Roma Mater

by Poul Anderson

  Yet while Taranis thus allowed His law to be lightened, it could not be abolished. The King must return to meet every challenger, slay or be slain. Moreover, save in war or essential travel or when a major ritual coincided, he must spend the three days and nights around each full moon out in the Wood. His presence there being the sole requirement, most sovereigns had taken a wife or two along, and sent for friends, and passed the time in recreations which ranged from decorous to debauched.

  Dahilis felt horror of the place. Beneath those shadowing oaks Colconor had killed her father and might have killed Gratillonius, whose blood would also someday nourish their roots. After she confessed this, just before his initial Watch, he had kissed her and gone off to sleep alone.

  The duty was otherwise not irksome. Free of distractions, he studied material from the archives, practised the language, conferred at length with magnates he summoned, pondered the tasks before him, and maintained his regular exercises to keep fit. About the underlying finality he was unconcerned. He awaited no rival soon. Such advents were, in fact, generally years apart. Any fighters who did come, he felt confident he could handle. Eventually his strength and speed must begin failing; but he did not mean to be here that long, although at the present stage of things he saw no sense in planning his departure.

  The morning of this third moon dawned already hot. Clouds banked murky in the east and rose higher hour by hour, while a forerunner haze dulled the dwindling western blue; but no breeze relieved the wet air or freshened its musky odours. Soren and the priests who officially escorted Gratillonius sweated beneath their robes so that they stank. They were as grateful as dignity permitted when he offered them beer at the House. He, who had tramped and fought in armour, suffered less, but was glad to strip down to a tunic after they were gone.

  Servants had carried along pens, ink, parchment. That last was costly stuff for the letters he meant to write to various Imperial officers of the region, but papyrus was not to be had, as disrupted as trade routes were on both land and sea, while wood was simply too plebeian. Well, he thought, this material should be impressive, emphasizing the capabilities latent in Ys and, by the bye, offsetting his awkward style and vagrant spelling. Only afterwards was it to occur to him that Bodilis could have corrected those.

  The hall was the most nearly cool place to be. He ordered a table and chair brought in and settled himself down to work. It went slower and harder than he had expected. After a while his jaw and back ached from tension. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe a ramble in the grove would help. He set off. That was about noon.

  At once he was alone. Utterly alone. Around him the trees brooded, huge boles, twist-thewed branches, claw twigs. Their leaves made a gloom through which a weird brass-yellow light struck here and there, out of a sky gone sooty and steadily darkening further. Silence weighed down the world, fallen leaves too sodden to rustle underfoot, brush stiff as though straining after any sound, never a bird call or squirrel chatter or grunt from a wild boar whose blood was to wash the corpse of a King, nothing astir save himself; but fungi glimmered like eyes. Even the canal, when he reached it, seemed to flow listless, tepid, forbidden to quench his thirst.

  Gratillonius scowled. What was the matter with him? He was no superstitious barbarian, he was a Roman … But Romans disliked wilderness. It was beyond their law. In its depths you might meet Pan, and the dread of Him come upon you so that you ran screaming, blind, a mindless animal, while His laughter bayed at your heels … A Presence was here. He felt It as heavily as he felt the slugging of his heart. It might be of Ahriman. Best he return.

  As he did, he heard the first muttering of thunder.

  He breathed easier after he got back to the Sacred Precinct, its courtyard flagged and swept, open to heaven and on to Processional Way, with a view beyond of the heights, garden-garnished homes, pastureland above the cliffs of Point Vanis where Eppillus kept his long watch. Yet he was still beset by portents he could not read. As he stood there, clouds covered the last western clarity, grey yonder, blue-black where they mounted out of the east. Summer’s verdancies were discoloured, bruised. Dominant in the courtyard reared and sprawled the Challenge Oak, shield hanging from it dully agleam with brass that the hammer had smitten over and over. Between its outbuildings loomed the House, crimson hue somehow bringing forth the brutal mass of timbers, grotesqueness of images that formed its colonnade. When Gratillonius looked away towards Ys, the city at its distance appeared tiny, fragile, a fantasy blown in glass.

  Suddenly as a meteor flash, he became aware of the three on the road. How had he overlooked them? They were almost here. He forced steadiness upon himself. A wind sprang up, soughing in the treetops and tossing them about. The hammer swung on its chain, hit the shield, belled in a mumble. Lightning flickered afar. Thunder rolled more loud.

  The three halted before their King. Under their cowls he saw Forsquilis, Vindilis, Maldunilis. He could not quell a shudder.

  ‘Greeting, lord,’ said Forsquilis. ‘We have come to attend you during your sentinel stay.’

  He sought to moisten his lips, but his tongue had gone dry too. ‘I thank you … However, I did not ask for … your company.’

  Vindilis’s look smouldered in the bony face. ‘You hardly would,’ she replied. Did a whiplash of spite go through her tone? ‘Not of us three out of the Nine.’

  Forsquilis lifted a hand. ‘Peace.’ Calm, resolution were upon her Athene countenance. The grey eyes took hold of Gratillonius’s and would not let go. ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘just we three, who held Colconor here until his doom could find him. That was needful evil. The hour has come to set it right.’

  Maldunilis sidled close to tug Gratillonius’s sleeve. ‘We’ll be sweet to you, yea, very sweet,’ she said, and giggled.

  Lightning flared anew, brighter; thunder boomed; the shield rang. Gratillonius felt a surge of anger as heartening as the wind. ‘Now look you,’ he snapped, ‘I accept your intention as good, and mayhap I have been neglectful, but we’ll settle all this in rational wise, later.’

  ‘We will not,’ Forsquilis answered. While her tone was level, she had let go of her cloak, and it flapped at her shoulders like great wings. ‘This is something that must be, lest the time-stream flow still worse awry. I have made a Sending. It did not reach the Gods, that is not in my power, but it did come near enough to hear Them whisper. Follow me.’ She strode towards the House. Numbly, Gratillonius obeyed. Vindilis and Maldunilis flanked him.

  Beyond the doorway, the hall gaped cavernous. The staff had lit fires in the trenches against the approaching storm, but their light only bred shadows which seemed to make move the carven pillars and wainscots, the tattered banners from battles long forgotten. Smoke stung nostrils and blurred vision. The crackling of wood was merely an undertone to the halloo of wind outside.

  ‘Go,’ Forsquilis ordered the assembled manservants. ‘Be off to town, fast, ere the downpour catches you. Come not back till the moon has waned.’

  Gratillonius confirmed with a stiff nod. What else could he do?

  ‘We’ll see to you,’ Maldunilis tittered in his ear. ‘Oh, we will.’ His flesh crawled at her touch.

  When they were alone with him, the three shed their cloaks. Underneath, they were royally dressed. As one, they confronted him. ‘Lord King,’ said Forsquilis gravely, ‘in us – you and your Queens – the Gods are on earth. We are seed and soil, weather and water, the cycle of the year and the tides, of the stars and the centuries. We engender, we give birth, we nurture, we protect, we dream, we die, we are reborn in our children at the springtime and we die again in the harvest at autumn. If ever in this we fail, Ys perishes; for we are Ys.

  ‘Therefore let that which was done here in hatred be now done in love. Let the wombs that were shut be opened. Let the dead quicken. Taranis, come unto Belisama.’

  Lightning burst. Its flare through doorway and smoke-hole made wan the fires. Thunder wheeled after, down and down heaven. Hailstones rattled before the wind, whitened
the ground, clamoured on the shield. In a mighty rushing, the rain arrived.

  It was as if Gratillonius stood aside and watched another man go into the arms of Forsquilis. Then there was no Gratillonius, no woman, there was only that which happened, which was everything that there was.

  – Lamplight glowed throughout the bedchamber, but its Roman accoutrements seemed unreal, infinitely remote; and the light was not soft in the eyes of Forsquilis, it turned them yellow, like a hawk’s. Her visage had become Medusa’s, gold-brown locks spread snakish over the pillow, she wrapped long arms and legs about him and cried out as her hips met his plunging.

  – ‘I did wrong to bid you go away,’ Vindilis breathed in the dark. ‘Give me another daughter, a new babe to cherish.’

  ‘But you told me you liked not –’

  ‘I should have told you what I do like. Hoel could not understand, but Bodilis and Dahilis say that you listen.’

  ‘I do. For I want you – you, not just a body lying still –’

  ‘Let us try, let us see. Give me your hand to guide –’

  – The sleepy noontide sun cast richness over Maldunilis where she lay. ‘We’re going to drain you dry, you know,’ she laughed, and somehow that was not impious, for the Gods have humour too and it is not always ironic or cruel; love and death have their ridiculous moments, that the spirit may be refreshed. With Forsquilis and Vindilis playful on either side, Gratillonius saw that Maldunilis honestly desired him and was quite ready to adore him. His ardour torrented.

  – The Bull was in him, he was the Bull, rampant among his cows, although in glimpses of self-awareness he knew it was a bull seal he had been thinking of, out on a rookery reef near Sena.

  – The last night ended as dawn paled the sinking moon. All four were so weary and sore they could barely drag themselves to their feet. Nonetheless Gratillonius and Vindilis, aye, Vindilis went forth to stand in dew and wildflowers across the road. ‘Now do you believe?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I seek to,’ he answered.

  Across her dark head, lifted against the sky, the white streak gleamed like a warrior’s plume. ‘We have been Gods. Belike ’twill never happen again. Flesh would burn to ashes. Nay, we shall return to what we were, perhaps a little wiser, a little stronger, but always mortal. Yet we have been Gods.’

  The sun rose, bearing the glory of Unconquered Mithras. Gratillonius gasped.

  He was silent when Speaker and priests led him and his Queens back to Ys. Dahilis met him at the palace, kissed him, said in tender mirth that he had earned a good long rest. She took him to a room curtained and cool, and left him by himself.

  A sunbeam struck through. Gratillonius went to that window, opened it, leaned out, holding his palms and his branded brow up to the light. ‘Nay, I do not understand!’ he cried. ‘What came upon me? What was it?’ He heard, surprised, that he had called in Ysan. He fled to Latin. Tene, Mithra, etiam miles, fidos nostris votis nos!’

  XX

  1

  Adminius was the new deputy to Gratillonius. Few would have thought the lean, snaggle-toothed scrounger and japester a wise choice, but he quickly vindicated the centurion’s judgement, laid his authority firm upon his remaining twenty-three fellows, kept them in sharp form, maintained cooperation with the Ysan regulars and popularity among the Ysan folk.

  The municipal theatre at the Forum operated, on grants from the Great Houses, during the four months around Midsummer, when daylight could provide illumination after working hours. For the most part it offered classical drama, music, readings; dance, gymnastics, and sports were for the amphitheatre outside of town. Not until a month after solstice did the soldiers have leisure to go. Gratillonius kept them too busy strengthening defences and executing joint manoeuvres with the marines.

  Finally, though, Adminius announced a party. ‘We’ll march down in formation, ’spite of being civil dressed, impress everybody proper, and take in the show. Don’t be afraid. It’s the Twin Menaechmi, lots of fun – dirty jokes in there too, if you’re quick enough on the uptake. I sneaked inter a performance once when I was a brat in Londinium. Afterwards we’ll ‘ave a banquet at the Green Whale. Some of you already know ’ow good a table Zeugit sets. The city’s paying, by way of a bonus for our services in the late unpleasantness. And then you’re free to go waste yer substance in riotous living – but I want you back in barracks and fit for duty at sunrise, d’you ’ear?’

  It was therefore a shock when a spokesman for the patrons announced that the theatre was proud to present the Agamemnon of Aeschylus in a new Ysan-language translation by the most gracious Queen Bodilis.

  ‘Wot the Sathanas!’ Seated on the right of his contingent, Adminius turned to his neighbour opposite, a portly and patrician Suffete. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said in the vernacular, ‘aren’t they doing Plautus this eventide?’

  ‘Nay, that is tomorrow.’ The man smiled superciliously. ‘I daresay our way of counting days straightforward, rather than backwards from ides and nones, is confusing to Romans.’

  ‘Oh, bloody Christ.’ Adminius addressed his men in Latin: ‘Sorry, boys. I got the date wrong. Wot we’ll be seeing is … m-m, I think it’s an old Greek tragedy.’

  Scowls and growls went among them. Cynan, beside the deputy, started to rise. ‘Well, let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’m in no mood for –’

  Adminius grabbed his arm. ‘We stay. This is a civilized country, and we owe it ter Rome and the legion ter make a good impression on the natives. You’ll take in some culture, s’welp me ’Ercules, if I’ve got ter ’old yer noses and pour it down yer flinking gullets.’

  A disapproving buzz went along the close-packed benches. Sullenly, the men resigned themselves. At least they would be able to follow the lines, more or less; none of them knew Greek.

  The theatre was of the Roman kind, a semicircular bowl before a stage, roofless although with arrangements for spreading a canvas top in wet weather. However, differences were many, most of them more subtle than its comparatively small size. The upper gallery was point-arched, supported on columns slim, unfluted, their capitals in the form of breaking waves. A box aloft there was empty, reserved for the Gods. Female roles would be taken by women, not prostitutes but honoured artists. In a well below the stage sat an orchestra with horns, flutes, syrinxes, sistrums, cymbals, drums, harps, lyres. It played for a while, a heavy, moody music; then, as the cloth-of-gold curtain was rolled down, it fell silent, until a lone trumpet call resounded.

  Scenery portrayed the front of a cyclopean palace, altars before it. A backdrop showed night, slowly brightening to day as layers of gauze were withdrawn. An actor stood peering outwards. He bore spear, shield, archaic armour; the great helmet descended to make his mask. After a space motionless at his sentry post, he sighed and began: ‘O Gods, relieve me of this weary watch, this yearlong waiting like a guardian hound with no more rest than elbows ’gainst the roof above the hall of the Atreides! Too well I’ve learned to know the midnight stars –’

  Cynan’s eyes widened. ‘Mithras!’ he whispered. ‘That’s the way it is.’

  ‘Shh,’ Adminius cautioned. But when the beacon fire blazed afar to proclaim the King’s return, he himself let out a cheer.

  Thereafter the soldiers spoke never a word; but often they drew breath or smote knees with fists.

  When finally Clytemnestra had scorned the chorus and starkly told Aegisthus that they twain would rule; and another trumpet call died away; and the audience applauded and went out into the sunset street – Adminius said, ‘Wow!’

  ‘Those women, those poor brave women.’ Budic was not ashamed to shed a few tears.

  ‘What happened next?’ Cynan wanted to know. ‘That Orestes they spoke of, he must have done something. Are there more plays?’

  ‘I’ve heard Greek plays go in threes,’ Verica answered. ‘Maybe Queen Bodilis has translated the rest. Or maybe she will.’

  ‘Well, anyhow, she did a damn good job on this one,’ Maclavius declared. ‘Especia
lly seeing she’s a woman. Only a man who’d been a soldier could’ve written it.’

  ‘He understood more than soldiering, I can tell you,’ said Budic with the loftiness of youth.

  ‘That was a lucky mistake you made, deputy,’ remarked Guentius, and general agreement murmured from the rest.

  Adminius laughed. ‘Fine, fine! We might as well appreciate wot’s around us. I’ve a notion we’ll be ’ere quite a spell.’

  2

  Summer advanced in triumphal procession. Colts, calves, lambs, kids grew long in the legs and full in the haunches. Apples, plums, cherries burgeoned in orchards. Freshly cut grass filled hayfields with fragrance. Bees droned about heather, clover, gorse, replacing the tribute men had exacted from them earlier. Carts laden with produce trundled out of Osismiic lands, to return full of wares from workshops and the sea. Poppies and cornflowers bejewelled roadsides. Children grew scratched on the hands and purple about the lips, gathering wild blackberries. Young storks, geese, ducks flopped overhead, in training for the trek south. On clear nights the Swan, the Eagle, and the Lyre stood high.

  While he still had much to do, most of it of his own making, Gratillonius began discovering time for himself. More and more Ysans, great, humble, and ordinary, were coming to accept him as a man when he was not being the sacral King. He could poke around town, ask people about their work, listen to legends related by granny or gaffer, put a child on his knee and tell it a story while dinner was cooking in some house where he was a guest. He could whistle up his crew and take the royal yacht, a trim and swift little galley, off for a day on the water. With a few bodyguards he could go a-horseback, hunting or simply exploring, well past the frontier. He could sit up late over wine, talking with scholars, philosophers, men of affairs, visiting skippers, everybody who had something worth listening to; and Bodilis was not the sole woman among them. He could participate in sports, watch contests and shows, hear music and readings, wander into books, lie on his back in the open and look at the clouds and find images in them until he drowsed off. He could practise his handicraft.