Authors: Alice Borchardt
On days like this, Regeane managed to drag Hugo and Silve outside, ostensibly to visit churches. Actually, Regeane hated churches. She had some compelling reasons. First, because after her mother’s death and the failure of the papal blessing, she believed God had abandoned her. Secondly, because she could see ghosts.
These visitations weren’t frequent, but they were always unsettling. Most often the materializations happened near churches. Usually not inside, but near the door as she was entering or leaving.
The wolf didn’t care. The brute was the most logical of creatures. What, after all, can the living do for the dead? To the woman, the dead were a source of pain.
The worst had been a shadow-faced cadaver wearing rich velvet and brocade garments. They were moldering, falling to pieces, and stank of damp, rotting rags and decay. She followed
Regeane, weeping and wringing hands that seemed at first to be flesh, then bony claws. The sobs and moans came from a face that wavered, as the hands did, between beautiful, pale, aristocratic features—but with only holes where the eyes had been—and the foggy shape of a naked skull.
The ghost terrorized Regeane for three days and only departed when Gisela, at Regeane’s repeated urgings, left the shrine they had been visiting. Regeane had been sixteen at the time. She’d tried to ascertain the source of the shade’s grief, but the ghost’s rotting brocade and the horror of the empty-eyed face inspired an overwhelming terror. Besides, she and her prominent tomb in the church were clothed in a sense of evil. Her outcries were not those of sorrow and repentance, but outrage at a well-deserved damnation—a fate she was unhappy at facing alone.
Regeane’s other encounters had been brief and less frightening, but she couldn’t remember any of them without a shudder of revulsion. She had learned to be wary of churches.
This day began with something a little bit like happiness. Regeane managed to persuade Gundabald to part with a few coins. Not a lot, but enough to buy a stewing hen, some fennel, tarragon, parsnips, and a nameless bunch of greens. The old woman contributed garlic and a rather withered onion. Regeane put them together in a pot to cook slowly over the low fire.
The morning had been foggy, but near noon the weather cleared. The sun came out. The air was mild, almost warm. The old woman ladled up bowls of stew for Regeane, Hugo, Silve, and herself; on the strength of her contributed onion, she was due her share. For once, Silve and Hugo weren’t too hung over to eat. They all chewed the tasty chicken meat, ate parsnips, and dunked their tough gray-brown bread in the broth.
When they were all replete, Regeane, Silve, and Hugo left to visit churches. The old woman remained behind. She placed the leftover stew in a covered dish for Gundabald and went on with her cleaning.
The church Regeane chose was a very ancient one, said to go back to the time of the apostles. A few steps down led to the door. The church itself was located in the atrium amid the
magnificent reception rooms of an ancient Roman villa. The building was so old, the walls were sunk three feet below street level.
Just inside the door, the roof was open to the sky. Below the opening in the roof was a small pond. Some green reeds and a few purple iris still bloomed in the pale light.
Regeane knelt. The floor was covered by a thin layer of clean straw. She found this a kindness to her knees. Away from the small, ancient atrium, the villa had extended into a long room colonnaded on either side. Tall, slender, white Corinthian columns led the eye toward the sanctuary.
The acanthus leaves at the top still bore faded traces of green paint. The walls and roof were stark white stucco. Here and there, a flaking bit of plaster showed a trace of color. Regeane knew the plaster must have been placed to obliterate frescos either too explicit or too pagan for the nascent church.
The altar was—after the custom of time—an unadorned clean square white marble table. Four small grainless pure white marble columns supported a simple blue silken awning over the altar.
A sanctuary lamp burned near a basin of blessed water, alerting a visitor to the fact that the real presence in the form of consecrated hosts must be nearby.
The place, she knew, must always have been sacred.
Long ago, when Rome was a small village on the Tiber, a family lived here. The eldest male in the family, together with the women, children, and even slaves, gathered at the altar to sacrifice to the fructifying spirits of earth and sky. And also to care for their own dead, most of whom were buried in the fields and orchards surrounding the villa.
They honored all of those things without which no one can live, things still present here: earth, air, fire, and water.
The bread of consecration rises from the burgeoning wheat field. The wine from the cold, bracing air of the mountains. Vines hold the soil to rock with roots like claws clinging to steep slopes where nothing else will grow. Red and white grapes ripen while the sun warms their hearts and cool breezes caress their skins. The fire flickering near the altar remembered
the woman-tended hearth, and water in the basin commemorated the source of all life.
Around the small atrium the city grew. The family’s wealth increased. The villa was extended, but the ancient sacred heart of the house was preserved.
Where the altar now stood, the owner of the villa must have sat in state to receive his clients and tenants. His tenants would have knelt before him, presenting him with the money due in rents and fees. His clients would have kissed his hands, solicited favors. In return, they followed him through the streets, bully boys, increasing his importance in the eyes of the Roman mob, ready to intimidate any of his enemies.
Time passed. The family dwindled. Its power faded. More and more parts of the villa were sold off until only these quarters remained. When they became Christian, the great family slipped into the family of man. Still, the little atrium was sacred and always would be.
Regeane saluted Christ, but not as a friend. She did not think He would ever be her friend. Still, she showed Him due respect and did not court His enmity.
When she rose to her feet, she noticed Silve stood alone by the door. “Where is Hugo?” Regeane asked.
“He sneaked off,” the girl said resentfully. “He’s probably in some wine bar with his hand up the barmaid’s skirt. You want me to go find him?”
“No,” Regeane said shortly. Send Silve after Hugo? Ha! In a few hours they would be sleeping in the sawdust on a taverna floor.
She spotted a bench along the back wall of the church, no doubt once intended for the villa owner’s clients and petitioners. It seemed a perfect spot to take her ease. She and Silve walked over and sat down.
The church was a peaceful place. The present watched over the past without enmity. The air was cool, but without the bite of the wind outside. Mottled sun shone in around the white marble altar and from the opening in the roof above the atrium pond.
She could see now as her eyes adjusted to the dimness that under the straw the church boasted a sumptuous mosaic floor gardened with a pattern of bright spring flowers.
Silve took a jug from under her robe, jerked out the cork with her teeth, and took a long pull. She offered it to Regeane.
Regeane declined. Silve and Hugo both favored tavernas where the host adulterated the wine with substances designed to increase its potency. The occasional patron of these establishments went permanently mad or dropped dead after a heavy drinking bout. Regeane didn’t wish to join their number.
Silve got a bit glassy-eyed as the wine hit her. She discussed Hugo’s ancestry, then laughed. “He’ll have to peddle his ass in the back room to get a drink,” she said. “I have the money. Oh, look!”
Regeane looked. Silve was pointing to the atrium pool. Regeane’s eyes picked up movement in the water. “It’s a carp,” Silve said. She began pulling off her veil. “Let’s see if we can net it. I’ll hold the veil. You chase the fish into it. He’ll make a wonderful supper.” She started to rise, but Regeane caught her arm and pulled her back.
“I’m not sure that’s a fish,” Regeane said.
The thing in the pool lifted its head above the water. A snake.
Silve made a sound reminiscent, to Regeane, of an ungreased axle being overstressed. Then bolted. She ran in the wrong direction toward the altar where there was no exit. She leaned against one of the columns and applied the jug for a bit more restorative.
The serpent moved out of the pool easily to the straw-covered floor and glided toward Regeane. The woman was afraid, but the wolf was indifferent, queenly even. She knew the snake wasn’t poisonous or even angry, only curious.
Put to it, Regeane scorned to show fear in front of Silve. She was, after all, the daughter of Wolfstan the Saxon prince, called by his people a talisman, and Gisela, blood kin to Charles Martel, the hammer of God. She would not be shamed by the creature before her.
The thing did not move very quickly, thus it allowed her to prepare for its arrival. She noticed on closer examination the snake wasn’t ugly. The scales were a tightly fitted mosaic similar to the colors of water sparkling in the sunlight—white, blue, and green. They formed a pattern down his back overlying darker bands at each side.
The wolf eyed him with a bow of appreciation for such good camouflage. He must be nearly invisible when swimming in the muddy sun-struck Tiber.
The snake reached Regeane’s shirt and investigated the hem with a brief flicker of his forked tongue. The wolf was aloof, yet the woman stretched out her hand as to a courtier.
The serpent’s head rose. She felt the flickering, timid caress of the tongue on her fingertips. He, or perhaps she, made an amazing U-turn and hurried back toward the water.
“Aha! Ahaa! Ahaaaaa!” Silve commented. “It paid you homage.”
“Like hell,” Regeane said. “It decided I was too big to eat. Now, shut up. If there’s any attendant or a priest about, you’ll have him bolting in her to find out what’s wrong.”
Silve shut up probably because she couldn’t scream while finishing off the contents of the clay flask.
Regeane rose and walked toward the pool. She watched as the serpent—with the air of one who knows where he is going—swam down toward the drainage pipe that probably emptied into the river. As he entered, she saw the woman.
There was a small marble bench near the pool. She was sitting there, staring contentedly into the still water. A child sat on her lap—a little boy. He was sleeping, small, curly head resting on his mother’s breast.
For a second, Regeane wondered when she had come in. Then realized the woman could not have entered without her noticing, and that she could see the far wall of the church through their bodies. She understood what she was looking at. The wolf yawned, bored.
Regeane felt a bit envious: the expression on the spirit’s face was serene and filled with love and peace.
Above the opening in the roof, the sky brightened. Regeane looked up. When she turned her eyes back to the bench, the woman was gone.
Yes
, Regeane thought.
This place has always been holy
.
Silve wailed. She sounded like an unhappy hound dog.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Regeane shouted. “What is it now? The snake is gone.”
“You were looking at someone on the bench. There couldn’t have been anyone on the bench. But I saw something on the bench—” Again the stressed axle sound.
Regeane had enough. “Silence!” The building’s acoustics were excellent. Regeane’s voice reverberated loudly under the roof.
Silve made a snorting noise and shut up.
Regeane marched past the colonnade until she reached Silve. Took her by the ear, led her to the door.
“Hugo says—” Silve screeched.
Regeane cut her off. “You might give some thought to the fact that you and Hugo drink at the same wineshops.”
They passed through the door and up the small flight of steps into the square. Regeane looked up. She saw the sky had grown even darker than when they had entered the church. Light rain sprinkled her upturned face.
Silve sniveled. Regeane let go of her ear. “I’ll die,” she wailed. “The cold and damp will be the death of me. You don’t care if I do die. You don’t care about anything. You just sit in that little stone room of yours with your face all stiff. Judging us. I’ll get siiiick.” She wailed. “My lungs will fill up with stinky pus and when I cough, I’ll cough up bloooood! I won’t be able to walk or climb stairs. I’ll get the flux. IIII’llll dieeeee.”
If there was anything on earth more disgusting than Silve, Regeane thought, it would be Silve coughing up blood and stinking up their cramped lodging by getting diarrhea. Advertently or inadvertently, Silve had hit on the one thing that would open Regeane’s purse. Regeane fished quickly in the leather scrip tied on her belt and pulled out a copper coin. She handed it to Silve. “Oh God, oh Christ! In the name of His Holy Mother and all the saints, go ahead and get yourself some more wine.”
“Yukkee,” Silve burbled happily, then leaped to her feet and ran around the corner to the wine bar of her choice. Regeane remained near the church.
The sky grew darker, and Regeane felt someone watching her. This didn’t surprise her. The Romans, especially Roman men, watched everything. Women were important targets and young women were at the top of their list. The undressing stare was one of their favorites. Regeane thought wryly,
If so, in this
case the starer has his work cut out for him
. She wore long, linen drawers attached to long, linen stockings. Strophium around her breasts. Her mother always made her wear it, accompanied by dark warnings that she would sag later in life if she neglected the binder too often. One long, sleeveless linen shift, and another long, linen shift with sleeves at the wrist. Overdress with wide sleeves to the elbow. Dark, woolen mantle wrapped around her head and body. Covering a veil which in turn hid most of her face.
Her eyes searched the square for the watcher, and did not find anyone. The rain increased slightly. The only other person abroad was a beggar. He or she was a filthy pile of rags sleeping on the porch of an insula nearby.