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The Centurions

Page 34

by The Centurions (retail) (epub)


  “Then you had best make it, lord of the Semnones,” Hoskuld said. He pushed his gray bulk up beside the younger chieftain and gave him a plain look. “I am oath-sworn,” he said. “Oath-sworn to you only, not to any other chief this tribe may call up. And to you only on conditions. Meet them or I break the alliance.”

  “I can’t kill him,” Nyall said, and he thought he saw Ingald relax just a little. One of the conditions he had made with Hoskuld was that the oath held only so long as Nyall could keep unity in his war band. Divided they could not stand against the Romans, and Hoskuld had made it plain that he would go back to his hold and hope that Rome would not venture that far east, before he would put his men in a war band that couldn’t move as one. Now he was obviously prepared to make good that threat.

  “I can’t kill him,” Nyall said again. “I put the chieftain’s curse on my warriors to keep the peace with each other. I will not break it merely because I am chieftain.”

  “Then you break your war band,” Hoskuld said, “and this one will not need to do it for you.” He gestured contemptuously at Ingald.

  “Neither do I break my word,” Nyall said.

  Hoskuld grunted something that might have been agreement and hooked his thumbs in his belt, waiting.

  Nyall said, “Ingald, come up to me and keep your tongue still.”

  Ingald hesitated, and Ranvig took the opportunity to give him a shove. It was plain that Ranvig wished there had been a knife in it. Ingald staggered a little and halted before Nyall, his bland look slipping now and his eyes angry.

  “Lords of the Semnones, Council of the Semnones, hear me.” Nyall pitched his voice to reach the farthest end of the hall. “From this day’s sundown, Ingald is no more of the Semnones.”

  There was a sharp-drawn breath from every man in the hall, and Ingald’s face went white. To be tribeless, outcast, was worse than death. For the tribeless man, there was no hold to go to, no refuge, no protection, and all men were foes. The tribe meant survival. Ingald rocked on his feet a little and Hoskuld watched him with a certain grim sympathy. Better for the fool if the chieftain had killed him.

  “Ingald, you are landless,” Nyall said ruthlessly, “you will not return to what was once your hold, nor will you come again into these lands. You may take with you your shield and spear, and one horse from the common herd, and you will be given one week’s food for your trail.”

  “My sword?” Ingald whispered. The sword was a warrior’s weapon, to lose it a disgrace.

  “No. It may be that you will find another one, if you live long enough, but you will not ride out of my hold carrying a sword.” Nyall turned to the tribal lords, to Fiorgyn and Morgian, and to Asuin the priest, who had come in to stand at the back of the hall. “Does anyone protest my judgment?” The square lines of his jaw were set tight, and it was plain that the question was only a formality. “Kari. Steinvar. Starkad. Take him and see that he rides out before sundown.” Nyall took Fiorgyn by the arm and stalked to the door that opened by the High Table, the thralls melting out of his way.

  Steinvar and Starkad took Ingald by the arms. He went, face set and unreadable, but his arms and shoulders were stiff, like a man barely in control. Ranvig started to follow and Kari shook his head at him.

  “No. Let this serve. I've seen Nyall in this mood. He's mad enough to curse you now if you disobey him.”

  “He'll go to the Romans,” Ranvig said.

  Kari shrugged. “Let him. If he gets that far, they may kill him for us. He doesn't know anything useful enough to tell them, except that we may fight them. They probably suspect that already.” He looked toward the open doorway. “It's midwinter, Ranvig. What chance do you give him?”

  * * *

  In their chamber, Fiorgyn stood silently, watching Nyall. He let go her arm and took a deep breath. “I ought to beat you,” he said finally, tonelessly.

  Fiorgyn made an angry noise. “You may try! I would have put my knife in him if you hadn’t come in, and you should have done it yourself a year ago! You are a chieftain, a great man, a leader of men! And Ingald is a blind spot with you! What is Ingald to you but a thief and a danger?”

  Nyall slumped down in a chair and stared at the fire. “He is… a doubt. A voice that may be right after all. Everything that I have done has taken something from Ingald. You… the lordship of the Nicretes… his home hills. I came lordlywise into the Black Forest saying we must fight the Romans, and we came near to losing everything. How can I kill Ingald and not wonder afterward if it was because he spoke the truth?”

  “Ingald speaks what will serve Ingald!”

  “Does that make it untrue?” Nyall whispered.

  “Nyall…”

  “So many dead,” he went on dully, eyes lost in the fire. “And more dead this spring. And all just to make us too big a nuisance for Rome to swallow… all just to push them beyond the Rhenus and hold them there… to spend year after year just holding them. Rome has pushed into the Free Lands before, and always they have been driven back, but only that. Never conquered.”

  She knelt down and put her hands on his shoulders and dug her fingers in hard through the woolen shirt. “Then we hold them, if that is all we can do. We hold them. We must.”

  His eyes were clouded and unhappy, but they drew back from the fire finally and focused on her. “Yes, we must.” His voice was older than Geir’s or Steinvar’s, too old for his face and body, too old for everything but the look in his eyes. “And I have sent Ingald to his death for speaking the things I won’t admit to thinking. Fiorgyn, I am tired.”

  She dropped her hands from his shoulders and sat back, holding out her arms to him. He slipped from his chair and knelt beside her among the rushes on the floor while she put her arms around him and held him tightly. After a moment he lifted his own arms and pulled her close, but over her shoulder he was still watching the fire.

  * * *

  Outside in the courtyard, Kari followed Steinvar and Starkad through the trampled snow to the barns. Together they set Ingald on a horse, gave him his spear and blue-painted shield, and a saddlebag of dried meat and hard barley cake. He looked down at them with a cold, white face, but didn’t speak. They would not have answered him. Steinvar dragged open the heavy outer gates of the hold and raised one lean, scarred arm in a silent gesture. The snow-covered road wound away down the hill before him, and dark clouds had begun to bank up above it. Ingald hesitated and Kari brought his hand down hard on the horse’s rump. The animal leaped forward and suddenly Ingald dug in his heels and took the road at a gallop, snow flying up under the horse’s hooves. They stood in the gate and watched him go, westward into the falling sun and the black clouds. It was like watching a ghost ride away.

  XVIII Home Leave

  “My dear boy!” Appius Julianus put his arms around his tall son (a shade taller than his father now – Correus had grown) and held him close for a moment, then stood back and looked him up and down, noting the way his lorica and leather harness skirt sat upon him with the rightness of usage. His eye lit with satisfaction on the Valorous Conduct torque, then traveled again to Correus’s face.

  Appius had already greeted Flavius with affection, but it was uncomfortably plain, Paulinus thought, watching them, that it was Correus whose presence called up that joyful light in the old general’s eyes. That much was probably equally plain to the Lady Antonia, although nothing escaped her well-bred countenance but polite welcome. Only when she put her arms around Flavius did her expression change, to the sharp, protective love of a mother tiger.

  Paulinus noted the dark, pleasant-faced girl beside her – the sister, Julia, no doubt – who greeted the brothers with indiscriminate affection, admired their uniforms and new military bearing, and smiled shyly at Paulinus as he was introduced.

  “What did you bring me?” she demanded, returning her attention to her brothers and linking an arm with each.

  “A severed head to put on a pole outside your window, like the German girls get,” Flavius
said, giving her a horrible leer. When Julia looked suitably revolted, he relented and took out a silk bag with a pair of gold eardrops in it, worked in German style. Correus gave her the necklace to match them – hammered gold twisted into spirals through which two hunting dogs chased a deer.

  Julia put them on and peered into the atrium pool to admire herself until Antonia told her to get up off the floor and remember she was a young lady.

  “They’re splendid!” Julia announced, dusting off her gown. “Every girl I know is going to be broken-hearted!”

  “Most becoming,” Paulinus agreed gravely. “I think you’re lucky it wasn’t the horse.”

  “Horse?” Julia gave him a puzzled look, and so the story of the Lyxian temple horse was retold.

  Appius Julianus was greatly amused, and Lady Antonia looked blank and seemed to feel that a great deal of effort that could have been better employed elsewhere had been put in on a joke. She excused herself with a gracious smile, saying that she had an appointment with the cook, but would see them all again at dinner.

  “Correus, dear, you should go and see your mother,” she added gently, and departed.

  Appius was still wiping his eyes. “She’s quite right,” he chuckled. “Helva’s expecting you, and I have estate business to talk over with Flavius.” He nodded at Paulinus. “If you can put up with my daughter’s youthful company, I’ll have her show you the gardens before it gets dark.”

  “I should be delighted, sir,” Paulinus said politely, as Julia shot her father a quelling glance for his aspersion on her maturity. “Don’t mind your father, child,” he said with a certain amount of sympathy. “My uncle Gentilius treats me in much the same fashion.”

  Paulinus caught a muffled snort of something that might have been laughter from his host as the study door closed behind him, but Julia merely smiled at him, an expression which transformed her mother’s handsome features into something approaching real beauty in the daughter. Paulinus noticed it with pleasure.

  “I suppose I’ll have to get used to it,” Julia said. “Being the youngest is always like that, and it’s worse now with my brothers in the army. Papa was saying last night what a pleasure it would be to see army scarlet at the table again, and looked at me as if I ought to have been a boy. I bore him, I expect,” she added philosophically.

  “Why?” Paulinus held the door open as they stepped out into the colonnade.

  It was chilly and Julia paused to adjust her light woolen wrap. “He needs someone to talk army with.”

  Paulinus chuckled. “And you don’t speak army?”

  “Not very well. Though I’ve tried to learn for Papa’s sake.”

  “There are other things of importance in the world besides the army, whatever your papa and your brother Correus may think to the contrary.”

  “Not in this house,” Julia said with a trace of humor in her voice. “The garden doesn’t look like much right now.” She eyed the mulched-up beds dubiously. “Everything’s laid down under straw, but we’ll go and admire the roses so we can tell Mama you did.”

  And so we will stay out of the way while Correus visits his socially unacceptable mother and the old general tries to decide if Flavius is going to make it in the army or not, Paulinus thought. “I shall imagine them in full bloom,” he said solemnly, looking at the geometrically arranged beds of pruned-back sticks.

  Julia gave him a curious look. He was an unprepossessing figure – slightly built, with a freckled face and ears that stuck out a bit, but there was something… knowledgeable in his face. “Did you really dress up as someone’s slave to trick that man about the horse?” she asked.

  “Certainly,” Paulinus said. “I haven’t had so much fun in years.”

  “But… you’re a gentleman. How could you pass yourself off as a slave?”

  “My dignity’s not as high as you seem to think.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. But how did you get him to believe you? You’re obviously not one. I mean, you could put a field slave’s clothes on Flavius, and he’d just look like someone dressed up for Saturnalia night.”

  Paulinus thought of all the other things he’d passed himself off as from time to time. “I’m a frustrated actor, I suppose,” he said mildly. He unwrapped his toga and drew its folds up over his head. He pinched a withered bloom, missed by the gardener, from one of the rosebushes, and held it out to her—

  “The flower of the lotus, mistress – imported direct from the Nile. It cures all manner of ills. A boon to those afflicted with baldness and female troubles, and all nervous disorders. Just two denarius, mistress, to bring these great powers to all sufferers at home.”

  His voice had a marked Egyptian accent and the singsong tone of the street markets. His eyes were squinted and slightly crossed, his expression importunate. Julia began to giggle.

  “For you, mistress, one denarius,” he went on insistently, trotting beside her and thrusting the flower at her. “Just one denarius for the lady with the bright eyes. I’m a poor man, mistress, but for you, one denarius.”

  Julia laughed. “Yes, I see.”

  Paulinus gave her the rose with a flourish and reassembled his dignity and the folds of his toga. “It’s all in what you think you are.”

  They had reached the end of the rose garden and Julia laid the flower at the feet of Athena’s statue. “I never thought of that. Can you make yourself anyone you want to?”

  “Sweet Aphrodite, who’s that?” Paulinus was staring across Athena’s courtyard at the colonnade that ran along the upper servants’ wing of the house. Correus was strolling along it arm in arm with the most stunningly beautiful woman Paulinus had ever seen.

  Julia made a little clicking sound with her tongue that was somehow reminiscent of the Lady Antonia. “That is Correus’s mother. I suppose you know about her. She’s been the most awful nuisance all day, and I just don’t want to talk to her. Come and admire the trellis with me.”

  Paulinus followed and gave Julia an inquiring look.

  “It’s Correus’s coming home,” she said. “Ever since Papa adopted him, Helva’s been so… well, set up about it, there’s just no living with her, and that puts Mama in a temper, which puts Papa in a temper.”

  “How trying for all of you,” Paulinus commented. “Especially for Correus.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. I hadn’t looked at it that way.”

  “There are generally about eight sides to everything, I find,” Paulinus said. “I knew a woman in Judaea like that. With one innocent-sounding sentence, she could wreak more havoc than a whole houseful of ordinary people. She was someone’s mistress too, and unfortunately he was very high up.”

  “Have you been in Judaea, too?”

  “I’ve been in most parts of the Empire,” Paulinus said. “And a few places we haven’t got to yet. I’m writing a modern history, you see, and I believe in sticking my nose into things firsthand.”

  “How wonderful!” Julia sat down on a bench under the trellis and sighed. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

  “Bored?” Paulinus asked. She was a nice child, he thought, and undoubtedly had been given a back place to her brothers.

  “Yes.” Julia put her elbows on her knees and looked up at him, chin in hand. “It’s very dull being respectable, I think. Helva’s had a much more interesting life than I have.”

  “You wouldn’t want to trade places with her,” Paulinus said, remembering what Correus had told him.

  “And be someone’s mistress? Certainly not.” Julia giggled. “I’d never get the chance. But I would like to… see things.” Her face was eager, curious. An inquiring face, ready to go out and take stock of the world. She probably wasn’t going to get much opportunity, he thought. The adventure in Appius Julianus’s household was confined to its male members. They’d marry her off to some up-and-coming career soldier whom she’d see once a year when he came home on leave to be bored and patronizing with her. It seemed a pity.

  “I expect I’ll be
married soon,” she said, echoing his own thought. “It’ll be better when I have a house of my own to run.”

  Don’t count on it, he wanted to say, but that seemed cruel. “Who are you going to marry?” he asked.

  “Oh, a soldier,” she said. “I can’t imagine Papa not picking a soldier.” It was obvious that the prospective bridegroom was still hypothetical at this point.

  “And you’ll let Papa do the picking?”

  “I’ll have to,” she said. “I never get to meet anyone. Anyway, I trust Papa. He picked a wonderful girl for Flavius. My best friend. Only—” She stopped.

  “Never mind,” Paulinus said. “I know about that. Again, poor Correus.”

  “Why poor Correus?”

  “Use your head.” He found himself speaking to her as if she were a much younger child. Or an old acquaintance. “He can’t do anything about her. Not honorably, and probably not any other way. And to have the girl insisting on mooning after him is an embarrassment.”

  “Aemelia’s very determined,” Julia said admiringly. “She says she’ll die an old maid if they won’t give in.”

  * * *

  Across the garden, Helva was telling Correus much the same thing.

  “The poor child hasn’t forgotten you a bit,” she was saying, apparently oblivious of the seething expression on her son’s face. She had on a gown of deep rose, exactly the color that she had painted her lips, and wore a fluttering woolen mantle, two shades darker, embroidered in fanciful black butterflies at the ends. She walked with the studied carelessness of a woman who knows that her appearance is flawless.

  “You’ll see for yourself,” Helva went on. “Correus, dear, if you would only try, I honestly think your father might come around.” She tapped the Valorous Conduct torque with one delicate finger. “How clever of you to have won that just in time to please your father.”

  “There was nothing ‘clever’ about it,” Correus said irritably. “And I didn’t win it to convince father to give me Flavius’s bride, so will you please just let it drop?”

 

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