Raptor (53 page)

However, truth to tell, I was beginning to weary of a life that was an almost continuous round of social gatherings and entertainments, of seeing the same people everywhere I went, of having almost nothing to occupy my days except what those people themselves called “weaving Penelope’s web,” meaning endlessly purposeless pursuits.

I decided that I had by now learned everything that those people had to teach me about the manners and proprieties and preoccupations of the upper classes. Both their conduct and their conversation now seemed to me mostly artificial, affected and trivial.

I wanted to seek some new acquaintances among people less refined, but people perhaps more real. Of the male friends I had so far had in my life, the very best, the old woodsman Wyrd, had begun life as a lowly colonial soldier. And Gudinand, my best male friend nearer my own age, had come from the absolute dregs of society. I hoped that, if I descended again to those levels, I might encounter other persons of equally admirable character and companionability. Akh, I did not intend to disengage myself entirely from the higher ranks of Vindobona; I was not at all weary of the private company of the many
female
friends I had made there. Also, I could not simply saunter down to the low quarter of the city and ingratiate myself among the commoners. The plebecula might admire, envy or detest their betters, but they certainly recognized every one of them, including the illustrissimus Thornareikhs. What I required was a new identity that I could assume and discard whenever I chose. That necessitated no elaborate disguise. I had only to change from male to female: a different name, a few touches of cosmetics, the donning of feminine clothes and feminine graces. That was easier for me to do convincingly than it probably would have been for any other.

I would also need a separate domicile for this alternate self of mine. I remembered that when Thiuda had inquired about cheap lodging, Amalric had directed him to the house of some widow. So I asked Amalric how to find the place.

“The hovel of the widuwo Dengla?” he said, making a face of repugnance. “Vái, Your Worship, why would you wish to go there?”

“Only to collect some secret messages,” I lied, “and to dispatch my replies to them. I arranged with Thiuda, my servant and agent, that the widow’s house would be our address of convenience for relaying such things.”

“Gudisks Himins,” muttered Amalric. “Then I fear your communications are no longer secret. The woman will certainly have opened and read every one, and either noised its contents abroad or somehow used them to her own advantage.”

I laughed. “You have a low opinion of this Dengla.”

“Not I alone, Your Worship. Everyone in Vindobona, high and low. Besides stealing anything she can get away with, the widuwo also by stealth ferrets out the delicta and peccata of eminent persons, and bleeds them of much gold under threat of disclosing those embarrassing secrets. Some say she learns such things through the basest arts of haliuruns sorcery. However she does it, she knows so many privities of our magistrates and legislators that they dare not banish her from the city, as they ought to do. Anyway, I hope I have convinced you to stay well away from her.”

I laughed again. “Ni allis. You have kindled my curiosity. I seek always to learn new things. And just to glimpse a creature of such venal enterprise might prove instructive.”

My stay with the widuwo Dengla did indeed prove instructive, but I would be loath to instruct anyone else in the things I learned during that time.

When I presented myself at her door one forenoon, I wore my oldest and shabbiest feminine garb, and carried only a few belongings tied in a cloth, to assure that my appearance was in keeping with my new identity as a lowly plebeia. The warped and splintery door was opened by a short, scrawny woman of about Amalric’s age. She was a bit better dressed than I was, though by no means in patrician garb. She was dish-faced and her complexion would have been sallow except that it was so heavily laminated with fucus and Chian earth and mastic; her hair would probably have been starting to gray, except that it was artificially reddened with anchusa.

“Caia Dengla,” I said respectfully. “I am newcome to Vindobona, and I seek domicile for some weeks. I am told that you sometimes accommodate boarders.”

She looked me up and down, much more searchingly than I had inspected her. Then, even before asking my name, she demanded, “Can you pay, girl?”

I held out my hand, several silver siliquae in my palm. Though her little eyes glittered greedily, she sniffed with disdain.

“A week’s worth of board and lodging only.”

I did not remark that her rates were outrageous, but said humbly, “I expect to earn more.”

“By harlotry?” she snapped. However, she evidently had no moral objections to that trade, for she added, “If you intend to entertain your stupratores here, it will cost you more.”

“I am not an ipsitilla, Caia Dengla,” I said, but without manifesting either resentment or amusement, still speaking meekly. “Like yourself, I was widowed young, and these few siliquae are all that my husband left me. But I have some competence in the craft of fur-stretching. I hope to obtain employment in some local establishment.”

“Come inside. What is your name, girl?”

“I am called Veleda,” I said. The Old Language name that I now assumed—it means “unveiler of secrets”—had been that of an ancient Germanic poet-priestess. I was determined never again to appropriate the name of the Juhiza who had been Wyrd’s beloved, and the other Juhiza who had been Gudinand’s.

Dengla’s house was nothing like Amalric’s opulent deversorium, but it was considerably more luxurious inside than it appeared from outside. Of course, I could not expect to share the well-appointed family rooms, and the upstairs chamber to which she showed me was pinched and skimpily furnished with the cheapest of wares, but it was adequate for my requirements.

Without the least embarrassment, she said, “If you made inquiry of me before coming here, you will have been told that I steal. Pay it no mind. You need not be concerned for your own possessions. I steal only from men. But then, speaking frankly, as between sister females, do not we all?”

I murmured, “I have never yet had any opportunity.”

“I shall teach you,” she said matter-of-factly, “if you stay long enough. I have no other boarders at present on whom we could practice. But I shall teach you that—and other things to your advantage and profit and even pleasure. You will not regret having taken lodging here, Caia Veleda. Give me those siliquae, then. But remember, I will not refund so much as a nummus if you change your mind before the week is up.”

“Why should I change my mind?”

She made a wry grimace that almost cracked the lamination of her face. “Once upon a time, and just once in my life, I made one mistake, and I was doubly punished for it. I regret to say that I have twin sons, of which I have not yet been able to rid myself. They live here.”

I said, “I have no complaint about there being children in the house.”

“Well, I do,” she said through her teeth. “If only I had dropped daughters, they would be now of an age to be… to be of some use and enjoyment. But
boys!
What are boys but small men? Beasts!”

She told me that a prandium would soon be served, and departed. I unpacked my few belongings and distributed them tidily about my room, then went downstairs for my first meal at Dengla’s board. I was not overly surprised to find that, for all her professed poverty, the widow employed a servant to do the cooking and waiting on table. That was a swarthy woman named Melbai, about the same age as her mistress, and equally plain of face, but she used no plasters and powders to prettify herself. Well, a servant would not, of course.

On being introduced to the woman, I said, just to be genial, “Melbai? That is an Etruscan name, is it not?”

She gave me a curt nod, then fairly barked at me, “And the word ‘Etruscan’ is Latin, and we do not like to be called that. We of that race—far older than the Roman—call ourselves the Rasenar. I am a Rasna. Try to remember that, young Veleda!”

I was rather taken aback to have a servant speak so to a paying guest. But then she sat down with us to the prandium, and I later heard her bark orders at the two boys, too, and I frequently afterward heard her speaking as an equal to her presumed mistress. So I began to perceive that Melbai was not exactly a servant in the house, and Dengla not at all her mistress, but it would also be some while before I realized their actual relation to one another.

The two boys might have been the real servants in the house, or even slaves. Robein and Filippus were not quite twelve years old and, as might have been expected, were not at all handsome children, nor were they very bright. They were, however, well behaved at table that day and at subsequent mealtimes and on the few other occasions that I was in their company. In fact, they were cowed almost to muteness and invisibility, because either their mother or Melbai was forever commanding them to do some chore or loudly ordering them to take themselves out of her sight.

On my second day at Dengla’s, I went out early in the morning, on the pretext of looking for employment with a furrier. I probably could have got it, if I really had wanted it, but I wanted only to look at the city through my new eyes, so to speak. And it was surprising how many things I saw as Veleda that I had not when I had walked the same streets as Thornareikhs. Now being of the people, not looking down on them from an illustrissimus height, I could observe their activities without their having to stop whatever they were doing to salute me, or step clear of my path, or self-consciously try to lessen the noise of their work, or desist from their quarrels, or put out a hand to beg alms of me. They merely went on with their day’s doings and paid me no heed.

I watched a potter throw an elegant urn and then, when he got up from his kick wheel to carry it to his kiln, I saw how he walked atilt, because every potter’s pedaling leg is so much stouter and more muscular than the other. I watched a housewife wash a tubful of clothes, then wrap a piece at a time around a wooden roller and roll that up and down a flat board to wring it clean. I watched a stonecutter polishing a new-cut block of marble with a pumice stone, and he frequently had to pause while he coughed and hawked and spat phlegm, it being well known that stonecutters, like quarriers and miners, usually die young of the lung impairment that the Greeks call phthisis, or “the wasting away.”

Another thing that I noticed now, as Veleda, was one particular sound of Vindobona. Of course, neither Thornareikhs nor the highest patricius could ever disregard the sheer
noise
of such a busy and populous city. There was the cacophony of hoofs and wheels, the neighing and braying and bawling of draft animals, the barking of dogs, squealing of pigs, cackling of chickens. Also there was the hammering of carpenters, the clanging of metalworkers, the jingle of money-changers’ coins, the rumble of wine casks being rolled, the tweedling or twanging of street musicians, the bellows of hucksters and itinerant barbers, the yells of drunken soldiers and the intermittent screechings of contentions between women or roarings of fistfights between men. But now I heard the singing. That washerwoman sang over her tub, the potter hummed along with his wheel. From the Catholic church came the sound of children singing their cathechism questions and answers, the better to memorize them. It seemed that everybody sang while he worked.

When I returned to the house that evening, I told Dengla that I
had
found employment as a fur-stretcher and that I was to be paid by the piece and therefore, since I was so adept at that craft, I would be earning rather more than the usual starvation wage. So, I said, I would be able to afford to stay on in her lodgings for some while to come. Dengla congratulated me—and sincerely, I am sure, because my news must have been gratifying to her avaricious nature. She even gave me a knowing smirk of approval when, after cena, I said I was going out again “to seek diversion” after my hard day’s work.

Going out alone at night was something I could not have done if I had been a woman of the upper classes. As one of the plebecula, I enjoyed considerably more liberty to wander where and when I chose to go. Of course, I could not sit down in a taberna and drink and make the acquaintance of good fellows like Wyrd and
his
drinking companions. Also, sometimes at night—when I was strolling along the torchlit streets, or eating at a street stall, or watching a band of mummers at their comic capers—I might be accosted by a drunken man or solicited by a sober one. But a good-humored bit of banter was usually enough to discourage any molester and, if it did not, I was capable of leaving him lying flat on the ground with a broken nose or missing teeth and a new respect for womanhood. However, the lower-class folk in general were a good deal less criminal and a good deal more mannerly than their betters gave them credit for being. Both by day and by night, I encountered decent men and women who became my friends, though I never met anyone to whom I was attracted as I had been to Gudinand. So, whenever I felt the urge for carnal relations, I would resume my identity as Thornareikhs and go calling on one of my nobler lady friends.

When I completed my first week’s “employment,” I paid Dengla her exorbitant price for my next week’s lodging. As it happened, I had not slept in her house the previous night, having spent it with a very young clarissima whose parents were away from home. So, as she accepted my money, Dengla favored me with a gangrene smile and the sly remark that she saw nothing wrong with my “augmenting” my income as I pleased.

“The virtuous and censorious folk like to believe that an ipsitilla sells her body, but I do not agree. An ipsitilla or even the cheapest noctiluca does not give herself for pay, any more than a lady does. She is
rewarded
with money after having given herself of her own free will, exactly as is the case with the most respectably married wife. If ever you are inclined to feel ashamed of yourself, young Veleda, look at it that way. I do, because I once similarly disported myself. I mean
precisely
once, with a hairy Suevian named Denglys, and that once was enough to disgust me with men forever. Of course, I did take everything in his purse when I stole away, and later decided to take even his name, it being rather more distinguished than”—she tittered coyly—“than other names I have worn. However, as you know, my only tangible reward for having so disported myself was those.”