Gratillonius had excused himself from sitting down—“I’m too restless”—so Apuleius courteously kept his own feet as the other man prowled. He had already had an account of the fight, heartily approved, softly offered sympathy at the way it ended. Today they both had work on hand.
“You’re right, we must move fast,” Apuleius said. “I can find three or four reliable agents; can you name one or two more? … Good. The captured galleys, I think we’d better resign ourselves to selling dirt cheap in Gesocribate.”
“No, I want to keep them,’ Gratillonius answered. “I’ve a notion they may come in useful.”
“Hm? Well, as you like. But leave them in some obscure place, a cove or stream or whatever, well away from here. We don’t want to be found in possession of them. Those few Scoti you took alive are less urgent, since they don’t speak Latin or Osismiic. I know a dealer who’ll take them on consignment. Don’t expect to get rich from that sale, either. The breed is considered too fierce for domestic service.”
“I wasn’t counting on much there,” Gratillonius said impatiently. “What about the gold and silver, though? Coins, jewelry, plate. We found expensive cloth stuff too, and spices and wine and that sort of thing.”
“It can be stowed in private places. We want to move it rather slowly, piecemeal, so as not to attract attention.”
“But damnation, we need the money! I’ve given the men or their heirs their parts.”
“I know. That’s all right, because it’s thinly spread among unnotable persons. If their lot suddenly betters a little, who’s to notice?”
“The Imperium has its eyes. Postal couriers, for instance.”
Apuleius stroked his chin and smiled, “Of course. But our local observers report first to me. Over the years, I’ve seen to it that their stations are filled by … trustworthy men. An elementary precaution, commonly taken.”
Gratillonius held to his purpose. “You and I can’t help being noticed. And we’ve expenses we’ve got to meet. First and foremost, the fu—the bloody taxes. Half the reason I organized that operation was the hope of getting the means to pay them for the next several years.”
“Oh, we will, never fear. It’s simply that we can’t hand over a bag of solidi. That would raise questions, especially since the assessments are normally paid in kind. We’ll dispatch Evirion down the coast—Portus Namnetum comes to mind—where he’ll buy what’s required. It will surprise them in Turonum. However, they’ll have no way of proving the Confluentians didn’t grow most of it themselves and that a wealthy wellwisher who prefers to remain anonymous—God does not like us to make a show of our charities—came up with the shortfall.”
An oath escaped Gratillonius’s teeth. “All this to go through, because we dared fight a pack of barbarian robbers!”
Apuleius signed. “So it is. We must be most careful, you and I, about what we admit to. The fact of the battle cannot be concealed. There must be no evidence that you planned and organized the movement.”
“Certainly not.”
“How have you meant to protect yourself and your men from charges of forming a local militia?”
“Well, you see, it wasn’t; it isn’t; not really. The ordinary man who was there—if the authorities interrogate him, all he knows is that the word went around that something must be done about those pirates, and he decided to join in. As for me, I’ll say that when I learned this was afoot, I thought I’d better provide leadership, or the fellows would be slaughtered.”
“A weak story.”
Gratillonius halted in his tracks and glared. “Well, what would you say?”
“I would obfuscate.” Apuleius smiled afresh. “Let me be your mentor and generally your spokesman. A man in my position learns how to misdirect unwelcome attentions and bog down unwanted proceedings. You needn’t pack for flight nor lose any sleep. Whatever investigation takes place will be undermanned and perfunctory, because in fact there is nothing clear-cut to find. People were desperate; you stepped in to mitigate the emergency; you have not subsequently maintained any kind of private army. Believe me, Glabrio won’t complain to the praetorian prefect. The risk is too high that he would be reprimanded, perhaps demoted, for letting the things happen that did. However, preserving you depends on keeping the details of actual events vague. Don’t talk about it more than you absolutely must, not even to your Ysans. Above all, don’t boast.”
“I’ve no wish to do that,” said Gratillonius grimly.
Relief and thankfulness burst through. He held out his hand. “By Hercules, Apuleius, I thought I could count on you, but this—you’re a friend!”
The senator took his arm in the old Roman manner and murmured, “What else? Praise God I can again be what I’ve longed to be.”
“We’ll work out details. But right now, it’s like … coming home from exile.” Horror and grief came along, but hushedly, things he could set aside most of the time as a man sets aside the pain of an unhealable wound while he goes about his proper business and daily life the best way he is able.
“It’s grand of you—Oh, I understand how it must hurt, playing this kind of tricks with the law you’ve always honored,” Gratillonius said awkwardly.
The response was grave: “That law conflicts with a higher one.”
Gratillonius nodded. “The Church’s. Christ’s. It is … better, surely, than the state’s. So it must be higher.”
Apuleius caught his breath. “I expected you’d talk only of honor.”
“Where does honor spring from? I’ve asked Corentinus to explain. This time I’ll listen.”
“Oh, my beloved friend. My brother.” Apuleius embraced Gratillonius, who returned the clasp.
Presently they left the room to get a bit of food and a stoup of the best wine in the house. They joked and laughed a great deal, nothing maudlin about them! Verania entered the triclinium just when they did. It was as if she brought the summer day inside with her.
4
News from the South that year had people back on the hook. Once more Alaric and his Visigoths invaded Italy. At Verona they took a resounding defeat and withdrew. Once more Stilicho failed to follow up his victory and do away with them. Instead he arranged for their settlement in the Savus Valley, astride the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia. Emperor Honorius gave himself a triumph in Rome, the first that that city had witnessed in more than a century.
Procurator Bacca secretly called his agent Nagon Demari to his house in Turonum. They met alone at night. Without Glabrio they could sit over drink and talk more or less freely.
“An interesting communication has arrived,” Bacca said. Candlelight filled the hollows of his face with darkness.
Nagon leaned over the table. “What?” he rasped.
“Tribune Apuleius of Aquilo writes, largely on behalf of his associate, the curial Gratillonius, that we should cancel confiscation proceedings. The taxes from Confluentes will be paid in full.”
The stocky man sat back, aghast. “Name of God! How?”
“You’ll try to find that out when you go to collect, of course. I doubt you’ll learn much or that the source will be anything we can lay hands on. It will be the same as with identifying runaways who’ve settled there or going after the Bacaudae in the woods. Nobody is disobedient, but nobody is competent either, or able to attend to the matter at this moment, and so nothing gets done. I’ll pass on to you what little I’ve discovered.”
Nagon smote the tabletop. “Is Satan at work?”
“Shrewd minds are, at least. Backed by strong arms. And … I hear the natives thereabouts are feeling their oats since the Scoti were trounced. Be very polite and circumspect when you call on them. We don’t want to stir them up further. Besides, I’d be sorry to lose you.”
Nagon gnawed his lip and ran fingers through his sandy-gray hair.
“Not that I propose to leave them in their contumacy,” Bacca went on. “We both know that Confluentes is a tumor that must be excised for the health of the state. Unfor
tunately, certain highly placed men have not seen this for themselves. They would deny our diagnosis and refuse to allow the surgery.”
Nagon caught the other’s drift. He straightened on his bench and thrust out his jaw. “I am ready, sir.”
Bacca smiled. “I knew you would be. Careful, though. Discretion is of the essence. I have a tentative plan. While you are there, you will study the layout, the whole situation, from the viewpoint of how feasible my idea may be. Report back fully and frankly. It would not do to go ahead with a procedure that is likely to fail and possibly bring grave consequences on us. Nor to rush. If you find it worth attempting, we shall have to wait for the season when it will have maximum effect.” He put elbows on table and fingertips together. “Surgery requires both neatness and proper timing, you know; and the surgeon must hold himself deaf to the screams of the patient.”
5
Rain fell in serried silver. Wind dashed it against walls and windowpanes. The first breath of autumn was in it. Gloom and chill filled the bishops house, for he scorned such worldly comforts as hypocausts; but candleglow made his private room a cave of light.
“You tell me Christ walked the earth as a man,” Gratillonius said. “I’ve been thinking what manhood was His, to die on the Cross when He could have called the legions of Heaven down to save and avenge Him.”
Corentinus smiled. “We each of us see our own Christ,” he replied.
Gratillonius pushed on toward that over which he had lain wakeful. “He stood by His vows and by those He loved. Would He want me to do less?”
Corentinus looked hard from beneath his brows. “What do you mean?”
Gratillonius shifted on his stool, swallowed, and blurted: “You know. My daughter Nemeta. You’ve warned me I’ve got to give up, forswear, heathen things. But she will not. And there she is, alone with her withered arm.”
“God may well have smitten her,” said the stern voice. “Yet still she won’t heed.”
“She can’t. Nor can I forsake her.”
“Not even for your salvation?”
“No.” Gratillonius sighed. “Am I beyond hope? I’ll go.”
“Stay!” rapped Corentinus. He made as if to seize his vistor, drew his hand back, and spoke quickly, in a milder tone: “Surely you didn’t suppose I meant you could have nothing to do with pagans. That’s nonsense. We have to deal with them all the time. There’s nothing wrong with feeling friendship. Our Lord Himself did. Or love—it is commanded. I meant ungodly rites, that sort of thing.”
“Of course. I understood that. But she … practices them. Her house holds a store of witchy tools.”
“I know. Certainly I could never forbid you to call on her, as long as you don’t take part in any abominations. But can’t you bring her the truth?”
“I tried. She came near showing me the door. I won’t try again.”
“Ah, well.” Corentinus sighed like wind spilling from a sail. “I’ll pray for her. And you do the Lord’s work anyway.”
“Hm?”
“A man as widely admired as you. You must be aware. Salutary example. More and more pagans come to hear me when I preach, or make welcome the priests I send out to evangelize. Some have already asked for baptism.”
Gratillonius frowned, hesitated, finally said, “I don’t think I should myself, yet. I couldn’t live up to it.”
“None but a saint can, my son.”
“I, though, I can’t try as hard as I ought. I can’t even wish I could. Too much anger in me.”
“Vengefulness. But also honesty.”
“I’ve been wondering what I should do. Look, I can’t go off for forty days and pray, anything like that. Too bloody much work here.”
Another smile flickered through Corentinus’s beard. “After these sessions we’ve had—” He donned solemnity. “Well, answer this truthfully. Do you believe in—no, I won’t throw the formula at you. Do you believe in the one God, Who sent His only begotten Son to earth—the Son Who with the Holy Spirit is Himself—that we might be saved from our sins and live forever with Him?”
“I do.” I must. I think I must.
“Then you would call yourself a Christian, Gratillonius?”
“I’d … like to.”
“That will do for now. Frankly, I have my doubts whether this new style of early baptism is always a good idea. Be that as it may, what you have just said makes that brand of Mithras on your brow no more forever than another scar. You are a catechumen, my son, not ready to take part in the Mystery, but a brother in the sight of God.”
“A Christian.” Gratillonius shook his head in bemusement. “It feels strange, and yet it doesn’t. I’ve come to this so gradually, after all.”
“If the job went slowly, may it prove the sounder for that. I expect it will.”
Gratillonius was silent for a space, until, in a rush: “Could I, as I am, could I marry a baptized Christian?”
Laughter gusted from Corentinus. “Ho, thought you’d surprise me, did you? I’ve only wondered when you would. You sluggard, Verania’s already gotten up the pluck to ask me the same.”
6
“Here we are,” said Cadoc harshly. “Why did you want me to come?”
Rufinus’s house in Confluentes made him uneasy, not because it was small and rudely made, but because of its owner. Worse than a pagan, he professed complete un-faith; his friends were mainly former Bacaudae like himself, out in the woods; his secretiveness, beneath the genial mask, gave rise to uncanny rumors. This dark space, crowded with oddments, hardly reassured. Cloud shadows made the window membranes flicker as they came and went. The wuthering of the wind recalled tides around a skerry, such as two shipwrecked men might be alone on.
Rufinus’s teeth glistened in the fork beard with his quick, disturbing smile. “I’ve been bracing different men,” he said in Latin. “Today it’s your turn.” He gestured at a stool. “Won’t you sit down? I can offer wine, ale, mead. The mead is for and away the best.”
Cadoc ignored both invitations. “Why do you do it?”
“Why invite you, do you mean? Well, you showed courage at the battle, but naturally, that by itself isn’t enough. It might be a disqualifier if not coupled with a measure of wits. Gratillonius is your father-in-law and, lately, your fellow Christian. You’ve been working to further his plans, what with surveying the wilderness for future roadways—oh, of course I know what you’re at. I would known even if Gratillonius hadn’t told me. What I’m trying to get together, very quietly, is a syndicate to start making those notions of his come real.”
“Hold on!” exclaimed Cadoc, alarmed. “I don’t—There’s n-n-nothing illegal about exploration. I don’t want to flirt with … with outlawry.”
Rufinus raised a brow. “Like me?”
“You said it.”
“You’re not afraid to hear me out, are you?”
“Go on,” Cadoc snapped.
Rufinus went into a corner, squatted, took forth a jug, opened it, and poured into two cups. Meanwhile he talked. His tone was even but unwontedly earnest. “Rome or no Rome, we’ve got to organize some kind of defense. We can’t rely on the army. You must know that. The Scoti would have gobbled our local garrison and reserves up and picked their teeth with the shinbones if they’d come up the Odita instead of along the coast. Gratillonius raised a force—between us two, we can say right out that he raised it—and it gave them a drubbing. But at what a cost! Nothing like that can work again. The ordinary man who was there or who’s heard about it is glad of the victory. However, if he’s not a fool, he now sees what sort of casualties untrained, undisciplined clutters of people are bound to take. He’ll see that this one survived only because of special circumstances that won’t repeat themselves for his benefit. Come the next menace, he’ll do the sensible thing and hotfoot it for the timber. I would myself. Wouldn’t you?”
He returned with the cups full and pressed one into Cadoc’s hand. “We must accept what God sends us,” the visitor argued.
“Did He send us the Scoti?” sneered Rufinus. “The Saxons? You were a man of Ys once. You remember those Franks. What if Gratillonius had meekly yielded to them?”
“But we can’t—set ourselves in defiance of Rome—W-we’d simply have two sets of enemies.”
“We’ll find ways,” Rufinus said in more amicable wise. “Today I only want your agreement in principle.”
“Why isn’t Gratillonius asking it?” Cadoc demanded.
“He can’t so well. Still too much under the Roman eye. Nor does he have a gift for this sort of thing. He foresaw the need, but not the nasty little difficulties.” Rufinus laughed. “Besides, these days he’s preoccupied.”
“With his betrothal?”
“What else? Let the poor man have what enjoyment he can. He hasn’t gotten much, these past several years.”
Relaxing a trifle, Cadoe drank. It was a good mead, dry, pungent with thyme and rosemary. “She is a sweet girl,” he said, “and pious.”
“With steel underneath, I think. Rejoice for him.”
“Do you?”
“Why, of course,” said Rufinus, surprised. “It isn’t right for a man to live alone, the way he mostly has since the whelming.”
“You do,” said Cadoe slowly, gaze fixed on him, “and not because of holiness.”
Rufinus scowled. The scar on his cheek writhed. “That’s my business. Better for you to think of your own wife and child. If the barbarians come, no doubt you’ll die heroically defending them, after which they’ll gang-rape her and toss the kid around on their spears. Wouldn’t you rather keep them off in the first place?”
“What are you getting at?” Cadoe curbed his temper. “W-we could try to have more men enlist.”
“Ha! A whole extra ten or twenty? I’d guess that’s about the number the army could and would accept out of this entire region. If you don’t know how such things work, I suggest you learn.”
“Then what do you propose?”
“It isn’t clear yet,” Rufinus admitted. “I told you, all I’m after is agreement in principle. I’ve been thinking, however. Gratillonius and I have had a couple of talks since the battle, too. It did give us some experience, something to base our thinking on. The rough units we formed, townsmen, tribesmen, seamen, woodsmen, were natural ones, that we seized on in our haste. But by that same token, they look promising as the kernels of a future standby force. You’re right, we can’t organize an actual army. What we can do, I suspect, is form associations within those groups—brotherhoods, benefit societies, whatever names they want. The avowed idea will be to foster cooperation in a number of matters, among them the maintenance of law and order. This will obviously require training in weapons, formations, maneuvers, and so on. Everything quite loose, each brotherhood independent of the rest. But the amount and quality of training and the kind of weapons, at least among those who live off the highways, needn’t be publicized. Such people don’t circulate so much that gossip would likely come to the ears of the mighty in Turonum or wherever. Besides, it wouldn’t be actual soldierly drill or equipment. Just hunters honing their skills, say, or sailors practicing to contend with pirates. Nothing to alarm any Roman. But. … the leaders of the groups would know each other, and meet from time to time. In the event of an emergency, they could quickly assemble a mixed but pretty effective collection of fighters.”
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