Gallicenae (15 page)

Hannon nodded. Tension gathered in his lank frame. At that meeting he had led the opposition to the King’s proposal to make yet another circuit about western Armorica and down to Portus Namnetum, weaving tighter his web of alliances. Gratillonius had been far too much away, neglecting his sacral duties to the point of contumely before the Gods. In the end, a compromise had been reached. Gratillonius would go, but not until after the equinox, and he pledged himself to have returned by winter solstice.

Before Hannon could speak, Soren did: “I beg my lady’s pardon. No intrusion—no discourtesy intended. The more so when we are here to seek your counsel and help.”

Lanarvilis leaned back in her chair and let her hands lie quietly crossed on her lap. “Say on.”

“Tis this, this temple of his foreign God Mithras he means to build.” Soren choked and coughed.

“Why, I thought that was agreed on. Reluctantly by a number of Suffetes, aye. But when we, the Gallicenae, having searched our hearts, our books, and our dreams, could find naught forbidding it, as long as he stays dutiful toward the Gods of Ys—”

“How long will that be? At the combat in the Wood—” Soren curbed himself. “No matter that. ’Tis Lir Captain who bears the word today. I simply came along to give my support, my own plea for yours. You and I have worked together often over the years, Lanarvilis.” He hunched where he sat.

The older man’s voice rolled forth as if once again he trod the deck of a ship. His look commanded, too.

“Forgive me if I’m curt, my lady. You know ’tis my way.

“Ill did Grallon’s wish strike me. Bad enough having a Christian priest mewling amongst us again. The King can’t help that, I give you, and no true man or woman ’ull pay any heed. But this Mithras, now—well, in my seafaring days I learned somewhat about Mithras. Mind you, he’s no bad God like yon Christ. He stands for uprightness, manliness, and He’ll let other Gods abide. But He
is
the Bullslayer, the Comrade of the Sun. He sets Himself above the rest and lays a law of His own on His worshippers. Remember how Grallon must needs refuse the crown after he won Kingship. Not a great thing in itself, maybe, but a sign of… what else?

“In storm, in fog, in dead calm and sea-blink through endless silences: I have known the Dread of Lir, my lady. Ys lives on His sufferance. No disrespect to Belisama or Taranis, nay, nay. We live by Them too. But the Pact of Brennilis made Ys forever hostage to Lir, did it nay?”

Quietness deepened until the rainfall sounded torrential. Lanarvilis nodded and signed herself. Soren knotted his fists.

“And Lir wears no human face,” Hannon said.

After a heartbeat, he went on: “Well, Grallon aims to take a warehouse down by the harbor, unused since trade went to hell ere we were born, he’ll take that and make it into a temple of Mithras. You remember this was after the Council wouldn’t let him buy land and dig a cave out in the hinterland.”

They could barely hear Lanarvilis: “The earth is Belisama’s. And Mithras will have no women devotees.”

“Taranis makes fruitful the earth,” rumbled from Soren.

“Therefore Grallon needs a house in town,” Hannon said. “Now that arrangement seemed to me just as wrong. What gave it Lir for His honor, Lir Who’s so quick to wrath?” He paused, filled his lungs, stared past the Queen. “Well,” he said, “people don’t pray to Lir, you know. We sacrifice, we obey, but He’ll have none of our cries, none of our tears. His sea is already salt enough.

“And yet—well, sometimes He does make His will known, ’stead of whelming those who go against it. He did for Brennilis, long ago. If now we’re at the end of the Age she birthed, might He again? I went forth by myself, in a boat, beyond sight of land. I fasted, I thirsted, I held myself sleepless, till—”

He surged to his feet. “Nay, no vision, no voice, only a remembrance. But when I uttered it aloud, soon there came a breeze blowing me back home, and seals and dolphins gamboled all about under the moon.”

He placed the big, scarred sailor’s hands on his hips, stood astraddle next to the second servant of Taranis, looking down at the high priestess of Belisama, and said: “This is my simple thought. That Lir be honored, let the temple of Mithras also be hostage to Him. When the Romans built our wall, the waters didn’t come so high as they do today. In the seaward towers are rooms which’re below the waves, abandoned on that account. I’ve been to see, and one at the bottom of the Raven Tower would do fine. ’Twas never meant for more than a storage cellar; no windows. Dripping wet, but that can be fixed. ’Tis lower than anything he could dig ashore, so ’tis a cave, better than trickery with a warehouse. And—I met Mithras folk when I was young, abroad—the raven is a holy bird to them. What happier sign could Grallon ask for? Or we?”

Again silence, but for the rain. Air slithered, candle flames guttered.

“I see,” Lanarvilis finally murmured. Her head was bowed; Soren could no longer read her face.

“You understand, don’t you?” the Speaker asked eagerly. “If Gratillonius will accept this, every faction should be satisfied. We’ll have interior peace, and peace with the Gods.”

She lifted her glance to confront his. “You want my help,” she said, flat-voiced, “because you know he is no fool. He’ll know that means placing Mithras under Lir.”

“Nay, not really. A gesture of respect, and should there not be respect between Gods? Lir gives Mithras this fine site. Mithras, in turn, acknowledges that Lir, that the Three are the patrons of Ys.”

Soren leaned forward. Impetuously, he reached across the table between couch and chair. Blindly, Lanarvilis did likewise. Their hands met and clung. Hannon sat back down, folded his arms, rested like a reef outside Sena.

“You want me to… persuade the King,” Lanarvilis said.

“First, we suppose, persuade your Sisters,” replied Soren. “Make the Gallicenae work together on Gratillonius till he agrees.”

“I expect we can,” Lanarvilis said.

“You can do so much with him, you Nine,” rushed from Soren. “The power that lies in women!”

She withdrew her hands, sat straight, and told him, “Most of that power comes from patience, Soren, from endurance.”

He snatched a cup and half emptied it in a gulp, though the wine had not been watered.

2

Some thirty miles east of Ys lay the head of navigation on the River Odita. Thence the stream flowed south for about ten miles to the sea. These were birdflight distances; it was longer for a man, whether he went by land or water through the winding valleys of Armorica. There a Roman veteran had taken the lead in founding a colony, three hundred years ago. It was actually a little below the farthest north a ship could reach when tide was high; that point was just above the confluence of the Odita with the lesser Stegir. He chose the site because of its handiness to a Gallic settlement and hill fort on the heights behind. Those had long since been abandoned, leveled by man and nature until only traces remained. Houses and small farms replaced them, though for the most part Mons Ferruginus was unpeopled, a woodland through which a few trails wound.

The Roman named the colony Aquilo, from the Aquilonian district of Apuleia in Italy whence he hailed. Sufficiently inland not to fear surprise attack by pirates, it became a minor seaport. Here entered wares of metal and glass, olives, oil, textiles. Out went mainly products of the heavily forested hinterland, hides, furs, nuts, pigskin, preserved meat, tallow, honey, beeswax, timber—but also salt, beneficiated iron ore, preserved fish, garum sauce, and the marvelous things they wrought in gold, silver, ivory, shell, and fabric in Ys.

The fortunes of Aquilo waxed and waned with those of the Empire. However, its leadership stayed in the hands of the founder’s descendants. These Apuleii intermarried with their Osismiic neighbors and folk of other cantons until by blood they were almost purely Armorican. In their lives they stayed Roman, even claiming that their ancestor had been kin to the famous writer. They sent their elder sons to be educated at such centers of learning as Durocotorum, Treverorum, and Lugdunum. Eventually they won elevation to senatorial rank. As such, they were no longer supposed to engage in trade; but they had ample relatives to serve as their agents while they devoted themselves to civic and—increasingly of recent decades—military affairs.

Gratillonius had passed through three years before, on his mission of keeping the western end of the peninsula quiescent while Maximus warred. Now, when he returned, Apuleius Vero made him heartily welcome. They had struck it off at once, in spite of the host being a devoted Christian.

After all, the centurion served Rome too; he had fascinating things to tell of the city in his charge; he was making possible a revival of commerce. For his part, Apuleius was well travelled, well read, experienced in the ways of the world. After his student days in the South he had dreamed or a public career, and begun by becoming a confidential amanuensis to the governor of Aquitania. But the death of his father laid on him the duty of coming back and taking over a post in which Gratillonius considered him wasted. Likely Apuleius would have agreed,
save that Roman virtue and Christian piety both forbade him to complain against fate.

“You wish to strengthen further the ties between Ys and the Gauls?” he asked when they were alone. “Why? Not that the resumption of dealings hasn’t profited everybody. It has, and nowhere more than in my poor Aquilo. However, the Empire is again tranquil, and the barbarians have drawn in their horns since that disaster the Scoti suffered. Can trade not grow of itself?”

He was a slender man in his mid-thirties, of medium height, dark-haired, straight-nosed, clean-shaven, with large hazel eyes whose nearsightedness caused him to wear an appearance of intense concentration. Somehow he seemed to Gratillonius more Hellenic than Roman, perhaps because in his quiet fashion he took pride in a bloodline going back to Magna Graecia. As the man sat, his wife Rovinda came softly in and replenished the wine and nuts they had been enjoying. She was young, comely, the daughter of an Osismiic headman. Since their marriage two years ago, Apuleius had been teaching her the manners of a senatorial matron; but she had never lacked inborn gentility. They had a single child thus far, a girl, and another swelled within her.

Gratillonius weighed his reply. He had rehearsed it in his mind, for he would need it repeatedly, but this was the first time.

“I’m afraid that tranquility is only on the surface, and can’t last much longer,” he said. “You’ve heard of the Priscillianist business last year?”

Apuleius grimaced. “Ugly, from what little I know. Unworthy of the Faith. But it’s behind us now, praise God. Isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure.” Gratillonius frowned into a lampflame. The floor of the house was warm from a hypocaust, but the air kept a chill, and outside the shuttered windows an autumn wind wuthered. “The church stays divided, and it and the Empire are woven together. Maximus accuses Valentinianus of heresy. It may be just a pretext. But what a dangerous pretext! No, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of civil war.”

“God help us,” Apuleius said sorrowfully. “But what can we do, you and I? We’re nothing but minor officers of the state. How can you bypass the Duke of the Armorican Tract?”

Gratillonius smiled. “You think I might take too much on myself? Well, I am the prefect of Rome, not of Maximus Augustus but of Rome, in Ys, which is not a province but a sovereign ally and has made me its King. I read that as meaning I’ve got discretion to act in the public interest as I see it, and answer for my actions afterward… to the proper authority.”

“That would be the Duke, wouldn’t it? How will he feel about you making his policies for him?”

“I may be cocky, Apuleius, but I’m not crazy. I wrote and got his leave to, m-m, ‘do what seems best to develop further those good relations between Ys and the Roman communities on which a start
has lately been made.’ The Duke’s no dunderhead either. He recognizes the facts, no matter how he has to gloss them over. First, he’s necessarily most concerned with the eastern and inland parts of the peninsula. I can do in the west what he cannot, and he knows it. Second, he never was happy about Maximus’s rebellion. He hinted pretty strongly, in writing to me, that my aims please him.”

“I see…. But what are they?”

“This: that western Armorica, and as much else of it as I can reach, not get embroiled in any new fighting. That we refuse demands on us to come help kill our fellow Romans, in anybody’s cause.”

“Which means the cause of Maximus, you know.”

Gratillonius nodded. “I think, if we do stand together in this resolution, I think he’ll know better than to order us to break it. Later, if he prevails—well, at least we Armoricans will be strong enough to have some say in what happens to us. And he might not prevail.”

“Valentinianus is weak,” Apuleius mused, “but if Theodosius should take a hand—”

A tingle went through Gratillonius. “It could be. Who knows? In which case Armorica might expect quite favorable treatment. A daydream, maybe. I don’t tell myself any nursery tales about us making the difference in what happens. I just think our chances will be better, and Rome will be better served, if Armorica looks after its own, unitedly.”

“Under Ysan leadership.”

Gratillonius shrugged. “Who else is taking the initiative? Besides, Ys is the natural leader of this whole region.” He grew earnest. “Believe me, though—I give you my word of honor—I’ve no ambitions for myself.”

Inwardly, fugitively, he wondered. The world groaned in its need for a man who could set things right. Why could nobody else see what must be done? It was so simple. Government firm, just, obedient to its own laws; military reforms and the taming of the barbarians; honest currency; reduction of taxes, of every burden that was destroying the productive classes; liberation of the individual man from bondage to the estate to which he was born; religious toleration—nothing else, really, than what he had hoped Maximus would enact.

But Gratillonius had no legions to hail him Emperor. He would do well if he could save Ys for Mithras and Dahut. If he was very fortunate, he might save Armorica. Give him that and he would lie down contentedly on his deathbed, knowing he had been a good son of Rome.