Avalon - Priestess Of Avalon Part 13

did not appear to enjoy it."

Oh my poor love, Ithought, turning to cradle his head against my breast,you are tempered too finely to be used for this butchery .

"When we had won the city... the other officers took women," he whispered then. "I could not do it, not with all that death around."

I tightened my grip, unreasonably pleased, whatever the reason, that he had been faithful. It was not something I had a right to ask, but it certainly, I thought with secret amus.e.m.e.nt, explained the intensity of his need.

"You are life..." murmured Constantius.

His lips brushed one nipple. I could feel both of them harden at his touch, and the rekindling of the fire between my thighs.

"I have seen so much killing... let me make life in you..."

His hands moved upon my body with a deliberation and a need more compelling than his first compulsion, and I found myself opening to his touch more deeply than ever before. At the ultimate moment he rose above me and I saw his features by firelight, focused in ecstasy.

"The sun!" he gasped. "The sun shines at midnight!"

At that moment my own completion came upon me, and I could not tell him that it was only the light of the bonfire they had kindled to celebrate the Emperor's victory.

In the silent hour before dawn, the only time, at this season, that it was truly cool, I rose to relieve myself. When I returned from the privy, I stood for a time, gazing out of the window and enjoying the touch of the chill air on my bare skin. The fire in the forum had burned out, and sleep, that next to death was the greatest of conquerors, had overwhelmed the revellers. Even Hylas, who had roused when I did, had lain down again.

A sound from the bed made me turn. Constantius was clutching at the bedclothes, groaning. As I watched, tears squeezed from beneath his tight-shut eyelids and began to roll down his cheeks. I hurried back and lay down beside him, winding him in my arms. Once, I thought, I had been the one who had the nightmares, but since I left Avalon I did not dream any more.

"It's all right," I murmured, knowing it was the tone that would reach him, not the words. "You are all right now-I am here..."

"The sun shines at midnight-" he groaned. "The temple burns! Apollo! Apollo is weeping!"

I soothed him, wondering if this was something he had seen on the campaign. The Emperor's personal deity was the sun-G.o.d-I could not believe he would willingly destroy a sanctuary, but I had heard that in warfare the destruction sometimes got out of hand.

"Hush, my love, and open your eyes-it is morning, do you see? Apollo is driving his chariot above the rim of the world-"

With lips and hands I set out to awaken him, and was rewarded presently when he quickened to my touch once more. This time our loving was slow and sweet. By the time we had finished, Constantius was awake once more, and smiling.

"Ah, my queen, I have brought gifts for you-" Naked, he padded over to the bag that someone had brought while we slept and set just inside the door. "I meant to array you in this for our first night back together, but you are more beautiful clad only in your night-dark hair...'

He rummaged in the bag, and pulled out something wrapped in unbleached linen. As the rough cloth fell away, a blaze of colour smote the eye. Constantius shook out a silk chiton dyed the true, imperial purple, and held it out to me.

"My love, it is too splendid!" I exclaimed, but I took the garment, wondering at the fine weave of the fabric, and slipped it over my head. I shivered as the silk caressed my skin and swayed, feeling the soft folds mould themselves to my body.

"By the G.o.ds, purple becomes you!" he exclaimed, his glance kindling.

"But I can never wear it," I reminded him.

"Not outside," he agreed, "but in our bedchamber you are my Empress and my Queen!"

And in bed or out, you, my beloved, are my Emperor! I thought, admiring the powerful balance of his naked body, but even here I dared not speak those words aloud.

Constantius put his arm around me and drew me to the east-facing window. I sighed, replete with loving, feeling in my body a sense of fulfilment I had not known before. Surely, I thought then, I must come away from such a night as this had been with child.

Together we stood watching as the sun, like a victorious emperor, lifted above the horizon and banished night's mysteries from the world.

CHAPTER NINE.

AD 272.

In Britannia, September had been a month of misty sunshine, but the forum at Naissus blazed with light beneath a brilliant blue sky. From the shade of the awning that had been raised to shelter the families of the imperial officers I could feel the waves of heat rising from the cobbles of the square. I had hoped, when Constantius told me of his new posting, that the plains that bordered the Danuvius in Dacia, being farther north, would be cooler than Bithynia, but in the summer, this inland city seemed even hotter than Drepanum, which had at least sometimes got a breeze from the sea. I could feel perspiration gathering beneath the fillet I wore to hide the crescent moon tattooed upon my brow. I took a deep breath, hoping I would not faint. Three months into pregnancy, I was still sick in the mornings and at intervals throughout the day.

Perhaps it was hunger that was making me feel so light-headed, I thought then, for I had not dared to eat before the ceremony, or perhaps it was the heavy scent of the incense. Two priests swung censers beside the altar; with each swing, more smoke swirled into the air. The haze drifted like a gauzy curtain before the columns that formed the western side of the square where the ground fell away towards the River Navissus. Beyond the tiled rooftops, a gleam of water, fields gold with stubble and low blue hills wavered in the heated air, insubstantial as a dream.

"Are you unwell?" Someone spoke nearby.

I blinked, and focused on the bony, dark face of the woman beside me. With an effort I remembered that she was called Vitellia, the wife of one of Constantius's fellowProtectores .

"I will be," I answered, flushing. "I'm not ill, it's just-" I felt myself colouring agin.

"Ah, of course. I have borne four children, and I was sick as a hound-b.i.t.c.h with three of them-not that dogs generally have morning sickness-" she added, large teeth showing as she smiled. "The first one I bore when we were stationed in Argentorate, the second and the third in Alexandria, and my last boy was born in Londinium."

I gazed at her in respect. She had followed the Eagles all over the Empire. "I come from Britannia..." I said then.

"I liked it," Vitellia gave a decisive nod, setting her earrings swinging. A little golden fish winked from her breast, suspended from a fine chain. "We still have a house there, and perhaps we'll return when my husband retires."

The procession was almost at an end. The flute players had spread out to one side of the altar, and the six maidens, having scattered their flowers, took up their position on the other. The priestess who walked behind them halted before the altar and cast a handful of barley into the fire that burned there, calling on Vesta, who lived in the flame.

"I had heard you were from the Isle," said Vitellia. "Your man came back from exile there and did so well in the Syrian campaign he's been made a tribune."

I nodded, appreciating her matter-of-fact acceptance of my somewhat ambiguous marital status. Since Constantius's promotion, some of the women who had pointedly ignored me before had become gushingly respectful, but Vitellia struck me as the sort of woman who would behave the same to a fish-wife as to an empress. The thought turned my gaze back to the forum.

The Emperor presided from a shaded dais behind the altar, with his senior officers around him. Seated on his throne, Aurelian looked like the statue of a G.o.d, but when Constantius presented me I had been surprised to find him a small man, with thinning hair and tired eyes.

Automatically, my gaze moved to the end of the line where Constantius himself was standing, just at the edge of the shade. When he moved his breastplate caught the sunlight. I blinked-for a moment he had seemed to stand in an aureole of light. But of course, I thought, smiling, he always looked like a G.o.d to me. The armour flashed again as he straightened, and I saw that the priests were coming through the archway with the sacrificial bull. The animal was white, its horns and neck garlanded with flowers. It moved slowly; no doubt it had been drugged to prevent any inauspicious struggle from marring the ceremony. The procession came to a halt before the altar and the priest began to intone the prayers. The bull stilled, its head drooping as if the droning incantation had been a sleep spell.

A second priest moved forward, hard muscle bunching in his arms as he lifted the pole-axe. There was a moment of stillness, then it blurred downward. The resounding 'thunk' as it struck the animal's skull reverberated from the columns. But the ox was already sinking to its knees. As it fell, one priest caught its horns, holding them long enough for the other to plunge the knife into the beast's throat and jerk crossways.

Blood rolled across the stones in a red tide. Several of the men who were watching averted their eyes, crossing themselves in the Christian sign against evil.It is only evil for the bull , I thought ruefully,or perhaps not even for him, if he consented to be the offering . Surely the Christians, who worshipped a sacrificed G.o.d, knew that death could be holy. It seemed rather small-minded of them to deny that sanct.i.ty to all religions but their own.

Holy it might be, but as the sickly-sweet scent of blood overwhelmed the incense on the air I felt my gorge rise. I drew my veil across my face, and sat very still, breathing carefully. It would be impolitic as well as unlucky to disgrace myself at the ceremony. A pungent whiff of herbs cleared my head and I opened my eyes.

Vitellia was holding out a spray of lavender and rosemary. I took another deep breath and thanked her.

"Is it your first child?"

"The first that I have carried this long," I answered.

"May G.o.d's Holy Mother bless you then, and bring you safe to term," said Vitellia, looking back towards the forum with a frown.

It was not a scene to enjoy, I thought, but I did not quite understand her disapproval. I tried to remember if her husband had been one of the men who crossed himself when the bull was killed.

The beast had mostly bled out by this time, and the lesser priests were sluicing the blood towards the gutters. The others had the body cavity open and had set the liver in a silver bowl so that the haruspex could examine it. Even the Emperor was leaning forward to listen to his muttering.

For me, trained in the oracular tradition of Avalon, augury by entrails had always seemed a clumsy method of divination. When the mind had been properly prepared, the flight of a bird or the fall of a leaf could be an omen, triggering the insights of prophecy. At least the bull had been killed cleanly and with reverence. When we feasted on its flesh that night, we would accept our own place in the cycle of life and death, even as we shared in its blessing. I placed my hand on my belly, just beginning to harden as the child within me grew.

The haruspex wiped his fingers on a linen towel and turned towards the dais.

"All honour to the Emperor, favoured of the G.o.ds-" he declaimed. "The Shining Ones have spoken.

The winter that is coming will be a mild one. If you take the field, you will have victory over your enemies."

I only realized how tense the crowd had been when I heard the murmur of comment. Several strong men were dragging the bull away to be cooked for the feast. The maidens came forwards, lifting their arms to the heavens and began to sing.

"Hail, Thou resplendent and sovereign sun, Adore we Thy glory, oh Thou holy one!

So help us and heal us, until as above, Below, all is beauty and all know Thy love..."

I felt the tears start in my eyes as the pure sweet voices intertwined, remembering how I used to sing with the other maidens on Avalon. It had been a long time since I had called upon the G.o.ddess, but the singing awakened in me a longing I had almost forgotten. The chant was for Apollo, or whatever name they used for the sun-G.o.d in the Danuvian lands. It was the custom for each emperor to exalt the deity who was his patron, but it was said that Aurelian wished to go further, and proclaim the sun to be the visible emblem of a single, all-powerful being who was the highest G.o.d of all.

At Avalon also I had encountered such an idea, though it was the Great G.o.ddess whom we saw as Mother of everything. But I had been taught also that any honest impulse of worship will find the Source behind all images, no matter what name is called, and so I set my hands upon my belly and closed my eyes and sent forth a plea that I might carry this child the full term and bear it healthy and alive.

"Come, Lady Helena," said Vitellia. "The ceremony is over, and you won't want to keep your lord waiting. They say that Constantius is a man with a future. You must make a good impression at the celebration."

I had hoped that Vitellia and I might be seated near each other at the banquet, but Constantius escorted me to a couch just below the dais, while she and her husband remained near the back of the room. She had been correct, I thought as I stretched out and spread my skirts modestly over my ankles and watched him speaking with the Emperor. The fact that my husband had won Aurelian's favour was becoming clear. I tried to ignore the murmur of speculation from the women nearby. Constantius would not have brought me here without the blessing of Aurelian, and what the Emperor approved, no gossiping woman, however exalted her status, might deny.

On the next couch lay one of the largest men I had ever seen. Obviously he was a German, from his flaxen hair to his cross-gartered breeches, with muscular arms showing beneath the short-sleeved tunic.

But around his neck was a golden torque, and the bands on his upper arms and wrists were also gold.

"You are Lady Helena, yes?" he asked. I flushed, realizing he had caught me watching him, but he did not seem to mind. With such a physique, I thought then, he must be accustomed to attracting attention.

"Constantius says much about you." His accent was guttural, but he spoke good enough Latin, by which I concluded that he had served with the legions for some time.

"You were on the campaign?"

"In the desert-" he grimaced, holding out one brawny arm, where the fair skin had been baked nearly to the colour of brick by the sun.

I nodded in understanding. I had learned quickly that it was not modesty but necessity that impelled women to go veiled when they walked outside in this land.

"I am a leader of auxiliaries-of Alamanni spears. You Romans cannot p.r.o.nounce my name." He grinned. "So Crocus I am called. Your man saved my life at Ancyra, more than his duty. I give him my oath, I and my kin."

I nodded, understanding him as, perhaps, a Roman woman could not, and understanding as well that this loyalty extended to Constantius's family.

"Thank you. My father was a prince among the British tribes, and I know what this means to you. I accept your service-" I set my hand upon my belly, "for myself and my child."

Crocus bent his head with even greater reverence than before. "I see that it is true, what he says about you." He paused as I lifted an eyebrow, and then continued. "Among my people we know that women are holy, so when he says you are like a G.o.ddess, I know it is true."

That Constantius should think so did not surprise me, but such talk was for the privacy of the bedchamber. I could not help but wonder in what extremity of danger he and this man had found themselves, for him to have revealed his inner mind so far. But I had realized already that there were things that a soldier did not speak of at home, things that Constantius strove to forget when he lay in my arms, and I would probably never know.

"To you and your child," he repeated my words, "I pledge my troth, to protect and defend against all foes."

The babble of conversation had receded, leaving the two of us in a great silence. I bowed my head, my eyes blurring with tears. It seemed a long time since I had used the senses by which the spirit sees truly, but even though there was no altar here, and neither priest nor sacrifice, I knew that the oath that Crocus had just sworn had been witnessed by the G.o.ds.

"I see that the two of you have met." Constantius spoke beside me and I looked up, blinking the tears away.

"Crocus tells me that you saved his life," I said quickly, lest he misunderstand my emotion, and moving over so that he could recline on the couch at my side.

"Did he tell you that he saved mine as well?" His smile to Crocus was a warning not to frighten the womenfolk with soldiers' tales.

"She does not need to be told."

Constantius's eyebrows twitched, but he thought better of enquiring further. He leaned on one elbow and waved towards the dais.

"Aurelian is honouring all the heroes of the campaign-he has Maximian up there with him, I see."

I followed his gesture and saw a thick-set man with a shock of greying brown hair, as formidable as a bull. He looked like a farmer, as indeed, his parents had been, but he had a gift for war.

"And there is Docles beside him," Constantius went on. Next to Maximian sat a big man with thinning reddish hair above a broad brow. Lines of rigid control marked his features despite, or perhaps because of, the colour of his hair.

"Now there's a man to watch. His father was only a herdsman in Dalmatia, unless some G.o.d begot him.

He seems to have been born with a genius for fighting, anyhow, and he is a good administrator as well, which is even more valuable in a general."

"And more rare?" I asked. But just then the slaves began to serve us the first course of the banquet, and he forbore to reply.

Constantius had been posted to the Cohors Prima Aurelia Dardanorum, who were garrisoned near the junction of the Navissus and the Margus. I had hoped that this meant he would be commuting between the fort and the house he had rented for me in Naissus, but at the beginning of November, the Dardanians were ordered to a.s.sist in the pursuit of the retreating Goths, and Constantius, his baggage packed with woollens against the suddenly chilly weather, marched north and left me alone.

Only a thin line of hills protected Naissus from the winds that swept across the open Danuvian plain, winds born in the steppes of Scythia that had warmed only enough to pick up some moisture in their pa.s.sage across the Euxine Sea. Soon, I thought as I wrapped a shawl around my shoulders, there would be snow. Still, in this country they knew how to build for cold weather, and not only did the house have a hypocaust that kept warmth rising from the tiled floors, but in the large room Constantius had chosen for our bedchamber, there was an actual hearth. It was for that reason that Constantius had rented it, he had told me, so that the warmth of an open fire would remind me of home.

As my pregnancy progressed I spent much of my time in that chamber. It seemed unfair that Constantius, who had comforted me through the first three months, should have had to leave me just as the sickness was pa.s.sing and my belly began to round out as the child grew. I had pa.s.sed through the phase when women most often miscarried their children, and I now felt certain that I would carry this babe to term. Indeed, I had never felt better. When the weather permitted, I would walk with Drusilla to the market-place in the centre of town; Philip, who had become very protective, a half-step behind us and Hylas scampering ahead.

Good food and affection had transformed the little dog, who now stood nearly as high as my knee, with a silky black and white coat and a wildly-waving plume of tail. To Hylas, the market was a place of infinite possibility, full of fascinating smells and even more interesting and odoriferous objects. It was poor Philip's task to keep the dog from trying to drag them home. For the human members of the household the market was a source of gossip that kept us informed about the progress of the campaign.

The Goths they were fighting were the last survivors of the great incursion that had shaken the Empire two years before. But even in the days when Rome still claimed Dacia, its northern mountains had resisted the penetration of the legions. The Goths had melted into the wilderness like snow in summer.

But it was winter now, and a dwindling food supply would put them at a disadvantage before the well-fed legions.

Or at least we could hope so. To think of Constantius on the march, wet and hungry while I sat warm before my fire, chilled my soul. But there was nothing I could do to help him. Only my yearning spirit reached out across the leagues that separated us, as if by doing so I could bring him some comfort.

And more and more, as winter drew in, it seemed that I was indeed touching his spirit. I had tried to do this when Constantius was in Syria, without success. Was it because I now carried his child that the link had strengthened, or perhaps because my successful pregnancy had restored a confidence lost when I was exiled from Avalon?

I dared not question too closely. It was enough, in the long winter evenings, to sit before the hearthfire, humming softly as I combed out my hair, and allow a vision of Constantius to take shape among the glowing coals.

On one such evening, just before the solstice when soldiers celebrate the birth of Mithras, I found the visions I saw in the coals taking on an unusual clarity. A chunk of charring firewood was transformed into a mountainside, and below it, on an outcrop, glowing sticks became the square palisade of a Roman marching camp with neat rows of tents laid out inside. Smiling, I indulged the fancy. Constantius might be settling down for the night in just such a camp even now. I leaned forwards, willing myself to see the tent in which he lay- -and suddenly I was there in the camp, staring at falling tents and running men lit by the flames of the burning palisade as the Goths burst in. Spearpoints flickered like exploding sparks as the Romans rallied, swords darting in and out in tongues of flame. Frantic, I searched for Constantius, and found him standing back-to-back with Crocus. He was defending himself with a legionary'spilum , while the big German fought with a longer German spear, and their valour had swept a circle of safety around them.

But even together they could not defeat the entire Gothic army, and the rest of the Romans were getting the worst of it. There were so many! Now another contingent drove towards Constantius. Instinctively I leapt forwards with an inarticulate cry. I do not know what the Goths saw, but they recoiled.