Right, Gratillonius thought as he went forth again. Not that any conspiracy was afoot. Corentinus merely wanted Bacca’s nose out of it. Therefore Apuleius, who was hosting the procurator, couldn’t be on hand. However, no doubt senator and bishop had gone into the matter today in private.
How to cope with the; new order of things. First and foremost, Gratillonius supposed, how to keep the taxes from grinding Confluentes away. The rates Bacca brought were out of all proportion to what the colony was as yet able to produce. Apuleius could stave off ruin for a space—appeals which wouldn’t be granted but which would consume time, loans from the Aquilonian treasury or his own purse, lean though both were getting—but sooner or later, one way or another, payment must be dug up. And he, Gratillonius, the curial, must do the digging. From the land and the flesh of his people? No, he was their leader, their defender; but the state had forbidden him to work for their defense; but somehow—
Wind flapped the edges of his cloak and streamed chill over his skin. It brawled in trees along the river road. The water ran darkling. Light flickered across it, cast by a near-half moon that fled between rags of cloud above the western fields. Shelter waited in the bishops house. Corentinus would surely start by asking after Julia. He’d give thanks for the safe birth, but in a few words, man to man with the saints; then he’d lead the way to his table, rough fare but hearty, and fill the mead cups, or maybe wine for celebration and defiance. It might be like old days in Ys, or at least like the time afterward when they’d worked together for the survival of the folk, before this miserable breach opened between them.
The gate of Aquilo stood wide as usual. Bacca had tut-tutted at that, the first night. Gratillonius explained there was nothing to fear, so far. Bacca made remarks about not allowing people to go in and out freely after dark, lest they be tempted to lawlessness.
The streets were, in fact, deserted save for the wind. Gratillonius passed Apuleius’s home. Every pane was aglow. Nothing too good for the procurator. Runa meant to give him a banquet herself before he left. Gratillonius had been inventing excuses for not attending.
A white form flitted out of the portico shadows and down the stairs. For an instant his heart recoiled from ghosts, then he told himself sharply that no matter how weary he was, he had no business being a fool, and then she reached him and he saw, barely, by what light the moon and the windows cast, that it was Verania.
“Hoy, what’s this?” he exclaimed.
Tears glistened. “I waited,” she gasped. He saw how she trembled in her mere gown, how her hair was gone disheveled. She had not dared take a cloak. Somebody might have noticed.
“Whatever for?” When had they last met, except in passing on his infrequent visits?
“T-to tell you—Gratillonius—”
How had she known he’d come by tonight? She must have overheard her father and Corentinus. Or had she listened beyond the door?
“You’re still the King of Ys!” she cried, and whirled and ran back. He heard the weeping break loose.
Bewildered, he stood where he was. The house took her into itself and closed up again.
What a girl, he thought after a moment. Something wild dwelt within that quietness. But no, not a girl any longer, a young woman, and fair to see. What was her age now—sixteen, seventeen? More or less the same as Dahilis’s when Gratillonius came to her.
Or Dahut’s when she died.
It was as if the wind blew between his ribs. He hastened onward.
4
“You humiliated me,” Runa said. “You disgraced yourself. Begging off from my feast for the procurator—You might at least have considered how that damages your position with the state. You claim so much concern for my people. But no, nothing counted besides your own wishes.”
Because she had chosen to speak in Latin, Gratillonius did likewise. “I tell you again, it was urgent I go reassure those two important headmen who weren’t at the assembly.”
“You lie.” She kept the same monotone, colder than the rain which roared outside and made blindness in the windowpanes of the old manor house. “It could have waited till he was gone.”
It could have. Gratillonius had flat-out judged he’d be unable to spend any more hours deferring to Bacca. A fight would have spelled disaster.
“You simply didn’t care,” Runa said. “Not about me or the people or anything other than getting back among the oafs you feel comfortable with.”
Despite lamps, the room was gloomy. A saint on a wall panel—big-eyed, elongated, stiff, centuries and a world removed from ancestral Rome—stared through shadows whose dance in the draft made him seem to move also, as if pronouncing an anathema. The hypocaust kept floor tiles warm, but cold air slunk around ankles and even at head level you breathed dankness.
Today Runa resembled the saint, narrow face, upright stance, implacable righteousness. “I have borne with you,” she said. “I have suffered your arrogance, your brutishness, your utter lack of any consideration, hoping God would unseal your eyes as He was pleased to unseal mine. But no. You keep them shut, willfully. All that matters to you is yourself.”
Gratillonius looked down at his hands and sought to curb his temper. He could slap her, but what was the use? “You’re not like your mother,” he told her. “She consigned me to hell in a few words. How long do you mean to go on?”
“Oh! Now you insult my mother! Well, knowing you, I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Somehow he felt a sudden tug of pity. We were quite close, he thought while he said the same words aloud. “Have you really turned altogether against me?” he added.
She brought fingers to bosom. “It hurts me, it hurts me more than you can possibly know. But you have already given me so many wounds. This has only been the latest of them. The last, God willing.”
“Then you’re breaking with me.” He was about to voice the hope that they could still work in tandem.
“I am leaving this wretched place,” she said.
He gaped. “Huh? How—where—”
“Procurator Bacca has most kindly invited me to accompany him to Turonum.”
“What?” Too taken aback for thought, he heard his tongue: “How’s he in bed? I’d guess he spends the whole night explaining this will be for the good of the state.”
She reached claws toward him, withdrew them, and clipped, “That will do. For your information, I’m finished with sin. In Turonum I’ll be baptized and join the community of holy women.”
Gratillonius recalled vaguely that Martinus had founded such a thing, corresponding to the monastery.
“And I shall be with civilized persons.”
Aye, the tale was that Martinus’s successor Bricius held that total austerity was outmoded; it became a master of the Church to live somewhat like the masters of the world with whom he dealt. Runa should do well enough—she wasn’t addicted to luxury—and find congenial company in the magnates, especially as she rose to a commanding position among her women. She’d do that, he felt sure.
“The celibacy oughtn’t to be any hardship,” he said. That might be unfair, though in fact she had responded less and less to his attentions as time went on, and found more and more occasions to avoid them.
Color tinged those sharp cheekbones. “It is a sacrifice I pray will be acceptable to God. I have so much to atone for. Satan was everywhere. Heathendom—fornication, outright incest, with you—lending your daughter my agreement to her running off with everything that that led to—seeking the death of her unborn child for her—and doing away with yours, Gratillonius!”
Her look challenged him. She strained arms back and breasts forward, like a Trojan woman before an Achaean sword.
Maybe later he’d be appalled. In this hour he felt nothing beyond … a vague sense of release? “I suspected,” he said tonelessly. “But I never pursued the thought, I let it skulk aside, because you were my mate and Id cause to be thankful to you, most of all that you freed me from the ghosts of the Nine, but for other things as
well.”
“And you didn’t care,” she said after a minute. “You wouldn’t. You can’t. I wonder if you haven’t been a penance God set me.”
Derision: Is that sound Christian doctrine? Doesn’t baptism wash every past sin away? It’s the ones afterward that count.
“I will try hard to forgive what you’ve done to me,” she said. “1 will pray for your salvation. But I’ll pray more that God not allow you to lead others astray.”
“Goodbye.” He turned and walked out.
He heard her follow. “What?” she yelled. “You depart like that? You haven’t the simple courtesy to listen?”
“The law doesn’t require it,” he replied over his shoulder.
“You haven’t the courage, that’s what! You don’t dare hear about the harm you’ve done me.”
I am afraid, he refrained from saying. If I stayed longer I might well strike you, and that could break your neck.
The first breath of regret touched him. “I wish things had ended differently,” he confessed.
Still he didn’t look behind. In the entry he retrieved his drenched paenula and pulled it over his head. The wind caught at the door as he opened it. He pushed it back shut and went off through the storm toward Confluentes.
XIII
1
Winter heaven hung featureless gray. Trees could well-nigh snag it in their twigs. Mists drifted through raw air. The drip off boughs was the only sound there was, save when dead leaves stirred soddenly underfoot.
Then Bannon said, “Here it is.’
He did not call Gratillonius “lord” as aforetime, but it was Gratillonius whom he had sought. “I came to you myself, ’stead of sending the hunter who found the thing, because ’tis a matter for chiefs,” he had related in the house. “You know about the outside world, what the Romans might make of this if they hear, maybe even who could have done it—for surely no Osismiic man would, unless he be mad.” The pair of them had gone off into the forest without telling anyone else.
Folk shunned the spot they came to, believing it a haunt of vengeful wraiths and what was worse yet. The man from Dochaldun had only dared them, by daylight, when helping to search the woods for two children missing from the village. What he saw sent him running home while he clutched his lucky piece and babbled charms against horror.
Amidst osier and sedge crowding a pool, a boulder that looked like an altar for trolls heaved up its mass. Nearby stood a great beech. Lightning had blasted it long ago, and fire gouged out a hollow. Gratillonius squatted to peer inside. He spent a few heartbeats finding what Bannon pointed at, for it was very small, discolored nearly as dark as the char, and begrown with some of the fungus that clustered on the bark outside. In a few more years it would molder quite to nothing.
He stared into the eye sockets. “This is naught of the little ones you’ve lost,” he said low. “They were old enough to walk. This is the skull of a suckling babe, maybe a newborn. And ’tis been here a while.”
“It has that,” Bannon answered grimly, “for ’tis pegged in place. No wolf does such a thing.”
Gratillonius saw and felt for himself, nodded, and rose. “A human sacrifice.”
“Not by any of us, I tell you!”
“Of course.” Stories of bloody rites in olden times might or might not be true, but the Romans had certainly exterminated the druids in Gallia. The pagan Gods whom most rustic Armoricans still worshipped were content with fruits of the earth, the mightiest of Them with an animal on Their high holy days.
“Some madman in the past, or a stray barbarian, or who knows what?” Gratillonius said. “I’ll see to the burial of this poor shard if you wish. Why should you care?”
“The children we’ve lost—”
“Children are forever wandering off, and not always found again. I’m sorry, but so ’tis. It has naught to do with this.”
Bannon seized Gratillonius by the wrist. “Does it? Can you swear no black wizard goes abroad, stealing our young for his cauldron? My thorp will be wanting more than words.”
Gratillonius understood. The knowledge was heavy as the sky. “You’d fain talk to Nemeta,” he said.
Bannon nodded. “I’d not be recklessly accusing of her. She’s done well by us in the woods.” His features tightened. “But we must make sure.”
“And I—”
“If she’s guiltless, maybe she can find out the truth. We’ve hardly anything to pay her with at this season, though. I asked you along also for coming with me to her. It may help. You are a just man. We have few just men any more.”
Unspoken was the likelihood that, if the tribesmen thought she was a murderess after all and her father was trying to shield her, they would kill both.
—Flames flickered in lamps. Brightest burned a Roman one. The bronze and oil were witch-wage lately earned. Darkness had fallen as the two men reached the oak by the Stegir which Gratillonius remembered so well. Nemeta bade them come inside her cabin and spend the night before starting back.
Seated on stools, wooden cups of mead in their hands, they looked up at her where she stood. Barefoot despite the chill, she nonetheless wore a gown of finely woven wool, close-fitted to her litheness. The red hair smoldered, the green eyes gleamed through shifting shadow. It came to Gratillonius that his scrawny girl had become a woman to kindle desire; but the beauty was somehow more hawk or vixen than it was human.
“Epona hunt me through hell if I lie.” Her voice moved cat-soft around the things that hung on the walls. “Never have I harmed child of yours or of any living man.”
Bannon looked toward Gratillonius. Someone must say it. Gratillonius lifted the load, he felt as if it were about to break his bones, and answered, “Your own was lost, a year and a half agone.”
Her gaze scorned him. “It was. Would you make trial of me? I will meet the hounds, or whatever ordeal you name, and the Gods will uphold me.”
“Nay, I meant not that!” he croaked in Ysan.
“You are a witch—” Bannon stopped short. Nemeta played her glance over him and fleetingly grinned. Unless a Power intervened, she would be safe in any test that called on the World Beyond.
The chief cleared his throat. “None of us want to blame you,” he said. “’Twould be ill for us too.” Again she grinned. If the Romans heard of manslayings to pagan Gods, they might well send soldiers to strike down men and burn down homes. “But must we go in dread this’ll happen afresh, or has happened? Can you find our little ones for us, wisewoman?”
Nemeta shook her head. In the uneasy light, Gratillonius could not make out whether compassion crossed her face. “I’ve been asked the same erenow,” she said. “Maybe in later years; but as yet my arts are slight, and—the forest Gods keep the secrets of Their beasts.”
“The killer, then. Can you track him for us, that we may make an end of him?”
She stood still a while. Through the shutters they heard an owl hoot, once, twice, thrice.
“He’s a dangerous one to deal with,” she said slowly, “for an offering like that, if made aright, feeds strange strengths. I’ve doubt I can cast a net over such a man. Yet surely we should rid the land of him. And soon, ere his might grows more.”
Gratillonius read meaning in her tone. Fear stabbed. Bannon understood too, in fierce joy, and exclaimed, “You know who he is?”
“I do not,” Nemeta answered. “I only know who he might be, and I could be mistaken.”
“Who?”
“Cadoc Himilco, the trailmaker from Confluentes.”
Gratillonius dropped his cup and leaped to his feet. “Nay, this is moonstruck:” he roared in Ysan. “Have done!”
Bannon rose beside him, to say with hand on knife, “Let her speak.”
“But he—I know him, you do yourself, Nemeta, your own sister’s husband,” Gratillonius stammered. “And a Christian.”
“He has indeed plagued us with his Christ, has he not?” Nemeta said to Bannon.
The Gaul nodded. “He has. A pest.
A threat, maybe; he talks of overthrowing the shrines. But—”
“Men have lied about their faith often enough,” Nemeta said. “Some did out of fear, others—well, Cadoc does range the wilderness wherever he likes. Who knows what he does there, or why? I’ve had feelings about him that crawled within me.”
“Why, you need only talk with him to know him sinless,” Gratillonius protested.
“Unless you are Nemeta and have witch-sight?” Bannon growled.
She lifted a hand as if to ward her father off. “I say naught for certain,” she reminded. “He may be harmless. You should hear him out.”
“He’s away.” Sickness caught Gratillonius by the throat. “We run the survey in all seasons.”
“When he returns, we will ask of him,” vowed Bannon.
Nemeta smiled. “Meanwhile, best keep silence about this,” she proposed.
Gratillonius knew that would be impossible, once Bannon brought home the tidings.
2
Daily the rumor grew. Gratillonius became fully aware of it when Julia came to him weeping, half crazed. “They mutter those things about Cadoc—one loyal maid warned me, one—I listened when they knew not I was nigh—What will become of him? Of our Johannes? Oh, father—”
He held her close, consoled her to the pitiful degree he was able, at least got her quieted by his promises, then went to Corentinus.
“I’ve heard,” the bishop said. He had ears in many places. “Of course it’s baseless. Those children simply fell prey to misfortune, and as for the babe that was sacrificed, Christ Himself would testify to Cadoc’s innocence. But pagans live without His comfort, you know. They’re all too apt to see magic and malice at work when anything goes wrong. These endless winter nights drive everybody a bit crazy, too. Hatred is easier to live with than fear; it gives you someone to attack. And … I’m afraid Cadoc has made himself disliked among the backwoodsmen. He’s been too zealous. Evangelism isn’t his proper calling. I’ll speak to him about that.”
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