B007IIXYQY EBOK (145 page)

“But I don’t understand…. How did it happen? I mean…you were given herbs and amulets and that ghastly wash of vinegar water…”

“I did not drink or use what the physician prepared for me. And I tossed the amulets away.”

“But…
why
?”

“Did you not see the moon on that night? All below was drenched in its holy light. No creature touched by it could have remained barren. It is unwise to thwart the fruitfulness of nature on such a night.”

“Let others be fruitful then! How can you possibly—”

“Listen to me. I will tell you my reasons. It was the day of the Festival of the Sacred Marriage. Any child conceived on that night will be a great bringer of good, be it woman or man. And this babe was conceived beneath the
aurr,
and so will have the earth-magic given me by Ramis, as well as powerful Roman magic from its father, whom I fear I will never see again on earth. Do you not see? This child will have kin-luck far greater than mine and will do for our people what I could not. Sunia, my own circle of kin has been pruned back to a stalk…it is pitiful. I must let it flower again, or how will my ancestors ever find rebirth? And…it is also because of Avenahar. That I have not seen her budding years sorely oppresses me. With this babe it will be different—this one I’ll keep by me always.”

“Great Fria,
keep by you always?
You’re a war captive locked into a cell. They do not have children in this place! And how can you fight? What of Aristos? The day is set.”

“Calm yourself, Sunia. I have thought of all of this. This time of sickness does not last—I know, from when I bore Avenahar. On the day that I fight Aristos I will be still strong and lithe in body, and not yet through half my time. Tell no one, Sunia, not even Coniaric and Thorgild. Erato would order the physicians to force abortives on me. Do not look so! It’s not the first time I have done battle with a child in me. Now swear on Fria’s name to say nothing, and to help me hide it.”

“I swear—” Sunia began, then broke into soft tears. “Oh, this is a sad madness. How could the gods ask such a thing of you? Have you not suffered enough?”

“It is all right, Sunia. Now listen to me…. To keep those hawk-eyed physicians from finding me out, I’ll need a draught for the sickness. There is a plant called clove root—do you know it?”

“I think
I saw my mother gather it once.”

“It grows in damp places and has brownish-pink flowers. The root smells of cloves. The leaf is shaped like this.” Auriane traced the form of the leaf in the grime of the floor. “When next they send you to the vegetable-market, you must steal off to the herb stalls and get it for me. Can you do it?”

“Of course. I’ll find it,” Sunia assured her, consoled somewhat by this small mission—it made her feel less buffeted about by fate. “You’ll not be found out, I’ll see to it.” Sunia looked with bewilderment toward the narrow slice of night sky. “What would Witgern have said of this strange turn of events, or Sigwulf, or your own mother? When the month of
Augustus
comes, Aristos, killer of men, born Odberht, bane of us all, will do battle with…with a pregnant Cleopatra. I think the Fates are having a joke at your expense. I do not like any of this.”

“Perhaps they are. I know Baldemar would find it rightly humorous. But he would in deadly earnest expect me to carry it through.”

AURINIA REGINA

CHAPTER LIII

T
HE MONTH NAMED IN HONOR OF
the deified Augustus came, and with it his festivals and games.

Auriane was like the hungry wolf in winter that pursues its quarry day on day, leaving bloody tracks in the snow as it seeks the creature whose death will give it life. Whether Aristos gulped down wine and meat in the First Hall or practiced in the school’s central ring, she observed him with the same neutral intensity with which she watched the flames during the Ritual of Fire. As the day drew close, his strengths and weaknesses became the boundaries of her world. Soon she could imitate the ponderous grace of Aristos’ leaps when he shifted target with such merciless accuracy that Thorgild broke into laughter when he practiced with her. Her awakening doubts about the holiness of the vengeance rite served only to increase the ferocity of her pursuit, for now she had to shout to cover the sound of whispered questions within.

But if Auriane had doubts, the three hundred Chattian prisoners housed among the city’s four training schools did not. When Auriane first spoke the challenge, excitement spread quickly among them. Though they did not know the hour was set, they sensed her new purposefulness and it maddened them with hope. Aristos’ greater strength did not discourage them—had not Auriane sprung from a bloodline that regularly produced great enchantresses and heroes who turned back armies? And had she not lived a season with Ramis, whose earth-born powers would lend her sword the speed and accuracy of a hundred serpents?

In great numbers they vowed their hair to her victory.

When they caught sight of Auriane, they made the sign of the war-god, and the chant of old would begin—
Daughter of the Ash
,
lead us out
!
Soft and uncertain at first, it would gain in momentum until the vaulted corridors of the school resounded like the interior of a great drum. It alarmed the guards, to whom it was no more than barbarous, gutteral noise.

Once as she was led to practice, she managed to exchange a few hurried, sad words with a fellow tribesman freshly captured, and got scraps of news from home. She learned a shrine of stones had been built on the spot where she had been taken captive, and the ground about it was daily sprinkled with the blood of white ewes.

And Witgern, to her astonishment, was alive. It was Witgern who had led the Chattian warriors when they attempted to cross the frozen Rhine to aid Saturninus in his ill-fated war on the Emperor. Her informant added, “The Hel-borne ice thawed that night only because the Scourge lives on—and lives like a king.”

“Soon now, that will be remedied,” she whispered before the guards prodded her on.

Erato noticed the new restlessness of the Chattian prisoners. When he was told that they refused to let the school’s barbers cut their hair, and that they muttered uncouth incantations whenever they saw Auriane, on the advice of his senior guards he decided to ignore it. These things were harmless enough in themselves, he was told, and his interference might provoke a costly uprising.

As the day of the bout with Aristos drew ever closer, for Auriane the nights worked in gentle but powerful opposition. As she lay in the darkness trying not to hear Sunia’s stuttering snores, Marcus Julianus seemed so intimately close that she felt like a loose lyre string shivering after it has been plucked. In the midnight dark the golden haze stole back, pleasure’s insistent ghost, lingering round her loins, haunting her with the memory of the heat of his breath on the back of her neck, the caress of his voice as he uttered reassurances. At such times she hardly knew the creature possessed by the need of Aristos’ death. But when dawn came, once again ancestors ruled. Each morning she had to force down the memory of him—which she could not do completely—and ignite herself anew with a passion for vengeance. By day, her resolve was like an image in a still pool—whole and perfect when she paused to examine it. But the memory of him cast in a stone, agitating the surface, disintegrating that clarity, muddling the world.

Marcus Julianus was at first given no sign to show how completely the bond between himself and the Emperor had been severed. Then, when two months had elapsed since the afternoon Domitian summoned him to the boat, his permission to use the imperial post was withdrawn without explanation. Within days of this, three men whom he had recommended for various posts were dismissed for frivolous causes. Friends and relations of clients whose court cases he supported began to regularly lose. No banquets of state were given in these days, and Julianus suspected the cause was that Domitian would not have him at the imperial table, but was not yet ready for the city to see such visible evidence of the rift. And when he sent round written advice Domitian requested concerning interpretation of the laws, if the Emperor had questions he would not put them to Julianus directly but asked them instead of his magistrates. Julianus mused once to Diocles, “It is as if I died.”

He put his favor to the test, and the evidence became less subtle—he requested a private audience and was told by an imperial secretary he must go to the Office of Petitions and wait his turn like a common citizen.

Rumors of who was in favor and who was not traveled swiftly as panic of fire; when word of this snubbing got about, Julianus found his clients deserting him in dozens, seeking the shelter of safer patrons. The favor of the Emperor was like rain on crops—nothing flourished without it. But he knew he had lost only the affections of those who used him to climb to the next post, and he found some grim amusement in the sight of them scurrying off. It would not undermine his plans or prevent Domitian’s death. For all, at last, was nearly in place.

He had enlisted more than half the Guard, enough to ensure the transition would be relatively bloodless—at least, as far as it was possible to arrange such things through human agency—and he was ready to leave the rest to the gods. The fateful day had been chosen: the second after the Ides of
Augustus.
On that day the twenty most influential Senators, all ready to proclaim Nerva emperor, would be present in the city. And the Senate would be in session against all custom, for Domitian was eager to begin autumn’s round of prosecutions.

Through all this, Julianus was shadowed by a certainty he had released Auriane to her doom. It was apparent from the reports of his agents that she stalked Aristos still, and it angered him. He sent a warning message to Erato, ordering him to keep them well apart. Though he reassured himself repeatedly the two would find no way to meet, the deep-knowing part of him knew better: She was in mortal danger.

As he prepared for his eventual flight to the north, sending valued possessions and volumes of his library to the villa and philosophical school he was establishing in the remote province, thoughts of Auriane would come at odd times to rupture his peace. He would see sunlight suffusing a garden pool and remember with striking clarity those eyes, soft and bold as a deer’s, clear as a seeress’s. Or he would hear, quite suddenly, her voice: the faint roughness of its northern accent, her overprecise way of sounding words. The bed, empty of her, looked tragic. The garden was alive with her; she rippled through it like some teasing wraith, obscure in the foliage, leaves rattling in her wake, always moving away from him while watching him still. He realized then the seeming contradiction in her: She sought an elusive comfort, a dock to put into, so restless curiosities could flower in peace, but at the same time she needed freedom as a condition of life, as rampantly growing things need it. He longed to give her both.

Soon after their night together an itinerant ivory dealer in his pay came to him with startling news—after a year of searching, he had discovered a woman who might well be Auriane’s mother. But he needed great sums of money if he were to bring the woman back.

“The woman you seek is employed as a weaver on an estate outside of Corinth,” he explained. “She is called Iona. But her last master called her Athelinda, and he got her from a dealer who buys from the legions. The name is not common, and she was certainly a captive of the Chattian war. She looks to be the woman in every other respect. But her present mistress, a woman called Fortunata, refuses to give her up, in spite of the fact that this Iona—or Athelinda—is old and useless; she’s become a companion to the lady in her dotage. But if you were to give me two hundred thousand, I might—”

“Bribe the woman to put aside her affectionate feelings? Stop, you’re running ahead of me,” he interrupted briskly, his smile amused, reserved. He was not certain how far he trusted the ivory dealer. “First you will return with Thersites,” he continued, naming an agent he trusted better and who was also this man’s enemy. The ivory dealer would not be likely to go in league with him to steal the money. “And if he agrees that this is the woman I seek, well then, you shall have whatever is needed to have her brought to Rome.”

Seven days before the commencement of the Augustan Games, Erato summoned Auriane to his chambers. He had not had private words with her since her return from Julianus’ house.

The various complaints brought against her by trainers and Palace officials had multiplied so that he could not decide which to hurl at her first. When she was brought in, face flushed from practice, gray eyes fixed on him expectantly, he looked, then looked again. Some bare but significant change had come over her, one he did not have the words to name. He was forced to settle for the effect she produced on him—before, she made him faintly restless; now her presence was like some mildly calming tonic.

“Tell me, Auriane,” he began with no word of greeting, eyes bright with irritation, “has that man gotten all he wants of you? That night of love cost me thousands,
when you figure in the bribes, the guards’ extra pay, the this, the that, the other. Do you think that the next time you get an itch you could lower yourself a little and couple with someone around here? Your opponents will straddle anything with two legs, male or female. Aristos is less trouble than you. You’ll not go there again. And you’ll not speak of it again. Is that understood?”