* * *
Correus lifted his head from the work on his desk in the commander’s office at Colonia Naval Station and sniffed suspiciously. It was a stone building close to the docks, and the unlovely smell of bilges being cleaned came through the open window. A cloud of midges and a green grasshopper had already sailed through, and Correus got up regretfully and closed the window. It was a beautiful day for the Rhenus, warm and sunny with the gold light bathing the vineyards and the patch-worked farm fields beside the river. Horses hauling their barges upriver made a gentle clip-clop along the towpath.
Correus was engaged in checking supply lists, an apparently unending description in his optio’s finicky handwriting, of the things necessary to the proper running of Colonia Naval Station: rope, pitch, canvas, paint, wax (in bars, forty to the crate), tow for caulking, bilge pumps (portable), mousetraps, canvas needles. It was a maddening list, and it went on and on. In a month or so he could leave it to his optio, who appeared to delight in lists, judging by the number of them that crossed Correus’s desk. For now it was as well to let it be known that the prefect took notice of such matters. An army in peacetime stole from itself even more than usual.
And there was peace, all along the Rhenus frontier, all that season. No one in Augusta Treverorum had heard of a man who matched Ranvig’s description, but the coastal shipping went unhindered now, and if anyone was cooking up a war, he was still uncommitted. The scouts reported that the Chatti were growing quarrelsome, picking disagreements at the ferries with the locals from the Roman side of the river, and pressuring the Usipi to break their treaty with Rome, but that was their nature, anyway. If it all came to anything, it wouldn’t be this year. So said the scouts. Correus doubled the river patrols and sent for his wife.
Eumenes went to escort Ygerna, nurse, babies, and whatever else she saw fit to bring across the pass into Germany – including the cat. Baucis was better traveled than most of her betters and content to ride for days on a pack pony, watching the scenery go by with just her ears and eyes showing over the top of her basket.
Correus could have done without the cat, but he had their quarters in the governor’s palace turned out and swept thoroughly.
Sulpicius Clarus, governor of Lower Germany, was a mild, pleasant man with the irritating habit of mislaying whatever it was that he happened to have in his hand at the moment and then sending his servants scurrying like a whirlwind through all corners of the palace to look for it. He brightened when Correus settled in, and asked hopefully if he played latrunculi. Correus did, and badly, which turned out to be the governor’s level, too. They spent pleasant evenings together vainly attempting to improve their game, and when he heard that the prefect’s wife was to join him, the governor sent his own staff to help with the cleaning and had the lady’s bedroom repainted by a local artist in scenes supposedly reminiscent of her native Britain. These leaned heavily to sylvan glades and broad meandering streams, a gentler aspect than the harsh blue uplands of the Silure hills, Correus thought, but more appropriate for a bedroom.
In the meantime, Correus renewed an old acquaintance. The artist had just finished decorating a house, he said, for a lady lately come to Colonia to settle. Actually she wasn’t what you’d call a lady, he added, but she must be a rich one, and her place was going to be the fanciest whorehouse in town. There followed a description that could only have matched one person, so Correus put on his parade uniform and all his medals and went to call.
Rhodope’s residence occupied the same slope the governor’s palace did, just west of the river wall. It was built around a courtyard with a fountain, and the two-story dining room on the east side gave onto a veranda overlooking the river. Correus gravely handed helmet and vine staff to the elderly slave who bowed him through the door.
Rhodope had adopted a few flourishes she hadn’t bothered with in the days when Correus had known her. Her quarters then had been a tent of Oriental splendor, which she carried in the army’s wake in a brightly painted wagon. Fancy enough for the frontier, but a pale shadow of the opulent dining chamber, awash with flowers and incense, where Rhodope’s customers now reclined to make their choice of the company she offered. The floor was set with a mosaic of medallions with a Dionysian theme. In the center was the god himself, drunk and leaning on a satyr. Below him a family of satyrs displayed unusual domesticity: The mother played a double flute while the father fed grapes to his baby son. There were satyrs on donkeys, Cupid on a lion, and Pan leading a billy goat. Two parrots pulled a cart full of gardening tools, and a female leopard displayed a charming smile and a broad blue ribbon around her neck.
Correus stood in the doorway with a bemused expression, taking it all in, when Rhodope looked up from the couch where she was reaching a business agreement with a wine broker. She had a head of brilliant orange-henna’d hair, astounding against olive skin, and a red and purple gown, held at the shoulder by an emerald. There were yellow shoes on her feet, and she was nearly as broad as she was tall. She was the brightest thing in the room.
She narrowed her eyes at Correus, taking in the new gilded cuirass, the wealth of medals, and the Rhenus Fleet’s trident insigne before she came to his face. Her eyes widened, and she heaved herself up from the couch.
“Correus!” A gold tooth gleamed a welcome. “Where did you spring from?”
“Up from the ground, like mine elves.” He grinned at her. “You’ve turned respectable.”
Rhodope snorted. “Certainly. And all the girls are virgins again. Here you, Leza, go and get the prefect some wine. You remember Leza, don’t you?” An Ethiopian girl with a headdress of crimped curls gave him a curious stare and then a smile of recognition.
Correus bowed gallantly, and Leza giggled.
“You’ll spoil her,” Rhodope said. “They think enough of themselves now as it is.” She looked over her shoulder at the wine broker. “Very well, Ostorius, I’ll meet your price, but if any of it is soured like the last batch, you won’t have any reputation left in any town from here to Augusta Raurica. Now go away and fetch the stuff.”
The wine merchant gave her a much-tried look and departed, and Rhodope dragged Correus over to her couch. Leza presented him with a cup of wine and curled up at his feet. Two more half-naked girls whom he thought he remembered settled themselves beside her. He felt like an Eastern pasha.
He scanned their faces, white, black, and brown, a friendly company of whores, painted for the evening’s business. “Where’s Charis?”
Rhodope chuckled. “She got married. A soldier from Aquitania, just getting his time-expired pay and a nice little piece of land. He must have been fifty, but he wasn’t particular, and Charis said she wasn’t getting younger herself. She’d a mind to have a house and a bit of a farm and just one man to please while she still could.”
“He was nice,” a blue-eyed girl said wistfully.
“He had warts,” Leza said.
“Enough.” Rhodope rearranged her bulk on the couch. “We have customers. Why are you sitting here like a bunch of schoolgirls, ogling Correus? If he wants one of you, I will send for you.”
“It’s a good thing Charis isn’t here,” Rhodope continued as they departed reluctantly. “She was too fond of you, that one. She would have done it for free.”
Correus chuckled. “Not with you around. When did she get married?”
“Not so long ago. Just before I bought this house. It is a good house, this.”
The night was warm, and from the veranda came the sound of high-pitched giggles. Below, the moon was reflected in the river and on the scales of the fish that threw their silvered forms in the air for a brief moment and disappeared into the river again with a plop.
“I thought you used to say you could make twice the money following an army on campaign as fighting the competition in a town,” Correus said.
“That was while there was still a campaign to follow,” Rhodope said. “It’s been quiet since you were here last. And my bones are old. I ache, and
the wagon makes it worse. It was time to settle and make a higher-class business. I endow temples now and put up public fountains, and everyone is very glad indeed to see me.”
Correus laughed. “Everyone was very glad to see you in your wagon, as I recall.”
Rhodope’s purple bosom heaved a sigh. “Those were the days.” She gave a shrewd glance to the phalerae strung across his chest. “You’ve come up in the world.”
“It’s been a long time,” Correus said. “Two wars ago.”
“And your German girl, the one that put a knife in you. What happened to her?”
“She died,” Correus said.
“Ah, I am sorry.” Her sharp black eyes were apologetic. She shook her head. Then she brightened. “Charis is gone, but there is Zoe, much the same type. For you I even make it for free. One time.”
“You’re getting soft, Rhodope. No, I am married now. My wife has told me that if I ever look at another woman, she will make a magic so that nothing will ever work again.”
Rhodope’s black eyes studied him, trying to decide if he was joking. “Could she?”
“Quite possibly,” Correus said solemnly. “And if she couldn’t, I expect she’d take matters into her own hands and do it personally.”
Rhodope laughed. “Drink your wine, Correus, and then go make an offering at the Temple of Isis that she doesn’t find out you’ve been in a whorehouse.”
“It’s not as bad as that. But I had to leave her in my father’s house to have her first child alone, when I came out here. I expect I owe her faithfulness, at least.”
“I expect you do at that,” Rhodope said. She sighed again, and the emerald rose and fell, glowing greenly in the lamplight. There was an oil lamp hung on a silver chain from the balcony of the second floor. “You never were a very good customer, Correus. You spent more time talking to the girls than you did in a bed.”
“They always knew everything before the camp knew it,” Correus said. He had been a very junior centurion then, with his first command and eighty legionaries twice his age in his charge. “It kept me a jump ahead of the men.”
“We were all younger then,” Rhodope said. She patted her orange curls sadly. “It’s all gray now, under the henna. And I get fatter every year. I need this house, Correus. You tell that to the governor if he doesn’t like having us on his hill. I’m too old for wagons now.”
“I shouldn’t worry. He’s no moralist.” Correus looked thoughtful. “You get a fair civilian clientele, don’t you, Rhodope? This is a government town, not an army post.”
“Oh yes. I’ve more girls than I used to have, and I’ve made them learn a thing or two. Zoe dances, and Leza has learned to play the flute.” Rhodope’s black eyes were shrewd and beady. Correus decided she wasn’t as old as she was acting. “What do you want, Correus?”
“Nothing to trouble you. But there may be trouble brewing with the tribes across the frontier. The first thing they’ll do is subvert the civilian populations in the Roman zone, if they can.”
“They tried that twelve years ago,” Rhodope said. “Colonia stayed loyal then.”
“I’m not expecting to be murdered in my bed,” Correus said. “But if there’s rebellion being talked in Colonia, some fool will as like as not talk of it here, and I want to know about it. I’ve sent for my wife and my children, and I intend to have peace and quiet to enjoy them in.”
“Anything I hear,” Rhodope said, “it’s yours. I am comfortable here, too.” She patted his hand maternally. “And you are too respectable for whorehouses. It’s good that you sent for your wife.”
* * *
“Tomorrow. Everything is packed, and I’ve had all the last-minute advice I can stand without being rude. Aemelia ‘doesn’t know how I can think of it with two babies,’ and her mother told me to be sure to take all my own linens because the frontier is always dirty.” Ygerna was curled up on the cushions in Berenice’s little garden room with Eilenn in her lap. The baby was blowing bubbles and catching at the pearls around Ygerna’s neck. Ygerna made an amused face at her hostess. “Aemelia doesn’t think Correus’s new slave is safe to travel with, either. So far she has thought of forty-one things that won’t be safe.”
Berenice laughed. “Remember that she has only been out of Rome once. You will be more adaptable.”
“I will be with Correus at any rate,” Ygerna said. “And the Rhenus frontier sounds more peaceful now than my father-in-law’s house. Correus’s sister still is not speaking to me, his mother thinks he should divorce me, and Aemelia thinks that I am a… a – I don’t know – someone from under the sea or a goblin’s changeling. She keeps saying, ‘But of course it must be very different where you come from.’ She was in love with Correus once. Someone told me that who shouldn’t have. Julius, I think.”
“It will be as well for you to be away from Julius, too, you know,” Berenice said. “Poor boy.”
Ygerna looked embarrassed. “Yes, Correus explained that. I shouldn’t have had him drive me here, I suppose, but there was no one else who wouldn’t tell my father-in-law.”
Berenice looked out into the little jeweled garden. The sun was low, casting a golden light on the flowers and the bright marble paving. “No, that would never do. I’m afraid you will have to go now, my dear. I am expecting another visitor – purely business, but you mustn’t be compromised.”
“I should have let you know I was coming, but I wanted to say good-bye, and there wasn’t much time.” Ygerna picked up the baby and wrapped her in her shawl.
“You are always welcome, my dear. It is only that I can’t break this… appointment.”
Ygerna smiled. “I understand. I will miss you.”
Berenice stood and kissed her on the cheek. “I will miss you too, child. But now you will be a family again. That is better.” Ygerna thought she sounded wistful. “Go with God.” Berenice patted her on the shoulder and turned her toward the door. Whoever was coming must be nearly due. Ygerna took the baby and went out, leaving Berenice looking out into the gold light in the garden.
She climbed into the carriage and handed Eilenn to Cottia. Julius clucked to the horses, and they set out at a trot down the dirt road that linked the little village, hidden among the trees, with the main paved road to Veii.
“You’re early,” Julius said.
“I have to finish packing.” As a driver, Julius was somewhat short of the unquestioning attitude required of a proper servant. Ygerna had so far failed to impress this on him and had given up now that he was Diulius’s pupil.
“I’m surprised you didn’t stay all night,” Julius said. “When you and Her Majesty get to nattering, I could die out here of old age. Thought you’d say a longer good-bye.”
“She had another visitor coming,” Ygerna said repressively.
“Here he comes now,” Julius said. “Tuck your head in. Won’t do for some hairdresser to see you keeping unsavory company.”
Ygerna ducked her head back behind the carriage curtains and looked out through a narrow gap. The other carriage swept past them at a good pace. Its curtains were drawn too, but the sun shone through them from the other side, setting the occupant’s face into sharp silhouette. Ygerna caught her breath. She had seen that bull-necked profile before. It was on the silver coins in her purse and one of Correus’s military medals. The emperor Titus.
“Watch the road, Julius!” she hissed.
So that was Berenice’s “visitor.” And that was why she had looked so sad when they had talked of Ygerna’s being with Correus again as a family. There would be no family life with
Titus, no time to let down one’s guard, not ever, not for a woman whose love was forbidden. Not for a man with a throne at stake.
So that was the reason for the emperor’s cruel edict, that no one who wished his favor should have contact with his banished woman. Berenice had traded all normal companionship, the daily round of friends and visitors, for a few infrequent hours in a hidden house.
Ygerna shivere
d. This was dangerous. “I want to go home as quickly as possible please, Julius,” she said, and was relieved when he shook out the reins and asked no questions. Had Julius seen that backlighted profile, too? It was as well that she was leaving tomorrow. Best not to be noticed or remembered as someone who had seen the emperor Titus visiting the lover he had exiled.
* * *
“Here now, we’ll be wanting that handy, not on the bottom of everything.” Nurse pointed a stout finger at the leather trunk that Eumenes had just settled as the foundation point of the mountain of baggage in the back of a wagon. “Master Felix’s clothes are in that one, and the baby’s. It’s got to be unloaded at night.”
Eumenes shot her an exasperated look. Felix was dancing like a dervish on the driver’s seat of the wagon, with a canvas bag of toys under one arm. “Here, stop that, you’ll fall off. And why didn’t you tell me that before I loaded it, then?”
“Don’t take that tone with me.” Nurse folded her arms and prepared to do battle. A cowed nurserymaid stood behind her, with Eilenn howling in a blanket and the cat beside her, howling in a basket. Cottia was piling last-minute additions on top of the luggage in the wagon, and a kitchen maid was stowing a hamper into the curtained carriage. The wagon driver, a slave of Appius’s, was hitching the horses to the wagon. He tangled the traces, and one of the horses backed suddenly into the wagon.
Eumenes gave the entourage a look of disgust. “It’ll take a year to get this caravan over the Alps.” He glared back at Nurse. “Longer if you keep farting about with the luggage. Buzz off now, and get the children settled.”
The Emperor's Games Page 16
