The Dog and the Wolf (2 page)

Gaius Valerius Gratillonius, born in Britannia, joined the Roman army at an early age and rose to be a centurion in the Second Legion Augusta. Distinguishing himself in a campaign to stop a barbarian onslaught from overrunning the Wall of Hadrianus, he was chosen by Magnus Clemens Maximus, military commandant in the island, for a special mission. With a small detachment of soldiers he was to go to Ys, at the western end of the Armorican peninsula.

That city-state, originally a Phoenician colony, had always been mysterious. Since the days of Julius Caesar it had been technically a foederate, a subordinate ally, of Rome. However, he never mentioned it in his writings, and such other notices of Ys as chroniclers made had a way of becoming lost in the course of time. Gradually it withdrew entirely from the affairs of the troubled Empire. Gratillonius was now supposed to fill the long vacant position of Roman prefect, an “advisor” whose advice had better be followed. With this power, he was to keep as much of Armorica peaceful as he could in a difficult period soon to come.

Unspokenly but clearly, the difficulties would result from an effort by Maximus to overthrow the co-Emperors of the West and make himself supreme. Gratillonius hoped such a strong man could put an end to the corruption, civil strife, and general weakness that were leaving Roman lands the prey of barbarians. His assignment was given him despite his being of the dying Mithraic faith, in an age when Christianity had become the state religion.

Having marched across Gallia to Ys, he was stunned by its beauty. Then suddenly he found himself in single combat.

Battles of this kind, held in a sacred grove, determined who would be King of Ys. That man was required to answer all challenges and to spend the three days and nights around full moon in the Red Lodge at the Wood of the King. A new winner was immediately married to the Gallicenae, the nine Queens. These were recruited from among children and grandchildren of their Sisterhood. Such a girl must serve as a vestal virgin until age eighteen—unless first, at the death of a regnant Queen, the Sign, a tiny red crescent, appeared between her breasts. If it did, she was consecrated a high priestess and married to the King. Otherwise she had to remain a maiden until her term was ended, at which time she became free. A Queen conceived only when she chose; to avoid it, she need but eat a few flowers of the Herb ladygift, blue borage. She bore only daughters. Most Gallicenae in the past had possessed strong magical powers, but in later generations these had been fading away.

All this had been ordained by the three Gods of Ys, Taranis of the heavens, triune female Belisama, and inhuman Lir of the sea. Other deities could be honored if so desired, and under Roman pressure Ys maintained a Christian church serving a minuscule congregation. Aside from the ritual combat, the city was highly civilized. For the past five years the King had been brutal Colconor. When the Nine could endure him no longer, they cast a curse on him and a spell to bring yet another challenger. This they did on the island Sena, out among the rocks and reefs beyond the headlands, reserved to them alone. Except on special occasions, one of them must always be there, holding Vigil.

They conspired to get Colconor drunk and pique him, so that when Gratillonius arrived he gave the Roman a deadly insult. Nevertheless Gratillonius should not have lost his temper and gotten into a fight. Afterward the centurion wondered what had possessed him. By that time, to his astonishment, he was victorious, proclaimed King and wedded to the Nine.

Of these, the youngest was beautiful Dahilis. He and she fell deeply in love. He must also consummate his marriage to the rest, except for the two who were past
childbearing age. It was fortunate that one of these, Fennalis, was, because she was the mother of another Queen, Lanarvilis, and his Mithraic principles would not have allowed him to sleep with both. He found that a King was always potent with any of the Nine, and impotent with all other women.

Gratillonius’s faith caused more conflicts, but did not prohibit his carrying out his duties as high priest and avatar of Taranis and also head of state. And his was the ceremonial task of locking and unlocking the sea gate.

In the days of Augustus Caesar, Brennilis, foremost among the Gallicenae, had had prophetic visions. She foresaw that rising sea level would drown the city unless it was protected, and got Roman engineers to build a ram-part around it. The Gods demanded that this be of dry-laid stone, so that Ys would lie at Their mercy. Floats operated to open the seaward gate as tide ebbed; it closed of itself when waters rose. In times of storm, when waves might swing the doors wide and come raging in, a heavy bar kept the portal shut. Counterweighted, it could be raised or lowered by a single man. The King did this at need, except when he was elsewhere. The key to the securing lock was an emblem of rank that he must always carry on his person while in Ysan territory.

Ys believed that Brennilis had inaugurated a new Age, and that the city’s often helpful obscurity, despite its brilliance, was due to its Gods—the Veil of Brennilis. Its manufactories, trade, and ships had made it the queen of the Northern seas; but the troubles of Rome inevitably affected it too.

Unlike many past Kings, Gratillonius took vigorous leadership. Besides influencing the Roman authorities in Armorica to stay neutral in the civil war as Maximus wanted, he sought to cope with the Saxon and Scotic pirates whose seaborne raids had devastated the coasts. His measures brought on a certain amount of controversy and opposition among the magnates of Ys. Its institutions founded in paganism, the city felt doubly wary of a Rome now officially Christian; yet without the Empire, it could scarcely survive.

In Hivernia, which they called Ériu, the Scoti were
divided into tuaths, not quite the same thing as tribes or clans, each with its king. Such a king was usually subordinate, together with others like himself, to a stronger lord. The island as a whole held five Fifths, not truly kingdoms though as a rule one man dominated each. They were Mumu in the south, Condacht in the west, Qóiqet Lagini in the east, Qóiqet nUlat in the north—and Mide, which an upstart dynasty had carved out of Condacht and Qóiqet Lagini. The high Kings in Mide centered their reigns, if not their residences, on the holy hill Temir.

Niall maqq Echach now held that position, a mighty warlord and the mastermind behind the assault on Britannia that Maximus had turned back. Smarting from this, he plotted fresh ventures against the Romans, beginning with an attack on Gallia while they lay at war with each other. He would steer wide of Ys and its witch-Queens. His son Breccan, young but his eldest and most beloved, persuaded the King of Mide to take him along.

Fearing that sort of event, Gratillonius made preparations. At his urging the Nine conjured up a storm (it was the last time they were ever able to do so) which blew the Scotic fleet onto the rocks outside Ys. Survivors who made it ashore were mostly killed by Roman soldiers, Ysan marines, and the mobilized seamen of the city. Niall escaped but Breccan perished. Grief-stricken and furious, Niall vowed revenge on this folk who had done him such harm when he intended them none.

Among the Romans lost was Eppillus, Gratillonius’s second in command and fellow Mithraist. Fulfilling a promise, the King buried him on Point Vanis, the headland he had defended, though the Gods of Ys had long since decreed that burials be at sea unless well inland and the necropolis on Cape Rach now crumbled unused. Further religious conflict arose when Gratillonius unwittingly initiated another legionary, Cynan, into the woman-banning Mithraic faith, in a stream sacred to Belisama.

This happened near the Nymphaeum, which the vestals and minor priestesses tended in the hills. Dahilis, who had gone there with Gratillonius to get a blessing on their unborn child, came upon the ritual and was appalled, but continued to love him. On the whole, the rest of the Nine
were also anxious to keep him. One among them, Forsquilis, still had some of the magical powers that few Queens did any longer. She could do such things as send her spirit forth questing in the form of an eagle owl, or sometimes take omens. Her arts seemed to show that the Gods would be reconciled with unrepentant Gratillonius if, among other acts, a Queen with child took Vigil on Sena at midwinter. This had to be Dahilis, very near her time.

Gratillonius insisted on accompanying her. It was forbidden him, a man, to betread the island, but he could wait on the dock. When a storm came while she was off on her sacral duties, and she had not returned to the house there by dark, he defied the prohibition and went in search. He found her crippled by an accident—if it was an accident—and dying of exposure. Yet labor had begun. At the moment of her death, he cut the child free.

In the morning a fishing smack arrived to take them back. It belonged to Maeloch, who lived in the hamlet Scot’s Landing below Cape Rach.

Numbed by sorrow, Gratillonius broke with custom and named his daughter Dahut as a memorial. Then with indifference he married the young woman on whom the Sign had come. On a later night, the knock of an invisible hand summoned the fishers of Scot’s Landing to ferry the souls of the newly dead out to Sena for judgment, as their fathers had done for centuries. It was believed that some spirits returned as seals, to watch over those they had loved.

For two years thereafter, things went generally well in Ys. Gratillonius adored Dahut. Among the Queens, he was especially fond of scholarly Bodilis and witchy, passionate Forsquilis; but all had their virtues, and Lanarvilis in particular was a valuable political counselor to him.

Maximus had forced a settlement which made him an Augustus, ruling over Gallia, Hispania, and Britannia, with his seat in Augusta Treverorum. He summoned his prefect to report to him. On the way there with his legionaries for escort, Gratillonius rescued a party of travelers from a band of Bacaudae. These men were more than simple brigands; mostly they had fled Roman oppression and developed a loose organization. As the leader of this group,
Rufinus, negotiated with Gratillonius, they felt a sudden liking for each other.

Later Gratillonius encountered Martinus, bishop of Caesarodunum Turonum and founder of a monastery near that city. Again there was quick mutual respect and friendliness. Martinus had been seeing Maximus in an effort to win clemency for certain heretics on trial. Soon after he reached Treverorum, Gratillonius became a victim of the general hysteria—after all, Ys was pagan and he had dealt with sorceresses—and was interrogated under torture. However, Maximus could not dispense with him and hence released him with an adjuration to promote the Christian faith. Actually, Gratillonius sought out a surviving Mithraic congregation and got himself elevated to the rank of Father, so that he could found and lead a temple of that religion in Ys.

Time passed. Children were born to him and grew. The Nine took turns caring for Dahut. Physically resembling her mother, she was often aloof and moody, though well able to charm when she chose. Men as rough as the legionaries or the skipper Maeloch became her slaves. There was always something strange about her—Forsquilis read signs of a destiny—and occasionally she was seen in company with a particular female seal.

On the whole, Gratillonius’s reign was highly successful. His naval, military, and political measures brought safety from the barbarians, which in turn revived industry and commerce. He gave justice to rich and poor alike. Even his defiances of the Gods from time to time did not shake his popularity. Among these was his sparing the life of Rufinus. Driven desperate and not knowing who really was the King of Ys, the Bacauda came and challenged him. Gratillonius disarmed Rufinus in combat, then refused to kill a helpless; man. Rufinus became the King’s devoted henchman, coming and going widely on his behalf, gradually recruiting Bacaudae to settle in the largely unpeopled interior of Armorica, give up their banditry, and serve at need as scouts and irregulars for Ys. This was violation of Roman law, but Gratillonius saw no alternative.

He had to replace the Christian minister, who had died. With Martinus’s advice and consent, he picked Corentinus,
whom he had come to know as a hermit in Osismia, the tribal territory adjacent to Ys. Despite the difference in faith they became friends and worked well together.

Another Christian friend whom Gratillonius made was Apuleius Vero, a senator and the tribune of the small Gallo-Roman city Aquilo. He likewise grew fond of Apuleius’s wife Rovinda and their children Verania and Salomon.

Maximus invaded Italy but was soon defeated and killed. With the help of such influential Romans as Apuleius and Martinus, Gratillonius arranged for Maximus’s veterans to be resettled in Armorica, where they could provide a leaven in the civilian reservists and ill-trained native regulars. The old legionary units were depleted, and modern heavy cavalry had not yet been much seen in the West.

It seemed the Gods would nevertheless chastise Gratillonius. The oldest Queen died, and the Sign came upon a daughter of Bodilis by an earlier King. Thereafter the mother and her royal husband could only be as brother and sister, much though that pained them. But in time he and the new Queen, Tambilis, became a loving couple.

Rufinus secretly bore another kind of love. Forceful Queen Vindilis ferreted out the fact of his homosexuality, which was abhorred in Ys, and thus had a hold on him.

Hoping to win back the favor of the Gods, the Queens raised Dahut to be Their fervent worshipper. The girl early showed immense promise as a witch, and got the idea that she was destined to inaugurate a new Age, now that the Age of Brennilis was clearly ending.

Time had also been at work in Ériu. Niall’s foster-kinsman Conual Corcc became a mighty king in Mumu. He did not have Niall’s implacable hatred of Ys, and eventually received envoys from Gratillonius (or Grallon, as the Ysans often rendered the name). Rufinus went on some of these missions, and in the course of doing so became friendly with a well-born young Scotian, Tommaltach.

Niall had been fighting in Ériu. He defeated his enemies the Lagini and demanded a huge tribute. At the parley, Eochaid, a son of the Laginach King Éndae, flared up and insulted Naill’s master poet Laidchenn. Laidchenn’s son and student Tigernach immediately composed a satire
which, unexpectedly, raised scarring blisters on the face of Eochaid and thus forever debarred him from becoming a king.