The Centurion's Empire (15 page)

"Oh, she was reluctant enough to enter my bed," he told Alfred while a distant chant for Bishop Paeder's recovery mixed
with the crackling of the fire. "Her mother had told her that anticipation keeps a man ardent, but when I reminded her
that Flavia had made my supposed father anticipate, then given him nothing . . . well, it must have been inherited guilt,
for she let me have my way with no more ado.

"Flavia had not aged gracefully, I must emphasize. The paint was thick on her wrinkles, and she dyed her hair every day.
Her husband Drusus had prospered and she loved to stage great revels for the local landowners and generally play the
temptress, but her figure had sagged with twenty-five years and seven children. At any rate, I was invited to one of these
feasts, now that her daughter was sleeping with me. After all those years I finally came face to face with Flavia again.
She even drew me aside from the other guests to ask if I meant to marry her daughter."

"I see," said Alfred in a hollow, flat voice. "So you killed her while posing as your own son."
Vitellan began to laugh, but was stopped by a coughing fit. Alfred gave him water to drink after tasting it himself.

"Civilized men have more refined perversions, my young barbarian prince," he said.
Alfred bristled for a moment. "We may live in the shadow of Rome's memory, but we do have civilization. Would you
prefer a Dane as a patron?"

Vitellan shrugged. "No, I merely stress how different we were long ago. Revenge often had the status of a high art, and I
practiced it well. All that I did was tell Flavia that I really was Vitellan Bavalius, the lover that she had jilted as a girl. It
was hard, but I was able to convince her. Apart from my appearance, I knew far too much about her and the things that
had passed between us.

"Only now did I have my revenge. I told her that I had found a potion that granted eternal youth—which was true in a
way. I'd meant to share it with her, but Drusus had seduced her away with his talk of comfortable, secure prosperity so I
had kept it for myself. Now she begged me to give it to her, to restore her face and figure. She promised to forsake
Drusus and go with me. It was her weakness, she would give the world to be young again. Nothing mattered to her so
much as that. I dangled the promise before her then snatched it back, explaining that I could only halt aging, not reverse
it, and the prospect of living forever with someone who looked old enough to be my mother did not appeal. Lucia was a
different matter, though."

"You do me an injustice," said Alfred. "I find that more

cruel than a knife through the heart, for all the barbarian that I may be."

"The details of what happened later that night . . . they would even unsettle a Dane. I departed early, and Lucia left a
slave in her bed and slipped away to my estate. While we fornicated our way through the night, Flavia stole through her
villa and silently slew her husband and family. Then she had a slave draw her a warm bath and slashed her wrists. Her
mind had probably snapped when I told her that jilting me for Drusus had robbed her of eternal youth, but she did her
work so quietly that the sun was up and Lucia was on her way home before the slaves realized what had happened.

"I wish that I could have kept silent as I lay there with Lucia, but I had told her everything. I just had to share my
triumph, secrets beg to be shared. All that I concealed was the method of keeping myself young, so she never knew about
the Frigidarium."

Alfred emptied his cup, then poured more mead from the jar. He drank the second measure straight down.

"The tongue grows loose when there is company in bed, Vitellan. Spies and agents would have a very poor business if it
were not for that."

"I know that now. While we lay tangled together she thought it a great joke on her mother, and was starry-eyed at the
prospect of living eternally with me. After she returned home to find her entire family and favorite slave dead, all that
changed. She tried to denounce me, but the authorities knew that she was obviously deranged with grief so her wild story
was given no credit.

"I was badly frightened, and tormented by guilt. I had wanted revenge, but not that sort of horror. I kept to myself, and a
few months went by. I learned that Lucia was pregnant ... then my taster died of a strong, subtle poison.

"At once I hired extra guards for my villa, and I began to sleep armed. Lucia was ahead of me, and had planted assassins
among my newly hired guards. There was a frantic, desperate fight in my room one night in which I killed the two
assassins and one innocent guard. They had forgotten that I was a trained and experienced soldier, but next time it
would be different. I told everyone that I was moving to Gaul again, then I prepared to return to the Frigidarium." "And
something went wrong?"

"No, it went as planned. After fifty years more my steward's son revived me, and I returned as my great-grandson this
time. For five years it was idyllic; I have told you about living here at the height of the Roman Empire already. Heaven
on earth, yet the old guilt still lingered. My father had had me christened nearly a century before, and I began to pray, do
good works, trying to atone for my sins. The .priests preached forgiveness for even the worst crimes, after all. The
nightmare passed. Lucia had disappeared years before, taking our baby son with her, and few remembered what Flavia
had done.

"Lucia was alive, though, and in her seventies. She had been traveling the Roman Empire, seeking the immortal man
who had driven her mother to murder and suicide. Every so often she would return to the old estates in Britain, just to
check if I had paid a visit as one of my descendants. Suffice to say that I killed an assassin in the year Anno Domini 161

... who turned out to be one of my own grandsons. Again I returned to the Frigidarium, planning to sleep until Lucia was
dead, then return as somebody else. I would move to Hispania, buy an estate by the Tagus.

"The village elders were told how to revive me, the Ice-keeper was reappointed, gold was hidden, and it was arranged that
each year a messenger would come from my villa. As long as he told them that Lucia was alive I would be kept frozen.
Somehow the scheme went wrong this time. I was not revived for seven centuries." With his story at an end Vitellan sat
staring at the glowing coals in the hearth. "After seven hundred years the coals still look the same," he said, shaking his
head.

Alfred drained his cup again. "If enough time passes anything can happen," he said. "Lucia may have learned the truth
about you, but not where you were lying frozen. She and her children may have bribed your servants to send the message
that she was alive for so long that, well, the villagers forgot who you were, or how to wake you."

"Perhaps. At first I thought that I had outlived her hate. I

told Gentor the story soon after Paeder revived me, but he said that the message business was unknown to the villagers.
As far as they were concerned I was a great warrior, only to be woken in times of dire peril. Thirty generations, Alfred. A
living tradition of revenge."

"Now you will flee again in your time chamber." Alfred's words were a statement, flat and neutral.

"The idea sickens me. I have been alive eight hundred and sixteen years, yet have walked and breathed for only
thirty-one. What else can I do, though?"

"My physician says that you cannot drink more of that oil without killing yourself."
For a moment he turned his head so that the light outlined his face like that of a skull. The effect startled Alfred, who
gasped and drew back. Vitellan turned again, and the light restored his life to him.

"I am a living ghost, and I shall be dying as I am frozen. The idea appeals ... the dying man who lives for centuries, the
living dead."

Alfred flung his cup against the wall as he stood up. It bounced, clattered, and lay dented beside the fire as he began to
pace the floor.

"I expect to hear this sort of talk from senile old men on their deathbeds, but not from you. You're young and strong; if
you were to stop drinking that caustic oil you would be as healthy as me."

"I have caused great evil. Only my life can be payment in full."

"You played a cruel joke that led to the death of no more than a dozen people. One Dane could do worse in a rampage
through a defeated village. Every time we beat the Danes back we save our people from just such a fate, and
you
are our
greatest weapon against them. You cower like some ragged churl caught stealing wine, yet all of Wessex hails you as the
hero who saved them from the invaders."

Alfred paced back and forth before the fire as he was speaking, his hands behind his back and his head down. He stopped
for a moment, raised his foot above the dented cup ... then reached down and snatched it up.

"A civilized man repairs and builds, no matter what his

temper would have him do," he muttered as he bent the rim back with his fingers. "Look at me, Vitellan. I am the most
civilized man in any position of power in this entire land. I need your help." He sat on the edge of Vitellan's bed. "Just
think, on the night that Lucia and you were bedded together Flavia might just as easily have drunken herself into a
stupor and been carried away to sleep it off by her slaves. She would probably have been a fearsome and bitter
mother-in-law, but there would have been no terrible evil weighing you down. You would have died surrounded by your
children and grandchildren some time in the second century, and would probably never have used the Frigidarium
again."

Vitellan closed his eyes. "I went to sleep as a prosperous Roman farmer, and I woke with Rome shattered and
overgrown."

"But Byzantium—"

"From what Paeder has told me, Byzantium is just a circus by comparison. I have been just a centurion in the Roman
army, but now I am a great commander—yet who am I commanding? If I had seen you and your rabble coming over the
hill seven of my years ago I'd have ordered my legionaries to charge just as soon as I could have drawn breath. Now I
design your defenses, show your blacksmiths how to make better armor and weapons, train your warriors, play with your
children . . . I've always liked children, yet my own child spawned a dynasty that's dedicated to killing me."
Alfred held his cup up in the firelight, then bent the rim a little more. "If I had done some accidental evil, I would spend
my life doing good works to atone for it. What is better, my friend: to hide within a lump of ice, or to help me build a
secure and prosperous kingdom? Think upon it."

Alfred was studying reports of the latest Danish movements when Gentor arrived to beg an audience with him. The
Ice-keeper was too fearful of eavesdroppers to speak indoors, so he led him outside, to the middle of a large courtyard.
The snow drifted down around them as they stood talking and a chill wind tugged at their clothing. Alfred was attentive
and

patient as Gentor took a scrap of parchment from his pouch and showed it to the prince.

"The village chief, Daegryn, found it," he said urgently. "It was on the very stone that leads to the Frigidarium."

"Pretty calligraphy," observed Alfred. "The sort that comes from Meath, I believe."

"But look at what it says—sire!"

"Lucia,
ah,
vivit."

"Lucia vivit,
sire. It says Lucia lives."

"The—is that the message, the coded message? Was that on the note found after Bishop Alfred was poisoned?"

"Yes, yes, those assassins, the Master's own descendants, they're still here, trying to kill him."

"But we knew that from the note at the feast. We know that it's hopeless to escape them. All that Vitellan can do is flee
into time again."

"Sire, they know where the Frigidarium is now!" shouted Gentor, and several distant men-at-arms turned to stare at
them through the drifting flakes.

Alfred looked at the parchment again, tracing the words with his finger. Gentor stood wringing his hands, his face
contorted with anguish.

"Lucia lives," muttered Alfred. "Lucia's hate lives, aye, that's certain. A slight is paid back with a cruel joke, then many
murders result. Should it not end here, after seven hundred years? What would you have us do, Gentor the Icekeeper?"

"Post guards at the village, build a fort over it."

"And what good would that do? Vitellan has been in the care of your village ten times longer than I am likely to live.
The generations who pursue him need just bide their time and breed until the guards are needed elsewhere, or the fort
is abandoned. Then the assassins would enter the Frigidarium and plunge knives through his chilled heart, cut off his
head and put it on a pike to warm and rot in the summer sun—"

"No! No more, sire, I beg you," shrieked Gentor, falling to his knees in the snow with his hands over his ears. "We must
build another ice chamber, one that is well hidden."

"Your villagers can do that."

"They can't cut stone and build proper walls and arches, but your army has masons and carpenters who could do it."
Seize what is most precious to someone, and you can lead them wherever you like. It took all of Alfred's willpower to
hold the smile down. He hoped that the strain gave him a grim expression.