She found his hand, warm and welcome as a hearth fire. Gently she gathered that hand up, feeling a powerful welling of relief that melted her down onto the lectus, where she happily burrowed in against him, making a nest, and lay in great contentment with her head upon his chest. For long moments they drifted on something deep and ancient that flooded over all the careful knowings of the mind.
“I don’t know why you’ve forgiven me,” she mumbled after a time.
“By any fair reckoning the fault’s as much mine. The gods tempted me with happiness and I greedily snatched it up, and came here with you. Didn’t I know your nature from the first, how adamantine your passion . . . How could I ever have thought to remake you, or even have wanted to, since that hallowed devotion was the very thing I loved?”
She guessed, from these stilted and lofty words, that he’d sought the consolations of philosophy while she’d sought the solace of Fria. Yes, it has been a feast of days, she thought as his hand gently invaded the opening of her tunica, finding her bare back, venturing round to an unbound breast. I haven’t murdered a great communion, she realized, delighting in the progress of his hand, strongly willing him on, feeling herself a spreading rose falling open, startled anew at the eloquence of his touch—always, it seemed to combine the knowledge of each previous touch. There was a library for the senses in those hands, a wrenching record of all their days. She sought him like one starved, pressing her whole body against his. His skin felt like hot silk. She joined with him then, in a world grown soft and brilliant again, and they were one in the dark, beautifully one, and his generosity seemed the only balm; lack of hope bound them together so tightly that when pleasure came, she nearly cried out in pain.
Afterward, they lay wakeful for a long time, molded together. She was aware, then, of that irritating cleft between the beds, realizing it formed the shape of the runic letter that signified ice—and cold isolation. It had lain there between them all these years, sly and silent, prying them apart with its harmful runic magic . . .
“Marcus, you cannot deny Avenahar her womanhood ceremony. Today she tried to run away.”
“I was told of this, and I think I was wrong on that matter. It has all been arranged—all those concessions I made to Maximus—and it comes so soon. I suppose we could get Avenahar through that, and then on to safety, before all of this all comes down on your heads.”
“This is well, very well. Avenahar will be grateful.”
After a moment’s silent thought, he said, “When you and Avenahar go, we’ll travel together, as far as Mogontiacum. Today, during all this, Maximus sent me an urgent message, something odd. It seems the Emperor has ordered him to summon the prophetess Ramis to the Fortress for questioning.”
The utterance of that name nudged her into another world.
“Ramis?” she said softly. “She’s to be summoned, like some disobedient servant? That would make a fine scene for a farce. Why?”
“She tried a Roman citizen. She convened a native court and condemned to death one of our soldiers up there, a man the Chattians claim looted treasure from one of your sacred lakes. Maximus wants me there beside him when he confronts your dread high priestess on the dais. The poor man’s at his wits’ end—he has no idea how to handle such an interview.”
“He’s frightened of her, you mean. I’ve never known a mortal man who wasn’t. Except for the utterly foolish . . . or the mad . . . or you.”
“Fine company you’ve put me in.” He smiled in the dark, and smoothed back her hair.
“Marcus, you don’t fear her, just a little?”
“Someone has to keep their head.”
“No, truly. You can question her as if she were an ordinary woman?”
“When negotiations begin I think only of the facts of the matter at hand, and all men and women are as one to me. Maybe it’s a form of shortsighted-ness. My poor old father was the same.”
“You do not do yourself enough credit. There’s a core of steadiness in you that’s not in others. And others readily give you faith, because they recognize a rare spirit who won’t abuse it.” Auriane hesitated in silence for a moment, then said, “Marcus, this morning as I stood by the river I felt something else that’s ill, a thing that lies separate from all this. I sensed about you, danger from an animal.”
He was silent—a sharp, knowing silence.
“Heavy and dark, with a smell of musk. Perhaps it’s nothing. Marcus?”
“By all the gods, you can be alarming at times, Auriane.”
“What is it?”
“One of the concessions Maximus pried out of me was, he got me to agree to go with him on one of his infamous aurochs hunts.”
“To hunt a great bull? But you despise that sort of thing.”
“He’s been beseeching me for years. It will please him greatly, and I didn’t think it would harm me overmuch.”
“You once called the hunt ‘a vicious means for a chair-riding quill-pusher gone to fat to prove he still has his mettle.’”
“Your damnable memory. You will quote me into a corner.”
“Have you turned somewhat from that position?” she said, managing a smile in the darkness.
“I’ll be on the sidelines, just to please him. I won’t be harmed. He’s done a lot for us. He takes a great risk, helping you and Avenahar across the frontier. Anyway, a man should try everything, at least once.”
Feeling drunken on the warmth of this renewed closeness, she decided to make a final try for accord. “Marcus, do you see now that if you cannot turn this matter round, that Avenahar and I must go nowhere but home? This Caledonia . . . its spirits do not know me.”
He was uncomfortably silent. The air between them seemed to stiffen.
“But one thing matters—that you and Avenahar live,” he said finally. “We must open an escape route for you, and keep it in place. You’ve got to understand that it’s not in my nature to quietly watch while both you and Avenahar are dragged to execution. I’ve decided to travel to the Dacian camp and force an audience with the Emperor—face to face, I’ve a better chance of softening his wrath toward you. But Auriane, I want you in safety when I do it—in case I fail.”
Something broke within her then, as if she’d struck a granite center within him. She accepted, then, that they would never come to agree on this matter. She lay trapped in the grief this brought, feeling herself a jug cracked against a wall, with its waters trickling out.
I must forge a way around him. I am a warrior again. What I plan, I plan alone.
She half heard him as he spoke on.
“I love you more than my life, and I abhor the thought of you fettered in any way. But cannot you see, that in this matter, you simply have no choice?”
“You are right,” she said, wedging herself more comfortably against him. He entirely mistook her meaning—You are right, she meant, I’ve no choice but to flee home. At the end of Avenahar’s nine-day ceremony, I, too, will journey to the hall of my mother. The fledgling decision hung there, bright with the strangeness of turning life upon its head, and leaden with sadness.
Chapter 14
This was the same summer’s eve. In the small native village that served the Fortress of Mogontiacum was a rotting tavern built at the end of a dock that projected into the waters of the Rhenus. The whole structure leaned downstream, as if straining to go with the river’s current. Within, two men met in the humid, dim-lit room at the back reserved for gamblers. One wore a traveller’s paenula with its ample hood pulled forward, so none might know him. The other was the young man loyal to the assassinated Domitian, who so ardently sought vengeance upon Marcus Julianus.
The hooded man spoke first. “You’re going on an aurochs hunt.”
The young Aelianus, eyes watering from the smoke of cheap lamp oil, could not tell if this was an agent he’d encountered before. Though that voice—softly rasping, strangely calming—was familiar. The midnight hour was well behind them and Telethusa, the tavern’s proprietres
s, ever careful with oil, had snuffed out every lamp but one. Some claimed this wasn’t thrift, but to ensure that she couldn’t see clearly all that went on within, so she could never be called before a magistrate as witness. Her tavern was a haunt for cutpurses and fugitive slaves as well as bargemen and sailors of the imperial fleet.
From behind a stand of wine jars on the brickwork serving-bar that divided the tavern’s front room from this fetid back room, Telethusa watched them distrustfully as if they were slaves carrying a stack of her best dishware.
The young man knew she’d already guessed they were planning a murder.
He didn’t need to ask which aurochs hunt. Everyone along the river knew of the great hunts staged by the Governor, Maximus—that grand game played out by the lords of the world as they vied with one another to win the laurel that fell to the noble hunter who made the fatal thrust into the beast. It was an event that employed hundreds of slaves and skilled natives from the local Celtic and Germanic settlements. Maximus’s hunts always stimulated much gambling along the docks, as taverners laid wagers on which aristocratic hunter would bring the fearsome beast down. The young man even knew the aurochs they sought. The aurochs is a colossus among bulls, the most formidable known to naturalists, and this particular beast was a murderous rogue Maximus had hunted unsuccessfully ever since he took command of the Fortress. Its coat was of a color never before seen—a ghastly white. He’d heard that the soldiers of the frontier forts thought it could only be slain by a man half-god, such as Hercules was.
“This must be some jest,” Aelianus replied to the hooded man while nervously running thick, ink-stained fingers through wiry, dark blond hair. “I’ve never hunted anything larger than boar.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not the aurochs you’ll be hunting.”
“I’m a clerk by profession now. I look up soldiers’ records. Not that I’m less a man for it, understand. That amphora there, by the door—I can hoist it with one hand. And I’ve finished off half a dozen worthless men no one needs to know about. But this is a beast that’s slain twelve skilled hunters and thirty slaves. The Chattian savages won’t even take it on. Believe me, I want the same thing you want. But with respect, I can think of a dozen other ways to get this task done, without putting myself in the path of horned death.”
“Then let your betters think for you. Our man’s got guards about him, always. We’ve got you to thank for that. This hunt will be the one time he won’t. Now, listen well—this will be somewhat more difficult than setting an unguarded carriage afire before a crowd of stupefied country farmers. But we’re wagering you’ve the mettle to carry it through.”
The young man carefully disguised his amazement. He should have expected the agent would know about his botched attack on Julianus’s carriage. These hooded men who came to him seemed to be able to tell him what he’d dined on a year ago on the fifth day of Junius, or when he’d last spit in a well.
The man-in-shadow made a curt gesture to Telethusa, commanding her to bring them another sextarius of her hot wine. Telethusa waited a good length of time before she moved away from the hot drink bar, disdain in the bold arch of her sharply downturned mouth. She was a woman of rambling proportions; masses of graying hair were scarce contained by a tightly tied Greek headband. Gold hoops suspended from her ears were adorned with a single pearl. She was a freedwoman who’d begun life in a Gaditan dancing troupe—the famous erotic dancers from Gades in Hispania—and she’d bought this tavern with her slave’s savings. As the years thickened her in girth they’d added gravity to her dancer’s grace. She approached at her own speed, with slow, proud rolls of her hips, to let them know she wasn’t a servant. The young man was momentarily fascinated by her; she advanced upon them so complexly, like tentacles under water or cold honey ribboning thickly from a jar, while her hips shimmied faintly as if from the memory of the tremor of reed pipes, and the fringe on the hem of that close-cut tunica danced on its own to an opposing rhythm. He’d never bedded a Gaditan dancing girl, and he found himself wondering how much he’d have to shake out of his purse to make her shake that way just for him.
Telethusa set the clay wine jug down with a rude thunk—she was wearied of them and they were staying too late. A rat burst from the straw, startled by the impact, causing Aelianus to reflect that all the care the proprietress put into painting, plucking, and buffing her person must have diverted her energies from improving this pesthole.
The hooded agent caught Telethusa by the heavy gold chain that hung from her neck. For a prolonged moment he held her fast, by a golden leash. Slowly he twisted the chain, until it constricted her throat. The young man guessed Telethusa must have seen something brutally cold in the agent’s eyes, for the proud proprietress’s eyes began to fog with fear.
Somehow, the sight pleased him.
“There’ll be no more of that,” the hooded man said in a voice that was mother-soft. “We stay until we’re through. No one else comes in.”
She nodded faintly, and he released her. Then she ebbed away from them, controlling her fury as she retreated to her post. It was suddenly so quiet they could hear the soft, suctioning sounds of water lapping round the pilings of the docks. The young man’s hand was stiff with tension as he produced a leather pouch and shook its contents into his battered silver travelling cup. He was adding his own purifying spices to the tavern’s wine—cumin, fennel, and wormwood. In a stinking hole like this, who knew what might have died in the wine cask?
“Are you losing your courage, Casperius Aelianus?”
The agent lingered cruelly over his name. Hearing it spoken caused the young man to feel vulnerable as a clam prised from its shell. Officially, “Casperius Aelianus” was among the shades—that young man had drowned, executed in that horrific shipwreck at the advent of Trajan’s reign. He still remembered the screams of his fellow condemned men as they died in a squall that blew up fiercely soon after their ship had been set adrift, as if in response to their imperial executioner’s wishes. Their only crime, he’d often reflected, was dutifully carrying out the commands of the Emperor Domitian, as they were bound to do by oath. He’d been reborn as Attius Ferox, promising young man with powerful sponsors in Rome, recommended to the Governor at Mogontiacum for a good post at the Fortress’s treasury offices, managing the monies deposited in the legionaries’ compulsory savings bank. The young man born Casperius Aelianus, now Attius Ferox, was not certain whom these Palace agents served—these all-providing helpers who always seemed to appear just when he ran out of patrons, money, or luck—and he suspected that if he even asked, he risked death. He’d convinced himself they must issue from a reputed faction of the Praetorian Guard who still vowed in secret to avenge the assassination of Domitian.
“Losing my courage? Never,” Aelianus answered him. “Not while I live on this earth . . . and Marcus Arrius Julianus lives on it, too.”
The agent’s voice was flat, cold, without a trace of grace, amusement, or pity. “We can get your fee doubled, if you’re much troubled over danger from the bull.”
“Triple it.” A little blustering couldn’t hurt his standing with these men.
The agent hesitated but a moment, then crisply replied, “You have it.”
With that, the young man felt a door swing shut behind him. Before him was a maddened horned beast. Suddenly he’d no desire to finish the fried chickpea cake on its greasy tin plate.
“Here are the names of the men who’ll take part in this year’s hunt.” Swiftly, the hooded man recited ten noble names. “You’re certain none of these men has ever seen your face?”
“I’ve told you, I was but a lad of fourteen when our great Lord Domitian was foully murdered. A man who’s been in Hades long as I have changes greatly in aspect. Maximus didn’t even recognize me—and he was a good friend of my father’s.”
“Julianus’s informants have good descriptions of you,” the agent said then, “so tomorrow we’re sending a barber and an ornatrix to you, to fit you
with false hair and darken your brows—”
“You speak of a wig? Like a woman’s?”
“The most feared commander of all, Hannibal, didn’t disdain to wear wigs to fool his would-be assassins, and you’re hardly the man he was. Keep silent and listen. Two of Maximus’s beast-handlers will be ours; they’ll maneuver our man away from the party, and protect you from the animal. But you will have to get in close. Tomorrow you’ll have your first meeting with your confederates. You’re an excellent horseman, but you’ll need to practice with the heavier hunting spear they use, and so on the morrow, you’ll . . .”
An hour by the water-clock passed as the agent described precisely how it would be done. At the last, young Aelianus, now Attius Ferox, found a moment to voice the objection that had troubled him from the first. “I lust to do this thing. But how do we get our man out there? He doesn’t hunt. Marcus Julianus despises the hunt.”
“He does, this time. This will be his first hunt, and his last.”
“EVERYTHING’S WRONG, ISN’T it? Is it something I’ve done?”
The question was Arria Juliana’s. It was night. Auriane knelt before her by the brickwork arch of the great hearth in the villa’s kitchens; the girl’s solemn face, round as a moon poised in darkness, was tinted red-gold from the glow of the still-glimmering charcoal fire.
“No, of course not!” Auriane replied. “We’re going on a journey, that’s all. Father, a shorter journey. Myself and your sister . . . a longer journey. Philomela stays here with you, of course.” Philomela was Arria’s aged Greek nurse. “All will be well.” Impulsively she pulled Arria close, holding to her daughter with a fervor meant to imprint love so deeply the child would know it well even when her mother was gone. And stop the spreading bleakness she felt inside. Then Auriane broke away, realizing how strongly she was conveying her desperation.
“A long journey.” Arria repeated her mother’s words without judgment, which sharpened Auriane’s despair. Arria’s eyes were trusting vessels, awaiting what Auriane put into them. In that moment Auriane thought battle simpler to face than her daughter’s lucid, softly engulfing eyes.
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