Gallicenae (45 page)

She nodded.

“Aye,” Soren agreed reluctantly, “but you’ve not shown us that Ys will have need of more navy, let alone that she turn it over to Rome.”

Gratillonius drew breath. “What I have to tell you will become generally known in the course of time,” he said. “However, by then the hour may be late for us. I’ve had passed on to me things that are
still supposed to be state secrets. If we act on them, we must pretend we are acting on our own initiative. Else my sources will likely be cut off, and the heads of some among them, too.”

Soren gave him a shrewd glance. “Apuleius Vero?”

“Among others. He wishes Ys well. Have I your silence?”

Soren hesitated an instant. “Aye,” he said; and: “You know I am faithful, Grallon,” said Lanarvilis.

The King took another long draught before he gripped the beaker tight, as if it were a handhold on the brink of a cliff, and told them:

“Very well. The peace between Stilicho and Alaric is patchwork. It cannot last. Stilicho made it out of necessity. Trouble is brewing in Africa and he must protect his back as best he can while he tries to deal with that. He’s terminating the campaign in Britannia not because the diocese has been secured but because he needs the troops in the South. He wants them as much for protection against the Eastern Empire as against any barbarians. Meanwhile Alaric and his kind wait only to see which of the two Romes they can best attack first. Stilicho is fully aware of that. He expects that within the next several years he must begin calling in more soldiers from the frontiers. Britannia, in particular, may be denuded of defenders.”

Shocked, Lanarvilis whispered, “Are you certain?”

Gratillonius jerked a nod. “Most of what I’ve said is plain enough, once you’ve given a little thought to the situation. Some of it, such as the African matter or the expectation of transferring legions—those are buried in letters to high officials. Lower officials who found ways to read them have sent the word along a network they’ve woven for the sake of their own survival; and one or two have passed it on to me. However, all in all, is it such a vast surprise? Is it not more or less what we could have foreseen for ourselves?”

She shivered. Soren grimaced.

Gratillonius pursued: “Think ahead, on behalf of our children and grandchildren. If Rome collapses, Scoti and Saxons will swarm into Britannia, Franks and their kin into Gallia. They’ll breed like cockroaches. Here is Armorica, thinly peopled, thinly guarded. At this lonely tip of the peninsula, how long can Ys by herself hold out?”

Stillness took over the room. Night deepened in its window. The candle flames guttered.

Lanarvilis mumbled at last, her head bowed, “Tours is a grim word. I should see what documents you have, but—aye, belike we’d better think how I can change my stance tomorrow.”

Soren’s fist thudded on the arm of his chair. “You’d give the ships to Rome, though!” he exclaimed. “To Rome!”

“How else dare we build them at all?” Gratillonius replied, flat-voiced. “This is another warning I have from underground. Boy-Emperor Honorius starves for some way to assert himself. His guardian Stilicho is willing to indulge him, if the undertaking be such as Rome can
afford. Indeed, Stilicho too would be glad of any accomplishment that impresses the West, the East, and the barbarians alike. To suppress a ‘rebellion’ in Ys would be easier than to dislodge the heathen Saxons in Corbilo. Nay, we must give no grounds for accusations against us, but keep ourselves too useful to Rome for it to make a sacrificial animal of us.”

Soren cursed.

—He left directly after supper. “We’ve talked enough,” he said. “Best I go home now.” Gratillonius gave him a glance. The King had dispatched a messenger early on to inform Soren’s wife that he would be absent this evening. “I want… to sleep on this.” Gruffly: “Oh, I’ll hew to my word. Tomorrow I’ll urge that the Council consider your proposal more carefully, look into ways and means. But I must devise the right phrases, the more so after what position I took today, eh? Also, remember I’m not sure yet of your lightness, only sure that I disbelieve we’ve need of everything you want. However, goodnight, Grallon.”

He took Lanarvilis’s hand and bent slightly above the veins that lumped blue in it. “Rest you well, my lady,” he said low. Releasing her, he stumped fast across the mosaic floor of the atrium to the exit. A servant scurried to let him out and hail a boy to light his way with a lantern.

“Good dreams to you, Soren,” Lanarvilis had breathed after him.

These had been useful hours, Gratillonius thought, and the meal at the end was amicable. He had won about as much agreement as he had hoped. Next came further maneuvers, bargainings, compromises…. He might finally get half what he asked for, which was why he asked for as much as he did…. With luck, work might commence year after next, which was why he began asking this early…. Aye, time has made this bluff soldier into a very politician, he thought; and realized he had thought in Ysan.

He turned his gaze back to Lanarvilis. Time was being less kind to her, he mused. But then, she was a dozen years older than he.

“Wish you likewise to leave?” he dropped into a silence that felt suddenly lengthy. “I’ll summon an escort.”

“Are you weary?” she replied.

“Nay. Belike my sleep’ll be scant. If you care to talk further, I’d—I have always valued your counsel, Lanarvilis.”

“Whether or not I agreed with you?”

“Mayhap most when you disagreed. How else shall I learn?”

She smiled the least bit. “There speaks our Gratillonius. Not that argument has ever swayed him far off his forechosen path.” She wiped her brow. “’Tis warm in here. Might we go outside for a span?”

He understood. Sweats came upon her without warning, melancholy, cramps; her courses had become irregular; the Goddess led her toward the last of womankind’s Three Crossroads. “Surely. We’re fortunate that the weather’s mild.”

They went forth, side by side. Soren had not actually required a lantern, for a full moon was up. When that happened on a quarter day, the King lawfully absented himself from his monthly stay in the Wood. Light fell ashen-bright on the paths that twisted through the walled garden, between hedges, topiaries, flowerbeds, bowers. At this season they were mostly bare; limbs and twigs threw an intricacy of shadows. The air was quiescent, with a hint of frost. Crushed shell scrunched softly underfoot.

How often he had wandered like this, with one or another of his women, since that springtime when first he did with Dahilis.

“Do you feel better?” he asked presently.

“Aye, thank you,” said Lanarvilis.

“Ah, how fares Julia?”

“Well. Happy in her novitiate.” Abrupt bitterness: “Why do you ask?”

Taken aback, he could merely say, “Why, I wanted to know. My daughter that you bore me—”

“You could have met with her occasionally. ’Twould have made her happy.”

“Nay, now, she’s a sweet girl. If only I had the time to spare—for her, for all my girls.”

“You have it for Dahut.”

That stung. He halted. She would have gone on, but he caught her arm. They faced each other in the moonlight.

“Well you know, Dahut suffered a loss she cannot even talk about,” he rasped. “She’s needed help to heal her sorrow. I’ve provided what poor distractions I could think of, in what few hours I could steal from the hundreds of folk who clamor after me.”

“She’s had well-nigh a year to recover, and been amply blithe during most of it.” Lanarvilis yielded. She looked off into the dark. “Well, let’s not quarrel. She is the child of Dahilis, and we Sisters love her too.”

Her tone plucked at him. He took her hands. They felt cold in his. “You are a good person, Lanarvilis,” he said clumsily.

“One tries,” she sighed. “You do yourself.”

Impulse: “Would you like to spend the night here?”

How long since they had last shared a bed? More than a year. As much as two? He realized in a rush what small heed he had paid to the matter. He would simply hear from another of the Nine that Lanarvilis was giving up her turn with him. That happened from time to time with any of them, for any of numerous causes. They decided it among themselves and quietly informed him. When he did call at the house of Lanarvilis, they would dine and talk, but she gave him to understand that she felt indisposed. He agreed without disappointment. Return to the palace and a night alone had its own welcome qualities, unless he elected to go rouse someone else. Guilvilis was always delighted to please him, Maldunilis willing, Forsquilis and Tambilis usually downright eager.

Her gaze and her voice held level. “Do you wish me to?”

“Well, we did intend speaking further of this statecraft business, and, and you are beautiful.” He did not altogether lie, seeing her by moonlight.

She blinked at tears, brushed lips over his, and murmured, “Aye, let us once again.”

—They had left the window unshuttered, undraped. Moonlight mottled rumpled bedclothes and unclothed bodies.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hoped ’twould give you pleasure.”

“I hoped so too,” she answered. “’Twas not your fault.”

He had, in fact, tried for some time to rouse her, until the Bull broke free of restraint and worked Its will. Her continued dryness had made the act painful to her.

“We’ve had a troublous day,” he said. “Tomorrow morning?”

“Nay, better we sleep as late as we can. That meeting will be contentious.”

“Nonetheless—”

“Confess we it to ourselves and the Gods, I have grown old.”

Bodilis is just a year or two younger! speared through him. She would be glad of me!

It was as if an outside voice came: “Would you feel otherwise with Soren?”

Lanarvilis gasped and sat bolt upright. “What do you ask?”

“Naught, naught,” he said, immediately regretful. “You are right, we should go to sleep.”

He recognized the steel: “Do you dare imagine… he and I… would commit sacrilege?”

“Nay, never, certainly never.” Gratillonius sat up also, drew breath, laid a hand on her shoulder. “I should have kept silence. I did for many years. But I do see and hear better than you seem to suppose. There is love between you twain.”

She stared at him through the moon-tinged dark.

He smiled lopsidedly. “Why should I resent it? The Gods sealed your fate ere ever I reached Ys. You have been loyal. That’s as much as a centurion can ask.”

“You can still surprise me,” she said as if talking in dreams.

“Indeed, I’d not really take it amiss if you and he—”

Horror snatched her. She clapped a palm across his mouth. “Quiet! You’re about to utter blasphemy!”

To that he felt wholly indifferent. He grew conscious of how tired he was. “Well, we need never speak of this again.”

“Best not.” She lay down. “Best we try to sleep. Soren and I—we’ve left any such danger behind. It is too late for us.”

2

“Nay,” Keban said. “Don’t.”

“What?” Budic dropped his arms from her waist and stepped back. “Again?”

“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I feel unwell.”

The soldier stared at his wife. Several days of field exercises had sent him home ardent, the moment Adminius gave furlough. “What’s the matter? A fever, a bellyache, what?”

Keban drooped her head. “I feel poorly.”

He regarded her for a space. She stood slumped, her paunch protruding; jowls hung sallow down to the double chin; but that was no change from what she had become during the past four or five years. Nor was her hair, unkempt and greasy, or the sour smell of an unwashed body, or the soiled gown in need of mending. Yet the bones beneath, the eyes, the lips, remained comely; and he remembered.

“You are never quite sick,” he mumbled, “and never quite in health…. Well, come on to bed, then. ’Twill not take long, and you can rest there afterward.”

“Nay, please,” she whimpered. “I would if I could, but not today, I beg you.”

“Why not?”

She rallied spirit enough to retort: “Shall I puke while you’re banging away in me? I am sorry, but I do feel queasy, and the smells—your breath, your cheese—Mayhap tomorrow, dear.”

“Always tomorrow!” he shouted. “Can you no longer even spread your legs for me? You did for every lout in Ys when you were a whore!”

She shrank against the wall. He waved around at the room. Dust grayed heaped objects, strewn clothes, unscoured kitchenware. “May I at least have a clean house, that I needn’t be ashamed to invite my friends to?” he cried on. “Nay. Well, be it as you will.”

She began to weep. “Budic, I love you.” He would not let himself listen, but stalked out the door and slammed it behind him.

The street bustled beneath a heartlessly bright sun. He thrust along its serpentine narrowness, through the shabby district it served. When acquaintances hailed him, he gave curt response. There were temptations to stop and chat, for several were female, wives or daughters of neighbors…. But that could lead to sin, and trouble, and possibly deadly quarrels. Let him just find a cheap harlot in Tomcat Alley or the Fishtail or walking these lanes.

Keban would understand. She’d better. She oughtn’t to inquire where he’d been. Still, her sobs might keep him awake tonight—

Budic halted. “Christ have mercy,” he choked in Latin. “What am I doing?”

It throbbed in his loins. Relief would allow him to repent. But the Church taught that God did not bargain. The pagans of Ys bought off
their Taranis, Lir, lustful Belisama with sacrifices; but only offerings made with a contrite heart were acceptable to the Lord God of Israel.

Budic turned on his heel and strode, almost running, to the Forum.

How wickedly merry and colorful the throng was that eddied and swirled over its mosaic pavement, around the basins of the Fire Fountain, between the colonnades of the public buildings! A merchant passed by in sumptuous tunic, a marine soldier in metal and pride. A maiden with a well-laden market basket on her head had stopped to trade jokes with a burly young artisan on his way to a job. A Suffete lady, followed by a servant, wore a cloak of the finest blue wool, worked with white gold emblems of moon and stars; her thin face was bent over a pet ferret she carried in her arms. Silken-clad and Venus-beautiful, a meretrix lured a visiting Osismian who looked moneyed as well as wonder-smitten. An old scholar came down the steps of the library bearing scrolls that must be full of arcane lore. A vendor offered smoked oysters, garlicky snails, spiced fruits, honeycakes. A shaggy Saxon and a kilted Scotian, off ships in trade, weaved drunkenly along, arm in arm. Music lilted through babble and clatter. It came from a troupe of performers, their garb as gaudy as their bearing, on the stairs to the fane of Taranis; flute and syrinx piped, harp twanged, drum thuttered, a girl sang sultry verses while another—shamelessly half-clad in what might be a remotely Egyptian style—rattled her sistrum and undulated through a dance. Young men stood beneath, stared, whooped, threw coins, burned.