Her rueful laugh pulled him back from his recollections. He felt grateful; they kept recurring to plague him. "How professorish, no?" she exclaimed. "And how shopworn obvious. Please believe I generally talk better to the point. Today I am nervous." Humor faded. Did she shiver? "I am not used to this. Confronting death, yes, but oblivion, the nothingness of everything I ever knew—" Her mouth firmed. She sat straight. "Forgive me."
Having stoked his pipe, Everard struck a match and sent the first pungency across his tongue. "You'll find you're plenty tough," he assured her. "You've proved it. I want to hear about your field experiences."
"Later." For an instant she looked away. He thought he saw hauntedness. Her gaze returned to him, her words became crisp. "Three days ago a special agent had me in for a long consultation. A research team had obtained their own text of the Histories. You heard?"
"Uh-huh." Brief though his briefing was, Everard had been told. Sheer happenstance; or was it? (Causality can double back on itself in strange ways.) Sociologists studying Rome, early second century A.D., found on short notice that they needed to know what the upper classes thought of the Emperor Domitian, who died a couple of decades earlier. Did they really remember him as a Stalin, or concede that he'd done a few worthwhile things? The later sections of Tacitus eloquently expressed the negative view. It seemed easier to borrow his work from a private library and surreptitiously duplicate it than to send uptime for a data file. "They noticed differences from the standard version as they remembered it—if it is the standard version—and comparison showed the differences are radical."
"Far beyond copyist's errors, author's revisions, or anything else reasonable," Floris emphasized. "Detective work proved it was not a forgery, but an authentic copy of a manuscript by Tacitus himself. And, while the phrasing varies between them, as one would expect if they led toward two separate endings—the chronicle as such, the narrative line, does not split until the fifth book, very soon after the scene where the copy that survived breaks off. Is this coincidence?"
"I dunno," Everard replied, "and better we pass that question by. Kind of spooky, huh?" He forced himself to lean back, cross shank over thigh, drain his cup, trail out a slow streamer of smoke. "Suppose you give me a synopsis of the story—the two stories. Don't be afraid of repeating what's elementary to you. I confess what I remember is simply that the Dutch and some of the Gauls rose against Roman rule and gave the Empire a stiff fight before they were put down. Afterward they, their descendants, were placid Roman subjects, eventually citizens."
Starkness responded. "Tacitus goes into detail, and I have—we have—confirmed that on the whole he reports it fairly well. It began with the Batavi, a tribe living in what is now South Holland, between the Rhine and the Waal. They, with a number of others in this area, had not formally been brought under the Empire, but they had been made tributaries. All furnished soldiers to Rome, auxiliary troops, who served their terms with the legions and retired on nice pensions, whether they settled down where they were at discharge or returned to the homeland.
"But under Nero the Roman government became more and more extortionate. For instance, the Frisii were supposed to furnish a certain amount of leather every year for making shields. Instead of the hides of the dwarfish domestic cattle, the governor now demanded the much bigger and thicker hides of wild bulls, which were growing scarce, or the equivalent. It was ruinous."
Everard grinned on the left side of his face. "Tax collection. Sounds familiar. Go on."
Floris's tone intensified. She stared before her, fists clenched on her lap. "You remember, at the overthrow of Nero, civil war broke out. The year of the three emperors—Galba, Otho, Vitellius—then, in the Near East, Vespasian—devastating the Empire as they contended. Each raised what forces he could, any kind, anywhere, by any means, including conscription. The Batavi, especially, saw their sons haled off, and not only to fight in a war that was meaningless to them. Some Roman officials had an appetite for comely youths."
"Yeah. Give government an inch, and that's what it'll do to the people every time. Which is why the founding fathers of the United States tried to limit federal powers. Too bad their success was temporary. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt."
"Well, there was a Batavian family of noble birth—property, influence, descent claimed from the gods—which had supplied Rome with a number of soldiers. Prominent among them was a man who had taken the Latin name Claudius Civilis. At home, we have learned, he was Burhmund. He distinguished himself in many actions through a long career. Now he called the tribes to arms, the Batavi and their neighbors. He was no naïve rustic, you understand."
"I do. Half civilized, and doubtless a smart, observant sort."
"Ostensibly, he declared for Vespasian as against Vitellius, and told his followers that Vespasian would give them justice. That made it easy for Germanic troops elsewhere to set their orders aside and come join him. He scored several major victories. Northeastern Gaul took fire. Under Julius Classicus and Julius Tutor, the Gallic auxiliaries went over to Civilis, while they proclaimed their province an empire in its own right. In the Germanic tribe of the Bructeri, a prophetess called Veleda predicted the fall of Rome. It inspired the natives further, to heroic efforts, and their aim also became an independent confederation."
That too sounds familiar to an American. We started in 1775 fighting for our rights as Englishmen. Then one thing led to another. Everard refrained from speaking.
Floris sighed. "Well, Vespasian's cause prevailed. He himself remained in the Near East several months, having much on his hands there, but he wrote to Civilis requiring an end of hostilities. He was refused, of course. After that he dispatched an able general, Petillius Cerialis, to take charge in the North. Meanwhile the Gauls and the Germanic tribes quarreled, could not coordinate, bungled what opportunities came to them. You see, unified command was something outside their mental horizon. The Romans reduced them in detail. Finally Civilis agreed to meet with Cerialis and discuss terms. It is a dramatic scene in Tacitus—a bridge across the Ijssel, from which workers first removed the middle—the two men stood each at an end of the broken span and talked—"
"I remember that," Everard said. "It's where the manuscript ended, till the rest was recovered. As I recall, the rebels got a pretty fair offer, which they accepted."
Floris nodded. "Yes. An end to outrages, guarantees for the future, and amnesty. Civilis retired to private life. Veleda—Tacitus does not say, except that she apparently helped arrange the armistice. I would like to find out what became of her."
"Any ideas?"
"A sort of guess. If you go to the museums in Leiden and in Middelburg on Walcheren you will see stones from the second or third centuries, altars, votive blocks, carved and inscribed in Latin—" Floris shrugged. "No matter, probably. The fact is that those ancestors of us Dutch became provincial Romans, reasonably well content." Her eyes widened. She clutched at the border of her cushion. "The fact was."
Stillness dropped over them. How fragile the late afternoon sunlight and rustle of traffic seemed, beyond the windowpanes.
"That's Tacitus One, right?" Everard said low after a while. "The version we've always used, and that I skimmed yesterday. I'm not quite clear on Tacitus Two. What does it tell?"
Floris answered no louder. "That Civilis did not yield, in large part because Veleda preached against peace. The war went on for another year, till the tribes were wholly subjugated. Civilis killed himself rather than go in chains to Rome for a triumph. Veleda escaped into free Germany. Many followed her. Tacitus—Two—remarks near the end of the Histories that the religion of the wild Germans has changed since he wrote his book about them. A female deity is becoming prominent, the Nerthus he described in his Germania. Now he compares her to Persephone, Minerva, and Bellona."
Everard tugged his chin. "The goddesses of death, wisdom, and war, eh? Strange. The Anses or Aesir or whatever you call them—the male sky-gods—should've long since reduced the old chthonic f
igures to second place. . . . What does he have to say about happenings in Rome itself and elsewhere?"
"Essentially the same things as in the first text. The phrases often vary. Likewise do conversations and a number of incidents; but ancient and medieval chroniclers freely invented those, you know, or drew on traditions that might have drifted considerably from the facts. These variations do not prove that actual events changed."
"Aside from in Germany. Well, it was the boondocks. Whatever happened there, for the first several decades, wouldn't particularly touch the high civilizations. The long-range consequences, though—"
"They were not significant, were they?" Floris's words trembled. "We are still here, we still exist, don't we?"
Everard pulled hard on his pipe. "So far. And 'so far' is meaningless in English or Dutch or whatever. But let's not go to Temporal yet. What we've got is an anomaly that needs investigation. I daresay it escaped notice earlier—yes, 'earlier' is meaningless too—because of its dates. Nearly all attention is elsewhere."
Annis Domini 69 and 70. Those weren't just the years of the Northern revolt. Nor were they just when Kwang Wu-Ti was nailing down the rule of the Later Han dynasty, or the Satavahanas were overrunning India, or Vologaeses the First was struggling against rebels and invaders of his own in Persia. (I checked the records before leaving for here. Nothing ever quite happens in isolation.) It wasn't even when Rome was ripping itself apart, after the legions had discovered that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome. No, it was the time of the Jewish War. That was what detained Vespasian and his son Titus after their victory over Vitellius. The rising of the Jews, the bloody suppression of it, the destruction of the Third Temple—with everything that that was to mean for the future, Judaism, Christianity, the Empire, Europe, the world.
"A nexus, then, is it not?" Floris whispered.
Everard nodded heavily. Somehow he preserved outward calm. "Patrol units are concentrated on guarding Palestine. You can well imagine what emotions are engaged, through how many centuries. Fanatics or freeboaters who want to change what took place in Jerusalem, researchers crowding in and multiplying the chances of a fatal blunder, and the situation itself, the near-infinity of causes radiating into that episode and effects radiating out from it. . . . I don't pretend to understand the physics, but I can sure believe what I've been taught, that the continuum is especially vulnerable around such moments. As far away as barbarian Germany, reality is unstable."
"But what could have shifted it?"
"That's what we've got to find out. Could be somebody taking advantage of the Patrol's preoccupation. Or could be accident, could be—I don't know. Maybe a Danellian could spell out the possibilities. Our job—" Everard drew breath. "Since they don't have some improbable but safe explanation, like a forgery, these two variant texts are . . . a warning. An early sign, a ripple of change, something that may have had consequences which caused history to flow into a different channel till at last you and I and everything around us never existed—unless we heed the warning and take steps to see that this did not happen—Oh, Lord, we had better talk Temporal."
Floris stared into her cup. "Can that wait?" she asked, barely audibly. "I need to think about this, to assimilate it. It was never more than theory to me. I did my fieldwork like, oh, a nineteenth-century explorer in darkest Africa. There were precautions to take, yes, but I was told that the pattern of events is not easily disturbed and that whatever I did, within reason, would 'always' have been a part of the past. Today it is as if earth dissolved beneath my feet."
"I know." How nightmarishly well I know. The Second Punic War—"Sure, take your time." Time! "Collect your wits." His smile surprised him by its genuineness. "Mine are still kind of scattered too. Look, suppose we relax and gab freely, whether about the subject on hand or anything else. In a while, let's go out for a drink and dinner, enjoy ourselves, start getting acquainted. Tomorrow we can buckle down in earnest."
"Thank you." She passed a hand over the thick yellow braids coiled around her head. He recalled that ancient Germanic tribes women wore their hair long. As if she felt that magic which folk around the world laid to the human mane, strength rang anew: "Yes, tomorrow we shall cope."
3
Winter brought rain, snow, rain again, flogged by harsh winds, weather that raged on into the springtime. Rivers ran gorged, meadows flooded, swamps overflowed. Men doled out what grain they still had stored, killed more of their huddled and shivering livestock than they wished, went hunting oftener and with less gain than they had been wont. They wondered whether the gods had wearied of last year's drought but not of harrowing earth.
Maybe it was a hopeful sign that the night when the Bructeri met at their halidom was clear, though cold. Rags of cloud flew on the wind, ghost-white next to the full moon that sped among them. A few stars flickered wan. Trees of the grove were huge darknesses, formless save where boughs nearly bare tossed against heaven. Their creakings went like an unknown tongue, answers to the skirl and snarl of the wind.
The balefire roared. Flames leaped red and yellow from its white heart. Sparks whirled aloft to mock the stars and die. Light barely touched the great boles around the glade and made them seem to stir, uneasy as the shadows. It gleamed off the spears and eyeballs of the gathered men, brought grim faces forth out of gloom, but lost itself in their beards and shaggy coats.
Behind the fire loomed the images, rough-hewn from whole logs. Woen, Tiw, and Donar were cracked and gray, begrown with moss and toadstools. Nerha was newer, freshly painted to shine beneath the moon, and the skill of a slave from the Southlands had gone into the carving of her. In the restless glow, she might have been alive, the goddess herself. The wild boar roasting over the coals had been killed more to her than to the others.
They were not many, the men, nor were any but a few young. All who could had followed their chiefs across the Rhine last summer, to fight with Burhmund the Batavian against the Romans. They were there yet, and sorely missed at home. Wael-Edh had sent word around that the heads of households among the Bructeri should meet this night, make offering, and hear her.
The breath soughed between their teeth as she trod into sight. Her garb was moon-white, trimmed with dark fur, a necklace of raw amber aglow over her bosom. The wind made waves in her skirts and her cloak fluttered like great wings. Who knew what thoughts laired within its hood? She raised her arms, the gold rings coiled upon them shimmered snakish, and every spear dipped to her.
Heidhin, who had led in readying the boar, stood nearest the fire, apart from the others. He drew his knife, lifted blade to lips, sheathed it again. "Welcome, lady of ours," he greeted. "Behold, they are come as you bade, they who speak for the folk, that through you the gods may speak to them. If you will, say forth."
Edh lowered her hands. While not loud, her voice struck to its mark past the noises of the night. More than Heidhin's, it kept an outland tone, a rise and fall like surf beating on some far shore. Maybe from this came a little of the awesomeness that forever enwrapped her.
"Hear me, sons of Brucht, for great are my tidings. The sword is aloft, the wolves and ravens eat well, the witches of Nerha fly free. Hail to the heroes!
"Let me first give you the older truth. When I called you hither, my wish was only to hearten you. The time has been long, homes guest hunger, and still the foe has stood fast. Many among you begin to wonder why we are allied with our kin beyond the river. We have shames to avenge but no yoke to cast off. We have a kingdom to build together with them but cannot if they fail.
"Yes, tribes among the Gauls have risen too, but they are a flighty lot. Yes, Burhmund has ravaged among the Ubii, those dogs of Rome, but the Romans have wasted the country of our friends the Gugernes. Yes, we have laid Moguntiacum and Castra Vetera under siege, but from the first we had to withdraw and the second has held out month after month. Yes, we have had our victories on the field, but we have had our defeats too, and always our losses were heavy. Therefore would I renew my prom
ise to you, that Rome shall fall, the bones of the legions lie strewn and the red cock crow on every Roman roof—the vengeance of Nerha. We have but to fight on.
"Then, only today, surely by the will of the goddess, a rider reached me from Burhmund himself. Castra Vetera, the Old Camp of the enemy, has yielded. Vocula the legate, victor of Moguntiacum, is dead, and Novesium, where he died, has likewise surrendered. Colonia Agrippinensis, proud city among the Ubii, asks for terms.
"Nerha keeps faith, sons of Brucht. This is the beginning of the pledge she will wholly redeem. Rome shall fall!"
Their yells tore at the sky.
She harangued them longer, though not much longer, and ended quietly: "When at last your warriors come home, Nerha will bless their loins and they will father men to bestride the world. Now feast before her, and tomorrow bring hope to your women." She lifted a hand. Once more they lowered their spears. She took a brand from the fire to light her way and departed into the darkness.
Heidhin led them as they pulled the offering off the grill, carved it, and devoured the smellsome flesh. However, he said little while they talked into each other's mouths of the wonder told them. Often such a silent spell came upon him. Folk had grown used to it. Enough that he was Wael-Edh's trusty man and, in his own right, a shrewd, swift leader. He was lean, with narrow features, white streaks in the blackness of hair and close-trimmed beard.
When the bones were cast aside onto the midden and the fire was guttering low, on behalf of everyone he bade the gods good night. Men sought the lodge nearby, where they would rest before starting back in the morning. Heidhin went a different way. His torch helped him along a dim trail until he came out from under the trees to a broad clearing, where he dropped it to die. Here the moon ran above western woodland, amidst the wind and the witchy clouds.
Before him hunched a house. Frost glistened on thatch. Within it, he knew, kine slept along one wall, folk along the other, mingled with their stores and tools, as they might anywhere else; but these served Wael-Edh. Her tower hulked beyond, heavy-timbered, iron-bound, raised for her to dwell in alone with her dreams. Heidhin walked onward.
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