Out of the Waters: Chapter Seven

    Daylight through cracks in the shutters awakened Corylus. He sat up quickly, angry with himself. Ordinarily he awakened before dawn and–

    Pain split his head straight back from the center of his forehead. He wobbled, sick and briefly unable to see colors. He whispered, “Hercules!”

    “Swear by Charon, better,” said Anna as she hobbled over to him, carrying a bronze mug that she had been heating in a bath of water. “I’ve never seen anyone closer to dead but still walking than the two of you when you came in last night.”

    She offered the mug. “Here,” she said. “Swallow it down.”

    Corylus lifted the warm bronze cautiously. The odor made his nostrils quiver; he started to lower the mug.

    “Drink it, I tell you!” Anna said. “D’ye think you’re the first drunk I’ve had to bring back to life in the morning? It’s been your father often enough; but I don’t think he’d be pleased to learn that my man, who he trusted, let you get into this state–and himself no better!”

    “Yes, ma’am,” Corylus said obediently. He held his breath and drank the whole mugful at a measured pace, then set it on the side table empty. Anna gave him a napkin. He looked at it puzzled, then sneezed violently into it.

    “There,” said Anna with a satisfied smirk. “You’ll feel better now, or so I believe.”

    Corylus lowered the napkin with which he had covered his mouth and nose. He did feel better, for a wonder. He would have thought that the sneeze would have shattered his head into more bits than the shell of a dropped egg.

    “I meant to stop at the first jar,” he said contritely. “I must have had more than that to drink.”

    “Aye, you must have,” Anna said, her tone still grim but her face showing a trace of humor–if you knew what you were looking for. “Well, it’s done and you’re back safely, no thanks to that fool husband of mine. Are you going to your class today, then?”

    “If I…,” Corylus said. He got slowly to his feet as he spoke. Somewhat to his surprise, he found that he was all right except for a slight wobbliness when he straightened. “Yes, I will. I want to talk with Varus afterwards anyway, and Master Pandareus too.”

    A thought struck him. “Oh!” he said. “And we did find what you sent us for, or I think it was.”

    He reached under his tunic. The chain wasn’t around his neck.

    Anna gestured with her free hand toward the storage chest on the other side of the bed. The chain and the jewel wrapped in the net of gold wire were there. In a shaft of sunlit, the stone was a cloudy gray-green with very little sparkle.

    “I took it off you,” she said. “When I got you out of that filthy tunic and sponged you before I put you to bed.”

    Her grin suddenly widened. “As I’ve done your father half a hundred times. It takes me back, lad.”

    Corylus reached for the jewelry, then paused and raised an eyebrow in question.

    “Aye, take it,” Anna said. “Take it and wear it. I don’t know what it means or what it does, but I know it’s meant for a man.”

    Corylus didn’t move. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said. “Meant for a man?”

    Anna grimaced. “I don’t have the words!” she said. Her voice was as harsh as he ever remembered her talking to him. “If a civilian asked me how you knew the shields on the far hill were Suebi and not Batavians, what would you tell him? You’d just know, that’s all. Well, I tell you, that jewel’s meant for a man; and whatever else I am, I’m not that.”

    Corylus picked it up by the chain and carried it over to the window for better light. He threw open the shutters.

    “It’s glass,” he said, looking at the scalloped fracture lines at one end of the stone. “Slag from a glass furnace, anyway.”

    He held it up against the sky and squinted through it. “There’s something inside, but I can’t tell what it is,” he said.

    Then, lowering the pendant with a triumphant grin, “No! It’s volcanic glass! But I still think there’s something inside it.”

    “I tried to look,” Anna said. Corylus tried to hand it to her; she waved it away and said, “No, I don’t mean like that, so better light would show me more than the lamp did. Another way, boy. All I learned is that there’s something inside, all right, and that it doesn’t like women. I set it down then–”

    She nodded to the chest.

    “–and I stepped back, and I burned a little frankincense to Mother Lucina–”

    A Greek would have called the goddess Hecate, but Anna was a Marsian born in the mountains a hundred miles south of Carce.

    “–that I wasn’t any deeper in when I roused it.”

    “Should I–” Corylus said. He stopped, lifting the pendant by its chain. He was seeing the complete object this time, not trying to peer into the depths of the cloudy glass.

    He looked at Anna. “You said I should wear it, dear one,” he said. “If it’s dangerous…?”

    She cackled without humor. “A sword’s dangerous, boy,” she said. “But not to you when you’re wearing it, I think. Nor is this, for you’re a man if ever a man was born. The dream that guided me….”

    She shrugged.

    “I can only trust my guides, master,” she said with a catch in her throat. Corylus realized that she was close to tears. “I would tear my own heart out if I thought it would help you, but it wouldn’t. I can only tell you what I am told, or what I anyway believe. And I pray that I’m right, because I would so rather die than you be harmed!”

    Corylus dropped the chain over his neck and tucked the pendant, the amulet, under his tunic. Then he folded his old nurse in his arms. She felt as light as a plucked chicken. He felt a rush of love.

    “I love you, little mother,” Corylus said. “You kept me safe as a boy, and you protect me still.”

    He squeezed Anna again and stepped back, smiling. “Now, I’m already late,” he said. “I’ll pick up a roll on my way to class. We’ll deal with this business, whatever it is.”

    Corylus quickly laced on his sandals. He was still smiling, but that was for show. He wished he could be more confident of what he had just told Anna; and he wished he didn’t feel that he had a vicious dog on the end of the chain around his neck.

    Because despite Anna’s words, he wasn’t sure it was his dog.

 

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    Hedia’s expression remained pleasant as the new doorman announced the arrival of Senator Marcus Atilius Priscus. In truth the fellow’s South German accent was so broad that if she hadn’t known who was invited for dinner, she wouldn’t be any wiser now.

    Keeping her professional smile, she murmured to Saxa at her side, “Dear heart, we cannot keep Flavus on the front door until his Latin has improved. Not if we’re going to entertain Senators as learned as Lord Priscus, at least.”

    Flavus was a striking physical specimen, tall and blond and ripplingly muscular. Hedia could certainly appreciate the fellow’s merit, but she had never allowed appearances to interfere with her duty.

    Hedia had never let anything interfere with her duty.

    She was standing beside her husband as a matter of respect while he greeted his dinner guests, though she would not be dining with the men tonight. She didn’t have a party of her own to attend: she planned to dine in her own suite, either alone or possibly with Alphena. She hadn’t decided whether to issue the invitation, and she thought it likely that the girl would decline it if she did.

    Varus wasn’t present, though he would be dining with Saxa and his guests. That wasn’t a protest, as it might have been with his sister in similar circumstances. The boy said he would work until dinner.

 

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    “Work” in his case meant that he would be reading something and taking notes. Hedia had recently looked through one of the notebooks Varus was filling, thinking that she should display interest in her son’s activities. She had found them either nonsensical or unintelligible, though no more so than the passage from Horace to which they apparently referred.

    Hedia’s smile became momentarily warmer. Her son–stepson by blood but, in law and in her mind, her son–would never be the sort of man she socialized with; but he was a clever boy, and brave. Hedia had seen that the night in the Temple of Jupiter when Varus saved the world from fiery destruction.

    Marcus Priscus waddled into the entrance hall, accompanied by a score of servants. There were no freeborn clients in his entourage. Sometimes a host would give his guests the option of bringing the number of diners up to nine with their own friends and hangers-on, but Priscus had not asked for this right and Saxa hadn’t volunteered it. Hedia knew her husband viewed the dinner as a chance to frame his magpie’s hoard of erudition with the solid scholarship of his guests and son.

    “Welcome, my honored colleague!” Saxa called. “Your wisdom lights my poor house.”

    “Welcome, Lord Priscus,” Hedia said, her voice a smooth vibrancy following her husband’s nervous squeak. “Our household gods smile at your presence.”

    “Lady Hedia,” Priscus said, beaming at her. “I recall your father fondly. He would be delighted, I’m sure, to see how his daughter has blossomed.”

    Priscus was badly overweight and nearly seventy, but his undeniable scholarship had not kept him from getting quite a reputation for gallantry in his younger days. A pity Varus isn’t more like him, Hedia thought. We might get along better if we had something in common.

    Hedia murmured something appreciative to the guest, then turned to a deputy steward–it happened to be Manetho–and whispered, “Go to Lord Varus–he’s probably in the library–and tell him that the guests are arriving for dinner.” Manetho nodded and vanished toward the back stairs.

    Candidus was marshaling the members of Priscus’ escort and leading them toward the kitchen where they would be fed with the household staff. There were probably as many more out in front, including litter bearers. Hedia was sure that Priscus hadn’t walked here himself from his home on the west slope of the Palatine Hill.

    Her husband and Priscus were chatting, waiting for Pandareus and perhaps Varus as well before they went up to the outside dining area, overlooking the central courtyard. Instead of permanent masonry benches built into the walls, wicker furniture was brought up from storage and covered with goose down pillows covered with silk brocade whose ridged designs made the guests less likely to slip off than slick surfaces would.

    “The learned Master Pandareus of Athens!” Flavus said, butchering the words even worse, if that was possible, than he had the Senator’s.

    The servant who whispered the names of those arriving was a wizened Greek from Massillia in Gaul. He was extremely sharp–Hedia had never known him to misidentify a visitor–and would have been a perfect doorman if he hadn’t had the face and posture of an arthritic rat. By Venus! the trouble the gods caused for a woman who simply wanted to present her noble husband with the proper dignity.

    Hedia smiled more broadly by just a hair. She wasn’t fooling herself, of course; but the experience of behaving normally for a woman in her position had thrown a little more cover over the figures of her nightmare.

    The scholar entered, looking faintly bemused. He didn’t have an attendant, and Hedia could only assume that the tunic he wore was his best. One heard of rhetoric teachers becoming very wealthy, but Pandareus had clearly avoided that experience.

    I must remember to check with Agrippinus to make sure that Varus’ school fees are paid.

    Priscus greeted the teacher with obvious warmth. Varus had said that the men were friends despite the difference in their social position; this confirmed the statement.

    Saxa glanced at Hedia and whispered nervously, “My dear? Do you suppose V-V…, my son, that is, will be joining us?”

    “Yes, he’ll be–” Hedia said. She stopped gratefully as Varus entered from the office with an apologetic expression. Two servants were trying to adjust his toga on the move.

    “The noble Senator Marcus Sempronius Tardus, Commissioner of the Sacred Rites!” Flavus boomed.

    There was silence in the hall, at least from the principals. Servants continued to chatter like a flock of sparrows, of course.

    “What’s this, Saxa?” Priscus said. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be inviting Tardus, not after that consular visit yesterday.”

    He didn’t sound angry, though he probably felt that he should have been informed of who the other guests were when he was invited. There were senators who certainly preferred never to set eyes on one another.

    “I didn’t…,” Saxa said, looking stunned. He turned to Hedia. “Dear one, did you invite Tardus? That is, I’m not misremembering something, am I?”

    “No, little heart,” Hedia said coolly. “I’m sure Lord Tardus will inform us of why he is gracing us with his presence.”

    Tardus entered the hall with attendants, crowding it again. No toga-clad citizens accompanied him, but the three men closest to the senator were the foreigners whom Hedia had seen with him in the theater. Close up they seemed even more unusual, especially the man with the stuffed bird pinned opposite to the roll of his long black hair.

    “Greetings, Lord Tardus,” Saxa said. “You are welcome, of course, but I confess that I was not expecting to see you today.”

    “I was equally surprised yesterday, Lord Saxa,” Tardus said. “But your visit reminded me that we were colleagues with similar interests which we might be able to cultivate together.”

    Hedia didn’t recall ever meeting Tardus before, and if she had seen him casually in the forum, he hadn’t lingered in her memory. He would have merited the term “nondescript” were it not that his toga was hemmed with the broad purple stripe of a senator. He had the reputation of being not only superstitious but involved in kinds of magic that were discussed in secret if at all.

    Hedia’s smile was cold. She wasn’t the one to talk, of course; not after the task she had given Anna.

    “Well, I…,” Saxa said, his words stumbling as he tried to understand the situation. “I’m pleased that you’re, ah, reacting in that fashion, Marcus Tardus, but in truth this isn’t a very good time… that is–”

    “I see that you’re gathering for dinner,” Tardus said, nodding to the guests. The two senators and Varus wore their togas, showing that this was a formal occasion. “No doubt you’ll have private matters to discuss, so I’ll take myself away. Perhaps another time.”

    “Why, yes,” Saxa said gratefully. “I appreciate your understanding.”

    Priscus jumped as though he’d been cut with an overseer’s whip… which, if the stories about him in his younger days were true, had indeed happened on occasion.

    My dear sweet husband doesn’t have a clue! thought Hedia with a mixture of affection, exasperation, and fear. There was definitely reason for fear if this weren’t handled properly–and at once.

    “We would be delighted to have you join us for dinner, Lord Tardus!” Hedia said brightly. Smiling as though she had just received the gift of eternal youth, she went on to the major domo, “Agrippinus, have three more places set; Lady Alphena and I will sit upright in place of the third couch.”

    Lowering her voice, she continued, “And Agrippinus? Ask Lady Alphena to prepare for dinner. I’ll be up in a moment to discuss jewelry with her. Please press upon her the urgency of the situation.”

    The major domo strode from the entrance hall, calling sharply to underlings. Hedia hoped Agrippinus intended to speak to Alphena himself rather than leaving the unpleasant task to a junior who might not understand its importance.

    The men were all looking at her. Well, that wasn’t the sort of thing that made her nervous. Saxa and Varus were puzzled, but Priscus was obviously relieved.

 

---

 

    Hedia expected Tardus to smirk at his successful throw of the dice, but instead he seemed numbly accepting. The trio of foreign servants were sharply interested in everything around them but particularly, it seemed to Hedia, in Varus and herself. She couldn’t tell how old they were. In their fifties, she had guessed from a distance; but close up, what she saw in their eyes suggested they were older than that, and perhaps impossibly old.

    “Dear, is that correct?” Saxa said, completely at sea now. “I’d understood that you wouldn’t be joining us. And Alphena, well, Alphena never dines with the family.”

    “Indeed, it’s time that our daughter becomes more comfortable in polite society,” Hedia said. “And what better place than a meal with erudite friends, discussing fine points of literature?”

    She continued to smile. On the walls of the hall were death masks of ancestors going back almost two hundred years, and by Venus! some of those wax masks would be less obtuse than her husband was showing himself at the moment.

    “Well, just as you say, dear,” Saxa said. “Ah–”

    “Take your guests to the dining room, my lord and husband,” Hedia said gently. She wondered if her smile looked as brittle as it felt. “Lady Alphena and I will join you very shortly.”

    Leaving Manetho to take charge of chivvying the men to the outside dining area, Hedia herself strode briskly to the back stairs. These were intended for the servants, but Hedia needed to get to her daughter as quickly as possible. It wouldn’t have done to rush up the main stairs ahead of three senators, and she certainly wasn’t going to wait until they had shuffled in chatty, leisurely fashion to the couches set on the roof above the black-and-gold hall, with a good view of the central courtyard.

    A quick-witted footman saw Hedia coming and sprinted ahead of her, bellowing up the back staircase in a Thracian accent, “Hop to, you wankers! Her ladyship’s on her way!”

    Hedia grinned wryly. She’d been announced in more gracious and mellifluous terms, but this had the merits of being short and extremely clear. When she got a moment to catch her breath, she would learn who the footman was and tell Agrippinus to promote him for initiative.

    The stairs weren’t clear when Hedia reached them, but servants who had been lounging there only moments before were scattering like a covey of quail. She lifted the skirts of her long tunic in both hands and trotted up.

    Part of her was appalled to think of how embarrassing it would be if she tripped on her hem and broke her neck. Another part–the part that made her giggle as her slippers pattered on the plain brick steps–realized smugly that if she did break her neck, her own problems were over.

    Alphena was leaning over the mezzanine railing, watching Tardus’ entourage being escorted toward the kitchen. Hedia approached her from behind, swallowing her initial flash of irritation. Florina and a bevy of other maids fluttered around the girl, afraid to warn her that Hedia had arrived but obviously afraid of what would happen if they didn’t say something. Agrippinus stood by the public stairs, bowing as Saxa and his guests passed in their stately fashion.

    “Come, daughter,” Hedia said in calm, cultured tones. “Let’s get you ready for dinner so that their lordships don’t feel that you’re insulting them. Syra–”

    She turned her head slightly. Her maid, as expected, stood at her elbow; she panted, probably more from nervousness than the exertion.

    “–go to my suite and fetch my jewelry box. I’ll pick out pieces for Lady Alphena while she’s getting into her synthesis.”

    “I’ve set out the violet one, your ladyship,” Florina said. “It would be ever so nice with a set of amethyst ear drops.”

    Hedia looked at the maid. She whined like a stray cat, but that was a good suggestion.

    “Yes,” she said. “I believe I have a pair that will work.” Then, to Alphena, “Come dear. This is really quite important.”

    Alphena allowed herself to be guided back into her room by a gentle touch, though she looked back over her shoulder once. Hedia wasn’t approaching the limits of her patience because she couldn’t allow herself to lash out in these circumstances, but she was certainly finding the business trying.

    The girl doesn’t understand. I must remember that the girl doesn’t understand.

    “Mother, did you notice the servants with the senator who just came?” Alphena said.

    Hedia had untied the simple sash as they entered the suite. Now she lifted the tunic over Alphena’s head, ignoring the girl’s squeak.

    “Yes, dear,” Hedia said. “Now, be quiet for a moment why the family needs you at dinner as soon as possible.”

    “I don’t see why–” Alphena said, her voice muffled until Hedia flung the tunic toward a corner of the room.

    “Be quiet!” Hedia repeated. “The senator who arrived uninvited is Marcus Tardus. He is not your father’s friend. He–”

    “But–”

    “Be quiet!”

    Florina and five other maids–unexpectedly junior to Florina, whom Alphena had suddenly chosen to make her permanent attendant–were holding the violet dinner dress and a variety of possible undergarments. They had no idea of how Lady Hedia would choose to display her daughter, and they were rightly worried at what would happen to them if they guessed wrong.

    Alphena had flashed angry, but she had quickly controlled that. Now she radiated a mixture of concern and defiance.

    She’s learned to trust me, Hedia thought. Thank Venus for that mercy.

    “Tardus announced that he would leave because he saw that your father and his senatorial friend wanted to have a private meeting,” Hedia said. “Do you understand what that means?”

    Alphena’s mouth dropped open. “But that’s crazy!” she said, showing–rather to her mother’s surprise–that she did understand the threat. “Saxa wouldn’t plot against the Emperor. He’d never do that!”

    “No, he wouldn’t,” Hedia agreed grimly, “but it’s very hard to prove that you haven’t done something. I prefer not to take that chance, so I invited Tardus to join us.”

    The notion of wealthy senators plotting to overthrow the Emperor might not seem crazy to someone who didn’t know Saxa personally; and the Emperor must certainly was crazy on the subject of possible threats to his life and government. A whisper in the wrong ear–which could be any ear in Carce nowadays–could mean a visit from the German Bodyguard and a quick execution in the basement of their barracks.

    “But me?” Alphena said. She wasn’t protesting now, and her curiosity was reasonable.

    “One moment,” Hedia said. To the maid holding the black bandeau and briefs she said, “Do you have gray?”

    The maid–all the maids–looked stricken.

    “Never mind,” Hedia snapped. “Syra, bring a set of mine, they’ll do in a pinch. And bring Lucilla too. There isn’t time to do the hair properly, but Lucilla can manage something.”

    “Your ladyship, they’re here,” Syra said. “The clothes too.”

    Hedia looked around in surprise. At least a dozen of her personal servants–the line extended out onto the walkway–waited with undergarments ranging from pale gray-blue to dark gray, plus two caskets of jewelry and apparently–this was beyond the doorway–wraps and stoles.

    She chirped a laugh despite the tension. Her staff had instantly realized what Hedia had forgotten: Alphena’s wardrobe contained nothing suitable for formal occasions except the silk dinner tunics that Abinnaeus had delivered the day before. Why, up until a moment ago the girl had been wearing a single knee-length tunic as though she were a field hand!

    “Yes,” Hedia said aloud. She pointed to the palest gray combination and said, “Those.”

    Maids began to dress the girl. Her staff had taken over from Alphena’s. Florina seemed briefly to have considered arguing. That wouldn’t have been a good idea, because Hedia would have welcomed a way to reduce tension.

 

---

 

    “As for why you and I will be present,” Hedia said, feeling herself relax as her staff transformed Alphena from hoyden to young lady, “well, perhaps we needn’t be, but this isn’t a situation that I want to be blasé about. Nobody has ever imagined that I give a hoot about any government official–”

    She paused, considered, and went on with a wicked grin, “Except in some cases for what they have between their legs. And you, my dear, have the reputation of being even less political than I am.”

    “Oh,” said Alphena as the synthesis drifted over her like a violet cloud. “I guess I see.”

    Maids cinched the thin silk under her bosom. She looked at Hedia and with a perfectly straight face and said, “I’ll be sure to talk to Tardus about the fine points of swordsmanship, then.”

    Hedia’s expression froze. Then she realized the girl was joking and burst into laughter.

    “Here,” she said, extending her arms to Alphena. “Hold me and raise your feet one at a time so that they can put your slippers on.”

    The girl’s feet were too wide for Hedia’s shoes, but she had a pair of black cut-work sandals which would do. I really must get her properly outfitted, tomorrow if possible!

    “Then as soon as Florina–”

    The maid had done a creditable job in caring for her mistress, given her limited resources. Hedia was making a point of not denigrating her in front of the other servants.

    “–puts in the amethyst ear drops, we’ll be ready to go.”

    Though Hedia hadn’t expected to eat with her husband tonight, she had dressed to greet the guests. That was a blessing, though she had enough experience with throwing on–or throwing back on–formal clothing in a hurry that she could have managed.

    Alphena raised her other foot. “But mother?” she said. “Those men with Tardus? I’ve seen them before.”

    “Yes,” Hedia said, frowning slightly at the return of a matter of no importance. “They were with him in the theater. I noticed them at the time.”

    She stepped back and looked at her daughter, then beamed. “You look lovely, dear. Just lovely! Now, let’s join the men.”

    Alphena followed without protest, but as they reached the main staircase she said, “Mother, I’ve seen them somewhere else than the theater. And I don’t think I like them.”

 

---

 

    Alphena was excited to be dressed up like this–like a fine lady. She wouldn’t have admitted that to a soul, certainly not to her stepmother and only in the very depths of her heart to herself, but she knew it was true.

    “I don’t see why I have to wear such a long tunic, though,” she muttered to Hedia as they walked arm-in-arm down the mezzanine corridor toward the main stairs.

    “Tush, dear,” Hedia said easily. “Be thankful that you’re not a man and having to wear a toga. And besides–”

    She glanced to the side, assessing Alphena with the dispassionate precision of a trainer judging a coffle of gladiators.

    “–you look quite nice in a long tunic. You move gracefully, and the sway of the fabric sets that off.”

    Alphena glowed with pleasure, though that embarrassed her. “Ah…,” she said. “Ah, thank you, mother.”

    They reached the staircase. There was a flurry of motion within the cloud of servants surrounding them. Two maids snatched the front hem of Hedia’s synthesis–it was a white as pure as sunlight on marble–and lifted it slightly as they skipped up the steps ahead of her; two more raised the back.

    Oh! thought Alphena. She hadn’t considered the difficulties of going up or down stairs in a garment that broke at her ankles. I could have tripped and fallen! Oh, gods, that would have been awful!

    Then she wondered if Corylus would be dining with them. That thought made her so angry that she glared. She wasn’t really looking at anything, but one of the maids her lifting the front of her skirt began to whimper. The girl didn’t stumble or let the fabric slip, but the sound brought Alphena back to an awareness of her surroundings.

    Servants had set poles supporting vertical wicker lattices on the west side of the dining alcove. Lamps would be necessary before the meal was over, but for the moment the shades were keeping the sun out of the eyes of the diners on the central, west-facing couch. Priscus, the chief guest, reclined there, and a place for Tardus had been added below him.

    Saxa was at the head of the left-hand couch, adjacent to Priscus. Below him were Varus and the teacher, Pandareus.

    Corylus wasn’t present. There was no reason he should have been. It was just a possibility, an obvious thing to wonder about, that was all.

    There was no bench on the right end. Instead, two chairs had been placed there with little side tables to hold the dishes or cup that the diner wasn’t using at the moment.

    Alphena looked at the arrangement. Because I’m a girl!

    “I prefer to recline at dinner,” she said to the dining room steward. She didn’t know his name; he was plump and had a touch of red in his thinning hair. “Set me a place on the couch beside Lord Tardus.”

    “My dear?” said her father, looking up with a startled-rabbit expression. “I think you’d, that is–”

    “Nonsense, dear heart,” Hedia said cheerfully to her husband. “There’s nothing improper about a lady reclining at dinner. I just prefer to sit upright.”

    Turning to the steward she said, “Borysthenes, remove one of the chairs and set a place for my daughter on the couch.”

    Servants were already bustling; when Lady Hedia gave directions, you obeyed or you wished you had. To the table generally she said, “I’m sure their lordships will be pleased to be joined by youth and beauty.”

    Priscus, twisting his body to better look toward the two women, chuckled. “If I were a great deal younger, your ladyship,” he said, “I’d be tempted to show you just how much I would appreciate that opportunity. Younger or drunker.”

    Hedia laughed like a string of little silver chimes. “Perhaps a trifle younger, Marcus dear,” she said.

    Alphena settled onto the end of the couch, what would have been the middle couch if there had been the normal three. She took most of her meals in her suite, sitting upright. She’d only complained because her father had directed her to sit instead of reclining, and now she realized–as an instant’s thought should have told her–that it was her stepmother, not Saxa, who had decided that.

    She’d seen an insult where there hadn’t been one. She had to stop doing that and not pick unnecessary fights.

    Alphena grinned. She wasn’t sure what the vision in the theater meant, but it seemed likely that it involved enough fighting for even the most pugnacious of young ladies.

    The servants had finished washing the guests’ feet, and the first round of wine was being served from the mixing table. “We’re having it three to one, Hedia,” said Priscus with heavy gallantry. “I fear that if it were stronger, I’d find myself too ensorcelled by your beauty to remember the proprieties.”

    Hedia and–a moment later–Saxa laughed. Tardus sipped his wine and said, “You mention sorcery, Marcus Tardus. Were you in the Theater of Pompey for our host’s gift, The Conquest of Lusitania by Hercules? For it certainly seemed to me that the impresario was a magician to have achieved those effects. Quite marvelous, didn’t you all think?”

    Priscus turned to look at his neighbor on the couch. “I wasn’t present, no,” he said, “but I’ve certainly heard enthusiastic descriptions. I suppose–”

    He gestured toward the teacher with a broad grin.

    “–that the impresario was one of you clever Greeks, eh Pandareus, my friend?”

    “So I’ve been told,” Pandareus said blandly.

    “He was indeed, Lord Priscus,” Varus said, sounding calmly interested. “Sometimes I wish I were more of an engineer so that I could understand such wonders, but my talents seem to limited to literature. And even in literature I’m only a spectator, I have learned.”

 

---

 

    He smiled, but Alphena saw momentary wistfulness in her brother’s expression.

    Alphena didn’t know anything about rhetoric, but she understood dueling better than anyone else present. As servants placed a tray with deviled eggs and olives on the little table in the U of the diners, she said, “I noticed the attendants with you during the performance, Lord Tardus. If I noticed correctly, they’re with you tonight as well. I wonder where you found them?”

    Tardus turned his head in surprise. “How interesting that you should ask, Lady Alphena,” he said. He coughed onto the back of his hand, gathering time to respond.

    Alphena didn’t smile, but she felt fiercely triumphant. I pinked you that time, didn’t I, you old weasel!

    Tardus had been pushing her father to talk about something that he didn’t want to. Indeed, Alphena wasn’t sure that Saxa had any more knowledge of what had happened in the theater than Agrippinus, who’d been here in the house at the time, did. Perhaps Tardus was reacting to the embarrassing visit her father and brother had made to him the day before, but perhaps there was more to his curiosity.

    Regardless, Saxa was her father. She wasn’t going to let this old man badger him when simply asking a blunt question would change the dynamic of the bout. Nobody expected perfect deportment and courtesy from Saxa’s boyish daughter, after all.

    “Well, strictly speaking, I met them when they arrived here in Carce eight days ago,” Tardus said, looking over his shoulder at Alphena. His gaze had a hard fixity that she hadn’t expected from so old a man. “But as to where they’re from, they say ‘the Western Isles.’”

    “The Hesperides?” Saxa said, cocking his head with interest. “What language do they speak, if I may ask?”

    “They speak Greek to me,” Tardus said. He spoke with studied care, quite different from the aggressiveness with which he had begun the discussion. “I suppose they have some language of their own, but I haven’t heard them speaking it. And as for the Hesperides–that isn’t their name for their home. Perhaps their ‘Western Isles’ are what Hesiod meant when he spoke of the Hesperides, but apart from summoning him from the dead, I don’t see how we could be sure.”

    “And even then,” said Pandareus, “we couldn’t be sure without teaching him modern geography first. In any event, I don’t think–”

    He smiled faintly. Alphena decided that her brother’s teacher was joking, which she hadn’t been sure of at the start.

    “–that I would choose to start my discussion there if I had the opportunity. I would be much more interested in details of how he created his masterpieces. The style of the Theogony is quite different, it seems to me, from that of The Works and Days; more different than I would have expected to come from the pen–the throat, rather–of a single man.”

    Priscus and Varus both laughed; Saxa blinked, then grinned weakly. Tardus was frowning, which was understandable, but there still seemed to be something odd about his demeanor.

    The discussion turned to how much Hesiod and Homer knew know about geography. Tardus listened glumly.

    Alphena grinned. She supposed the situation should please her: her mother’s plan to convince Tardus that this was simply a literary evening was a resounding success. She was utterly, bone-deep, bored, however.

    She took a olive from the dish, then paused and looked at it more closely. A man’s face had been carved into it. She popped the olive into her mouth–it was stuffed with anchovy paste, a startling but tasty combination–and picked another one, green this time. The features were female.

    “I wonder, Marcus Tardus?” Hedia said in a break as the fish course came in. “Are your Hesperians nobles from their own country who should be dining here instead of down with the servants?”

    “I don’t…,” Tardus said, clearly taken aback. “That is, I believe they are priests or wise men rather than, ah, nobles. From what they say. But they didn’t wish to call attention to themselves.”

    Are you still pleased that you blackmailed your way into this dinner, Lord Tardus? Alphena wondered. She took what looked like a small crab, complete to the stalked eyes; it proved to be a thin pastry shell stuffed with a spicy fish paste.

    “If I may ask, Lord Tardus?” Pandareus said. “You suggest that your guests are the western equivalent of the Magi. The Magi ruled Persia until Darius broke their power in a coup, and even now under the Arsacids they have a great deal of authority. They are certainly as worthy of a place at Gaius Saxa’s table as–”

    He curled his hand inward.

    “–a professor of rhetoric.”

    Pandareus had done full justice to the eggs and olives, and he was now attacking a seeming mullet molded from minced crabmeat. Alphena decided that his lanky frame was a result of privation rather than ascetic philosophy.

    “I don’t know what political arrangements exist in the Western Isles!” Tardus said. “The, the… my guests, that is, they said that they would prefer to eat with the servants. They didn’t expect to arouse comment, as I understand it. They’ve come to Carce to observe our customs, and they hoped to do that without their presence affecting those observations.”

    The conversation drifted back to literature when Saxa mentioned Plato’s conceit of a Scythian visitor to comment on Athenian society. Tardus ate morosely without adding much to the discussion of fictitious Brahmins, Magi and Egyptians.

    Alphena didn’t speak either. She neither knew nor cared anything about the books the men were talking about; and besides, she was puzzling over the Westerners themselves.

    Alphena knew them from somewhere; she’d felt that when time she saw them in the theater. That didn’t seem possible if they had arrived so recently in Carce, though; and if Tardus was lying–why should he be on a question like that?–then it still didn’t explain why she had no recollection of where she had seen the trio.

    The talk droned on. The men might as well have been chattering in Persian for how much Alphena could understand of it.

    She thought of the theater and her vision of a man tearing his way through the sparkling city. She thought of the way he had looked at her, and the recognition she had felt in his gaze as well.

    Alphena ate mechanically, and thought. She almost could remember.

 

---

 

    “I see you approve of father’s cook, master,” Varus said in a low voice to Pandareus, who had just taken another fig-pecker stuffed with a paste of figs and walnuts before being grilled.

    “My dear student,” Pandareus said, pausing with the skewer just short of his mouth. “For a man who can’t always afford sausage with his porridge, this meal is the very ambrosia of the gods.”

    He paused, pursing his lips in thought. “I misspoke,” he said. “This meal would be the true ambrosia to anyone, whatever his background.”

    Varus smiled. The meal had been both pleasant and stimulating, which was a surprise after Tardus had invited himself to join them. Not that Tardus would have been an improper guest under normal circumstances, given his background and interests, but these circumstances were scarcely normal.

    He glanced at his stepmother, sitting primly across from him as she nibbled a quail drumstick in which the bone had been replaced by a breadstick and the meat chopped with spices. Thank Jupiter for Hedia! Varus himself hadn’t understood the threat until Priscus whispered an explanation while they mounted the stairs together.

    “I am a collector of objects which are supposed to have, ah, spiritual properties, Gaius Saxa,” Tardus said. “I suppose you are aware of that?”

    He means “magical properties,” Varus translated. But magic could be seen as a means of threatening an Emperor who was reputed to be something of a magician and astrologer himself, whereas “spiritual” had no dangerous connotations.

 

---

 

    “I believe many of Carce’s older families have objects from the time when the city was rising to greatness,” Saxa said. His tone was more cautious than Varus would have expected. His father probably didn’t know what was going on, but at least he was beginning to realize that there was cause for concern. “I’m not surprised that the Sempronii Tardi do. We of the Family Alphenus do also.”

    “Yes, I had heard that,” Tardus said. “I believe that you have in your collection a murrhine tube, do you not? About as big around as my thumb?”

    Pandareus had reached for another fig-pecker. Now he withdrew his hand and looked sharply from Tardus to Saxa.

    “I do, yes,” said Saxa. “It was sent me recently by Gnaeus Rusticus, whom I have been appointed to succeed as governor of Lusitania. He, ah, said he knew that I was interested in such things, so he was giving it to me in a gesture of goodwill and thankfulness that I was allowing him to come home.”

    “Might I see the object, if you please?” Tardus said. “I have a fondness for murrhine myself and I would like to observe the structure of the grain.”

    “I suppose…,” Saxa began. Then, as forcefully as he ever got, “Yes, of course. Simplex–”

    One of the footmen standing near his couch.

    “–go to the library and tell Alexandros to bring me the murrhine tube from Rusticus. Hurry now!”

    “Have you decided to go to Lusitania in person, Gaius?” Priscus said. Varus wondered if he was trying to change the subject. “I ask because it has the reputation of being a challenging post, all mountains and mule tracks; and you’re no more of the active, outdoor type that I am myself.”

    He laughed and patted his belly. He had been eating just as enthusiastically as Pandareus had, and he’d been drinking quite a lot of the wine that the teacher had been avoiding.

    Saxa smiled weakly. “In truth,” he said, “I’ve been considering governing through a vicar, Quinctius Rufus. A very solid man, you know; a Knight of Carce who has served as legate of a legion in Upper Germany. But I suppose Rusticus wouldn’t have known that.”

    “I do hope you’ll stay in Carce, dear lord and master,” Hedia said. “My heart would waste away if you were to go into exile off on the shore of Ocean.”

    She sounded sincere. Varus, though by no means a man of the world, was at least knowledgeable enough to know to doubt anything his stepmother might say to a man.

    “I’ve requested an appointment with the Emperor to discuss the matter,” Saxa said. “Of course his will–that is, the will of the People, expressed through the Emperor–is paramount, but I’m hoping that, well….”

    He fluttered his hands with a wan grin.

    “As Marcus Priscus says, I’m not well suited for clambering across the spines of mountains on muleback, which I gather would be required for any official in Lusitania.”

    Alexandros, the chief librarian, appeared, leading two attendants who carried a narrow wooden casket about the length of a woman’s forearm. The container’s weight didn’t require two men to carry it, but the librarian’s rank did.

    Corylus would like the box. He would know the kind of wood it was, too, with that lovely swirling grain.

    Alexandros was a corpulent man, and rushing up the stairs from the library had set him to wheezing. As he approached, Borysthenes signaled to a pair of his juniors who snatched the table holding the tray of fowls out of the space in front of the diners.

    The librarian was an impeccable servant, with a good grounding in literature and a flawless memory regarding where things were filed. The only way to locate a scroll was to remember where in which basket it had been stored. This was a matter of some difficulty for Saxa’s library of over three hundred books, but Priscus was reputed to own nearly a thousand; his librarian must be very good.

    “Your lordship,” said Alexandros, bowing, “we have brought the curio which you requested.”

    The two attendants knelt before Saxa. The librarian lifted the lid of the casket–it was separate rather than hinged–to display the blue-and-yellow crystals of a murrhine tube as long as a large man’s thumb and as thick as two thumbs together; the hollow center was only half that diameter.

    Saxa touched the tube, then gestured toward Tardus on the central couch. The attendants shifted to face the guest.

    “Where does your librarian come from?” Pandareus whispered, his lips close to Varus’ ear.

    Varus turned and whispered, “He’s a Greek from Gaza, I believe. From somewhere in Syria, at any rate.”

    “Ah,” said Pandareus. “He’s Jewish, unless I’m badly mistaken. His trying to pass for Greek explains that odd accent.”

    Varus hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the librarian’s accent, either the Latin he spoke to members of the family or the Greek he rattled off to other servants from the East. He didn’t doubt Pandareus’ assessment, though. The subtleties of speech were as much a rhetorician’s stock in trade as was the literature of which rhetoric was a branch.

    Tardus used his thumb and forefinger to lift the tube from its velvet-lined container. The murrhine had a soapy sheen in the lamplight. The material came from Britannia, generally worked into the form of whimsies like this tube.

    Occasionally traders penetrated the interior of the island and convinced the savages to turn murrhine into cups or tabletops for which the aristocrats of Carce would pay astronomical amounts, but that was a difficult and dangerous business. The Britons were headhunters, as their Gallic kinsmen had been two generations before. Caesar’s raid into the island hadn’t been enough to civilize them out of the practice.

    A warrior who took the head of a foreign trader didn’t have to worry about the victim’s family returning the favor before long. The difficulties that caused for commerce weren’t a pressing concern to the island’s tattooed savages.

    “That’s odd, Gaius,” Priscus said, staring at the object which the man beside him held. “Bring a lamp closer. The ends–”

    He pointed, though he didn’t attempt to take the tube from Tardus.

    “The one end is cut and polished, you can see the way they radiused it. But the other seems to have been melted, doesn’t it? Cut with a hot knife, but how hot to melt stone?”

    “Whose tomb did this come from, Gaius Saxa?” Tardus said, looking from the murrhine to his host.

    “I don’t know that it did come from a tomb,” Saxa said. He drew his lips in, then let them out again.

    “Rusticus said some of his soldiers dug into a cairn on a headland over looking the Ocean,” he continued with an uncomfortable expression. “They were looking for gold, but all they found was splinters of bone and this. It may be that it was a tomb, but a very ancient one. They brought it to Rusticus, and he gave it to me.”

    “I see,” said Tardus. He weighed the tube in his hands before him, but he didn’t seem to be looking at it.

    As best Varus could tell in the lamplight, the old senator was lost in another world. His mouth seemed to go slack momentarily. Is he having a fit?

    Tardus roused himself abruptly. He blinked twice and his body trembled.

    “Well!” he said. He didn’t return the murrhine tube to its box. “Gaius Saxa, thank you for returning in so lavish a fashion the hospitality I showed when you and Lord Varus visited me. I’m not a young man any longer and I wasn’t given to late hours even when I was, so I think I’ll take my leave now.”

    “A colleague of your learning is always welcome, Marcus Tardus,” Saxa said in obvious relief. “Perhaps soon we can exchange visits in a more, well, regular fashion.”

    Tardus rose to a sitting position on the back of the couch, then stood. He still held the tube. Varus saw his teacher’s expression harden as he watched what was happening.

 

---

 

    “If I may, Saxa,” Tardus said, “I’ll borrow this tube for a day or two. I’d like to compare it with–”

    “Lord Saxa!” Pandareus said. Varus was as startled as if a squeak of protest had come from the carved olive he was lifting to his mouth. “I know it isn’t my place to speak, but I would appreciate it–”

    “It most certainly isn’t the place of a snivelling Greek to inject himself into a discussion between senators of Carce!” Tardus said. He bent his hands to his breast, still clutching the murrhine.

    “Father, you mustn’t let go of that thing,” Alphena said in a carrying tone. “I have an idea for the most darling little ornament for my hair. I’m becoming–”

    She rose gracefully to her feet. Standing, she blocked Tardus’ natural path from the dining alcove.

    “–very much the fine lady, don’t you think?”

    She fluffed her hair with the fingertips of her left hand. She really is quite attractive, Varus realized in surprise.

    Alphena reached for the murrhine tube; Tardus hunched back, scowling fiercely. Priscus was leaning forward to whisper to Saxa on the adjacent couch.

    Varus wondered if he should stand. Is Alphena going to kick him in the crotch? No, that’s more the sort of thing that mother–

    Hedia rose and stepped forward from her chair, her right hand outstretched. Alexandros and his attendants slid out of her way like cork dolls bobbing in the wake of a trireme.

    “I’m so sorry, Marcus Tardus,” she said in a cheery voice. “I know you’ve heard that our daughter is a shameless tomboy and terribly spoiled, but my lord and I love her very much. I’m afraid I’ll have to take the bauble now. Perhaps when fashions change, dear Alphena will allow you to borrow it.”

    Tardus stiffened, then sagged and opened his hands. Varus knew from experience that his stepmother had a stare like a dagger point when she chose to use it.

    Hedia took the tube, then replaced it on its velvet bed and closed the box. Alphena stepped aside. Tardus scuttled past her, then walked briskly toward the stairs with his waiting attendants falling in ahead and behind him. The remaining diners watched him go in silence.

    Hedia embraced Alphena. “We do love you, daughter,” she said. “You are such a clever young lady!

 

---

 

    Corylus picked up the cornelwood staff that leaned beside the door during daytime. When he went out at night, he carried it.

    Carce at night was similar to the forests on the German side of the Rhine. A healthy young man who kept his eyes and ears open probably wouldn’t have any trouble; but if trouble did crop up, you’d best have something besides your bare hands available to deal with it.

    “Sure you wouldn’t like me to come along, lad?” Pulto said. “I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs.”

    That was a lie. Corylus knew that the old servant’s knees had been giving him trouble, and the last thing he needed was to lace his hobnailed sandals back on and tramp over the stone-paved streets with a youth who wasn’t ready to settle in for the night.

    “Keep your wife company, old friend,” he said. “I’m just going to sit in Demetrius’ yard and relax for a bit. I’ve got a declamation to work on, you know.”

    “Wouldn’t you–” Anna said.

    Corylus raised his left hand palm out to stop her. “Little Mother,” he said, “I’m not hungry. If I get hungry, I’ll have a sausage roll at the Cockerel on the corner. Don’t worry, you two.”

    He slipped out the door quickly. Back in the suite, his servants were arguing about the cook shop’s sausages. Pulto held that regardless of what Spica, the owner, put in them, they tasted better than a lot of what he or the boy either one had eaten on the Danube.

    A pair of beggars were huddled on the second floor landing. They were regulars; they scrunched to the side when they saw who was coming down and one of them, an old soldier, croaked, “Bless you, Master Corylus.”

    Corylus passed with a nod. Anna had probably seen to it that the fellow had eaten today. He was a former Batavian auxiliary whose Latin was still slurred with the marshes at the mouth of the Rhine; but he’d been places that Pulto and the Old Master had been, and he wouldn’t go hungry while scraps remained in the suite.

    Corylus stepped into the street and took his bearings. Someone moved in the shadows opposite; a quick waggle of the staff let the moonlight shimmer on the pale hardwood. The movement ceased.

    Smiling, Corylus strode westward, toward the center of Carce. Half a block down, a large jobbing nursery filled a site large enough for an apartment block. A crew was unloading root-balled rose bushes from an ox-drawn wagon.

    It would have been an easy enough task if the roses had been pruned back severely, but wealthy customers didn’t want to wait till next year for their plantings to bloom. By definition, anybody who owned a house with a garden in Carce was wealthy. The workmen were cursing as canes whipped and caught them unexpectedly as they moved the bushes.

    “Where’s Demetrius?” Corylus said as he approached.

    The man on his side of the tailgate turned his head and snarled, “We’re closed! Come back in the bloody morning!”

    He was a new purchase. The thorn slash across his forehead was still oozing despite his attempt to blot it with the sleeve of his tunic.

    “You stupid sod, that’s Master Corylus!” his partner said. “Do you want the back flayed off you too? Go on back, sir. The master’s working on the accounts back in the shed, like usual.”

    Corylus walked through the crowded lot, feeling the tension recede. Not disappear; it was still waiting out in the night. But the presence of bushes and saplings hedged him away from the unseen dangers, the way they had insulated him from the pressures of Carce when he first came here to take classes under Pandareus of Athens.

    He wasn’t a peasant who grew up in a rural hamlet: the military bases of his youth were crowded, boisterous, and brutal. Legionaries lived as tightly together as the poor on the top floors of tenements in Carce.

    But the total number of people gathered into this one city had stunned Corylus. The entire army which guarded the frontiers of the Empire was about 300,000 men, including the auxiliaries who were not citizens. There were far more residents in Carce than that.

    A single lamp burned in the office, one end of the shed along the back of the lot where tools and shade plants were stored. Demetrius, a Syrian Greek, was usually there; Corylus suspected he slept in the office occasionally. He had married his wife while they both were slaves, but with freedom and wealth she had become increasingly concerned about status and appearances. Demetrius simply loved plants and having his hands in dirt, which made time spent in his luxurious apartment a strain.

    “Granus?” Demetrius called. “Have you got those bushes–”

    “It’s just me visiting,” Corylus said as he stepped through the doorway.

    Demetrius grinned over the writing desk at which he worked standing. Two clerks were reading aloud invoices written in ink on potsherds; he was jotting the totals down on papyrus.

    “Oh, you’re always welcome, Publius,” Demetrius said. “Say, I’ve got some apple grafts I’d like you to cast an eye over. I didn’t have a chance to see them when they were delivered, and I’m not sure about the technique. They’re end-butted on the twigs. You’ve got the best eye for how a tree’s doing that I’ve ever seen.”

    I should, Corylus thought. My mother was a hazel sprite.

    Aloud he said, “I’ll take a look, sure. I just wanted to sit with something green for a while and work on a declamation. Is that all right?”

    “Any time, boy, any time,” Demetrius said cheerfully. “Say, you wouldn’t like a pomegranate tree at a good price, would you? I had an order for six, but there was only room for five in the garden when I delivered them and they sent one back. You could have it for my cost.”

    Corylus laughed. “I don’t think it’d fit on a third-floor balcony, my friend,” he said. “It’s a bit crowded with potted herbs as it is.”

 

---

 

    “Now, don’t turn it down till you see it,” Demetrius said. “Pomegranates need to be root bound to bear best, so it doesn’t take up as much room as you’d think. And the pots are nice glazed work, blue with birds and flowers. One of them’d dress your apartment up a treat!”

    “Sorry, Demetrius,” Corylus said. “Where’s the apples?”

    “On the west side of the lot,” Demetrius said, gesturing. Ever hopeful, he added, “And the pomegranate’s there too. I’ll bet she’d fit fine, boy.”

    Corylus made his way along the paths winding through the nursery stock. Demetrius brought only what he had under immediate contract into the city. Even so, his lot was stuffed to capacity.

    He imagined Anna hauling enough water for a tree up to the third floor. Well, she would organize it done as she did the household water already; other residents of the building, generally young women having problems with romance or with the results of romance, did the work that Anna’s arthritis didn’t permit her to accomplish herself. Corylus didn’t care what sort of charms and potions Anna provided in return, and Pulto didn’t want to know.

    There were four grafted trees. The trunks were probably crabapples and appeared healthy, and the grafts appeared to have been done well also. Demetrius mitered twigs onto branches, but these mortise cuts were clean, tight, and tied with strips of inner bark in a thoroughly satisfactory fashion.

    “I wonder how the gardener would like it if they cut his hands off and tied somebody else’s onto the stumps?” said the woman suddenly standing beside him.

    Corylus didn’t jump, but his head snapped around quickly. She was short, no more than five feet tall, and remarkably buxom. She wore a shift that was probably red or blue–moonlight didn’t bring out the color–but was so thin that her breasts might as well have been bare.

    “Ah, mistress?” he said. How did she creep up on me?

    Then he realized. “Oh,” he said. “You’re a dryad. Of one of these trees?”

    He gestured to the apples, looking furtively at her plump wrists. They seemed unblemished.

    Always before when Corylus had seen tree spirits, it was in the wake of great magic. Demetrius’ nursery was a simple business concern, unlike the back garden at Saxa’s house where the wizard Nemastes had worked spells that might have drowned the world in fire.

    “Them?” the sprite sneered. “Well, I like that! I’m not one of those drabs. I’m sure they’ll be giving themselves airs whenever they come out of that butchery, but they’ll still only be apples. I am a pomegranate.”

    She threw her head back. The movement didn’t exactly lift her breasts–that would have required a derrick–but it made them wobble enthusiastically.

    “Of course, Punica, I beg your pardon,” Corylus said. There at the end of the line of apples in terracotta transfer urns was a pomegranate tree in a fine glazed bowl, decorated with a garden scene. The pot was indeed very nice, but it was much smaller than Corylus had expected. The tree looked positively top-heavy.

    Oh. He blushed.

    “I was glad you came to see me,” Punica said. “I’ve been lonely.”

    She put her arm around his waist; he shifted sideways, recovering their previous separation. He cleared his throat and said, “I’m surprised to see you. That is, I don’t usually see, well….”

    He made a circular gesture with his left hand, the one that didn’t hold his staff.

    “It’s what you’re wearing,” the sprite said. “What’s in the glass.”

    She leaned forward and twitched the thong around Corylus’ neck, bringing the amulet out from under his tunic.

    “Not the hazelnut,” she said. “The other thing. And I wouldn’t care to be wearing it, I promise you; though since you’re half-hazel too, I suppose you’re all right.”

    “What?” said Corylus. He lifted the bead–it was the size of the last joint of his thumb–up to the quarter moon. He knew he was being silly as soon as he did that: the glass had barely shown internal shadows against the full sun, and now it was as black as a river pebble.

    He lowered the amulet. “What is it inside, Punica?” he asked.

    She shrugged impressively. “I told you I didn’t like it,” she said, moving closer again. “That’s all I want to know about it. I like you, though, Corylus. Why don’t you just take off–”

    She reached for the thong again. Corylus caught her hand and lowered it firmly to her side.

    “I don’t think so, Punica,” he said. “I–maybe I’ll come back. But right now, I have to get home.”

    “Oh, must you go?” she called as he squirmed between potted oleanders on one side and planter of fragrant parsley on the other.

    “Another time,” he murmured over his shoulder. He was old enough to have learned that nothing a man said on these occasions was going to be sufficient, so you might has well stop with bare politeness. He didn’t strictly owe Punica even that, except as to another living being; which Corylus believed should be enough to demand courtesy.

    The crew which had unloaded the wagon was in the office when Corylus returned there. Demetrius had sponged the injured slave’s forehead clean and was looking at it. The jagged tear didn’t seem serious without the wash of blood, though the fellow would probably have a scar. He hadn’t been much of a beauty to begin with.

    “The apples are going to be fine, Demetrius,” Corylus said. “Did you buy them from a new grower?”

    “No, I got a Gallic arborist myself, a freeman, and I hadn’t seen his grafts before,” the nurseryman said. “Ah–you slipped a girl in, sir?”

    Corylus understood the question, though it gave him a shock to hear it. “That’s all right, Demetrius,” he answered with forced calm. The workman must have heard him–and heard Punica as well, which meant the glass bead on his breast really did have power. “There’s no hole in your fence. But just put it out of your mind, all right?”

    “Sure, lad,” Demetrius said, relaxing a little. “It’s no problem, only I’d like to know if, you know, it comes up again.”

    Corylus cleared his throat. “I looked at the pomegranate too,” he said, “and I think I will take it. But not for me. Senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa has a house in the Carina. Do you know where it is?”

    “I can learn,” Demetrius said. “I don’t believe he’s bought from me in the past.”

    “He’s been letting me use his gym,” Corylus explained, though in fact he wasn’t sure that Saxa even knew his son was letting a friend use the training facility; certainly he didn’t care. “A pear tree in his back garden died. I thought I’d give him the pomegranate as a little thank you.”

    “I can get in a nice pear tree in forty-eight hours,” Demetrius said. “And if you’re worried about the price–”

    Corylus stopped him with a smile and a gesture. “I’m not,” he said truthfully, “but I’ve taken a liking to that pomegranate. Only–plant it in the ground, will you? I think it’ll be more comfortable if its roots have a chance to spread out.”

    Demetrius shrugged. “It won’t bear as well,” he said, “but I don’t suppose I’m going to change your mind about how to plant trees. Sure, I’ll send it over in the morning. Just one tree, Bello and Granus can carry it on a handbarrow so we don’t have to wait for nightfall to use a wagon.”

    “Send the bill to me,” Corylus said as he started toward the front gate. “I’ll clear it on the first of the month.”

    He wondered how Punica and Persica would get along. They’d squabble–the spirits of fruit trees tended to be self-centered and quarrelsome, in his experience–but he thought they’d both be happier than they would be alone.

    Corylus began to whistle as he crossed the street. He was ready to sleep now.

    Two men were running toward him; from the way one clutched his cloak to his side, he was using it to hide a sword–illegal to carry in the city and a bad sign anywhere except on the frontier. Corylus paused and put his back to the wall.

    “Lad, is that you?” Pulto called hoarsely.

    “Right!” Corylus said, relaxing again. He recognized the other man as a courier from Saxa’s household. “I’m glad it’s you.”

    “Well, turn right around,” Pulto said. “There’s trouble at the Senator’s house and Lord Varus said to bring you!”