Authors: Alice Borchardt
“Then,” Gavin said, “how did you get to the city, get close enough to kill him?”
“My master, Blaze …” Maeniel said.
“Blaze taught Merlin,” Gavin said. “And Merlin is only an old story.”
“Perhaps … or perhaps not,” Maeniel said, strolling a little farther away from him. “I forget. You don’t know how strange it is to be old, to know that events that once seemed of catastrophic importance in my own life are only the dry bones of history to you.”
“All right,” Gavin said. “I’ll bite.”
“I hope not,” Maeniel said with a grin.
“What I meant,” he said with exasperated patience, “is you’re telling this story, so tell it your way.”
“Very well,” Maeniel answered. “My master, Blaze, spent a year preparing me to be a Roman. After all, he said, Caesar’s friend Dacidicus managed it. So should I. I learned all I could of their dress, their language, their manners and customs. By the end of the year, I could pass among the Romans as one of them. I learned quickly enough when I came here that I needn’t have bothered. The city then as now was an aging whore always ready to sell herself for the right price.
“Posing as a wealthy landowner from Crisalpine Gaul, I
quickly found out all I needed to know to accomplish my objective. The location of Caesar’s residence in the city, the hours when he went to visit the Senate, who his friends and habitual companions were.
“But I had not seen the man himself until I shouldered my way through the Forum to the very steps of the Senate and waited with my hand on my sword.”
“How did you plan to escape after you killed him?”
“I didn’t.” He turned and faced Gavin with a half smile on his lips.
Gavin was struck by his eyes. They were a peculiar color, a deep steel blue in some lights, dark as a troubled sea in others, and now, sunstruck, they were the hazy color of a storm wrack when the day fades into purple dusk.
“Strange,” Gavin said sarcastically, “I always thought you were intelligent.”
“I was young then,” Maeniel said, “and headlong courage was what was expected of a warrior.”
“If you ask me,” Gavin began.
“Nobody did,” Maeniel answered.
But Gavin finished anyway. “Those Gauls had too much headlong courage and not enough common sense. That’s why Caesar found them such easy prey.”
“Perhaps,” Maeniel said. He was looking away again over the quiet ruins basking in the clear autumn light. “At any rate, I waited for him there. And I met his eyes. He was a lean man, hollow cheeked, and in their deep sockets the eyes burned with the unquenchable hunger.”
“I suppose,” Gavin said, “it’s my function to ask for what?” He tried to sound bored.
Maeniel turned toward him, again with a slight smile on his lips. Then his eyes followed a ring dove as it flew overhead, its wing feathers a sunlit fan against the sky.
“I don’t know,” Maeniel said.
“Maeniel,”‘ Gavin said, in a warning tone. “I don’t like you when you get enigmatic.”
“Men,” Maeniel said, “weaken things by naming them sometimes. Thank all the gods that they have not found a name for this. But I know what it is. I have it, you have it, even the bird
has it. How else would they trust their wings to the invisible air? How else would the pinions of a hawk ride the heat rising from a sunlit mountainside? A wolf has it when he curls in his den after a hunt, not caring for tomorrow, knowing he must hunt again but sure of his strong legs and sharp fangs. I had it, too, even in Blaze’s house, cut off as he wanted me from the world of beasts. I knew the transcendent confidence when I crossed the meadow, breasting the ground mist, to bathe in the river at dawn. An infant knows it when he seeks a mother’s breast with his lips and finds his pleasure and ease. I had it even in my own magnificent stupidity and showed it by not caring what happened to me, if I could but sink my blade into his body.
“But I could read the truth in his restless, hungry gaze. All his power had brought him no ease, no hope, no joy. So I watched him, sickened, pass toward the top of the steps. Then I smelled it. A reek that drowned out the myriad other smells that hung like a foul miasma surrounding me. The powerful odor of human rage, human fear, and desperation. And I realized it came from the men around him. The smell of a pack closing in.
“Damn it, Gavin, did he know those he thought of as his brothers were going to kill him? Was that the reason for that heart-hungry gaze? I think now perhaps he did not care. He was tired of life. Perhaps he would have preferred me to finish him. A clean kill by an avowed enemy. I don’t know. I only know they paused at the top of the stair. As if to urge a petition on him. A moment later their steel was in him. Even the blade of one who they say was his son.
“Men make such a fuss over a kill,” Maeniel mused. “A wolf would simply have left him for the carrion birds.
“I left quickly, a riot was beginning. I brought the news to his wife, Calpurnia. A great, stately lady very much like the Romans of old. Strange, women preserve the virtues of a people longer than men do.”
“That’s because they’re forced to,” Gavin said. “Give them any choice at all … well, I ask you, look at Matrona.”
“That’s your problem, isn’t it?” Maeniel asked slyly. “She won’t let you look at her often enough.”
“Maeniel,” Gavin wailed. “I have. I go in search of a little adventure and she cuts me off for months.”
“In any case,” Maeniel continued, “I told Calpurnia and ordered the servants to keep a watch over her. I was afraid she might take some Roman way out. Then I hurried away from Rome, not just Rome, but from man. Night found me fleeing toward the mountains. A wolf.”
Maeniel turned and walked back toward the horses.
“He was a great man,” Gavin said.
Maeniel paused and looked out again over the sweep of ruins and the wide empty sky. “No, he wasn’t. Great men always leave the world a better place than they found it. He didn’t. He destroyed a state that could have stood as a buffer between his people and those beyond the Rhine who have washed over them since, like a tide. And he wrecked his own government.”
“It may be,” Gavin said, “that those Romans saw his seizure of power as a choice between disorder and despotism.”
Maeniel gazed into Gavin’s eyes again. “That’s no choice at all, and you know it, growing up as you have among people who make their own laws and obey them. No, Roman government was contentious, disorderly, and all too often corrupt. But it had room for growth and change. And above all, when one attended deliberations, it was possible to hear more than one voice.
“After he passed by, it was never anything more than the projected will of one man. That’s why I said Augustus found something living and left a cenotaph. Just as Caesar in Gaul found something living, a people who might have become mighty and magnificent and stood as a bulwark against the savagery beyond the Rhine.
“No, he was not a great man, only a talented, small one driven by greed and a lust for power beyond the common run. Be glad we have no Caesars and no faceless legions to be his instruments.” He turned away abruptly toward his horse.
As Gavin hurried after Maeniel, he only half believed what his war chief was telling him. Still, the quiet that surrounded the big man frightened him. He was in the saddle and the two of them were setting off for Lucilla’s house when he asked, “Why are you telling me all this?”
Maeniel reined in his horse abruptly. “Because,” he said. “I
want no Caesar to come to my valley in the mountains, be his name Charles or any other, and destroy my friends.
“I am explaining to you why the stakes are too high in this marriage for me to behave otherwise than as a father to my people. I will marry the girl, whatever she is. And she will be honored in my house by the rest of you. And we will keep our secrets as well.
“So, I hope you enjoyed the freedom of the Campagna last night, because that freedom is about to come to an end. Understand, Gavin, an end. For the time she is with us, we will be men, not wolves. And you will behave yourself at the villa of Lucilla. All of you.”
Gavin showed an uncharacteristic meekness when they reached Lucilla’s house. Maeniel lifted the heavy saddle bag from the horse as Gavin announced his identity to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper was a pretty young girl and Gavin didn’t even roll his eyes at her.
He followed Maeniel at a respectful distance when they entered the atrium garden. The girl paused, looked at them once, giggled, and disappeared into the house.
Gavin sat down on a marble bench beside the pool. “I suppose we are to make ourselves at home,” he said.
“Not too much at home,” Maeniel warned.
“Oh, no,” Gavin said, trying to sound reassuring.
Maeniel placed the saddlebag on the bench beside Gavin and stood, waiting expectantly. A few minutes later a very dressed up Elfgifa stepped out of the door of the triclinium. She wore the silk shift and the stiff gold and white brocade overgown she’d worn to the pope’s banquet. A string of pearls was wound into her short golden hair.
She looked up at Maeniel, expectantly, and said, “Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”
Both Gavin and Maeniel stared at her in complete bewilderment for a second. Then Gavin dissolved into roars of laughter.
Maeniel glared at him.
“Did the letter …” Gavin said, choking with laughter, “did the letter they sent you say anything about your future wife’s age?”
Maeniel turned and kicked him hard in the ankle.
Elfgifa’s lower lip shot out.
“I knew something was wrong,” Gavin said. “I knew something had to be wrong,” he moaned. “Now I know what it is.”
Elfgifa’s lip protruded even further. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said, stamping one little foot. “Everybody said I was very pretty. What’s the matter with him?”
“Gavin,” Maeniel said between his teeth. “Shut up. Yes,” he said with forced cheerfulness to Elfgifa. “You are very pretty.” Bending over, he dropped a soft, very gentle kiss on the child’s forehead.
“Poor Maeniel,” Gavin said, wiping his eyes. “You’re going to go without for a very long time.”
“Without what?” Elfgifa asked innocently.
This set Gavin off again. Faint sounds of incipient hysterics emanated from behind the curtains that shielded the triclinium. Maeniel knew every servant in the villa must be there listening.
“My lady,” Maeniel said to Elfgifa. “If you don’t mind, would you bring me a cup of wine and when I’m finished strangling my friend, here,” he directed a quelling look at Gavin, “I’ll join you and we’ll talk over the future.”
Elfgifa studied Maeniel darkly for a moment. “If he’s your friend, why would you want to strangle him?”
Gavin was nigh paralyzed but he managed to jump off the bench and sidle well away from Maeniel.
“I always thought,” Elfgifa went on, “that you strangled people you didn’t like.”
Gavin staggered against one of the columns supporting the porch roof. “It’s going to be wonderful,” he said, “waiting for this consummation.”
“What’s a consummation?” Elfgifa asked. “And why is he acting that way? Is it because you’re going to strangle him? And if you are, can I watch?”
“Yes,” Maeniel said between his teeth. “Only I may not strangle him, I may just drown him, slowly.”
Suddenly Gavin stopped laughing and stared at the two women walking along the porch from the garden.
“Look,” Elfgifa said to Regeane, clutching Maeniel’s brown mantle. “This is the man who’s come to marry you.”
Regeane stopped dead in her tracks. The blood left her face
in a rush, leaving her almost as pale and waxen as the lilies blooming beside the pool.
“Oh, good heavens,” Lucilla whispered.
A volley of half-stifled giggles erupted from behind the curtains to the triclinium.
“What’s going on here!” Lucilla demanded.
“This is the Lord Maeniel,” Elfgifa said, excitedly. She still had hold of Maeniel’s mantle. “You know, the mountain lord who’s going to marry Regeane. The servants said to greet him properly and be nice to him. And since I’m going to be one of Regeane’s ladies, I came out to talk and that red-haired man there,” she gestured at Gavin, “started laughing. I don’t know why. I don’t think I’m funny.” She pointed at Maeniel. “He said he was going to strangle him and promised I could watch.”
“He won’t,” Lucilla said, “and if he did, you couldn’t, and thank you for bringing me up to date, you terrible, terrible child.”
Elfgifa’s face clouded over, the lower lip protruded. “I’m not terrible. I’m very nice. Regeane says so. I told you where she went when she ran away. I set Hugo on fire and made him let her go—”
“Enough,” Lucilla roared. “Besides, as a lady’s maid—”
“I’m not going to be a lady’s maid,” Elfgifa piped up. “I’m going to be an attendant. Postumous says as the daughter of a thane I am too highborn to be a lady’s maid. I’m—”
“I said, enough,” Lucilla commanded in a voice like a boulder dropping to earth. The murderous look she directed at the closed curtains of the triclinium promised dire consequences for the authors of this particular mischief.
“Having a little fun with the bridegroom, are we?” she asked in artificially dulcet tones.
Sounds of feet moving away quickly followed her words. Elfgifa stood her ground. She tugged twice at Maeniel’s mantle and whispered. “Bend down.” She looked anxiously at Gavin.
Maeniel obediently bent down. Elfgifa placed her lips near his ear. “Do you know what my father says about red-haired men?”
“No,” Maeniel whispered back.
“He says Judas had red hair,” Elfgifa whispered breathlessly.
Maeniel’s face convulsed with mirth.
Gavin, who had been standing openmouthed a second before, drew himself up in fury. “Now wait just a goddamn minute …”
Maeniel straightened up, his hand on Elfgifa’s golden curls. “Gavin may have red hair,” he said, “but I don’t think he and the apostle are related.”
“I certainly hope not,” Elfgifa said, casting a second suspicious look at Gavin. “My father says …”
“That is quite enough,” Lucilla said. “That father of yours has filled your head with every manner of nonsense. You will go inside and trouble us no more. At once.” She clapped her hands.