B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  Aristos could not cease being a man of his tribe; he had too much fearful respect for the rite of vengeance to simply ignore her declaration. But he knew also that he could not fight her. He might have cheerfully hacked her to pieces in their own country if that was what she really wanted, but he would not do it here. He noticed at once that in this place women were not counted so holy as among his own people; they did not speak the law here or dispense justice, nor was their counsel sought in grave matters. Incredibly, these people even went to war without listening first to the prophetic utterings of the women—and he knew as well these people saw something faintly ridiculous in women carrying a sword. Disposing of her by the light of day would bring him no honor in this country; it would be as though he accepted the challenge of a thrall.

  But he knew, if these ignorant Romans did not, that all women possessed uncanny powers, and this one in particular had walked with Ramis, whose name was like a chilly hand on the back of his neck. No matter what the customs here, a sorceress was still a sorceress and Auriane was Auriane. He was pinned between the ancient ways, alive in him still, and this glorious present that he dared not risk. It was confusing and unsettling.

  This crazed spawn of Baldemar pursues me to the ends of the earth. She should be buried alive along with that Hel-hag Ramis, safely out of the sight of men.

  He made a sweeping gesture with a hairy hand. “Stand aside. I’ve no time for silly women.”

  He started forward, then stopped again, scowling. What was the wretched woman doing now? Walking stick in hand, she was tracing signs in the sand and dirt of the travertine floor.

  Vile witch-woman! She was drawing rune signs across the passage—those sinister glyphs that could disorder a man’s fate, lift the veil of the future or throw the natural world out of joint. He recognized the sign for Tiwaz, spirit of battle; the rest was a mystery—the mastery of runes was for sorceresses and priests of Wodan, not honest warriors. He guessed it was a cursing formula, doubtless promising his bones would melt and his blood turn to dust if he did not answer her challenge before the next dark of the moon.

  When Auriane had finished, she moved aside, making way for him. Pernicious woman, he thought. She was forcing him to step over the runes.

  Aristos’ entourage cast curious glances at him. Why did he hesitate? Aristos wanted with all his mind not to step over those dread signs; he was certain that if he did, they would be activated and would begin to work their will on him—or else why had she written them where she had? Now even the greater crowd seemed puzzled by his hesitation. Witless fools, he thought. You know nothing of the baneful powers of runes.

  When Aristos heard someone whisper loudly, “What is the matter with him?” he gathered up all his courage and swaggered forth, sarcasm in his step. As he passed, Auriane saw that his lips moved in a silent incantation and he gripped the preserved wolf’s muzzle.

  The crowd gave Aristos ample room to pass. Auriane sank slowly to her knees; the two physician’s assistants caught her up just as her eyes became sightless. Two more hospital servants entered the passage with a rude litter and they hastily laid Auriane upon it. Then all four trotted briskly off with her. She was worth considerably more now than she had been this morning and they would be punished if they lost her.

  Already Aristos’ flatterers were busy telling tales of this encounter with an eye to pleasing their master. “I was there—I saw it all,” they would proclaim to all who would listen. “You’ve never seen such low cunning married to such presumption. This barbarian wench manages to run poor Perseus through because the wretched fellow slips and falls—and then she comes out and barks at Aristos. This morning I saw a bitch-dog yapping at an elephant; do you suppose it was an omen?” This, among followers of Aristos, became the accepted version of the bout with Perseus.

  Auriane was taken to the school’s hospital rooms with their penetrating smells of resins and herbal powders, and laid in one of the chambers reserved for the dressing of wounds. While she was still unconscious, one of the school’s first physicians quickly cut away the leather tunic and began applying strips of wool soaked in deer’s rennet and vinegar to halt the bleeding. Auriane awakened and cried out when the stinging vinegar was pressed into the wound, for it was more painful than Perseus’ blade.

  After a short time Erato entered and sent the school’s physician from the chamber. Erato then ushered in Anaxagoras of Cos, followed by five of his highly skilled slaves—that same Anaxagoras who was author of a hundred books on the medical arts, whose name had become legendary among physicians when he saved the life of the King of Parthia after all the court physicians had failed. He happened to be in Rome because Domitian had summoned him to minister to a favorite concubine.

  “What in the name of Venus is he doing here?” one of the school’s physicians muttered to another. “Only emperors and kings can afford his fees.” Erato alone knew Anaxagoras had been hastily sent for by Julianus, and he was sworn to strictest silence. It was not a situation likely to arouse too much comment, for everyone knew traveling physicians were drawn to gladiatorial schools after days of games. They came to study anatomy if they were young—for nowhere but in Alexandria was dissection of the human body permitted—or to experiment with new techniques of suturing and wound-dressing if they were famous and established.

  Anaxagoras first ordered the school’s pots of powders and resins removed. He would use nothing from the stores; he brought his own medicines. A physician could never be sure of the purity of his potions and drugs; a good measure of the secret of Anaxagoras’ effectiveness was the excellence of his suppliers, who, along with his herbal formulae, were close-kept secrets. He allowed no one but his own slaves to come near Auriane.

  The two subordinate physicians watched raptly from a safe distance as Anaxagoras took a wound probe from his instrument kit and examined the long cut to make certain no foreign matter had entered. To their surprise Anaxagoras used no prayers or charms; he seemed to rely solely upon his superior knowledge. When he was assured no vital place had been struck, he called for iris oil in which he dissolved terebinth resin pure as Attic honey; with this he cleansed the wound. Then he applied a sponge soaked in the juice of the poppy to dull the pain, and ordered his slaves to boil bark of elm for a decoction to close the wound. When Anaxagoras began to stitch the wound with human hair, the spying physicians were seen and driven out; they nearly stumbled over Sunia, who stood vigil outside the door.

  Sunia tried to steal inside then, but was roughly driven back by Anaxagoras’ slaves. All that day and the next, whenever Sunia could evade the sharp eyes of the chief cook, she returned to that door, imagining her spirit somehow enfolded and protected Auriane’s. At first she thought with confidence: Auriane is a chieftain’s daughter and so of course she will heal quickly. But Sunia’s hopes began to wane on the second day, when the grim expressions on the faces of Anaxagoras’ slaves did not change.

  You who protected me so well—for you I can do nothing. You are all our country. You are the sunward slope, the spring stars, the hearth of hearths. If your life is taken, I’ll not survive you long. I am of no importance. Still I must pray on and hope some hawk or butterfly will carry my words to Fria. Live, great and good friend.

  Sunia was greatly pleased when she realized crowds of curious people had begun to gather outside the main entrance of the school, anxious to know if “their Aurinia” would recover. They were a mix of poor artisans, young aristocratic matrons, Palace officials, and overdressed young men reeking of perfumes. Many silently deposited palm branches at the door, in quiet protest of Domitian’s refusal to award her the palm. The young men left rolled love messages and scattered wildflowers across the entrance. Sunia was not surprised that Auriane had become a celebrated woman in this odd country, for her fate could be expected to reassert itself in any new place.

  On the third day, when the door was thrown open but a moment, Sunia heard Anaxagoras saying with sharp annoyance, “I ordered this given five
times a day.”

  “For what purpose?” a slave-assistant replied. “You said by evening, she would be gone.”

  Then Sunia heard no more; she collapsed to the stone floor as consciousness gently left her.

  CHAPTER XLIX

  AURIANE CRIED OUT IN HER OWN tongue, frightening Anaxagoras’ assistants, whom she imagined were Hel’s black dogs rending her flesh because she had slain a man with whom she had no blood debt. She despised sleep, for she dreamed of a bloody sun at World’s End and the jaws of the Great Wolf gaped wide as he swallowed molten rivers in which her people were thrashing and drowning. In her brief moments of wakefulness she realized she had lost forever a thing she never knew she possessed—a pure trust that she could never be grievously wounded.

  I can be drawn like kine. I am a pitiful, graceless sack of sinew. My body is a membrane precariously full of blood. I am naked flesh quivering at the first touch of the sacrificial knife. I am not swift—death is swifter. I no longer have the heart for this. The arena is a rogue stallion that threw me hard to the ground and battered me with iron hooves—all love, all striving cannot make me climb onto that broad back again.

  What was more terrifying still was that she wondered if it mattered.

  It must matter. To deny Baldemar vengeance is to deny him meat and mead. I owe him Odberht’s death or…or what? she thought as Odberht’s form dissolved into a multitude of ills: Storm, pestilence, starving times—he was a force, faceless as nature, a process, not a man, killing randomly, innocently, like winter snow—and does one challenge the drifts to single battle?

  She felt a surge of anxiety. These are ignoble thoughts. This must be how men weaken themselves before they turn from honor.

  She smelled the steam of Anaxagoras’ acrid preparations, heard the soft flow of his assistants’ voices, felt ministering hands—and wondered why they struggled to keep her alive, for she was no one. If she peered into a looking glass she would find it empty. Certainties were clouds pulling apart and randomly re-forming. What was honor? Was it not a sort of blindness?

  Ramis, look on your victory…. You have won. I do question that which I desire. What is becoming of me? I am falling into stars.

  It is far simpler to let this wound carry me off than to find the horizon line again. Fria, let me die.

  But she dreamed then of her daughter Avenahar, grown to womanhood, bent and shivering over her mother’s cairn. Her mother did not lie beneath the rude heap of stones for she had died in a foreign land. Snow flurries came and Auriane knew her daughter was alone, bereft of kin, and would die of the cold.

  Then she saw herself at a venerable age, dressed in the heavy, amber-studded gray robes of a seeress, her hair proudly white. In her hand was a knotted staff of elmwood. Many roads streamed from the pathway she walked, all leading upward; on one summit was the sentinel form of the tower of the Veleda, a specter in the fog. She moved through a throng to speak a judgment at the Assembly of the Full Moon. Avenahar was there, in the midst of her many children. Proudly Avenahar pointed out her mother to the people.

  Auriane knew she was meant to choose.

  Her ghost deliberated. Then it shrugged, shouldered the burden once more, and walked toward her people, her growing kin, all arrayed beneath the assembly oak.

  I will live on a while, then—not for Ramis’ riddling reasons, but for a more humble one—I want to see the sun reflected in my daughter’s eyes.

  Simultaneously, Anaxagoras bent over her wound, sniffed it, lightly prodded it, then drew in a breath and exclaimed, “This cannot be.”

  When he had examined it at midnight, the suppurations were of the evil sort—thin and malodorous. Had he dreamed it? The wound was of angry appearance still, and beset with ill humors, but now the suppurations were bona—healthy and white—signifying that the wound would heal. Certain he had managed one more miraculous cure, Anaxagoras sent a messenger to awaken Erato with the great news.

  At the moment she elected to live on, Auriane slept soundly, blissfully, and in the diffuse blackness, anguish softened to pleasure. Before her was a silvery temple with columns delicate as snow-laced branches; over it was poised a sickle-moon in the time of waxing. Beyond lay fields over which hooded figures walked in procession, bearing fertile cakes, preparing for the ancient rite of the marriage of the Lady and the Lord, that magical mingling of woman and man that flowered into the firmament, joining the earth to the sun so all life could increase. Kinship overflowed like mead from a cask and embraced even the humblest of animals. One of the spectral hooded figures beckoned her into the temple-house; with dream-knowledge she knew it was Marcus Julianus. We have come together, then, to lead each other to the gods.

  But I don’t deserve this portion while a father’s blood stains my hands.

  She felt his reply— Not so. Here I shall remain until you know your own goodness and grace.

  She opened her eyes. Within moments, life settled back on her shoulders like a sack of stones; her urgent liminal dreams retreated into pleasant, distant impossibility. She felt for her resolve. It was there. What was gone—cut away by Perseus’ blade—was her trust in her body’s inviolability. It was no longer whole. It was a wellspring of pain, vulnerable and unlovely.

  She looked about and saw the room was full of gifts from lowly admirers—terra-cotta figurines of humbler gods whose powers promoted healing, dried flowers and honey cakes, cups of colored glass, bronze Celtic mirrors, silver necklets, pots of incense, slender-necked green glass bottles of perfume. The richer gifts, she later learned, had been removed, but whether they had been stolen by Anaxagoras’ servants or impounded by the financial officers of the school, she never determined.

  She quickly learned she had passed from slavery’s anonymity to a dubious and precarious renown. Whether they ridiculed her or thought her wondrous, the people knew her name and invoked it to some purpose, most often to slyly express their loathing of Domitian. Since the time of Nero women had been regularly exhibited in the amphitheater, often in a spirit similar to that of the contests of monkeys that fought with javelins—as a mockery of the shows in earnest to follow. She was accorded more honor than this, but still there was no recognized place for her; she was intruder, talisman, prodigy, or emissary of fate, but never a common veteran of the Third Hall. And in the First, she was a low jest of Erato’s, a novelty run amok who had better not overestimate her worth. She had made a place for herself that was uniquely her own.

  Her new status brought small comforts—meat and fowl were served in the Third Hall’s dining chamber and wine that did not burn the throat. The cell that housed her was twice the size of the former one, and its narrow window was set low enough so that she could even look out on the city. Sunia was brought to it and so lived with her once again, without Auriane having to ask. The pallets had cushions stuffed with feathers instead of straw and there was even a lamp, though no one ever brought oil so it could be put to use. And the rats seemed unwilling to climb this high. Never had either of them since their enslavement known such comfort. And still gifts came steadily—jars of honey, cloaks of softest wool, gaudy birds, and love poems penned on fine vellum.

  How odd, Auriane reflected, to be celebrated and a slave at once. Status in this place was like hollow bangles that glittered and caught every eye—no one believed for a moment that they truly had value. It was so unlike her own country, where status was a thing of sober weight and low luster, like a bar of gold.

  In the months to follow she hid her wound from all eyes, even Sunia’s; it was her secret horror, a puckered, livid thing that marked her as broken, infirm. Victor or no, its lingering pain made her feel only defeat. Her mangled body made her spirit sense itself as mangled also, as if the one impressed itself on the other—in the deeps of the mind, she knew the two were tied. And did not the gods determine such misfortunes? The damage must also embrace her soul. There began then a slow, festering conviction that Marcus Julianus did not know just how pitifully marred she was—a growing certa
inty that when he saw, he would not want her.

  These new doubts drove her to observe carefully the Roman women who crowded the street beneath her newly acquired window. She began to torment herself with the ways that they differed from her—their plush white arms, dimpled and jeweled. Their boneless hands that had never grasped a rein, a hoe, a spear. Their smaller, more delicate constitutions, coupled with that worldly lift of the chin that caused idlers to make way before them. The lilting gestures, practiced as a dancer’s, that accompanied their exuberant speech. Their boundless, mysterious stores of knowledge—of the language of the great-houses, of how to decipher a love message or cleverly drape and wind bright clothing, of all that occurred in this city, and why. They are his people. They are far more suited to him than I.

  These doubts fed and grew fat in the days that followed, in spite of the fact that Marcus Julianus sent her small gifts—useful things, well made but not too fine, to prevent their being stolen—a well-woven blanket, or fur-lined slippers—so that she would not feel he had forgotten her. For he made no arrangements, as he had promised, to pass a night with her. Before the wound, she might have persuaded herself there was some good reason for this. Now, she could scarcely hear her own assurances.

  The news of Auriane’s recovery was conveyed to Aristos as he was being massaged in the warm rooms of the school’s baths. He rose up in a fury and strode off to a grimy tavern on Tanner’s Street frequented by veterans of the First Hall. From a Samnite fighter called the Cyclops he learned the name of a fearsome Etruscan witch, a woman named Haruna, along with uncertain directions to her dwelling in the Subura district. Her services were dear. But she was so effective in laying curses that the Finance Minister Musonius Geta once employed her, as did a certain Senator whom the Cyclops would not name for fear of being accused of defaming a member of the nobility.

  The following day Aristos found Haruna with great difficulty, for she had moved again, as she was forced to do often, because her neighbors drove her out when they tired of the stench of her noxious potions. She was nearly bald and shriveled as a dried fig. Her rags were ready to rot off her body, which he thought unaccountable, for she could have purchased decent garments with the fortune in gold about her arms and throat. The warts on her hands, she told him, were the result of powerful curses that rival witches had tried and failed to lay upon her.