Текст книги "The Divining"
Автор книги: Barbara Wood
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
She could not, for the truth was a great secret: after the deaths of Arminius's wife Thusnelda and their only son, the German hero never married again. But when Arminius was grieving bitterly for his loss, he found comfort in the sacred grove dedicated to the Goddess of the Red-Gold Tears, where the beautiful young priestess took him into her arms. Wulf was the result of that secret union.
"Could you not at least tell her that her father is alive?" Hilde asked gently.
Milky blue eyes filled with tears. "A great and strange destiny awaits my granddaughter, and if she knew her father was still alive, she would stay here and go in search of him and never fulfill that destiny. Believing him to be dead, she will follow the correct path."
"Will she come back to us?"
"Perhaps someday, the gods willing," said the elder seeress of the Cherusci tribe, herself called Ulrika and after whom her granddaughter had been named.
10
THE DAY DIED, THE FOREST GREW MENACING.
Ulrika had been following the stream as the old woman had instructed, but it seemed to be leading nowhere. How far was the river?
Her packs grew heavy as the stream seemed to meander aimlessly through dense pines and oaks, down a narrow valley pocked with ancient caves. Ulrika felt the eyes of woodland creatures measure her progress as she stumbled, her right foot bare, over prickly ground.
Snap!
She stopped, held her breath to listen.
Snap!
Footfall. Too heavy for an animal.
Rustling in the underbrush. Something—or someone—was following her.
She scanned the forest, her eyes wide in the dying daylight. Shadows took on forbidding shapes, seemed to move. The gurgle of the stream faded while other sounds grew loud—the screech of a hawk, the wind high in treetops, another snap of underbrush.
Wondering if she could outrun whatever was following her, Ulrika turned in the direction of the sounds, saw silhouettes moving, and realized they were men. When the first emerged into the small clearing beside the stream, and Ulrika saw that he was tall and bearded, wearing a belted tunic and leather leggings, when she saw the tribal tattoos and long twisted hair, she frantically searched for a place to hide.
Four more emerged from the oaks and pines, swords in hand, angry looks on their faces. One had dried blood caked on his arm, another limped on an injured leg. As they drew near, brandishing swords smeared with blood, Ulrika saw the crazed look in their eyes. She thought of her own dagger, tucked out of reach in one of her packs.
She fell back a step. The strangers exchanged words which she did not understand. But she understood their intent. Killing lust burned in the eyes of these survivors of a humiliating defeat.
She fell back another step and felt the slope of the ground as it began the descent to the bank of the stream. The sun had left the forest; gloom surrounded Ulrika and the five warriors. They crept closer. She smelled their sweat. She saw scars, old and new. The long blond beards, unruly hair. The faces smeared with blood and dirt.
Then she saw the man at the rear, a barrel-chested giant with red hair, separate himself from the others and inch around to come up from behind. He leered at Ulrika with a gap-toothed grin. Reaching for the strap of one of her travel packs, she drew it from her shoulder and swung it with all her might. The warrior laughed as he grabbed the pack and tossed it away.
Ulrika tried another, swinging it at her assailants, but it too was wrenched from her grasp and thrown out of reach. She tried to step to the side, but a third man blocked her way. They encircled her. Ulrika could not watch all of them.
The leader raised his sword, grinning like his comrades, the look in his eyes no longer one of killing lust but lust of another kind. The man behind grabbed Ulrika's hair, as half had come uncoiled during her forest trek. She cried out. He dragged her to him. She felt strong arms go around her waist. She kicked, tried to bite. The leader seized her ankles. Ulrika cursed her weakness. Afternoons sitting at her loom, browsing in bookstores—
They dragged her to the ground and pinned her down. The leader bent over her, grinning as he tugged at her dress. He lowered himself, and then suddenly looked at her in surprise. Ulrika stared up into his scarred face and their eyes met for an instant before he collapsed onto her, suffocating her with his weight. The others were suddenly on their feet, shouting. Pushing the unconscious man away, Ulrika sat up and saw Sebastianus Gallus, in a white tunic and blue cloak, come flying out of the forest, swinging a sword. She watched in amazement as the four warriors descended upon him, their swords meeting his.
Ulrika shot to her feet and searched for something to use as a weapon. She saw the dagger in the dead man's back, which Gallus had thrown on the run. She yanked it out and looked for a target, but the men were moving too quickly.
As metal clanged with metal, the Galician reached for the fastening at his throat, drew his cloak from his shoulders and threw it over the heads of Ulrika's assailants. One of them became tangled in the cloth and fell backwards. The other three continued to fight, attacking from all sides, with the Spaniard deftly meeting each plunge of a Barbarian's sword.
Gripping Gallus's dagger, Ulrika gave a cry and flew at the man with red hair, sinking the weapon into the meat of his shoulder. He bellowed and swung about. Ulrika managed to pull the dagger out and jump aside, to jab at another warrior.
With the clang of metal ringing in her ears as she thrust and hit and screamed, driven by fury and grief and self-recrimination, her eyes blinded by tears, Ulrika caught flashes of Sebastianus Gallus as he fought the Barbarians. She saw thickly muscled arms, broad shoulders, and a strong back as he swung his massive sword again and again, sending his foes reeling, staggering beneath his blows.
Gallus kept up with them, even though outnumbered, thrusting, slicing, spinning this way and that, meeting each blow that came his way until one attacker fell, and then another. With one man left standing, and Gallus advancing with his sword, relentlessly driving the Barbarian backwards, the others scrambled to their feet and ran off, shouting oaths over their shoulders as they plunged into the woods and disappeared.
Heaving for breath, Sebastianus watched them go, then he wiped his brow and looked at Ulrika. "Are you all right?"
She stared at him. "Yes—" she began. Was he truly here, or was he a vision? Why was he here? How had he found her? Gallus gulped for air, his chest expanding, muscles straining the fabric of his tunic. His closely cropped bronze hair and beard glistened with the sweat of combat. Ulrika was speechless at the sight of him. Sebastianus's sword was massive, yet he had swung it with ease.
"They will come back," he said as he retrieved his cloak from the ground and then picked up Ulrika's packs. He looked around the forest gloom. The sun had gone, night was nearly upon them. "I got separated from my party. I'll never find them in the dark. Those caves look safe for now."
Ulrika fell wordlessly into step at his side. She was numb with shock. Judging by their tribal tattoos, her attackers had been Cherusci, her father's countrymen. And yet her rescuer was really a stranger to her, with whom she had no connection, materializing out of nowhere, startling her with his strength and power—a man who sat with his abacus, counting sacks of grain.
"Here," Sebastianus said when they reached a cave surrounded by stunted trees and trailing blackberries. The fissure was small, barely visible, with just enough room for them to slip inside. "They won't find us in here."
But Ulrika held back. "No, not this one," she said.
"Why not? It's defensible. And we can camouflage the opening." Sebastianus glanced back toward the forest. They needed to find a hiding place quickly. As he stepped toward the cave entrance, Ulrika said, "No, they will find us in there."
She turned and surveyed the dark woods, listened to the stream trickling nearby. In the darkening twilight she saw ahead, on the other side of a stand of oak trees, a larger cave, with a wide opening, and no brush surrounding it. "There," she said, pointing. "We will be safe in there."
Sebastianus looked at her in surprise. "They will find us for certain in there!"
But she sprinted ahead, turning ghostly white in the purple dusk. Sebastianus ran after her. Ulrika disappeared through the entrance and Sebastianus had no choice but to follow.
Inside, he saw that the cave was deep and wide, with no openings branching off, no large rock formations behind which to hide. They might as well be sitting in the middle of a meadow! Before he could voice his objection, they heard voices—deep, angry, shouting. The Barbarians had returned and, from the sound of it, had brought friends.
Sebastianus dropped the travel packs and gripped his sword, ready to fight. But Ulrika seemed unconcerned as she slowly looked around the deep, black cave, turning in a circle, looking up at the rocky ceiling, until she was facing the entrance and Sebastianus. "We will be safe here," she said again.
Whispering a curse, Sebastianus took Ulrika by the wrist and drew her away from the opening, to press her against the cold wall while he peered around to watch the Barbarians.
But Ulrika did not mark the progress of the Germans as they tramped through the forest, drawing nearer to the cave. Instead, she found herself staring at Sebastianus's muscular arms and broad shoulders. His tunic was sweat-soaked from the fight, the fabric clinging to his back, defining hard muscles. The breath caught in her throat.
But then she saw the tear in the cloth, the red stain spreading over his upper arm. He was wounded! Ulrika placed her hand over the injury and pressed gently. Sebastianus flinched, then said, "Shhh."
They watched the Barbarians go inside nearby caves, search behind boulders, run their swords into dense brush, cursing oaths, wondering where the Romans had gone. To Sebastianus's surprise, they did not even glance toward the cave where he and Ulrika were hiding, did not come near, even though surely they must have seen it. He waited with held breath as the German warriors continued deeper into the woods, stamping over twigs and leaves until their footfall and voices could no longer be heard.
He turned to Ulrika, his face inches from hers. "How did you know they would do that?" he asked softly.
But she stepped away and opened one of her travel packs. Sebastianus watched as she sorted through the contents, bringing out a small, stoppered jar and a roll of cotton. Her dress was torn and soiled, her palla beyond repair, and her long, lion-colored hair streamed over one shoulder while still touchingly coiled on one side of her head. She looked tragic, yet proud, he thought. The bend of her slender body, the graceful movements of her hands—everything about her was fluid, elegant.
Sebastianus looked away and concentrated on watching the forest.
Even though the German warriors had moved on and could no longer be heard, Sebastianus remained watchful by the cave's entrance, his sword ready. Ulrika came up to him and, lifting the torn sleeve of his tunic, gently dabbed ointment on his wound. Sebastianus thought it a minor injury and would have let it dry and scab on its own, but she was cleaning it, and then applying more salve and finally wrapping his upper arm with strips of cotton fabric. Expertly done, he noticed, recalling what she had told him about her mother being a healer.
When she was finished, she lifted her eyes to his and for a moment both stood breathless in the darkness of the cave. Sebastianus felt the shadows move and shift about them, as if cosmic changes were taking place, and he remembered that he was cut off from his group, separated from his astrologer. Tonight, for the first time since he could remember, Sebastianus would sleep without his evening horoscope.
The thought unsettled him. As did the girl's proximity. She stood too close. He could feel her soft breath on his neck. He stared at her lower lip, full and moist and sensuous.
He stepped back, drew down his bloody sleeve, murmured a thank-you, and wanted to ask again how she knew the Barbarians would not search for them in this cave. But he was held by her blue eyes. He saw the smudges of dirt on her cheeks. Recalled how she had fought her attackers. "Night is upon us," he said. "We will need a fire."
Ulrika sat wearily on the cold dirt floor and watched Sebastianus strike the flint and coax a flame out of a pile of dried leaves. He had collected stones and placed them in a circle for a campfire, and now he added twigs and pieces of wood. "Thank you," Ulrika said.
"For what?" He concentrated on laying the sticks. The girl was filling his thoughts in a way that made him uneasy. He knew it was not just her proximity. Sebastianus suspected that if they were a thousand miles apart, he still would not be able to rid his mind of her. Aside from Ulrika's beauty, her grace and femininity, there was a curious strength about her—the way she had flown at the Barbarians with a dagger, and then had held her emotions together as they searched for a safe hiding place. Now, quietly watching him with those compelling blue eyes.
"For saving my life," she said.
"As long as you travel with my caravan, you are under my protection. It is my duty to see that you reach your destination safely. When you turned up missing from our camp, I put a party together to go looking for you." He didn't look at her as he added, "I was furious when I realized you had left. I had to send the caravan on ahead while I put together a search party."
When Ulrika trembled and wrapped her arms around herself, Sebastianus unclasped his blue cloak and draped it around her shoulders, drawing it snugly tight. In the flickering firelight, Ulrika saw the pewter pin that held the cloak at the throat. It was a beautiful Gallic design.
Sebastianus saw how it caught her interest. "That was given to me by a widow in Lugdunum. A man in the neighborhood was making unwelcome advances and she had no male relatives to protect her. So I paid the man a visit. He will not bother her again."
His words reminded Ulrika of something Timonides had said outside the city of Masilia, when Sebastianus had gone into town that night, bearing gifts. "My master has friends all over the empire. He takes care of people who have no protection. He need only make it known that this man or that woman is under the care of Sebastianus Gallus the merchant trader, and that person is safe."
Ulrika had asked what these people gave Sebastianus in return and Timonides had said, "Their friendship."
As Ulrika touched the fashioned metal, she received a brief vision of the widow who had given him this gift—a pretty woman left alone by a husband who drank too much—and Ulrika knew that the Greek astrologer had spoken the truth when he had said that all Sebastianus asked in return was friendship, for she sensed that there had been nothing more between Gallus and the widow.
"How did you find me?" she asked.
Sebastianus poked the flames with a green stick. "I became separated from my group and met an old woman who told me a Roman girl had come through here recently, a girl on her own. The old woman directed me to the stream. Why did you leave the caravan? Why not wait until we reached Colonia?"
"I wanted to warn my father's people."
Sebastianus finally looked up, firelight reflected in his green eyes. "Warn them of what?"
"Gaius Vatinius had a plan that would ensure his victory." She explained about the dinner at Paulina's villa, the secret strategy Vatinius had bragged about. "But I came too late."
Sebastianus absorbed her remarkable tale while silently building a warm, bright fire. He looked across the flames and saw how pale she was in the hot glow, how she trembled, not from cold but from shock. She had seen a battlefield strewn with corpses. She had traveled a great distance to be reunited with a father she never knew, only to be told he was dead.
"You are very courageous," he said.
"I am very reckless. I could have gotten myself killed. I could have gotten you killed. I'm sorry."
"At least you brought us to the safety of this cave. You knew those men would not come in here. How did you know?"
She mutely shook her head and looked at her hands.
"I have food," he said, reaching for his travel pack. "You must be hungry."
When she did not respond, he turned to her, to find Ulrika with her back to him and to the fire, her eyes delving the darkness at the rear of the cave. "What is it?" he asked.
"I thought," she began, but then turned around, shaking her head.
Sebastianus brought out coarse bread and sharp cheese, cutting off chunks with his knife and handing them to Ulrika. As she nibbled delicately, staring into the flames, Sebastianus noticed that her eyes flickered toward the cave entrance, beyond which lay a dark and forbidding forest. He knew she was not worried about their stalkers coming back. The look in her wide, blue eyes was haunted, as if she were seeing images not there.
She is back on the battlefield, he thought, searching for her father ...
"What will you do now?" he asked. "Stay here and perhaps search for survivors of your father's family?"
"I do not know what I will do now. I was so certain when I left Rome that I would find answers here. Yet I am more confused than ever." She thought for a moment, holding him in her gaze with damp eyes. You must return to the place of your beginning. "I do not know if there is anything, or anyone, here in the Rhineland for me. But if I return to Rome, I will be expected to marry." She bit into the bread and chewed. "Are you married, Sebastianus Gallus?"
He shook his head. "I am never in one place long enough to be a good husband and father. I have a villa in Rome, but I am rarely there. Sometimes my journeys keep me away for years. What woman would want that kind of husband?"
He fell silent then, and found himself held captive by a pair of frank, blue eyes. He gazed at Ulrika across the golden flames of the campfire, and felt unaccustomed yearnings stir deep within him.
Breaking away from the spell of her eyes, Sebastianus cleared his throat, looked at his hands, and then surveyed their saturnine surroundings. "This cave evokes a memory from my boyhood in Galicia, when I was thirteen years old. There was a man, Malachi, who owned the largest vineyard in the area. He was fat and rich and my brother Lucius and I had heard our father say that Malachi was cruel to his slaves and animals. We did not like that. So Lucius and I would sneak among Malachi's vines and eat his grapes until he chased us off with a whip. One night we crept into his vineyard and stole bunches of ripe grapes, taking them into town and selling them. When Malachi complained to our father, he gave us the thrashing of our lives. This meant revenge. Our plan involved a cave very much like this one."
Ulrika kept her eyes on Sebastianus as he spoke.
"Lucius and I dug a pit just inside the cave's entrance and filled it with pig manure. And then we ran past Malachi's house, making sure he heard us, exclaiming about treasure we had found in the cave. Because he was greedy, or so we thought, we knew he could not resist following us. We paraded in and out of that cave carrying bags, knowing Malachi was watching. And then Lucius and I loudly agreed that we had enough treasure and should go home."
Sebastianus laughed softly. "We thought we were so clever. We did not know, of course, that Malachi was onto us. As we watched the entrance, he came up behind us. He shouted, 'BAH!' We jumped up and yelped and dashed straight into the cave and the manure pit. My mother scrubbed us with soap for a week to get the smell out. And Father gave us yet another thrashing. Lucius and I didn't laugh at the time, but in later years we did."
Sebastianus shook his head. "I was always looking for trouble and Lucius, being younger, followed. Neighbors called us 'those Gallus devils.' My father was forever apologizing for our pranks. But he secretly admired us. He had a way of smiling when he thought we weren't looking."
"Tell me about your family," Ulrika said, finding comfort in the sound of his voice.
"We have been traders for generations. It is in our blood. My ancestors journeyed the length and breadth of Iberia, taking goods to the many tribes that have lived there for millennia. When the Romans crossed the Pyrenees into our land, two centuries ago, my family did not fight them, as others of my race did. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity to expand commerce. My forefathers entered into contracts with the invading Romans, and began carving out routes to distant lands, following the new roads being laid down by Roman legionaries. When Julius Caesar made the conquest of Iberia complete, my family adopted Roman names and Roman ways, we learned to speak Latin and cultivate Roman friendships, and when we were offered Roman citizenship, we embraced it. My ancestral home, Galicia, is the northwesternmost tip of Hispania. I own land there, and a villa.
"My three sisters live there with their husbands and children. I have not seen them in five years, but I write to them regularly, and send money home, even though they are prosperous. I miss my home and my family very much."
"My mother is the only family I have ever known," Ulrika said, picturing a Galician villa filled with children. "We never had a home, we were always on the move because of her personal quest. We came to Rome seven years ago, but it has never felt like home to me. I have never really known where I belong. I had thought perhaps here ..." She sighed. "It must be nice to have an ancestral home, to know that blood relations are still there, that you can always go back someday."
"Someday . . ." Sebastianus said as he stared into the fire. That was the problem. Sebastianus Gallus was a man who wanted to walk two streets at the same time: he wanted to remain unmarried and free to explore the world, open new trade routes. But he also yearned to go home, settle down, marry, and have a family. He could not do both, and so he traveled his exotic trade routes with a divided heart.
"My next journey, the gods willing," he said, "will be to China. If Emperor Claudius will grant me the imperial diploma." And if, he added silently, I can find a way to distinguish myself over Badru, Gaspar, Adon, and Sahir.
Sebastianus had been on his way to meet with Gaius Vatinius, to inform the general of the location of the hidden rebel camp, when he had been stopped by a stab of conscience. Although the information he carried to the Roman commander was priceless beyond measure, and would surely guarantee the granting of the diploma to him by Claudius, Sebastianus had suddenly thought: the insurgents might be this girl's family. And he could not betray her. She trusted him, had placed herself in his care, and Sebastianus always prided himself on being an honorable man. So he had turned back, deciding that he must earn the diploma by other means.
"Can you not go to China without one?" she asked. "Do merchants not travel that route already?"
"No merchants from Rome have ever gone as far as China. The route is long and fraught with danger. Caravans are constantly being attacked by brigands and mountain tribes. A diploma from the imperial court at Rome guarantees some degree of safety, but only as far as Persia. Beyond that, little is known about that fabled far-off land."
Hoot! Hoot!
Ulrika turned to the entrance, her eyes widening.
Sebastianus stirred the fire. "It is but an owl," he said quietly. Or, he thought, it is a secret signal. And he imagined the Barbarians using the cover of night to plan their assault on the cave. He kept his sword close.
Ulrika turned then to peer into the darkness at the back of the cave. "What is it?" he asked.
"I thought I heard ..."
"There is nothing there," he said, looking into the black abyss beyond the fire's glow and feeling the dark forest at his back with its myriad sounds and whisperings.
Ulrika slowly rose, her body stiff as she leaned toward the darkness.
Sebastianus reached out, touched her arm, to reassure her. She gave a cry and whipped about. "It's only me," he said.
Ulrika's eyes went to the scallop shell that lay on his chest, a cream-colored mollusk with fluted ribs and a wavy outer edge. "What does it mean?" she asked as she sat down.
Sebastianus looked down at the shell suspended on a leather cord and said, "There is an ancient altar near my town. No one knows who built it or when, or to which god it was originally dedicated. Since the arrival of the Romans, someone has carved the word 'Jupiter' into the stone, but I believe the altar was originally dedicated to a goddess because it is decorated with hundreds of scallop shells which, as everyone knows, is the symbol sacred to the goddesses Ishtar and Mari. For many years pilgrims came from all over, each adding a scallop shell. In this way the altar became large and beautiful."
Sebastianus was proud that he was a descendant of the distant ancestress who had built the altar. In fact, he had taken his scallop shell directly from the altar instead of collecting it at the shore as others did. The shell around his neck was very old and might possibly be one of the originals placed there by his ancestress herself, and so it carried great power.
"Unfortunately," he added wistfully, "the highways to the remote altar became rife with brigands who set upon the unarmed pilgrims. Visits are sparse now. I fear the altar might someday be forgotten."
"It means a lot to you?" Ulrika asked.
He gave this some thought, weighing his answer. "I was praying there one night, ten years ago, and ..." He hesitated.
Lucius, she thought, holding him with her eyes.
The flames crackled and snapped. The darkness of the forest hovered at the cave's entrance, a constant reminder of the dangers beyond. Behind her, Ulrika felt the darkness of the cave's belly, empty and hungry. She saw how the fire brought out the bronze highlights in Sebastianus's hair.
"Ten years ago," he said quietly, his green eyes reflecting the light as he relived a memory, "I was to accompany a shipment of wine to Cypress with a fleet of our merchant ships. My brother Lucius was to take a local caravan in Hispania. But he knew of my desire to go to China, that I had recently come into possession of new maps to the East, that I needed to study them, plan my route, meet with traders who had recently come from kingdoms that lie on the road to China. And so Lucius offered to change places with me. Our father would not have approved, but he was in Rome at the time, and would not have known of the switch. So Lucius accompanied the ships to Cypress. He perished during a storm at sea."
He touched the gold bracelet on his wrist. "I was at the scallop-shell altar," he said, "the night a shower of stars fell from the sky. A river of debris covered the countryside, mostly bits of ice and rock no bigger than a grain of sand, but that night, as the star-shower streaked the sky, I saw a star fall to earth, and I ran out into the hills to find it." He touched the small, gray stone on his gold bracelet. "The crust was hot at first, but it cooled, and I kept it as a trophy, an actual fragment of a star."
His face darkened, his gaze going inward as he said, "And then the letter came, informing me of Lucius's death, and when the author of the letter specified the exact date—the tenth day of that month named for Julius Caesar—and I realized it was the same day on which I had found the star-stone, I knew it was a sign from my brother. But I also realized that I had sent my brother to a death that should have been my own, and so I made a vow that day, on the sacred scallop shell, never to remove this bracelet, in memory of my brother."
"I'm sorry," Ulrika said. "That is a sad story." She suddenly sat up. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
Ulrika listened. Beyond the cave's entrance, the forest stood in complete darkness, with not even moon glow to relieve the night. She turned and looked toward the back of the cave, also plunged in darkness. "We are not alone," she whispered. "Someone is in here."
Sebastianus shook his head. "It is impossible. There is no other entrance."
"There is someone at the back of the cave. I'm sure of it."
Wrapping a dried vine around the end of a stick to form a torch, Sebastianus rose and walked toward the back of the cave, Ulrika following. But the light illuminated only cold, stone walls and an earthen floor, with a ceiling so low they had to lower their heads. When they reached the end, they found no exit, no way for an intruder to get inside.
"You see?" Sebastianus said. "There is no one here."
"Look!" Ulrika whispered, pointing.
He turned and, lifting the torch, saw the rock wall suddenly spring to life. It was covered in vivid paintings, and as Sebastianus examined the figures rendered in bright reds and yellows and browns, he was able to identify bison, deer, wolves. There were also small figures of men carrying spears, chasing the animals, hunting them. All executed in a lifelike manner. Sebastianus had never seen anything like it.
"Someone is buried here," Ulrika murmured. "He was a holy man ... a long time ago."
