Raptor (66 page)

“Excuse my dampness, Costula,” I said, embarrassed. “The river was very wet.” He gave me a sidelong look, and I realized that I was sounding exceptionally stupid for a marshal, so I dropped the subject and asked, “What is the proper manner of saluting and addressing the princess Amalamena?”

“A dignified bow will suffice, Saio Thorn. And you may address her simply as Princess, until she gives you leave to call her Amalamena, as she probably will. She demands none of those grandiose Augusta or Maxima titles, as the Romans do. I will, however, ask one indulgence of you, Saio Thorn. Would you mind waiting for a while in an anteroom? I must announce your arrival and the princess must arise from bed and get dressed to receive you.”

“From bed? It is midafternoon.”

“Oh vái, she is no sleepy sloven. She has been ill, and under the care of a lekeis. But do not say I told you so. Amalamena is her father’s daughter and her brother’s sister. Just as she refuses to admit the least frailness, so would she disdain any show of sympathy or condescension on your part.”

I murmured vague condolences and an assurance that I would not rudely remark on the princess’s health. The steward ushered me through the big, double front door of the palace and to a couch in the entry hall, and bade another servant bring me refreshment. So I sat and sipped from a tankard of good, bitter, dark beer while I studied my surroundings.

The palace was constructed of the same red stone I had seen at the Iron Gate, and stood two stories high, at the center of well-tended prata and gravel paths and flower beds, all surrounded by the thorny hedge. And the palace was no more ostentatious inside than out, for it was not cluttered with ornamentation, as a Roman-style villa would have been. Of what furniture there was, most of it, not surprisingly, represented trophies of the hunt. The couch on which I sat was covered with úrus hide, there were bearskin rugs scattered about on the mosaic floors and there were superb horns and racks of antlers mounted on the walls. There were also works of a kind of artistry I had never seen before: immense, elegantly shaped vases and urns of a black and cinnabar-colored ceramic, decorated with figures of graceful gods and goddesses, lithe boys and girls doing athletic feats, muscular hunters and their prey. Costula later told me that those things were of Grecian artistry, and also that the manner of furnishing a room sparsely—so that every item of adornment in it can be separately appreciated—was in the Greek fashion.

Now, at the inner end of the hall, another double door opened and old Costula beckoned to me from there. I set down my tankard to go to him, and he motioned me on into the room beyond. It was a most spacious and lofty chamber, lighted by many windows unshuttered to the summer day outside. It was mosaic-floored like the hall I had just come from, and likewise arrayed with hunt trophies and the Grecian urns. But there was only one functional piece of furniture, a high, thronelike chair set against the farther wall, a considerable distance from the door, and on it sat a slight feminine figure clad in white. She was holding Theodoric’s unfolded letter, as if she were reading it, and without assistance. That somewhat surprised me: an “outlander” female, even a royal one, being able to read. But I would in time find out that the princess not only could read, and write besides, she was very
well
read.

I went toward her at a deliberate and stately pace, but it was a long march I had to make, and all the dignity I tried to assume was dispelled by the comical squish-squishing of my moist shoes, a sound horrendously amplified in this vaulted chamber. I felt less like a marshal and a herizogo than like a trudging water bug.

The Princess Amalamena must have been thinking much the same thing, because she kept her head lowered and her gaze fixed on my feet all the time I was approaching her. When at last I squish-squished to a stop a little way in front of her chair, she finally, languidly raised her head. She was smiling pleasantly enough, but the dimples about her mouth were visibly struggling; she would have preferred to laugh out loud. I know that I must have been blushing redder than Theodoric’s Aurora had ever done, so I bowed deeply to hide my own face, and did not straighten up until I heard Amalamena say:

“Welcome, Saio Thorn.” She had her expression under control, but now the smile was pensive, as she delicately sniffed the air. “Did you come hither by way of the Valley of Roses?”

“Ne, Princess,” I said—through my teeth, because I was biting back the urge to remark that, whatever was her ailment, it was not a catarrh dulling her sense of smell. “I am wearing a perfume of rose essence, Princess.”

“Ah! Say you so? How original!” Her dimples were again having difficulty maintaining the smile. “Most of my brother’s emissaries come smelling of sweat and blood.”

I did not need her to tell me that I was cutting a wretched figure as a marshal of the king. And I should very much have liked to impress this Amalamena, for she was as comely as every princess ought to be. I could discern the resemblance to her older brother, but her features were naturally more delicate, so, while Theodoric was handsome, she was beautiful. And of course she did not have his strong body; she was so slender as to seem almost wraithlike, and had not much more of a bosom than I did when I was Veleda. While Theodoric was Gothic-fair of complexion and hair, Amalamena had tresses of silver-gilt, lips of primrose and skin so ivory-translucent that I could see the pale blue of veins at her temples. She was well named—“moon of the Amals”—for she could have been an incarnation of the slim, wan, fragile new moon. Her overall pearliness made her Gothic-blue eyes as brilliant as those Gemini fires I had once seen—and right now her eyes were mischievously mocking of me, as she went on:

“Why, you are no bigger than I am, Saio Thorn, and I think not any older, and you have no more beard than I do. Perhaps I, too, could aspire to a marshalcy. Or does Theodoric nowadays, like Alexander, prefer to have only young
men
about him? If so, he has certainly changed since I saw him last.”

I was probably apoplectic-red by this time, and I said in a voice constricted by vexation, “Princess, I was awarded my title because I helped Theodoric take the city of Singidunum, not for any other—”

At that, she finally let loose her laugh, a long and lilting one. She helplessly waved a slim white hand at me, and even old Costula began to chuckle, and I could gladly have melted into the floor where I stood. When her hilarity subsided, she dabbed at her gem-bright eyes and said, with kindly amusement, “Forgive me. I was being indecorous. But you
did
look so… so… And the lekeis tells me that laughter is the best medicine for any affliction.”

I said icily, “I hope it proves so, Princess.”

“Come. You are not young enough to go on addressing me as your senior. Call me Amalamena and I shall call you Thorn. Surely you could not have believed me serious in my raillery, for you must have read my brother’s letter.”

“I have not,” I said, still stiffly. “It was your faúragagga yonder who broke the seal. Ask him.”

“No matter. You should be proud to have anyone read it—or everyone. My brother praises you unstintingly, and calls you friend, not just marshal. He has many friends, of course, but they are friends of the king. You are the friend of Theodoric.”

“I try to be a trustworthy one,” I said, not yet entirely thawed by her warmth. “And I am on a mission of some urgency, Princess. I mean Amalamena. If you would merely provide what is necessary for the expedition, as I think your brother requests in that letter, I will be on my way and—”

“And I, too,” she interrupted. “I wish to join your expedition. Theodoric himself suggests that I might do so.”

I said, “I believe, when he wrote that, your brother was unaware that you are… er…” I broke off because old Costula, behind the princess’s chair, was shaking his head so emphatically that his long beard rippled. “I mean to say… I know nothing of the way from here to Constantinople. The journey thither could be rigorous. Even hazardous.”

She favored me again with that dimple-wreathed smile, and said persuasively, “But I have Thorn to guide and protect me. According to this letter, I could not travel more securely even under the aegis of Jupiter and Minerva. Would you deny me the opportunity to find out for myself?”

Now she was asking a question, not giving me a command. And this was a royal princess, sister of my king and my friend, doubtless dear to all her people, and she was suffering some illness of which I did not yet know even the name, and I would be held responsible for anything that happened to her in my keeping. So I had ample reason for misgivings and forebodings, and I should have voiced them with vigor. But in fact, as I gazed on that fragile and beauteous girl, the only thought in my head was “Akh, could I but be a
man!”
And all I could say was “I would never deny you anything, Amalamena.”

Amalamena gave various instructions to the faúragagga regarding preparations for the expedition, and told him to send to her chambers various other servants and military aides to whom she would also give instructions. Then she said to me:

“The excitement of anticipation has already tired me somewhat. Or perhaps, Thorn, it was the salubrious laughter that you provided for me.” And she laughed again. “Anyway, I would rest now. Costula will show you to your lodgings, and will arrange for your belongings to be brought there. I shall see you again when we dine at nahtamats.”

So old Costula and I took our leave together. As soon as we were outside that throne room, I asked him, “This lekeis who is attending the princess, would it be some haliuruns, some astrologus, some other such qvaksalbons?”

“Akh, nothing of the sort. The lekeis Frithila would poison you if he heard you speak so. He is a man most learned and skillful, genuinely deserving of the Roman title of medicus. Would any qvaksalbons practitioner be employed by the royal family?”

“I should hope not. Take me to this Frithila. I must have his permission before I can let the princess—and you—get too far with the preparations for her traveling to Constantinople.”

“That is so. We will go to Frithila at once. Let me but summon a chair, Saio Thorn. It is a long way for my old legs.”

We went through a number of streets and turnings, and came to a respectable dwelling house, and went into its presence-chamber, which was full of waiting patients, all women and small children. I waited, too, while Costula continued into an inner room. After only a few minutes, a woman emerged from that room, doing up her vestments, and Costula’s head poked out the door to nod to me.

“Well?” barked the lekeis, the instant I entered. He was a man nearly as ancient as the faúragagga, but far more bright-eyed and brisk of manner. “What is the necessity of this urgent call, niu? You look healthy enough.”

“It is the health of the Princess Amalamena that I came to inquire about.”

“Then you can go away at once. My oath of Hippocrates forbids me to speak of a patient’s condition to anyone but a consulting physician.”

I said to the steward, “Have you not told the lekeis who I am?”

“He has told me,” said Frithila. “And I would not care if you were the Patriarch Bishop of—”

I slammed my hand loudly on the table behind which he stood. “I will waste no words. The princess wishes to accompany me on a mission to Constantinople.”

He looked a trifle disconcerted, but only shrugged and said, “Fortunate young man. I see no reason why she should not.”

“Look here, Lekeis Frithila. I am the king’s marshal and his friend besides. I will not risk taking his sister on a lengthy journey without your assurance that she will survive it.”

The physician now stroked his beard and pondered, regarding me narrowly the while. Then he turned to Costula and said, “Leave us.” When the steward had gone, Frithila eyed me some more, and finally asked, “Have you a grasp of Latin and Greek?” I said I did. “Very well. Then even a layman like yourself will already have noticed the princess’s very evident marasmus and cacochymia and cachexia.”

I blinked. I had never heard of such things, in any language, and would not have recognized them in any person, but it sounded as if Amalamena was much more ill than she had looked to me. I said, “All I could see, Lekeis, is that she is pale and thin and inclined to weary easily.”

He snapped, “That is precisely what I
said.
An appearance of malnutrition, of vitiated body fluids and of general ill health. When I first saw her looking so, I insisted on giving her an examination, although she protested that she felt as well as ever she had. Now, in the case of a debilitated female patient, a physician naturally thinks first of chlorosis or the fluor albus or some other such adust ion of the womb. Niu?”

“Er… naturally.”

“However, she maintained that she was suffering no aches or pains, that she was eating well, that all her functions were normal and regular. And I could detect no fever, no rapidity of the pulse, no purulent or offensive or otherwise significant discharge from the female parts.
Except”
—he held up a forefinger—“except a very slight secretion of a limpid and pellucid lymph. This, of course, led me to suspect an infarct or renitency elsewhere than the womb. Niu?”

“Of course.”

“But, on palpation and percussion of her thorax and abdomen, I could discover no such induration. Therefore, I prescribed only calorific epithems for her to apply—or have her maids apply to her—and, of medicines, a chalybeate to incrassate her blood and a deobstruent to clear any clogged intestinal passages.”

None of this told me anything whatever, but I could read his expression, so I said, “And your remedies did not restore her to health?”

“Ne,” he said grimly. “But still she felt nothing to complain of, and so did not return for further consultation, and I had other patients occupying my attention. Unfortunately, it was not for some months that I chanced to meet Amalamena on the street. I was shocked to see that her pallor and languor had not visibly improved. I insisted on making a call at her chambers. This time, when I palpated—oh vái—I
could
feel an induration in her abdomen.”