To Eodan, Rome had been two things. First was the city of the Cimbrian
dream, all golden roofs above white colonnades, shimmering against a
sky forever blue. Then was the avenue of the triumph, where he bent his
weary head lest the hurled muck take him in the eyes, and thereafter
the slave pens and finally a stumbling in chains, one dawn, out onto
the Latin Way. Neither was of this earth.
Now he entered Rome herself, and he saw just a little of a city that
toiled and played and sang and dickered and laughed, plotted, feasted,
sacrificed, lied, swindled, and stood by friends--a city of men and
women and children like any others, built by men's hands and guarded
by men's bodies. He had thought Rome was walled, but he found as he
trudged through hours of buildings that she eternally outgrew her
walls, as though she were a snake casting skin, so that the old gates
stood open in the midst of a brawling traffic. He had thought of
Romans as divided into iron-sheathed rankers, piggish man-traders, and
one woman who shuddered in his arms; but he saw a gang of children
playing ball in the dust, a leathery smith in a clangorous tiny shop
and a limping man who cried out the roasted nuts he bore for sale in
panniers slung from a yoke. He saw Romans spread their wares in flimsy
booths while a temple gleamed purity above them. He saw a Roman matron,
in clothes no better than his, who scolded her small boy for being
reckless about passing horse-carts. He saw a young girl weeping, for
some reason he never knew, and he saw two young men, merry with wine,
stop to rumple the ears of an itinerant dog.
It growled about him, the heavy sound of laden wheels, echoing between
grimy brick walls. A haze hung in the air, smoke and dust, tinged
with garlic, cooked meat, new bread, perfume, horse dung, sewage,
garbage, human sweat. Folk milled about, shouting, waving their arms,
chaffering, thrusting a way past the crowds, somehow, anyhow. Once
Phryne was whirled from Eodan in such an eddy. He gasped with terror,
knowing he was indeed lost without her. She found her way back to him,
but thereafter he held her wrist.
They threaded their way toward the Esquiline Gate. "We must find an
inn," Phryne said; she had to shout through the noise. "The house is on
the Viminal Hill, but we could not go there clad as we are, nor before
dark in any case."
Eodan nodded dumbly. He let her lead him under the portal. A distance
beyond it was a shabby district of tall wooden tenements, where the
streets were slimy with refuse and the landless, workless scourings
of war and debt crouched in their rags waiting for the next dole.
He was too tired even to feel anger at the shouts from tooth-rotten
mouths. "Hail, peasant! A son of the soil, there are straws in his
hair! Aha, will you not lend us that pretty boy for a while? No, he
will not--they're a hard-fisted lot, these farmers. Cisalpine Gauls for
certain, see the ox look about 'em. But then where are their Gaulish
breeches? Ha, ha, lost their breeches, did they--now was it at dice or
what?"
Phryne, gone pale with wrath, led Eodan through twisted alleys until
they found an inn. The landlord sat outside, yawning and picking his
teeth with a thumbnail. "We would have a room for ourselves," she said.
"Half a sesterce," said the landlord. "Half a sesterce for this flea
pit? One copper as!" cried Phryne. They haggled while Eodan shuffled
his feet and looked about.
When at last he was alone with her, in a windowless box of a room, he
said, "The night winds take you, girl, what do we care for a copper
more or less? I feel a fool every place we stop, listening to you!"
"I wonder what they would have thought of two people who did not
bargain?" purred Phryne. "That they were in a suspicious haste to get
off the streets?"
It was too murky to read her face, but he had come to know that tone.
He could almost have traced out the quirk of her mouth and the mockery
of her eyes. "Oh, well, you rescued me again," he said. "I am a
blundering dolt. What shall we do next, captain, sir?"
"You have a wit like a bludgeon," she said. "Be quiet and let me
think." She threw herself on a pile of moldy straw and looked up at a
ceiling hidden as much by grime as by dimness.
Eodan hunched among the stinks and choked down his wrath. She had saved
him too often, in the days that lay behind. Her right to badger him was
earned.
He could have guided the first wild gallop himself, out of the estate
and down ringing dirt roads to the south. When they reached a stream,
they had dismounted and led their horses several miles northerly in its
channel, slipping and stumbling while the dark hours fled them; but he
would have done that, too, to cover his trail. They found another road
at last and went mercilessly along it toward the Latin Way; the horses
were ready to fall down by sunrise. Eodan would have turned them loose
then and gone ahead on foot; Phryne had made him, unwillingly, lead
them into a brushy ravine and kill them. But that was not a thought
Eodan might never have had--it was another trail-covering, after all,
and a chance to sacrifice for luck. She had told him to offer the
beasts to Hermes, whom he did not know, but he felt any god would have
been pleased.
No, he thought, thus far he could have come without her. He might even
have gone for many miles, sleeping by day and walking by night. But
when he blundered into a sheep-fold, and the dogs flew at him and the
shepherds came to club him for a thief, he could not have fobbed them
off with so ready a tale as Phryne had. He could never have passed
himself for a harmless man when they bought bread and wine on the way;
he would have had to steal his food, with all the risks. He reckoned
himself brave, but he had gone chill when she chattered merrily with a
wagoner chance-met at an inn; yet it ended with two days of riding on
a load of barley while the blisters on their soles eased. (He recalled
seeing in the first dawn how her feet bled from the river stones; but
she had said nothing.) She saved him having to answer any questions
at all in his accent when she remarked calmly that her poor brother
was a mute. The last two days, with houses and villages grown so thick
they dared not sleep out in the grass like vagabonds, she had gotten
rooms for them. (Formerly they had lain side by side, wrapped in
their cloaks, looking up at a sky frosty with stars, and she had told
him unbelievable things that the wise Greeks thought about heaven,
until he begged her to spare his whirling head. Then she laughed very
softly and said he knew the stars themselves better than she.) And now
in Rome--Yes, surely she belonged to his weird, for he saw now how
moonstruck had been his notion of entering Rome alone.
Nonetheless, at the few times weariness or wariness had not forbidden
them to speak freely, she was apt to be curt with him. He wondered how
he offended her. Once he asked, and she said for him to cease plaguing
her with foolish questions.
She stirred on the straw. "I will go out and buy us better clothing,"
she said. "After sunset I will take you to Flavius' house. I know a way
we can get in. But then it must be you who leads, for I have no more
plans in me."
"I have none," he said. "I will trust in whatever gods are willing to
guide us."
"If they guide us not to our doom," she said.
"That may well be. But if so, what can we do to stop it?" Eodan
shrugged. "I had thought we might steal Hwicca from the house--buy
boy's dress for her too, Phryne--and then if we could all get on a ship
bound somewhere--"
The girl sighed and left. Eodan stretched himself out and went to
sleep.
She came back with cloaks and tunics of better stuff than they wore, a
lamp and a jug of hot water and a basin borrowed from the innkeeper.
Once again he submitted to her razor. When she was done, she gestured
curtly at a loaf of bread and a cheese. "Eat," she said. "You may need
your strength."
He had been tearing at it for some time when he noticed that she sat
unmoving. "Will you not have some?" he asked.
Her tone was far-off, as if she had small care for what was to happen
to them. "I have no appetite."
"But you, too--"
"Let me alone!" she flared.
Presently they were out again upon the street. It was sunset time and
the crowds had thinned, so they moved quickly over mucked cobbles. "It
is as well to get into a better part of the city before dark," muttered
Phryne. "There could be robbers out."
Eodan lifted his staff. "I would give much for a good fight," he said.
Phryne looked at him, his eyes two heads above her own. "I understand,"
she said. Her fingers stroked lightly over his arm. "It will not be
long now, Eodan."
The tightness in his breast grew with every pace. As dusk settled over
the city, he found himself climbing a wide well-paved road up the
Viminal Hill, so that he could gaze down across roofs and roofs and
roofs, here and there a last pale gleam of temple marble, hazy blue
fading into black in the east, and many lit windows making an eldritch
earthbound star-sky, farther than a man could see. Faintly to him came
smoke, a sound of wheels or tired feet, a distant hail that quivered
upon still air. Once a horseman went by, casting the two plebeians an
incurious glance.
Hwicca, thought Eodan. Hwicca, I have not seen you for a thousand
years. I am going to see you tonight.
Though all the earth stood up to bar my way, I will hold you again
tonight.
The darkness thickened, until at last he heard his footfalls hollow on
unseen stones, until the houses on either side were little more than
black blocks. His heart beat so loudly that he could almost not hear
Phryne's final words: "We have found it." But he felt with unwonted
keenness how her hand clenched about his.
They stood before a sheer ten-foot wall. "The house lies within a
garden," she whispered. "No one watches the rear ... guests come in at
the other side ... there is a gate, but it would be locked now. If you
can raise me to the top, I will tie my belt to a bough I know and you
can follow."
Eodan made a cup of his hands. She stepped up, in a single flowing
movement, caught at his head to steady herself and murmured, "Now." He
lifted her carefully, but aware of her leg sliding along his cheek.
Then she had scrambled to the top, and he felt his way past rough
plaster until he found the cord she let down. He climbed it hand over
hand.
"Where is your staff?" hissed Phryne. "Down below," he said. "Have the
gods maddened you, to mark your own path? Back and get it!" she snapped.
When at last they stood in the garden, Eodan peered through the crooked
branches of a tree. No lights showed on this side. He guessed, from
remembering the villa, that kitchen and slave quarters were at this
end, but there would be a separate corridor on one side that the owners
used. Phryne led him to such a door. It creaked beneath her touch. She
halted, and time stretched horribly while they waited.
"No one heard," she sighed. "Come."
Two hanging lamps gave just enough light for them to see down the hall.
"To the atrium," whispered Phryne. "Nobody seems to be there. But the
Cimbrian girl stayed here--" She stopped in front of a door and touched
it with hands that shook. "Here, Eodan." He saw her mouth writhe, as if
in pain. "O Eodan, the Unknown God grant she be here!"
He found himself suddenly, coldly his own master. His fingers were
quite steady on the latchstring. The door opened upon darkness ... no,
there was a window at the end, broader than most Italian windows; he
had a glimpse of gray-blue night crossed with a flowering vine and one
trembling star.
He went through. His dagger slid from its sheath. If Flavius was here,
Flavius would not see morning. But, otherwise, he told himself, he must
keep Hwicca from yelling in her joy. Put a hand over her mouth, if he
must, or at least a kiss; silence was their only shield.
He padded over the floor, Phryne closing the door behind him. They
stood in shadows.
"Hwicca?" he whispered.