Night of the Wolf (45 page)

Dryas braided her hair around the spiked copper crown as Fulvia’s maids did yesterday. She wrapped the palla more tightly around herself and then told Aquila through the door, “I’m ready.”

He kicked the door open. His face was stern and his color was high. He jerked the palla away from Dryas and manacled her hands behind her back, then replaced the palla over her shoulders and shoved her forward.

She walked ahead of him down the stairs. On the second flight, she stumbled briefly. He snatched at her arm, realizing she was in danger; with her hands chained she wouldn’t be able to catch herself if she fell. But he didn’t take off the chains. Instead, he kept hold of her arm until they reached the bottom where Marcia waited.

“Aquila, you stop that right now! If you’re going to play the fool, go to your farm in Campagna.”

“She won’t even defend herself!” He undid the manacles.

Marcia embraced Dryas and helped her rewrap the palla. Marcia looked sad. “No, she won’t. I didn’t either. Sometimes it isn’t safe for a woman to think about herself. I had my mother and a younger sister to consider. She has us.”

“Of all the evil in this ugly thing, this is the worst meanness of all.” Aquila’s fists were clenched. “He wants to get to her before she faces . . . that . . . that . . . thing.”

“Well,” Dryas said, “I can’t think I’ll be much use to him after.”

Marcia began to laugh. She hugged Dryas again and then started to wipe away tears. “After it was over, my mother helped me clean myself. There was some blood. I was only fourteen. I shrugged, looked at her dry-eyed, and said he wasn’t much. That’s true enough, he wasn’t, but it hurt all the same. So I lied, but it was a good lie and I’m glad I said it. And when it’s over, I have some porridge, bacon, and fresh-baked bread and you, Dryas, can sleep on the cot off the kitchen. Both Gordus and my boy are gone. I’ll welcome the company until this afternoon.”

“Well, I’m not fourteen and he’s not going to think I enjoyed it,” Dryas replied darkly. “I may not resist, but there are other ways to show how you feel and I won’t spare him those. So warm the porridge; I’ll return shortly.”

This time, Aquila led the way.

When Marcia turned to enter her kitchen, she saw the dog. He was one of the biggest she’d ever seen. “More wolf than dog,” she said under her breath. She was a bold woman. Some of the men confined in the ludus—not all, mind you, she would have said, but some—were more dangerous than any wolf.

So she had a smaller version of the old legionnaire’s sword in a sheath near the door. A dreadful weapon, it could easily be used to decapitate a human or animal with one blow. The sure weight of the heavy, crooked, single-edged blade made it formidable even in the hands of a woman. She drew it from its sheath and poised herself in front of the dog.

But he seemed to have heard her comment. He sidled toward her, creeping, tail between his legs, tongue lolling, with an ingratiating whine.

She sighed and shook her head. “Another hungry one. All right, stay there.” She threw odds and ends of discarded food in a pail near the grill. Some were stale, but the dog would probably be grateful.

She picked up the pail, turned, and found herself facing a large man not wearing much in the way of clothing.

With one hand, he shielded a strategic area with a somewhat less than adequate dishtowel. The other was extended in a gesture of supplication. He addressed her in formal Latin. “My apologies for disturbing you at such an early hour. If you could spare a piece of cloth a little larger than this, I also would like to see Dryas, and if you could see your way clear to some porridge and a little of that bacon, I would be most appreciative. You see, I’ve been on foot all night and—”

He had to break off and finish his speech a little later, because just about then, Marcia fainted.

“I’m not about to make it easy for him,” Aquila snarled. He led Dryas to a chamber with one door opening into the arena. It was covered by a metal grating. The other end of the room was closed by a similar grating. He locked her in. The ceiling was curved. The gratings on either end suggested animals and the room smelled of cat piss and dung though the floor was clean, freshly swept. No doubt ready for the tiger.

Dryas composed herself and waited. Aquila and two men appeared in the corridor in the passage under the seats. She recognized both of them at once. One was the physician who treated her bruised ankle, the other the bath attendant who’d been with him. Only the bath attendant was dressed a whole lot better today.

Dryas walked toward them, then paused at the bars. A torch burned in the corridor. She gave both Lucius and Philo a look of deep disapproval. “Why the charade?” Her eyes looked directly into Lucius’, as they had the day before. “Why didn’t you simply identify yourself at once?”

Lucius found his mouth dry and he had no answer. He looked at Philo and Aquila. They were no help at all. Aquila’s face was savage. Philo’s expression more or less said, “You’re on your own.”

“Because . . . because,” Lucius stammered, “anything, anything, even pity, would have been better than seeing hatred in your eyes.”

Dryas smiled. “Why should it matter to you what I think of you?”

“Because I don’t . . . What do I say? Normally a man doesn’t have to do this for himself . . . not without help.”

Dryas extended her hand through the grating and took his. He lifted it to his lips.

“Now, tell me what it is you want,” she said quietly.

“What did you think I wanted?”

“To lie with me, with or without my permission,” she answered.

“No.” He shook his head and clasped her hand in both of his. “I came here to ask you to marry me.”

Aquila looked as if he thought his ears had gone back on him. Even Philo seemed shocked.

But Dryas’ eyes widened in horror. She let go of the mantle and it fell unregarded to the floor. She stretched out her left hand through the grating to touch his cheek. “Either this is the worst of deceptions,” she whispered to him, “or you don’t know!”

His direct gaze belied the very idea of deception. They stood only inches apart. He placed his right hand over her hand on his cheek. “What don’t I know?” His face suddenly paled with anger and fear and then, in a voice not even Philo knew he possessed, he roared out the question, “What don’t I know?”

XXIV

To Gordus, the day seemed beautiful. He and Martinus were walking along near the Forum. The sky was a fair warm blue with a haze of very high, white clouds that did nothing to dim the bright, warm sunlight.

“Do you think we will get to see Caesar?” Martinus asked.

“I don’t know,” Gordus said. “He has so many petitioners now that I can’t think we’ll be successful and, even if we do get in to see him, he might not grant our request.”

“Surely he has some sense of fairness,” Martinus said.

“My son, I wouldn’t put my request to him in that particular way. In fact, I wouldn’t put any request to a man as powerful as he is in that way.”

“No,” Martinus said. “I’ll let you do the talking. I’m not good at explaining things and I’d probably just get tongue-tied and make a fool of myself.”

“What did she tell you?” Gordus asked. “How did she read your fortune?”

Martinus looked pensive. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just didn’t seem like much, at least not to me, not at first.”

“So?” Gordus asked.

“Very well.”

They dodged a seller of stuffed bread—the man had his stove on his head—and then had to make their way around an aged soldier selling flowers, of all things. He sat on the steps to the Temple of Vesta with baskets of roses, lilies, violets, and narcissus scattered around him, along with pots of herbs for windows, balconies, and courtyards; sage, basil, one kind of sweet marjoram, and even long stalks of dill.

“She asked for her sword. Aquila went and got it for her and she drew it and placed my hand on the blade. Then, after a few seconds, she lifted it off. There were dark marks where my fingers touched it. She said I had to know, but you were right. I am not for the sword. I was sad because I honor you and I wanted to be as much . . .”

They paused because they were near the Temple of Venus and the dovecote in her shrine covered the paving with birds.

An old woman tried to sell them a small bag of grain. “Feed her doves,” she said, “and you honor her. She has made you fair of face, young man, and must love you. Now ask her to make you lucky in love.”

Martinus smiled and Gordus thought,
He is handsome. Light brown hair, so very fine and soft the wind ruffles it like dust, large, hazel eyes fringed by long, brown lashes, a beautiful smile coupled with a tall, strong body endowed with the grace of youth. If I saw him in the arena with a sword in his hand, I would die. My spirit cut from its fleshy root would lie down in darkness and never rise again. Thank you, Dryas. Thank you.

Martinus paid the old woman a copper and took the bag of grain from her hands. Then he and his father sat on the temple steps and fed the doves. They were across the street from the awnings striped in red and yellow that marked the house of Caesar.

“As I said,” Martinus continued, “I wanted to be as much like you as I could, but she said, ‘No, the steel rejects you. Look at the marks you left on the sword.’ Then she put her hand on my chest and closed her eyes. She frowned at first and then smiled and, for a long time, she was still. Then she gestured at the doorway. A girl walked through it. She was beautiful, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She smiled at me and then vanished. And, after that, I heard the laughter of children. Then Dryas asked me if I wanted the music.”

“What music?” Gordus asked.

“The music I hear all the time,” Martinus answered. “I never remember not being able to hear it. I sang in my crib and while I crawled around the kitchen floor behind Mother. Sometimes, when I hear a good bit, I memorize it and teach it to my friends. I can’t imagine it ever going away, but I never told you or Mother about it because I was afraid you’d laugh at me.”

“No,” Gordus said. “No.” His gray eyes were luminous with love. “No, I would never laugh at you. Not about anything important. So, what about the music?”

“She said that if I went on with my training as a gladiator, when I fought my first match, the music would leave me forever. I said I’d rather be dead than live without it. She answered yes, she knew, but that’s why she kept her hand on my chest so long. It was so beautiful and she was listening, too. She told me the girl at the door would be my wife and we would live a long, happy life. I would have many children and I would love them all and they would love me in return. The music would follow me all the days of my life and through the lifetimes of my descendants until the end of time. But not if I took the path of the sword.

“I wouldn’t ever want to do anything to make the music end. I couldn’t live without it.”

Or I without you,
Gordus thought. “We will think of something,” he promised.

Burdened slaves trotting past, carrying a very expensive litter with ivory-and-gold poles and purple curtains, sent the doves into flight with soft piping cries and a whir of wings. The cloth bag was empty.

Gordus rose. “We will go to see Caesar.”

To his surprise, they were admitted only about an hour after they arrived.

Caesar greeted them politely. “Yes,” he said, “and I believe I saw the young man at the exhibition bout you gave.” Martinus’ arm was still bandaged. “He’s not the swordsman his father is, but then that’s hardly to be expected. Will you follow his profession?”

Martinus blushed and stammered. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Probably just as well,” Caesar said.

“Yes,” Gordus said. “My lord, it’s about the woman at my ludus that I came.”

Caesar had turned away from his desk to greet them. He looked back and cast an impatient eye at the parchments and papyrus piled there. “Yes, what about the woman? I’ve invited some people this evening to see her fight. Are she and what is it, a lion or whatever kind of cat, ready?”

“It’s called a tiger, Caesar, and I came because I feel placing her in the arena with such a savage creature is nothing short of murder.”

Caesar’s eyebrows rose. He waved away the two secretaries still in attendance and rested his hands on his knees. “Strong words,” he commented.

“I don’t think so,” Gordus said. “The young lady is no criminal. As far as I can tell, she has never been convicted by any Roman court of a crime whose penalty is damnatio ad bestias, that is, execution by being thrown to wild animals.”

“I know what it is,” Caesar said. “Don’t presume to instruct me in law.”

“No,” Gordus said. “I would never presume to take any such line, but I would like her status clarified for me. The soldier, Aquila, tells me she was captured in an attack on a town ruled by an ally of ours called Cynewolf and carried off against her will to Rome.”

“You have a sensitive conscience, Gordus, for a lanista and an ex-gladiator.” Caesar rose and walked to the side of his office looking into the garden. There was a stiff breeze and the long linen curtains flapped and the rings rattled.

“Gordus,” Caesar said, turning toward him, “I know what the young lady, as you describe her, is and I can tell you more about her.” He reached up self-consciously and smoothed his balding head. “I can tell you more about her than she cares to tell you about herself.

“She is a Caledoni. They are the British tribe at the farthest remove from us. They live in the highest mountains, farthest away from the rest and, even among the fierce and wild tribes of Britain, the White Isle, they are considered the fiercest, the most savage, and the most lawless. They have no gods and worship only the dead who have gone before them. They feel all men are created equal and women, also, because they train their women in the arts of war and slaughter. And their daughters as they do their sons, teaching them to ride, hunt, and wield sword and shield as well as men.

“They account one man as good as another and will accept no curb on their passions, are moved as easily to laughter as to tears, to wrath as to terror. They are without consistency or control and are as wild and untamable as the wolves of their valleys or the eagles floating among the crags where they make their homes. The arena memorializes our victories. When I’m done with Parthia, I will return to the White Isle again.

“I would like to see this woman of the Caledonians fight. We cornered one of their she-wolves in Britain but we never knew she was a woman until she was dead. When I do return, I will capture as many more of her people as I can and bring them here, men and women, to fight and die for our entertainment. As this woman does for me now. Do you understand, Gordus?”

“Yes,” Gordus said. “I believe I do, but will you at least let me allow her to have her own weapons to fight this Terror so she stands some chance? That’s what they call the beast, Terror. The mail the Lady Fulvia wants to dress her in is weaker than most cloth. Let me give her some effective armor.”

“Gordus, you weary me and that’s not good for you or the lady. Next you will want me to send a cohort of soldiers into the ring with your fighter, to protect her against any harm that might befall her.”

“You don’t want her killed in the first few seconds, do you?”

“No,” Caesar said slowly. “I would like her to survive, if at all possible.”

“I am an experienced man in these matters,” Gordus said. “Let me arm her.”

“The exhibition of her body is part of the spectacle,” Caesar objected.

Gordus swallowed. “She will look wonderful, I promise.”

When they were out in the street again, to Gordus the sun didn’t seem so bright or the day so beautiful as it had been.

“You failed,” Martinus said.

“No, boy, no. Half a loaf is better than none, especially if you’re dealing with men like Caesar. I didn’t hope to get that much, but he did overrule that Basilian bitch who would have gotten our little priestess killed in under a minute. I’ll do the best I can for her. She’s formidable. He’s right about that.”

“Are any of those other things he said true? What does that stuff mean about memorializing our victories?”

“The other things, probably not. Does this Dryas seem to you to lack self-control or courage?”

“No,” Martinus said. “Aquila told me she was some sort of judge among her people, which means they have laws, at least.”

Gordus nodded. “As for memorializing our victories, he made me feel like spitting in his face. My father farmed his land in Campagna until he was chased out by soldiers when our land was expropriated by the Senate to settle some of Pompey’s veterans. I’m as much a Latin as any member of the Senate. My grandfather supported the Gracchi when they tried to make land reforms. My father was a tenant farmer at Capua when the Campagnian law was passed, by Caesar no less, leaving our family completely destitute.

“So we went to Rome and tried to live on the grain dole. Bread and circuses, they say, have been the ruination of the Roman people, but I think my father and grandfather would rather have had their farms than any amount of panum and circuses. I went before the lanista at Capua, yes, the same ludus Spartacus came from later, and swore to be beaten by whips, burned by hot irons, or killed by steel if I disobeyed my master. I did it for money, money to try to keep my mother and younger brothers from poverty, but I never wanted such a life for you.”

“Mother?” Martinus asked.

“Be quiet. What happens to a man may be spoken of openly, but women . . . that’s different. I will say this: we played together as children and she lived only two streets away in the same village, and her blood is as Latin as is my own. But in the arena, I fought as a Gaul sometimes and, at others, as Samnite and once or twice as Thracian—all peoples defeated by the legions.

“Still, I can’t see what Caesar thinks he’s memorializing unless it’s reducing our own people to slavery in a headlong quest for power. He’s managed to do that all right. Still want to be a swordsman and shed your blood and that of your companions as ‘entertainment’ for men like him?”

“I’d rather have the music,” Martinus said.

The resulting fight was probably better than the one with the tiger, but not so public. Philo, who got a chance to watch, considered it one of the best rafter-lifting, window-rattling, knockdown, drag-out family fights he’d ever seen.

Lucius and Dryas were made for each other. On very slight acquaintance they stood, iron grating between them, and slugged it out, toe to toe, at the top of their lungs.

Lucius was all for taking possession at once and wanted Dryas to run away with him.
Now!
They would take ship from Ostia.
Now!

And leave his friends and family to face the not-inconsiderable wrath of Caesar and Fulvia, not to mention Antony? Was he out of his
mind?
She had her
honor
and honor demanded certain types of behavior. Didn’t he understand
that?

What kind of honor could a woman and barbarian have?

It was just as well the iron grating was there, Philo thought. Not for Dryas’ sake, but for Lucius’.

Dryas looked as if she might just kill him if she could get her hands on her suitor. In fact, if Aquila would bring her sword, she might do just that!

How dare she get him into such a condition that he was about to be driven mad for love of
her!

His mental aberrations were hardly
her fault!
Had he not come from a nation of men so vain, arrogant, selfish, and heedlessly greedy that they could not be trusted to leave even their friends alone, she would not be . . .

At this point, Maeniel, Marcia, Gordus, and Martinus arrived. Lucius found himself seriously outvoted. He didn’t take it quietly. He went down fighting, but he didn’t get much help. Even Philo felt he had certainly taken serious, reckless, and, possibly, semipermanent leave of his senses.

Marriage! He was proposing marriage to a wild barbarian warrior woman. There were any number of proposals, not to mention propositions, the very practical Greeks of Philo’s acquaintance might have made to this magnificent Amazon, but marriage was not one of them.

And the same went for Aquila, Gordus, and even Martinus. Aquila’s mind inclined in that direction, but he could not, with any true conviction, see Dryas feeding chickens and pigs on a farm in Campagna. Or, for that matter, dwelling in the house of a rich Roman aristocrat like Lucius. She would cause a sensation, even if he retired to a villa in the country with her. The majority of Romans, patricians or even knightly, would find a desire even to cohabit with Dryas not only eccentric, but absolutely insane.