B007IIXYQY EBOK (140 page)

Then with a speed for which he was unprepared she sprinted forward, darting around him on his other side; he reached for her but she was gone, streaking out into the darkened rooms. Cursing, he snatched a torch from a wall sconce—in the last hour the lamps had been extinguished—and took up the chase. Ahead of him she sped through the silent dark.

“Auriane! Stop this at once,” he cried out as he ran. “Have you gone mad? What possesses you?”

She fled blindly, hoping to find the vestibule, but she did not know the way and she was making bad guesses. For a moment he lost her; then he heard a heavy table crash to the floor, followed by a cascade of falling glass. He shifted course and sprinted forward once more.

“You’re headed for a fish pond! Halt at once.”

He heard a loud splash, a moment of silence, then fast footfalls as she regained solid ground and continued running.

Without realizing it Auriane was traveling in a great circle. Now there was gravel beneath her feet and she was enveloped in the humid perfume of earth and herbs.

A
garden. But which one? Fria, let it be the one nearest the vestibule.

The garden’s lamps had been snuffed as well, and the fate-weaving moon cloaked itself behind clouds; that moon was a hunter, setting traps, laying a black web over the night. She could scarcely see. Pine branches lashed at her. From the sound of his footfalls she knew he was gaining on her. She ran erratically, and terror fed terror till it grew beyond reason.
My fate is my people’s, and Baldemar’s. If he shames me more, I will poison the common blood.
Then she slowed, some instinct warning her of a barrier ahead. An instant later she crashed against a wall of open latticework. The moon shrugged off its cloak. She was trapped inside that phantom belvedere, haunt of dreams. The thing had conspired against her, together with the moon.

A moment later the fast steps behind her stopped and Marcus Julianus stood in the only door, blocking her exit, his torch filling the small garden room with its unsteady light.

The moments were marked by her labored breaths, shuddering with suppressed sobs. She was flattened against the far wall of the octagonal room, eyes bright and wild as a cornered hare. She felt she clung instinctively to the last of her dignity, as if she gripped a high ledge and felt herself slipping. But she managed to lift her head spiritedly and muster a warning look.

Julianus determined at once to come no closer. She looked as though her heart might collapse if he did. He waited until her breathing slowed, giving her time to trust he would not invade the territory that separated them, not, at least, without invitation.

“Auriane, you must listen.” His voice was a steadying hand. “I do not suppose you know what you did. I suppose you could not know—”

“There is no place for me here and you know it well.” Her wrath had a desperate quality now, like an animal thrashing in a trap. “I cannot blame you for wanting to rid yourself of a woman who is an animal. But I can hold you to account for making a laughingstock of me. You left me here since dusk. Now leave me forever. However you may try, you shall not thieve the strength and luck of my ancestors.”

“You have guessed at what has happened, and you guessed wrong. You learned today what my people’s love is worth, outside the school, and you wrongly assumed mine is worth the same. It is mystifying to me how you could think such things of me. Or how you could so easily forget that divine accord we knew before, which I’m certain was the gift of a benevolent Providence—”

“It was not done easily.” She was silent abruptly, as if an icicle had been forced into her throat.

“All right, not easily then. But it is there, and you have forgotten it. It is there right now in abundance, though you cannot feel it. Auriane—”

She stood very still, her muscles tensed, aware of him with all her senses, listening to him with her whole body. Carefully he took a step forward. She pressed closer to the wall as though to maintain the original distance between them, but in her eyes was a look of being lulled somewhat just by his voice, which worked upon her like a massage.

“You were not abandoned, nor were you mocked. And if you were tormented by anyone in this household, it was done against orders and certainly does not express my own sentiments—”

“I will not live among people who despise me,” she said hoarsely. “Why do you pretend? You must know I will never
a woman of your people.”

“It is true, Auriane. The people of this city are cruel to anyone of foreign birth and they probably never would accept you. And I never expected they would. But I don’t intend to stay here. It matters not at all to me what my countrymen think of you. The understanding between us, the tender passion—these things are beyond race and custom. And as for my absence, there are certain things you must understand at once. You’ve little idea what you’ve come into the midst of and I fear I’m not free to tell you. In this one thing I must ask you to trust me; I know of no other way. I was away on a grave matter that arose unexpectedly. I believed that you would understand since in the first hour of evening I sent a messenger—”

He saw a small jump of relief in her eye. “No messenger was sent,” she said quickly.

“
What
?”
he said softly, then half turned from her, his expression alert and faraway. He paced back and forth once, going out the door as if swiftly contemplating some action; then he stopped, as if thinking suddenly—it is no use. “If no messenger arrived, I fear a man has died tonight,” he said with such a depth of sadness that she caught her breath, feeling intimately his love for the man. Then she felt a fresh spurt of shame.

He sent a messenger.
I ran like a frightened animal…like a child that does not know when to give faith to another and when to withhold it. What woman of his own people would have behaved so?

“I am in the midst of a ring of wolves,” he continued, “and daily they move closer.” His resolute look softened as he considered her. “But now I have more reason than ever to battle my way out. Auriane, you cannot really believe I turned from you. It is a cruel deception brought on by all the torments you’ve endured. You have gravely underestimated my love.”

He set his torch into a sconce and walked over to her then, slowly, patiently as a man trying not to frighten a wild bird from its perch. She was still turned away as he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders and left them there, letting her absorb their warmth. She tensed at first, fighting against the animal comfort his hands brought, but it was irresistible, like a slow immersion into steamy water on a winter day. He felt her begin to relax in hesitant stages. But if the wall about her had begun to crumble, he could see that sentries were still out. Much of the wild sadness was still in her eyes.

She felt like a person shaken out of a disturbing dream—its ill humors flowed still in her veins; she was not yet ready to believe a gentler reality had replaced it.

“Well then, if you’d no reason to despise me before,” she whispered, “I’ve certainly given you a reason tonight. I acted the fool, summoning those guards.”

She turned round to face him, a haunted look in her eyes. “This is a strange and foul night. Marcus—I have brought about your ruin.”

“That is ridiculous.” He smiled easily, shaking his head. “You must not think that. There is no situation that cannot be turned round, with diligent effort. You couldn’t have been expected to do otherwise than you did. And the chances are, it will come to nothing.”

“This will
come to something,” Auriane said, dreading the words as she spoke them, but unable to stifle them. She remembered how she had once described her covert certainties to Erato—
it is a knowing
…
a knowing that feels certain
. “I see this as I see you. I brought about Baldemar’s end. And now yours.”

Her eyes were clearest glass through which he imagined he saw much—shadows of violence on some swift-approaching day. Only with great effort did he push away the accumulating unease she brought him.

“Stop this,” he said at last. “It is futile fatalism and I won’t listen while you torment yourself so. You take away all the powers of men and give them over to the fixed stars of fate. Sometimes things just happen or do not happen, as a man is thoughtful or careless. But benevolence can see us through. Think of it no more; I know I shall not, not, at least, before tomorrow.”

Then as if moving to a lazily plucked cithara, he pushed her damp hair aside, exposing her bare neck; languidly he kissed it. A delicate shudder ran down the length of her body, in spite of herself. To her dismay she realized that something at her core that was covetous and nurturing, overflowing and blind, sought him as the sea seeks the shore, wanting to mingle for a time with no thought of what might happen at the change of tides.

He thought her mind settled then. But to his surprise she stiffened and took a decisive step away from him, putting herself out of his reach. Her look was veiled.

“Something else is wrong,” he said, reaching out and touching her cheek with the back of his hand. “What is it?”

“Marcus, how do you think—” she began, rushing into a question she could not finish. He guessed she feared it might be improper, or worse, ridiculous.

“If you think I would ridicule you for your fears, you do not know me. What is wrong?” But her look was once more evasive, protected.

“Nothing,” she said decisively. As if to prove it, she moved toward him, threaded her arms about his neck and sought his mouth with her own with a curious mix of hesitation and confidence. But when he responded by pulling her closer, moving his hands through the open sides of the tunica and down the curve of her bare back, she vigorously wrest herself free and backed quickly away. Then she stared off into the murk of the gardens, misery in her face. He found it intriguing rather than irritating. Something had made her timid about being touched. Had he violated some tribal custom?

“I am sorry,” she said tautly. “I am making you angry and disappointing you and…I must seem foolish. Let us sever our bond now and say farewell to each other, since the ways of my people are so at odds with the ways of yours.”

He smiled, shaking his head. “But that is not what the trouble is. No farewells until this mystery is uncovered. Come over here, and sit.”

Reluctantly she sat beside him on a stone bench before a low table of polished granite supported by three bronze greyhounds; on it was a shallow terra-cotta bowl heaped with fruits unknown to her. She leaned back against the tapestry of grapevines that wove themselves through the latticework. The little room seemed utterly remote from the world, as though they had made a camp in the Hyperborean forests beyond all the settlements of humankind.

“You are disappointing me but not in the way you might think. I am not a boy. I will not sulk if you do not lie with me tonight. I am a man who wants to spend the remainder of his days with you—however few they may be. I doubt we’ve a whole year left to live, between the two of us—and for that we’ve each got only ourselves to blame. I’m disheartened that you trust me so little to understand. If a wall is reared up between us now, it might well be there until we die. You must tell me what it is. If it is something you count shameful, I know I will not judge it as harshly as you imagine.”

The words she wanted to speak churned in her mind. Finally she steeled herself, and said quickly, “Marcus, how do you think a woman ought to look, that is, if she were…most pleasingly formed?”

“What sort of question is this?” Had there not been a look of torment on her face he would have laughed in spite of his promise.

“Just answer it,” she said angrily, sitting very still, her gaze riveted on the fruit.

I cannot believe this, he thought. Here is the most courageous being I have ever encountered, the woman who galloped alone into the ranks of the Eighth Legion, fully expecting it to be her last battle on earth—and she is fearful of undressing before me. The philosopher in him observed: It is strange how inconsistently human courage manifests itself. But the human part of him felt only a welling of compassion.

“For that, you’ll have to give me more time. It’s a matter I haven’t considered seriously since I was a boy of sixteen or thereabouts—nor has any man who has any sense. Truly, I believe there
is
no one way a woman ought to look.”

“Then why—” she began, struggling with how to express all she had sensed. Then she turned to the ghostly image of Diana that seemed to hover among the rosebushes, and said solemnly, “It was a god-touched maker of images who fashioned that, and…I look not at all like she does.”

He struggled with a smile. “You’d be depressing if you did. She looks sour and smug and like she’s had one too many milk baths. Anyway, that sort of perfection can be bought, and quickly becomes dull. A noble heart cannot be bought.”

“You will think me too muscular and too scarred.”

“Who—or what—has caused you think so? It did not seem such thoughts troubled you when last we looked on one another.”

“Now you think me ridiculous.”

“No, I think it sad, not ridiculous. I cannot believe you tormented yourself with this.” He then took up one of her hands and pretended to critically examine it. “Take, for example, this hand,” he said, mimicking a philosopher presenting an argument. “To me, it is perfection. Why? Because it is such a well-formed hand? Well, in fact it is so, but that alone isn’t enough. It is because it is yours. And so it will go with the rest of you, I promise it.”