Roma Mater (51 page)

Afterward he picked her up again and carried her on board a ship that led the rest forth. The water in the harbor basin was lively, for the gate stood wide and a fresh breeze blew yonder. As her father’s yacht passed through, the deck started to roll beneath her. Keeping her feet became a delightful game. The air was shrill and cold. It flung salt spray that tingled on her lips. The planks she stood on were still sun-warmed, giving off a fragrance of new pitch.

Everybody was jolly, men and women and such children as they had with them, none of those as young as the girl. From aft resounded the coxswain’s drum, setting time for the rowers, whose oars cracked against the holes. Between strokes they often tossed words back and forth that made them grin. The ship creaked too, stays thrummed, a ruddy pennon at the masthead went
snap! snap!
Gulls mewed, hundreds of them, a snowstorm of wings, dipping and soaring. Other birds were likewise out in their darker throngs, aloft or afloat, and sometimes their cries also cut through the wind.

The craft that followed spread formation into a half-moon. Many were bigger than this, whether low and lean or high and round-bellied. Many more were smaller, duller-painted, and the men in them weren’t so finely dressed. Some had raised sails, the rest continued under sweeps. Behind them rose the city wall, sheer, murky red save for the frieze under its battlements, and its towers, and the still taller spires inside, whose copper and glass and gilt flung light blindingly back at the sun. The headlands bulked rugged on either side, surf tumultuous underneath. The valley and hills beyond were turning green.

But it was the sea that captured the girl child, the sea. At first she clapped her hands together and shouted. Later she stood silent, aware of nothing else, for this was everything, this was the forever changing boundlessness that she had not known was within herself.

The sky reached pale and clear, only a few clouds scurrying at the edge of the world. Waves rushed and rumbled, long, maned, foam-swirled, wrinkles dancing in webs across their backs. Colors played over them, through them, gray-blue, grass-green, purple-black. Where they broke on the rocks and reefs that lay everywhere about, they bellowed hollowly and sent milkiness fountaining. Torn-off strands of kelp moved snakishly in their troughs. Creatures swam, tumbled, darted, at one with the waves, not only fowl but the sleekness of seals, a few times the silver leap of a fish or the frolicsome grace that was a porpoise. The child did not recognize a piece of driftwood as being off a wreck.

Time was no more, nothing was except the miracle that had taken her unto itself. She did not come back to anything else until the helmsmen put their steering oars over and the yacht turned again landward. The parade was done.

Most vessels headed the same way, wanting their berths prior to commencing the season’s farings. A few bore southeasterly, toward fisher hamlets along the coast. The child realized that her adventure neared an end. She did not weep, such was not her nature, but she made her way to the side, the better to watch while she could.

This was on the foredeck, above and forward over the rowers’ benches. The bulwark was too high for her to lean over. When a seal drew alongside, she had just a tantalizing glimpse. Nearby squatted a bollard, the anchor rode coiled around it, the hook leaning massive against it. An active creature since her birth, she got a purchase on the hemp and climbed to the top. There she glanced widely around.

Aft she spied a streak of land low in the water, from which rose a single building, dark, foursquare, surmounted by a turret. But she had already seen that. What she wanted to do was look at the seal.

It swam close, easily matching the speed of the oarsmen. The amber-brown of its coat was warm amidst the brilliance of the waves. It did not move like its fellows, intent on prey or whatever else they sought. Rather, as much as possible, it kept gazing upward. Its eyes were big, beautiful, as soft as sleep. Enchanted, the child stared back into them.

A grown-up noticed her on her precarious perch, exclaimed, and hastened to pluck her off it. He was too late. The yacht rolled heavily. It was nobody’s fault—these were notoriously treacherous waters—and had happened several times today. The girl was pitched loose and went overboard.

As she fell, the yells from above reached her faintly, unreal, lost in the welcoming noise of the sea. It received her with a single enormous caress. Her thick garments drew her under. A lucent yellow-green blindness enfolded her. She felt neither chill nor fear, merely surprise, a sense of homecoming. The sea tossed her about much like her father bouncing her in his arms. A humming began to fill her head.

Before she could gasp a breath, solidity struck, gripped, whirred her away. Held between the front flippers of the seal, she drank wind and salt scud. And then her father was there, threshing clumsily but mightily through the billows. Somehow it became he that clutched her, kept her face in the air, roared for a line. Scrambling and confusion overran them; and they were back on deck. She released her shock and bereavement in a wail.

He hugged her close to him. She felt his heart slugging behind the iron Key. His voice shuddered. “Are you well, darling? Are you all right, my little Dahut?”

2

The summons came to Gaius Valerius Gratillonius in the third year during which he had been Roman prefect and King of Ys. Having read it, he told his majordomo to arrange accommodations for the courier, because he would need a few days to find out precisely what his reply must be. Thereafter he sent for Bodilis and Lanarvilis.

Bodilis arrived first. It was raining. In the upstairs conference room where he received her, a brazier did somewhat to relieve cold, but a couple of lamps mainly cast unrestful shadows that made the pastoral frescoes on the wall dim and unreal, like memories of the summer that was waning. She had left her cloak with the palace doorkeeper. Though it had a cowl, drops of water sparkled in the dark-brown waves of her hair and misted the strong-boned countenance. Two graceful strides brought her to him. He took both her hands—they were warm beneath the dampness—and smiled down into the deep-blue eyes—not very far down.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said, and brushed his lips across hers, a kiss quick and cool but aquiver. “How have you been, and the girls?” He spoke Latin, and she replied in the same tongue. They ordinarily did when by themselves; she wanted to maintain proficiency in it.

“Oh, Kerna is all agog, planning a feast to celebrate when she finishes her vestalhood, and Semuramat is wild with envy and insists the eight
years still ahead of her might as well be eternity,” she laughed. Of the three children she had by Hoel, Talavair had completed Temple service and was married, with one of her own on the way. “Una was sound asleep when your messenger came.” That was the daughter Bodilis had given Gratillonius last year.

He sighed. “If only I could spend more time in your household.”

“No,” she said earnestly, “don’t think like that.”

He nodded. Had Dahilis been less beloved by her Sisters than she was, his lavishing of attention on her would have created stresses he could ill afford. Since her death, he divided his nights as evenly as feasible among the seven Queens with whom he slept, and his days among all the Nine—or, rather, what remained of his nights and days after royal duties and masculine recreations. “Well, we’ll have tomorrow, you and I, if the moon be willing. Keep it clear for me.”

She smiled. “I’ve been preparing. But why have you called me here today?”

“Best we wait for Lanarvilis…. No, you may as well read this at once.” He pointed to a papyrus sheet on the table. It was curled from having been carried as a sealed-up roll. She spread it between her hands and brought it close to a lamp. As she lowered her head, nearsightedly, to scan the writing, she murmured, “Lanarvilis too, and none other? Are we to compare notes on your youngsters? Then why not Guilvilis?”

The jape fluttered forlorn. She had spied the grimness upon him. “It’s not that you two—well, you three—among the Gallicenae have happened to bear me offspring this soon,” he explained in his methodical fashion. “Although I well know it’s no chance pure and simple. You and Lanarvilis took most thought for the future. You both saw that after what… happened with Dahilis, my fathering of more princesses would strengthen my shaken standing in Ys.”

“Also,” Bodilis said, “we are neither of us young women. Time is at our heels.”

“Well, because you are what you are—yourself learned and wise, she versed and shrewd in the politics of the city—I want your counsel before I tell anybody else about this matter.”

“Whereas you think poor Guilvilis is neither,” remarked Bodilis sadly. “She has nothing to offer you but her utter love.”

He bit back a retort that any dog could do as much. It would have been unkind, and not quite true. He must not blame the newest of the Nine for supplanting Dahilis; that had been no wish of her own. Guilvilis was dull, true, but she was humble and sweet and helpful; the first infant she had brought forth, Sasai, was healthy and seemed bright enough; she was carrying a second. “Read,” he said.

While Bodilis did, Lanarvilis came in. Blue gown and tall white headdress showed that she had been taking her turn as high priestess at the Temple of Belisama. Nothing less than the wish of the King
would call such a one away, and it had better be business vital to the city or the Gods.

Gratillonius greeted the big blond woman courteously, as was his wont. Between them was little of the warmth he had with Bodilis or the wildfire with Forsquilis. Even when they coupled, she held back her inmost self. But they had become friends, and partners valuable to each other in the governance of Ys. “What betokens this?” she asked briskly in her native language.

“A moment,” he requested in the same speech. “How fares Julia?” Her sixth and most likely last living child, the babe was frail, often ill. Sometimes, when it fell out that the King visited Lanarvilis while she was keeping Dahut, the beauty, vitality, and willfulness of Dahilis’s daughter seemed almost inhuman by contrast, elflike—no, catlike.

“Her fever grew so fierce yesterday that I sent for Innilis, who laid on hands and gave her medicine,” replied the mother. “Today she’s much better.”

“Ah, good. Will you be seated?” Gratillonius gestured at a chair. After two and a half years in Ys, he had come to take that article of furniture for granted, well-nigh forgetting that it was not commonplace elsewhere.

Lanarvilis settled down. He joined her. Bodilis finished reading, passed the letter to her Sister, and likewise sat. For a while, silence took over the room, apart from the susurrus of rain outside.

Then Lanarvilis, whose lips had been moving and forefinger tracing, lowered the papyrus and said with a rueful smile, “I find my Latin worse rusted than I knew. It seems the Augustus commands you to report. But you’ve been sending him news of your stewardship whenever he required it.”

“He wants me to come in person,” Gratillonius said.

She drew a sharp breath. “Where?”

“Augusta Treverorum. You may remember hearing how he entered it in triumph early this year”—after he, Magnus Clemens Maximus, scattered the army of co-Emperor Gratianus, who was presently murdered; and Valentinianus made a peace that gave Maximus lordship over Britannia, Gallia, and Hispania, while Valentinianus retained sovereignty over Italy, Africa, and part of Illyricum. The Eastern half of the Empire stayed under Theodosius in Constantinople.

“’tis understandable,” Gratillonius went on. “The issues are settled, the weapons fallen silent, the task no longer to seize power but to wield it. He can learn more, and better, of Ys in interviews with me than from any amount of my clumsy writing.”

“And what will he do with the knowledge?” Bodilis wondered.

Gratillonius shrugged. “We shall see. Yet I have ever maintained that Maximus Augustus is the stern physician whom sick Rome needs. Hell heed my advice, if it be sound. This is among the things I’d fain discuss with you two, what my recommendations ought to be.”

“He may forbid you to return here,” Lanarvilis fretted.

“I doubt that. True, he need no more fear a hostile Armorica at his back. But you know how much is left to do, putting down piracy and banditry, reviving trade, weaving the whole peninsula back together. I’m in the best position to lead that work, and I’ve proven my loyalty to him.”

“You may be gone for a long while, however.”

Gratillonius nodded. “Belike so. Even on Roman roads, ’twill be more than half a month’s journey, unless I kill horses. And though the conference should not fill many days, I want afterward… to use the opportunity.”

“They’ll not like it—Suffetes, votaries, commoners, all folk in Ys—having the King take leave of them.”

“I’ve been away erenow. Granted, this may prove a lengthier absence. But no military leader will be called for, and our interior affairs prosper. As for my ceremonial and sacral tasks, they can either await my return or be delegated. I want your thoughts on all this.”

Bodilis’s gaze grew intent. “What else have you in mind to do?” she asked.

“Well,” he said uncomfortably, “you remember that when the Christian minister Eucherius lay dying, we promised him a successor in his church. That’s two years gone, and the pledge still unfulfilled, as busy as we’ve been. I’ll seek a man we can get along with.”

“That’s a small matter, to Ys and in your own head,” she responded. “I’ve come to know you, my dear. What is your true intent?”

“Very well!” he blurted. “You know how I’ve wished to found a Mithraeum, for the worship of the God Who is mine. I cannot, unless first I’ve won the rank of Father in the Mystery. My hope is to find a temple where this can be done.”

Lanarvilis looked shocked. Bodilis remained calm: “You may search through a vast territory, if I’ve heard aright about the persecution of that faith.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t. Mithras is a soldier. First and foremost, He expects a man to do his duty. But if I went as far south as, say, Lugdunum—I’d need permission, but I suppose I can get it—I should at least learn whether any such congregation is left within my reach.”