The Dog and the Wolf (34 page)

“You have experience, sir, in … in balancing demands against each other—you, the K-k-king of Ys.”

“No more. And that was different. We were sovereign, the Nine and I. Oh, we must take Rome into account, most carefully into account; and of course I bore my duty toward her, I, an officer, a son of hers. But still, we were free in Ys. How do they handle it here?”

“They do as their superiors bid. Nay?”

Gratillonius barked a laugh. “I know better than
that.”
His small levity flickered out. “Well, we can’t allow rebellion.”

“What would you have me do?” Cadoc asked.

Gratillonius stopped before him. Out of turmoil, decision crystallized. “Why, carry on your survey, along with such other rangers as we can trust to be quiet about it. Naught unlawful there. However, we’d liefer they don’t hear of it in Turonum, eh?”

Cadoc opened and shut his mouth before he could reply, “Then you mean to g-go on weaving your net of defense? But you can’t! It calls for the outlaws in the wilderness, and—and you, we, we’re to hunt them down.”

“I have no plan,” Gratillonius snapped. “Everything may well come to naught. But I said we’re not forbidden to keep exploring the woodlands. Nor are we yet commanded to take positive action against their free dwellers; and I doubt any such orders will be forthcoming soon.” Memory of army days bobbed from the depths. He seized on it as a man overboard might grab a plank. “If they do, well, belike I’ll find myself unable to execute them fast or
thoroughly. Meanwhile, soldiers at war may parley. I’ll be talking with those old bandits—through Rufinus, when he gets back—Ere then, I can only sit still. Agreed?”

Cadoc traced a cross in the air. “You run a terrible risk, sir.

“Blind obedience holds a worse one. Think. You know what’s begun happening again along our coasts. Nay, you don’t really, you’ve not seen it—I have in the past—but you’ve heard tell. Unless we ready ourselves, one day barbarians will come up this river too. What then of your wife and children, aye, your precious church? Are you with me?”

“I’m not afraid.”

Gratillonius heard the offendedness and admitted it was justified. Cadoc had totalled months, oftenest by himself, in the country of wolves.

“B-but prudence, sir,” the young man went on. “God’s will. Th-those men He has chosen to set above us—”

The inner door opened. The midwife entered. Her hands were washed but her apron speckled with red, that looked black in the candlelight. At her bosom she carried a swaddled bundle.

“Christ help us!” Cadoc beseeched.

From the burden lifted a tiny wail. The woman smiled. “Here’s your son,” she said in Ysan. “A fine boy. His mother is well.”

The men crowded close. Ruddy and wrinkled, the infant sprattled arms outward. His hands were like starfish.

“God be praised,” Cadoc moaned.

“Go see her if you will,” said the midwife. “Be not affrighted by the blood. ’Tis no more than you’d await. I’ll cleanse and make the bed fresh and she can rest till she’s ready to nurse. A brave girl, she, hardly ever cried out, aye, true daughter to the King of Ys—”

The men scarcely heard, being already on their way inside.

The bedchamber was a cubicle set off from the main room by walls, or curtains, of wickerwork in the rudest Celtic manner. It stank from the hours of labor. Shadows fell thick over Julia where she lay, but sweat gave her face a sheen. Reddish-blond hair was plastered lank across it.
Her eyes were half shut. Cadoc bent above. “Darling,” he breathed. “I’m s-s-so happy. I’ll make devotions for us both and, and when you’re churched, we’ll hold a feast of thanksgiving.”

Gratillonius stood aside. He didn’t think he quite belonged here. But her gaze found him and she gave him a drowsy smile.

The midwife bustled in. “Now, out, out,” she fussed, “and let me care for the poor dear. Go admire your get. But handle him not, d’you hear, till I’ve shown you how. … Oh, but my lord, you’ll know. I’m sorry.”

Back in the main room, Cadoc leaned over the infant. “My son,” he murmured. That had been forever denied the King of Ys. He straightened. “Your grandson, sir.”

“Aye, so he is,” Gratillonius said, because he must say something.

“I shall give thanks. Many thanks to Heaven. Would you—” The question trailed off.

“Nay, I’d best be on my way. I’ll call tomorrow. When you find time, think upon what we’ve spoken of. Goodnight.”

It was a relief to step out into the cold and the wind of dusk. The lanes between houses were blessedly empty. Gratillonius started toward his dwelling.

How wonderful that Julia had come through her battle unscathed—though you were never certain till days afterward—and she had known her father and smiled at him. She always was a sweet child. He’d done well to name her after his mother. Did that Julia look down this night from the Christian Paradise she’d yearned for, and reach a hand in blessing above her son’s grandchild?

The parents were going to christen him Johannes, weren’t they? Aye, Julia had told Gratillonius that a while ago, awkwardly. “If ’tis a boy, we’ll call him after the Baptist. His day was our wedding day, you know.” Gratillonius had silently hoped for a Marcus, his own father’s name. He doubted the reason for the couple’s choice was pure sentiment. Julia would have made that up after the fact. Cadoc simply wanted a powerful patron. Or so Gratillonius believed.

A grandson, honestly begotten, appearing sound in every
way. Rejoice. Gratillonius couldn’t. Aside from being glad, in an exhausted fashion, that his daughter lived, he felt vacant. Well, he’d seldom had a worse day. Later his heart might awaken. Although, in full frankness with himself and nobody else, he didn’t quite like his son-in-law. Cadoc meant well, he was a kind and faithful husband, a brave and able man, but that super-piety of his—We’ll see how the kid turns out, Gratillonius thought.

Light glimmered dull from his house—the front room only, one or two candles his servant had kindled. Runa was at the manorial building. She’d spent her nights there since word first arrived that the procurator and his entourage would come in person. “We must have the place worthy of him,” she said. “We cannot let him think us barbarians or peasants.” Gratillonius had swallowed the implication that that was how he lived. It didn’t matter. He’d be too busy himself to pay her the attention she considered her due.

A man got up from the wall bench as he entered. “Good evening to you, your honor,” he said in Osismiic. “God grant all is well.”

Gratillonius nodded. “It is that, we think. A boy.”

“A boy, is it? God be praised. May the angels watch over his crib.”

Gratillonius looked into the weathered face. This was one of the deacons Corentinus had chosen, a trusty fellow who otherwise was a boatman on the Odita. “What brings you here, Goban?”

“The bishop sent me. He’d like you to come talk with him—confidentially, you know, if your honor’s not too tired.”

A thrill tingled some of the grayness out of Gratillonius. He understood what this meant. Corentinus and Apuleius had both absented themselves from the assembly. Bacca had as much as told them to. “This is a matter for common workers and tribesmen. I must be on hand to impress them with the seriousness of it, but your dignity could be compromised.”—and their presence could be taken as moral support of the speaker. When guests were leaving the senator that day, Corentinus had found a chance to
draw Cratillonius aside and mutter, “We’ll discuss this after you’ve endured it, we twain,” in Ysan.

“I’m ready,” Gratillonius said.

“He told me the hour don’t matter, and he’ll have a bit of supper waiting. I’ll head back to my lodgings, if it please your honor.” Goban winked. “Just so nobody sees us together and gets the wrong idea, right, sir?”

Right, Gratillonius thought as he went forth again. Not that any conspiracy was afoot. Corentinus merely wanted Bacca’s nose out of it. Therefore Apuleius, who was hosting the procurator, couldn’t be on hand. However, no doubt senator and bishop had gone into the matter today in private.

How to cope with the; new order of things. First and foremost, Gratillonius supposed, how to keep the taxes from grinding Confluentes away. The rates Bacca brought were out of all proportion to what the colony was as yet able to produce. Apuleius could stave off ruin for a space—appeals which wouldn’t be granted but which would consume time, loans from the Aquilonian treasury or his own purse, lean though both were getting—but sooner or later, one way or another, payment must be dug up. And he, Gratillonius, the curial, must do the digging. From the land and the flesh of his people? No, he was their leader, their defender; but the state had forbidden him to work for their defense; but somehow—

Wind flapped the edges of his cloak and streamed chill over his skin. It brawled in trees along the river road. The water ran darkling. Light flickered across it, cast by a near-half moon that fled between rags of cloud above the western fields. Shelter waited in the bishops house. Corentinus would surely start by asking after Julia. He’d give thanks for the safe birth, but in a few words, man to man with the saints; then he’d lead the way to his table, rough fare but hearty, and fill the mead cups, or maybe wine for celebration and defiance. It might be like old days in Ys, or at least like the time afterward when they’d worked together for the survival of the folk, before this miserable breach opened between them.

The gate of Aquilo stood wide as usual. Bacca had tut-tutted at that, the first night. Gratillonius explained
there was nothing to fear, so far. Bacca made remarks about not allowing people to go in and out freely after dark, lest they be tempted to lawlessness.

The streets were, in fact, deserted save for the wind. Gratillonius passed Apuleius’s home. Every pane was aglow. Nothing too good for the procurator. Runa meant to give him a banquet herself before he left. Gratillonius had been inventing excuses for not attending.

A white form flitted out of the portico shadows and down the stairs. For an instant his heart recoiled from ghosts, then he told himself sharply that no matter how weary he was, he had no business being a fool, and then she reached him and he saw, barely, by what light the moon and the windows cast, that it was Verania.

“Hoy, what’s this?” he exclaimed.

Tears glistened. “I waited,” she gasped. He saw how she trembled in her mere gown, how her hair was gone disheveled. She had not dared take a cloak. Somebody might have noticed.

“Whatever for?” When had they last met, except in passing on his infrequent visits?

“T-to tell you—Gratillonius—”

How had she known he’d come by tonight? She must have overheard her father and Corentinus. Or had she listened beyond the door?

“You’re
still
the King of Ys!” she cried, and whirled and ran back. He heard the weeping break loose.

Bewildered, he stood where he was. The house took her into itself and closed up again.

What a girl, he thought after a moment. Something wild dwelt within that quietness. But no, not a girl any longer, a young woman, and fair to see. What was her age now—sixteen, seventeen? More or less the same as Dahilis’s when Gratillonius came to her.

Or Dahut’s when she died.

It was as if the wind blew between his ribs. He hastened onward.

4

“You humiliated me,” Runa said. “You disgraced yourself. Begging off from my feast for the procurator—You might at least have considered how that damages your position with the state. You claim so much concern for my people. But no, nothing counted besides your own wishes.”

Because she had chosen to speak in Latin, Gratillonius did likewise. “I tell you again, it was urgent I go reassure those two important headmen who weren’t at the assembly.”

“You lie.” She kept the same monotone, colder than the rain which roared outside and made blindness in the windowpanes of the old manor house. “It could have waited till he was gone.”

It could have. Gratillonius had flat-out judged he’d be unable to spend any more hours deferring to Bacca. A fight would have spelled disaster.

“You simply didn’t care,” Runa said. “Not about me or the people or anything other than getting back among the oafs you feel comfortable with.”

Despite lamps, the room was gloomy. A saint on a wall panel—big-eyed, elongated, stiff, centuries and a world removed from ancestral Rome—stared through shadows whose dance in the draft made him seem to move also, as if pronouncing an anathema. The hypocaust kept floor tiles warm, but cold air slunk around ankles and even at head level you breathed dankness.

Today Runa resembled the saint, narrow face, upright stance, implacable righteousness. “I have borne with you,” she said. “I have suffered your arrogance, your brutishness, your utter lack of any consideration, hoping God would unseal your eyes as He was pleased to unseal mine. But no. You keep them shut, willfully. All that matters to you is yourself.”

Gratillonius looked down at his hands and sought to curb his temper. He could slap her, but what was the use? “You’re not like your mother,” he told her. “She consigned
me to hell in a few words. How long do you mean to go on?”

“Oh! Now you insult my mother! Well, knowing you, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

Somehow he felt a sudden tug of pity. We were quite close, he thought while he said the same words aloud. “Have you really turned altogether against me?” he added.

She brought fingers to bosom. “It hurts me, it hurts me more than you can possibly know. But you have already given me so many wounds. This has only been the latest of them. The last, God willing.”

“Then you’re breaking with me.” He was about to voice the hope that they could still work in tandem.

“I am leaving this wretched place,” she said.

He gaped. “Huh? How—where—”

“Procurator Bacca has most kindly invited me to accompany him to Turonum.”

“What?” Too taken aback for thought, he heard his tongue: “How’s he in bed? I’d guess he spends the whole night explaining this will be for the good of the state.”

She reached claws toward him, withdrew them, and clipped, “That will do. For your information, I’m finished with sin. In Turonum I’ll be baptized and join the community of holy women.”