The Dog and the Wolf (15 page)

“Are you quite sure?”

Gratillonius wrestled himself toward steadiness. “What else will account for everything we’ve discovered? And Corentinus, he knows. There at the end, he told me to let her go, let the sea have her, or … the weight of her sins would drag me down with her. Not that I cared, not that I did … willingly. The visions he gave me, of the Queens, how each of them died, it made me—I lost strength—” He snapped air. “Since then, he won’t talk about the matter. When I’ve asked, he’s said that’s not for him to speak of, and gone straightaway to something else. Oh, he can find enough urgent business to steer me off this.”

“Are you angry with him, then?”

Gratillonius shook his head. “Why? As well be angry with the messenger who brings bad news. And he did save my life, and other lives, and now when he’s off to Turonum I realize through and through how much he’s been doing for us here.”

Suddenly, terrifying calm, he lifted his face to the blue overhead and declared: “No, this goes beyond the world. Gods have been at work. What else could have led my Dahut astray like that? The Gods of Ys, and that poor, bewildered, lonely girl; They played on her like Pan playing on pipes made from a dead man’s bones. And Mithras, Mithras was too careless or too afraid to stand by us. Dahut was left all alone with the Three, and They are demons. As for the God of the Christians—I don’t know. I’ve asked Him for an honest answer, and gotten silence. So I don’t know of anything except the demons. Maybe otherwise there’s only emptiness.”

Rufinus, who had entertained the same idea, shivered to hear it thus set forth. He waited a bit, while Gratillonius brought his gaze back to earth and across the lands afar, before he said low, “You want to avenge Dahut—and Ys—on Niall.”

“Since I cannot reach the Gods,” replied Gratillonius, flat-voiced, still looking into distance. “In any event, he needs killing.”

Rufinus mustered courage. “First I do.”

Startled out of grief, Gratillonius swung around to peer at him. “How’s that?”

Rufinus stood straight, hands at sides, and spoke fast. “Sir, I failed you. I may well have something to do with what happened. You remember my telling now I freed that prisoner of Niall’s, Eochaid, the same man Maeloch found on the island. It seemed like a fine trick at the time. But it must have poured oil on Niall’s fire against Ys. Certainly it made it impossible for us to send any mission to his kingdom, negotiate, try to engineer his overthrow. I was vain and reckless, I overreached, and Ys had to suffer for it.”

A slow smile, with no mirth but considerable pity, lifted Gratillonius’s lips. “Is that all? Nonsense. You should know the Scoti better than that. I do. They never forget what they think is any wrong done them, and anything that keeps them from having their way is a wrong. Blame me. I was the one who wrecked his fleet and his plans, all those years ago. And I don’t feel guilty about that. It was a good job well done. As for you, why, you freed an enemy of his, who may yet become an ally of ours.”

Rufinus hung his head. “Maybe. But I did go away, down south, just when the trouble was brewing. I should have stayed. I might have been able to warn you, or—or somehow head things off.”

“You might have at that,” said Gratillonius, “you, if any man alive could. I’ve wondered what made you go. It wasn’t really necessary, and you didn’t seem like simply wanting the adventure.”

“I had … reasons,” Rufinus croaked. “I thought it-might ease a conflict—I should have stayed, whatever it cost. All the way back from Italy, after the news came, I was feeling more and more certain the whelming couldn’t have been an accident, it had to be some outcome of the evil I’d smelled everywhere around us.”

“You did? You never let on.”

Rufinus straightened, met his master’s look, and grinned his grin that was half a sneer. “I’m good at putting a nice face on things.” He slumped. “Now scourge me, kill me, anything to free me of this.”

Gratillonius sighed. “All right, you made a mistake, but I was with you in it. I could have required you to stay, couldn’t I? Are we magicians to foretell the future? I need your wits. Throw that remorse of yours on the dunghill where it belongs. That is an order.”

Rufinus’s words seldom rang forth as they did: “At your command, sir! What do you want of me?”

“I told you. For the present, your thoughts. And your ways of dealing with people, seducing them into doing what you want and believing it was their own idea. Well have our hands full getting the colony established, dealing with Imperial officers, collecting intelligence about barbarian movements and making ready to meet them—everything.” Gratillonius paused. “But it’s not too soon to start thinking about Niall of the Nine Hostages.” His tone had gone quiet as a winter night when waters freeze over. “I mean to wash Dahut’s honor clean in his blood. Then my little girl can rest peaceful.”

3

The day was so lovely that to sit in the murk and dinginess of Martinus’s hut was itself a mortification. The door did sag on leather hinges, letting in a bit of sunlight and a glimpse of grass and river. Sounds also drifted through, from monks at their prayers—those who worked in the kitchen gardens stayed mute—all along the bottomland and up in the hillside caves which were the cells of most. But smells of loam and growth were lost in malodor; saintly men scorned scrubbing. The light picked out dust, cobwebs, mushrooms in the corners of the dirt floor. Two three-legged stools and a chest for books and documents were the only furniture.

The bishop’s few remaining teeth gleamed amidst wrinkles and pallor as he smiled. “Do not pretend to virtues that are not yours, my son,” he jested. “I refer to simplicity. You know perfectly well who should take leadership there. Yourself.”

Corentinus bowed his head. That was never quite easy for him to do for a fellow mortal. “Father, I am not worthy.”

Martinus turned serious. His dim eyes strained through the shadows, studying the visitor. “No man born of woman should ever dare imagine himself truly fit for the cure of souls. However, some are called, and must do the best they can. You are familiar with those people, and familiar to them. You get along well with their King—with him who was King. In fact, the two of you make a formidable team. Moreover, you are a man of the folk; you have known labor and hardship, shared the joys and sorrows of the humble. That includes the tribes round about. The effort to bring them into the fold has waned with Maecius’s strength. You are still in your full vigor, never mind those gray hairs. Who better to take over the ministry?”

He sat still before adding, “This is more than my judgment, you understand. God has long marked you out. You are one of the miracle workers.”

So lengthy a speech took its toll of him. He hunched, hugging himself against chill despite the springtime mildness, regaining breath. Eyes closed in the snubnosed countenance.

They opened again when Corentinus protested hoarsely, “Father, that was nothing—No, I repent me; of course I must not demean His mercies. But that is what they were—the fish that kept me fed in my hermitage, the ability to heal or rescue, the rare vision of warning—mercies to a wretched sinner.”

Martinus straightened. Something of the old soldierly manner rapped through his tone. “Enough. Humility is not a virtue natural to you either, Corentinus. Affecting it like this, false modesty, is nothing more than spiritual pride. You have your orders from Heaven. Obey them.”

The tall man gulped. “I’m sorry.” After a moment, his words wavering: “Let me confess it, I’m afraid. I don’t know how to handle these powers. They were such small, comfortable miracles before. Now—”

“You confront the very Serpent.” Martinus nodded. “I know. All too well do I know.”

He leaned forward, intent. “The divine will is often hard to riddle. We make blunders which can bring disaster. And sometimes—oh, Satan works wonders of his own. I have seen what wore the semblance of Christ Himself—” He drew the Cross before him.

“But the Lord is always with us,” he said, “even unto the end of the world. He will help us see through and win through, if only we ask. I recall a mistake—” Once more he must stop to breathe.

“Tell me, Father,” Corentinus begged.

Abruptly Martinus seemed nearly at ease. He smiled anew. “Ah, no great thing. There was a shrine not far from here which my predecessor had consecrated as being of a martyr. But I could find no believable story about his passion; even his name was uncertain. Could members of my flock be calling on a false saint? I went to the grave and prayed for enlightenment. Night fell. A figure appeared before me, wrapped in a shroud black with clotted blood; for his head had been cut off and he must hold it to the stump of his neck. I bade him speak truth, and he confessed he was a brigand, put to death for his crimes. Afterward sheer confusion among the rustics—confusion with a former godling of theirs, I think—caused them to venerate him. I dismissed the ghost to his proper place, and next day made known the facts, and that was the end of that.”

“You treat it so lightly,” Corentinus whispered.

Martinus shrugged.

“But that which walked in the dark around Ys—” Corentinus went on, “that which I’m afraid still haunts the ruin It made—”

Martinus grew solemn anew. “We may have terrible things to deal with,” he said. “Therefore we need a strong man.”

Corentinus braced himself. “I’ll do what I can, Father, since you want it.”

“God wants it. In Him you will find strength boundless.”

Then, in the practical way that was his as often as the pious, Martinus added: “A chorepiscopus at Aquilo is no longer enough, given the changed circumstances. We require a full bishop. We can’t elevate you immediately. These are indeed deep waters. You and I shall have to talk, and think, and pray together, before we can hope for any idea of how to fare in them. Meanwhile, you need instruction. A great deal has happened, a great deal has changed, also in the Church, during those years you spent
isolated in Ys. We have to make you ready for your ministry. It will be harder than most, my son, and perhaps mortally dangerous.”

4

Returning from Mons Ferruginus, Gratillonius sought the house of Apuleius in Aquilo. His talk with Rufinus had vastly relieved him. The pain and rage were still there, but congealed, a core of ice at the center of his being. He could turn his thoughts from them. The day must come when he let them thaw and flood forth over Niall; meanwhile, he should get on with his work.

At the moment he had in mind to discuss the organization of defense, now that construction was progressing so well that soon his colony would be a tempting target. If only Imperial law did not limit the arming of populaces to peasant reservists—but it did, and Rufinus’s woodsrangers were an illegality at which the authorities might soon cease winking, as they perforce had done while Ys was their bulwark. …

Salomon bounded down the front steps to meet him. “Oh, sir, can we go?” he cried.

Gratillonius stopped. “What’s this?”

“Why, you promised, sir, the first day the weather was dry you’d take me to your town and explain how it’s guarded. I got my tutor to let me off, and I’ve been waiting, and—and—” The boyish voice stumbled. A tousled head drooped. “You can’t?”

Gratillonius regarded him. At eleven years of age, Apuleius’s son approached his father’s height, though all legs and arms and eyes. Blue as his mother’s, those eyes clouded over. He tried to keep his lip still. “Of course, sir, you’re busy,” he managed to say.

The man remembered. A promise was a promise, and this was a good lad, and he had no overwhelming urgency. “Why, no, I hadn’t forgotten,” he lied. “I was engaged earlier, but that’s done with and I came to fetch you. Shall we go?”

Joy blazed. “Thank you, sir! Right away!”

If I had a son of my own—Cratillonius thought, and the old pang returned. But my Queens in Ys could bear nothing but daughters, and the same spell made me powerless with any woman other than them.

Am I still?

Too much else had filled him since the whelming. Desire was crowded out. He did wake erected from dreams, but the dreams always seemed to be of what he had lost, and he hastened to leave them behind him.

He started to turn around. A flash of white caught his glance. Verania had come out into the portico. “Must you leave at once?” she called softly.

“Why not?” demanded her brother.

“Oh, I have some small refreshments ready … if you have time, sir.”

The wistfulness caught at Gratillonius. It would be unfair to make Salomon wait any longer. However—“Thank you, when we are finished,” he blurted. “Uh, first, if you’re free, would you like to come with us?”

Her radiance quite overran Salomon’s disgruntlement. She skipped down to them with a gracefulness that recalled Dahilis, and Dahut
(no).
Hair, also light-brown, blew free of its coiled braids in rebellious little curls. She had her father’s big hazel eyes. The face hinted at Bodilis’s daughter Una, and more and more the mind at Bodilis herself; pure chance, that, no relationship whatsoever to those two who lay drowned. His stare made her redden, plain to see under so fair a skin. The faintest dusting of freckles crossed a pert nose. … He hauled attention elsewhere and the three of them began walking.

Their way went opposite from the bustle at the dock, out the eastern gate and up the left bank of the Odita. To reach the section between the rivers without wading, it was necessary to take a wooden bridge just above their confluence. “We’re going to put one across the Stegir,” Gratillonius remarked. “Save time for carters and such, once our town begins drawing them from the west.”

“Won’t that be dangerous, sir?” Salomon asked. “I mean, you said the streams were two sides of your city wall.”

“A shrewd question,” Gratillonius approved. The stuff of leadership was certainly in this boy. He wasn’t fond of
book learning like his sister, nor as quick to master it, but he was no dullard either, and where it came to military subjects you might well call him brilliant. He shone in the exercises, too, or would when he had tamed the impulsiveness of his age. “It’ll be a drawbridge, and flanked by a real wall.”