by Lisa Cach
“I?”
“For the sake of my spying on him, you wouldn’t really ever give me to Childeric, would you?”
“If I wanted you to go to him, you would.”
I chewed my lip, restraining my protest to a murmured noise deep in my throat.
“But your value to me lies elsewhere, as well you know. You are mine, Nimia, and I will not give you up. I have so much still to teach you.” His gaze shifted to the basket on the table. “You must work to keep my favor, however. Think upon the hidden contents of that basket, and know that it’ll be used to reward you during your initiation, if you’ve pleased me.”
“And if not?”
“Punishment, Nimia. Such terrible punishment.”
By the light in his eyes, I wasn’t sure which he wanted.
Nor, by the contraction of my sex, did I know which I wanted.
Don’t do it, Nimia,” Terix said.
“How can I not?” I wished I could tell him the whole truth, that this secret meeting with Clovis was partially blessed by Sygarius. Partially, because of course Sygarius did not want me to meet with Clovis. It was a day and a half since Sygarius had given me the command to spy and pry, and I hadn’t yet accomplished anything with Childeric. I’d convinced myself that I could achieve the same ends with Clovis, while also giving myself a good excuse should I be caught with him.
I wasn’t here because I wanted Clovis. I was here to hear about the Phanne, and I was here to obey Sygarius’s command to gather information.
Or so I persuaded myself.
Terix and I were in a half basement of the villa, outside the door to the grape pressing room. It was the one space I could think of where there was no risk of discovery. No one would be going in there until fall, in preparation for the harvest of the vineyards surrounding the villa.
Terix’s hand hovered over my shoulder, the worry in his eyes making him look older. I felt his fear: it was an echo of my own. This could all go so badly, so quickly. It was stupid, it was reckless, it was impulsive, thoughtless . . .
And yet.
There are moments when you feel your life hanging like a garden spider at the end of a long strand of silk. Above you lies your web: familiar, safe, the place where you know the meaning of every vibration in the many interwoven strands around you. Below is the open air, and winds that would carry you far from all you know, should you lose your hold on your silken strand. That silken strand was your anchor rope. Your tie to all that you knew.
The gods only knew where the winds might take you, given a chance. To a better place, perhaps: the edge of a meadow filled with sunshine and flying insects—a happy place for a spider. But the winds could be cruel. They might dump you in a raging river and laugh as you sank beneath its roiling surface, your little spider legs flailing until you drowned.
Knowing the cruel humor of Fate, while you hung on your strand between your web and the unknown, swaying in the breeze as if you had all the time in the world for debating and deciding, a crow would fly up and eat you.
Such was the fate of hesitant spiders.
“Clovis won’t care about that warning around your neck,” Terix said. “He won’t care what will happen to you after he’s gone. All he’ll care about is getting his prick inside you.”
“I can handle him.” A lie, of course. Truth was, he scared me more than Sygarius. With Sygarius, at least I knew what the rules were, and what was expected of me. I knew I wouldn’t be touched. I knew I was safe.
With Clovis . . .
Terix shook his head. “If you’re alone with him, all that will matter is that he’s stronger than you.”
“He’s not going to rape me.”
“There’ll be nothing to stop him. The way you’ve been aching for him, though, he won’t have to. And then gods help us all.”
“I’m not like you; lust never overwhelms me. I’m a woman. We’re different.” Such a lie that was, coming off my last lesson!
Terix put his hand to his forehead, his mouth a grimace of disbelief and dismay. “That’s what you believe? Oh gods, we really are doomed. Nimia, you have no real experience, you don’t know—”
“I can’t explain it, Terix,” I interrupted, “but I have to do this. You’re going to have to trust me.” I met his doubt-filled eyes. “Sometimes I know things, yes?”
He chewed his lips, then nodded. Reluctantly.
“I can’t promise that trouble won’t come of this, but . . .” I gestured helplessly. “I have to.”
“I can stand guard, in case someone comes; or in case he—”
“No! Go somewhere that people can see you. If trouble comes, I won’t have it spilling over onto you; I’ve involved you too much already. And besides,” I said, softening my voice, “your being here won’t change whatever it is that will happen. I know you want to protect me, but . . .”
“But there’s no protecting you from yourself.”
That wasn’t quite what I’d meant, but I gave him a rueful smile. Reminding him, without words, that we had no control over one another—not even over ourselves, our lives. I was trying to free him of responsibility.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, then sighed. “I’ll go find a pig to fuck. It’ll keep my mind off whatever’s happening here, and all the squealing will give me a good alibi.”
“Thank you, Terix.” I wished I could hug him.
But I hoped he was joking about the pig.
He left.
The spider let go of her web, and gave herself to the wind—I pushed open the door and went in.
Two large rectangular cement basins dominated the pressing room; they were knee-high, and used for crushing grapes. One basin was for foot stomping, while the second was occupied by a massive cylindrical press with a stone weight and turnstile. After the first juices from the stomping were collected for making the finest wines, the crushed grapes were put in the press for a second pressing. The second pressing gave juice suited to wine for soldiers and common folk.
The wine that came from the third pressing was fit only for slaves. The thought was as bitter as the wine itself.
The room stayed cool all year, embedded down in the earth. I shivered and held my arms across my chest. The windows were just above ground level, and the wood shutters let in the faint blue light of dawn around their edges. I’d chosen the hour: people might question why you were skulking about at night, but no one ever questioned you if you were up and about at an unnaturally early hour. They were too bleared by sleep to care, assuming they were awake at all.
I paced the room, waiting, the bricks cold and dusty under my feet. And then I couldn’t bear the semidarkness any longer and cracked open the shutters on four of the windows, standing on my tiptoes to reach up and release the latches. When I turned around from the last of them, Clovis was there.
The man moved as silent as a wolf. And stared at me with the same intensity.
I gripped my elbows, a smile quavering on my lips, Sygarius’s commands chanting in my head so loudly I was certain they could be read on my face. Spy spy spy, lie lie lie.
“Clever choice,” he said, nodding at the pressing room, our meeting place.
“Being a slave doesn’t mean being a simpleton.”
“Nor does it mean being clever.” He came toward me, and I backed up a step; he veered off to the side, affecting an interest in the massive press with its stone weight.
Or maybe he really was interested; what did I know? Perhaps he’d never seen the like. He was a barbarian, after all.
Whatever that meant. So was I.
Or I had been, before Sygarius got me.
A sudden longing filled me, for those days before Sygarius; before Groudan; for those days I remembered only in a few precious fragments, when my mother and I had both been free, living amid the Phanne. Our people.
Clovis
was not Phanne. But he was the closest taste to freedom I’d had in years.
I didn’t know why that taste terrified me so.
“So what do you know about my tattoos?” I blurted out, desperate to take control of the situation.
He tilted his head and grinned. “That would be no fun, telling you and being done with it.”
“You think because I’m slave, I’m here to be toyed with for your amusement?”
He sat on the wide edge of one of the basins, stretching his long legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. “I’m not your master. How did you fall into Sygarius’s hands?”
I briefly summed up the battle of Roman against Visigoth, and his choosing me from amid the captured. “I was separated from my mother during the chaos; I’ve always hoped she escaped and found our people.”
“The Phanne.”
I sucked in a breath of surprise, and closed the distance between us. “Yes. You know of them!”
He flashed a quick smile, revealing nothing. “How did you and your mother end up with the band of Visigoths?”
“A raid on a village we were visiting during market day. Groudan couldn’t resist stealing my mother, along with the pigs and grain.”
“And you.”
I didn’t answer that. I didn’t want to dwell on that vivid memory when, as a small child, I’d seen my mother beg and make promises to a blood-splattered man, if only she could take me with her.
“What of your father?” he asked.
“I never knew him, although I’m told he was a Celt.” Another thing I did not want to talk about: my mother had told me that the women of the Phanne made it a ritual to love as adventurously as possible, collecting the seed of men far different from themselves. It was, she had said, where they got their strength.
There had been no chance for her to explain that mysterious statement further, before we were separated for good.
“Tell me what you know of the Phanne,” I said, impatient with his questioning. “Please.”
He patted the space next to him, inviting me to sit.
I crossed my arms.
He raised his brows and waited.
I tossed up my hands and sat beside him on the edge of the basin, a careful couple of feet between us.
Clovis swung one leg over the basin wall so that he straddled it, his open thighs facing me. His close-fitting tunic rode up, and I couldn’t not glance down at his short breeches, muscled thighs, and the shadows beneath the hem of his tunic that hid the bulge of his sex. One of his knees was now almost touching the side of my thigh; the other leg was stretched out behind me, in the basin.
“The Phanne,” he said. “It must have been about six years ago. We were on the north coast, and this man was looking for someone to take him across the channel to Britannia.”
“A man,” I said, disappointed. I’d been hoping beyond hope that Clovis had seen my mother.
“A young man, maybe twenty or so, with fair, reddish hair. He had spirals like yours, only not over his . . .” Clovis gestured at my breasts. “They were over his shoulders, his elbows, knees, ankles. His neck.”
“Nowhere else?” I wasn’t sure if this man had been Phanne. I couldn’t remember what the tattoos on our men had been like.
“I never saw him nude. I was a curious child, though, and asked him about his tattoos. He was a strange fellow . . .” he said, trailing off, his gaze growing distant as he remembered. “Passing strange.”
My impatience was building again. “How so? What was so odd?”
“He asked me what I thought the tattoos meant. I said I didn’t know, that’s why I was asking him, and that answer didn’t please him. It didn’t make him angry. It . . . disappointed him. I could see him lose interest in me.
“So I said maybe they were clan markings. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But what do you think they mean?’
“I didn’t want to see that look of disappointment again, so I thought about it. I’d seen spirals carved into stone way-markers, and once I saw some outside an ancient tomb. ‘Pathways,’ I said. He didn’t reply, but he looked interested. ‘Death? Mark of the gods. Spinning, going around in circles. Time?’ I was babbling out ideas, wanting to find the answer that would please him.
“ ‘Why are they where they are on my body?’ he asked. ‘Strength,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t they be over my muscles, then?’ he asked.
“But I’d trained enough to know the answer to that. ‘Muscles are nothing without the joints. Maybe the spirals protect them.’
“Then we started talking about fighting and sword technique, and he offered to spar with me—he was killing time, waiting for his boat to be ready—and so we did, and he fought like no one I’d ever seen. Fluid, graceful, looking as if he expended no energy at all, yet without even seeing his movement or knowing how he managed it, my sword would fly from my hand, or I’d find myself flat on my back.
“When I was winded and couldn’t lift my sword arm again, he showed me the exercise he did every morning: a long series of moves with the sword that looked like dancing, silent except for the rush of air past steel. Other men gathered to watch, but he didn’t seem to notice or care; his concentration was absolute.
“He finished and then looked at me, and I was scared, because his eyes seemed an unnaturally bright green in his flushed face. He looked at me and said that it wasn’t an accident that our paths had crossed. ‘Remember me, young Clovis: I am Maerlin of the Phanne. Remember me, and we shall both find what we seek.’ ” Clovis looked at me.
I looked back. “What did he mean?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t about to ask him, and get another ‘What do you think it means?’ thrown at me. But I remembered him. And then I saw you.”
A chill ran over me as the meaning of what he said sank in. “This Maerlin, you think he knew somehow that we would meet.”
Clovis reached out and took my hand. I tried to jerk it away, instinctively, but he held it tight and gave it one hard press to warn me to stop fighting. So I did, and let it rest inside the warmth of his, his calluses from reins and sword feeling both rough and protective against my skin. I was almost too fascinated by the feel of his hand holding mine to attend to his next words.
“He knew that my remembering him would matter at some point. What point could it be, but this?”
For a wild moment, I didn’t believe him. I heard Terix in my head, saying how Clovis would make up any story to get what he wanted. It was all a lie, meant to seduce me, meant to let him get close to me.
Then I remembered the look on his face when I’d danced as Lotus, and he’d seen my tattoos through the gown. That had not been feigned, or planned. Had it? He’d been stunned. Entranced. He’d sought me out immediately afterward, as if seeing the tattoos had forced him to it.
“Yes, but to what end?” I asked. “How do either you or Maerlin find what you seek—whatever that is—by my hearing about him?”
“That’s the mystery to be solved.” He scooted closer, until his knee pressed against my thigh and he was leaning forward, his pale blue-gray eyes lit with excitement.
The contact with my thigh was making it difficult to think; shimmers of sensation and expectation radiated outward from it. “How do we solve it? This is likely the only chance we’ll have to talk privately before you and your father leave. Sygarius owns me; I’m not even allowed to leave the villa without his permission.”
“I’ll buy you from him.”
I gaped at him. “Have you as my master?”
“Wouldn’t you rather have me in your bed, someone your own age, than that old man?”
I shook my head, struggling to figure out why his suggestion felt so wrong. “I want freedom, not to exchange one master for another.” The thought of being owned and commanded to sex by a young man near my own age was repellent in a way that being mastered by old
er, powerful, worldly Sygarius was not.
He put his free hand on my lower back and stroked me with slow, gentle pressure, as if stroking a cat. The delicious pleasure of it surprised me so much that I couldn’t make myself move away. Oh gods, is this what I’ve been missing all these years? Such a simple touch, yet so much pleasure . . . A furious resentment at my enslavement suddenly burned through me and with one hand I grabbed the “touch me not” torc at my neck. “I won’t have this replaced with another collar, with ‘Clovis’ written upon it. Let me come to you of my own choosing, or not at all.”
“If I set you free, would you come to me?”
“That’s the whole point of freedom: you could never be perfectly sure I would.” His hand released mine, and as I turned toward him, both his hands moved to my waist, sliding up my sides to where his thumbs could brush the undersides of my breasts. Each brush sent shocks of arousal down to my loins. “It’s no use, though. Sygarius will never sell me.”
“Everything has a price. My father and Sygarius haven’t yet reached an agreement on how much we Franks are to be paid for continuing service; you could become part of that agreement.”
I shook my head. “He’s obsessed with me.”
“He’s a man in a precarious position. He’s more obsessed with remaining dux of Soissons than with any woman. No matter how lovely.”
“And you have an army to feed. How could I possibly be worth the gold that you’d lose by taking me as part of the bargain?”
“I don’t know yet. But Maerlin knew. You’ll lead me to what I seek.” He bent his head to my neck and nuzzled the tender bend where it met my shoulder. My eyes half-closed in response, and I felt as if I were melting.
“What do you seek?” I whispered.
“All of Gaul.”
“Mmm?” I barely heard him, more interested in the soft touch of his lips on my skin.
“No more Romans.”
“That won’t be easy.” The tip of his tongue stroked a path up to my earlobe, which he drew between his lips. Oh gods, oh gods . . . don’t let him stop.
