Raptor (88 page)

“If one outlander could attain to such eminence, so could another.”

With a mischievous glint in his eye, Theodoric asked, “Are you proposing that I appropriate Strabo’s plan? That I evict Odoacer and usurp his rule of the Western Empire?”

“You are at least entitled to unite all the Ostrogoths under your rule,” I said. “Strabo’s Constantiana is in an uproar, all of Scythia is in disarray. Now that Strabo is dead, and all those lands and peoples are leaderless, and you have Zeno’s appointment as magister militum praesentalis, you could become truly king of
all
the Ostrogoths, without even wielding your blade.”

“Except for one small detail,” said the marshal Soas. “Strabo is not dead.”

I wondered if I had drunk too much of the mead; I could not believe I had heard those words. Theodoric cast a sympathetic look at whatever stunned expression I must have had on my face, and explained:

“During your long ramble hither, Thorn, messengers from Constantiana have been galloping more directly and rapidly to Constantinople, to Ravenna and Singidunum and every other major city, including this one. They report Strabo injured but still alive.”

“That is impossible!” I gasped. “Odwulf and I left the man with only four stumps of limbs, and every stump was spouting blood. Even his
lips
were bloodlessly blue.”

“Akh, I do not doubt you, Thorn. The messengers said that he is bedridden, and has been seen by no one except his two or three most skillful and most trusted lekjos. Well, he would be, if he is now the swine-man you described to us. But evidently his remains were discovered before he lost every last drop of his life’s blood. Or perhaps there was divine intervention. That is what is being told.”

“Eh?”

“The word is that Strabo has rededicated himself to the Lord God, and swears he will henceforth be a better Arian Christian than ever before.”

“He should not find that difficult. But why?”

“To show his gratitude for his miraculous escape from death, and for his continuing recovery. He credits it all to a drink of the breast milk of the Virgin Mary.”

I was destined to see Strabo just one more time in my life, and then only from a distance, and that was some years later, so I will tell of that in its place.

In the meantime, the formerly rampageous old tyrant seemed to be living up to his near-deathbed vow of Christian piety and meek Christian behavior. It was a matter of wonder and conjecture among all people—how he never again bestrode a horse or flaunted a weapon or deflowered a maiden or personally led his men to war or pillage. He was henceforth so reclusive that he might have been a cave-dwelling anachoreta doing nothing but solitary devotions. His only attendant, it was said, was his new wife, Camilla, mother of his new son, Baíran. And she would not—because she could not, being deaf and mute—reveal anything of Strabo’s private life. The few of his chief officers who were admitted to his presence, to be given orders or instructions or advice or chastisement, came away from those meetings as silent as his queen.

Naturally I believed the stories of Strabo’s hermitry, because I knew the reasons for that. And I was much amused to hear that the lowly and unattractive servant woman had somehow married so far above her station. No doubt she had done it by letting Strabo know that his one drunken ravishment of her had impregnated her—and I was aware of the old man’s eagerness to sire more progeny. Of course, he need not have
married
her, any more than Theodoric had had to marry Aurora. But I assumed that, given Strabo’s inability now to pursue or abduct anything better than the frumpish Camilla, he had settled for what queen he could get.

However, regarding Strabo’s rumored renunciation of all villainy and ambitions of conquest, I credited that not to any surge in him of Christian regeneration, but to force of circumstance. His apparent piety was merely his attempt to make a virtue of necessity. Once the news had been heard by everyone of every degree that Theodoric Amaling was now the true and sole King of the Ostrogoths, the greater part of Strabo’s armies gratefully pledged their auths to King Theodoric. So did almost all of the cityfolk and countryfolk—not just Ostrogoths but many other peoples, even Slovenes—from Singidunum in the west to Constantiana in the east to Pautalia in the south.

Strabo was left with only the remnant of an army, mostly those men related by blood to his branch of the Amal line, and for his subject population he had not many more people than those soldiers’ families. He and they became nomads, drifting from one to another of the “stronghold” cities of which he had boasted to me, but finding the cities strongholds no longer, and themselves no longer very welcome in those places. From time to time during the ensuing years. Strabo would summon up enough pushfulness to start a petty war or make a random raid for plunder. But those escapades were seldom more than minor nuisances to either Zeno or Theodoric, and either the emperor’s legions or the king’s would repel the marauders, usually with ease.

(I will mention that the one thing Strabo might have done that could have hurt or annoyed or embarrassed me personally, he never did do, or at least I never heard of his having done it. He never spoke a word to anyone about that occasion on which the presumed Princess Amalamena had exposed her private parts in front of him—her
very
private parts—and announced herself to be really Thorn the Mannamavi. I can only suppose that he had dismissed that incident from his own mind as having been an incredible hallucination engendered by his agony.)

Strabo’s son Rekitakh never rejoined his father, but went on residing in Constantinople. If he had earlier been of little value to Zeno as a hostage, he was now of no value whatever, so he no longer dwelt in the Purple Palace. But evidently his father had long before provided him with an ample purse, perhaps more ample than Strabo himself now possessed. According to report, Rekitakh was able to afford fair lodgings in that fair city, and to enjoy the otiose, pleasurable life of an illustrissimus.

On my return to Novae and my reunion with Theodoric, I had expected to rest and refresh myself until my king should conceive some other mission on which to send his marshal Thorn. But Theodoric was naturally much occupied with many responsibilities of his own. A king’s first duty is to take care of the needs and wants of his subjects. And now, as
truly
King of All the Ostrogoths, Theodoric had a superabundance of administrative details requiring his attention. And, in having assumed command of the Danuvius frontier, he had to see to a multitude of military matters. Also, when in due course Aurora gave birth to their child, Theodoric proved to be an admirably uxorious and paternal man. If ever he brushed aside any pressing duties at all, it was so he could spend time with his consort and their infant daughter, Arevagni.

I do not mean to say that I was slighted or forgotten; quite the contrary. I was given all the due of an esteemed herizogo, and then was left to enjoy my good fortune in undisturbed tranquillity. Theodoric conferred upon me the estate of another herizogo who had recently died without widow or progeny or other heirs: a thriving farm on the Danuvius riverside, managed by tenant freemen and worked by slaves. With tilled fields, orchards, vineyards and pasture grounds, the property was almost as extensive as the Balsan Hrinkhen lands of St. Damian’s Abbey. The main building, my residence, was no palace, only a rustic farmhouse, but it was solidly built, comfortably furnished and capacious enough to contain separate quarters for my indoor servants. There were outdwellings for my freemen and the slave laborers and their families. There was a smithy and a mill and a brewery and an apiary and a dairy house, all in working order and all being worked most productively. There were barns and stables and sties and cotes and cellars, full of every kind of bounty of the land: cattle, swine, horses, poultry, grain, grapes, cheeses, fruits and vegetables. If I had been disposed to live out the rest of my life as a nobleman farmer, I could have lived busily and gainfully and fatly indeed.

However, my tenant managers were clearly competent at everything that made the farm prosperous, so I was content to let them go on being so, without my playing the officious overseer. Instead, and somewhat to my men’s surprise and admiration, I occasionally lent a hand, as humbly and industriously as any of the slaves, to those menial chores I had done in my youth—bellows-pumping, poultry-plucking, coop-cleaning and the like.

In only one field of husbandry did I exert authority and control. When I first took over the estate, the only equine stock in the stables and pastures consisted of nondescript horses not much superior to the Zhmuds ridden by the Huns. So I purchased two Kehailan mares—for a price that would well-nigh have bought me another whole farm—and bred my Velox to them, and later to their fillies. Within a few years, I owned a respectable herd of more than just respectable animals, from which I profited handsomely. When one of my mares threw a black colt almost identical to its sire—even to the “prophet’s thumbprint” on his lower neck—I told my stable steward:

“This one we will not sell. He is to be mine, the successor to his noble father, never to be straddled by anyone but myself. And since I believe such a superb bloodline as this is entitled to the same honorific designations as any succession of kings or bishops, I shall name this one Velox the Second.”

From his first saddling, Velox II was accustomed to wear my foot-rope around his chest, and he learned readily to jump without ever balking on account of my eccentrically non-Roman seat, and he became as agile as Velox I at staying firmly under me when I practiced mock fighting from the saddle, however much he had to dance and dodge and contort. Eventually, if I had been blindfolded before going to the mounting block, I could hardly have told which of my two Veloxes I was riding.

Except for my equine occupations and my trivial chores, most of my time on the farm was spent as idly and purposelessly as, according to report, Rekitakh was doing in Constantinople. However, I was not always on the farm. I had lived too much of my life on the road to be ready, now, to settle down forever in one place. So, once in a while, I would simply throw a saddle and a pack on one of my Veloxes and go roaming abroad, for a span of days or a fortnight or sometimes as long as a month. (I more and more often chose Velox II for the longer rides, judging that his sire had well earned his retirement to pasture and the enjoyment of his mares.) On each of those occasions, of course, I sought Theodoric’s permission before I absented myself, and asked if I could perform any services for him on my way. He might say, “Well, if you chance to see any barbarian forces roving about, make note of their number and strength and route of march, and report to me when you return.” And I would punctiliously comply. But he never had any more specific missions to assign, so I wandered where I would.

As always, I found travel rewarding, but it was pleasant, too, having a home to come back to. That was something I had never had before. Because I still, and for a long time, mourned the loss of Amalamena—or, to say it more honestly, because my yearning for that winsome nymph had been unrequited, and now forever would be—I had no desire to take a consort to keep me company in my country retreat. In fact, I repeatedly had to fend off the lady Aurora’s kindly intentioned efforts to make a match for me with various unattached females of the Novae court, from noble widows to the pretty cosmeta Swanilda. Therefore, partly to keep myself from being tempted to make any such long-term alliance, and partly because imperious arrogation is expected of a slave owner, I occasionally took a female slave to warm my bed.

There were many of those about my premises, and I tried several, but only two were handsome and appealing enough that I made use of them with some frequency. Naranj, a woman of the Alan people, the wife of my mill steward, had exceptionally long hair as black as moonshade. Renata, a Suevian girl, daughter of my cellarer, had exceptionally long hair as silver-gilt as Amalamena’s had been. I remember the names of those two, and I remember their gorgeous hair, and I remember how the woman and the girl showed their appreciation of the honor, in their eagerness to give me plentiful pleasure. But that is all I can now remember to recount of them.

Meanwhile, there was the other side of my nature to be satisfied, too. As Veleda, I wanted to be purged of the memory of the abominable Strabo and those odious insults he had inflicted on my person. Also, since I had so steadfastly suppressed my femininity every time he had defiled me, I now felt the need of some reassurance as to the adequacy of my female sexuality. I could easily have tested that by availing myself of a male slave or two; I possessed quite a stud of stalwart and passably attractive men. But I was disinclined to go to the trouble, again, of maintaining the disguises and jugglery that such an expedient would have entailed.

So I took some of my estate income and, as Veleda, purchased and furnished a small house in Novae. I had to be discreet in my employment of that, and in the ways in which I accosted and made the acquaintance of the men I judged eligible to share that sanctum with me—for an hour or a night or longer—because Novae was a considerably smaller city than, say, Vindobona, where I had previously been Veleda, or Constantia, where I had been Juhiza. Here in Novae I could not risk making myself conspicuous and causing gossip and speculation: who was this newcome woman and whence came she and what was she up to? I took care not to approach any high-ranking military men, with whom I might someday have to associate as Thorn, or any of Theodoric’s familiars, or men of the nobility, or any other notables whom I might later meet at court.

Of course, I was pleased to find that I was still attractive to men, and could easily entice and enthrall them, and that my female apparatus and sensitivities and juices and emotions were all unimpaired. But no bedfellow there in Novae ever inspired in me anything quite to equal the affection and appetite I had felt for my very first male lover, Gudinand of Constantia. I kept none of the men about me for very long—I most quickly dismissed those who became abjectly enamored of me and pleaded for lasting attachment. I do not regret either Thorn’s or Veleda’s libertine behavior of those days, nor do I think I owe any apologies for it. That was one of the few periods in my life when I had leisure and opportunity to indulge myself—both of my selves—and I thoroughly enjoyed the indulgence.