Raptor (39 page)

“I
did
tell you to recant the wager!” I snapped. “I give you free leave to do so now.”

“By the pale, emaciated goddess Paupertas, I never in my life reneged on a debt. I will not start now, by defrauding a friend.”

“Good,” I said as we emerged onto the street. “I need the money. And I promise to work harder than ever during this coming winter, to help us earn another fortune.”

“You
need
the money?” Wyrd asked, surprised. “May I inquire what for?”

“Ne, fráuja, not until after I have spent it. You might try to dissuade me from the uses I wish to make of it.”

He shrugged, and we proceeded in silence toward our deversorium. Actually I walked weeping, though not Wyrd or anyone else could have perceived it, for no tears flowed from my eyes. The grief that I felt, as Thorn, on being bereaved of Gudinand-who-had-been-my-friend, I was bearing manfully dry-eyed. It was the female half of me that was unashamedly
weeping
for Gudinand-who-had-loved-me. And, my femaleness being at present suppressed deep within my outwardly male self, the tears flowed, so to speak, from my heart. I wondered: if I were at this moment Juhiza instead of Thorn, would those tears be visibly issuing from my eyes and streaming down my face?

I was led to reflect yet again on the peculiar nature of myself, and the frequently dire effects it seemed to wreak in the world around me. Was it my mannamavi incapacity to love, I wondered, or was it just my ordained fate, to make others suffer so? All Romans used to believe, and those who remained pagan still believed, that every human being is guarded and guided through life by a personal godling, invisible but ever-present. Those of male persons are called the genii, those of females the junones. According to that pagan belief, the individual has little volition of his own, but generally must follow the whims and dictates of his tutelary spirit. Then was I, as an androgynus, attended by both a genius and a junone? Were they perhaps in perpetual conflict for control of me? Or was I perhaps attended by neither? I
thought
that many of the things I had done in my life so far had been done of my own free will, but of others I could not be sure. I had willfully, deliberately and with malice slain the reprehensible Brother Peter. But, for all I knew—and with no intent on my part—the innocent Sister Deidamia might also now be dead, from the flagrum beating she endured because of her involvement with me. I had had good reason and right to slay the savage woman in the Hun encampment, but no reason, right or wish to have impelled also the death of the little charismatic Becga. By Iésus, even my companion juika-bloth had died because of me—because I had ignorantly meddled with its true nature. And now… now I had, without wanting to, been the direct cause of Gudinand’s self-sacrifice.

Liufs Guth! Whether it was my own doing or that of a tutelary genius or junone—or both—had I
really,
already, so early, become a raptor, as I once had vowed, marauding my way through life? And through others’ lives?

Well, if I had, I said to myself, at least I knew what my next prey would be.

“Khaîre!” The Egyptian slave trader uttered the Greek exclamation of salute when I told him what I had come for. “Did I not say, young master, that someday even
you
might find use for a venefica of your own? I confess, I did not expect that to be so soon, when you are still so young and—”

“Spare me the homily,” I said. “Let us discuss price.”

“You know the price.”

Nevertheless, I managed to bargain at least a little to my advantage. As I have told, the Egyptian had earlier demanded for the slave called Monkey an amount approximately equal to the entire contents of my purse. But, after much wrangling, I bought the Ethiope girl for a trifle less than that amount, leaving enough money for me and Wyrd to pay what we would owe at the deversorium by the time we left there, and to supply ourselves for the coming winter, and even a few siliquae to spare, for another purpose I had in mind.

“Very well,” I said, when the transaction was concluded, and the trader had signed, sealed and given to me the certificate of Monkey’s servitium. “Have the girl clothed and ready to go with me—because I may call for her most suddenly—when I require her services.”

“She will be waiting at your command.” And the Egyptian smiled evilly. “When the time comes, I wish you—let us say—complete and utter satisfaction. Khaîre, young master.”

During the next several days, I was a secret watcher, lurking outside the domicile of the dux Latobrigex. I spied only during the daylight hours, because that was when the concatenation of events for which I waited was likeliest to occur. The nights I again spent in company with Wyrd, dining at a taberna or bathing at a therma, and we talked of only inconsequential things. Wyrd was obviously itching with curiosity, but he patiently forbore from asking questions or complaining that I was delaying our start upon the hunting season.

Numerous times I watched the Liburnian car leave the ducal residence, its bearer slaves shouting, “Way for the legatus!” On occasion Latobrigex rode out alone, on other occasions with his wife, on others with his son. But not until the day the slaves brought out the car bearing
just
Jaeirus and Robeya did I follow it, trotting at a discreet distance behind. As I had hoped, the car stopped to let Jaeirus descend at one of the men’s baths. Then it went on again, and I continued to follow, silently praying. My prayer was answered: the car stopped next at one of the women’s thermae, and Robeya descended there.

I ran as fast as I could to the Egyptian’s establishment, fairly snatched Monkey out of the place and, dragging her, ran back to the therma where Jaeirus was bathing. It was not at all uncommon for a man to arrive anywhere with either a male or a female slave in attendance, but of course I could not take a female inside a men’s bath. However, like all the better-class thermae, this one was equipped with small but comfortably furnished exedria waiting rooms, and I installed Monkey in one that contained a couch.

It was impossible for me to tell the little black girl anything in words, but I contrived to convey my instructions to her by gestures, and she nodded compliantly as she comprehended each point. She was to undress to the skin; she was to recline upon the couch and wait a while; then she was to perform the function for which she had been bred and trained. Immediately afterward, she was to dress herself again, leave the exedrium, leave the building and meet me in the street outside the therma.

Hoping mightily that Monkey
had
understood everything, I left her there and went on into the apodyterium to take off my own clothes. Then, wearing a robe of toweling, I hurried through the series of other rooms, searching for Jaeirus. After all the running I had done, I really needed a bath, so I was quite grateful to find my prey in the steam-filled sudatorium. There were several other men in there, sitting and sweating and talking among themselves, but they were grouped at an aloof distance from Jaeirus. I had rather expected that. Over these past days I had noticed that all the people of Constantia—even the louts like himself whom I had sometimes seen in Jaeirus’s company—were now shunning any contact with him. Since the day of that trial by ordeal, probably no one but his mother and father, and perhaps the self-serving priest, had given him a friendly word or glance.

So, here in the sudatorium, Jaeirus sat in a corner all alone and looking morose, nude except for a bandage on his right hand. He stared at me in genuine surprise when I sat down beside him and introduced myself as “Thorn, an admirer of yours, Clarissimus Jaeirus.” It might be supposed that he was surprised to be accosted by someone so close in age and resemblance to the girl Juhiza. But he had seen Juhiza—close up, anyway—only in the darkness of the copse and the dimness of the church where the judicium had convened. Also, I was patently a male, for I was here in a men’s therma. was I not? I am sure he was surprised merely to have
somebody
speak to him, persona non grata that he had become.

“Clarissimus,” I said, “you do not know me, for I am but an apprentice to a traveling merchant, and we have only recently arrived in your fair city. However, I must tell you that I owe you a great debt.”

“What debt?” he asked huskily, and sidled a little away from me on the bench. I think he was instantly frightened that I was some friend or relation of the late Gudinand, and that the debt I mentioned was of a sort he would not wish paid.

I hastened to say, “Thanks to you, I won a wager of considerable money. Considerable for one of my humble station, at least. You see, I attended the arena combat the other day, and on you I staked every last nummus of my wages and savings.”

“Indeed?” he said, less warily. “I should hardly have believed that
anyone
wagered on me.”

“But I did. And I was given extravagant odds.”

“That
I can believe,” he said glumly.

“So, for the fortune you earned this lowly apprentice, I desire to reward you. I know, of course, clarissimus, that you would never accept a pars honorarium. So I have brought you a gift.”

“Eh?”

“I spent part of my winnings to buy you a slave.”

“I own ample slaves, thank you, apprentice.”

“None like this one, clarissimus. A young virgin, just ripe for the taking of the kernel from the fruit.”

“Thank you again, but I have enjoyed many such kernels.”

“None like this one,” I repeated. “The girl-child is not only virgin, not only beautiful, she is
black.
A young Ethiope.”

“Say you so?” he murmured, and his gloomy face brightened. “I have never bedded a black girl.”

“You can bed this one this very instant. I took the liberty of fetching her here to the therma. She awaits you, stark naked, in the exedrium numbered three beside the entry hall.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You are not making some elaborate jest of me?”

“I am thanking you, clarissimus. You have but to go and look. If you do not like what you see… well, here I sit. Simply come back and tell me you decline the gift.”

Jaeirus still looked suspicious, but he looked eagerly lustful as well. He stood up, wrapped a towel around himself and said, “Wait, then, apprentice. If I do not return immediately and throttle you as a prankster, I shall return—afterward—and make most gracious acceptance of your gift.” And he went off toward the front of the building.

I did not wait; I was close behind him. I had too closely calculated my timing to waste any of it. When Jaeirus went through the exedrium door, and it did not open again after a very brief interval, I scurried into the apodyteriutn and—happy to have steamed off some of my sweat—hastily redonned my clothes. Then, again running like mad, I dashed to the deversorium and to my room, ripped off my masculine garments and donned those of Juhiza. I did not take time to adorn myself with cosmetics and ornaments, but immediately ran back to the therma I had just left.

Monkey was, as instructed, already waiting for me on the street corner, placidly eyeing the passersby. Many of those slowed or paused to give her a look, too, because the merchant trains that visited Constantia did sometimes bring blacks with them, but not that often, and very seldom a pretty black girl. When I took her arm, little Monkey flinched away; I was a female and a stranger. But then she recognized me as her new owner, and she smiled, though looking understandably puzzled at what she must have taken to be extremely odd behavior. I gestured inquiringly toward the therma, and her smile broadened and she nodded vigorously.

So next I trotted her to the women’s therma, and there, of course, it was commonplace for a gentlewoman to bring along her own female slave, even a black one. Monkey and I both disrobed in the apodyterium and then together went searching the rooms. Enough time had passed by now so that Robeya was already in the farthest room, the balineum, floating about in the warm after-bath pool, as lazily and languorously as when I had first seen her. However, it was obvious that she, too, was being shunned by her peers, for the several other women and girls in the pool were letting her have one whole end of it to herself—that far and darker corner where Robeya had once suggested that she and I go to frolic.

Taking care that Robeya did not see me, I pointed her out to Monkey and again, with gestures, conveyed my instructions. She was to swim over to Robeya, in the most enticing manner possible, and accede to whatever the lady suggested. Then, after performing her function, Monkey was to
hurry
to the apodyterium, hurry into her clothes, hurry out of the therma, and this time I would be waiting for
her
outside. Monkey nodded and nodded and then slipped gracefully into the water, while I returned to the apodyterium and got dressed as Juhiza for the very last time.

I stood fidgeting in the street, while time seemed to pass with excruciating slowness. But actually it took no longer than it had with Jaeirus. In fact, I could hear a distinct commotion inside the therma—the sounds of women screaming, feet running, children bawling, attendants shouting—for a minute or two before Monkey came scuttling out the door, still doing up some of her outer garments. Before I even inquired, the little black girl beamed a broad white smile and nodded.

So now, much more leisurely, I walked Monkey to our final destination, in the poorest residential district on the far outskirts of the city. Gudinand had once shown me which was his house, but had never invited me inside—he being ashamed of such a shabby and squalid shack. I indicated that Monkey was to enter there, and gave her my purse to take with her. Then, somewhat gingerly, I gave her a thank-you kiss on her ebony forehead, waved goodbye to her and watched until she had gone inside.

The purse she took with her contained the few silver siliquae I had saved for this purpose, and Monkey’s certificate of servitium, now countersigned by myself, and a note I had written in the Old Language and the Gothic script: “Máizein thizai friathwai manna ni habáith, ei huas sáiwala seina lagjith faúr frijonds seinans.”