—He stood holding her in his arms. She had hidden her face against his breast but did not give him back his embrace, only shivered and mewed. By the light of a single candle, he glared at Guilvilis.
“You dolt,” he snarled. “You unspeakable clod, lackwit, bungler. What have you done to her? How could you do it, even you?”
She opened and shut her mouth several times, and he thought how very like a fish she looked, before she could stammer. “Y-y-you said take her where she wanted, and, and she got away from me. Oh, I’m sorry!” Tears coursed from her eyes. Her nose dribbled.
“A squid would have had better judgment, more command. And ’tis you who dwell in the home of Dahilis! Take you hence. Leave us ere you do worse harm.”
She stared, and now he thought of a poleaxed cow.
“Get you to the nursery.” To Sasai, Antonia, Camilla she had borne him in such quick and glad succession. “Dahut and I will be together this night…. Not so, darling?” he murmured into the child-fragrance under her hair.
Guilvilis lifted her hands. “I love you, Grallon. I wanted to do what you said. I wanted to please you.”
He brushed her aside as he carried his daughter out of the room.
They must cross the atrium to reach the main bedchamber. Every trace of Dahilis was gone. That had been at his insistence. Guilvilis would passively have left the dear things in place. He had ordered them brought to the palace. Guilvilis had acquired a few objects of her own. They were mostly garish. He didn’t care.
He heard her weep on her way to the nursery. His anger sank a trifle. Thanks to her, Dahut had seen an unpleasant thing before she was ready for it, and it had given her a nightmare, but surely she could overcome any fears, as lively and self-willed as she was. Sometime soon he’d toss Guilvilis a friendly word or two.
He laid the ivory shape down on the bed. Though there was hardly any light here, she burrowed into a pillow. It was as well, since he must now undress and—better find himself a nightgown, which he generally did only in the coldest weather. Dahut was naked, but, Mithras, she was five years old. Yet, holding her, he had felt the first slight filling out of her slenderness.
“Be not afraid, sweetling,” he said. “You saw no people yonder. You saw the husks they’ve no more use for. ’Tis like a—a dandelion, when the seeds blow away on the wind to become new dandelions.”
Still she was mute. He got into bed and held her close. How moveless she lay, except for the faint trembling and catches of breath. Couldn’t she cry, talk to him, have it out? Well, she’d always borne a strangeness about her. “I love you, Dahut,” he whispered. His lips brushed her cheek. “I love you so much.”
She did not answer. He got scant sleep that night.
6
Morning was bright and bleak. The funeral barge departed on the tide.
Dahut saw it from the heights. She had said at breakfast that she wanted simply a crust of bread and a cup of milk—which was true; she must force them down—and that she would make her own way to school—which of late she had been proudly doing. Father had left, and Mama Guilvilis was too crushed to respond. Freshly clad, Dahut set forth. Then she followed side streets to Northbridge Gate and went out on Point Vanis.
Few whom she passed paid her any heed. To them she was merely another lass bound somewhere, uncommonly pretty and curiously intent, but nobody to question. Women and girls walked about Ys as freely, safely as men. However, once on the headland, she left Redonian Way and went along the cliffs. A shepherd, carter, merchant, courier would have been too surprised by the sight of a child alone beyond the city wall. When she glimpsed anybody, she hid behind a bush or a boulder. Sometimes she stayed a while, staring out to sea or downward at earth and insects, before she wandered onward.
The promontory reared stark out of the water and stretched inland nearly bare save for grass turned sallow, gorse, thistle, scattered trees that the wind had dwarfed and gnarled, lichenous rocks. In a few places stood beehive-shaped stone shelters or menhirs raised by the Old Folk to Gods unknown. Wind boomed from the west, a torrent of chill. Clouds scudded before it, gulls, cormorants, a hawk on high. Shadows harried each other across the miles. In between them, sunlight made the waters flame.
Finally Dahut reached a low mound and a headstone, out near the northern end of the point. She sat down to rest. At school she was learning the Latin alphabet. She had not been here since that began. Now, slowly, with a tracing finger, she followed the letters chiseled into the stone:
Q IVN EPPILLO
OPT LEG II AVG
COMMIL FEC
Father had told her that a brave man lay beneath, who died fighting for Ys and Rome before she was born. He put off saying more, and when she asked two or three of the Mamas they put her off too. They seemed uneasy about it.
Abruptly Dahut sprang up. Her glance flung itself around. Against the dazzle on the sea she spied and knew the funeral barge, crawling out upon its oars. She choked down a scream and fled.
Nearby, where the cliffs turned east, a footpath led to them from the bend in the highway. Dahut sought it. Downward bound, it became a mere trail, steep and slippery. Father had held her in the past when they visited. Dahut picked her way alone, breathing raggedly but never losing balance.
A few blocks, canted and overgrown, showed that once a stair had led up. At the bottom were crumbling walls and the remnants of a jetty. Father had said this was a Roman marine station, smashed to pieces and fired long, long ago by the nasty Saxons. Dahut scrambled past the wreckage. Charred baulks and newer driftwood had jammed around the stump of the jetty to form a rough little ness. On this face of the headland the surf did not, today, assault it, though whitecaps smote and whooshed and sent spindrift flying.
Dahut stooped and took off her sandals. Barefoot, she could go out on the logs. Wind ripped at her. She cupped hands about mouth. “O-ho, o-hoo,” she called. “Come to me, come to me!”
The wind flung her cry down into the waves.
“O-ho, o-hoo! Please come. I need you.”
A shape appeared and swam rapidly toward her. It was golden-brown and huge eyed. “Welcome, thank you, welcome,” Daliut shouted; and tears started to run. She hunkered down into what shelter an uptilted slab offered. It was of planks, bleached and warped, still held by corroded nails to a pair of snapped-off crossbeams: a piece from the deck of a lost ship.
The seal came aground and slithered over the jumble. Dahut flung arms around her neck. The fish-breath was not foul, it was strong, like a soldier’s trumpet. The wetness didn’t matter, when such warmth and sleekness were there to lie against. A flipper enfolded Dahut. The seal nuzzled her. Whiskers prickled, then a tongue kissed, a voice hummed deep in the throat behind.
“O-o-oh, I saw the dead floating. They were all ugly an-an-and eels will eat them, me too, like my mother that father says was so beautiful, o-o-oh, they come after me in my dreams. I thought one of them was mother.”
The seal held her close.
“Nay?” Dahut whispered after a while. “Not really? Never?”
Somehow the seal got her looking outward and opened her to what she saw.
“Papa told me ’bout dandelions—”
Radiance lit the wings of a hovering gull. Its voice was like laughter.
“Aye, shells on the beach, kelp, starfish, but they go back, they all go back.”
The waters no longer roared, they sang.
Dahut snuggled. Here, shielded from the weather, held in this comfort, she could let her weariness overwhelm her, she could sleep and be healed. “They all return. Ever’thing returns…” The voice of the seal went lulling. “Tis mine.”
Oh, darling, lie peaceful The sea is before us,
The mothering, cleansing, all-powerful sea,
And borne on the wind and the foam is a chorus
Of surges and surf to your nest in the lee.
From depths that are darkling the billows lift sparkling,
As eager and salt as the beat of y
our blood.
No horror shall snare you, but life shall upbear you.
Dear sea-child, the tide of your hope is in flood.
XII
1
There was a man called Flavius Stilicho. His father had been a Vandal who entered the Imperial army and became an officer. Stilicho did likewise, rising high and fast until he was the mightiest general Rome had known for generations. This made him a power in the state. After military and diplomatic exploits in Persia and Thracia, he moved against the barbarians of the North. In Britannia his campaigns piled the bodies of Saxons, Picti, and Scoti in windrows and sent the survivors reeling back.
That spring, Uail maqq Carbri had led a seaborne raid up the channel to the mouth of the Sabrina and along the Silurian shore. Newly reinforced, the Romans fast marched from Isca Silurum, surprised the Scoti, and harvested a goodly number of them before the rest could escape. Uail’s outsize currach did keep its load of booty from a town his reavers had sacked, including some captives. Among those was a lad of sixteen, a son of the curial, named Sucat.
Gallia had become an even worse hunting ground. Armorica guarded the approach, strengthened by the newly enlarged navy of Ys. No man of Ériu in his right mind would go there, unless it be as a peaceful trader.
Uail sought Niall maqq Echach, King at Temir, and gave his ill tidings. Unlike most of the chieftains who were on hand, Niall did not rage. Time had taught him patience. If the sun-brightness of his locks had begun, ever so faintly, to dim, the wits beneath were whetted as keen as his sword had always been. He accepted Uail’s gifts out of the plunder, and made generous return. “It’s kindly your mood is, lord,” said the skipper.
Niall laughed. “It is not,” he replied. “The Romans must simply wait their turn. I have built up my strength over the years. Now we will build it further still, beginning with an undertaking that men shall remember forever.
Toward that end, he had been seeking the goodwill of his Condachtach kinfolk. One of these, a tuathal king from the western shores, happened to be guesting him just then, a man named Múlchu. When this man went home, among the gifts he took along was the slave Sucat, whom Uail had presented to Niall.
Alliance was natural. Warfare between the Ulati of the north and the Firi Condachtae south and west of them was as ancient as when Cú Culanni stood off the cattle raiders of Queen Medb, if indeed the strife had not begun between the sons of Ír and Éber just after they conquered the Children of Danu. Being of Condachtach origin, the royal house that lorded it over the tuaths of Mide had inherited those feuds.
Equally haughty were the Ulatach kings who foregathered at Emain Macha. The chief among them claimed descent from Conchobar maqq Nessa, the lesser ones from the warriors of the Red Branch, as did the landowning nobles.
Tributary to them, between Qóiqet nUlat and Mide, were humbler folk. Ulati had established themselves in these parts as chieftains, but scorned the dwellers, calling them mere Cruthini or outright Firi Bolg, exacting heavy rents, being careless about rights. Often a poor man could only get justice by starving at the door of the rich. Sometimes this, too, failed to shame the defendant, whose well-nourished flesh could endure hunger far beyond the day when scrawniness must either give up or die.
Thus, when the chariots of Niall and his sons rumbled north at the head of a host, victory winged above them. They found few earthworks and strongpoints to overrun. The enemy leaders fought valiantly, but many of their followers, especially bond tenants, were half-hearted and quick to flee. Reinforcements from the King at Emain Macha arrived too late, too little. At the end of the second summer’s warfare, Niall had prevailed as far as the headwaters of the River Sinand, almost to the Ulatach lands proper. The petty kings whom he had beaten plighted faith to him. He took hostages from them and went home.
There he would bide a while, waiting to see what happened in Ériu and overseas, before moving onward. Anything else would have been foolhardy. What he had won promised wealth, power, glory, but also unforeseeable trouble. It was more than plowlands, herds, salmon streams, forests for game and timber, gold, weapons, men. His now was mastery over Mag Slecht, the holiest place in all Ériu. He must be careful not to rouse the anger of its Gods or too many of Their worshippers.
2
The months wheeled onward, through winter and spring and again to summer.
Esmunin Sironai, chief astrologer in Ys, predicted a lunar eclipse some three sennights after solstice. His table and formulae went back to the Chaldeans, with much added by the Greeks and no little by his own people over the centuries, hampered though they were by their climate. The Queen who would be in charge of the Temple of Belisama at the time prepared for a special service, and she who would have the Vigil on Sena rehearsed special prayers, for the moon was the Lady’s. Forsquilis arranged to have neither duty; she would be casting spells and taking omens by herself. Bodilis planned to be at Star House.
The weather proved clear. The Symposium met early for dinner and discourse. King Gratillonius had attended such meetings when he was able, but excused himself from this. The word went, very softly, that he intended a rite in his Mithraeum.
At sunset the company entered the Water Tower and climbed a helical staircase to the observatory on top. Esmunin’s students busied themselves with armillary spheres, goniometers, and other instruments. The old man sat in a corner wrapped in his cloak. He was nearly blind. “But we will tell you all as it happens, master,” they said lovingly. “We will write it down with exactness, that you may draw forth meanings we would never find.”
Bodilis went to the parapet. Ys made a basin of darkness, save where fire glowed from windows, but towers still caught light on their uppermost metal and glass. In the opposite direction, the canal drew a thread of silver through the dusk in the valley. Air was as yet warm, moist, full of scents and whispers. And yonder above the hills rose the full moon. Already a gap was out of its limb.
“A-a-ah,” murmured voices, and “Goddess, be gentle us-ward,” and “Quick, now, set the clock.” Nearsighted Bodilis squeezed forefinger against thumb to make a peephole through which she could more clearly see the marvel.
Blackness advanced until it became red. That veil gave way in turn to blackness again as it withdrew from ashen white. It had been an eclipse longer than some, shorter than some. It would go into Esmunin’s book, another grain of truth laid down for a harvest he would never see. Bodilis wondered how many learned men in the Empire had troubled themselves to observe this, or watch at all.
A little talk followed, comparison, speculation; but most of the philosophers were ready for bed. Bodilis remained wide awake. As folk descended and said goodnight, she started home, thinking that she would read for a while, or perhaps attempt a little further translation of the Oedipus, or perhaps do a sketch for a painting she had in mind. Her place had grown lonesome since Gratillonius ceased sleeping there. Semuramat—Tambilis—was lonely too, but it behooved a Queen to maintain a household; and, to be sure, Tambilis was still studying those things a cultivated woman should know. Kerna and Talavair were good daughters who tried to see their mother often, but they had their families to attend first.
Bodilis had no need of a lantern, so brightly did the moon shine. The streets she took were empty, which made the glimpses she got through the windows of lighted homes seem doubly snug. Her rangy stride sent echoes rattling along the up-and-down twistiness.
It happened that her way led her by a house lately fire-gutted. That was rare in Ys, where only the upper stories of the tallest buildings were wooden. When conflagration did occur, the marines at Warriors’ House were as quick to come put it out as they were to come stamp down violent crime. In this case, a high wind and a broken amphora of oil defeated them. The family moved elsewhere, pending repairs.
A man had climbed up to sit on the blackened front wall, whose roof had collapsed. Swinging long legs, he was dressed in forester’s wise, coarse shirt, leather doublet, cross-gartered trews. The moonlight showed a sil
ver headband, gold earrings, forked black beard. A scar puckered the face that he kept turned aloft.
The sound she made caught his attention. He came down in a rush via a windowsill and made a sweeping salute of deference. “My lady, Queen Bodilis!” His rather high voice spoke easy Ysan, though with a Redonic accent. “What a grand surprise. How may I serve you?”
She recognized Rufinus. They had met seldom and fleetingly, as much as he was off on errands of the King’s about which neither man said much. “What were you doing?” she inquired.
“Watching the eclipse, of course,” he laughed. “Such marvels are all too few, and then this wretched weather of ours most likely hides them.” Immediately he grew serious. “Afterward I sat trying to think what makes such a thing happen. Surely the Queen knows, but I’m only a runaway serf.”
“You’ve no ideas?” she found herself asking.
“Naught but folk tales. Not erenow have I had leisure to wonder about the world, thanks to King Grallon, best of lords.”
Bodilis winced and replied in haste: “Well, ’tis simple enough. The sun and the moon move opposite each other when the angles are just right, and so the shadow of the earth falls on the moon. Have you not noticed that the shadow is curved?”
Rufinus stared. “Why—yea, my lady—but, do understand you to say the world, this earth, is round?”
“Indeed. That’s well known. Think how a ship goes below the horizon on a clear day. First the hull disappears, then the mast. How could that be, save on a globe?”
Rufinus drew a long breath. His voice pulsed: “True, true! I said I’d never had a chance to think beyond the needs of staying alive, till lately, but—Yea, clear ’tis to see. But more riddles boil forth—” He fell to one knee in his extravagant fashion. “My lady Bodilis, wisest of the Gallicenae, may I beg a favor? May I accompany you to your doorstep, listening to whatever you care to share of your knowledge? If ever you’d make for yourself an adoring servant, here is how!”
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