“Oh Lord God! I can’t help it; it’s all this talk about Alexandria, and being disgraced. She’s so reckless. She’ll get herself killed. And I’m bound to go to Armenia.”
“Why don’t you just tell her?”
“The last thing she needs is another Goth proposing marriage. Particularly not in the middle of the journey, in the wilds of Thrace. It would certainly make it very awkward for her to turn me down.”
I sat up. Athanaric jumped back in a hurry. I didn’t know what to say, whether he could possibly mean what he seemed to.
“Sacra maiestas!” Athanaric said. “You’re awake.”
“I . . . I just didn’t want to get up. What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” said Athanaric. Even in the firelight I could tell that he was going red.
“But you said —”
“I don’t mean anything by it. I know you don’t want to hear anything about it, and you can forget I said it. We are friends, and I would have done as much for any man I valued.”
“But what did you say? Arbetio, what did he say?”
Arbetio hesitated, looked at Athanaric, and then said slowly, “He meant to ask your permission to arrange a marriage with you, when you are back safely in Roman lands.”
I pressed my hands together to stop them from shaking. “Did you?”
“You can forget the idea for now!” Athanaric said hurriedly. “I know you don’t want to hear anything more about marriage now — maybe in a year, if you could bear to think about it . . . If you don’t dislike me, that is.”
I stared at him with my mouth open. “But why? You don’t have to do a thing like that to protect me, you know: I can manage for myself. And I thought you wanted someone like Amalberga.”
“You can manage yourself into trouble,” Athanaric said, recovering himself a little. “But that has nothing to do with it. Amalberga isn’t worth mentioning beside you; she’s a swan, perhaps, but you’re a phoenix. One of a kind, and a kind unto itself.”
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t bear it; I thought that like the phoenix I would be consumed by fire, a fire of delighted love.
“You don’t need to say anything!” Athanaric cried, alarmed by the gesture. “I shouldn’t have spoken; I wouldn’t have, but I thought you were asleep. Forget it all.”
“Not in a thousand years,” I said firmly, and I opened my eyes and looked up at him. And that was a sight to remember a thousand years, too: his face, half turned to the fire, with the light snared in his hair, and his eyes alarmed, puzzled, unsure. “Do you really love me?” I demanded, not daring to believe it.
“Of course. Isn’t it obvious? But you don’t need to worry that I’ll force myself on you. I know that you’ve heard far too much of this sort of thing already. And you told me once that there was a man you were in love with. If you still want to go looking for him, I won’t try to ruin it.”
I jumped up. “Oh ye gods! Athanaric, that was you! There was never anyone but you! Isn’t that obvious?”
He gaped for a moment. Then he touched the side of my face, very hesitantly, and then kissed me. I put my arms around him. I wished I could die in that instant. Nothing in my life, I thought, will ever be this wonderful again.
Arbetio gave an embarrassed cough, and Athanaric drew back and stared at me in bemusement. I didn’t let him go; I’d waited too long to let go quickly. He started to say something, but I kissed him, and his arms came round me and he forgot whatever it was he’d meant to say.
“You really mean it,” he said in a surprised voice when we eventually separated.
“My life and my soul!” I said, and put my head down against his shoulder. I could feel the hardness of muscle and bone under the cloak which smelled of sweat and horses, and the ring of his arms against my back, and the beat of his heart. Hippocrates says that the body is wise. It understands, certainly, how to give happiness.
Arbetio gave another embarrassed cough and shuffled his feet. Poor man, he had nowhere to go to avoid intruding, except outside with the horses. If he hadn’t been there, I suppose Athanaric and I would have dropped into bed in an instant. But it wasn’t fair to Arbetio, who had, after all, risked everything to help us. I remembered a few manners, let go of Athanaric, and stood back. Then I had to sit down in a hurry: my knees were shaking, from the shock and from all the riding. Athanaric caught my hands. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’ve done too much riding,” I said, “but I’ve never been so well in my life.” And I sat there smiling at Athanaric, and he stood there holding my hands and smiling back with a stunned expression.
“You ought to have something to eat,” Arbetio said, resolutely trying to impose normality. At once Athanaric helped me up and led me over to the fire. They had made a stew with some dried meat and a few onions and pot herbs that had survived in the abandoned kitchen garden. I sat there smiling stupidly while Arbetio broke another loaf of journeybread. There were no serving dishes, so we huddled about the stew pot and dipped our bread into it. Athanaric dipped his bread and sat staring at me, but now that the stew was in front of me I was ravenously hungry, and I dipped mine and ate it, though I had to keep looking at Athanaric to make sure he wasn’t a dream. Arbetio looked at each of us, then laughed.
“I never would have thought it of you, Chariton,” he said. “You, in love?”
I swallowed my mouthful of stew. “What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, nothing. But you always seemed so . . . professional, as though personal feelings didn’t exist.”
“I thought I must have been obvious. Always being sure to be in Novidunum if Athanaric was going to be there, all those invitations to dinner . . .”
“You always forgot them,” Athanaric said.
I shook my head. “Not ever. But I couldn’t let you guess, could I?”
“Why not?”
“Because it would have been the end of me. Exposure, disgrace, a quick trip home, and a long death sitting there with nothing to do. That’s what I thought, anyway. I never thought you’d want to marry me, and I didn’t think you’d agree to a clandestine affair either.”
He looked even more stunned. “And you would have?”
I looked down; it had been a shameless thing to say. “You said yourself that desire is a torment.”
“But . . . me? Sebastianus —”
“I like Sebastianus. But not that way.”
“He’s better-looking than I am, of pure Roman birth, better educated, wealthier, and cleverer. Why should you, who could have anybody, prefer me?”
“He’s not cleverer. Better read, but not cleverer. And I don’t know why. I thought in Egypt that you were good-looking, but it wasn’t until I saw you here in Thrace that I realized that I loved you. I suppose it is because you are yourself, and Sebastianus is always a duke and a gentleman as well. He will fight for the empire and enjoy its culture, but he never looks at it from the outside. He doesn’t love it. And he doesn’t love virtue either; he just admires it. You are like Odysseus, who could go out onto the great sea, lose all his goods and his friends, come to the boundaries of death, and return still himself. And what do you mean, I could have anybody? Very well, Sebastianus thinks I resemble some girl a Latin poet fell for centuries ago — but his father put a stop to that nonsense pretty quickly. I must be one of the most notorious women in the empire, what with running away from home, jilting a governor, working in the army, and being offered in marriage to half a dozen different Goths. I never was more than tolerably well-born, rich, or pretty to begin with, and now I’m getting old — old for marriage, that is. I shouldn’t think your father will like me any more than Count Sebastianus does.”
“I expect my father will have more sense, and I don’t care if he doesn’t. And you’re not old. You’re what, twenty-eight?”
“Twenty-five,” I confessed.
“No more than that? Immortal God, how old were you when you left Ephesus?”
“Seventeen. Marriageable age.”
“So is twenty-five. And do you really think that people will see you as scandalous?”
“How else?”
“As a cross between Medea and your Penelope of Ithaca. And for every traditionalist who thinks you’re shameless and brazen, there’s another gentleman who thinks you’re splendid. It’s only stupid or conventional men who like stupid, conventional women. As for your ‘tolerablys,’ don’t be ridiculous. You’re of consular rank, of one of the wealthiest families in the province of Asia, and beautiful.”
“Beautiful! You must be in love and blind. I was pretty once, but never beautiful. Daphne and Amalberga are beautiful.”
“So are you.”
I laughed and shook my head, pleased that he thought so. “So are you. Dearest.”
His lips repeated the endearment without sound, his eyes fixed on mine.
“Well,” said Arbetio. “Love is certainly a great god, to make two intelligent people look so foolish.” We both glanced at him in irritation, and he grinned. “Esteemed Chariton — Charis — I advise that you finish your dinner and go to sleep. You need food and rest, and we still have a day’s riding ahead of us.”
The torments of desire did not keep me awake that night: I was too exhausted. I woke up feeling even happier, and even sorer, than I had the morning before. We had a very cheerful breakfast and set off. Athanaric looked as though he had not slept as well as I, but he was in high spirits, and almost at once began talking of our marriage.
“It will have to wait until we have made the arrangements with your brother,” he said.
“Will it?” I said, not thinking much of this idea. In fact I felt happier about loving Athanaric than I did about marrying him, but I suspected that he would insist on everything’s being respectable until we were married. It’s one thing to consummate a passion, and quite another to consummate a marriage, with all that that entails in financial arrangements and legal settlements. Legal subordination, too. A married woman has more freedom than an unmarried girl in many ways, but she is required to obey her husband. I thought I could trust Athanaric not to abuse his power, but even so, the idea frightened me.
“It needs to be official, well testified, and respectable,” Athanaric declared firmly. “After starting off as unconventionally as this, we need all the legality we can get.”
“Damn respectability.”
“ ‘Rumoresque senum severiorum, Omnes unius aestimemus assis! Da mi basia mille!’ “
“Damn respectability, and give you a thousand kisses? Gladly. What’s that?” ,
“Sebastianus’ favorite. Catullus.”
“Perhaps I should read Latin poetry after all.”
“Ah, but in the end she lost respectability and he lost her. We need to be official. I don’t want anyone questioning it afterward, not even my own father, if he does decide to be an idiot. Besides, you’ll need your dowry in full if you want to found a hospital.”
My fear vanished. I would have control of my dowry, and he was the one who had suggested founding a hospital with it in the first place. I laughed, trying to picture a hospital of my own. “Very well.”
“We will have a thoroughly respectable wedding, blessed in a church, with none of this pagan business of carting the bride off like a captive. We will go up to the altar, very solemn, and swear in the name of the most sacred and glorious Trinity, and of Divine Healing, and of St. Hippocrates, to love one another forever, and then I will have to swear the oath of Hippocrates.”
“And why will you have to swear that?”
“So as not to be outdone by you. How does it go? “I will use my art to heal and not to harm, I will be chaste . . “
“I hope not excessively so.”
“No fear of that. Then we will go home. I will get a permanent position somewhere, with a fixed base, and you will have your hospital. We will have a big house, and both leave it every morning for work.”
“We will make my Maia the housekeeper,” I said, beginning to look forward to it.
“Your Maia? You have an old nursemaid somewhere?”
“She’s housekeeping for my brother and his concubine at the moment. But I was the one she nursed; it cut her to the heart to see me run off, though she helped me do it. Festinus had her tortured when my father was accused of treason; I suppose she’s the real reason I did run away. But what she’s always wanted is to manage my house for me and play grandmother to my children. She’ll be enchanted to see me respectable again.” I tried to picture her excitement, and her inevitable boasting about Athanaric’s title, mutilating the Latin words as she always did. Would she and Athanaric get on? Yes; they would want to, and there was no reason they shouldn’t.
Athanaric laughed. “We will have children!” he exclaimed enthusiastically.
“The boys can go into the civil service, and the girls can learn medicine from their mother.”
“What if the boys want to learn medicine?”
“I suppose I might allow it.”
“What if the girls want to go into the civil service?”
“I will tell them to cut their hair and pretend to be eunuchs, but not to expect any bribes from me.”
I laughed. “And where will we go, to raise a family like that?”
“Armenia? Alexandria? Ephesus? Rome? We have the whole empire waiting for us.” He swept an arm east and south and west, as though he were brushing away the wild and deserted land of Thrace and promising the great bright glittering world. I laughed again, for sheer joy, and Athanaric and Arbetio both laughed too. We do have the world, I thought, we do have the whole world to choose from.
We reached Novidunum late that afternoon.
I was once again very tired, and the sky was darkening for a storm. The countryside around us was still and deserted: flat green and yellow grasses, unsown fields and empty houses, the song of cicadas in the hot, thick air. But in the northeast the thunderclouds were already black. Then Arbetio reined his horse in and pointed, and there in the distance rose the walls of Novidunum, the bluff towering over the flat country, outlined against the darkening sky. Despite my exhaustion I gave a shout of happiness, and we kicked our tired horses into a trot.
“With luck,” said Arbetio, “we’ll be indoors when the storm breaks.”
Since early afternoon we had been traveling along the main road north; the countryside around it was flat and open, so we didn’t have to fear an ambush. Now for the first time since we left Carragines we saw cows and horses grazing in the fields, and houses that looked inhabited; their owners could shelter safely in the fortress if the Goths attacked.
“Are there many men in Novidunum?” I asked.
“Plenty,” said Arbetio. “We’ve been made the main convalescent hospital for the whole of Thrace.”
“And you went absent without leave?”
He grinned and shrugged. “I have plenty of assistants. And it was your fault we were chosen — we had the best record of recoveries. At any rate, the fortress is full, though mostly with convalescents, and Valerius is still in charge of it. When the injured are well enough to hold a spear, though not to travel, they’re supposed to guard the walls and prevent any more barbarians from crossing the river.” The smile disappeared, and he went on quietly but grimly. “What they’d do if another barbarian horde actually appeared, I don’t know. They certainly couldn’t stop it. But I think all the barbarians are down in the south, killing our people.”
There was a rumble of thunder far away over the delta. The horses’ hooves clattered on the road. A man and a woman ran from a house nearby and started driving their cows into their shed. They glanced at us curiously, fearfully, but when we didn’t stop went on with their business. We urged our horses more quickly toward shelter.
When we were just near enough to see figures on those towering walls, Athanaric turned his horse off the road, over to an apple tree in an orchard. He cut off some green branches and handed one to each of us. “So they understand at the fort that we’re peaceful,” he
said. “We don’t want to end up killed by our own people.”
So, holding my green branch high in token of peace, I rode back to the fortress I had left so carelessly a year and a half before. The figures on the wall pointed and shouted but didn’t throw anything, and we rode together up to the locked gates.
The guards stood on the watchtower, shields raised and spears at the ready, and one of them asked us loudly to give the password.
“We don’t know it,” Athanaric said clearly, holding his hands well away from his sword. “We are escaping from the Goths at Carragines. I am Athanaricus of Sardica, curiosus of the agentes in rebus.” He held up his license on its chain. “This is Arbetio, the chief physician of this fortress. And this is the lady Charis, daughter of Theodoros of Ephesus.”
They had all stared at, and recognized, Arbetio, but as soon as Athanaric named me all attention switched to me. There were muttered exclamations, then a ragged cheer. Someone ran to open the gate; the great ironbound doors swung open, and we rode through into the fort. A gust of wind caught at the doors as the guards closed them behind us, and the first drops of rain splashed fat and heavy against the secure protection of the walls. And a long farewell to you, Thrace, I thought to myself. From here I go down the river by boat and so out into the Euxine, where there are no barbarians.
The soldiers of the fort crowded round. I could see now that they were indeed convalescents, limping or gaunt with illness, with arms in slings, their chests or heads or thighs bandaged. But they were grinning and shouting joyfully. I recognized one or two faces from my time at the camp, but most were strangers — men from other legions, from other provinces, brought here by injury or disease. But they had evidently heard of me. “Charis of Ephesus!” they shouted. “Snatched from the Goths!” “That for Fritigern!” one shouted, making an obscene gesture; his neighbor cuffed him: “Mind the lady!” Several of them caught my horse’s bridle, and I quickly slid off and pulled my skirts down. No use displaying my ruined legs to the entire fort. The men crowded round me, grinning, and I felt a bit dizzy; my legs were trembling with fatigue. I hung on to my horse’s saddle and smiled feebly back. Athanaric rode his horse into the crowd around me; I was vaguely aware of Arbetio arguing with a man about a sling and pulling it off to look at an arm.
The Beacon at Alexandria Page 47