by M. K. Hume
Suddenly, out of fragments of memory, a line of verse came to him. He recited it aloud in the original Greek in what he hoped was a reasonable approximation of the correct pronunciation.
‘What did you say, Myrddion?’ A female voice carried to him on the sweet, salty air. Flavia stepped away from the shadow of the rigging, and he could see the outline of her body lit through her robes from a single lantern that hung on the mast behind her.
‘Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.’
Her laughter was wry, bitter, and yet as tinkling as the small brass bells that hung in the temples of the Mother, where they could catch the night winds and sing her name.
‘Gloomy thoughts for a night of such magic! Can’t you feel the ancient loves and dreams that lived here long before Rome came into being? So old, Myrddion! Our ancestors scrabbled like animals in the mud at a time when Athens spawned philosophers and Sparta made warfare into living song. How can you celebrate such beauty with so grim a warning?’
‘Perhaps I’m trying to remind myself that all this . . .’ he flung his arms wide to encompass the land, the sea and the wheeling, velvet-soft stars, ‘this is all illusion! We struggle and scheme to win a small corner of the world and to gather up gold or jewels to protect us from the darkness that we fear, when all that truly endures through the ages are the shadows of our deeds and the generosity of our spirits.’
Flavia sighed and swayed towards him so that the lamp picked out the scarlet in her hair like threads of ruby and chalcedony. ‘You think too much, healer. I believe I’ve told you so before. On a night such as this, how can you do aught but accept the power of your senses? Smell the scent off the land! Can’t you imagine the olives ripening in the sun, the fish drying in racks and bunches of lavender perfuming the air? Can’t you feel the wind as it caresses your naked flesh like a lover’s touch? The gods give us eyes to see and ears to hear, but you persist in experiencing the world through the filter of your reason and your dusty scrolls. My father was the same. You miss the glories of being alive and being human, while you chase something abstract and impossible to define. Then, when you realise that knowledge is just another illusion, it’s too late to taste the sweetness of living.’
‘Why, Flavia, you surprise me,’ Myrddion murmured without a trace of irony in his beautifully modulated voice. ‘I never thought I’d hear philosophy coming from your lips.’
‘Because I’m a woman – or because I’m Flavius Aetius’s daughter? Am I any less capable of seeing the wonders of existence simply because I’m my father’s daughter?’ She made a small gesture of disgust. ‘In Ravenna, they called me a harlot or an epicurean, because I want to experience all that life brings before I journey to the shadows. One life isn’t enough to satisfy me, Myrddion. I’d live forever, if I could.’ The healer could see her wilful, passionate mouth through the stray beams of moonlight. ‘I want to devour life as if it was a ripe peach and feel its juices run down my face. Is that so wrong?’
Her appeal touched him, and involuntarily he stepped towards her. Wise to the passions of men, she took a half-step towards him and raised her hand to stroke his smooth, beardless face. Her pointed nails tracked deliciously over his cheek and his breath caught in his throat.
‘Don’t think, Myrddion. Be!’
And then Flavia was in his arms and her mouth was opening under his, as silky as the finest cloth and so smooth and warm that he couldn’t resist her. Tongue and teeth captured his, teasing and biting as his heat rose and his work-strengthened fingers gripped her back, kneading her soft flesh and leaving bruises in their wake.
She pulled away from him and tilted her head so that she could see his blinded eyes, heavy with his body’s longings. ‘You have put aside your reason, healer. Will you regret what we do? Will you blame me for a night of beauty or love? If so, leave me now to the night and my feelings, for I am weary of recriminations.’
For a moment, Myrddion wondered at the courage and frankness of this woman who perceived herself to be outside the rules of society, not by choice, but because she was unable to adapt to the many hypocritical demands of her peers. He believed her. She really placed sensation above reason, a dangerous journey for even the strongest of men, for that path could lead to a life so dedicated to the senses that common sense and decency were lost.
‘You’ll receive no insults from me, Flavia, not if you act in accordance with kindness and compassion. I suppose you’re a free soul . . . it must have been difficult to grow up under the rule of a man like Aetius, who was rigidly in control of every aspect of his life.’
Flavia shook her head with such finality that Myrddion sensed the heartbreak under her arrogance. His reason told him that Flavia was too damaged to change, but his body didn’t care for arguments.
‘No more talk, Myrddion. You use words like weapons. Just be, and let me be.’ Then she moved back into his arms and their kiss was full of promise and hope. Flavia was demanding, with her mouth and with her hands, which stroked and insinuated themselves into his tunic and kneaded the muscles at his shoulders, back and buttocks. Only by an effort of will, and out of a need to remain Myrddion, did he pull away from her and bow over her hand, before kissing it gently.
‘Goodnight, Lady Flavia. The night is lovely, but I must go before I make a fool of myself.’ He almost ran to the stairs that led below decks, found the healers’ cabin and leaned against the closed door. Cadoc stared at his master with wide, alarmed eyes.
‘Don’t fret, Cadoc. I’ve been enjoying the evening in company with Lady Flavia.’
Cadoc noted a long, shallow scratch on Myrddion’s forearm, and leered knowingly. ‘I can see what you’ve been enjoying, master. All that I’ll say is that you should be careful with a woman like that. Ayeee! She’d suck a man’s brains out through his mouth.’
‘Don’t say that, Cadoc, even in jest,’ Myrddion cut in, but being young and vain enough to enjoy the admiration of other, older men, he allowed himself a small grin. He went to sleep on his scratchy pallet to dream of Flavia’s thighs, her milky white breasts with their dusting of amber freckles and the rose pink crevices of her body that drew him towards her with a hot, musky scent that was all her own.
The galley drove on and was now heading north through the islands of the Mare Myrtoum. On the high ground to the left lay Sparta, out of sight but brooding over the south with all its reputation for discipline, unnatural courage and stirring deeds of heroism. Myrddion told Cadoc, Finn and the widows the story of Thermopylae and they marvelled at the stirring history of the three hundred Spartans who had held back a vast horde of invaders. As the galley continued across the sea, Myrddion dug into his store of legends and whiled away the hours of inactivity with tales of the ancients, what histories he knew and improbable tales of incredible courage.
Hydrea slid by and vanished into the distance. Cythnos and Ceos passed on their right, the northern tip of the famed Cyclades where the souls of heroes were said to dwell. Then the galley pushed on to Marathon to take on a fresh supply of water before island-hopping across the Aegean Sea en route to the Propontis.
Although the days were a changing vista of many islands and dim, smoke-blue landscapes, the nights belonged to Flavia.
Though Myrddion might have hoped to resist her advances, in Cadoc’s words, he had as much chance as a plump pigeon in a cage of peregrines. After an initial attempt at resistance, he submitted to his desires and took Flavia, rather inexpertly, in her narrow cabin among a pile of scented bedclothes. He had believed that to enjoy her body would free him from her thrall as had been his past experience, but Flavia was a fever in the blood, a disease in the mind and a poison in the heart. The more she kissed him, the more he wanted. When he had spent himself in her, the lust that should have sated him only served to whet his appetite more cruelly.
The nights were long and filled with wild sensations, but the days were governed by his craft. Sailors slipped often and he was kept busy with cuts, contusions and ev
en the occasional illness. His assistants worked on their herbs, storing a fresh supply of completed unguents, fleshed out with new, strange ingredients purchased at the ports, fishing villages and islands where they picked up cargo or replenished their supplies of water.
As her waist began to thicken, Bridie sat among the women in the fresh air and sewed delicate baby clothes out of scraps of cloth. Each day fitted seamlessly into the next, like wool on a loom, and Myrddion prayed with a young man’s ardour that the voyage would never end. He had his scrolls, now more interesting because he could see the lands that brought them forth, and he had his growing store of odd maps that recorded their journey. Even his ritual of plucking hair from his smooth skin, washing in salt water on the decks or combing and plaiting his midnight-blue mane assumed a kind of novelty.
So Myrddion began an odd double life, as strange as Flavia’s mismatched eyes. The lovers spoke little, preferring to lose themselves in sensation. Besides, Myrddion feared to break the spell of Flavia, knowing in the deepest recesses of his heart that he would try to excise her from his life if he should learn the full measure of her manipulations and misdeeds. He was tortured by a persistent fear that something in him would bleed forever.
At Marathon, both Myrddion and Flavia left the galley, after a stern warning from the master that he must set sail quickly if the ship was to escape the tidal pull of Euboea, a huge land mass that ran parallel to the mainland. But the town of Marathon called to Myrddion with stories of Pheidippides who had run from the port to Athens to bring tidings of a great sea battle and, after imparting his news, had run back to Marathon without pause. Shortly after completing the return journey, he had died. The duty inherent in this tale of bravery and determination touched Myrddion’s nature, so he longed to see the landscape on which such epics of the human spirit were based.
On the other hand, Flavia longed to purchase something pretty to adorn her throat, so Myrddion offered her his protection. Rouged and perfumed, the lady avoided the piles of refuse, old fish heads, fish scales and rubbish that fouled the wharf. Marathon itself lay slightly inland on the higher ground and was too far to visit, so Myrddion swallowed his disappointment and took pleasure in watching Flavia as she haggled with street sellers who tried to tempt her with trinkets of base metal. Eventually, she found a dark cavern of a shop-front that promised Greek jewellery within. Like a roe deer seeking sweet grass, she dived into its cool interior.
At first, Myrddion sat on his heels outside the unprepossessing premises but, out of sheer boredom, he eventually followed his lover into its dim recesses to remind her that they must hurry. He found Flavia poring over a strip of scarlet cloth on which lay bangles of heavy gold carved to resemble twining fish and a necklace that was a scaled serpent with a clasp shaped like a head swallowing its own tail. Its eyes were ruby chips and small, round emeralds decorated its spiny back.
‘Buy the damned thing if you like it, Flavia, but hurry! The galley will sail without us if you don’t make haste.’
‘A moment, Myrddion. The captain wouldn’t dare to sail without us. He has high hopes of a substantial sum at the end of the journey, if I’m satisfied with his services.’
Myrddion wandered around a whitewashed room that was far cleaner than its exterior suggested, except for spider’s webs that lurked in corners out of reach. The dim shelves concealed all kinds of merchandise in a wild tangle that seemed without logic or order. Painted pots in blood red, black and white jostled with weavings of warriors and maidens that had been crudely coloured with vegetable dyes. In one dusty corner, a collection of pottery and carved wooden gods looked down with impassive, blind eyes, including a tall staff shaped like a sea serpent with a carved frill and fins encircling its scaly throat. The wood was unfamiliar and as smooth as silk.
‘A fair piece of carving, master,’ a voice croaked at him from out of the gloom.
Myrddion spun round and the staff fell to the packed sod floor with a dull clatter. The face that loomed out of the darkness was old and seamed with wrinkles, and the eyes were white and blind with cataracts. At first, Myrddion thought that the wizened creature was a man, but then it moved forward into a narrow strip of light from the doorway and revealed the dusty, bleached robes of a woman.
‘How much is the stave, mother?’ Myrddion asked, for in truth it attracted him strongly.
The old woman named a price that seemed fair, and although Myrddion knew he should haggle with her he was overly conscious of the swift passage of time. Searching through his satchel, he found the coin to pay what she asked and pressed them into her gnarled and twisted hands.
When their fingertips met, he felt an immediate jolt of precognition.
‘Ah, master, I’ll not need to read the portents for you. The Mother Serpent sits by your shoulder.’ She paused, and her nostrils twitched as if she smelt the air. ‘Beware of your woman, master. She may be rose-red, but like all pretty flowers her thorns are wicked and barbed. She will leave you weeping at the end of your journey.’
‘You are a terrible old woman,’ Flavia hissed from behind Myrddion’s shoulder. ‘How can you tell such lies?’
The old woman turned her milky irises towards the sound of Flavia’s voice and smiled, revealing browned and broken teeth.
‘Do I lie? You have learned to sell yourself to the highest bidder, but you still don’t know your worth, Woman of Straw. You might deck yourself in gems and drape yourself in gold, but until in your heart you believe what you say, you will wander without a home or a man you can call your own.’
Flavia scoffed, but Myrddion could detect a faint tremor in her voice. When the old woman turned her wizened face back towards Myrddion, her features fell into a kinder expression. Chilled, Myrddion wondered if he was staring at the most terrible aspect of the Mother, the Crone of Winter.
‘Remember, master, that you are like your father, but you don’t have to be him. The gods decreed at your birth that you have free will, so you need not follow the ancient and wicked patterns of your bloodline. See what is real, not what your heart longs to see. Choose wisely, or you will never know your home again and a great destiny will be lost for all time.’
‘Pay this charlatan so we can get out of this pesthole,’ Flavia ordered rudely, turning away with the serpent necklace round her throat. The old woman was affronted and made a strange sign with her fingers behind Flavia’s back.
‘I will take no coin for what I have seen. You should beware that the serpent doesn’t bite you when you least expect it, Woman of Straw. Beware of the eagle and the snake, woman, or you will die.’
With the old woman’s words and the cackle of her laughter ringing in his ears, Myrddion fled from the mean little establishment and found he was gasping in the open air. Flavia was already disappearing down the narrow, cobbled street towards the wharf, her speed fuelled by temper, so Myrddion was forced to run to catch up with her.
‘Now you know what it’s like when someone tells your future. How does it feel, healer?’
For several days, Myrddion and Flavia avoided each other on the galley. The lady chose to eat in her cabin and Myrddion was kept busy caring for an outbreak of dysentery that had struck down the sailors and the galley slaves. The crowded conditions in the double banks of oars were unhygienic and filthy, so Myrddion ordered the whole space to be sluiced with seawater and scrubbed clean. The same treatment was given to the malodorous quarters deep in the belly of the ship where the slaves were shackled and the sailors slept in filthy straw. Gradually, under the twin cures of cleanliness and purgatives, Myrddion controlled the vicious spread of the stomach contagion, while he comforted himself with the knowledge that the disease wasn’t more serious.
When he was finally able to assure the captain that the dysentery had passed, the galley had moved past Scyros, Icus and Polyaegus and was beating out into open waters as they headed towards the great island of Lesbos and landfall at Eresus. The captain was more able than most of his ilk and chose to cross open water, ste
ering by the angle of the sun by day and by the points of the stars at night.
The sea was wide and very dark, like purple wine, and so still that at noontide Myrddion imagined he could see the reflection of clouds in its deep waters. The sun never seemed to dim in a sky that was so bright and so blue that the colour hurt Myrddion’s eyes, while even the sunsets became glorious panoramas of gold, amber, scarlet and orange when the sea was set aflame. Myrddion felt a peace he had rarely known during his short life. For the first time in many months, he didn’t regret the impulse that had driven him to leave Segontium for these strange climes.
Inevitably, Flavia and Myrddion renewed their passion, although his lady seemed to seek him out for comfort and affirmation of her worth rather than out of an overriding lust. He wondered occasionally if she even cared for sexual congress, considering their coupling merely as proof of her power and her attractiveness. She also chose to talk in the long, dark reaches of the night when the fires of the spirit burn dimly, as if she needed someone in the world who would understand the motivation that drove her to trade her body for feelings of adequacy.
When she revealed to Myrddion that her father and brother had awakened her into womanhood, the healer was appalled and sickened. That Flavia was only ten at the time added to the betrayal that the child had endured.
‘It’s a pity that Aetius is dead. He should have been made to suffer for what he did to you. From what you have told me, he died quickly and relatively painlessly. As for your brother Gaudentius, the Christian god has promised special punishment for such sins. I could almost wish myself to be Christian so I could pray for such justice.’