Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  The burning sword. It still felt like an omen, even though Auriane knew its natural cause.

  “You brazenly disobeyed me. You’ve had that out here in the wood, all this time? How did you hide it on the way home?”

  “I put it into one of the emptied sacks while you weren’t looking.”

  “So even as the magistrate halted us—you had a concealed sword, which is a forbidden thing, and would’ve made us look all the guiltier, were it found—where are your wits? It takes more than a womanhood ceremony to make you one!”

  “I am sorry for it.” But Auriane could see that Avenahar’s only regret was for her mother’s disappointment. “It was as though an evil wight possessed me.” After a moment, she added, “I’ve become adept with it. Would you like to—”

  “Throw it in the river. This time do it without fail or I’ll forbid you to come here more.”

  Avenahar jogged off with it at once, alert to something in her mother’s voice not to be trifled with.

  Auriane felt an errant pride in her daughter, then. I, too, was defiant at her age of life, but with it always came a portion of shame. Shame will never cling to Avenahar as it did to me. I raised a daughter who knows her innocence. In this matter I’ve succeeded, if in nothing else!

  “Mother, I can help us,” Avenahar said on her return. “All our troubles at home are the doing of that Chariomer and his raiding gaggle of bandits. His rape of our country left you no choice but to break a Roman law. I mean to take the oath of a shield maiden when I go back, and gather together all the disheartened . . .” Her fine fervor dissolved into uncertainty. “Your mind has flown; you aren’t even listening!”

  Victorinus is awash in riches, Auriane had been thinking. What can I offer such a man to keep him silent?

  “Why do you not see what I am?” Avenahar pressed on plaintively.

  “What makes you think I don’t? I see a heedless hothead. Avenahar, that life holds none of the beauty you’re dreaming into it. Cold and want, misery from wounds, early death—are these things glorious? And in the end, you discover you’re battling not the enemy—but Fria herself.”

  “I want . . . an important life. As yours was. Here, I will always be an outcast. I would belong somewhere.”

  “I want you to oath a thing to me, right now, on that amulet of earth, in case death comes to me . . . sooner rather than later . . . that when you’re fully grown you’ll go home and apprentice yourself to an herb woman. You’re far cannier than most, in those arts. And you’ll shun weapons of war.”

  “I won’t do it. An oath’s a dread thing. I’ll not make one I can’t keep.”

  Chapter 9

  The interior of the courthouse at Confluentes was somber at noon. Auriane felt muted and small as she passed between the solemn stone women flanking the entranceway, Roma and Iustitia, Justice, their rippling marble garments frozen for the ages in midbillow. The vast basilica held all the color and noise of the town’s Forum at bay; as she stepped into the formal gloom, her footfalls sounded as hollow and solitary as if she’d entered a mausoleum. Upon entering the long nave she reached to her throat to touch Ramis’s amulet, following long habit—but her hand closed round emptiness, and she felt a momentary sink of regret that she’d passed it on to Avenahar. She moved between rows of thick columns of red porphyry—smooth, voiceless trees standing at relentless attention. High clerestory windows emitted a sallow, autumnal light. Beneath them, running the length of the walls, was a rhythmic motif of green scrolls carved in bas-relief against a field of gold. Beneath her feet a black-and-white mosaic of interlaced vines reduced all the comforting chaos of nature to measured, still geometry. The basilica played grandly on the senses but she was ever conscious it was not alive. A living house was made of materials that lived once—willow withies, grasses, oakwood. It had breath; the winds were free to stir in it. This was a shuttered temple, a stone grove.

  The magistrate followed her progress down the nave with stony patience, eyes bright and malign as some troll beneath a bridge. A troll in a soiled toga, she saw as her vision began to adjust to the stale twilight. Like all provincial courthouses, this one was meant to convey the grandeur and permanence of Roman law. But the effect was spoiled somewhat by Roman law’s representative, Victorinus, propped sloppily atop his chair of office, a globular amphora of a man with ears like jug handles and a protruding lower lip. He had a frightful welt near his left eyebrow, given him by one Venusta, citizen of the town, who’d hurled a peach stone at him when she’d taken a dislike to his judgment in the matter of the theft of her cook-pan, and he’d combed one scraggly lock forward in an attempt to disguise it. Encountering him in this austerely beautiful gallery was like finding a soup stain on a perfectly penned manuscript.

  She halted before the tribunal, feet sinking into a carpet of sea-green wool. There was an iron distance in the magistrate’s eyes; they were void of all memory of any past pretense of friendship. She thought it odd Victorinus’s sizable staff of clerks was nowhere in evidence, not even that amiable oaf Cobnertus. Nor was there so much as a single slave secretary posted near to record the proceedings. Whatever Victorinus planned, he wanted no witnesses.

  The spider is alone as it awaits the fly.

  “I am here, Victorinus. Though I’m not sure why I’m here.”

  “Ah—Queen Aurinia has swept down from her country throne to delight our little town. I trust you are well.”

  “Do you? At our last meeting you called me a necromancing whore.”

  “It’s vexing to have one’s words thrown back at one, rather like hearing some overzealous accountant tell you everything you spent last year. Where is Avenahar? I wanted her here, too. I’ve a gift for her coming birthday.”

  “What is it you want, Victorinus?”

  “To deliver her gift in person—it’s of such a nature, it can’t be delivered by messenger. I was compelled to ask you here, as you never seem ready to offer hospitality to me—all those prominent guests who’re regularly welcomed at Marcus Julianus’s dinner banquets, and it seems this guest is always prominently missing. That’s not a way to cultivate the representatives of the law, Aurinia—whom, I assure you, you’re soon going to want in your camp.”

  The fright she felt was physical and sharp. Somewhere within, she was a hapless creature scrabbling for purchase on a steep trail. But from long experience with single battle her gaze had a wrestler’s strength, and she held him fast with it.

  “I’ll not be batted about like some cat’s ball, Victorinus. Inform me of whatever it is by letter when you finally see fit to come to your purpose.”

  She turned and strode off down the basilica’s central aisle, her sky-blue cloak unfurling in her wake as her angry steps echoed crisply on stone.

  He saw his hope was vain that his courthouse would have a humbling effect—she might as well have come upon him naked in a bath.

  “Here is Avenahar’s gift!” he called out to her retreating back.

  Auriane’s steps slowed, tension sabotaging every muscle.

  “I mean to give her”—he paused, savoring her torment—“the security of knowing she’ll still have a mother—that is, if you come my way, and make no trouble.”

  She spun about, the light of a lioness in her eye. “You adder in the straw. Explain yourself.”

  “Let us say a fish bearing a fascinating tale has swum into my net . . . a fish named Lurio.”

  Lurio. The name shot up from the murk of nightmares, livid and horrible.

  “What explanation do you have for burying coins near the Eleventh Milestone, behind a shrine to the Mothers, on the eve of the Kalends of Aprilis?”

  “You flatter yourself beyond reason, magistrate,” she said softly, “to think I would reveal my affairs to you.”

  “Perhaps your insolence will be tempered when I tell you we have more than Lurio’s identification of you—though, in a case so notorious, I’m certain the Palace’s requirement for three freeborn witnesses would be waived. A me
dallion of Minerva torn from a horse’s harness, such as are worn only by mounts from Julianus’s estate, was found there on the ground—proving someone from your farm did haunt that remote place, and that some sort of struggle ensued, as this Lurio claims—”

  “No wise judge would count that firm evidence.”

  “Ah, you know my methods little—in laying out a banquet, I save the best dish for last. I posted guards there day and night, to see who came down the river seeking your hoard. You must know, Auriane, I have arrested Grimo, rower on the Isis, a wineship out of Rigodulum. He named you under torture, Auriane. Your traitorous days have ended.”

  The abyss claimed her.

  “This Grimo was feeble,” Victorinus spoke on, “and he expired under the torture, but he proved quite the babbling coward before he went. He gave us more than enough to destroy you.”

  She knew he meant to goad her into a show of pity and revulsion, thus demonstrating her connection with this man, and with immense effort, she maintained a look of detachment. But in her mind’s eye she traced on air the runic sign of rebirth for poor Grimo. Fria, cradle him in death. Though he had an oar in his hand, not a spear, he died a warrior in this war that does not end. See him off to the shining sky.

  “Well then, Victorinus. If you have what you need, why call me here at all? Deliver me up to the Imperial Council and collect your three million sesterces for my blood.”

  Her mind was in ferment as she spoke—she must get word at once to the hide trader at Mogontiacum, a man called Axsillius, to whom Grimo passed on the coin, in case poor Grimo had named him as well. . . .

  “You’ve got courage even if you lack all the regular charms one holds dear to womanhood.” His wan smile vanished. “Hear me through. I have in this letter here the whole record of my gathered evidence. Fast as I can get it through the post to Rome, the ministers of our Lord Trajan will be reading this with amazement—and gratitude to me.”

  He motioned for her to come closer; she did not move.

  “But know this, it does not have to be so—” His voice altered subtly, sounding more sly, almost ashamed, and her animal senses caught a foul whiff, evidence of a new sort of danger.

  “—for consider, Aurinia, I am already a very wealthy man . . . perhaps that three million sesterces isn’t much more to me than one more string of sea-pearls round a high-born matron’s neck . . . Suppose there is something else I want even more.”

  He leaned farther out of his chair. “I’m ready, even now, to commend this letter to the fire,” he said, extending an arm and holding the rolled papyrus high above the five flames of a pottery lamp, “if you’ll sign this document here, betrothing your second-born daughter, Arria Juliana, to my son, Lucius.”

  “Have you lost all memory of honor? I didn’t think your shamelessness could still astound me.”

  “Yield her, Aurinia . . .” He tried to infuse a victor’s amused complacency into his smile but his eyes betrayed him; they had a look of pleading, and they smoldered with the fire of a man who sees one thing, desires one thing, in all the world. One finger intimately caressed the edge of the document, as though it were the flesh of a woman who stirred the blood. Auriane felt sickness rising in her throat. “. . . and perhaps then, your crime will remain secret between us.”

  “Have you no fear of Nemesis? That’s no true marriage! You’d have me exchange my child for my freedom, like some hostage of war. Your country may have been founded upon women who were forced, but my daughter Arria is no Sabine bride who’ll turn about in a year and come to love the man who seized her and dragged her to his marriage bed. Even if I agreed, do you imagine Marcus Julianus would? That he would gladly turn over his only child-in-the-blood to a man who must extort a bride for his wretch of a son because he can’t get one any other way?”

  “Julianus? Ah, I imagine that with your witch’s tongue you could get him to agree to anything you wished. Yield her.”

  She took a step closer. “If your case against me is so unshakable, then why give it up? It’s difficult to believe you’d toss off three million sesterces and the glory this would shower on you. Why cheat your masters of so valuable a criminal as myself?”

  He had no answer for this; a shade seemed to drop over his eyes.

  “What’s wrong with your case, Victorinus? Perhaps you did catch Grimo, but, inconveniently, he died without naming me? Or maybe you’re calculating just how little weight the Palace will attach to a case prepared by a wriggling worm such as yourself?”

  “Play with your doubts, Aurinia, they’re all you have. I assure you, Grimo named you.”

  “And I say you are a liar.”

  “And I don’t imagine, with your low birth, you’ll be allowed to choose the manner of your death. Then there’s the matter of whose money it was. Poor Julianus—I’ll wager he’ll think twice before he drags more barbarian baggage home from the wars. I don’t know if you duped him as well, but no one in official places will believe Marcus Julianus wholly innocent in this matter.”

  “Victorinus, you are faithless to everyone, even to the men you serve. You’ve nothing to bargain with. Bargaining supposes a man possesses a measure of honor.”

  She whipped about and, once again, swiftly walked away.

  He rose from his seat, fists clenched as he realized he was losing what he sought. “You whinnying mare, I will have you!” There was a slight warble in his voice, as if he sang through a hollow reed. “And before I turn you over to higher justice, I’ll see you stripped naked and whipped before the whole of the town!”

  She halted abruptly, turned round, and closely examined his face.

  “It’s you you want her for,” she said in a low voice. It was a guess that felt certain, born of all she sensed about the man. “Not your son, Lucius. The marriage is just a means to have her close.”

  “You are wrong. I want her for my son.” But his eyes told her otherwise. She felt she had surprised a lizard when she looked into them—something small, dark, and clammy streaked for cover.

  Despoilers of children, she thought. When your people take brides at twelve, she supposed, a girl of nine must look near ripe. Among her own people, it was counted shameful, unmanly even, for a man to lie with a woman of less than twenty years. But here, she knew, to take a maid less than half that age was counted but a minor vice, like swilling down too much wine in the wrong company.

  My babe, my tender bud not yet opened, set to be plucked off and devoured . . .

  My betrayal of Marcus has exposed my child to a monster.

  “I leave you no choice, Aurinia,” Victorinus said softly. “Yield her.”

  In her own country Auriane had witnessed ritual cursings; she decided to gamble that she could imitate the practice convincingly enough. From a leather pouch hung from her belt she got a pinch of common goatweed, an herbal powder she used in everyday rituals of blessing. With a flourish, she flung it high, as though it were a seeress’s cursing powders.

  “You venomous Circe . . . what are you doing?”

  As the greenish-brown cloud drifted down over her she began intoning a chant, employing the Chattian tongue. “May you be cursed in blood and eyes . . . may you be twisted in every limb—”

  “What’s this barbarous cant? Stop at once!” After a frantic search on his person, the magistrate produced a small bell and rang it with frenzied motions, believing the tinny bell tones had the power to ward off evil.

  “—may your vitals turn to putrid rot . . . may Hel tangle thought and memory. I reverse your name. May—” As she intoned these words, with swift, swordlike precision she traced runic letters in the air. The magistrate knew her people possessed a dreaded secret alphabet, used solely for warding, cursing, and spells.

  He believed it was a death curse. Fear of sorcery was the fine fracture in the stone on which she tapped to crack him open.

  “Guard!” His dry croak did not carry to the guard chamber.

  “And should you make any more attempts to snatch her, Hel
will take you off within the moon,” she finished in clear Latin so he would understand. She regarded him in solemn quiet for a moment, while the goatweed cloud drifted off, leaving a sharp, evil silence in its wake. Victorinus sat stiff and still on his cross-legged magistrate’s chair, his torso twisted about like a man in the grip of a a quick-acting poison.

  “I suggest you keep your letter,” she said then. “You’ll need something to wipe the drool from your chin with, when you think of my daughter. Good day, Victorinus.”

  YIELD HER. VICTORINUS’S words ground into Auriane’s mind like a mortar into a pestle.

  “What did Victorinus want?” Avenahar asked as she saw Auriane emerge from the law basilica looking stricken but adamant. The hood of a magentahued cloak lay against Avenahar’s darkly shining hair, and her arms glittered with adornments of gold; these bright woman’s things, so rarely donned, seemed only to increase her natural boldness. Mother and daughter spoke in their Germanic tongue to conceal their words from their retinue—four stout grooms from the villa who served as bodyguards and way-clearers. The small party wove their way through the town forum’s crowds, through spring air infused with the delicate aroma from the hot-drink stands ladling out spiced, watered wine. They sought the gem-cutters’ stalls, where Avenahar would choose a sardonyx ring, which they would have engraved for her as a gift from Marcus Julianus for her birthday—this was the purpose she’d given him for her journey into town today.

  “He wanted Arria,” came Auriane’s terse, distracted reply.

  “Gods below, a chicken has more wit,” Avenahar said, failing to check a burst of laughter that bent her double, “and a horsefly less persistence! The man must get some carnal pleasure from hearing you utter the word no. Was that all?”

  “No, Avenahar,” Auriane answered, grief stifling her voice to a whisper. “It wasn’t. He knows everything. Or enough to destroy us, anyway. He’s interrogated Lurio.”

  To Auriane’s surprise her daughter seemed more intrigued than intimidated, as if presented with an especially challenging move in a board game. “My counsel’s to tell Father. It’s his country and his law. We’ve not the means to battle this alone.”