Raptor (151 page)

“And if I had embraced the venefica?”

“The same. The swiftest, surest, kindest poison known. It is extracted from the spines of the sea hedgehog. I would not have made you suffer. I was bent on revenge, yes, for those you slew. But needless torment… I would not do that.”

I sighed. “It has been so many years since I slew
anybody.
Why did you wait so long?”

“I was not waiting. I was very busy, very dedicated during all the years. It was easy enough for me to find out who had done the actual killing, but I was not interested in the mere instruments. I wanted the one who had given the orders. It took a long time to find that out. Then, when I learned it was you, I had to set about devising a plan. And for that, I had to have you accessible.”

I laughed a small laugh. “I encountered that problem too, the time I set a similar trap for an enemy.”

“For years, you kept journeying hither and yon, and I had always to keep track of you. At last, when you did seem to settle down somewhat, here in Rome, I determined that Rome would be the place for my trap. So… more time had to pass. I wanted a bait that was certain to draw you, that you absolutely could not refuse.” She smiled ruefully. “I failed to reckon with your vast experience. By the way, what kind of female bait did you use in
your
man trap?”

“Only myself. I had none other to use.”

She looked a trifle puzzled at that, but went on. “So, fourteen years ago, I made arrangements to buy a baby girl of the rarest possible sort. Sending emissaries halfway across the world—you can imagine what a long and complicated and frustrating process that was. And then, rearing her on the poison, inuring her to it, saturating her with it. The spines of that sea fish exude their venom in only minute amounts, so I was practically having to manage a fishing fleet at the same time I was doing everything else.” She shrugged. “All for nothing.”

I said, “You exempted the actual killers from your revenge. But you must have known that I gave the orders only in the service of Theodoric. Why did you not exempt me too, and go after him?”

“I would have done, if I had thought I could lure him out from behind all his defenses.” She added thoughtfully, “That would yet have been possible if I had succeeded with you. It might still be.”

I turned to the optio of my swordsmen. “You heard. A threat against the king.”

“I heard, Saio Thorn.” He took a step forward. “Do we slay her?”

I motioned for him to hold his arm, and at the same moment the woman said, “I would prefer that, Thorn, to the Tullianum.”

I deferred comment on that, asking, “And the name? Melania?”

“A small disguise. I took the name of the woman your soldiers slew in mistake for me. She was my husband’s sister.”

I nodded, recalling the circumstances as. they had been reported to me. Then I asked, “And the name I knew you by—did you ever go back to the river of ice, to see if our two names had moved downhill from where I carved them?”

“No. I waited a long time, hoping you would return someday. When finally I married Alypius, I moved south with him, and I never since then went back to visit Haustaths. Alypius and I built up a very respectable business in Tridentum.”

“So I heard. And I remember your saying once that you intended to make your own way in the world.”

“I did. I worked hard. I was not just a Caia Alypia, a barnacle riding the hull of my husband’s prosperous galley. I worked as much and as productively as he did. Indeed, it was because I was off in a distant mountain orchard, negotiating to purchase the olive crop, that I was not at home on the day your soldiers came. I returned to find Alypius and Melania dead, and the neighbors told me also that my father was a captive, probably taken to die as well. That was bad enough, but then they showed me my brother in the salt sack. Shriveled and desiccated and gray, like a flitch of bacon. There never was a worse day in my life, except…” She faltered.

I said, “Alypius sacrificed his sister to save you that day. You and he had no children?”

With a flash of her old childhood spirit, Livia demanded, “Would they have died too?” I said nothing, so she went on. “No, there were no children. Had there been, I might have wavered in my determination on revenge. But when I heard that my father and my other brother also were dead, that strengthened my resolve. I know, Thorn, that you always considered them worthless. Perhaps I did too, but they were all I had. Now I should like to join them. Can we get this over with?”

“You said the day you returned to Tridentum was the worst of your life, except… What was worse, Livia?”

She hesitated, then whispered, “The day I learned who was the slayer I was hunting. That it was you.” She stood up and faced me, unafraid. “May I die now?”

“I think not. You were kind enough to wish me an easy death. In return, I can at least emulate Alypius, and preserve your life. But you will appreciate that I cannot grant liberty to such a dedicated and determined opponent. I might tolerate your being a hazard to myself, but to the king, no.”

I turned again to the optio. “Collect everyone in the house, tenants and servants alike, all but the girl of the Seres. Leave her here. Take all the rest to the Praefectus Liberius. Have him apportion them out to the regular licensed lupanares. He ought to enjoy that chore. This house is closed. Put a guard on it, day and night, from this time forward.”

The optio saluted, and he and the others disappeared.

To Livia I said, “You will be under house arrest for the remainder of your life. The Seres girl will be your only servant. The guards will fetch and carry for you—supplies, messages, whatever. But you will never again go out of doors, and no one else will ever be allowed in.”

“Thorn, I told you I would prefer death to prison.”

“This is hardly the Tullianum. I assume you have never seen the inside of that. I have.”

“Please, Thorn. Just give me back the little paring knife, for only a moment. For the sake of what we once—”

“Livia, we are far, very far, from what we once were. Look at us. We are old now. Even I, for all my wandering ways, even I probably would not find house arrest impossible to endure, what time I have left.”

She slumped a little. “I suppose you are right.”

“And if you ever do find it unendurable, Livia—either imprisonment or old age—well, you do not need the knife. You have only to kiss your servant girl.”

She laughed without humor. “I do not kiss women.”

I thought about that for a moment, then said, “You never even once kissed
me.”

And I took her in my arms and put my lips on hers. For a long minute, she only accepted the kiss, then she sweetly returned it. But in a moment more, I felt her shudder slightly and she drew back from me. Her eyes were searching my face, but her own face showed nothing like anger or offense or dislike. It wore an expression of perplexity that changed slowly to a sort of wonderment, and I went away and left her standing like that.

Time was when I regarded with amusement the Roman pagans’ superabundance of gods and goddesses. In the Old Religion of us Germanic peoples there is only one goddess of flowers, Nerthus, and she is credited with responsibility, as well, for almost everything else that flourishes on Mother Earth. By contrast, the pagan Romans believe in not just a single flower deity, but four or five. According to them, a goddess named Proserpina is in charge of a plant when it first sprouts, then Velutia takes charge as its foliage unfolds, then Nodinus when the plant is in bud, and finally Flora when the plant is in full bloom. If it is a food-bearing plant, then still another, Ceres, is responsible for its fruiting. I used to be amused by that: so many goddesses caring for every green growing thing. But I have come to think, now, that there is yet one lacking. There is no goddess in attendance during the time of fading blossom and yellowing leaf and the dying fall of what was once beautiful and pleasing and enriching to the world.

Theodoric, all through his autumn years, had remained as vigorous and alert as ever I had known him, but I saw the winter of his life begin when Queen Audefleda sickened and died. That bereavement clearly affected him much more deeply than had the loss of his Aurora—probably because he and Audefleda had shared the experience of growing old together. I have observed that that often makes more of a bond between a man and a woman than even love does, though love there certainly had been between those two. Anyway, in the five years since the queen’s death, I have watched Theodoric age much more rapidly. His hair and beard, once radiant gold, later gleaming silver, now can only be called ash-white. Though he is still erect of posture and carriage, he is thin and his hands sometimes tremble and he is too restless ever to sit still for long. His blue eyes, that once could change so easily from merry to fierce and back again, have not been leached of their color, as are those of many old men, but now his eyes are a blue without light or depth, like blue slate. His voice is still firm and resonant, not at all thin or quavery, but he can sometimes be as rambling of speech as Cassiodorus is of pen.

On that occasion when Symmachus made worried remark about the king’s having twice sent him the identical message, the senator was only voicing what all of us of Theodoric’s court had begun to notice—and tried hard not to. It first came to my notice one day when I was at the Ravenna palace, conversing with the king, and Princess Amalaswintha unexpectedly came calling, bringing along her son, Prince Athalaric. I forget what Theodoric and I were discussing, but he kept right on talking to me, flicking at his daughter and grandson only a blue-slate glance as blank and uninterested as if they had been servants coming in to dust the room. Only when the escorting steward announced them, enunciating their names very loudly and carefully, did Theodoric blink, shake his head and finally give them a rather bleak smile of acknowledgment.

Tactfully, I made my excuses and departed, so I do not know what had brought Amalaswintha visiting that day. But it was common gossip among the palace servants that she never did communicate with her father except to make some greedy demand or petulant complaint—just as she never called on “Uncle Thorn” except to try to get from me a costly slave at a “niecely” price. Not wifehood, motherhood or widowhood had changed the princess from the Xantippe she had always been.

And she had made little Athalaric no more likable than she was. The spoiled princess had grown up to be a spoiler, and turned the poor prince into as odious a brat as a five-year-old child could be. He was seldom out from behind his mother’s skirts, and even in that soft sanctuary he did nothing but whine and whimper. So, on the occasion of Theodoric’s seeming not to recognize his own offspring, I assumed that he had been deliberately feigning forgetfulness, and that the paternal smile he finally gave them was only forced by my having been present.

But evidently that had been no pretense. Not long afterward there came a night when I was among the many guests at a feast the king gave for some visiting Frankish nobles. During the meal, Theodoric regaled the company with stories from our wartimes past, including the time our army broke open the supposedly impregnable treasury building at Siscia.

“With nothing more than oats, would you believe it?” he said gleefully. “Oat-filled tin wedges that we dubbed our trumpets of Jaíriko. That was the ingenious idea of the young marshal here…” He indicated me, then stammered, “The young marshal… er…”

“Thorn,” I murmured, in some embarrassment.

“Ja, young Saio Thorn here,” and he went on with the story—while the guests eyed me, obviously wondering why he called me
young
—and he told how those tin trumpets had worked, and how successfully.

The company laughed and buzzed in appreciation when the tale was done, but one of the Franks said, “Curious. I have visited Siscia since those days. The treasury building seems unimpaired. And not one of the citizens made mention of any such occurrence. I should think an event so memorable—”

“The Siscians probably prefer
not
to remember,” Boethius interrupted, laughing, and deftly turned the talk to something else.

No one of Theodoric’s court would have dreamt of correcting him in public, of course. But I felt I was a close enough friend to tell him later, in private:

“It was at
Singidunum
that we employed the trumpets of Jaíriko. At Siscia, we undermined the treasury and threatened to topple it, and that was how we got in.”

Theodoric looked momentarily flustered. “Was it?” Then he looked indignant. “What of it? Have you some complaint? I gave you credit for the ingenuity, did I not?” Then he clapped me on the shoulder and chuckled dismissively. “Well, well. A good story need not be overburdened with accuracy. It is still a good story, eh, Soas?”

“The marshal Soas died a decade ago,” I said, downcast. “Theodoric and I have been friends for nearly fifty years, but nowadays he is frequently forgetting or miscalling my name.”

“Which one of your names?” Livia asked, a little mockingly.

“Thorn, of course. He has never known me as Veleda. Not many ever have, besides you.”

“Why not tell him?” She grinned as impishly as she used to do when she was a child. “Forgetful he may be. But if Theodoric knew both your names, he might be better able to remember you by one of them.”

I grinned too, but ruefully. “No, that secret I have kept from him through all these years. It will go to the grave with whichever of us goes there first. Anyway, I have not even
been
Veleda for a long time now. Except with you.”

That was true. My having closed the house in the Transtiber, I supposed, was one of the reasons—having no place now in which to be my female self—that I began visiting the house of Livia from time to time. She never refused me admittance, and even seemed glad to see me, and I do not think that was just because I was almost the
only
person she ever saw.

Except for my own visits, I allowed no relaxation of the terms of Livia’s imprisonment. She was never let to leave the house and no one else from the outside world was ever let in. Her only human contact was with myself and her guards and her sole remaining servant. She and that slave had no language in common, except for basic commands and responses, and the Seres girl seemed indisposed to affability, anyway. She served Livia efficiently enough, but went about her duties in glum silence, and I gathered that she had been made permanently morose when I denied her the one function she had been bred for.