Destiny's Children - Coalescent. Part 22

He studied her seriously, his dark eyes grave. "I do understand, you know," he said gently. "I am no illiterate savage. I want what you want. Order, prosperity, peace. But I accept the times as they are; I accept what I must do to achieve those ends. I have told you my dreams, and my ambitions. Now tell me what you are thinking, Regina-tell me what you think ofme ."

She considered carefully. If anybody could restore order in this confused, collapsed landscape it was surely Artorius-a man full of dreams, but a man with the power and realism, it seemed, to make those dreams come true. For a moment, there on the busy plateau, it seemed to her that in this man, this Artorius, she had found a rock on which she might at last build a safe future for herself and her family- that there might come a time when she could rest.

"I am-hopeful." And so she was, tentatively.

He seemed moved; apparently her good opinion really was of value to him. He grabbed her hand; his palm was dry and warm. "Work with me, Regina. I need your strength."

But then there was a cry from the bottom of the slope, where the men had been digging out the clogged- up defense ditches. "Riothamus!You might want to see this, sir . . ."

Artorius clambered quickly down the zigzag path to the base of the ditch.

The men had found a jumble of bones. Many were broken, some charred. The men picked through this unwelcome trove carefully. There were many skulls-surely more than a hundred.

When Artorius clambered out, his face had a hardness she had not seen before. In one hand he cradled the skull of a child, in the other a handful of coins, just slivers of metal, stuck together from their immersion in the soil. "You see, Regina-from the bones it's hard to tell men from women, young from old. But you can always tell if it's a child. And at least this one did not suffer in the fire. See the crater in the back of the skull-inflicted by a legionary's sword hilt, perhaps . . ."

"The fire?"

"There was some kind of building down there." He pointed. "We've found the stumps of posts. The people were gathered up and crammed inside, and then it was torched."

"Who would do such a thing?"

"Who do you imagine?" He held out his handful of coins. One of them bore the name of the Emperor Nero. "Was it not during the reign of Nero that Boudicca led her rebellion against Roman rule? It seems that reprisals were fierce." He hefted the child's skull. "This little warrior must truly have terrified the mighty Roman army."

"Artorius-"

"Enough." Holding the skull, he walked back down the hill and began issuing commands.

For the rest of that day and most of the next, a large proportion of Artorius's scarce resource was devoted to digging out a new ma.s.s grave and transporting the broken and burned bones to it. The burial was done in the style of the Celtae. Three pigs were slaughtered and their carca.s.ses thrown on the bones, to provide sustenance for the journey to the Otherworld. For each skull a beaker or cup was placed in the grave, so that the dead could drink from the great cauldrons in the Otherworld's banqueting halls.

As the grave was filled in, Artorius's iron-making genius Myrddin led prayers. He was a small, wild- eyed man with a ma.s.s of gray-black beard, and his arms were covered with puckered smelting scars. His voice was thin, his western accent heavy: "Death comes at last and lays cold hands upon me . . ."

For the rest of that year the fields around the dunon were to be prepared for sowing the following spring, and provisions like dried and salted meat were laid up for the winter.

Life continued to be harsh, with hard labor for all but the very smallest children. But Artorius had insisted they make time for such measures as the digging of proper latrines as one of the first priorities- and so they were spared the plague of fever that swept the countryside in late summer. And long before the season turned it was clear to all that they had ama.s.sed enough food to see them through the winter, even if some of it had been taken by force by Artorius's soldiers. Regina could not deny the energy Artorius brought to his task, the great sense of loyalty and industry he instilled in others-including herself, she admitted-nor the great strides the new community had made by the autumn.

But Artorius was changing.

Artorius announced that from henceforth they would follow the old calendar of the Celtae, rather than that of the Romans. This was marked out by four main feasts: Imbolc at the end of the winter, when the ewes lactated for their lambs; Beltane in early summer, when the cattle would be driven between purifying fires to open grazing; Lughnasa at the start of harvesting; and Samhain in early autumn-the start of the new year for the Celtae, a time when the old gave way to the new, and the world could be overrun by the forces of magic. The next full year, beginning that Samhain, would be the first in which Artorius's new kingdom would begin to find its feet, and Artorius announced that the Samhain would be marked by a mighty feast.

Regina listened to all this with some disquiet. But she kept her counsel.

Similarly she said nothing when Artorius began to abandon his old, much-repaired Roman armor and dress for a more traditional costume. He wore brightly coloredbraccae and cloaks, and when the weather turned colder abirrus , the hooded cloak that had always been a.s.sociated with Britain. The effect was completed when he began to wear a handsome golden torc around his neck, looted by one of his officers from a Saxon raiding party. Though Regina spent much time in his company discussing practical matters, she never heard him refer back to his talk of starting a mint, or styling himself a magistrate.

Later, when Regina thought back, it seemed to her that the incident of the ma.s.s grave had been a turning point for Artorius: after that something hard and cold and old emerged in him, slowly becoming dominant. Or perhaps it was just the ambience of the ancient place they had come to reinhabit, their return to this old place of earth and blood, as if the age of the Roman peace had been nothing but a glittering dream.

Certainly, after that day, there had been no more talk of turning his country over to the emperors.

But none of it mattered, she told herself, so long as she and Brica were safe. The family: that was her only priority. Every night, as she lay down to sleep in the corner of the hilltop roundhouse she shared with Brica and several other senior women, she stared at hermatres , carefully preserved across all these years, the three worn little statues perhaps older than this piled-up fortress itself, and said a kind of prayer to them-not to preserve her life, for she knew that was her own responsibility-but to grant her guidance.

On the evening of the Samhain, it felt like autumn for the first time, Regina thought. There was a hint of frost in the air, and her head was filled with the smoky scent of dying leaves. As she prepared to enter Artorius's hall, she lingered in the open, oddly regretful to leave the last of the daylight behind-the last of another summer, now her forty-first. But it was Artorius's feast, and she had no time for such reflections. With a sigh she entered his great hall.

The hall was already crowded, the torches of hay and sheep fat burned brightly on the walls, and she was bombarded by heat and light, smoke and noise.

Though even now there was much work to be done on it, she had to admit the hall's magnificence. The centerpiece was a hearth, a great circle of scavenged Roman stone, on which a huge fire was blazing.

The fire cast light and heat around the hall's single vast room, and filled the noisy air with smoke. From an iron tripod twice the height of a man, a cauldron had been suspended, and she could smell the rich scents of stew-pork and mutton flavored with wild garlic, from the smell of it.

Already Artorius's men were lining up to take their share of the meat. Artorius himself served it up, yanking joints out of the simmering broth with iron hooks. There was a constant jockeying for position among the subordinates, and there was nothing subtle about the way Artorius fished for the best cuts of meat to reward his favorites. He fumbled one serving, dropping the meat on the floor, and two of his soldiers began to fight over the honor of whom it had been intended for. The others didn't try to separate them, but gathered around and roared them on.

Old Carausias was beside Regina.

She said, "What a display-grown men, squabbling over bits of meat."

He shook his head. "But with such contests his lieutenants are working out their status-who is closer to the sun."

"How savage."

Carausias shrugged. "It's a shame your grandfather isn't here. I'm sure the legionaries in their barracks behaved much the same way. Anyway it's their night, not ours."

When the soldiers had had their share of the food, the other men and the women were allowed to approach the cauldron. Regina herself took only a little of the broth, and drank sparingly of her cup of wheat beer.

When Artorius took his place on the floor at the center of a circle of his men, the storytelling began. One soldier after another got to his feet, generally unsteadily, to boast how he-or perhaps a dead comrade- had bested two or three or five savage Saxons, each taller than a normal human being and equipped with three swords apiece. They all drank steadily, at first from a communal cup carried by a servant who moved to the right around the circle, and then, as the evening got rowdier, from their own vessels. It had been a heroic labor for the little community to produce the vast vats of wheat beer that would be consumed this night.

Then the iron maker Myrddin got to his feet and began a long and complex tale about giants who lived in magical islands across the ocean, far to the west of Britain:"There are thrice fifty distant isles / In the ocean to the west of us / Larger than Ireland twice / Is each of them, or thrice . . ."

"All true, all true," murmured Carausias. He belched, and Regina realized that he was getting as drunk as any of Artorius's soldiers.

As the beer continued to flow, the talk and horseplay became more raucous, and some of the soldiers and younger men started mock-fighting and wrestling. Regina sat stoically in her corner beside a dozing Carausias, wondering how much of this she could endure.

There was a touch on her shoulder. Startled, she looked up.

Artorius was beside her. She could smell the beer on his breath, but unlike his men he was not drunk.

"You are quiet," he said.

"You should go back to your men."

He smiled, glancing back. "I don't think they need me anymore tonight. But you . . . I know what you are thinking."

"You do?"

"You are remembering your mother. The parties she gave, in the villa. The glittering folk who would come, the expensive preparations she would make. You've told me as much. And now you must put up withthis ."

"I don't mean to judge."

He shook his head. "We are all prisoners of our past. But the present is all we have. Those men wrestling over their beer are as rough as sand-but they will give their lives for me, and for you. We must make the best of the times we live in, what we have, the people around us."

"You're wise."

He laughed. "No. Just a survivor, like you." He took her hand with an odd gentleness. "Listen to me," he said intensely. "That old fool Myrddin is full of legends . . . He says I must become Dagda for these people."

"Dagda?"

"The Good G.o.d-but the most humble of G.o.ds.All that you promise to do, I will do myself alone . . .

But Dagda needs a Morrigan, his great queen. And at Samhain," he whispered, "the time of reconciliation, the G.o.d of the tribe and the G.o.ddess of the earth come together, so that the opposing forces, of life and death, dark and light, good and evil, are balanced once more."

"What are you suggesting, Artorius? . . . We fight, you and I. We are in constant conflict."

"But life itself results from the interplay of opposing forces. That's the point."

"You foolish man. I am old, and no G.o.ddess. Find yourself a younger woman."

"But none of them has your strength-not even your daughter, beautiful though she is.You, you are my Morrigan, my Regina, my queen." He cupped her cheek and leaned close to her, his breath flavored with the meat and the beer, his eyes bright.

She looked into her heart. There was no affection there, not even l.u.s.t. There was only calculation:If I do this, will it increase my chances of keeping Brica alive another day? Only calculation-but that was enough.

She stood, and let him lead her out of the hall. She looked back once to see Carausias's eyes on her, rheumy, but a mirror of her own coldness.

Chapter 19.

The elevator, having risen up through the nested levels of the Crypt, delivered Lucia and Rosa Poole to a small front office. Rosa nodded to the staff. They walked out to the street, emerging into thin November sunlight. They both squinted at the brightness. Rosa donned small fashionable-looking sungla.s.ses, while Lucia pulled on her heavy blue-tinted spectacles, of the kind issued to every member of the Order.

This was a modern district of residences, shops, and businesses, just off the Via Cristoforo Colombo, a broad, traffic-heavy avenue that snaked south from the center of Rome, running roughly parallel to the ancient Appian Way. Rosa led Lucia to a small taxi rank; they had to wait a couple of minutes for a cab to arrive. The air was clear, crisp, not very cold.

Lucia wasn't sure where Rosa was taking her. The older woman had barely spoken two sentences to her since calling for her in thescrinium . But there was no escape, any more than from her periods.

Lucia suppressed a sigh. She had forgiven Pina for what had felt like another betrayal. Pina had only done what would have had to be done eventually; in her way she had tried her best to help. Lucia just had to endure whatever was to come.

The cab took them north toward the city center. They pa.s.sed a breach in the ma.s.sive, ugly old Aurelian Wall and headed northeast, driving through the areas dominated by the old imperial ruins, to the Piazza Venezia.

The Venezia was the heart of the Roman traffic system. It was just a broad field of tarmac sprawling before theVittoriano , the grandiose Vittorio Emanuele monument erected to celebrate Italy's national unity, a mound of pillars and marble that loomed over the skyline, even dominating the imperial relics.

The Venezia was crowded with traffic that seemed to be flying in every direction, and Lucia quailed when the cabdriver launched his vehicle into the mob, horn honking briskly. Gradually, as cars edged this way and that, n.o.body apparently giving way to anybody else, a route forward opened up, bit by bit, and the driver made his way to the exit he wanted, for the west-running Via del Plebiscito.

To Lucia's surprise, Rosa took her hand in her own. Rosa smiled, her eyes hidden. "Listen, I know how you feel. I know how difficult this is for you."

Sitting in the cab, apparently unperturbed by its jolts as it lurched forward through the traffic, Rosa was elegant, cool, and her narrow face with its strong nose seemed kind, though Lucia could not make out her eyes. She was tall, taller than Lucia, certainly taller and more slender than most Order members, who tended to be short and somewhat squat. But then, as everybody knew, Rosa was one of the few at the heart of the Order who hadn't been born in the Crypt. Though she had come to the Order as a child, her fluent Italian still bore traces of England, short vowels and harsh consonants.

"At school we come up here every week," Lucia said. "To the city, I mean. Even so I can never get used to it."

"What, exactly? The crowds, the noise-the light?"

"Not that," Lucia said, thinking. "Thechaos . Everybody going every which way, all the time."

Rosa nodded. "Yes. You know that I'm something of an outsider. Well, I always will be, and it's not to be helped. But it does give me a certain perspective. There are some things about the Crypt that we all take for granted, and we notice only when they are taken away. In the Crypt everything is orderly, calm, and everybody knows what she is doing, where she is going. Even the temperature is controlled, the air clean and fresh. But out here it's quite the opposite. Out here is anarchy, everything out of control. And now you, Lucia, feel that even your own body is out of your control. And you fear-"

"I fear I don't belong anymore," Lucia blurted.

The driver had a broad head, all but hairless, with a band of greasy pores above his collar. He looked about fifty. At her slightly raised voice, he turned, glancing in his mirror. His speculative gaze was heavy on her; she looked away.

Rosa said, "You won't be turned out-out into this messy chaos-if that's what you fear. In fact, quite the opposite. You're more likely to be drawn into the center."

"The center?"

"You'll see. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Lucia. The Order needs you." Rosa smiled. "It's just that you may be needed for something other than record keeping or calligraphy . . . Ah. Here we are."

Lucia was, of course, full of questions. But the cab was drawing to a halt, and there was no time to ask.

She got out of the cab to find herself in the Piazza di Rotonda. The square was thronged with tourists bustling between ice cream stalls and cafes. She stood before the blocky walls of a great building that loomed over them like a fortress-and indeed, said Rosa, it had been used as a fortress in the Middle Ages, as had been most of Rome's ancient buildings; the brick walls were, after all, six yards thick. This was the Pantheon.

Rosa pointed to a ditch around the walls. "See that? The road level is higher than the base of the building. Since this place was built the rubble and dirt has risen like a tide . . . Come." She took Lucia's hand.

They walked under the great colonnaded portico at the front of the building. Though the height of the tourist season had been the summer, the s.p.a.ce among the great gray columns was crowded by people, many in shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps and with tiny cameras in their hands. In the Crypt everybody was trim, neat, and would get out of each other's way without having to be shoved. Not here. The people all seemed grossly overfed and clumsy to Lucia. It was like being in a herd of cattle-slow-moving and aggressive cattle at that.

And then there were the boys, and even some of the men, who looked at her, stared in fact, with a calculating intensity, a greed that made her shudder.

But there was one boy whose gaze seemed clearer. He looked perhaps eighteen, with a pale face, high forehead, and red hair in which sungla.s.ses nestled. He stared, too-he seemed fascinated by her-but there was an innocence in his gaze. He actually smiled at her. She flushed and looked away.

Rosa didn't seem troubled by the tourists. She was stroking the cool marble of one of the columns. "My father is an accountant, but he did a lot of work with the building trade," Rosa said. "I know what he would say if he was here." She switched to English."Imagine shifting one of these b.u.g.g.e.rs."

"You were only small when you came here, to the Crypt."

"Yes. But I still remember him. I remember his hands." She spread her own fingers. "Big, scarred hands, great slabs of muscle, like a farmer's hands. He always had strong hands, even though most of his life was spent behind a desk."

Lucia didn't know what to say, how to join in a conversation about fathers. Lucia had seen her own father only once or twice. He was acontadino who did occasional work in the Crypt. He was a slightly overweight man, characterless, given to smiling a little weakly. She'd never even spoken to him. To Lucia, even to think about your father seemed unnatural.

"Do you miss your father?"

Rosa smiled, her eyes hidden. "No, I don't miss him. I lost him, or he lost me, too long ago for that."

She touched Lucia's shoulder. "And anyhow, the Order is my family now. Isn't that true?"

Lucia was uncertain how to respond. "Of course." That didn't need saying. It shouldn'tbe said.

"Come on. Let's go inside."

Lucia looked back once. The redheaded boy had gone.

The Pantheon enclosed a broad, airy volume. There was an altar, the walls were decorated with paintings and holy figures, and the floor was a cool sheet of marble across which tourists wandered.

But it was the roof that drew Lucia's gaze. It was a dome, decorated with a cool geometric design, quite unlike the clutter on the walls. The structure seemed to float above her. The only illumination in this immense s.p.a.ce came from a hole in the domed ceiling, the oculus. The light it cast showed as a broad beam in the dusty air, and splashed a distorted circle on one wall.