Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  "Yes, they did. But Carta is still the daughter of a princess. And you're lucky to have a slave attendant at all. Once there were slaves for everything. You would have a slave to call out the time for you — a human hourglass! But now, only your mother, and a few others, believe they can afford slaves. Anyhow you mustn't hurt Carta."

  "But I didn't."

  "And yet she is ill."

  Regina thought back and remembered how pale Carta had looked during Julia's dressing. "But she was ill before the party. I saw her. Go ask her what's wrong."

  "She was?" Still doubtful, Aetius released her hands. "All right. If you are lying, you know about it in your heart... Oh." His eyes widened, his huge head tilted back, and he looked up into the sky.

  Startled, she looked up, too. It took her a moment to spot the light in the sky. It was right in the middle of the great band of stars — a new star, brighter than any of the others, flickering like a guttering candle. People drifted out of the villa, drink and food in their hands, and their chatter faded as they gazed up at the strange light, their faces shining like coins in the last of the twilight.

  Despite the warmth of the evening, Regina suddenly felt cold. "Grandfather, what does it mean?"

  "Perhaps nothing, child." He folded her in his arms, and she pressed her slim warmth against his strength. She heard him mutter, "But it is a powerful omen, powerful."

  • • •

  During the night, after all the guests had gone home, Regina heard shouting. The raised voices, oddly like the cawing of crows, carried across the still air of the courtyard to Regina's room. It wasn't unusual for her mother and father to argue, especially after wine. But tonight it sounded particularly vicious.

  With that going on, she found it impossible to sleep. She got out of bed, and crept along the corridor to Cartumandua's room. The night sky, glimpsed through the thick glass of the windows, seemed bright. But she avoided looking out; perhaps if she ignored that strange light, she thought, it would go away.

  When Regina had been smaller she had often come into Carta's room to sleep, and though it had been some months since she had done so it still wasn't so unusual. But when Regina appeared in the doorway Carta flinched, pulling her woolen blanket up over her chest. When she saw it was Regina she relaxed, and managed a smile, dimly visible in the summer twilight.

  Regina crossed to the bed, the tiled floor cold under her bare feet, and crawled under the blanket with the slave. Vaguely she wondered whom Carta had thought had come to her room, whom she was afraid of.

  Even here she could hear the drunken yelling of her parents. Though it wasn't cold, Carta and Regina clung to each other, and Regina muzzled her face into the familiar scent of Carta's nightdress.

  "Are you better now, Carta?"

  "Yes. Much better."

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  "What for?"

  "For making you sick."

  Cartumandua sighed. "Hush. I've been ill, but it wasn't your fault."

  "You've been stealing food again," said Regina, softly admonishing.

  "Yes. Yes, that's it. I've been stealing food..."

  Regina didn't notice the strained tone of her voice, for, cradled in Carta's arms, she was already falling asleep.

  • • •

  In the morning, there was no sign of her mother. Not that that was so unusual after a party. Servants and slaves moved to and fro, emptying lamps and cleaning away pots and sweeping floors. They looked tired; it had been a long night for them, too. The day was hot, much more sultry than yesterday, and Regina wondered if a storm was going to break.

  Regina ate the breakfast of fruit and oats brought to her by Carta. There would be no schooling today, as a treat for her mother's birthday. Carta, who seemed just as pale as yesterday, tried to distract Regina with games. But today her terra-cotta dolls and little animals of carved jet seemed childish and failed to engage her attention. Carta found a wooden ball, but they could find no third to make up a game of trigon, and throwing the ball back and forth between the two of them was dull. Besides, it was too hot for such exercise.

  Bored, restless, Regina roamed, trailed by a weary Cartumandua. She didn't find her mother, or Aetius, but at length she came across her father. He was in the living room, surrounded by his papyrus rolls and clay tablets. He was talking to a tenant, a thickset bearded man wearing a dun-colored tunic and breeches. Regina peered through an unglazed window; Marcus didn't notice her.

  Marcus looked as pale as Carta, and, hunched over his columns of figures, more strained than ever. Midsummer was the end of the rent year, and it was time for Marcus to collect the rent he was due for his land, as well as the Emperor's taxes. But things weren't going well.

  The farmer said in his thick brogue, "We haven't seen the Emperor's man for a year or more — probably two."

  Marcus said doggedly, "I have kept the tax you paid me and will render it up duly at the next visit. Even if the system is sometimes — ah, inefficient — you must pay your taxes, Trwyth. As I must. You understand, don't you? If we don't pay our taxes, the Emperor can't pay his soldiers. And then where would we be? The barbarians — the bacaudae — the Saxons who raid the coasts—"

  "I'm no callow boy, Marcus Apollinaris," the farmer growled, "and you show me no respect by treating me like one. And we haven't seen a soldier for nearly as long, either. None save that grizzle-haired father of your wife."

  "You must not speak to me this way, Trwyth." Regina could see her father was shaking.

  Trwyth laughed. "I can speak to you any way I want. Who's to stop me — you?" He had a small sack of coins in his hand; he hefted it and slipped it back into a pocket of his breeches. "I think I'll keep this, rather than let you add it to your hoard."

  Marcus tried to regain control of the situation. "If you prefer to pay in kind—"

  Trwyth shook his head. "I hand over half my yield to you. If I don't have to grow a surplus to pay you and the Emperor, I just have to feed myself, and what a relief that is going to be. And if you go hungry, Marcus Apollinaris, you can eat the painted corncobs on your walls. You let me know when the Emperor next comes calling, and I'll pay my respects. In the meantime, good riddance!"

  Marcus stood unsteadily. "Trwyth!"

  The farmer sneered, deliberately turned his back, and walked out of the room.

  Marcus sat down. He tried to work through the lists of figures on his clay tablet, but quickly gave up, letting the tablet fall to the floor. He hunched over and plucked with his fingers at his face, chin and neck, as if for comfort.

  Regina couldn't remember any tenant speaking to her father like that, ever. Deeply disturbed, she withdrew. Cartumandua followed her, just as silently, her broad face impassive.

  • • •

  They walked aimlessly around the courtyard. Still it was unbearably hot; still there was no sign of her mother. More than ever Regina wanted something to take her mind off her parents and their incomprehensible, endlessly disturbing problems. She almost missed her lessons: at least her thin, intense young tutor with his scrolls and slates and tablets would have been company.

  After completing three futile circuits of the courtyard, still trailed by a passive Cartumandua, a strange impulse took hold of Regina. When she came to the doorway to the old bathhouse — instead of passing it as before — she just turned and walked through it.

  Carta snapped, "Regina! You aren't supposed to be in there..."

  And so she wasn't. But neither was her mother supposed to be in bed when the sun was so high, neither was a tenant like Trwyth supposed to withhold his taxes from the Emperor, neither were peculiar lights supposed to flare in the sky. So Regina stood her ground, her heart beating fast, looking around.

  The roof of the bathhouse had burned off, but the surviving walls, though blackened and their windows unglazed, still stood. They surrounded a small rectangular patch of ground, thick with grass, weeds, and small blue wildflowers. This forbidden place, out of bounds for her whole life, wa
s like a garden, she realized, a secret garden, hiding in the dark.

  "Regina." There was Carta, in the doorway, beckoning her back. "Please. Come back. You're not supposed to be in there. It's not safe. I'll get in trouble."

  Regina ignored her. She stepped forward gingerly. The soil and the grass were cool under her bare feet. Rubble, broken blocks of stone from the walls, cluttered the floor under the thin covering of soil, but she could see them easily, and if she avoided them she was surely in no danger. She came to a patch of daisies, buttercups, and bluebells. She crouched down in the soil, careless of how her knees were getting dirty, and began to pick at the little flowers. She had a vague notion of making a daisy chain for her mother; perhaps it would cheer her up when she eventually awoke.

  But when she dug her fingers into the thin layer of earth, she quickly came to hard, textured stone beneath. It must be the floor of the bathhouse. She put her flowers aside and scraped away the soil with her hands. She exposed little tiles, bright colors — a man's face, picked out in bits of stone. She knew what this was; there was another in the living room. It was a mosaic, and these bits of stone, brick red and creamy white and yellow-gold and gray, were tesserae. She kept scraping, shuffling back on her knees, until she had exposed more of the picture. A young man rode a running horse — no, it was flying, for it had wings — and he chased a beast, a monster with the body of a big cat and the head of a goat. Eager to see more, she scraped at more of the soil. Some of the picture was damaged, with the little tiles missing or broken, but—

  "I thought I'd find you here. The one place you aren't meant to be." The deep voice made her jump. Aetius had come into the bathhouse through a rent in the ruined wall at the back. He stood over her, hands on hips. He wore a grimy tunic; perhaps he had been riding.

  Cartumandua said, "Oh, sir, thank the gods. Get her out of there. She won't listen to me."

  He waved a hand, and she fell silent. "You'll be in no trouble, Cartumandua. I'll be responsible." He knelt down beside Regina and she peered into his face; to her relief she saw he wasn't being too stern. "What are you doing, child?"

  "Grandfather! Look what I found! It's a picture. It was here all the time, under the soil."

  "Yes, it was there all the time." He pointed to the young man in the picture. "Do you know who this is?"

  "No..."

  "He's called Bellerophon. He is riding Pegasus, the winged horse, and he is battling the Chimaera."

  "Is there more of it? Will you help me uncover it?"

  "I remember what was here," he said. "I saw it before the fire." He pointed to the four corners of the room. "There were dolphins — here, here, here, and here. And more faces, four of them, to represent the seasons. This was a bathhouse, you know."

  "I know. It burned down."

  "Yes. There was a sunken bath just over there, behind me. Now, don't you go that way; it's full of rubble now, but the bath's still there, and if you fell in you'd hurt yourself and we would all be in trouble. We used to have water piped in here — great pipes underground — our own supply from the spring up on the hill." He rapped at the mosaic. "And under the floor there is a hollow space, where they used to build fires under the ground, so the floor would be warm."

  Regina thought about that. "Is that how it all caught fire?"

  He laughed. "Yes, it is. They were lucky to save the villa, actually." He ran his finger over the lines of Bellerophon's face. "Do you know who made this picture?"

  "No..."

  "Your great-grandfather. Not my father — on your father's side." She dimly understood what he meant. "He made mosaics. Not just for himself. He would make them for rich people, all over the diocese of Britain and sometimes even on the continent, for their bathhouses and living rooms and halls. His father, and his father before him, had always done the same kind of work. It's in the family, you see. That was how they got rich, and could afford this grand villa. They were in the Durnovarian school of design, and... well, that doesn't matter."

  "Why did they let it get all covered over?" She glanced around at the scorched walls. "If this bathhouse burned down all those years ago, why not rebuild it?"

  "They couldn't afford to." He rested his chin on his hand, comfortably squatting. "I've told you, Regina. These are difficult times. It's a long time since anybody in Durnovaria or anywhere near here has wanted to buy a mosaic. In the good days your father's family bought land here and in the town, and they've been living off their tenants' rent ever since. But they really aren't rich anymore."

  "My mother says we are."

  He smiled. "Well, whatever your mother says, I'm afraid—"

  There was a scream, high-pitched, like an animal's howl.

  Regina cried out. "Mother!"

  Aetius reacted immediately. He picked her up, stepped to the doorway over the scattered dirt, and thrust Regina at the slave girl. "Keep her here." Then he strode away, his hand reaching to his belt, as if seeking a weapon.

  Regina struggled against Cartumandua's grip. Carta herself was trembling violently, and it was easy for Regina to wriggle out of her grasp and run away.

  Still that dreadful screaming went on. Regina ran from room to room, past knots of agitated servants and slaves. She remembered that her father had been in the living room with his tenant and his figures. Perhaps he was still there now. She ran that way as fast as she could. Carta pursued her, ineffectually.

  So it was that while Aetius was the first to reach Julia, his daughter, Regina found Marcus, her father.

  • • •

  Marcus was still in the living room, on his couch, with his tablets and scrolls around him. But now his hands were clamped over his groin. Red liquid poured out of him and over the couch and tiled floor, unbelievable quantities of it. It was blood. It looked like spilled wine.

  Regina stepped into the room, but she couldn't reach her father, for that would have meant walking into the spreading lake of blood.

  Marcus seemed to see her. "Oh, Regina, my little Regina, I'm so sorry... It was her, don't you see?"

  "Mother?"

  "No, no. Her. She tempted me, and I was weak, and now I am like Atys." He lifted his hands from his groin. His tunic was raised, exposing his bare legs, and a meaty, bloody mess above them that didn't look real. He was smiling, but his face was very pale. "I did it myself."

  "You fool." Aetius stood in the other doorway now, with his strong arm around Julia. Julia was hiding her face in her hands, her head bowed against her father's shoulder. "What have you done?"

  Marcus whispered, "I have atoned. And like Atys I will return..." His voice broke up as if there were liquid in his throat.

  "Mother!" Regina ran forward. She was splashing in the blood, actually splashing in it, and now she could smell its iron stink, but she had to get to her mother. Still she kept on, running across the room, past the couch with the grisly, flopping thing that was her father.

  But Julia twisted away and fled.

  Aetius grabbed Regina and folded her in his arms, just as he had the night before, and no matter how she struggled and wept, he wouldn't release her to follow her mother.

  Chapter 4

  I stayed in Manchester another seventy-two hours.

  I retrieved my father's boxes of business material from the loft, and found a few more files downstairs. He'd actually carried on working after his nominal retirement, doing bits of bookkeeping for friends and close contacts. Much of this work concerned small projects in the building trade.

  I spent the best part of a day checking through all this material, trying to close down any loose ends. There were actually some bits of work my father hadn't completed, a few fees he hadn't collected, but they were all for small amounts, and everything was resolved amicably. I came away with a short list of requests for the return of some material. Most of the contacts were his friends — I knew a couple of them myself — and most hadn't heard of the death. The round of calls was painful, and the friends' reactions brought back the immediacy of it
all.

  I checked through Dad's most recent bank statements. Most of the statement lines were unremarkable. But I did find a few orders for foreign checks. Some of these were for more than a thousand pounds, and they went out every month, usually in the first week. I had no idea what they were for. I considered calling the bank branch, and wondered if they would tell me what was going on.

  But then I came to a month earlier in the year, without the regular foreign payment. It wasn't like Dad to be so untidy as to leave this gap. On an impulse I checked his check stubs. And sure enough, one stub showed how he'd bought a thousand pounds' worth of euros from a travel exchange desk in one of the Manchester stations — that transaction showed up in the statement. On the back of the stub he had written, in his neat hand, "March pmnt. To Mry Qn of Vgns, overdue." I imagined him parceling up the currency and pushing it into the post — an unwise way to handle money, but fast and effective.

  "Mry Qn of Vgns." To the eye of a Catholic boy that cryptic note unraveled immediately: Mary Queen of Virgins. But I had no idea who this was — a church, a hospital, a charity? — nor why Dad had been handing over so much money to them for so long. I found nothing else in his correspondence to give me any clues. I put it to the back of my mind, with a vague resolution to follow up the lead and close down the contact.

  The personal stuff was more difficult than the financial matters, of course.

  There were photographs around the house: the framed family-portrait stuff on the dresser, the big old albums in their cupboard in the dining room. I flicked through the albums, moving back in time. Soon the big glossy colored rectangles gave way to much smaller black-and-white images, like something prewar rather than early sixties, and then they petered out altogether. There were surprisingly few of them — only one or two of me per year of my childhood, for instance, taken at such key moments as Christmas, and family summer holidays, and first days at new schools. It seemed an odd paucity of images compared to the screeds people produce now. But then, I realized, glimpsing through these portals into sunny sixties afternoons long gone, that my memories of great moments, like the day the training wheels came off my bike, were of my father's face, not of a magnifying lens.