The Eagle and the Raven (68 page)

“The ship has gone down.”

“Not until there is no one left to sing its funeral songs.”

“What are you prattling about?” Agrippina broke in suspiciously. “Gladys, is he going to sing or not?”

Caelte inclined his head to her. “I will sing.” He unslung his harp, Gladys began the song. Caelte’s voice had changed as he aged. It was deeper and had more volume. It no longer rose high and melodious to mingle with bird song and wind but forced itself against rock and pillars and the deaf, hard ears of the city. Until tonight the city had remained impervious to its music, but this song carried with it its own magic. Gladys stood and swayed, humming it softly with him. The empress crossed her legs and sat back, watching. Claudius craned to catch each tone, for though he could not understand the words, the subtle weaving of the tune fascinated him. Nero was plainly impressed. He watched Caelte’s long fingers pluck the harp and he held his head to one side. The last note was high, plaintive, an unresolved question, a gentle plea, and Caelte closed his mouth, stiffening against the snickers he believed would come, but the Greeks looked at him blankly as Gladys went to him and kissed him.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I will not ask such a hard thing of you again.” Agrippina applauded briefly, uncomfortably, moved for one fleeting moment. The emperor stopped blowing his nose.

“That was good,” he commented without hesitation. “Come and sing it to me tomorrow.” Caelte opened his mouth to refuse, but Gladys imperceptibly shook her head. By tomorrow the emperor would have forgotten the song. Nero sat up.

“I think I could sing it better,” he announced. “Teach it to me. Show me the notes on my own harp. What manner of song is it?”

“It is a love song,” Caelte replied. “A very magical and mysterious song. I do not think that it would be safe for you to sing it, young sir, even if you could learn the words. It belongs only to my people.”

“Oh. Well, I want nothing to do with spells, and for a love song it sounds a bit gloomy. I prefer something more robust when I sing of love. You can go away now.”

Gladys did not resume her seat but went to Claudius and put her arms about his neck.

“Emperor,” she said in his ear. “I think my mother and father want to go home now, and I should go also. Have I leave?”

“I like dutiful women,” he said, beginning to stutter again. “Of course you have leave. I may send for you tomorrow.” She kissed his wrinkled cheek, bowed to Agrippina, and walked to where Caradoc and Eurgain were already walking back under the dark height of the dome, Caelte and the slaves behind them. Moving in the air, she realized she was drenched in sweat.

They emerged onto the terrace that swept down, losing itself in the dusk. They stood for a moment looking over the city while a slave went to summon their litter-bearers. No one spoke. Gladys began to shiver although the night was warm, and Eurgain folded her arms and kept her eyes on the ground. People came and went around them, occasionally calling a greeting, but not even Caelte could summon a word. The litters arrived, but before they could be seated a messenger came hurrying from the torchlit caverns behind them.

“The empress wishes to see you in her own rooms,” he told Caradoc. “Follow me, please.”

“Father, be careful,” Gladys began, but he kissed her and settled her on her litter.

“Go straight home,” he said evenly to Eurgain. “I will not be long.”

“It is about Gladys this time,” she replied quietly. “There is nothing that terrible woman does not know. Are you armed?”

“I have my knife. Don’t worry. If she wanted to harm me she would not have sent a message.”

Eurgain spoke curtly to the slaves and Caradoc watched them sway out of sight, Caelte striding beside Eurgain’s litter. He turned and paced after the messenger, who led him back inside, through a garden and the huge, still pool in the pillared atrium, up wide marble stairs lined with stiff troops and the garish flicker of torches, and they plunged into a maze of gleaming passages. Caradoc knew vaguely where he was. They climbed more stairs, silent now, far from the uproar in the dining hall, then abruptly came upon a broad, moon-splashed balcony with a high door to its right. The messenger knocked, bowed, and vanished.

She opened to him herself, beckoning him impatiently within and closing the door quickly behind her. He went and stood in the middle of the bright room, no longer awed, as he had once been, by the tall, painted ceiling, the red-andwhite mosaic floor, the rich hangings, so heavy that it took two men to carry one of them. Windows framed a black night sky full of stars and funneled to him a breath of wind, clean-smelling up here above the smoke and odors of the city. His eye rapidly scanned the corners, seeking the places where a man might stand hidden, and she laughed gently.

“Now what would be the advantage in that?” she asked him. “None in particular for me. I would be rather sorry if it became necessary to murder you, Caradoc. I like to look at you. You are the only honest man in Rome and it shows in your walk and your face. You still flounder around in the palace and city like a gasping fish on dry land, saying and doing things that would have meant the silencing of a more cunning man long ago, but I suppose that honesty and forthrightness provide their own protection.” She began to take the jewels from her arms, then from her hair. “You may relax, barbarian. I no longer plot against your life. You made me very angry once, you know that, don’t you?”

He loosened and smiled at her. “Yes, Lady, I know.”

“I am surrounded by old men, eunuchs, and perverts,” she went on matter-of-factly. “When you refused to submit to me I was grieved and astonished, for no man refuses me if he values his life, but I must admit now that if you had done so you would have disappointed me. Your beautiful image would have been tarnished. Perhaps you would have disappointed me in other ways also, for surely an honorable barbarian must lack the requisite imagination.” She smiled wryly, her fingers busy with the pins in her hair, and he grinned suddenly, wondering whether she had guessed his true reasons for declining her invitation to share her bed.

He had constantly been afraid during his first few months in Rome, afraid of the city, of the emperor, of the undercurrent of directionless power that blanketed those he met, giving them a strange, warped view of themselves and of the world. It had bewildered him. She had hinted that for his own good and the health of his family he ought to comply with her whim, but he simply could not. He had been incapable of doing so. She was too foreign, too unknown. Then, as he had begun to recover from the emotional strains of his capture and journey, he resisted her for other reasons, knowing instinctively that to submit would mean his eventual death. She would quickly have wearied of him and discarded him, and he knew that many of her lovers lay mouldering in their mausoleums.

He watched as she released the tight ringlets bunched on her head, letting them bounce against her neck, ghoulishly framing the tiny, pursed mouth, the flesh of her cheeks, once firm and round but now sagging inward toward her broad, curiously undelineated nose. Her eyes are old too, he thought, old and tired and full of the knowledge of man’s degradation. Yet she is one year younger than I.

“It is perfectly true that hardship and poverty can deprive a man of his, ah, imagination,” he agreed with humor. “You would not have liked me at all, Lady.”

“You are probably right.” She flung a cushion into a chair and sat leaning back, her fingers still busily pulling at the coils of hair. “But I did not summon you to discuss the past. You blunder about, Caradoc, doing no harm, in fact you are well liked by certain senators and other influential people, I suppose because you can be trusted. But this time your family is blundering into a situation that you do not understand. I will speak frankly with you, because if I do not, you will fail to appreciate the point.”

In a flash he understood very well what she was going to say and could see all the ramifications making secret and invisible paths in the palace and in his own home. He went to the floor out of long habit, squatting before her, his fingers laced lightly together, balancing on the balls of his feet. She continued. “I have tolerated your daughter in the palace because she has provided diversion for the emperor and has asked nothing for herself. In short, she is as unambitious as the rest of you. But I want her here no more. Claudius is talking of adopting her, changing her name to Claudia, bringing her to live in the palace. My son moons after her like a lovesick cow. If she would settle for a nice, quiet affair with him, then all would be well and he would soon get over this odd passion of his, but knowing you all, she would not agree. Nero lets nothing go until he is ready or until he has glutted himself and,” she said, smiling cynically, “you can see how our family concord would be destroyed. Britannicus would use her to recover the good graces of his father and further his own ambition. He is only twelve but that means nothing here, Caradoc. My son might even make an effort to divorce Octavia, or worse. With two daughters Claudius would be torn, and you yourself would suddenly acquire a new and dangerous position.”

Dangerous indeed, Caradoc thought. Dangerous to you. With Gladys in the palace there would be a sudden focusing of everyone’s slow machinations, and you cannot take the chance of losing control.

“She is a very sweet young girl,” Agrippina went on.

“But I know what sudden favor and power can do to sweet youth. If Gladys lost her head she could cause untold trouble. If Claudius approaches you with adoption plans you must refuse. And you must not let Gladys come to him so often. I am becoming tired of spying on her.”

Caradoc rose. “I understand perfectly,” he said. “But I wonder if you do, Lady. You are afraid of me and my family, aren’t you? You think that a whiff of power would be sufficient for us to scrabble after more. But all we really want is to live in peace and anonymity with our hurts and our memories. Has it never occurred to you that Gladys really loves the emperor? We will bargain.”

She shook her head. “Oh no, barbarian. I make bargains with no one.”

“This time you must, Empress. I will refuse the adoption and ease Gladys away from Claudius, but only if you for your part keep your son as far from her as possible. She wants nothing to do with him.”

She thought for a moment and then rose also. “Agreed. I shall find another playmate for Nero. But you had better keep your part, Caradoc. Do not forget the Greeks.”

He looked at her, eyes narrowing against the threat, and she drove it viciously home. “Claudius is very fond of his freemen. They wield more influence over him than anyone else. They despise Gladys and are jealous of her. A few words of this matter would be enough to ensure that you lose a daughter rather suddenly.”

“May I go?” he enquired stiffly, shoving away his anger.

With a snap of the wrist she dismissed him. “You may. Take your family to Aulus Plautius’s summer residence this year. The country air might do you all good.”

He closed the door softly and traversed the cool, dark passage, the slave who had led him there running after him. He knew that he ought to be grateful to Agrippina for the chance of extricating himself and Gladys, but all he could think of was his own knife in her back. He followed the slave blindly. How hard it was in this, the most civilized city in the world, just to stay alive. He came out onto the terrace and immediately turned to the steps that zigzagged down through the imperial gardens and would carry him part of the way to his own home across the Clivus Victoriae on the brow of the Palatine hill. Darkness obscured the view over the Forum and the river with its graceful bridges, but he did not care. He hated it all.

Llyn and his sister Eurgain left the house with Chloe, Eurgain’s Greek slave, and slipped softly along the street, mingling easily with the evening crowds. The sun had set but darkness had not yet fallen, and as they reached the foot of the Palatine and began to cross the concrete and marble maze of the Forum, angling south and west toward the river, they had to battle the loiterers who gathered to gossip before going home to supper. They walked in single file, not talking, Eurgain in the lead, Chloe trailing behind, but when the Forum was behind them and the streets became narrower, the shops and apartment houses closer together, Llyn led and Eurgain fell back, watchful of every passer-by. The light failed but they did not pause to fire their torches, and they moved steadily and unerringly on through the shadows. The men and women who still passed them were shoptenders and tradesmen, intent only on finding their own tables and the comfort of their families, and the young trio was not challenged or accosted. The night was too young. At last Llyn halted. They were on a corner. To the left the street snaked back into the choked quarter where the poorer citizens lived and worked, but to the right it narrowed and dived suddenly into darkness and the murmur of river and tavern.

Eurgain pushed back her hood as she came up to Llyn. “Well,” she said. “I will see you tomorrow, Llyn, unless they dredge your body out of the Tiber. Don’t lose too much money.”

“Why should I care?” he answered lightly. “It isn’t my money and anyway there’s plenty more where it comes from. You keep my secret, Eurgain, and I’ll keep yours.”

“Will you come with me?”

“No, thank you. There may be something left to live for, who knows, and I am not ready yet to be tied to a cross or ripped to pieces by goaded lions. Tell me, is it true that those people roll babies in flour and then kill them and eat them?”

She smiled briefly. “No, Llyn, it is not true. They would never kill anyone.”

“In any case, they ought to know better than to plot against the emperor. You are a fool to associate yourself with them.”

“They don’t do that either. Their God has told them that they must obey those in authority over them.”

“How very dull. They won’t hold your interest for long, Eurgain.”

“I can’t say, Llyn.” She kissed him. “I think that they have discovered the unchangeable truth the Druithin have sought for ages beyond ages, and, if they have, then nothing else in the world is so important to me.”