Jo Graham - [Numinous World 05]

by The Emperor's Agent (epub)

  That night, at dinner with Corbineau, I said as much.

  Jean-Baptiste took a quick sip of his wine. "You know I don't know the date either."

  "That's why I'm talking to you," I said. "Subervie will think I'm trying to wheedle it out of him, which I'm not. I'm trying to figure out how to best calculate our opportunity to catch the spy." I rested my forearms on the edge of the table. "There is the weather to consider. Fall gales in the Channel."

  "That's not the only thing of course," Jean-Baptiste said. "There are naval maneuvers we know nothing about. Our ships must lure the British fleet away, or at least engage them and draw their attention so that we have a clear passage. We need seven hours to get across. That's all. But we must have seven hours without the Channel Fleet. Or," he looked at me pointedly, "without other interruptions."

  The air elemental, of course. Otherwise our fleet would suffer the same fate as the Spanish Armada, and Jean-Baptiste, Michel and the rest would be cast into the sea, landing craft swamped by eldritch waves.

  "I do not see how we are to do it," I said, shaking my head. "The power of that creature…."

  "Honoré says he has a way," Jean-Baptiste said, glancing up over my shoulder in the nearly empty tavern. "Why don't you ask him? Honoré, will you join us? This capon bears remarking upon."

  Reille had come in behind me, and now loomed over me in an uncertain sort of way, as though wondering if he were really welcome. "If you don't mind," he said. "Madame?"

  "Call me Elza," I said warmly. "And do join us. We were just speaking of you."

  He looked startled and a little pleased. "Oh."

  "I was saying what a great buffoon you are," Jean-Baptiste said with a grin.

  "He was not," I said. I dropped my voice. "We were discussing how to get rid of the creature."

  "That." Honoré sank into the chair to my left. "That is the question."

  "To which you are expected to provide an answer, if I understand correctly," I said. "What is it you mean for us to do?"

  He reached for the wine bottle and filled an empty glass with the air of a man settling in for a long explanation. "The only way to fight Story is with Story. That creature is drawing its power from the belief of Britons, from the core mythology of the British Isles themselves, that Albion is protected by the encircling seas, inviolable and uninvadable. Thousands of people know the stories -- Drake's Drum and the Armada, Robin Hood and King Arthur, Bran's head…."

  I must have looked blank, having never heard of Bran's head.

  "It's a very old tale," he said, "but the specifics aren't important. The thing that's important is that thousands of people believe that the seas and skies will rise against an invader. They believe it in their core, in the very heart of their being. That is a powerful, unshakable thing. We can't hope to touch that."

  "So what do we do?" I asked.

  "We must attach our efforts to a story of successful invasion," he said. "To a counter story of equal power."

  Jean-Baptiste looked keen. "Hastings?"

  "Not enough," Honoré said, shaking his head. "There isn't enough power in that story. Really, when it comes to it, who adores William of Normandy? Who dreams of him as the model of a king, or for that matter the model of a man? He is no great hero of France. And even more importantly, none of us, so far as we know, have the correct correspondences to tap into that story."

  "Correspondences?" I asked. I thought I knew what he meant, and it sent a shiver up my spine.

  His dark eyes were level. "None of us were there. As far as we know, none of us were present at Hastings. On either side."

  "That is what I thought you meant," I said. My throat was unaccountably dry, and I took a quick gulp of my wine.

  "What then?" Jean-Baptiste asked.

  Honoré smiled, and lifted the front of his coat, displaying the facing to us. "What do you see?"

  Dark blue wool, of course. White lining, black braid about the button holes…. I drew in a deep breath, reached out and touched one of the brass buttons. "Imperial eagles," I said. Each button on his uniform coat was the new style, spread-winged eagles rather than the old ones of the Army of the Republic. They glittered in the candlelight, almost as though their feathers shifted a little. Eagles on our standards, each regiment with its own, given to them by the Emperor's own hand, like the legions of old. All that was missing was the legend SPQR beneath them…. "Julius Caesar invaded Britain," I said, and I was proud that my voice did not shake. "Caesar did it. Before the civil war, before he came to Alexandria."

  "And Lannes was with him," Honoré said in a low voice.

  I had not thought about it, but now, bending my head over plate and glass, the slightly wavering surface of my goblet reflecting the candlelight, I could see him clearly, a young man with a sharp, handsome face wearing leather beneath his red cloak, his hair grown out long like the Celts he commanded rather than cut short as a Roman's. I could see him in the dining room of some old palace, striding in among the couches with a piece of news, vital and hurried, making his way about the antique krater on its stand….

  "Pollio," I whispered, the name coming to me unbidden.

  Honoré started, dark eyes rising to meet mine.

  "You served him," I said, the certainty of it making me bold. "You were one of his men."

  And there was something there I did not wish to see, some old sorrow that blurred my eyes, that my gaze shrank from.

  "That could well be," Honoré said gravely. "Asinius Pollio commanded Caesar's cavalry for many years."

  "Celtic auxiliaries," I said. No, there was something there I did not wish to see, something too painful, a time I did not wish to return to, even in thought….

  Jean-Baptiste touched my hand. "What's wrong?"

  A white palace in slanting light, late summer sun….

  "There is something I do not want to see," I said, a note of rising panic in my voice. "I do not want this!"

  Honoré took my other hand warm in his, met my eyes with compelling authority in his voice, like that which he had used in the operation with Michel. "You do not have to see anything you do not wish to," he said. "You are the master of your soul. The choice is yours to see or not."

  I felt the terror subside a bit, answering to the command in his face. Oh yes, I thought irrelevantly, there is some part of me that desires to be commanded yet. Would I find that imperative in him?

  "You do not have to see," he said. "Not unless you choose to."

  I nodded, my grip on his fingers tightening. "Do you remember?" I asked. "Do you know what it is that I don't want to see?"

  He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. "No," he said. "I don't know." I heard his unspoken thought as though he had said it aloud -- but I can guess. Honoré was the one who had read history, who knew what books told us befell these people. I did not know who I was to have known Lannes and Honoré in that life, but he had drawn his own conclusions based upon study, not dreams.

  "Well, it's nothing to me," Jean-Baptiste said. "No affinity for Caesar whatsoever. Unless you mean Borgia." He squeezed my other hand. "I've an utter terror of the Italian Renaissance, just for your information."

  "I will keep that in mind," I said, releasing both their hands. Whatever it was, the strangeness had subsided now. I must learn to control this lest it control me. It was too strong, too powerful to leave alone, too dangerous to leave that doorway half open. Perhaps Noirtier's Dr. Mesmer could help. Perhaps those techniques could give me mastery of the things that resided in my own head, these far memories which proved both so important and so distressing.

  "That's what technique is for," Honoré said. "Technique teaches control. That's why the esoteric has always been a hidden path of study. It's not easy. It's a demanding calling requiring much of one. Misused or half-understood, it can be very dangerous." He looked at Jean-Baptiste. "I wish Noirtier would agree to let Madame St. Elme join as an Entered Apprentice."

  I looked from one to the other as Jean-Baptis
te shrugged. "I do too, but only Lannes among the Journeymen agrees, and he can't overrule his own Master."

  "An Entered Apprentice?"

  "If you're going to work with us, it makes sense," Jean-Baptiste said. "Better to have official standing."

  "Better to have actual teaching and discipline," Honoré said.

  "But I am a woman," I said.

  He seemed unconcerned. "There have been circles that admitted women before," Honoré said. "Just not…."

  "…the Pléiade," Jean-Baptiste finished. "God love the Pléiade! We must do nothing differently than the Pléiade did! As though this were the seventeenth century!" He reached for his wine glass. "I say we make it up for ourselves."

  "Have any of us the theory for that?" Honoré asked. "And us both still Apprentices ourselves?"

  "We shan't be forever, shall we, child?" Jean-Baptiste smiled. "And one must break some eggs to make omelets. We are too cautious, and these are not times for caution. We'd have got nothing out of the Marshal if we hadn't tried Mesmer's techniques, and you know that's not Pléiade."

  "Not hardly," Honoré said. "But I'm not conceited enough to think that two years' study makes me a Master. We have a long way to go, Jean-Baptiste."

  He shrugged negligently. "Well. But when you are Master indeed, I'll be just there to back you up. And if you want girls in the Lodge, so be it."

  "I am several years your senior," I said sternly. "I hardly think I am a girl."

  Jean-Baptiste winked at me. "You are an oldster like Honoré, then. Would you believe that he has just passed his thirtieth birthday? A fire-breathing Leo. And you?"

  "I will be twenty-nine in the fall," I said. My own true age, my own birthdate. "I am a Libra."

  "Balance in all things," Honoré said. "Or perhaps just being caught between."

  "Something like that," I said. I took up my glass again. "So. Caesar. What is your plan for using this Story to invade Britain?"

  "Albion's Tale is strong," he replied. "But so is the Emperor's Story. There is a wind through the world that cannot be stopped, a force that sweeps all before it, legions and ships, orthodoxies and customs alike. We claim that Story, that force. We claim our mantles, and all of the strength and passion that entails to sweep away any obstacle in our paths. We ride the wave."

  "We are Companions," I said, and I blinked hard. "We have the right because we are us." I looked at him. "If we do that, it cannot be undone."

  Jean-Baptiste whistled softly. "I take back my accusation that you are over-cautious. To call that power into ourselves, to claim the sword…."

  "I'll do it," I said. I lifted my chin. "Absolutely."

  "Good," he said, and there was in his even gaze a daring to match mine.

  You are my brother, I thought, my kin, my soul's friend. Oh yes. We understand one another.

  "Why ever not?" I asked. "It might be fun."

  Invasion

  "Dis, who dwells below, lord of the dark places and their hoarded treasures, of mines and hidden things, of the grain in the ground and the caves of concealing night…." Michel's voice was strong and even, and I felt a shiver run through me even though the light of the candles played against the lids of my closed eyes, kneeling in abeyance between Honoré and Lannes. His was the last quarter of the circle to be called.

  I had not shivered when Lannes spoke, addressing himself to Venus of the Seas, lady of all the oceans of the world, mother of the Caesars, nor when Honoré had, addressing himself to canny Minerva, or Max Duplessis to swift Mercury. But Dis… one does not even address Dis by his proper name where he sits below, eternal consort of the Lady of the Dead, merciless in his judgment.

  I had lost the thread of the ritual, and it surprised me when Michel turned back to the center and knelt in his place, his red hair burnished bronze in the dim light. "Very well," he said, looking at Lannes.

  Lannes took a deep breath, as though steeling himself for some passage of arms. The incense smoke from the censer curled around him in its path to some chink in the windows, a breath of frankincense. "Let us begin," he said. He lifted up the wrapped bundle in front of him, a piece of white silk around something roughly the size of his hand, and then opened it in the candlelight. Flame glinted off gold.

  It was an Imperial eagle, the bottom of it fitted as for a staff, and I knew in that moment what it was -- one of the eagles from V Corps regimental colors, the ones handed out by the Emperor only a few months past that his troops would march under.

  Subervie shifted, and Honoré caught his eye. "Correspondence," he said quietly. "Our eagles and Caesar's."

  "Reille, if you'll assist me with this?" Lannes asked, but it was an order, not a request. I knew why. In that time we reached for, that distant lifetime we were attempting to grasp for its power, Honoré had served under him as now he served Michel. I could almost see that man's face in the candlelight, wavering just out of reach.

  "Sir," Honoré said, reaching for the eagle and laying it out reverently on our central altar. The long sets of lines were his, long sections that had to be memorized and delivered like an actor. I wondered if he'd written them as well. I doubted Subervie was up to composing in Alexandrines. It wasn't so different from provincial theater, after all.

  While he began, my eyes ran over the table draped in white. The eagle, and of course my mirror. A thick white candle in a silver stand. The censer. A worn cloth-covered copy of De Bello Gallico filled with schoolboy scribbles. I wondered whose it was. The handwriting was unfamiliar. I opened it to the title page. Duplessis. Max shrugged at me across the circle, the corner of his mouth twisting.

  Honoré had stopped, and now Lannes took up the narrative, minus poetic Alexandrines. His voice was businesslike, as though he were giving a report. "On the 23rd of August 55 BC we embarked in the third watch of the night, from this place in which we stand, then known as Portus Itius. We sailed through calm seas until at dawn we came to Dobris, where the chalk cliffs guard the seaward watches of Britain. But there were men drawn up upon the cliffs with spears and bows, and so we waited for a favorable tide and until the ninth hour of the day, making our way a short distance up the coast to an open beach which now they name Deal. Thereupon we disembarked into deep water, wading ashore while the catapults of our navy engaged the chariots upon the beach to clear the way for us. Caesar set his foot upon the land, and thus Albion was drawn into his story, an outlying land no more, but part of the World That Is Known." He looked at me and nodded to the mirror. "The seas are Caesar's to cross if he wishes. And by this power we have the right."

  I nodded in return, and with careful hands took up the eagle, heavy and solid in my hands. I held it to my breast, feeling its cool weight through the draped linen of my robe. Material correspondence: our eagles and Caesar's, our forces and his. Caesar had camped here long before Boulogne existed.

  But not before we had. Not before we were Companions.

  Lannes sat beside me, his shoulder not quite touching mine. "Asinius Pollio," I whispered, and closed my eyes. I could see him so clearly, the lines of his face, his hair grown long like the Celts who served under him rather than cropped Roman short, could see him bending over Caesar's couch in some elegant dining room, a dispatch in his hand. Asinius Pollio, who had ruined himself rather than take arms against Antony.

  Imagination, some logical part of me whispered. You are imagining those you know in an old story, making up things to pretend to importance.

  Old doubts. I would not give them sustenance, not tonight. I pushed against it, forcing the picture in my mind clearer. It was easier than I had expected. There was Caesar, his mobile face changing as he read the dispatch, one knee forward beneath his scarlet tunic. Behind him stood a massive bodyguard, his arms crossed, blond beard trimmed to a point beneath his chin. I felt a wave of warmth, of friendship and love. I knew him, dear man whose name I could not quite touch! And yet he was here. He felt the same as Subervie in some indefinable way.

  Two, I thought. Pollio and the German b
odyguard. There should be three. There should be four.

  Honoré. Pollio's man. Long brown hair caught back in a tail, the faded leathers of the Celtic auxiliaries, with beautiful long hands….

  Michel. A boy on the last couch barely out of adolescence, light brown hair waving close to his scalp, and his eyes on me as though I were something out of a dream….

  After all, something whispered within me, nineteen hundred years was such a little time….

  And with that I cast myself aloft, flung my winged soul into the sky.

  The sea rushed by beneath me, the moon making a path across the water toward Dover. Fast and sure I drove toward it, a white gull made of moonlight and mist, gray water beneath my wings. Power crackled above me and around me, a lone scout, the first line of the advance.

  And yet I was not alone. All their strength channeled through me, all their determination. I could feel each of them as though I held separate reins in my hands, a chariot pulled by eleven fine horses, each of them a fillet of silver, a cord slender and shining as steel. Max Duplessis was bright as fire, will and purpose wrought by faith. Michel was solid as the earth beneath my feet, glossy black stone found far underground. Honoré's mind played over mine like light on water, skipping and illuminating. Subervie's stubborn strength, Jean-Baptiste's flashing power, Lannes elusive as mercury, thoughts sliding away from mine, keeping his secrets.

  It rose out of the sea a mile off shore, a vast cloud tipped with lightning, winds buffeting at me. Every instinct screamed. I must veer off. I must shear away before it ripped me to pieces. I was only a gull and it was a hurricane. It would catch me up in its power, leave only ragged feathers and a storm-tossed body discarded on the beach.

  Not a gull, something whispered inside me. Far away I held it to my chest, felt its power seep into me. Not a gull but a golden eagle, hard as bronze.

  Lightning flared around me and did not scar, its power feeding my own. Shadows followed me, dark triremes against the water, ghost ships risen in my wake as my wings beat ceaselessly, driven by the primal power of Story, straight into the heart of the storm.