Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  “You’ve done well,” she said finally. “You can go.” She pressed a denarius, moist and warm from her hand, into his.

  When he was gone, Auriane felt washed clean of all sorrow, as if her mind were a chalice that could hold only so much of it and the contents of an amphora had been poured in. She’d scarce had time to assimilate the news that Avenahar was with Witgern. It was as though the bloodcourse connecting head and heart had been severed, leaving an otherworldly detachment, tranquil as falling snow. She sensed something unnatural in her calm, feeling her ghost rode on air just above her body as she moved to the writing alcove Marcus used for dictating letters, and sat before an elegant table on delicate, deer-form legs. This fresh disaster was, oddly, almost a relief, perhaps just because it left the path ahead so clear.

  Nothing mattered but that she set things to right.

  She retrieved a stylus from among the drifts of papyrus and found a brass-bound wax tablet, clean of letters. With painful slowness, she wrote, pausing once as she heard the ominous swell of distant voices—the native populace was evidently learning the same news she’d just been given. Auriane understood now why it had been necessary to post so many soldiers along Ramis’s route. But even the people’s cries didn’t disturb the still surface of this fantastic tranquillity—is this a dim flicker of what the immortal gods know every day? she wondered once. Or have I fallen victim to some spell?

  She got her plain cloak of undyed wool from its peg and fastened it with a silver brooch in the shape of a wheel, mate of one her mother, Athelinda, wore; it reminded her that her family, both the living and the dead, walked with her. Then she called out for Brico.

  The maidservant came slowly from her alcove, stumbling once on the front of her long tunica, her full face swollen with sleep.

  “You’re going out?” Brico asked. Then she heard the people’s thunder beyond the walls. “Something’s wrong. What is it?” Her eyes were immense and shining.

  “Yes, I must go out. Don’t stay awake for me, there’s no need.”

  “If you go out, I go with you!” Brico wasn’t entirely surprised something dreadful had passed, for the presence of Ramis was dangerous; her touch was the crooked finger of lightning, illumining, searing, leaving a swath of mysterious destruction to be discovered in the light of morning.

  “No, Brico. You’re scarce awake and you’ve had enough adventuring for one night. But listen to me now. When Marcus Julianus returns, don’t fail to tell him at once what’s befallen Avenahar. Then, I have a task for you.” She gave Brico the wax tablet, now folded and neatly tied. “There’s a seeress here with Ramis, named Algifu. I want you to give her this, and—”

  “Me—ask to see a seeress? Why not you? Where will you be?”

  “You must not ask that, or even think about it.”

  With a fierce twist Brico turned away, shoulders heaving as she quietly cried.

  “Brico, please, be of good courage. None of us has time to be afraid. You must do this thing and not wonder over me. I’ll be well.” She put her hands on Brico’s shoulders. “They say Algifu is kind. She won’t harm you. You must ask her to give this to Witgern, the Wolf Coat chief.”

  “To Witgern.” Brico said the words as if they were devoid of meaning.

  “Yes. Put it in a safe place, for now. Do it on the morrow.” Witgern’s band shifted about like the winds, but Auriane believed a member of the Holy Nine would know how to find him.

  Brico took the tablet in both hands, as if fearful of dropping it.

  Witgern would not be able to read what she’d written, but he had occasional commerce with Gallic traders, most of whom were literate. The short message would remind him of their old and dear blood-friendship, close as the bond between husband and wife. She begged him to conduct Avenahar to a safe place; she named the Holy Wood. From there, men sent by Marcus Julianus would collect Avenahar, and take her to him. Auriane swore on her honor as daughter of Baldemar that this would be carried out with great discretion; he need not fear an ambush.

  Feeling borne along on a river-current of Ancestresses, Auriane departed the guest chamber, passed through a haze of smoke drifting from an altar dedicated to the Governor’s household gods, then on into the night. Torches still burned around the Principia. It was the third hour of darkness.

  The sounds of turmoil from beyond the Fortress’s walls were louder now; the cries resembled the mourning wails of wolves. Clots of smoke blew over the crenelated rampart; there was burning in the native village. As she approached the triple-arched entranceway of the Principia, she saw a knot of her Chattian countrymen gathered outside its doors—the tribal delegation.

  She quickened her pace and pulled forward the hood of her cloak, but one tall, bearded warrior hailed her, then another. None of these had ever seen the daughter of Baldemar but they knew she was here, and so had little trouble deducing that this tall native woman with bronze hair, her eyes gently molten with grief, was Auriane. If they had doubts, the wheelform brooch quelled them.

  A well-favored young man among them brazenly put himself in her way, feet planted apart. His face haunted her; it was insistently familiar.

  “Auriane? It must be.”

  “Yes. I am sorry, I’ve no time for—”

  “Auriane!” He grasped her strongly by the shoulders. “It is truly you! We’re departing for home. You must come with us.”

  “Gods below, you are known to me.”

  “It’s my father, Sigwulf, you knew, slain beside you so long ago.”

  She tamped down a fresh start of sadness, but beneath it lingered a stronger faith in the rebirth of souls. “I’m gladdened your father lives on in so fine a man.” She pulled away from him. “I’ll greet Baldemar for you.”

  Sigibert caught her cloak as she strode off, and she dragged him like some unwilling hound on a lead.

  “We would win back the old world!” he called out. “Chariomer and his Cheruscan brigands will fatten the crows. Auriane, were you to come with me now, I would give over the whole of my warband to you. ‘Greet Baldemar ’? What do you mean by that?”

  She made no reply.

  “You’re not going in there?” he said then. “Only treachery awaits inside.”

  “I must, if I’m to get Ramis back for you.” She wrestled herself free from him and strode on.

  “Auriane!” She did not slow. “‘Daughter of the Ash, lead us out!’” At the sound of the battle cry from long ago, Auriane became very still.

  “Sigibert, you foolish dreamer, get out of here now before he arrests you all.” Prompted by the realization she sensed a wound in this young man that for a reason she couldn’t name called to mind her lost daughter. She came closer and said, “You can help me, Sigibert. The Wolf Coats have my daughter Avenahar. Watch over her as best you can. It’s my last wish, you can’t fail me in this. Tell her—what I do now, I do for her.”

  A desolate Sigibert found himself staring helplessly at her fluttering, rapidly retreating cloak.

  At the door of the Principia, a clerk of the headquarters staff lowered his banner-draped lance, signaling her to halt. She told him she had information bearing on the case. He dispatched a junior clerk to relay this to Maximus, and she was given leave to approach the tribunal.

  She felt she wasn’t walking so much as drifting as she moved toward the dais like some wind-driven leaf. Only Maximus remained, and he was rising to leave. Later she would learn that Marcus Julianus had quit the tribunal in outrage, not wanting to be a party to this deception. She could still smell the holy incense of the seeresses, lingering like the black perfume of a funeral’s wake. She found the absence of Ramis strange and unsettling. Had the Governor’s Grooms actually laid profane hands upon the Veleda and put her under arrest? There was something repugnant, obscene in the mental picture of Ramis taken into custody; some part of her thought it impossible.

  Maximus smiled paternally at her approach. “It is our female Hercules!” He sounded like giants shouting from mou
ntain to mountain as his voice travelled hollowly about the stone hall. “Has Julianus told you I have written a letter to the Emperor describing your singular deed?” But his gaiety was wan.

  As he better discerned Auriane’s face, the fond smile was replaced with a puzzled but forbearing look.

  Maximus’s curiosity sharpened further as she halted beneath his seat. In one mad moment he felt he looked at many women, all living in her eyes—Ancestresses. He saw another sort of strength in her then, that of elements that conquer in time, as water, through constancy, carves stone. She was a creature flexible and strong as a young tree, this confounding native woman who had casually leapt on the back of an aurochs, who watched him now as though she stood before some altar of sacrifice. The candelabra flames illumined two soft, steady points of light in her eyes; they were made of silvered glass, lit from within. By Charon, he thought, when one looks upon this woman, one thinks the gods likely to exist.

  “State your name.” It was a formality for the recorders. Reed pens scraped over papyrus.

  Then she said, “Valerius Maximus, I am the woman you seek.”

  “My dear Aurinia . . . what are you saying?”

  “I am the criminal you’ve sought for seven years. And I can prove it so. Ramis is innocent.”

  After a sharp moment of hesitation, he said dismissively, “Perhaps you should speak of this matter first with Julianus.”

  “Do not speak to me as if I were a child!” Her words split the silence like a whip crack. It startled him; he sat straighter in his seat.

  “I know it all,” she went on, “how new-minted denarii were exchanged for older, full-weight coins at the bank at Lugdunum, the names of the captains of the vessels used for transport, how the wagons were secured, who got it across the frontier—for I’m the one who planned it. Give Ramis her freedom. Take me and let her go. Or you commit a woeful mistake for which your gods will punish you.”

  Maximus’s eyes began to harden as he rapidly considered that what she claimed could well be true. She seemed a woman of entirely too simple and direct a nature to concoct elaborate lies. And she had been a dedicated enemy of Rome, long before she’d ever entered Julianus’s household—had it been wise to assume her allegiances had so thoroughly turned, after a few short years of civilized life? He’d been careless. He’d let Julianus’s eminence act as a shield, deflecting all suspicion from this woman.

  “And . . . Marcus Julianus . . . ?” he said finally, the words left unspoken too dreadful to voice.

  “I carried this out entirely without his knowing. I will swear to this by every god.”

  “That is not possible.”

  “Do not be a fool, it is possible.”

  “Mind your speech! You’re too unsophisticated to know when you give offense, or I’d punish you for that. Where could you have gotten access to these great sums of money, without him knowing it?”

  She told him. Maximus’s expression became increasingly clouded. These were most unwelcome words. Her singular boldness had saved his life. The thought of putting this exemplary native woman in chains appalled him. Tensely he tapped a stylus against the same wax tablet Julianus had earlier thrust into his hands.

  “I think you confess to this only to save your prophetess.” It was almost a plea.

  “No. And I suspect you’ve got it turned about. There’s a good chance Ramis allowed you to believe in her guilt, in order to save me.”

  He found himself suddenly depleted of objections. As he looked on her now, her comeliness began to distort in his view, until it became the frightful beauty of the bright serpent flowing prettily, bearing poison.

  “This is a sad madness, it is too much to consider in one sitting. Leave me to think on this.”

  “And had I not been found out this spring by the magistrate at Confluentes, I’d be arming my people still. You may cross-check with him; his name is Volusius Victorinus. As we speak, he sends his evidence to Rome.”

  “If this all be so, then you are Nemesis’s own emanation.” His voice had grown soft and ruthless. “At best, you’ve cost me time and trouble. At worst, your act has grievously harmed a noble man, and has led to the death of good soldiers. Your gods preserve you if these things be true.”

  “You must do Ramis no harm! Tell me you will release her!”

  “Take her off,” he said to the Grooms. “Hold her in the guard tower.”

  Chapter 19

  When the sentry announced Marcus Julianus, Auriane felt the cold, hollow readiness of the soldier rudely roused at dawn by a war trumpet.

  From her prison’s narrow window she could see a brown-green expanse of parade ground with its guardian images of Victory with upraised spear, of Mars in flowing garments, hovering weightlessly above their plinths. She had been watching the training of a detachment of the Twenty-second Legion, soon to be dispatched to the Dacian war. They drilled in pairs. One man was armed with the falx, the dreaded scythelike sword carried by the Dacian nobles; the other defended himself with the short sword of the legionary soldier. She had heard it said that because of the terrible penetrating force of the falx, the Palace had revived the use of a stronger mail armor of antique type that Rome had not used for generations, and ordered the legionaries’ shields stiffened with extra planks of wood. That is how Rome has extended herself so—by refashioning herself to fit each new enemy. My people would have hotly refused to do such a thing. They would have counted the Dacian falx a dark sign from this god or that, brought on by some family misdeed, then faced it naked of armor, to retrieve more of their honor. Ramis always spoke of the strength that came from being mutable as water; does this mean she privately thinks her own people fools?

  Such thoughts were a fire-break against what she did not want to see—Ramis brought to execution. Avenahar torn apart in the wild.

  And Marcus’s fury. Doubtless, he means to take leave of me forever.

  He stood in the open doorway, eyes afire with the silent shout—Why? There was a solemn distance in his face, uncomfortably close to the expression in the portrait bust of his father. He was unshaven and haggard, eyes bruised with sleeplessness. And he was clad in tattered gray mourning clothes. With an unpleasant start she realized he wore them in mourning for her.

  Auriane wore the same cloak she’d donned before the tribunal, and she’d not been given enough water to wash. She drew off from him, humiliated by how defeated and soiled she must look.

  “I could not let her die for me,” she whispered.

  “I came to take my leave,” came words in the flat voice of an officious stranger. “I’ve settled affairs at the villa. Tomorrow I set out on the journey to Dacia, in the company of the cohort you see practicing there.”

  “I care if no one else in the world understands,” she said then, “but I must have you know why I did this thing. I was born to stand by the gate and protect—the Fates know why. And you are the same. So I’d hoped you’d understand.”

  He put his hands gently on her shoulders. “I return in spring,” he said. “The journey will be mostly by oared galley, down the Danuvius. Where the river forms a spur into Dacian lands, Pontes, it’s called—there, the Emperor assembles his army of invasion. I’ll winter there. What hope have I of softening his wrath toward you after that complete confession? Little or none. And now, I’ll be making a plea before a man who suspects me of treason. But that’s the bed we now lie in.”

  This massive effort of self-control frightened her; she was uncertain what lay beneath.

  “As you say,” she said, edging off again, feeling intensely, unpleasantly alone. “That is well, then.” She felt she poked at the dying embers of their common hearth. “Will . . . will we meet again, in this life?”

  “I am not a sybil! Ask the woman you sacrificed us for!”

  “Ah, that’s better. I like your anger more than your nothing-at-all.”

  “You forced my hand—do not expect me to be pleased. The one fortunate part of all this is that Avenahar’s run o
ff with a hunted rebel with a price on his head even greater than the price on yours. At least, we know where she is—more or less. At least, the law cannot get to her—that is, not yet!”

  “Marcus, no king, no spirit that dwells among the living or the dead could have kept me silent while this woman who stands at our people’s heart was accused falsely of a deed committed by me.”

  “I knew your nobility would slay us one day. A man cannot serve two masters. One is always wronged. You straddle two worlds, and you’re struck down by the halfhearted faith you give to each. Our being together was ill-starred from the start.”

  “Marcus. In my place, you, too, would have come forward with the truth. You’re adamant in giving faith to what you love and it’s for this we’ve always given each other so much honor.” She felt herself a vessel breaking into fine shatter-lines, ready to crack apart. “How can you call so dear a time ill-starred?”

  “Gods. Let us stop this.” It was a cry of grief. He pulled her to him like a man in famine times who comes upon sustaining bread. In this matter his words were against his heart, and he knew it. The courage she’d exhibited in going alone before the tribunal shored him up immensely against the cold caprices of the world.

  She felt she embraced a lightning-struck oak.

  She gathered her strength for the fearful question.

  “What have they done with Ramis?”

  “Nothing, yet. She’s being held in a chamber not unlike this one. Maximus believes you. He overreached himself. Your people have lit fires all over the hills. He knows that if he harms her, the Chattians and their allies will make war—and they could do some damage, even in their weakened state. He doesn’t have the men to handle it. He rushed ahead in this matter, without consulting me.”

  “He has no reason to hold her here!”

  “Auriane, you saved her life. You couldn’t have preserved her freedom. He would have found a way to detain her, just or unjust. The order to arrest her came from the Palace. Maximus thought the ruse necessary—had your people suspected he planned to hold her, they would have cleverly hidden her away somewhere where Rome would never have found her.”