Out of the Waters-ARC

by David Drake

  "Pulto should stay here with you, Anna," he said. There was no reason to force a brave man and a friend into a night's work that would torture him worse than hot pincers.

  "No," she said. "You'll be going into the ground, but you'll want a solid man up above to watch your back. My Marcus is that; and anyway, you couldn't keep him away unless you chained him."

  She coughed. "I think it's a tomb, master," she said. "An old one, maybe; very old. Etruscan, I'd venture, from before Carce ever was. Though--"

  She fluttered her little fingers, since her palms were braced on the smooth knobbed handles of her sticks.

  "--that's a lot to draw from a vole's mind, you'll understand. Anyway, it's cut in rock, the place the thing is."

  Corylus laughed and hugged Anna again. "We'll find you your bauble, dear one," he said. "How could any man fail someone they love as much as Pulto and I love you?"

  He'd made the words a joke, but it was the truth just the same.

  I'd best send a messenger to Varus, telling him I won't be able to join him this afternoon after all, Corylus thought.

  On his way back from class, he'd been concerned about what they might find in Tardus' home. Now, entering the cellars of a senator's house seemed a harmless, even friendly, alternative to the way he would really be spending the evening.

  ***

  "Oh!" said Saxa as his entourage formed around him with all manner of shouting and gestures. "My boy, I don't see your friend Corylus. You don't think he's gotten lost on the way here, do you? We really shouldn't wait much longer or we'll arrive at the dinner hour, which would be discourteous."

  Tardus will probably regard our arrival to search his house under consular authority to be discourteous enough, Varus thought. Aloud he said, "Corylus was detained on other business, your lordship. We will proceed without him."

  Saxa bustled off, surrounded by Agrippinus, who would stay at the house; Candidus, who would lead the escort; and the chief lictor.

  It hadn't occurred to Varus that Saxa would remember that Corylus might accompany them. He'd underestimated his father, a disservice which he would try hard not to repeat.

  Pandareus had dropped into the background when Saxa approached; now he joined Varus again. With his lips close to his teacher's ear, Varus said, "It seems a great deal of argument for what is really just a six-block walk, doesn't it?"

  "It would be, I agree," Pandareus said, for a moment fully the professor. "But I take issue with your terms, Lord Varus. If we were simply to walk to the home of Sempronius Tardus, we would be wasting our efforts. If this is to be a rite of state--a religious act, in effect--then the litanies are to be accepted as being of spiritual significance even though their human meaning has been blurred."

  Varus chuckled. In an undertone he muttered the refrain of the priests during the rites of Robigus--the deity of corn smut. It was a string of nonsense syllables to anyone alive today.

  "Yes, my teacher," he said. "It does have a great deal of similarity to what we're hearing now. Or at any rate, to what my father is hearing, merging the three speeches."

  "Plato believed in Ideal Republics," said Pandareus, watching the commotion with an attitude of bright interest. He was chatting now, no longer lecturing. "I am... willing, I suppose, to accept them also--for the purpose of argument. I don't find them any more useful in studying real conditions than the Chief Pirate's Beautiful Daughter would be in formulating the Republic's mercantile policy."

  Varus chuckled at mention of one of the standards of school orations, like the Reformed Prostitute and the Undutiful Son. "I wouldn't say that the reign of Dion of Syracuse was a Golden Age, despite Plato's earnest coaching of his would-be philosopher king," he said. "I accept your point about real politics generally looking like--"

  He gestured to the confusion of servants, lictors, and citizen-clients. It looked as though the procession was close to moving off.

  "--that. What I don't understand is why it looks like that instead of being, well, smoother."

  "It may be that you are asking the correct question," Pandareus said, reverting to his classroom manner. "You're asking it rhetorically, however, instead of using the moment as a real opportunity to learn. Why is it that human societies generally organize themselves in fashions that we philosophers deplore as inefficient? Surely it cannot be possible that human wisdom is limited while the cosmos is infinite?"

  Varus laughed again. "I'll want to spend an hour or two considering the question before giving you a definitive answer, master," he said.

  Pandareus had a remarkable ability to puncture displays of excessive ego--by using the Socratic Method, proving that his disciple already possessed the information. That was certainly true in the present instance. Varus wouldn't go so far as to claim that the fact something existed proved that it was good--but he did accept that everything happened for a reason.

  Candidus spoke to a musician holding a double-pipe. Varus believed the piper was the same man--if that was the correct term for someone so slender and feminine--who had led the music during yesterday's mime. If so, he had come through the ordeal very well.

  "We'd best take our places," Varus said. He moved into the place directly following Saxa. Behind them would come the most respectable of his clients, most of them impoverished relatives.

  Varus and Pandareus had just reached the column when the pipe began to sing cadence from the front, among the lictors. The procession started off--not in unison, but a good deal closer than most arrays of this sort.

  "In the army, Corylus says they sing to keep time," Varus said as they ambled through the city. "From the songs he describes, it's probably as well that we're not doing that. Otherwise Tardus would be in a panic to lock up his daughters."

  "Or sons," Pandareus said, straight-faced. "Though I'm sure that the standards of the eastern legions that I'm familiar with are less manly and rigorous than those of the Rhine frontier."

  I didn't expect to be laughing repeatedly on this expedition, Varus thought. The obvious answer--because everything was a question, looked at in the correct fashion--struck him. He looked at Pandareus and said, "Thank you, master. You have taught me more by example than even from the knowledge you have accumulated."

  "I would not be a good model for most of the young men who become my students," Pandareus said, looking up with interest at the imperial palace on their right. Only servants were present, since the Emperor was--as usual--on Capri. "Certainly not for Master Corylus, of course: he is far too forceful and decisive to gain from my style of self-management. But you, Lord Varus.... I believe you understand my own qualms and uncertainties all too well, so my practiced ways of dealing with them could be useful."

  Changing the subject almost before the words were out, the teacher gestured up the steep slope to the ancient citadel. The great temples of Jupiter and Juno glowered down at the city. In a breezy, less contemplative tone, he said, "I'm seeing this Carce for the first time."

  "But surely you've been here before, master?" Varus said. "Why, I'd think you regularly came this way to get from your room to the Forum when you hold class there."

  "So speaks the son of the wealthy Alphenus Saxa," Pandareus said. "Yes, my feet tread this pavement--"

  He half-skipped to rap the toe of his sandal on the flagstone.

  "--regularly. But on an ordinary day I would be dodging a crowd of those who would trample a slender scholar who dawdled in front of them. Today, I'm in a capsule formed by the companions of a consul, like a hickory nut in its shell."

  "Ah!" said Varus. "The armor of righteousness, no doubt."

  "I would be the last to claim that the father of my student and--if I may--friend Gaius Varus is not a righteous man," Pandareus agreed solemnly.

  Varus thought about being insulated from the world. Pandareus was talking about physical protection here, but that was really a minor aspect of the way Varus was walled off. His father's wealth wasn't really a factor.

  Varus had come to realize that tho
ugh he lived in the world, he was not and never would be part of it. If footpads knocked him down and slit his throat, a part of him--the part that was most Gaius Alphenus Varus--would be watching them through a sheet of clear glass, interested to see how far his blood spurted when the knife went in.

  Corylus could probably tell me from having watched it happen to somebody else. That would be a better way to learn.

  Pandareus was watching him intently. Varus let his smile fade. He said, "Master, what do you think we'll find in this chapel? What should we be looking for?"

  "Your lordship...," Pandareus said, being particularly careful in his address because they were in public. "We are intruding on Senator Tardus because of inferences which we deduced from your vision, coupled with additional knowledge which I brought to the discussion. All I can do is to say that I think we are acting in the most logical fashion that we could, given our limited information."

  He grinned, becoming a different person. He said, "I will not lapse into superstition by saying that whoever or whatever sent you the vision was wise enough to give us as much information as we would need. I will particularly not say--"

  The grin became even wider.

  "--that he, or she, or it, is All-Wise. But the less rational part of me believes those things."

  "A textbook example of praeteritio," Varus said. "And I accept the principle underlying your statement, which I deduce to be that the wise man, when faced with an uncertain result which he cannot affect, should assume it will be beneficial. The price is the same as it would be for a gloomy prediction."

  "I've taught you well, my boy," Pandareus said. They were no longer joking. It was one of the few times Varus had heard what he would describe as real warmth in the older man's voice.

  At the head of the procession the lictors stopped in front of a house and faced outward. Its walls were of fine-grained limestone, rather than marble over a core of brick or volcanic tuff as was the more recent style.

  The chief lictor banged the butt of his axe helve on the door and boomed, "Open to Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa, Consul of Carce!"

  Varus drew a deep breath. He wondered what it would be like to wait for howling barbarians to charge, shaking their spears and their long, round-tipped swords.

  At the moment, he would rather be out on the frontier, learning the answer to that question.

  CHAPTER 6

  Alphena would have been happier walking, but Hedia had insisted that they take the litter to the Field of Mars. This shopping expedition was part of the business--business or trouble or mystery, Alphena didn't know what to call it--so she'd agreed, but it still made her unhappy.

  Her face must have been squeezed into a petulant frown. Hedia raised her slippered foot and wriggled the big toe at her. Because they were seated facing one another in the litter, it was like somebody pointing an accusatory, short, but nonetheless very shapely, finger at her.

  "Cheer up, dear," Hedia said. "We really have to do it this way, you see. No one would imagine me going shopping on foot. And though they'd let us into the shops I want to visit even with your original footgear--you'd be with me, after all--the last thing we want is to appear eccentric. We'll learn much more if Abinnaeus is thinking only about the amount of money he'll get from their gracious ladyships of Saxa's household. Besides--"

  She touched the tip of Alphena's slipper with her finger. The upper was silk brocade instead of a filigree of gilt leather cutwork, and the toe was closed. Sword exercises wearing army footgear had left Alphena's feet beyond transformation into ladylike appearance in the time available, despite the skill of Hedia's own pedicure specialists.

  "--these shoes wouldn't be at all comfortable to walk across the city in, dear. And we really do have to dress for the occasion. Think of it the way men put their togas on to go into court, even though there's never been a more awkward, ugly garment than a toga."

  Alphena giggled. Even a young, gracefully slender, man like Publius Corylus looked rather like a blanket hung to dry on a pole when he wore his toga. Father, who was plump and clumsy, was more like the same blanket tumbled into a wash basket.

  The Cappadocian bearers paced along as smoothly as the Tiber floating a barge. They were singing, but either the words were nonsense or they were in a language of their own.

  Only the thin outer curtains of the litter were drawn, so Alphena could see what was going on about them. They were making their way through the forum built by Julius Caesar; the courtyard wasn't less congested than the streets to north and south, but there was more room for the crowd which was being pushed aside. The brick and stone walls bounding the street wouldn't give no matter how forcefully Hedia's escorts shoved people who were blocking the litter.

  Alphena nodded in silent approval: someone had chosen the route with care and intelligence. This heavy vehicle required that sort of forethought.

  The particular servants in attendance must have been chosen with equal care, because they were not Hedia's usual escort. "Ah, mother?" Alphena said. "That's Lenatus walking beside Manetho, isn't it?"

  "Yes, dear," Hedia said approvingly. "Manetho is in charge of things under normal circumstances, but Master Lenatus will take command if, well, if necessary."

  Alphena didn't recognize every member of the entourage, though she didn't doubt that they were all part of Saxa's household. She'd seen at least one man working in the gardens. Several more had been litter bearers before Alphena bought the new, larger vehicle with the matched team of Cappadocians; simply by inertia the previous bearers remained members of the household, though they had no regular duties.

  The escort wore clean tunics, most of which appeared to have been bought as a job lot: they had identical blue embroidery at the throat, cuffs, and hem. Further, the men's hair was freshly cropped and they'd been shaven, though that had been done quickly enough that several were nicked or gashed.

  The razor wounds stood out sharply against chins which since puberty must have been shaded by tangled beards. Alphena supposed that was better than being attended by a band of shaggy bravos. Though they still looked like bravos.

  She leaned sideways, bulging the side curtain, to get a better look at the trainer toward the front of the entourage. She said, "I don't think that's a club that Lenatus is hiding under his tunic, is it, Mother?"

  Hedia shrugged. "I didn't ask, dear," she said. "I leave that sort of thing to men."

  She leaned forward slightly, bringing her face closer to Alphena's. "I told Lenatus to choose the men," she said. She was as calm and beautiful as a portrait on ivory. "I told him I didn't care how handsome they were or whether they could communicate any way except by grunting in Thracian. I just wanted people who would stand beside him if there was real trouble."

  She laughed briefly. "Beside him and in front me, of course," she said, "but I didn't need to tell Lenatus that. I think he felt rather honored. I've never quite understood that, but men of the right sort generally do."

  Of course men feel honored to be given a chance to die for you, Alphena thought, suddenly angry. And don't tell me you don't understand why!

  But that wasn't fair to Hedia, who was risking her life too. Or seemed to think she was.

  "Mother?" Alphena said, shifting her thoughts into the new channel with enthusiasm. "What's going to happen? Are we going to attack this Abinnaeus?"

  Hedia's mouth opened for what was obviously intended for full-throated laughter, but she caught herself with a stricken look before a sound came out. Leaning forward, she caught Alphena's wrist between her thumb and two fingers.

  "I'm sorry, dear one," she said. "No, Abinnaeus is a silk merchant with a very fine stock. His shop is in the Portico of Agrippa. My husband Latus' house is just up Broad Street from the portico."

  Alphena saw the older woman's expression cycle quickly through anger to disgust to stony blankness--and finally back to a semblance of amused neutrality. "My former husband's house, I should have said," she said. "And briefly my own, when the lawsuits agai
nst the will were allowed to lapse after your father took up my cause."

  Hedia's lips squirmed in an expression too brief for Alphena to identify it with certainty. It might have been sadness or disgust, or very possibly a combination of those feelings.

  "I got rid of the house as quickly as I could," Hedia said, falling back into a light, conversational tone. "There wasn't anything wrong with it. I didn't have bad memories of it, no more than of any other place, but I didn't want to keep it either. I told Saxa's agent to sell it and invest the money for me. I suppose I have quite a respectable competence now, dear one--by any standards but your father's."

  "Father has never been close with money," Alphena said, thinking of her childhood. She had been angry for as far back as she could remember: angry about the things she couldn't do, either because she was a girl or because she was the particular girl she was.

  She forced the start of a smile, but it then spread naturally and brightened her mood. She said, "I envied you so much, m-mother. Because you're so beautiful."

  The smile slipped, though she fought to retain it. "And I'm not."

  "You're striking," Hedia said, touching Alphena's wrist again to emphasize the intensity she projected. "In a good way, a way that shows up much better in daylight than I can."

  She leaned back, suddenly regally cool. "If you want that," she said. "Not if you're going to wear clodhoppers--"

  She gestured dismissively toward Alphena's feet.

  "--and scowl at everyone as though you'd like to slit their throats, though. Do you want that? Do you want people to say you're beautiful?"

  Hedia grinned like a cat. "That is," she said, "do you want it enough that you're willing to spend as much effort on it as you do now on hacking at a stake, or as your brother does on reading Lucilius and similarly dull people who didn't even write Latin that ordinary people can understand?"