Death of an Empire (55 page)

As the galley pulled into the wharf, a bronzed, half-naked sailor leapt onto the quay to tie off the rope that tethered it to the land. As he watched, Myrddion wished that affairs of the heart were so easily solved. Flavia was a sweet poison, a clever atrophy of the brain that sought out his reason and numbed it while she ensnared him with her extraordinary eyes. If only he could take her body casually and then have done with her.

‘Did you know that my husband was one of the men who murdered Valentinian? I suppose he’ll be dead soon as well. That’s how I’ll be remembered . . . as Thraustila’s wife and Aetius’s daughter. Is that all I am?’

Flavia spoke reflectively but even Myrddion’s unsympathetic gaze discerned the bitterness below her words.

‘How could anyone hope for more than to be remembered? Most of us will disappear in the great waters of time as if we had never been born.’

She laughed with all the arrogance of the old Flavia and her tossed head and aura of confidence stirred Myrddion’s admiration. ‘But not you, Myrddion-no-name. You will be remembered for something other than whom you marry or who sired you. In fact, I foretell . . . How does it feel to wonder what your future will bring?’

‘I cannot match wits with you, Lady Flavia. I fear you are too clever for me – you always were.’

She laughed again, and the pleasant, contralto voice was laced with irony. ‘Clever enough to accept Thraustila, a Hungvari simpleton, and to sit in Ravenna watching the Roman world split at the seams like an old tunic.’ She nodded reflectively. ‘Aye, I’m far too clever for you. Oh, to be young and green again, my Myrddion!’ She turned her face away and the healer knew he had been dismissed from her brooding thoughts.

He walked away and returned to his cramped cabin. Nor did he re-emerge until after dusk fell and Flavia was safely below decks.

The ship left Epidaurus and took up a southerly heading to avoid the coastal strip where the land rose steeply into the jagged teeth of the mountains without the leavening of a strip of arable land at their feet. Straight from the shoreline, the mountains sheered upward, cut by the occasional river that ran in cataracts into the sea. Lissus passed, and the sapphire isle of Corcyra,
followed by Actium and the jewelled islands of Cephallenia, Ithaca and Zacynthus that rose out of the Middle Sea like velvet green jewels on a cloth of deepest blue. The names sang in Myrddion’s head with all the musicality and romance of the distant past. Homer could have seen these mountains and alluvial valleys before he lost his eyes. The fleets of Darius and Xerxes sailed among these dim islands as they sought weaknesses in the Greek defences. Wondrous names echoed in Myrddion’s imagination, the sound of the marching feet of the hoplites as the phalanxes came to famed Thermopylae or glorious Plataea and created the history of the west, long before the people of Britain emerged out of caverns and raised the stones of the Giant’s Dance at Stonehenge.

Here was history in every colourful, precarious village that clung to the forbidding coast. Here rang the echoes of conflicts fought in desperation and fierce loyalty over stretches of land too narrow and too mountainous to grow food and to bear new life. Here, history walked and still lived within human memory, although the men who had thought, fought and perished now existed only on scrolls or in the tales of peasants who still struggled as they tilled the soil in the ancient ways. Perhaps it was the dying glory of the land on their left, as it unrolled before their fascinated gaze, that stilled the small voice of reason in Myrddion’s brain. Perhaps the fishermen who passed them in boats so flimsy that the Roman god Neptune could have struck them down with a single, violent wave reminded the young healer that life is fleeting and fragile, so experiences must be grasped and savoured before the sea drowned them all. Perhaps . . . perhaps . . . But Myrddion felt a sea change of recklessness rising in his blood like a hidden leviathan that was fighting its way towards the light.

One evening, as the galley drove towards the east with the great island of Cythera to the right and the broken teeth of Laconia to the left, Myrddion sat on a folded pile of canvas sails and stared out
at the phosphorus-edged wavelets as they moved and slapped against the hull. The galley was quiet and the oars were at rest because wind filled the great sail, causing it to slap and rattle against its rigging. He was considering the wondrous and terrifying history of Sparta, the prime city-state of Laconia, with its dour warriors who had sacrificed their personal freedom to the machine of war. Although his thoughts were of bloody deeds of glory, peace enveloped him in a night that was lit by millions of stars. Had he known the lineaments of the constellations, he would have been able to trace the form of Andromeda, the Archer, or the Naiads as they wheeled in the sky for eternity. Their names filled his mind with resonances of wisdom and tragedies that were long gone, so that his heart was full of magic and sadness.

Suddenly, out of fragments of memory, a line of verse came to him. He recited it aloud in the original Greek in what he hoped was a reasonable approximation of the correct pronunciation.

‘What did you say, Myrddion?’ A female voice carried to him on the sweet, salty air. Flavia stepped away from the shadow of the rigging, and he could see the outline of her body lit through her robes from a single lantern that hung on the mast behind her.

‘Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.’

Her laughter was wry, bitter, and yet as tinkling as the small brass bells that hung in the temples of the Mother, where they could catch the night winds and sing her name.

‘Gloomy thoughts for a night of such magic! Can’t you feel the ancient loves and dreams that lived here long before Rome came into being? So old, Myrddion! Our ancestors scrabbled like animals in the mud at a time when Athens spawned philosophers and Sparta made warfare into living song. How can you celebrate such beauty with so grim a warning?’

‘Perhaps I’m trying to remind myself that all this . . .’ he flung his arms wide to encompass the land, the sea and the wheeling,
velvet-soft stars, ‘this is all illusion! We struggle and scheme to win a small corner of the world and to gather up gold or jewels to protect us from the darkness that we fear, when all that truly endures through the ages are the shadows of our deeds and the generosity of our spirits.’

Flavia sighed and swayed towards him so that the lamp picked out the scarlet in her hair like threads of ruby and chalcedony. ‘You think too much, healer. I believe I’ve told you so before. On a night such as this, how can you do aught but accept the power of your senses? Smell the scent off the land! Can’t you imagine the olives ripening in the sun, the fish drying in racks and bunches of lavender perfuming the air? Can’t you feel the wind as it caresses your naked flesh like a lover’s touch? The gods give us eyes to see and ears to hear, but you persist in experiencing the world through the filter of your reason and your dusty scrolls. My father was the same. You miss the glories of being alive and being human, while you chase something abstract and impossible to define. Then, when you realise that knowledge is just another illusion, it’s too late to taste the sweetness of living.’

‘Why, Flavia, you surprise me,’ Myrddion murmured without a trace of irony in his beautifully modulated voice. ‘I never thought I’d hear philosophy coming from your lips.’

‘Because I’m a woman – or because I’m Flavius Aetius’s daughter? Am I any less capable of seeing the wonders of existence simply because I’m my father’s daughter?’ She made a small gesture of disgust. ‘In Ravenna, they called me a harlot or an epicurean, because I want to experience all that life brings before I journey to the shadows. One life isn’t enough to satisfy me, Myrddion. I’d live forever, if I could.’ The healer could see her wilful, passionate mouth through the stray beams of moonlight. ‘I want to devour life as if it was a ripe peach and feel its juices run down my face. Is that so wrong?’

Her appeal touched him, and involuntarily he stepped towards her. Wise to the passions of men, she took a half-step towards him and raised her hand to stroke his smooth, beardless face. Her pointed nails tracked deliciously over his cheek and his breath caught in his throat.

‘Don’t think, Myrddion. Be!’

And then Flavia was in his arms and her mouth was opening under his, as silky as the finest cloth and so smooth and warm that he couldn’t resist her. Tongue and teeth captured his, teasing and biting as his heat rose and his work-strengthened fingers gripped her back, kneading her soft flesh and leaving bruises in their wake.

She pulled away from him and tilted her head so that she could see his blinded eyes, heavy with his body’s longings. ‘You have put aside your reason, healer. Will you regret what we do? Will you blame me for a night of beauty or love? If so, leave me now to the night and my feelings, for I am weary of recriminations.’

For a moment, Myrddion wondered at the courage and frankness of this woman who perceived herself to be outside the rules of society, not by choice, but because she was unable to adapt to the many hypocritical demands of her peers. He believed her. She really placed sensation above reason, a dangerous journey for even the strongest of men, for that path could lead to a life so dedicated to the senses that common sense and decency were lost.

‘You’ll receive no insults from me, Flavia, not if you act in accordance with kindness and compassion. I suppose you’re a free soul . . . it must have been difficult to grow up under the rule of a man like Aetius, who was rigidly in control of every aspect of his life.’

Flavia shook her head with such finality that Myrddion sensed the heartbreak under her arrogance. His reason told him that Flavia was too damaged to change, but his body didn’t care for arguments.

‘No more talk, Myrddion. You use words like weapons. Just be,
and let me be.’ Then she moved back into his arms and their kiss was full of promise and hope. Flavia was demanding, with her mouth and with her hands, which stroked and insinuated themselves into his tunic and kneaded the muscles at his shoulders, back and buttocks. Only by an effort of will, and out of a need to remain Myrddion, did he pull away from her and bow over her hand, before kissing it gently.

‘Goodnight, Lady Flavia. The night is lovely, but I must go before I make a fool of myself.’ He almost ran to the stairs that led below decks, found the healers’ cabin and leaned against the closed door. Cadoc stared at his master with wide, alarmed eyes.

‘Don’t fret, Cadoc. I’ve been enjoying the evening in company with Lady Flavia.’

Cadoc noted a long, shallow scratch on Myrddion’s forearm, and leered knowingly. ‘I can see what you’ve been enjoying, master. All that I’ll say is that you should be careful with a woman like that. Ayeee! She’d suck a man’s brains out through his mouth.’

‘Don’t say that, Cadoc, even in jest,’ Myrddion cut in, but being young and vain enough to enjoy the admiration of other, older men, he allowed himself a small grin. He went to sleep on his scratchy pallet to dream of Flavia’s thighs, her milky white breasts with their dusting of amber freckles and the rose pink crevices of her body that drew him towards her with a hot, musky scent that was all her own.

The galley drove on and was now heading north through the islands of the Mare Myrtoum. On the high ground to the left lay Sparta, out of sight but brooding over the south with all its reputation for discipline, unnatural courage and stirring deeds of heroism. Myrddion told Cadoc, Finn and the widows the story of Thermopylae and they marvelled at the stirring history of the three hundred Spartans who had held back a vast horde of invaders. As the galley continued across the sea, Myrddion dug into his store
of legends and whiled away the hours of inactivity with tales of the ancients, what histories he knew and improbable tales of incredible courage.

Hydrea slid by and vanished into the distance. Cythnos and Ceos passed on their right, the northern tip of the famed Cyclades where the souls of heroes were said to dwell. Then the galley pushed on to Marathon to take on a fresh supply of water before island-hopping across the Aegean Sea en route to the Propontis.

Although the days were a changing vista of many islands and dim, smoke-blue landscapes, the nights belonged to Flavia.

Though Myrddion might have hoped to resist her advances, in Cadoc’s words, he had as much chance as a plump pigeon in a cage of peregrines. After an initial attempt at resistance, he submitted to his desires and took Flavia, rather inexpertly, in her narrow cabin among a pile of scented bedclothes. He had believed that to enjoy her body would free him from her thrall as had been his past experience, but Flavia was a fever in the blood, a disease in the mind and a poison in the heart. The more she kissed him, the more he wanted. When he had spent himself in her, the lust that should have sated him only served to whet his appetite more cruelly.

The nights were long and filled with wild sensations, but the days were governed by his craft. Sailors slipped often and he was kept busy with cuts, contusions and even the occasional illness. His assistants worked on their herbs, storing a fresh supply of completed unguents, fleshed out with new, strange ingredients purchased at the ports, fishing villages and islands where they picked up cargo or replenished their supplies of water.

As her waist began to thicken, Bridie sat among the women in the fresh air and sewed delicate baby clothes out of scraps of cloth. Each day fitted seamlessly into the next, like wool on a loom, and Myrddion prayed with a young man’s ardour that the voyage would never end. He had his scrolls, now more interesting because he
could see the lands that brought them forth, and he had his growing store of odd maps that recorded their journey. Even his ritual of plucking hair from his smooth skin, washing in salt water on the decks or combing and plaiting his midnight-blue mane assumed a kind of novelty.

So Myrddion began an odd double life, as strange as Flavia’s mismatched eyes. The lovers spoke little, preferring to lose themselves in sensation. Besides, Myrddion feared to break the spell of Flavia, knowing in the deepest recesses of his heart that he would try to excise her from his life if he should learn the full measure of her manipulations and misdeeds. He was tortured by a persistent fear that something in him would bleed forever.