Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  “Julianus has the great good fortune to be your good friend, but sadly, he’s no friend of the state,” Livianus said then, intuiting the nature of the Emperor’s reluctance. “I’m relieved that it’s you confronted with this dilemma, and not myself—for you, like the god Augustus, have always had a heroic ability to put the safety of the country ahead of all private affections.”

  “Sura?” The emperor turned to his old friend.

  But Sura made a dismissive gesture, indicating he would leave the matter to them. Apion knew Licinius Sura found the whole matter odious, but all had already progressed too far. These were not ordinary times, and it was dangerous to speak for Julianus while the Emperor’s mind was still not known.

  The stifling silence stretched on. To Apion, it signaled agreement.

  Unexpectedly, the Emperor said, his voice iron-cold, “I do not condemn men without a trial.”

  The Praetorian praefect was ready for this. “Of course not,” he said with matching indignation. Then he straightened, looked away, and muttered with the emotion-laden exasperation of a stage-actor, “And the gods know it’s not our fault, but the treacherous Dacian king’s, that there is no time for a trial.”

  “I owe him much,” Trajan said finally. I owe him my throne, Apion heard in those words. “He opened the way to the age we live in now. I wouldn’t deserve rulership, were I such a man as that.” Trajan dragged forth these words with a sad, simple openness, and it seemed to Apion he subtly transmitted a plea—

  Tell me how to rid myself of him.

  Tell me how I can do it, and yet at the same time, not do it.

  Apion glanced briefly at Pylades, curious to see what the older boy was making of all this, but Pylades’s fit of moodiness hadn’t passed—he was putting all his attention into fidgeting with the gold braid on one of the costumes. The Praetorian praefect Livianus spoke again, and Apion forgot Pylades.

  “What if it were another man’s deed, and all could clearly see that this was so? What if it were done by a man known to despise Marcus Julianus so much, a man so ready to destroy him—no one would believe it was not this man’s plot from the start?”

  Apion felt a jolt of disbelief. The silence that followed was peculiar; he couldn’t read it. Was Trajan intrigued, or horrified?

  “Am I correct in understanding,” the Emperor said at last, “you refer to Casperius Aelianus’s son, who lusts to avenge the assassination of Domitian?”

  Apion’s fright grew. Why is he even acknowledging this monstrous plan?

  “I am,” the Guards’ praefect Livianus replied. “The very man who, conveniently, has made one clumsy attempt already, and before a crowd of thousands, when he tried to immolate Marcus Julianus in his carriage,” Livianus whispered. “Let this young Aelianus be the weapon . . . the means.”

  “You’re quite sure it was this younger Aelianus who made a torch out of Julianus’s carriage?” Sura interjected then. The Emperor sat in regal, distant quiet, as if he did not want to touch such a shameful plan with any part of himself, even his voice.

  “We are. In fact, we’ve made contact with him already,” Blaesus replied. At this, Sura sharply withdrew. This was a rash thing to have done, an even rasher thing to admit.

  The next voice was Trajan’s. “This is despicable. I am ashamed.”

  “Shame is deadly at this altitude, my Lord,” Livianus responded. “Natural law’s not the same for a ruler—that, I scarcely need tell you. I remind you, you’ll be gone for two years.”

  The Emperor said, “You’d employ our enemy to destroy our friend.”

  “That’s no way to put it!” Livianus objected. “We’re just clearing a way for a mad dog. You know this young hothead will keep trying to finish Julianus anyway—we’ll just increase the odds that he succeeds. I’ll see this Casperius Aelianus is given money, and we’ll install him in a minor post at the Mogontiacum Fortress. It will all be done by local men. There will be so many men buffering the deed from the Capitol—it will be a broken, twisted trail no one will follow to the Palace.”

  “You and Dio are on opposite sides of a perch,” Trajan said with a lightness that brought a fresh queasiness to Apion’s stomach. The Emperor referred to the court philosopher, Dio Chrysotom, who had of late been giving windy, sleep-inviting lectures on the necessity of displaying courage in the practice of virtue. Apion sensed that by acknowledging the man, Trajan was disarming him.

  “Dio puffs words into the air and gets nothing done,” the Praetorian praefect said. “I get the cart to market.”

  “I will not say yes to this. . . .” the Emperor said, his words trailing off into tension.

  The Praetorian praefect Livianus leaned close to the Emperor, his whisper soft and eager as a lover’s.

  “But you won’t say no?”

  Apion’s chest tightened so that he could scarce get a breath. He watched, amazed, while Trajan removed the diamond ring of office given him by the Emperor Nerva when that Emperor had adopted him as his son, and placed the ring on the table. His meaning was clear: I cannot wear this while committing so shameful an act.

  “Just don’t say no,” Livianus went on in that oddly seductive voice, “and we’ll quietly go about our work. You need know no more about it.”

  This next round of silence was a death warrant for Apion’s master. Hot tears puddled in the boy’s eyes. His gentle spirit did not blame Trajan; it would not have occurred to him to question the deeds of such a majestic man, so charged with Olympian purposes. To Apion, this was more a matter of one god setting out to slay another, and his reflex was to deflect an arrow aimed at a man he loved.

  For long, the boy could not move. He was sweating. He felt he was in the clutches of ague.

  Below him, the tension broke suddenly, as if someone cut a taut rope. Finding they had no more to say, the men began drifting to their feet—first the Emperor, then the others, while trading banalities about the health of wives, the vacillating fortunes of children.

  If I were fleet as a heron, Apion thought, I could fly to Julianus and give him warning tonight.

  Then Apion was jolted from one nightmare and pitched into another. He looked about the small room.

  Pylades was gone.

  Apion found the loose tile and clicked it into place. He fumbled for a sulphur match, relit the lamp, and began exploring the room while softly calling out Pylades’s name—even though the hollow emptiness he felt all about told him the truth.

  The fright that gripped him now was of a different sort—keen and immediate as a blade pressed to the neck.

  Pylades had abandoned him. Was he vengeful enough to betray him to the guards of the watch?

  He was.

  How had Pylades melted off so silently? Through the trapdoor onto the practice stage, Apion guessed.

  Then Apion saw that Pylades had taken the feather mask from the wall and savaged it. All that was left of Apion’s gift from the Emperor were sad drifts of vermilion and gold feathers.

  Pylades was mad. He meant to slay a rival in love.

  Apion opened the door leading to the vaulted passage behind the costume chamber, listening acutely for the tramp of guard-steps as he paused between the guttering flames of two wall sconces shaped as griffin’s heads. In his belt was a silver dagger. Its blade was not sharp; it was but a prop he used in performances. But it would do for his purpose.

  So Pylades believes he can cast off Marcus Julianus with scarcely a thought, and toss me away like table leavings?

  Now Apion did hear the distant staccato of heavy-booted feet, the rhythmic jingling of keys on an iron ring—four guards, he judged, approaching at a trot. Fright shot him into another world. Then all at once fear was faraway and small, and Apion felt he drifted like a ghost as he moved down the passage, away from the sounds of the guards. He made no attempt to outrun them. In his fury he no longer cared if he died.

  His dagger had passions of its own, and it sought Pylades’s throat.

  “There! Just ahead!
Get him!” The harsh shouts reverberated all about the stone passage, resembling the yips of excited dogs. He guessed they were a hundred paces behind him.

  When Apion came to the spiral stair tread that led to the galleries below, he found Pylades lingering behind a basalt column. As Apion had guessed, Pylades had not gone far; the older boy had been unable to resist the sight of Apion’s destruction.

  Apion hurled his slender body at Pylades, mighty in his fury. The older boy was thrown backward by Apion’s weight. Apion’s silver knife was a ravening talon raking open Pylades’s soft wool tunic; dark stains appeared in many places on the rose-colored cloth. Entwined about one another like serpents, the boys fell into a silk-embroidered curtain closing off a portico. The curtain was torn free; it billowed down on top of them.

  The guards circled them with swords drawn, frustrated as hounds at bay, shouting at them to get to their feet. They must take Apion alive, if they were ever to learn who the spying boy’s master was. And they dared not injure Pylades and risk the Emperor’s wrath for maiming his favorite.

  “Proditor perfide!” came Apion’s raw cry. “Loathsome betrayer.” The most damning words in Apion’s world burst from a molten heart. Apion fought his way atop the older boy. Pylades got a desperate grip on Apion’s wrists. The younger boy’s knife strained toward Pylades’s throat. Pylades’s arms shuddered with effort as gradually, he began losing strength. In several heartbeats Pylades would be dead.

  The guards knew they must act at once. One seized Apion’s legs and pulled hard. Simultaneously, a second guard, using the flat of his sword’s blade, delivered a sharp blow to the side of Apion’s head, meaning to stun the boy.

  The guard misjudged the strength of his blow.

  Apion was dying but he did not know it. He thought he’d taken horse, and was speeding north. Apion had never learned to ride but he was riding now, travelling at reckless speed over the post roads, through a string of towns, through fields, through verdure—crossing an Empire bafflingly vast, seeking a villa on a northern river. He must warn Marcus Julianus.

  Marcus Julianus. There’s no one else to tell you that they mean to kill you. I shall not fail you in this. You’ll be so proud of me, you’ll adopt me as your son. . . .

  He galloped on until he rode into warm, sentient light, heard the laughter of the wild woodland goddesses his mother loved, felt the lapping of nurturant water as he swam his steed across a river that had no bottom. Still galloping, he surged onward through liquid tranquillity, into a world where betrayal had no meaning. And then he galloped no more.

  Chapter 13

  Four days after the Kalends of Junius

  “My man in Victorinus’s house just came with the news,” Auriane said to Avenahar. “We are finished. Victorinus’s ‘evidence’ has been sent.”

  At the villa of Marcus Julianus, Auriane and Avenahar were racing the mares, an annual event held on the estate to determine which horses would be kept for breeding and which would be sold in the horse markets at Confluentes. They approached a changing station at the far end of the meadow, close by the glassy shimmer of the Mosella’s narrow course. There, a groom waited with two fresh horses; sunlight played along the sculpted ridges of their shoulders, coursed round sleek, tapered flanks; their coats were bright as bronze vessels against the lustrous silk of sea-green meadow grasses. In a household aswarm with servants, this proved Auriane’s first chance to take counsel with Avenahar alone. She was astride a losing mare, a lean, bony horse of Hispanian stock, deflated from exertion, walking with slack steps, its lowered neck streaked with lather. Avenahar’s winning bay had dark shading round the eyes that gave the beast a look of great equine wisdom. Beneath the red-tiled eaves of the villa’s north wall, a collection of grooms and household slaves had gathered to watch. Auriane was just able to discern that Marcus and Arria Juliana had joined them; a servant held a fringed blue sunshade over Arria’s head. Normally Auriane would have felt warm pleasure at the sight of the family momentarily joined—but not today.

  “He lost his fear of your death curse?” Avenahar asked.

  “Stay calm and don’t show agitation in your face. It all happened this-wise.” Auriane reached down to stroke her mare’s neck—an unconscious gesture meant to console the beast for losing the race. “Four nights past, Victorinus ate a tainted clam. He thought he was dying because of my curse.”

  Avenahar bowed her head as she nipped short a burst of laughter. She recovered herself, mumbling, “Sorry, Mother.”

  “His wife, Decimina, ran shrieking all about the house, tearing her clothes, and all the slaves began lamenting—”

  “Sham tears! I’ll wager his poor mistreated tenant farmers made thanksgiving sacrifices!”

  “Shssh! Listen. Victorinus turned a sickly shade of green, and collapsed onto his couch. He called his son, Lucius, to his bedside. Victorinus told the boy he was dying, because of me—”

  “I do want to commend that clam.”

  “Be silent and listen! Victorinus, of course, wanted vengeance on us. As his dying wish, he commanded Lucius to send off the evidence, a thing that apparently, until then, he had not done, still hopeful, I suppose, that I’d give in and betroth Arria to his boy. Anyway, Lucius has done so. Dying wish, indeed! Two days later our clam-eater is hale and healthy again, and back at what he does best—tormenting small shopkeepers in his courtroom.”

  The mares shied as one at an eruption of blackbirds from the meadow grass. When they were brought under control, Auriane went on. “Avenahar, this means we’ve a month and a half, at most, before that evidence makes its way to Rome. Our enemy’s not Volusius Victorinus anymore—it’s the pride of the most ruthless nation the gods ever brought forth. And the wrath of a man who is a god, their Emperor—”

  “But Marcus—”

  “—doesn’t fear emperors, I know, and even humbled one once, but Avenahar, he uses reason, not sorcery. We must not tell him yet—first I get you to safety.”

  “But what of you?”

  “I stand and fight.”

  “You stand and die!”

  “No more of this! I would never leave Arria and Marcus.”

  “You’ll go down with this ship and drown, like a dutiful sea-captain,” Avenahar said in a bitter voice, looking away. “This isn’t what you wanted, is it, Mother?” she whispered. Avenahar stole a look at her mother, and saw Auriane stiffen slightly, as if from a knife thrust. Avenahar felt keenly her mother’s haunted yearnings. “You want to go home.” She spoke the word home as if it were the Fields of Elysium. “In your secret mind you’ve always wanted it, and I’ve always known it. Your secret hand reaches for a sword. I see it. You want to lead a great raid and get our lands back from the Cheruscans. Tell me the truth. And what better time to depart this place than now?”

  “What’s that vile machine they torture slaves with, that pulls you apart, joint by joint? The rack,” Auriane whispered. “Must my own daughter put me upon it?” She could not understand how a fierce and blind need to remain at the villa could be housed within her side by side with that strong pull to go home and reclaim the land—but it did.

  “You and I belong where we took first milk,” Avenahar pressed on. “I despise saying this but I think your counsel is clouded by love.”

  “Well, that’s amusing!—coming from a maid who hasn’t yet loved. It doesn’t cloud counsel, it reshapes it.”

  “This country . . . it’s poisonous. You see only Marcus, who’s fine and good. The gods alone know how he got that way, living among these people. All is twisted and backward among them. Here, it’s the men who’re boldest, the soldiers of the ranks who fight on the frontier, who’re treated like slaves. No champion’s portion for them—”

  “Avenahar, not now—”

  “—while the men with no battle-mettle at all, noblemen who give commands but do not fight, live within thick-walled houses while slaves spoon delicacies into their mouths. These people are false to their gods, and false to the brave.”
She captured Auriane’s gaze. “Let’s flee off from the ceremony. Let’s just not come back.”

  “Rein in those bolting horses, my little spitfire. You’re half right. One of us will flee from it. You. Directly after the rites in the Holy Wood, you’ll travel to my mother’s hall and stay with Athelinda for a few seasons—just for safety. Athelinda is your grandmother, it’s good she should know you before she leaves this life. I won’t see your life endangered for what I’ve done.”

  “Madness. I won’t go off without you.” Avenahar bit her lip and cast her gaze down.

  Auriane reached across the space between horses and gathered up Avenahar’s hand. “Dearest, you must. Our life-threads are entwined, can’t you see? We’ll be woven together again, in time. You’re never alone, Avenahar; the Ancestresses are with you. Lift your head up, now. Look peaceable and gay, everyone’s watching.”

  “Mother, I want you to know . . . if the Fates do separate us, I will become you. Whatever you have left undone, I will finish. I’ll strike for you. Your mother, your home village—I’ll find a way to protect them.”

  “Nobly said, but you’re too untried to know what those words mean.”

  They came to the shed at the meadow’s far end and gave the wearied mares over to the groom. Auriane grasped her fresh mare by the mane and withers and sprang up in a beautiful bound, without the aid of the mounting block. Avenahar, with much enthusiasm but less grace, did likewise. The strong young mares surged toward the starting mark, making a frenzied music with their bits as they capered sideways at a frustrated half-gallop, protesting the tight restraint of the reins, which drew their slender necks into exquisite arches. The course would take them round the breadth of the grassy meadow, bounded by forest, main house, and river.

  The mares burst from the mark. Clods of earth sailed high in the air. Auriane felt like a stone hurled from a sling. She joyed in power unleashed, the drama of smooth, rapidly lengthening strides. Both horses attacked the path with an unquenchable appetite for running; they were mated ecstatically to the wind. It was as if they’d been too long denied their natural right to fly. They are some beautiful machinery of the gods, Auriane thought, formed so we’d know the limitlessness of speed and grace.