Gallicenae (10 page)

So, he thought. I am once for all the King of Ys. Anywhere I may be, as long as we both shall live.

Despite himself, he smiled a bit. Then maybe they’re not mistaken about other things in Ys, he thought. Maybe the soul of Dahilis is still somewhere thereabouts, waiting for me.

He could almost believe that something of hers had watched over him. He was in search of the highest consecration to Mithras. His hypocrisy before Maximus still tasted nasty in his mouth, necessary though it had seemed. At least now he was, like it or not, free of any further impurity.

1

Even without the need to make fortifications each afternoon and demolish them the next morning, the march to Lugdunum took half a month. It might have gone faster, but Gratillonius wanted to assure himself of complete recovery. He had seen what could happen when men overtaxed their healing bodies. Also, he had been unable to obtain sufficient rations for his squadron in Treverorum, but must needs get
them piecemeal at way stations. Several were out of commission, which meant delay while soldiers searched and dickered. Maximus’s war had caused some of the damage. More was due to incursions of Franks and Alemanni. The Romans had succeeded in driving those barbarians out ten years ago, then lacked funds and labor for complete restoration.

The countryside was beautiful, but autumn travelled south with the troop, bearing downpours and shivery winds. Journey’s end and roofs overhead felt good indeed. Gratillonius gave his soldiers and himself a few days to rest, see the great city, and take what pleasures were available. He knew they would be close-mouthed, and in any event he had not confided his real purpose to them, except for Adminius. The deputy’s Christianity was nominal, and his boyhood in the Londinium slums had taught him how to learn much while revealing nothing.

Gratillonius felt it best to keep his own inquiries abut Mithras worship incidental to those about possible clergy for Ys. The latter questions were the merest token. He knew full well that such an appointment could only be made in the North. However, if secret agents demanded a report on him, this should satisfy them.

Whatever guilt he felt had left him as he sat hour by hour in the saddle or lay alone in his tent at night. It was Maximus who was the betrayer. He had not strengthened the Empire, he had split it asunder as Roman slew Roman. He had not given it peace and prosperity, he had raised persecution and fear. He had broken pledge after pledge, to Gratianus, to Martinus, to poor old Priscillianus, to the Senate and the People of Rome; how long would he keep his to Valentinianus? He proposed to violate the ancient compact with Ys. Gratillonius disliked practicing deception, but such knowledge about his commandant had eaten away his resistance to it.

Seeking a better mood, he wandered around Lugdunum and found marvels, stately public buildings, baths, theater, and, outside its walls, sculptured tombs, magnificent aqueducts, an artificial lake for mimic sea battles. While many warehouses stood hollow, commerce still flowed along rivers and roads. Though poverty lurked in tenements and alleys, joviality flourished in taverns, foodstalls, bawdyhouses, odeions, the homes of the well-to-do. Few folk seemed to worry about much besides their private lives, unless they be devout Christians intent on the after-world.

No Mithraeum survived here, but presently Adminius heard that one was left in Vienna, some twenty miles south. Gratillonius’s spirits lifted. He ordered departure the following day. None of the twenty-four asked why, or what else he had in mind.

A considerably lesser city on the left bank of the Rhodanus, Vienna nevertheless possessed its splendors, including a large circus and a temple that Claudius Caesar had erected four hundred years ago. More to the point, military accommodations and civilian amenities were adequate. The troop might be staying for some time.

Adminius had ferreted out the name and location of Lucas Orgetuorig Syrus, a wine merchant. Walking thither the day after his arrival, Gratillonius found a house with a moderately prosperous shop. Syrus proved to be an old man whose features, despite generations of intermingling, bore traces of his family’s Asiatic origin. When Gratillonius gave him the initiate’s grip, his dim eyes widened, then filled with tears, and he came near collapse. Rallying, he took the newcomer to a private room, where Gratillonius made the signs of reverence before speaking those secret words that identified his rank in the Mysteries as Persian.

“Be welcome, oh, very welcome, my son,” Syrus quavered. “It’s been so long since any of the faithful appeared who were young and strong. Are there more like you?”

Gratillonius nodded. “Three, Father, men of my company. Two have the rank of Occult. The third joined us a couple of years ago. He’s only a Raven, of course.”

“He has not been advanced? Why not? Advancement should be swift, when we are so few, so few—” The voice trailed off.

“How can it be, Father, with none superior to me where we’ve been? That’s why I’ve sought you, that, and the hope of your blessing.”

“The blessing you have, my son, but… but let us be seated. I’ll call for refreshment and we’ll talk. Or am I being selfish? Should I first send for Cotta? He’s our Runner of the Sun, he deserves to hear. Oh, I must share these glad tidings with him.”

“Later, Father, I beg.” Gratillonius assisted the frail form to a bench. “Did you wish drink? Permit me to call a servant.”

Conversation went haltingly. Syrus had not lost his wits, but they were apt to wander, and twice he dozed off for a few minutes as he sat. Gratillonius learned this congregation existed on sufferance, provided it stay discreet and refrain from any hint of proselytization. It might have been banned altogether, as the Imperial decree required; but Syrus’s family had money and his son carried weight in civic affairs. Although himself a Christian, the younger man did not care to see his father’s heart broken. Death would close down the Mysteries soon enough.

Gratillonius explained his desire as best he could. “I know it’s a great deal to ask, such a promotion, especially when I can’t stay here long. It may be impossible. If so, I ask forgiveness for presuming. But if it can be done—if I can be raised to your rank, Father—why, Ys will have a temple of the God, and full celebration of His rites, proper instruction for the young, elevation of worshippers. The faith will live!”

“A wonderful vision, my son,” Syrus whispered. “Foredoomed, I fear, but wonderful. Mithras, sentry at the frontier of the dark—” His head drooped, snapped back up; he gulped air. “I must think, study, pray. It
is
irregular. But, but I wish—how I wish—Can you come to services tomorrow sundown? Bring your fellow believers. It will be a common rite, they too may take part, and welcome, welcome—”

Gratillonius gave him an arm and upbore half his weight when he shuffled off to bed.

—Mithraeums had never been large. The one in Vienna consisted of a single room in Syrus’s house. Its windows had been boarded up and plastered over to simulate a cave. Benches along the walls left just a strip of aisle between. A cord at the entrance end marked off the vestibule. Neither font nor image of lion-headed Time stood there, only a basin for holy water. At the sacrificial end, the Bullslaying and the Torchbearers were merely painted above a table that did duty for an altar. Nothing was squalid; wax candles gave light, incense sweetened the air. But of the handful of regular attenders, every head was gray or white.

Yet after the feverish chatter beforehand had stopped and men entered this sanctuary, solemnity brooded over it. The lesser members took stance behind the cord and made reverence as the higher—two Lions, two Persians (Gratillonius the second), the Runner of the Sun, and the Father, all in minimal vestments—passed by. The offering was simply wine raised before the Tauroctony. The re-enactment by the two seniors—of Mithras overcoming the Sun, then crowning Him to be forever after the Unconquered—was bare-bones simple. The liturgy was brief. Subsequently those forward reclined on the benches while Ravens, Occults, and Soldiers brought the sacred meal and served them. That food, at least, was of the best, within the limits of prescribed austerity. Gratillonius savored it, as being like a sign unto him of the soul’s ascent Heavenward… when he had tasted nothing holy but prayers for nigh on three years.

Thoughts tumbled through him. Why was he doing this, why was he feeling this? He knew he was not a deeply religious person—no spiritual kin to, say, Martinus of Turonum. Well, but what else had he to cleave to? The Gods of Achilles, Aeneas, Vercingetorix were dead: phantoms at most, haunting glens and graveyards and the dusty pages of books. The Gods of Ys were inhuman. Christ was a pallid stranger. Rome the Mother was a widow, her husband the Republic and their tall sons long since dead in battle, herself the booty of every bandit who came by. Mithras alone stood fast, Mithras all alone.

2

When they consecrated Gratillonius a Father, he felt weariness drop off him like a cloak of lead unclasped, and himself momentarily victorious.

There had been too much he must learn, in too brief a span. He had no gift for acquiring doctrine, words, gestures, arcana; he must hammer them into his head, toiling till dawn grizzled his window and he fell into a few hours of sleep wherein his dreams gibbered. Meanwhile he must ever strive to keep chaste and pious. That was not hard for the body, requiring little more than exercise, cleanliness, and temperance.
But his mind was a maniple of barbarian recruits, raw, rebellious, slouching off every which way the instant that the drillmaster’s glance strayed off them. He should have had years for his undertaking and done it openly, while the rest of his life went on in everyday wise. Instead, he rammed his way through the teachings, hoped for godliness, and took precautions against the authorities.

Probably no one would ever denounce him. He had entered Vienna quietly, stayed inconspicuous, responded to questions with evasive phrases about a confidential assignment. His men knew nothing and were content to enjoy themselves—aside from Maclavius, Verica, and Cynan, his fellow Mithraists, and Adminius. Those would not give him away. Syrus’s congregation had learned silence. However, somebody else might notice how often Gratillonius visited that particular house.

No matter! he told himself. By the time such gossip reached Treverorum, if it did, he’d be back in Ys. Maximus would look upon his establishment of a Mithraeum there as an act of rebellion, which it was, but could scarcely do anything about it for another two or three years, during which anything might happen. Live each day as it comes, like a soldier in the field.

They raised him to Runner of the Sun and he concelebrated the Mystery with Syrus. In his exhaustion, he felt only that he had passed a mark on an endless uphill road.

But when Syrus and Cotta together had finished the rite that made him Father, and for the first time he—with his own hands, farmer’s, soldier’s, woodworker’s hands—lifted the chalice before the Tauroctony, and drank the blessed wine—then abruptly, blindingly, the sacredness of it came upon him. Did the Sun lift out of the night in his spirit, to blaze in terrible majesty from his heart? He knew not. As he spoke the words, he wept.

Everyone embraced him. “The grace of Mithras be with you always, beloved brother,” Syrus wished.

That was impossible, of course. After he left the sanctum, he was merely Gratillonius. What had happened within, he could barely remember.

Maybe You will reveal Yourself to me again, God of my fathers, he thought. Or maybe not. I am unworthy of this much. But I will serve You as steadfastly as lies in the power of mortal flesh and grimy soul.

—The Birthday was not far off. Syrus asked Gratillonius to join him in honoring it. The old man cried a little when he heard that that would be unwise. The legionaries had lingered suspiciously long as it was and must be off straightaway. Gratillonius gave him the kiss of peace, and received it.

In the morning the squadron started west toward Burdigala. Gratillonius had another promise to redeem.

3

Decimus Magnus Ausonius smiled. “You show me the lady Bodilis as still more fascinating in person than in correspondence,” he said. “You see, she’s had so many questions for me that I failed to question my own assumptions. Thus I came to regard her as a brilliant human being, but one condemned to existence in a stagnant backwater. My mistake. What you have had to tell makes me wonder if Ys may not hold the world’s highest civilization. Were I capable of the journey, I would accompany you there, Gratillonius, and explore it. ‘Oh, that Jupiter might restore to me the years that are fled!’” His quotation and the sigh that followed were rueful, though quite without self-pity.

“But I talk too much,” he went on. “Better to listen. In a sense, Ys is more distant than the farthest land we know of. That mysterious force which has worked for centuries to erase its name from our chronicles—You can remain a while, can’t you? Please.”

“I should be returning soon, sir,” Gratillonius answered.

“You are restless. You hunger for achievement. Well, let us work some energy off you before we dine.” Ausonius guided his guest to the door.

Gratillonius went along gladly. Inclement weather had kept people indoors these past two days, during which he—after getting his men barracked in the city—had stayed with the poet. Not that he hadn’t enjoyed himself. Ausonius was delightful company. Still erect and lively in his mid-seventies, he had been more than a famous teacher of rhetoric; he had been tutor to ill-fated Emperor-to-be Gratianus in Treverorum, afterward prefect of Gallia, Libya, and Italy, eventually consul. In retirement since Maximus took the throne, he remained active among colleagues, students, civic leaders, a large household and its neighborhood, while from his pen streamed verses and epistles to friends throughout the Empire.

Nevertheless it was a special pleasure to step forth on the portico of the rural mansion, flush lungs with fresh air, and look widely around. Rain and sleet had yielded to sunshine which, although slanted from the south, gave January a pledge of springtime. Grounds swept darkling with moisture down to the bank of the Garumna; mist smoked off the river, roiled by a breeze, half obscuring the vineyards beyond. On a paved path that the men took, doves moved aside from the sapphire arrogance of a peacock.