Raptor (36 page)

“I could leave with you!”

“And drag along your invalid mother as well?” I chided him. “Ne, let us speak of this no more. Let us relish what we have while we have it. Any thought of tomorrow—or of permanence—would only cast a pall over our today and now. Not another word, Gudinand. The darkness is coming fast upon us, and we have better things to do than talk.”

I have told of these episodes in as few words as possible, because the next part I cannot tell so briefly. That summer of those many strange and wondrous events ended at last, and there came the autumn, and with it came catastrophe: for Gudinand, for Juhiza and—how could it be otherwise?—for me.

I should remark that I did not live in a vacuum during those summer months in Constantia. With Wyrd away, and with Gudinand at his labors during most of every day except Sundays, and with no work of my own to occupy me, I had a great deal of time to fill. I did not waste it by simply sitting in my room at the deversorium, waiting for my next meeting with Gudinand, either as Thorn or as Juhiza. True, some of my time I did pass at the deversorium, helping the stable hands feed and groom my horse Velox, or helping them keep soaped and shiny and supple my saddle and bridle leathers.

But much of my free time I spent, either on foot or on horseback, indulging my natural curiosity by exploring Constantia and its environs. I sometimes rode out to meet merchant trains of wagons and pack animals heaped high with trade goods coming into the city, or I might ride for some miles with an outgoing train. I conversed with the teamsters and riders, and learned much about the lands from which they had come and to which they were going.

In the city, I loitered in the markets and warehouses, and made the acquaintance of both sellers and buyers of every sort of goods, and learned much about the art of bargaining to one’s best advantage. I even spent some time in Constantia’s slave mart, and eventually so ingratiated myself with one Egyptian slave dealer that he, furtively but proudly, gave me a private showing of a particular item of his stock, which, he said, would never be displayed on the public auction block.

“Oukh,” he said, which in the Greek tongue means “no.” “She is for private, secret sale… to some buyer of
very
special requirements… because this sort of slave is so
very
rare and expensive.” I looked at her and saw only a naked girl of about my own age—quite a pretty and fetching girl, except that she was an Ethiope. I politely greeted her in every language and dialect that I knew, but she only shyly smiled and shook her head.

“She speaks nothing but her native tongue,” the dealer said indifferently. “I do not even know her name. I call her Monkey.”

“Well,” I said, “she is black, but that is only an uncommon color, no great rarity. And I suppose, at her age, she is still a virgin, but virgins are not rare, either. And she cannot even make love-talk in bed. How much money do you ask for her?”

The Egyptian mentioned a price that took my breath away. It amounted approximately to the entire and considerable sum that Wyrd and I together had earned from our whole winter of hunting. “Why, one could buy a whole string of beautiful virgin slaves for that!” I gasped. “What in the world would make this one worth so much? And why do you reserve her for only private showing?”

“Ah, young master. Monkey’s true virtues and talents are not readily apparent, because they reside in the way she was reared from birth. She is not only black, not only comely, not only a virgin, she is also a venefica.”

“And what is that?”

He told me, and what he told me was fantastic. I stared anew at the shy little black girl, and I was awed and aghast and almost unbelieving of what she was.

“Liufs Guth!” I choked out. “Who would purchase such a monster?”

“Oh, someone will,” said the Egyptian with a shrug. “I may have to feed and house Monkey for quite a while, but—soon or later—there will come someone who can make use of her, and will cheerfully pay the price I demand. Begging your indulgence, young master, but at some time in your life, you may be glad to know that—if you search hard enough and pay dearly enough—you can find a venefica for your own use.”

“Pray God…” I muttered sickly. “Pray
all
the gods that I never have to. Nevertheless, I thank you, Egyptian, for furthering my education in the wicked ways of the world.” And I went away from there.

At mealtimes, I frequented the tabernae favored by merchants and travelers, and ate and drank with them, and heard their tales of hardship and hazard on the road, their boasts of dizzying profits or their bemoanings of dismal losses at their various journeys’ ends.

I attended athletic games and horse or chariot races and bouts of pugiles at Constantia’s amphitheater—it was smaller than the one I had seen in Vesontio—and learned how to place wagers, and I sometimes even won on one of my gambles. I spent numerous other hours in the various thermae reserved for men, and made acquaintances with whom I exercised or wrestled, or we played at dice or at the twelve-line game or at the ludus game of batting a felt ball with the gut-stringed open paddles—or we simply lounged about and listened to someone of orotund voice reading poetry or singing the Latin carmina priscae or the Germanic saggwasteis fram aldrs.

Constantia also had a public library, but I went there only infrequently, for it was inferior even to the scriptorium at St. Damian’s, and I could find few codices or scrolls that I had not already read. Nor did I often attend the city’s Basilica of St. John, unless I was absolutely chafing with boredom, because I had conceived a dislike for the priest Tiburnius from the day I had witnessed his “involuntary” ordination and heard his self-serving first lection.

The streets and marts and squares of Constantia were forever thronged with people, but eventually I could recognize many of the permanent residents and distinguish them from the passers-through and summer visitors like myself. Two persons in particular I had reason to take note of. The street crowds were generally unruly and unmannerly, pushing and shoving and elbowing each other, but they
did
meekly step aside and make way and even cringe in doorways when a certain one of their fellows desired passage. Not for a long time did I even catch sight of that person, because he always came through the streets in an immense, lavishly decorated, curtained Liburnian car, its poles borne on the shoulders of eight trotting and sweating slaves, who bellowed, “Way! Way for the legatus!” and who would run right over anybody who did not dodge. When I inquired, I was told that that was the vehicle of Latobrigex—the dux, as he was known in Latin—or the herizogo, as he would be called in the Old Language. Latobrigex, said my informant, was Constantia’s only native-born citizen of really noble lineage, and on that account he was at least nominally Rome’s legatus of this prosperous outpost of her empire.

The other person whom I came to recognize, because I saw him so frequently, was a heavyset, hulking young man of slack and dull visage, with a hairline that began not far above his beetling eyebrows. He was about as old as Gudinand, meaning of an age to be gainfully employed, but he seemed to do as much leisurely ambling about the city as I did. At least I was going about noticing and inspecting and learning things; that young man’s vacant gaze seemed to reflect nothing but contempt or disgust for whatever part of the city I saw him in. And I never saw him
do
anything, except to be even more unmannerly than others in the crowds, shouldering them out of his way, always with a curse and a growl.

So I inquired about him, too, and I inquired of an elderly man who had just then been shoved so hard that he had fallen. I helped the old man to his feet, and asked, “Who
is
that lout, anyway?”

“The damnable whelp is named Claudius Jaeirus. He has not the free enjoyment of his senses—except for his overbearing sense of superiority to all lesser citizens. He has no occupation, no obligations, no interests beyond vapid idleness and mindless brutality.”

As the old fellow tried to brush off the mud he had accumulated from his fall into the street, I asked, “Then why do not the lesser citizens put some restraint upon him? I would, and gladly, even though he is twice my size.”

“Do not try, young fellow. None of us dares cross wills with him, because he is the only child of the dux Latobrigex. Mind you, our dux is a mild and inoffensive man, no tyrant. He is lenient with us, his inferiors, and even more so with that misbegotten spawn of his. Would that Jaeirus partook of his father’s weakling temperament. But he is also the son of his mother, and she is a bitch-dragon of the first degree. I thank you, young sir, for your assistance and sympathy. In return, I warn you to stay well away from that intolerable but inviolate Jaeirus.”

And so I did, or at least for as long as I was able.

I hardly need say that it was always as Thorn that I did my wanderings about the city and the countryside, and my attending of public functions, and my mingling with the citizenry. When I went out in my guise and garb of Juhiza, it was on those twilight occasions of my meeting Gudinand for another episode in our course of his treatment. I took pains, even in the dusk, that no one saw me slip out of the deversorium, and I would sneak through back alleys to the lakeside outskirts of the city, and thence to our familiar copse. Usually, also, after those episodes—and under cover of full darkness—I would repair to one of the women’s thermae for my cleansing and resuscitation. A few times, in one or another of those baths, I saw again the lewd woman Robeya. But she never again accosted me, and if our glances did chance to meet, I would give her a sweetly malicious smile and she would give me a venomously malicious glare before we mutually averted our eyes.

Only twice or thrice did I deliberately, in broad daylight, venture out into public view as Juhiza. The one feminine gown I owned had already been faded and shabby when I bought it in Vesontio. Now, after my several sessions with Gudinand, it really showed signs of wear and tear from its being so often doffed and donned again. I now had ample money with which to purchase new garments—and I had no further need to pretend to be buying for an absent mistress. So, to ensure that I obtained raiment that both fit me properly and looked well on me, I went as Juhiza to the shops of clothiers catering to fine ladies. Dowdily dressed as I was, I was received with some coolness. But since I treated the shopkeepers as condescendingly as it I
were
a fine lady, and insisted on only the very best-quality goods, those clothiers were soon bowing and scraping obsequiously before me. Over the course of those few daylight ventures into the city, I acquired three new gowns, exquisitely embroidered, plus various accessories: new kerchiefs and sandals, some pins and ribbons and bars with which to dress my hair in different arrangements. I repeat: my outings as Juhiza were few, but they turned out to have been one too many.

That one time, I chanced to be emerging from the shop of a myropola, where I had been replenishing my supply of cosmetic unguents and powders and such, when I heard the pounding of many feet and the cries of “Way! Make way for the legatus!” So I drew back into the doorway of the shop, and everyone else on the street scurried to clear a passage, and along came the Liburnian car. On this occasion, however, and not far from me, the slaves halted and gently lowered the great enclosed chair. If the legatus was inside it, he did not get out. The passengers who alighted were an exceptionally handsome woman and an exceedingly ill-favored young man. He was, not too surprisingly, that loutish Jaeirus, son of the dux Latobrigex. But the woman, to my vast amazement, was that Robeya whom I knew from the women’s baths. I instantly realized that she must be the “bitch-dragon” mother of the lout.

I ought to have covered my face, or turned and scuttled unobtrusively away. But I stood eyeing them and thinking: well, even a woman of Robeya’s peculiar proclivities probably
could
marry—and would, if given the chance to marry into the local nobility. And then, having acquired a husband, she must have lain still and compliant at least
once
and for long enough to get impregnated by him. But it was small wonder that the fruit of such a dry and loveless womb should have been a male child as paltry and unlovable as Jaeirus.

But I stood there musing too long, and Robeya saw me. She and I had never seen one another in any state other than nudity, but she recognized me as easily as I had known her. Robeya’s dark eyes widened, then narrowed, and she leaned to nudge her son and direct his attention to me, and she put her face close to his and spoke rapidly. I could not hear what she said, but it made Jaeirus’s eyes narrow, too, and he swept them up and down me, as if his mother had bidden him to memorize every detail of me. At that, I did depart—in the opposite direction and at a modest gait. But as soon as I came to a cross street, I turned down it and made off as swiftly as I could without actually breaking into an unseemly run. Only once did I look back, and saw neither Jaeirus nor Robeya pelting after me.

I was grateful to reach my lodgings unmolested, and relieved at having escaped what might have been a nasty confrontation. I put away my newly purchased parcels and quickly stripped off every vestige of Juhiza, and made a silent vow never again to be Juhiza in public in daylight. And I never did. For many days thereafter, it was as Thorn that I did my perambulations about the city and made my meetings with Gudinand for boy-type sport and games. After those days, my anxiety abated somewhat, and so, when Gudinand glumly told me that he had suffered yet another convulsion, it was with only a minimum of trepidation that I arranged to have Juhiza meet and treat him once again.

“But I fear, good friend,” I said, “this
has
to be the last time. Autumn is upon us, and our guardian Wyrd will be back here any day. Besides… if the treatment has not worked a cure by now…”

“I know, I know,” said Gudinand with weary resignation. “Still, if nothing else, I shall have had this one last time…”

The next evening, when I dressed as Juhiza, I was nervous and my fingers fumbled, and I twice had to redo the creta with which I accentuated my eyes’ lashes and brows. But, since this
was
one of the first days of autumn, the dusk came early, so it was very nearly dark when I slipped out of the deversorium. It was my first time outdoors as Juhiza since my street encounter with Robeya and Jaeirus, but I saw neither of them lurking about, nor anyone who might have been a spy of theirs. And as well as I could tell, I was not followed by anybody when I made my accustomed way through Constantia’s back alleys toward the lake.