Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories

by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei

  “I—” Herosilla said. She paused, stunned when her mind burst through the wall it had raised to protect her from the full horror of her situation.

  She wanted to return to civilization. There was no civilization. Rome didn’t exist. Athens and the other cities of Greece would scarcely be intellectual centers in this age. Writing was a new art, and literature was limited to drinking songs and oral renditions of Homer.

  Should she go to Egypt, the source of so many of the beggars clogging the streets of Rome in her day?

  Or should she simply open a vein and end this misery?

  Herosilla stiffened. Weakness was the worst of vices; worse even than ignorance. “King Amulius,” she said in a firm voice. “Provide me with a house and servants. There are many things I can teach you.”

  The laughter was louder this time. Amulius grinned; his staffbearer said something to him in a normal voice, but the crowd’s merriment hid the words.

  “Are you a goddess after all, then?” the king said when the noise had died down. “Only, I thought goddesses would be able to speak proper Latin.”

  Everybody laughed again.

  “Of course I’m not a goddess, you witless clods!” Herosilla shouted. That she could speak their barbarous dialect even with an accent made her a marvel of her own time—but this wasn’t her time. “I’m Flavia Herosilla, one of the most learned persons of any age, let alone this swamp of mud and boorishness! You should provide me with the basic amenities because I’m the closest thing to civilization that you’ll ever see!”

  The laughter finally ended. Romulus and Remus edged close to either side of her, disconcerted by the turn of events.

  Herosilla doubted anyone in the crowd had heard her outburst. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they did. Amulius was a worm, not a man who might have had her executed for telling him the blunt truth.

  “Well, Flavia Herosilla,” Amulius said with false geniality. “I suspect you can get something for that shawl you’re wearing. As for the rest of your needs…”

  He gestured toward Romulus. “You men. You’re the sons of Faustulus, my herdsman at Palatium, aren’t you?”

  “You know we are,” Romulus growled, too angry to claim heavenly parentage.

  “Since you found her,” the king said, “I give you full responsibility for her. She’ll no doubt teach you many things. Now, is there other business to come before me?”

  Herosilla turned and walked away. She was blind with rage. Citizens moved out of her way, but Remus put a hand on her arm to stop her before she collided with a house at the far end of the forum. The brothers were beside her, wearing troubled expressions.

  “The ignorant fools,” Herosilla said.

  “They didn’t see you come from the lightning,” Remus said. “If I hadn’t been there myself…” He shrugged.

  “I would have believed!” Romulus said.

  “You’d believe the sun rises in the west if you thought it would prove you were king!” Herosilla snapped. Open anger immediately made her feel better. She tossed her head, shaking the cobwebs loose from her brain.

  Amulius and his advisers were ignorant fools, but that had been true of most people in Herosilla’s own day. She was a fool herself to have thought the situation would be better during the barbarous past. The question before her was what to do now?

  Her clothing and jewelry was unique and doubtless valuable in this age. Unfortunately, no one in Alba—and perhaps no one in Italy—had sufficient long-term capital to pay the amount Herosilla would need to live the remainder of her life in reasonable comfort. Any ruler who did have that wealth probably had also the will and ability to take the items by force from a friendless stranger.

  She supposed she could live in Palatium on the villagers’ charity. She visualized the prospect: she couldn’t imagine any existence that would be more dreary and miserable. There didn’t seem—

  “So you two own her, huh?” said an unfamiliar voice. Herosilla looked around. A local man had walked over to the brothers. He wore an iron ring on his right index finger and a russet cloak over a tunic with a patterned border. The garb and his fat belly marked him as one of Alba’s leading citizens.

  “Go away,” Romulus said.

  “Now, don’t be hasty,” the fat man said. He was clean-shaven, but his bushy mustache flowed into his sideburns. “I was hoping we could do business. I think she might clean up into something interesting.”

  He gripped Herosilla’s jaw with a thumb and forefinger to turn her face in profile. She slapped his hand away in amazement.

  The man chuckled. “Now, she’d have to stay in Palatium,” he continued. “My wife would—”

  “You moronic pig!” Herosilla shouted. She kicked at the man’s crotch. The purse hanging from his belt got in the way. Nearby citizens turned to watch the commotion. “You fat cretin! I’d fling myself off the Tarpeian Rock before I’d let you touch me!”

  The local backed away, then turned. A heavily-built woman wearing a mantilla of imported lace trotted out of the crowd. She made a beeline for him. The man began mouthing excuses, but they obviously weren’t going to do him any good.

  “We’d better get out of here,” Remus said somberly. “I want to get home before dark. I don’t trust Numitor if we give him time to prepare something.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Romulus said. His voice rasped like a file cutting iron.

  The three of them strode through Alba in silence. When they reached the path down to the lake and home, Remus said, “Lady?”

  “Yes,” Herosilla said.

  “I was wondering…” Remus said. “What is the Tarpeian Rock?”

  “Why,” Herosilla said in amazement, “it’s the outcrop on the Capitolium where—”

  She stopped. The story of Tarpeia betraying Rome to the invading Sabines hadn’t occurred yet. There wasn’t a city to betray.

  “I’ll show you some day,” Herosilla said. After a moment she went on, “I can see that if I’m to live in civilized surroundings, I’m going to have to create them myself. Which I will!”

  The vermin in the bed she shared with Acca didn’t keep Herosilla from getting to sleep, nor did the bustle of the shepherds taking out their flocks awaken her in the morning. Only when the sun found a gap in the clouds and streamed past the hut’s half-closed door did she rouse from dreams as sharp-edged as the walls of a Greek temple.

  Herosilla straightened her legs and groaned. She ached in every muscle, even those she wouldn’t have thought had anything to do with walking.

  Acca opened the door fully. “Are you up, dearie?” she said. “I have some breakfast for you here.”

  Herosilla thrust her feet into her own sandals. They wouldn’t have lasted a mile of the journey to Alba, but the loose-fitting local products she’d worn instead—hide wrappers, really—rubbed blisters in several places. She stumbled out to join her hostess.

  Acca handed her a wooden mug of beer and an ashcake made from left-over porridge cooked all night on a flat rock beside the fire. Herosilla thought she could get used to the beer in time. There was nothing in Palatium to drink except beer or water, and she didn’t trust water from the shallow well near the sheep pen.

  There was probably wine in Alba; certainly there would be in Cumae. It wasn’t Herosilla’s first priority, but she’d see to it in time.

  “It didn’t go as you’d hoped, the boys told me,” Acca said as Herosilla began to eat. None of the other women joined them, though most watched Herosilla as they continued with their own tasks. Ganea, Romulus’ doxy, glared briefly before she went back to chopping vegetables against a treetrunk split to form a flat surface.

  Herosilla dipped the ashcake into the beer to soften it. “Not yet,” she said. “It will eventually.”

  She looked around the straggling village. She hadn’t paid it much attention before; hadn’t been here in daylight except a snatch the previous morning before she set out to Alba with the brothers.

  Drainag
e ditches would be fairly easy. Paving or at least stepping stones shouldn’t be difficult either. Improvements to the water supply were trickier, but hollowed logs could bring adequate clean water from a distance. She wasn’t an engineer, but her studies in natural philosophy provided a basic awareness of slope and flow.

  Herosilla swallowed the bite she was chewing and said, “Tell me about your sons. Is Faustulus really their father?”

  Acca looked around to see if any villagers were nearby. She said, “I suppose I’d better tell you about myself. Most of those who knew are dead or they’ve forgotten…”

  She stared at the backs of her spread hands. “It was a long time ago.”

  Herosilla dipped more ashcake and waited.

  “I was betrothed to Faustulus as a girl,” Acca continued, raising her eyes to Herosilla’s. “But a trader came by, a Greek like you. Not so fancy as you, lady, but…I’d never seen clothes like he wore, and he had lovely bronzeware on his donkey.”

  “I understand,” Herosilla said. She didn’t, really; her own affairs—in all senses—had been arranged after a cold balancing of costs and benefits. She’d seen the normal cycle of passion and disaster often enough in others, though.

  “So I went to Cumae with him for a year,” Acca said in a quiet, calm voice. “That’s where I learned to speak Greek, lady. But when he went home to Chalcis, I, well, he didn’t take me. I came back to Palatium and Faustulus married me as if nothing had happened.”

  She added fiercely, “He’s a good man.”

  “Ah!” said Herosilla at what she thought was a light dawning. “So the boys weren’t really suckled by a wolf. ‘She-wolf’ is just the slang your people used for prostitute.”

  “What?” Acca said. She frowned. “I’d never heard that.”

  The older woman’s mouth opened in amazement as the implications sank in. “You mean you think I’m a whore because I spent some time with the wrong man? Oh, lady! Is it like that with your people?”

  Herosilla thought of the morals of her age. Of her own morals, for that matter; though she’d never considered that what she chose to do with her own body was a moral question.

  “No,” she said. “I certainly didn’t mean that. I apologize for giving the impression that I did.”

  Acca smiled wryly. “Though I’ve been lucky,” she admitted. “There’s few enough husbands who wouldn’t have thrown the business in my face a time or two when we argued. Faustulus is a good man.”

  “I see that,” Herosilla said. This time she meant the words as more than a placeholder to entice a story from the embarrassed teller.

  “Anyway, Faustulus took a flock to Alba a few days after I gave birth,” Acca continued. “Gave birth to his son—it was a year and more since I’d come back from Cumae. There was a babe, a little boy, left to die by the lakeside. Faustulus couldn’t let that happen, he’s too soft hearted. He brought it to me to raise with our own.”

  She shrugged. “What could I say, lady? When he’d been so kind to me? We’ve brought them both up the same with no differences between them.”

  “Was Numitor’s daughter Rhea the mother?” Herosilla asked.

  Acca dipped her chin in denial. “Rhea and her baby died at the birthing,” she said. “I knew the midwife. There’s some believe that Numitor was more than the child’s grandfather, if you catch my drift.”

  She looked toward the distant horizon, thinking about the past. “The mother of the child my husband found was just some girl who got into trouble and took the only way out. I was lucky it wasn’t me, off in Cumae.”

  “But it’s still true that Romulus isn’t your son?” Herosilla prodded gently.

  “Romulus?” Acca said. “Oh, no, he’s our son all right. It was Remus that my husband found by Alba.”

  The old woman shook her head in amusement. “I’ve never understood where Romulus gets his notions. The only thing special about his father—”

  Her tone hardened.

  “—is that Faustulus is a better man than any other I’ve met!”

  The afternoon rain had passed; the sky to the west was clearing enough to let reddened sunlight through again. “They’re coming,” said Acca. “That’s Grayleg, my boys’ ram.”

  Herosilla turned. She’d been sketching a drainage plan in the soft ground, using a long stick so that she didn’t have to bend. If she listened carefully she could hear sheep and a faint clatter that could have been the bellwether’s neck rattle, but it was hard to believe Acca could identify the sound as that of a particular ram.

  “Mostly my boys are the last in,” Acca said with quiet pride. “In case there’s trouble with Numitor, you know. But because of tomorrow they’re coming in early.”

  Sheep came over the crest of the hill behind the brothers’ gray ram, as Acca had predicted. Romulus and Remus walked at the back of the flock.

  Remus played a simple tune on a reed pipe. Wax stopped the bottom of the single tube; he varied the notes by opening or closing holes in the shaft with his fingertips.

  Ganea ran to Romulus and ostentatiously kissed him. Remus stuck the pipe through his sash and called, “I see you’re able to move today, lady. Last night we weren’t sure.”

  “I’m in perfectly fit condition,” she said sharply. “Walking through mud was an unfamiliar exercise, but I assure you I’ll adapt.”

  The women of the village were taking the sheep in charge. Ganea tried to hold Romulus with her, but he shook her curtly from his arm and walked over to see what his brother and Herosilla were discussing.

  “If I’m to live in Palatium, as it appears that I am for a time,” Herosilla said, including Romulus with her eyes, “then I intend to pay my way by improving the life of everyone in the community.”

  She allowed herself a self-deprecating smile. “My own included, of course. Tomorrow we can start with detailed planning of the drainage route I’ve sketched to direct waste and rain water away from the village.”

  Other herdsmen were bringing in their flocks. Pressure in their udders made the fresh ewes eager to be milked, and the other sheep were too strongly group conscious to hang back from a general movement.

  “We can’t do it tomorrow, lady,” Romulus said. His tone suggested that he didn’t like to get orders from females, even females he thought might be divine.

  “You two and your father are the leaders of the community,” Herosilla said, “and he can’t walk the ground. I don’t expect you to do the digging by yourselves, but—”

  “It’s not that, lady,” Remus said apologetically. “The two of us with Roscio and Celer have a religious rite tomorrow we call the Lupercal. We run—”

  “I know what the Lupercal is,” Herosilla snapped. “Who do you think—”

  She caught herself. The brothers thought she was a foreigner who wouldn’t understand a fertility rite unique to their village—nude men, Luperci, running around the Palatine daubed with the blood of a sacrifice to ensure the success of the Spring lambing season.

  “Ah,” she said. “I, ah—” the word ‘apologize’ caught in her throat. “I’m familiar with the Lupercalia, that is.”

  Another piece fell into place in the legends of a thousand years later. “Oh!” Herosilla said. “But you can’t run the Lupercalia tomorrow. Numitor’s men will attack you while you’re unarmed!”

  “Is she on about the future again, Romulus?” asked Celer, the toady Herosilla had noticed the day before. Returning shepherds were joining the brothers after handing their flocks over to the women.

  “Go talk to your sheep, Celer,” Remus said. “You may know something a sheep’d be interested in hearing.”

  He turned to Herosilla and continued more gently, “Lady, we’ve lived with Numitor’s threats for a long time. We can’t hide all day because we’re afraid of him.”

  “Listen to what I’m saying, you numskull!” Herosilla said. “Numitor is planning to ambush you. No buts, ifs, or maybes. You can’t run the Lupercal, period.”

  “You’
ve seen this, lady?” Romulus said. He was frowning, though perhaps as much at Herosilla’s tone as at what she was saying. “Or your god whispered it in your ear?”

  “I read it!” Herosilla said. “I—”

  Her own mind put her suddenly more on the defensive than anything these yokels could say. She’d always believed the accounts of Rome’s founding were legends or worse, fictions invented by historians of later centuries to inflate the genealogies of rich patrons in their own day. There was obviously some truth in the legends; she had the evidence of her own eyes as proof.

  That didn’t mean that every detail—the attack on the Luperci, for example—was accurate. Even if the story was basically true Herosilla couldn’t be sure the attack would occur this year rather than next year or ten years in the future.

  Unless of course a god or gods was controlling events, using Flavia Herosilla as a pawn. That thought made her very uncomfortable.

  “What’s reading, Romulus?” Roscio asked.

  What an age, what a world! “An activity for which you are wholly unsuited, Roscio,” Herosilla said aloud. “Like childbirth!”

  “Well, we appreciate your concern, lady,” Remus said in obvious embarrassment. “We’ll come look over the drainage with you in the next few days. Right now we’ve got things to get ready for the morning.”

  The brothers turned away, drawing the remaining shepherds with them. Celer said something that made several others laugh. Remus didn’t smile; nor, more surprisingly, did Romulus.

  The moon lit the tops of reeds growing below Herosilla, where the Forum would be. The broad valley would be a swamp during the winter rains until the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer, was built to drain it in a century or so.

  Beyond the Forum Herosilla could see the corner of the Capitoline Hill from which the Tarpeian Rock jutted. During the Republic murderers were flung to their death from the outcrop. The emperors had substituted more refined methods of execution.

  She didn’t turn when she heard footsteps behind her. The slope before her was steep enough that death for herself and her attacker would be the probable result if she launched herself outward. Either outcome would satisfy her in her present state of mind. Herosilla tensed, waiting for the hands to grip her shoulder.