The Scourge of God (16 page)

A WOMAN NAMED

ILANA

L
et
me
get the water, Guernna.”

The German girl looked at Ilana with surprise.
“You
, Ilana? You haven’t wanted to soil your pretty little hands with wood and water since you got here.”

The maid of Axiopolis took the jar from the German and balanced it on her head. “So much more reason for me to do it now.” She smiled with false sweetness. “Maybe it will help quiet your whines.”

As she left Suecca’s house to walk to the Tisza, Guernna called after, “I know what you’re doing! You want to go past where the Romans are camped!”

It was late morning after the banquet, and the encampment was finally stirring. Ilana hoped the young Roman was awake. The bright reds and blues of the embassy tents were a vivid contrast to the browns and tans of barbarian habitation, making them easy to find, and the hues made her long for the colorful paints and bustling bazaars of civilization. It was astonishing what quiet passion the arrival of the Roman embassy had stirred in her. She’d been half dead, going through the motions of the days and half resigned to union with Skilla. Now she was seized with fresh hope, seeing an alternative. Somehow she had to convince these Romans to ransom her. The key was the embassy scribe and historian who’d followed her around the banquet room with his eyes.

A year before, the thought of such calculation would have horrified Ilana. Love was sacred, romance was pure, and she’d had a queue of suitors before settling on Tasio. But that was before her betrothed and her father had died, and before Skilla seemed determined to marry her and stick her forever in a yurt. If she acquiesced she’d spend the rest of her days wandering with his tribe from pasture to pasture, bearing Hun babies and watching these butchers bring on the end of the world. She was convinced that ordinary Romans had no idea of the peril they were facing. She believed this because until her own former life had ended, she’d had no idea as well.

Ilana had donned the Roman dress she’d been captured in for this occasion, and carefully washed and combed her hair. A Hun belt of gold links helped emphasize her slender waist, a medallion the swell of her breasts, and Roman bracelets on the raised arm that balanced the jar caught the light of the sun and called attention to her errand. It was the first time since her capture that she’d really tried to look pretty. The jar was seated on a round felt cap on the crown of her head, the posture needed to bear it giving a seductive sway to her walk.

She spied the Roman to one side of their cluster of tents, brushing a gray mare. He seemed handsome enough, curious, and, she hoped, necessarily innocent of female motive. She walked by his field of vision while staring straight ahead and for a moment feared he might ignore her, so intent he seemed on combing his damned horse. She’d have to try again when returning from the river! But, no, suddenly he straightened abruptly and just as he did so she deliberately stumbled and caught the jar as it toppled from her head. “Oh!”

“Let me help you!” he called in Latin.

“It’s nothing,” she replied in the same tongue, trying to feign surprise. “I didn’t see you standing there.” She clutched the clay jar to her breasts like a lover.

He walked over. “I thought you might be Roman from your look and manner.”

He seemed almost too kind, not yet hardened by life’s cruelties, and for a moment she doubted her plan. She needed someone strong. But at least he would take pity!

“I saw you serving at the banquet,” he went on. “What’s your name?”

“Ilana.”

“That’s pretty. I am Jonas Alabanda, of Constantinople. Where are you from?”

She cast her eyes down, purposely demure. “Axiopolis, near the Black Sea. The city the Greeks called Heracleia.” 

“I’ve heard of it. You were captured?”

“Edeco conquered it.”

“Edeco! He’s the one we rode here with from Constantinople.”

“The warrior Skilla caught me and brought me here on his horse.”

“I know Skilla as well!”

“Then we have even more in common than our empire.” She smiled sadly.

He held out his arms. “Here, let me help carry that.”

“It’s woman’s work. Besides, it’s not heavy until full.” 

“Then let me escort you to the river.” He grinned. “You look like more enjoyable company than Edeco or Skilla.” 

This was going better than she’d hoped. They walked together, the quick companionship giving a sheen to the pleasant day, the grass suddenly greener and the sky bluer. “You’re young to be on such an important mission,” she said. “You must be wise beyond your years.”

“I merely speak Hunnish and enjoy letters. I hope to write a history.”

“You must come from a good family.” She hoped he was rich enough to buy her.

“We’ve had some misfortune. I’m hoping this journey turns it around.”

That was disappointing. They reached the grassy river-bank, the Tisza lolling lazily, dried mud showing how much it had fallen since spring. She stooped to dip water, making her movements deliberately slow. “The journey has let us meet each other, at least,” she said.

“What house do you belong to here?”

“Suecca, wife of Edeco.”

He watched her stand and balance. “I will ask him about you, I think.”

Her heart soared. “If you could ransom me, I would serve the embassy on your way home,” she said, her words coming more quickly than she’d planned. “I can cook, and sew. . . .” She saw the amused concern on his face and stopped. “I just mean I wouldn’t be any trouble.” The jar balanced on her head, she carefully began walking back, knowing that Suecca would miss her soon and probably be suspicious of why she’d uncharacteristically fetched the water. “I could tell you much about the Huns, and I have relatives in Constantinople who could contribute . . .”

She was desperate to bind him to her side. Yet even as she babbled, pathetically promising everything she could think of—how she hated to be a supplicant, and helpless!—there was a sudden rattle of hooves and a Hun pony burst between them, butting Jonas aside and spilling some of the water. “Woman! What are you doing with the Romans!”

It was Skilla, astride his horse Drilca.

“I am only fetching water—”

Jonas grabbed the rein. “It was
I
who talked to
her”
Skilla pointed with his whip. “Let go of my horse. This woman is my uncle’s slave, taken in battle. She has no business talking to any free man without permission, and certainly not to
you.
If she doesn’t know
that,
then Suecca will make it clear!”

“You’ll not punish a Roman for talking to a Roman.” There was low warning in Jonas’s voice, and Ilana realized there was some history between these two. She was both thrilled and apprehensive. How could she use it? How could she be so calculating?

“She’s no longer a Roman! And a slave has no business mingling with diplomats! She knows that! If she wants to be free, then let her agree to marriage!”

The Roman pulled on the reins, turning the horse’s head and making it sidestep. “Leave her alone, Skilla.”

The Hun lashed the hand that held his rein, put his boot on the Roman’s chest, and shoved. Jonas, taken by surprise, vaulted backward, landing in humiliation on his rear. Skilla wheeled and scooped Ilana off the ground, her jar falling and shattering. “This one is mine! I told you that!” She struggled, trying to scratch, but he held her like a child, his arm iron. “Keep to your own, Roman!” Jonas charged, but before he could reach Skilla the Hun yipped and galloped his horse away across the encampment, people whooping and laughing as Ilana hung helplessly, her feet a foot or two off the ground, bouncing like a rag doll until he dropped her rudely in Suecca’s doorway. She staggered, breathless, while his exited horse turned in a circle.

“Stay away from the Roman,” he warned her, twisting his body to keep her in view as he struggled with his horse. “I am your future now.”

Her eyes were afire. “I’m Roman, too! Can’t you see that I don’t want you?”

“And I am in love with you, princess, and worth a dozen men like him.” He grinned. “You’ll see it, in the end.”

Ilana looked away in frustration. There was nothing more unendurable than to be loved by someone you didn’t want. “Please leave me alone.”

“Tell Suecca I will bring her a new jar!”

Then he galloped away.

Never had I felt so humiliated or angry. The Hun had caught me by surprise and then disappeared, like a coward, into the sea of his people. I was certain Skilla had no real relationship to the young woman, whatever he might dream, and I was tempted to dig my weapons from the baggage and call the warrior out. But as a diplomat I knew I couldn’t start a duel. Nor, I admitted to myself, was I very certain I could beat him. In any event I’d risked Maximinus’s anger simply by talking to a girl. But she was Roman, pretty, and—if this was the one Skilla had boasted would marry him after she’d scratched him—in peril. For a person of my age and situation, it was a recipe for infatuation.

I brushed myself off, annoyed at the nearby Huns grinning at my embarrassment, and tried to think what to do.

“You can never win solely by fighting,” an oddly pitched voice said in Latin, as if reading my mind. “It requires thought as well.”

I turned. It was the dwarf who had performed the evening before. Zerco, they called him. What a little monster he was, waddling up from the trees where he must have been lurking.

“Did I ask your advice?”

“What need to ask, when you so clearly need it?” Daylight made his visage even more pitiable: his skin too dark, his nose flat and lips wide, his ears too big for his head, his head too big for his torso, and his torso too big for his legs. His back was partly humped, his hair a shaggy mat, and his cheeks beardless but pocked. All that saved him from repulsion were his eyes, which were as large and brown as an animal’s but blinked with sharp intelligence. Perhaps Zerco was not the fool he seemed when performing.

“You were spying.”

“A clown has to observe the betters he wishes to mock.”

Despite myself, I smiled wryly. “You plan to mock me, fool?”

“I already did, last night. And between that maid leading you by the sword and that barbarian seating you on your rump, you’re doing a good enough job yourself. But I’ll pick on your Hun friend next, perhaps.”

“That Hun is not my friend.”

“Never be too sure who your friends and enemies are. Fortune has a way of changing which is which.”

The dwarf’s quickness made me curious. “You speak the tongue of the Empire.”

“I come from Africa. Discarded by my mother as the devil’s joke, kidnapped and sold as a jester, and passed from court to court until I found favor with Bleda, whose idea of humor was simpler than his dour and more ambitious brother’s. Other men must work their way to Hades, but I’ve found it in this life.” He put his arm to his brow in a pantomime of self-pity.

“Someone said Attila gave you to Aetius, the general of the West, but you came back for your wife.”

“Ah Julia, my angel! Now you have found me out. I complain of hell but with her I’ve found heaven. Do you know that she missed me even more than I missed her? What do you think of that?”

I was baffled. Bigilas had said the woman was not ugly like Zerco, but I could not imagine what their relationship was like. “That she has peculiar taste.”

The dwarf laughed.

“Or that she looks inside the skin as well as outside.” Zerco bowed. “You have a diplomat’s flair for flattery, Jonas Alabanda. That is your name, is it not?”

“So you
are
a spy.”

“I am a listener, which few men are. I hear many things and see even more. If you tell me something of Constantinople, I will tell you something about these Huns.”

“What could I tell you of Constantinople?”

“Its palaces, games, and food. I dream of it like a thirsty man dreams of water.”

“Well, it’s certainly grander than what we have here: the greatest city in the world now. As for the Huns, I’ve already learned that they’re arrogant, rude, ignorant, and that you can smell one before you see one. Beyond that, I’m not sure there’s much to learn.”

“Oh, but there is! If you fancy Ilana and despise Skilla, you should come with me.” He began walking north along the riverbank, in a rocking gait that was comic and pitiable at the same time, and I hesitated. The crippled and diseased made me uncomfortable. Zerco would have none of it. “Come, come. My stature is not contagious.”

I slowed my own habitual pace to match his. Children ran after us, calling insults, but didn’t dare draw too close to the odd little monster and the tall, mysterious Roman.

“How did you come to be a jester?” I asked when he didn’t say anything more.

“What else could I be? I’m too small to be a soldier or laborer and too ill-formed to be a poet or a singer. Making fun of the great is the only way I’ve saved myself.”

“Including the noble Flavius Aetius?”

“It’s the most competent who are usually most willing to laugh at themselves.”

“Is that what you think of the famous general?”