The Dog and the Wolf (49 page)

His beaker clashed against Rufinus’s. How those gray eyes shone! The drinkers had gotten merry and bawled out a couple of songs and at last hugged each other goodnight.

Rufinus remembered the arms, beard rough against his cheek, wine-breath and also the sweat-smell, which had the cleanness of a man’s who is much outdoors.

Moonlight inched across the floor.

“Oh, hell take this,” ripped through him. He sat up and swung his legs out of bed in a single sweep. Tiles were hard and cool underfoot. He rose, stretched, shook nightmare off.

No reason to fumble with striking fire for a candle. He knew his way around this room as well as did the house cat, and it was her favorite in the house. He spoiled her rotten, as he doubtless would young Marcus. His hands knew how to fetch ranger’s garb from the chest and slip it over his body. Weapons, bedroll, pack of provisions he always kept ready. He made them fast and opened the door.

The corridor beyond was a tunnel where he was blind. Fingertips brushed a wall which by day would look pretty; Verania was well along with decorating it. Rufinus missed the freedom and casual clutter of his own house, but he’d been too much gone, and too indolent in town, to see about replacing it; you couldn’t put up another wattle-and-daub shack in phoenix Confluentes. Someday he’d take care of the matter. Meanwhile it was kind of Gratillonius and Verania to give him a room in their home.

And they didn’t meddle. When they found him missing, they’d simply smile. “Off on another of his rambles, is he?”

He passed through the atrium and entry and out the unbarred front door. It gave directly on the street; luxuries like a portico were for years to come, if ever. The wall reared sheer at his back, white with moonlight. How the moon shone, and it still a day short of being full. He wished he could have bidden Gratillonius—and Verania—farewell, with thanks; but of course they were asleep.

His sandals padded over cobblestones. Confluentes might never boast Roman paving blocks. Well, only cities old and rich had ever had them, and this was certainly better than dirt lanes. Rufinus dodged around horse dung and offal heaps. Though Gratillonius fumed about it, there was likely no hope of enforcing such cleanliness as had been on the streets of Ys.

Nor would such towers again soar above the sea. Rufinus hastened on between shadowing houses.

The pomoerium opened before him. It was unpaved, hard-packed, its dustiness pale beneath the moon. He had followed Principal Way and ahead of him lifted the earthen wall, moss upon it full of dew, wooden towers squat above the south gate. It stood ajar; he saw the bridge and river beyond. The moon sailed high. To him the markings upon it had always looked like an old woman who grieved. But elsewhere stars glinted, and a breeze wandered through the gate bearing a scent of wild thyme.

Rufinus drank it. He would go hence into that land from which it blew.

He started across the open space. “Hold!” cried a sentry on the north tower. “Who’s there?” The sound was lonesome in the night.

“Friend,” gibed Rufinus. “Enemies come the other way, have you heard?”

“Ha, you,” laughed the man aloft. “The moon-cat. Well, go with God, wherever you’re bound.”

I’d liefer not, thought Rufinus as he passed between the massive iron-bound timbers of the doors. Or He’d liefer not. Shall we agree on it, You and I?

Moonlight flowed with the river. Past the bridge, plowland stretched dim toward the sea. On the left, though, a ribbon of road followed the stream, toward the highway to Venetorum. Striding along it, gravel acrunch, he would soon find woodland; and soon after that, a trail which most travelers never noticed led into its depths.

He started across the bridge. The planks felt somehow soft. Perhaps that was because on his right was the new one, half-finished masonry, and behind it a sprawl of docks still under construction. The night blurred shapes. Water clucked and purled, sliding past stone.

In the forest lived one who loved him—too humbly, maybe, but Rufinus hoped to teach him pride. His hut lay within a sunrise’s reach. Afterward they could sleep late, and then range the woods for days.

And I will raise your image before me, Grallon, thought Rufinus. He smiled with half his mouth. Poor old fellow, you’d be so shocked if you knew, wouldn’t you?

She came from downstream up a pier onto the bridge. Small and cold on high, the moon made shimmer the water that ran off her nakedness.

Rufinus halted. He stood wholly alone with her. The shout of the guard, who saw, might have been in a dream or from the Otherworld.

She grinned. Her teeth were shark-white. Did you think I would let
you
go free? he heard.

She glided close. He drew his Roman sword and stabbed. It would not bite, it slid off and fell from his hand. She laid arms around him. They were freezingly cold.

“Oh, Dahut—” Rufinus had no strength to break loose. Locked together, he and she toppled into the river. He caught a taste of the incoming tide. Her lips and her tongue forced him open to her kiss.

1

Clouds drifted low, heavy with rain. The breeze rustled leaves. They cast no shadows today, but dimness under their arches grew purple-black as vision ranged into the forest. No birds were calling. The Stegir mumbled lusterless.

Gratillonius halted at the oak and dismounted. Favonius nickered. He secured the stallion. Nemeta must have heard, for she came out of her dwelling. Her hair bore the only bright color in the landscape. She stopped before Gratillonius and regarded him silently. It was as if neither quite dared speak.

“How are you?” he asked at last in Ysan. They had not met for months. Summer freckles spread healthily over her arched nose, but she seemed thinner than ever. The sleeves of her plain gray shift were a trifle short; he saw that her right arm had shriveled nearly to the bone.

Her brusqueness told him that she remained herself: “I know why you’ve come.”

It boded ill, though. “I thought you would,” he replied. “But how?”

She chuckled without mirth. “Not by any spell. I do get news here.” The frigidity broke open. She blinked against tears, shivered, abruptly cast herself against him. “Oh, father!”

He held her close, stroked her mane, let her burrow into his bosom. Her breath rattled. “You liked Rufinus too, did you not?” he murmured.

“Aye, he w-was kind and jolly—when I was a little girl—and—and he was good to you, when all the rest of us had turned on you—” She wrenched free. Her left hand swiped angrily at her eyes.

He could no longer hold his question inside him; yet it resisted coming forth. “Was it, then—The sentry isn’t clear about what he saw. It seemed him ’twas a woman, moon-white, but—We know not. We’ve searched the shores and dragged the river, but haven’t found the body.”

Nemeta had mastered herself. “You never will,” she said in a cold small voice. “’Twas borne to the sea.”

“You’ve gone into these matters. Can you tell what—what was that thing?”

“Dahut.”

“A demon in her shape?”

“Herself. She drowned with Ys, but They would not let her stay dead.”

He had awaited this, and prayed it not be, and now that it was he must fight it still. “Who are They?” he challenged.

“The Three. She is Their vengeance on the city.”

“You can’t be sure! How do you know?”

“By my dreams. By the wands I have cast. By things half seen in a pool and in the smoke of a sacrificial fire.”

“You could be mistaken. You could be crazed, huddling alone for years.”

Pain shook her tones. “Would you have sought me if you didn’t believe I could tell you the truth? Father, I know those Gods. I am the last of Their worshippers.”

His throat thickened and burned. “Gods like that—you serve, you whose mother They killed—why?”

She made a faint, one-sided shrug. They had been over this ground before. “There are none other for me. Epona and the rest are shrunk to sprites, phantoms; nor do I think they would heed me if I called, as far as I have gone from Their ways. Wotan and His war-band are aliens. I must have some few powers if I am to live as anything better than a slave. From Lir, Taranis, and Belisama I have them.”

“Christ has more.”

She stiffened. “He’d deny me my freedom.”

Hatred sank within him. In its place came sorrow for her, and a weariness he could feel to his marrow. “I’ve heard this too often,” he said. “For the dozenth time I beg, bethink you. Is Verania a slave? Come back with me. She’ll be like a sister to you, and I—while I live, you’ll be your own woman. And afterward too, if God lets me build what I’m trying to build. Come home, Nemeta, daughter of my Forsquilis whom I loved.”

The sudden fear he saw on her slashed through him. Her eyes widened till white ringed the green. Her left hand made a fending gesture. “Nay,” she whispered. “Dahut would find me.”

“What, you?”

“I counselled and helped Rufinus on his mission to get Niall killed.”

For my sake, he understood, and wanted to hold her again but seemed unable to stir.

“’Tis become Niall that she chiefly exists to avenge. And she knows where they are who were his bane.” Nemeta clutched at her breast. She turned her head to and fro, looking. The violence of the motion made her useless arm swing. “I don’t think she can swim this far up the Stegir. No tidewater here. She’s wholly of the sea now. I dare never go near the sea again. But she can follow the tide through the Odita to Confluentes.”

She steadied. He groped in the dark after common
sense. “Rufinus was a pagan; nay, he held by no Gods whatsoever. You—Christ will protect you.”

“If I accept Him.” The red head shook. “That’s not in my heart.”

Somewhere at the back of his soul, he wondered about his own faith. Why had he sought Christ? Was it merely for power against evil—at best, because He stood between the world and chaos, like a centurion between Rome and the barbarians? Gratillonius knew Christ lived, but in the same way that he knew the Emperor did. He had never met either. He admired Christ; but did he love Him?

“He will accept you if you ask,” Gratillonius said.

The brief pridefulness crumbled. Nemeta looked away, into the dusk of the forest. “Will He ever?” he barely heard. “Can He? Father, you know not the things I have done.”

The grimness that that awakened was somehow strengthening. “I may know more than you think,” Gratillonius told her. “His waters wash every sin from us.” And that is why I haven’t yet dared be baptized.

“Well, talk to your bishop—about Dahut,” she said in forlorn defiance, “I’ve told you all I’ve learned.”

“Nemeta,” he pleaded, “you mustn’t suffer this any more, loneliness, poverty, fear. Let those who love you help you.”

Her courage lifted anew. “Oh, now, in truth ’tis not so bad. I have my house, my cats—” She even smiled. “You’ve not met them. They’re inside. Three kittens. And I do have my freedom, and these deep woods—” The mood broke. “Father, ’tis you I sometimes weep for.”

Wind moaned in the trees. The first raindrops fell down it.

2

Gratillonius was at work several miles from Confluentes when Salomon found him. A man must work, no matter how hollow he felt within.

A curial, responsible for the lives of many, required a suitable livelihood. You couldn’t forever spend pirate gold;
besides, it was earmarked for public purposes. Since his marriage he had gone into partnership with Apuleius. Without talent for the management of land, the latter had never been able to make the fundus pay, and Confluentes had taken over that ground. Broad new acres being cleared and claimed, the senator financed operations which Gratillonius—farm boy, soldier, ruler—knew how to run. Sharecroppers were established and this year producing their first, excellent harvest. Meanwhile Gratillonius was properly organizing the horsebreeding Apuleius had begun. Favonius would be the prize stud, but he meant to get more, for the servicing of the finest brood mares he could find. There ought to be a boundless market. Rome needed cavalry.

On this day he was overseeing the fencing of a meadow, taking a hand himself. He didn’t enjoy that as erstwhile, he no longer enjoyed anything, but at least it got the cramp out of his muscles. Salomon rode up at his usual breakneck pace, reined in his mount and made it curvet. “Hail!” he shouted.

Gratillonius squinted against the sun, which haloed those locks the hue of Verania’s. At sixteen, Salomon was still smooth-cheeked but otherwise a young man, tall, his gangliness filled out and become both hard and supple. His tunic and breeks were striped in the gaudiest Gallic style. “What brings you?’ Gratillonius grunted.

Salomon winced a bit. He had, though, resigned himself to his brother-in-law’s recent curtness. “You wanted to know when Corentinus returned. Well, he has.”

It gave an excuse for a gallop, Gratillonius thought. However, the announcement let him meet with the bishop today rather than tomorrow. That might or might not prove a kindness. “Thanks,” Gratillonius remembered to say. He left instructions with his foreman and got onto Favonius.

Radiance poured from above. The clover sown this year bloomed white. Bees droned about, gathering its riches. A stand of wild carrot filled the warmth with pungency. Its filigree was like sea foam…. What was the weather at Ys? He imagined fog, the breakers crashing unseen on rocks and remnants. Evil creatures hated sunlight, didn’t they? It hurt them.

At the grassy wall of Confluentes, Salomon bade him goodbye and went off, doubtless in search of company more cheerful. Gratillonius continued around. The churcn there was still abuilding. Corentinus hoped to dedicate it as his cathedral before winter. Enlargement and beautification might continue for generations. That had been an idea strange to Gratillonius; but the world was moving into a different age.

He found the bishop at home in Aquilo. Corentinus met him in the doorway. A minute passed, during which the street traffic seemed remote, while eyes beneath shaggy brows ransacked the visitor. Finally Corentinus said gently, “Welcome, my son. Come in where we can talk.”

Gratillonius followed him to the room in which secrets were safe. Corentinus gestured at a stool. Gratillonius slumped onto it. Corentinus mixed water and wine in two cups.