The Dog and the Wolf (25 page)

That day passed mutely on the whole. Most sound within the walls came from the babe. “You must soon take him to your breast, you know,” Tera said in the afternoon.

“Aye,” Nemeta sighed from her pillow. “Nine months it sucked my blood. It may as well have my milk.”

Seated on a stool at the bedside, fingers twined together in her lap, Tera said slowly, “I’m disquieted about you, lass. You’ve been dumb throughout, save when bearing. You stare like one blind. But at what?”

The young woman’s lip flicked upward. “You told me not to waste strength crying out while the. thing happened. I strike a balance, nay?”

“You do wrong if you blame the child.”

“Do I? Four beasts begot it; and it would not go away.”

Tera regarded her a while. “You sought to be rid of it, then.”

“Of course.”

“HOW?”

“I tried—oh, what I hoped might serve, whatever I could think of. But what did I know, I a stranger in the Roman city? Afterward—” Nemeta’s voice halted.

“Afterward,” Tera followed, “you stayed with Princess Runa.”

Nemeta compressed her mouth.

“Trust me.” Tera reached for a hand lax on the coverlet and cradled it in hers. “Think you yours is the first woe like this that ever I kenned? I’ll keep silence. But sometimes yon leechdoms wreak lasting harm. If you’ll tell me what you tried, I’ll better know how to help you.”

Nemeta considered. When she spoke, her tone was hard with resolution. “Do you swear secrecy? That without my leave you’ll utter no breath of whatever I may say here?”

“I promise.”

“Nay, you must give oath. Silence about every single
thing you heard or saw in the whole while you’ve been with me.”

Tera grimaced. “That’s a heavy load. But—Aye.” She took a knife that hung at the cord around her waist, nicked her thumb, squeezed a drop onto the floor. “Hark. If I break faith with you, let the Wild Hunt find me, let its hounds lick my blood, let my ghost stray homeless between the worlds. Cernunnos, You have heard.”

Nemeta sat up in bed. She shivered with sudden ardor. “You know the old lore, then. Teach me!”

Tera shook her head. “I know just enough to fear how spells can turn on us. Lie back down. Tell me what I asked.”

Grudgingly, Nemeta obeyed. She spoke of bitter or nauseating herbs she had taken, of casting herself belly first on the ground, of searches for a witch or wizard or renegade physician. Nothing availed. Outsider, pagan, therefore object of suspicion despite the money Evirion left her after he departed, she dared not inquire forthrightly, even among the poor of Gesocribate. Christian law forbade doing away with the unborn as well as the newborn.

“Runa gave me sapa to drink,” she finished. “It only made me weak and ill. At last she said I’d best stop. Presently I felt better. But I was being kicked within my body. As a rider kicks his animal.”

Tera frowned. “Sapa?”

“A Roman brew, Runa said. They make it by boiling grape juice in a lead vessel. ’Tis thick, sweet, commonly added to their wines. I took it pure.”

“Hm. In Ys they thought lead a slow poison. Belike that’s soothfast.”

Nemeta raised her eyes. “Runa told me Roman whores are wont to drink sapa. It whitens their skins. Ofttimes it sloughs out their unwanted young. How right, I thought, if I drink a whore’s potion against this maggot in me. But it failed.”

Tera sat silent before she answered, “Well, keep the child till we find him a foster home, your father and I.”

“Does
he
want it?”

“I’ve a feeling he’d be happier had it died in the womb.
And yet. … ’tis his grandchild, and Queen Forsquilis’s. I think he cared for her as much as he did for any of the Nine, aside from Dahilis the mother of Dahut. But Dahilis left us ere I was grown. I knew her just by hearsay. I’ve seen Forsquilis, though, beautiful, strong, and strange. Aye, Grallon will do whatever he can for the grandchild.”

“I will endure, then,” Nemeta mumbled. When Tera brought the infant over, she bared her breast and held him close. He suckled with savage eagerness.

—In the time that followed, she showed him neither love nor cruelty. Nursing him, learning from Tera how to care for him, were things she did. Otherwise she gazed afar, spoke little and distantly, fingered the magical objects she was collecting. As strength returned, she first paced the cabin like a cat in a cage, later went off by herself to walk in the woods and bathe in the river.

Those were brief whiles, but increased rapidly. On the third day, Tera said, “Well, I can leave you and go tell your father you’re up and about. He’ll be glad. When can he come see you, or you come to him?”

Nemeta’s answer was low and cold. “I’ll send word.”

“Men of his will still look in on you daily for a span.” Tera’s tone softened. “Keep him not waiting much longer. He’d laden and lonely.”

“He shall hear. Thank you for your help.”

Tera drew a sign in the air. “May They be with you, dear.”

—When the woman was gone, Nemeta began to tremble. It worsened till she crouched in a corner hugging herself while the teeth clattered in her jaws. The babe cried. She threw a curse at him. It drowned the noise he made. She howled aloud for a long time.

Thereafter she had mastery of her flesh. Rising, she busied herself. There were things to pack together—knife, a stake she carved, the scribed shoulderblade of an aurochs, flint and steel, tinder, bundle of kindling wood—and a distance to go while daylight wore away toward sunset. As she worked, she muttered, sometimes prayers she had learned as a vestal, sometimes scraps of what she had heard were spells. It helped curb rage at the clamorous creature. She would have gotten silence by nursing
him, as well as relief from an ache in swollen breasts, but she could not quite bring herself to that.

At last she donned a clean white shift and hung her filled sack across her back. Quickly, she stooped to lift the infant from the basket Tera had brought to be his crib. He struggled before she got him firmly held on her left hip. With her right hand she took the staff twined with a snake’s mummy; and she set forth.

Heat, stillness, odors of wet mould hung over the game trails down which she padded. The babe’s yells dropped to a whimper and to naught; rocked by her pace, he slept within the bulwark of her arm. Now and then she heard wings whirr or a cuckoo call. Through the few gaps between boles, sunbeams slanted ever more long and deeply yellow. Finally they went out and shadows closed on her.

She reached the place that people shunned. Here too was a narrow opening in the forest, looking west. Heaven smoldered red where Ys had been. Overhead it arched wan behind leaves; eastward, night filled all spaces. The pool burned with sunset. Swifts darted noiseless in pursuit of mosquitoes that swarmed above it. Chill seeped from the earth below the fallen leaves. They rustled and scratched at her bare feet.

She set her loads before the boulder at the waters edge. It bulked high as her waist, black athwart sundown. The babe started crying again, a sound that sawed the air. Nemeta scuttled about gathering deadwood dry enough to burn. She must lay and light her fire while she could see what she did.

It was never an easy task, making needfire, but she had skill. Her father had taught her. He had taught her whatever he could that she wanted to learn when she was a little girl, ere the rift between him and his Queens denied him to her. How she had missed the big man with the knowing hands.

Her child screamed on and on. “Be quiet,” she snarled. “Oh, soon you shall be very quiet.”

The fire flickered up. She made sure it would burn untended for a space. The western embers were turning to ash.

She stood, lifted arms, spoke aloud: “Ishtar-Isis-Belisama,
I am here. I call on You, Maiden, Mother, and Hag; Lady of Life and Death; Comforter and Avenger. See, I make myself pure before You.”

She stripped off her garment and waded into the pool. Withes caught at her. Slipping along her nakedness, they lashed and stung. Roots made her stumble and bruise her feet. She went on until she stood at the middle, ooze cool around her ankles, water to her waist. Thrice she scooped a double handful and poured it over her head. “Taranis,” she called as she did, and “Lir,” and “Belisama.”

The fire sputtered low when she returned. She squatted to build it anew, feeding it until the glow quivered as far as the lightning-blasted beech nearby. A burning brand in her left hand, the knife in her right, she danced slowly three times around the great dead trunk while she named her Gods.

The babe wailed, kicked, reached arms up from the blanket whereon he lay. Nemeta came back to stand above him. For an instant she found herself moveless, muscles locked together. With a gasp and a shudder she broke free. She plunged the torch into the soil; its flame went out. Her left hand caught the child by a leg and lifted him. He was so small, he weighed scarcely anything.

She took him to the boulder and stretched him on its flat top. He writhed. His cries had grown thin. She held him down and looked aloft. Day was altogether gone. Stars blinked.

Her words rushed forth, half-formed, falling over each other. “Taranis, Lir, Belisama, behold the last of Your worshippers. Men fled in terror of Your wrath, sought a home with the new God of the Romans or the doddering old Gods of the Gauls. I, Nemeta, born to the King of Ys by Your Queen Forsquilis, I alone keep faith with You. Hear me!”

The knife gleamed in her right hand. It was big, heavy-bladed, almost a sword. She had bought it in Gesocribate from a shopkeeper who said it had, long ago, made pagan sacrifices.

“Ys lies drowned,” Nemeta yowled. “The Wood of the King has burned. Take what I give you!”

The knife flashed and struck. The cries ceased.

Nemeta lifted the dripping tiny head alongside the blade.

“Blood of my blood I give You, flesh of my flesh, I Your worshipper. Now give me what I want!”

Her voice sank to a rasping purr. The flames snapped louder at their back. Their light turned the smoke to a living presence.

“Lir: May those four who made prey of me beside Your sea never win free of it. Let her who haunts the ruins torture their souls forever.

“Taranis: May their kin, in the city Audiarna, perish like vermin. Let this blood of theirs which I have shed to You drain wholly out of Your earth.

“Belisama: May I gain the powers that belonged to my mother, Queen Forsquilis. Let me never again be captive and helpless, but witch-priestess unto You.

“It is spoken.”

The fire sank. By its uneasiness she found her way back to the pool, wherein she cast the body, and to the tree, in whose charred cavern she laid the head and pegged it fast.

She prostrated herself, got to her knees, rose to her feet, arms uplifted. “Be always with me,” she implored.

Having gathered her things, she set off homeward. It would be impossible to find her way through the dark, but how could she linger here? She would come on a glade where she could see the stars and take shelter there. At dawn she would seek the cabin, wash herself clean in the river, dispose of the bloodied shift. When Gratillonius’s man arrived she would have her tears ready. “I went out after berries. I came back and the door stood open and the crib lay empty. Did a wolf steal my babe, or the elves, or, oh, what has become of him?” Her father would believe, he must believe, and console her as best he was able.

3

The feast of St. Johannes had taken unto itself the ancient rites of Midsummer, but otherwise they had changed little. Even many Aquiltonians left the city on the eve to dance around bonfires such as blazed from end to end of
Europe, or leap across them, or cast the wreaths they had worn and the pebbles they had gathered into them. Burning wheels rolled down hills while besoms, set alight and waved around, showered the night with sparks. Wild revelry followed, and hasty marriages during the next few months. Relics, partly burnt sticks and the like, were kept till the following summer as charms against misfortune. Brotherhoods and sisterhoods existed to prepare for these gatherings, lead them, and dispose of the remnants lest those fall into the hands of sorcerers.

Bishop Corentinus could not have stopped this, nor did he wish to. Rather than hold the Church aloof from something that dear to her children, he would bring her into it. His priests went about blessing the piled logs before they were lit and conducting prayers for a good harvest. Everyone who possibly could was supposed to attend Mass the day after; confession was encouraged. As for misbehavior, he must hope that in the course of generations it would die out. His duty, and vital, was to purge the observances of their openly pagan elements.

In this one year, however, he saw an opportunity to reinforce the Christian aspect. Among the Confluentians was a large and growing proportion of wedded couples. In some cases man and wife together had escaped the destruction; in other cases they mated with fellow Ysans or with Osismii after reaching these parts. Such knots had generally been tied in heathen wise, if there was any sanctification at all. As yet, rather few members of the widespread tribe had been converted. Corentinus meant to imitate his mentor, holy Martinus, and evangelize the countryside. While any union honestly entered into was doubtless only venially sinful, God’s ministers alone could make it truly valid, eternally secure. If it be done at the very Midsummer, it would help the folk understand whose day that truly was. This in turn should give the unbaptized cause for thought and thus guidance toward the Light.

Accordingly, the bishop occupied himself for a pair of months in advance, persuading and arranging. The occasion was a triumph crowned by Julia, daughter of the leader Gratillonius, and Cadoc Himilco, scion of Suffetes, when they joined in Christian wedlock.

They had gone side by side beforehand to make their intention known to her father. He had consented, with a brevity and reserve that slightly diminished her joy, and asked the young man to see him alone later at his house.

It was a simple, white-painted building of squared timbers with a few utilitarian rooms, though it did posses glazed windows and a tile roof. The main chamber, which could scarcely be called an atrium, was for receiving guests. It held little more than some articles of furniture. The plaster of the walls was undecorated and the floor, clay, covered merely with rushes. Gratillonius gestured Cadoc to a stool, gave him a cup of wine, took one for himself, and sat down too.