Night of the Wolf (49 page)

All he saw was a big, dark, dappled gray, its coat glowing like pure hammered silver, with a curling mane and tail, soft as a fair woman’s hair, but abundant as a skein of fine wool.

It knelt for a second, inviting her to mount. She demurred, laughing, but kissed its nose and hugged the big neck.

Then the wings opened with a snap, the report as loud as a ship’s mast breaking in a storm, and it vanished in a swirl of wind.

She stood, hand raised in farewell.

“Your friend?” he asked.

“Yes. He is becoming impatient. I must leave next time the visions present themselves.”

He walked down to join her and they sat on a broken bench near the pond. It was thickly overgrown with lotus, and the big pink-violet flowers were opening in the sunlight.

From the pool, to one side, a stair led down. The shallow, half-overgrown steps sloped away across low terraces, each filled with green sward surrounded by different gardens, some filled with roses, lilies, flowering trees, and more ponds decorated with statuary, some of it broken, some intact, some pale, others darkened by lichen and moss. A riot of flowers bloomed in the borders around them: hollyhocks; pinks; daisies; calulena; foxglove; nightshade; poppies white, pale violet, and red; and in the shadows were henbane and monks-hood. Each garden was a separate entity. Each invited exploration and contemplation.

“Your friend defeated the tiger,” she said.

“Yes, but I don’t know what to do now.”

“Kill him,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t think that whoever replaces him will be any better,” Maeniel said.

“Yes, they will, especially from your friend’s point of view. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter. As far as Rome is concerned, he’s done all the damage he can. He cannot create. All he can do now is destroy. Once, I wouldn’t have said that, but now, I must.

“He has perfected his skills. Another ten years and he will have laid waste with both hands. In ten years, nothing will rise from the ruins he leaves behind. There is no one like him. No one as strong.”

“They say he has good qualities.”

“What?” she asked.

“Mercy.”

She began laughing. “He doesn’t know what the word means. What looks like mercy is his ability to ambush. He pardons all and waits to see who will be of use to him, who may be crushed, their spirits broken and enslaved, and who must be killed because they will defy him to the last.

“Of those, he will select a few and allow them to live, for a time, that they may entertain him with their suffering. Remember the pirates? They captured him and demanded a ransom. He raised it, but promised he would return and crucify them. And so he did.”

“I was told he had them strangled before he put them on the crosses,” Maeniel said.

“Yes, after a time, some of them, but only when he became bored with his cruelty and their sufferings. He’s good at cowing others through those they love. In fact, he deprived me of everyone I loved long ago. Think about your friends. All those hostages in Gaul. They bow the knee because they fear for their loved ones.

“Now I am free. I have become a hindrance to him. When he returns from Parthia and the White Isle, he will wish to marry the Egyptian. Of what use is a middle-aged wife to him? He was seen tampering with one of Philo’s medicines, the concoction I take for my headache. A bit more opium and I will sleep not for a few hours, but forever.”

Maeniel caressed her cheek and kissed her on the forehead.

He started to speak, but she pressed her finger to his lips. “No, he has chosen and so have I, because there is no damnation here, only choice. His is a plane of stone where the dead rise at dawn, wounds livid in their pale flesh, eyes emptied of all but hatred. They contend again each day for victory and power, but the only victory they have is the few hours before sunset when the dead sleep in nonexistence. Wrapped in death’s silence, they rest and rise at dusk to drink and boast, waiting for the dawn, going out again to relive the agony of their death wounds. They wait for him. He cannot escape them because he understands nothing else.”

“And you?” he asked.

“Shh.” She put her finger on his lips again. “I have never felt such love. I cannot walk in darkness because it lights me from within and I may, on my steed born of wind and rain, ride forth to all the worlds beyond.

“Now, share this final beauty one more time before I am summoned and must go. We will love each other in the bloody dust of time before I must turn and enter the portals of eternity.”

XXVI

There were baths at the ludus. Spartan, to be sure, but equipped with all the latest appliances. The hypocaust had been fired. The room was very warm and Marcia waited for Dryas. The warm bath was a simple, tiled pool filled by a pipe protruding from the wall on the side. She opened a stopcock and warm water began to fill the plunge bath.

“Go away, you men,” Marcia said.

“No,” Lucius replied. “I have a right.” He settled Dryas on a bench against the wall and began removing her sandals. They had quite an audience: Gordus, Aquila, Philo, and Martinus.

“Do you say he has a right?” Gordus asked Dryas.

Dryas, still staggered by the enormity of what she had done, said, “Yes.”

The others left, all but Marcia, who unbraided her hair and then began helping her undress.

Dryas sank gratefully into the pool, basking in the warm water. As she relaxed, she watched him, standing by the side of the pool, talking to Marcia.

She closed her eyes and thought for a long time of her house with its bright wall hangings and the dogs clustered near the fire pit. The bedroom curtains partitioned it off from the rest of the house. She’d seen how these Romans lived.

What would he think of it on a wild night when the sea leaped at the rocks only a few miles away, the wind drove the rain ashore in gray curtains, and an icy mist hung over forest and heath?

She closed her eyes and it seemed she could smell salt air, a faint perfume of heather and wild fennel mixed with the odor of woodsmoke and roast meat. Here, in this hot, moist bathhouse a half a world away, her heart hungered for the chill, but oh so clean wind and the distant sound of the sea.

At the assembly, when she had communicated her decision to her people and among the women who were the queen’s companions, she was surprised by their sorrow. Surprised they loved her, at least some of them.

Sachna came, her closest friend, riding as she did like the nomadic horsemen, without bridle or rein, so well did she and her mount understand each other. She begged Dryas to return if only for her sake. When Dryas refused and tried to tell Sachna good-bye, the little redhead turned her back, wouldn’t listen, and rode away.

But from a distance she turned at last, and Dryas could hear the tears in her voice. “I won’t believe you won’t return. I won’t. I know you. You will come back and I’ll see to your horses and hounds until you do. The same wind that blows you away will bring you back. I know. I’ve never been wrong about you before, and I’m not now.”

Then the ship’s captain cast off and the rowers, sculling her lightly as a bird, turned the hull out into the open sea.

It had been, yes, over two years, almost three since she last heard her friend’s voice. Now this Roman, this strange man offered marriage and she could not refuse him.

No, I cannot refuse him, but can I be a wife to him? I need to know
She looked down at her body in the pool. Her wounds colored the water with a pinkish haze. The worst were the claw marks on her thigh, but they’d stopped bleeding and were being cleaned by the water. The ones on her arm were only scratches. Her right shoulder was sore, swollen, and purpling.

The cat had got in a bite. The mail Gordus made for her had done its work well. Had she been wearing the silver gauze Fulvia had wanted to dress her in, she would now be dead or at least badly injured. As it was, she would recover in a day or so.

Her eyes closed and she rested, listening to the stream from the flow pipe pouring into the bath, letting it gently lave the injured shoulder.

She must have slept for a moment, or possibly more than a moment, because she awakened with a start and found Marcia was gone. He was on one knee near the stair down into the bath. His expression and posture reminded her that he had pretended to be a servant simply to get close to her. She smiled at him, almost pityingly.

“Don’t!” he said. “You might tempt me to take advantage of you. That smile is so lovely.”

“Take advantage of me,” she said invitingly.

“No.” His face darkened. “Come up and let me tend your wounds.”

There was a chair near the bath with a thick linen sheet spread over it. He helped her get up the stair from the pool and, very gently, seated her, then wrapped the sheet around her, leaving her leg bare. He dried it carefully, looking at the gashes in her thigh. The tears in the skin looked raw, the edges livid and ugly.

Philo had given him clean linen bandages and a vulnerary powder that stank of sulfur. The men at the ludus swore by it and so did he. The heat and swelling of the wound in his back had begun to subside from the first time Philo used it. Now he scattered it on the claw marks; then, because he’d learned a thing or two from Philo, he bandaged it expertly.

He began dressing her, beginning with the most intimate garment first, the loincloth, a new one made of white silk. He handled her body the way another woman would, without passion.

He could tell by the expression on her face that she was shocked. She had expected the usual force, perhaps with a tacit gesture of conciliation, an attempt to make use of her without causing her pain or even too much discomfort. Male rut, possibly with its more ugly and unpleasant aspects suppressed, but much the same as she’d encountered before.

He proved as expert with the strophium as he had with the loincloth. Then he dressed her in a shift of white silk and added a red silk stola. He placed sandals on her feet. They were soft suede with a thong between her toes and tied at the ankle.

Marcia returned just then. She carried a white woolen palla and vitta, the fillets that bound a married woman’s hair. She finished dressing Dryas, braided her hair, and placed on her the vitta and a belt called a cingulum, tied in a ritual knot.

“Only he can untie this,” Marcia instructed her. “And only when you give him your permission.”

“I am not a virgin,” Dryas said. “I have borne a child.”

“Yes,” Marcia said, “but it doesn’t have anything to do with virginity. It signifies something much more important.”

“What?”

“He must persuade you to accept him as a husband, to lay aside whatever fears you have, so the two of you can become one.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Dryas said.

“Yes, I was afraid of this,” Lucius said. “But whatever happens tonight, I won’t accept less and I’ll try to return you to your people. We can part as friends, even if we can’t be lovers. I don’t want the specter of violence between us, even implicit violence.”

“So I see,” Dryas answered. Then she wrapped herself in the soft woolen mantle and accompanied Marcia and Lucius to the gate.

Aquila was waiting at the gate. He kissed Dryas on the cheek. “Good-bye now, little fighter. Take good care of her,” he told Lucius. “I’m going on to Campagna.” He touched Dryas’ cheek with callused fingers.

She found her eyes filling with tears and caught his outstretched hand with both of hers. “Thank you.”

He nodded and echoed the first words he’d spoken to her as a person. “Good luck, Dryas. Take care of her,” he told Lucius again.

“I’ll try. It isn’t always easy,” Lucius said.

Then Aquila turned, went through the gate, mounted his horse, and was gone.

Lucius helped Dryas into a litter.

“Yours?” she asked.

“Hired,” he said, and they started out for the Basilian villa.

A few seconds later, she saw a pair of eyes reflecting the torchlight. She told the bearers to stop. The eyes came in closer to the litter, but did not approach the men carrying it because it moved as some of them drew back. “If you would,” Dryas asked, “see to it he gets home safely?”

The eyes vanished.

“Do you think he will do as you ask?” Lucius questioned her.

Dryas nodded. “I believe yes. He’s very kind and I’m worried about Aquila.”

Lucius signaled the litter forward. “Close the curtains.” Dryas obeyed. Lucius nodded. Yes, she was too intelligent a woman to quarrel about minor matters.

When they reached the house, he sent the litter to the utility courtyard. He assisted her out and led her past his old rooms to the part of the villa where his parents had lived. He’d asked Philo to tell Aristo to move the things stored there elsewhere and refurbish the place, but he had no idea how far along they were. Now he found Octus, Philo, and Alia there to greet him.

The triclinium was swept and the table laid. Couches and chairs were present. The others took their leave.

“Would you care to recline?” he asked Dryas.

She smiled. “I have never eaten in such a way.”

“Well, sit,” he said.

The chairs were old and comfortable, well padded with cushions. Octus entered with a tray of gustatio and placed it in front of them. Olives, cheese, fruit, and some white wine.

Dryas looked up at him. “Thank you. What is your name?” Octus drew back. He wasn’t used to being seen or even noticed.

“This is Octus,” Lucius said. “He’s a body servant—takes care of my clothes, shaves me, that sort of thing. Who’s cooking? Don’t tell me my sister allowed that temperamental Greek chef of hers to—”

“No,” Octus said. “Alia is in the kitchen. There’s a separate one in this part of the house. I had to get the chimney unblocked from the old swallows’ nests, but when I did, she said she could use it.”

“Fine! Alia’s a good cook.”

Octus departed, closing the curtain separating them from the garden. The room was bright. There were four standing lamps near the table, each sporting six flames. The room was made brighter by the fact that the walls were done in white, decorated with green garlands. The floor tessare picked up the green, being a simple acanthus design, also in green and white.

“You don’t have a lot of servants?” Dryas asked.

“There are a lot of servants in the house, but no. I don’t have a great many, not for myself.”

She frowned at the olives and cheese. “Is this all?” she asked.

“No, it’s the first course. Something to nibble on while Alia cooks.”

“Oh,” Dryas said, then she dipped her fingers and enjoyed the olives.

“Try some of the cheese with the olives.”

“I see,” she said in a few moments. “The combinations are pleasing.”

“Yes.” He filled her cup.

She sipped. “Sweet.”

“Water,” he said.

“You water it?”

“Yes, most men, all women.”

“I see. One loses status if one doesn’t.”

“Yes.”

She nodded and added water to the wine.

“What do you drink on your isle?”

“Mead, barley beer, sometimes wine. The rich tribes near the coast drink wine. We aren’t rich, but poor, at least by their standards and probably yours, also.”

“What do you do for them? Gordus called you a priestess. Aquila, also, but Cut Ear said you were a queen.”

“Yes, I am royal. Mainly, I do three things. I must give the people a king by either marriage or birth. Speak law. Perform rites for the dead. When you asked to marry me, I spoke law. I told you what my laws say about me.”

The olives and cheese were gone. Octus pushed aside the curtain and took the tray.

Lucius looked and felt very uncomfortable, but he had to know. “How many men in your life?”

“Two,” Dryas said.

“Is that all?”

“It’s enough. One is the father of my son, the other the wolf.”

Lucius found himself violently jealous. “The father of your son?”

Dryas was quiet for a second. “I’m not sure I can explain. It was political.”

“Political?” Lucius asked. “How could it be—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t understand? Marcia said at least half the marriages among the Romans are political. He had to be accommodated: We aren’t Romans. The only thing that holds us together is good faith. He and his lineage threatened to withdraw when their queen died in childbirth. I stood in for her, as did several others. They have heirs and remain our allies.”

“The wolf . . . Why didn’t you marry him and return him to your people?”

Octus entered then, interrupting her response. He had three covered dishes on a tray. “Alia’s outdone herself. I hope you’re hungry.”

He set the tray down. “Roasted hare with an herb sauce,” he said as he uncovered the first, “pork stew with leeks and quince, and a capon larded with bacon and stuffed with mushrooms. For wine, Falernian.”

The capon was a hit, the pork stew only a little less appreciated, but Dryas, as ravenous as the tiger she’d killed, found room for some of the hare also. At length, she sighed, sipped from the wine cup, wiped her mouth with the napkin, and answered his question.

“The wolf’s not human. He was a menace to the people near where he lived and had to be tamed.”

“And you succeeded.”

“Yes. I was lucky, and he is sweet-natured and brave. Otherwise, I would have failed.”

“But you don’t love him?”

“No. He is different. For a time, any people of his would love him, but, in the end, whatever was between them would fail and he would return from whence he came. I don’t know what his destiny will be, but it does not lie with us or with me.” She sipped again. Her long lids came down over her eyes and she looked almost asleep.

“Where is your son?” Lucius asked.

“He’s dead.”

“Cut Ear told me you or any woman of your rank would have taken her own life if you hadn’t had a purpose in coming here. Besides, I’ve spoken to the wolf,” he finished rather uncertainly. “I don’t think we should talk about what he said. I trust the people around me, but . . .”

“Yes,” Dryas said. “I will tell you how my son died.”

Octus entered just then with passum, a sweet raisin wine, and dried figs preserved with bay leaves.

It must be the wine,
Dryas thought. The wine seemed to produce a curious detachment in her or, just possibly, grief was dying away. She didn’t know, but the nature, extent, and depth of grief, however boundless, didn’t matter. The whole point was, should grief be a barrier not only to love, but also to duty?

He means the offer,
she thought.
Whatever else he may be—foolish, deluded, reckless, to be drawn by a life and people he’d never seen or known—the man was honest. And I must meet him with honesty of my own. To do less would be the worst possible crime.