Authors: Alice Borchardt
“No,” she said. “But he can be. As for this”—she touched the necklace—“I will not go to your sister undowered and a beggar. I can pay my way. And I will.”
Someone knocked at the door; they both started.
“My lady, will you need me? I’m anxious to get to the arena. The dancing has already begun.”
“No, Senta. I’m dressed,” she replied. “You run along.”
Footsteps retreated into the distance.
“My maid. If the dancing has begun, the villa’s probably almost deserted. So we won’t have to worry about sneaking around.”
“The arena?” he asked.
“That’s where they hold the horse fights.” She opened the door and looked both ways.
He opened the harp case and glanced at the instrument nested in its brocade. The strings thrummed softly without his ever touching them.
She was looking back at him from the door. “Does it do that often?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
“There’s no one around. No need to do any sneaking at all,” she said. “We can go together.”
The arena was some distance from the house. On the way there, he saw Alex and Alexia doing a tumbling act for a crowd that had gathered at a roadside shrine. They had come to offer the gifts of the poor, some of the first spring flowers and a little watered wine. A man stationed at the shrine was selling wine, beer, and some truly wretched mead to passersby. But most of it wasn’t going to the inhabitant of the shrine, who was variously described as Saint Anne or the Virgin Mary. The chipped limestone pylon that held the statue carven in low relief was badly worn and Uther was hard put to tell if the figure holding a horn was man or woman, naked or clothed. He suspected she had been ceremonially naked and had only recently, much to her surprise no doubt, been baptized a Christian. She had many names, he knew, and Anu or Anna was one of them.
Some of the beverages were being poured into a pipe at the foot of the slab, but most of them were being poured down the throats of the worshipers. Alex and Alexia were performing a rudimentary tumbling act for the crowd and being paid in beer and small coins. Someone pressed a piece of bread and a cup of beer into Uther’s hand, and he recognized a few who had listened to his singing. They begged for some music.
He obliged with what could only be called a love song. It had been brisk, clear, and cold when he began to play. But as he caressed the harp strings and thought of the rising desire of springtime, the need of the elements, air, fire, and water, to make love to their consort the earth, the wind turned and a soft summer breeze began to blow from the south, bending the long grass and the winter wheat in the fields around and ruffling the petals that wildflowers were just beginning to open in the sun.
This is the origin of all song. The love of life, the love of its flow. Wind flows, rivers of air moving the trees as it passes; rivers of light flow from the sun by day, the moon by night. Water ripples and gurgles, spouting from the earth as wells and fountains, rivers and the long, slow-driving rain.
The people around him ceased talking, moving in closer around him, drinking in the beauty of his song. Feeling the ebb and flow of blood in their veins. Children in the womb ceased kicking. The old forgot to notice their aches and pains. The young were smitten by intense desire. For desire is like water or wind, an elemental thing knowing only the shape of its manifestations, and it has no words to describe itself. But he was lost in his own music and did not realize it until he heard the voices around him rise in song. He knew he had in his musical peregrinations stumbled upon one of the songs known by this motley people. He opened his eyes (he hadn’t known they were closed) and saw she was singing along with them.
He reprised the music and another set of words emerged. Along the road, the now-stiff breeze brought the smell of roast meat. He smiled and, playing as he walked, began to lead them in the direction the smell was coming from.
Severius was feasting his people, and ahead at least a dozen large animals, cattle, deer, sheep, and goats, were roasting over open fires. It was obvious that most of this was to be eaten by the aristocrats who were gathered in large numbers at a pavilion near a corral and viewing stand. It was clear the seats in the viewing stands were also intended for the more aristocratic members of the audience, since most of them seemed to be taken. Cushions, throws, the occasional brightly colored mantle were draped over the wooden benches and in many instances servants were standing nearby to be sure none of the best seats were snatched away by casual passersby.
Igrane and Severius were walking arm in arm, nearly invisible among a crowd of brightly and expensively dressed courtiers. Uther stopped, because he spotted at least a half dozen he knew well and at least ten more with whom he was acquainted. All were rich; all were powerful. And all had sworn fealty to him.
The southern landowners were hedging their bets. They would follow the winner.
The outer circle around his straying wife and her new lover was warriors, several hundred of them. And he knew that if Severius received the support of most of the men and women around him, they could raise this many and possibly even more.
The stallion stood alone in the big corral where the horse fights were held. He’d obviously been bathed, his mane and tail braided, for the ceremony. He was beautiful with his black nose, legs, and tail setting off his shimmering silver body. He raced round and round just inside the high, barred fence, his dark silk tail bannered, held high, as he galloped the limits of his prison. So beautifully proportioned was the horse that he almost seemed small until he dropped from a gallop to a trot and it became clear that at the withers he was higher than any of the stablemen who watched him through the fence.
Big. The horse was huge, and no, nothing could defeat him. Uther shivered. He remembered what had been in the dog—Merlin—his ghost, his spirit? What inhabited the horse?
The horse ceased trotting, turned, and went and stood in the center of the corral. He looked bored and lordly at the same time.
“You see,” Aife said, “how big he is? They have a black . . . but no one expects him to be able to . . .”
Uther returned the harp to its case. The people who arrived with him scattered. The smell of roast pork drifted his way and he saw a dozen fire pits steaming at the outer edges of what he knew must be a ceremonial center. Beyond the corral and the viewing stands, a feasting hall loomed. It had a thatched rood and wattle-and-daub walls.
“For the soldiers,” Aife said, pointing to it.
“The amphitheater,” he said, and knew he was looking at it now around the hall, corral, and viewing stands. The sides sloped gradually upward, and he knew that with the roof of the hall occupied, the viewing stands full, and people gathered on the horseshoe-shaped mounding on the surrounding hillside, the ceremonial center would hold several thousand people.
“They used to, before the Romans came, choose a king here. Now they will again.” She pointed to a gibbet on the hill beyond the drinking hall. “They have taken a man already. When the feast ends, they will take a woman.”
Yes, there was a figure hanging from the gibbet.
“A woman?” he asked.
“Yes. Do you know, that was why I was so afraid. I think it will be me.” She looked up at him. The pupils of her eyes were so dilated that he could barely see the blue edging that was the iris. It was a bright day, but her fear opened them like ink-dark wells.
She continued, “I saw her with him last night. Even at the table, at the feast, she had her hand in his pants, playing with him. And while she was doing that, she was laughing and looking at me. Then he laughed, too, and studied me for a long time with a smile on his lips. They can’t hang a virgin,” she whispered.
No!
Uther thought.
No! Not even she would attempt . . .
But then he knew with an absolute certainty how far gone she was in evil now. And she would do anything that served her ends. He wondered if she would try to bring Severius to her crystal realm. Lay him on the same spot where she’d tried to take . . . what? What had she wanted from him?
Ustane said he would have died. Died of her love. Died like the drone bee in his final, savage mating with his immortal queen. Because that’s what she was now—not human any longer, but a creature whose habits were dictated by her terrible thirst. As indeed Merlin had been before her. He trod the maze of Dis now, and he would be in the horse if he could.
They were close to the corral. Most of the wealthy were gathered at the pavilion filled with tables near where the meat was roasting. Severius was dining with Igrane and a crowd of well-wishers and accomplices. Everyone not dining or drinking was reclining in the shade of the pavilion, nibbling snacks passed out by pretty young girls who carried trays of food and wine among the guests.
The poor were gathering at a series of fire pits scattered at the other end of the amphitheater. As he watched, one pit was opened. The spectators gave a joyous shout, but jumped back because a cloud of steam redolent with the smell of roast pork erupted from the pit. Nearby, over a low fire, women were cooking up a sauce for the pork, caramelized onions, honey, and wine. Without thinking, he put his arm around Aife’s shoulders. Then caught the death look Severius gave him from his couch in the pavilion.
Aife was looking in the same direction. “He knows,” she said.
“Indeed,” the king said. “He may well know.” Because Igrane was reclining beside Severius, the expression on her face one of raw terror.
Alex and Alexia moved up beside him. “We didn’t expect to see you again. She”—Alex indicated Aife—“told us what happened. How did you get away?”
“That’s not important. Conduct my lady to the peasant feast and never again leave her side. Not until I give my permission.”
“What are you going to do?” Aife asked.
“Stop your brother! More away, remember the child,” he whispered.
The three stood looking at him. “Can I trust you to take care of her?” he asked Alex and Alexia.
They were both pale. They both answered, “Yes.”
There was a shout from among the humble as two more pig pits were opened. The feast was in full swing now, and Uther was sure everyone for miles around must be gathered here, all feasting and drinking, especially drinking. That had started earlier, a lot earlier, than the eating.
Alex and Alexia led Aife toward the fire pit. He stood looking across the crowded square. Igrane was clutching Severius’s shirt with one hand and whispering frantically in his ear. Severius was studying Uther with a look of icy calculation.
Will he shed my blood?
Uther wondered. There are consequences to shedding a king’s blood. Igrane knew that now.
He was standing to the right of the big corral that held the stallion. A whistling neigh pulled his attention away from Severius. A dog had somehow gotten into the enclosure. It was the sort of skinny cur that hung about the refuse dumps that appeared near any town or village. It had probably been drawn by the cooking odors and come hoping to beg some food. There were always some things the master race (human) wouldn’t or couldn’t eat, and the dog hoped to scavenge some of their leavings.
The stallion neighed when he spotted the dog. Then he reared, cried out again, and thundered toward the dog. The little animal was no fool. She—Uther saw the dog was a bitch; her dugs were elongated, nipples engorged; she must have pups somewhere. She fled immediately toward the high fence surrounding the corral. She should have escaped the stallion, but one of the onlookers gathered at the fence wanted blood. The bitch gave a shrill
Yip!
as an expertly thrown rock blinded her. In pain, she slowed and, blood streaming from where her eye had been, turned and tried to run in another direction.
But the stallion was upon her. Uther watched, glad it was quick as the little bitch’s head exploded into a hideous mist of blood and brain when one forehoof splattered her skull.
Then the entire crowd cheered the stallion on as the big horse trampled the dog’s carcass first into a lump of bleeding carrion, then into dust-covered scraps of pulverized meat and bone. When Uther glanced back at Severius, he saw that he and Igrane were both smiling. They were looking at the children playing in the tent, near Severius’s feet.
The world they lived in didn’t understand or tolerate deformity. Dwarves, the hunchbacked, the lame, or those otherwise impaired in mind or body were dealt with in a summary fashion, usually abandoned in situations where they had little chance of survival. But there were those who dealt in such creatures, usually powerful landlords who had connections with the slave dealers who shipped their human cargo to Byzantium, where there was a demand for such creatures among the aristocracy. An effete aristocracy, corrupt enough to be amused by their antics.
Uther had heard that if they were not too mentally impaired, these twisted creatures could be taught no end of diverting tricks. There were about a dozen playing on a carpet close to Severius and Igrane. As Uther watched, Severius beckoned to one of his personal guards and pointed at a child playing among the rest.
The guardsman walked over and picked up the child by the scruff of the neck. He—it was a little boy—gave a loud screech, showing a big tongue and a mouthful of pointed teeth. The creature’s face and body were hideously deformed. The right mouth and eye were twisted by a scar that created a hollow in his cheek. He was so completely hunchbacked that his head seemed to be in the middle of his chest, and so bowlegged that Uther was surprised the creature could walk at all.
The child still dangling in his grip, the guardsman began to carry him toward the corral where the stallion stood, snorting over the dog’s remains. Realizing where he was being taken, the child screamed again, this time in terror.
A girl darted out of the pack of children and ran to the soldier’s side. She was also deformed. Her face looked as though it had been made of wax and the wax had run. One eye was higher than the other, the mouth twisted and slack at the same time. The nose was really no nose, only two openings in the face. The hideous features were placed above a perfectly formed doll-woman’s body. A dwarf, but exquisite body.