“I am here, Marcus.”
The familiar comfort of his face was painful to look upon. This must be why the Fates do not want enemies to lie together. In the end, there must always be a betrayal, either of the birth-country or the country taken anew.
He looked up. The flames of the bronze candelabrum illumined a gray solemnity in that well-loved face, a weariness of the world that brought forth a rush of sympathy in her.
“Auriane,” he said quietly, “Victorinus will soon be ruined because of what I have just done, but it’s only justice, and no more than what that scoundrel deserves. But he has made a charge against you that I pray before every god is not true.
“He claims you are the notorious malefactor whom all seek, on whose head Maximus has put three million. He says he’s in possession of proof. Tell me it’s not so, and I’ll see Victorinus not only ruined, but prosecuted for a false charge as well.”
She found herself suddenly emptied of a lifetime of reasons, acutely aware only that she’d grievously wounded someone she never wanted to hurt. Her gaze fled his, taking refuge in the lamp flame’s reflection in the mirror gloss of the tiger-cypress table top.
“I can’t tell you that,” she whispered, “because it is true.”
I have done it, she thought, poisoned a rare communion, murdered a magnificent devotion . . .
He dropped his head into his hands.
“You may well have destroyed our life here,” he said.
“I know it,” she whispered.
“Surely this is some madman’s jest or some drunken dream. I feel the dupe in a farce!” He met and strongly held her gaze. “Why did I have to learn it from that lout Victorinus, and not from you?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to force a cruel choice upon you, between your people and me. I wanted our love left in peace.”
“This is a thing that tears us from our very moorings. It risks us all. Gods above and below, I believe I could have understood anything but this!”
“Marcus, it’s my own mother who’s set to be taken hostage. My own kin who’ve been pounced upon by this Cheruscan beast. What are my people to defend themselves with? Stones?”
“Auriane, no enemy still festering from the wounds of war, living right on our border, can be left under arms. It’s the most fundamental point of military strategy, why can’t you understand—”
“But my kin, my land, they are not separate from me. Our earth, it owns us—I’m attached to it still as if by a birth string. How could I abandon them?”
Wearily, he broke away from her gaze. “I’m sorry but I feel played false . . . betrayed . . . betrayed that you did not tell me, and that this was carried on for so long.”
“But Marcus, this is the very sort of matter we agreed, from the first, never to speak of. You’re bound to your law, I’m bound to ours. We always said that if we aired every question between your people and mine, we’d live our lives facing each other across a battlefield. Please know I never would have willingly brought you harm. Before our gods I had no choice.”
“I’ve done the tricks of an acrobat trying to understand your gods and your ways. Because I’ve seen the world through your mind’s eye, we took no marriage vow, you hunt in the forest as well as overseeing the house and teach the children your history as well as ours. But of what use is my understanding in this matter, anyway? It’s hardly going to help you! It is brutally evident now, you cherish your people above our life here. You’ve savaged my trust and my love.”
An animal grief seized her then, a bitter-cold misery that flooded down into the farthest roots of her spirit, full of the bleakness of the babe torn from its mother, the mother torn from the babe.
He is my country, too. What have I done?
Edging her way round the table, approaching him with a caution alien to their life together, she whispered, “Marcus . . . ? Love of kin, love for you . . . they are one thing, I couldn’t set one over the other. Please . . . look at me.” She extended a hand across the chasm between them, wanting to rejoin their souls again, but stopped, not knowing if she could bear it if he rudely brushed her hand away.
His face was a cold cliff. Her hand dropped heavily to her side.
I have broken the law of guest-friendship, she thought. I must pay the ring-price for this. Otherwise I disgrace my family.
“Marcus.”
Alert to a dark solemnity in her voice, he turned to meet her gaze.
“I am a guest-friend who betrayed the trust of a host,” she said simply. “A noble host from whom I’ve taken much. And so, I’ve turned my greatest friend into an enemy. I’ve disgraced my clan. You would be right to drive me off. I will go.”
“What is this foolishness?” The simple earnestness in her words dismayed him. She meant it truly. “Auriane! Never! You are as harsh a mistress to yourself as your northern winters are cold.” He dragged her numbed body toward him and held to her tightly, as if striving to bring life-warmth to one frozen in the snow. “Don’t speak so. Let us stop all this.” They clung to one another while he ran a gentling hand through her hair. “Let’s fight on one side,” he said, “let’s not battle each other. Let us put our minds to devising a way to secure your safety.”
Together, they turned to look at the records tablet from the provincial estate and vineyard outside Lugdunum. His purpose in giving her full ownership of this estate was to preserve the rich fortune he planned to leave Arria Juliana and Avenahar. Because both children were illegitimate by Roman reckoning, under the laws of inheritance they could only receive a legacy from their mother.
“Come, let me understand exactly what it is you did. First, how much of this does Victorinus know?”
“He captured my man Grimo, and tortured him. Grimo knew enough to seal my fate. Victorinus has a witness, who saw us burying the coin, and—”
“Us? Avenahar was with you? She’ll be judged as harshly as you, as your accomplice. This tragedy has birthed more tragedy.”
“I know it well, and I’ll let no harm come to her. I’ll shield her with my life, if need be.” She indicated one of the neatly penned lines of figures. “I had my procurator draw off one quarter of the proceeds of the farm,” she continued, “and instead of reinvesting it in more land, he brought it to the money changers at Lugdunum, and had it converted into old silver, Nero’s silver, when it was last full weight. He left it at Lugdunum’s bank until I could send an agent out to receive it. I buried it myself at agreed-upon places, along the river. The wineship Isis actually belongs to me, purchased under a false name; we invented a shipper who supposedly lives at Lugdunum. My man Axsillius received it at the native settlement where the Mosella flows into the Rhenus. Getting it over the Roman frontier was hardest—we had to put it into the sacred wagons that go round the fields at first thaw, bearing our Lady Fria’s image—”
“Yes, Maximus ferreted out that part—by Charon, you were clever. Continue.”
“From there, it was taken to the Chattian Assembly and given into the hands of the three strongest Chattian chiefs. They then purchased longswords from the arms dealers of our brother-tribe, the Ubians. The swords are stored in a cave, in our lands; I don’t know where, exactly. Witgern guards it. Victorinus threatened me with his evidence, but I believed his purpose was to force me to betroth Arria to his son. I thought lust was a draught that numbed his wits—I didn’t think he’d have the mettle to send it. He wants Arria, Marcus. For himself.”
“He’ll be fortunate to keep the tunic on his back when I’ve had done with him.” Marcus put his hands to his temples, and sank slowly onto his cross-legged chair. “By the foul tricks of Providence, this is the worst of times to be accused of such a thing—at the start of this far-eastern war. Trajan might well believe I had knowledge.”
“Let me go before the Governor at Mogontiacum and take this all upon myself.”
“No. You can’t go and confess, it will only incite greater passion against you. I’ll have to trust that my past deeds on behalf o
f the state will be remembered, and will shield me.”
His face solemn with grief, he fervently met her gaze. “But for you, Auriane, there is no shield.” He took her hands in his. “We must look for ways to preserve your life. You are a dead woman unless you flee the country.”
“I know it.”
“In the face of the very real possibility that I can’t undo this, a journey must be planned for you. We must arrange to send both of you somewhere beyond the reach of our law.” He frowned, thinking rapidly. “You know of Caledonia, in the northern reaches of the Isle of Britannia? It’s a wild land that has never been brought into the Empire. It’s been used as a refuge from tyrants, in times past. The climate there is similar to yours, and naturalists say the folk there come from the same stock. Perhaps this place would be more amenable to you than—”
“Caledonia? What is Caledonia? I know nothing of this place. I won’t hide in an outland full of strangers. Marcus, if I flee off, I go nowhere but home.”
“And the patrols will pick you up within a day.” His gaze held hers with the iron inflexibility of a wrestler’s hold. “Auriane, you must listen to me. You’ve no full knowledge of what you’ve set yourself against. Caledonia it must be, if we are to preserve your life!”
She wrenched her hands free and took a step away from him. In her anguish, she’d torn at her hair, and she watched him with bold eyes from behind a fall of rumpled locks that obscured her face like some half-drawn curtain. In that moment she looked remote to him, a woman governed by alien promptings, unknown tides. “Marcus,” she said with soft ferocity, “either I stay here. Or I go home. Or I give myself to the gods.”
“We cannot argue over this! You must live! Do you think I can stand idly by while you both walk into destruction? This is all horrible enough without you battling the only reasonable solution!”
“I’ll not go off from Arria. I’ll not be split apart from my own child!”
“It can’t be helped, Auriane. For now, it must be so. Perhaps it won’t be forever. Arria is a Roman child—she’ll flourish far better here than in your country. I’ll send off letters to Rome and finish the marriage negotiations at once, so she’ll be taken care of, no matter what happens to us. Arria will be well. Not so, you . . . what tragedy has come . . .”
“Marcus—what of Avenahar’s womanhood ceremony? Its time is but eight days off.”
“I’m sorry, Auriane—”
“We cannot deny Avenahar her initiation!”
“This is folly! Why cannot you see, you both must flee!”
Auriane turned from him, drawn into wretched silence; she was a soul blindly battling river currents, not accepting them, and for long moments she listened to the atrium fountain’s sad trickle in the darkness. The atrium was somber as a cave because the servants needed to venture past the Records Room to light its lamps—and thus far none had dared.
Then she happened to think of something else. She turned round again, and tightly grasped his hands.
“Marcus . . . we’d go away together, of course? You would come with me?”
This caught him by surprise—she felt him tauten.
He disengaged himself from her, turned away, and for long, would not reply.
“That is not possible,” he said at last.
“And why is it not possible?” she said, her voice growing hoarse.
“You don’t understand,” he replied, choosing his words with care. “I have complicated and pressing duties here—”
“More pressing than us living on, joined as one?”
“Auriane, you don’t understand, I’m the head of my family now, and must watch over them all—”
“But . . . I am your family. As you are mine.”
“Of course, but matters are different among my people. Auriane, that would be exile. Under a good and fair ruler, exile is the harshest punishment ever meted out to a member of the Senatorial class. That’s because it severs us from everything that gives us life—the country where grandparents are buried, the masks of ancestors . . . the family’s guardian spirits . . . the sacred relics of the past, the books on which our lives are written, and all that exercises the mind . . . It takes us from the very sun. I would lose even my citizenship. That’s the fate of a Roman no longer living within the imperium, whether voluntarily or not. I could never so dishonor my mother and father.”
“But I exiled myself for you.”
“You should have been an advocate! Yes, you did. And look at the ill fortune it’s brought upon us.”
“Do you not see, Marcus, that for all those reasons you just said you must stay—if I go anywhere, it must be back to my people? My mother is there. My father is buried there.”
“No, Auriane. You must go where I say. Your enemies have grown too numerous, on both sides of the Rhenus.” His voice rose to oratorical strength. “I want our children to have a living mother!”
“I want our children to have an honorable mother.”
“To Hades with your honor,” he said sharply, “if it takes you to your grave!”
“To Hades with you, if you deny Avenahar her womanhood ceremony.”
For long moments, their gazes locked; her eyes were fevered with determination and hurt; his, fogged with anguish. They were two exhausted opponents dropping into troubled rest, after battling to a draw.
Finally he said in a voice of lead, “I am so stricken with grief, I can scarce think on what must be done. Our children, ourselves, set to be rent apart . . . this is much akin to going to our deaths. Leave me now, to think on this.”
“I will go. But I leave you with this one bit of counsel—I am a free woman. Not a slave.”
“And who treats you as a slave?” he said with startled affront.
“I must say it only because among your people, the difference is not always readily apparent.”
“Who treats you as a slave?” Affront flashed into outrage.
“Anyone who compels me to go where I mean not to go.”
“Madness. What a sad madness. Leave me!”
FOR A DAY and a night they had no words for one another. A sickly quiet lay over the estate. Demaratos, soon after Auriane had banished him from the alcove, had been lured back again by the sound of rising voices. And so the household knew at once of the rift between master and mistress and went about their duties in grim, guarded silence. Slaves of ruptured households lived in fear of being dispersed.
That night, long after Marcus had retired, Auriane halted at the door of their bedchamber. His words, you’ve savaged my trust and my love, left her emptied, mute; she felt like a fire smothered under damp sand.
And so she exiled herself to one of the guest chambers. He did not inquire. Her desolation deepened.
As she lay in wakefulness, she thought something foul must have been coiled in the pit of her heart since birth—how else could the act of aiding her people have brought those she loved to destruction? And she marveled that somehow that ancient sense of her own evil was never completely conquered. It was like smoke—close off one aperture and it found another.
Sleep brought dreams that raged like a tempest. Behind them, she thought she heard Ramis, laughing. The old seeress fed off ruptured worlds. Did she lay some curse on my life here in order to force me back to my country—and to her?
Dawn came, and it was a day of small horrors. Marcus sequestered himself in the library, wrapped in the mysteries of plans he didn’t disclose, writing a series of letters, sending out and receiving messengers. Arranging passage, she supposed. Arria Juliana, though she had been told nothing, was so unsettled she would take no food. Once, Auriane caught Brico stuffing clothing into travelling trunks—her own, and Avenahar’s. Apparently Marcus had ordered this. Auriane told the flustered girl to stop. When Avenahar learned she was to have no womanhood ceremony, she tore herself from her mother, her eyes wild and lost. Moments later, Auriane discovered that Avenahar’s womanhood cloak was missing from the weaving room. Guessing her daughter’s purp
ose—Avenahar had run away once before, when she was nine, and hadn’t returned for three days—Auriane rushed outside and saw Avenahar taking long, fierce strides toward the stables. Fortunately her daughter was too distraught for stealth. Auriane set out in pursuit, and caught Avenahar’s horse by the rein as she was galloping for the villa’s arched gate.
ON THE NEXT night, Auriane came again to the bedchamber she and Marcus had shared for seven years. She knew he lay awake in the dark, though he spoke no words of greeting. In all their life together, she had always stayed with him through the night, though this was not usual in aristocratic Roman houses. Normally, husband and wife came together for love, then returned to their small, separate chambers. “How singly your people live,” she’d said when first they’d come here, “stowing themselves in bare, comfortless boxes at night—one body, one room. How like a burial chamber. Among my people, we sleep alone only in death.” His people never considered that a person’s soul might not end at her skin, that a family’s spirit might flow together in one wide river course. She knew this separateness embraced his people’s every thought, enabling them to make small, unfettered decisions, so unlike the broad, slow, encompassing ones, common to her people. How different this separateness was from her world, where one longhouse might be packed with a hundred bodies, human and beast, family and friend. For her sake, he had defied custom, and they had pulled two high, narrow Roman beds together. Two bodies, one room. But the cleft had always been there, in the dark, a divide that never allowed her to forget she was among strangers.
“Is my greatest friend my enemy still?” she said, her voice venturing out into the dark. She felt herself an animal stretching out its neck for the sacrificial blade.
“Of course not.” Words like a warm blanket. “Come here.”
Lady of the Light Page 21
