Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  The only choices for the natives were to serve the new rulers, to flee — or to die. Many people had indeed fled, it was said, either to the west and north, the harsher mountainous lands beyond the effective reach of the old diocese, or else they had gone overseas to the growing British colonies in Armorica. Great stretches of the countryside were depopulated altogether.

  But Artorius and his growing armies had formed one of the few foci of resistance to the marauding Saxons.

  With a mixture of Roman discipline and Celtae ferocity, even before the present campaigning season Artorius had scored nine significant victories. People had come flocking to his hill fort capital, and the petty warlords and rulers who had emerged from the collapse of the old diocese had been keen to vow their allegiance to him — Vortimer, for instance, son of Vortigern, who had tried to avenge his father's destruction by Hengest. As Artorius's power, influence, and reputation grew, he was slowly earning his self-anointed title of riothamus, king of kings. Not that Regina trusted many of the bandits he dealt with, many of whom she suspected of making equally vivid declarations of loyalty to the Saxon warlords.

  Despite such doubts, she had no choice but to cling to Artorius, for he was a beacon of hope in a terrible time. And despite all his efforts the Saxon advance was a wall of slow-burning fire that left nothing but a cleansed emptiness behind it: Roman Britain was suffering a slow, terminal catastrophe.

  • • •

  The army came in a great column of thousands of men and as many horses. The foot soldiers yelled and struck their shields, the cavalry raised their slashing swords so they glinted in the low autumn sun, and the trumpeters blew their great carynx trumpets, slender tubes as tall as a man and adorned with dragons' mouths.

  As the first of the booty wagons was hauled up the steep path toward the gate, Regina saw that it was piled high with heads — the severed heads of Saxons, complete with long tied-back hair and heavy mustaches, heads piled up like cabbages on a stall, their rolled-up eyes white and their skin yellow-white or even green. Behind the cart a prisoner walked, attached by a length of rope wrapped around his hands. He was a big man with a golden torc around his neck. The skin of his face was broken and caked with blood and dust. He had evidently been dragged all the way from the site of his defeat, for he was staggering.

  Women and children ran down the slope from the dunon, anxious for news of their husbands, brothers, fathers. Regina held her place, just outside the gate. It was like something out of the past, she thought wonderingly, an army from four or five or six centuries ago, the kind of force that must once have met the Caesars.

  And yet Artorius had made great changes. To those old Celtae forces, fighting had been ritualistic. Armies would draw up to face each other, would make a racket and an elaborate display, and only small teams of champions would be sent to do battle together. And they couldn't sustain a long campaign: Celtae armies, recruited from local farmers, had been forced to disperse when the crops needed harvesting. All that had had to change when the Romans had come with their propensity for pitched battles with decisive outcomes: The Celtae had quickly learned the techniques of long campaigns and massed slaughter.

  Now the Romans were gone, but their lessons lingered. Artorius had been assiduous. He had even picked Regina's brains over what she could remember of Aetius's reminiscences of the comitatenses. Now Artorius's warriors were an effective and mobile fighting force, just as capable as the Romans' of waging a pitched battle — and of mounting a summer-long campaign.

  But Artorius's practices were increasingly laced with a primitive darkness.

  Regina knew the old beliefs, spouted by Myrddin and others. To take the head of your enemy was to possess his soul, so when these Saxon heads were mounted on stakes around the walls of the hill fort their souls would keep out danger. Regina wasn't sure how much of this Artorius believed, but she could see how he used its symbolism, working on both friend and foe, to cement his victories.

  Regina lived with barbarians, and was the mistress of a warlord. But she could live with that until, as she always promised herself, things got back to normal, and the Emperor returned with his legions to sweep out the Saxon marauders, dissolve the petty native kingdoms — including Artorius's — and restore Roman dignity and order, so that this brief and bloody interval would come to seem no more than a bad dream.

  Now here came the riothamus himself, at the head of his army.

  At the gate, Artorius embraced Regina. He was hot, his armour scuffed, and she could smell the stink of his horse. "We have won great victories, my Morrigan. Everywhere the Saxons lie slain, or they run away at the sound of our trumpets. They are falling back to their fastnesses in the east, but perhaps next season—"

  "Your deeds will live on for a thousand years, riothamus."

  He cocked an eyebrow. "You sound like Myrddin. However I hear a 'but' in your voice..."

  "But your collection of severed heads would have appalled Vespasian."

  His face clouded. "The Caesars aren't here. They abandoned us to the Saxons. I do what I have to do. In fact—" Artorius turned speculatively, looking east, the direction of Europe and the rump of the Empire. "Perhaps, in fact, now that we are strong, we should be planning what to do about the Caesars and their betrayal of Britain."

  She studied his face, alarmed, uncertain; she had never heard him talk of such plans before. But he was lost in his proliferating thoughts of future battlefields.

  One of his lieutenants came to him. "We are ready for the show, riothamus."

  The "show" was the execution of the Saxon chieftain. It was a triple murder, a sacrifice to the ancient Celtae veneration of the number three.

  Artorius himself raised his axe, and slammed its blade into the back of the Saxon's head. But the man was not killed, and Artorius gave his limp form to his soldiers. Next a cord was tied around the Saxon's neck and tightened, by the twisting of a piece of wood, until the bones snapped. And finally, and most ignominiously, his face was pushed into a vat of water, so that he drowned. Regina couldn't tell how long the Saxon stayed alive, for the crowd of soldiers around him bayed and yelled.

  Artorius grinned at Regina. "I wonder what your Caesars would have made of this..."

  Chapter 21

  A week after her encounter with the mother-grandmother, Rosa sent Lucia out for a study day in a library in the Centro Storico area — not far from the Pantheon, in fact. Pina accompanied her.

  The two of them had finished their day's work by three. They decided to take a walk toward the Tiber, and perhaps make for the gardens of the Villa Borghese, across the river. They set off along the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, heading west. It was a bright December afternoon, and they were walking into the sun.

  The Centro Storico was the medieval heart of the city. It was enclosed by a great eastward bend of the Tiber. Rome's ancient core had always been the seven hills, where the great forums and palaces had been built. But after the collapse of the Empire, the ancient aqueducts had broken down, and the dwindling population of Rome had gravitated toward the river, seeking drinking water. The ruins in the area had provided building materials for houses, churches, and papal complexes. Later, as Renaissance families competed for power and prestige, the area had become cluttered with grandiose monuments, and it grew into a center for craft guilds, filled with botteghe, workshops. To some extent that was still true, Lucia saw as they walked down the Via dei Cestari, filled with shops selling clothes and equipment for the Catholic priesthood.

  In the low, dazzling light, the streets swarmed with cars and the pavement was crowded with chattering schoolchildren, slow-strolling tourists, and office workers yelling into their cell phones. The crowd was purposeful, agitated, and continually noisy, and Lucia felt out of place.

  "You aren't saying much." Pina walked beside her, bag swinging at her shoulder, phone in her hand, sunglasses on her nose.

  "I'm sorry. It's just all these people. It's the way they talk. Everybody is so intense — see the
way their muscles are rigid — as if they are on the point of shouting the whole time. But what is it they are shouting about?"

  Pina laughed. "You know, we're spoiled in the Crypt. We emerge as helpless as nuns evicted from their convents."

  "I don't know." Lucia pointed to a group of three nuns in simple pale gray vestments. Chatting brightly in a small pavement café, they all wore sunglasses and expensive-looking trainers, their cell phones set among the cappuccinos before them. One wore a baseball cap over her wimple. Rome always seemed full of nuns, here to visit the Vatican, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of the pope, El Papa. "They seem all right."

  Pina linked her arm through Lucia's. "Come on. When we get to the Villa Borghese I'll buy you an ice cream."

  Lucia remained unhappy. As usual when out of the Crypt, she longed for its calm and order, where every direction she looked she would see a face like her own. But she knew that even back in the Crypt, even in her dormitory, she would have trouble finding peace. She was layered with secrets now — the painful mystery of her menstruation, Rosa's peculiar pursuit of her with her hints of an assignment to come — secrets, huge painful bewildering secrets, in a place where you weren't supposed to hold any secrets from those around you, not even the smallest.

  Still, she was relieved when they reached the river, and the crowd thinned a little.

  They crossed over the Vittorio Emanuele bridge and walked northeast, following the great curve of the Tiber. There were houseboats moored to the banks; Lucia saw people sunbathing, laid out over the boats' decks like drying fish.

  The Villa Borghese was in an area where wealthy Romans had built their country estates since imperial times. It had been saved from the twentieth-century property developers when the state had bought it, and preserved it as a park. Lucia had always liked these gardens, with their winding paths and half-hidden flower beds; she and her sisters had been brought here when they were small. It was best to avoid the weekends, when the population of Rome moved in here en masse, overwhelming the place with yelling children, chatting mothers, fathers with radios clamped to their ears for soccer scores. Today, though there were plenty of children, brought here by their mothers after school, their shouting seemed remote and scattered.

  Lucia and Pina found their way down to a little circular lake, bounded by a path. On the edge of the water stood a small temple, dedicated to the Greek god Aesculapius. They sat on a wooden bench that had seen better days. People were rowing on the lake, sending shimmering bow waves across the dense green water and disturbing the reflection of the god's statue. It was always a calming place, Lucia thought; she had been disappointed to find that the temple was only a reproduction. Pina fulfilled her promise by buying an ice cream cone from a cart — not very reputable looking, but drawn by a patient horse, irresistible in his battered straw hat.

  While they ate their ice cream, they watched a young woman in Lycra jogging gear sitting near them, earnestly peering into the tiny screen of her cell phone. She had a dog with her, a big, aged, slow-moving Labrador. He meandered happily through the dappled shade. But when he walked behind a set of railings he couldn't figure out his way back, and peered through the bars at his owner, whining theatrically. His owner retrieved him, comforting him with strokes and tugging at his collar. But then, as she returned to her earnest texting, the dog would wander off into his conceptual prison and begin his whining once more, making Lucia and Pina laugh.

  Lucia renewed the sunblock cream on her face, hands, and arms. It had been less than an hour since her last application, but even in the weak December afternoon sunlight her skin prickled. Pina, however — cradling her phone in one hand — took off her sunglasses, closed her eyes, and lifted her face to the dipping sun. It was unusual for a woman of the Order to have a skin able to tan. Lucia wondered how it would feel to relax, to enjoy the sunlight on her face, without the need to block it out.

  Pina's face showed no signs of aging, no wrinkles or lines. Her skin might have belonged to a seventeen-year-old. This would baffle the contadino males, she knew; she had heard young men whistle, or mutter, "Ciao, bella," or "Bella figura," after sisters of the Order old enough to be their mothers, and yet looking younger than they were. It was strange, Lucia supposed. But she had never thought about it before. There was much about life in the Order she hadn't questioned, hadn't even noticed, until the last few disruptive weeks. Perhaps it wasn't the outsiders who were strange, but the Order. After all, she thought, there are very many more of them than us. Perhaps she had become a kind of outsider herself, and was learning to look back at the Order through the eyes of a contadino—

  "Excuse me."

  She turned, peering into the sun. Pina snapped her sunglasses into place like a mask.

  A man was standing before them — a young man, half silhouetted in the sun. He wore a blue Italy soccer shirt and jeans that looked as if they had been faded by time, not design. He carried a bundle of books under his arm. He was slim, and not tall, no taller than Lucia was. He had red hair, and his face had a weakish chin and a rounded profile, a smooth curve that proceeded from his long nose to his brow — which was high, she saw, and covered in freckles. He was young, perhaps not yet eighteen...

  She was staring. She recognized him, of course. She dropped her gaze, hot.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to startle you. I just—"

  Pina snapped, "Who are you?"

  "My name is Daniel Stannard. I'm a student. I attend an expat college in the Trastevere. I'm studying for my bachelor's degree. My father is American..." He had an accent, a slightly singsong American intonation to his Italian.

  Pina smiled. "Why should we care, Daniel Stannard? Have you a habit of bothering girls in the park?"

  "No — no. It's just — " He turned to Lucia. "Haven't I seen you before?"

  Pina laughed. "That's your best line?"

  Lucia said, "Hush, Pina."

  Daniel said, "I mean it. At the Pantheon — about a week ago, I think. I remember seeing you — I'm sure it was you — in the colonnade..."

  "I was there," Lucia said.

  Daniel hesitated. "I kept wondering if I'd see you again." He turned to Pina defiantly. "Yes, I know it's corny, but it's the truth."

  Pina tried to stay stern, but she laughed. She muffled it with her hand.

  Tentatively Daniel sat on the bench, next to Lucia. "So — you're sisters, right?"

  "We're related, yes," said Pina.

  "The lady you were with last week — who was that, your mother?"

  "An aunt," said Pina.

  "Kind of," Lucia said, and she was rewarded with a glare from Pina.

  Pina said, "And you say you're a student?"

  "Of politics, yes. My father's a diplomat here, with the American embassy. He's been stationed here for six years. He brought over the family to continue our schooling. I arrived age eleven..."

  And so you are seventeen, Lucia thought. "Your language is good," she said.

  "Thank you... My school was international, but most of the classes were in Italian. What do you do?"

  "She's still at school," Pina snapped. "After that, the family business."

  He shrugged. "Which is?"

  "Genealogy. Record keeping. It's complicated."

  Complicated, yes, thought Lucia. Complicated like a web in which I'm tangled. And even the little you have just been told about me isn't true. For I am lined up for a new destiny — not genealogy or record keeping — something dark and heavy.

  She looked at Daniel. He had large, slightly watery blue eyes and a small upturned mouth that looked full of laughter. He has already become at ease in two separate countries, she thought, while I have spent my life in a hole in the ground. She had never thought of it that way before, but it was true. Suddenly she longed to have this boy's freedom.

  In a silent moment of communication, she felt her inchoate emotions, of confusion and frustration, pulse through her body, and surely into her face, her eyes. Help me, she thought.
Help me.

  His blue eyes widened with surprise and dismay.

  "We have to go," Pina said hurriedly. She got to her feet and grabbed Lucia's arm, pulling her upright. Before she knew what was happening Lucia was marched off along the circular path around the lake, toward one of the roads that cut through the park. As she walked Pina started texting urgently.

  Daniel, startled, grabbed his books and clambered to his feet. "Your sister is kind of ferocious," he said, stumbling after Lucia.

  "She's not my sister."

  "Let me see you again."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know. Just to talk."

  "I can't."

  "The Piazza Navona," he said. "Tomorrow at three." Pina's pace had picked up almost to a run, and Daniel stopped chasing them.

  Lucia looked back.

  "I'll be there every day," he called. "At three, every day. Come when you can."

  When they reached the Piazza le Flaminio, outside the park, a car was waiting for them.

  Pina bundled Lucia inside. "Lucia, what were you thinking? He's a contadino. What did you want with him?"

  "Something. Nothing," said Lucia defiantly. "I just wanted to talk to him. Aren't I supposed to be learning about outsiders?"

  Pina leaned toward her. "You aren't," she said heavily, "supposed to be inviting them into your knickers."

  "But I wasn't — I didn't mean—"

  "Then what did you mean?"

  "I don't know." Lucia buried her face in her hands. "Oh, Pina, I'm confused. Don't tell, Pina. Don't tell!"

  Chapter 22

  Early the next spring Artorius traveled to Londinium. He asked Regina to travel with him. She in turn insisted that Brica accompany her.