The Boat of Fate (27 page)
Dish succeeded dish, the wine flowed more and more freely, and I began to enjoy myself in a rarified sort of way. This, after all, was a game I’d played before, many times, in Burdigala. The wine mellowed me; so much so that when I realised Paeonius’ daughter had so far contributed nothing to the conversation I determined the dumb should be brought to speak. ‘I saw you in the market-place some months ago,’ I said. ‘Shopping, with a slave. Naturally, I couldn’t address you; will you talk to me now, under your father’s roof?’
Instantly the room was silent. The Bishop coughed embarrassedly and addressed himself to his goblet; Papianilla raised her eyes briefly to the ceiling, as if calling on God to witness some enormity, while Paeonius stared at me with the oddest expression of mingled anger and pain. His daughter spread her hands flat on the table, head lowered, forehead suffused once more with crimson.
Certainly the wine had hold of me, for my good humour changed instantly to irritation. If I had assaulted the wretched girl in full view of the company they could scarcely have looked more appalled; as it was, all I had done was ask a civil question. I repeated it deliberately, the words falling into the quiet like so many stones. She raised her eyes at that, no longer able to ignore me. Her head rolled, agonised; she seemed to pant for breath. Her lips parted, but all that emerged was the gross beginning of an enormous stammer.
I shall never understand what happened next. Certainly her beauty and distress worked powerfully in me, aided by the wine; but to act as I did I think I must have drunk myself temporarily out of my senses. I sat up and leaned to grip her fingers, willing her to speak. A wait, while she fought for control; then she answered quick and low, in a voice like the rushing of wind in trees.
‘I saw you too,’
she said.
‘You were wearing a cloak. I was buying oranges.’
The reaction of the company to the simple speech was even more remarkable. Paeonius’ brows rose towards his hair while a look of amazed delight spread over his face; Papianilla’s eyes widened even further with astonishment while the Bishop and the rest burst into a babble of congratulations that sent their victim even redder than before. For my part, it was obvious some prodigy had taken place; I lay back filled with a curious mixture of emotions. Had I not been in my cups I would probably never have addressed such an exquisite creature directly at all; now, knowing what I did, I wondered if I would ever have the courage to speak to her again. The answer, I knew instinctively, was yes; for something had passed between us in that moment of pain that defied ready analysis. I knew myself incapable of love; what I had felt then could have no name. Its very formlessness perhaps rendered it more powerful; for when the company finally went its several ways, in the still hours of the morning watch, I carried back with me something more vivid than a memory. I lay in my bed, feeling the strangeness of the wine ebb from my veins, hearing her name again, Paeonia, hearing her voice.
A few weeks later I had the pleasure of viewing Massilia from what was for me a new vantage point. I reclined in the rear seat of the carruca, lolling grandly against the cushions, while the ungainly vehicle lurched and rumbled its way to the west gate. Beside me, wrapped in a light travelling cloak and with a wide-brimmed straw hat drawn low over her eyes, sat Paeonia. A female slave attended her. A second retainer controlled the carriage, flicking and cracking his whip to clear a way through the busy streets; two others, clad in Paeonius’ outrageous livery, cantered haughtily in our wake.
We clattered out in fine style along the Via Domitia; a few miles from the town the carruca left the highway for a rutted track that wound through low hills to the sea. There, in a secluded bay, awnings were set up, rugs and cushions scattered beneath. The horses were unharnessed and picketed; the slaves sat stolidly on the beach, respectfully out of earshot, while Paeonia and I lounged and talked. The sun beat down strongly, sparkling on the waves that lapped the fine white sand; a breeze rustled the stiff-leaved shrubs behind us, scarcely louder than her voice. Later, in the deepening twilight, we walked the edge of the sea. Our footprints showed dark against the sleeky glistening sand; she ran and laughed, lifting her robe to her knees, stooping to snatch up little shells the retreating waves laid bare. It was full night before we returned, jingling through the streets of Massilia to her father’s door.
This extraordinary state of affairs had come about, as I judged at the time, largely by chance. For some days after the dinner party I brooded round the camp, unable to concentrate on anything. The image of the girl, shut away in that gloomy house, haunted me persistently. Time after time I put it out of my mind, but it invariably returned. I reminded myself bitterly of my own precarious state; lacking friends, money and influence, my life itself staked on the whim of some Mediolanian clerk. Besides, I had seen enough of women during my stay in Rome. Paeonia’s world was closed to me, for all time; I told myself it was better that way.
In the end I buckled down to my tasks again, finding relief in the sheer physical effort of running the mine. The assay officer put in his scheduled appearance; hard on his heels, and most unexpectedly, I had another visit from Paeonius.
His manner was considerably altered. He greeted me pleasantly, asking if it would be convenient to inspect the workings. I roused out Baudio and a couple of overseers and accompanied the party myself, helping the portly spectabilis down ladder after ladder into the noisy dark. Conditions were much improved, though there was a lot I realised I would always be ashamed of. I pointed out what still needed doing; Paeonius agreed absentmindedly, throwing the odd nervous question about security measures. There was, he pointed out, a great deal of valuable equipment in the mine. I bore his comments indifferently; I had a growing conviction that the mine and its operation were not the sole purpose of his visit.
In that I was right, for later, over a glass of wine, he finally wheeled ponderously to a subject closer to his heart. And a grim enough tale he unfolded, in all truth; of rape and pillage, the sack of a villa in the lawless times of Maximus, a child dragged bloody and hysterical from beneath her mother’s corpse. ‘The Domina Papianilla,’ he said in his fussy way, ‘is, of course, the girl’s stepmother. I... ah... remarried basically for Paeonia’s good. I thought perhaps . . . another woman . . . but it’s done very little. Very little . . He shook his head sorrowfully. For a twelvemonth, he told me, the little creature had neither washed, dressed nor fed herself unaided. Doctor after doctor had confessed himself baffled, and the spectabilis had become resigned to the prospect of living with an idiot for a daughter. But time had worked the cure herbs couldn’t achieve; with the years Paeonia recovered by slow degrees, to grow into the lovely young woman I had seen. Save in one respect. When, finally, she spoke again, it was with the dreadful, stumbling rush that I had heard; the Devil had taken her tongue, and never let it go. ‘Until that night,’ said Paeonius, ‘she never uttered a sentence that could be understood. . . He flashed me one of his quick, crafty glances. ‘The Bishop,’ he said, with an unexpected access of humour, ‘would in no way have been averse to the proclamation of a miracle, had the laying-on of hands been performed by his good self. As things were, he was sufficiently impressed; he urged me to make every effort to draw such an evidently worthy young man closer to the bosom of the Church.’
He hadn’t, even now, come to the point. I waited expressionlessly, but despite myself my heart was beginning to race.
He had noticed, he said--it could scarcely be missed--a certain ... ah ... mutual interest, an interest he for one would by no means be averse to fostering, solely for Paeonia’s good. A shadow had been lifted from the household; could it be banished completely, I would earn at least his undying gratitude. He would even put his carriage at my disposal, were I to call at his home again; it would benefit the child to get some trips to the countryside, into the fresh air. So it came about that, partly against my will and certainly against my instincts, I was drawn into an involvement that seemed to promise nothing but misery and pain. Had I known what would in fact result I think I would have fled Massilia, and the Empire, there and then.
Meanwhile, though the future might be black the present was undeniably sweet. Whatever hours I could spare from my self-imposed duties at the mine I spent with Paeonia. Sometimes our meetings took place at her father’s house. She would sit in the walled garden of the peristyle, a book on her knee or a piece of embroidery; her hands moved steadily and deftly, now pausing in the sunlight, now darting like brown butterflies, while I talked and talked. Of ancient things for the most part, stories of the Gods of Greece, tales of Rome and her Emperors and Kings; childhood fantasies that stubbornly had never left me, and now at last found a ready audience. While the God-figures watched from their niches, less disturbing now in the bright daylight, the summer air moved gently in the court. Sometimes Papianilla would pass through the corridor that bordered it, inclining her head to favour me with the fixed and icy smile that served as greeting between us; or Paeonius would take time off from his ledgers and files, sit fanning himself and grumbling at the state of the Province and Empire, the injustices that beset him on every side. But mostly we were left alone.
Sometimes I would go with Paeonia on her shopping trips to the markets or the harbour. She liked the harbour, with its endless bustle and confusion, best of all; she would turn over the glistening, still-wriggling fish as they were landed in their baskets, pointing and frowning, shrugging or shaking her head while I haggled with the boatmen. Her judgement was shrewd; in time we developed a whole range of signals, comprehensible only to us, by which she conducted her affairs, She would rub her nose or touch her hair, fold her arms to clinch a purchase, tap her foot on the quay to break off a deal; it was a game she never tired of. Other times I would take the carruca, with three or four household slaves as bodyguard, ride inland or to the sea. Those were days when time itself seemed to stand still; when I could forget, in spite of myself, the sword that still hung over me by a single hair.
Paeonia’s affliction did not noticeably diminish, at least at first. Time after time the rolling of her head, the panic and sudden misery in her eyes, warned me what would follow; and I would touch her hand or lay a finger lightly to her lips, willing her to patience and quietness. She would swallow and pant, twining her fingers and lowering her head; and her eyes would clear, she would speak quickly with that same rushing intensity I had first heard, say her thought and be done. Then she would laugh, or we would laugh together; and once she ran and skipped, clapping her hands for joy at the new things her tongue could achieve.
So the summer passed, swiftly and pleasantly enough. Autumn brought fresh rumours of unrest in the north. All along the frontiers of the Empire the tribes were once again in a ferment; the field army campaigned endlessly, force-marching from point to point, suppressing this or that threat to the safety of the West. Also it was said the Scythians had taken the field. Imperial messengers rode the Via Domitia day and night, but for us in Massilia reliable news was hard to come by. Till one dawn Baudio roused me in what was for him a state of considerable excitement. He told me the regent Stilicho had passed in the night, heading west, some claimed to Britannia herself; with him had been the Standards of Vidimerius.
The news woke all my slumbering restlessness. Obviously the Magister Militum could no longer afford to let crack troops languish in garrison duty so far within the Empire; had it not been for the chance encounter that had ruined me, I might have been riding with him. I cursed my lot bitterly, quite forgetting that but for the inexplicable kindness of Fate I would most certainly have been dead as well as disgraced. I even conceived the childish notion of riding west myself on the track of the Palatini, but it would have been useless. Vidimerius had intimated plainly enough what I could expect if he ever set eyes on me again; I would merely be rushing on my fate.
By mid-morning the need for some sort of positive action had become imperative. I had spent an hour inspecting the results of the last season’s work, and small enough they were in all faith. The footings for the new dormitories had been laid--mostly by me--but there the job had ground to a halt. In my first flush of enthusiasm I had sworn to carry the work out with the staff at my disposal, but one attempt to marshal overseers and off-duty slaves into a construction gang had convinced me of the impracticability of the scheme. I needed timber in quantity, and skilled men to shape it; the cost would exceed anything I could afford. I had already applied unsuccessfully to Paeonius. He was, he claimed, sinking deeper into debt with every year that passed. There was no money anywhere in Massilia for projects such as mine; they would simply have to wait for better times. If better times ever came. I made a last round of the litter of trenches, still fuming, then saddled a horse and headed for Massilia.
I didn’t enter the town. Within sight of the walls I turned off the road, urged the animal along a steepening track to where, set on a slight promontory, the stone of the new monastery gleamed in the sunlight. A notion I had been harbouring for months had hardened into a resolve. I would seek help from the fountainhead of charity, the Church itself; where there was money for a project like that, there was money for my simple huts. I disliked the thought of begging, but my feelings were, after all, a secondary concern; God knew the cause was worthy enough.
The buildings of the place stood simple and four-square, facing Massilia and the sea; round them at a distance a high wall shielded the inmates and their devotions from the gaze of the herd. I presented myself at the gate, to be met by an elderly man whose coarse, plain robe and shaven pate proclaimed him a Brother of the Order presided over by Cassianus. He took my name, courteously enough, and enquired my business. I told him I was the officer in charge of the Imperial mines, and that I urgently required advice concerning the welfare of my slaves. He raised his eyebrows slightly but made no comment. His spiritual Father, he explained, was at his devotions, and couldn’t for the moment be disturbed; but if I cared to wait he was sure he would be pleased to receive me. A second monk saw to the stabling of the horse; I was shown to a small, square cell, empty save for a stone table on which stood a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. The door closed softly behind me, leaving me alone.