by David Drake
Pulto wasn't going to coddle Corylus any more than he would have coddled a new soldier in the company. On the other hand, if the boy showed signs of really going off in the woods, Pulto would bring him back to reality. A troop of Sarmatian lancers hadn't been able to move Pulto from where he stood over the unconscious form of his commander, and Hercules himself knew that no matter how drunkenly angry Corylus got, Pulto would be obeyed if he thought he needed to be.
"It's my honor to serve you, master," said Pulto in a sepulchral voice, "no matter how dangerous the duty may be. If I don't survive, I hope you'll see to it that my grieving widow is cared for in her final days."
Orpelia sat bolt upright, looking as furious as her rice-flour makeup allowed without cracking. "Well, really!" she said. "I'm astounded at the rural boors who claim to have been honored with knighthood!"
"Well, don't get too upset, honey," said Pulto as he and Corylus changed places. "His daddy and I were on the Rhine when your Greekling husband was being marched to Carce in chains, so it isn't us who made a slave of him."
Laughing, he chucked Orpelia under the chin. She squealed and made for the aisle, dragging her maid behind her.
Corylus allowed himself a smile. He'd grown up in the cantonments around military bases. He was a tall, good looking youth and the son of an officer besides, so it hadn't been uncommon for older women to suggest they would like to know him better.
Even whores who were feeling the pinch toward the end of the army's pay cycle weren't quite as brazen as some of the women Corylus had encountered here in Carce, though. The metropolis had its own standards-and they weren't as high as those of the barbarian fringes of empire. Corylus wasn't a prude or a virgin, but neither was he desperate enough to be charmed by the attentions of a slut.
On stage, the head of "Geryon" had been placed on a stand beside Hercules. Its wax eyes stared out from beneath bushy brows as lines of actors paraded before it, wearing placards indicating what Lusitanian tribe they were supposed to belong to. Nemetatoi, Tamarci, Cileni…
Corylus frowned as a thought struck him: were they actors, or were they real Lusitanians, either purchased locally or shipped in from the province in order to make the production that much more lavish? If Saxa was paying his impresario a percentage over the expenses, Meoetes had every reason to run the costs up.
He glanced up at the Tribunal, looking for his friend Varus. Instead he saw the profile of Hedia, as crisply chiseled as the portrait on a coin. She started to turn toward the audience, and Corylus as quickly jerked his eyes away.
In the orchestra beneath him sat Marcus Sempronius Tardus, accompanied by three men of foreign aspect. Corylus knew little of the Senate, but he had met-better, had seen-Tardus seven days ago. He doubted whether Tardus would remember him; he certainly hoped the senator wouldn't remember him.
Tardus was a member of the Commission for the Sacred Rites, the ten senators who guarded the Sibylline Books and examined them if called on to do so when the Republic faced a crisis. Seven days ago, Tardus had been on duty in the Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitoline Hill; the Books were kept in a crypt beneath the temple floor.
The Underworld ripped open through the floor of the temple that night. Tardus had seemed to be asleep, the victim of a magician's spells. It might be awkward if he now remembered seeing Corylus when he awakened in the temple.
Tardus' three companions were thin-faced and, though they wore ordinary woolen tunics, were not natives of Carce or of Italy. Two had wizened cheeks and skin the color of polished walnut. They wore their hair over their left ears in tight rolls into which brightly colored snail shells had been worked. One had pinned a small stuffed bird with spread wings over his right temple, and the other had a tuft of small yellow feathers in a piercing in his right earlobe. Corylus had never met anyone with their particular combination of costume and features before.
The third man had short hair, a black goatee, and gold rings in both ears. If Corylus had seen him alone, he would have guessed the fellow was a seaman from somewhere in North Africa; in company with the other pair, his background was more doubtful.
Tardus sat upright on his ivory chair, as still as a painted statue. If he was following the action on stage it was only with his eyes, which Corylus couldn't tell from behind.
His three companions squatted instead of sitting on chairs of their own, and they were wholly focused on the Tribunal. The sailor-looking man curled the fingers of his left hand, then spread them one at a time as though he were counting. His lips moved; Corylus wondered if he was murmuring a prayer under his breath.
Why are they so interested in Saxa? Assuming that it's Saxa and not his wife or children that they're staring at.
While Zephyrs in flowing silks and mountain nymphs who wore revealing goatskins danced attendance, the Lusitanians continued to arrive from stage left and march past Hercules. They were carrying more treasures, this time in hand barrows instead of on mule back.
Corylus wasn't sure what the major products of Lusitania were, but he guessed hides and fish would cover the vast majority. This procession emphasized red-figured pottery of the highest quality.
A broad wine-mixing bowl, displayed on edge, showed the infant Hercules strangling the serpents which had attacked him in his cradle. At least there's a connection with the mime, Corylus thought. And in fairness, there were doubtless Greek colonies on the coast of Lusitania.
He looked at Tardus again, frowning slightly. The Senator was completely still. He couldn't be sick or even asleep, not and remain upright on a backless chair. His lack of animation seemed unnatural, even granting that this display of Saxa's wealth would be of less interest to another senator than to the members of the urban proletariat who filled most of the seats in the theater.
For the first time, Corylus speculated on the relationship between Saxa and Tardus. The internal politics of the Senate weren't greatly of interest to the son of a provincial knight, but most of Pandareus' present students were themselves sons of senators; it was inevitable that Corylus would hear a great deal.
Much of it was gibes directed against Saxa, since Varus was clearly the best scholar in the class and held his well-born fellows in contempt. The fact that he associated with Corylus, a mere knight, made the implied insult to his peers even sharper. Nobody was going to physically attack the son of so rich a man, but there was free discussion of Saxa's reputation as a superstitious fool who lived in Aristophanes' Cloud-Cuckoo Land.
If that bothered Varus, he didn't show it. Corylus suspected it did bother him, simply from the fact that his friend never referred to the comments when the two of them were alone.
Tardus was the subject of similar comments, however. He was Saxa's elder by fifteen years and had a become a Commissioner of the Sacred Rites through a combination of seniority and interest. Unlike Pandareus' friend Atilius Priscus, however, Tardus was known for credulity rather than scholarship.
Saxa had shouted at Tardus in the aftermath of the chaos at the Temple of Jupiter, blaming him for what had happened. At the time, Corylus had thought that was a clever ploy: it had prevented others, particularly Commissioner Tardus, from looking closely at the role Saxa's own family had played in those events.
Now Corylus found himself wondering what Tardus remembered of that night. He wondered also who the strangers accompanying Tardus were, and why they stared so intently at Saxa and his family in the Tribunal. There might, of course, be no connection.
On stage, the "suppliant tribesmen" were kneeling, and the various sprites and spirits had frozen in their dance. Mercury faced the audience, one arm pointing back toward the gleaming pomp of Hercules.
For an instant the only things moving in the scene were the twisting heads of the three metal snakes which protruded from the boss of Hercules' shield. According to Hesiod, Vulcan's genius gave the serpents the semblance of life. Here in Carce, a clever midget hidden in the belly of the shield moved them.
"All hail our ruler, the
master of Lusitania under the majesty of the gods!" Mercury boomed, a neatly turned compliment for Saxa framed in a fashion that would not offend the emperor. The latter had by reputation been paranoid when he was young and in good health; the rigors of age had not mellowed him.
The actors on stage cheered; the audience echoed them, even most of the senators in the orchestra. Tardus remained as silent as a stone, and his three companions stared toward the Tribunal like greedy cats eyeing a fish tank.
David Drake
Out of the Waters-ARC
CHAPTER 2
Corylus stepped down into the fourteenth row again. He'd been punctilious about following the rules when he put his freeborn servant in the row behind him, rather than getting Pulto a ticket for the Knights' section as Orpelia-and hundreds of others-had done for the slaves attending them.
"No reason not to sit beside you now," he said.
"There was no reason not to before, except you're so stiff-necked," Pulto said with a broad grin. He glanced in the direction Orpelia had disappeared and said, perfectly deadpan, "Too bad the lady had to go. We could've had an improving conversation, I'm sure."
He nodded his head toward the stage and added, "Better than going on up there, anyhow. What are they supposed to be doing now?"
The curtain had been drawn over stage left while the company, including Hercules on his rock, danced a complex measure. "They're moving, marching," said Corylus after a moment's consideration. "I don't know where to."
Mimes had their own visual language, as surely as birds and animals did. Corylus hadn't spent enough time in Carce to be fluent in it yet.
Pulto snorted in disgust. "It's not what I remember route marches being like," he said. "Which is good, mind you, because my knees aren't what they once were."
The curtain drew back. The thirty feet of stage closest to that wing was now water on which flats of sea creatures floated on shallow rafts: a ribbonfish, an octopus painted an unexpected green, and what was probably meant for a whale. Corylus had never been to the mouth of the Rhine where it emptied into the German Ocean, but he was pretty sure that the whales which were sometimes glimpsed there didn't arch their bellies, lifting their tail flukes and their long, grinning jaws into the air simultaneously.
"Here will I found a city," boomed Hercules. "In later years, great leaders will come here in the name of the Caesars, my equals in Olympus!"
Even granting that his mask contained a resonating chamber, the fellow's voice was impressive. Pulto must have been thinking the same thing, because he muttered, "That one's got the lungs of a first centurion on him. Wish he wasn't dressed like a clown, though."
Corylus chuckled. "I quite agree with you, old friend," he said, "but the impresario had literary justification for each of his choices. Well, a kind of justification. Probably because writers in the past were just as determined as Saxa is to give their audiences the most impressive show they could."
The Hercules of ancient legend carried a plain oak branch for a club and wore a lion-skin cloak. Later myth made the skin that of the gigantic Nemean lion, sprung from the blood of the monster Typhon. No writer before now had suggested that the lion's skin had been sprinkled with gold dust so that the spectators in the highest seats of the theater could see it sparkle, but Corylus supposed that might be an aspect which had simply gone unremarked in the past.
Euripides had given Heracles a brazen club, the gift of the god Hephaestus. Saxa had gone the Greek one better by gilding the club, but either metal was too sophisticated for the rustic hero.
Heracles' armor-here golden-and the shield banded with gold, silver and ivory had even more ancient evidence: the poet Hesiod, second in time and-some said-second in literary importance to Homer himself.
Even a great writer could come up with a bad idea in search of an effect, though. When one did, he opened a passage through which a Replacement Consul of the future could drive whole herds of absurdity.
Saxa wouldn't have written the mime himself, of course. For a moment, Corylus wondered if Varus had. No, he would've said something. And besides, Varus had given up dramatic writing after his public reading last month.
Corylus glanced again at his friend and saw that he was jotting notes with a short bronze stylus on a tablet. Varus had decided to become a historian of the sacred rites of the Republic. That meant not only things like the auguries attending the appointment of a consul, but also theatrical performances like this one: they too were religious in character.
If something went wrong with a mime, a gladiatorial spectacle, or a beast hunt, it had to be repeated: restarted, in official terminology. That clause had been used to extend public events beyond the limits set for them by ritual.
In the past, a rich man could keep a spectacle going as long as he thought necessary to burn his name into the memory of the electorate. That wasn't required now that officials were elected only after being nominated by the Emperor. Indeed, a thoughtful senator might conclude that it wasn't entirely wise to call the Emperor's attention to one's wealth and popularity.
New "denizens of the deep" flowed along the channel: a cuttlefish lifting its arms, and a seahorse on which a painted triton rode. Floats in water so shallow wouldn't bear the weight of an actor, but overhead performed three rope dancers dressed as sea-nymphs in diaphanous silk.
Hercules gestured with his left hand and said, "Blessed will the people of this land be…!"
Flats against the rear wall of the stage rotated on vertical axles to display city walls beyond which red roofs peeked. "… when my successor arrives to dispense the justice and mercy of godlike Caesar!"
"Say, how are they doing that?" Pulto said in a low voice. He nodded toward the stage. "The sea, I mean. That really looks…"
The right corner of the stage had gotten darker. Corylus frowned. He couldn't see the rope dancers any more, and the water had become the dusty gray color of old lead.
Indeed, Corylus couldn't see the back of the stage: a sea covered with an angry chop seemed to stretch into the distance. The serpentine neck that lifted momentarily and disappeared again certainly didn't look like a bobbing flat.
"By Hercules!" Pulto said. "That looks bloody real!"
The oath had nothing to do with this mime. Hercules was the common man's god, a good-natured fellow who drank too much and got into fixes, and who therefore could understand the problems of an ordinary soldier or farmer.
Corylus looked at the Tribunal. Saxa was beaming. There may have been a touch of surprise in back of his pleased expression, but he didn't appear concerned.
Varus and Pandareus leaned forward transfixed. Varus continued to jot notes with a stolid determination which delighted Corylus but didn't surprise him.
Varus consistently displayed as much physical courage as anyone Corylus had witnessed on the frontiers. There were plenty of men in the legions who could stand before a charge of screaming Germans, but there were very few who could have done what Varus was doing now. Not if they knew what Varus-and Corylus-knew about what was really happening.
The "city" of painted canvas took on depth. The walls shone brighter than the armor of Hercules, who now cowered on his rock, and the tiled roofs had risen into high crystal towers.
"How are we seeing this?" Corylus said. Pulto might have been able to hear him, but he knew he was really speaking to himself, attempting to impose reason on something beyond all reason. "It's too clear!"
He wished he were with Pandareus and Varus now. They were talking in the Tribunal, two learned men discussing in the light of their philosophy the events they observed.
I am a citizen of Carce, a soldier and the son of soldiers. I will not flee.
The spectators began to applaud by shuffling their feet. They think it's a stage effect! Corylus realized. They can't imagine anything else that it might be.
The things Corylus had seen during the past ten days let him consider a broader range of possibilities than the general audience did, Gaius Saxa included. Ignoran
ce would have been less uncomfortable.
Man-sized figures moved on the walls of the city, and the peaks of individual waves flicked foam into the breeze. A painter might manage the precision, but not the movement. No human eye could make out such detail from where Corylus sat. The spectators stamping delightedly from the base of the Temple of Venus at the back of the theater were hundreds of feet still farther away.
The sky continued to darken. Corylus could no longer see the stage, but the city and the sullen ocean spread to the limits of vision.
Tardus remained seated, unaffected by the scene or the clamor it provoked. His three companions had risen to their feet and were chattering with animation. Their words were lost in the applause and the howl of a wind that Corylus could hear but not feel.
The foreigners looked as frightened as Corylus felt. I am a citizen of Carce…
The darkness spread, now engulfing the Tribunal. The last thing Corylus saw as he glanced upward was Hedia leaning forward for a closer look at what was before her. Her profile was cool and perfect.
***
I wonder if I'm going mad? Hedia thought. The idea caused her to bleat a laugh. Would that be a good thing or a bad one? Something that can be treated with a dose of hellebore would be better than what it means if I'm seeing what's really there.
"Isn't it wonderful!" Saxa said, more excited than Hedia remembered him ever being during sex. "Why, Meoetes didn't suggest he was going to do this! Look at how clear the walls of Olisipo are! Marvelous!"
Hedia glanced at her husband, wondering if he were prattling nonsense to mask his fear. He wasn't. Saxa thought he would see a painting of the capital of Lusitania. He saw what he expected, stagecraft, and he was delighted that it was so good.
She patted the back of his hand with a wry smile; he gripped her fingers in excitement. Obviously, he's seeing the same thing I am, so I'm not mad. Well, hellebore probably doesn't cure madness anyway.