Legions of Fire: Chapter Three

    Alphena hugged herself. When the light returned to normal, the hall had again become warm and muggy; she shuddered from reaction to what had just happened. Whatever that was.

    The members of the audience had rushed out as soon as they saw the sunlit courtyard again. Alphena smiled despite herself: if her brother had wanted his reading to be talked about, then he’d succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

    The smile slipped. She didn’t want to think about dreams. She was afraid she’d see — she’d feel — this afternoon’s events every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life.

    Varus and Corylus were still clinging to one another; they looked stunned, as though they’d been pulled from the water when they were on the verge of drowning. Their teacher, Pandareus of Athens, seemed unaffected by the visions. He frowned and said, “We should get out of this room, even though it seems to be all right now. Lord Varus, perhaps we can go into the courtyard?”

    Though the guests for the reading had vanished, Saxa’s own servants peered furtively through the doorway or hunched low on the second floor balcony opposite to see into the Black-and-Gold hall. If Varus and his companions adjourned to the courtyard, the spectators would have an even better view.

    Alphena didn’t want what had just happened to be discussed any more than it had to be. That would surely be enough as it was. Acquaintances would ask her what had happened, and she wouldn’t know how to answer.

    “I suppose –” said Varus.

    “No,” said Alphena. “We’ll go into the gymnasium. It’s bright, and Lenatus and your man Pulto can keep everyone away from the door. Come, I want to get into the sun.”

    Pandareus and the three younger people stood in a tight group on the dais. The veterans, each holding a wooden sword lightly, stood kitty-corner to them. They were turned slightly to keep the others in the corners of their eyes, but their real concern was anyone who tried to bull his way through the door to the courtyard.

    When Lenatus and Pulto heard their names spoken, they nodded slightly. Neither spoke, but the trainer grinned. Alphena had practiced daily with him for over a year. That grin showed her a man she hadn’t imagined.

    “All right, where is it?” said Pandareus. “And quickly, if you would, though I don’t think the room itself was the problem.”

    Pulto led; Lenatus brought up the rear. Alphena wondered why Lenatus wasn’t in front; then a bulky under steward crowded too close. Pulto kicked him in the stomach. Corylus’ servant was freeborn and outside the household hierarchy. That permitted him to act — with the authority of the owner’s children, of course — without fear of retribution, either formal or informal. The old soldiers were coarse men and uneducated, but they weren’t unsophisticated about the way things worked on the hard edges of society.

    Varus rubbed his eyes as they crossed the courtyard. “Did I see father come in?” he asked. “I’m not sure what happened.”

    “Father was here but left again,” Alphena said. “It was — there was shouting. I guess, well, I guess that a lot of people heard it.”

    Servants stared. They didn’t appear to be so much frightened as excited and curious. They hadn’t been in the hall when Varus was reading, and apparently all they knew was that there’d been a noisy to-do of some sort.

    Alphena smiled again; her expression was wan but not forced. Hercules knew that she really couldn’t say much more about it than that either; but from where she’d been, it certainly had been frightening.

    Pulto strode into the gymnasium and looked about it. Alphena hadn’t meant for the soldiers to be part of the discussion. Before she could speak, he came back out and said, “All clear, missy. You go ahead and talk all you like. Nobody will bother you.”

    Lenatus smiled again without speaking. They’re on our side, Alphena reminded herself. She entered the yard, feeling the sun’s touch relax her.

    Pandareus shut the door with a thump and barred it. The gymnasium was open to the sky, but its walls were ten feet high. The yard wasn’t overlooked by anyone outside the property, and the rooms facing it on the upper floor of the house were windowless.

    “What happened?” Pandareus said. His voice was even, and he glanced between the two young men.

    Corylus grimaced, then faced his teacher; the sun caught blond highlights in his hair. His features had been cut with a sharper chisel than those of Varus or Alphena’s own.

    “Master,” he said formally, “I didn’t see anything, I’m afraid. I must have — I’m sorry, Varus, I must have fallen asleep. I dreamed that I was flying.”

    “Flying?” said Pandareus. “Flying where, boy?”

    He faced the two youths as though he was questioning them after a declamation. Alphena had watched the class once when it met in the Forum. It irritated her that her gender had excluded her from the further education her brother got, but she didn’t miss the education itself. She would rather weave like a woman of ancient Carce than spend her time spouting high-toned twaddle about pirate chiefs and heiresses.

    “Master, there were trees,” Corylus said. He stood stiffly upright, his hands clenched. Alphena thought he would have liked to knuckle his eyes to squeeze the vision back to life. “Huge trees, firs and spruces mostly, and there was heavy snow.”

    He gestured, not with the sweeping arm of an orator but rather a circular scoop of one hand as though he were digging out the right word. His hair was a golden crown from where Alphena stood.

    “Not snow like some winters here,” Corylus said. “Snow like it falls in Upper Germany, but there weren’t the hardwoods like German forests. It was all conifers.” He pursed his lips and added, “And birches. Little ones.”

    “What did you see in the forest?” Alphena said. The men had been ignoring her, but she’d seen the look on Corylus’ face as her brother boomed lines that he certainly hadn’t written. “It wasn’t just trees, I know it wasn’t.”

    Pandareus looked at her without expression; Varus was still shrunk within himself. Corylus smiled faintly and said, “You’re right. I saw elephants, but they had long hair. I was dreaming, as I told you.”

    He lost his smile, but he continued to face her. It was the first time he had really engaged Alphena as a person.

    “And just before I woke up,” he said, “I saw your father with a man I didn’t know. He was the same man who came to the door of the hall with the Senator after I woke up. But when I saw them first, I was dreaming.”

    Corylus shook his head and looked at his teacher again. “Master,” he said, “it was just a dream. But I’ve never had a dream like it before.”

    Pandareus nodded to close that portion of the discussion. He turned to Alphena’s brother. “Lord Varus?” he said. “What’s that in your hand?”

    Varus blinked. Ever since Alphena had slapped him, he’d been acting as though he’d just waked up. His cheek still glowed.

    “I don’t know,” he said, unclasping his hands. “I had the scroll . . . .”

    They all stared at a two-inch high head carved from — no, not stone as Alphena had thought. It was ivory, with the honey-brown patina that old ivory got. The image was narrow-faced and wore a bulbous hat or turban. There was a loop in the back so that the figurine could be hung from a neck cord.

    “Where did that come from, boy?” Pandareus asked sharply. He stretched out two fingers of his left hand but stopped well short of touching the object.

    “I . . . ,” said Varus, frowning with concentration. “I’ve had it, sir.”

    “Not that I’ve ever seen,” said Corylus. There was harsh certainty in his voice.

    “Nor I,” said Alphena. “Brother, you know you didn’t have that when you were reading. You were holding your poem!”

    “I don’t know, then,” Varus said. He closed his left fist over the figurine again. In sudden anger he snarled, “It’s mine now, anyway.”

    “Varus?” said Corylus in surprise.

    Varus winced. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, rubbing his temples with his right fingertips and the knuckles of his left hand. “I have, I guess it’s a headache. My head throbs.”

    “Brother?” said Alphena. Varus wouldn’t meet her eyes. “What did you see? You weren’t the person reading at the end, were you?”

 

---

 

    “I don’t know,” Varus whispered. “I don’t know! I saw a dance; I think I remember dancers. But I don’t remember anything about it.”

    He looked up. “What did I do with my manuscript?” he said. He opened his left hand slightly to peer at the figurine again, apparently making sure that it hadn’t changed back into a roll of papyrus. “Did I leave it in the hall?”

    “You destroyed it on the dais, Lord Varus,” Pandareus said. “In a very thorough and determined fashion. Why did you do that, do you suppose?”

    “I did?” said Varus in amazement. “Why on earth did I do that?”

    He looked up with a wan smile and added, “I don’t suppose much was lost by that. I don’t think I’m going to gain fame as a poet.”

    Corylus put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Pandareus smiled coldly and said, “Regarding the heroic exploits of Regulus, I agree with your estimate. The lines you sang after you departed from your prepared manuscript, however — those had elements of real power. Did you compose them on the dais?”

    “Master, I don’t know,” Varus said simply. “I don’t have any memory of what happened after I started to read. Except that I think someone was dancing. Maybe I was dancing myself?”

    “Not that we in the audience noticed,” said Pandareus.

    He pursed his lips, tapping his notebook against the palm of his left hand. “There is a great deal going on,” he said, “and I can only see the surface. From what you boys tell me, you saw even less.”

    Varus grimaced; Corylus nodded firm agreement. Both were alert now.

    “Therefore, I want both of you to join me tomorrow night at the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter,” Pandareus said. “My friend Priscus –”

    “Atilius Priscus?” Varus said in surprise.

    “Yes, Senator Priscus,” Pandareus said. “Are you surprised that a mere teacher of rhetoric would claim a respected senator as a friend?”

    “No sir, not at all,” Varus mumbled, lowering his eyes again.

    “You might well wonder,” the teacher said in a milder tone. “The senator has a remarkable library. I applied to read his copy of On the Stars by Thrice-Learned Hermes. Our acquaintance ripened through a mutual love of scholarship.”

    He coughed, then continued, “He’s on duty tomorrow. I’ll send a messenger to him to expect us at the temple at the beginning of the second watch. You’re both agreeable?”

    Varus nodded. Corylus grinned and said, “I’m glad somebody has a plan. I don’t, and . . . . Master, I’m not a fearful man, I hope. But the dream I had disturbed me.”

    “Master Pandareus?” Alphena said. She spoke without the humility the youths, his pupils, put in the title. “Why do you think Priscus will understand the business better than you do? You were there, after all, and he wasn’t.”

    “I don’t think my learned friend will understand it,” Pandareus said, allowing his lips to spread in a slight smile. “We won’t be visiting him for that. He’s one of the Commissioners for the Sacred Rites, however.”

    “Oh . . . ,” whispered Corylus, who must have seen what Alphena so far did not.

    “Yes, that’s right,” said Pandareus, his smile still broader. “Tonight Priscus will have the Sibylline Books in his charge.”

 

---

 

    A pair of servants at the top of the back stairs gaped as Hedia stepped quickly toward them. She was forcing herself to keep a ladylike demeanor and not to skip steps.

    “Where’s your master?” she snapped. The servants didn’t speak, but one nodded toward the suite behind him. His Adam’s apple bobbled.

    There hadn’t been much doubt in her mind. When Saxa was badly pressed, he fled to his private apartment at the rear of the second floor. That had been an inviolate sanctum in the years before he had remarried.

    Hedia found herself smiling as she swept past the servants. She wasn’t sure whether she was more angry than frightened or the other way around, but she was quite sure that she and her husband were going to discuss what had happened today. Propriety and wifely subservience be damned.

    The door to the suite was closed — but not barred, which was good. Hedia flung it open and strode inside. If necessary she would have brought the porters to batter the panel down with the poles from the sedan chair.

    Half a dozen body servants fluttered at her entry. They were pretending to be busy and also pretending not to be staring at their furious mistress.

    Hedia made a quick shooing motion as though she were flicking something unpleasant from her fingers. “Get out,” she said to the servants collectively. She didn’t raise her voice. “Close the door behind you.”

    Saxa stood at the window, his hands gripping the ledge. His pretense was that he was absorbed in the view up slope of the Palatine. Hedia waited till the servants had scuttled out, the last of them banging the door shut, before she said mildly, “Husband, what’s going on?”

    “Dearest, there are things you can’t understand,” Saxa mumbled without turning around. “I’m sorry, but you simply have to trust me.”

    The bedroom was decorated as a seascape. The small stones of the mosaic flooring were set in a stylized wave pattern, and water nymphs cavorted with fish-tailed Tritons on the walls. Plaster starfish and crabs were molded into the ceiling coffers.

    Hedia rather liked the room, but the decoration puzzled her. Saxa didn’t care for the sea; she’d had to press to get him to go with her to Baiae in the Gulf of Puteoli this past spring. Perhaps a previous wife had chosen it for him . . . .

    “I do trust you, dear heart,” she said, putting a hand on her husband’s shoulder. He was trembling. “There’s no one in the world with a better heart or with greater loyalty to the Emperor.”

    That last was for any ears listening at doorways or through the floor with tumbler to amplify sounds. In truth Saxa probably didn’t think about the Emperor twice in a week; he was about as apolitical a man as you would find in the Senate. But the deeper truth beneath that lie was the fact that Saxa certainly wasn’t involved in a plot.

    Not that the truth would matter if somebody laid a complaint. And Juno knew that it wouldn’t be hard at all to show the Senator’s behavior in a bad light.

    “I don’t trust your Nemastes at all, though,” Hedia said, letting her anger show in her tone. Saxa had started to relax; now he tensed again. “He’s a viper, and he’ll bite many people besides you unless you scotch him immediately. But he’ll certainly bite you.”

    She paused before adding, “And your son. As he did today.”

    “Hedia, that’s not true!” Saxa said, whirling to face her for the first time. “You don’t understand, I tell you. Without Nemastes’ efforts, we’re all lost. The world is lost!”

    He’s not lying, Hedia thought. She wasn’t sure her husband could lie; certainly he couldn’t lie successfully to her. But he thought he was telling the truth now.

    “I understand that Nemastes plays at being a magician,” she said aloud. “How do you think the Emperor will feel if he hears about that, husband? And I understand that the viper you brought into the house with you today caused your son to speak words that terrified everyone who heard him. You know that.”

    Hedia hadn’t waited to question the audience pouring out of the hall, so she didn’t have any idea what had happened during Varus’ recital. The wealthy freedmen were running as though Parthians galloped behind them with their bows drawn, but she could have stopped one if she’d seen the need to. Oh, yes, she most certainly could.

    But their abject fear was all Hedia needed to know. Whatever happened, it hadn’t been Varus’ unaided doing: the boy didn’t have it in him to frighten a mouse from the pantry!

    Knowing that Nemastes was in the house, she hadn’t had to search far for a villain. She was confident that the blame was deserved in this case, but she didn’t particularly care. A threat to Varus was the best tool she’d been offered for prying her husband away from this dangerous magician, so she would have used it even if she thought she was being unfair.

    “Nemastes had nothing to do with whatever you’re talking about,” Saxa said uncertainly. “He and I were together while the reading was going on.”

 

---

 

    “Together doing what?” Hedia snapped. “Tell me, husband, what was your so-called magician doing? Besides tricking you out of money, I mean, because I know he’s robbing you!”

    That was a lie. She’d originally believed Nemastes was a charlatan — anybody would have believed that. She only became really worried — really frightened — when she realized that the Hyperborean’s magic wasn’t just tricks and suggestion.

    “No, you’re quite wrong, dear one,” Saxa said, sounding relieved. “Master Nemastes hasn’t taken a single coin from me. He’s a king in his own land, you see.”

    Hedia wanted to slap him. How do you know he’s a king, you puling child? Because he told you so?

    And yet Saxa wasn’t a fool or even unsophisticated in most respects. This was just something that he desperately wanted to believe.

    “He pays for his needs with gold that he brought with him,” Saxa continued earnestly. “All I did, dear heart, was introduce him to my own bankers, the brothers Oppius. Because Hyperborean gold isn’t coined; it grows in blocks of quartz. But it’s pure, the brothers assure me it is. They wouldn’t lie to their own cost.”

    No, unless they were part of the swindle themselves, Hedia thought. But she didn’t believe that, much as she wished it were true. The Oppii and their ancestors had served the Alphenus family for three generations.

    “The money I withdrew isn’t for Nemastes,” Saxa said, the first time Hedia had heard about a withdrawal. “I’m renovating the Temple of Tellus at the entrance to the Carinae District. As a public service, you see.”

    He tried a smile. “That’s why I suggested you and Alphena hold the marriage divination there, you see,” he said. “The chief priest is a freedman named Barritus who owns the laundry on the same block. I knew he’d jump at a chance to do anything for me, since I haven’t decided the scale of the renovation yet.”

    “Why are you . . . ?” Hedia said, as startled as if Saxa had just announced he was going to retire to his villa in the Campania and spend the rest of his life as a gentleman farmer. “That is, it’s commendable that you’re fixing up an ancient temple, husband. But I hadn’t previously noticed signs of your religious inclination.”

    “Well, it was Nemastes who made the suggestion,” Saxa said diffidently, watching his wife to see how she took mention of the Hyperborean’s name. Hedia didn’t react. Even in the silence of her mind, she filed the fact and waited till she had more information.

    Saxa cleared his throat and continued, “He believes it’s important to the coming struggle that Carce’s most ancient temple of Tellus, Mother Earth, be renovated. Because he’s a foreigner, he would have to ask permission of the Senate to carry out the repairs in his own name.”

    “Ah,” said Hedia. “I see.”

    Applying to the Senate — which meant to the Emperor — would call attention to the Hyperborean and to his patron, Gaius Alphenus Saxa. Hedia certainly didn’t want that to happen, but the fact that Nemastes was trying to avoid it also was very disquieting.

    “We’re going to store the objects that have been given to the goddess over the years here,” Saxa said. “In the back garden. There’ll be some wagons coming by shortly. Bringing things for safekeeping, you see; there are some quite valuable dedications, though mostly from a number of years ago.”

    Hedia felt an aching fear. If I could name what I was afraid of, it wouldn’t be so bad. But now –

    Saxa swallowed. His face had briefly been animated as he talked about the antiquities which he so loved. It went waxen again and he turned away.

    Seeming to gather strength from an image of Neptune blowing on a conch with a pair of Nereiads, fish-tailed and bare-breasted, supporting him, he said, “My dear, you don’t know what I have seen. Seen. Yes, in a vision, but it was real. It was –”

    His hands lifted as though he were trying to squeeze an image into life.

    “I saw fire,” he whispered. The words sounded like dry leaves rustling. “I saw fire rushing across the whole world. Everything burning, everything dying in fire, and the fire-god was laughing as he watched.”

    Hedia licked her lips, then embraced him. She hugged herself close, but Saxa didn’t respond except to wriggle like a hooked fish.

    “Husband,” she pleaded.

    “Please, dear . . . ,” Saxa muttered to the wall. “Things will come out right. You have to trust me.”

    She stepped away and wrapped her arms around herself instead. She was cold with fear — not for the mythical fire, but from the certainty that Nemastes had caught her husband in a net she could not break him free of.

    “You will do as you please, husband,” Hedia said. “I only hope that you come to your senses in time to, to . . . .”

    To escape the Emperor’s torturers, but even in this awful moment she couldn’t bring herself to say that.

    “For my part,” she went on instead, “I’ll hold the marriage divination tomorrow as planned. I only hope that I can save Alphena from the wreck of her father’s life.”

    Despair was crushing her down. She turned and strode from the room, leaving the door open behind her.

    A waist-high plinth supported a small marble faun in the corridor. It stuck out slightly from its alcove. Hedia deliberately stubbed her toe on the base, then bent over shouting curses.

    It was an acceptable excuse for the tears that were about to burst out regardless.

 

---

 

    Pandareus had paused to write a message on a sealed tablet for one of Saxa’s servants to carry to Priscus, and the children of the house were staying home; Pulto and Corylus left the townhouse alone. On the doorstep Pulto paused. “Kid,” he said, “I need a mug of wine before we go home. Or maybe a whole jar of wine. You up for that?”

    “Sure,” said Corylus. He grinned. “I don’t know that I’ll be downing much of the jar, but I don’t mind trying to carry you home.”

    Pulto chuckled, a pleasant change from the bleak glare he’d worn since they’d left the gymnasium. He turned right toward the bar two doors down, the Blue Venus, instead of left to go home.

    “The Old Man’s done it more than once for me,” he said, “and me for him. Never both of us falling-down drunk at the same time, until he got enough rank that we stayed home instead of crawling the strip.”

    A masonry counter faced the street and ran down the right side of the central aisle. Three men stood at it. On its corner was the little statue of painted terra cotta which gave the bar its name; Pulto patted her for luck. Thousands of other clients must have done so over the years, because the paint was worn from her bosom. Most of the times Corylus heard the bar spoken of, it’d had been as the Blue Tit.

    To the left of the aisle were three small masonry booths, empty at this hour. “Bring us a jar of the house wine, Maura,” Pulto said. “The better stuff, mind. We’ll settle up when we leave.”

    He led the way to the further booth. “Now, boy, sit down,” he said. “Because I’m going to talk to you.”

    “Yes sir,” Corylus said obediently. He felt as though he’d been punched in the stomach.

    Pulto was his servant, the social and intellectual inferior of a well-educated Knight of Carce. However Pulto was also the fellow who had taught the Old Man’s son the things a young man needed to know in and around a military camp. Sometimes the teaching had involved a switch or even a fist, because failing to learn the lessons could mean the next time they were rehearsed with steel in the hands of people who definitely wouldn’t have the boy’s best interests at heart.

    Pulto hadn’t touched the boy in years, of course. From the tone of his voice, though, Corylus was afraid that the discussion was going to be more unpleasant than a beating.

    The bar maid brought over cups, a mixing bowl, a bronze carafe of water, and a jar that must hold at least a gallon of wine. It had a tapered base to be set in sand or a hole in the counter sized for it; here she leaned it into a corner of the booth. She was a slight, older woman with crinkly hair — probably a Moor, as her name suggested — but she handled the awkward load with less trouble than Corylus would have taken with it.

 

---

 

    He grinned; there were tricks to every trade. Some of Pandareus’ other pupils, who’d been schooled only in words and literature, hadn’t learned that. The education Corylus had gotten on the frontiers was broader; and in some fashions, he thought, much better.

    Pulto hefted the jar onto the crook of his right elbow, his index finger through one of the loop handles, and poured a generous slug into the bowl. Corylus added water from the carafe, mixing it two parts to one without asking Pulto if he wanted it stronger. If we’re going to have a difficult discussion, we’re going to have it sober.

    Pulto didn’t comment, but he drank down his first cup and refilled it before he looked at Corylus across the table. “So, boy, I’m going to tell you about your mother, Coryla.”

    “The Celt who father married when he commanded the fort on the Upper Rhine,” Corylus said. Until the wine touched his lips, he hadn’t realized how very dry he was. He forced himself to sip instead of slurping it down as instinct urged him to.

    Strictly speaking, soldiers on active duty weren’t permitted to marry. It was common for men in the frontier garrisons to enter into permanent arrangements with local girls, however. These would be recognized when they got their diploma of discharge.

    That required both parties to survive, of course. Coryla had died in giving birth, but her son had become a citizen of Carce as soon as Cispius had lifted him outside the door of the hut and named the child as his legitimate offspring.

    “Right,” said Pulto, “only she wasn’t a Celt. And she wasn’t a Helvetian either, which is what most of the folk in the district were — stragglers, those that come down from the mountains after Caesar chopped the main lot of them back in his day, and maybe some that high-tailed it ahead of his cavalry.”

    “Not Celtic . . . ?” Corylus said. He finished his wine. There were any number of tribes in the empire, of course, not to mention those — like the Hyperboreans — who lived beyond the borders but mixed with civilized peoples. The fact that he’d been told a lie about his mother’s race was much more disturbing.

    “No, and don’t ask me what she was,” Pulto growled. “She and her mother had a language they spoke to each other sometimes, and it wasn’t anything I’ve heard elsewhere.”

    He emptied the mixing bowl to fill both their cups; there was plenty more in the jar, and if they ran out of water, the bar maid would bring another carafe. “They tended a hazel coppice — government property, you know. Growing straight saplings for spear and arrow shafts. It was a big plantation and just the two of them to work it, but they didn’t seem to have any trouble. Only the locals, you see . . . the locals, they didn’t like them.”

    “Go on,” Corylus said. His mouth was suddenly drier than before he’d had the first cupful.

    “There was a sacred grove, two big hazels, along with the saplings,” Pulto said. “The Helvetians had brought their religion from the mountains with them and the grove wasn’t part of it. Coryla and her mother didn’t need help, so it didn’t seem to matter a lot. The Old Man –”

    Pulto gestured with his cup. He would have sloshed wine onto the table if he hadn’t drunk it down so far already.

    “– his dad and his dad before him had been nurserymen down on the Bay –” Puteoli ” — so he started spending time with the women. I guess something might’ve happened anyway, but one night there was Pluto’s own storm, lightning and hail and more wind than I’d ever seen. We lost the roofs of half the barracks and thought we were lucky.”

    “And the grove?” Corylus said, not raising his voice.

    Pulto poured more wine deliberately into the bowl, then added the water himself. He kept the mixture the same, two waters to the slug of wine.

    When he had finished, he looked up and said, “A lot of the saplings lost their leaves, but the wind wasn’t a problem even when it bent them double. The biggest hazel came down, though, struck by lightning and then the whole thing blew over. And the old woman, she died too. Had a seizure.”

    Pulto grimaced and guzzled the cup of wine he’d refilled while speaking. “Hecate knows how old she was,” he muttered. “Mostly barbs are a lot younger than they look right off when you meet them, but I’m not sure the old lady was. Anyway, the Old Man took up with the daughter, that’s Coryla, and things went along pretty much the way they had. And it wasn’t too long before you –”

    He gestured, then refilled the cup.

    “– were on the way.”

    Pulto had splashed wine when he last filled the cups. He used his little finger to draw a line with it before the last of the puddle settled into the terra cotta surface. Corylus waited silently, sipping from his own cup. The story was coming at the speed Pulto was comfortable telling it.

    “It was just Coryla to work the coppice and her pregnant besides, but that didn’t seem to be a problem,” Pulto went on, continuing to play with the tile. “Just about every sapling kept straight and they didn’t have a bug problem. Coryla — her and her mother — had a right good sum put by from bonuses when the assessors from the Quartermaster’s Department accepted each crop. And then come the night you were born.”

    Corylus nodded to show he was listening. He tried to take a sip of wine and found his cup was empty. He set it down and reached for the mixing bowl. He gave up on that because his hands were shaking.

    “Well, there was other women in the cantonment,” Pulto said to the table. “Women who’d come with the cohort from previous stations. The local women, even the ones who’d shacked up with troopers, they wouldn’t have anything to do with Coryla, but there wasn’t trouble finding help with the lying in. It all went pretty well, not that the Old Man nor me was looking at anything but the bottom of wine cups — and we weren’t mixing it, boy, you can count on that. But everything was fine. Only the barbs –”

    He waved his left hand before him.

    “– the locals, I mean, but they was barbs, they got into the plantation while Coryla was out of action and they cut down the other big hazel. And your mother, she died.”

    “In childbirth?” Corylus whispered.

    “Sure, in childbirth!” Pulto said. “Hecate knows, boy. She’d born you and she died, women die all the time, right?”

    The bowl was empty. Instead of refilling it, Pulto lifted the jar and drank directly from the spout. Still balancing the heavy jar on his arm, he said in a raw growl, “Well, that was destroying army property, right? The hazel tree. So the army held their investigation, that was the Old Man. And there might’ve been some complaints to higher authority about just how he did the investigating, but as it turned out the locals were all killed while resisting the duly constituted authorities.”

    “All of them?” Corylus said. He could scarcely hear his own voice.

    Pulto nodded emphatically. “Every bloody one,” he said. “And the girls in the cantonment who must’ve known what was up but didn’t warn anybody, they resisted too.

    He poured unmixed wine into Corylus’ cup, then swigged more from the jar. “Your father was a popular officer, boy,” he said. “Not lax. Troopers don’t respect a lax officer even when he’s easy on them in peace. It won’t always be peace, you see, and the veterans know it. But the Old Man always looked out for his men, so when this happened –”

    Pulto shrugged. His grin was much like the one he’d had at the door of the gymnasium when he said nobody was going to disturb Corylus and his friends.

    “– nobody questioned his orders. And afterwards, nobody talked to outsiders about what had happened. Till I did just now, because after that business today, I thought you maybe ought to know.”

    There was a hint of challenge in Pulto’s voice as he met his master’s eyes.

    “Yes,” said Corylus with a crisp nod. “I see that. Thank you for –”

    For what, exactly?

    “– for your loyalty to my father and myself, Pulto.”

 

---

 

    He cleared his throat and went on, “Now, do you think we’re ready to go back to the apartment? Because I’m to meet Pandareus and Varus at Jupiter on the Capitol tonight and I’d like to get some food in me before that.”

    He patted his cup, empty again. “To settle the wine,” he said with a grin which after a moment became natural.

    Pulto set down the jar and stood, grinning even more widely. “Ready and willing, young master,” he said. “And I’ll pay the score here, if you don’t mind.”

    The old soldier shook his head with a look of wonder. “For seventeen years I’ve wanted to tell you the story,” he said. “Doing it now, well, it’s a weight off me that I’m bloody pleased to be shut of.”

    Hooking his left index finger through one loop of the wine jar, he sauntered toward the counter where Maura who would measure the damage with a rod. He was whistling, “The Girl I Left behind Me.”

    Corylus followed. His mind was full of more questions than he’d had before this sudden dose of truth from his servant.

    And he wondered even more about what they would learn tomorrow from the guardian of the Sibylline Books.

 

---

 

    Varus sat on the curb around the spring in the back garden. The stonework beneath him was ancient; the garden wall kinked to enclose it. Instead of marble or even patterned tiles, the blocks were volcanic tuff: porous and sometimes light enough to float, but able to support more than an equal weight of concrete. The stone looked black, but it was light gray beneath the stains of algae and centuries.

    Varus’ hands were in his lap, closed over the ivory head. He wasn’t looking at the figurine, nor was he really conscious of anything else in the present world.

    A wagon drawn by mules pulled up in the alley behind the house. As it did so, a flock of house servants led by Agrippinus entered the garden from the house proper. Waddling self-importantly with them was a middle-aged man with Greek features.

    The major domo saw Varus. “Quiet down!” he rasped to his companions.

    Instead of obeying, the stranger bowed low to Varus and said, “My noble lord, I am Decimus Livius Gallo, chief attendant of the Temple of Tellus. I –”

    “Shut up, you fool!” snapped Agrippinus. Unasked, a pair of husky under stewards grabbed Gallo by the shoulders and jerked him back so that he was no longer addressing Varus. “You don’t speak to your betters in this household unless they give you permission first!”

    Varus turned slightly, his eyes tracking the freedman — he would have been the slave Gallo who took the name of Livius, his former master, when he was freed — without interest or full comprehension. He was in a reverie of sorts.

    Servants unbolted the back gate, then stepped away. Agrippinus held a low-voiced discussion with Gallo and the wagoneers. The streets were supposedly barred to wheeled traffic during daylight hours, but the wagon in the alley had edged the law by an hour or so. Perhaps Gallo figured that because they were temple servants, or because they were carrying the goods to the home of a prominent Senator, they didn’t risk confiscation by the magistrates as lesser mortals did.

    Varus dreamed, though his eyes were open. He was riding past a great hound; it strained at its tether as it bayed with bloody jaws. The thunder of its fury shook the universe, and its open maw could swallow the world.

    “Don’t look at me!” said a wagoneer to Gallo. He spat on the pavement in emphasis. “Our job is to drive the mules, not muscle around the crap in the wagon.”

    “All right, get with it,” Agrippinus said in a low snarl to the waiting house servants. “And if any of you in the Senator’s household think that you’re too good to carry temple treasures, then you can spend the rest of your lives on one of his estates following a team of oxen and learning to break clods with a hoe!”

    The servants shambled into the alley without muttering. The conscious part of Varus’ mind noticed that a few directed troubled glances toward him, but he didn’t react.

    Varus rubbed the ivory with his thumbs. A powerful man clad in sealskin stood on a rocky shore, looking out to sea. Behind him at the tide line hunched a female whose body was covered by her own coarse hair. Her breasts hung to her waist; they were hairy also. Four children, halflings with her flat features but less hair and that of the blondish shade of the man’s, stood to either side of her, looking puzzled.

    The man raised his face. He howled to the choppy sea in an agony of soul.

    Six servants eased through the back gate, carrying a tusk. It was enormous, easily eight feet in length if measured along its sweeping curves. The part of Varus which remained in the present wondered if it really came from an elephant. Did the world hold some vastly greater creature whose tusks resembled those of the beasts he had seen in the amphitheater?

    “Get that bench out of the way, Callistus,” the major domo snapped to the servant standing nearest the summer bedroom on the right corner of the garden. These, one on either side, were masonry-framed structures. They had tiled roofs but walls of wooden louvers. “We’ll put the tusks under the portico and the bronze and silver in the summer houses.”

    “But where do I stand if it rains, hey?” asked one of the men carrying the tusk. He was half bald and paunchy, though his shoulders were impressively wide. Varus didn’t remember the fellow’s name, but he was one of the low-ranking watchmen; he wasn’t handsome enough to be put at the front door, at least during daylight.

    “Then you’ll bloody get rained on, Castor!” Agrippinus said. “And by Hercules! I’ll have somebody checking you every hour, so you’d better stay alert. This is the god’s treasure you’re watching, do you understand?”

    The servants shuffled under the portico attached to the wall of the main house. Through the louvers came Castor’s muttered, “I’m no Latin, so she’s no god of mine!”

    The ivory figurine had a sizzling warmth, like amber rubbed with a cloth. It made Varus’ fingers prickle.

    A man hung by one leg from a branch. His other leg crossed the tethered one, knee to ankle. His gray beard fell over his face, but through its cloud his one eye blazed like blue lightning. A babble of voices surrounded him, speaking all the knowledge of all time, and the Tree extended forever.

    Beside the well curb was a pear tree. Its blackened leaves lay on the grass, where the killing frost had dropped them. Some twigs had split, and bark was already beginning to slough.

    The pear had been healthy as recently as this morning. Two weeks ago it had been covered in white flowers, but their petals had fallen and they were beginning to set fruit.

    “Watch that!” Gallo said, stepping forward; he pumped his forearms upright beside his face. “You’re going to scrape it on the pillar!”

    “Shut up, twinkie, unless you want this up your bum!” said the assistant gardener at the front of group bringing in the second tusk; it was slightly shorter than the first, and the tip had been worn to a wedge by grubbing in the ground. “And if you don’t get out of the way, you’ll be lucky if that’s all that happens to you!”

    The men doing the work were members of Saxa’s household. Whether slave or free, they had a clear awareness that no temple flunky was going to give orders to a senator’s servant.

    Varus stroked the ivory figurine. He knew what was happening in the garden; beyond the present he saw ice and fire, and monsters moving through them.

    But close about Varus in the shadows of time were the twelve hairless men whom he had seen during the reading. They danced with jerky motions of their legs and arms.

    Demons with furious faces danced among them, and together they whispered: Nemastes is a traitor. Nemastes must die.