“And Salomon also a marked man.”
Though he heard nothing of reproach in her tone, he must plead, “How could I have stopped him? And we need him. I’ve told you before. Everybody loved Apuleius and remembers him. They’ll rally around his son as they would around nobody else.”
Pride suddenly pulsed: “Except you.”
“I won’t be here forever.” He saw her stricken, jumped to his feet, laid hands on her shoulders. “Easy there, sweetheart. I intend to last for many years yet, annoying the devil out of those who’d prefer it otherwise.” A smile trembled briefly on her mouth.
He straightened, turned, paced to and fro before her. “But I’ve got to think beyond,” he said. “Come my time, Marcus will still be too young. Not that I could ever be King, or leave the kingdom to my son. Too much of Ys clings to me.”
Her eyes widened. She brought hand to lips. Her whisper came appalled. “King—!”
Trying to explain, knowing how awkwardly he did it but unable to find any better words, he plowed on. “What I can do is take the immediate leadership. Forge the sword. Lay the foundation. The rest will be for Salomon after me.
“Do you really mean to break from Rome?” The voice shuddered. “You, my husband? He, my brother?”
Aghast, he could only halt and stammer, “Oh, darling, the pain in you!”
She steadied. “I hear it worse in you,” she told him sadly.
“I don’t necessarily mean we rebel,” he said. “Except against this rebellion, this Constantinus who deserted Britannia for his own ambition. I was wrong about Maximus, long ago when I was young. I can’t make the same mistake twice, can I? Afterward, when Armorica has the strength to bargain, then maybe—” He didn’t know what then.
She nodded. Her calm deepened. “I see. You say ‘King’ as a short word for something infinitely complex and changeable.”
“It may come to real kingship in the end,” he confessed. “I can’t foresee. Pray for a good tomorrow. God will hear you more willingly than me.”
“He hears all who speak to Him.” She looked away for a while, out at sunlight and sky. He stood silent. The spindle whirred at his back.
Verania returned herself to him. “No, I don’t imagine you could have done anything but what you are doing,” she said.
He spread his hands, closed them into fists, dropped them slack at his sides. “I thought about it. My thoughts ran around and leaped and dashed themselves against walls like a wolf in a pitfall. Should I take you, Marcus, Maria, and run? Where to? No place in the Empire. Changing our names wouldn’t help. What work could a masterless man my age find, among those guilds and laws, unless as a field hand, serf or slave? Settle in the wilderness, or with the barbarians? What sort of life would that be for you and our children?” Unconsciously, he came to military attention. “No, Verania, we’ll live and die as Romans.”
Her voice caressed him. “I understand. The chiefs, the people will rise regardless. That can only bring ruin on them—without you and Salomon. You can make things better rather than let them go on getting worse. Do what you must, with my blessing. And I think with Gods,”—her smile flowered—“my dear old watchdog.”
She reached out and took his head between her hands as he bent down to kiss her. A wave of healing went through him. And yet below it, like an undertow, passed memory of her poem. “Would you know the dog from the wolf?— ”
He stood up. “Thank you,” he said. “I will go get a little sleep.”
“And then?”
“Send out my summons. Also to Nemeta and Evirion. They can come home now.”
And also, he thought, seek out a certain smith, the best in Osismia, perhaps in all Armorica. Confluentes had drawn men like; that. He would bid him lay other work aside and make a sword befitting a king.
4
Rain came, not cruelly slashing as in last year but a mildness that swelled the crops to full ripening. It made earth a shadowless cool gray haunted by its whisper on the leaves. When the sun broke through, mists curled beneath spiderwebs turned to jewelry strung with stars. Dwellers in a land always wet, the Armoricans paid these showers scant heed while they went about their labors. Earlier they had joked that seven clear days in a row were a dangerous drought; the moss on them was dying.
One afternoon a cry from Verania brought Gratillonius out of the workshop in a rearward room where he had been releasing some of the tension in him through his hands. He found her and a gaggle of chattering servants in the atrium. The front door stood open on dim silver. The air that drifted through it mingled with city odors of smoke and horse dung the richer scents from beyond, of soil and growth. Two had entered, man and woman. Water dripped off them and puddled on the floor.
Coarsely garbed as they were, in wool stiff with grease and smelling in this weather like a sheepfold, for an instant he thought them woodfolk of the most primitive sort. The man was big, shock-headed, full-bearded; he was ferociously armed, bearing knives, sword, crossbow, and a staff with a fire-hardened point on top. The woman was wrapped in a cowled cloak, but the ankles above her deerhide shoes showed her to be fine-boned.
Then Verania sped to embrace her, and the hood fell back and unkempt locks made a flame in the chamber. “Nemeta!” Gratillonius bellowed, and plunged to take her for himself.
How thin she was. He thought he could feel the arch of every rib, and her poor dead arm dangled loose though the left clung hard and dug fingers into his back. But when he stepped away he saw skin clear, eyes cat-green, and after her trek she stood firm-footed beside Evirion.
“Welcome, welcome, welcome,” Gratillonius babbled, foolish with delight. “A long, hard walk, wasn’t it? But here you are. How well feast!”
Nemeta looked from him toward Evirion, and edged nearer the young man. He let his shaft clatter to the tiles and took hold of her searching hand. “Damp days, and pretty hungry.” Why did he sound so gruff? “Vindolenus wanted to hunt, but we made him push on. We lived on cheese and hardtack we’d packed, and berries, and whatever his hook or traps caught overnight.”
“You must be ravenous,” Verania said. “Which do you want first, a bite to eat or a bath and dry clothes?”
They ignored the question. “How fares it?” Evirion asked Gratillonius, remembered the wife, and inquired again in Latin.
“You’re barely in time,” Gratillonius told him. “Day after tomorrow, Salomon and I are off to Vorgium. Come along if you’re able. You’ll be important to us in the time ahead. Did I write to you that you still have your house and ship? Everything was confiscated, sold for the public treasury, but … Salomon was the only bidder.”
Evirion blinked, smacked his thigh, whooped a laugh.
“And you, Nemeta, must stay with us,” Verania said. “We’ve ample space.”
The red head shook. “I thank you, no.”
“She’s with me,” Evirion stated half defiantly.
Gratillonius felt less jarred than he might have expected. They’d been a year alone in the wilds, those two—the settler and his family could not have counted for much—and both were young, attractive, bound together by the same danger and thus, at last, by the same need.
“We are going to be married,” Evirion said.
Verania clapped her hands. “Oh, Nemeta, wonderful! And you, Evirion. Everybody will be overjoyed for you—” Happiness faded. “No. I’m afraid—the bishop says—”
Nemeta lifted her head to look straight at her father and stepmother. “I am a Christian now,” she told them. It rang like a challenge. “As soon as Corentinus will baptize me, he may.”
Verania broke into tears and hugged her all over again. Gratillonius barked clumsy good wishes until he turned about, seized Evirion’s hand, and choked, “Thank you. You’ve g-given me back my daughter.”
The other’s grin masked a diffidence which his voice betrayed. “‘Twasn’t easy, sir. I’m no missionary. It’s just that, well, there we were, the Black Months holding us, talking and talking and—Sh
e wanted to learn about me, my life, everything. I the same for her, of course, but hers had been so terrible.’ His words dropped low. “She was afraid. Not in any cowardly way, nobody’s braver than Nemeta, but deep inside, as dreadfully as she’d been hurt and, and the things that’d caused her to do. But the hurting started to go away and she began to understand she’d be welcome. ”
“And the Gods of Ys lost Their last worshipper,” said Gratillonius in a rush of savage glee.
“Well, I’m no holy man, sir, but it is true that baptism washes out every sin, isn’t it?” The question was not humble. Evirion stood with hand on sword haft as if to say it had better be true.
Gratillonius nodded. “The bishop tells me that pretty often. He wants me baptized. And I will be, but I don’t yet feel quite right about it. Nemeta, though—” Eyes met eyes. An undertone: “The sooner the better. You know why, I suppose. Corentinus will have to know also, if the old fox doesn’t already. Nobody else need ever.”
His daughter’s lover gripped him by the arm. They stood a minute thus.
Verania had let go, and Nemeta was saying in reply to her: “We can’t. I’m sorry, we must leave at once.”
“For where?” asked Verania, shocked.
“My old cabin in the woods, if it remains. That’s a long way. We can’t reach it till after nightfall. Could we borrow lanterns, or even a pair of horses?”
“In God’s name, why?”
“Not for witchcraft. I’ll cleanse it of that, I swear. But—” Nemeta gathered courage. Her gaze locked with her father’s. “You know,” she said.
Memory stooped on him—a day in the forest outside that dwelling—and struck. The talons broke his joy apart. Little feathers and blood drops of it rained around him. “Dahut,” he uttered.
“I dare not linger near tidewater,” Nemeta told Verania. The listening servants shrank from her and made signs against evil. “She came this far upstream for revenge on Rufinus, who got Niall killed. I helped him in that. She’ll know I’m here—already she knows—and she’ll come after me too.”
“She hasn’t shown herself to me in these parts,” Gratillonius said out of his hopelessness.
“I don’t know why,” answered the unmerciful terror. “I can only guess. You weren’t directly part of the death. Or else it is that—that—No. I don’t know why.”
Or else it is that I am her father.
“But this is horrible!” Verania nearly screamed. “That you have to go in fear of that, that unclean thing—” She saw the look on Gratillonius, went to him, laid her face to his breast and wept. He consoled her as best he might.
“I’ve wondered if the bishop could protect her,” Evirion said.
Gratillonius shook his head above his wife’s tears. “No,” he replied. “I don’t see how. Not without exorcising Dahut. He’s moved here to Confluentes, but—well, we don’t know how far she can come up on land, but he has to be out of his house most of the time, and anyway, you two couldn’t simply cower in there.” A dreary chuckle. “He can’t allow carnal relations under his roof, can he?”
“We’ve got to be on our way soon.”
“You can’t hide in the woods any more. We need you! I’ll explain why in a minute. And, and haven’t you had enough of that? I’m surprised you stood it this long.”
“I couldn’t have without Nemeta.”
An idea bobbed up, like flotsam from a sunken ship. “Wait. You can stay closer. I’ve built a house out by my horse pastures, less than three leagues from here. It’s only a shieling for the watchman and whoever else may have to spend a night there, but it’s warm and tight and we can bring some things along for you. You may as well keep guard; he’ll be glad of a chance to come to town. Later we’ll see what better we can do.”
“Water,” said Nemeta. Her eyes stood huge in the white face.
“A burn. It feeds a pool where the horses drink, then runs on to the Stegir, a league or so away. No trace of salt.” Gratillonius ordered up a laugh. “I repeat, the place is nothing much, but surely a palace compared to where you’ve been. You can make of it whatever you like.”
Verania disengaged from him. She gulped and dabbed at her eyes, but it lilted from her: “Why, that’s right, Gradlon. Of course.”
“Meanwhile,” he reminded them, “we have plenty of daylight left for celebrating in.”
His cheer was a lie. Before him wavered Dahut—strangely, not as he had last seen her, a swimmer in bloodied surf around the ruins, but the living girl who cried for his help while the sea swept her from him in sundering Ys.
5
A pair of candles and a banked hearthfire brought Nemeta and Evirion out of the night for each other, highlights on countenances, along the angles of his body and the delicate curves of hers. The air smelled of smoke and love-making. Rain chuckled at the eaves of the shieling.
He raised himself to an elbow and looked down at her. The straw in their pallet rustled beneath him. She reached up her good hand to stroke his newly smooth cheek. He caught the wine scent on her breath, wild and sweet.
She smiled at him and said drowsily, “There will be no more witchcraft.”
“What?” he asked in gentle startlement. “I thought you—”
“Oh, I forswore it when I gave myself the name of Christian. And yet … ’twould have been unwise for me to become fruitful, nay? Off in the wilderness, with naught of knowing what would befall us or when we must flee onward. I cast certain small spells at certain times between moon and moon, and they seem to have worked as I hoped. No more than that, I swear, beloved. And now not even that. We are come home. Tonight I have opened my womb for you.”
6
That year they kept the Feast of Lug in Armorica without their chiefs. They held what fairs and festivals a tribe could afford in this troubled time, they plucked flowers and herbs on grounds that were anciently holy, they met on hills and by streams and springs and sought with apprehension to divine the future. In churches the Mass was more than commonly prayerful.
Most leaders were at Vorgium, those who had been there earlier and the many who came freshly, hammering out the compact by which they would live or die. As the full moon rose, they went forth from the ruined city to swear to it.
One man, and a Christian priest he was, had garlanded a menhir beyond the walls: as his forebears had done at the Feast of Lug since first the Celts rolled their chariots into Armorica, and maybe the Old Folk before them. Nearby hulked a dolmen. They had kindled needfire between, and built it up to a tall, booming blaze. Under the moon, first with mistletoe, second with drawn blades, last with blood from themselves, by Lug and Christ and the threefold Mother, they plighted their faith.
Standing above them on the capstone of the dolmen, hands resting across the pommel of a naked Gallic sword, Gratillonius wondered what the civilized men present—and those were not few—thought of this. Were any repelled, did most hold lit a necessary concession to allies, might it catch some by their hearts? Flamelight cast iron, clan emblems, wild faces in and out of shadow. The moon limned treetops ghostly against a sky where the Dragon coiled far aloft around the Pole Star. Its light upon dew beyond the fire’s dominion made a phantom also of the open land, fields gone back to grass and brambles which lapped around broken walls he could no longer descry. When the shouts rang away into silence, he heard an owl calling. Rome of the law that he would fain uphold seemed as remote as yonder stars, Rome that he had never seen nor ever would.
The gathering waited for his word.
He lifted the sword before him, kissed the blade, brought it around and sent it hissing into the sheath. “I thank you,” he said in the cadenced tones of a centurion addressing his men; but tonight his language was the language of Armorica. “I thank you for the honor you have given me, and the patience you have shown,”—he would not say anything about endless wrangling, pettiness, anger, bloodshed barely averted a couple of times—“and above all for your loyalty to the people and the law. With everything that i
s in me, everything I am, I will strive to be worthy of your trust.”
He couldn’t help it, he was no orator, his words turned plain and hard. “You’ve chosen me to be your war lord, your duke. My charge is nothing more or less than to see that you, your wives, your children, the old and the young and those not yet born, shall be free to get on with their lives untroubled by robbers, murderers, slavers, within and without. For that we’ll have to fight. I was a soldier once. I’m taking up my trade again. You must be soldiers too. I’ll have work out of you and your followers, sweat, long dull days where nothing happens, wounds and death when we need to spend men. You will carry out orders with no back talk. I’ll be free with my punishments, and as for rewards—as for rewards—why, those will be your wives and children and the roofs above them. Is that clear?”
They shouted. Nonetheless, he knew, this night called for something that was not in him to give, he, rough old roadpounder. They wanted one who could not so much speak as sing to them, a young God, a dream become flesh.
“I am only the duke,” he said. “I’m your leader for now, but just a soldier. Not your King. Here we can’t name any such man. There’s no foreknowing what will happen, what will be wise. All we can do for years ahead is defend our hearths. But you have a right to hail my deputy—him who’ll take my place if God or the luck of battle calls me away—who after I’ve stepped down, if I live, will carry on—Salomon Vero.”
It was no surprise. Everyone had understood beforehand. Yet blades flashed and shouts crashed until birds of day flew crying from their nests. “Salaun! Salaun! Salaun!”
The son of Apuleius swung lithely onto the dolmen and trod into firelight. Gratillonius knelt, picked up what had rested at his feet, unwrapped it. Steel shimmered like rippling water. Bronze plated the guard, silver coiled in the haft, and on the pommel smoldered a ruby, for the star of Mars. He lifted the weapon on high. “Take the sword of Armorica,” he called, and laid it in Salomon’s hands.
XXIII
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