The Golden Slave

by Poul Anderson

  It growled about him, the heavy sound of laden wheels, echoing between grimy brick walls. A haze hung in the air, smoke and dust, tinged with garlic, cooked meat, new bread, perfume, horse dung, sewage, garbage, human sweat. Folk milled about, shouting, waving their arms, chaffering, thrusting a way past the crowds, somehow, anyhow. Once Phryne was whirled from Eodan in such an eddy. He gasped with terror, knowing he was indeed lost without her. She found her way back to him, but thereafter he held her wrist.

  They threaded their way toward the Esquiline Gate. “We must find an inn,” Phryne said; she had to shout through the noise. “The house is on the Viminal Hill, but we could not go there clad as we are, nor before dark in any case.”

  Eodan nodded dumbly. He let her lead him under the portal. A distance beyond it was a shabby district of tall wooden tenements, where the streets were slimy with refuse and the landless, workless scourings of war and debt crouched in their rags waiting for the next dole. He was too tired even to feel anger at the shouts from tooth-rotten mouths. “Hail, peasant! A son of the soil, there are straws in his hair! Aha, will you not lend us that pretty boy for a while? No, he will not ― they’re a hard-fisted lot, these farmers. Cisalpine Gauls for certain, see the ox look about ‘em. But then where are their Gaulish breeches? Ha, ha, lost their breeches, did they ― now was it at dice or what?”

  Phryne, gone pale with wrath, led Eodan through twisted alleys until they found an inn. The landlord sat outside, yawning and picking his teeth with a thumbnail. “We would have a room for ourselves,” she said. “Half a sesterce,” said the landlord. “Half a sesterce for this flea pit? One copper as!” cried Phryne. They haggled while Eodan shuffled his feet and looked about.

  When at last he was alone with her, in a windowless box of a room, he said, “The night winds take you, girl, what do we care for a copper more or less? I feel a fool every place we stop, listening to you!”

  “I wonder what they would have thought of two people who did not bargain?” purred Phryne. “That they were in a suspicious haste to get off the streets?”

  It was too murky to read her face, but he had come to know that tone. He could almost have traced out the quirk of her mouth and the mockery of her eyes. “Oh, well, you rescued me again,” he said. “I am a blundering dolt. What shall we do next, captain, sir?”

  “You have a wit like a bludgeon,” she said. “Be quiet and let me think.” She threw herself on a pile of moldy straw and looked up at a ceiling hidden as much by grime as by dimness.

  Eodan hunched among the stinks and choked down his wrath. She had saved him too often, in the days that lay behind. Her right to badger him was earned.

  He could have guided the first wild gallop himself, out of the estate and down ringing dirt roads to the south. When they reached a stream, they had dismounted and led their horses several miles northerly in its channel, slipping and stumbling while the dark hours fled them; but he would have done that, too, to cover his trail. They found another road at last and went mercilessly along it toward the Latin Way; the horses were ready to fall down by sunrise. Eodan would have turned them loose then and gone ahead on foot; Phryne had made him, unwillingly, lead them into a brushy ravine and kill them. But that was not a thought Eodan might never have had ― it was another trail-covering, after all, and a chance to sacrifice for luck. She had told him to offer the beasts to Hermes, whom he did not know, but he felt any god would have been pleased.

  No, he thought, thus far he could have come without her. He might even have gone for many miles, sleeping by day and walking by night. But when he blundered into a sheep-fold, and the dogs flew at him and the shepherds came to club him for a thief, he could not have fobbed them off with so ready a tale as Phryne had. He could never have passed himself for a harmless man when they bought bread and wine on the way; he would have had to steal his food, with all the risks. He reckoned himself brave, but he had gone chill when she chattered merrily with a wagoner chance-met at an inn; yet it ended with two days of riding on a load of barley while the blisters on their soles eased. (He recalled seeing in the first dawn how her feet bled from the river stones; but she had said nothing.) She saved him having to answer any questions at all in his accent when she remarked calmly that her poor brother was a mute. The last two days, with houses and villages grown so thick they dared not sleep out in the grass like vagabonds, she had gotten rooms for them. (Formerly they had lain side by side, wrapped in their cloaks, looking up at a sky frosty with stars, and she had told him unbelievable things that the wise Greeks thought about heaven, until he begged her to spare his whirling head. Then she laughed very softly and said he knew the stars themselves better than she.) And now in Rome ― Yes, surely she belonged to his weird, for he saw now how moonstruck had been his notion of entering Rome alone.

  Nonetheless, at the few times weariness or wariness had not forbidden them to speak freely, she was apt to be curt with him. He wondered how he offended her. Once he asked, and she said for him to cease plaguing her with foolish questions.

  She stirred on the straw. “I will go out and buy us better clothing,” she said. “After sunset I will take you to Flavius’ house. I know a way we can get in. But then it must be you who leads, for I have no more plans in me.”

  “I have none,” he said. “I will trust in whatever gods are willing to guide us.”

  “If they guide us not to our doom,” she said.

  “That may well be. But if so, what can we do to stop it?” Eodan shrugged. “I had thought we might steal Hwicca from the house ― buy boy’s dress for her too, Phryne ― and then if we could all get on a ship bound somewhere―”

  The girl sighed and left. Eodan stretched himself out and went to sleep.

  She came back with cloaks and tunics of better stuff than they wore, a lamp and a jug of hot water and a basin borrowed from the innkeeper. Once again he submitted to her razor. When she was done, she gestured curtly at a loaf of bread and a cheese. “Eat,” she said. “You may need your strength.”

  He had been tearing at it for some time when he noticed that she sat unmoving. “Will you not have some?” he asked.

  Her tone was far-off, as if she had small care for what was to happen to them. “I have no appetite.”

  “But you, too―”

  “Let me alone!” she flared.

  Presently they were out again upon the street. It was sunset time and the crowds had thinned, so they moved quickly over mucked cobbles. “It is as well to get into a better part of the city before dark,” muttered Phryne. “There could be robbers out.”

  Eodan lifted his staff. “I would give much for a good fight,” he said.

  Phryne looked at him, his eyes two beads above her own. “I understand,” she said. Her fingers stroked lightly over his arm. “It will not be long now, Eodan.”

  The tightness in his breast grew with every pace. As dusk settled over the city, he found himself climbing a wide well-paved road up the Viminal Hill, so that he could gaze down across roofs and roofs and roofs, here and there a last pale gleam of temple marble, hazy blue fading into black in the east, and many lit windows making an eldritch earthbound star-sky, farther than a man could see. Faintly to him came smoke, a sound of wheels or tired feet, a distant hail that quivered upon still air. Once a horseman went by, casting the two plebeians an incurious glance.

  Hwicca, thought Eodan. Hwicca, I have not seen you for a thousand years. I am going to see you tonight.

  Though all the earth stood up to bar my way, I will hold you again tonight.

  The darkness thickened, until at last he heard his footfalls hollow on unseen stones, until the houses on either side were little more than black blocks. His heart beat so loudly that he could almost not hear Phryne’s final words: “We have found it.” But he felt with unwonted keenness how her hand clenched about his.

  They stood before a sheer ten-foot wall. “The house lies within a garden,” she whispered. “No one watches the rear… guests come in at the
other side… there is a gate, but it would be locked now. If you can raise me to the top, I will tie my belt to a bough I know and you can follow.”

  Eodan made a cup of his hands. She stepped up, in a single flowing movement, caught at his head to steady herself and murmured, “Now.” He lifted her carefully, but aware of her leg sliding along his cheek. Then she had scrambled to the top, and he felt his way past rough plaster until he found the cord she let down. He climbed it hand over hand.

  “Where is your staff?” hissed Phryne. “Down below,” he said. “Have the gods maddened you, to mark your own path? Back and get it!” she snapped.

  When at last they stood in the garden, Eodan peered through the crooked branches of a tree. No lights showed on this side. He guessed, from remembering the villa, that kitchen and slave quarters were at this end, but there would be a separate corridor on one side that the owners used. Phryne led him to such a door. It creaked beneath her touch. She halted, and time stretched horribly while they waited.

  “No one heard,” she sighed. “Come.”

  Two hanging lamps gave just enough light for them to see down the hall. “To the atrium,” whispered Phryne. “Nobody seems to be there. But the Cimbrian girl stayed here―” She stopped in front of a door and touched it with hands that shook. “Here, Eodan.” He saw her mouth writhe, as if in pain. “O Eodan, the Unknown God grant she be here!”

  He found himself suddenly, coldly his own master. His fingers were quite steady on the latchstring. The door opened upon darkness… no, there was a window at the end, broader than most Italian windows; he had a glimpse of gray-blue night crossed with a flowering vine and one trembling star.

  He went through. His dagger slid from its sheath. If Flavius was here, Flavius would not see morning. But, otherwise, he told himself, he must keep Hwicca from yelling in her joy. Put a hand over her mouth, if he must, or at least a kiss; silence was their only shield.

  He padded over the floor, Phryne closing the door behind him. They stood in shadows.

  “Hwicca?” he whispered.

  It rustled by the window. He heard a single Latin word: “Here.”

  He glided toward it. Now he saw her, an outline; she had been seated by the window looking out. Her long loose hair and a white gown caught what light there was.

  “Is it you?” she asked, uncertainly. She used the “thou” form of closeness, and it twisted him.

  He reached her. “Do not speak aloud,” he said, low, in the Cimbric.

  He heard her breath drawn in so sharply that it seemed her lungs must rip. He dropped his knife and made one more step, to take her in his hands. She began to shiver.

  “Eodan, no, you are dead,” she cried, like a lost child.

  “If he told you that, I shall tear his tongue out,” he answered in a wrath that hammered against his skull. “I am alive ― I, Eodan, your man. I have come to take you home, Hwicca.”

  “Let me go!” Horror rode her voice.

  He caught her arms. She shook as if with fever. “Can you give us light, Phryne?” he asked in Latin. “She must see I am no nightwalker.”

  Hwicca did not speak again. Having risen, she stood wholly mute. Her hand brushed him, and he felt the palm had changed, had gone soft; she had ground no grain and driven no oxen for nigh to a year. Oh his poor caged darling! He let his own grasp go about her shoulders and then her waist. He raised her chin and kissed her. The lips beneath his were dead. In an overwhelming grief, that she should have been so hurt, he drew her to him and laid her head on his breast.

  Long afterward Phryne found flint and steel and a lamp. A tiny glow herded immense misshapen shadows into the corners. Eodan looked upon Hwicca.

  She had not altered greatly to his eyes. Her skin was white now ― the sun had touched it seldom, the rain and wind never; but the same dear small freckles dusted across her nose. She had taken on weight; she was fuller about breast and hip. Her hair streamed in a loose mane past a Roman gown and a Roman girdle, thin sheer stuff broidered with gold; she wore a necklace of opals and amber. He did not like the perfume smell, but―”Hwicca, Hwicca!”

  Her eyes seemed black, wrenched upward to his. They were dry and fever-bright. Her shaking had eased, until he could only feel it as a quiver beneath the skin. “I thought you were killed,” she told him, tonelessly.

  “No. I was sent to a farm south of here. I escaped. Now we shall go home.”

  “Eodan―” The cold, softened hands reached down, pulling his arms away. She went from him to the chair in which she had been seated when he came in. She sat upon it, her weight against one arm, and stared at the floor. The curve of thigh and waist and drooping head was a sharp pain to him.

  “Eodan,” she said at last, wonderingly. She looked up. “I killed Othrik. I killed him myself.”

  “I saw it,” he said. “I would have done so, too.”

  “Flavius brought me here,” she mumbled.

  “That was not your wish,” he answered, through a wall in his throat he had raised against tears.

  “There was only one thing that gave me the strength to live,” she said. “I thought you had died.”

  Eodan wanted to take her in one arm, lead her out, hold a torch in the other hand; he would kindle the world and dance about its flames. He went to her, instead, and sat down at her feet, so she must look at him.

  “Hwicca,” he said, “it was I who failed. I brought you to this land of sorrow; when we were wedded, I could have turned our wagon northward. I let myself be overcome by the Romans. I even left you my own task, of free ― freeing our son. The anger of the gods is on my head, not yours.”

  “Do you think I care for any gods now?” she said.

  Suddenly she wept, not like a woman but like a man, great coughing gulping sobs that pulled the ribs and stretched the jaws. She lifted her head and howled, the Cimbrian wolf howl when they mourn for their slain. Phryne stepped back, drawing her knife by the door, but no one came. Perhaps, thought Eodan, they were used to hearing Flavius’ new concubine yell.

  Hwicca reached for him with unsteady hands and brushed them across his mouth. “You kissed me,” she cried. “Now see what you kissed off.” He looked upon a greasy redness. “My owner likes me painted. I have tried to please him.”

  Eodan sat in numbness.

  Hwicca fought herself to quiet. Finally she said, stammering and choking, “He brought me here. He left me alone… for many days… until I had used up all my tears. At last he came. He spoke kindly. He offered his protection if ― if ― I should have asked him for a spear in my heart. I did not, Eodan. I gave him back his kindness.”

  He had thought many ugly fates for her. This he had not awaited.

  “Go,” she said. “Go while it is still dark. I have money, I will give you what I have. Leave this place of men’s deaths, go north and raise me a memory-stone if you will ― Eodan, I am dead, leave the dead alone!”

  She turned away, looking into night. He got up, slowly, and went to where Phryne was standing.

  “Well?” said the Grecian girl. “What is the trouble?” Her tone was unexpectedly stinging, almost contemptuous; it jerked him like a whip.

  He bridled with an anger at her that drained off some of the hurt Hwicca had given. “She yielded herself to Flavius.”

  “Did you expect otherwise?” asked Phryne, winter-cold. “It is one thing to fall on your own sword in battle’s heat ― another to be a captive alone, and get the first soft word spoken in weeks! Romans have long known how to harness a soul.”

  “Oh… well―” Eodan shook his head, stunned. “It is not that. I looked for nothing else, I have seen too many women taken… But she will not come with me now, Phryne!”

  The Hellene stared across the room at Hwicca, who sat with her face hidden in her hair. Then she glanced about at clothes and jewels and whatever else a man was blind to. She nodded.

  “Your wife told you she did not merely obey,” she said to Eodan. “She tried to please Flavius. She wanted to.”<
br />
  He started. “Are you a witch?”

  “Only a woman,” said Phryne. “Eodan, think, if you are able. She believed you dead, did she not? I heard the gossip in this household last winter. And Flavius was a man, and there was life in this woman, enough life to draw you here into the she-wolf’s throat to get her back! What would you have her do?”

  Phryne brought down her foot so the floor thudded. Beneath the boy-cropped dark bangs she regarded Eodan with eyes that crackled. Her scorn flayed him: “She feels she has betrayed you because, for a while, she kissed Flavius willingly. She will send you off and remain here, caged, waiting for him to tire of her and sell her to a brothel and so at last to destruction and a corpse rotting in the Tiber. She will damn herself to that, for no other reason than that she remained a living woman! And you, you rutting, bawling, preening man-thing, you think you might actually go from her as she asks?”

  Phryne snatched up a vase and hurled it shattering at his feet. “Well, go then,” she said. “Go, and the Erinyes have you, for I am done with you!”

  Eodan stared, from one to another of them, for very long. Finally he said, “What thanks I owed you before, Phryne, can be forgotten beside this.”

  He went to Hwicca, stood behind her, pulled her head back against him and stroked her hair. “Forgive me,” he said. “There is much I do not understand. But you shall come with me, for I have always loved you.”

  “No,” she whispered. “I will not. There is no luck in me. I will not!”

  He wondered, with a deep harsh wound in the thought, how wide of the mark Phryne, too, might have been. But if they lived beyond this night ― if his weird should carry him back to Jutland horizons ― he would have their lifetimes to learn, and to heal.

  But first it was to escape.

  Boierik’s son said calmly, “You are going with us, Hwicca. Let me hear no more about that.”