Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  The Emperor sat very still, intently watching the wine cup as it rolled across the floor, then stopped. Thirty and more pairs of eyes followed his gaze; all saw the thick, grayish powder oozing from the tipped cup, so sinister in appearance it hardly needed testing by the camp’s expert on poisons.

  “Unhand him!” the Emperor trumpeted into the silence.

  The Guards released Marcus Julianus. Grudgingly, one by one, they sheathed their swords. A servant of the chamber dropped to his knees and began wailing for his life, expecting to be held accountable simply because he was in attendance. Behind this noise was the high-pitched ramble of the Egyptian boy—“. . . but the wine jar . . . it was just opened . . . It was sealed in gypsum . . .”

  “The prince,” Julianus said a little hoarsely, climbing painfully to his feet. “In the darkness he got it into the empty cup.” The Guards examined the distance from the map table to wine service, considering the difficulty of pouring it into the cup in that confused darkness without spilling any—difficult, but not impossible.

  A centurion of the Guard took Julianus’s cup, poured it out into a bronze bowl, and found the same evil mud at its bottom. “It looks to be aconite,” he said. Unwilling to wait for the official determination, he demanded a bit of hard bread, scooped a measure of the substance onto it, then exited to give it to one of the camp’s dogs.

  Trajan sat solemnly still; all that betrayed the agitation he must have felt was a greater than usual calm. “The Dacian prince,” he said quietly to the Guards. “Put out the alarm at every guard tower. Ride him down.”

  The Guards quickly filed out; cavalry was dispatched in pursuit down the Via Principia. Julianus heard outraged shouts, fading off, as all along this wide way, men were roused. Within a remarkably short time, every last man in the vast encampment would know of this.

  In the sudden, profoundly altered quiet, Julianus said as he resumed his seat, “My apologies for an unforgivable attack on your sacred person.”

  “Nonsense. How can you speak of it?”

  The centurion of the Guard interrupted, admitting the wind’s wail and flurries of snow. A servant slid in quietly behind him; in his arms was the limp body of a small red-and-white-spotted hound.

  Trajan observed this grimly for a moment, then nodded for them to go.

  “Enough poison to fell a good-sized bull! I should be flattered, I suppose.” Trajan said it jovially, but Julianus heard the faintest tremor of disquiet in that voice. The Emperor rested his gaze on Julianus for long moments, and slowly, a truce-filled peace crept into the room. “It is a humbling thing to owe one’s life to the quickness of another,” he said. “My good friend. What roused your suspicions?”

  “The map.” Julianus rose and moved to the map table. “There’s a pass, here, that’s not shown, a notorious place that’s treacherous and narrow—it’s overlooked by precipitous cliffs, and it’s ideal for placing bowmen above, and indeed, has been used for ambush before, in times of these tribes’ constant wars among each other. It could only have been left out deliberately. And this way through the pass—it’s marked as the one route to the king’s treasure hoard, which he indicates, here. They would have picked off our advance men like cattle in a pen.”

  “How came you to have such a close knowledge of a wild and distant country?”

  “It was a long, dull journey, and I had little to do but study, and, as I’ve found philosophy . . . somewhat poisonous of late, I kept to a study of the tongues of this region—and the works of the Alexandrian geographers.”

  “So an assassin’s warded off not by the sword, but by an insatiable pedant’s need to make a close study of nearly everything, relevant to him or not! I’ve been unfair to you. I’m forgetting why I ever allowed you retire to the country.”

  Julianus saw a deep allegiance forming in those iron-gray eyes, and realized then that no subtle arguments, no fervent protestations of loyalty could have won trust so readily as this unintentioned event. He offered fervent thanks to Fortuna.

  “Tomorrow, you are my guest of honor at dinner,” the Emperor spoke on. “Come at the same hour. I must think of some proper way to thank you. I know you don’t want any honors or posts.”

  Julianus found his senses could scarce keep apace with the suddenness of this restoration to favor. Few men were fortunate enough to outlive or outwit all their enemies, but it seemed he’d somehow managed it. The moment was not so honeyed as it might have been, however, for one dangling horror remained—the plight of Auriane.

  “I wish no thanks,” Julianus said, “What I did, any man not utterly base would have done. I wish only a sympathetic hearing of the case I travelled here to put to you.”

  “That can wait. First, we celebrate.”

  ON THE FOLLOWING day the chief priest made a thanksgiving sacrifice to Nemesis, who was—or so it was determined after long debate—the deity who had preserved the Emperor’s life. The poisoner was not caught; he’d talked his way past the main gate’s sentries moments before Trajan dispatched cavalry to hunt him, and the snowstorm covered his escape. Julianus restively endured seven courses of a banquet of celebration, centered on Danuvian carp grilled in date sauce with lovage and a Hispanian wine chosen because it was bottled in the year of his birth. Tedium peaked during locally-provided entertainment too rude for his taste—something announced as the “fire and sword dance,” performed by skin-clad youths from a nearby village. If the senior tribunes were offended by the sight of a man who disapproved of Trajan’s great war reclining in the place of honor, they disguised it well. Present, but distinctly nervous, was the Guards’ praefect Livianus. For now at least, Julianus thought, that panther is leashed. Strikingly absent was Lappius Blaesus, and no one spoke his name; he’d been banished from the Emperor’s side, and prepared to depart the camp in disgrace. Julianus couldn’t say he was entirely pleased; he’d always held that having a dedicated enemy lurking about keeps the wits honed.

  And so Marcus Julianus couldn’t speak the cause for which he’d come until the first hour of the following day, when most of the banqueters were still sleeping off its effects. He returned to the Praetorium in dawn’s sallow light, to find the Emperor Trajan as keen and clear of mind as if he’d drunk vinegar water the night before.

  Julianus had scarce gotten beyond, “I would speak to you concerning the Chattian woman you know as Aurinia—” when Trajan interrupted him.

  “If this is concerning that woman with whom you cohabit, who’s been the author of so much mischief, and her confession before Maximus, rest your mind on that matter completely. I am not fool enough to believe, with some, that you had any knowledge of what she was doing.”

  He felt the first delicate touch of horror. “The woman with whom you cohabit” was a cold and cursory way to refer to Auriane. This, then, is the cost of the trust I just won—this firm line of division he’s drawn between Auriane and myself.

  I’ve never lost such a battle before. And now I grapple, not with a tyrant, but with a just ruler who favors me. Why, then, do I feel in the grip of a final sadness?

  “It is of her I wish to speak,” Julianus said carefully. “As you may already know, she will make a journey here to appeal to you.”

  Trajan frowned, and slowly nodded.

  “You must forgive her,” Julianus said.

  The frown held; this did not augur well.

  “Go on, make your case.”

  “I know she acted against the law, but she acted lawfully, even nobly, when considered as a woman of her own nation. Your reign is known for keeping alive reverence for the old virtues, but it’s especially known for bringing forth new ones—”

  “New ones? I’ve heard nothing of this.”

  “You push back not only the boundaries of the world, but the boundaries of what is good and right. I believe it is for these things that you will be remembered, and not so much for the new territories you win for the Empire. I refer to your measures for bringing education to greater numbers of citizens
than ever before, and your system by which orphaned children are provided a dole from the interest farmers pay on money loaned them by the Treasury. These things are without precedent. Here is yet another new road for you to open, a boundary to push back, concerning what is good and right. For after all, did we not orphan her?”

  Now the Emperor’s frown seemed faintly clouded, suggesting a state of mind grown pensive, disturbed. Julianus pressed on.

  “It appears she flouted the law in the gravest way, but it is really a matter of where one stands when you gaze upon her. She has always acted with a heroism one seldom sees in either women or men, in this quieter age. Considered as a daughter of her own beleaguered nation, her giving them arms was but a way to save them from starvation, for they’d no means to repel enemy raids. By the laws of her people, she hardly could have done otherwise.”

  “I know it’s not necessary to remind you that no one may claim national custom if it has not been accepted in Roman law.”

  This blunt objection distressed him, but Julianus continued on. “Of course. But the law itself is in continuous evolution, as men make it—and has many refinements added by yourself. Consider that we were not in a state of war when she did this. Consider that she has been a noble friend to us, in every other way. And let us not forget how she saved Maximus’s life, and the lives of five other men, when she bravely leapt upon the back of that beast—”

  “This is true,” the Emperor replied. “But the saving of several private persons’ lives is of little consequence, weighed against her endangerment of the whole of the state.”

  “Consider that her people are besieged on every side, as Rome was, in its beginnings. She is one who has kinship with the heroes of our earliest days. She sought only to keep the Cheruscans from seizing the yearly grain crop. She never meant for those weapons to be directed at us.

  “Always, we have respected the gods of other peoples,” Julianus spoke on, “and it is not such a great step further to respect the actions mandated by these gods.”

  A distinct discomfort showed in Trajan’s features.

  I will not accept this, Julianus thought. If she cannot be saved by persuasion, then, by Providence, I must find some other way.

  “You make an interesting case,” Trajan said. “And you’ve long been an enemy of tyrants. If you tell me she is innocent, I am bound to believe it. So great is my debt to you, so strong is my natural desire to give you anything you ask—that this is agony to say. In this, you see, she has reached beyond herself. There are crimes that cannot be overlooked, for the sake of the safety of the frontier provinces, and all those who look to us for protection.”

  “But I give you my own assurance, she will do this no more. There is glory in leaving her alive. She would stand as a tribute to the greatness of this age.”

  “No,” he said, and that voice was a firmly closing door. “It cannot be.”

  Julianus thought then, the malevolence of a tyrant could be battled more easily than this man’s blunt, stubborn reasonableness.

  “Marcus Julianus, you must let this matter go. It is even beyond me. If we look aside when citizens arm our enemies, it only serves as encouragement for others to do so. It does not even matter what her intention was. We must think, here, only of the greater good.”

  “But you’ll hear her when she comes?” Julianus said with forced calm.

  “Of course. It is the law.” There was a moment’s silence, then the Emperor added, “Is it not time to find a proper wife, one who’s equal to your rank and eminence?”

  This was an unpleasant blow from an unexpected direction. When Julianus had mastered surprise and grief, he answered solemnly, “You are correct that we are not equal in eminence. Hers is the greater. Might I go?”

  A faint look of distress crossed the Emperor’s face. “I tell you again, this opinion was an agony to give.” The quiet between them was extended, unsatisfactory. The Emperor broke it. “I am going to found a school in your name, in Rome. I’ll have a statue of you erected in its forecourt. You shall have unlimited monies for staffing it.”

  “That is most nobly generous,” Julianus said flatly.

  “Dio is speaking later. Did you know the court philosopher was here? You must entertain us by debating him.”

  Cannot he see I am too sick in heart to consider such things? Julianus realized suddenly that possibly Trajan didn’t, that the Emperor may well have counted that impassioned defense as no more than what any patron might put forth for a client for whom he feels affection. Julianus considered then that few men had the means to understand that some fundamental bond of the spirit could flourish between two who stood at such different altitudes of society.

  “I am sorry,” Julianus said. “I debate no more, in these days. I care nothing of what Dio thinks, and indeed, I care nothing of what I think. The man could stretch half an idea across a stadium. He lives to provoke—choosing Ilium as a place to give a lecture that Troy never existed, and I . . . find myself full of unaccustomed emptiness. Which means I should keep silence. As a consequence, I want, no more, even to instruct others.”

  “What has so embittered you to philosophy?” Trajan added gravely, “I truly would like to know.”

  For some reason, Julianus told the truth.

  “I met an old woman. And I have not been the same since.”

  “Ha!” He clapped a huge hand on Julianus’s shoulder. “I like that answer. Our Dio causes Senators to interrupt meetings in the Curia so they can hear him, yet he has no effect on you. And an old woman does.”

  “Indeed. Because of her, philosophy seems senseless as counting grass blades. And tastes of dust.”

  “Well, that’s tantalizingly odd. Can you tell me more?”

  “Have you ever thought that perhaps it’s not learning more and more, but unlearning what we think we know, that sets a man free?”

  “Now I know I’m in a philosopher’s company: You’re making no sense. Who is this inestimable crone?”

  “The great prophetess of the Chattians, who is called Ramis—”

  “Who was just chastised by Maximus on my behalf, and sent to Rome.”

  “The same. There is a being who lives all those things of which the philosophers speak. And you know it in the blood when you stand before her.”

  “You’ve a formidable gift for goading the mind. I’ll have an audience with her after this war’s been won. You’ll remind me, when I’ve returned home?”

  It was said with the detachment of one who collects philosophies as some collect Corinthian bronzes, and warily, Julianus agreed. A moment later, as he was preparing to depart, Trajan seemed suddenly to remember a matter that had earlier been on his mind.

  “I’ve a task before me that begs for your mastery of negotiation—you did say you’d remain here, long as I need you? Intelligence indicates that the eighty captives the Dacians took last spring have been transferred to a cave,” Trajan continued, “where they’re holding them, hopefully, for ransom. But this is a barbarous race, and they’re as likely to slay them. There are men of rank among them. I want them back.

  “Will you go at the head of a party to negotiate for their lives? I dislike asking; it’s a perilous expedition that means journeying far into enemy lands. But I trust no one to do this better than I trust you.”

  Without spirit or interest, he agreed. Until Auriane was brought, he had no other desire but to remain in this country.

  Chapter 26

  The Fortress of Mogontiacum The Nones of December

  “Aurinia.You may sit in my presence.” Maximus’s comfortably settled features were tauter than usual, and there was a faintly anguished vagueness in his eyes. Tragedy’s scent hung on the air like guished vagueness in his eyes. Tragedy’s scent hung on the air like tainted perfume.

  Slowly, warily, Auriane eased herself onto a bench. She’d been conducted from her prison rooms to this barren inner chamber of the Mogontiacum Fortress’s headquarters, where the Governor awaited her alone—a
thing that was alarming in itself, for a recorder or junior tribune was normally never far from his side. She prepared herself to hear that the Wolf Coats had fallen into an ambush, and a slain Avenahar had been pulled from the battlefield corpses. A mortifying cold began to spread through Auriane’s stomach, her heart, as she wondered if he would give her leave to embrace her daughter’s torn body before Avenahar was laid on the pyre.

  At least, poor Arria is safe. Her mind’s image of Arria happily cared for at the villa was the one warm, still place in all this storm and darkness. She’d not had words with Maximus since the day she’d been condemned. Her journey to Dacia, where she would make her final appeal before the Emperor, had been delayed until spring thaw, when the last detachments would be dispatched to Trajan’s great war, so this Fortress would be her winter home. She had no way of knowing that Marcus Julianus’s advance efforts on her behalf had, on this very day, failed.

  “As you know,” Maximus spoke on, “Marcus Julianus has asked me to look after your children.”

  Auriane felt something collapse within her.

  “Yes. I’ve had no news of Arria Juliana for a month,” Auriane broke in, trying to compel him to meet her eyes. In the last months she had felt herself some feral creature slinking about its cage, alert to nothing in life but some opening through which she might slip, wanting no nourishment but scraps of news of Arria, Avenahar, or Marcus. When there was a moon she felt stronger, and she would sit in her chamber’s weed-ridden courtyard and say words to Fria, begging the Lady to give comfort to her children. Fria was silent, but often she thought she heard the whispered encouragements of Ramis in the wails of the winter winds scouring the rooftops. Under cover of darkness she would steal into the yard and practice swordfighting maneuvers with a stick broken from a hawthorn bush, or cast the stick at targets; her feral heart told her to stay limber and strong, as long as possible; she had always been a creature that survived by fighting. She was an amusing curiosity to the men quartered here, and a junior officer or two was discovered to be enlivening the tedium by practice-sparring with her in the barren courtyard—until Maximus had learned of it, and angrily stopped them. “I don’t even know if Arria’s gotten my letters,” Auriane said. “I trust you’ve been watching over her well.”