Risa, page 23
Risa found her mouth had gone dry. Her heart pounded so that she could feel its pulse in her throat. But she nodded. This once, no matter what happened next, this once, she would hear him say what she longed to hear.
“Then let me speak of love, Risa. If I were granted a poet’s tongue I would fashion you a song that would last down the ages and sear the souls of all who heard it. But as I am, I can only speak in the plainest words. I love you. I love your courage and your noble heart. I love your song and story. I love your face and form, and I shall never cease to love the whole of you as long as God may grant me life.”
Risa had no words to answer him. What words could there be? There was no verse, no vow that could be enough for what she felt. Instead, she kissed him. He was startled for a heartbeat, and then returned the kiss, with passion, with longing, with deepest love.
This then was what the poets sang of. This was how one knew. One knew because the whole soul sang of it, because even the broken heart rejoiced.
Both an instant and an age passed before they parted. Risa found herself breathless and strangely light, as if she might fly up into the air at any moment. Gawain, however, seemed to become more solid, as if his declaration of love had given him roots much more than wings.
“Come, Risa,” he said, taking her hand. Even that simple gesture was filled with his warmth. “Let me get you safe away from here to where there are stout walls and strong friends around us.”
But there was one thing. One last thing before she began this journey afresh. “Gawain, do you think … will Queen Guinevere send for my mother if I ask it? She cannot stay in my father’s hall, not with …”
Gawain did not require that she finish. “I am sure that the queen will do so, as soon as she knows the full story. It may be that Merlin himself will ride out to fetch your mother for you.”
“Thank you.”
Gawain’s eyes sparkled as he bowed. Then, sweeping his short, Saxon cloak back with a flourish, he knelt on the road and cupped his hands for her step. Risa lifted her nose haughtily to her stepping-stool and permitted him to help her back onto her horse. He stood and bowed humbly, and when he dared to lift his eyes to her again, Risa could no longer keep her countenance and they laughed, long and loud and freely.
When at last their laughter spent itself, Gawain mounted his riding horse and turned the animal so it faced the way they must travel.
A thought came to Risa. “Your brother will not be pleased.”
But Gawain only smiled. “Agravain will not be pleased when God Almighty raises him from the dust on the last day. It is far more than mortal man can accomplish.”
They set themselves on the road to Camelot and side by side they rode away.
Euberacon walked the streets of Caer Ludien seeing the ruins of greatness on every side. The temple of Mithras crumbled in on itself, the roads buckled and potholed, even the bridge had begun to list. There were some great houses that still looked habitable, even well-appointed, but most had fallen down, leaving heaps of rubble to be overgrown by encroaching greensward, or shored up by mud and thatch hovels with wicker fences. Some efforts had been made to repair the wall, at least. Even a Saxon could see the need for defense.
The market was still there. It was a sea of mud, and the tiny warehouses looked as if they could barely hold enough cargo for one of their little corricles to carry. But, there were ships berthed at the broad river’s edge. Fat valley sheep milled about in their pens. Tall, blooded horses from Andalucía gazed about with scorn. Men sat at rickety tables, examining samples of metals or artisan work, hunched over their cups, speaking the universal language of barter.
He had heard that in the days of the Romans, this place had been bustling, its ports crammed with ships come for wool, enamel, tin, silver, lead and slaves. Arthur was working to restore the Britons’ trade, but so far the results had been meager indeed. The Saxon overlord who held this place was both arrogant and greedy. Arthur had flattered and traded, and bribed and bullied. Now at least, his people could walk here unmolested. Kerra’s man Harrik had sagely suggested that they start the reconquest here. There were many who regarded Caer Ludien’s overlord as a traitor, the “city” was in the lands the Saxons still held and some actual wealth could be garnered from it. It would be fairly easy to throw out the current overlord and to use the city’s treasure to pay men to fight other battles.
It had taken all Kerra’s powers of persuasion to put that idea from his mind and force him to strike much closer to Arthur’s throat. Euberacon had time, but not that much.
The air by the river was somewhat fresher than in the warren of the ruinous city streets, with fewer smoky fires and stinking animals wandering free. Little dark men had set up tables, or just stacked up crockery jugs to sell the black beer and fiery liquor the Saxons were learning to relish along with their native mead. They squatted in the mud or on chunks of broken stone, trading lies and drinks, growing more raucous and unsteady with each round. There would be fights before long, and the traders would have to look to their tents and their sheep.
In the middle of this display of barbarity was a small island of civility. A clean-shaven man with his black hair swept back from a high, intelligent forehead, wearing a simple but clean brown tunic and a dark blue cloak, surveyed the ruffians over the top of a clay liquor cup. He wore a short sword at his hip, and held himself as if he knew how to use it, but his real protection clearly came from the two square men who flanked him with their axes in their hands and their knives in their belts. If he watched the crowds warily, they watched them with avid interest, taking note of the movement of each man, his state of drunkenness, and how long he looked toward their master’s gilded cloak brooch. He conversed with another man who looked to be from Greece, or perhaps Crete. Both were sun-brown and clean, well-barbered and unafraid. Envy gnawed at Euberacon’s heart as he strode forward.
The man in the blue cloak saw the magus approach and touched his companion’s elbow, saying something softly. He set the liquor cup on the rickety table without any sign of having touched its contents and came forward, his hand outstretched.
“Magister,” he said as they clasped each other’s arms. “God! How do you bear it here? It’s no wonder the Romans fled this place.”
“I prefer life to death, Quintus,” Euberacon replied blandly. It felt good to speak his native tongue again. The patterns rolled comfortably off his tongue. “But come, give me the news.”
Quintus looked around him, but the only man who might possibly understand what they spoke of was over by the Andalucian horses, and already deep in conversation with their keeper. Even so, he moved them away from the liquor-sellers to stand by a fragment of brick wall that had somehow remained standing. His bodyguards followed, repositioning themselves to better keep up their watch. “The news is good. Justinian has ideas about tax collection that have upset many.”
Euberacon snorted. “That is to say he means to collect them.”
“The fog has not entirely dampened your mind,” said Quintus with a nod. “Yes, that’s it exactly and both the Greens and the Blues are making noises that something needs to be done about it.”
The idea of those two parties coming together would have been laughable, but an emperor who actually meant to enforce the tax laws … that might just drive those rivals together. “Have any of them a plan?”
“Not yet, but they do have a man, or a boy at any rate.”
“Who?”
“Hypatius. He’s a nephew of old Anastasius.”
Anastasius had been emperor when Euberacon’s father was a boy. He was one of those who was content with having enough in the treasury to fill the Hippodrome with chariot teams and exotic animal acts, and did not bother anyone for more than that. Just the sort the richest citizens of Constantinople would prefer to have wearing the purple. “Has he any strength of character about him?”
Quintus shrugged. “Not that I’ve seen, but that may be all to the good. Justinian has strength of character and to spare.” Quintus was a smuggler. Euberacon had in the past bought a number of jewels and poisons from the man that should not have been sold. If Justinian meant to enforce the tax laws, what else did he mean to enforce and who would he empower to do that enforcement? It was hideously expensive to bribe honest men.
“And Justinian’s woman?”
“You had best learn to call her Empress,” said Quintus, leaning against the broken wall. “They are to be married.”
No. Euberacon felt his spine straighten one joint at a time. “Impossible. The law forbids a patrician to marry an … actress.”
“Justinian is changing the law.”
Euberacon pressed his hand against the wall. The rough bricks scraped his palm. Theodora, the daughter of a whore and a dead bear-keeper. Theodora was to be empress? It could not be. It could not! If she wore the purple … if she was legitimized … he was trapped here in this place of mud and cold. He could never go home. He was lost.
“It will not happen,” he said through clenched teeth. “I will not permit it.”
“Magister,” said Quintus carefully. “You’ll need money to buy your way back in. You are a joke in the city now, the great magus chased out by Justinian’s whore.”
Euberacon ignored that. “Before two more winters have passed, I will have enough wealth even for Byzantium, and then we will make Justinian regret his choice of wives.”
Quintus’s face wrinkled as he looked over Euberacon’s shoulder, at the crumbling city. “I don’t want to doubt you, Magister, but … how are you going to find that much gold out here?”
Euberacon smiled. “Even the barbarians have their gilded idols. The one they call the High King, Arthur, has a treasury stuffed with wealth his father raided from the Romans as they fled.”
“You’re going to bring down a barbarian king to bring down an emperor to bring down a woman?” Quintus looked as if he did not know whether to be impressed, or appalled.
Euberacon only smiled. “You will tell the ones who should know that men and treasure will be coming to their aid?”
Now Quintus just looked skeptical, but he shrugged again. He knew Euberacon well enough to know he did not make promises he could not keep. “They will be glad to hear it.”
They spoke of politics awhile longer, of who was heading up the Blues and who the Greens, and of who had decided to throw their lot in with Justinian, and what shape those shifting loyalties were taking, of who was yet living and who had suddenly died. The men of this island thought themselves fierce because they would kill each other over a handful of cows? They knew nothing. In Constantinople, a man could be murdered for training animals too well, or for keeping the horses for the wrong chariot team and no one would think of it twice, as long as the proper bribes had been paid.
Almost no one.
It took awhile, but at last, Quintus’s store of news and gossip was emptied. Regretfully, Euberacon held out his hand again. “I must bid you farewell, Quintus. I have business to attend to here, and then I must go see that an item I have need of has been acquired.”
They clasped arms again. Whatever Quintus was thinking of Euberacon’s chances of success here, he kept it to himself. It didn’t matter, as long as he told those who needed to know that Euberacon would return, as long as he came back next year to bring the news and to remind Euberacon of the world beyond these shores.
The world to which I will soon return, Euberacon told himself as he walked away from the trader and the river, heading back into Caer Ludien’s smoke and shadows. Where I will take my rightful place, and make Theodora wish she had kept hers.
Euberacon had been meant for a clerk. His father had paid a decent bribe to get him apprenticed to a secretary in the Imperial warehouses. It was a good enough position from which he could rise to a reasonable level of prominence, but not so close to the imperial palace that he would have to be made a eunuch to gain an appointment, nor that politics would get in his way, if he were quiet and kept his head down.
That was his father’s ideal. Work hard, take what you were given. Stay quiet and uninvolved, and you could live a good life. He had no ambition, no courage, no ability to understand why his son might be plagued with such discontent.
But Euberacon saw a world around him that made no sense, a world of wealth he could never have, of secrets and powers he would never know. So much that was forever shut off, so much that was shifted without warning and yet could not be made to shift by the likes of him. Why? Be content and trust in God, his father said. But how could one trust in a God that was so far away, and who tormented even his chosen people?
He might have learned contentment eventually. He might have become the private secretary for some prominent citizen and found his place in intrigues enough to believe he was actually shaping the world around him in some fundamental way. Instead, however, his master, Lucius, decided to give Euberacon access to his library. Lucius, and his father, and his grandfather, it seemed, had all drilled their apprentices by having them make copies of books and public documents, and then keeping those copies for themselves. Euberacon had never seen so many books in one man’s hands before. He spent all of his free time in that bright room with its high windows. He pestered Lucius to teach him Greek and Arabic as well as Latin so he could decipher some of the older texts.
It was in that room, late one night, by the yellow light of an oil lamp, that he found the book on necromancy.
At first he thought he was reading some fable, but it quickly became clear they were recipes—for love, for divination, for finding what was lost, for guarding, for poison. It explained the nature of several of the various demons and of angels, and when they might be summoned, and what they might be called on to do. It explained that any man, be he pure of body and of learning and intelligence, could have this mastery over the invisible.
Such promises were made in the market every day. This unguent would bring beauty. That amulet wealth. Euberacon shut the volume and returned it to its place, but he came back to it time and again, reading over the mysteries, wondering if he had been wrong. What if God was not distant after all? What if the divine and the ethereal were close beside him?
“Could it really be reached out and touched so simply?”
“Not so simply.”
Master Lucius stood in the library doorway. Euberacon made some feeble attempt to hide the book, but soon realized it was pointless. His master already knew what it was he read, and what was more, he was pleased.
“Much of what that book says is pure foolishness.” Lucius was a tall man, and he crossed the library in three strides, lifting the slim, red book out of Euberacon hands. “But there is enough of truth in it to begin with.” He smiled and ran his hand across the leather binding. “You have the talent, Euberacon. I saw it in you. You can learn the High Arts, if you want.”
Euberacon did not hesitate for so much as a heartbeat. “Yes, master. I do.”
That night, Euberacon had dared the curfew and crept out to the city walls. He had sat on the warm stones beneath the sky’s million stars and he’d thought about what the book said, about the angels and how each ruled a day and an hour, about the devils and their ranks and orders. It seemed to him that all that was solid had become soft, like clay, and that it could be molded and worked, and if one could speak to the hands that molded it, if one could tell them what to do … then anything was possible. Even for a clerk with a mouse for a father.
It was no wonder the Father Church forbade such studies. It was a dangerous route he undertook. The Church disapproved, and while they were willing to tolerate a number of heresies in Constantinople, this they were not. If he were caught in its practice, he would die, publicly and painfully. The Church, hand in hand with the imperial powers, traded on the ignorance of the people and would not have any they did not sanction looking into matters beyond the base. Master Lucius assured him that if he went into the Church, it would be one way he could continue study in safety. But Euberacon did not mean to cloak his studies in a cleric’s robe. He would take the other route.
In Constantinople, wealth bought power. Power, in turn, brought safety and safety brought peace. With enough wealth, he could buy the peace he needed to practice the highest arts. He could study without fear, and he could understand all the greatest secrets, of angels or of devils, of the workings of the universe and how they could be made to turn or not, as he chose.
A few of the smallest miracles, and men began to come to him. A chariot race won unexpectedly. A successful prediction, a caught spy, a dead thief. They came with documents to be copied, or to have letters written, and they left with cures and charms, potions and prophecy, and Euberacon’s house grew rich with books and fat with secrets. He was able to purchase the dragon’s blood and gems, and even poisons needed for the most subtle and complex of summoning. He was able to bribe the proper officials to keep their eyes averted.
Then, a fat and sweaty man calling himself Octavius had come to Euberacon, sodden with drink. He wanted a girl. A girl he had seen that day in the Hippodrome. He would pay to have her, but it could not be done the ordinary way. Her father had worked with the animals, been a bear-keeper or some such. He might still have friends. But Octavius would pay for a love potion so the girl would come to him willingly.
Euberacon had sent him away, staggering even more badly than when he had come, but the fool had returned. He would have this girl. He would pay for her to come to him willingly.
By this time, Euberacon had heard something of the story. Apparently, it had been a small and sordid drama. A woman, the wife of the Green Team’s bear trainer, had stood up in the Hippodrome, before the emperor and all the public, with her two daughters beside her and exhorted, cried, shamed and begged for the pension owing her so that she and those same two daughters would not starve.
“Why not buy the one you want from her, if she’s short of money?” Euberacon had asked.
“No, no,” the fat fool had insisted. “She must come to me. She must be willing. She must love me.”
