Out of the Waters (26 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“—very much the fine lady, don't you think?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*   *   *

C
ORYLUS PICKED UP
the cornelwood staff that leaned beside the door during daytime. When he went out at night, he carried it.

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

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

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

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

“Wouldn't you—” Anna said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh.
He blushed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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