Air and Darkness

by David Drake

  Hedia had chosen the members of her escort. The servants who accompanied Varus when he went out had been picked for him, probably by the majordomo. They would be eminently suitable for the task of maintaining not only Varus’ physical safety—rarely a real concern in Carce, where he spent most of his time—but also his status as a member of the nobility.

  Alphena hadn’t chosen her escort: they had chosen her. On a night when Lady Hedia had vanished in the hands of demons and the household was in uproar, Alphena had held herself in the icy calm that she had learned from her stepmother.

  A few servants had grouped themselves around Alphena, simply because the young lady hadn’t lost her head. They were odds and ends, supernumeraries and outcasts. Most spoke bad Latin or none at all, and the Illyrian cousins weren’t alone in having shaky Greek. There was a potboy, a gardener’s assistant, and a spare litter bearer.

  What they all had in common was the willingness to face any bloody thing, so long as they had a leader who would tell them what to do. For these men, uncertainty was a worse enemy than demons. They were willing to follow, and they had decided that Alphena was able to lead.

  Which I was, Alphena thought. Which I am.

  “I’ll wait for the information that my colleagues will want,” she said calmly. “It will take some time to get the reports together, even with everyone available to write them down. We’ll leave in an hour, though, if we can’t leave sooner. I don’t want to risk class breaking up and Corylus and his teacher being gone.”

  She took a breath and added, “You can alert your colleagues now, but there’ll be a delay.”

  “Right,” said Drago as the cousins turned toward the stairway. “We’ll make sure everybody’s dressed for business.”

  “No!” Alphena said. “No, no weapons for now. We’re just making a visit to scholars in the Forum in broad daylight.”

  “Aw…,” Rago said in disappointment. Being caught wearing a sword within the religious boundary of Carce meant a death sentence even for a freeborn citizen; the slaves of Alphena’s escort could expect even less consideration. And what good would swords do against magic?

  “Wait,” Alphena said to the cousins’ backs. “Come back for a moment. We have time.”

  Rago and Drago came up from the stairs. They watched her uneasily, afraid they’d done wrong but not sure how.

  Florina and the breakfast servants stood in a silent row. They were thrilled to watch others deal with a crisis but terrified that they would be dragged into it as well.

  “Aren’t you afraid of magic?” Alphena said to the Illyrians.

  Everyone was afraid of magic. Corylus’ servant Pulto was as brave a man as ever faced a German ambush or a charge of Sarmatian cavalry, but he trembled to admit that his wife, Anna, was a witch from the Marsian region.

  “I guess,” Rago said. “I’m scared of lots of things.”

  “Being crucified,” said his cousin, nodding in agreement. “Bloody near happened too. Near happened twice.”

  “Thing is,” Rago said, “Drago and me likes fronting for you, lady. I guess that’s the same with the rest of your outside crew, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Drago. “You tell us where to go, lady, and we’ll go there ahead of you.”

  Alphena swallowed. “All right,” she said. “For the present, that’s to the Forum. I don’t think we’re in any danger except for the chance that we’ll be bored to death by speeches. You may go.”

  Grinning, the cousins trotted down the stairs. Alphena took a deep breath as she watched them go. How can they trust me?

  “I’ll dress to go out now,” she said to Florina. “With traveling shoes but not army sandals.”

  Pandareus will know what to do. And Corylus. Corylus will take charge.

  * * *

  “THIS WOMAN COMMITTED ADULTERY, you say!” Corylus thundered from the north end of the Rostra. “The sacred laws of our forefathers, the founders of Carce, demand that she be punished!”

  Pandareus and his class, save the absent Varus, watched below the steps. A pupil of Fulvius Glabrio was declaiming to his immediate left. Corylus had been taught to project his voice by centurions on the frontier where lives depended on their troops hearing orders in the crash of battle. The Forum, though crowded, wasn’t much of a test for him now.

  “Well and good!” Corylus said. “Her punishment is to be flung from the Tarpeian Rock, that awful crag!”

  He pointed his whole arm in a broad, dramatic gesture. He would have used a motion as quick as a spear thrust if he were informing a legion’s commander—or directing the troops he was about to lead in an assault.

  A noble entourage was pressing through the crowd, past the ancient altar to Vulcan. Corylus recognized the leaders as the Illyrian members of Alphena’s suite. No other noble would be seen in daylight guarded by such men, so even before the girl’s head became visible beyond the taller escorts he was certain that it was her.

  “And so she was punished!” Corylus said. A successful orator couldn’t allow himself to be distracted by what was happening in the audience or beyond it. “But since the immortal gods preserved her unharmed by the fall, what business is it of mere men like ourselves to object to their august decision? The laws of our forefathers have been carried out, and the mercy of the gods has been displayed. Release her now!”

  He swept his pointing arm across the arc of his fellow students. Piso was ostentatiously chatting with his toady Beccaristo, but the others listened intently. Two were even jotting notes.

  “Release her,” Corylus repeated. “Or set yourself against the will of our ancestors and the judgment of the immortals!”

  He lowered his arm. Pandareus nodded approval, and a pair of strangers—Corylus didn’t know their names, at least—stamped their feet in applause. There were always loungers in the Forum; some of them had become good judges of a speaker’s ability.

  I’d like to think these were two of the more knowledgeable ones, Corylus thought. He smiled at himself.

  Pulto stood at the back of the class with the servants of the other students. Alphena spoke with him and he—not Alphena’s own escorts—led her through the chattering students to the teacher’s side. Pandareus bent his ear to her words, then mounted the first step of the Rostra.

  “Young gentlemen,” he said, “we will delay our discussion of Master Corylus’ presentation to the morrow. Other business calls us now, and possibly pleasures call some of you.”

  Laughter rippled. The class broke up with the suddenness of a bird’s egg falling to the pavement.

  “Your Ladyship,” said Pandareus, stepping down from the Rostra to meet Alphena. Julius Caesar had rebuilt in marble the curving steps decorated with the bronze rams, the Rostra, of Carthaginian warships captured centuries before. The Rostra was the Senate’s original meeting place, but today and most days the senators were under the cover of the Basilica Julia on the southern edge of the Forum.

  Alphena’s escort had moved up. They pressed closer to their mistress than better-trained guards would have done. Pulto stood back, watching with a friendly smile. Corylus hadn’t been sure how the old soldier would get on with Alphena’s toughs, but there hadn’t been any trouble. The parties respected one another, and nobody felt he had anything to prove.

  Corylus joined them on the Forum pavement. Alphena backed to give him room, bumped one of her Illyrians, and snapped, “Drago! All of you! Get back three steps or I’ll leave you back at the house the next time!”

  That struck Corylus as an odd threat, but the escorts retreated obediently—not three paces, but enough to provide elbow room. Alphena made a grimace of apology to Corylus and said, “They have something to learn about deportment, but they’re very, well, loyal.”

  Corylus lifted his chin in agreement. “They can learn deportment,” he said. “I noticed you asked Pulto to lead you through the crowd, though.”

  “I thought that was better than explaining to Father that my guards had broken the ribs of some
of his colleagues’ sons,” Alphena said with another grimace.

  “I applaud your restraint, Your Ladyship,” said Pandareus. “I have enough difficulty collecting my teaching fees as it is. But I presume you had a reason for visiting this morning? Besides the excellent presentation by Master Corylus, that is.”

  “What under Heaven was that about, anyway?” Alphena asked.

  “An adulteress was thrown from the Tarpeian Rock but survived,” Corylus said, embarrassed to hear himself explaining a rhetorical conceit to a layman. Laywoman. “I was defending her against the opinion that she should be thrown down again to complete her execution.”

  Alphena frowned and looked up the rugged side of the Capitolium. The roof of the Temple of Juno—the Mint—was barely visible from this angle. Acanthus plants grew over the rocks at the bottom, but their tender leaves would not cushion a hundred-foot fall.

  “But nobody could survive that,” Alphena said.

  “The purpose of the rhetorical exercises is to teach students how to reason and to argue,” Pandareus said mildly. “The stated facts are merely to provide an occasion for learning.”

  He coughed and added with what Corylus thought was a smile, “I could explain this at any length that Your Ladyship might wish, if that is really the purpose of your visit?”

  Alphena looked startled, then realized that Pandareus was making a joke. Her expression went in an eyeblink from anger—the old Alphena, being mocked by a wretched little Greek—to ruddy embarrassment.

  Corylus frowned. The new Alphena who didn’t rant and raise her voice if balked had been a pleasant metamorphosis. He wasn’t sure how he felt about an Alphena who blushed, however.

  “Varus and my mother disappeared yesterday,” Alphena said. “In Polymartium. I just learned about it.”

  Then she said, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid. I was jabbering because I was afraid to face what happened. Whatever it was.”

  “The Temple of Saturn is empty at this time,” Pandareus said, nodding toward the ancient building behind him. “There’s a useful library in the attached treasury”—a pair of matching outbuildings on the opposite side of the altar platform from the main temple—“so I’ve gotten to know the priests and staff. They won’t make a problem.”

  One of Alphena’s guards said something Corylus didn’t catch, but a scarred Illyrian growled, “Let ’em try,” in bad Greek.

  “Yes,” Corylus said in Greek in a carrying tone. “Pulto, only the three of us will enter the building. You and the other servants will remain outside.”

  “Huh?” said Pulto. “Sure, it’s just an empty temple, right?”

  “Thank you, Corylus,” Alphena said quietly. “Stylo”—a servant, one of Saxa’s librarians—“give your case of notes to Master Corylus. All of you wait for us out here.”

  Pulto might not understand that his master had just avoided an embarrassing scene, but she did. While Alphena might not have her brother’s intelligence—Corylus wasn’t sure he knew anyone else who did—she was a great deal smarter than he had given her credit for being when he first met her.

  Corylus took a basket of pierced wood inlaid with ivory and burl. There were over a dozen slim rolls of papyrus inside and a number of wax tablets besides. It was an ordinary book storage container, pressed into service for transport.

  Pandareus beckoned from the temple entrance, where he was discussing matters with the doorman. Corylus palmed a silver piece from his purse as he followed Alphena, slipping it to the servant discreetly. It was an excessive tip for the purpose, but Publius Cispius was well-to-do by any standard but that of a senator.

  Alphena’s father was wealthy, of course, but the girl didn’t carry cash. Besides the guards, her entourage was limited to her maid and the librarian. Alphena must have rushed off without the understeward who would ordinarily have accompanied her with a purse—which underscored the degree to which this wasn’t an ordinary affair.

  Even with the main doors open, the interior of the temple was dim to eyes that had been in the sunlight of the Forum. Tablets of thanks hung along the walls. Some were shaped to suggest the help the god had provided the dedicator: a ship saved from wrecking, a leg that had healed.

  The limestone statue at the end of the room was of Saturn seated with a real sickle inset into his right hand. It was very old and had not been replaced by bronze or marble in the rebuilding that both Caesar and his adopted son, Augustus, had carried out in central Carce.

  Corylus set the basket on the floor. He and Pandareus each pulled a scroll out to read as their eyes adapted.

  “They all say about the same thing,” Alphena said. “A circle of light appeared near the altar where the rite had taken place. An uncertain number of men and women came out of the light wearing skin garments or no clothing at all. There were horsemen or perhaps centaurs with them, and there was a chariot.”

  She took a deep breath. “There was confusion for many hours,” she continued. “Then the intruders went back through the light, and the light vanished. Afterward the servants couldn’t find Hedia or Varus. Most didn’t remember seeing them after Mother had finished dancing the rite.”

  Pandareus finished reading the report he had taken at random. He waggled it and said, “This one is from Abinneus, a clerk with Manetho who was in charge of the entourage. He says there was a group of Indians in company with members of Senator Sentius’ household and he thinks they caused the red light to appear. Then he became unconscious.”

  Corylus started to repress his chuckle, then realized there was no need to. “This,” he said, tapping the report he’d been reading, “is from Minimus, one of Hedia’s guards.”

  Corylus remembered the big Galatian as an individual. The fellow’s deposition read oddly because the scribe who’d taken it down had put it into grammatical Greek—the Greek of ancient Athens, in fact. It was disconcerting to visualize the words coming from Minimus’ lips. Corylus didn’t doubt that account was accurate, though.

  “What Minimus says is that Bacchus led a procession out of the rosy light and that there was an orgy like nothing he’d ever dreamed of,” Corylus said. “Minimus is clearly worried that Her Ladyship disappeared—and worried that he’ll be punished for letting her get out of his sight—but he’s not embarrassed about the orgy. Rather proud of how well he acquitted himself, in fact.”

  Alphena’s face had frozen. Pandareus gave a tiny smile and said, “It may be that Abinneus was not unconscious as he claims to have been, but for the moment I would accept his claim that he remembers nothing useful about later events.”

  He coughed into his hand and added, “When I was younger, that might even have been true of me under similar circumstances. Not that I was ever fortunate enough to find myself in similar circumstances.”

  “Mother may…,” Alphena said. She swallowed and went on, “It may be that Lady Hedia is quite all right and is simply taking advantage of opportunities.”

  “A Bacchic procession bursting out of thin air means that something potentially dangerous is happening,” Corylus said. “Lady Hedia would regard it as her duty to report this. To us, because of what’s happened in the past. Your mother would never shirk her duty.”

  “Quite right,” said Pandareus, lifting his chin in approval. “And even granting that your brother is a young man, I do not believe that anything but knowledge would entrance him for more than perhaps a few hours.”

  The two men smiled. Alphena swallowed and bobbed her head in agreement.

  “There’s something else there…,” Corylus said. He realized that he was hesitating to discuss Gaius Saxa’s problems publically. These were two of the people Corylus had intended to discuss his own plans with after Saxa had offered him the job, however, and it was the same information.

  “That is,” Corylus said, “you mentioned Lucius Sentius. Sentius apparently believes that Senator Saxa owns a magical object which Sentius wants. If Sentius’ household was involved, is it possible that they kidnapped Varus and Lady
Hedia to force Saxa to give up the object, the Ear of the Satyr? Saxa says he doesn’t have the ear.”

  Corylus had been speaking to his teacher. He realized the implications of what he was saying and turned to Alphena. “I believe Lord Saxa,” he said. “But Sentius apparently doesn’t believe him.”

  “Lucius Sentius has the reputation of being interested in occult matters,” Pandareus said. “A number of nobles do, of course.”

  “You mean my father,” Alphena said sharply. “You don’t have to hide his name.”

  Pandareus looked at the girl and smiled faintly. “I was thinking of the Emperor,” he said in a mild tone. “In this company, I don’t have to hide his name, either. Besides which, I am an old man and childless, so even imperial anger is not much of a threat to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Alphena said. She was expressionless, but her cheeks looked hot again. “I don’t know what to do. There must be something to do. Should we take armed men to Polymartium?”

  “I don’t see what they could do, Your Ladyship,” the teacher said. “I’m more interested in the fact that Sentius was looking for the Ear of the Satyr.”

  Pandareus looked at Corylus and raised his eyebrows in question. Corylus nodded and said, “That’s correct. Lord Saxa is very precise about minutiae of this sort. Have you heard of it, the ear?”

  Corylus and Pandareus were being very careful to avoid offending Alphena. Despite her recent campaign to control her behavior, the girl was used to giving free rein to her spiky emotions. In her present state she might react very badly to a perceived insult to a member of her family.

  “Heard of it, yes, but only as a myth,” the teacher said. “Atilius Priscus and I were discussing the relationship of music to speech. He said that in his grandfather’s day a Marcus Herennius had claimed to have an iron locket which he called the Ear of the Satyr. With the ear he could hear birdsong as speech. Herennius was proscribed by the Second Triumvirate, and no one had heard of the ear since.”

  “Is that possible?” Alphena said. “Listening to birds speaking?”

  “Judging from bird behavior,” Pandareus said, “they are very stupid. I suspect one would have a more interesting time arguing philosophy with a group of gladiators. It seemed to me that the object was a myth which Herennius invented to raise his reputation. In certain circles.”