“He sounds like the only man of sense to me.”
“That is because everything you think is inside out, because you are Roman.”
“My thanks to you for clarifying that.”
Auriane began secretly watching Baldemar’s hall, feeling like a ghost peering back on her earthly life. And she saw much that was alarming.
Men of Gundobad’s retinue had taken up residence in the yard, almost in the shadow of the hall. She could see the thralls were frightened of his men and stayed well away from them. She saw too that delegations of warriors’ retinues, village elders and priests came daily though the Cat-Skull Gate. From their demeanor Auriane guessed that some came for Athelinda’s counsel in myriad matters; Sunia had told her that these unsettled times had served to burnish Athelinda’s holiness in the sight of the people; many saw her as the one hearth still steadily burning while the hearths about her were blown out by winds of chaos. As Athelinda’s mother Gandrida had been called the Wise in Counsel, so now was Athelinda. But Auriane guessed others came on behalf of chieftains who wished to bind themselves to Athelinda in marriage—or trick out of her the location of the sword of Baldemar.
On the days when no petitioners came, her mother was a stark and dreadful figure in hooded cloak, haunting the edge of the flax field, a specter clothed in flesh. Even from a distance Auriane recognized the wild, desperate, roaming look in her mother’s eyes—the suffering of one slowly poisoned by an unavenged death. At other times Auriane saw her mother staggering with milk-pails, frenziedly pulling weeds from the gardens, or cutting fodder for the cattle. Again Sunia had spoken truly—Athelinda’s desolation drove her to feverishly busy herself with thralls’ tasks.
The next day when Auriane traveled to the Lightning Oak, she found another token. This one was a length of bone—from the thigh of a dog, she guessed. Tied beneath it was a crude carving of a sword, small enough to fit in her palm.
This sign she found easier to interpret. The bone symbolized either winter or the burial ground. Certainly, she thought, Athelinda meant to indicate Baldemar’s barrow. The carved image could only be the sword of Baldemar.
The sword of Baldemar has been taken to his barrow. This interpretation made sense; it was a place Athelinda would consider safe—no one who was not close kin to Baldemar would dare linger near such a place, particularly at night.
As she realized the most sacred and powerful of weapons might be within her grasp, a crowd of new doubts arose. Will not I foul it with my touch?
I must not indulge myself so. What had Hylda said in the Ash Grove so long ago? “Your lot is to protect your people with your own body…to be a living shield….”
Auriane waited for the first moonless night. Then, with Decius, she set out at dusk for the urnfields.
Their horses trotted down night-filled pathways, hooves sinking into the mossy forest floor. The forest’s dark perfumes were stronger at night, Decius noticed, or perhaps his sense of smell was more acute because sight was frustrated by the gloom.
“Do we have to dig him up?” he asked once, reluctance in his voice.
“No—the sword and all the treasures will be buried at the head of the barrow.”
“Some might call it superstitious, the magical properties your people ascribe to particular swords.”
“Decius, some day when you’re sleeping, I’m going to sew up your mouth. I tire of you plastering that word all over me like mud. Whenever we do a thing and your people do not, it is superstitious—or barbarous.”
In the darkness she heard his muffled laughter.
When she judged it was roughly midnight, she saw, barely visible in the starlight, the standing stone that marked one entranceway to the urnfields. Decius jerked his horse to a halt.
“Stop! Someone’s there, and it’s no ghost.”
“It’s Andar, the thrall who guards the barrow,” she whispered. “Wait. I’ll frighten him off.”
She dropped soundlessly from Berinhard’s back. As he watched, amused, she crept forward and imitated a call of an owl.
“A passing-good owl,” Decius whispered admiringly.
She moved closer two more times, each time repeating the same call. When the thrall had heard three times the cry of an owl, he straightened, took several stumbling steps backward, then turned and fled in a jerking run, nearly crashing into a tree in his haste to get away.
“I made him think death approached,” she whispered. Decius nodded.
In the starlight they found the grim, low shape of the freshly made barrow. Quietly they began digging, using pottery sherds. They brought up golden torques, Gallic bowls, gem-encrusted brooches, bronze fibulae and gilded horns, but no sword. Auriane stopped once to look at her bleeding hands.
“We are mocked. I do not understand. I know Mother put it here.”
“You do not usually give in so easily.”
They resumed digging. Ground fog gathered and thickened as morning approached. Their limbs were stiff with cold. Once, while clawing at the soil, she felt an oddly familiar warmth wrapped about her softly as the fog, as though someone well-known and loved pressed close, then passed on. Her eyes blurred with tears.
When she struck cold steel, she stopped breathing. Hastily she cleared away dirt. “Decius! It is a sword. But is it the sword?”
Together they dug furiously. At last she grasped a pommel and pulled it out. In the starlight a snakelike reflection rippled along a long blade.
“Is that it?” Decius asked, running a testing finger along the blade.
But Auriane was wrapped in deep silence, rushed off to old dreams, and she trembled, knowing life had caught and engulfed her visions. That which was to be, unfolded now.
Decius continued to examine the weapon dispassionately. The hilt was of bone, and behind, it was set with a ring of precious stones. Each, he guessed, had separate magical powers: protection from wounds, from curses, from treachery. The runic sign of Tiwaz, god of war, resembling an upright arrow, was deeply etched into the base of the blade.
“By Minerva, the cursed blade is pattern-welded—I did not know your people even knew that process. I ask again, is this the one we seek?”
“Yes,” she whispered a little hoarsely. She inclined her head and softly touched her lips to the blade.
“A beautiful and terrible thing, is it not?” he said reverently.
She nodded. “We must put these treasures back and make the barrow look as if it were undisturbed—or Andar will be punished with death for leaving the grave open to robbers.”
Then she was suddenly alert, head up, reminding him of the elk scenting the wolf. He saw the tracks of tears and put an arm about her to comfort her.
“I hear him,” she whispered. “I hear Baldemar in the trees. `Do my will with it,’ he is saying, `and your own.”’
For one course of the moon Auriane sparred with Decius using the sword of Baldemar, accustoming herself to its weight and balance. It was lighter than the legionary swords with which she was familiar, though, like most Germanic swords, it was longer than the Roman gladius.
She was careful at first, acutely aware of the power of the sword, tightly holding herself back, fearing she might do injury to Decius. Then one day, near the end of a long practice, he came at her with such suddenness he surprised her; she gave ground, backing into a fir tree. There was a quick moment when she was jolted into instinctive response—she forgot place and circumstance. There existed only the wind and the chaotic rhythm of clashing blades. In one whiplike motion she dropped down, rolled against his back, came round and began rapidly cutting off his strokes before he began them. He felt himself struck by a series of lightning flashes of steel, coming from impossible directions faster than a mind could plan—it felt akin to being on a fast horse that bolted before he was ready. He was two, then three beats behind when she executed a long, sliding upward cut he never taught her; it nearly ripped the sword from his hand.
The downstroke touched his upper arm before it whis
tled off into air, causing a flesh wound painful enough to make him wince in spite of himself.
She froze in place, gave a small cry, and dropped the sword. Quickly she brought a strip of clean linen to bind it, winding it tightly about his arm in worried silence, watching the bright red stain rapidly grow.
After a time Decius said, “It is enough, Auriane. For all time.”
She looked at him, even more alarmed. “For all time? What are you saying?”
“I am saying, I have done all for you that I can. Auriane…, you have become so skilled…I do not even know where it comes from.”
“Well, of course. I’ve a weapon possessed of power that increases my strength threefold, some say ninefold.”
He shook his head. “I put no store in magic. You may call it what you will. I know only I have never seen such… grace, such…such swift intelligence. By Minerva, you are part cat, part deer, part hawk!”
“Nonsense. And so like you. You will goad me to madness. At last I get words of high praise from you, when I am not the cause, but the weapon.”
“You are the cause, you little fool.”
Vigorously she shook her head. “And you are wrong. The wisdom of all my father’s life is in this sword. Look at the blade. Do you not see the living fire in it? That is where your ‘swift intelligence’ lives.”
He shook his head sadly and shrugged. “Believe what you will. But you do not need me anymore, my little dove. You’ve flown beyond your teacher.”
She sensed the widening gulf between them more acutely than ever before, and a painful chill settled on her chest. If he could not be her teacher, what could he be? Already she felt he loved her less. It was as though she had cut her own flesh with the blade, and not his.
“Decius…,” she started softly, and stopped, feeling uneasy. Then she slowly leaned forward and tentatively kissed him. He did not move toward her until the last moment. For appearances, she thought miserably. She kissed him with purposeful passion, and he responded barely.
What have I done? she thought. I have only followed the will of the gods. What have I done?
CHAPTER XVI
ATHELINDA KNEW AT DAWN THAT THIS day would be fraught with evil. She arose spiritlessly; the three spoonfuls she ate from the bowl of honeyed gruel Mudrin brought her had no taste. It was late summer, the day she and Mudrin must go to the garden where her cultivated hops plants grew on poles, to harvest the conelike catkins; when added to mead, they gave it the desired bitter taste and helped to preserve it. Then they would put the new mead into casks. Her mind was an airless room with locked doors on all sides; she allowed herself to think of nothing but mead: Would it be the proper shade of deep bronze red? Would it foam vigorously with health and life when poured? Had she used enough yeast, enough bog myrtle and ginger, the right measure of honey? Numbly she rolled her hide bedding and adjusted the sacks of seed corn that hung from the roof beams so that mice could not get to them; then she walked among the thralls at the looms to see how the wool cloth progressed, and chided the girl at the stone gristmill for allowing dirt to mingle with the grains. Finally she crossed the threshing floor, Mudrin and Fredemund close behind, and looked out into the yard.
“No. Let me die,” Athelinda whispered.
Mudrin came up beside her to see what fresh catastrophe had come.
Before them in the yard, Gundobad’s men were setting up a marriage tent. The square of white linen supported by four polished rowan poles transfixed her for a moment: It was a banner of white, death’s color, evoking winter drifts, frozen corpses, weathered bone.
Four moons had passed since the death of Baldemar and full summer had gone, but the raiding season was far from over—all who could best protect her were still campaigning in the south.
Athelinda sent Mudrin to bring Thrusnelda, hoping the pleas of a priestess would inspire Gundobad to think better of this. At the same time she sent Fredemund to fetch Witgern, though she doubted he would come. As Athelinda waited, the preparations proceeded without a word of greeting to the lady of the hall. She watched them bring an oak table and set it beneath the tent; on it they laid the ceremonial marriage sword. Then they set shields painted with signs to avert evil at the four corners of the tent. A cart rumbled beneath the gate, laden with gifts; Gundobad’s men began unloading them and laying them by her door: a Celtic silver bowl studded with amethysts and carbuncles, an ancient loom, a gameboard with silver and ivory pieces, finches in a cage, bolts of fine embroidered cloth. Greater gifts came as well: Five of Gundobad’s men passed beneath the Cat-Skull Gate leading a pure white ox, a Thessalian stallion and three Plains mares, all beautifully decked out for riding. Alongside them came an ox-drawn cart bearing a young harpist, two pipe players and a grim, gray-robed marriage priestess with clicking amulets of amber hanging from her belt. Tied to this cart was a fattened sow garlanded for Fria, an offering to encourage the fertility of the bride.
Athelinda scarcely breathed, her mind as frantic as the finches flitting back and forth crazily in their bronze cage. A marriage oath could not be unsaid or undone.
Mudrin returned first. Thrusnelda was a prisoner in her lodge, Mudrin reported; the old priestess was guarded by ten of Gundobad’s men. She could do nothing to help but withdraw into her herb-rooms to work spells against the intruder.
When the sun rose halfway to midheaven, Fredemund returned. Witgern was coming, she told Athelinda, and with him, Thorgild and Coniaric, but they were in a weakened state and could not make haste.
What good can they do? Athelinda thought, her whole body contracted in fury. There are twenty-five, twenty-six of Gundobad’s men here, and doubtless more lurk just out of sight.
Gundobad’s Companions formed into two files, holding their gaudily marked shields of linden before them, forming an avenue down which the bride would walk. Among them, Athelinda saw, were four who had once been men of Baldemar’s. The wretches, she thought, but she understood: She guessed their allegiance to Gundobad was tepid at best, doubtless motivated more by their fear of being shunned at councils—the fate of Witgern and Thorgild—than by any love of Gundobad.
Finally Gundobad made his entry, approaching the Cat-Skull Gate on a black Asturian stallion, chosen, Athelinda surmised, for its resemblance to Baldemar’s horse. He was clad in a saffron cloak trimmed in marten fur, secured with a chieftain’s raven brooch, and a bronze helmet to which boar’s tusks had been affixed. He carried a small round shield with a binding of gold. Those high-laced boots of soft red leather Athelinda knew were not obtained anywhere within Chattian lands; they must have been purchased dearly from some trader who imported leather goods from one of the fabled towns of Gaul.
Athelinda might have laughed at the sight of her would-be groom, had she not been so stricken with dread, for his fine raiment only made more apparent how unrefined he was. It was as if a brigand had stolen the clothes of an effete prince. Gundobad looked as she believed elves must look, with a healthy fringe of bristling red beard, a round, protruding stomach, spindling legs, a glimmer of malicious playfulness firing his eyes. Even his horse did not seem to like him—the beast snorted and picked up its feet with distaste, seeming to contemplate throwing his rider. Gundobad clutched the reins as though he had a dangerous dog on a leash. His pastry-flour skin was blotched with red from bouts of mead-drinking that lasted a night and a day; all knew him as a man whose appetites were stronger than his will.
“My lady Athelinda, greetings to you,” he called out to her. “It’s time you’re wedded, and none make a more suitable husband than me. Go deck yourself in your finest clothes and your greatest treasures. My patience is at an end.”
“You are a pitiable fool to think you can walk where Baldemar walked.” Athelinda’s voice was harsh and raw. “It will be the hand of a dead woman you’ll take.”
Gundobad ignored this and dismounted near the marriage tent, brushing the dust of the journey off his cloak. He ordered the harpist to play. The fluttery notes, so regal and poised, w
ere so absurdly out of place Athelinda wondered if she had taken that last short step to madness. She felt all the venomous sadness fermenting in her breast boiling up in a violent eruption.
“Bed down here and you lie in a nest of wasps,” Athelinda shouted from the doorway. “Lie where Baldemar lay and the coverlets will burst into flame. Taste my mead and your entrails will shape-shift into vipers. Before Hel I declare it, you’ll awaken on the marriage-morn to find your gut the habitation of white worms.”
This brought uncomfortable quiet to the company; there was something darkly menacing and wrong in the sight of this handsome and imperious woman, the noblest among them, reduced to helpless rage. Surely the powers of night would descend to vindicate her.
After an awkward length of time Gundobad proclaimed with thin gaiety, while grinning and nodding, “I like her spirit!” He was determined to fight the unease settling over the yard in an evil cloud. He ordered a cask of his own mead opened—an unrealized deference to Athelinda’s threat. Gundobad himself planned to touch none of it—he seemed to sense he would need his wits about him to claim this difficult bride.
Athelinda regarded Gundobad with empty eyes, a look he misread as defeat. Then she withdrew abruptly into the gloom of the hall.
“Mudrin,” Athelinda whispered, “bring out my marriage dress.” Mudrin fled past her and opened the oak chest by the hearth and, with trembling hands, brought out a girdle of silver and a voluminous white woolen shift, its square neckline and hem embroidered with entwined serpents in crimson and woad blue. Mudrin looked at Athelinda, her eyes blurred with hopelessness. “Dare we desecrate this!”
“It is fitting I should die in it. Understand, Mudrin, I go to my death. I mean to slay him before I take the vow, and then end my own life.”
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