Moonlight flooded her who came down off the portico and across the lawn. White, white, blue-white was her skin, also nude except for the tresses streaming loose. She held out her arms to the man-shape. Distant though she was in this dimness, Budic knew that Athene countenance.
The male wheeled and strode to meet her. She ran. When she reached them, they halted and he took both her hands in his. The serpents wrapped around their wrists, moonlight icy along scales. For an endless while, male and woman stood unmoving. Then at last they went side by side into the forest. The nymphs took up their frolic anew.
Lightning through the thunder that filled Budic’s skull: Everybody knew Forsquilis was deepest versed in sorcery of the Nine witches, and gossip muttered how she bore the air of a passionate woman and how hard it must be for her to share a single man. None, even Christians, ever dared hint that any among the Gallicenae might betray the King. But what about a God—a demon?
A nymph-shape left the dance and swayed across the dew toward Budic.
He shrieked and fled. Yet he did not re-enter the guards’s house when he got there, but spent the rest of the night outside, shuddering, groveling, weeping, and praying.
3
“Have you told anyone else?” asked Corentinus.
Astounded, Budic gaped at him. Dusk gathered around the minister of Christ where he sat on his stool, in the room of his church that he had designated private, like a black-feathered bird of prey on its perch.
“N-no, Father,” the Coritanean stammered after a moment. “I p-pretended I’d had nightmares, that was why I was so numb and weak this morning.”
“Good.” The knaggy head nodded. “No sense in letting rumors get started. They’ll force people to take firm stances, which is the last thing we want the pagans to do. Of course, you realize what you saw may well have been just a dream.”
“What? No, Father, that can’t be. I mean, I beg your pardon, but I do know the difference—”
Corentinus raised a palm to cut off the words. “Peace. Don’t fret yourself. It matters little. The forces of Satan prowl always around us. Whether they work as mirage or material, their purpose is the same, to lure us from our salvation. If what you saw really happened, I’ll feel sad for that poor benighted woman. But you, my son, you may thank God that He strengthened you to resist.”
Budic wailed and covered his face. “No, Father. Th-th-that’s why I came—not even to warn you, but, but the vision won’t leave me, the lust is fiercer than fire, what shall I do, Father?”
“Ah. Hm.” Corentinus rose, bent over the hunched figure, briefly hugged the bright head to his bosom. “Don’t be afraid. You have wisdom beyond your years, that you seek help here instead of in a brothel.”
“I have sinned that way before. But this, this called me.”
“I know. I too have heard.” Corentinus began pacing back and forth. He made his voice dry:
“Listen, Budic. You’ve been a pretty good catechumen, and this isn’t the first time I’ve given you some thought. Now, I can’t compel your spirit. Only God can do that. But I can, in my left-handed mortal fashion, advise you. So listen, and think.
“Your trouble is that you’re devout, but you haven’t got the makings of a monk. No disgrace in that. The Lord bade Adam and Eve be fruitful and multiply. What’re you waiting for?”
Budic gave him a dazed look. “Where’ll I find a Christian wife? I knew I did wrong, going to that pagan wedding. Isn’t this my punishment?”
Corentinus smiled. “I’m not sure you did do wrong. I’ve never reproached any of my flock who married unbelievers. It can’t be helped, and grace may come on the spouses. I only require that they allow their children to hear the truth. You, though—you’re not the sort who could live with an infidel woman. But you need a woman, in the worst way.”
He took stance before he went on, almost sternly: “I have one, if you’re Christian enough, man enough, to take her for your wife.”
Budic stared up at him. The chorepiscopus seemed to tower as if he spoke from the peak of Sinai. “Who?” Budic whispered.
“You know her well. Keban, the harlot from the Fishtail.”
Budic sat dumb-stricken.
“She has repented,” Corentinus went on relentlessly, “and she has washed herself clean with her tears, she acknowledges Christ her Lord and Savior. But who among the haughty goodfolk of Ys will have her, even as a scullion? I give her shelter and employment here, but it’s made work, as well we both know, and her days are empty, and Satan understands very well how to fill that emptiness with old carnal cravings. I’ve dreaded that she may fall by the wayside. But if not—what an example to shine before every wretch forsaken in this city of sin!
“Budic, she’s still fairly young, healthy, a fit mother of sturdy sons, and reborn in Christ. What she was before is nothing in the sight of God. But is everything in the sight of man.
“Who will have courage to take her under his protection, for the salvation of both, and shield her, and turn his back on the sly, unspoken mockery, till at last it is outlived, forgotten, and an honorable old pair go hand in hand toward Heaven? Might you be, Budic?”
Silence lengthened, underneath harsh breath.
Corentinus eased. “Ah, well, I know better than to force things,” he said. “Come, lad, let’s share a stoup and talk a bit. I can always use barrack-room gossip. As for any sins of yours, consider them forgiven.”
—But later that evening, summoned, Keban entered. In wimple and full, coarse gown, timidly smiling, by lamplight she seemed twice comely. All she did was prepare and set forth a frugal meal, and answer a few inconsequential questions. Yet the glance of Budic followed her everywhere she went.
4
Often around the autumnal equinox, storms caused Ys to lock its sea gate, lest waves force an opening and rush through the harbor into the city. When calm was restored, the King freed the portal. It was his sacral duty. Only if he was absent or disabled did Lir Captain take it in his stead.
As usual, he performed the task at high tide, which this day happened to come in the afternoon. “You see,” he explained to Dahut, “the doors are hung in such a way that they always want to be shut. As the water falls, the floats that hang from them do too, and draw the doors open. At low water, they would pull so hard that I couldn’t get the bar out of its holder.”
“But what if you had to close the gate then?” she asked.
Gratillonius smiled. “Sharp question!” There was quite a mind below those golden curls, behind those big eyes. “Well, we have machinery, so gangs of men can haul the doors shut against the weight of the balls. Just the same, it’s hard work.”
Lanarvilis had told him he should let Dahut witness the rite. All the Queens were touchingly concerned about the upbringing of Dahilis’s daughter. Delighted, he had sent a messenger to temple school. She came from there in company of Guilvilis, whose turn it was to foster her. He was twice happy that that turn coincided with his night at Guilvilis’s house.
Woman and child followed him from the palace. Guilvilis had donned finery, a silken gown that showed to disadvantage her tall, awkward, heavy-haunched figure. The thin dull-brown hair would not stay properly in its elaborate coiffure, but did call attention to small eyes, long nose, undershot chin. In a schoolgirl’s brief white dress, Dahut went like wind and waterfall. Gratillonius wore a ceremonial robe of blue-gray wool embroidered in gold and silver thread with sea beasts. In full view on his breast hung the iron Key.
A squad of marines waited in their conical helmets and shoulder-flared loricae. Pike butts crashed a salute on the stones. They took formation behind the King. Traffic on Lir Way was thick and bustle was loud, but a path opened immediately before the procession. Many folk cheered, some signed themselves, a number of youngsters trailed after to watch from the wharf.
The Temple of Lir stood under the Gull Tower, just before the pomoerium. Ancient, it lacked the Grecian exquisiteness of Belisama’s, the Roman stateliness of Taranis�
��s. Despite small size, here was brutal strength, menhirlike pillars and rough stone walls upholding a roof of slate slabs. The interior was dark, revealing little more than an altar block within an arch formed of the jawbones of a whale.
Gratillonius entered. The man on watch today greeted him. Every ship’s captain in Ys was ordained a priest of Lir; Hannon Baltisi simply presided over meetings of the guild and spoke for it and its cult in Council. Gratillonius knelt to receive on his tongue the ritual pinch of salt and voice the ritual plea that the God withhold His wrath. Emergence was like release from captivity.
It was a bright, bracing day. When he had climbed the stairs to the rampart heights, he looked out across utter openness. Waters shone blue, green, purple, white-capped, save where they burst on rocks and reefs, brawled against wall and cliffs; there fountains leaped. In this clarity he could see the house on Sena, miles away. Only wings beclouded the sky, hundreds of them soaring and circling on the breeze whose tang washed his face.
He looked inland, across the broad arc of the basin. How still it lay, nine or ten feet beneath the tide, lower yet whenever the combers climbed and broke. Ships and boats crowded the piers. Men were busy with cargo. Mariners of Ys would venture another voyage or two before winter closed in. The knowledge that he had put life back into that trade made a glow in Gratillonius.
And the city behind shone in roofs, towers, on its higher eastern half gardens, temples, mansions. Hinterland stretched beyond, valley and hills where homes nestled, the gaudiness of leaves muted by distance to a tapestry laid over the earth, a sign of ingathered bounty. God Mithras, said Gratillonius, watch over all this, stand guard upon its peace.
Dahut tugged at his hand. “Won’t you start?” she piped.
Hauled from his reverie, he laughed and tousled her hair. “Ever are you the impatient one, eh, sweetling? Aye, let’s…. Have a care! Lean not so far over the parapet. I know you love the sea, but remember, ’tis forever hungry.”
He led her past the Gull Tower and the sheltered war engines to that fifty-foot gap in the wall which was the portal. Dahut, who had been here before, cried greeting to the block that jutted from the wall below the battlements. It had the time-blurred form of a cat’s head. A chain ran from the inner top corner of the adjacent door, into the block, over the sheave within, and down out of its mouth. Most of the chain hung submerged, for the leather-clad bronze ball at its end floated not far beneath, idly swinging in the waves. Gratillonius heard the thuds when that great weight rolled against the wall. Those dry-laid blocks were well fitted indeed, to have withstood centuries of such battering. And even the doors, oaken though copper-sheathed and iron-bound, had only required replacement twice.
He let go of Dahut’s hand. “Now ’tis single file,” he said.
A flight of stone steps angled down the inside of the wall to a ledge beside the gate, halfway up. There stood a capstan, from which a chain ran through another cat’s head to the inner top corner of the door. Opposite, fifty feet away, was a similar arrangement. “This is the machinery for closing at low tide,” Gratillonius explained. “The doors are made so they never swing too widely for that. Follow me onward.”
From the ledges, narrow, railed walkways ran across both doors, meeting in two platforms at the juncture. Dahut touched the riveted green plates and black iron reinforcing strips that she passed. “Why must you ever lock the gate?” she asked. “Less’n you want it shut up at low tide.”
What a quick person she is! marvelled Gratillonius. “Well, think of a big storm with huge waves. They don’t only have high crests, they have deep troughs. The floats drop down as well as bob up. Were it not for the bar, they’d jerk the doors wide. The sea would pour through and do terrible things to poor Ys.”
“Thank the Gods that They don’t let that happen,” admonished Guilvilis. Gratillonius thought, irritated, that man had somewhat more to do with it.
He reached the platform. There a titanic beam, pivoted on the southern door, fitted into an iron U on this northern one. A cable ran from its free end to a block and tackle above. The bar was secured by a chain through it and through a staple, closed by a ponderous lock whose hasp went between two links.
Looking down into the girl’s eyes, Gratillonius wondered how he appeared in them. “This is my work,” he said.
The marines had deployed along the walkway. Gratillonius unslung the Key from his neck and raised it aloft. “In the name of Ys,” he called, “under the Pact of Brennilis that the Gods did grant unto us, I open the city to the sea.”
He fitted Key into lock. It turned stiffly, with a clicking as of footsteps. He withdrew the Key and laid it back in his bosom. With both hands he removed the lock and hung it on a single link. Drawing the chain out, he fastened it in a loop by locking the loose end to the staple.
Crossing over to the opposite platform, he uncleated the cable and hauled on it. Cunningly counterweighted, the bar rose easily for all its massiveness. When it was almost vertical, he refastened the cable. Returning, he clasped his hands and bowed before the lock.
It was done. The party went back to the top of the wall. Soon, as tide ebbed, the doors would begin to draw apart. The sea would come hissing through, but gently, by that time not raising the level of the basin too much. Ys would again have the freedom of Ocean.
“I’ve other matters to attend to,” Gratillonius said regretfully. “Guilvilis, there’s scant sense in taking the child back to class today. Why not show her about this quarter? The Cornmarket, Epona Square, the Ishtar Shrine, whatever she’d like to see. She’s grown enough for it. I’ll seek your house this evening.”
Dahut
5
That ended an hour later.
Passing through the narrow, twisted streets near the waterfront, on the edge of the Fishtail slum, the girl halted. “What’s in there?” she asked.
Guilvilis looked around. The cobblestones of Crescent Way lay nearly deserted, for dwellers in the tenements that hemmed it in were still off at work. On the right a building lifted four stories high, balconies cantilevered from the upper floor, the lower wall stuccoed and inset with shells which centuries had chipped and discolored. A couple of children had stopped their play to stare at the finely clad lady. A porter with a laden frame on his back had just come around a corner; Ys restricted draft and burden-bearing animals to a few principal thoroughfares. “Where?” the Queen replied vaguely.
“There,” said Dahut with exasperation, and pointed.
Opposite stood a building unique to Lowtown. It was of black marble, broad and deep though not high. Pilasters flanked bronze doors on which were life-sized reliefs of a veiled woman and a man with bowed head. The entablature was granite, sculptured into a frieze: a row of skulls and at the center, floating above, an unborn babe.
“Oh,” said Guilvilis. “Why, that, that’s Wayfaring House.”
“What’s it?”
“You haven’t heard? Well, ’tis, um, ’tis thus. You know dead people get taken out on the funeral barge and put in the sea.”
Dahut nodded solemnly. “Father’s told me. He says that’s where my mother went.”
“Well, the barge is supposed to go out each third day, but often the weather makes that too dangerous. Sometimes they have to wait a long while. They did this month, with those awful storms we got. Here, Wayfaring House, here is where they wait.”
“Oh.” Dahut’s eyes widened.
“Tis all good and quiet for them,” Guilvilis said hastily.
“Can we go see?”
“What? Nay, I think better not. Later, when you’re older.”
Dahut’s face drew into an expression the Gallicenae well knew. “Why? You say ’tis good and quiet.”
“Well, it is—”
Dahut stamped her foot. “Father said show me everything I wanted!”
Guilvilis searched her memory while the child fumed. “Aye, he… he did that, I think. But—”
Dahut darted from her, up the few broad stairs.
The doors were unse-cured. She pulled them apart and was inside before Guilvilis got there.
“What’s this?” called the old man on duty. His voice made echoes in the twilight of a huge chamber. He shuffled forward. “My lady, you shouldn’t bring a wee one here. Leave her with me. Which beloved would you bid goodbye to?—O-ah.” He recognized the woman. “My lady!” Touching his brow in reverence: “How may I serve you?”
“I, well, ’tis thus—” faltered Guilvilis.
Dahut dashed past them.
Stone tubs, a few feet apart, covered the floor. She came to the first and looked over its edge.
Brine filled it. Within, full length, lay a dead woman. While a sheet wrapped her body, its soddenness revealed the bony contours. Cords bound wrists and ankles and held her to eyebolts. Hair floated loose. It had been an old woman, withered and toothless. The jaw had been tied up and the eyes closed, but lips and lids were shriveled back, while the waterlogged face bloated around the beak of a nose.
“You shouldn’t’a done that, little girl,” wailed the attendant.
Dahut made a mewing sound. Like a sleepwalker, she stumbled to the next vat. There was a man more newly dead. He had been young and healthy, though now his skin was ashen. Some mishap had shattered the right side of his head.
“Get her way from that, my lady,” the attendant implored. “She’s too young for the sight, she is.”
“Aye, come, let us go, Dahut, dear, let’s go see the Cornmarket and I’ll buy you a honeycake.” Guilvilis lurched toward the princess. “Cry not, be not afraid.”
“Nay,” said the man, “these are but the harmless dead. We’ll take them to their rest on the morrow, and the Ferriers will bring their souls to Sena and the Gods will make happy those who were good.”
Stiff-legged, Dahut walked to the door. She stared before her, never a tear, never a blink. As daylight touched her, it showed a visage with no more color or movement than any in the brine.
Nor did she speak the whole way back to the house, and scarcely at all when Gratillonius arrived there. But when she had gone to bed, and man and wife were about to, they heard her scream.
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