The Incorruptibles (13 page)

And then he’s over her, kissing her lips, everything abandoned, everything lost, except her scent and the warmth of her flesh, pinioned in a shaft of light in the ever-moving dappled glade. Her hands are at the small of his back, and she’s whispering in his ears – what, neither could say later. She shudders and searches his body for a piece of it she can keep with her forever, and he arches his back, rising on his arms, and the motion of his body becomes frantic against her. He feels massive and infinitesimal, all at once, adrift on the sea of her body, rolling on the waves of pleasure coursing through them both and thinking,
What did I do to deserve this?

Later, she lies there shivering, not from cold, but from tremors still wracking her body. And he looks at her face, so fine, so far beyond him and his rough life, and with the sight of her smooth skin – that delicate skin that comes with a lifetime of good food and the sunless hours of a privileged education and the steady drone of tutors– it all comes crashing in. She’s a noble and he’s what he is: a scout, a man living off the dried teat of this harsh land.

She kisses his eyelids, and slides her body against him once more. He responds. She shuts her eyes as she rides him, her face caught in the sun, her hair around his face, cords standing out on her neck.

Later, they’re too spent for words and neither wants to think upon the consequences of this tryst. It could be death for him, she knows.

She takes a long time restoring her clothing and her hair, but it’s still mussed. Beautifully mussed, he says, gloriously mussed, and she smiles, but she takes the time to right it all the same. She holds his hand as they walk back to the horses, and when they remount, he feels a desperate loneliness again, until she winks at him from horseback.

They ride back to the legionaries, returning to the world they left behind, the cruel hard one with nothing soft in it.

The legionaries dilly-dallied after they lost Fisk and Livia.
And
Banty and Isabelle. The couples had made headed off in opposite directions, splitting the escort detail and outriding the poor soldiers.

Fisk and Livia returned first, and I knew in a moment, just looking into his face – the way he looked at me and then away to the prairie, quick-like – that there had been something more than horseback riding. Banty and Isabelle took a mite longer, so much longer that I’d told Fisk he’d better remount so we could go find their bodies. But then they came riding in, sun behind them, her dress all a mess and the damned greenhorn all grins and shy batting of eyes.

Back in the village Cimbri, glowering and chomping on his cigar, waited until the ladies had dismounted and taken the swing stage back to the
Cornelian
before he said, ‘Took you Ia-damned long enough for your joy ride. You missed all the hubbub. Young master Gnaeus did us all a favour and died.’

THIRTEEN

A patrician’s son – a patrician with proconsular imperium – demands a lavish funeral. And Cornelius wasn’t cutting any corners.

See, the Rumans have hedged their bets. While they recognize Ia as the one true god, on the sly they still make obeisance to the old Prodigium gods – those old titans and the ill brood of capricious gods that came before. Ia did us all a favour by wiping the heavens clean of their taint, but they lurk still in the shadows of Ruman ceremony. The nine days of sorrow are still observed – the unwashed grief, the vestes pullae, the lamentations and funeral procession. All the collected grief was the foodstuff of those gods. Ia just inherited the trappings.

Cornelius directed the boat upstream to the western shore beyond the village, a full hour’s steam north, in good sight of the Whites. I took Bess and a brace of ponies, dragging a sledge up to a brake of gambels and gathered the laurel of perfect leaves for Gnaeus, and we felled enough trees for the pyre. We spent the day there, dragging logs back to the
Cornelian
, me, Fisk, Banty, Sharbo, Horehound and Jimson plus a team of legionaries and lascars. In two days, we had the pyre as high as a hillock and steeped in pitch.

Livia and Isabelle visited us to inspect the funeral pyre. Livia looked tired and pale. With one exception, her time since the auroch hunt had been spent ministering to her scalped brother, watching what little humanity the man had seep from his head as pus and burn from his body in fever. As he died, so all the Cornelian children’s positions and allegiances shifted. It was as though their world had cracked and tilted on end. I would not mourn Gnaeus. But I could see that Livia, at least, would.

‘My condolences, Miss Livia,’ I said.

Fisk stood unmoving and looked at her.

‘How’s your pa?’ he said, low and not without feeling.

‘He’s lost, as you’d expect. What with his leg and now Gnaeus. He’s making a big show of—’ She waved her hands at the pyre. ‘All this. His grief. He’s donned the vestes pullae and blotted out any decent emotions with alcohol, as usual, and generally made an arse of himself clomping around the stateroom, glaring at the
vaettir
. Most of us declined to join him.’

There was a different timbre now on the
Cornelian
. The legionaries had become dour and silent. Many sported new tattoos of bulls or skulls. To a man, their heads were shorn and fierce looking. The lascars could be seen touching their heads, lips, and hearts constantly, genuflecting to Ia.

I heard mutterings among the men, that the stretcher whore in the stateroom had killed Gnaeus, just by her presence. That she could draw men’s thoughts out of their heads and reveal their deepest secrets. That if you lay with her, you would surely die.

And that more were coming. More
vaettir
. To rescue her.

On hearing of Cornelius’ state, Cimbri snorted and then murmured, ‘Sorry, ma’am.’

‘I’m not in the mood, Mr Cimbri. My brother is being anointed by the libitinarii right now, and my tolerance for nonsense is very low.’ She watched Cimbri for a moment, eyes narrow. He shifted his cigar in his mouth nervously and lowered his head. She looked back to where two bald lictors, in priestly robes, directed men to make sure each of the pyre’s sides were in the right proportion – being equal in length and pleasing to Ia – and haranguing the men to arrange fragrant rosemary and sagebrush against the pile. The pleasing scent of it might lull Ia into a sense of complacency so that Gnaeus’ spirit might be allowed past the trials of the shadowlands and to the great feast where all noble souls are brought before their lord, Ia. Here he sits at the head of a great and massive table, laden with food and drink and the withered bones of the old gods. Here every noble is rejoined with his or her maker and allowed into Heaven.

For the rest of us, death is much like life: we have to work to get where we’re going. Pay the ferryman, cross the river, drink the lethal dregs from the cup of forgetfulness, and there the Pater Dis, the nameless hand of Ia, judges the taint done in life to our souls – our genius or iuno – and sends them to their final disposition.

It might not be the most equitable of arrangements, but it seems to work. And it’s better than those old Ruman gods, what with their eternal wheels of pain, nameless dreads, capricious whims, and whatnot. I’m with Ia.

I wandered over to slather more logs with pitch and let both Fisk and Banty talk with the ladies.

Banty, dirty with the day’s labours, tried desperately not to sully Isabelle’s dress as he passed her the note.

I don’t know what was more surprising to me, the fact that he had the gall to start private conversation with a noble or that he could write at all, though it made sense due to his equite parentage. Scouts don’t need to have their letters. They need to be able to read the ground and air, ride a horse.

I rejoined Fisk and Miss Livia and cleared my throat.

‘Young Banty’s passed a schoolyard note to the Medieran lass.’ I didn’t mention her disarrayed clothing and his stupid grins after their ride on the plain.

‘What?’ Livia sounded a tad shrill.

Fisk said, ‘Looks like the boy’s sweet on her. He’s a damned silly pup, treading where he doesn’t belong.’

‘No, he’s a damned deadly nuisance, is what he is. Isabelle is more than noble. She’s the eldest daughter of King Diegal of Mediera. She’s Princess Isabelle, the one who’s sung about in taverns.’

Fisk whistled and shook his head.

‘You mean, “The White Rose of Cordova”?
That
Isabelle?’ I asked.

‘Precisely.’

‘But—’

‘Holy shit …’ Fisk removed his hat and dusted his pant leg. ‘I’m as thick as a brick. Hell, Shoe, it was right in front of us the whole damned time.’

Livia smiled wearily – I was reminded that we were preparing her brother’s funeral.

‘But you introduced her at that dinner. Can’t figure out why none of us picked up on it,’ I said.

‘Some did, of course. Miss Decius, she figured it out right away. And possibly Sam Kliment – that man doesn’t miss a thing. Of course Beleth already knew. But if you didn’t know the name that went with the royal title, it’s understandable that you didn’t realise.’ She put her hands on her waist, and stared hard at Banty. A little bit of the fierce Livia, the
vaettir-
shooting Livia, shone through. ‘Once this funeral is over, I’m going to have to sort out the pretty equite boy. He’s fair to look at, with passable manners, but I believe he might need reassignment. Mr Cimbri?’

He harrumphed and looked pained. ‘His folks are influential knights out of Harbor Town. Might be Marcellus is into them for a piece.’

‘We can sort out Marcellus, I’m sure. He’s in command of the fifth, but the fifth answers to Rume and Rume’s governor.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

We were silent for a moment until a lictor began screaming at one of the sailors who’d let slip a log that tumbled downslope toward the Big Rill and managed to agitate the brace of ponies.

When Fisk and I had the leisure to return, the ladies were gone.

Despite the objections and alarm of Cimbri and us scouts, Cornelius insisted on the full nine days of sorrow heading up to the pompa funebris. We bought cattle from the hamlet downriver for the funerary feast. We kept watch for
vaettir
and the ever-hungry mountain lions that came down from the heights at night to prowl about, now that the days were shortening and winter coming on.

The day of the funeral we woke to a dusting of snow on the ground. The
Cornelian
steamed in the hard, cold air, and our breath came in crystal plumes in front of our faces.

A bell from the riverboat clanged and echoed across the Big Rill midday, when the sun was directly overhead. We gathered at the river’s shore – all the scouts, the legionaries, and lascars – and waited as the slaves carried Gnaeus’ body across the hurricane deck and then made procession on each lower deck of the
Cornelian
. The Senator followed behind, head covered, togated, clomping on his bear leg and ringed by lictors wearing black and hefting fasces with silver-pronged axes. Behind him came Secundus, his head covered by his toga minima – the small, more modern toga the Rumans wore occasionally like a shawl as an accent over their garb – and at his side walked Carnelia and Livia, both with their hair wild and mussed, as Ruman tradition dictated. With each step, they brought clenched fists to their breasts, as though beating their heart.

As for the husk of Gnaeus himself, he’d been oiled and dressed in his best military garb – Imperial blues and golden phalerae gleaming in the cold air – while his hair was tastefully arranged so that the horrible wound was not as apparent. But it was hard not to focus on it and think it a scrap of dead raccoon skin perched on his head.

As far as corpses went, it seemed Gnaeus’ outside finally resembled his inside. He was as grey as old meat, and despite his closed eyes he looked like he had died in agony and enraged.

He’d been quite the soldier, judging from the medals affixed to his uniform. I can’t imagine how much money Cornelius spent to get the boy those trinkets.

They walked his body out on the swing stages, borne on the wicker lectica, and brought him to the pyre.

They raised him up on ladders and set him at the top, fifteen feet above us.

A remarkably dry-eyed funeral, I must admit.

Cornelius said a few words I couldn’t hear, and then a lictor intoned, ‘We consign this soul to the tattered path through the shadowlands and up to the great triclinium of Ia, where he shall feast forever in the Lord’s presence. Ia, Ia! Ia, vast and mighty, heed these offerings.’ He looked around and waved a lictor to bring forward the cow, withdrew a longknife from his belt, and held it up to the sky. ‘We offer them to you so that you sway the hand of the Pater Dis, the nameless, who sits in judgement on this one’s soul.’ Holding the knife, he led the cow over to where two lictors had a tin tub and jabbed the knife in its neck. The animal lowed and thrashed, and lictors gathered around it and forced the blood to fall in the tub until the creature was too weak to do anything other than pant and then die.

They brought the tub full of sloshing crimson back to where Gnaeus’ body rested on the pyre, and with an undramatic heave ho they splashed the blood on the pitched logs. Then Cornelius himself took a torch and lit the pyre.

It caught quick and burned hot and high. The heat pushed back the gathered people. Wineskins and flasks were passed about.

Slaves passed out pewter mugs with spirits, and the legionaries handed out wineskins full to bursting. Bread was distributed freely and later, once it grew dark and the beef had been salted and basted in its own juices, hunks of steaming meat were slapped on the loaves that served as trenchers and tasted like ambrosia. I’d been feeding on shoal auroch too long.

Under hard cold stars, we drank and broke bread together. The constant threat of
vaettir
fell away, and the dark mood that had beset the
Cornelian
and the men of the fifth dissipated. For a moment at least, smiles split craggy legion faces. Soldiers and sailors and lictors slapped forearms and gripped each other in rough bear-hugs, suffused by alcohol and the reminder of death burning nearby. For one evening, they didn’t cast fearful glances at the mountains looming above or whisper rumours of bloodshed or stretcher atrocity.

All this, considering Gnaeus’ reputation, it wasn’t a bad send off, after all. All of us, from senator to slave, coming together to share drink and food.

All except two.

By the time the booze gave out, Banty had already stolen a johnboat, cut loose the ponies on the eastern shore, and was riding hard away from the
Cornelian
, the funeral congregation just a small flame in the distance behind him.

Isabelle rode with him.