Roma Mater (19 page)

Bitterness lashed: ‘Why not? What difference? We’re not the boy and girl who babbled endearments under a midsummer moon. Your satisfactions have been plain to see on you. I daresay you await more of them from Gratillonius.’

She drew herself straight and retorted, ‘You’ve taken your own pleasures, Soren Cartagi, and well I know ’tis not been with your wife alone. Should I embalm my spirit? Lugaid was no bad man, and Hoel was grand.’ Anger collapsed. She struggled not to weep. ‘But oh, how often with them would I pretend to myself ’twas you. And I tried with Colconor, but as nasty as he was …’twould
have been wrong to have even the memory of you present … whenever he took me, I would go away anywhere else.’

‘Oh, Elissa,’ he croaked. They reached.

She drew back before they had quite met. ‘Nay. Nay. We are what we’ve become. ’Twould be desecration.’

He slumped. True.’ After a while he stirred. ‘Best I depart.’

She had rallied. ‘Not yet, Soren. We
are
what we are, Speaker for Taranis and high priestess of Belisama, in Ys. I said we should not conspire against the new King. But let us think how best we may cope with him.’

1

Unwontedly solemn, Dahilis asked, ‘Beloved, have you an hour to spare for me this morning?’

Gratillonius clasped her to him. How wonderfully slender and lithe she was. His free hand cupped a breast, roved down across the curves of hip and belly, rested briefly on golden fleece, returned to chuck her under the chin. ‘What, immediately again?’ he laughed. ‘I’ll need that hour to recover my strength, as spendthrift of it as you’ve made me.’

‘I mean talk, the two of us alone.’ He heard what a need was hers, and read it in the lapis lazuli of her gaze. ‘Oh, I understand you are engaged, you’ve been around among people like a whirlwind since first you arrived, but if you have any time free – It concerns us both, and the whole city.’

He kissed her. ‘Of course, of course,’ he did his best to say in Ysan. ‘It was never my wish to leave you behind. If you too would discuss affairs of state, why, every magnate and officer should be as delightful.’

At his movement, an object stirred between his shoul-derblades – the Key that he must always wear but had put at his back, out of the way. Somehow, shifting it on to his chest again felt like closing a door. He pushed the thought off, banned it from Dahilis and himself.

They left the bed to which they had impulsively returned after breaking their fast, and sought the bath. Dahilis became playful once more, giggling as she soaped
him and her and rinsed them clean, diving about in the warm water like a seal. They towelled each other as well but did not call anyone to help them dress. He would summon his barber later, he decided. He slipped on a robe, cloak, and sandals. She took an equally simple white gown belted at the waist, slippers on her feet, a fillet on her head. The yellow tresses she had merely combed and let hang free. Many young women of the best families often used plebeian styles these days, rather than the traditional elaborate coiffures. Ready to leave, she seemed to him a maiden, almost a child.

Hand in hand they wandered down a hallway on which opened the doors of luxurious chambers, across the mosaic of charioteers which floored the atrium, past servants who touched the brow, and out into the morning. Uniquely in Ys, the palace had a walled garden around it, not large but so intricate in its hedges, bowers, topiaries, flowerbeds, paths that one could walk long about and never feel cramped. The building and the outbuildings behind it were likewise of modest dimensions, but ample for their uses and pleasing to behold. The northern and southern sides of the palace formed ideal rectangles, their plaster flaunting vigorous images of wild beasts in a forest. Sculptures of a boar and a bear flanked a staircase leading to the portico and the main door, whose bronze bore reliefs of human figures. The upper storey was set back above a roof of green copper, and itself carried a dome, on top of which the gilt figure of an eagle spread wings.

It was a glorious day, springtime in bloom, each breath like a draught of cool wine. Dew still glittered on leaves and moss, newly born blossoms, crushed shell that scrunched softly underfoot. Birds were everywhere, redbreast, warbler, finch, linnet, wren, singing in a chaos of joy. High overhead, white as the cloudlets they passed, winged a flight of storks, homeward bound.

Dahilis walked mute, her trouble again upon her, until she and Gratillonius reached the wall. Vines growing over its sandstone did not hinder the warmth of sun that it had begun to give back. He spread his cloak over the dampness on a stone bench and they sat down. He laid a hand across the fist she had made in her lap. ‘Tell me,’ he said.

She stared before her, unseeing, and spoke with difficulty: ‘My lord, my darling, I can no longer abide here. Grant me that … that I may go to my own house.’

‘What?’ he exclaimed, dismayed. ‘I thought you happy.’

‘Oh, I was. Gladsome beyond measure. But – it is not right … that I have the King all to myself. Five days it has been. Six nights.’

He clenched his teeth before saying, ‘Well, true, I suppose we should –’

‘We must! You are the King. And they, they are my Sisters in the Mystery. They too are of Belisama. Oh, do not anger Her! I would fear for you yet more than I already do.’

‘I will certainly give them proper respect,’ he forced out.

She turned her face to him. He saw tears on her lashes. ‘Do more than that,’ she begged. ‘Cherish them. For my sake at first, if naught else will serve. Later for their own. They are my Sisters. They bore with my childhood flightiness, they were gentle and patient when I grew too restless to study what I ought, the older were like my mother unto me and the younger like loving elder sisters in the flesh. When my father Hoel fell, they upbore me in my grief. When my mother died, they did more, for the Sign was upon me that same night, and – And they consoled me, gave me back my heart, after Colconor, until they had schooled me in how to endure him. And at last it was they, they, they who had the bravery and the
skill to bring you. I was their acolyte. Yet me only have you honoured – It is not right!’

She fell into his arms and sobbed on his breast. He stroked her, crooned wordlessly, at length murmured, ‘Aye. Indeed. It shall be as you wish. And you speak truly, I’ve been unwise in this. I can but plead that I’ve been too taxed with my business among men to think, otherwise, of aught than you, Dahilis.’

She gulped her way to self-mastery and sat straight. He kissed the salt off her cheeks and lips. His mouth slipped on down to the angle between jaw and ear; he kissed the softness of her skin there, too, and drank odours of her warmth and her hair. ‘Th-thank you,’ she whispered. ‘You are ever kind.’

‘Nay, now, what else could I be, towards you? And I’ve agreed you are right. Can you explain to … the rest … that no insult was intended?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll go about today doing that, since tomorrow comes my Vigil.’

‘What’s this?’ he inquired.

‘You did not know?’ she replied, amazed. ‘Why, I took it for given that my learned lord – Well, then, Sena is the sacred isle. Always must at least one of the Gallicenae be there. Save at a few certain times, Council meetings or the Crowning and Wedding, when all of us are needed here. Oh, and in war, for safety’s sake, though I scarcely believe even the fiercest pirate would dare – We go out for a day and a night by turns, on a special ferry. The crew are navy men whose officers decide they’ve earned this honour for a month.’

He forbore to ask what the high priestesses did yonder. That might be a knowledge forbidden him. Instead, he regarded her in some slight bemusement before saying, ‘You’ve depths I did not suspect, my sweet.’

The bright head shook. ‘Nay, nay. I’m a shallow little person, really.’

‘You’re unjust to yourself.’

‘I am truthful. The deaths of four aged Queens did not touch me, I was only sorry and missed them for a time. Not until my father was slain did I understand what sorrow is.’

‘He surely adored you.’

A smile quivered. ‘He spoiled me, he did. You are much like Hoel as I remember him, Gra – Gratillonius.’ Her Latin weak, she occasionally had trouble keeping the syllables of his name in place. He found it easiest to chop along in Ysan when with her, telling himself he needed the practice.

‘Even afterwards,’ she continued, ‘when I’d stopped mourning him aloud, I’d no real thoughtfulness in me. I expected to serve out my vestal term, and then after I turned eighteen belike marry a pleasant young man, the sort who was in my daydreams.’ Her smile writhed away. ‘But mother died, and the Sign came, and –’ She stared beyond him. Her fists doubled anew.

‘That must have been horror,’ he said.

Bit by bit, she eased. ‘At first. But my Sisters took me in charge, Bodilis foremost. She’s my true sister, you know – half-sister – also daughter of Tambilis, though her father was Wulfgar. But the rest comforted me too, and taught me. Colconor was seldom there for long. When he was finished he’d dismiss me, or fall asleep and snore if it was night. Then I could go home next morning. And when he used me – however hurtfully or, or shamefully – I could leave him. I sent my spirit back through time, or forward, to when things had been better or when someday they would be good once more. Forsquilis taught me how. And most days he let me alone, I could live my own life.’

‘Tell me,’ he said, trying to help her back to gladness, ‘how did you pick the name Dahilis? I know your mother called you Estar. How do any of you Gallicenae choose your names when … you have been chosen?’

‘They come from places. They bring the blessing of whatever spirit is tutelary. My name means “of Dahei”. Dahei is a spring in the eastern hills where the nymph Ahes indwells. I picked that because it is cool and bubbly, hidden among trees. When I was a girl and my mother or Bodilis took me along on a trip to those parts – ’tis beautiful countryside – while she meditated I would seek the spring and give Ahes a garland and ask her for happy dreams at night.’

She sighed, but no longer in misery. ‘Could we go together sometime, Gratillonius? I’d like to show you.’

‘Of course, when I can find leisure. There’s too much on hand now. Hm. You need not feel overly hurried about passing my message on. Your Vigil on Sena shall be postponed. I should have told you, but you make me forgetful of everything outside. And it was preoccupying, making those arrangements – when I was ignorant of all the ins and outs – for a full Council. It meets tomorrow.’ He grinned. ‘That requires your presence.’

‘As a matter of form,’ she said humbly. ‘I can offer nothing.’

‘Your presence, I repeat. We’ll need the loveliness.’

‘Oh, my own only!’ They embraced. ‘I did not know,’ she breathed in his ear. ‘I thought, yea, the new King will carry a better day for us on his shoulders, he cannot help but do that. I did not look for joy such as you’ve given. Last night after you were asleep, I prayed to Belisama Mother. I prayed you be spared for many, many years – and whatever happens, I might die before you. Was that terribly selfish of me? I’ll come back in the sea and wait for you. Always will I wait for you.’

‘Now, now, I have many a battle in me yet,’ he boasted. She strained against him. Arousal stirred. ‘M-m, I’ve a meeting with some Suffetes at noon, but that’s hours hence. Shall we?’

She crowed in glee. ‘And you thought you’d need more time!’

‘With any woman but you I would.’ Briefly, he wondered. Quinipilis had bespoken the power of the Goddess …

As she skipped along beside his more dignified pace, she said laughing, ‘Could we wait long enough for you to be shaved? Later you might grow a beard. ’Tis the style in Ys.’

He rubbed his chin. ‘I might. These past days my whiskers have been sprouting at a furious rate.’

‘Well, but do put the razor to them this time. When I call on my Sisters and explain, best would be that I not flaunt marks on my face. Not but what they won’t know from my gait, dear stallion!’

2

The Forum of Ys had never been a marketplace. It merely received that familiar name from the Roman engineers who reconstructed it as they did much else while the wall against the sea was going up. At the middle of the city, where Lir Way and Taranis Way crossed, it was a plaza surrounded by public buildings. These were likewise on the Roman model, marble-sheathed, colonnaded, stately, albeit of no great size. The temple of Taranis, the baths, the theatre, and the library were still in use. The basilica was also, less often, despite having seen no Imperial official permanently in residence for the past two hundred
years. The temple of Mars had echoed empty almost as long, until Emperor Constantinus I required Ys to take in a Christian minister. Then it became a church.

Budic went looking around the square. Mosaics of dolphins and sea horses ringed a triple-basined fountain at the centre. No water splashed; on festival nights, pump-driven oil did, set alight to leap and cascade in fire. At noon today, not many folk were about. They stared curiously at the young soldier. He was out of uniform, but height, pale-blond hair, tunic falling down to bare knees – a garment his Coritanic mother had sewn for him – identified him as a foreigner. Though sunlight descended mild, his calves felt the breeze as a cold caress. His sandals slapped the pavement too loudly.

Because the former temple faced south, the Christians had cut a new entrance in its western side. Mounting the stairs to the portico, he found that door open and passed through. Before him was a stretch of bare floor, the vestibule, ended by a wall – which its peeling plaster revealed to be wooden – that subdivided the great chamber where the pagan rites had taken place. A door in it was also open, giving Budic a glimpse of the sanctuary. It was nearly as devoid of furnishings. The altar block stood in the middle beneath a canopy replacing the cupola of a proper church; the cross upon it was neither gilt nor of especially fine workmanship. At the far end were a table and a couple of seats.

An aged man was languidly sweeping in there, hunched over his besom. Budic halted at the divider. ‘I b-beg your pardon, sir,’ he ventured.