by David Drake
“Oh …,” whispered Corylus, who must have seen what Alphena so far did not.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Pandareus, his smile still broader. “Tomorrow night Priscus will have the Sibylline Books in his charge.”
A PAIR OF SERVANTS at the top of the back stairs gaped as Hedia stepped quickly toward them. She was forcing herself to keep a ladylike demeanor and not to skip steps.
“Where’s your master?” she snapped. The servants didn’t speak, but one nodded toward the suite behind him. His Adam’s apple bobbed.
There hadn’t been much doubt in her mind. When Saxa was badly pressed, he fled to his private apartment at the rear of the second floor. That had been an inviolate sanctum in the years before he had remarried.
Hedia found herself smiling as she swept past the servants. She wasn’t sure whether she was more angry than frightened or the other way around, but she was quite sure that she and her husband were going to discuss what had happened today. Propriety and wifely subservience be damned.
The door to the suite was closed—but not barred, which was good. Hedia flung it open and strode inside. If necessary she would have brought the porters to batter the panel down with the poles from the sedan chair.
Half a dozen body servants fluttered at her entry. They were pretending to be busy and also pretending not to be staring at their furious mistress.
Hedia made a quick shooing motion as though she were flicking something unpleasant from her fingers. “Get out,” she said to the servants collectively. She didn’t raise her voice. “Close the door behind you.”
Saxa stood at the window, his hands gripping the ledge. His pretense was that he was absorbed in the view up slope of the Palatine. Hedia waited till the servants had scuttled out, the last of them banging the door shut, before she said mildly, “Husband, what’s going on?”
“Dearest, there are things you can’t understand,” Saxa mumbled without turning around. “I’m sorry, but you simply have to trust me.”
The bedroom was decorated as a seascape. The small stones of the mosaic flooring were set in a stylized wave pattern, and water nymphs cavorted with fish-tailed Tritons on the walls. Plaster starfish and crabs were molded into the ceiling coffers.
Hedia rather liked the room, but the decoration puzzled her. Saxa didn’t care for the sea; she’d had to press to get him to go with her to Baiae in the Gulf of Puteoli this past spring. Perhaps a previous wife had chosen it for him ….
“I do trust you, dear heart,” she said, putting a hand on her husband’s shoulder. He was trembling. “There’s no one in the world with a better heart or with greater loyalty to the Emperor.”
That last was for any ears listening at doorways or through the floor with a tumbler to amplify sounds. In truth Saxa probably didn’t think about the Emperor twice in a week; he was about as apolitical a man as you would find in the Senate. But the deeper truth beneath that lie was the fact that Saxa certainly wasn’t involved in a plot.
Not that the truth would matter if somebody laid a complaint. And Juno knew that it wouldn’t be hard at all to show the Senator’s behavior in a bad light.
“I don’t trust your Nemastes at all, though,” Hedia said, letting her anger show in her tone. Saxa had started to relax; now he tensed again. “He’s a viper, and he’ll bite many people besides you unless you scotch him immediately. But he’ll certainly bite you.”
She paused before adding, “And your son. As he did today.”
“Hedia, that’s not true!” Saxa said, whirling to face her for the first time. “You don’t understand, I tell you. Without Nemastes’ efforts, we’re all lost. The world is lost!”
He’s not lying, Hedia thought. She wasn’t sure her husband could lie; certainly he couldn’t lie successfully to her. But he thought he was telling the truth now.
“I understand that Nemastes plays at being a magician,” she said aloud. “How do you think the Emperor will feel if he hears about that, Husband? And I understand that the viper you brought into the house with you today caused your son to speak words that terrified everyone who heard him. You know that.”
Hedia hadn’t waited to question the audience pouring out of the hall, so she didn’t have any idea what had happened during Varus’s recital. The wealthy freedmen were running as though Parthians galloped behind them with their bows drawn, but she could have stopped one if she’d seen the need to. Oh, yes, she most certainly could.
But their abject fear was all Hedia needed to know. Whatever happened, it hadn’t been Varus’s unaided doing: the boy didn’t have it in him to frighten a mouse from the pantry!
Knowing that Nemastes was in the house, she hadn’t had to search far for a villain. She was confident that the blame was deserved in this case, but she didn’t particularly care. A threat to Varus was the best tool she’d been offered for prying her husband away from this dangerous magician, so she would have used it even if she’d thought she was being unfair.
“Nemastes had nothing to do with whatever you’re talking about,” Saxa said uncertainly. “He and I were together while the reading was going on.”
“Together doing what?” Hedia snapped. “Tell me, Husband, what was your so-called magician doing? Besides tricking you out of money, I mean, because I know he’s robbing you!”
That was a lie. She’d originally believed Nemastes was a charlatan—anybody would have believed that. She became really worried—really frightened—only when she realized that the Hyperborean’s magic wasn’t just tricks and suggestion.
“No, you’re quite wrong, dear one,” Saxa said, sounding relieved. “Master Nemastes hasn’t taken a single coin from me. He’s a king in his own land, you see.”
Hedia wanted to slap him. How do you know he’s a king, you puling child? Because he told you so?
And yet Saxa wasn’t a fool or even unsophisticated in most respects. This was just something that he desperately wanted to believe.
“He pays for his needs with gold that he brought with him,” Saxa continued earnestly. “All I did, dear heart, was introduce him to my own bankers, the brothers Oppius. Because Hyperborean gold isn’t coined; it grows in blocks of quartz. But it’s pure, the brothers assure me it is. They wouldn’t lie to their own cost.”
No, unless they are part of the swindle themselves, Hedia thought. But she didn’t believe that, much as she wished it were true. The Oppii and their ancestors had served the Alphenus family for three generations.
“The money I withdrew isn’t for Nemastes,” Saxa said, the first time Hedia had heard about a withdrawal. “I’m renovating the Temple of Tellus at the entrance to the Carinae District. As a public service, you see.”
He tried a smile. “That’s why I suggested you and Alphena hold the marriage divination there, you see,” he said. “The chief priest is a freedman named Barritus who owns the laundry on the same block. I knew he’d jump at a chance to do anything for me, since I haven’t decided the scale of the renovation yet.”
“Why are you …?” Hedia said, as startled as if Saxa had just announced he was going to retire to his villa in the Campania and spend the rest of his life as a gentleman farmer. “That is, it’s commendable that you’re fixing up an ancient temple, Husband. But I hadn’t previously noticed signs of your religious inclination.”
“Well, it was Nemastes who made the suggestion,” Saxa said diffidently, watching his wife to see how she took mention of the Hyperborean’s name. Hedia didn’t react. Even in the silence of her mind, she filed the fact and waited till she had more information.
Saxa cleared his throat and continued. “He believes it’s important to the coming struggle that Carce’s most ancient temple of Tellus, Mother Earth, be renovated. Because he’s a foreigner, he would have to ask permission of the Senate to carry out the repairs in his own name.”
“Ah,” said Hedia. “I see.”
Applying to the Senate—which meant to the Emperor—would call attention to the Hyperborean and to his pat
ron, Gaius Alphenus Saxa. Hedia certainly didn’t want that to happen, but the fact that Nemastes was trying to avoid it also was very disquieting.
“We’re going to store the objects that have been given to the goddess over the years here,” Saxa said. “In the back garden. There’ll be some wagons coming by shortly. Bringing things for safekeeping, you see; there are some quite valuable dedications, though mostly from a number of years ago.”
Hedia felt an aching fear. If I could name what I was afraid of, it wouldn’t be so bad. But now—
Saxa swallowed. His face had briefly been animated as he talked about the antiquities which he so loved. It went waxen again and he turned away.
Seeming to gather strength from an image of Neptune blowing on a conch with a pair of Nereids, fish-tailed and bare-breasted, supporting him, he said, “My dear, you don’t know what I have seen. Seen. Yes, in a vision, but it was real. It was—”
His hands lifted as though he were trying to squeeze an image into life.
“I saw fire,” he whispered. The words sounded like dry leaves rustling. “I saw fire rushing across the whole world. Everything burning, everything dying in fire, and the fire god was laughing as he watched.”
Hedia licked her lips, then embraced him. She hugged herself close, but Saxa didn’t respond except to wriggle like a hooked fish.
“Husband,” she pleaded.
“Please, dear,” Saxa muttered to the wall. “Things will come out right. You have to trust me.”
She stepped away and wrapped her arms around herself instead. She was cold with fear—not for the mythical fire, but from the certainty that Nemastes had caught her husband in a net she could not break him free of.
“You will do as you please, Husband,” Hedia said. “I only hope that you come to your senses in time to, to …”
To escape the Emperor’s torturers, but even in this awful moment she couldn’t bring herself to say that.
“For my part,” she went on instead, “I’ll hold the marriage divination tomorrow as planned. I only hope that I can save Alphena from the wreck of her father’s life.”
Despair was crushing her down. She turned and strode from the room, leaving the door open behind her.
A waist-high plinth supported a small marble faun in the corridor. It stuck out slightly from its alcove. Hedia deliberately stubbed her toe on the base, then bent over shouting curses.
It was an acceptable excuse for the tears that were about to burst out regardless.
PANDAREUS HAD PAUSED to write a message on a sealed tablet for one of Saxa’s servants to carry to Priscus, and the children of the house were staying home; Pulto and Corylus left the town house alone. On the doorstep Pulto paused. “Kid,” he said, “I need a mug of wine before we go home. Or maybe a whole jar of wine. You up for that?”
“Sure,” said Corylus. He grinned. “I don’t know that I’ll be downing much of the jar, but I don’t mind trying to carry you home.”
Pulto chuckled, a pleasant change from the bleak glare he’d worn since they’d left the gymnasium. He turned right toward the bar two doors down, the Blue Venus, instead of left to go home.
“The Old Man’s done it more than once for me,” he said, “and me for him. Never both of us falling-down drunk at the same time, until he got enough rank that we stayed home instead of crawling the strip.”
A masonry counter faced the street and ran down the right side of the central aisle. Three men stood at it. On its corner was the little statue of painted terra-cotta which gave the bar its name; Pulto patted her for luck. Thousands of other clients must have done so over the years, because the paint was worn from her bosom. Most of the times Corylus heard the bar spoken of, it’d had been as the Blue Tit.
To the left of the aisle were three small masonry booths, empty at this hour. “Bring us a jar of the house wine, Maura,” Pulto said. “The better stuff, mind. We’ll settle up when we leave.”
He led the way to the farthest booth. “Now, boy, sit down,” he said. “Because I’m going to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir,” Corylus said obediently. He felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach.
Pulto was his servant, the social and intellectual inferior of a well-educated knight of Carce. However, Pulto was also the fellow who had taught the Old Man’s son the things a young man needed to know in and around a military camp. Sometimes the teaching had involved a switch or even a fist, because failing to learn the lessons could mean the next time they were rehearsed with steel in the hands of people who definitely wouldn’t have the boy’s best interests at heart.
Pulto hadn’t touched the boy in years, of course. From the tone of his voice, though, Corylus was afraid that the discussion was going to be more unpleasant than a beating.
The barmaid brought over cups, a mixing bowl, a bronze carafe of water, and a jar that must have held at least a gallon of wine. It had a tapered base to be set in sand or a hole in the counter sized for it; here she leaned it into a corner of the booth. She was a slight, older woman with crinkly hair—probably a Moor, as her name suggested—but she handled the awkward load with less trouble than Corylus would have taken with it.
He grinned; there were tricks to every trade. Some of Pandareus’s other pupils, who’d been schooled only in words and literature, hadn’t learned that. The education Corylus had gotten on the frontiers was broader; and in some fashions, he thought, much better.
Pulto hefted the jar onto the crook of his right elbow, his index finger through one of the loop handles, and poured a generous slug into the bowl. Corylus added water from the carafe, mixing it two parts to one without asking Pulto if he wanted it stronger. If we’re going to have a difficult discussion, we’re going to have it sober.
Pulto didn’t comment, but he drank down his first cup and refilled it before he looked at Corylus across the table. “So, boy, I’m going to tell you about your mother, Coryla.”
“The Celt who Father married when he commanded the fort on the Upper Rhine,” Corylus said. Until the wine touched his lips, he hadn’t realized how very dry he was. He forced himself to sip instead of slurping it down as instinct urged him to.
Strictly speaking, soldiers on active duty weren’t permitted to marry. It was common for men in the frontier garrisons to enter into permanent arrangements with local girls, however. These would be recognized when they got their diploma of discharge.
That required both parties to survive, of course. Coryla had died giving birth, but her son had become a citizen of Carce as soon as Cispius had lifted him outside the door of the hut and named the child as his legitimate offspring.
“Right,” said Pulto, “only she wasn’t a Celt. And she wasn’t a Helvetian either, which is what most of the folk in the district were—stragglers, those that come down from the mountains after Caesar chopped the main lot of them back in his day, and maybe some that hightailed it ahead of his cavalry.”
“Not Celtic?” Corylus said. He finished his wine. There were any number of tribes in the empire, of course, not to mention those—like the Hyperboreans—who lived beyond the borders but mixed with civilized peoples. The fact that he’d been told a lie about his mother’s race was much more disturbing.
“No, and don’t ask me what she was,” Pulto growled. “She and her mother had a language they spoke to each other sometimes, and it wasn’t anything I’ve heard elsewhere.”
He emptied the mixing bowl to fill both their cups; there was plenty more in the jar, and if they ran out of water, the barmaid would bring another carafe. “They tended a hazel coppice—government property, you know. Growing straight saplings for spear and arrow shafts. It was a big plantation and just the two of them to work it, but they didn’t seem to have any trouble. Only the locals, you see … the locals, they didn’t like them.”
“Go on,” Corylus said. His mouth was suddenly drier than before he’d had the first cupful.
“There was a sacred grove, two big hazels, along with the saplings,�
�� Pulto said. “The Helvetians had brought their religion from the mountains with them, and the grove wasn’t part of it. Coryla and her mother didn’t need help, so it didn’t seem to matter a lot. The Old Man—”
Pulto gestured with his cup. He would have sloshed wine onto the table if he hadn’t drunk it down so far already.
“—his dad, and his dad before him had been nurserymen down on the bay”—Puteoli—“so he started spending time with the women. I guess something might’ve happened anyway, but one night there was Pluto’s own storm, lightning and hail and more wind than I’d ever seen. We lost the roofs of half the barracks and thought we were lucky.”
“And the grove?” Corylus said, not raising his voice.
Pulto poured more wine deliberately into the bowl, then added the water himself. He kept the mixture the same, two waters to the slug of wine.
When he had finished, he looked up and said, “A lot of the saplings lost their leaves, but the wind wasn’t a problem even when it bent them double. The biggest hazel came down, though, struck by lightning, and then the whole thing blew over. And the old woman, she died too. Had a seizure.”
Pulto grimaced and guzzled the cup of wine he’d refilled while speaking. “Hecate knows how old she was,” he muttered. “Mostly barbs are a lot younger than they look right off when you meet them, but I’m not sure the old lady was. Anyway, the Old Man took up with the daughter, that’s Coryla, and things went along pretty much the way they had. And it wasn’t too long before you—”
He gestured, then refilled the cup.
“—were on the way.”
Pulto had splashed wine when he last filled the cups. He used his little finger to draw a line with it before the last of the puddle settled into the terra-cotta surface. Corylus waited silently, sipping from his own cup. The story was coming at the speed Pulto was comfortable telling it.
“It was just Coryla to work the coppice and her pregnant besides, but that didn’t seem to be a problem,” Pulto went on, continuing to play with the tile. “Just about every sapling kept straight and they didn’t have a bug problem. Coryla—her and her mother—had a right good sum put by from bonuses when the assessors from the Quartermaster’s Department accepted each crop. And then come the night you were born.”