Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  She returned to the chamber to find the maidservant Brico luminous in her amazement, and Arria babbling, her waxy, purplish lids struggling open. Brico shot up in flustered joy, then looked back, fearfully, at the earth amulet.

  “Mistress. That came from the Lady? From Ramis herself?”

  Slowly Auriane nodded.

  “Arria knows me! She will live! Domina, it has brought her back to us.”

  “It can’t be. Nothing heals so quickly.”

  Arria sat up and stared, full of the befuddled wonderment of a traveler to marvelous places. “I saw awful things,” the child said. “. . . They came and came . . . riders in war . . . mountains that turned to monsters.”

  “It’s what a fever does, poor child, it isn’t real.” Auriane dropped to the bed and embraced Arria as if to crush her. I’ll never let you beyond my sight.

  Had the amulet such power? Suddenly it disturbed Auriane to know it had lain on her own breast all these years, subverting her will, working Ramis’s, that somber Lady who’d hunted her like game, all her life.

  Just then the bronze bells hung in the passage to ward off evil made their melancholy noise—agitated, insistent.

  It sounded like women, calling to her across a lake.

  Auriane felt a prickle of spirit-terror. There was no wind in that passage—she’d closed the connecting doors.

  All conspires to pull this life apart. I’ll not let it. By all the gods, I will never leave this place.

  AT MIDMORNING THE following day, a decurion of the Imperial Horse Guard presented himself at the columned entrance to Julianus’s villa. The steward Demaratos found himself eye-to-eye with the embossed image of Mars on the guardsman’s golden cuirass; Horse Guards were selected for size, drawn mainly from the Batavians, a tribe of Germania. Demaratos disliked the man at once. The guardsman’s gaze was fixed on the air just above Demaratos’s head in a way that implied he grappled daily with high mysteries of state, far beyond the comprehension of a mere country steward.

  “I am Marcus Ulpius Secundus,” he began, “and I’ve a letter to deliver to the master of this estate, from the Secretary to our Divine Lord in Rome.” Though the man had done much to cleanse himself of the marks of native ancestry—disguising himself behind three names and mimicking closely the speech of the capitol—the veneer was thin. The red-haired beast was but one generation removed from kin who pulled flea-ridden blankets to their ears by a hearthfire with grunting animals stabled near. For all his fine airs, Demaratos thought, this fellow is just as barbarous as the mistress of this household.

  Demaratos made up his mind to make things as difficult as possible for this Romanized lout. “I fear my lord’s not here. He’s at Mogontiacum, helping decide where you’ll be sent in the coming Dacian war. He’s lecturing a fine group from the Palace, expounding on the beauties of the Age of Gold, when kings sacrificed themselves to the people, and all lived virtuously without law, but I’m sure you know about these things, being from the Capitol and all. It starts at the noon hour; if you hurry off now you’ll get there just as Zeus is born.” The copper-haired giant refused to look puzzled but Demaratos was satisfied the man knew he’d had his ignorance wagged in his face. “Or,” Demaratos went on smoothly, “you can present your letter to the Matrona.”

  “The Matrona?” Marcus Julianus had no wife. The guardsman allowed himself a bare smile, then nipped it short. Demaratos heard clearly: “However you wish to lighten the burden of serving that shameful oddity of a mistress, I won’t object.” “No delay, good man,” he said. “She’ll do. Summon her.”

  Demaratos hesitated, momentarily distressed—it hadn’t occurred to him the overgroomed brute would consent to giving his message to Auriane. He recovered himself and managed loftily, “The mistress is . . . practicing. She spars with wooden swords to heat the blood, to balance the humors of the body, and to keep her strength.”

  The guardsman checked a burst of laughter. This country steward would have him assume this outlandish activity was ordered by a physician. He gave Demaratos a blank look.

  “Of course. Might I disturb her . . . practicing?”

  Demaratos felt like a treed cat that could do little but hiss, but he kept his feline dignity.

  “You may. But you might want to remove that fine fringed cloak and that gold cuirass, lest she want to spar with you.”

  The guardsman flushed. It was a dramatic coloring, reddening his face, his neck, his nose, and Demaratos thought it ironic how a flush makes you more visible at the precise moment you’d prefer to disappear.

  “Steward, I have never crossed weapons with a woman. This is as much to avoid injury to them as in consideration of the fact that it would not be seemly for a senior member of the Imperial Horse Guard to be seen doing such a disgraceful thing.”

  “But my lord! She has sparred with far stouter, better-muscled specimens than yourself; in fact she even slew a man twice your size, before all your people!” It pleased Demaratos to wield a double-edged blade, ridiculing both Auriane and this pretentious guardsman.

  “Yes, of course. I’m sure she did,” the guardsman said carefully, briefly reflecting on a grotesque, half-remembered tale that Julianus had rescued this uncouth woman from condemnation to the arena, where she had competed as a gladiatrix before the mob in the Great Amphitheater in Rome. But he checked a tart reply—why trouble to correct the manners of an ignorant servant, as long as there were none about to witness? He considered briefly that the master and mistress of this household might simply be insane. Julianus was said to be a philosopher, after all, and weren’t they all missing a few support beams in their houses? “Just take me to her,” he said, for he’d given over his own lathered mount to the villa’s grooms, “and I’ll deliver the letter and be on my way.”

  When a freshly saddled mount was brought, the guardsman strode out into the brilliant haze of the morning sun, his plumed helmet adorned with mythic scenes tucked beneath one arm.

  “That is a mare.” The guardsman said it as if the reason for his objection was self-evident.

  “You are correct,” Demaratos said politely. “A mare it is.”

  “I cannot sit a mare.”

  “It’s not so simple to find a mount that will quietly accept an unknown rider, my lord. And, be assured, this is a bold, brave, worthy mare, a battle mare, in fact, who holds the rank of centurion among horses.”

  “This household has evidently not seen enough of the whip!” The guardsman was gratified by the horrified look this brought to Demaratos’s smooth Attic features. He knew, then, this man had never considered such punishment a possibility, amazing as that seemed. Perhaps there was no impudent intent in that response; the man merely made a simpleminded joke? This is a household of madmen, the guardsman thought.

  He squared his shoulders and announced, “I’ll walk.”

  “It’s past a mile.”

  “And no man can walk it faster than me.”

  A slender groom, a gentle-natured Treveran boy, proudly marched ahead of them to show the way. They passed the domed bathhouse, and crossed between paddocks in which sleek mares grazed contentedly in silk coats of red-brown, umber, and gold. On a summit above was a small temple to Epona, Goddess of Horses, a deity the guardsman knew well, for she was worshipped by the Roman cavalry—though he disliked sharing his trustworthy Epona with these rude country villains. It made him aware there were no shrines about the estate’s main house. Julianus apparently had little use for Jupiter or Mars, and probably worshipped only Providence, like most aristocrats with a taste for philosophy. They strode past the neat farms of the villa’s tenants, who grew oats, emmer wheat, and barley; two farmers in their hip-length, hooded leather capes waved familiarly and shouted greetings. Pert behavior, the guardsman thought. This is an estate overrun with impious wretches who don’t know their place, and a master is always to blame.

  After a quarter mile—after which Demaratos puffed pitiably and sweated, while the armored man might have been rec
lining on a couch—they turned off the carriage path and into the forest. There, Demaratos left them. After a time, the guardsman heard the crisp strikes of wood on wood, arrhythmic but precise. The path vanished; their feet sank into the earth’s mossy hide.

  Before them was a dished place in the earth that formed a crude amphitheater. Nature freely overran the place. Logs had been set about this forest theater, to provide seating for a small audience. Half the places were filled, and the onlookers were an odd mix of stable grooms, house slaves, youths, and maids who he supposed were students from the academy Julianus had founded in the nearby town of Confluentes, as well as a tenant farmer or two. Languishing among them familiarly as a prostitute was a comely black-haired maid, turned out in clothes too fine for a slave—could she be a daughter of this bizarre household? This insolent nymph ruined her tender looks by staring back at him as if he had something to answer for. Next to her was a slight, elfin man he recognized—the fellow had once given a dinner entertainment at a rich house the guardsman frequented in Rome: the satiric poet Milo, the razor-witted waif every man feared, just a little, and every woman wanted to take care of. Milo sprawled casually on a log, gesturing with a chased-silver wine-cup, garbed in an absurd red-and-blue flowered dinner tunic. It surprised the guardsman not at all to find a creature like Milo here, for every oddity in Rome eventually found his way to Marcus Julianus’s villa. It burnished a man’s reputation to say you’d basked for a time in this temple of learning.

  In the natural arena was a tall woman in a short, belted leather tunic, who was bending to help a man to his feet. Auriane, he realized. In her hand was a heavy wooden practice sword, which she held as if it belonged there, like a stylus or a comb.

  “Stay here,” the young groom said to him. “You must lay down your sword if you would approach closer.”

  “My patience with this household is at an end. Stand aside. I regret having to deal so firmly with you, but I do not take orders from house slaves.” He strode briskly into the cleared enclosure.

  Auriane turned to him.

  “Perhaps, then, you’ll take orders from me.” She regarded him with the fierce purity of a Vestal, yet with the barest flicker of humor in her eyes. She seemed oblivious to how outlandish she was, this strange huntress-queen defending her grove. A light sweat glazed her forehead. Bronze hair was drawn back with masculine severity into a braid thick as a man’s arm. She wore the dark stain of perspiration on her fawn-skin tunic like some adornment. He found himself faintly appalled, but fascinated.

  “Lay down that sword,” she said then, “or I’ll not take that letter from your hand.”

  “I wear it even in the presence of the Emperor. Certainly I’ll not shed it for a country woman.”

  “Well then, I’ll say you never delivered it. You may even lose your rich pension, Horse Guardsman.” In her face was a mix of soberness and playfulness, humor and challenge. The company on the logs burst into laughter. They sound like honking geese in Hades, he thought. Only the bold dark-haired maid wasn’t laughing. He saw the sleek-maned she-colt had the same eyes, the same chin, and realized this was indeed the woman’s daughter.

  Auriane’s aspect became gentler. “This is sacred ground, good man, and would be polluted by the presence of iron. I ask as a courtesy, not to challenge you.”

  “The denizens of this household are uniformly insane.” He unsheathed his sword and laid it on the moss.

  “A new man, Mars and Bellona be praised! Fight her, fall to her!” The words were Milo’s, thrown out musically like verse. Then they chanted all together, “Fight her, fight her!”

  “Silence, you villains!” They ignored him.

  Auriane raised a hand for silence and they obeyed at once.

  “Let me assure myself I have the right woman,” the guardsman said. “Are you that same Aurinia of the Chattians brought to Rome in chains after the Emperor Domitian’s punitive expedition against your people, who is now the concubine of Marcus Julianus?”

  She refused to be goaded. “If you insist on saying it that way, yes, I am.”

  “This, then, is for you to receive for Marcus Arrius Julianus, from the imperial Secretary in Rome, acting for the Emperor.”

  “Fight her!” Now they clapped as they chanted the words.

  “Some would say he’s faint of heart . . .” Milo’s needling trill rose above them all. “. . . A sybil said he’s full of victories untold. . . . I say he’d better run . . . or he’ll wallow in shame when he’s old!”

  One of the stable grooms thrust into the guardsman’s hands a grimy wooden sword with a sweat-darkened grip.

  Angrily, he turned to face them. “I’ll not lay this daughter of wild men on the ground just to prove a case that doesn’t need proving, before a drunken nest of softlings and sybarites.”

  Milo stood up on the log, agile as a monkey. A frog-broad smile was touched with horror as he revealed blackened teeth. “You think far too well of yourself, with too little cause, Batavian. Your tribe yielded to Rome. It matters not that your master’s the Emperor, for it was said by a wise man: ‘The slave of a great man is still a slave.’ Yet you insult a free woman, of a tribe that did not yield.”

  That neck’s scrawny as a chicken’s, the guardsman thought—one smart twist would snap it.

  “Fight her! Show us what you’ve got! Fight her!” chorused the others. He did not hear how lighthearted the taunts were; to him, it was the voice of a jury in a capital case, the burning brand that goads a gladiator to strike.

  “I debase myself in teaching you this lesson,” he said stiffly to Auriane, “but then who’s to know, beyond that troop of monkeys over there?”

  “As you wish. But they mean you no harm, nor do I.”

  He removed the heavy gold cuirass. Clad in a belted woolen undertunic, he strode to the center of the enclosure. Auriane turned to face him. The guardsman shifted his hand on the grip and assumed a balanced pose, holding the wooden sword with grim purpose now. In Auriane’s eyes he saw a small jump of excitement, as of a racehorse led to the starting rope. He began easing in a circle about her, exhibiting his size, the reach of his arms. She kept herself in range, slowly moving with him, then to his surprise, began pressing in closer—a reckless maneuver, but right for one slight of body, he knew, for with his longer arms he was at a disadvantage in close quarters.

  He erupted into motion first, executing a brutal downward cut that played out into nothingness. She scudded sideways like some feather on a breeze. Then this evasive maneuver somehow evolved into an attack, as she seamlessly spun round into a stance so oppressively close they might have embraced, while lashing out with whiplash-fast parries that made him feel closeted, uncomfortable, roped in by subtle argument; he couldn’t open out to get a full swing at her. He felt he fought a lynx. He moved backward to give himself room and was not sure of the precise moment when he was no longer doing so voluntarily, but giving ground. Yes, she was taking ground and he wasn’t sure precisely how; she flashed into openings he didn’t know he was leaving, her movements unpredictable as a whipping adder’s tail. It was as though her mind somehow fastened onto his and she saw his next stroke as he conceived it.

  She struck him in the side with the flat of the sword, bruising a rib.

  “That’s a strike!” came a shout from the logs.

  “It’s a kill!” The jubilant shriek was Milo’s.

  He rushed her then and got control, battering her blade, punishing it with frantic strength. She defended herself with strokes that were startlingly fast, and perplexing—she never quite seemed to meet force with force. It was as though a power were raised up in her by her own movement. And soon enough, he knew she was melting off by design, drawing him to full extension, tiring him. All the while, most aggravatingly, she seemed not to be paying full attention—or rather, her gaze seemed to take in the whole of the field, reducing him to one insignificant part. After a quarter-hour by the water clock he found himself heaving deeply for breath.

&
nbsp; His downward cut was masterfully executed—surely, a successful strike to the shoulder. But she whipped her blade up from nowhere. The impact was so blunt and ungiving he felt his wooden weapon struck granite; his teeth slammed together. This was no training-ground maneuver; it was something far stranger. Her whole body had surged forward with the blow, as if all the lifeforce in her flooded into the sword and, oddly, at impact, her attention seemed elsewhere.

  Before he had time to assess what she’d done, she was rolling against his side, behind him when she should have been in front. Then she dismantled him in three grand, cursive strokes, like some decisive script written in air—a clipped downward blow to the back of his knees left him slowly sinking. This looped round into a flourish that played into space, to become a crushing horizontal stroke to the forearm. His numbed hand fell open; the wooden sword slid to the ground.

  When his senses returned he lay on his back on the moss, too mortified to move, wondering if he could somehow convince them he was dead, so they’d leave him alone.

  “She’s finished with this one, bring on the next!” The words, all vinegar-and-honey, were Milo’s. “Sir, your tribunes should engage her to train your Horse Guard!”

  He felt his limbs had been set in quicklime.

  My career is dust, should word of this fly to Rome. They’ll take my horse, my armor, and turn me out, swordless, in a bare tunic, before my assembled cohort. No early retirement, no good civil appointments later, no happy ease basking in imperial appreciation . . .

  The wretched Amazon bent over him then, actually meaning to help him up.

  “I did not mean to offend,” she was saying. “You fought well. Pay no attention to their rude jests.” She hesitated, then added, “You must be our guest. Marcus Julianus would want you to pass the night here.”