The Boat of Fate (31 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘Naturally, you would love her. Well, I’ll tell you what love is. It’s a fumbling, in the dark. The hasty sliding of flesh within flesh. And afterwards . . . it’s nothing. A void, an emptiness. And we still have the rest of our lives to live.’ She fixed me with her pale eyes. ‘Do I still nauseate you?’ she said softly. ‘Perhaps ... and yet I tell you this. This puppy-love, that sears you to the bone, will pass. You’ll come to prefer your Ovid to your Propertius, for all your high ideals.’ She smiled again, in the gloom. ‘There, see,’ she said. ‘Papianilla discourses on poetry. Perhaps, in time, I could even learn to please you.’

There was a pause.

‘As I remarked,’ she went on levelly, ‘my husband is a fool. Too great a fool, it seems, to recognise another. For my part, I’m not prepared to see the household saddled with an impecunious son-in-law. I’m well aware this tale of rape is nonsense; I heard what happened from the child’s own lips, who is insufficiently aware of the world to lie. Neither, I’m persuaded, would a court be much impressed by that black ape of a doorkeeper, whose talents, though varied, lie in other regions than his head. But interesting though it might be, I’ve no intention of having my husband’s ingenious little concoction put to the test. In that I can help you, if your martial pride will condescend to it. Certainly nobody else will.’ Suddenly I had heard enough. The heavy air of the chamber was making my head spin; I rose again, stood looking down at her. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Domina,’ I said. ‘But I don’t need either your advice or your assistance. Tomorrow, at first light, I ride for Mediolanum. Since you put the choice so succinctly, I’ll place my fate in God’s hands rather than yours.’ I headed for the door, but she raised her voice behind me. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Add cowardice to your stupidity if you wish; and see how far it gets you.’

I stopped, back turned to her.

‘Yes, cowardice,’ she said. I heard her rise and walk towards me. ‘Though I’ve no doubt if you dredge the depths of our literary heritage you’ll come up with a more comforting phrase. You’re extremely good at that. And I’ll tell you something else about yourself.’ Her voice rose furiously again. ‘You’ve looked at me, since you first entered this house, as no woman should be looked at ever. Why? What God-given right do you have to judge me? Do you think you’re such a man?’ She circled me slowly, staring, ‘A man,’ she said, ‘would have taken from Paeonia what a man should have, a long time ago. Why do you come trailing back here day after day, picking and whimpering? Couldn’t you find a better specimen than our little half-formed flower? Daren’t you lift your aim to a woman with all her faculties?’

My memory of the next few moments is vague. It seems I raised my arm as if to strike her. She seized my wrist; a wrestling, and her mouth was jammed hard against mine. She was panting, groping for me with her disengaged hand.

Shock and outrage lent me extra strength. I wrenched away, flung her violently from me. She rolled across the bed, lay gasping and glaring up. It seemed she might rise, and attack me again; instead, she began to laugh. When she had finished she sat up, flicking her robe into place. To one side of the chamber was a dressing table, its top strewn with jars and bottles. She seated herself at it, back turned to me, unfastened her hair and began to draw the strands of it methodically through a comb. ‘Get out,’ she said calmly. ‘Go and mumble a prayer, then play with yourself in bed. It’s all you’re fit for.’

I rubbed my face slowly. My hand was shaking; I stared at it, trying to still the movement, heard my voice speak as if from a distance.

‘What,’ I said, ‘do you intend to do?’

The hand that held the comb checked momentarily. I thought she wouldn’t answer; then she glanced at me expressionlessly over her shoulder. ‘Why should you be concerned?’ she asked. ‘You’ve made your decision. And very Roman, noble and right it sounds too.’

I waited.

‘I shall reduce my husband’s bargaining power,’ she said,

‘That’s all ....’

I said woodenly, ‘The girl must not be harmed.’

‘She won’t be harmed,’ she said. ‘At least not permanently. You have my word on that.’ She set the comb down, rose and walked back to me. ‘All I require of you,’ she said, ‘is that you absent yourself from your normal place of work for a day or so. Don’t concern yourself any further with my husband’s amusing little ultimatum; by tomorrow night it will have lost much of its potency. Oh, there is one last thing. Never, under any pretext, show your face here again; or I might be tempted to take a hand in your affairs. And I should be more effective, I promise you, than the noble Paeonius. . . .’

The servant was waiting to conduct me to the door. My head still buzzed with rage; it seemed I glided to it rather than walked. Once on the open road I forced the tired horse to a gallop; but what I was trying to run from, Papianilla, myself, or the anger I carried with me, I could never say.

The same anger roused me well before first light. I took four men, a brace of mules and a waggon and headed away from the camp. We reached the pipeline not long after dawn. I worked solidly through the day, hauling what lining slabs remained from the bottom of the ravine. I piled them into the cart and set off back along the line of the channel, offloading the material at those points where repairs were most urgently needed. The hard work kept me from thinking too long or too clearly about the events of the night before. It seemed the rage I felt reached out to encompass all womankind. I neither knew nor cared what form Papianilla’s scheming would take; as for Paeonia, she must fend for herself. She had, after all, rejected me; now events were out of my hands, I could do no more to help her. I hauled and sweated, cursing the working party till I’m sure they were all as sick of my face as I was myself.

The day, that had begun hot, remained close, with that odd taste and tingle to the air that presages a storm. Sure enough, towards evening, when I finally downed tools and allowed the tents to be pitched, vast masses of coppery cloud were towering threateningly in the west. As darkness fell, the horizon became alive with the flash and leap of lightning. I sat moodily before the flap of my tent, sipping wine and watching the threatening sky. I stripped eventually and turned in, lay tossing restlessly in the thick dark. I was dog-tired, but sleep was far away; the sultriness alone would have prevented that.

The storm broke around midnight, with a crash and peal like the rolling of huge stones across the sky. Rain drummed and roared on the fabric above my head. I rose, poured myself a cup of wine and stood watching the wild display that sorted so exactly with my mood. The lightning was nearly continuous, a purple-white blazing that lit the hills, showed me the shapes of trees and bushes bowed under the downpour. The camp-fire was extinguished, with a hissing of steam; while the track beside which we had pitched the tents became a roaring gutter for the floodwater streaming from the higher ground. It was an hour or more before the storm finally blew itself away, passed muttering into the distance. The air was fresher, cooled by the rain; I slept at last, only to be plagued by a monstrous dream. What it was I could never remember, but I woke from it sweating, in the first grey light of dawn.

I sat up, frowning irritably; and the sound that had roused me came again. A scratching at the tent flap, and a hoarse voice calling.

‘Sir . . . Tribune, sir ….’

I rose, slung a blanket round myself, and lifted the flap. Air rushed in on me, full of that intense, sweet chill that only comes after a night of rain. I rubbed my eyes blearily. At first I couldn’t place the man who stood outside; then I recognised him. It was the carter I’d set to watch over Paeonius’ house when I first arrived from Burdigala. He waited now uncertainly, a scrawny, unkempt-looking Gaul with a mop of ragged greying hair. I growled at him, asking him what the devil he wanted at that time of the morning. He fidgeted unhappily but stood his ground. There were, he said, many carriages in the streets of Massilia last night; he was sure the Tribune would be interested.

I swore at him, violently. What comings and goings there might have been in the town interested me not at all. He scratched his head, screwed his eyes up and tried again. Did not these carriages, he asked, converge on the mansion of the Lord Paeonius? For a purpose best undisclosed?

Obviously a piece of silver was the quickest way to be rid of him. I found one, grumbling, and warned him not to waste any more of my time with tittle-tattle that no longer concerned me.

‘What were these carriages?’ I asked sarcastically. ‘And what was this purpose, that shunned the light of day?’

He told me.

What I heard had me first standing stock-still with shock, then grabbing hastily for clothes and weapons. It seemed one madness had left me to be replaced instantly by another. I slung my swordbelt over my shoulder, buckled a dagger to my side and set off wildly, careering down the stony track to the Via Domitia. But fast as I rode, fear paced ahead of me. Fear for Paeonia, certainly; but also fear of dark and the night, and a thing older than the stones of Rome. Other rites had been celebrated in Massilia than the rites of the Christos; rites the Emperors, pagan and God-fearing alike, had laboured for generations to suppress. Only the women adore him, it is said; the nameless one, who has known so many titles. Once he was called Dionysius, once Bacchus. Now he is Antichrist; for he can never die.

I know what happened to her. I learned a little; for the rest, a dream or vivid nightmare came to my aid.

They fetched her, from her room, and she was bathed. About the house was a whispering expectancy, a giggling anticipation of horror and delight. There were faster hearts beating, fingers that shook and fumbled as they unbraided and combed her hair. She tried to ask what they wanted, what they expected of her; but there was no answer. Her servants had become her mistresses.

She was anointed, with oils that stung and burned. The wind sighed over the house, heralding the storm, turning the courtyard torches to beards of flame; while the burning grew deeper, drew itself into a knot that blazed with pain and light. She was dazed, perhaps with grief; she reached for loincloth and breast-band, but the clothes were twitched away. Instead they brought others for her; dark and wet-looking, shot with gleams like clotted blood, stinking with the animal stink of Tyrian dye. The robe, she saw, was divided to the waist, baring her flank and hip with every step. A cloak was draped round her, a heavy cloak with a hood; she muffled her face in it, whimpering at the pain between her thighs. Her heart pounded her ribs; she was led to the outer door, for she could no longer see.

Already it seemed she walked above the earth, treading the wind.

A carriage was waiting for her, closed and black. Her feet were naked; she slipped, barking her ankle on the step. She felt the pain, but distantly, lost in the greater confusion of her body. The streets were deep and hot as a well; she clung to the woman beside her, rocking as the wheels found the stony ruts of the roadway. The noise, the jingling and hollow clatter, seemed now to recede, now to echo monstrously inside her skull. She screamed aloud, using my name; and the storm broke, with a blaze of light. The flashes lit the jerking backs of the horses, the high walls between which the vehicle careered; showed her too, ahead and close, other carriages, swaying at the same frenzied speed. She screamed again, but there was nobody to hear.

The wild ride ended finally. The carriage passed beneath a gateway, bounced and slewed on cobbles. She had left Massilia, that much she knew; but where in all that tumult she had been carried she had no idea. Her hands were beneath her robe. She thought she was bleeding, but the gliding smoothness was sweat.

Her shaking legs would barely support her weight. Torches streamed, sputtering in the deluge; the spots beat her face and shoulders like so many fists. The lightning blazed again; she saw a house front, blind-eyed and baleful, tendrils of some creeper that swayed and tossed. Water splashed tart against her ankles, but couldn’t stop the fire. There was a doorway; she passed through it, felt the dripping cloak drawn from her.

Her feet were on slimy steps. Ahead were more torches; and a din of drums and chanting, the high excitement of many voices mixed with the rumbling of the storm. She moved forward, drawn irresistibly. The torches made a smoky cave of light. In it gleamed bodies, breasts and shoulders drenched with wine that streamed like thin blood. She saw the water of a pool or reservoir, sparkling, blackish green. Girls plunged into it with burning brands, rose with the flames unquenched. A madness came on her then so that she tore at her own robe, needing to join them. She felt it slip away; and for the first time a drum began to beat inside her head. A great drum, whose every stroke was silence.

It’s bad to burst in on a Bishop before he’s finished breaking his fast; worse to pour into his astonished ears nonsense about revels and night sacrifice. The good man coughed and choked, spluttering. What, the house of Paeonius? The Domina Papianilla? Surely I was mistaken. They were, after all, well known to him; both worthy, excellent citizens. And what was this about carriages, night carriages in the streets? Come now, my boy, come,
come
. . .

There was no help there. I ran for the door, evading a handful of His Eminence’s slaves. The horse was still standing, lathered, where I had left it. The rabble tried to follow: I lost them in the confusion of the streets.

Paeonius’ door wouldn’t yield to my beating. I renewed the onslaught; and it opened with a suddenness that nearly sent me sprawling. The slave who had answered it took one look and bolted like a hare.

I lived a nightmare. In it I ran through room after room, full of the smell of incense and a stink like death. I shouted till the place rang, ‘
Paeonia
. . .’ I was answered by silence.

I found her, finally. She was huddled on her couch, covers drawn up round her chin. I would have lifted her, but the blazing white of her face prevented me. She was smiling, maybe smiling, but crying too; it had been good of me to come at last. I leaned closer. She could whisper, if the Devil would give her back her tongue. Whisper, whisper . . . what did she say? It all made nonsense. She had ... what was that,
eaten
? Eaten what, Paeonia, what did they
say
it was. ... I couldn’t understand this waywardness about the Sin of Chronos; till I pulled the covers back, and saw the glistening red.