by David Drake
Storm clouds painted on flats descended over the stage. A troupe of attractive boys representing the Winds-a placard identified them-danced, while the actor playing Hercules' companion Ithys sang about his leader's battle with Geryon.
According to the song, this was merely a prefiguring of the greater battles which the divine Caesar and his heirs would fight in coming days. Silver foil on the scenery reflected torchlight to mimic lightning, and pairs of stagehands rattled sheets of bronze thunderously between stanzas.
The fellow playing Ithys was well set up. In other circumstances, Hedia might have invited him to perform at-and after-a private dinner some night.
In her present mood, though, Hedia didn't want to think of darkness, even when it was being spent in pleasant recreation. The night before, Hedia had dreamed of Latus in the Underworld, screaming out the agonies of the damned.
If those who wrote about gods and men told the truth, her first husband was certainly worthy of eternal torture… but until recently, Hedia had never imagined that such stories-such myths-were true. A few days ago she had visited the Underworld herself. She had talked with Latus, who had been in the embrace of broad, gray-green, leaves like those which wrapped him in her dream.
In last night's dream, three figures had coalesced through the shadowy fronds about Latus. They looked like men; or rather, they looked like human statues which had been found in a desert where the sands had worn their features smooth. These were of glass, however, not bronze or marble; and these moved as though they were human.
In the dream, Latus was screaming. Hedia had awakened to find her personal maid Syra leaning over her with a frightened expression and a lamp. Behind Syra were three footmen and a gaggle of female servants, all wearing expressions of excitement or concern.
Hedia had closed her mouth. Her throat had been raw; it still felt tender, though she had sucked comfits of grape sugar most of the day to sooth it. The screams had been her own. Something terrifying was going on, though she didn't know how she knew that.
On stage, the painted storm had lifted, and Hercules was back on his plaster hill. A large mixed company danced on, wearing silks and chains of tiny metal bells which tinkled to their movements. Hedia wasn't sure whether the troupe was meant to be the conqueror's companions, his captives, or more nymphs and sprites.
She didn't know, and she didn't care. Something was wrong, badly wrong; but there had generally been something wrong in Hedia's life, before her marriage to Latus and most certainly afterwards. She would see her way through this trouble also.
Hedia gave her husband's hand a final squeeze, then crossed her fingers on her lap. Composed again, she glanced to her right at Alphena, Saxa's daughter by his first wife. The girl sensed her stepmother's interest and immediately blushed, though she didn't respond in any deliberate fashion.
Hedia nodded minusculely and turned her attention to the audience. She suppressed her knowing grin, just as she had swallowed her laughter at the monkey's antics.
As she expected, Alphena had been looking toward Publius Corylus, who sat at the edge of the knights' section. He was a striking young man, taller than most citizens of Carce. His hair was buttery blond, His father had been a soldier, so the boy probably had Celtic blood. Soldiers couldn't marry, but informal arrangements on the frontiers were regularized on retirement, for those who survived to retire. Acknowledged offspring became legitimate and, in Corylus' case, joined the ranks of the Knights of Carce to whom his father had been raised.
A very striking boy. Spending the afternoon with him would be a good way to climb out of this swamp of disquiet…
Hedia's face hardened for an instant before she consciously smoothed it back to aristocratic calm. She could appreciate better than most why Alphena found the boy attractive, but she was by law the girl's mother and she took her duties seriously. Hedia would do whatever was necessary to keep Alphena a virgin until the girl was safely married; and marriage, for the daughter of Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa, meant an alliance with another senatorial house.
After that, well… After that, Alphena's behavior would be a matter for negotiation between husband and wife. Nothing to do with the girl's stepmother.
Hedia had never pretended to be a wife who embodied all the virtues of ancient Carce, but she had never failed to do her duty as she saw it. She would not fail in her duties now, neither to her husband nor to the girl to whom she was now mother. She would not fail for so long as she lived.
Trumpets and horns which curved around the player's body sounded harshly together. A military procession was entering from the other side of the stage.
As long as I live…, Hedia thought. She remembered Latus screaming and her own swollen throat; and she smiled with polite courtesy, because it was her duty now to smile.
***
The antics of the monkeys had amused Alphena, so she regretted it when they and their gilded perches slipped down into the sub-floors beneath the stage. Were there really monkeys on the Pillars of Hercules?
Varus will know. She glanced toward her brother, but Saxa and Hedia were seated in the way. It didn't really matter anyway.
Corylus would know if the monkeys were authentic too; or anyway, he might know…
Alphena realized she was staring toward her brother's friend in the audience. She scowled, furious with herself and with Corylus also. He was so- She drew her eyes away with a quick intake of breath. Corylus was enough of a scholar to impress Varus, who was a good judge of that sort of thing, and enough of an athlete to impress Lenatus, the ex-soldier whom Saxa had hired as family trainer and manager of the small gymnasium in Saxa's townhouse. His swordsmanship impressed Alphena too.
The actors marching across the long stage were supposed to be soldiers, or at least some of them were. Alphena eyed the hodgepodge of equipment with a critical eye.
Most of the helmets had been worn by the City Watch before becoming so battered they'd been replaced, but there were also gladiatorial helmets and various examples from the legions and the non-citizen cavalry squadrons. The remainder, a good quarter of the total, was odds and ends of foreign gear in leather, bronze and iron. The impresario in charge of this mime seemed to have found it cheaper to buy real cast-offs than it would have been to manufacture dummies.
The shields were wicker, though, covered in linen and painted with what for all Alphena knew really were Lusitanian tribal symbols. She sneered. The shields had to be fakes because actors wouldn't have been able to handle the real thing. The shield of a legionary of Carce was three thick layers of laminated wood and weighed forty pounds. The barbarians on the other side of the frontier generally used bull hide contraptions, less effective but even larger and equally heavy.
Alphena could use a real legionary shield and short sword: she had practiced daily for several years, determined to make herself just as good a swordsman as any man. She wasn't that good-she wasn't big enough, and she had learned from experience that men had more muscle in their arms and legs than a woman did. Alphena was better than most men, though.
She wasn't better than Publius Corylus. He had been training with weapons all his life; and though Corylus didn't talk about it to her, Alphena knew from her brother that he had crossed the river frontiers with army scouts on nighttime raids.
Corylus didn't talk much at all to his friend's little sister. He shouldn't, of course. He was merely a Knight of Carce, and Alphena was the daughter of one of the greatest houses in the empire. For Corylus to have presumed on his acquaintance with Varus would have been the grossest arrogance!
Alphena scowled fiercely again. She didn't have the interest in books that her brother showed, but she had never doubted that she was as smart as-smarter than-most of the people she dealt with in a normal day.
This wasn't always an advantage. Right now it prevented Alphena from believing that she wasn't angry because Corylus showed absolutely no interest in her: he wasn't merely avoiding her for the sake of propriety.
But he was avo
iding Hedia for the sake of propriety. If he really does avoid her- Alphena heard the thought in her head and shied away from it. Her skin tingled as though she had rolled in hot sand.
Swallowing, she forced herself to focus on the stage again. Still more actors were marching on. Actually, they were marching and dancing: the ones who weren't dressed as soldiers danced, men and women both. If she'd been paying attention she might have known who the dancers represented, but she doubted that she'd missed anything.
The only reason Alphena was here this afternoon was that Hedia insisted that the whole family be present to support Saxa in his consulate. In her heart, Alphena knew that her stepmother was right: this was a great day for Gaius Alphenus Saxa, and his family should be with him during his public honor.
She turned to look at Hedia, opening her mouth to protest, "Father never went out of his way for me!" but that wasn't really true-and it wasn't at all fair. Alphena faced the front and crossed her hands primly in her lap, hoping her stepmother hadn't noticed the almost-outburst.
Hedia probably had noticed. Hedia did notice things.
Alphena had been amazed and appalled when she learned-from Agrippinus, major domo of the Saxa household-that her father was marrying for a third time. Marcia was his first wife and the children's mother; she had been a coolly distant noblewoman from the little Alphena remembered of her. At Marcia's death, Saxa had married her sister Secunda. That relationship ended, but the children had seen almost nothing of their father's wife before the divorce, so that made very little difference to them.
But Saxa's third wife was to be the notorious Hedia: certainly a slut, probably a poisoner, and utterly impossible. Alphena thought she had misheard Agrippinus-or else that the major domo was making a joke that would get him whipped within a hair's breadth of his life even though he was a freedman rather than a slave.
It hadn't been a joke. Alphena had known that as soon as she realized that Agrippinus was trembling with fear. He had obviously guessed how Alphena would take the news, and he knew also that Saxa would have allowed his furious daughter to punish the major domo any way she pleased even though he had only been carrying out his master's orders.
Saxa had left for his estate in the Sabine Hills that morning. He too had been concerned about how Alphena was going to take the news.
When Hedia arrived, Alphena had found no difficulty in hating her. What she couldn't do-what nobody seemed able to do-was to ignore her stepmother. Instead of ignoring Saxa's children the way their birth mother had, she had become their mother in fact as well as law. That hadn't affected Varus much; he continued to take classes and, in his spare time, write poetry-an acceptable occupation for a nobleman if not a very heroic one.
Alphena, though, had found herself being forced into ladylike pursuits. She couldn't fool her stepmother, and she had found to her amazement that Hedia's voice was louder than her "daughter's" and that she had no compunction about causing a scene.
For that matter, the servants were more afraid of Saxa's wife than they were of his daughter. Alphena and her famously bad temper could no longer rule the household. For three months she had subsided into sullen anger, which Hedia had resolutely ignored as she ignored everything that didn't suit her.
Then Alphena had found herself trapped in a place she couldn't have freed herself from, and Hedia had rescued her. Alphena had already felt gratitude toward her stepmother even before she learned that Hedia had literally gone down into the Underworld for her.
A fragment of myth fluttered through Alphena's mind: Hercules had visited the Underworld too, but he had brought the monster Cerberus back to the surface with him. What would Hedia say if Saxa had commissioned a mime on that subject instead of the conquest of Lusitania?
Alphena giggled, then worried that she shouldn't do that now. Fortunately, what was happening on stage had absorbed everyone's attention.
Two tall Nubians had entered, bearing a platter with a domed silver cover. The actor playing Mercury cried, "Behold, great leader! The head of Geryon, conquered by your prowess!"
He whisked off the cover, pointing toward the platter with his free hand. On it was the head of a man whose tawny moustache flared back into sideburns of a paler color. His face had mottled during strangulation, and his eyes started in their sockets.
"The bandit Corocotta!" shouted a spectator who recognized the dead features.
"Corocotta!" shouted the crowd as a blurry whole. "The head of Corocotta!"
Alphena had heard-from gossiping servants-about the coup that Meoetes, the impresario, had arranged with a help of a great deal of Saxa's money. A noted Sardinian bandit, Corocotta, had been captured after years of terrorizing the countryside. Instead of being crucified in Caralis, Corocotta had been brought to Carce and marched through the streets before being strangled in the prison on the edge of the Forum.
Corocotta's body had been dumped in a trench outside the religious boundary of Carce, but his head had been preserved for this performance. Saxa's triumph was greater than that of the Governor of Sardinia, who had caught the fellow to begin with.
The audience stood and began stamping its feet in delight. Saxa sat straighter on his golden throne: beaming, flushing, and happier than Alphena had ever seen him before.
She grimaced. She hadn't given her father much reason to be happy in her presence. She had resented him, and she had resented the world that said that a daughter wasn't free to do the things that sons were encouraged to do. Varus could be a military officer, could rise to general even-but Alphena, who was easily able to have chopped her brother to sausage in battle, had to threaten a tantrum merely to be taught the manual of arms by the family trainer.
Being forced into close contact with Hedia had given Alphena a different perspective. Alphena's ability to use a sword had been helpful and occasionally very helpful. Hedia wouldn't have considered gripping a sword hilt and wouldn't have known what to do with the weapon if she'd been forced to handle one.
But for all her ladylike disdain for swordsmanship and combat, Hedia had shocked her stepdaughter with her ruthless determination. Hedia had brought Alphena back to the world she had fallen out of, alive and uninjured except for some scratches and blisters.
Alphena blushed, remembering the way she had sneered at the older woman as a pampered weakling. Hedia certainly pampered herself, and if threatened she would bend like a young willow in a storm. When the storm passed, the willow would stand straight again; and it wouldn't break, not ever, no more than Hedia would.
The Nubians pranced the length of the long stage, giving every section of the theater a good opportunity to view the head. I wonder what my brother thinks of this? Alphena wondered.
She bent forward slightly, then remembered that her father's plump bulk concealed Varus-and Pandareus-unless she leaned out over the Tribunal railing. There was no need of that.
From the time Alphena had begun to be aware of the world around her, she had been mildly contemptuous of Varus. He wasn't crippled, but he was completely disinterested in the physical sports that were open to boys. He spent his time with books and his writing, the sort of thing that an old man or a weakling would do.
Varus wasn't a weakling. When the blazing demons of the Underworld began to climb into Carce, he had sat as calmly as a Stoic philosopher, chanting a poem. At the time, Alphena would have preferred Varus help her fight the fiery onslaught; but-candidly-he wouldn't have been much use as a warrior.
She couldn't see that his poetry was much use either, but at the end of the night Carce and the world had survived. Alphena's sword had not defeated the threat, so perhaps her brother's verses had.
At any rate, Varus hadn't run. He was as true a citizen of Carce as any legionary who stood firm against charging barbarians; as true as the sort of man Corylus would be when he returned to the frontier as an officer.
Alphena's eyes slipped unbidden into the audience again. Corylus sat very close to the woman beside him. She wasn't young-she must be almost thir
ty!-but she wasn't bad looking in a coarse way.
A lower-class Hedia, Alphena thought, and for an instant embarrassment overcame her anger. Hedia saved my life!
Corylus' neighbor was from a knightly family like his own, shown by the two thin stripes on the hem of her tunic. She wore a linen cloak too, longer than the warm temperatures demanded but just the thing to conceal a man's groping hand.
Did Corylus and the hussy meet here by plan?
Alphena jerked her eyes away; but after a moment, she found herself looking at Corylus again.
***
"My goodness, the excitement just makes me dizzy," said Orpelia, the woman seated to the right of Corylus. "You'll keep me from falling over if I'm overcome, won't you, dear?"
She toppled-lunged would have been another way of describing it-against Corylus' shoulder, shifting her arm back so that her breast flopped against his forearm. As if that hadn't been a clear enough signal, she tried to wriggle closer.
Orpelia was the wife of a ship-owner named Bassos, a Greek born on Euboea who had become extremely wealthy. Also, according to Orpelia, Bassos was very old and at present inspecting his estates in Sicily.
Corylus suspected "old" meant middle aged; and Bassos might well be here in Carce, though he probably didn't care a great deal about his wife's recreations. The claim of wealth was likely enough, though, given that Orpelia's jewelry included a ruby tiara along with other expensively flashy items.
Corylus didn't care how Orpelia conducted herself either, so long as her activities didn't include him. Which was much harder to arrange than he had expected it to be.
"Master Pulto," he said, looking over his shoulder. Pulto wore an amused expression which he quickly blotted from his face. "I wish to be a little higher for a better view. Trade places with me, if you will."
Pulto had served twenty-five years in the army with Corylus' father and had followed him into retirement. Pulto had been Cispius' servant, his bodyguard, and most important his friend. When it was time for Corylus to be trained in rhetoric by a professor in Carce, Cispius had sent Pulto along.