A SHIP was loading at the Claudian dock. She was big for an ocean-goer, two-masted, her round black belly taking perhaps five hundred tons. The gilt sternpost, curved high over the steering oar fixtures in the form of a swan’s neck and head, also bespoke wealth. Lugo went over to inquire about her. Bound more or less this way, he had turned aside with the idea of seeing what went on at the waterfront. He made it his business to keep fully aware of the world around him.
The stevedores were slaves. Though the morning was cool, their bodies gleamed and reeked with sweat as they carried amphoras across the dock and up the gangplank, two men to each great jug. A breeze off the river mingled whiffs of fresh pitch from the ship with their odors. The foreman stood by, and him Lugo could approach.
“The Nereid,” he replied, “with wine, glassware, silks, and I don’t know what else, for Britannia. Her skipper wants to catch tomorrow’s early tide. Hoy, you!” His whip licked across a bare back. It was single-stranded and unloaded, but left a mark between shoulder blade and loincloth. “Move along, there!” The slave gave him a hopeless glower and trudged a little faster to his next burden at the warehouse. “Got to freshen ‘em pretty often,” the foreman explained. “They get out of shape and lazy, sitting around idle. Not enough to do any more.” He sighed. “Free men, you could lay off in these wretched times, and call back when you needed them. But if everybody’s in his station for life—”
“It’s a wonder this vessel is going,” Lugo said. “Won’t she draw pirates like flies to a carcass? I hear the Saxons and Scoti are turning the shores of Armorica into a blackened desert.”
“The House of the Caelii always was venturesome, and I guess there’s a big profit to be made when so few dare sail,” the foreman answered.
Lugo nodded, stroked his chin, and murmured, “M-m, sea rovers usually do seek their plunder on land. No doubt Nereid will carry guards as well as her crew being armed. If several barbarian craft came in sight, Scoti probably couldn’t climb that tall freeboard out of their currachs, and given any kind of wind, she can show her heels to Saxon galleys.”
“You talk like a mariner yourself. But you don’t look like one.” The foreman’s glance sharpened. Suspicion was the order of the day. He saw a medium-sized, wiry man of youthful appearance; face narrow and high in the cheekbones, curved nose, slightly oblique brown eyes; black hair and a neatly trimmed beard such as was coming into fashion; clean white tunic, blue raincloak with a cowl shoved back; stout sandals; staff in hand, though he walked lithely.
Lugo shrugged. “I’ve been around. And I enjoy talking to people. You, for instance.” He smiled. “Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, and a good day to you.”
“Go with God,” said the foreman, disarmed, and turned his attention back to the longshoremen.
Lugo sauntered on. When he came opposite the next gate, he stopped to admire the view eastward. His lashes snared sunlight and made bits of rainbow.
Before him flowed the Garumna, on its way to its confluence with the Duranius, their shared estuary, and the sea. Some two thousand shimmering feet across, the water bore several rowboats, a fishing smack bound upstream on oars with its catch, a gaudy spitsail above a slim yacht. Land on the far side reached low, intensely green; he saw the tawny walls and rosy tiles of two manor houses amidst their vineyards, while smoke blew in tatters from humbler roofs of thatch. Birds winged everywhere, robin, sparrow, crane, duck, a hawk on high, the startling blue of a kingfisher. He heard their calls as an overtone that skipped through the lapping and rustling of the river. It was hard to imagine that heathen Germani raged at the gates of Lugdunum, that the chief city of central Gallia might even now have fallen to diem, less than three hundred miles from here.
Or else it was all too easy to imagine. Lugo’s mouth tightened. Come along, he told himself. He was more prone to reverie than other men, with less excuse nowadays. This vicinity had been spared so far, but the handwriting on the wall grew plainer for him to read every year, as certain Jews he had known would have phrased it. He turned and re-entered the city.
The gate was minor, a sally port in the bulwarks whose towers and battlements stood foursquare around Burdigala. Beside his spear, a sentry leaned half asleep against the sun-warmed stones. He was an auxiliary, a German himself. The legions were in Italy or out toward the frontiers, and mere skeletons of what they had once been. Meanwhile barbarians like this wrung leave from the Emperors to settle in Roman lands. In return, they were supposed to obey the laws and furnish troops; but in Lugdunensis, for example, they had revolted.
Lugo passed through, across the open pomoerium, into a street that he recognized as Vindomarian Way. It twisted among buildings whose flat sides crowded out all but a strip of sky, the lumpiness of its cobblestones slickened by stinking offal, an obscure lane quite likely going back to ages .when only the Bituriges squatted here. However, Lugo had m the course of time taken care to learn the entire city, old as well as new quarters.
Not many people jostled him, and they for the most part Shabbily clad. Housewives chattered together while they reamed laundry to the river, pails of water from the nearest aqueduct outlet, baskets of vegetables gotten at a local mar-. A porter came by under a load well-nigh as heavy what was in the donkey cart he met; he and the driver, trying to get past each other. An apprentice fetching Wool for his master had stopped to jape with a girl. Two Countrymen in ancient-style coats and breeches, probably cattle drovers, made remarks so accented and full of Gallic words that Lugo could hardly understand what he overheard. A drunken man—a laborer to judge by his hands, out of work to judge by his condition—lurched along in search of a frolic or a fight; unemployment had become rife as die upheavals of the past decade cowed an already decaying commerce. A meretrix in pathetic, bedraggled finery, seeking customers even this early, brushed against Lugo. Except for laying a hand over the purse at his waist he ignored her. A hunchbacked beggar whined for alms in the name of Christ and then, when likewise ignored, tried Jupiter, Mithras, Isis, the Great Mother, and Celtic Epona; finally he screamed maledictions at Lugo’s back. Shockheaded children in grimy smocks ran their little errands or played their little games. For them he felt a tug of compassion.
His Levantine features marked him out among them all. Burdigala was cosmopolitan; Italy, Greece, Africa, Asia had poured blood into it. Yet most dwellers remained what then- forebears must always have been, strongly built, roundheaded, dark of hair but fair of skin. They spoke Latin with a nasal intonation he had never quite mastered.
A potter’s shop, its front open on the wares and whirr of roe wheel, showed him where he must turn onto broader Teutatis Street—which, lately, the bishop was trying to make its residents call after St. Johannes. It was his quickest route through this maze toward Mother Thornbesom’s Lane, where lived the one he sought. Rufus might not be at home, but was certainly not at work. The shipyard had had no orders for well over a year, and its men were now dependent on the state for their bread; circuses amounted to an occasional bear-baiting or the like. If Rufus was out, Lugo was prepared to stroll around inconspicuously till he came back. Lugo had learned patience.
He had gone a hundred yards farther when the new noise reached him. Others heard it too, halted, stiffened, listened with heads cocked and eyes slitted. The majority began retreating. Shopkeepers and apprentices made ready to close doors and shutters. A few men licked their chops and drifted in the direction of the sound. Turmoil called their kind to itself. The racket loudened, muffled by houses and contorted alleys but unmistakable. Lugo knew it of old, the deep, racking growl, the yelps and hoots. A crowd was hounding somebody.
He realized with a chill who the quarry must be. For a moment he paused. Was it worth the risk? Cordelia, the children, he and his family might have thirty or forty years ahead of them.
Resolution came. He should at least go see whether the situation was hopeless or not. He pulled the hood of his paenula over his head. Sewn to the edge was a veil, which he drew down. He saw reasonably well through the gauze, but it hid his face. Lugo had learned preparedness.
A military patrol might wonder at the sight and stop him for questioning. However, were a patrol in the neighborhood, that pack would not be after Rufus. Instead— Lugo’s mouth twisted briefly upward—Rufus might well be under arrest.
Lugo moved to intercept the oncoming tumult, as closely as he could judge. He went a trifle more quickly than the trouble seekers, not quickly enough to draw any special heed. The hood overshadowed the veil and blinkered sight of it; perhaps nobody noticed. Within himself he spoke ancient incantations against danger. Give fear no hold upon you, keep sinews loose and senses open, ready at every instant to flow with the rush of action. Calm, alert, supple; calm, alert, supple—
He came out on Hercules Place just as the hunted man did. A corroded bronze statue of die hero gave the small square its name. Several streets radiated thence. He who burst forth was stocky, his coarse features freckled, his thin hair and unkempt beard an unusual orange-red. The tunic that flapped around stout limbs was drenched and a-reek with sweat. Indeed this must be Rufus, Lugo saw, and “Rufus” must be a nickname.
The fugitive was built for strength, not speed. His pursuers swarmed close behind. They numbered about fifty, proletarians like him hi drab, oft-mended garments. Quite a few were women, locks gone Medusa wild around maenad faces. Most bore what weapons they could snatch, knife, hammer, stick, loose cobblestone. Through their baying tore words: “Sorcerer! ... Heathen! .... Satan—kill—“ A flung rock struck Rufus between the shoulders. He staggered and pounded on. His mouth stretched wide, his chest heaved, his eyes stared as if blinded.
Lugo’s gaze flickered. Sometimes he could not wait and see how things went, he must make an instant decision. He gauged the layout, distances, speeds, nature of the throng. Terror thrilled through the hatred they howled. The chance of rescue looked worth taking. If he failed, he might escape with injuries less than fatal; and those would soon heal.
“To me, Rufus!” he shouted. To the pack: “Halt! Hold off, you lawless dogs!”
The man in the lead snarled at him. Lugo brought hands near the middle of his staff. It was oak. He had drilled holes in the ends and filled them with lead. It whirred and smacked. The man screamed. He reeled aside. A broken rib, likely. Lugo’s weapon punched the next under the breastbone. Air whoofed from lungs. Lugo caught a third man across a kneecap. He shrieked his pain and flailed against two at his back. A woman swung a mop. Lugo fended it off and rapped her knuckles. Maybe he cracked a bone or two.
The crowd recoiled on itself, milled, moaned, gibbered. From behind his whirling, half invisible staff, Lugo grinned at them and at the rowdies who had appeared. “Go home,” he called. “Dare you take Caesar’s law in your own hands? Be off!”
Somebody threw a stone. It missed. Lugo laid a blow on the nearest scalp. He controlled its force. Matters were amply bad without producing corpses; those would provoke immediate official action. Nevertheless the wound bled spectacularly, sudden red brilliance over skin and pavement, a shock to behold.
Rufus’ gasps rattled. “Come along,” Lugo muttered. “Slow and steady. If we run, they’ll be after us again.” He backed off, still twirling the staff, still grinning his most wolfish. At the comer of vision, he saw Rufus sidle on his right. Good. The fellow had kept that much wit.
The hunters mumbled and gaped. The hurt among them ululated. Lugo entered the narrow street he had chosen. It bent around a tenement, and he had no more sight of Hercules. “Now we move,” he clipped, and turned around. “No, you fool.” He caught Rufus’ sleeve. “Don’t run. Walk.”
Such people as were present looked warily at them but didn’t interfere. Lugo ducked into the first alley he knew connected with a different street. When they were alone at the noisome middle of it, he said, “Stop.” He put his staff beneath an arm and reached for the fibula that held his cloak. “We’ll drape this over you.” He tucked the veil back inside the cowl before he covered his companion’s distinctive hair. “Very well. We are two peaceful men going about our business. Can you remember that?”
The artisan blinked from the hood. Sweat glistened in what light there was. “Who, who be you?” His voice quavered deep. “What you want?”
“I would like to save your life,” Lugo said coldly, “but I don’t propose to risk mine any further. Do as I say and we may yet make it to shelter.” When the other began in a dazed fashion to seem doubtful, Lugo added, “Go to the authorities if you wish. Go at once, before your dear neighbors pluck up courage and come in search. Tell the prefect you’re accused of sorcery. He’ll find out anyway. While you’re being interrogated under torture, you might think how you can prove your innocence. Sorcery is a capital offense, you know.”
“I am no more guilty of it than you are. I have a notion we can help each other. If you disagree, farewell. If not, come with me, and keep your mouth shut.”
Breath shuddered into the burly frame. Rufus drew the cloak close about him and shambled along.
His gait grew easier as they proceeded, for nothing untoward happened. They simply mingled with traffic. “You may think the world is ending,” Lugo remarked low, “but it was a purely local fuss. Nobody elsewhere has heard of it, or if anyone has, he doesn’t care. I’ve seen people go on with their everyday lives while the enemy was breaking down the gates.”
Rufus glanced at him, gulped, but preserved silence.
LUGO’S HOME was in the northwest quadrant, on the Street of the Sandalmakers, a quiet area. The house was unostentatious, rather old, stucco peeling off the concrete here and there. Lugo knocked. His majordomo opened the door; he kept only a few slaves, carefully chosen and winnowed over the years. “This man and I have confidential matters to discuss, Perseus,” he said. “He may be staying with us a while. I do not wish him disturbed in any way.”
The Cretan nodded and smiled his bland smile, “Understood, master,” he replied. “I will inform the rest.”
“We can trust them,” Lugo said aside to Rufus. “They know they have soft berths.” To Perseus: “As you can see— and smell—my friend has had a strenuous time. We’ll lodge him in the Low Room. Bring refreshments immediately; water as soon as you can heat a decent amount, with washcloth and towel; clean garb. Is the bed made up?”
“It always is, master.” The slave sounded a bit hurt. He considered. “As for raiment, yours will not fit. I’ll borrow from Durig. Shall I then purchase some?”
“Hold off on that,” Lugo decided. He might need all the cash he could scrape together in a hurry. Though not the debased small stuff. That was too bulky; one gold solidus equalled about fourteen thousand nummi. “Dung’s our handyman,” he explained to Rufus. “Otherwise we boast a gifted cook and a couple of maids. A modest household.” Homely details might soothe. He wanted Rufus fit to answer questions as soon as might be.
From the atrium they passed into a pleasant room, equally unpretentious, lighted by sunshine that leaded clerestory windows turned greenish. A mosaic at the center of the floor tiles depicted a panther surrounded by peacocks. Wooden panels set into the walls bore motifs more current, the Fish and Chi Rho among flowers, a large-eyed Good Shepherd. Since the reign of Constantine the Great it had been increasingly expedient to profess Christianity, which hereabouts had better be of the Catholic sort. Lugo remained a catechumen; baptism would have laid inconvenient obligations on him. Most believers put it off till late in life.
His wife had heard and come to meet him. “Welcome, dear,” she said happily. “You’re back fast.” Her gaze fell on Rufus and grew troubled.
“This man and I have urgent business,” Lugo told her. “It is highly confidential. Do you understand?”
She swallowed but nodded. “Hail and welcome,” she greeted in a subdued voice.
Brave girl, Lugo thought. It was hard to look away from her. Cordelia was nineteen, short but deliciously rounded, her features delicate and tips always slightly parted below a lustrous mass of brown hair. They had been married four years and she bad borne him two children thus far, both still alive. The marriage brought him certain useful connections, her father being a curial, though no dowry worth mentioning, the curial class being crushed between taxes and civic duties. More important to the couple, they had been drawn to each other, and wedlock became an ever higher delight.
“Marcus, meet Cordelia, my wife,” Lugo said. “Marcus” was a safely frequent name. Rufus bobbed his head and grunted. To her: “We must get busy at once. Perseus will see to the necessities. I’ll join you when I can.”
She stared after them as he guided his companion off. Did he hear her sigh? Abrupt fear stabbed. He had gone forth with hope aflutter in him, a hope so wild that he must keep denying it, scolding himself for it. Now he saw what the reality might lead to.
No, he would not think about that. Not immediately. One step, two steps, left foot, right foot, that was how to march through time.
The Low Room was downstairs, a part of the cellar that Lugo had had bricked off after he acquired this house. Such hideaways were common enough to draw scant attention. Often they were for prayer or private austerities. In Lugo’s tine of work, it was clear that he could have use for a place secure from eavesdroppers. The cell was about ten feet square and six high. Three tiny windows just under the ceiling gave on the peristyle garden at ground level. The glass in them was so thick and wavy as to block vision, but the tight that seeped through met whitewashed walls, making the gloom not too dense at this moment. Tallow candles lay on a shelf beside flint, steel, and tinder. Furnishings were a angle bed, a stool, and a chamber pot on the dirt floor.
“Sit down,” Lugo invited. “Rest. You’re safe, my friend, safe.”
Rufus hunched on the stool. He threw back the cowl but clutched the paenula around his tunic; the place was chilly. His red head lifted with a forlorn defiance. “Who the muck be you, anyhow?” he growled.
His host lounged back against the wall and smiled. “Flavius Lugo,” he said. “And you, I believe, are a shipyard carpenter, unemployed, generally called Rufus. What’s your real name?”
An obscenity was followed by: “What’s it matter to you?”
Lugo shrugged. “Little or nothing, I suppose. You could be more gracious toward me. That rabble would have had the life out of you.”
“And what’s that to you?” The retort was harsh. “Why’d you step in? Look here, I be no sorcerer. I want naught to do with magic or heathendom, me, a good Christian, a free Roman citizen.”
Lugo lifted a brow. “Have you absolutely never made an offering elsewhere than in church?” he murmured.
“Well, uh, well—Epona, when my wife was dying—“ Rufus half-rose. He bristled. “Dung o’ Cemunnos! Be you a sorcerer?”
Lugo raised a palm. His left hand moved the staff, slightly but meaningfully. “I am not. Nor can I read your mind. However, old ways die hard, even in the cities, and the countryside is mostly pagan and from your looks and speech I’d guess your family were Cadurci a generation or two ago, back in the hills above the Duranius Valley.”
Rufus lowered himself. For a minute he breathed hard. Then, piece by piece, he began to relax. A smile of sorts responded to Lugo’s. “My parents come o’ that tribe,” he rumbled. “My right name, uh, Cotuadun. Nobody calls me aught but Rufus any more. You be a sharp ‘un.”
“I make my living at it.”
“No Gaul you. Anybody might be a Flavius, but what’s ‘Lugo’? Where you from?”
“I’ve been settled hi Burdigala a fair number of years.” A knock on the plank door was handily timed. “Ah, here comes the excellent Perseus with those refreshments I ordered. I daresay you’ve slightly more need of them than I do.”
The majordomo brought a tray of wine and water flagons, cups, bread, cheese, olives in a bowl. He put it on the ground and, at Lugo’s wave, departed, closing the door behind him. Lugo sat down on the bed, reached, poured, offered Rufus a drink not much diluted. His own he watered well.
“Your health,” he proposed. “You pretty near lost it today.”
Rufus took a long swallow. “Ahhh! Bugger me if that don’t go good.” He squinted through the dusk at his rescuer. “Why’d you do it? What be I to you?”
“Well, if nothing else, those proles had no right to kill you. That’s the job of the state, after you’ve duly been found guilty—which I am sure you are not. It behooved me to enforce the law,”
“You knew me.”
Lugo sipped. The wine was Falernian, sweet on his tongue. “I knew of you,” he said. “Rumors had reached me. That’s natural. I keep track of what’s going on. I have my agents. Nothing to frighten you, no secret informers. But street urchins, for example, who earn a coin by bringing me word of anything interesting. I determined to seek you out and learn more. It’s lucky for you that that chanced to be exactly when and where I could snatch you from your fellow sons of toil.”
The question soughed through him: How many chances had he missed, by what slender margins, throughout all the years? He did not share the widespread present-day faith in astrology. It seemed likeliest to him that sheer accident ruled the world. Perhaps today the dice had been due to roll in his favor.
//the game was real, //anyone like him existed, had ever existed, anywhere under the sky.
Rufus’ head thrust forward from the heavy shoulders. “Why did you?” he grated. “What the dung be you after?”
He needed calming down. Lugo check-reined the eagerness within himself, that was half fear. “Drink your wine,” he said. “Listen, and I’ll explain.
“This house may have led you to think I’m a curial, or a mildly prosperous shopkeeper, or something of that kind. I’m not.” Had not been for a long while. Diocletian’s decree had supposedly frozen everybody into the status to which they were born, including the middle classes. But rather than be crushed, grain by grain, between the stones of taxation, regulation, worthless currency, moribund trade, more and more were fleeing. They slipped off, changed their names, became serfs or outright slaves, illegal itinerant la- borers and mountebanks; some joined the Bacaudae whose bandit gangs terrorized the rural outback, some actually sought to the barbarians. Lugo had made better arrangements for himself, well in advance of need. He was accustomed to looking ahead.
“Fm currently in the pay of one Aurelian, a senator in this city,” he went on.
Hostility sparked. “I heard about him.”
Lugo shrugged again. “So he bribed his way into that rank, and even among his colleagues is monumentally corrupt. What of it? He’s an able man and understands that it’s wise to be loyal to those who serve him. Senators aren’t allowed to engage in commerce, you may know, but he has varied interests. That calls for intermediaries who are not mere figureheads. I come and go for him, to and fro, sniffing out dangers and possibilities, bearing messages, executing tasks that require discretion, giving advice when appropriate. There are worse stations in life. In fact, there are less honorable ones.”
“What’s Aurelian want with me?” Rufus asked uneasily.
“Nothing. He’s never heard of you. Fate willing, he never shall. I sought you out on my own account. We may be of very great value to each other.” Lugo sharpened his tone. “I make no threats. If we cannot work together but you have done your best to cooperate with me, I can at least get you smuggled out of Burdigala to someplace where you can start over. Remember, you owe me your life. If I abandon you, you’re a dead man.”
Sullenness and the gesture of the fig: “They’ll know you hid me here.”
“Why, I’ll tell them myself,” Lugo declared coolly. “As a solid citizen, I did not want you unlawfully slaughtered, but I did feel it incumbent on me to interview you in private, draw you out—Hold!” He had set his cup on the ground as he talked, expecting Rufus might lunge. Now he gripped the staff in both hands. “Stay right on that stool, boy. You’re sturdy, but you’ve seen what I can do with this.”
Rufus crouched back.
Lugo laughed. “That’s better. Don’t be so damned edgy. I really don’t want to cause you any harm. Let me repeat, if you’ll be honest with me and do as I say, the worst that will happen to you is that you leave Burdigala in disguise. Aurelian owns a huge latifundium; it can doubtless use an extra workman, if I put in a good word, and the senator will cover up any little irregularities for me. At best—well, I don’t yet know, and therefore won’t make any promises, but it could be glorious beyond your highest-flying childhood dreams, Rufus.”
His words and the lulling tone worked. Also, the wine had begun to. Rufus sat quiet a moment, nodded, beamed, tossed off his drink, held out a band. “By the Three, right!” he cried.
Lugo clasped the hard palm. The gesture was fairly new in Gallia, maybe learned from Germanic immigrants. “Splendid,” he said. “Just speak fully and frankly. I know that won’t be easy, but remember, I have my reasons. I mean to do well by you, as well as God allows.”
He refilled the emptied cup. Behind his jovial facade, tension gathered and gathered.
Rufus drank. His vessel wobbled. “What d’you want to know?” he asked.
“First, why you got into grief.”
Rufus’ pleasure faded. He scowled beyond his questioner. “Because my wife died,” he mumbled. “That’s what broke the crock.”
“Many men are widowed,” Lugo said, while memory twisted a sword inside him.
The big hand tightened around the cup till knuckles stood white. “My Livia was old. White hair, wrinkles, no teeth. We’d two kids what grew up, boy and girl. They be married, kids o’ their own. And they’ve gone gray.”
“I thought this might be,” Lugo whispered, not in Latin. “O Ashtoreth—”
Aloud, using today’s language: “The rumors that reached me suggested as much. That’s why I came after you. When were you born, Rufus?”
“How the muck should I know?” The response was surly. “Balls! Poor folk don’t keep count like you rich ‘uns. I couldn’t tell you who be consul this year, let alone then was. But my Livia was young like me when we got hitched— fourteen, fifteen, whatever. She was a strong mare, she was, popped her young out like melon seeds, though only the two o’ them got to grow up. She didn’t break down fast like some mares.”
“You may well have reached your threescore and ten, then, or gone beyond,” Lugo said most softly. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five. Were you ever sick?”
“No, ‘less you count a couple times I got hurt. Bad hurts, but they healed right up in a few days, not so much as a scar. No toothaches ever. I got three teeth knocked out in a fight once, and they grew back.” The arrogance shriveled. “People looked at me more and more slanty. When Livia died, that broke the crock.” Rufus groaned. “They’d been saying I must’ve made a deal with the Devil. She told me what she heard. But what the muck could I do? God give me a strong body, that’s all. She believed.”
“I do too, Rufus.”
“When she fell bad sick at last, not many ‘ud speak to me any more. They’d shy from me in the street, make signs, spit on their breasts. I went to a priest. He was scared of me too, I could see it. Said I ought to go to the bishop, but the bastard stalled about taking me to him. Then Livia died.”
“A release,” Lugo could not help venturing.
“Well, I’d gone to a whorehouse for a long time,” Rufus answered matter-of-factly. Fury flared. “Now they, them bitches, they told me go away and don’t come back. I got mad, raised a ruckus. People heard and gathered around outside. When I came out, the scumswine yelled at me. I decked the loudest mouthed o’ them. Next thing I knew, they were on me. I barely fought free and ran. They came after me, more and more o’ them.”
“And you’d have died under their feet,” Lugo said. “Or else presently the rumors would have reached the prefect. The tale of a man who never grew old and was dearly no saint, therefore must be in league with the diabolical. You’d have been arrested, interrogated under torture, doubtless beheaded. These are bad times. Nobody knows what to expect. Will the barbarians prevail? Will we have another civil war? Will plague or famine or a total collapse of trade destroy us? Heretics and sorcerers are objects to take fear out on.”
“I didn’t say you were. I accept you’re a common man, as common as I’ve ever met, aside from— Tell me, have you known or heard of anyone else like you, whom time doesn’t appear to touch? Kinfolk, perhaps?”
Rufus shook his head.
Lugo sighed. “Neither have I.” He mustered resolve and plunged forward. “And I have waited and tried, searched and endured, since first I came to understand.”
“Uh?” The wine splashed from Rufus’ cup.
Lugo sipped out of his own, for what comfort it could give. “How old do you think I am?” he asked.
Rufus peered before he said at the bottom of his throat: “You look maybe twenty-five.”
A smile quirked on the left side of Lugo’s mouth. “Like you, I don’t know my age for certain,” he answered slowly. “But Hiram was king in Tyre when I was born there. What chronicles I have since been able to study and figure from show me that that was about twelve centuries ago.”
Rufus gaped. The freckles stood lurid on a skin gone white. His free hand made a sign.
“Don’t be afraid,” Lugo urged. “I’m in no pact with darkness. Or with Heaven, for that matter, or any power, any soul. I am your kind of flesh, whatever that means. I have simply been longer on earth. It is lonely. You have had the barest foretaste of how lonely it is.”
He rose, leaving staff and cup, to pace the cramped floor, hands behind back. “I was not born Flavius Lugo, of course,” he said. “That is only the latest name I have taken out of—I’ve lost count of how many. The earliest was— never mind. A Phoenician name. I was a merchant until the years brought me to trouble much like yours today. Then for a long time I was a sailor, a caravan guard, a mercenary soldier, a wandering bard, any number of trades in which a man may come and go little noticed. That was a hard school I went through. Often I came near dying from wounds, shipwreck, hunger, thirst, a dozen different perils. Sometimes I would have died, were it not for the strange vigor of this body. A slower danger, more frightening as I began to perceive it, was that of drowning, losing my reason, in sheer memories. For a while I did have scant use of my wits. In a way that was a mercy; it blunted the pain of losing everyone I came to care for, losing him and losing her and losing, oh, the children. ... Bit by bit I worked out the art of memory. I now have clear recall, I am like a walking library of Alexandria—no, that burned, didn’t it?” He chuckled at himself. “I do make slips. But I have the art of storing what I know until it’s wanted, then calling it forth. I have the art of controlling sorrow. I have—“
He observed Rufus’ awed regard and broke off. “Twelve hundred years?” the artisan breathed. “You seen the Savior?”
Lugo forced a smile. “Sorry, I have not. If he was born in the reign of Augustus, as they say—that would have been, m-m, between three and four hundred years ago—then I was in Britannia at the time. Rome hadn’t conquered it yet, but trade was brisk and the southern tribes were cultured in their fashion. And much less meddlesome. That’s always a highly desirable feature in a place. Damnably hard to find these days, short of running off to the wild German or Scoti or whatever. And even they—
“Another art I’ve developed is that of aging my appearance. Hair powder, dyes, such things are cumbersome, unreliable. I let everybody talk about how young I continue to look. Some people do, after all. But meanwhile gradually I begin to stoop a little, shuffle a little, cough, pretend to be hard of hearing, complain of aches and pains and the insolence of modern youth. It only works up to a point, of course. Finally I must vanish and start a new life elsewhere under a new name. I try to arrange things so it will be reasonable to suppose I wandered off and met with misfortune, perhaps because I’d grown old and absent-minded. And as a rule I’ve been able to prepare for the move. Accumulate a hoard of gold, learn about the home to be, perhaps visit it and establish my fresh identity—”
Some of the weariness of the centuries fell over him. “Details, details.” He stopped and looked into one of the blind windows. “Am I going senile? I don’t usually gabble this way. Well, you’re the first like me I’ve found, Rufus, the very first. Let’s hope you won’t be the last.”
“Did you, uh, know about others?” groped the voice at his back.
Lugo shook his head. “I told you I never did. How could I? A few times I thought I saw a trace, but it gave out or it proved false. Once I may have. I’m not sure.”
“What was that ... master? You want to tell me?”
“I may as well. It was in Syracuse, where I based myself for a good many years because of its ties with Carthage. Lovely, lively city. A woman, Althea was her name, fine to look on and bright in the way women sometimes got to be in the later days of the Greek colonies—I knew her and her husband. He was a shipping magnate and I skippered a tramp freighter. They’d been married for over three decades, he’d gone bald and pot-bellied, she’d borne him a dozen children and the oldest of them was gray, but she might have been a maiden in springtime.”
Lugo fell silent a while before finishing, flat-voiced: “The Romans captured the city. Sacked it: I was absent. Always make an excuse to clear out when you see that kind of thing coming. When I returned, I inquired. She could have been taken for a slave. I could have tried to find her and buy her free. But no, when I’d tracked down somebody who knew, insignificant enough to’ve been left unhurt, I learned she was dead. Raped and stabbed, I heard. Don’t know if that’s true or not. Stories grow in the telling. No matter. It was long ago.”
“Too bad. You should’a got in there first.” Lugo tautened. “Uh, sorry, master,” Rufus said. “You don’t, uh, don’t seem to hate Rome.”
“Why should I? It’s eternally the same tale, war, tyranny, massacre, slavery. I’ve been party to it myself. Now Rome is on the receiving end.”
“What?” Rufus sounded aghast. “Can’t be! Rome is forever!”
“As you like.” Lugo turned back to him. “Apparently I have, at last, found a fellow immortal. At least, here is someone I can safeguard, watch, make certain of. Two or three decades should suffice. Though already I have no real doubt.”
He drew breath. “Do you see what this means? No, you scarcely can. You’ve had no time to think about it.” He surveyed heavy visage, low forehead, dismay yielding to a loose-lipped glee. I don’t expect you ever will, he thought. You are a moderately competent woodworker, nothing else. And I’m lucky to have found this much. Unless Althea—but she slipped through my fingers, away into death.
“It means I am not unique,” Lugo said. “If there are two of us, there must be more. Very few, very seldom born. It isn’t in the bloodlines, like height or coloring or those deformities I’ve seen run in families. Whatever the cause is, it happens by accident. Or by God’s will, if you prefer, though I’d think that makes God out to be sheerly capricious. And surely senseless mischance takes off many immortals young, as it takes off ordinary men and women and children. Sickness we may escape, but not the sword or the runaway horse or the flood or the fire or the famine or whatever. Possibly more die at the hands of neighbors who think this must be a demon, magician, monster.”
Rufus cowered. “My head’s all a-spin,” he whimpered.
“Well, you’ve had a bad time. Immortals need rest too. Sleep if you wish.”
Rufus’ expression was glazing over. “Why couldn’t we say we was, uh, saints? Angels?”
“How far would you have gotten?” Lugo gibed. “Conceivably a man born into royalty— But I don’t suppose that’s ever happened, as rare as our kind must be. No, if we survive, we learn early on to keep our heads low.”
“Then how shall we find each other?”
Rufus hiccoughed and farted.
“COME our with me into the peristyle,” said Lugo.
“Oh, gladly,” Cordelia sang. Almost, she danced at his side.
It was an evening mild and clear. The moon stood over the eastern roof, close to full, in a sky still violet-blue. Westward, heaven darkened and stars trembled forth. City sounds had mostly died out; crickets chirred. Moonlight dappled the flowerbeds, shivered on the water of a pool, brought Cordelia’s young face and breast out of shadow into argency.
She and he stood hand in hand a few minutes. “You were so busy today,” she said at length. “When you came back early, I hoped— Of course, you had your work to do.”
“I did that, unfortunately,” he replied. “But these next hours belong to us.”
She leaned against him. Her hair carried a remnant fragrance of sunlight. “Christians should give thanks for what they get.” She giggled. “How easy to be a Christian, tonight.”
“How have the children done today?” he asked—his son Julius, no longer stumping about but leaping adventurously everywhere, starting to talk; little, little Dora asleep in her crib, starfish hands curled tight.
“Why, very well,” said Cordelia, a bit surprised.
“I see them too seldom.”
“And you care. Not many fathers do. Not that much.” She squeezed his hand. “I want to give you lots of children.” Impishly: “We can begin at once.”
“I have ... tried to be kind.”
She heard how the words dragged, let go of him, widened her eyes in alarm. “What’s wrong, beloved?”
He made himself take hold of her shoulders, look into her face—the moonlight made her searingly beautiful—and answer: “Between us, nothing at all.” Only the fact that you will grow old and die. And that has happened so often, so often. I cannot count the deaths. There is no measure for tile pain, but I think it has not grown any less; I think I have merely learned to live with it, as a mortal can learn to live an unbeatable wound. I thought we could have, oh, thirty, perhaps forty years together before I must leave. That would have been wonderful.
“But I have an unexpected journey to make,” he said.
“Something that man—Marcus—something he’s told you?”
Lugo nodded.
Cordelia grimaced. “I don’t like him. Forgive me, but I don’t. He’s coarse and stupid.”
“He is that,” Lugo agreed. It had seemed wise to him they let Rufus share their supper. Confinement in the room with nothing but his dreads and animal hopes company had been breaking what self-control was left him, and he needed it for the time ahead. “Nevertheless, I got important information from him.”
“Can you tell me what it is?” He heard how hard she tried not to make it a plea.
“I’m sorry, no. Nor can I say where I’m bound or how long I’ll be gone.”
She caught both his hands. Her fingers had turned cold. “The barbarians. Pirates. Bacaudae.”
“Travel has its dangers,” he admitted. “I’ve spent a lot of this day making arrangements for you. Just in case, darling, just in case.” He kissed her. The lips that shivered beneath his bore a thin taste of salt. “You should know this is a matter that may or may not concern Aurelian, but if it does, it must be investigated at once, and he’s in Italy. I’ve told his amanuensis Corbilo as much, and you can collect my pay for your needs from him. I’ve also left a substantial sum in trust for you at the church. The priest Antoninus took it and gave me a receipt that I’ll give you. And you are heir to this property. You’ll be all right, you and the children.” If Rome hangs together.
She threw herself against him and dung. He stroked her hair, her back, ruffling the gown, making the caress an embrace. “There, there,” he crooned, “this is just in case. Don’t be afraid. I’m not running any great risk.” He believed that was true. “I’ll be back.” That was not true, and hurt like fire to utter. Well, no doubt she’d marry again, after he was given up for dead. Last heard of on the Ordovician coast, about when a Scotic raid occurred ...
She stood back, hugged herself, swallowed, smiled unsteadily. “Of course you w-w-will,” she avowed. “I’ll p-pray for you the whole while. And we have this night.”
Until shortly after dawn, when Nereid cast off. He’d obtained passage for himself and Rufus. Most of Britannia continued secure, but the barbarians ravaged enough of it that nobody would question a couple of men who appeared -in, say, Aquae Sulis or Augusta Londinium with a story of having fled. Given money in hand, they could start afresh; and Lugo had buried a fair supply of honest corns in the island, several generations back.
“If only you could remain,” escaped from Cordelia.
“If only I could.” But Rufus was marked in Burdigala.
Rufus, the male, the oaf, the immortal, who would surely perish miserably without an intelligent man in charge of him. And he must not. However awkward, his was the only help Lugo had toward the ultimate coming together of their kind.
Cordelia heard how the words wrenched themselves from her husband’s mouth. “I will not whine,” she declared. “We do have this night. And many, many more on the far side of your journey. I’ll wait for you, I’ll always wait.”
No, Lugo thought, you won’t. That wouldn’t make sense, once you’ve decided you’re a widow, still young but with time at your heels.
Nor could you ever have waited for me always.
I seek for her who shall never have to leave me.
THE CARAVAN to Tripolis would leave at daybreak. Nebozabad, its master, wanted everything ready the evening before. He wanted every man rehearsed in making and breaking camp. Delays not only cost money, they multiplied risk.
So he thought. Some people told him not to fret. Peace was now secure, they said, Syria firmly in Arabian hands. Had not the Khalifa himself passed through Tadmor, on his way to holy Jerusalem, three years ago? Nebozabad was less trustful. Throughout his life he had seen too much war, with the disruption of trade, breakdown of order, and upsurge of banditry that soon followed. He meant to use every hour of opportunity that God granted him.
Therefore his charges bedded down not in a caravanserai but on a ground beyond the Philippian Gate. He went about, speaking to camel drivers, guards, traders, lesser folk, issuing commands where needed, piecemeal giving turmoil a shape and a meaning. Night was well upon him before he was done.
He paused, then, to enjoy a moment alone. Air had gone cool, with a tinge of smoke from the small fires that glimmered in the camp. Otherwise it was a huddle of darkness. He made out the peaks of a few tents, pitched by the more prosperous among his travelers, and sometimes light flickered off the spearhead of a sentry on his rounds. Nebozabad wanted all routines working from the outset. A murmur reached his ears, talk of men who sat up late, occasionally the soft whicker of a horse or the nimble and gurgle in a camel’s throat.
Stars glittered brilliant, beyond counting. From the west a gibbous moon cast light down the shallow valley. It frosted hills, palm fronds, the tower tombs that rose out of shadow, the turrets and battlements of the city wall. That wall loomed sheer, gray-white, as if a piece of the steppe surrounding this basin had been turned on end. It seemed as eternal, too, its massiveness never to be breached, the life that now slept behind its shelter to pulse every day forever.
The thought made Nebozabad bite his lip. Much too well did he know otherwise. In his own lifetime the Persians had driven out the Romans, and later the Romans had driven out the Persians, and today both nations were in retreat before the sword of Islam; and while trade routes still bore wealth into Tadmor and forth again, the city was long past her glory. Ah, to have lived then, when she—Palmyra on Latin and Greek tongues—was the queen of Syria, before Emperor Aurelian crushed Zenobia’s bid for freedom—
Nebozabad sighed, shrugged, turned about and started back. A city, like a man, must bear whatever fate God decrees. In that much, at least, the Muslims were right.
On his way, he heard and answered several greetings. “Christ be with you, master.”
“And his spirit be with you.” Everyone recognized his stocky form in the plain djellabah, his rather heavy features bared to the sky. Moonlight touched white streaks in hair and short-cropped beard.
Presently he neared his own tent. It was of good material though modest size; he never took along weight that could, instead, be in articles of value. Lamplight glowed faint yellow around a flap hanging loose.
A hand clutched his ankle. His stopped short, sucked in a breath, closed fingers on knife hilt. “Quiet,” a voice whispered frantically, “By God’s mercy, I pray you. I mean no harm.”
Nonetheless chill tingled through him as he peered. Someone crouched, flattened close to the ground, a paleness amidst the shadows. Naked? “What is this?” he hissed.
“I need help,” came back at him. “Can we speak alone? Behold, I am unarmed.”
He believed he knew that voice. Often had he had to make quick decisions.
“Abide,” he said low. The imploring hand released him. He stepped around to the front of his tent and slipped past the flap, with care that little light flash forth. Within, the camel’s-hair fabric enclosed a measure of warmth. A clay lamp dimly showed his bedroll spread out for him, water pitcher and basin and two or three other minor comforts ready, his body servant hunkered down. That person brought knees, hands, and brow to earth in salutation and asked, “What is my master’s desire?”
“I expect a visitor,” Nebozabad told him. “Depart cautiously, as I arrived. When I have secured the entrance, let no one else seek to me, nor ever speak a word of this.”
“On my head be it, master.” The slave glided off. Nebozabad had chosen and trained him well; he was wholly loyal. When he was gone, Nebozabad looked out for a moment, murmured, “Come now,” and drew back again.
The other scuttled through, straightened, confronted him. Despite his half knowledge, he gasped. A woman indeed. Oh, woman’s very self!
He remembered the danger, muttered a curse, hastened to secure the entrance. Then he dared try to deal with her.
She had lowered herself to knees and toes, hands laid across her lap. Midnight tresses flowed over shoulders, down past her breasts. He guessed flittingly that that was not quite by chance. Nothing else had she for garment, except grime, a streak of clotting blood on the left forearm, sweat that shimmered in the lamplight, and the gloom. Her body might have belonged to an ancient goddess, lithe, firm-bosomed, slim-waisted, round-hipped. The face she turned to him was broad across the cheekbones, straight of nose, lips full above the cleanness of chin and jawline. Her skin was faintly golden and the great eyes, beneath arching brows, were hazel. In her, Roman of the West, Roman of the East, Hellene, and Persian had mingled with Syria.
He stared down at the sight. She seemed a maiden, no, a youthful matron, no, something for which he had no name. But he knew her.
Her voice trembled husky. “O Nebozabad, old friend, there is no hope left me save in you. Help me, as once my house helped you. You have known us all your life.”
Forty-odd years. The thought struck like a dagger. His mind flew back across more than thirty of them.
ALIYAT BOTH longed for Barikai’s return and dreaded it. She would have the solace of his embrace and of giving him her own upbearing love. So had they stood together when they lost other children; but those were infants. First, though, she must tell him what had happened.
He was elsewhere in Tadmor, talking with the merchant Taimarsu. News from the front was evil, the Persians inflicting defeat after defeat upon the Romans, thrusting into Mesopotamia, with Syria’s defenses thin on their left. More and more, commerce with the seaboard pulled into its shell and awaited the outcome. Caravan masters such as Barikai suffered. Most were, themselves, chary of venturing anywhere. He, bolder, went off to persuade the traffickers that they should not let goods molder in warehouses.
She imagined his heartiness, his laughter: “I’ll convey them. Prices in Tripolis or Berytus will be at a peak! Rewards are for the brave.” She had encouraged it. Daughter of a man in the same trade, she was closer to her husband than most wives, almost a partner as well as his mate and the mother of his children. It eased the wistfulness that tugged at her whenever she stood on the city wall and watched his train move off beyond the horizon.
But today— A female slave found her in the garden and said, “The master is here.” Aliyat’s spirit twisted within her.
She called up courage as women must, in childbed or by deathbed, and hastened. Her skirts rustled through a silence full of eyes. All the household knew.
It was a fair-sized household in a good-sized building. Until lately Barikai, like his father before him, had done well. Aliyat hoped it would not become necessary to sell off any slaves; she was fond of them. She was instituting frugality... What mattered such things?
The atrium lay dim with eventide. Her glance fell on the image of the Virgin that stood In a niche, its blue and gold aglow against whitewash. For a little while she had knelt before it, silently praying that the news not be true. The image had merely stared, changeless.
Barikai had just given his cloak to a servant. Beneath it he wore a robe decorated with gold thread, to show power, confidence. Time had grizzled the dark hair and furrowed the lean face, but he still walked springily. “Christ be with you, my lady,” he began, as was seemly in the presence of attendants. His gaze sharpened. He reached her in three long strides and took her by the shoulders. “What is wrong?”
She must swallow twice before she could beg, “Come with me.” His mouth drew tight. Wordlessly he followed her back into the garden.
Enclosed by the house, it was a place of cool calm, refuge from the world. Jasmine and roses grew around a pool where water lilies floated. Their fragrances drenched the air. Overhead, heaven had gone royal blue as the sun went below the roof. Here two people could be alone.
Aliyat turned to Barikai. She doubled her fists at her sides and forced out, “Manu is dead.”
He stood unmoving.
“Young Mogim brought the word this morning,” Aliyat told him. “He was among the few who escaped. The squadron was on patrol south of Khalep. A Persian cavalry troop surprised them. Mogim saw Manu take an arrow in his eye, fall from the saddle, go down under the hoofs.”
“South of Khalep,” Barikai croaked. “Already. Then they are coming into Syria.”
She knew that man-thought was only the first poor shield he could lift. She saw it break in his grasp. “Manu,” he said. “Our first-born. Gone.” The hand shook with which he crossed himself, over and over. “God have mercy on him. Christ take him home. Help him, holy Georgios.”
I too should pray, Aliyat thought, and knew with a wan surprise that any wish to do so had withered.
“Have you told Aqmat?” Barikai asked.
“Of course. Best, I think, best leave her and her children in peace for a while.” Manu’s young wife had lived in terror of this since he was called to war. The fact had fallen on her like a hammer.
“I sent a messenger to Hairan, but his master has dispatched him to Emesa on some business,” Aliyat went on. The younger of their sons worked for a dealer in wine. “The sisters mourn at home.” Their three living daughters were married, well enough that she was glad of the earlier struggle to amass good dowries for them.
“I think now—to carry on my trade—I think I will take Nebozabad to apprentice,” Barikai mumbled. “You know him, do you not? Son of the widow Hafsa. Only ten years old, but a likely lad. And it would be a kindness. It might make the saints smile a little on Manu’s soul.”
Abruptly he seized her, painfully hard. “But why do I chatter like this?” he yelled. “Manu is gone!”
She loosened his hands, guided his arms around her, held him very close. They stood thus for many heartbeats, while shadows rose in the garden and light drained from the sky.
“Aliyat, Aliyat,” he whispered at last, shakenly, into her hair, “my love, my strength. How can it be that you are what you are? Wife of mine, mother, grandmother, and yet you could well-nigh be the girl I made my bride.”
WHEN THE Persians occupied Tadmor, they first levied a heavy tribute. Thereafter they were not bad overlords— no worse than the Romans, thought Aliyat in secret. Zarathushtrans who held fire sacred, they let everybody worship according to belief, and in fact kept Orthodox Christians, Nestorian Christians, and Jews from molesting each other. Meanwhile their firm control of the territories they won allowed trade to resume, also with their own country. After a dozen years, people heard that they were advancing farther, had taken Jerusalem and presently Egypt. Aliyat wondered if they would go on to Old Rome, but decided, from what men told about Italy, that that raddled land, divided among Lombard chiefs, the Catholic Pope, and remnant Imperial garrisons, would be no prize.
Word trickled in: a new Emperor, Heraklios, reigned in Constantinople and was said to be energetic and able. However, he had woes close to home. Barely did he cast the wild Avars back from the capital city.
In Tadmor such events seemed remote, not quite real. Aliyat was nearly the sole woman there who even heard of them. One had one’s private life to cope with. For her, too, the days and the years blurred together. A grandchild born, a friend dying, rose into reality and stood afterward in memory like lone hills espied on a long caravan trek.
So matters were at the hour that ended them.
She set forth with a sturdy female attendant for the agora. They left early in the morning, to finish her bargaining and carry back her purchases before the heat of the day drove folk indoors to rest. Barikai bade her a farewell she could barely hear. He had been weak of late, with bouts of pain in the chest and shortness of breath, he who was hitherto so strong. Neither prayers nor physicians availed much.
Aliyat and Mara followed their winding street to the Colonnade and walked on along it. The great double row of pillars gleamed triumphant between the arches at either end, bursting into florescence where the capitals challenged heaven. From a ledge on each, a statue of some famous citizen looked down, centuries of history at attention. Below them the ways were crowded with shops, trading offices, chapels, joyhouses, humanity. Smells eddied thick, smoke, sweat, dung, perfume, aroma of spices and oils and fruits. Noise rioted, footfalls, hoofbeats, wheel-creak, hammer-clang, chant, shout, speech, mostly the Aramaic of this country but also Greek, Persian, Arabic, and tongues of lands more distant yet. Colors swirled, a cloak, a robe, a veil, a headdress, a pennon streaming from a lance, an ornament, a charm. A rug seller sat amidst the rich hues of his wares. A wine vendor held his leather bottle aloft. A coppersmith made clangor. An oxcart slogged through the crowds, laden with dates from the oasis. A camel grunted and shambled beneath bales of silk from beyond Aliyat’s ken. A squad of Persian horsemen trotted behind a trumpeter who warned the throng to dear the way; their armor flashed, their plumes rippled. A litter bore a wealthy merchant, another a bedizened courtesan, who both looked out with indolent insolence. A black-clad Christian priest drew aside from an austere magus and crossed himself once the latter was past. Drovers who had brought sheep in from the arid steppe wandered wide-eyed among enticements that would likely send them back to their tents penniless. A flute piped, a small drum thumped, somebody sang, high-pitched and quavery.
This was her city, Aliyat knew, these were her people, and nonetheless she was ever more estranged from them.
She stopped at the call and glanced about. Nebozabad forced a path toward her. The persons whom he shoved aside shook their fists and cursed him. He went on unhearing until he reached her. She read his countenance and foreknowledge became a boulder in her breast.
“Lady, I hoped I could overtake you,” the young man panted. “I was with my master, your husband, when— He is stricken. He uttered your name. I sent for a physician and myself started after you.”
“Lead me,” said Aliyat’s voice.
He did, loudly, roughly, quickly. They returned beneath the brightening, uncaring sky to the house. “Wait,” Aliyat commanded at the door of the bedchamber, and went in alone.
She need not have hurt Nebozabad by leaving him out in the corridor. She had not been thinking. Of course several slaves were there, standing aside, awed and helpless. But likewise, already, was their remaining son Hairan. He leaned over the bed, holding fast to him who lay in it. “Father,” he pleaded, “father, can you hear me?”
Barikai’s eyes were rolled back, a hideous white against the blueness that crept below the skin. Froth bubbled on his lips. The breath shuddered in and out of him, ceased, came raggedly anew, ceased again. Beadwork curtains across the windows tried to obscure the sight. For Aliyat they only made a twilight through which she saw him the starker.
Hairan looked up. Tears ran into his beard. “I fear he is dying, mother,” he said.
“I know.” She knelt, brushed his hands aside, laid her arms about Barikai and her cheek on her man’s bosom. She heard, she felt the life go away.
Rising, she closed his eyes and tried to wipe his face. The physician arrived. “I can see to that, my lady,” he offered.
She shook her bead. “I will lay him out,” she answered. “It is my right.”
“Fear not, mother,” Hairan said unevenly. “I will provide well for you—you shall have a peaceful old age—“ The words trailed off. He stared, as did the physician and the slaves. Barikai, caravan master, had not reached his full threescore and ten, but he seemed as if he had, hair mostly white, visage gaunt, muscles shriveled over the bones. His widow who stood above him could have been a woman of twenty springtimes.
UNTO HAIRAN the wine merchant was born a grandson, and great was the rejoicing in his house. The feast that he and the father gave for kinfolk and friends lasted far into the night. Aliyat withdrew early from the women’s part of it, into the rear of the building where she had a room. No one thought ill of this; after all, however much respect her years entitled her to, they were a burden.
She did not seek rest as everybody supposed. Once alone, she straightened her back and changed her shuffling gait. Fast, supple, she went out a back door. The voluminous black garments that disguised her figure billowed with her haste. Her head was covered as usual, which hid the blackness of her locks. Family and servitors often remarked on bow amazingly youthful her face and hands were; but now she lowered a veil.
She passed a slave going about his duties, who recognized her but simply made salutation. He would not babble about what he had seen. He too was old, and knew that one must bear with the old if sometimes they grow a trifle strange.
The night air was blessedly cool and fresh. The street was a gut of shadow, but her feet knew every stone and she found her way easily to the Colonnade. Thence she strode toward the agora. A full moon had cleared surrounding roofs. Its brilliance hid the stars close to it, though lower down they swarmed and sparkled. The pillars lifted white. Her footfalls slithered loud in the silence. Most folk were abed.
She took some risk, but it was slight. Mostly, the city guards had continued under the Persians to maintain law and order. Once she hid behind a column while a squad tramped past. Their pikeheads sheened like liquid in the moonlight. Had they seen her, they might well have insisted on bringing her home—unless they took her for a harlot, which would have led to questions for which she lacked answers.
“Why do you prowl about after dark?” She could not say, she did not know, yet she must get away for a while or else begin screaming.
This was not the first such time.
At the Street of the Marketers she turned south. The grace of the theater fountained upward on her right. On her left, the portico and wall around the agora lay ghostly under the moon. She had heard that they were but fragments of what formerly was, before desperate men quarried them for fortification material as the Romans closed in on Zenobia. That suited her mood. She passed through an unbarred gateway onto the broad plaza.
Remembrance of its liveliness by day made it feel all die more empty. Statues of former high officials, military commanders, senators, and, yes, caravan leaders ringed it in like sentinels around a necropolis. Aliyat walked through the moonlight to the center and stopped. Her heartbeat and breath were the only sounds she heard.
“Miriamne, Mother of God, I thank you—“ The words died on her lips. They were as hollow as the place where she stood, they would be mockery did she finish them.
Why was she barren of gladness and gratitude? A son had been born to the son of her son. The life that was in Barikai lived on. Could she call his dear shade out of the night, surely it would be smiling.
A shudder went through her. She could not raise the memory. His face had become a blur; she had words for its lineaments, but no vision any-longer. Everything receded into the past, her loves died and died and died, and God would not let her follow them.
She should praise Him with song, that she was hale and whole, untouched by age. How many, halt, gnarled, toothless, half blind, afire with pain, longed for death’s mercy? Whereas she— But the fear of her gathered year by year, the glances askance, whispers, furtive signs against evil. Hairan himself saw in the mirror his gray hair and lined brow, and wondered about his mother; she knew, she knew. She held as much apart as she could, not to remind her kin, and understood what an unspoken conspiracy was theirs, to avoid speaking of her before outsiders. And so she became the outsider, the one forever alone.
How could she be a great-grandmother, she in whose loins burned lust? Was that why she was punished by this, or what dreadful childhood sin of hers had she forgotten?
The moon moved onward, the stars turned their wheel. Slowly, something of heaven’s bleak tranquility came to her. She started homeward. She would not surrender. Not yet.
THE WAR devoured a generation, but in the end Heraklios prevailed. He drove the Persians before him until they sued for peace. Two-and-twenty years after they left, the Romans re-entered Tadmor.
On their heels was a new resident, Zabdas, a dealer in spices from Emesa. That was a somewhat larger city, nearer the seaboard, therefore wealthier and more closely governed. Zabdas’ family firm had an affiliate in Tadmor. After the chaos of battle and the latest change of overlords it needed reorganization, a cunning hand on the reins and a shrewd eye out for such opportunities as might appear. He arrived and took charge. That required making acquaintances, alliances, among local people. He was handicapped in this by being newly widowed, and therefore soon began looking for a wife.
Nobody told Aliyat about him, and indeed when he first visited Hairan it was on business. The dignity of the house, the guest, and herself required that she be among the women who bade him welcome before the men supped. Out of sheer rebelliousness, or so she vaguely thought, she left off her shapeless grandam’s clothes and dressed in modest but becoming wise. She saw his startlement on learning who she was; eyes met eyes; a thrill that she fought to control went through her. He was a short man of about fifty, but erect, alert, the white hairs few and the visage well-molded. They exchanged ritual courtesies. She went back to her room.
Though she often found it hard to pluck a single memory out of the multitude that crowded her, certain experiences repeated themselves frequently enough that she gained skill from them. She could well read the meaning of Hairan’s glances when he thought she didn’t notice, the words he spoke to her and the words he did not. She could sense a rising current of excitement in the wives and slaves, even the older children. Her sleep became broken, she paced and paced or stole out by dark, the comfort that she had sometimes found in books now vanished.
It was no surprise when at length Hairan asked her to see him privately. That was in winter’s early night, after most of the household had gone to bed. He admitted her when she knocked, escorted her to a cushioned stool, sat down cross-legged on the rug behind a table on which stood wine, dates, cakes.
For a space there was quiet. Bronze lamps sheened in the light that their flames threw soft. It picked out floral patterns of frescos, reds and blues and browns of carpet, the folds of his robe and the furrows in his face. He was wholly gray and had grown a pot belly. He blinked dimsightedly at her slimness. The brocade of green and gold that she had chosen lay close over curves; above her head covering, a wreath of gold wire enclosed the clear brows.
“Will you take refreshment, mother?” he invited finally, very low.
“Thank you.” She reached for a goblet. The wine glowed on her tongue. Drink and food, those were comforts too. They had not lost their savor as she aged, nor had she become fat.
“You should not thank me.” He looked away. “It is my duty to provide for your well-being.”
“You have been a dutiful son.”
“I have tried my best.” In a rush, never meeting her gaze: “You, though, you are unhappy with us. True? I am not blind or deaf so far, not quite. You seldom if ever complain, but I cannot help knowing.”
She commanded her body to be still, her voice to be level: “True. No fault of yours, nor of anyone else.” She must force herself to hurt him. “I daresay you feel you are a young man trapped in flesh growing old. Well, I am an old woman trapped in flesh that stays young. Why this is, only God knows.”
He twined fingers together. “You are—how old? Threescore and ten? Well, some people do carry their years well and reach great ages. If you lived for a hundred years in good health, it would not be unheard of. May God grant you do so.” She marked how he evaded mention of the fact that except for teeth showing wear she bore no trace of the time that had passed.
Let her encourage him to say what he intended to say. “You will understand how my uselessness makes me restless.”
“It need not!” burst from him. He lifted his eyes. She saw sweat on his skin. “Hark. Zabdas, a respectable man, a merchant, has asked for your hand in marriage.”
I knew this, she thought; and aloud: “I know whom you speak of,” She said naught about the cautious inquiries she had contrived to make. “But he and I met just a single time.”
“He has queried people about you, and talked repeatedly with me, and— He is, I say, an honorable man, well off and with excellent prospects for the future, a widower in need of a wife. He realizes that you are older than him, but feels this is no barrier. He has children grown, grandchildren coming, what he wants is a helpmate. Believe me, I have made sure of this.”
“Do you wish the union, Hairan?” Aliyat asked quietly.
She sipped while he stuttered, fumbled with his goblet, looked to and fro, before he said, “I would never compel you, mother. It simply appears to me ... it may be in your best interests. I will not deny, he offers certain business agreements that would ... help. My enterprise has fallen on hard times.”
“I know.” He showed surprise. Aliyat whetted her tone: “Did you think me blind or deaf? I worked closely with your father, Hairan, as you never let me work with you.”
She laughed a little. “Oh, you have been as kindly as you know how. Let us put such things behind us. Tell me more.”
THE WEDDING and the celebration that followed were an occasion small, almost subdued. Finally the bride was escorted to the groom’s bedchamber and left with a maidservant.
The room was not large, its walls merely whitewashed, its furnishings austere. Some garlands had been hung around it. A screen blocked off one comer. A three-branched candelabrum gave light. Laid across the bed were two nightgowns.
Aliyat knew she was expected to change into hers. Mutely, she let the attendant help her. She and Barikai had frolicked naked, with wicks burning bright. Well, times changed, or perhaps it was people who differed. She had been too long cut off from gossip to say.
When she stood briefly unclad, Zabdas’ slave cried: “But my lady is beautiful!”
Aliyat stroked hands down her flanks. The touch tingled. She barely stopped short of her groin. Tonight she would again know the true pleasure that had haunted her for— how many years? She smiled. “Thank you.”
“I, I heard you were old,” the girl stammered.
“I am.” Aliyat’s manner imposed fear and silence.
She had an hour or two by herself in bed. Thoughts tumbled through her head, out of control. Now and then she shivered. At least her days in the house of her son had been predictable. That, though, was what had become the horror of them.
She sat up with a start when Zabdas entered. He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment watching her. In festival garb, he was ... dapper. Her gown was of rather thick material, loosely cut, but her bosom swelled it outward. “You are more fair than I knew,” he said in his careful way.
She lowered her lashes. “I thank my lord,” she replied around the tightness in her throat.
He advanced. “Still, you are a woman of discretion, with the wisdom of your years,” he said. “Such a one do I require.” He halted before the icon of St. Ephraem Syrus that was the chamber’s sole fixed ornament and crossed himself. “Grant us a satisfactory life together,” he prayed.
Taking his nightshirt, he went behind the screen. She saw how neatly he hung his clothes over the top. When he returned dressed for sleep, he bent over, cupped a hand behind each candle in turn, and blew them out. He got into bed with his usual economy of motion.
He is my husband, pulsed in Aliyat. He is my liberation. Let me be good to him.
She reached out. Her arms enclosed, her mouth went seeking. “What?” Zabdas exclaimed. “Be at ease. I shall not hurt you.”
“Do, if you like.” She pressed against him. “How may I please you?”
“Why, why— This is— Kindly lie still, my lady. Remember your years.”
She obeyed. Sometimes she and Barikai had enjoyed playing master and slave. Or youth and whore. She felt Zabdas raise himself to an elbow. His free hand tugged at her gown. She pulled it up and spread her thighs. He climbed between. He rested his full weight on her, which Barikai had not, but then Zabdas was much lighter. She reached to guide him. Briskly, he took care of that himself, grasped her breasts through the cloth, and thrust. He did not seem to notice how her arms and legs clasped him. It was quickly over.
He got off and lay until his breathing was again even. She could barely see him as a deeper shadow in the night. He sounded troubled: “How wet you were. You have the body of a young woman, as well as the face.”
“For you,” she murmured.
Through the mattress she felt him tauten. “What is your age in truth?” So Hairan had avoided saying it outright; but Zabdas had perhaps avoided asking.
Fourscore and one, she knew. “I have never kept count,” was the safest reply. “But there has been no deception, my lord. I am Hairan’s mother. I ... was quite young when I bore him, and you have seen that I carry my years better than most.”
“A wonder.” His voice was fiat.
“Uncommon. A blessing. I am unworthy, but—“ It must out: “My courses have not yet ended. I can bear you children, Zabdas.”
“This is—“ He searched for a word. “Unexpected.”
“Let us thank God together.”
“Yes. We should. But now best we sleep. I have much to do in the morning.”
TO ZABDAS came the caravan master Nebozabad. They must discuss a proposed shipment to Dannesek. A journey of that length could no longer be lightly undertaken. News was too ominous, of the Arabian onslaught against Persia and threat to New Rome.
The merchant received his guest well, as he did all who were of consequence, and bade him dine. Aliyat insisted on serving them with her own hands. As they sat over their dessert, Zabdas excused himself and was gone for a while. He suffered from an occasional flux of the bowels. Nebozabad waited alone.
The room was the best furnished in the house, with embroidered red hangings, four seven-branched candelabra of gilt bronze, a table of teakwood carven in foliate patterns and inlaid with nacre, the ware upon it of silver or the finest glass. A pinch of incense hi a brazier made the air, on this warm eventide, a little cloying.
Nebozabad looked up when Aliyat came in with a tray of fruits. She stopped across from him, in dark garments that muffled sight of more than hands, countenance, the big hazel eyes. “Sit down, my lady,” he urged.
She shook her head. “That would be unseemly,” she answered in a near whisper.
“Then I will stand.” He rose from his stool. “Far too long has it been since last I saw you. How fares it?”
“Well enough.” She took on expression; her words leaped. “And how is it with you? Aiid Hairan and, oh, everybody? I hear very little.”
“You do not see much of anyone, do you, my lady?”
“My husband feels it would be ... indiscreet ... at my age. But how goes it, Nebozabad? Tell me, I beg you!”
He repeated her phrase: “Well enough. Another grandchild born to him, a girl, have you heard? As for myself, I have two living sons and a daughter, by the grace of God. Business—“ He shrugged. “This is what I’ve come about.”
“Is the danger from the Arabs great?”
“I fear so.” He paused, tugged his beard. “In your days with master Barikai, may he be happy in Heaven, you knew everything that went on. You took a hand in it yourself.”
She bit her lip. “Zabdas feels differently.”
“I suppose he wishes to keep rumors down, and that is why he never has Hairan, or any kinsman of yours, here— Forgive me!” He had seen what crossed her features. “I should not pry. It’s only that, that you were my master’s lady when I was a boy, and ever gracious to me, and—“ His voice trailed off.
“You are good to be concerned.” She jerked her head as if to keep it from drooping. “But I have fewer sorrows than many do.”
“I heard your child died. I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “That was last year. Wounds heal. We will try again.”
“You have not already? No, again I spoke badly. Too much wine. Forgive me. Seeing how beautiful you still are, I thought—”
She flushed. “My husband is not too old.”
“Yet he— No. Aliyat, my lady, if ever you should need help—”
Zabdas returned and she, having set down her tray, said good night and departed.
WHILE ROMAN and Persian bled each other to exhaustion, afar in Makkah Muhammad ibn Abdallah saw visions, preached, must flee to Yathrib, prevailed over his enemies, gave his refuge the new name Medinat Rasul Allah, the City of the Apostle of God, and died as master of Arabia. His Khalifa, Successor, Abu Bekr suppressed rebellion and launched in earnest those holy wars that united the people and carried the faith out across the world.
Six years after the troops of Emperor Heraklios reclaimed Tadmor, the troops of Khalifa Omar took it. The year after that they were in Jerusalem, and the year after that the Khalifa visited the holy city, passing triumphant through a completely subjugated Syria while couriers brought accounts of Islamic banners carried deep into the Persian heartland.
On the day he spent in Tadmor, from her rooftop Aliyat witnessed magnificence, gallant horses, richly caparisoned camels, riders whose helmets and mailcoats, lances and shields turned sunlight into flame, cloaks like windblown rainbows, trumpet and drum and deep-voiced chant. The streets surged, the oasis boiled with the conquerors. Yet she noticed that the far greater number of them were lean and roughly clad. Likewise was their garrison here, and their officials lived simple lives, five times daily humbling themselves before God when the muezzin’s call wailed across the sky.
Nor were they bad rulers. They levied tribute, but it was not unbearable. They turned a few churches into mosques, but otherwise left Christians and Jews in the peace that they sternly enforced. The qadi, then chief justice, held court beneath the arch at the east end of the Colonnade, near the agora, and even the lowliest could appeal directly to him. Then- irruption had been too swift to damage trade much, and it soon began reviving.
Aliyat was not altogether surprised when Zabdas said to her, in the tone that meant he would banish her to a rear room if she gave him any dispute: “I have reached a great decision. This household shall embrace Islam.”
Nonetheless she stood a while quiescent, amidst the shadows with which the single frugal lamp filled their bedchamber. When she spoke it was slowly, and her eyes searched him. “This is indeed a matter of the first importance. Have they compelled you?”
He shook his head. “No, no. They do not—except pagans, I am told.” He formed his thin brief smile. “They would rather most of us remain Christian, so we may own land, which believers may not, and pay tribute for it as well as the other taxes. My talks with the imam whom I approached have been difficult. But of course he may not refuse a sincere convert.”
“You’ll gain many advantages.”
He reddened. “Do you call me a hypocrite?”
“No, no, certainly not, my lord.”
Zabdas turned mild. “I understand. To you this is a terrible shock, you who have been raised to worship Christ. Think, though. The Prophet never denied that Jesus was also a prophet. He was simply not the last one, the one to whom God revealed the full truth. Islam sweeps away the superstition about countless saints, the priests who come between a man and his God, the witless commandments and restrictions. We have but to acknowledge that there is one God and Muhammad is His Prophet. We have but to live righteous lives.” He lifted a forefinger. “Think. Could the Arabs have borne everything before them as they have done, as they are doing and shall do, were theirs not the cause that is blessed, the faith that is true? I am bringing us to the truth, Aliyat.” He squinted, peering. “You welcome the truth, do you not? It cannot harm you, can it?”
Recklessly, she cast across the space between them: “I hear a man who becomes a Muslim must suffer what Jewish boys do.”
“It will not disable me,” he snapped. Curbing temper again: “I do not expect a woman to understand these deep things. Only trust in me.”
She swallowed, willed ease upon herself, moved toward him. “I do, my lord, I do,” she murmured. Maybe she could cause him to beget a third child on her, and maybe that one would survive to give meaning back to her life. He seldom took her to him, mostly when she made herself coax him in that same hope. It was almost as if, more and more, he feared her.
As for the change of religion, that mattered less than he supposed. What had the saints done to help, throughout the endless years?
SHE HAD not foreknown what the change meant. Islam burst upon Syria too suddenly. Zabdas studied it before he made his move. Only when the thing was done did she learn.
The Prophet had laid upon women of the faith the ancient usages of Arabia. In public they must wear the yashmak, the heavy veil hiding everything but the eyes, and likewise at home in the presence of any man but father, brother, husband, or son. Unchastity was punished by death. Quarters for men and women were separate, like an invisible wall built through the house, to whose door its master had the single key. Submission of wife to husband was not bounded by law and custom as it was among Christians and Jews; while a marriage lasted it was total, his the right to mutilate or kill the disobedient. Aside from such tasks as marketing, she had nothing to do with the outside world; he, his children by her, and his dwelling were to be her universe. For her there was no church, and whatever Paradise she might hope for would not be his.
So Zabdas explained, piecemeal as occasion arose. Aliyat was not sure the Law was quite that one-sided. She was entirely sure that in most families, practice softened it. But be that as it may, she was a prisoner.
She was even denied the solace of wine. That might be just as well, she decided once the first rage had faded. She had been resorting to it much oftener than was wise.
Oddly, however, as the Muslim months passed, she found herself less alone than hitherto. Thrust together, the females of the household—not only she and the slaves,, but the wives and girl-children of two of Zabdas’ sons who had joined him in Tadmor—at first quarreled viciously, then began to confide in each other. Her position and her freedom from aging had set her apart. Those who now saw her sharing then- helplessness discovered they could overlook these things, and if they told her their troubles she would do what little she could to aid them.
For her part, she learned bit by bit that she was not utterly isolated. In some ways, she touched more of the city than she had done since Barikai’s death. She might be confined, but lesser females must needs go out on various errands; and they had kinfolk with whom they gossiped at every opportunity; and nobody cared to be strict with the humble, nor stopped to think that they too possessed sharp ears, open eyes, and inquiring minds. As the touch of a fly quivers through the web to the spider that sits at its middle, so did flickers of information reach Aliyat.
She was not present when Zabdas sought the qadi soon after his conversion; but in view of what was overheard and passed on, and what happened later, eventually she believed she could reconstruct it almost as well as if she had been invisibly listening.
Normally the qadi heard pleas in the open. Everybody was free to come. She could have done so, had she had any real plaint. She thought of it, and concluded drearily that she did not. Zabdas was never abusive. He provided adequately. If he no longer came to her bed, what should a woman close to her ninetieth year expect—whether or not she had again borne him a child, and this one did keep on living? The very thought was obscene.
He asked for a private audience and the qadi granted it. The two sat in the house of Mitknal ibn Dirdar and sipped chilled pomegranate juice while they talked. Neither paid heed to the eunuch who waited on them; but he had acquaintances outside, who in their turn knew people.
“Yes, of course you may divorce your wife,” Mitkhal said. “It is easily done. However, under the Law she retains all property that was hers, and I gather she brought a fair amount to this marriage. In every event, you must see to it that she does not become destitute or lack for protection.” He bridged his fingers. “Moreover, do you wish to offend her kinfolk?”
“Hairan’s goodwill is worth little these days,” Zabdas clipped. “His business fares poorly. Aliyat’s other children—by her first marriage—scarcely know her any more.
But, hm, the requirements you describe, those could prove awkward.”
Mitkhal regarded him closely. “Why do you wish to put this woman from you? In what is she at fault?”
“Proud, resentful, sullen— No,” said Zabdas beneath that gaze, “I cannot in honesty call her contumacious.”
“Has she not given you a child?”
“A girl. The two before, they soon died. The girl is small and sickly.”
“That is shabby ground for blame, my friend. Old seed gives thin fruit.”
Zabdas chose to misunderstand. “Old, yes, by ... by the Prophet! I have inquired. I should have done so at the first, but— Sir, she nears the hundred-year mark.”
The qadi’s lips formed a soundless whistle. “And yet— one hears rumors—is she not yet fair? And you tell me she remains healthy and fertile.”
Zabdas leaned forward. Sunlight fell through the grille over a window to dapple his balding head. Behind sparse whiskers, the wattles under his jaw wabbled as he cried in a high-pitched, cracking voice: “It’s unnatural! Lately she lost a tooth or two and I believed at last, at last— But new ones are growing out, as if she were a child of six or seven! She must be a witch, or an ifrit, a demon, a— That’s what I beg for. That’s what I ask for, an investigation, a—an assurance I can cast her out and—not have to fear her vengeance. Help me!”
Mitkhal raised a palm. “Hold, hold.” His words flowed soft. “Be calm. Truly we have a marvel here. Yet all things are possible to God the Omnipotent. She has not been impious or sinful in any way, has she? You may have done right to keep her as secluded as you could—since you, her husband, have had this terror brewing within you. If the tale went abroad and spread panic, she might have been set on in the streets. Beware of that.” Severely: “Ancient patriarchs lived close to a thousand years on earth. If God the Compassionate sees fit to let—Aliyat, is that her name?— linger for close to a hundred, ageless, who are we to question His will or divine His purpose?”
Zabdas stared at his lap. What teeth remained to him gritted together. “Nevertheless,” he mumbled.
“My counsel is that you keep her as long as she does no evil, for this is both justice for her and prudence for you. My decree, upholding the Law, is that you offer her no harm when she has offered none, nor make accusations that are baseless.” Mitkhal reached for his cup, sipped, smiled. “But, true, if coupling with a crone strikes you as indecent, that is a matter of your choice. Have you considered taking a second wife? You are allowed four, you know, besides concubines.”
In these latter years of his, Zabdas was quick to cool down from both his angers and his fears. He sat a moment silent, looking into a corner of the room. Then his mouth tilted upward and he murmured, “I thank my lord for his wise and merciful judgment.”
THE DAY came when he summoned Aliyat to his office.
It was a chamber bare and cramped. A window opened on the inner court, but was too high up to afford sight of water or flowers. A niche gaped white where once the image of a saint stood. At the far end, a dais held a table bestrewn with letters, records, and writing materials. Behind it, he sat on a bench.
She entered. He laid aside a papyrus sheet, which crackled, and pointed downward. She went to knees and toes on the bare tiles before him. Silence stretched.
“Well?” he snapped.
She kept her eyes lowered. “What is my lord’s desire?”
“What have you to say for yourself?”
“What must your handmaiden defend?”
“Mock me not!” he shouted. “I’ve had my fill of your insolence. Now you have struck my wife in the face. It is too much.”
Aliyat looked up, caught his glance, held fast. “I thought Furja would go whimpering to you,” she said steadily. “What tale did she bear? Fetch her and let me hear.”
His fist struck the desk. “I will settle this. I am the master. I am being kind. I am giving you your chance to explain why you should escape a whipping.”
She drew breath. This had been foreseeable since the thing happened; she had had a pair of hours wherein to marshal words. “My lord must know that his new bride and I are apt to quarrel.” Stupid, weak-chinned, spiteful creature, forever seeking to squirm herself into the man’s favor and shrill herself into sovereignty over the harem. “Alas that this should be. It is wrong.” That tasted foul but had better be said. “Today she gave me an intolerable insult. I smote her once, open-handedly, across the chops. She wailed and fled—to you, who have things of importance to deal with.”
“She has often complained to me. You have been overbearing ever since she came into my house.”
“I have demanded no more than the respect due your senior wife, my lord.” I will not become a slave, a dog, a thing.
“What was this insult?” asked Zabdas.
“It was vile. Must I take it in my mouth?”
“Um-m ... describe it.”
“She shrieked that I keep my looks and strength by— means unspeakable in decent company.”
“Um! Are you certain? Women have flighty memories.”
“I suppose if you haled her in and put the question, she would deny it. Not her first lie.”
“Word against word.” Zabdas sighed loudly. “What is a man to believe? When shall he find peace to get on with his work? Women!”
“I think men, too, would grow jangle-witted, were they shut away forever with nothing to do that was worth the doing,” said Aliyat, for she felt she had little to lose.
“If I have left you ... undisturbed, it has been out of consideration for your age.”
“And yours, my lord?” she dared purr.
He paled. The brown spots on his skin stood plain to see. “Furja does not find me wanting!”
Not quite every night of the month, Aliyat thought. And, in sudden, surprising pity: He fears that his uneasiness about me would unman him; and likely that very fear would.
But they were moving toward deadly ground. She drew back: “I pray my lord’s pardon. No doubt some of the blame does fall on me, his servant. I simply hoped to explain to him why squabbles trouble his harem. If Furja will show me courtesy, I will do likewise.”
Zabdas rubbed his chin and stared beyond her. She had a brief, eerie feeling that somehow this was a chance for which he had waited. At length he regarded her and said, his tone strained, “Life was different for you in your young days. Old people find it hard to change. At the same time, this vigor you have kept makes it impossible for you to resign yourself. Am I right?”
She swallowed. “My lord speaks truth,” she answered, amazed that he showed any insight.
“And I have heard that you were helpful to your first husband in his business,” he went on.
She could only nod.
“Well, I have given you much thought, Aliyat,” he said faster. “My duty under God is to provide for your welfare, which should include your spirit’s. If time has become empty for you, if our daughter is not enough—well, perhaps we can find something more.”
Her heart sprang. Blood thundered in her ears.
Again he looked past her. “What I have hi mind is irregular,” he said, cautiously now. “No violation of the Law, understand, but it could cause gossip. I am willing to hazard this for your sake, but you must do your part, you must exercise the utmost discretion.”
“Wha-whatever my lord commands!”
“It will be a beginning, a trial. If you acquit yourself well, who knows what may follow? But hark.” He wagged his forefinger. “In Emesa is a youth, a distant kinsman of mine, who is eager to go into the business. His father will be pleased if I invite him here and train him. I, though, I lack time to teach him the ins and outs, the rules and customs and traditions peculiar to Tadmor, as well as the basic practicalities—especially where it comes to making shipments, to dealing with caravaneers. I could assign a man of mine to his instruction, but I can ill spare anyone. You, however; I suppose you remember. Of course, the utmost discretion is essential.”
Aliyat prostrated herself. “Trust me, my lord!” she sobbed.
BONNUR WAS tall, broad in the shoulders, slim in the waist. His beard was the merest overlay of silk across the smooth features, but a man’s strength rested in the hands. His movements and his eyes were like a gazelle’s. Though he was Christian, Zabdas received him cordially before sending him to find a bed among the other young men who served and learned here.
A twelvemonth back, the merchant had bought a lesser building adjacent to his home. He set workers to erect walls and roof joining the pair together, then knock out what separated them and make them one. Thus he would gain added offices, storerooms, and quarters for an expanded staff; his trade was burgeoning. Lately he had ordered a halt to the construction. He declared it was better to wait and see what effect the ongoing conquest of Persia would have on the traffic with India. The addition therefore stood unfurnished, unoccupied, dusty, and silent.
When he led her into it, Aliyat was astonished to find a room at the far end had been swept and outfitted. A plain but thick wool carpet softened the floor. Hangings flanked the second-story window. A table held a water carafe, cups, papyrus, ink, pens. Two stools waited nearby. And Bonnur did. Though Aliyat had been introduced to him earlier, her pulse quickened.
He salaamed deeply. “Be at ease,” said Zabdas with unaccustomed cordiality, “at ease, my dears. If we are to be a little irregular, we may as well enjoy it.”
He took a turn around the room, talking: “For my wife to explain things to you, Bonnur, and for you to ask of her, you need freedom. I am not the dry stick people take me for. I know that the folkways, the subtleties of a city cannot be entered in a ledger or parsed like a sentence. Stares and sniggers and the constraint you would feel, did you sit conferring in plain sight of every fool, those would bind your tongues, your minds. The task would become difficult, prolonged, perhaps impossible. And, to be sure, I would be considered eccentric at best for setting you to it. Men might wonder if I was near my dotage. That would be bad for trade, oh, yes.
“Therefore this retreat. At such times as I deem right, when your services are not required elsewhere, Bonnur, I will send word. You will leave the house and enter this section by its back door, on the lane behind. And I will give you a signal, Aliyat. You will betake yourself directly here. In fact, sometimes you will come here to be alone. You have desired to help me; very well, you may look over such reports and figures as I shall lend you, undisturbed, and offer me your opinions. This will be common knowledge. At other times, unbeknownst to anyone else, you will meet Bonnur.”
“But sir!” Red and white went in waves over the boyish face. “The lady and I and nobody else? Surely a maidservant, a eunuch, or—or—”
Zabdas shook his head. “The protestation does you honor,” he replied. “However, a watcher would defeat my whole purpose, which is to give you a true feel of conditions in Tadmor while avoiding derision and insinuations.” He looked from one to the other of them. “I never doubt I can trust my kinsman and my first wife.” With a flick of a smile: “She is, after all, aged beyond the usual span of me.”
“What?” Bonnur exclaimed. “Master, you jest! The veil, the gown, they cannot hide—”
“It is true,” said Zabdas, a low sibilation. “You shall hear of it from her, along with things less curious.”
A DAY approached sunset. “Well,” said Aliyat, “best we stop. I have duties still before me.”
“And I. And I should think upon what you have revealed to me this time.” Bonnur’s voice dragged.
Neither of them rose from the stools on which they sat facing. Abruptly he colored, dropped his gaze, and blurted, “My lady has a wonderful intelligence.”
It felt like a caress. “No, no,” she protested. “In a long life, even a stupid person learns a few things.”
She saw him break down a barrier so that he could meet her eyes. “Hard to believe you are, are old.”
“I carry my years well.” How often had she said it precisely thus? How mechanical it had become.
“All you have seen—“ Reckless impulse: “The change of faith. That you were forced away from Christ!”
“I have no regrets.”
“Do you not? If only for, for the freedom you have lost— the freedom your friends have lost, the simple freedom to look upon you—”
For an instant she was about to hush him. Nothing closed off the doorway but a bead curtain. However, such a thing muffled sound somewhat, and deserted corridors and rooms stretched between it and the inhabited part, and he had spoken softly, deep in his throat, while tears glimmered on his lashes.
“Who cares to see a hag?” she fended, and knew she was teasing.
“You are not! You shouldn’t have to cower behind that veil. I’ve noticed when you forgot to stoop and shamble.”
“You have watched me closely, it seems.” She fought a dizziness.
“I cannot help myself,” he confessed miserably.
“You are too curious.” As if a different creature used her tongue, her hands: “Best we quench that. Behold.”
She drew the yashmak aside. He gasped.
She dropped it back and stood up. “Are you satisfied? Keep silence, or we shall have to end these meetings. My lord would mislike that.” She left him.
Her daughter met her in the harem. “Mama, where have you been? Gutne won’t let me play with the lion doll.”
Aliyat groped after patience. She ought to love this child. But Thirya was whimpery, and sick half the time, and resembled her father.
SOMETIMES THE sameness of the days broke, when Zabdas gave Aliyat materials to study and report on. In the room that was apart, she tried to grasp what she read, but it slipped and wriggled about like a handful of worms. Twice she met there with Bonnur. The second time she took off her veil at the outset, and she had dressed in a gown of light material. “The weather is blazing hot,” she told him, “and I am only an old granny, no, great-grandmother.” They accomplished little. Silences kept falling between them.
More days flowed sluggishly together. She lost count of them. What difference did their number make? Each was just like the last, save for bickerings and nuisances and, at night, dreams. Did Satan brew certain of those for her? If so, she owed him thanks.
Then Zabdas summoned her to his office. “Your counsel has gone worthless,” he said peevishly. “Does your dotage come upon you at last?”
She bit back rage. “I am sorry, my lord, if no thoughts have occurred to me of late. I will try to do better.”
“What’s the use? No use in you any more. Furja, now, Furja warms my bed, and surely soon she’ll be fruitful.” Zabdas waved a hand in dismissal. “Well, be off. Go wait for Bonnur. I’ll send him. Perhaps at least you can persuade him to mend those woolgathering ways he’s taken on. By all the saints—by the beard of the Prophet, I regret my promises to both of you!”
Aliyat stalked through the empty part of the house with fists clenched. In the room of meetings she prowled back and forth, back and forth. It was a cage. She halted at the window and stared out through the grille. From there she could look over the walls around the ancient temple of Bel. Its limestone seemed bleached under a furious sun. The bronze capitals of the portico columns blazed. Heat-shimmer made the reliefs on the cella waver. Long had it stood unused, empty, like herself. Now it was being refurbished. She had heard at fourth or fifth hand that the Arabs planned to make a fortress of it.
But were those Powers entirely dead? Bel of the storm, Jarhibol of the sun, Aglibol of the moon—Ashtoreth of begettings and births, terrible in beauty, she who descended into hell to win back her lover—unseen, they strode across the earth; unheard, they shouted throughout heaven; the sea that Aliyat had never known thundered behind her breasts.
A footstep, a click of beads, she whirled about. Bonnur halted. Sweat sheened on him. She caught the smell of it, filling the heat and silence, man-smell. She was wet with her own; the dress clung to her.
She unfastened her veil and cast it to the floor.
“My lady,” he choked, “oh, my lady.”
She advanced. Her hips swung as if of themselves. Breath loudened. “What would you with me, Bonnur?”
His gazelle eyes fled right and left, trapped. He backed off a step. He raised his hands against her. “No,” he begged.
“No, what?” she laughed. She stopped before him and he must needs meet her look. “We’ve things to do, you and I.”
If he is wise, he will agree. He will sit down and begin asking about the best way to bargain with a caravaneer.
“I HAVE business in Tripolis,” Zabdas said. “It may keep me several weeks. I shall go with Nebozabad, who leaves a few days hence.”
Aliyat was glad she had left her veil on after reaching his office. “Does my lord wish to say what business it is?”
“No sense in that. You’ve grown barren of advice, as of everything else. I am informing you privately so that I can state what should be obvious, that in my absence you are to abide in the harem and occupy yourself with a wife’s ordinary duties.”
“Of course, my lord.”
She and Bonnur had thus far had two afternoons together.
Aliya pushed fury down. “Hush, darling,” she breathed. “Go to sleep.” And she must wait while the child tossed and whined, until finally the bed was quiet.
Her feet remembered the way through the dark. She clutched her nightgown to her lest it brush against something. The thought flitted: Like this do the unrestful dead steal from their graves. But it was to life that she was going. Already the juices of it ran hot. Her nostrils drank the cedary odor of her desire.
Nobody else woke, and there was no guard on as small, as drab a harem as this. Her fingers touched walls, guiding her, until she reached the last dear corridor. No, do not run, make no needless sound. The beads in the doorway snaked around her. The window framed stars. A breeze from the cooling desert drifted through it. Her pulse racketed. She pulled off the gown and tossed it aside.
He came. Her toes gripped the carpet.
“Aliyat, Aliyat.” The rough whisper echoed in her head. Bonnur stumbled, knocked a stool over, panted. She gurgled laughter and slipped to him.
“I knew you would come, beloved,” she sang. His arms enclosed her. She clawed herself tight to him. Her tongue thrust between his lips.
He bore her down, they were on the carpet, the thought flashed that she must take care it show no stains, he groaned and she reached after him.
Lantern light glared. “Behold!” Zabdas cackled.
Bonnur rolled off Aliyat. Both sat up, crouched back, crawled to their feet. The lantern swung in Zabdas’ hand. It sent huge misshapen shadows adance over the walls. She saw him in fragments, eyeballs, nose, wet snags of teeth, wrinkles, hatred. Right and left of him were his two sons. They bore swords. The steel gleamed.
“Boys, seize them!” Zabdas shouted.
Bonnur reeled. He lifted his hands like a beggar. “No, master, my lord, no.”
It tumbled through Aliyat: Zabdas had planned this from the first. He had no passage arranged with the caravan. ; These three waited in another room, their light muffled, for that which he knew would happen. Now he would be rid of her, and keep her property, and believe that even an ifrit— or whatever inhuman thing she might be—would not return from the punishment for adultery.
Once she would have welcomed an ending. But the weariness of the years was burned out of her.
“Bonnur, fight!” she screamed. “They’ll tie us in a sack and the people will stone us to death!” She laid her hands on his back and shoved him forward. “Are you a man? Save us!”
He howled and leaped. A man swung sword. Unpracticed, he missed. Bonnur caught that arm with one hand. His fist crunched into the nose behind. The second brother edged around, awkwardly, afraid of hitting the wrong body. The struggle lurched past Aliyat. It left a smear of blood on her. She bounced clear.
Zabdas blocked the doorway. She snatched the lantern from the old man’s feeble grasp and dashed it to the floor. Oil flared in yellow flame. He staggered aside. She heard him shriek as the fire licked his ankle.
She fled past the beads, down hall and stairway, out the rear door, from the lane into ghost-gray streets between blank walls. The Philippian Gate stayed open after dark when a caravan was making ready. If she took care, if she moved slowly and kept to the shadows, its sentries might not see her.
Oh, Bonnur! But she had no breath or tears to spare for him, not yet, not if she wanted to live.
THOSE IN the caravan who glanced behind them saw the towers of Tadmor catch the first sun-gleam. Then they were up the valley and out on the steppe. Ahead of them the sky also brightened-until the last stars faded away.
Signs of man were sparse on that day’s travel. After Nebozabad left the Roman road on a short cut across the desert, there was nothing but a trail worn by the generations before him who had fared likewise. He called halt for the night at a muddy, pool where the horses could drink. Men contented themselves with what they carried along in skins, camels with what scrawny shrubs were to be found.
The master strode through the bustle and hubbub to a certain driver. “I will take that bale, now, Hatim,” he said. The other grinned. Like most in this trade, he considered smuggling to be a part of it, and never asked unnecessary questions.
The bale was actually a long bundle tied together with rope, which had been nestled into the load on the camel. Nebozabad’s slave carried it back, into the master’s tent, laid it down, salaamed, and went to squat outside, forbidding intruders. Nebozabad knelt, undid the knots, unrolled the cloth.
Aliyat crept forth. Sweat plastered her hair and the djellabah he had lent to the curves of her. The countenance was hollow-eyed, the lips cracked. Yet once he had given her water and a bite of food, she recovered with eerie quickness, well-nigh minute by minute as he watched.
“Speak low,” he warned. “How have you fared?”
“It was hot and dry and gut-wrenching bumpy,” she answered in a voice husky more than hoarse, “but I shall forever thank you. Did a search party come?”
He nodded. “Soon after we left. A few Arabian soldiers, rousted out—after Zabdas gained himself ill will by waking the qadi, I gather. They were sleepy and uninterested. We need not have hidden you so well.”
She sighed where she sat, knees drawn up, ran fingers through her matted tresses, gave him a smile that shone and lingered in the lamplit dusk. “You cared, dear friend.”
Cross-legged before her, he scowled. “Reckless was I. It might cost me my head, and I’ve my family to think of.”
She reached to stroke fingers across his wrist. “Rather would I die than bring harm on you. Give me a waterskin and a little bread, and I will strike off across the desert.”
“No, no!” he exclaimed. “That would be a slower death. Unless the nomads found you, which would be worse. No, I can take you along. We’ll swaddle you well in garments too large, keep you offside and unspeaking. I’ll say you’re a boy, kin to me, who’s requested a ride to Tripolis.” He grinned sourly. “Those who doubt the ‘kin’ part of that will snicker behind my back. Well, let them. My tent is yours to share while the journey lasts.”
“God will reward you, where I cannot. Barikai in Paradise will intercede for your soul.”
Nebozabad shrugged. “I wonder how much good that will do, when it’s the escape of a confessed adulteress I’m aiding.”
Her mouth trembled. A tear ran down the sweat and grime dried on her cheeks. “It’s right, though,” he said in haste. “You told me what cruelties drove you from your wits.”
She caught his nearer hand in both hers and clung.
He cleared his throat. “Yet you must understand, Aliyat, I can do no more than this. In Tripolis I must leave you, with what few coins I can spare, and thereafter you are alone. Should I be charged with having helped you, I will deny all.”
“And I will deny I saw you. But fear not. I’ll vanish from sight.”
“Whither? How shall you live, forsaken?”
“I will. I have already seen ninety years. Look. Have they left any mark on me?”
He stared. “They have not,” he mumbled. “You are strange, strange.”
“Nonetheless—simply a woman. Nebozabad, I, I can do somewhat to repay a morsel of your kindness. The only things I have to offer are memories, but those you can bring home with you.”
He sat motionless.
She drew closer. “It is my wish,” she whispered. “They will be my memories too.”
AND GLADSOME they are, she thought when afterward he lay sleeping. I could almost envy his wife.
Until he grew old, and she did. Unless first a sickness took one or the other off. Aliyat had never in her life been ill. Her flesh had forgotten the abuse of the day and the night that were past. A pleasant languor pervaded it, but if perchance he should awaken, she would instantly arouse to eagerness.
She smiled in the dark. Allow the man his rest. She would like to go out and walk about a while, under the moon and the high desert stars. No, too risky. Wait. Wait. She had learned how.
Paul twinged. Poor Bonnur. Poor Thirya. But if ever she let herself weep for any of the short-lived, there would be no end of weeping. Poor Tadmor. But a new city lay ahead, and beyond it all the world and time.
A woman who was ageless had one way, if none eke, to live onward hi freedom.
IT is told in the saga of Olaf Tryggvason how Nornagest came to him when he was at Nidharos and abode some while in the king’s hall; for many and wonderful were the tales that Gest bore. Evening after lengthening evening as the year drew toward winter, men sat by the fires and hearkened. Tales they heard from lifetimes agone and the far ends of the world. Often he gave them staves as well, for he was a skald, and was apt to strum a harp underneath the words, in English wise. There were those who muttered he must be a liar, asking how any man could have fared so widely or been so old. But King Olaf bade these be still, and himself listened keenly.
“I was living on a farm in the Uplands,” Gest had said to him. “Now my last child yonder has died, and again I am weary of my dwelling—wearier than ever, lord. Word of you reached me, and I have come to see whether it is true.”
“What you have heard that is good, is true,” answered the priest Conor. “By God’s grace, he is bringing a new day to Norway.”
“But your day first broke very long ago, Gest, did it not?” murmured Olaf. “We have heard of you again and again. Everyone has—though none but your neighbors in the mountains have seen you for many years, and I supposed you must be dead.” When he looked at the newcomer he saw a man tall and lean, straight in the back, gray of hair and beard but with few lines across the strong bones of his face. “You are not really aged after all.”
Gest sighed. “I am older than I seem, lord.”
“Guest of the Noras. A strange and heathenish nick-name, that,” said the king slowly. “How did you come by it?”
“You may not want to hear.” And Gest turned the talk elsewhere.
Right well did he understand the craft of doing so. Over and over, Olaf urged him to take baptism and be saved. Yet the king did not make threats or order death, as he did with most who were stubborn about this. Gest’s tales were so gripping that he wanted to keep the wanderer here.
Conor pressed harder, seeking Gest out almost daily. The priest was eager in the holy work. He had come with Olaf when the latter sailed from Dublin to Norway, overthrew Hdkon Jarl, and won the land for himself. Now the king was calling in missionaries from England and Germany as well as Ireland, and maybe Conor felt a bit left out.
Gest gave him grave heed and soft answers. “I am no stranger to your Christ,” Gest said. “I have met him often, or at least his worshippers. Nor am I plighted to Odin and Thor.” His smile was rueful. “I have known too many different gods.”
“But this is the true and only God,” Conor replied. “Hang not back, or you will be lost. In just a few years a full thousand will have passed since his birth among men. Belike he will come back then, end the world, and raise the dead for judgment.”
Gest stared afar. “It would be good to believe I can meet my dead anew,” he whispered; and he let Conor talk on.
At eventide, however, after meat, when the trestle tables had been taken from the hall and women carried the drinking horns forth, he had other things to talk about, yarns to spin, verses to chant, questions to meet. Once a couple of guardsmen happened to speak of the great battle at Bravellir. “My forebear Grani from Bryndal was among the Icelanders who fought for King Sigurdh Ring,” one boasted. “He cut his way close enough to see King Harald War-Tooth fall. Starkadh himself had not strength to save the Danes that day.”
Gest stirred. “Forgive me,” he said. “There were no Icelanders at Bravellir. Norsemen hadjiot yet found that island.”
The warrior bristled. “Have you never heard the lay that Starkadh made?” he flung back. “It names all the worthies who came to the fray on either side.”
Gest shook his head. “I have heard, and I do not call you a liar, Eyvind. You passed on what you were told. But Starkadh never made any such lay. Another skald did, lifetimes afterward, and put it in his mouth. Bravellir was bloodied—“ He sat a few heartbeats thinking, while the fires in the trenches guttered and crackled. “Was it three hundred years ago? I have lost track.”
“Do you mean Starkadh was not there, and you were?” gibed the guardsman.
“Oh, he was,” said Gest, “though he was not much like the stories men tell of him now, nor lamed and half blind with age when at last he went to his death.”
Stillness fell anew. King Olaf peered through shifting shadows at the speaker before he asked low, “Did you, then, know him?”
Gest nodded. “I did. Indeed, it was right after Bravellir that we met.”
HIS STAFF was a spear, for no man traveled unarmed in the North; but over the small pack on his back hung a harp in its case, and he offered harm to none. When at nightfall he found a homestead, he slept there, repaying hospitality with songs and tales and news from outside. Otherwise he rolled up in his cloak, and by dawnlight drank from a spring or brook and ate of whatever bread and cheese his latest host had given him. Thus had he fared through most of his years, from end to end of the world.
This day was cool beneath a wan sky where clouds were scant and the sun swung southward. The woods that decked the hills of Gautland stood hazed and hushed. Birches had begun to turn yellow, and the green of oak and beech was less bright than erstwhile. Firs lifted darkling among them. Ripe currants glowed hi the shade. Smells of earth and damp filled every breath.
Gest saw it all, widely, from a ridge he had climbed. Below him the land rolled off to an unclear edge of sight. Mostly it was tree-clad, but meadows and plowed fields broke it here and there. He spied two houses and their outbuildings, distance-dwindled; smoke rose straight upward from the roofs. Close by, a stream glistened on its way to a lake that shone in the offing,
He had come far enough from the battlefield that the wreckage and the dead strewn across it were blurred together in his eyes. Carrion birds swarmed aloft and about and back down, a whirling blackness, but also gone tiny for him. He could barely hear their cries. Sometimes the howl of a wolf lifted, to hang above the hills for what seemed a long while before dying away in echoes.
Living men had withdrawn, bound home. They took wounded kindred and friends along, but could merely throw a little earth over such of the fallen as they knew. A band of them whom Gest had come upon this morning did tell him that King Sigurdh had borne off the body of his foe King Harald, to give it a barrow and grave goods at Uppsala for the sake of his own honor.
Gest leaned on his spear, shook his head, and smiled sadly. How often had he beheld the like of this, after young men stormed forth to cast their lives from them? He did not know. He had lost the number somewhere in the waste of the centuries. Or else he had never had the heart to try keeping count. He was not sure which, any more. Yet as always, he felt the need to say a farewell, the only thing he or anyone else could now give the young men.
It was no skaldic drapa that came to his lips. The words were Northern, so that the dead would understand if they could hear, but he lacked all wish to praise bravery and recall mighty deeds. The verse form that he chose was from a country thousands of miles toward the sunrise. There a short, slanty-eyed folk knew much and fashioned things of wondrous beauty, though there too the sword ranged free.
“The summer fading, Chill shall slash the leaves bloody And the geese trek—where? Already this ground went red While the wind called souls away.”
A brief spell more Gest lingered, then turned and departed. Those Danes he met earlier had seen the one whom he sought leave soon after half a dozen Swedes did and follow them eastward. Thereupon Gest had gone to Bravellir and cast about until his woodsman’s eye lighted on what he thought must be the tracks. He had better hurry. Nonetheless he kept to his everyday stride. It looked lazy, but in the course of a day it left as much behind it as a horse might, or more; and it let him stay aware of everything around him.
He was on a game trail. The kings had set Bravellir as their meeting place because it was a broad meadow through which a road ran north and south, about halfway between Harald in Scania and Sigurdh in Sweden. However, the land round about was thinly settled. The six going this way must be headed for the Baltic shore, where lay the ship or ships that had brought them. That they were so few bespoke how terrible the battle had been. It would be remembered, sung about, made even larger in the minds of men, for hundreds of years to come. And those who plowed yonder fields would molder forgotten.
Gest’s shoes scuffed softly on soil. Branches were a roof overhead, through which sunbeams fell to make spatters of light on the shadowy hallway before him. A squirrel ran like a flame up a tree. Somewhere a dove moaned. Brush rustled on the left, a great dim shape slipped off, an elk. Gest let his soul drift into the sweet-smelling reaches. Meanwhile, though, he kept reading the traces. That was easy, footprints, broken twigs, torn spiderwebs, marks on mossy logs where men had sat down to rest. They were no hunters by trade, as he had been through much of his life. Nor was the one who followed them, never stopping, closing the gap between. Those feet were huge.
Time passed. The sunbeams lowered, lengthened, took on a golden hue. A bit of cold crept into the air.
Suddenly Gest halted. He leaned forward, head cocked, listening. Family to him came a noise he thought he knew.
He quickened his pace to a lope. Muffled at first by leaves, the sound swelled fast, clang and clatter, shouts, soon crackling, snapping, and harsh breath. Gest brought his spear to the ready and glided on as quietly as might be.
A slain man sprawled across the trail. He had fallen into a bush that snagged the upper half of him. Blood dripped from its stems and pooled below, screamingly bright. A blow had cloven him from the left shoulder through the breastbone. Pieces of rib and lung poked out of him. Fair hair clung sweat-matted to cheeks whereon no beard grew, just the down of a boy. He stared and gaped emptily.
Gest drew aside and found himself treading on another body, dose by, brush churned with combat. He glimpsed men, iron, blood and more blood. Weapon banged on weapon, scraped across helmets, thudded against wooden shields. Another fighter toppled. A thigh spouted red; he threshed about and shrieked. It was the kind of noise a human throat ought not to make. A fourth warrior dropped and lay sodden in a patch of nettles. The head was nearly off him.
Gest got behind a young fir. It screened him, and he could see between its limbs. Two were left of the band that the newcomer had overtaken and attacked. Like their mates, they wore only sarks, coats, breeks. If any owned mail, he had not thought to put it on until too late. Both these did have kettle hats. One carried sword and shield, one an ax.
Their lone foe was fully outfitted, in knee-length byrnie, conical helmet with noseguard, an iron-rimmed shield hi his left grip and a sword of uncommon size in his right. He was more than big, overtopping Gest’s goodly height by a head, shoulders as wide as a doorframe, arms and legs like oak boughs. An unkempt black beard reached to his chest.
The pair had recovered from the shock of his onslaught. They worked together, barking words to and fro. The swordsman went straight at the giant. Blades clashed, agleam when they rose into a sunbeam, a blur as they hissed downward or sideways. The Swede caught a blow on his shield that made him lurch, but stood fast and struck back. The axman circled behind their enemy.
The huge man must have known it. Blindingly fast, he spun on his heel and plunged at the axman, offside, so that the stroke missed him by inches. His blade whipped. The axman staggered, dropped his weapon, stared at a right forearm laid open and bone-shattered. The giant leaped on past him. There was a grassy patch between him and the other swordsman. At its end he turned and burst into a run at that fellow. Shields boomed together, with weight and speed behind his. Overborne, the Swede went on his back. Somehow he kept hold of his sword and got his shield up.
The giant sprang high and landed on him. Shield was driven against ribs. Gest thought he heard them crack. Breath whoofed out. The giant straddled the writhing body and made his kill in two strokes.
He glared around. The wounded axman was in flight, blundering off among the boles. The winner dashed after and cut him down.
The shrieks of the thigh-slashed man ebbed off to cawing, to rattling, to silence.
Laughter boomed from a cavern of a breast. The huge man rammed his blade thrice into the earth, wiped it clean on the shirt of a fallen, and sheathed it. His breathing eased. He doffed helmet and coif, dropped them, swept a hairy hand over the sweat that tunneled off his brow.
Gest came out from behind the fir. The giant snatched at his hilt. Gest leaned spear in the crotch of a tree and spread his palms, “I am peaceful,” he said.
The warrior stayed taut. “But are you alone?” he asked. His voice was like heavy surf on a strand of stones.
Gest looked into the rugged face, the small ice-blue eyes, and nodded. “I am. Besides, after what I have just seen, I would not think Starkadh need be wary of anyone or anything.”
The warrior grinned. “Ah, you know me. But we have not met erenow.”
“Everybody in the North has heard of Starkadh the Strong. And ... I have been in search of you.”
“You have?” Surprise turned into a glower. “Then it was a nithing’s trick to stand aside and give me no help.”
“You had no need,” said Gest in his mildest tone. “Also, the battle went so fast. Never have I seen such weapon-wielding.”
Pleased, Starkadh spoke friendlier. “Who are you that seek me?”
“I have borne many names. In the North it has oftenest been Gest.”
“What would you of me?”
“That is a long tale. May I first ask why you hounded these men down and slew them?”
Starkadh’s gaze went elsewhere, toward the sun whose light shot in yellow beams between trees turning dark against heaven. His lips moved. After a bit he nodded, met Gest’s look again, and said:
“Here shall wolves not hunger. Haraldfed the ravens. Honor won we. Only Odin overcame us. Ale I lack, but offer All these foes to Harold. Never was he niggard. Now I’ve shown I’m thankful.”
So it was true what they said, Gest thought. As well as being the foremost of warriors, Starkadh had some gift as a skald. What else might he be?
“I see,” Gest acknowledged slowly. “You fought for Harald, and wished to avenge your lord after he fell, though the war be done with.”
Starkadh nodded. “I hope I have gladdened his ghost. Still more do I hope I have gladdened his forebear King Frodhi, who was the best of lords and never stinted me of gold or weapons or other fine things.”
A tingle went through Gest, a chill along his backbone. “Was that Frodhi Fridhleifsson in Denmark? They say Starkadh was of his household. But he died lifetimes ago.”
“I am older than I seem,” answered Starkadh with renewed roughness. He shook himself. “After this day’s work, thirst is afire in me. Would you know where there is water?”
“I know how to find water, if you will come with me,” Gest told him. “But what of these dead men?”
Starkadh shrugged. “I’m no scaldcrow to pick them clean. Leave them for the ants.” Flies buzzed around blind eyes, parched tongues, clotting blood. Stenches hung heavy.
Gest had grown used to such sights, but he was ever happy to lay them behind him, and tried not dwell on thoughts of widows, children, mothers. The lives he had shared were short at best, the merest blink of years, and afterward, for most, a span hardly longer before they were wholly forgotten by all but him. He took his spear and led the way down the trail.
“Will you be returning to Denmark?” he asked.
“I think not,” rumbled Starkadh at his back. “Sigurdh will make sure the next king in Hleidhra is beholden to him, and that the under-kings are at odds with each other.”
“Chances for a fighting man.”
“But I’d mislike watching the realm fall asunder that Frodhi built and Harald War-Tooth rebuilt.”
Gest sighed. “From what I have heard, the seed of something great died at Bravellir. What will you do?”
“Take ships that I own, gather crews for them, and go in viking—eastward to Wendland and Gardhariki, I think. Is that a harp you bear above your pack?”
Gest nodded. “I’ve put my hand to sundry kinds of work, but mainly I am a skald.”
“Then come with me. When we reach a lord’s hall, make a drapa about what I wrought this day. I’ll reward you well.”
“We must talk about that.”
Silence fell between them. After a while Gest saw the signs he had been awaiting and took a side trail. It opened on a glade starred with clover. A spring bubbled up at the middle; water trickled off through the grass, to lose itself under the trees. They made a wall around, dark beneath, still golden-green on top where the last sunbeams touched them. The eastern sky was violet-blue. A flight of rooks winged homeward.
Starkadh cast himself belly down and drank with mighty slurps. When at length he raised his dripping beard, he saw Gest busy. The wanderer had lain down his cloak, opened his pack, spread things out. Now he gathered deadwood below the trees and bushes that surrounded the glade. “What are you doing?” Starkadh asked.
“Making ready for night,” Gest told him.
“Does nobody dwell nearby? A swineherd’s hut would do.”
“I know not, and belike darkness would overrun us while we searched. Besides, here is better rest than on a dirt floor breathing smoke and farts.”
“Oh, I’ve slept under the stars often enough, and gone hungry too. I see you’ve a little food with you. Will you share?”
Gest gave the warrior a close look. “You’d not simply take it from me?”
“No, no, you are neither foeman nor quite a stranger.” Starkadh laughed. “Nor a woman. Too bad.”
Gest smiled. “We’ll halve what there is, though it’s not much for a man your size. I’ll set snares. By morning, with luck, we’ll have voles to cook, or even a squirrel or hedgehog.” He paused. “Would you like to help me? If you’ll work as I show you, we can make ourselves snug before nightfall.”
Starkadh rose. “Do you think me a coalbiter? Of course I’ll take a hand. Are you a Finn, or have you dwelt among Finns, to know these woodsrunner’s tricks?”
“No, I was born in Denmark like you—a long time ago. But I learned the hunter’s craft in my boyhood.”
Gest found, unsurprised, that he must pick his words with care when giving orders. Starkadh’s haughtiness was likely to flare. Once he roared, “Am I a thrall?” and half drew blade. He resheathed it, smacked fist into palm, and did as he was bidden. For that moment, pain had twisted his face.
Daylight drained from the west. More and more stars glittered forth. When dusk had seeped upward to fill the glade, the men had their camp ready. A brushwood shelter, bracken and boughs heaped within, would allow rest free of dew, night mists, and rain if any fell. Turfs piled outside its mouth cast back into it the warmth of a fire that Gest had kindled with a drill. Besides nuts and berries, he had found pine cones, sedges, and roots to eke out the bread and cheese. After he had roasted them in the ways that were needful, he and Starkadh would bed down fairly full.
He hunkered at the fire, with his knife whittling a green stick into part of a cooking tool. It was a fire more low than the warrior would have built, softly sputtering, its slight smoke savory of resin. Though air cooled fast at this season, Starkadh learned he could stay comfortable by sitting close. The red and yellow flames cast wavery light over Gest’s cheekbones and nose; it glinted from his eyes and made shadows in the gray beard. “These are good skills you own,” Starkadh said. “Indeed you shall fare with me.”
“We will talk of that,” Gest answered, watching his work.
“Why? You told me you were in search of me.”
“Yes, I was.” Gest drew breath. “Long and long had I been away, until at last memories of the North overwhelmed me and I must come back to see if the aspens still quivered in the light nights of midsummer.” He did not speak of a woman who died after he and she fared thirty years together over the vast plains of the East with her herder tribesfolk. “I had lost hope in my quest, I had stopped seeking—until as I walked through the woods and over the heaths of Jutland and the old tongue reawakened in me, not too much changed since I left, I began to hear about Starkadh. Him I must meet! I followed word of him to Hleidhra, where they said he had gone across the Sound to join King Harald and thence onward to war. I followed that trail to Bravellir, and reached it at sunset when the day’s slaughter had ended. In the morning I found men who had seen him go from it, and I took the way they pointed, and here we are, Starkadh.”
The huge man shifted about. “What would you of me?” he growled uneasily.
“First I would ask for the tale of your life. Some of the stories I heard were wild.”
“You’re a news-greedy one.”
“I have sought knowledge throughout the world. M-m-m ... how shall a storyteller repay a night’s lodging or a skald make staves for chieftains, unless he have something word-worthy behind his teeth?”
Starkadh had unbuckled his sword, but dropped hand to knife. “Is this the beginning of witchcraft? Uncanny are you, Gest.”
The wanderer locked gaze with the warrior and answered, “I swear to cast no spell. What I am after is more strange than that.”
Starkadh quelled a shiver. As if charging at fear to trample it underfoot, he said in a rush: “What I have done is well known, though belike no man save me knows all of it. But sooth it is, wild and sometimes ugly tales have mushroomed over the years. I am not of Jotun birth. That’s old wives’ chatter. My father was a yeoman in the north of Zealand, my mother came of honest fisher folk, and they had other children who grew up, lived like anybody else, grew fold, and were laid in howe, those that battle or sickness or the sea had spared—also like anybody else.”
“How long have they lain in the earth?” Gest asked softly.
Starkadh ignored the question. “I was big and strong, as you see. From childhood I lacked wish to muck and plow the fields or haul nets full of stinking fish. Twelve years old, I went off in viking. Some neighborhood men had a ship in common. They met with other ships and harried a while along the Norse shores. When they went back for hay harvest, I stayed behind. I sought out a skipper who was going to stay the winter; and thereafter my fame waxed fast.
“Shall I tell you of battles, reavings, burnings, feasts, hunger, cold, shipmates, women, offerings to the gods, strife against storm and bad luck when the gods grew angry with us, kings we served and kings we overthrew? The years lie jumbled and awash in me like flotsam on a skerry.
“Frodhi, king at Hleidhra, took me in after I suffered shipwreck. He made me the head of his household troops, and I made him the greatest of lords in his day. But his son Ingjald proved a weakling, sluggard, glutton. I upbraided him and quit the land in disgust. Yet from time to time I have been back and wielded blade for worthier men of the Skjoldung house. Harald was the best of them, he became first among kings through all of Denmark and Gautland and well into Sweden; but now Harald is fallen, and his work broken, and I am alone again.”
He cleared his throat and spat. That may have been his way of not weeping.
“They told me Harald was aged,” Gest said. “He must ride to Bravellir in a wagon, and was well-nigh blind.”
Gest nodded and spoke no further, but busied himself with the food. They ate wordlessly. Afterward they slaked their thirst anew at the spring and went aside, left and right, to piss. When Starkadh came back to the fire he found Gest already there, squatting on his haunches. The night was wholly upon them. Thor’s Wain gleamed enormous, barely over treetops, the North Star higher like a spearpoint.
Starkadh loomed above the fire, legs astraddle, fists on hips, and nearly snarled, “Too long have you slyly fended me off, you. What do you want? Out with it, or I’ll hew you down.”
Gest looked up. The light slipped to and fro along the shadows in his face. “A last question,” he said. “Then you shall know. When were you born, Starkadh?”
The giant coughed forth a curse. “You ask and ask and ask, and naught do you give! What kind of being are you? You sit on your hams like a Finnish warlock.”
Gest shook his head. “I learned this much farther east,” he replied mildly, “and many things else, but none of them are wizardry.”
“You learned womanishness, you who took care to arrive late at the battlefield and stood by while I fought six men!”
Gest rose, straightened his back, stared across the flames, and said in a voice like steel sliding from sheath: “That was no war of mine, nor would I have hunted men who boded me no further harm.” In the dim and restless light, under the stars and Winter Road, suddenly he seemed of a tallness with the warrior, or in some way taller still. “A thing I heard said about you is that though you be foremost in battle, you are doomed to do ill deeds, nithing’s work, over and over and over. They say Thor laid this on you because he hates you. They say the god who bears you good will is Odin, father of witchcraft. Could this be true?”
The giant gasped. It was as if he shrank back. He raised hands and thrust at air. “Empty talk,” he groaned. “Naught more.”
Gest’s words tramped against him. “But you have done treacheries. How many, in those lifetimes that have been yours?”
“Hold your jaw!” Starkadh bellowed. “What know you of being ageless? Be still, ere I smite you like the dayfly you are!”
“That might not be so easy,” Gest purred. “I too have lived a long rime. Far longer than you, my friend.”
The breath rattled in Starkadh’s throat. He could merely gape.
Gest’s tone went dry. “Well, nobody in these parts would keep count of years, as they do in the South or the East. What I heard was that you have lived three men’s lifetimes. That must mean simply that folk remember their grandfathers telling of you. A hundred years is a good enough guess.”
“I—have thought—it was more.”
Again Gest’s eyes caught Starkadh’s and held them. His voice softened but bleakened, trembled the least bit, like a night breeze. “I know not myself how old I am. But when I was a boy, they did not yet ken metal in these lands. Of stone did we make our knives, our axheads and spearheads and arrowheads, our burial chambers. It was not Jotuns who raised those dolmens that brood over the land. It was us, your own forebears, laying our dead to rest and offering to our gods. Though ‘we’ are no more. I have outlived them, I alone, as I have outlived all the generations of men after— until today, Starkadh.”
“You have grayed,” said the warrior in a kind of sob, as if that could be a denial.
“I went gray in my young manhood. Some do, you know. Otherwise I have not changed. I have never been sick, and wounds heal swiftly, without scars. When my teeth wear out, new ones grow. Is it the same for you?”
Starkadh gulped and nodded.
“Belike you’ve taken more hurts than me, such a life as you’ve led,” said Gest thoughtfully. “Myself, I’ve been as peaceful as men let me be, and as careful as a roamer may. When the charioteers rolled into what these days we call Denmark—“ He scowled. “That is forgotten, their wars and their deeds and their very speech. Wisdom lasts. It is what I have sought across the world.”
Starkadh shuddered. “Gest,” he mumbled. “I remember now, in my own youth there went tales of a wayfarer who— Nomagest. Are you he? I thought be was but a story.”
“Often have I left the North for hundreds of years. Always it called me home again. My last stay here ended maybe fourscore years ago. Less of an absence than formerly, but—“ Once more Gest sighed. “I feel myself grow ever wearier of roving the earth among the winds. So folk remembered me for a while, did they?”
Starkadh shook his head dazedly. “And to think that I, I was alive then. But I must have been faring about. ... Is it true that the Norns told your mother you would die when a candle burned down, and she snuffed it out and you carry it still?”
Gest grinned. “Do you yourself believe you have your lifespan from Odin?”
He turned grave: “I know not what has made us twain what we are. That is a riddle as dark as the death of all other mankind. Norns or gods in truth? The hunger to know drove me to the far ends of the world, that and the hope of finding more tike myself. Oh, seeing a beloved wife wither into the grave, and seeing our children follow her— But nowhere did I come on any else whom time spares, nor did I come on any answer. Rather, I heard too many answers, I met too many gods. Abroad they call on Christ, but if you fare southward long enough it is Muhammad; and eastward it is Gautama Buddha, save where they say the world is a dream of Brahm, or offer to a host of gods and ghosts and elves like ours hi these Northlands, And almost every man I asked told me that His folk know the truth while the rest are benighted. Could I but hear a word I felt even half sure of—”
“Fret not yourself about that,” said Starkadh, boldness rising anew in him. “Things are whatever they are, and no man shuns his doom. His freedom is to leave a high name behind him.”
“I wondered if I was altogether alone, and my deathlessness a curse laid on me for some horrible guilt I have forgotten,” Gest went on. “That seemed wrong, though. Strange births do happen. Oftenest they are weak or crippled, but now and then something springs up that can flourish, like a clover with four leaves. Could we ageless be such? We would be very few. Most could well die of war or mischance before discovering they are different. Others could well be slain by neighbors who come to fear they are witches. Or they may flee, take new names, learn how to hide what they are. I have mostly done this, seldom abiding at length in any single place. Once in a while I have met folk who were willing to take me for what I am—wise men in the East, or raw backwoods dwellers like my Northerners—but in the end there was always too much sorrow, too heavy a freight of memories, and I must leave them also.
“Never did I find my own sort. Many and many a trail did I follow, sometimes for years, but each led to naught. At last hope faded out of me, and I turned my footsteps homeward. At least the Northern springtime is forever young.
“And then I heard about you.”
Gest came around the fire. He reached to lay hands on Starkadh’s shoulders. “Here my quest ends, where it began,” he said. Tears trembled on his lashes. “Now we are two, no more alone. And by this we know there must be more, women among them. Together, helping and heartening each other, we can search till we begin to find. Starkadh, my brother!”
The warrior stood unmoving before he said, “This ... comes ... suddenly.”
Gest let go. “It does that. I’ve had the whole while to think since the first word I got about you. Well, take your time. We have more time than most men, you and I.”
Starkadh stared off into the dark. “I thought someday I must grow old and strengthless like Harald,” he breathed. “Unless first I fell in battle, and I thought I would see to it that I did ... But you tell me I shall always be young. Always.”
“A load that on me has often felt well-nigh unbearable,” Gest told him. “Shared, though, it will be light.”
Starkadh clenched oak-burl fists. “What shall we do with it?”
“Ward the gift well. It may, after all, be from Beyond, and those who bear it singled out for deeds that will change the world.”
“Yes.” Glee began to throb in Starkadh’s voice. “Fame undying, and I alive to enjoy it. War-hosts to rally round me, kingdoms to take, royal houses to found.”
“Hold, hold,” said Gest. “We’re not gods, you know. We can be slain, drowned, burned, starved like any other men. I’ve stayed on earth these uncounted years by ganging warily.”
Starkadh gave him a cold look. Scorn snorted: “I understand that. Do you understand honor?”
“I don’t mean we should skulk. Let us make sure of our safety, both in strength and in boltholes, lest luck go awry. After that we can make known what we are, piece by piece, to such folk as we can trust. Then- awe of us will help, but that is not enough; to lead, we must serve, we must give.”
“How can we give unless we have gold, treasures, a hoard such as deathless vikings can heap up?”
Gest frowned. “We draw near to quarreling. Best we speak no further tonight, but sleep on it. Tomorrow, refreshed, we’ll think more clearly.”
Starkadh laughed. “After reaping a goodly harvest.” He failed to see how Gest winced. “As you wish. To bed.”
However, in the shelter he thrashed and muttered and flung his arms around. Finally Gest slipped back outside.
He found a dry spot close to the spring, but decided he would take his rest in meditation rather than sleep. Having assumed the lotus position, he raised calm within himself. That came easily. He had far surpassed his gurus in lands east of the sunrises over Denmark: for he had had centuries to practice the disciplines of mind and body that they taught. Yet without those teachings, he doubted he could have endured his lot. How fared those masters, those fellow chetas? Had Nadha or Lobsang at last won free of the Wheel?
Would he ever? Hope bound him. He could never quite bring himself to loosen it. Did that mean he spurned the faith? “Om mani padme hum.” No such words had seized him by the soul; but was that because he would not let them? Could he only find a God to Whom he could yield —
At least he had become like the sages in control of the body and its passions. Rather, in this he had won to the power for which they had striven. Breath and heartbeat dwindled at his command until he was unaware of them. Chill ceased to be a thing invading his skin; he was of it, he was the night world, he became the stave that unfolded.
“Slowly the moon Slides aloft.
Keen is its edge, Cutting the dark.
Stars and frost,
As still as the dead,
Warn of another Waning year. “
A noise recalled him. Hours had passed. The east stood gray above the trees. Dew spread the only brightness in a hueless half-light. Mists smoked above it and along men’s breath. The clear gurgle of the spring sounded much louder than it was.
Starkadh hunched at the shelter. He had knocked it apart, blundering out. He carried the sheathed sword that had lain across his doffed mail. A bloodshot and darkrimmed gaze jumped about until it landed on Gest. He grunted and stalked that way.
Gest rose. “Good morning,” he greeted.
“Did you spend the night sitting?” Starkadh wondered. His voice grated. “Sleep fled me too.”
“I hope you got some rest anyway. I’ll go see what’s in the snares.”
“Wait. Ere I take more at your hands—”
Cold pierced Gest from within. “What’s wrong?”
“You. Your slippery tongue. I tossed as in a nightmare, righting to grasp what you meant yesterday. Now you’ll make it plain to me.”
“Why, I thought I did. We are two ageless men. Our loneliness is at an end. But there must be others, women among them, for us to find and ... and hold dear. For this, we’ll swear oaths, become brothers—”
“Of what kind?” rasped Starkadh. “I the chieftain, later the king; you my skald and redesman— But that’s not what you said!” He swallowed. “Or do you also want to be a king?” Brightening: “Surely! We can divide the world between us.”
“We would die trying.”
“Our fame will never die.”
“Or worse, we would fall out with each other. How shall two stay together when always they deal in death and betrayal?”
At once Gest saw his mistake. He had intended to say that such was the nature of power. Seizing it and holding it were alike filthy. But before he could go on, Starkadh clapped hand to hilt. The rocky face went dawn-pale. “So you besmirch my honor,” he said from the bottom of his gullet.
Gest lifted a hand, palm outward. “No. Let me explain.”
Starkadh leaned close. His nostrils flared. “What have you heard about me? Spew it out!”
Gest knew starkly that he must. “They tell how you took one small king captive and hanged him for an offering to Odin, after you had promised him his life. They tell how you murdered another in his bath house, for pay. But—”
“I had to!” Starkadh yelled. “Ever was I an outsider. The rest were, were too young, and—“ He uttered a bawl like an aurochs bull’s.
“And your loneliness lashed you till you struck back, blindly,” Gest said. “I understand. I did when first I heard about you. How often have I felt thus? I remember deeds of mine that hurt me worse than fire. It’s merely that I am not a killer.”
Starkadh spat on the ground. “Right. You’ve hugged your years to you like a crone wrapping herself in her blanket.”
“But don’t you see,” Gest cried, “things have changed for us both? Now we’ve better work to do than attack folk who never harmed us. It was the lust for fame, wealth, power that brought you to dishonor.”
Starkadh screamed. His sword flew free. He hewed.
Gest shifted like a shadow. Nonetheless the edge ripped down his left arm. Blood poured forth, drenched the cloth, dripped into the streamlet that ran from the spring.
He drifted back, drew his knife, halted hi half a crouch. Starkadh stood fast. “I should ... chop you in twain ... for what you said,” he panted. Gulping air: “But I think you will die soon enough of that stroke.” Laughter clanked. “A shame. I did hope you’d be a friend. The first real friend of my life. Well, the Norns will it otherwise.”
Our natures do, Gest thought. And: How easily I could kill you. How open you stand to a hundred martial tricks I know.
“Instead, I shall have to go on as erstwhile,” said Starkadh, “alone.”
Let it be so, thought Gest.
With the fingers of his right hand he searched below his torn shirt and pushed together the lips of his wound. Pain he made into something apart from himself, like the mists that broke under the strengthening light. He gave his mind to the blood flow.
Starkadh kicked the shelter aside, fetched his mail, drew it over the underpadding in which he had spent the night. He donned coif and helmet, belted on sword, picked up shield. When he was ready to leave, he stared in astonishment at the other man. “What, are you still on your feet?” he said. “Shall I make an end of you?”
Had he tried that, it would have been the end of him. But he stopped, shivered, turned away. “No,” he mumbled. “This is all too spooky. I’m off to my own doom, Nornagest.”
He lumbered up the trail, into the woods and beyond sight.
Then Gest could sit down and bring a whole heed to the steering of his body. He had stopped the bleeding before he suffered overmuch loss, though he would be weak for a few days. No matter. He could stay here until he was fit to travel; the earth would provide for him. He began to hasten the knitting of the flesh.
He dared not wish he were able to heal the wound inside.
“HOWEVER, WE only met fleetingly, Starkadh and I,” Gest went on. “Afterward hearsay about him reached me now and then, until I went abroad again; and when I came back he was long dead, slain as he had wanted.”
“Why have you fared so widely?” asked King Olaf. “What have you sought?”
“What I never found,” Gest answered. “Peace.”
No, that was not wholly right, he thought. Over and over had he been at peace, in the nearness of beauty or wisdom, the arms of a woman, the laughter of children. But how short the whiles! His latest time as a husbandman, in the Uplands of Norway, seemed already the dream of a single night: Ingridh’s youthful gladness, its rebirths in the cradle he had carved, her heart that stayed high while she grew more gray than he, but then the shriveling years, and afterward the burials, the burials. Where now wandered Ingridh? He could not follow, not her nor any of those who glimmered on the rim of memory, not that first and sweetest of all, garlanded with ivy and in her hand a blade of flint...
“In God is peace,” said the priest.
It could be, it could be. Today church bells rang in Norway, as they had done for a lifetime or more in Denmark, yes, above that halidom of the Mother where he and the garland girl had offered flowers ... He bad seen the charioteers and their storm gods come into the land, he had seen bronze and iron, the wagon trains bound south for Rome and the viking ships bound west for England, sickness and famine, drought and war, and life patiently beginning anew; each year went down into death and awaited the homecoming of the sun that would bring it to rebirth; be too could let go if he would, and drift away on the wind with the leaves.
King Olaf’s priest thought that soon every quest would end and the dead arise. How good if that was true. Ever more folk believed so. Why should not he?
Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Days later, Gest said, “Yes, I will take your baptism.” The priest wept for joy. Olaf whooped.
But when it was done, that evening in the hall Gest took forth a candle and lighted it at a torch. He lay down on a bench where he could see it. “Now I may die,” he told them.
Now I have yielded.
He let the candleflame fill his vision, his being. He made himself one with it. The light waxed for him until he almost thought it shone on those lost faces, brought them back out of the dark, nearer and nearer. His heartbeat heeded him, slowing toward quietness.
Olaf and the young warriors stood dumb with awe. The priest knelt in shadow and prayed without uttering the words aloud.
The candleflame flickered to naught. Nornagest lay still. Through the hall sounded a wind of the oncoming winter.