Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (35 page)

‘You know Rome, you can help to get me started. First of all, send off a courier to our agents in Londinium and Bonnonia,
and in all the towns on the way, to say I’m coming. Don’t say why, just say I’m on my way, and they’re to give me all the credit the family name will bear.

‘Next, we’ll have a night out in Rome. I want to see this Gwawl so that I recognise him in future, and so that he won’t recognise me.

‘Last of all, I want a litter and carriers arranged all the way from here to Bonnonia, starting, let’s say, next Wednesday, and a bunch of reliable men as escort.’

‘Wednesday? But he’ll have two days’ start then. You’ll never catch him before he gets into the Province!’

‘I don’t want to. If you fancy tackling the baggage-master of a legionary draft when the troops are all around him, go ahead. Let
him
keep the Deed safe. If I can get to Bonnonia before him, I can catch him at sea – alone. Besides, I can have a few days in Lutetia on the way. People keep on telling me about the girls there. And that reminds me …’ a sudden thought had struck me. ‘There’s another last thing you can do. I want you, Philebus, to go and buy me a girl for the journey, as a parting gift. I bet you know where to go.’

‘He does,’ said Uncle Euthyphro coldly. ‘And he’ll pay out of his own money, not out of the family’s. Will any woman do?’

‘Of course not. Listen carefully, Philebus. I want a woman who doesn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, if she’s going to come in the litter with me. For the same reason, she’s got to be clean and decent and not too stupid. And the less Latin she speaks the better. You see, I want a Brit.’

That would be difficult, I thought. Nobody in their senses will buy a British slave. There are too many magicians in that island: you don’t want to be bewitched overnight and wake up in an ass’s head or something. I went on. ‘She’s got to be miserable and want to go home. If she does what I want, then I’ll set her free in Britain when I get there. So make the bill of sale out to me, and put her age down as thirty-five, whatever it really is, or the manumission won’t be legal.’

Philebus didn’t object to this. He answered:

‘I know the very thing. It’s what Gwawl was wagering against the Monopoly Deed. And whatever he asks, it will be worth it if you can make him pay for what he did for me.’

I had my night out in Rome, and another three after that, before I had my good look at Gwawl in a fashionable bathhouse, not at all the kind of place to expect to see the baggage-master, of a legionary mule train. If I’d been Gwawl, I thought, I’d have been a little more careful about the consistency of my disguises. Myself, I decided, I wasn’t going to bother about any disguises or fancy dress in Britain.

No, I thought, time and again in those few days, I was going to be just Photinus and nobody else. No more was I going to do anything myself, either. I would have enough agents among the Brits for that. I would just stand aside and plan, and tell the others what to do. And least of all would I have anything more than necessary to do with British women. That was how I had got into trouble in Germany. First I had married a native, and then I had done other things, distilled drink, and organised trade, and even raised an army of my own. No, that personal dealing was over. What others wouldn’t or couldn’t do for me would remain undone.

My Uncle Euthyphro agreed.

‘Just leave it in the hands of the Gods,’ he told me. ‘But what worries me, my boy, is what Gods? I know that the Unconquered Sun dismissed you from his service. Who do you worship now? The Moon and Stars?’

‘No,’ I replied, quietly, because it wasn’t something I liked discussing. ‘As far as I worship anything, I worship the Gods Below. Wherever you go, you find different Gods for this and that. But the Gods Below are the same everywhere.’

By dawn on that Wednesday morning I was glad enough to settle into the nice comfortable litter, and jog off with the curtains drawn against the sun. I hadn’t been to bed on Tuesday
night at all, and so I was glad of five hours’ sleep. We moved at a steady trot, most soothing, with the litter bearers changing every quarter of an hour, so smooth I never noticed it. Our escort came close behind. Big hard men, they were, mule-drivers for the family most of the year, freedmen or freedmen’s sons, and their leader was a nasty customer called Marco with a scar from eye to throat. I was glad he was on my side.

When I woke up, I had a good look at the girl Philebus had bought from Gwawl for me. She wasn’t very young, she must have been eighteen at least, but she was small built and plump, nearly down to the limit I’d set, though she got fatter as we went. She couldn’t have been anything but British with that dark brown hair, nearly black, and those blue eyes, not ice blue like the Germans so often have, but the blue of woodsmoke, soft, lazy but with the fire behind it all the time. She reminded me of my first bigamous wife, Bithig, who had been a queen among the Picts, and who was probably still looking for me. To get away from her, I remembered, we had had to steal a ship belonging to a crusty old man called Caw, whom we sold to Starkadder Eightarms the Pirate. Still I thought, I’ll be quite safe, I won’t be going within a hundred miles of the Wall.

I looked at the girl in my litter, who didn’t really look like Bithig on closer inspection, and asked her what her name was.

‘They call me Candida around here.’

‘But your real name?’

‘Cicva.’

‘All right, Cicva. After this morning, we speak not one word of Latin together. Then, if when we land in Britain we find I can pass for a Brit, I shall set you free.’

She didn’t like the word Brit, I could see it in her face: they none of them do. To outsiders they call themselves Britons, in full, but to themselves they call themselves Comrades, Cymry. But Brit is the old Army word and I used it when I wanted to. I was paying, wasn’t I?

The best way to learn a language is in bed. That was the way I learnt German. I learnt the language of the Brits in a litter, which was almost as good, if not better. We watched the long coast swing by, and I learnt the words for sea and ship and for all
the fishes and shell-fish. We turned away from the sea, and I learnt the words for ox and plough and for all the plants that grew.

We turned north at Marseilles and up the Rhone. Coming south, it’s much faster and more comfortable to take a boat, but not going north. This is a surprising thing. I saw a map once, hanging on a wall in Alexandria, and it showed quite clearly that Rome is in the centre of the world, and that Africa is at the top, and that Britain and the Land of Norroway are at the bottom, and that is why the greatest rivers of the world, the Nile and Rhine, flow downhill to the north. So going north ought to have been easier than it was, but if the Rhone flows in the face of nature, then perhaps the road does the same thing.

A little way before Lugdunum we caught up with the legionary draft. Of course they got off the road to let us through. It’s wonderful what a show of money will do when you’re travelling. I walked by the litter with Marco, and Cicva peeped out through the curtains. I pointed Gwawl out to them. Marco asked:

‘Shall we kill him tonight?’

‘No, no! I want him alive as far as Bonnonia. He’s got something I want, and we’ll let him worry about looking after it. We’ll pass them and have a few days in Lutetia.’

I got back into the litter. I asked Cicva:

‘Did you see him?’

‘Of course. Why
can’t
we kill him tonight? We could take all night over it.’

‘You sound as if you want to kill him personally.’

‘I do. If it weren’t for him I wouldn’t have been kidnapped and sold down here.’ She wouldn’t tell me anything more about it. She wouldn’t say what part of the island she came from, or who her people were. This was unusual. Most of these girls are only too eager to assure you that they would be princesses if only they had their rights. But she wouldn’t say a thing.

We stopped a little way further up, to have a midday snack at a tavern, and the handful of officers going up with the draft, and riding ahead of it to keep out of the dust, stopped there as well. I called them over to join us. We had various mutual acquaintances. I asked after Aristarchos the son of Demons. Last I heard
of him, I told them, he’d been commanding a regiment of cavalry at Carnuntum.

‘All Brits they were, too,’ I remembered. ‘What were they called? Hadrian’s Own Danube Rangers?’

‘Oh, the Wall-eyed Warriors,’ said one of the centurions. The legions are always glad to make fun of the cavalry. ‘But he’s left those now. I don’t know where, but I think it was a promotion.’

They asked after Philebus – I hadn’t realised he was such a rake.

‘He’s well at sea by now,’ I told them, and they all laughed again – they could afford to, I was paying for the wine.

‘Better to travel like you with all home comforts,’ someone said waving at Cicva, who had brought us some cheese she had been bargaining for in the village. Like all the Brits she was a connoisseur of cheese, and Gaulish was near enough to British, as even I could tell by now, to let her hold her own in the market.

‘I’ve got to have someone to watch my blind side,’ I told them – I had a quite tasteful false eye in that day, of jet, carved in concentric circles – and the officers hooted with laughter and tried to pinch her bottom without my seeing it, and they were in great good humour when the mule train came swinging up the road and Cicva ran off to hide her blushes in the kitchen.

I pointed to Gwawl. I said:

‘Now there’s a real old-fashioned mule-driver for you. Where did you find him?’

‘Oh, that one,’ they all said at once. ‘He’s a bad one, he is. Even his own family wouldn’t own him, wherever they are. A Brit, you know, and one of the nastier ones. Good little fellows, but every now and again you find one like him. Usually, though, they have red hair. You’ve got to watch out for the red-haired ones.’

I looked again at Gwawl. His hair was black, and tight curled, and it bristled on his thick forearms, with the sinews knotted and corded under the skin. When I had seen him in the baths, I had only thought him gross, the kind of man who sits down in a tavern and then picks up his belly in his hands and puts it on the table. But now he had fined down with the long march, and he just looked big. He was as tall as I am, but he weighed at least
half as much again, I’m sure. I looked down at myself, and I took the hint.

After that, I used to get out of the litter for a part of each day and walk with Marco, much to the relief of the bearers. By the time we got to Lutetia I could walk the whole twelve hours of daylight, and that in the early summer, with my bag over my shoulder, and never want to stop once for a rest. We passed beneath the ruined walls of Alesia, that great fortress of the Gauls. Caesar had tumbled the ramparts and hacked the gates from their hinges. And the Lord of Alesia, that great king, who might have reigned as Emperor over all the Gauls of the world from Britain to Galatia, great Vercingetorix, long dead now, dead and thrown into the sewer. But there was no weeping, even for Cicva, over that old dream, no singing that old song again. There was no stopping till we reached Lutetia.

We had a few splendid days in Lutetia. We quartered ourselves on the family’s agent, a man called Julius Macrinus, who had a very pleasant house on the south side of the island, looking on to the river. It was a really delightful time, and even today I occasionally meet people who remember it. The girls … the drink … the food … surprising when you consider the reputation the place has for being a sad and strict town. There’s no culture in Lutetia to speak of, no art or anything else to turn an honest penny over, which may be one reason why it’s getting so prosperous.

Then one morning, while everyone else, muleteers and all, were sleeping off the last and most outrageous party, Marco and Cicva and I took horses and rode off to Bonnonia.

We moved in on our agent in Bonnonia. He was even more embarrassed to see us than Macrinus had been. He was expecting an important Greek businessman, somebody used to dealing in millions and bargaining with the Governors of Provinces, and that of course he got. But he didn’t expect me, with a variety of false eyes to suit my moods and hair all over – I had let it grow, beard and all, on the way up from Rome. And he got Marco, who had a scar across his face that turned his eye outwards, so that the milder he was feeling the more brutal he looked. Cicva was the most respectable of the three of us, to look at. I’d given her some money to get dressed up with in Lugdunum, and you know what Lugdunum fashions are. Then she’d had them altered to her own taste in Lutetia, and we all know the Parisii have no sense of how to dress. She ended up looking like an only moderately successful whore.

Marco was quite happy. He was anchor man, which suited him. He was to see that everyone was contented in Bonnonia after I left. He knew perfectly his place in my plan. The only trouble was that I hadn’t got a plan. I had a vague idea that nothing would come right till I had a ship. I had to go and find one.

On the second night in Bonnonia I took out of my baggage an old grey cloak with a hood. I put it on, and went out. Marco followed me. He kept a few yards behind me, and when I went into a tavern he would stand by the door, just inside, making it clear that I wasn’t alone.

The first tavern I went into – I was choosing the less reputable ones, the ones down by the quay, where the clientele would be sailors, and not the most respectable sailors either – well, the first one I went into, I called for drinks all round. While everybody was drinking my health – and after the long journey, and the nights in Lutetia, I needed some attention to my health – I stood
by the bar counter, and I drew idly in the sawdust of the floor with my toe. I drew a face, at least a circle with eyes and a mouth, and eight lines sticking out of it like arms, and to each arm I gave a hand holding some kind of weapon, an axe or a sword. Nobody took the slightest notice. I finished my beer and moved on.

I did precisely the same in the next tavern I came to. Again nobody seemed to take the slightest notice, except for the man next to me. He dipped his finger in a puddle of beer and drew a fish on the bar counter. He looked at me meaningly, which was difficult with the squint he had, and then quickly rubbed it out again. I didn’t know anything about that, so I just said: