Out of the Waters: Chapter Five

    Alphena had allowed her stepmother to choose her garments for the outing: a tunic of fine wool, cut much longer–and so more ladylike–than Alphena preferred, with a shoulder-length cape which was quite unnecessary in this weather. She also wore earrings, bracelets, and a high comb, all of silver but decorated with granulated gold.

    The one place that Alphena had refused to give in was her footgear. Instead of delicate silken slippers, she wore sensible sandals with thick soles and straps that weren’t going to snap if she suddenly had to run. She didn’t expect to run–she couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which that would be necessary–but she would not wear flimsy shoes.

    Instead of arguing, Hedia had nodded and said, “Very well,” in a calm voice. She had sounded rather like a nurse telling her three-year-old charge that she could bring along all six of her dollies when they walked down to the river to watch barges from Ostia unloading their cargoes of grain.

    In the entrance hall, Alphena turned to Florina and said, “I won’t be needing you. Stay here and do whatever you like till we come back”

    “I believe, your ladyship,” said Agrippinus, “that it would be better if Florina accompanied you.”

    Alphena snapped her head around to face the major domo. He froze; so did everyone else in the hall, which was still crowded even though Saxa had left for the Senate with his lictors and general entourage.

    But Alphena froze also. “Thank you for your concern, my man,” she said, choosing the words carefully. That wasn’t the sort of thing she was used to saying, but she was determined to learn not to scream abuse whenever somebody tried to direct her. “I believe that mother’s staff will be able to care for me adequately, should the need arise.”

    She even smiled. It wasn’t a very nice smile, she knew, but she wasn’t feeling very nice.

    “As your ladyship wishes,” said Agrippinus, bowing low enough that he no longer met her eyes. He held the obsequious pose until she turned away.

    Feeling both virtuous–because she hadn’t raised her voice–and triumphant–because she had gotten her way nonetheless–Alphena stepped through the jaws of the entrance and into the street. Servants milled there. Saxa’s still larger entourage of lictors, servants, and clients, was turning into the Argiletum on their way to the forum and the meeting of the Senate in the Temple of Venus.

    The double litter had arrived from the warehouse on the Tiber where it was stored. Its frame was inlaid with burl and ivory; its curtains were layered Egyptian linen; and the upholstery inside was silk brocade.

    The litter’s weight required four trained men to carry it and four more to trade off with the original team at regular intervals to prevent fatigue–and therefore possible accidents to the wealthy passengers. Agrippinus had bought eight matched Cappadocian bearers along with the vehicle itself, all at Alphena’s order.

    Though she had demanded the double litter as an angry whim, it had proven very useful now that she and her stepmother had become one another’s confidante: they could speak while travelling in as much privacy as anyone in Carce was able to claim. Only the foreman of the Cappadocians spoke Latin, and even then the bearers’ deep breathing and the rhythmic slap of their clogs effectively prevented them from listening to those within the vehicle.

    Candidus was in charge of the entourage. He minced unctuously toward Alphena and bowed. “Everything is in order, your ladyship,” he said. “I sent a courier to the warehouse myself to be sure that the vehicle would be here at the third hour, as Lady Hedia ordered. Manetho was supposed to have done it, but for your ladyships’ comfort I thought it well to make sure.”

    Hedia swept through the doorway, turning the facade of Saxa’s townhouse into a setting for her jewel-like beauty. She was so stunning and perfect that Alphena’s breath caught in her throat.

    Not long ago she would have been furious at her stepmother for being, well, what Alphena herself was not. Now, she just accepted it as a reality of life, like the fact that she would never be Emperor.

    Reality wasn’t a wholly one-sided thing, of course. She would never be teasing some other woman’s hair, in constant fear of a slap or a slashing blow with the comb, the way Florina did daily. And there were women less fortunate than Florina.

    “You’re looking well, daughter,” Hedia said, touching the pendant in Alphena’s left ear. “You have flecks of gold in your eyes, and these bring it out. Your eyes are one of your best features, you know.”

    Alphena felt her jaw go slack if not exactly drop. “I didn’t…,” she said. Then, “I do? I–thank you, mother.”

    “Let’s get started, shall we?” Hedia said in her breezy, pleasant voice. She gestured Alphena toward the litter.

    She hadn’t bothered to ask whether it was ready. Either she had seen that it was–though the bearers weren’t gripping their poles yet–or she assumed that it would be, because the servants were terrified not to have accomplished whatever Lady Hedia expected them to have done.

    “After you, mother,” Alphena said, mirroring Hedia’s gesture.

    Laughing, the older woman mounted the vehicle, placing herself on the front cushion. She moved as gracefully as a cat, or a snake.

    Alphena got in on the other side, facing Hedia and the route ahead. As soon as Alphena settled on the cushion, the Cappadocians braced themselves and rose.

    Candidus called an order, but that was an officious waste of time. The bearers didn’t pass visible signals to one another, but they nonetheless moved as though one head controlled all four of them.

    The litter swayed as the Cappadocians fell into step. The motion wasn’t unpleasant–the passengers could have read if they wanted to–but it did serve to separate those inside from the rest of the world.

    Hedia drew the curtains on her end. They were black netting, woven fine enough that they caught much of the dust as well as blurring the features of those inside the vehicle. Alphena quickly pushed forward her curtains also.

    She eyed her stepmother carefully. She had heard–nobody had told her, but the servants had been murmuring about nothing else all morning–that Hedia had had a bad night with all sorts of shouting and threats. There was no sign of that on her face or in her calm, clear gaze.

    Alphena mentally rehearsed her words before saying, “Have you been thinking about the vision in the theater yesterday, mother?”

    Hedia grinned with wry amusement. “Was that what gave me nightmares last night, dear?” she said. “Is that what you mean? No, monsters can destroy all the foreign cities they like without causing me to miss a wink of sleep.”

    Her eyes had drifted toward something outside the present. She focused again on Alphena and added, “Or distinguished older men can, if you like. I learned long ago, dear, that two women never see the same thing in any, well, man.”

    Alphena blushed, but the comment was kindly meant; and Hedia had been polite to her own clumsy prying. I should have just come out and asked. With Hedia–not with most people.

    Before the younger woman could apologize, Hedia continued, “No, it was seeing the glass men again. Which I don’t understand.”

    She turned her hands up in a gesture of amused disgust. “I could explain being frightened by dreadful monsters, couldn’t I?” she said. “I’m sure people would be very understanding and say they feel sorry for me. Telling people I’m afraid of men would give a very different impression.”

    “Well, they’re not really men,” Alphena said.

    Hedia’s laughter caroled merrily. “Neither are eunuchs, dear,” she said, “and I assure you that they don’t frighten me. And they’re not nearly as useless as you might think, the ones that were gelded after they reached manhood, at least.”

    The streets were noisy at this hour; they were noisy at most hours except in the heat of early afternoons in summer. The normal racket was doubled by the shouts and threats of the escort–and the curses of the pedestrians, peddlers, and loungers who felt they too had a right to the route that their ladyships wished to travel. Occasionally Alphena heard the smack of blows and answering yelps.

    “Whatever they are,” Alphena said, “the glass men, I mean, they must be terrible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you frightened before, mother.”

    Hedia chuckled. “You’ve seen me frightened many times, my dear,” she said. “You’ve never seen me unable to do whatever was necessary, though; and you’re not seeing that now.”

    She indicated her calm, disdainful face with one careless hand. “Don’t mistake acting ability for my being too dimwitted to recognize danger,” she said. “And you should learn to act too, dear. Even though I’m sure you’ll live a life with less to conceal than I have, it’s a skill every woman needs to acquire.”

 

---

 

    They were passing through the leatherworkers’ district. The reek of uncured hides warred with the stench of the tanning process. Alphena’s eyes watered, and even Hedia’s face contorted in a sneeze.

    “I’ll try, mother,” Alphena said, barely mouthing the words. She was afraid her voice would tremble if she spoke loudly enough for the older woman to hear.

    She had faced demons, faced them and fought them. She had a sword that seemed to be able to cut anything and had certainly sent fire-demons to bubbling death.

    She didn’t know what they were facing now. That was the frightening thing. What use was the keenest, best-wielded sword if you had nothing to turn it on except the ghosts in your own mind?

    “I suppose Pulto thinks that we’re visiting his wife in order to buy charms,” Hedia said. Her voice fell naturally into the rhythm of the Cappadocians’ pace.

    “Aren’t we?” said Alphena. “That is, well, I thought we were too.”

    “If I believed that a sprig of parsley wrapped around a human finger bone would keep away those walking statues from my dreams,” Hedia said tartly, “I’d be far less concerned than I am.”

    Her lips twisted into another smile. “I don’t believe there’s a charm to keep away distinguished older men with braided hair either,” she said. “But as I told you, I’m not worried about them.”

    She’s mocking me! Alphena thought. But that wasn’t really true, and if it was true, it was good-natured. Hedia had risen from her bed screaming this morning. If she could smile and compliment and plan when she was under that much strain, then her stepdaughter could smile at a harmless joke and go on without snarling.

    The litter continued pattering forward, but at a minutely quicker pace: the teams of bearers must have changed places. Alphena would not have noticed the difference had she not spent so much time studying swordsmen. Tiny patterns of movement indicated alertness and fatigue, victory and death.

    “What do you want from Anna, then, mother?” she said aloud.

    Hedia looked momentarily weary, though her cheeks quickly sprang back to their normal buoyant liveliness. “Advice, I suppose, dear,” she said. Her smile was real, but not as bright as usual. “Or at any rate, someone besides one another to commiserate with. I….”

    She paused, then wriggled her shoulders as if to shake away a locust that had landed on them. “Dear,” she said with renewed confidence, “I want to discuss the matter with Anna because she’s the closest thing to an expert whom we have available, even though I don’t really believe she can help. If she says she can’t help, when she says that, I’m afraid, then we go on to the next possible pathway to enlightenment.”

    Alphena opened her mouth to ask the question. Before she could voice the first syllable, the older woman continued, “We’ll determine what that next possibility is when we reach that point.”

    “Your Ladyships, we are arriving!” Candidus cried. He sounded on the verge of collapse. Even though the Cappadocians had a heavy litter to carry, the pace they set through the streets had strained the deputy steward almost beyond his capacity.

    The vehicle swayed gently to a halt. There was excited babble outside the curtains.

    “Yes,” said Alphena, trying to sound as assured as Hedia did by reflex. “We will determine that.”

 

---

 

    Hedia swept the curtains back but allowed the younger woman to get out of the litter before she herself did. She had been puzzled by the cheering, but it wasn’t until she stood up that she could see past the wall of attendants surrounding the vehicle.

    When she did, the slight smile that was her normal expression vanished. She wasn’t angry, yet; but her mind had slipped into a familiar mode in which she decided how to deal with a problem–and absolutely any answer was acceptable if cold reason told her that it was the correct choice.

    The apartment block in which Corylus and his household lived was the newest in the neighborhood and the tallest–at five stories–this far out the Argiletum. Anna–Corylus’ nurse from the day he was born and his housekeeper here in Carce–was waving from a third-floor balcony. Arthritis made it difficult for her to navigate stairs; otherwise she doubtless would have greeted the litter on the street.

    Scores of other people were waiting, however. At a guess, every tenant in the building who was home this morning stood outside, waving scarves or napkins and cheering, “Hail to their noble Ladyships Hedia and Alphena! Hail!”

    “I didn’t expect this,” Alphena said, edging close when Hedia walked around to her side of the litter.

    “Nor did I,” said Hedia. The background commotion probably concealed the flat chill of her voice; but if it didn’t, that too was all right.

    There were relatively few men in the crowd, but those present were neatly dressed. The women wore their finery and all the jewels they possessed. The children were clean and wore tunics, even the youngsters of three or four who would normally run around in breechclouts or nothing at all.

    This litter would draw a crowd anywhere in Carce; it was exceptional even in the Carina District where Saxa and similarly wealthy nobles lived. This demonstration had been prepared, however, which was a very different thing.

    Anna has bragged to her neighbors that she’s so great a witch that noblewomen came to visit her. She’s trafficking on my name–and perhaps my secrets–to raise her status in the neighborhood.

    “Candidus,” Hedia said, “you and the escort can remain here with the litter. All but one, I think.”

    The deputy steward didn’t object as she had expected him to. He must have understood her expression.

    Hedia looked over the entourage, then said, “Barbato?” to a footman whom she thought would set the right tone. “Precede Lady Alphena and myself to the third floor.”

    The name–Bearded, with a rural pronunciation–was a joke; his whiskers were so sparse that he could go several weeks between shaves by the household barber. He was a slender, muscular youth from the southern Pyrenees, with clear features and a good command of Latin.

    He wasn’t a bruiser, but he could take care of himself. Because this was daytime, the escorting servants didn’t carry cudgels as they would at night, but Barbato wore a slender dagger in an upside-down sheath strapped to his right thigh where the skirt of his tunic covered it

    “Come along, my dear,” Hedia said, stepping off with a pleasant smile. Barbato was swaggering pridefully; the crowd parted before him, still cheering.

    “Anna must have said we were coming,” Alphena said quietly.

    An eight-year-old girl offered Hedia a bunch of violets, wilted because she’d had nothing to wrap the stems in to keep them wet. Hedia took them graciously and continued into the stairway entrance. To the right side was a shop selling terracotta dishes; on the left–the corner–was a lunch stall and wine shop.

    “Yes,” Hedia replied. “That’s something I’ll want to discuss with her.”

    To her amazement, the stairwell was not only empty but clean. When she had visited the building before, there was litter on the treads and a pervasive odor of vomit and human waste. There were benefits to Anna having turned the event into a local feast day.

    The door at the third level opened. Barbato called pompously, “Make way for the noble Hedia and the noble Alphena!”

    Anna waved him aside with one of her two sticks. “Bless you both, your ladyships!” she said. “Welcome to the house of my master, Gaius Corylus!”

    She wore a long tunic which wavered between peach and brownish yellow, depending on how the light caught it, under a short dark-blue cape to which leather horse cut-outs had been appliquéd; Celtic work, Hedia guessed, and probably a very good example of it. She herself couldn’t imagine anybody finding it attractive; but then, she wasn’t a Marsian peasant who had spent decades among barbarians on the frontiers.

    “Thank you, Anna,” Hedia said. She turned and added in a sharper tone, “You may wait on the landing, Barbato. We’ll call you if we need you.”

    She shut the door firmly, then slid the bar across. The panel was sturdier than she would have expected on a third-floor apartment. Not that she spent much time entering or leaving third-floor apartments.

    “I hope you didn’t mind all the fuss below, your ladyship,” Anna said. “It’s for the boy, you see. How would you like your wine? Oh, and I had Chloe from the fourth landing, right above you see, fetch some little cakes from Damascenus’ shop in the next building. I do hope you’ll try them, won’t you?”

    “I’ll pour the wine, Anna,” Alphena said, forestalling their hostess as she started toward the little kitchen of the suite. She and Hedia knew that the old woman had better days and worse ones. Even at her best now Anna had no business struggling with a tray of wine, water, and the paraphernalia necessary for drinking it.

 

---

 

    “You said that the gathering was for Master Corylus?” Hedia said, letting her very real confusion show in her voice. “I had the impression they were expecting my daughter and myself.”

    “Oh, that, yes, of course they were,” Anna said, obviously unaware of Hedia’s suspicions. “Do sit down, won’t you? I’ve gotten new cushions. The blue one is stuffed with goose down, so why don’t you take it, your Ladyship?”

    Hedia settled carefully on one end of a clothes chest being used as a bench. She said, “I don’t see, then….”

    “Well, it’s like this,” said Anna, lowering herself onto a stool of polished maple. “The boy grew up in camp, you know. He’s used to fetching for himself and he likes it that way, so it’s just me and Pulto does for him–and I get the neighbor girls to fetch the shopping, since I’m such a clapped-out old nanny goat myself.”

    Hedia opened her mouth to protest; Anna waved her blithely to silence. “It suits me better that way too, to tell the truth,” she said, “because, well, you know the stories that go around about Marsian witches. If we had servants, they’d be making up tales to cadge drinks and the like. That can get pretty nasty, as I know to my sorrow from when we lived in Baiae before the boy come here to school.”

    The small round table between the stool and the chest was cedar with a richly patterned grain, oiled and polished to a sheen like marble. Alphena set the tray on it and handed out the cups, already filled.

    “I mixed the wine three to one,” she said, a little too forcibly. That was the normal drinking mixture which she was used to, and she was making a point that she didn’t intend to get tipsy by drinking to limits that her companions might be comfortable with.

    “Thank you, my dear,” Hedia said, taking her cup–part of a matched service which impressed her as both stylish and beautiful. Clear glass rods had been twisted, slumped together in molds, and polished.

    She sipped; it was like drinking from jewels. She wondered if Corylus had chosen the set. Certainly Anna had not, given the taste shown by her garments.

    “I’m not clear what the crowd down there…,” Hedia said, nodding toward the window onto the balcony. “Has to do with Master Corylus, however.”

    She wasn’t on the verge of anger any more. Clearly she was missing something, but she now knew that Anna hadn’t turned Lady Hedia into a carnival for plebeians as a way of bragging to her neighbors.

    “Oh, well, you see….” Anna said. Her face was so wrinkled that Hedia couldn’t be sure, but she seemed to be making a moue of embarrassment. “Because we don’t have servants and because we’re up on the third floor–the boy said he liked to be able to look out at the Gardens of Maurianus, and you couldn’t from any lower down–folks don’t really believe he’s quality.”

    Ah! The higher levels of apartment blocks were successively flimsier in construction and–of course–that much farther to climb on narrow stairs when coming and going. Lower rents reflected this. Corylus apparently wasn’t concerned about whether the neighbors thought he was an impecunious phony who only pretended to be a Knight of Carce, but his old nurse cared on his behalf.

    “I’ve been having dreams, Anna,” Hedia said. “Bad ones, of course, or I wouldn’t be seeing you. And I suppose you heard about what happened yesterday in the theater?”

    Anna had been using “their ladyships” as a status tool, but Hedia couldn’t be angry about that now, however much she wished it hadn’t happened. The old servant was completely absorbed with her boy. No objection, no threat–nothing but death itself–would change that focus.

    And Hedia wouldn’t have forced a change if she could. Oh, it was excessive, no doubt, but Master Corylus was certainly an impressive young man.

    Hedia let a smile play at the corners of her mouth. Corylus even had the good judgment to refuse to become entangled with his friend’s beautiful mother. Which was a pity, though Hedia was no longer concerned that a physical relationship would be necessary to bind the boy to her. He would support her for so long as he believed that she had the best interests of the Republic at heart.

    “I didn’t hear much,” Anna said with a sort of smile. “A sight of a monster, is all. The boy won’t talk, which is as should be for an officer. My Pulto was afraid to talk; afraid of what he doesn’t know, pretty much, and I don’t blame him. But I could guess things, and–”

    She shrugged.

    “–I could feel them, too, when they’re as strong as what happened yesterday.”

    “Mistress?” Alphena said. “Anna? Do you know what it is that we saw in the theater?”

    “No, dear,” the old woman said, “no more than I knew what made the ground shake so one winter in Upper Germany. It wasn’t for two weeks that we learned that the snow had come down the slopes in Helvetian territory and buried a thousand people in a village.”

    She looked at Hedia. “You’ve been dreaming of this monster come up from the sea, then?” she said. “Is it the same as it was in the theater?”

    “Nothing like that,” said Hedia, more sharply than she had intended. “In the theater, though, there was a city and there were glass men on its walls. Does that mean anything to you?”

    Alphena sat down, offering the older women a burl walnut tray of small sweet cakes. There wasn’t room for it on the table with wine containers.

    Hedia had emptied her cup. She hesitated–she never ate sweets; she loved them and knew she would bloat like a dead cat if she didn’t if she didn’t exercise rigid control over what she ate–but finally took a cake and nibbled. It was delicious.

    “I’ve never heard of glass men, Hedia,” Anna said, reverting to previous familiarity now that they were completely alone. “Real men, moving you mean?”

    “Moving, certainly,” Hedia said, forcing herself to visualize the images that terrified her without reason. “Real, I don’t know. Certainly not real men; but they acted like men.”

    She took a deep breath. Her eyes were open, but for the moment she wasn’t seeing anything beyond her memory.

    “I dreamed of them in the Underworld, Anna,” she said. “I dreamed of them with Latus, where I visited him before. I couldn’t hear them, but I think they were questioning him. He was screaming.”

    She sniffed with bitter amusement. “Screaming like the damned, in fact,” she said, “which is likely enough with Latus.”

    Hedia forced her eyelids closed, then opened them and met Anna’s calm gaze. “I think they’re hunting for me,” she said. “I don’t know why or why I feel that. But I feel it, and I’m afraid.”

    “When we opened the passage to the Underworld,” Anna said, “it couldn’t be closed again. I’m sorry, but that was one of the risks.”

    Her face twisted into a smile. “It wasn’t one of the risks that I worried most about,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you ever again.”

    Her gaze flicked to Alphena. She added, “Either of you.”

    Hedia laughed, finding the humor of the thought. “Rather like virginity, you mean?” she said. “Well, that wasn’t much good to me either. Perhaps keeping the passage to Hades’ house open will turn out to be just as pleasurable in the long run.”

    Alphena’s lips pressed together, but she tried to smile when she felt Hedia glance at her. She’s really everything one could wish in a daughter. Even her playing with swords turned out to be useful.

    “Is there anything you can suggest, dear?” Hedia said. Then, blurting, “Can you do anything? Please!”

    Alphena had refilled her cup. She drank, to hide her embarrassment and to sooth her throat. She was dry, and her thoughts were dry and withered.

    “A charm, you mean?” Anna said.

    Hedia waved her hands, disgusted at her own weakness. “No, of course not,” she said. “I know better, but I’m… frightened.”

    “Some of my charms do help,” Anna said. She spoke softly, but there was rock not far below the surface. “Some help, and more help because people think they’re being helped. But not for this, no. My usual work is for sick people; and sometimes for girls who want something or want to get rid of something.”

    She spread her hands. “I won’t lie to you, your ladyship. Love charms and abortions. But what happened in the theater is beyond such neighborhood business.”

    Hedia opened her mouth to object, but Anna stopped her with a raised hand. “You may not be concerned with what happened in the theater, dear,” she said, “but I am. It reeked on my men when they came home last night, and it’s nothing I’ll pass over lightly.”

 

---

 

    Her tone was polite but no longer obsequious. They were in Anna’s realm now, and however much she might respect Lady Hedia, she wouldn’t leave any doubt about what she knew.

    Hedia’s cup was empty again. She thought for an instant, then covered it with her hand as Alphena reached to refill it from the mixing bowl.

    “I think that’s enough for me,” she said, rising smoothly. She might feel as though she should hang herself; but if she did, she would expect to writhe gracefully. “Thank you, Anna. You’ve helped me understand the situation better.”

    Anna struggled to rise from her stool. Alphena braced her while she got both her sticks planted.

    “I told you I’m not passing over this, your Ladyship,” Anna said. “I… I won’t promise you. But there’s another thing that might be tried. It means danger for those I would die to keep from danger, but I fear–”

    Her eyes locked with Hedia’s.

    “–that there’s no safety anywhere if this thing isn’t scotched. So I’ll try.”

    “Mistress,” said Hedia. “He’s a soldier, in his heart at least. He’ll understand.”

    Anna laughed. The sound would have been appropriate at a funeral. “Aye, we all understand,” she said, “but it’s still bloody hard to send them off. Well, we women know about that kind of hard, don’t we?”

    “Yes,” said Alphena unexpectedly. “We do.”

    She reached out; for a moment, the three of them linked hands. It didn’t make any sense, but Hedia found herself more hopeful than she had been since she awakened from her nightmare.

 

---

 

    As Corylus and Pulto approached the apartment block, one of the daughters of the cobbler on the fourth floor leaned out the window and called, “Hello, Master Corylus! I’m glad you’re back!”

    Corylus waved a half-hearted acknowledgement and tried to smile. He probably didn’t succeed very well.

    “I wonder if that’s Tertia or her sister?” Pulto said, sounding mildly curious.

    Corylus looked at the older man, uncertain whether the implication was a joke. He said, “Quartilla’s pretty young, Pulto.”

    “Well growed, though,” Pulto said. “And from the way everybody on the street’s looking at us now, you could probably parlay one visit into a two-fer.”

    Then, with the break in his voice he’d been trying to avoid with the crude jokes, he said, “I wonder what it is my Anna said to everybody to get them so excited? Well, there’s nothing to do about it now.”

    “Ah,” said Corylus, who now understood a great deal more than he had a moment ago. Yes, a parade with elephants could scarcely have drawn more attention than he and his servant were getting right now.

    Corylus had been thinking about the oration his fellow student Clementius had given today, urging Hannibal not to storm the walls of Carce. Pandareus had responded by ‘predicting’ all the disasters which had beset the Carthaginian cause when Hannibal marched away without attacking.

    Corylus would be speaking tomorrow. His set subject was to advise the imprisoned Socrates either to flee to Macedonia or to stay and drink the hemlock poison. He had planned to argue that Socrates should stay, honoring his principles–but that would give Pandareus the opportunity to blame Socrates for all the misfortunes “the gods” had heaped on Athens after his execution. Perhaps Corylus should argue that from exile in Macedonia, Socrates could foment a revolt of reason within the body politic….

    But Publius Corylus had duties and obligations in the real world also, as Pulto had just reminded him. Hedia and her daughter had visited Anna today, and the visit apparently had consequences here in his neighborhood on the Viminal Hill. Now that Tertia–or Quartilla–had addressed Corylus directly, a score of other people were calling to him also.

    Hercules! Some are even cheering! He waved again as he ducked into the staircase behind Pulto.

    “I’ll just have something light to eat and go straight over to Saxa’s,” Corylus muttered to the servant’s back. “Ah–Pulto? You don’t need to come with me tonight. There’ll be more than enough attendants, I’m sure.”

    “I guess I do have to come, don’t I?” Pulto growled. “I would if you were heading for a dust-up, wouldn’t I? And this is a bloody sight worse, the way I look at it.”

    The way I look at it too, old friend, Corylus thought. But though Pulto wouldn’t be of the least use in a situation where the danger was from magic, it was his duty. That was a way a soldier had to think, and it was the way Corylus thought as well.

    The door opened before they reached it. “Anna, my heart!” Pulto said, his voice much harsher than was usual when speaking to his wife. “What in buggering Mercury did you say that’s got them so worked up down in the street?”

    “Never mind that now, Marcus Pulto,” Anna said. “You’ll give me a hand up to the roof where I’ll talk to the master, and you’ll stand at the bottom of the ladder making sure other folks understand that he wants his privacy. Do you understand that?”

    I do not, Corylus thought. But it took his mind off a quick dinner and what they were going to find in the home of Sempronius Tardus.

    “Yes, ma’am,” Pulto said in a tone of supplication. That was even more unusual when he talked to Anna than the anger of a heartbeat earlier.

    Corylus had wondered how long it would take her to reach the fifth-floor landing, let alone mount the ladder to the roof. Pulto must have had the same thought, because he took her arm as directed, but even that was probably unnecessary.

    Anna clumped up the stairs in normal fashion, without pausing or slowing. The doors on the upper landings were all ajar, but nobody actually stuck her head out as they normally would when strangers passed.

    “Anna?” Corylus said. “Let me go up ahead of you.”

    “I can still climb a ladder, master!” she said.

    “So that I can help you out over the coaming,” he replied, keeping his voice artificially calm. She must be very upset. “And there may be somebody on the roof already.”

    “There’s not,” Anna said, her tone contrite; she stepped aside on the narrow landing to let him pass. “But I shouldn’t wonder if they’d lift the trap door and listen in once we were up there. I reckon my Marcus can take care of that, won’t you, dearie?”

    “I guess I could if I needed to,” Pulto said. “Which I won’t, since nobody in this building is going to show his ass to you. Me included.”

    He gave his wife a peck on the cheek. Things seemed to be back to normal between them.

    The roof was empty, as Anna had claimed. It was tiled, but the pitch was so slight that it was easy to walk on. A poulterer on the second floor supplemented his merchandize by keeping a large dovecote here, and there were eight or ten terracotta pots with flowers and vegetables growing in them.

    There was even a spindly orange tree. Corylus lifted Anna from the third rung down, then touched the tree trunk while she closed the trap door. He thought for an instant that flesh wriggled gratefully beneath his fingertips.

    “I don’t like what I’m going to ask you, master,” Anna said. “But sometimes ‘like’ don’t make no nevermind.”

    She was standing beside him, looking southeast toward the center of Carce instead of meeting his eyes. He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. He didn’t speak.

    “Aye, you know,” Anna muttered. She gave him a half-hug also. “You’re a soldier’s son, and anyway, you’re a good boy.”

    She turned her head to look at him. “It’s her ladyship,” she said. “She needs something I can’t fetch her and I won’t ask my Marcus to go for. He’d try, but I think it’d kill him, stop his heart. He’d be that fearful.”

    “Tell me what you need, Anna,” Corylus said. He felt calm. “Tell me what the Republic needs, or so I think.”

    He had been very young, certainly no older than three, when his father came into the room Corylus shared with Anna one night. Something had happened, though at the time he hadn’t known what.

    Later Corylus learned there had been a battle–not the kind that the historians wrote about, but the sort of little skirmish that happened regularly on the frontier. A party of young Germans had crossed the river for loot, but they got too drunk to return after they captured a handful of wagons loaded with wine.

    They were too drunk to surrender also, but Germans never seemed to get too drunk to fight. It had been a nasty one, because the Germans had the wagons in a circle and horses wouldn’t charge home. Cispius had dismounted his troop and stormed the laager.

 

---

 

    Cispius had taken off his armor before he shook his son awake, but his tunic reeked of sweat and blood. In a voice as rough as stones sliding, he had said, “Don’t ever let them know you’re afraid, boy. And by Hercules, if you play the man, you’ll find you really aren’t afraid. Don’t let your troops down, and you won’t let yourself down either.”

    Corylus hadn’t understood that at the time. He understood it now, with his arm around his old nurse.

    Anna nodded and stepped away, visibly calmer. “Lady Hedia came to see me today,” she said in the same normal voice in which she would have discussed taking her sandals to be mended. “It isn’t her coming, though, because I already knew I’d have to do something.”

    She sniffed angrily. “I knew from the smell on you when you come back from the theater, boy,” she said, “It was her ladyship visiting that showed me I couldn’t put it off. I’d been telling myself it wasn’t so, like I was a foolish girl.”

    “Tell me what I must do, Anna,” Corylus said, firmly but calmly. He’d never seen his nurse in such a state. Shouting wouldn’t help matters, but he did need to get her to the point at some time before Carce’s thousand-year celebrations–in two or three centuries.

    “There’s a thing under the ground,” she said, suddenly herself again. “An amulet I think, but maybe something else. I can’t see it myself–I don’t have that sort of power, boy, you know that. But….”

    She swallowed and walked awkwardly over to the dovecote. She used her sticks. She had thrust them down the neck of her tunic so that she could climb the ladder, but they were a doubtful help on the tiles. Still, the surface wasn’t any worse than wet cobblestones.

    Corylus wasn’t certain what to do, but after a brief hesitation he followed her. He tried to keep his weight over the beams, but a flash of humor lighted his face. I wonder what Tertia–or perhaps Quartilla–would say if I entered through the ceiling instead of by the door?

    It was good to laugh at something when he felt like this. Especially something silly.

    Anna rubbed a dove’s neck feathers through the grill; it cooed, squirming closer to her. She looked again at Corylus and said, “I couldn’t see things, but the birds, I thought, might; and the little animals. Which they did. Last night I went with a vole down his burrow into the place that the thing was; and this morning, after their ladyships were gone, I hired a chair to the Esquiline with Dromo, Cephinna’s boy from the fifth floor. We marked the place, and he’ll guide you back to it tonight.”

    Corylus licked his lips. “On the Esquiline. That will be to the old burial grounds there.”

    “Aye,” said Anna. She looked as fierce as a rebel waiting to be crucified.

    “All right,” said Corylus, since there was nothing else to do. “We’ll leave as soon as it’s dark. Ah–will there be difficulties with Dromo? That is, how much does he know?”

    Anna sniffed again. “He knows enough not to like it,” she said, “but he’ll do it for me. And for you, master. He trusts you.”

    “Ah…,” said Corylus. “I’ll pay whatever you think…?”

    “A silver piece,” Anna said. “A day’s pay for a grown man, which is fair enough. Mind, there’s few grown men who’d do what Dromo will tonight. He’s a brave one, which is why I picked him. Though….”

    Corylus hooked his hand, as though trying to draw the thought out of the old woman by brute force. It would be simpler if Anna simply spat out all the information in an organized fashion; but then, it would be simpler if everyone loved his neighbor, worked hard, and behaved courteously to others.

    There wouldn’t be much use for soldiers, then, or attorneys either. Corylus had seen enough of oxen to know that he didn’t want to spend his life following a pair of them around a field while leaning into a plow to make it bite. Though a return to the Golden Age, where the fruits and grain just sprouted–that might not be such a hardship.

    “I told Dromo all he had to do was show you where the place to dig was,” Anna explained. “You and Pulto would do the rest. I’ve already bought mattocks and a pry bar; they’re in the kitchen.”

    “That will save time,” Corylus said, smiling faintly. Anna might have trouble saying things she wished weren’t so, but she certainly didn’t hesitate to do anything she thought was necessary.

    He looked west over the city. Because this apartment was the tallest building for half a mile, he was largely looking down onto tile roofs much like the one he stood on. Potted plants and dovecotes and rabbit hutches; and now and again there was a shed of cloth on a wicker frame that might have anything at all inside it.

    People lived ordinary lives here in Carce, the greatest city in the world. None of them perfect, including Gaius Cispius Corylus, a student of Pandareus of Athens… but generally decent folk.

    He thought of Typhon, ripping its way through a vision of crystal towers and walls of sun-bright metal. No one had told Corylus that would result unless he–and Anna and Pandareus and Varus and all of them–managed to stop the creature, but it was a logical inference from what he had heard–and what he had seen ten days before, when the Underworld vomited forth its flaming demons.

    “Pulto should stay here with you, Anna,” he said. There was no reason to force a brave man and a friend into a night’s work that would torture him worse than hot pincers.

    “No,” she said. “You’ll be going into the ground, but you’ll want a solid man up above to watch your back. My Marcus is that; and anyway, you couldn’t keep him away unless you chained him.”

    She coughed. “I think it’s a tomb, master,” she said. “An old one, maybe; very old. Etruscan, I’d venture, from before Carce ever was. Though–”

    She fluttered her little fingers, since her palms were braced on the smooth knobbed handles of her sticks.

    “–that’s a lot to draw from a vole’s mind, you’ll understand. Anyway, it’s cut in rock, the place the thing is.”

    Corylus laughed and hugged Anna again. “We’ll find you your bauble, dear one,” he said. “How could any man fail someone they love as much as Pulto and I love you?”

    He’d made the words a joke, but it was the truth just the same.

    I’d best send a messenger to Varus, telling him I won’t be able to join him this afternoon after all, Corylus thought.

    On his way back from class, he’d been concerned about what they might find in Tardus’ home. Now, entering the cellars of a senator’s house seemed a harmless, even friendly, alternative to the way he would really be spending the evening.

 

---

 

    “Oh!” said Saxa as his entourage formed around him with all manner of shouting and gestures. “My boy, I don’t see your friend Corylus. You don’t think he’s gotten lost on the way here, do you? We really shouldn’t wait much longer or we’ll arrive at the dinner hour, which would be discourteous.”

    Tardus will probably regard our arrival to search his house under consular authority to be discourteous enough, Varus thought. Aloud he said, “Corylus was detained on other business, your lordship. We will proceed without him.”

    Saxa bustled off, surrounded by Agrippinus, who would stay at the house; Candidus, who would lead the escort; and the chief lictor.

    It hadn’t occurred to Varus that Saxa would remember that Corylus might accompany them. He’d underestimated his father, a disservice which he would try hard not to repeat.

    Pandareus had dropped into the background when Saxa approached; now he joined Varus again. With his lips close to his teacher’s ear, Varus said, “It seems a great deal of argument for what is really just a six-block walk, doesn’t it?”

    “It would be, I agree,” Pandareus said, for a moment fully the professor. “But I take issue with your terms, Lord Varus. If we were simply to walk to the home of Sempronius Tardus, we would be wasting our efforts. If this is to be a rite of state–a religious act, in effect–then the litanies are to be accepted as being of spiritual significance even though their human meaning has been blurred.”

 

---

 

    Varus chuckled. In an undertone he muttered the refrain of the priests during the rites of Robigus–the deity of corn smut. It was a string of nonsense syllables to anyone alive today.

    “Yes, my teacher,” he said. “It does have a great deal of similarity to what we’re hearing now. Or at any rate, to what my father is hearing, merging the three speeches.”

    “Plato believed in Ideal Republics,” said Pandareus, watching the commotion with an attitude of bright interest. He was chatting now, no longer lecturing. “I am… willing, I suppose, to accept them also–for the purpose of argument. I don’t find them any more useful in studying real conditions than the Chief Pirate’s Beautiful Daughter would be in formulating the Republic’s mercantile policy.”

    Varus chuckled at mention of one of the standards of school orations, like the Reformed Prostitute and the Undutiful Son. “I wouldn’t say that the reign of Dion of Syracuse was a Golden Age, despite Plato’s earnest coaching of his would-be philosopher king,” he said. “I accept your point about real politics generally looking like–”

    He gestured to the confusion of servants, lictors, and citizen-clients. It looked as though the procession was close to moving off.

    “–that. What I don’t understand is why it looks like that instead of being, well, smoother.”

    “It may be that you are asking the correct question,” Pandareus said, reverting to his classroom manner. “You’re asking it rhetorically, however, instead of using the moment as a real opportunity to learn. Why is it that human societies generally organize themselves in fashions that we philosophers deplore as inefficient? Surely it cannot be possible that human wisdom is limited while the cosmos is infinite?”

    Varus laughed again. “I’ll want to spend an hour or two considering the question before giving you a definitive answer, master,” he said.

    Pandareus had a remarkable ability to puncture displays of excessive ego–by using the Socratic Method, proving that his disciple already possessed the information. That was certainly true in the present instance. Varus wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the fact something existed proved that it was good–but he did accept that everything happened for a reason.

    Candidus spoke to a musician holding a double-pipe. Varus believed the piper was the same man–if that was the correct term for someone so slender and feminine–who had led the music during yesterday’s mime. If so, he had come through the ordeal very well.

    “We’d best take our places,” Varus said. He moved into the place directly following Saxa. Behind them would come the most respectable of his clients, most of them impoverished relatives.

    Varus and Pandareus had just reached the column when the pipe began to sing cadence from the front, among the lictors. The procession started off–not in unison, but a good deal closer than most arrays of this sort.

    “In the army, Corylus says they sing to keep time,” Varus said as they ambled through the city. “From the songs he describes, it’s probably as well that we’re not doing that. Otherwise Tardus would be in a panic to lock up his daughters.”

    “Or sons,” Pandareus said, straight-faced. “Though I’m sure that the standards of the eastern legions that I’m familiar with are less manly and rigorous than those of the Rhine frontier.”

    I didn’t expect to be laughing repeatedly on this expedition, Varus thought. The obvious answer–because everything was a question, looked at in the correct fashion–struck him. He looked at Pandareus and said, “Thank you, master. You have taught me more by example than even from the knowledge you have accumulated.”

    “I would not be a good model for most of the young men who become my students,” Pandareus said, looking up with interest at the imperial palace on their right. Only servants were present, since the Emperor was–as usual–on Capri. “Certainly not for Master Corylus, of course: he is far too forceful and decisive to gain from my style of self-management. But you, Lord Varus…. I believe you understand my own qualms and uncertainties all too well, so my practiced ways of dealing with them could be useful.”

    Changing the subject almost before the words were out, the teacher gestured up the steep slope to the ancient citadel. The great temples of Jupiter and Juno glowered down at the city. In a breezy, less contemplative tone, he said, “I’m seeing this Carce for the first time.”

    “But surely you’ve been here before, master?” Varus said. “Why, I’d think you regularly came this way to get from your room to the Forum when you hold class there.”

    “So speaks the son of the wealthy Alphenus Saxa,” Pandareus said. “Yes, my feet tread this pavement–”

    He half-skipped to rap the toe of his sandal on the flagstone.

    “–regularly. But on an ordinary day I would be dodging a crowd of those who would trample a slender scholar who dawdled in front of them. Today, I’m in a capsule formed by the companions of a consul, like a hickory nut in its shell.”

    “Ah!” said Varus. “The armor of righteousness, no doubt.”

    “I would be the last to claim that the father of my student and–if I may–friend Gaius Varus is not a righteous man,” Pandareus agreed solemnly.

    Varus thought about being insulated from the world. Pandareus was talking about physical protection here, but that was really a minor aspect of the way Varus was walled off. His father’s wealth wasn’t really a factor.

    Varus had come to realize that though he lived in the world, he was not and never would be part of it. If footpads knocked him down and slit his throat, a part of him–the part that was most Gaius Alphenus Varus–would be watching them through a sheet of clear glass, interested to see how far his blood spurted when the knife went in.

    Corylus could probably tell me from having watched it happen to somebody else. That would be a better way to learn.

    Pandareus was watching him intently. Varus let his smile fade. He said, “Master, what do you think we’ll find in this chapel? What should we be looking for?”

    “Your lordship…,” Pandareus said, being particularly careful in his address because they were in public. “We are intruding on Senator Tardus because of inferences which we deduced from your vision, coupled with additional knowledge which I brought to the discussion. All I can do is to say that I think we are acting in the most logical fashion that we could, given our limited information.”

    He grinned, becoming a different person. He said, “I will not lapse into superstition by saying that whoever or whatever sent you the vision was wise enough to give us as much information as we would need. I will particularly not say–”

    The grin became even wider.

    “–that he, or she, or it, is All-Wise. But the less rational part of me believes those things.”

    “A textbook example of praeteritio,” Varus said. “And I accept the principle underlying your statement, which I deduce to be that the wise man, when faced with an uncertain result which he cannot affect, should assume it will be beneficial. The price is the same as it would be for a gloomy prediction.”

    “I’ve taught you well, my boy,” Pandareus said. They were no longer joking. It was one of the few times Varus had heard what he would describe as real warmth in the older man’s voice.

    At the head of the procession the lictors stopped in front of a house and faced outward. Its walls were of fine-grained limestone, rather than marble over a core of brick or volcanic tuff as was the more recent style.

    The chief lictor banged the butt of his axe helve on the door and boomed, “Open to Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa, Consul of Carce!”

    Varus drew a deep breath. He wondered what it would be like to wait for howling barbarians to charge, shaking their spears and their long, round-tipped swords.

    At the moment, he would rather be out on the frontier, learning the answer to that question.