply.
And now to twist the blade.
“Clovis—the father of my son.”
With a rasp of steel against leather, he drew his short sword from its scabbard. Too late I saw my danger; I had pushed him too far.
He hefted the blade in both hands and drew it back, his face contorted in a snarl of hatred and fury. Far behind him I caught a flash of movement, and an outcry of voices. A baying bark. I was still looking toward that far-off rescue when the blade flashed in the sunlight and came round in an arc. It swung faster than I could react, my vision of it slicing toward me too far ahead of my body’s ability to move.
I felt a dull impact in my neck, devoid of pain, and then I was falling. I heard shouts and cries, but they were far away. I saw only the sky and a fountain of red blood, pulsing toward the heavens, brilliant crimson against the cerulean blue. My blood splashed over the face of a nereid, her open mouth now one of horror. Down I went, down, until I came to rest in the dry grass, staring up at the fountain of crumbled nymphs. I felt my blood choking me. I could not breathe.
My vision, when I had lain with Clovis. This was it. I was choking to death upon my own blood, my arteries severed, my windpipe clogged.
I’d seen my own death, and now I lived it.
My swarm came to me, a thousand golden bees upon my body. The nymphs faded from my vision, screened out by a mist of gold. The buzzing filled my ears, transforming again into the melody I had been playing while alone in the garden, summoning the waters of the fountain, bringing this lost world back to life. In my mind I played it again, my fingers on the cithara’s strings, losing myself in music and the healing it brought me. I called forth the waters, wanting to see it flow before I was gone.
An image of my necklace flashed into my imagination, and I watched bemused as the bee at the center traced the route out of the labyrinth, leaving a trail of honey behind. The words I’d spoken during childbed fever trickled through my mind and I silently sang them with my melody, even as my golden swarm began to fade and I sank toward darkness.
Cool water splashed my face, halting my fall into the abyss. Another splash. And then a deluge, pounding against my body, covering my face, soaking my body, and then rolling me in a wave of water.
Sputtering, I opened my eyes to find myself facedown in grass and flowing water, and I pushed myself up on my elbows to get air. I saw the fountain basin overflowing, the water shooting from amphorae and nereids as if a river had been diverted through them. I gaped at it, then lifted my hand to my throat, and felt a narrow ridge of scar that vanished even as I touched it.
“Holy Mother of Jesus,” someone said.
I turned my head to find Alaric falling to his knees in the flowing water beside me, his face pale with terror and awe.
A smile trembled on my lips. “Hello, darling.” But I had a feeling I was never going to be his darling again.
He stared from the fountain, to my face, to my gown soaked with blood that not even the gushing waters could wholly wash away. “What on God’s good earth are you?”
It’s her!”
“It’s the saint!”
“Bless me, my lady! Bless me!”
“Saint Quitterie, bless my child. Please, bless my child.” A woman thrust her baby toward me. I forced a smile and touched the babe upon its forehead. “Thank you, my lady. Thank you!”
“They will insist on saying it wrong,” Sid complained beside me.
We and the rest of my retinue were walking toward the pier in Tolosa, where several galleys waited to take us back downstream to Burdigala. Sygarius was already installed in one of them. Belowdecks. In chains. It had been two weeks since my confrontation with him.
“It’s ‘Saint Kitharede,’ ” Sid said, “not ‘Saint Quitterie.’ ”
“I will never forgive you for this.”
“Tsch. You should be thanking me for your life.”
I cocked a brow at him.
“Alaric’s priests would have loved to hang you as a witch. But now, as a Christian saint? You are untouchable. For a hundred miles, the
y’re already spreading my tale of the Christian woman who wouldn’t submit to the evil lusts of the pagan lord. He struck off her head—”
“I’m not Christian. And he did not strike it all the way off.”
“Facts have nothing to do with a good story.”
“Apparently.”
“As I was saying. He struck off her head in his anger, but instead of dying, where her head hit the ground, a spring burst forth. Saint Kitharede picked up her head and, with her wounds doused in the healing waters of God, put it back on her shoulders.”
“You didn’t make up this story to save my life. Did you do it to increase your fame as a poet?”
He smiled beatifically. “No. Although I do not mind the attention.”
“Then why?”
He sighed and tucked my hand into the crook of his arm. “Nimia, you still have much to learn of the affairs of men. Your naïveté charms me, but I fear it will bring you harm unless you shed it.”
“I’m trying.”
He patted my hand. “Forgive me. I forget sometimes how long it took me to shed my own ignorance. I forget, as well, how very young you are. I wrote the poem of Saint Kitharede because I could not have word spreading of a pagan miracle. I am a Christian bishop in a Christian kingdom, my dear. To have such a miracle—witnessed by far too many, who would never keep their mouths shut—happen at a Temple of Mars, would shake the faith of simple minds. I had to shift the story to serve the Church. You can’t hate me for it too much; it got you what you came for: Sygarius in chains. Alaric can hardly claim the ‘evil pagan lord’ who beheaded a saint as an ally.”
“Tell me, Sidonius Apollinaris: how do you explain to your own mind what happened?”