Текст книги "The Divining"
Автор книги: Barbara Wood
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"I am Ulrika," she said, "and I welcome your kind assistance."
When Hashim and Kaptah, who had watched the exchange in curiosity, began to protest Sebastianus's stealing their customer, he shot them a look that silenced them. As he started to escort the young woman away, with the two traders accusing each other of causing the loss of a profitable fare, Sebastianus glanced back at his compound where Timonides the star-reader was still cradling his head and moaning.
Following his line of sight, Ulrika saw the fat, bloated man with a ring of white hair around his bald head. "What is wrong with him?" she asked.
"We do not know. He is my astrologer and he is unable to cast a horoscope."
Ulrika hesitated. She was in a hurry to start her journey northward, but the man was clearly in distress. "Perhaps I can help."
AS THE STAR-CHARTS SWAM before his blurry eyes, Timonides thought he was going to burst into tears. Never had he known such despair, such bleakness. The stars were his life, his soul, and the messages contained within them were more precious to him than his own blood. He had dedicated his entire life to the heavens and interpreting the secrets written therein, but now look at him! Unable to distinguish Cassiopeia from Leo!
Lifting his head, hoping to dislodge the pain but feeling it only worsen, he saw his master walking toward him and he seemed to be accompanying a young lady.
Timonides momentarily forgot his pain as he watched Sebastianus take the girl's travel packs and water and food bags and shoulder them himself, leaving her free to hold her veil modestly in place—a skill known to Roman women that never ceased to amaze Timonides.
Strange girl, he thought as they drew near. By the drape and color of her dress and palla, she was patrician, yet she had been carrying her own packs. No doubt she was off to visit family, maybe attend a birth, for that was what motivated most women to travel. To his surprise, she stepped away from Sebastianus and approached.
"Is it a toothache, sir?"
He stared up into sky-blue eyes framed by hair the color of a young deer. Great Zeus, where had his master found this one? "Of the teeth remaining to me, mistress," Timonides said, "none give me grief, thank the gods. What ails me, miss, is my jaw."
"I am Ulrika," she said gently, "may I take a look?" To his surprise, she took the seat opposite him and, reaching out, gently palpated his jaw and neck with soft fingertips. "Is the pain worse when you eat?"
"That it is," he said in dismay. Timonides was fat for a reason. While astrology was the focus of his spiritual and religious life, food was the center of his mortal life. Timonides lived to eat. From his morning breakfast of wheat cakes and honey, to his late-night supper of pork fried in oil with mushrooms, his day consisted of chewing and swallowing and filling his belly in a continual feast of taste and texture sensations. When not eating, he was reminiscing on his last meal and anticipating his next. Timonides would give up women before he would give up food. And now, to be unable to eat! Was life even worth living?
"I believe I can help you," the young woman said in a voice soft yet confident.
"I doubt that!" he cried in misery. "My master took me to a doctor in the city who wrapped my neck and jaw in a hot mustard poultice that resulted in a burning rash. The second doctor prescribed poppy wine that sent me into deep sleeps. The third extracted my back teeth. No more doctors!"
He was wary as she continued to gently probe, but he had to admit that her touch was gentle and light, not like the ham-fisted doctors who had pried his mouth open so wide he thought his jaw would snap off.
When her finger touched a sensitive spot below his jaw, and he cried out, she nodded solemnly and asked Sebastianus to bring something sweet or sour for Timonides to eat. Sebastianus stepped inside a tent and returned with a small, yellow fruit, handing it to Ulrika, who recognized it as a costly fruit imported from India. Instead of peeling it, she slipped the entire lemon into the old Greek's mouth and said, "Bite down."
He did so with much protesting—didn't this girl know that lemons were a medicine, not food?—and while he struggled not to spit the sour thing out, Ulrika's fingers were immediately at the spot below his jaw, massaging and pushing mercilessly.
Sebastianus watched in fascination as saliva and spittle flowed from his astrologer's mouth, while those fingertips manipulated and probed until, after an agonizing moment, the girl said, "You may spit the lemon out."
Timonides did not need further encouragement. He spat saliva and lemon pulp into the girl's hand.
"Here was the cause of your distress," she said, showing him the speck in her palm. "A tiny calculus had formed in your salivary gland, and it needed the flow of saliva to flush it out."
"Great Zeus," Timonides murmured as he rubbed his jaw.
"You will have a little tenderness for a while," Ulrika said as she gracefully rose from the chair, "but it will go away and you will have no more distress." She delicately wiped her hand on the hem of her dress.
"What form of payment do you desire?" Sebastianus asked, amazed at what he had just witnessed. How had she known to do that?
"No payment," she said. "Just introduce me to an honest trader who will take me to Colonia as quickly as possible."
Sebastianus picked up her packs and bundles and said, "I know just the man." He paused to say to Timonides, "I assume you are now able to cast an accurate reading?"
"That I am, master, just as soon as I get some sustenance into my stomach!"
Sebastianus nodded curtly and led the way through the noisy throng, with Timonides watching his master and the strange girl vanish into the crowd.
AN IRON STEWPOT BUBBLED over a fire between two tents in the Gallus compound. Next to it, an oven made of portable stones gave off the aroma of baking bread. Upon the hot stones, fresh eggs sizzled in olive oil.
A large man in a gray, stained tunic stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. He had a round, flat face with slanting eyes and a baby's smile. When he saw Timonides approach, his smile brightened.
"Great news, my boy!" Timonides boomed. "I am cured! By the gods, I can eat again. Dish me up that stew, boy, I am ravenous."
Nestor was the chief cook for the Gallus caravan, preparing food for Sebastianus and his inner circle, which included a bookkeeper, a personal valet, a secretary, two assistants to help run the caravan, and Timonides the astrologer. Nestor had never learned to read, being simple-minded, and so he had never read a recipe. But he had a natural talent for concocting meals by instinct, knowing just which spice to add and how much. "Yes, Papa," he said with a giggle. Nestor was thirty years old and Timonides's only child.
As the old Greek sat down to the savory meal, looking forward with relish to every bite, he rubbed his jaw where there was no longer any pain, and he thought of the girl with the clever fingers, how quickly and easily she had rescued him from the worst hell imaginable. A hell that he prayed he would never visit again—
He froze. With bread in hand, ready to scoop up the pork and mushroom stew, Timonides squinted through the crowd of traders and workers, merchants and travelers, and a terrible thought sprang into his mind.
Timonides the astrologer held his office very seriously. Before casting a horoscope, he always bathed, meditated, changed into clean robes, purified himself physically and spiritually. He believed most deeply that the casting of horoscopes was as sacred and solemn as any temple ritual, that astrologers were as holy and reverent as any temple priest. The gods used the stars to send messages to mortals, and the interpretation of those messages was a serious and lofty affair.
Unlike with many seers and augurs, it never entered his mind to use his talents to his own benefit. Timonides was given food and lodging, and a secure place in the Gallus household, and he was content with that, knowing he was going about holy business. The world was full of soothsayers who used their art to make a profit, and some lived very well by telling lies. But those charlatans, he was certain, were going to burn in the fires of Hell for eternity. Not Timonides the astrologer, who held a close and secret wish in his heart.
And herein lay the tragic irony of Timonides the star-reader. Destined forever to read the stars for other people, the astrologer himself would never have his own horoscope cast. Timonides did not know the date of his birth, or where he was born, or who his parents were. He had been found on one of Rome's many trash heaps where unwanted infants were left exposed to die. Sometimes they were claimed for slavery, or by a barren woman desperate for a child. Mostly they perished, as people assumed such unwanted babies were defective or cursed. But a widow in Rome's Greek quarter had found the mewling infant lying among rotting meat and horse dung and, out of compassion, brought it home.
And so the astrologer grew up not knowing his own sign, his own planets and houses, where his moon and sun were supposed to be. Therefore it was his lifelong wish and most cherished prayer that someday, somehow, the gods would reveal to their humble servant the stars of his birth. To this end Timonides had kept his astrological practice pure. He had never cast an inaccurate horoscope, had never twisted the meaning in the stars to suit a more favorable reading.
Until now.
Because, the terrible thought that had suddenly entered his mind was: What if the stone comes back?
And he felt a blow to his chest as if a mule had kicked him. Was it possible his salivary gland would produce another calculus? Was the pain going to return?
Am I going to be kept from my precious food again?
And then he thought: I must keep the girl with me.
Timonides the honest and pure astrologer was instantly filled with terror.
Great Zeus, he thought, his mind racing along a track laid with blasphemy and sacrilege. He had to make sure the girl traveled with them. But he knew there would be no persuading his master to bring a lone female along on a caravan consisting of men and no other women. There was only one solution: Timonides the sacred astrologer must falsify Sebastianus's horoscope.
As it was never a good idea to make decisions on an empty stomach, he scooped some chunks of pork and gravy onto his bread, hefted it into his mouth, and munched with heavenly delight. As more and more of the stew went through his lips and down his throat, his every taste bud waking up to garlic and onion, reminding him of what it had been like to be unable to eat, filling him with dread that such deprivation would visit him again, Timonides the astrologer thought: But it would be just a small untruth. Not really a lie, more like a fiction. And I won't exactly say it is what the stars said, I will merely hint and let my master draw the vital conclusions.
Timonides washed the stew down with beer that had been kept cool in wet straw, and as he smacked his lips and signaled to Nestor for a second bowl, he told himself that what he was about to do was a small favor to ask of the gods. In all his years of serving the heavens and the stars, he had never asked for anything in return, had never once used astrology to his own gain. Surely they would not mind one tiny self-serving transgression from an old man who had been staunchly faithful.
As more greasy pork and piquant onions awoke his palate, reminding him of culinary pleasures to come, Timonides the astrologer started to feel good about what he had to do.
SEBASTIANUS AND ULRIKA RETURNED to the camp, having found a trustworthy guide to take her to Colonia, one who had families in his caravan. But a refreshed and considerably cheered Timonides greeted them and, with star-charts in his hands, declared, "Master, the message is astonishing but clear. This girl Ulrika is meant to travel with us."
Timonides spoke hurriedly lest his voice betray the lie. Showing Sebastianus his calculations, he said, "Master, you know that your sun sign is Libra with Capricorn your Moon sign." He went on to fill the air with words such as house and aspect, elliptic and ascendant, conjunctions and crescent, explaining the placement of the five planets in relation to the sun and moon and how they affected not only Sebastianus Gallus, but the caravan, the girl named Ulrika, and the outcome of the race for the imperial diploma.
Sebastianus frowned over the papyrus sheet covered in numbers but he had no reason to doubt the outcome of the calculations. Timonides used a small calibrated instrument to determine the intersecting angle between the horizon planes and the ecliptic, and his most prized possession was a zodiacal casting wheel made of finely hammered gold, with symbols and degrees imprinted in the metal. It was said to have belonged to the great Alexander himself. These left little room for error in the casting of horoscopes.
Still, this reading came as a surprise. "What does this young lady have to do with us?"
Timonides did not meet Sebastianus in the eyes, looking instead at Ulrika. "It makes logical sense, master. I was unable to make good readings because of my pain and hunger. The gods sent the girl to us to take away my pain and to fill my belly again. Now I am able to serve them once more. She is here for a reason, master, and that is only for the gods to know."
Sebastianus could not argue with this logic. He also could not deny that the girl had been able to affect a cure that Rome's physicians could not, so perhaps she would be an asset on the caravan. But how would she travel? Where would she sleep? How could he keep a watchful eye on all his men?
"But I am in a hurry," Ulrika said. "I must travel with speed and your caravan is too large, it will take too long."
"As it so happens," Timonides said quickly, "my master is also in a hurry and must reach Germania Inferior as fast as he can, and so we will be traveling at a healthy pace."
Timonides saw how his master hesitated and so he said, "Master, you know that in the next towns, a family will join us, or a group of women. They always do. It will only be for a short time that the young lady is unchaperoned."
Sebastianus considered this and then, as he had never questioned the stars, he finally said, "Very well," as Timonides had known he would.
It was done! The girl was coming along and Timonides was guaranteed of freedom from salivary pain. He struggled to conceal his joy.
They entered into an agreement. With the corner of her veil covering her fingers, Ulrika shook hands with Sebastianus and in that instant a startling vision filled her head: an explosion of small bright lights streaking across the black sky and coming to rest, like a shower of golden sprinkles, on a vast, grassy valley. The image was so strong, so vivid that it held her briefly transfixed.
In the next moment, her mind was filled with the vision of a breathtaking landscape of rolling green hills, a rocky coastline, winds blowing in from the sea. She knew it was a land called Galicia, although she had never been there. She knew it was this man's beloved home, verdant with thick forests, ending in a wild and rugged coastline, a place that his people called Land of the Thousand Rivers—and yet thoughts of Galicia caused him great pain. He is homesick, she thought, yet he can never go back. Sebastianus Gallus was a man without a country.
As Gallus picked up her travel packs and she followed him to a line of covered carriages, as her heart raced in anticipation of meeting her father at last, Ulrika shivered with a chilling thought. If her illness was indeed back, what other frightening visions and sensations awaited her on this journey into the unknown?
BOOK TWO
GERMANIA
8
STAND ASIDE IN THE NAME OF IMPERIAL ROME!"
Ulrika did not recognize the stranger demanding to be let in. "Who are you?"
"Agents of Claudius Caesar. You are hiding someone in there."
"I am hiding no one. We are a simple trade caravan, taking grain to the northern outposts. You must speak with Sebastianus Gallus, he is the leader of this caravan. You cannot mistake him. He is tall, with hair the color of bronze, and a deep commanding voice, and a way about him that makes one notice. He is unmarried, although I do not understand why, for he is very attractive, quite handsome, in fact—"
Ulrika opened her eyes to darkness and found herself in bed. Where was she? To whom had she been speaking?
It was another dream ...
She held her breath and listened, and heard, beyond the cloth walls of her small tent, horses galloping through the encampment. Men shouting. Women crying out.
Ulrika frowned. It was barely dawn. The camp wasn't due to break up for another two hours.
Clutching her shawl at her throat, her long hair streaming over her shoulders, she stepped out and peered through the atmosphere thick with mist and smoke. Eerie figures were marching through the camp, brandishing swords and barking orders. Roman legionaries, rousing people from sleep, disrupting breakfasts, interrupting prayers.
As Ulrika watched the commotion in the pale morning light, Timonides appeared from around the side of the tent. "What's going on?" the astrologer asked with his mouth full. He held a greasy lamb chop with a bite taken out; his tunic was stained down the front where honey had dripped from wheat cakes. It was the first of several meals of the day for the corpulent Greek who had discovered the joy of eating again.
"I do not know," Ulrika murmured.
Timonides wrinkled his nose as he watched the red-caped legionaries stride through the crowded encampment, entering tents and covered wagons, kicking over hay bales, jabbing swords into barrels and bundles of merchandise. "They appear to be searching for something," he observed as he sank his teeth into the spicy chop.
Or someone, Ulrika thought.
"Where is your master?" she asked as she watched the legionaries brusquely pull people from tents, bringing torches close to their faces, to examine them and then push them away.
"Sebastianus will come soon. Mistress, go back inside. With your fair hair and that symbol you wear about your neck..."
Ulrika's hand went to her breast, where she wore the Germanic Cross of Odin. She turned and looked out over the Rhine—a wide, flat, silver river that, in the early morning mist, looked unreal. Roman naval vessels patrolled the waters, great ships moving under the power of sail or rhythmic oars, a constant reminder of Rome's imperial and mighty presence in this northern land. On the other side of the river, dark green forests holding ancient secrets stretched to the horizon.
Ulrika brought herself back to the camp and the intruders. The caravan of Sebastianus Gallus had stopped, along with several smaller caravans and groups of traders and travelers, at a garrison called Fort Bonna, one day's journey south of Colonia, birthplace of Empress Agrippina and the cause of the new outbreak of war in the region. Since leaving Lugdunum in Gaul and following the eastward road that skirted alpine foothills, the mood of the caravan had become one of nervousness and anxiety. Lugdunum was a major trading hub in Europe, a cosmopolitan city of marble towers and fortress walls and roads that stretched away like the spokes of a wagon wheel. And along those roads, men traveled, bringing with them word of fighting in the east, rumors and unconfirmed reports but no one saying for certain what was happening—or was going to happen, or had already happened—in Germania Inferior.
Now, after days of rising apprehension, they had come to a halt fifteen miles from Ulrika's destination. Her heart raced. Where was Gaius Vatinius and his legions? Everyone said that he was leading his troops directly across the Alps, a more hazardous route than the one caravans took, but a more direct one—thousands of men pushing northward like a deadly tide, bringing horses and weapons and war machines into the pristine forests of Ulrika's people. How far behind were the legions? How much time was left to her to find her father and warn him?
As she kept her eye on the soldiers, their armor clanking as they pushed their way into people's privacy, stamping the ground with their thick, hobnailed sandals, Ulrika wondered where Sebastianus was. She glanced at his tent. It was dark and deserted as usual. Once again, he had not slept in his own bed.
Where does he go every night?
As they had followed the busy trade route from Rome to Masilia, from Lugdunum to the Rhine, Ulrika had seen Sebastianus Gallus interact with merchants, traders, and travelers, inviting them to share his fire and a meal. Trade and commerce were conducted at each stopping point, with the abacus coming out, coins being counted, baskets and bundles of merchandise changing hands, and Gallus overseeing it all. When business was concluded, he would bathe in his tent, change into a fresh tunic and cloak, and leave the camp, usually bearing gifts, to head into the village or town, and return the next morning.
While Ulrika wondered what he did away from camp—while she wondered about many things concerning the master of her caravan—she did know one thing: his passion for the stars.
Ulrika had learned that Sebastianus Gallus was not a religious man in the traditional sense. He did not erect a small altar each time they camped, nor did he make a sacrifice of food and wine to the gods. Instead, he consulted the stars, making use of Timonides and his star-charts.
Ulrika thought about the gold bracelet on Sebastianus's wrist. It was a beautiful piece, finely molded with intricate designs. The surprising feature was a rather homely chunk of rock in the center, neither pleasing to the eye nor seeming to be of any value—a prosaic stone easily found in any street. She wondered at its significance.
As she watched the legionaries move through the camp, coming her way while a nervous Timonides stood at her side, Ulrika thought about the local people the caravan had encountered along the route, Germans who were not slaves, as Ulrika was used to seeing, but free men and women working their own farms, engaged in cultural arts and crafts and who came to the caravan to trade. She would stare at them, marveling at seeing this race in their own environment of forests and rolling hills and green, misty valleys. Women in long skirts and blouses, their hair worn in braids; men in leggings and tunics, hair worn long and nearly all of them bearded, reminding Ulrika that the term "barbarian" literally meant "bearded one," but that in recent years had come to mean any uncivilized person.
She trembled to think that she was near her father's territory. It filled her with pride to know that, not far from here, forty-five years ago, three legions commanded by Quinctilius Varus had been defeated by the German hero Arminius, Ulrika's grandfather! But sadness also filled her—leaving her mother without a proper good-bye. Fear was in her heart as well, that the childhood sickness that frightened her might never be cured, that she was going to be plagued forever with dreams that were too real and vivid to be mere dreams.
As two legionaries strode up to her tent, she braced herself.
Ulrika was familiar with the political climate of this region. Under the empire's pax romana, several important Germanic tribes worked peacefully with Rome, and seemed to have no problem with the presence of imperial forts and garrisons in their ancestral territory. So peaceful was this region, in fact, that Claudius had needed to pull idle troops from the Rhine and give them something to do: invade Britain. But now there was a new problem: an unnamed German warrior was firing up the tribes and uniting them against Rome for the first time in forty years.
And Ulrika was certain it was her father.
As the two legionaries approached, she tightened the shawl about her shoulders and drew herself up tall, ready to stand up to them. She would not let them search her tent. She had nothing to hide, but it was the principle.
ON THE FAR SIDE of the camp, at the edge of the clearing where the western forest began, a leather-faced centurion scratched his testicles as he watched the proceedings with a jaded eye. A twenty-five-year veteran of foreign campaigns, the middle-aged soldier was looking forward to retiring with his fat wife to a vineyard in southern Italia, where he hoped to live out his days idling in the sunlight and telling war stories to his grandchildren. This search for insurgent Barbarians—in a trade caravan!—was useless. The whole military thrust north of the Alps was futile, in his seasoned mind. Germania was too big and its people too proud to ever be conquered. But the centurion never questioned orders. He did as told and drew his monthly pay.
He stiffened. His trained eye told him that trouble had just arrived.
"What is going on here?" boomed Sebastianus Gallus, riding through the trees at a gallop. Jumping down from his mare, he strode up to the centurion. "What are these soldiers doing here?"
"We're searching for rebels, sir," the officer said, recognizing the bronze-haired young man, in a fine white tunic and handsome blue cloak, as someone of rank and importance.
Sebastianus scowled as he surveyed the chaotic scene. It would be an hour before he could restore order and another hour to break camp and get the caravan underway. He had to reach Colonia before dark. "Upon whose orders?" he snapped. "And why wasn't I informed?"
"General Vatinius, sir," the centurion said wearily, reminding himself of the vineyard and warm Italian days. "He ordered a surprise search, the better to find the fugitives. No forewarning, no chance to get away."
"We are hiding no one here," Sebastianus growled and marched off.
Sebastianus's ill humor was due only in part to this unexpected upheaval of his camp. He had spent the night at a nearby farm, the guest of a Roman farmer he had known for years, but he had not slept well. It was because of the girl, Ulrika. The day before, she had announced her intention to leave the company of the caravan the moment they arrived in Colonia, to go off on her own in search of her father's people. Sebastianus had not expected that. He had thought he would help her put together a party that consisted of local Germanic guides, bodyguards, slaves. As safe an escort as he could muster.
But to go alone? Was she out of her mind? Was she so ignorant of the dangers she risked?
He wished he had never agreed to take her as a passenger. But Timonides had insisted that the stars showed her path aligning with his. And with each daily horoscope, there she was, still intertwined with Sebastianus's destiny. "When do our paths diverge?" he had asked in their camp outside of Lugdunum. Timonides had only shrugged and said, "The gods will let us know."
Although he had worried that a girl on her own in a caravan might be a problem, Ulrika had turned out to be no trouble at all. She had kept to herself, quiet, reading, going for walks—always modestly draped in the palla that covered her coiled hair and bare arms. She had traveled without complaint in an enclosed box-wagon drawn by two horses, a rocky carriage ride that always elicited grumbles from passengers when they stepped out at the end of the day. But Ulrika never spoke as she sought a place at the campfire while Sebastianus's slaves erected a tent for her privacy.
In a small way, she had even been an asset. Sebastianus had watched her heal people. A mere girl with a calming, quiet presence and a curious box filled with medicinal magic. She would listen to someone's problem and she would either say, "This is beyond my skill," or, "I can help."
She had said that she had learned healing arts from her mother, but Sebastianus suspected her talent went beyond a mere apprenticeship, for those she had helped declared that she had somehow known exactly what ailed them, had known even without them being able to adequately describe their ills.
As he walked through his disordered camp, calming people down, assuring them that the soldiers would soon be gone, he squinted through the smoke and mist and saw her on the other side, standing outside her own small tent, talking to Timonides. Sebastianus was startled to see long hair flowing over her shoulders and down her back. She normally wore her tawny hair bound up in a Grecian knot and hidden beneath her veil.
He was further startled to feel a stab of sexual desire.
Pushing the girl from his thoughts—they were parting company tomorrow, after all—he strode through the camp bringing reassurances to his slaves and workers, and to those traveling under his protection, stopping to set hay bales aright, to soothe frazzled nerves, to restore order as he went. But his mind raced. It normally took him sixty days to reach Fort Bonna, yet he had arrived in a record forty-five. He had pushed to cover the miles, and had not conducted his usual extensive commerce in the towns and cities they had visited. By his calculations, if he could execute a swift turnaround in Colonia, he could have the caravan back in Rome in perhaps another forty-two days, with an excellent chance of beating the other four traders to the finish, which was the Imperial Palace and an audience with Emperor Claudius.
Unfortunately, simply getting there first was not enough. Sebastianus still had to find a way to distinguish himself before the emperor. What could he take back to Rome as a gift that would set him apart from Badru, Sahir, Adon, and Gaspar, who would surely present splendid trophies to Claudius?
