The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories (17 page)

In due course of time perhaps I would have married him. But it was not to be. In the winter, at the height of the growing season when I had just turned fourteen, my father returned from the palace greatly upset.

I brought him water, and sat him in the shade. I knelt beside him and waited until he would speak, for he was almost speechless with what he had to say. At last he reached for my arm.

“You are a good child,” he said. “And you do not deserve this misfortune.”

“What misfortune?” I said. Fear struck me, but at the same time came the thought that he could not have displeased Pharaoh too badly and be allowed to return to his home lamenting, rather than being flung into prison or executed. “How have you displeased Pharaoh?” I asked.

“I have not displeased him, daughter,” my father said, and he took another long drink of water. “I have pleased him, and that is worse. He says my cats are well behaved and beautiful.”

“So they are,” I said. “But how does this constitute misfortune?”

“He has determined to give a pair of them as a gift to some petty king of the Peleset with whom he wants to trade for precious woods. I am to go accompany them and tend them, while an ambassador presents his compliments and seeks a trade. This is a misfortune beyond belief! That I should be sent from the Black Land into this kind of exile for as long as the cats shall live!” He lamented further, and took another drink.

Then he shook his head and squeezed my hand. “I will miss you, daughter. I had thought to see you married and happy, and perhaps have a grandchild on my knee.”

I gasped. “The cats will not live so long, father. Five years, perhaps, if the pair you choose are not too young when you go. And I am not old! Besides, where do you plan to leave me? I cannot stay in Thebes alone!”

“I will send you back to your grandmother in Elephantine,” he said. “She will be glad to see you, and will find you a good husband while I am far away. For five years is a long time at my age, daughter. And who knows if I will ever return from that uncivilized place?”

“Surely it cannot be so bad,” I said, remembering all I had learned of those lands at the temple and from Zuka. “They were ours once, not long ago. Ramses the Great conquered them, and Thutmose.”

“They’re not ours now,” my father said. “They belong to the Peleset. There is some petty king who has emerged in the valley of the Yordana River who controls the forests and hill country. Menkherperre does not make war like Ramses. He seeks trade. And I do not doubt his wisdom.”

Neither did I. Times had changed. I had learned that at the temple. In days past our chariots were our strength. Now it was our archers who defended us from Peleset and Meshwesh armed with strong iron. And once, long ago, there had been no chariots and no horses. Our oldest scrolls and pictures showed this – Pharaoh going into battle on foot, armed with a long spear.

“I could go with you, father,” I said. “I would not mind seeing Peleset lands. And it will not be for so long.”

He shook his head. “Kadis, that is foolishness.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I do not want to go back to Elephantine. I could come with you. You are not going to the ends of the earth, but only to places that are well known and where we have long had trade. And you are going with a king’s gift. You will be an honored guest, not a man with no means and no status. Why should I not join you there for a few years until you may return home? Why should I not see the world too? Besides, you’ll need some help with the cats, and there is not a boy here you will want to bring.”

My father smiled. “You are the jewel of my eye. I have been too indulgent with you, and have treated you too much as the son that we never had. You are right that there is no boy here who has half as much skill with the cats as you do.”

“I can help you,” I said. “And it is just for a few years. It will be exciting.” I put my hand on his knee. “Remember, if I were a boy I could be going to war.”

Then he laughed. “You know you will get anything you want from me, as always, Kadis!”

“You know I will miss you if you make me stay,” I said. “Truly, father. I want to go with you.”

He hugged me tightly. “And I would miss you. I suppose you may come. And I do need the help with the cats.”

Long ago, Neas dreamed on the beach below Vesuvius, dreamed of fire in the sky and a burning city, dreamed himself looking back.
 
Here is the other end of that dream, in which Marcus
Gerontius
Tasso dreams of Neas.

Marcus
Gerontius
Tasso was twenty-six, a soldier, a sailor, and a child of the East. His grandparents were
Etrurian
, certainly, under Roman rule for centuries, but his father had gone out to the East in hopes of making money, now that all those ancient lands were part of the Empire. And he had found what he sought. Importing fruit was a lucrative business. Dried dates, apricots, peaches and sesame paste were all important produce that shipped from Caesarea in Judea to the rest of the Empire.

Fruit importing was not for Marcus. He was the oldest, and his father’s heir, and so of course he was the impractical one in a practical family. Both of his younger brothers were better merchants. He was the one with wild dreams of glory, of duels with Parthian champions and night marches across the desert. He was the one who was like his mother.

Now he stood on the deck of his ship, standing out from
Stabiae
, watching the world explode. The sky was on fire. Mount Vesuvius rained ash and pumice down on them, even so far away, and the morning sky was dark as twilight. Dark clouds rolled down the slopes of the mountain, swallowing greenery and vineyards, houses and livestock and people. Already he could see fires in the towns, Herculaneum swept under. He had been here on leave, two years ago with his parents when they were in Italy. He had stayed in this town, been a guest in these homes.

On the next ship he heard Admiral
Plinius
giving the orders. They would sail into the gates of the underworld and take off as many survivors as they could.

He gave the orders and the rowers picked up the beat, the ship going forward. Pieces of pumice floated on the surface of the sea like scraps of papyrus. Burning stones rained down. He ordered the ships boys to have buckets of water at the ready when they landed on the deck. He was doing twenty things at once, everywhere on the deck, watching the town coming nearer.

And then, for a moment, everything was still. It seemed to him that the town was gone entirely, not engulfed in fire and lava, but never built, that green lands curved around the bay, three black ships drawn up on white sand beaches. They were little ships, less than half the size of his trireme, fragile looking. People were sleeping on the beach. Except for one man. On the nearest ship a tall man was looking straight back at him, light brown hair held back with a leather thong, bare-chested and strong. His blue eyes met Marcus’ with a jolt.

Fire, and a burning city.

There were swimmers in the water.

“Careful with the lower bank!” Marcus shouted. “You there, get some ropes over. By Jupiter, this isn’t an enemy fleet action! These are our people, the ones we’ve come to rescue! Careful with the oars!”

A young man about his age was treading water, a naked baby held above his head. Marcus threw the rope himself, waited to see if he would get it. It slithered near him in the water, and he bobbed up and down, but at last got it. Marcus towed him to the side, but he couldn’t climb with the child.

“Tie the baby on!” Marcus shouted down over the din. He hauled the baby up the side, then dropped the rope back down, but the man was gone. They were drifting closer to the docks. He hoped the man had gone up some other rope, but he couldn’t wait to see.

“Get the lower bank in!” he yelled. They were going to break their oars against the stone wharf.

There was the strangest sense of unreality to it. The light in the sky, the burning world. The double image of the peaceful beach he had seen. Getting swimmers aboard from a burning city…

It seemed like days later that they put out again, racing against the black clouds that flowed down the mountain, a firestorm, a smothering blanket of ash. It was probably less than an hour.

“Row!” he yelled, “Pull for your lives!”

One of the ships was burning. Burning stones had caught her.

“Row!” Their decks were crowded with people, some of them collapsed on the deck, retching from the fumes. Fifty? A hundred? Out of how many thousand? Out of how many people he had known, how many shopkeepers from streets he had walked, girls from the taverns he had visited?

Out to sea the skies were clear and it was morning, the pall of cloud rising like a column.

It was not until they were well out to sea that he realized he was still holding the baby. Marcus looked at it dumbly.

It was a little girl five or six months old, and other than a long red burn down one arm, she seemed to be all right. Big gray eyes watched him solemnly, clutched against his left shoulder.

Well, Marcus thought, his mother would know what to do. He held it and went aft to set a course for Capri.

The German bodyguard, Sigismund, is one of the few characters to survive the ruinous end of Hand of Isis.
 
He's retired to Rome, gotten married, and runs a tavern in the Subura.
 
Nothing strange will ever happen to him again.
 
Or so he thinks, until a Roman waif named Lucia enters his life with her strange dreams…

I dreamed, and in my dream I drifted like smoke through the streets I walked waking, through the neighborhood and away, and up the steep cobblestone streets of the hills. It was a night of rain. I saw him then, just ahead of me, a man alone in the hours before dawn, his dark cloak pulled tight against the fog. I hurried to catch up with him, and he looked back, almost as if he felt me, a handsome face grown heavier with age. He stopped outside a great house, the two bodyguards on duty coming to attention, but he dropped back his hood and I saw them relax.

"Yes, sir," one of them said. "The lady is expecting you." The porter opened the door behind them and he passed in.

I hesitated at the threshold. Beyond, I could see the wall shrine, masks glowing in the light of a small lamp, left lit all night. I wasn't sure I could pass, or what would happen if I did.

One of the masks, crudely made of wax with distorted features, as though made by a child's hands from memory, looked straight at me. "You may pass, friend," it said, and I drifted in, insubstantial as night mist.

They were already speaking, standing in the dining room, the empty couches pushed against the wall for cleaning, their voices low and urgent.

"He has doubled the offer," the man said quietly. "He is inclined to take it. After all, it's something for nothing."

She shook her head and looked away, her hair pinned up and fully dressed even well before dawn. "It's too far, and she's too young. The other children need her. She's still a child, really, and Juba is too old. I should know. I was married at that age to a man much older, and while he was kind to me I was not happy in it. I will tell him no, that it cannot be done."

The man took a deep breath, and took both her hands in his, looking into her face. "I tell you that it is better if you do this. Better that she be far away in Numidia when Helios puts on the toga."

Her eyes did not leave his. "You can't think that."

His hands tightened on hers. "If I did not think it, I would not take the risk of telling you this."

"He wouldn't."

He held both her hands and said nothing until she could no longer meet his eyes.

At length, she broke away, pacing around a little table. Her voice was still low. "Why are you here, Marcus?"

"To keep faith with the dead," he said.

She paused, her fingers running over the inlaid surface. "I will send her then with many blessings. I have loved them all, you know. I have loved her, though I think she does not thank me for it, proud as she is. It was a year before she would let her brothers eat before she had eaten and an hour passed."

He looked at her and said nothing, simply met her eyes as she glanced up.

"You cannot really think it," she said.

He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "And how should you prevent it, if he wanted it?"

She took a quick breath. "Is Africa safe enough then?"

"As safe as anywhere in the world. And anywhere would be safer than Rome. Juba is not a very young man, as you say, and he needs his bride alive. There is little point in marrying the last Ptolemaic princess otherwise." He stepped forward until they almost touched, the little table between them. "You know he marched in Caesar's Triumph when he was seven years old."

She took a hurried step away, half turning from him. "Marcus, how did we get here?"

"One step at a time," he said grimly.

I related the entire dream to Sigismund the next morning, perched on a tall stool while he was wiping the counter and tables down. In the kitchen, I could hear Mucilla getting the ham in the oven, basted with honey and spices, so that it would be ready for the dinner hour. It was what the tavern was known for. The sign over the door might be a smiling pig, and everyone in the neighborhood called it The Happy Ham. My parents didn't mind too much, as long as I only took off to the Ham twice a week or so. They knew Mucilla was a good woman, and since Baby came there were seven people in a one room apartment, so getting rid of me for half a day was just fine.