Roma Mater (11 page)

‘He feels it. He looks upward and sees my wings beneath the moon, the moon that turns his eyes to quicksilver. The dread of the mystery in him comes upon me. I fly from his terrible gaze. It is he, it is he, it is he!’

Forsquilis shrieked and fell. Quinipilis stood aside while Bodilis and Vindilis pulled her out into the open and stretched her carefully on the ground. The rest clustered about. Between dark cloaks and blanched headwraps, most visages were paler than was due to the light.

Bodilis knelt to examine the unmoving woman. ‘She seems in a swoon,’ she said.

Quinipilis nodded. ‘That is to be awaited,’ she replied. ‘Our Sister has travelled along weird ways. Cover her well, let her in peace, and she should arouse soon.’

‘Meanwhile, what shall we do?’ asked Lanarvilis.

‘Naught,’ quavered Maldunilis, her wonted placidity torn apart. ‘Naught save abide … abide that moment.’

‘Surely
something
else,’ was Innilis’s timid thought. ‘Prayer?’

Fennalis stroked her hand, responding, ‘Nay, I think not. We have held rites since sunset. It were not well to risk the Gods growing weary of us.’

Bodilis said slowly: ‘Hold, Sisters. Belike those same Gods have given us this pause. We can think on what our wisest course may be.’

Wrath flared in Vindilis. ‘What mean you?’ she cried.
‘We held council and made decision at equinox. We cast our spells and tonight we know they’ve wrought well. What else remains but to curse Colconor?’

‘That … that is such a dreadful thing,’ Dahilis dared say. ‘Mayhap we shouldn’t – ’

Vindilis turned on the girl as if to attack. ‘You dare?’ she yelled. ‘Has he won your heart, little traitress?’

‘Please, darling, please,’ Innilis begged. She tugged at the sleeve of the older woman, whose anger thereupon abated somewhat.

Dahilis helped by blurting, ‘I meant no cowardice, in truth I did not. It was but that Bodilis said – oh – ’

‘Bodilis said,’ declared that one, ‘we should take heed this last time ere we do what cannot be undone. Magic is ever a two-edged sword, ofttimes wounding the wielder. I loathe Colconor as deeply as do any of you, my Sisters. But we have called his death to him. May not that be enough? Need we hazard more?’

‘We must!’ Lanarvilis exclaimed. ‘If we stand by idle at this pass, well shall we deserve it that our whole enterprise comes to grief.’ She crooked her fingers aloft like talons. ‘Also, I want my share in the death.’

Vindilis hissed agreement.

‘Calm, Sisters, calm, I pray of you,’ urged Fennalis. ‘I’ve no wish myself for black sorcery. Yet if ’tis needful, ’tis needful.’

‘I believe it is,’ Quinipilis told them. ‘Forsquilis is most profound in the lore, aye, but over the years that have been mine I’ve had to do certain deeds, and watch others done. You, Bodilis, are wise, but it is the wisdom of your books and philosophers. Bethink you. Thus far we have at best brought a man who
may
prevail, and thereafter prove a better King than Colconor.’

‘He could never prove worse,’ whispered gentle Innilis.

‘This man may choose not to fight,’ Quinipilis went on.
‘If he leads soldiers, he is on duty he would be reluctant to set aside. If he does fight, he may lose. I doubt me Colconor’s strength has much dwindled since he won the crown.’

Bodilis nodded thoughtfully. True. If then the soldiers slay him who killed their comrade, why, we would be rid of the monster, but how shall we have a new King? The sacred battle may never be of more than one against one. Ys beholds too much desecration already. I believe that is why the powers of the Gallicenae are fading and failing.’

‘Oh, nay,’ Innilis shuddered and crept close to Vindilis, who laid an arm about her waist.

Tear not, my sweet,’ Vindilis assured her. ‘We will cast our spell in righteousness, that the hero shall indeed take lordship and redeem us.’

Dahilis clasped her hands together. ‘The hero!’ Her eyes shone.

Forsquilis groaned, stirred, looked up with merely human sight. Her colleagues aided her to sit, chafed her wrists, murmured comfort. Finally she could rise.

‘Feel you that we should go on as we’ve planned?’ Quinipilis asked. ‘And if you do, have you the strength?’

The witch straightened. Teeth gleamed between lips drawn thin. ‘Yea and yea!’ she answered. ‘Wait no more. Our might sinks with the moon.’

The Nine had, earlier, brought wood and laid it on a blackened site near the Stones. Dahilis had had the honour of carrying the fire: for the Sisterhood had agreed, upon Quinipilis’s proposing, that Dahilis, youngest and fairest of them, should be the bride of the new King’s first night. She prayed to Belisama while she emptied glowing charcoal on to kindling. The wind made flames leap quickly.

From under her cloak Forsquilis took a silver vessel whence she dusted salt across every palm. The Queens
licked it up in the name of Lir. Quinipilis called on Taranis while she drew forth a knife, nicked her thumb, and flung drops of blood on to the fire. They spat when they struck the coals. Each by each, the Sisters passed before her and made the same sacrifice.

They joined hands around the blaze. It roared, streaming and sparkling on the wind. Red and yellow unease below, icy white above, were all the light there was; everywhere else reached blindness. Sang the Nine:

Aboard their boat at the dock, looking beyond the House, the fishermen who had brought the Nine hither
saw the fire. They did not know what it portended, they had only obeyed when called upon, but they shivered, muttered charms, clutched lucky pieces and made for-fending signs; and they were Ferriers of the Dead.

1

West of Vorgium the hills became long and steep. Forest thinned out until there were only isolated stands of trees, and none wherever heath prevailed over pastureland. The soldiers were rarely out of sight of one or more megaliths, brooding grey amidst emptiness. Winds blew shrill and cold, drove clouds across heaven and their shadows across earth, often cast rainshowers. Yet here too it was the season of rebirth. Grass rippled like green flame, mustard and gorse flaunted gold, flowers were everywhere – tiny daisies, blue borage, violets, hyacinths, cuckoopint, speedwell, primrose, strewn through filigree of wild carrot and prickle of blackberry. Only willows had thus far come to full leaf, but oak and chestnut were beginning, while plum blossoms whitened their own boughs. Bumblebees droned, amber aflight. Blackbirds, starlings, sparrows, doves, gulls filled the sky with wings and calls.

Farmsteads were apt to be far apart, tucked into sheltering dells: a thatch-roofed wattle-and-daub house for people and animals together, perhaps a shed, a pigpen, a vegetable garden, an apple tree or so. Mainly folk in these parts lived by grazing sheep and, to a lesser degree, cattle. They were all Osismii, and Gratillonius would not have been able to speak with them had he not picked up some of their language as a boy. It used many words unique to itself, words he thought must trace back to the Old Folk. Invading Celts, centuries ago, had made themselves the leading families of the tribe and mingled
their blood with that of the natives, but more thinly, this far out on the peninsula, than elsewhere in Gallia.

Some words, he thought with an eerie thrill, must stem from another source, from Ys. They resembled none he had heard before, but stirred vague memories in him of names he had met when studying the history of the Punic Wars.

Although folk were friendly, much excited to see legionaries, he didn’t stop for talk except one evening when he chanced to camp near a dwelling. There he learned that the neighbourhood had suffered little from raiders, being too poor to draw them, but the western shore was an utter wreck apart from Gesocribate and Ys. The former was tucked well into a narrow bay and Roman-defended. The latter fronted on Ocean, but – The farmer signed himself to his Gods in awe of the power protecting that city. He would be glad to come under its guardianship. Unfortunately, Ys claimed only a few eastward miles of hinterland.

Disturbance crept about within Gratillonius. What forces indeed did such a minikin state command, that it endured while Rome crumbled?

He found himself thinking about that again when his squadron reached the coast and spent a night at Garomagus. He and his father had called there several times, in years as lost as the lives they had found. Small but bustling, the town once embodied those industries, that prosperity, which ringed its great bight: ceramics, metal-work, salt, and garum, the fish sauce Armoricans exported to the farthest ends of the Empire. Now, as sunset smouldered away, Gratillonius stood fingering a shard of a jar, among the burnt-out shells of buildings surrounding a forum where only he and the whimpering wind had motion.

He saw no bones lying about. Survivors who crept back
to town after the final sack must have buried their kindred before abandoning their homes. Stains still darkened a fountain gone dry, where the heathen had held a sacrifice, and rubbish littered pavement. A book sprawled mildewing outside a church, its cover stripped of jewels, its vellum capriciously slashed. Gratillonius bent over to peer at the rain-blurred pages and recognized Greek letters and ink drawings. A Gospel. Christian or not, the dead book saddened him. He carried it into the church and laid it on the altar.

Later the moon rose, a day past the full. Unable at first to sleep, he wandered from camp. Following the stream beside which the town had nestled, he came to the mouth and turned on to a beach. Wavelets on the bay glimmered and lulled, sand scritted underfoot. The air was not very cold. He made out stars, old friends, the Bears, the Dragon, the Lion that heralds the northward-swinging sun. Tonight they seemed remote and alien. Did they really rule over the fates of men? Most people believed so. If they were right, then the star of Ys – Venus? – was still ascendant; and the Mars of Rome was sinking?

Without having pondered the matter, which could have led him to question seriously a tenet of his religion, Gratillonius had always doubted astrology. At most, he supposed, whatever planet a man was born under might influence him; but so would the heritage of blood and circumstance that he had from his parents. Manhood required him to make his own fate.

But if the blind circle of the spheres was not what kept Ys alive: what did? He should have learned far more than he knew before embarking on this mission. The knowledge had, though, not been there for him, in any chronicles he could find or any spoken accounts he could elicit. Ys kept itself wrapped in enigma – how?

For no good reason, he remembered another evening a
few days back, and a great owl he had glimpsed above a glade. Why should that make him shiver? He turned from shore and sought his tent.

2

Out of what had been Garomagus, a road ran almost due west along the coast, twenty miles or a bit less to the Gobaean Promontory. It was merely gravelled, like most secondary Roman routes, but well maintained. The troops started early and marched with redoubled briskness. This night they would be in the fabulous city.

They had covered half the distance when they came to a pair of stones flanking the track. Ten feet tall, those granite pillars were not prehistoric; weather had softened their squared edges, but the characters chiselled into them were still legible. Gratillonius dismounted to read. On the southern column, a gracefully curving alphabet was unknown to him. On the northern he found Latin, surely the same message. His finger traced what his lips murmured:
‘In the names of Venus, Jupiter, Neptunus, here I mark the frontier of land that has been of Ys since time immemorial, along this Redonian Way. Hold me and my sister sacred, for we bear the Oath, for ever binding. Raised DCLXXXVIII AVC obedient to orders of the SPQR, year XIII since the Sign came upon Brennilis, who with C. Julius Caesar did make the Oath
.’

‘Old,’ Gratillonius whispered. Tour and a third centuries. But the wording – I’ve seen things like this elsewhere, from nearly that far back – the wording here is – ’ a chill went up his spine –’unusual.’

Eppillus looked around. ‘Boundary marker, eh?’ he grunted. ‘Where are the sentries?’

Grass waved in a salty breeze, down to a cliff’s edge on the north, with water agleam beyond it under a clear sky, and southward up to the spine of the peninsula. Afar in that direction, the men could just spy a flock of sheep near some wind-gnarled trees, but no other sign of habitation. Out where sunlight winked on whitecaps, sails showed boldly coloured across the arc of vision. They were too remote for Gratillonius to be certain, but he supposed they belonged to fishing boats. Ys took little from its modicum of thin-soiled hinterland; its communion was with the sea.

‘I don’t imagine the city feels any need of pickets,’ he answered slowly. ‘Relations with the Osismii, and with Rome, have been peaceful. Trade must go unhindered, and across a long stretch, too. “Redonian Way.” That seems to mean the Ysans think of this as their road to the Redones in eastern Armorica – nowadays to Condate Redonum – though those tribesmen seldom get to these parts.’

‘But what about pirates?’ the deputy argued. ‘Pirates could land and walk on in.’

‘They don’t. Something keeps them away. I don’t know what.’