The Dog and the Wolf (23 page)

“I remember Ys, though I have never seen her,

With her towers leaping gleaming to the sky,

For a ghost once walked beneath her mighty seawall

And along her twilit streets. That ghost was I.

“In my dreams I was a dweller in the city

Where I lived and loved and laughed aloud with you.

Now that Ys is overwhelmed and lost forever,

I must pray you give me leave to mourn her too.

“Here at sunrise, when I looked along the highways

I knew well the one our couriers took to Rome

And the fading path that led to Garomagus—

But the Ysan road flew off to magic’s home.

“At the eventide, the time for storytelling,

There were many ancient tales of splendid Ys

That had risen from the seed of Tyre and Carthage

And that with her very Gods had sworn a lease.

“I will shed my tears for Ys the hundred-towered,

For the city facing west against the sea,

For the legend-haunting city, Ys the golden,

For the wondrous place where all once yearned to be.

“I’ll remember Ys, though I shall never see her

Shining tall where only waves are left to grieve.

When we’ve given this new city to our children,

Will our ghosts return to Ys and never leave?”

4

Easter Eve was clear. Green misted the plowlands; leaves were bursting forth; the rivers sparkled on their way to the sea; everywhere sounded birdsong. Soberly clad was the throng that gathered at the church in Aquilo that day, but quietly joyful the spirits of many.

Julia, daughter of Gratillonius, hardly knew what she herself felt. Fasting had left her lightheaded, for ordinarily her appetite was robust. Teachings, prayers, rites buzzed about in her head like swarming bees. The bodies packed close around her seemed from time to time to be at immense distances, their faces the faces of strangers.

The church, not meant to become a cathedral, could barely hold all the converts. There would have to be several celebrations of the Mass tomorrow, with worshippers taking their turns. On this occasion, those to be received were assembled in the street outside, with guards on the fringes to keep order. One by one they were summoned inside. First the children, next the men, last the women—it went on endlessly, Julia had stood here for centuries, nothing changed save that her feet ached worse and worse.

Then sunbeams, slanting richly out of the west and between houses, caught a blond head and came afire. Cadoc Himilco was mounting the steps to his christening. Faintness swept through Julia, and after it a rush of almost unbearable joy. Were angels aloft? Today was the day of her salvation.

Folk inched forward. She reached the front of the women. She heard her name called, saw the deaconess beckon. None of it was real. She stumbled, she floated, the angel wings whirred in her head.

Since returning as bishop, Corentinus had had a baptistry added to the stone building. It was wooden, little more than a lean-to at an end of the portico, but solidly
made; he had worked on it himself in rare free moments. Likewise put together in some haste was the organization he needed, priests, deacons, a deaconess, brought in from among Martinus’s people at Turonum or recruited here. He cherished plans for a new, properly enlarged church and Church—to be founded at Confluentes, where sites were still available—but this required first that by God’s grace the colony flourish and grow.

Julia saw the dim little room as aflicker with rainbows. Its dankness smelled musty. For her the ceremony must be different from what Cadoc had known, she being a woman. Curtains had been drawn from wall to wall behind the font, lest the priest at the back of it see her naked. Nonetheless, as she disrobed with the help of the deaconess, she felt a sudden heat. It terrified. She needed no prompting to cry out thrice, “I renounce you, Satan!”

Thereafter she stepped down into the font. It was not a fine stone basin such as she had heard of, but a barrel-stave tub. The water was holy, though, deep enough to cover her waist. Motionless once the ripples she raised had died, it yet somehow licked at her loins. She drew her hair over her shoulders, tightly across her breasts, and kept her head lowered. In Ys you had not been ashamed of your body; Ys lay drowned.

The priest’s voice tolled through a vast hollowness: “Do you believe in God the Father, almighty?”

“I do,” she gasped. Oh, I do.

The deaconess dipped up the first bowlful of water, gave it to the priest, and guided his hands as he poured it over Julia. She remembered a brooklet falling across an edge in the hills behind the Nymphaeum, how it flashed and chimed, bound for the pool over which watched the image of Belisama.

“Do you believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord, Who was born and suffered for us?”

“I do.” Forswear all heathen things. Forget them. Anew the water of redemption ran down her head and above her heart.

“Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the forgiveness of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh?”

“I do.” Forgive my sin, that I don’t quite understand it. I believe. Let the water wash me clean.

A hand urged her forward. She went up the steps and stood dripping. At this point, the bishop would have anointed a man; but for modesty’s sake, the deaconess simply embraced her—perfunctorily, being by now weary—and helped her on with the clean white robe that was Christ’s welcoming gift.

Taking her former garments, she passed through a doorway knocked out of the stone wall, into the vestibule. This she knew; as a catechumen she had stood here listening to the services until the inner door was shut on those who were not initiated. Tonight she too would partake of the Mystery.

Corentinus waited just within the sanctum. “Bless you, my daughter,” he said, and signed her with the seal of the Spirit. He held his post like an iron statue, though he must have been on his feet all day at least. Nonetheless she heard the wound within him, a hurried whisper: “Go home after we are done here and beseech your father that he come too. If you love him, do it.”

The chamber was already packed. Lamps and candles burned everywhere. They, the incense, the bodies made the air chokingly thick. Julia felt dizzy, drunk. She feared she might fall or otherwise disgrace herself. What when she received the Bread and Wine?

Voices gabbled. Among the converts were a leaven of lifetime Christians, chosen for their calm tempers. They took the lead in kissing the new faithful, a tender hug and a quick brushing of lips.

But the converts were mingling with each other as well. Suddenly Julia found herself in the arms of Cadoc. The Light shone from his eyes. It burned when his mouth touched hers.

“Hoy, is’t not sufficient, or a trifle more?” asked a sardonic voice in Ysan. The two disengaged. Evirion Baltisi stood hard by. “I also would fain greet my sister—chastely,” he said. Cadoc flushed. The look he cast was less than charitable. Evirion returned it, with the slightest sneer. Then another woman came in, and another, and the milling of the expectant crowd pulled them apart.

5

Tera, who had kept sheep and led rites among those folk who sparsely dwelt in the hinterland of Ys, knew she would never know ease in Aquilo. Like most survivors, at first she found a place for herself and her four children on a farm. Unlike most, after the raising of Confluentes she did not move there, but remained where she was. That happened to be the freehold Drusus had hewn for himself out of the forest. The former soldier was a Christian, but easygoing; he saw no harm in keeping a person who knew how to get along with the ancient landwights. Besides, Tera was a good, sturdy worker, and her youngsters—two boys, two girls—did as much as could be expected at their small ages.

On Easter morning, they five were well-nigh alone. Apart from a pagan man who rode watchful about the acres, everyone else had gone into town for the post-baptismal services and the festivities that would follow.

The children dashed to her from their play and squealed that a traveler was coming. She left the bench outside the house on which she had sat half adoze, went around the wall, and peered southward. Snowpeaks of cloud brooded over fields where shoots thrust from furrows and paddocks where cattle grazed the new grass. At her back reared wilderness, a thousand bright hues of green decking cavernous shadows. The farmhouse and its outbuildings made the four defensible sides of a square with a well at its middle. They were long structures of cob, thick-walled, thatch-roofed, and whitewashed. Tera and her brood slept in the haymow, a territory she had claimed for herself and defended with threats—once, a pitchfork—against fellow underlings who shared quarters with the animals.

Aquilo was out of sight, miles to the southeast. Thence meandered roads, branching every which way, scarcely more than tracks worn by feet, hoofs, wheels. On the one that led to this place, a man was bound afoot. He was powerfully’ built, with gray-shot black hair and beard. His
rolling gait he aided with a spear used like a staff; a knife was at his belt, a battle ax slung across his shoulders. Yet the condition of breeks and tunic proclaimed him no outlaw; and the guard had let him by.

The hounds that Drusus kept, as most well-to-do Gallic landholders did, sensed the approach and gave tongue. Huge and savage, the half dozen were penned when someone who could command them was not there to order them back from tearing a newcomer apart. However, they had come to know Tera. At her word, the deep baying died away.

Recognition: “Maeloch!” She hurried to meet him and seized his free hand in both hers. “Why, what brings you hither, lad?”

“I felt restless,” the seaman answered. “No haven for the likes o’ me this day, Aquilo nor Confluentes. The King too, he went off aboard his stallion.”

“But you’d call on a friend? Be welcome. I’m sure the master wouldn’t grudge you a stoup of ale.”

“’Twould lay the dust in this gullet. Ahoy, there.” Maeloch grinned at the children. The two oldest pressed close, the younger pair looked from behind their mother’s skirts. “Ye await a harbor fee, I’ll be bound. Well, then, how be this?” His huge hand dipped into a pouch and came forth full of sweetmeats.

“You’ve a chiefly way about you,” Tera said.

Maeloch scowled. “A chief ’ud give gold. The day may come—”

And in the clay-floored kitchen, he said over his cup: “I’ve somewhat to talk about with ye.”

“I thought so,” Tera replied. “If your legs are not worn down, let’s go walk in the woods. No ears yonder to hear us, unless they be on the elves.”

He gave her a close regard. She stood before him in an oft-mended linsey-woolsey shift, on her bare feet, stocky, strong, and returned look for look. A shock of hair, sun-bleached flaxen, bonneted a round, pugnosed face from which not quite all the youth had weathered away. Her eyes were small but a very bright blue. You would not have guessed she was familiar with spells, spooks, fayfolk, and maybe even the old Gods of the land.

“Aye, ye’d know,” he said. “It be a thing I mean to ask about.”

He drained his drink, she gave orders to her older boy, and they set forth. “I’ve scant wisdom or might,” she warned. “Naught like what the Queens of Ys did; and their powers were far on the wane in our last years. I made my offerings, cast my sticks, dreamed my dreams, and sometimes it worked out aright and sometimes not.”

“I know. Ye’ve done naught like that since the whelming, ha’ ye?”

“Nay. Only a muttered word, a lucky charm, a sign seen in wind or water or stars. What else can I? What dare I, any longer?”

They left cleared land behind and were in among trees. The trail, leading to the Stegir, was packed hard by use, yet it seemed as though that use were on sufferance, perforce around great roots and mossy boulders. Brush hedged the path, boughs roofed it, boles loomed in a dimness speckled with sun-flecks. Air hung heavy. Through silence drifted the moaning of doves; now and then a cuckoo call rang forth.

“Nemeta will dare, I think,” said Maeloch after a while.

“The King’s wild daughter? I’ve heard a little.”

“They’re building her a house in these woods. Her wish, which Grallon grants. Scant more than that will he say about it, to me or anybody.”

Tera caught his hand. Compassion gentled the hoarseness of her voice. “You fret for him—because of him, nay?”

“He be my King. And yours. … Look after her, will ye?”

“How can I?”

“Ye’ll find ways. How many women amongst us ha’ had strength to hold out against Corentinus?”

They wandered on.

“Why do ye?” he asked at length. “How can ye?”

She stared before her. “I’ve not wondered much about it,” she answered low. “It felt like—being herded. Oh, he’s a kindly herdsman, I suppose, but I was born free.”

“With a God your father? I’ve heard that said.”

She laughed. “My father can have been any man my
mother liked. Same for my brats. I can guess, of course.” Sobering: “Thrice I’ve seen Cernunnos, His antlers athwart the moon, and once—but that may have been a dream after I’d breathed too much of the hemp smoke.” Forlornness touched her. “They’re ghosts of what They were, the Gods are. For sure, my children will go to Christ. Else their age-mates’ll mock them, and why should they suffer?”

“But ye’ll abide?”

“I hope I will.”

“It be a terrible thing to be old alone.”

They reached the riverbank and stopped. The water rilled so clear that they could see stones on the bottom and fish darting across. Years ago, a tree had fallen. Moldering away to punkwood, it had spread a place for moss to grow thickly alongside the stream. Maeloch and Tera sat down on what remained of the trunk. It too bore a padding soft and cool.

“You risk the same, lad,” she said. “For Grallon’s sake?”

He tugged his beard. “N-nay. His God and mine never came betwixt us.”

“But you serve yet the Three of Ys?”

He heard the scorn slice through her tone, and shook his head. “Nay after what They did.”

“Nor I. But to inlanders like me, who just came to the city on market days, They were something afar. We lived with the wights that had always been of our land; and what Gods we called on were of the Gauls, or the Old Folk before them. Now you—”