Authors: Alice Borchardt
“You can speak with the dead?” Lucilla asked, breathlessly.
“Yes. I saw the Abbess Hildegard at the convent. She was dead. It frightened the nuns.”
Lucilla threw back her head and howled.
Regeane started up, appalled and afraid Lucilla was having some kind of fit and then realized Lucilla was laughing.
“It frightened the nuns. Oh, my God,” she chuckled. “Oh, Mother of God. Oh, Son of God. I imagine it did. No wonder Emilia was so hot to get rid of you.” Lucilla was holding her sides. “The night you ran away, I sent word to them that you were here. They went to Hadrian the next day. They gave him every reason possible why he should leave you in my care. The attempted poisoning, Sister Angelica’s hysterics, every excuse but the right one.
“Oh, oh, oh.” Every “oh” was a hiccup of laughter. “Girl, you are most uncomfortable company.”
Then Lucilla’s mirth subsided. She stopped laughing and began to wipe her eyes. All at once another thought seemed to strike her. Her eyes darted quickly around the small garden.
“You don’t see any here, do you?” she asked.
“No.”
“Thank heavens for small mercies,” Lucilla said, shaking her head.
“Though,” Regeane said hesitantly, “I don’t know when I do see them. Sometimes they seem so mortal.”
This set Lucilla off again, and it was a while before she got herself under control. When she did, a hard, rather cold expression crept into her eyes.
“Did you see Adraste?” she asked.
“Yes,” Regeane said. She looked away from Lucilla at a patch of sweet woodruff. The new sun gilded its white flowers. “She is in hell.”
“And may she rot there,” Lucilla shot back. She reached out and seized Regeane by the wrist. “Look at me, girl.”
Lucilla’s face was set and remorseless. “Your father may or may not have forgiven Gundabald. I’ll assume what you say is true and you did meet him in some world we common mortals have no access to. But you haven’t the luxury of your father’s generosity. You can’t afford it. He’s dead and nothing can harm him. It’s well and good to forgive past injuries, but you must consider the future harm Gundabald could do to you.”
It grew warmer in the small patio, and bees visited the flowers at the border of the pool. Regeane closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Sweet fragrances surrounded her. The delicate scent of the flowers, the heavier smell of Lucilla’s clean body lent a warm human flavor in the clean air. But above all, the air itself that seemed a fresh white wine. That made every breath a draught of pleasure.
How strange it was to sit surrounded by beauty and plot a man’s death.
“What’s wrong?” Lucilla asked.
“The wolf,” Regeane said. “Sometimes she comes and just wants to revel in the world around her.”
“You’re dodging the issue,” Lucilla said. “And tell the wolf to go away. No mere animal could possibly understand dissimulation, or at least not the sort we’re planning.”
The wolf wandered back into her daytime darkness. And Regeane’s mind snapped back to the present.
“What kind of dissimulation are we planning?” she asked with an interrogative lift of her brows.
“Your uncle is a frequenter of low companions, is he not? Brothels, taverns, wine bars, and the like.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” Lucilla said. “Murder is always best and most easily accomplished when it seems to grow out of the manner of a man’s life. Now, no doubt, your uncle sees you so successful at finding other friends. Friends, I might add, in a position to be of more help to you than he has been.
“I think that your charming uncle will see he has been wrong in the methods he chose in dealing with you. He will believe
you’re more clever and more powerful than he realized. He will arrive at my villa anxious to—shall we say—mend fences.” Lucilla paused and smiled maliciously.
“You really think so?” Regeane asked. “Last time I saw him, he threatened to kill me.”
“And he still intends to,” Lucilla said, “but first, he will have to win you over. Because otherwise, how can he achieve his objective of lining his pockets with this Maeniel’s gold?”
“I want nothing to do with him. His very nearness makes my flesh crawl,” Regeane said with a shudder.
“Naturally,” Lucilla said. “But when he comes, as I have said, you must seem won over by his sweet words. Mind you, don’t allow yourself to be persuaded too quickly or he might become suspicious.
“Be very reluctant at first. These things require very deft, delicate handling. In fact, my dear, you may even show some measure of mistrust at the conclusion of your conversation. But above all, you must make him believe that you can, eventually, be persuaded to fall under his sway—in short, to become his accomplice, willing or unwilling. Send him away confident and you will have won the engagement. Then, of course, I’ll hire my man and he’ll begin his stalk.
“When Gundabald is found floating facedown in the Tiber, you will follow him to his grave, discreetly veiled in black, in tears. Now, what about Hugo? Should I include him in my instructions also?”
Regeane, marveling at her own calm, reached out and poured herself another cup of wine. “I don’t think so,” she said, judiciously. “With Gundabald dead, Hugo will do whatever I say. He’s afraid of me.”
“Excellent,” Lucilla said. “It’s always best in these affairs to keep things as simple as possible. Economy is always preferable to blood-lust and slaughter.”
“Hugo will know,” Regeane said, looking up at the cloudless sky and taking another sip of wine.
“Yes, my dear,” Lucilla said. “But then, he won’t talk, will he?”
“No,” Regeane said. “He has no money and he’d be dependent on me for his keep and his pleasures. He’d be too afraid he wouldn’t be believed and then I’d cut him off.”
“Just so,” Lucilla said. “And he wouldn’t be frightened of you any longer. He’d be absolutely terrified. And sometimes, with some men, terror is a better guarantee of loyalty than love.”
THE SKY WAS THE SAME CLEAN, CLOUDLESS BLUE over the Forum, the wind sharp and chill. Maeniel paused in the shelter of an enormous stone block. Beside it, a flight of marble stairs led upward to nowhere. While it was warm enough in the sunlight, the dry air was cool in the shadows.
Gavin shivered. “Let’s ride on,” he said. “These ruins depress me and besides, you never know who might be lurking about, waiting to—”
“Be quiet, Gavin,” Maeniel said.
“Be quiet, Gavin. Shut up, Gavin. Don’t take on so, Gavin. I know what I’m doing, Gavin. That’s all I ever get from you in this mood,” Gavin complained. “I might point out that we’re carrying enough gold to buy half of what’s left of this wretched city and you want to play around in lonely spots where—”
“Gavin,” Maeniel said as he dismounted and began to climb the marble steps. “Have you ever seen anyone who could take anything from me against my will, ever, anywhere, anytime?”
“No, but …”
“No ifs, buts, or maybes,” Maeniel said. “No one ever has. Besides, we’re alone. If we were not, I would see something, smell something, or hear something, and I don’t.”
Maeniel stopped to peer down at the marble steps. They were cracked and broken, stained by centuries’ growth of lichens and moss. Weeds, bearing some golden composite flower, poked up
from the interstices between the treads, blooms glowing against the shadowy stone.
One side of the stair was clear, the other disappeared into a velvet mantle of greenery where vines and even small trees struggled to get a foothold.
“Was it here?” Maeniel mused softly. “It’s all changed so much. Augustus is supposed to have said ‘I found a city of wood and left one of marble.’ In fact, I think he found something alive and left only a cenotaph.”
“Maeniel, what in the hell are you talking about?” Gavin asked.
“Caesar,” Maeniel answered.
“Which one?” Gavin asked, sourly.
Maeniel reached the top of the steps and gazed out over the ruins of the Forum. Seen from this slight elevation, the place had a parklike aspect. Though a night of frost had dulled some of its lush vegetation and even stripped a few trees bare, the verdigious color of the hardy ones still prevailed. Here and there a patch of autumn goldenrod among crumbled blocks still flaunted its saffron banners. At his feet in a mossy dell formed by two broken columns, small blue flowers were a cerulean carpet welcoming the sun.
“The first one, Gavin,” Maeniel said.
“The first one,” Gavin smirked. “Who cares about the first one? I doubt if there’s enough left of his dust to raise a sneeze.” Then he suited the action to the words and did sneeze. “Maeniel, I’m going to catch my death—”
“I doubt it,” Maeniel said coldly as he closed his eyes and tried to remember. The sun was hot on his neck. It had been equally hot on that day almost … what … eight hundred years ago. And it hadn’t been winter as it was now, but spring … the ides of March.
The cobbles under his feet had been slick and wet after a night’s rain. The sights, sounds, and smells had almost overwhelmed his wolf senses. For they had been extended against his will, driven by a deep visceral knowledge that this day might be his last on earth.
Street hawkers advertised their wares, sausages, wine, cheese, in voices that were a violent assault on his tender ears. He was
surrounded by toga-clad bodies that jostled his, each with its own particular miasma of perfume and perspiration. Above all the smells of stale food, sour wine, hung the smell of burning bone from the morning sacrifices in the temples that surrounded the Senate.
Maeniel had pulled away from the crowd that filled the ancient marketplace and stood by the plinth that supported the statue of some Arabic goddess with a thousand breasts. He had brought his wolf senses sternly under control and waited for Julius Caesar to reach the long flight of stairs leading to the Senate. Their eyes met for a second and Maeniel, young creature that he was, was stunned by the terrible look in them. He saw before him a greedy, needy face. The face and eyes of someone who had wanted, desired with a poignancy beyond mortal flesh, something for so long that he has forgotten what it is. A face alive only to the pointless, futile energies driving it from within.
Even now after the passage of so many years, the sheer futility in that face drained Maeniel’s arms of strength, his soul of will. His hand had been on the hilt of his sword. In that moment, it slipped and fell away.
Gavin broke in on his thoughts of the distant past. “Maeniel, are you just going to leave all that gold on the horse?” He pointed to a leather saddle bag on Maeniel’s big roan.
“Gavin,” Maeniel said, quietly. “Don’t trouble me about a few trinkets.”
“I like what you call a few trinkets,” Gavin said, outraged. “The best of all the wealth we’ve ever won. I can’t remember how many years of hard fighting—”
“A few trinkets,” Maeniel said firmly. “What we’ve won over the many years of fighting is our valley, our mountains, and above all, our freedom. Compared to those, I consider a little gold a trifling matter.”
“We’re riding to meet your prospective bride, Maeniel,” Gavin said. “I’d like to get on with it. I want to find out what’s wrong with her before we go much farther. Did you see that marriage contract? She demanded everything, her own court practically. Maeniel, that woman can ruin you. She’ll have her own soldiers. What will we do if she decides to …”
“To what?” Maeniel met Gavin’s gaze.
“Well, I don’t know.” Gavin threw up his hands. “But I’m sure if this marriage lasts, she’ll think up some form of treachery to practice.
“In God’s name, at times you worry about everything. The damn hay, the damn harvest, the damn firewood, even all the way down to the mold on the damn cheeses. But here when all we’ve won is in mortal peril, you’re standing in a patch of weeds, muttering to yourself about Julius Caesar. I ask you, what the hell has Julius Caesar to do with anything? Besides, you couldn’t have known much about him, you’re not that old. You can’t be that old. No one is that old.”
“That’s it,” Maeniel said. “Try to convince yourself. But I’ll tell you the truth, Gavin, I was a boy your age when I came here at the behest of my master to kill Julius Caesar.”
“No,” Gavin exclaimed, turning his back. “I won’t listen to this. It’s impossible.”
Maeniel laughed harshly.
Gavin spun around again and faced him. “I’ve never known you to have a master. Who was he and how did he persuade you to …”
“He didn’t have to persuade me,” Maeniel said. “I was willing, even eager. Caesar destroyed my people.”
The breeze blew hard, whipping around the two men, the noise deafening them. Gavin felt the back of his neck prickle.
“What was he like, this Caesar? He’s nothing to me … only a name in a history book the priests made me read a long time ago.”
“I’m not sure I know,” Maeniel said. “After all, I’m only a wolf who is a man. Sometimes I’m not sure I understand any man, not fully.”
Gavin ducked his head and looked away from his chief toward the crumbling ruins of the Colosseum on the horizon. “But,” Maeniel continued, “he destroyed a whole people and their way of life to pay his debts. In the process, he ruined countless human lives. Killed hundreds of thousands and led as many away into slavery. I know,” Maeniel said, “I saw them here. So many with wounded eyes, enduring the Romans’ alien ways, learning, painfully, to speak in another tongue. A few of
them recognized me for what I was when I traveled here. Sometimes they spoke to me, not asking for succor or even comfort, but I think simply to hear, for one last time, the music of a world they had been commanded to forget. But I wasn’t of their world, even as I am not fully of yours. So there was little I could do. The only reason I stopped here today was that I seemed to recognize and remember this place. But everything is changed now.”
“How about that?” Gavin said, pointing to the Colosseum.
“It wasn’t even built then,” Maeniel said.
A sense of age washed over Gavin as he realized that Maeniel had been here before a thing now falling apart had been constructed.
“How long have you been alive, then?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know,” Maeniel said. “It is for such as Caesar to count the sands of time. I am wolf and never felt the need.”