“No, not tonight, and if anyone seeks me, tell them I have retired early.” Picking up her cloak she went out softly, and the girl closed the door behind her.
The man still hovered in the corner of the atrium, and when he saw her coming he slipped toward the cloister and out into the garden. Gladys ran down the terrace steps behind him, seeing him vault the the wall and disappear into the trees below. Of course. No guards did duty there.
Gladys determined that she would ask her father to request more sentries from Claudius, then in spite of herself she smiled grimly. She did not think the emperor would want to grant any more Catuvellaun requests. She scrambled over the wall, tumbled into the rough grass on the other side, and sped after the man. He moved surely ahead of her, glancing back now and then to make sure that she was following, and one behind the other they cut across the smooth width of the Clivus Victoriae and on down the hill, skirting the walls of other estates, jogging down alleys, until the Palatine loomed behind them. The man did not cross the Forum directly. He zigzagged on the periphery and Gladys fought to keep him in sight. Then he angled down through the blocks of apartment houses half-hidden in trees to where there were shops and an occasional expensive drinking house. It seemed that he was being careful to stay in sight, yet he obviously did not want her to walk with him, and she padded after him, her breath coming short, realizing for the first time how soft she had become with her litters and her host of slaves to escort her about the city. Now there were no gardens, no trees, and the streets narrowed and began to twist. Taverns and brothels lined them, bringing to her a low murmur of a life she had never known, and as she flitted past, there seemed to be in the dark doorways the unmoving huddles of a dozen grubby secrets. Llyn, how could you? she thought. There is so much gay strength in you, so many alternatives. Why this? Is it a deliberate denial of your captivity, a calculated choice?
The man strode on in the odorous darkness, often cutting from one street to another through an alley, and she stumbled on, sweating in spite of the chill wind. She was about to call to him to go more slowly, to wait for her, when she ran around a corner and he was not there. She halted, leaning against the rough stone, straining into the gloom, but no footsteps rang out under the laughter and oaths that spilled from the tavern at the end of the tiny street. She cursed to herself and shouted, “Where are you? Wait! Wait for me!” But there was no answer. She stood there panting, and the moments went by. She was about to call again when out of the corner of her eye she saw a man emerge from a doorway on the opposite side of the street. It was too dark to see more than his silhouette, but she knew that he was looking at her. She glanced away and saw another shape detach itself from the shadows ahead of her and come pacing slowly toward her. There was still the length of the street between them—it was still beyond the light-limned door of the tavern, but it drew closer with a determination she could feel. It was then that she knew, and her heart stopped. I am in a trap, she thought incredulously, and I am going to die. Trapped like the witless, lazy Roman wench I have become, trapped here in the bowels of the city, and they will say that I was carousing with Llyn, they will say that the sailors killed me, or the thieves and drunkards who roam these streets. The man facing her came on unhurried, sure of an easy prey, and the one standing in the doorway stepped out onto the paving. I cannot live! she thought, panic stricken. I have forgotten much, I have forgotten it all, I am lost and there is no moon to shine between the trees and tell me which way to go. The intestines of this city twine about themselves forever, dark and corrupt. Father! Help me! Then sense returned. The tavern. Better to face the dangers of a room full of curious men than the certainty of imperial knives. There might even be a Praetorian or two, Llyn himself might be in there.
She took three awkward steps, and then the tavern door opened and another man came out, hitching up his belt. She drew breath to cry to him but before she could make a sound there was another sound, and she saw that he had drawn a knife. “Take her!” the one coming down the street shouted, and the other two sprang into life. Gladys screamed, spun on her heel, and fell forward into the labyrinth that waited, leaving all light and sanity behind. It was an alley. At the end of it, looming high, there was a wall, and with near hysteria she prepared to turn at bay, but she saw the tiny path that began at its foot and she stumbled up it, squeezing between wall and wall, hearing the heavy thud of their footsteps. Hurry, she sobbed, oh hurry, hurry, then she was out in another street. No friendly lamplight fell on this one, nothing but shadows and silence, and she had no time to try the doors. She sped along it, hearing another shout as the three men saw her go. She did not know where she was, and as she ran she tried to think, but the clean stateliness of the Palatine and the Forum could have been a thousand miles away, in another world. Something rushed by her head and fell with a clink and she screamed again, knowing it to be a knife well thrown. She came to the end of the street and turned, ripping off her cloak as she did so, tearing at the belt that held her stola to her body. She dropped cloak, belt, and overgarment to race on, freer, in her white, thigh-short tunic. White! she groaned. Ah, mother! Must I go naked to my death? The sandals, flimsy things with golden buckles, pinched her feet and she kicked them off, feeling as she did so the shedding of her ill-fitting Roman self, feeling the ability for coherent thought come seeping back to her. “Sword-woman, sword-woman,” she heard the voice of Cinnamus whisper, as though she were once more his pupil, weapon in hand, eyes on his face as he admonished her. “Make them run, make them sweat,” and she sobbed as she drove into yet another alley drowned in night, the assassins fleet behind her. Dear Cin, it is I who run, I who sweat, I whose muscles are flaccid from too much good food, too little care. I haven’t a chance.
She could smell the river now, and in her imagination she tried to picture it flowing through the city under its lordly bridges, curving as she stood in the garden and looked down upon it. Then suddenly it was there, starlight reflected on its smooth surface, the shadows of the warehouses rippling dark. Watchmen, she thought. Watchmen, but she dared not shout for help. Upstream or down? Camulos, where am I? She ran into an alcove and tried to get her breath, one hand over her mouth to stifle the sound, her head hanging, her ears tensely straining. Then she heard them step out of the maze of dockside streets and knew that she must move or be cornered. She flung herself from her hiding place, but not before the glimmer of her tunic had betrayed her. A man lunged for her, with arm raised, shouting to the others, and the impetus of her start carried her against him, faster, harder than he had thought. She could not have drawn back if she had tried. He stumbled, and his arm was driven back against the stone wall of the warehouse. Before she realized what had happened, Gladys saw the knife fall. She pounced on it, fell to her knees, and drove it into the man’s chest with both hands, as hard as she could. The other two were almost upon her. She got to her feet and ran. First blood, she sobbed to herself. The first blood of my life, and she turned downstream, not caring that she could be seen, for now the city had relented and voided her out of its stinking bowels like a tiny white worm. Ahead and to her left the Capitoline hill bulked, and beyond it, far, oh heartbreakingly far, the Palatine mocked her with its lights. I learned once how to run, she told herself. Now obey me, my body. Falling into the graceless, ground-eating gait of her people, she sprinted, as the river lapped beside her, and the pounding feet and labored breath came on behind.
One man. Where was the other? No time to wonder. The river began its wide inroad on the west side. The Capitoline became the whole horizon as she swung with the water, and now the temples of the Forum were visible. Suddenly she veered, her bare feet finding grass for a moment, the Capitoline in front of her now, and cast a glance over her shoulder. The river’s shadows were empty. She stopped dead. The man had gone. Where? Why? Shuddering with exhaustion and fear she forced herself to study the tangle of buildings ahead, behind. He was not there. She closed her eyes and felt for his presence, but there was nothing. For a moment s
he sank to the ground, but she was not such a fool as to believe the jaws had opened so easily. Where? Where? I must cross the Forum directly, with such people as might be out tonight, but then what? The trees on the Palatine are dark, and I dare not seek a Praetorian, not now. How many of them are in her pay? She got up, straightened her tunic, now soiled and bloody, and made herself walk slowly across the plaza. No one gave her a glance, and she knew that no citizen would dare interfere with a disheveled girl covered in sweat and blood, for fear of those pursuing her.
It took her a long time to traverse the Forum, and she wanted to linger in the hope that she might see a face she knew, but the rise of the Palatine loomed, a mass of darkness between her and its crown of lights, a forest that held death. Then she saw him, standing on the edge of the road that branched into the rising Clivus Victoriae. He watched her come with impudent patience, and her heart began to palpitate wildly again. Sobs of disappointment ached in her throat but she stood still, gathered together every thread of energy left to her, then leaped away like a hunted doe, running for the foot of the Palatine, around the other side, plunging courageously into the darkness that could smother her or be her salvation. He saw her purpose and sprang after her, trying to cut her off, to keep her circling at the foot, but the insanity of her last effort for life had given her an edge and she found herself looking down on the road, the man pumping behind her. There was no time for stealth. With an awkward jump she landed on the road and began to half-run, half-stagger along it, upward, around the curve, following a wall that ended in a row of gray stone houses which fronted the street directly. She knew that she was spent and could not clamber up through the trees to her father’s wall but must stay on the road. There was a sound behind her. The man had come out and was gaining. It was then that Gladys knew she would never reach her father’s gate. She had given all she could. There was nothing left. She ground her teeth together and turned. “Come then, animal!” she shouted, “But you will have to strike me in the back,” and, turning, she took four more stumbling steps.
Then, like the shock of a sudden summer rain, she heard his voice, Rufus Pudens, …I rent three rooms in a house on the Clivus Victoriae…it is almost directly below here… A chance, she thought, relief and terror flooding her, and even as she reached the first gray doorway she looked up.
The other man, the missing man, stepped out from the depths of the last house, smiling, his knife raised. She saw his face as a pool of whiteness, the knife as silver. “Mother!” she screamed, and beat on the door with both fists. Let it be this one, let him be home. The man stopped, aimed coolly, insolently, and threw. She flung herself flat against the unyielding door but the knife found her, pricking like cold fire between her ribs, and she sank sobbing, unaware that the door was opening. The porter looked down on her, aghast. When he saw the blood spurting from her side and the men hovering in the shadows, he began to close it again. “No trouble here,” he said firmly, and Gladys raised a streaming, crazed face to the dimly lit peristyle beyond. Taking a last, pain-fired breath, she opened her mouth. “Rufus!” she screamed. “Rufus Rufus!” and the men waiting for the door to click shut looked at one another and started to melt away into the night. The porter stood irresolute, and then there was a flurry of movement. Rufus Pudens came striding through the peristyle, Martial behind him, and when he saw her on her hands and knees on the doorstep, her tunic torn, mired, and bloody, blood already puddling the tiles of the entranceway, he ran, side-stepped her, and vanished. A moment later he was back, kneeling beside her. “Gone,” he said. “Jupiter! How could Caradoc allow this happen? Help me to get her upstairs, Martial, before the others in the house awaken.”
“I will have to tell my master,” the porter said, worried. “I hope that you are not interfering with imperial business.”
Pudens gritted his teeth. “I will tell your master myself,” he said, “Now get out of the way.”
Together he and Martial carried her through the peristyle, across the atrium, and up the stairs to Pudens’s rooms. “Get those cushions,” he ordered, “and shut the door.” They placed her gently on the carpeted floor and Martial closed the door and gathered up cushions, while Pudens eased off her tunic. “Find some water so that I can clean this,” he said after a while. “It is not deep, only painful and unpleasant. Gladys! Gladys!” She lay there crying while he washed and bandaged her and found her a blanket. She sat up with difficulty, wincing at the stiffness already spreading over her ribs and down her side.
“There were three of them,” she said shakily. “I killed one, Rufus. My first blood. A Roman in Rome. I killed.”
He and Martial exchanged glances. “You killed a wild beast, that is all,” he replied. “It was not combat, Gladys. They were hunting you like the animals they are, and you should not concern yourself about such a killing. Tell me how it happened.”
She did so quickly, her hand stealing into his, and Martial watched her critically, and not without amusement. Whoever was behind it all had bitten off a great deal more than he could chew.
Pudens listened without betraying the confusions of anger and worry in his mind, then he stood up. “I must take you home at once,” he said. “Martial, go and roust my servants. I want the litter, and three or four of them can walk with us.”
“Shall I arm them?”
Pudens considered, then shook his head. “No. I think our numbers will be sufficient, and it is not far.”
Not far, Gladys thought. A pleasant little walk. It could have stretched ahead forever. She shuddered as Martial left the room. “Help me up, Rufus,” she said. “I want to stand.”
He put his arms around her and lifted her, and for a moment she rested against him, her body a single protesting ache of abused muscle and bruised tissue, then she kissed him softly on the lips.
“Thank you, Rufus Pudens,” she said. “There are people at court who will hate you for what you have done, and you know it, and you may have to find other rooms to rent.”
“I may indeed,” he said gravely. “What a pity. I have been comfortable here.”
She met the smiling eyes and stepped out of his embrace. “I do not find it funny, and neither will you when my father declares a blood feud against Agrippina.”
“Will he do that?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. Perhaps not, if I can show him an honorable way out.”
“Marry me. Then your problems and his will be solved.” He knew that he was taking advantage of a sordid situation but he did not care, and she stood staring at him for a long time, those black, deep eyes full of self-confidence and independence once again. She still had not answered him when Martial came to tell them that the litter was below, and they left the house in a tense silence.
Pudens took no chances. He sent a runner on ahead, and by the time they turned in at Caradoc’s gate the guards were clustered, waiting for them. Caradoc himself was raging up and down the street, and when he saw the litter with Pudens and Martial flanking it, he ran up, tearing back the curtains. He said nothing. He met his daughter’s gaze steadily and she saw again, for the first time since he descended the steps of the Curia with Claudius and raised both free arms in exulta tion to his family, the fiery wheels of power and authority rolling behind his eyes. “Arviragus,” she whispered. “Do not blame yourself. This was my fault alone.”
“Lady, it will be a long time before I approach senility,” he croaked. “I was a fool to believe that my life no longer had meaning.” He dropped the curtain, dismissed the sentries, and they came to the house. Here Martial bid them all a quiet good night and went away, and the rest of them entered Caradoc’s reception room, Gladys walking slowly but unaided. The family came to its feet, their faces pale. Only Llyn stayed in his chair, sprawled loosely, fighting to regain sobriety, and Gladys went and sat beside him. “I heard,” he said to her with exaggerated care. “I heard you run past the tavern. I heard the men who ran after you. It is not wise to seek trouble down there, and I was winning a lot of
money from a stranger. I did not know it was you, Gladys.”
“Llyn…” she began, but he turned his head away, white and sick.
The two other women stayed on their feet. Caradoc took off his cloak, and going to Gladys he demanded an account of the night in their own tongue. She gave it quickly, her hands moving unconsciously in the way of chiefs who sat by a Council fire and recounted their raids, and the others watched. Pudens stood in the doorway. The line that divided him from them had appeared again, as real as though Caradoc had taken chalk and drawn it on the floor. He was not one of their kind. They had closed ranks, suddenly and uncompromisingly, leaving him outside, the Roman, the enemy. One by one they squatted, going to the floor as though it were grass under their vast forests. He turned to go, but then Gladys put both hands together and brought them slicing down, the tears sliding over her cheeks, and she looked across the room and saw him.
“Rufus,” she said in Latin. “Please do not go. I am in your debt. That is not a light thing.”
“There is no owing between friends,” he retorted, but he stepped into the room. When Gladys had stopped speaking there was a brief silence. Llyn sat with his eyes closed, but he was not asleep. The two Eurgains squatted and looked at the floor. Caradoc had folded his arms and was studying the wall. Caelte fingered his harp, but made no sound. Then Caradoc spoke.
“Eurgain?”
His wife did not even look up. “Blood,” she said.
“Llyn?”
“Blood.”
“Eurgain?”
The girl hesitated, then her mouth thinned. “Blood.”
“Gladys?”
“Not blood!” They all turned their heads to stare at her and she strove to keep the pleading out of her voice. “The blood has been spilled. I was pursued and wounded, but a man was slain by me, and blood is not demanded unless there is murder.”
The Eagle and the Raven Page 69
