“I will not die,” Ramis said calmly.
She is inhuman. She did not even wince in pain.
“That same measure of venom in your body would have you writhing on the ground, for you have so much venom in you already, poor child. You poison yourself day by day—without the aid of a viper. You poison yourself with the venom of shame. My body is too intimately acquainted with death. It moves with it, it does not fight it. I am death’s bride. I bed down with it every night.” She resumed affectionately stroking the snake.
“The horse test showed you your innocence,” Ramis went on. “Yet still you speak of your ‘crime.’ I thought if I refused to give a judgment in that case and left it to the horses, it might help you believe. Evidently it has not. Why?”
Auriane felt hot tears collecting, filling her eyes.
“I, too, once caused a death,” Ramis said, voice low, speaking with effort. “She was my own daughter.”
Auriane felt uncomfortable, as though hearing a confession she was not certain she had earned the right to hear.
“In the sacred precinct of Seven Alders, where, as you know, I served long ago as apprentice to the great seeress and Veleda of those times, Raganhildis,” Ramis continued, the barest hoarseness in her voice indicating the hurt was not completely healed, “we were required to be adept with one weapon. I was accomplished with a bow. One night a band of Hermundures attacked, and in the confusion and darkness…I shot her and killed her…my own heart’s blood…. Freawaru was her name. The arrowhead was smeared with hellebore—she died painfully, but at once. I was younger than you then, and like you, I poisoned myself for years. My grief was larger than the Nine Worlds. I sorrow still, yes, but now my blood is cleansed.” Auriane was even more astonished to see a single tear travel down that smooth cheek. “As I was cleansed, so too can you be, Auriane.”
Auriane could scarcely breathe.
“Life is never, never what it seems,” Ramis continued gently. “That stone, which is so hard against the flesh, is truly emptiness. Baldemar lives. Your suffering pains him. I will try to show you, while you are here, your true enemy. It is not, as you suppose, death.”
“Will I ever be able to return to my people?”
“There is your true enemy.”
“What? Wanting to return to my people?”
“No. Not questioning that which you desire. Your desires are idols, worshiped blindly. But returning to your people is not even your greatest idol. Greatest for you is vengeance.”
Auriane felt her body tauten; a vast distance seemed to spring up between herself and Ramis. This could not be discussed. Of course she would avenge Baldemar’s death, as spring follows winter. Of course, she would one day challenge Odberht, and kill him. What proud person of noble parents would not? It was sacred law, and all peoples followed it—all except the followers of Ramis, known everywhere for their strangeness.
“Well, we’ve come to a barrier high as the clouds, and it’s a fine place to stop,” Ramis said easily, arising. Auriane rose with her. Before quitting the circle, Ramis inclined her head, took Auriane’s hand, and shut her eyes. Facing the fire, she began to chant a familiar prayer to Fria:
“You who are pure light shed from the moon…you who are the radiant one, whose raiment is the sun…you who generate all things and bring forth ever anew the sun that you have given to the nations…victory is your divine name…”
Auriane spoke it with her; it was a prayer every child knew. When it was done Ramis cast a bundle of dried vervain into the flames as a token-gift to Fria. Then she took up a torch and lit it from the fire. Walking in silence, she led Auriane to one of the small lodges.
She means for me to stay here on the island.
Auriane felt weak and emptied, so great was her relief. There was no safer place—no emissary of Geisar would dare cross this water.
The lodge was spare and simple; on a crude pine table were a jar of water, a hollowed gourd and a bird-bone flute; on the floor was a comfortable bed of straw.
She fell at once into sleep and dreamed vividly of Ramis. The sorceress was conversing with frightful spirits that possessed animal heads. Of all the words she spoke, Auriane heard clearly only one line.
“Yes…she is the one.”
CHAPTER XX
MIDWINTER AND THE DAYS OF YULE approached, and the mud began to freeze. At dawn Ramis often walked round the island with Auriane, her stream of talk smoothly weaving the visible world with the realm of spirits; she might begin by speaking of the habits of water birds, of which she had made a study, then shift to the nature of death and why so many peoples represent it by the flight of a bird. Once when Auriane spoke of her sense of foreboding about the coming spring, Ramis paused and looked out on the smoking water as if considering carefully what to say. Then she answered, “Remember this, Auriane: That very turn of fate which, in its day, you find most relentlessly cruel—one day you will turn round and know it as your deliverer.”
Auriane carefully considered this, but it made her feel no more secure. She scented gathering war as beasts scent a storm.
In late morning Auriane would row herself ashore and take Berinhard out to let him run riderless over the bare grassy hills; often she practiced with a spear on these journeys to keep herself conditioned for battle, ever hopeful she would be called back. As the child grew within her, she felt a new sort of love: a warm, diffuse tenderness for the unknown being within. She felt an ardent curiosity about this new creature. Who are you? she wondered a hundred times a day, her hand on her rapidly growing belly. Will you have Decius’ nature or mine? Or will you be hideous because of Geisar’s curse and have a calf’s head and the body of a black dog?
At the same time she despised this new ungainliness that made it increasingly difficult to get easily about. And then grim thoughts would come: The old must give way to the new. My body will swell and burst, and I will die so new life can arise. The mare is not so encumbered, nor is the doe. Why does nature descend so heavily on the human mother, leaving her staggering about and prey to the wolf?
While Auriane was off the island, Ramis saw the petitioners. Most wanted an oracle or advice in matters of sacred law, land disputes, marriage, or war, and Auriane trusted this greatest of Holy Ones even more when she saw how joyful the petitioners often were when they left her presence. At times Ramis was absent for days, leading delegations to the legionary fortresses to take complaints to the tribes’ common enemy, the Romans, or if it was the time of the new moon, traveling to the nighttime gatherings of the Holy Nine in their elm grove a half day’s ride to the east. Frightful rites were performed there, it was said, that maintained the harmony between the old and new gods and the balance among the Nine Worlds. Once she was called to a law assembly by the neighboring Tencteres to settle the case of a battle chief who had broken the law of vengeance, striking at the offending clan by slaying an unblooded, half-grown boy. And so Auriane was often alone with the dour, distant Helgrune.
As the year’s shortest days approached, evergreen boughs were nailed above the doors in the little community about the lake—charms to ensure the return of the green in the spring. On Midwinter Day the lake community set Yule logs alight to ensure that the light of the world would not go out entirely in winter. The mead they drank was sent by noblewomen of the Tencteres. The Boar Feast consisted of barley cakes shaped in the image of boars, because they did not eat flesh in this place. Auriane went ashore for the Yule Feast and sat before Helgrune’s glowing oak log in bitter loneliness, fearful for her mother and for Decius. Often in years past she had gotten a dim sense of events of the coming year by divining from the flight of the Yule log’s fiery embers, and what she saw for the new year she could scarcely bear to look upon—something dark and catastrophic loomed; she could not make out its precise shape.
Two days later, snow came in earnest, first laying a light shroud over the withered ground, then a solid blanket; it weighed down the boughs of the evergreens until the branches drooped l
ow. Like me, she thought, those boughs sag under a cumbersome burden, and like me, they will not be relieved of it until spring. The snowfall sealed the great pathways through the forest, shutting out all but the most determined travelers. This year she despised the winter—it heightened her sense of isolation from her people.
Through the winter the lake remained black and still, strangely free of ice because of its magical warmth. When at last the snowstorms relented and many of the trails first became passable, just when Auriane was near maddened with need of news, Fastila did come, riding with a party of six novices from the Ash Grove temple in which she had been raised. This was nine days into the third moon of the new year; Auriane was so heavy with child she ventured nowhere now, contenting herself with struggling about the island. Fastila came on a day the sanctuary was deserted but for Auriane; Ramis had gone to give a judgment in the case of a man of the Bructeres accused of setting a temple afire.
Helgrune rowed Fastila across the lake. Auriane was startled to see her in the gray robes of an ash priestess. As Fastila embraced Auriane, she explained that she had wanted no more to do with the Companions after Auriane was so shamefully driven off, and she had returned to the slow, predictable life of her mother’s temple.
Auriane saw much of the playfulness was gone from Fastila’s black eyes. No longer did she stumble excitedly over her words; now her speech was careful and considered, as if she measured out pinches of herbs for a potion, and an elder-woman’s heaviness of mind had settled into her face.
Fastila settled herself on the bearskin by the fire before Auriane’s lodge. Auriane waited until the younger woman pulled off her hairy calfskin boots, wrapped her cold-numbed feet in a blanket and took a long, appreciative draught of mead before she demanded to know the news.
“Athelinda is well protected—have no fears for her,” Fastila answered to Auriane’s first question. “Geisar tried to claim two hundred cattle from her in payment for your ‘crime,’ but the Companions prevented it. Now they sleep in arms at the Hall. A hundred of her cattle froze to death anyway—spring will see a forest of bleached bones. As if it were not enough, Geisar cursed her crop. There’s no end to his vileness and his hatred of your family.”
“Take a good measure of our Yule ashes when you go—Ramis will let me have them if I ask,” Auriane replied, eyes bright with concern. Yule ashes sprinkled on the fields were held to ensure the land’s fertility after a hard winter, and the presence of Ramis would render ashes from this place particularly potent.
“Athelinda will bless you. She will not believe ill of you, Auriane. You have a noble and loyal mother. ‘No daughter of Baldemar would lie with a foreigner,’ she insists. If you are with child, it was fathered by Wodan or some other great spirit of the wood.”
Auriane dropped her head into her hands and made no effort to stop a quiet upwelling of tears. “She makes it powerfully difficult to tell her the truth. My poor mother. I should let her believe what she will. Fastila, I am ashamed of some things, but of this I am not ashamed. I just do not want her to suffer.”
“Well, of course,” Fastila responded amiably. “I’ve always held with the older law. Does great Fria know shame when she parts from her lovers? Her love-acts bless all nature. The Fates guide all you do, Auriane.”
“If I could believe that!” Auriane said, smiling companionably. “What word have you of Decius?”
“This was sent to your mother.” Fastila pulled a damp, grimy strip of papyrus from the leather pouch that hung from the belt of her robe; it had been torn from Decius’ book, The Art of Siege Warfare. Auriane’s breath caught in her throat; she seized it out of Fastila’s hands. It appeared Decius had washed the original writing from the beginning of the roll and added letters of his own, penned with some mixture of dyes.
“He lives!” She pressed the curled paper to her cheek, then held it at a distance and spent a long time studying it, as if by examining it long enough, she might make some sense of what was written there. “I wonder if he is safe where he is.”
“You will not learn it from him,” Fastila retorted. “He could be pinned beneath hurdles with a hundred aurochs bearing down on him, and he would say only, ‘Now this is an annoying circumstance.’” She paused. “Will you go to him?”
Auriane was quiet for a time, considering in gloomy silence. Finally she said, “No. No matter what is written here, or what he says to lure me, I could not. It is not that I do not love him enough. I’m bound by my oaths, and I’m bound by blood. I know no other way to live. Fastila, I haven’t abandoned hope they’ll call me back.”
Fastila’s look betrayed she had no such hope, but she nodded firmly and said, “Of course they will.” From this, Auriane guessed the answer to the next question.
“What is being said at the Assembly?”
“The Fates have not softened. I am sorry. It is hard for me to witness at times—”
To Auriane the very air now had a bitter taste. Why, she wondered, was it her fate to never have what all other women accepted as their natural due? A husband who was human and not divine. Rich-yielding land handed down from her mother’s mothers. A child of her own family’s blood. A great clan all about, and the smallest measure of peace.
Abruptly she stopped these thoughts. Dimly she knew she would not be content even then.
“—but Athelinda speaks for you bravely,” Fastila spoke on, “as does Theudobald. Every Assembly rings with their entreaties.”
“What of Witgern and Sigwulf?”
“Sigwulf says nothing for or against you. You know how he is. Loyal when he has to be, but not so much that it interferes with his plans. He wants a great retinue, but now Geisar controls who is consecrated as a warrior and who is not. But Witgern speaks for you.”
“Does he truly? I…I am surprised. I thought he despised me now.”
“He means much to you.” Fastila’s voice was suddenly taut; she carefully examined Auriane’s face.
“Of course,” Auriane answered, alert to the catch of hurt and sorrow in the younger woman’s voice. “But not in the way you suggest.” Auriane took Fastila’s hand and regarded her with gently knowing eyes. “Fastila, you…and Witgern…?”
Fastila looked down, flushing deeply; Auriane was the first to ferret out her secret. “Yes. Once. At the Midsummer rites. And in that one ill-fated conjoining, he managed to bind me with fetters I cannot break. But he will not look at me now…if I flung myself naked before him on the trail, he would throw me down a cloak and ride on!”
“Fastila, take care none see you giving him looks of longing.”
“Why? Thurid was a thrall-woman when she and Witgern were joined—she has no kin to take vengeance on me.”
“Geisar performed the marriage—have you forgotten? He will act for her.”
Fastila laughed with constrained gaiety. “I may be ever the fool in choosing lovers but not when it comes to outwitting cutthroat priests. Do not worry over me.”
On the next day, among the people camped about the lake, Auriane found a young man who was a house-slave escaped from a Gallic estate; he had been his master’s reader. In exchange for the silver denarius she wore about her neck, he read Decius’ letter to her.
“‘I am a prisoner of Chariomer, the Cheruscan king, although he calls me guest,’” the young Gallic fugitive read. “‘I suffered capture after two days’ riding. I live because of your courage, Auriane. I loved you before and love you still—why could I not ever tell you? I beg you, stay where you are. I am more certain than ever a terrible war is coming. Enclosed is a measure of the king’s gold. I pray it is not stolen….’”
Of course, it has been, Auriane saw, looking at the flaccid pouch that came with the letter.
The reader continued, “‘…a gift for the child, who I hope has no taste for war. May the poor babe know more peace than we have known. I am tired of the world. I will send messages when I can.’”
It made her feel jolted and bruised inside. This did not sound
like Decius, but a worn and humbled man, and for a brief moment she even wondered if Decius wrote it. She was intrigued that the words he could not speak—that he loved her—he managed to write on this paper. So people will write what they dare not speak, when there is not the heat of the other’s gaze upon them. Perhaps there was some good in this habit of the peoples of the south.
She judged that Decius had most likely saved himself by affecting a great knowledge of warfare—preserving his life, if not his freedom. Surely, she thought hopefully, he will devise a way to escape.
Suddenly Decius seemed unbearably pitiable to her, he who would never beg another’s protection. How ironic, she thought, that he who seems so little to need protection arouses in me a desire to give it. All I know of the outer world he taught me, and it seems I did not give much in return.
It was not until the following day that Fastila told her the thing that was to haunt her sleep and possess her with terror in the days to come. For Fastila thought it news of little account and almost did not say it at all.
“One of Witgern’s sources in the village of the fortress,” she said idly, toying with the fire, “reports that the Emperor Domitian has left Rome and travels to Gaul for a census. What is that?”
Auriane felt every sense tauten.
“They like to count their people from time to time. It is usual for them,” she said, watching Fastila with growing concern.
“They say he has with him a great army, and they mean to camp in the country of the Treveres in northern Gaul—Auriane, what is wrong? Is it the child? Are you well?”
Auriane slowly rose to her feet. “Yes, I am well,” she whispered, pacing with heavy steps, hands clenched over her swollen stomach. “Fastila, we are done,” she whispered. “Why did you not tell me this at once?”
Fastila shrugged and struggled up after her. “But…why would I? What is so terrible in their counting their people?”
“That is not what they are doing, Fastila. They used this stratagem once before, in the time of our grandfathers. What fools they must think us.” She paused and met Fastila’s eyes. “They do not send Emperors for a census, nor do they send out great armies. They come for us. In the spring they mean to catch us unprepared—then they will strike with all their strength.” Auriane looked away, a restless melancholy in her eyes. “Fastila, can you bring my mother to me?”
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