Gallicenae (30 page)

“O-o-oh, I saw the dead floating. They were all ugly an-an-and eels will eat them,
me too,
like my mother that father says was so beautiful, o-o-oh, they come after me in my dreams. I thought one of them was mother.”

The seal held her close.

“Nay?” Dahut whispered after a while. “Not really? Never?”

Somehow the seal got her looking outward and opened her to what she saw.

“Papa told me ’bout dandelions—”

Radiance lit the wings of a hovering gull. Its voice was like laughter.

“Aye, shells on the beach, kelp, starfish, but they go back, they all go back.”

The waters no longer roared, they sang.

Dahut snuggled. Here, shielded from the weather, held in this comfort, she could let her weariness overwhelm her, she could sleep and be healed. “They all return. Ever’thing returns…” The voice of the seal went lulling. “Tis mine.”

Oh, darling, lie peaceful The sea is before us,

The mothering, cleansing, all-powerful sea,

And borne on the wind and the foam is a chorus

Of surges and surf to your nest in the lee.

From depths that are darkling the billows lift sparkling,

As eager and salt as the beat of your blood.

No horror shall snare you, but life shall upbear you.

Dear sea-child, the tide of your hope is in flood.

1

There was a man called Flavius Stilicho. His father had been a Vandal who entered the Imperial army and became an officer. Stilicho did likewise, rising high and fast until he was the mightiest general Rome had known for generations. This made him a power in the state. After military and diplomatic exploits in Persia and Thracia, he moved against the barbarians of the North. In Britannia his campaigns piled the bodies of Saxons, Picti, and Scoti in windrows and sent the survivors reeling back.

That spring, Uail maqq Carbri had led a seaborne raid up the channel to the mouth of the Sabrina and along the Silurian shore. Newly reinforced, the Romans fast marched from Isca Silurum, surprised the Scoti, and harvested a goodly number of them before the rest could escape. Uail’s outsize currach did keep its load of booty from a town his reavers had sacked, including some captives. Among those was a lad of sixteen, a son of the curial, named Sucat.

Gallia had become an even worse hunting ground. Armorica guarded the approach, strengthened by the newly enlarged navy of Ys. No man of Ériu in his right mind would go there, unless it be as a peaceful trader.

Uail sought Niall maqq Echach, King at Temir, and gave his ill tidings. Unlike most of the chieftains who were on hand, Niall did not rage. Time had taught him patience. If the sun-brightness of his locks had begun, ever so faintly, to dim, the wits beneath were whetted as keen as his sword had always been. He accepted Uail’s gifts out of the plunder, and made generous return. “It’s kindly your mood is, lord,” said the skipper.

Niall laughed. “It is not,” he replied. “The Romans must simply wait their turn. I have built up my strength over the years. Now we will build it further still, beginning with an undertaking that men shall remember forever.

Toward that end, he had been seeking the goodwill of his Condachtach kinfolk. One of these, a tuathal king from the western shores, happened to be guesting him just then, a man named Múlchu. When this man went home, among the gifts he took along was the slave Sucat, whom Uail had presented to Niall.

Alliance was natural. Warfare between the Ulati of the north and the Firi Condachtae south and west of them was as ancient as when
Cú Culanni stood off the cattle raiders of Queen Medb, if indeed the strife had not begun between the sons of Ír and Éber just after they conquered the Children of Danu. Being of Condachtach origin, the royal house that lorded it over the tuaths of Mide had inherited those feuds.

Equally haughty were the Ulatach kings who foregathered at Emain Macha. The chief among them claimed descent from Conchobar maqq Nessa, the lesser ones from the warriors of the Red Branch, as did the landowning nobles.

Tributary to them, between Qóiqet nUlat and Mide, were humbler folk. Ulati had established themselves in these parts as chieftains, but scorned the dwellers, calling them mere Cruthini or outright Firi Bolg, exacting heavy rents, being careless about rights. Often a poor man could only get justice by starving at the door of the rich. Sometimes this, too, failed to shame the defendant, whose well-nourished flesh could endure hunger far beyond the day when scrawniness must either give up or die.

Thus, when the chariots of Niall and his sons rumbled north at the head of a host, victory winged above them. They found few earthworks and strongpoints to overrun. The enemy leaders fought valiantly, but many of their followers, especially bond tenants, were half-hearted and quick to flee. Reinforcements from the King at Emain Macha arrived too late, too little. At the end of the second summer’s warfare, Niall had prevailed as far as the headwaters of the River Sinand, almost to the Ulatach lands proper. The petty kings whom he had beaten plighted faith to him. He took hostages from them and went home.

There he would bide a while, waiting to see what happened in Ériu and overseas, before moving onward. Anything else would have been foolhardy. What he had won promised wealth, power, glory, but also unforeseeable trouble. It was more than plowlands, herds, salmon streams, forests for game and timber, gold, weapons, men. His now was mastery over Mag Slecht, the holiest place in all Ériu. He must be careful not to rouse the anger of its Gods or too many of Their worshippers.

2

The months wheeled onward, through winter and spring and again to summer.

Esmunin Sironai, chief astrologer in Ys, predicted a lunar eclipse some three sennights after solstice. His table and formulae went back to the Chaldeans, with much added by the Greeks and no little by his own people over the centuries, hampered though they were by their climate. The Queen who would be in charge of the Temple of Belisama at the time prepared for a special service, and she who would have the Vigil on Sena rehearsed special prayers, for the moon was the
Lady’s. Forsquilis arranged to have neither duty; she would be casting spells and taking omens by herself. Bodilis planned to be at Star House.

The weather proved clear. The Symposium met early for dinner and discourse. King Gratillonius had attended such meetings when he was able, but excused himself from this. The word went, very softly, that he intended a rite in his Mithraeum.

At sunset the company entered the Water Tower and climbed a helical staircase to the observatory on top. Esmunin’s students busied themselves with armillary spheres, goniometers, and other instruments. The old man sat in a corner wrapped in his cloak. He was nearly blind. “But we will tell you all as it happens, master,” they said lovingly. “We will write it down with exactness, that you may draw forth meanings we would never find.”

Bodilis went to the parapet. Ys made a basin of darkness, save where fire glowed from windows, but towers still caught light on their uppermost metal and glass. In the opposite direction, the canal drew a thread of silver through the dusk in the valley. Air was as yet warm, moist, full of scents and whispers. And yonder above the hills rose the full moon. Already a gap was out of its limb.

“A-a-ah,” murmured voices, and “Goddess, be gentle us-ward,” and “Quick, now, set the clock.” Nearsighted Bodilis squeezed forefinger against thumb to make a peephole through which she could more clearly see the marvel.

Blackness advanced until it became red. That veil gave way in turn to blackness again as it withdrew from ashen white. It had been an eclipse longer than some, shorter than some. It would go into Esmunin’s book, another grain of truth laid down for a harvest he would never see. Bodilis wondered how many learned men in the Empire had troubled themselves to observe this, or watch at all.

A little talk followed, comparison, speculation; but most of the philosophers were ready for bed. Bodilis remained wide awake. As folk descended and said goodnight, she started home, thinking that she would read for a while, or perhaps attempt a little further translation of the
Oedipus,
or perhaps do a sketch for a painting she had in mind. Her place had grown lonesome since Gratillonius ceased sleeping there. Semuramat—Tambilis—was lonely too, but it behooved a Queen to maintain a household; and, to be sure, Tambilis was still studying those things a cultivated woman should know. Kerna and Talavair were good daughters who tried to see their mother often, but they had their families to attend first.

Bodilis had no need of a lantern, so brightly did the moon shine. The streets she took were empty, which made the glimpses she got through the windows of lighted homes seem doubly snug. Her rangy stride sent echoes rattling along the up-and-down twistiness.

It happened that her way led her by a house lately fire-gutted. That was rare in Ys, where only the upper stories of the tallest buildings
were wooden. When conflagration did occur, the marines at Warriors’ House were as quick to come put it out as they were to come stamp down violent crime. In this case, a high wind and a broken amphora of oil defeated them. The family moved elsewhere, pending repairs.

A man had climbed up to sit on the blackened front wall, whose roof had collapsed. Swinging long legs, he was dressed in forester’s wise, coarse shirt, leather doublet, cross-gartered trews. The moonlight showed a silver headband, gold earrings, forked black beard. A scar puckered the face that he kept turned aloft.

The sound she made caught his attention. He came down in a rush via a windowsill and made a sweeping salute of deference. “My lady, Queen Bodilis!” His rather high voice spoke easy Ysan, though with a Redonic accent. “What a grand surprise. How may I serve you?”

She recognized Rufinus. They had met seldom and fleetingly, as much as he was off on errands of the King’s about which neither man said much. “What were you doing?” she inquired.

“Watching the eclipse, of course,” he laughed. “Such marvels are all too few, and then this wretched weather of ours most likely hides them.” Immediately he grew serious. “Afterward I sat trying to think what makes such a thing happen. Surely the Queen knows, but I’m only a runaway serf.”

“You’ve no ideas?” she found herself asking.

“Naught but folk tales. Not erenow have I had leisure to wonder about the world, thanks to King Grallon, best of lords.”

Bodilis winced and replied in haste: “Well, ’tis simple enough. The sun and the moon move opposite each other when the angles are just right, and so the shadow of the earth falls on the moon. Have you not noticed that the shadow is curved?”

Rufinus stared. “Why—yea, my lady—but, do understand you to say the world, this earth, is
round?”

“Indeed. That’s well known. Think how a ship goes below the horizon on a clear day. First the hull disappears, then the mast. How could that be, save on a globe?”

Rufinus drew a long breath. His voice pulsed: “True, true! I said I’d never had a chance to think beyond the needs of staying alive, till lately, but—Yea, clear ’tis to see. But more riddles boil forth—” He fell to one knee in his extravagant fashion. “My lady Bodilis, wisest of the Gallicenae, may I beg a favor? May I accompany you to your doorstep, listening to whatever you care to share of your knowledge? If ever you’d make for yourself an adoring servant, here is how!”

Bodilis smiled. “Why, certainly, if you like.” As devoted as he was to Gratillonius, this young man would be no menace to her; and he was charming and his appeal was touching. Besides, she recalled vaguely, gossip was that when in Ys Rufinus did not take advantage of the novelty that could attract many a well-born woman to him.

He capered for joy.

The questions he put as they went along showed ignorance, but also a mind amazingly quick to comprehend the truth. At her house she was tempted to invite him in. Few pleasures matched teaching a bright pupil. She thought better of it; but they agreed to meet again when opportunity allowed.

3

That had been a quiet year in Ys. Yet folk came to believe that mighty things were astir in the womb of time. One month the moon had darkened; then in the very month that followed, a comet appeared. For seven-and-twenty nights it followed the sun, drawing ever nearer as a wolf overtakes a stag. Even when clouds hid it, all knew that it prowled above, a maned star trailing tails of ghostly flame.

The Gallicenae met shortly after the apparition. “This fear is nonsense,” Bodilis declared. “Whatever comets are—Aristoteles thought them mere vapors in the upper air—the chronicles tell us they’ve come and gone with less serious consequences than so many thunderstorms.”

“The fear may be groundless,” replied Lanarvilis, “but ’tis real just the same. ’Twould help were the King on hand, but—” She shrugged. Gratillonius was off to the Romans again, helping Maximus’s veterans organize the training of reservists. “Unrest grows. Some mariners are afraid to put to sea. Nagon Demari stirs up the workers.”

“And Christian Corentinus makes converts,” Vindilis sneered.

“The trouble will die out, won’t it?” ventured Innilis.

“One hopes so,” Fennalis answered. “Still, ’twould be wise as well as kindly to quell these dreads now if we can.”

“That’s why I called you hither,” Lanarvilis told them, and went on to explain her idea. After some discussion, the Queens reached consensus. Let heralds go forth, promising that at the new moon, some nights hence, the whole Nine would be on Sena, there to divine the will of the Gods and set right any wrongs.

Toward the end of talk, Forsquilis proposed: “We should take Dahut with us.”

“What?” exclaimed Maldunilis. “But we can’t. She’s no Queen. She may well never be.”

“True, she may not go ashore with us,” Forsquilis said. “But she can abide on the barge, which will wait overnight to take eight of us back.” Her seeress’s eyes searched them. “It should strengthen that awe of the Gods we want her to feel.”

—Dahut was enraptured. The barge of state had always been so splendid, and here she got to ride on it, and to holy Sena! Tambilis, who was familiar with it because of the Vigils she took, led her about and showed her everything, from the swan’s head at the prow, through the flagstaff and templelike deckhouse at the waist, to the gilt fishtail at the stern. The sailors made much of the little princess; even those
at oars had a grin and a jest for her. It was a brisk day, wind whittering, the sea all gray-green and whitecapped.