Gallicenae (19 page)

Martinus laughed louder. “Why should you not also be God’s messenger boy?”

2

Early summer brought a spell of calm, light, warmth. It had prevailed for days when Quinipilis’s turn to have Dahut came, and she took the girl out on the water.

“I promised her this, the first chance we’d get,” she snapped when her manservant expressed qualms. “Would you have a high priestess break her word? A promise to a little kid is the most sacred kind there is. And nay, we’ll not want the royal yacht or any such cluttered-up thing. What you can do is carry my word to Scot’s Landing. So get off your arse!”

As he left, the man grinned to himself. The old lady had a rasp for a tongue and a lump of butter for a heart.

Maeloch was quick to arrive from the fisher hamlet under Cape Rach. His
Osprey
was under repair after storm damage. Meanwhile
he welcomed extra earnings, and this would be a pleasant job. When he entered the Queen’s house he found woman and child on the floor playing with little animals that King Grallon had carved in wood. “Here he is, sweetling,” Quinipilis said to her charge. “We can go now.”

“Oh, go, go, go!” sang Dahut, and soared to her feet. She was taller than most three-year-olds, wand-slim, wind-swift. Beneath flaxen billows of hair, her eyes were huge, deep blue, in an exquisitely sculptured face. “We go sail!”

“The airs willing, Princess,” Maeloch said. “Else must I row.” His coarsely clad, burly form, black mane and beard, rumbling voice, caused her no alarm. It did not seem that anything had ever frightened Dahut.

“Well, help me up, oaf,” Quinipilis ordered with a nearly toothless smile. As he did, she caught a sharp breath.

“Does something hurt, my lady?” he asked.

“Of course something does. What d’you think ’twould do, in this wreck of a body? Like always having feet in a boiling kettle, if you must know. Let’s begone.”

“Uh, better if my lady stays home. I’ll take good care of the princess, believe me. How I do remember her mother.”

“Nonsense! Should I deny me a pleasure because of some verminous twinges? Fetch me my staff. ’Tis in yon corner; are you blind or only drunk? Give me your arm.” Quinipilis leered. “I want all Ys to see I can yet snare a lusty young man for escort.”

Dahut skipped with them down the winding street. Folk they met, mostly servants in livery, gave deferential salutation. Many recognized Maeloch as well as the Queen. He was not only a fisher captain, frequenter of taverns and sometimes joyhouses like most sailors; he was a Ferrier of the Dead.

“Why d’ye go in this wise?” he wondered.

“On Dahut’s account,” Quinipilis explained. “She’s ever been wild about the sea. Can’t get close to it, or out on it, enough.”

A grimness crossed Maeloch’s weathered countenance. He knew where and how the child had been born. Should that not have left a dread of the realm of Lir within her? Instead, it was as if He had touched her then, and was forever after calling her.

“Her dad takes her when he can,” Quinipilis went on, “but he has scant free time, poor fellow. And then ’tis in his yacht. The notion came to me ’twould pleasure her to fare in a small boat.”

Maeloch could not keep his forebodings while the bright small presence who already looked so much like Dahilis skipped beside him. “We could land on a skerry I know and spend a while,” he suggested. “Might get hungry, though.”

“I’m not quite in my dotage! We’ll have provisions aboard.”

Thereafter Quinipilis must save her breath for walking. “Wan’ a’ hear a song?” Dahut asked the man. Her hand lay tiny in his. She
pointed at the woman, who smiled as if receiving an honor.
“
Ol
’
Mama taught me.” She lifted a voice clear and true:

“Starfish, starfish, what have you seen

Deep in the water, deep in the green?

I saw the darkness, far from the day,

Where the seals go to hunt and play.”

From the Forum, broad and busy Lir Way brought them through Lowtown to Skippers’ Market and the triumphal arch. Beyond was the harbor. At early ebb, tide had drawn the sea gate open; but on this mild day, the basin curved almost waveless beneath the city wall. Shallops cruised back and forth, a merchant ship was standing out, more vessels lay docked, bustle went over the stone arc of the quay. Trade was reviving under the reign of Grallon.

A well-stocked boat waited at a slip as Quinipilis had ordered. They went aboard. Maeloch cast off, put oars in tholes, rowed powerfully. They passed between the awesome doors of the gate. He found sufficient breeze that he could step and stay the mast, set sail, pole it out for a broad reach, and merely steer.

It whispered, the breeze, cooling the brilliance that flooded from above and dusted diamond-sparkle across the sea. It stirred, the sea, in low waves that somehow moved as one, like a single huge being gently breathing in its sleep. Today whiteness did not shatter on the cliffs or on the strewn reefs, only swirled and murmured. Otherwise Ocean was a million shifting shades of blue, save where a kelp bed rocked, or a swimming gull or cormorant. Such birds wheeled aloft in the multitudes, seldom crying. Dahut’s gaze winged out among them, on past the dim streak that was Sena, to the line where vision met worldedge and lost itself in sky.

Her heed returned when a seal drew near. There were always many of the beasts around Ys, they being protected. Most were plunging through the water or basking on rocks. This one met the boat and swam alongside, a few feet away. Often it looked at Dahut, and she looked back, losing her earlier excitement, becoming mute and motionless though appearing very happy.

“That’s strange,” Maeloch said after a while. His voice, which could outshout storms, was hushed. “Dolphins’ll play thus with a craft, but scarce ever a seal.”

Quinipilis nodded. “I think I ken it,” she answered as low. Clear sight remained to her. “Yon particularly beautiful coat, a kind of gold under the brown, and those big eyes. Could be the same as was there when the babe went overside. You’ve heard? I glimpsed it. And a few time since on the beach—”

“A seal saved me and my crew once. Guided us home through a fog, when else we’d sure have run aground.”

Quinipilis nodded. “We’re both wont to signs of the Otherworld, nay? As close as we are to it, in our different ways.” She glanced at Dahut. “Sea child.”

The girl returned to playfulness when Maeloch dropped sail and rowed to that skerry he had mentioned. It was large of its kind, an islet, bare rock but strewn with weed, shells, bleached and contorted sticks of driftwood. Tidepools gleamed on its lower ledges. She clapped her hands and caroled. Maeloch lay to, hung out rope bumpers, jumped ashore with the painter and made fast to an upright thumb of stone. “Come ye, sweetling,” he called. “Nay, first put sandals back on. ’Twouldn’t do having the barnacles cut those wee feet.”

He assisted Quinipilis, then brought a chair and parasol carried along for her, then set out luncheon, while Dahut scampered round and round, shouting at each new marvel she discovered. After they had all refreshed themselves he led her by the hand, explaining things as best he could. Quinipilis watched, smiled, sometimes talked in an undertone to nobody he saw. At last he said, “Well, Princess, best we be starting home.”

Dahut’s face clouded. “Nay,” she answered.

“We must. The tide’s turning. That’ll help your poor old Uncle Maeloch, for the wind’s down and he’ll have to row a lot. But if we wait too long, the tide’ll close the gate, and we’ll have to make for Scot’s Landing, and your poor old Aunt Quinipilis can’t get up the cliffs there.”

The child stuck out her lower lip, clenched fists, stamped foot. “Nay. I
b’long
here.”

“Not the way the sun’s putting a flush in that white skin of yours, ye don’t. No mutiny, now. Ye can play till I’ve stowed our gear.”

Dahut whirled and sped from him.

When Maeloch returned to Quinipilis he found she had dozed off in her chair, as the aged do. He left her alone while he loaded the boat. Always he kept half an eye in Dahut’s direction. She had gone down to the water and become quiet. The rock sloped in such wise that he could see merely the fair top of her head.

Having finished his task, he gave Quinipilis a slight shake. She drew a rattling breath and blinked confusedly. “Dahilis—” she mumbled. Her senses steadied. “Oh, my, such eldritch dreams I was having.” Painfully, she hobbled to the boat and got in with Maeloch’s assistance.

The sailor went after Dahut. “Time to go,” he said, and stopped and stared.

On the ledge beneath him, the girl was side by side with the seal. Maeloch saw that the animal was female. Her narrow, earless head (how much the head of a seal called to mind a human corpse) had brought muzzle against cheek, through a tumble of tresses. The fishy breath seemed to give no offense. Did a murmur, a hum or a tone, resound from the long throat?

“Dahut!” Maeloch bellowed. “What the thunder?”

The two started, rolled apart, exchanged a look. The seal slithered into the water and dived below. Dahut leaped up. The wet body had soaked her gown so that it clung to the curves of her, which were not yet a woman’s curves but slender as if to cleave waves. Calming, she walked toward him without protest.

Maeloch squatted to inspect her. “Ye’re not hurt?” he grated. “Damnation, whatever happened? Don’t do that sort o’ thing! A big beast like yon could tear ye in shreds. Saw ye nay its teeth?”

“She came and sang to me,” Dahut answered like a sleepwalker.

“Sang? Huh? Seals don’t sing. They bark.”

“She did so.” Sheer willfulness brought the girl back to herself. “She sang ’bout the sea ’cos I wan’ed she should.” Turning she called across the luminous, moving miles: “I’ll come again! I’ll al’ays come again!”

The mood flitted from her. She gave Maeloch an impudent grin, a wink, and her hand to hold. What could he do but lead the daughter of Dahilis to the boat and take her home to her father?

He knew he would never understand what he had seen; but he, who dealt with the dead as his forebears had done before him, need not be daunted by a mystery as tender as this. “She sang, did she?” he asked.

“She did, she did.” Dahut nodded violently. “She tol’ me ’bout my sea”

“What did she tell you?”

“I ’member. You wan’ a’ hear?” The treble that lifted toward the gulls was childish, but the words no longer were, and the melody ebbed and flowed. It was not a song that had ever been heard in Ys.

“Deep, deep, where the waters sleep

And the great fish come and go,

What do they dream in the twilight gleam?

The seals will always know.

“Far, far, from the evening star

Comes the storm when the wind runs free

And the cloud that lours with the rain that pours.

The seals will always see.

“High, high is the evening sky,

Deep is the Ocean swell.

Where foam is white in the changing light,

The seals will always dwell.”

3

For the past three years, except when it was impossible, Gratillonius had given a day every month to open court. Anybody was free to enter the basilica during those hours, to watch the proceedings or to lay before him a trouble—dispute, complaint, need—that lower authorities
had failed to resolve. Turn by turn, he heard them out, and rendered judgment with military briskness. He had neither time nor patience for subtleties, though he strove to be fair. In doubtful cases he generally found for the humble. They had less to fall back on than the well-off.

The setting was impressive. Tiered benches looked down toward a dais on which the King sat enthroned, the Wheel embroidered in gold on his crimson robe, the Key hanging out in view upon his breast, the Hammer across his knees. At a table to his left sat a recorder whose pen ran as fast as words were uttered, on his right a jurist with scrolls containing the laws of Ys before him. Behind the seats four legionaries in full battle gear stood at attention; and behind them loomed the eidolons of the Three, Taranis the Father, Belisama the Mother, kraken that represented inhuman Lir.

On that day, a rainstorm made dim the light from the glazed windows and laved the chamber with its susurrus. Candles in walls sconces and lamps on the desks cast their small glows, uneasy in the drafts. More people than usual had come to observe, for a notorious case was to be heard. The smell of wet wool garments gave sharpness to the air.

Gratillonius heard pleaders in order of arrival. Nagon Demari registered outrage, but Donnerch the wagoner guffawed, when they must wait for several of the lower classes. An elderly woman stated that she did not want the charity of the Gallicenae, for her son’s widow could perfectly well pay her support as the son himself had done; having obtained the figures, Gratillonius so ordered. A man found guilty of theft brought friends, whom the magistrate had ruled unreliable, to declare he had been with them on the night of the crime; Gratillonius released him on grounds of reasonable doubt, but warned that this would be taken into account if there was another accusation. A sailor declared that his captain did wrong to make him suffer six lashes for a minor infraction, and ought to pay compensation for the injustice; after several of the crew had testified, Gratillonius said, “You were lucky. I’d have given you nine.”

Thereupon it was time for Nagon Demari, Labor Councillor among the Suffetes, and Donnerch, son of Arel, carter. Nagon spoke at length about his beneficence in organizing the longshoremen of Ys into a guild, now that trade was improving, thanks to wise King Grallon. He made a mouth as he said that: a stocky, cold-eyed man who despite aristocratic blood had been born poor and scrabbled his way up in the world till he sat in the Council. “Spare me this and get to the point,” Gratillonius snapped.

Nagon looked indignant but explained that handling cargo obviously involved carrying it inland, wherefore carters should belong to the guild, pay its dues, require its fixed charges for their work, and perform such services for the guild as it leadership needed. Donnerch had not only refused these requests, made for his own good, and done so in unseemly
language, he had brutally assailed two of the brotherhood who sought to persuade him.