Roma Mater (25 page)

If she chose, upon completion of her vestalhood a princess could renew her vows, or at any later time, and
become a minor priestess. The temple would also accept other volunteers who qualified, train them, advance them according to what abilities they showed; but of course no such outsider would ever become a Queen.

Ys looked upon vestalhood as a divine privilege. It had its worldly benefits as well. Besides an excellent education, a maiden received a generous stipend. On going into civil life she got additional gold and goods, as a dowry for herself or investment capital if she did not elect marriage. The temple could well afford that, for much of the wealth of the state flowed into it from holdings, offerings, and bequests.

Ysan commerce waxed. The city commanded only meagre natural resources, other than what it wrested from the waters, but skilled workers turned imported raw materials into wares that, exported, won high prices. Merchantmen on charter and adventurers among the barbarians brought in wealth of their own. When Rome finally sowed salt where Carthage had been, it made no large difference to Ys … although some folk wept.

For a hundred or more years afterwards, the city prospered. It had no imperial ambitions; it was content with its modest hinterland and outlying island of Sena. Nor did it need more than a small, efficient navy, chiefly for convoy and rescue duty – when its Gallicenae could raise a storm at will. Its ship went trading and freighting throughout the North; likewise throve its manufacturies, brokerages, entrepots; and its poets, artists, dreamers, magicians.

Yet the sea at whose bosom it lay was ever rising …

The Veneti had always been troublesome. When Julius Caesar came conquering, Ys gave him substantial help against them. When he had crushed and decimated those foes, he visited the city in person.

What happened then would be hidden from the future.
Brennilis of the Gallicenae had had a vision while in a prophetic trance, and somehow she prevailed upon the tough and sceptical Roman. He actually appointed a soldier to slay the King of the Wood and succeed in that office – a young favourite of his, thus a sacrifice on the part of them both. Other things which were done required eternal silence: for Belisama had revealed that a new age was come to Ys. Archivists of the city believed that this was why Caesar made no mention of it in his writings.

The upshot was that Ys became a foederate of Rome, paid a reasonable tribute, accepted a prefect and his staff, enjoyed the benefits of the Roman peace and otherwise continued its wonted life.

To be sure, as Armorica was Romanized, there were effects upon this city too. On the whole they were benign. Indeed, Rome saved Ys from destruction. The Vision of Brennilis warned that sea level would mount and mount until waves rolled over everything here, were measures not taken. As defensible as it was between its headlands, this site ought not to be abandoned; but already people were moving to higher ground.

From the time of her revelation, onwards through her long life, Brennilis was the effective ruler of Ys. In her old age she won for her people the help of Augustus Caesar. To her he sent his best engineers, that they erect a wall against the waters. They did much else while they were there, but the wall and the gate were their real accomplishment, for which the city gave them a triumph.

That labour did not go easily. Besides the sea to contend with, they had the folk. The Romans thought it ridiculous that the wall be built as high as Brennilis demanded; they did not live to see tides eventually surge where she had foretold. Nor could they understand why they must not use enduring concrete. They insisted on it, and not until storms had repeatedly wrecked their work
and snatched lives from among them did they yield. True, they then wrought honestly, in dry-laid blocks of stone so well shaped and fitted that a knife could not slip between. But they never understood why.

Brennilis and her Sisters did. In her Vision, Lir had told her that Ys must remain hostage to Him, lest it forsake its Gods in the eldritch days to come. He would only allow a wall that He could, at need, break down, for the drowning of a city gone faithless.

The gate was no defiance of this; Ys required one if it would receive ships as of yore. Sealed in copper, oak endured for many a decade. Sometimes the doors must be replaced – machinery and multitudinous workers doing it in a few hours of the lowest tide and deadest calm, followed by three days and nights of festival – but the necessity came seldom, and Ys abided.

Yet also, as lifetimes passed, it drew ever more behind the Veil of Brennilis. This too had been part of her apocalypse, that the Gods of Ys were haughty and aloof, that They would not demean Themselves to plead for worshippers against a new God Who was to come, but would, rather, hold Their city apart unto Themselves. For all its splendour and prosperity, Ys grew obscure. Chronicles which described it gradually crumbled away without fresh copies having been made, burned in accidental fires, were misplaced, were stolen and never recovered, were scraped clean so that the vellum might be reused for a Gospel. Curiously few Roman writers ever referred to it; and of those who did, their works had a similar way of becoming lost.

A part of this may simply have been due to regained autonomy, as Roman commerce and government began to fall apart. Longer and longer grew the periods during which the Emperors saw no reason to send a prefect; at last, none came. Payment of the tribute was more and
more often delayed by bad communications; at last, Septimius Severus remitted it altogether, in thanks for help the city had given him against his rival Albinus. That was the final intervention of any consequence that Ys had made. Thereafter it looked to its own.

But it was not totally isolated. The storms that racked the Empire inevitably troubled Ys as well. Trade shrank, Scotic and Saxon raiders harried the waters and the coasts, inland barbarians pressed westwards, evangelists of Christ led men away from the Gods of their fathers. Among the Gallicenae arose a feeling that they had come to the end of still another age. What would the new one bring? None could foreknow. Like a creature of the sea, Ys drew into its shell and waited.

3

By candlelight in the bedroom. Bodilis showed no mark of being past her youth, save for maturity itself. Smiling, she went to Gratillonius. ‘How can I best make you welcome?’ asked her husky voice.

She responded to him, in movement of loins and hands, in soft outcries; but always there was something about her that cared more for him than for herself; and before they slept, she murmured in his ear, ‘I pray the Goddess that I be not too old for bearing of your child.’

1

Suddenly fog blew out of the west. Then wind died while cloud thickened.
Osprey
rolled to the swell, the eyes painted on her bows as blindfolded as eyes in the skulls of the men aboard her. Barely did sight reach from stem to stern, and the masthead swayed hidden. It was as if that formless grey also swallowed sound. There was nothing to hear but slap of waves on strakes, slosh in a well where the live part of the catch swam uneasily about, creak of timbers and lines and of the sweeps where crew toiled – and dim and hollow, at unknown distances and in unsure directions, those boomings which betokened surf over the rocks around Sena.

Maeloch drew his hooded leather jacket tighter. Leaving the prow of his fishing smack he went aft, past the four starboard oarsmen. Sheeted fast, the lugsail slatted to the rocking. Despite chill, air was too dank for breath to show. As Maeloch neared, the helmsman slowly changed from a phantom to a mortal like himself, beard as wet as the sail, leathery face stiffened by weariness.

‘How fare ye?’ Maeloch asked. ‘Need ye a relief?’

Usun, his mate, shrugged. ‘Not so much as the deckhands. Might be one o’ them and me should spell each other.’

‘Nay. While we keep sea room, their task is but to maintain steerage way. Should we find ourselves drifting on to a skerry or into a snag, aye, they’d better row their guts out. But worse will we need an alert steersman. My
thought was ye might want to change with me and go stand lookout for’ard.’

Usun sagged a little over the tiller. ‘If ye, who captain us through this passage on those nights, if ye be lost –’

‘Who’d not be, as long as we’ve wallowed in this swill?’ Maeloch snapped. ‘Would Lir fain destroy us, why couldn’t He ha’ sent an honest gale?’

‘Ha’ ye gone mad?’ Usun exclaimed, shocked. ‘Best we join in vowing Him a sacrifice if He spare us.’

‘He got His usual cock ere we set forth.’

‘I – I’ve promised Epona – ’

‘As ye wish.’ Maeloch’s rough countenance jutted on high. ‘Myself, I’ll deal with the Gods like my fathers before me, straightforwardly or not at all.’

Usun drew back. Ever were the Ferriers of the Dead an arrogant lot, not only because they enjoyed exemption from tax and civic labour but because – the source of their privileges – they met the unknown, on behalf of Ys. But Usun, who was himself along on such crossings, had not thought the captain’s pride would go this far.

Maeloch filled his lungs and shouted: ‘D’Ye hear me, out there? Ahoy! Here I stand. Drown me if Ye will. But remember, my eldest living son is a stripling. Twill be years till he can help bring Ye your wayfarers. Think well, O Gods!’

The fog drank down his cry. Louder snarled the surf, and now there was in it a hiss of waves as they rushed across naked rock. Two crewmen missed a beat. The vessel yawed. Usun put the steering oar hard over. His own lips moved, but silently.

Something passed alongside. A splash resounded. Maeloch trod to the rail and peered downwards. Foam swirled on darkling water. Amidst it swam a seal. Twice and thrice it smote with its rear flippers. The front pair kept it
near the hull. It raised its head. Great eyes, full of night, sought towards Maeloch’s.

For heartbeats, the skipper stood moveless. Finally Usun saw a shiver pass through him too. He turned about and said, well-nigh too quietly for hearing: ‘Stand by to give what helm I call for.’

But striding off, Maeloch trumpeted: ‘Pull oars! Full stroke! We’re going home!’ The seal glided beneath and beside him.

When he reached the bows, the creature swam on ahead, until he could barely see it through the swirling grey. Once it glanced back at him and made a leap. Thereafter it started off on the larboard quarter.

‘Right helm!’ Maeloch roared. ‘Stroke, stroke, stroke! Give it your backs, ye scoundrels, if e’er ye’d carouse ashore again!’

Dread was upon the men, they knew not what this portended, nor knew what to do save obey. To and fro they swayed on their benches. Their breath loudened. Sweeps groaned at the tholes, throbbed in the waves. ‘Steady as she goes,’ Maeloch ordered. The seal swam on.

Surf crashed to starboard. On the edge of sight, a reef grinned. Yet
Osprey
had clearance enough. ‘Might that be the She-Wolf?’ Maeloch muttered. ‘If ’tis, we’ve tricky navigation before us.’ The seal veered. ‘Left helm! … Steady as she goes.’

Stroke, stroke, stroke.
The waters bawled, seethed, sank away and sighed.

– The sun must have been low when the mainland hove in view, shadowy at first, later real, solid, the southside cliffs of Cape Rach. Men dared utter a ragged cheer. With their last strength they brought the battered and tarry boat into her home cove and laid her to at Ghost Quay. Oars clattered inboard. Feet thudded on close-packed stone as sailors climbed on to the dock, caught mooring
lines, and made fast to iron rings set in boulders. The hull rolled, rubbing against rope bumpers hung on a log secured to the wharf.

At the stempost Maeloch slowly lifted his hand, waved, let the arm drop again and watched the seal depart.

Usun sought him. A while they stood in silence. Fog seemed thicker still, or was it only that night drew near? They could make out a pair of companion smacks at the quay, rowboats drawn on to a strand which had become cobble-hemmed and tiny at high tide, nets across poles. A track wound up the steeps, to join roads towards the pharos and Ys. A second trail went under the scarp. At its end, a deeper dimness showed where those few rammed-earth cottages were that bore the name Scot’s Landing. A hush had fallen. Cold gnawed in through garments and flesh.

‘Ye men’ll sleep aboard,’ Maeloch said at length. ‘We’ve our catch to prepare for market in the morning, ye know.’ Only he and Usun among them dwelt here, where some were boatowners like him and all were haughty – however poor – and a little strange, concerned less with affairs of the Fisher Brotherhood and the city than with things that were their own. ‘But I’ll dispatch boys to tell your kin ye came back safe.’

‘How did we?’ one sailor whispered.

‘I know not.’

‘You … a Ferrier of the Dead … know not?’

‘What I do those nights is a mystery to me too,’ Maeloch answered starkly. ‘Ye’ve heard what folk tell, that Gallicenae who’ve died may return in the shape o’ seals, abiding till those they loved ha’ fared out to Sena. No dream has told me if this be so or not. But when yon swimmer appeared, I had a feeling we should follow her.

‘Goodnight.’

He left the craft and trudged towards his home. There
his wife Betha kept vigil, among their living children and the babe that was great within her. For his sake she was invoking Belisama, Our Lady of the Sea – and, silently or by secret tokens, beings about whom the fisher women never told their men.

2

The day was bright when Innilis came to the house of Vindilis; but within lay dimness and quiet. ‘Welcome,’ said the older Queen, with a smile such as was rarely seen on her gaunt countenance. She took both hands of Innilis in her own. To the servant who had admitted the visitor: ‘We twain have matters of discretion before us. Let none disturb.’

The servant bowed. ‘Never, my lady.’ This was not the first time he had been so commanded. As half-sisters, both daughters of Gaetulius, unlike though they were in aspect, this pair might be expected to cherish one another. In any event, it was not for him to question what the Nine did, or even wonder.

Vindilis led the way. Innilis must hurry to match her strides. They passed through the atrium. Like Bodilis, Vindilis had had the walls of hers painted over; but these now bore only spirals and Greek keys, black on white.