Raptor (31 page)

As the juika-bloth got even weaker, and its once bright and burnished but now untended plumage got faded and frazzled, I reproached myself again and again, and sometimes aloud:

“This stalwart bird has never done a single thing but good for me, and I have repaid that now by doing it harm. My friend is dying.”

“Stop your sniveling,” said Wyrd. “The eagle is doing none of that, and would despise you for it. Urchin, every one of us must die of
something.
And a raptor, of all creatures, knows that even raptors do not live forever.”

“But this was my fault,” I insisted. “Had I not interfered with its natural habits and way of life, it would have eaten only of cleanly things.” I added, with bitterness, “I should have known—from knowing how I would feel—never to meddle with another’s nature.”

Wyrd looked uncomprehending and said nothing to that. He probably thought that I was babbling, demented by my sorrow.

“If the juika-bloth had to die,” I went on, “it should have died while fighting for blood.
That
was its nature. Or at least it should have died in the air, in its element, where it was most at home and happy.”

“That,” said Wyrd, “it still can do. Take this”—he held out his war bow, an arrow already nocked—“and toss the eagle aloft.”

“I would,” I said wretchedly, “but, fráuja, I have practiced only seldom with that bow. I could never hit a bird on the wing.”

“Try. Do it now. While your friend still can fly.”

I leaned my head over toward my shoulder, so I could rub my cheek against the eagle’s side, and it moved to nestle closer to my face. I reached up my hand and, for the first time in days, the bird stepped of its own accord onto my finger. I looked one last time into the eyes that had been so keen and were now so bleared, and the eagle looked back at me, as fiercely and proudly as it was able. I was saying a silent farewell to my only living tie to the Ring of Balsam, and to my childhood, and I believe the bird was saying goodbye, too, in its own way.

I flicked my hand and the juika-bloth flew. It did not vault eagerly upward, in the gladsome way that had been its wont. It went anxiously thrashing its wings now, as if they could no longer instinctively feel and seize and master the air. Still, it went valiantly, and not fleeing away from me, but up and to the front of me, so that it could easily hear and obey, and come quickly back, if I should call. But I did not call, and I lost sight of it, for my eyes had filled with tears.

Blind, I drew the bow and loosed the arrow, and I heard the feather-burst sound of the impact, and then the sad, soft sound of the broken body hitting the ground. I had not aimed; I could not have done. I know full well that the juika-bloth flew to meet the arrow. And from that day of that brave example, I have promised myself: when my own time comes, I will strive to welcome it as gallantly.

After a while, when I could speak, I murmured to the bird, “Huarbodáu mith gawaírthja,” and then said to Wyrd, “The eagle deserves a hero’s burial.”

“Burial is for
tame
animals,” he growled, “such as soldiers and women and Christians. Ne, leave the corpse for the ants and beetles. Eagle meat is tough and not tasty, so no higher creature is likely to eat it and get infected. But the insects will reduce it to compost, and thereby your friend will attain to the afterlife.”

“What? How?”

“Perhaps as a flower. In time, that may nourish a butterfly, and the butterfly may nourish a lark, and the lark may nourish a future eagle.”

I scoffed, “That is hardly any way to attain to heaven.”

“That is heaven. At each dying, to give new life and beauty to this earth. Not many of us get to do that. Leave your friend here. Atgadjats!”

When Wyrd finally decreed that we had furs enough, and that in any case our most recently collected pelts were past their prime, it was very nearly summer. From the headwaters of whatever stream we were then on, we came down it and out of the woods to the lake Brigantinus, and I at last got to see the vastest body of water I had yet seen in my life. Wyrd told me how many Roman miles long and broad it was, and also that, at its deepest point, a hundred and fifty men standing on each other’s shoulders would not reach from its bottom to its surface. But I needed no numbers to grasp its immensity. The fact that I could not
see
across it, at its narrowest point, was enough to awe a native of a landlocked valley.

That lake, however, is not my favorite of lakes. Since it has no nearby mountains to shelter it, the least wind makes it turbulent and, on a really stormy day, it seethes and boils and surges most fearsomely. Even on a calm and sunny day, when its waters are dotted with a multitude of the local fishermen’s little smacks—the tomi, or “chips,” as the fishers call them—the Brigantinus is shrouded in a gray haze and seems to be sullenly brooding. Its surroundings, though, I found more cheerful; all about the lake, trim orchards and vineyards and flower gardens were in bounteous, colorful, fragrant bloom.

Constantia is not so big a city as Vesontio, and does not stand on a hill, and has no grand cathedral, and its only vista is of the melancholic Brigantinus. But otherwise it is fairly similar to Vesontio: a waterfront city and a crossroads of trade and travel. Most of its permanent denizens are descended from the Helvetii. Those were a people once wandering and warlike, but they long ago settled down, became Roman citizens, and their descendants now peaceably prosper by catering to the needs of
today’s
nomads—merchants, teamsters, traders, missionaries and even other nations’ armies marching hither and yonder to make war. It is said that the Helvetii, making of neutrality a vocation, profit more from war than any victors do.

Because Constantia stands at the confluence of so many Roman highways, the Helvetic residents are much outnumbered by the transient visitors, who hail from every province and corner of the empire. But the citizens seem to have learned to speak the language of every one of those. And every building in the city that is not a place of buying, selling, trading or warehousing of goods seems to be a hospitium or a deversorium for lodging those visitors, or a therma for bathing and refreshing them, or a taberna or caupona for feeding them, or a lupanar for their sexual diversion. Where the Helvetii themselves—when they were not occupied with business—did their own sleeping and eating and bathing and copulating, I could not make out, so I asked Wyrd if they ever
did.

“Ja, in private,” he said. “Always in private. So much of their time they spend in pandering to the public that some few things they do in private. But even in copulation they are as businesslike as in every other dealing. It is done only after dark,
in
the dark, under the covers, in one unvarying position. And besides being good Roman citizens, they are good Catholic Christians. So their coupling is done only for procreation, never recreation. Also, a decent woman is expected always to keep wearing at least one of her undergarments while doing it.”

“She is? Why?”

Wyrd snorted. “Not being Helvetic or Christian or a decent woman, I do not know why. Now come, urchin. We have earned the right to luxuriate for a while. I know a comfortable deversorium here, and I will even engage separate rooms for each of us. Then, as soon as the horses are unloaded and stabled, we will be off to the best bathhouse in Constantia. And thence to a taberna that has never disappointed me yet.”

The deversorium was well appointed and well kept. Besides providing us with a room apiece, it allowed us a separate room entirely for the safe storage of our furs. Once again I had a bed that stood on legs off the floor, and my room had both a closet and a trunk for storing my personal possessions, and another closet that enclosed a rere-dorter for my use alone. The establishment’s stable was as clean as the lodgings for humans, and each horse’s stall even contained a small goat for company to keep the horse from getting bored.

“In the woods, urchin, we were hunters,” said Wyrd, when we left the therma after a welcome and long and leisurely bath there. “Now we are merchants. The taberna to which I am taking you is much favored by us traveling merchants.”

There we also took our time, as we savored our platters of broiled Brigantinus whitefish and our horns of heady Staineins. Many other patrons came and went while we loitered, and Wyrd identified for me those merchants whose places of origin I could not divine for myself. Since I had previously known men of most of the Germanic nationalities, I could recognize a Burgund, a Frank, a Vandal, a Gepid, a Suevian, even though they dressed and spoke and even looked much alike. I could also recognize as Jews three men who sat together, and several of the shifty-eyed Syrians, who sat as far from one another as possible. But others were new to me.

“That rough-dressed man in the corner,” said Wyrd. “From hearing him order his meal, I take him to be of the Germanic tribe called the Rugii, who live on the Amber Coast around the far northern Wendic Gulf. If so, the fellow is far wealthier than he looks, for he is doubtless a merchant of the gemstone amber. At the table just behind us, the big man with all the yellow hair is one of your Gothic cousins. An Ostrogoth from Moesia, I judge, and—”

“What?” I said, surprised. “A
merchant
Goth?”

“Why not? Even a warrior people must have a livelihood in times when there is no war in progress. And peddling usually pays better than pillaging.”

“But peddling what? Their plunder from other nations?”

“Not necessarily. By the torn-off breasts of St. Agatha, urchin, do you suppose every Goth to be a ravening savage? Do you expect to see him clad in skins stained with gore and hung with plucked-out maidenheads?”

“Well… I know the Goths only by reputation. I have read the Roman historians. They all tell how the Goths love idleness, but hate peace. And Tacitus said that they scorn to earn by honest labor anything that they might acquire by shedding someone else’s blood.”

“Humph. Typical Roman slander of anyone not a Roman born. And meanwhile, no Roman will ever admit that he learned from the Goths how to bathe himself cleaner with soap than with oil alone. Or that he learned from the Goths the cultivation of hops.” Wyrd shrugged. “Minor contributions to civilization, perhaps. But contributions, nonetheless.”

I eyed that burly, yellow-haired merchant with new interest.

“As for merchandise,” Wyrd went on, “the Gothic armorers forge the so-called snake blades, the best swords and knives ever made. They do not often deign to part with many of those, but they get princely payment when they do. And the Gothic aurifices are renowned for their artistry in jewelry of filigree, of enamel fillet, of gold and silver inlay. Those things, too, are in great demand and fetch handsome prices.”

“The armorers I already knew about,” I said. “But Gothic
artists?”

Wyrd laughed. “Hard to believe, is it, when the rest of the world insists that the Goths are brutes less than human? Well, I doubt that you would find even the most refined Gothic artist to be a kittenish effeminate. But sensitive perception? Ja, the Goths are as capable of that as of belligerence and ferocity.”

Over the next several days, Wyrd went about Constantia, haggling with one buyer after another to get the best possible price for our various furs and our castoreum. I, being still only a novice at grading the quality and value of such things, and even less than a novice at trading and bartering with experienced buyers, could be of no help to Wyrd in those transactions. So, on my own, I simply wandered about Constantia, getting to know the city.

I soon discovered, from what I overheard in public places, that the citizens were in a state of some commotion. Wyrd and I had heard nothing of it in any bathhouse or taberna or in our deversorium, because it was nothing that would have concerned merely temporary lodgers like ourselves and other travelers passing through. But the Helvetic permanent residents of the city were excited—or at least as excited as the stolid Helvetii can ever get—over the matter of choosing a new priest for the city’s Basilica of St. Beatus, its old priest having but recently died (of a surfeit of beer, it was rumored). The matter of deciding on a new priest was of consuming interest to the cityfolk, and I, as always, was inquisitive. So, whenever I heard any persons discussing the subject in a language that I could comprehend, I would loiter in the vicinity and listen.

“I shall nominate Tigurinex,” said one of a group of middle-aged men, all of whom looked exceedingly prosperous and well fed, and all of whom were speaking Latin. “Caius Tigurinex has long itched to be something even more noble than a successful and tightfisted merchant.”

“A good choice,” said another man. “Tigurinex owns more business establishments and warehouses—he employs more commoners and purchases more slaves—than any other proprietor in Constantia.”

“There are rumors from the other end of the lake,” said a third man, “that Brigantium too will soon be needing a new priest. Suppose
those
people should think of Tigurinex.”

“Negligible town though that is,” said a fourth, “Tigurinex would almost certainly remove all his holdings to Brigantium—per Christo! he would remove them to the pits of Gehenna!—if he were offered a priesthood there.”

“Eheu! We must keep him here!”

“Offer the stola to Tigurinex!”

So my curiosity took me to the Basilica of St. Beatus to see the merchant Tigurinex become a priest. He was, like the men I had heard talking about him, of middle age, of amply well-fed girth, nearly bald; he would not need to shave a tonsure. He was also beardless and, I think, even powdered about the face to dull what would have been a skin as oily as a Syrian’s.

Without any stammering of his voice or modest bobbing of his head or awkward shuffling of his feet, he announced his acceptance of the priesthood in a strong voice, as if the honor had been always his due and impatiently awaited. Nevertheless, Tigurinex had not condescended this day to dress humbly in robe and cowl. He was dressed as what he was and would always be, priest or not: a peddler of the products of other people’s labor—a very successful, rich, vain and preening peddler. It should have been offensive even to his merchant friends and colleagues and sycophants to see the pure and simple white stola draped across both his shoulders, over the expensive and gaudy garments he wore.