Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  The mares were so evenly matched, they might have been tethered together at the bit. Iron hooves battered the dirt path as they rushed at a blind curve around a thick stand of alders, where the track bent close to the deep forest at the beginning of the Slate Hills. Both mares leaned steeply into the sharp curve in the track. Avenahar’s mare, who held the inside position, edged her dark muzzle slightly ahead.

  Then before them was the impossible—a pile of building stones freshly deposited on the track, as if some careless giant dropped a fistful of them. The frightful obstruction was already so close there was no time for horse or rider to plan an evasive move. They had not even a moment to wonder who might have done this. Both horses left the ground, propelling themselves over the tumble of stones, stretching their bodies in flight to lengthen their leap when, while airborne, they realized the length of the obstacle. Both beasts wrenched their hindquarters to the side to avoid nicking their hooves on stone. Auriane’s mare landed on a patch of soft earth; with a few inelegant frog-hops, her horse got safely over the remaining stones. Avenahar’s mount struck rock, and was slammed to its knees. The mare’s hindquarters flew up; the beast was flung onto its back. Avenahar was launched into a thicket. The broken mare got up with one mighty lurch, then began turning in aimless circles, limping pitifully amidst the rockfall.

  Auriane brought her mare around and cantered to Avenahar’s side.

  “I’m well, Mother, don’t bother with me,” Avenahar shouted, noisily fighting her way out of the thicket. “Look about! Whoever did this can’t be far!”

  Auriane scanned the meadow, studying the russet-and-violet shadows pooled along the treeline at the forest’s edge. At last she saw something, just entering the drape of shadow—was that an ox-drawn quarryman’s cart? Yes. It lurched crazily over the uneven ground, bumping along like some hurrying turtle. She remembered that she’d seen an ox cart laden with building stones abandoned not far from the course, where the tenant farmers were constructing a wall—apparently, someone had seized it for his own devices. She kicked her mare’s sides. She was an arrow shot at her quarry.

  Ox cart and driver would soon be lost in the cleft of a shallow ravine. She supposed whoever it was had gambled that the victims of this prank would be too stunned to pursue. Auriane pushed the mare harder than she had during the race. The cart’s driver realized, suddenly, his cart’s progress was not fast enough; he sprang from the seat and began sprinting for the forest. As the young man fled from her with a strange stride that shifted him swiftly along like some running stork, Auriane saw a familiar thin neck widening into sloped shoulders.

  Lucius.

  He was close to freedom. As Auriane’s mare whipped past the cart, the boy took the creek in one elongated stride and sped on, nearly falling once in the thick matting of silverweed on the far bank. Then he pitched himself headfirst into the wood, and to safety. The forest in that place was treacherous with rock slides, rendering it impassible on horseback. So she let go the hope of catching him, realizing it was enough to have identified him. She had, as well, the cart for evidence. Galloping at an easier pace, she returned for the bruised, bleeding Avenahar. Astride one mare, mother and daughter crossed the meadow, seeking the main house.

  Marcus rushed up and caught her horse’s rein, his face taut with concern. Auriane related the tale in clipped, brief sentences, while pointing toward the forest. As she spoke, she saw him slowly overtaken with an anger she’d seen but rarely in their life together—thunderous, but quiet, a rage of many parts, possessed of a finality that promised it would not be discharged fully until someone was punished.

  Abruptly he turned from her and began striding purposefully down the covered walkway that gave onto the villa’s columned porch. “Marcus—?” she called out after him.

  He slowed, but only to say, “I mean to see this does not happen again.”

  As she dropped from her horse, she heard him giving brisk orders to Demaratos, then to the decurion of grooms. After she’d dispatched a man to see if the fallen mare could be saved, she made her way to the vestibule and was just in time to see Marcus departing, in the company of his first secretary. The carriagemen’s whips cracked; two teams of sleek, silken bays hitched to two elegant redas broke into motion, accompanied by running footmen and ten armed grooms on horseback. He means to go now, to bring Victorinus to account. A queasiness rose in her throat. Any gratification she might have felt at this swift justice was snuffed out by her sudden fear that matters had shot irreparably beyond her control.

  JULIANUS’S JOURNEY TO Victorinus’s riverside estate required but a quarter hour by the water-clock; the magistrate’s villa was adjacent to theirs, separated by a half-mile-wide strip of uncultivated land. This was the eleventh hour of day; the town court would be shut up for the night. The magistrate was a man of regular habits, and Julianus judged it near certain Victorinus would be at home, dining alone or with clients and friends.

  His carriages halted before the thick columns of green porphyry that fronted the main house of Victorinus’s rambling, red-tiled villa. The entryway’s heavy double doors were pulled wide, exposing the vestibule. Within, two rows of interior columns were garlanded with ivy to welcome the evening’s dinner guests. The startled doorkeeper stared, baffled, at the rich redas with their emblems of Minerva carved into the sides, the footmen, the grooms, wondering what great eminence had been invited—and why he hadn’t been informed.

  “Bring your master out, and at once,” Julianus spoke from the carriage, “if he wants to keep his post as magistrate.”

  The doorkeeper’s look of affront shifted to astonishment as he recognized the august visitor framed within the parted drapes of the fine reda. The Hermit-King, as his master called him, deigning to pay a visit here? He vanished within, while Julianus waited with gathering impatience. The vestibule’s mosaic floor was visible through the open doors, the reds blood-red, the blues iridescent in the late-afternoon glow sifting from the lightwell above. In a better temper he might have had leisure to marvel at the vulgarity of Victorinus’s choice of subject: Most entryway mosaics depicted solemn tableaus, often mythic, always remote from day-on-day life, chosen from standard designs offered by the mosaicist’s shop. Victorinus’s showed the magistrate himself, rendered with the crudeness of a child’s drawing. The figure’s head was a flattened globe resembling a partly squashed melon; one odd, outsized arm was stiffly extended as the magistrate was depicted gifting the town of Confluentes with its gymnasium.

  Victorinus soon emerged, wagging his head and protesting, “. . . but I’ve got guests! How does he dare—” His azure-and-saffron silk dinner gown had slipped, exposing a knobby shoulder. Close beside him was his usher, the slave whose duty was to aid a master’s memory by announcing guests’ names; Victorinus had refused to believe the doorkeeper, and couldn’t trust his own poor eyesight. The magistrate still had a dinner napkin tucked beneath his chin. An agile serving-boy appeared from the darkness beyond, adroitly picked it off, and disappeared. From the interior of the house came the lowing of pipes, the fast shake of tambourines, the wild yelps of guests. His wife, Decimina, gusted in on his wake, her stola billowing like an unraveling shroud. A pearl diadem was lodged at an angle in preposterous hair; Julianus supposed many blonde serving maids had sacrificed their locks in the construction of this edifice of curls, all for the sake of a style one dynasty out of date. Daylight was ruthless to this woman, highlighting the cracking paint that whitened her face; the chalky unguent had pasted her row of tight, even, ocean-wave curls to her forehead. She seemed a thing returned from the dead as she hovered there behind her husband, glaring imperiously, certain he would say something to embarrass her.

  “Volusius Victorinus, stand out here where I can look at you.”

  Decimina put a painted paw on Victorinus’s shoulder to stop him. He carefully removed it with hands still greasy from his meal. Then, warily, he edged out onto the columned porch. He put Julianus in mind of trapped vermin alert to an
y crevice through which it might wriggle off.

  “This is most irregular, Julianus,” Victorinus said, squinting to get a better look at the well-kept carriages, the neatly attired footmen, the shadowed man watching him with quiet wrath from within the reda. “Could you not have chosen a time amenable to us both?”

  “There’s no amenable time for murderous pranks, Victorinus. Your son, Lucius, has played his last.”

  “I’ve no notion whatever what you’re speaking of.”

  “Your son set out to gravely injure Auriane and my daughter. This isn’t the first time; it’s just the worst. Your ill will and envy have made him what he is—as a father lives, so does the son. Answer for him!”

  “His daughter,” Decimina whispered with wicked glee, from behind Victorinus. “What man of substance adopts a daughter whose father is unknown?”

  “I . . . I’ll see the boy whipped,” Victorinus offered. “Soon as he’s . . . he’s out somewhere now, hunting grouse—”

  “I want better than that, Victorinus. He’s not to take himself within sight of the walls of my estate.”

  A curious guest materialized in the shadows beside Decimina. “Victorinus, Decimina, you’re missing a good story—” the newcomer began, before Decimina, with a slightly panicked look in her face, tried to turn him round and steer him back into the dining room. Julianus noted that this guest spoke in the crisp, precise syllables of the Latin of the capital, not the softly corrupted speech of the provinces. The guest refused to cooperate, and he and Decimina were locked in an odd tussle while Decimina pleaded with him in a loud whisper. Victorinus, too, was dismayed that the intruder was witnessing this exchange, seeming trapped between his fear of Julianus and a need to maintain dignity before the man behind him.

  “Agreed. And if that’s all, Marcus Julianus, you’ll have to excuse me now; I’ve got high-born folk inside, and—”

  “It isn’t. I want Lucius to make a public apology on the oration platform in Confluentes’s forum,” Julianus continued, “with you standing beside him. You don’t seem to be able to curb him on your own. Perhaps if the whole town has knowledge of this, they can help you keep watch on him, and his evil mischief can be controlled.”

  The thought came to Victorinus then—Julianus has been badly compromised by his woman’s perfidy—need I take this beating at all?

  Fearing Victorinus would capitulate, Decimina crept up behind him. “We are ruined, ruined,” she whispered loudly, while miming tearing out her hair, “because my husband is a coward!”

  This proved effective. Victorinus took a bold step closer to Julianus.

  “That’s a humiliation, Julianus, and nothing more. I’ll do the first, as I must, as a father, but I’ll be poleaxed if I’ll do the second!”

  “It can’t be helped, Victorinus,” Julianus said sharply. “I want the boy’s mischief exposed to the town. And I want it done before the Ides of Augustus.”

  Had the magistrate and Julianus been speaking in private, all might have ended there. However, the curious guest behind him was Victorinus’s uncle, with whom he was trying to engineer his return to Rome and, hopefully, a post of honor. An offense given to one member of the greater family was given to all. He could not let his esteemed uncle witness him consenting to look the fool before the populace of his own town. Victorinus was like some unwilling gladiator, goaded with firebrands to keep on with the bout.

  “We’ll do none of those things, Marcus Julianus.” His eyes glinted with the blank courage of the boar veering into the charge. “And who are you to threaten us? It’s time you learned it, Julianus—that she-animal you call wife has ruined you! It’s my pleasure to tell you, if you don’t know it already—your Aurinia is the very villain everyone’s been trying to catch, who’s been smuggling arms-money over the frontier.”

  “You’ll curb that lying tongue if you value your freedom.”

  “She’s the traitor with three million on her head! And I’ve the proof of it! Traitor, who harbors traitors, who are you to mete out punishment to an honest man?”

  “The ravings of an intemperate, choleric man. I’ll hear no more.”

  “Maybe it’s a bit more than that, Julianus. Your woman’s been arming those barking savages who are her kin, and has been, for years. I’ve got evidence. As we speak, it’s making its way to Rome.”

  Now that Victorinus had purged himself, regular good sense returned with a snap. He was aware, suddenly, of Julianus regarding him with the steady wrath of a calm avenger. The boar-glint faded off. What had he done? He was but a provincial magistrate, facing a man whose connections and means were far beyond his own.

  When Julianus spoke, his voice was almost gentle, but it did nothing to quell Victorinus’s unease.

  “Perhaps you’ve simply gone mad, Victorinus. I do not know, or care. But for now, just know this: Your days as magistrate are done.”

  The carriagemen’s whips cracked; the proud bays broke into a stately canter. The party departed down the wide, graveled carriageway, to the accompaniment of Decimina’s wails. Julianus could still hear her when he’d covered half the distance home.

  On the brief journey, he had leisure to ponder Victorinus’s words. Was it possible the magistrate spoke the truth?

  It was.

  But would Auriane keep such a thing secret from him?

  Certainly not.

  But what, then, inspired Victorinus’s boldness, his brash certainty?

  I’ve never wished to know the result of any test that might pit Auriane’s loyalty to her people against her love for me. And does not an unwillingness to know some grave and telling thing often foment disaster, at the last?

  On his return, he went at once to his Records Room and drafted a letter to the Secretary of Imperial Correspondence in Rome, who sorted all incoming letters from the northern provinces. With a very few lines, Marcus Julianus cut out the ground from beneath Victorinus, first summarizing the Florentius affair, in which the magistrate had taken a bribe from the owner of a nearby limestone quarry accused of causing the deaths of ten soldiers assigned there who’d been crushed in a rockfall; Victorinus had managed it so that the case was never brought to trial. He also charged that Victorinus had misdirected funds allocated by the Treasury for “Public Entertainments,” using this public money to add a race course to his villa. If half the provincial magistrates were as corrupt as this one, he mused, we’d do better to settle disputes as primitives do, through combat. Though Julianus had a good store of offenses to choose from, he stopped there, determining that it was better to do too little than too much; this was the sort of weapon that kept its potency through light, infrequent use.

  He then commanded one of his messengers to carry the letter to the posting station, so a post rider could be off with it at dawn. His seal on the letter would ensure the swiftest delivery.

  Then he asked Demaratos to send Auriane to him.

  AURIANE FELT A pressing sense of dread as she made her way to the villa’s Records Room. A waiting tension lay over the house. Night had fallen and darkness poured in everywhere, flooding the chambers, flowing into the halls. The still flames of the row of hanging lamps above her in the passage were small, brave islands of warmth.

  She had been going over accounts with the horsemaster, and she was still clad in a mud-stained deerskin tunica belted with a hemp rope. Her chestnut hair was loosened, falling about her shoulders. Grass and straw had caught in it, and she knew she looked more like a woodwife of the forest than a matron of a villa.

  As she approached the atrium, she threw back the heavy olivine-colored curtain that draped the doorkeeper’s alcove, flushing a flustered Demaratos from his favorite listening post. This was one time when she did not want to be overheard. She caught a look of sharp disappointment in the steward’s face, for spoiling his evening’s entertainment. Demaratos quickly recovered his Greek manners and began some belligerent explanation, but she walked away from him before he was through.

  And then she st
ood before Marcus Julianus in the Records Room. He sat before a gilt-legged accounts table, his head bent over a row of wax tablets. Behind him was the bronze cupboard that held the waxen masks of his ancestors, which he’d carried with him from his great house in Rome, and a marble portrait bust of his father, whose cold, shrewd features made it difficult for Auriane to believe the man had truly felt much love for his son. How different their faces, she thought, though the gods obviously cast both from one mold: The father seemed to look down a long, narrow corridor, while not approving of what he saw at its end. The son’s look had no such fixedness; it embraced a long stretch of horizon.

  With a start of dismay she recognized the procurator’s report he studied so intently: It was from the estate and vineyard outside Lugdunum, capital city of Gaul, which he had put in her name. Never before had he taken an interest in it.

  She was keenly aware, suddenly, of the comforting sound of the rushing water of the atrium fountain. Water flowing inside. She tried to recapture how wondrous that had been, when first she came here—to have a tame river running all over the house. It reminded her that she lived and raised her children in an earthly paradise. Unfortunately, that paradise was an island. One step outside and darkness began. She would ever be a stranger in this world, with its lives played out indoors amidst unnatural quiet, its pallid festivals, its myriad strange gods, its thick stone walls that brutally divided the great from the humble—and its women, who lived clothed in a shame infused into the heart at birth. They behaved like citizens of a defeated country, keeping desires bridled, counsel muzzled, steps shortened, ambitions shuttered, or forced through a maze of others. And yet, this villa was a harbor, preserving the only tranquillity she had ever known, and she felt herself braced to fight to the death to preserve it.