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Chapter 26 - Love and War

"Are you ill, Master Polybius? I can come back tomorrow."

"No, no, child. Come in. It's merely this weather. The consul and I were discussing politics. You may find it interesting."

"Politics?" she asked as she found a seat—the only place was on the bench next to Calvinus. She hoped he would not assume anything from that. If there had been another stool like Polybius's . . .

"Everything Roman is political," the historian said. "For example, this expedition has its real roots not in Massilia's plea for aid, but in Roma's ongoing dispute over land reform. The consul and I have been on opposite sides of the issue until recently. Are you familiar with the names Gracchus and Flaccus?"

"Of course. The two Gracchi brothers, Tiberius and Gaius, wanted to divide the land captured in the Punic wars among the Roman poor. Fulvius Flaccus, last year's consul, sided with them not out of idealism but because even poor landowners incurred the obligation to serve in the legions, if called—and Flaccus was a military man."

"Ah—you really do know. And my good friend Scipio—where did he fit in?"

"He opposed them. The lands in question, though still in the public trust, were actually in the hands of the socii, Roma's Latin and Italian allies. Scipio Aemilianus's loyalties lay with those men, many of whom had fought with him against the Carthaginians."

"And I agreed with him," said Polybius. "Land for the poor—and troops for the legions—are good causes, but not at the cost of betraying one's allies. Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus came up with a fresh alternative: our agreement with Massilia calls for us to have use only of a stretch of land across coastal Gaul, for a road—but Massilia has no claim upon the hinterlands. If, in the course of supporting our Greek allies here, we acquire more land—vast tracts of it, especially in the fertile Rhodanus valley . . ."

"You'll divide that land—the Gauls' land—among the Roman poor, and call it Provincia Transalpina—the province beyond the Alps. And Tiberius Gracchus will be its first governor."

Both men looked at her strangely. "That's . . . that would be quite difficult," said Polybius. "Unless, of course, this province you prophesy is to be governed by . . . a fantôme."

"What do you mean?" A chill ran up Pierrette's ribs.

"Tiberius Gracchus was murdered by angry senators five years ago, when he tried for a third consecutive term as Tribune, which was against tradition, and perhaps the law."

"Murdered? But no, he was . . . is . . ." He might have been governor of Gaul, she realized, had history not been changed. Was his death a result of the change—or was it perhaps the cause? It would have taken so very little effort for a malignant god to tip the scale slightly with such great effect: one angry senator or senator's loyal client in that crowd, to delay Tiberius Gracchus's escape for a few seconds, and thus forever, when the clubs began to strike him.

"We have a problem, don't we?" mused Calvinus. "If indeed you have seen a future time, it is not our future, because the elder Gracchus is dead, and will not govern Gaul—if indeed there is to be a Roman Gaul. Your prophecies are tainted. How can we know anything will be as you say?"

"With or without Tiberius Gracchus, if there is no province, there will be no defense against the Teutons, a Germanic tribe, when they invade. You must take Entremont, or all will be as I have foreseen." Was Gracchus's death indeed only a temporary ripple in time's current? If the Salyen Gauls, the Salluvii, were defeated here, would some other Roman step up to fill the void Gracchus's murder had left, or was it already too late? Had history already been changed too much, the stream diverted into a new channel, and Roma doomed?

Polybius stood up, swaying slightly. "I must be sicker than I thought," he said, weakly. "I am going to lie down." Calvinus took his arm, and led him to his bed, like a dutiful son. He pulled a curtain across the room, then returned to his seat—ignoring the stool Polybius had vacated.

"You care for him, don't you?" Pierrette asked.

"I have a certain affection for him—and he served my predecessor, Scipio, well. His advice is not to be taken lightly." The consul placed his hand on Pierrette's knee. "And I have taken his advice. I am making preparations to storm the oppidum even if no reinforcements arrive."

The brazier's embers gave Calvinus's face a warm glow and enhanced lines of character and harsh weathering as a Gallic sculptor of bronze ornaments incised a casting into sharp relief. He was handsome, well-built, and surely not many days past his fortieth year. So why did she feel so . . . so wrong about being alone with him? And why did the sense of wrongness increase as he moved closer, and put his arm around her?

"I've given my word," he murmured. "The tribunes assure me the troops are ready, their weapons honed. Tomorrow, many of them will die." The implication was clear to Pierrette: "They will die for you" was what he meant. And now the consul expected . . . "Now what of your word?"

She placed her small hand over the large one resting on her knee. "I hear thunder," she said, "and I saw Taran's dark clouds in the west, at dusk, but it is not raining."

"The storm will come," he replied, his strong fingers kneading the inside of her thighs, causing not-entirely-unwelcome tingles that spread outward in waves. "Listen—I hear raindrops on the roof tiles." Even nature, she decided, was conspiring against her. She had certainly had nothing to do with the rain that now dripped over the eaves outside of the single window.

If this was wrong, why did she so enjoy his hand's pressure, and so anticipate his next advance, as inexorable as the march of hastati, principes, and triarii in their precise maniples, standard bearers and centurions at the fore, pili at the ready? "I can't give you what you want," she whispered desperately, turning her face from his kiss. "Not until the battle is won, and the citadel taken. My . . . my skills . . . might yet be needed, and I dare not throw them away."

"Kiss me. Give me a taste of your promise, as I've given you mine."

A taste? Her whole body was responding to his nearness. Did she dare toy with him further? This man was no simple hunter, to shrug when, after long stalking, he threw his flint-tipped spear, and missed his prey. He was no Alkides, who laughed at his own arousal, and was satisfied with a compromise. This Roman would not declare a victory until her last bastion had fallen, and his troops swarmed through the streets and into the nemeton of her being. A small voice inside her cried out for something that was not there, some vital missing element that made this dalliance seem empty and wrong.

But the assault had begun, and there was no stopping it. As his tongue sought hers, his broad hand at the back of her neck prevented her retreat.

Her own hand sought beneath the bronze-weighted leather strips of his pteruges, beneath the linen kilt they covered, and she had no difficulty finding what she sought there. . . .

* * *

She untangled herself from Calvinus's arms, which lay heavy on her, all their rigor drained away. The last moans of the wounded had faded in the streets of her citadel, the last red-clad soldiers had retreated . . . and the nemeton, her virginity, still stood, untaken.

The lamp guttered low, barely bright enough for her to pour water and wine into her cup, to wash away the taste of the invader as rain washed blood from the streets and out the tiled drains beneath the city wall.

She felt his eyes on her as she drank. Despite his languor, she knew he had not gotten enough of her, and she regretted that her clothing lay heaped on the floor by his feet; the naked city walls had been stormed and beswarmed, but were ultimately unconquered. He would not long be content for them to remain so.

The sense of wrongness remained. Was it only that he had been satisfied, and she not? She had felt the spears of Teutatis, war god of the tribe, and had retreated before their goading, and there had been no victory for her, only an enemy withdrawn from the walls, but still camped undefeated on the fields below.

"When this is over, will you return to Roma with me?"

His words startled her, confused her. Had she made that much of an impression, with her tactical, defensive victory? Or did he mean something else? "You'll have prisoners enough to parade through Roma's streets—even Teutomalos himself in chains, at the head of your procession, wearing his golden helmet. What would the people of Roma care about me?"

"I do not mean for you to be my prisoner, but my wife."

Her head spun, as if he had hit her hard, and sent her sprawling. "Your wife? Me? A poor Ligure girl without an estate? Me—with only one name, and no noble ancestry? I am Pier . . . Petra. I am not Cleopatra to your Caesar."

Too late she remembered—Julius Caesar was not yet born, nor was his doomed Egyptian queen. But Calvinus did not question her about it. His mind was on other things. "I don't know who they are. Your estate will be Gallia Transalpina, from the Rhodanus to the Alps, and your name will be . . . will be . . ."

"See? You're stumbling. I'd never be accepted in Roma."

"I have a villa in Campania, with olive groves and orchards, and a lovely view of the sea. Marry me."

She reached for her skirt, deftly avoiding his reaching hands, and quickly covered herself. "Tomorrow you'll fight the Saluvii on the heights. At dusk tomorrow, ask me again."

He stood, and straightened his disarrayed garments. There would be no more skirmishes this night. And later? If the Romans prevailed, would her continuing virginity be of no further consequence? Would their victory be hers also—her last confrontation with the Eater of Gods? She did not think so.

Her thoughts turned to a place further away in time than in miles—to the crumbly red rocks of the Eagle's Beak where, a hundred-odd years from now, her master Anselm might build his keep, and stock his library with books in twenty languages, with maps drawn a thousand years before by the Sea People, Minho's ancestors, who had explored the world and knew it to be round as an apple. . . . She felt again a wave of sadness, of strange nostalgia not for something lost, but something never found. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

No, her destiny would not—could not—be fulfilled until she had studied the last axioms that underlay the last ancient spell, until she was truly a sorceress, not a girl dabbling in mysteries. But if Calvinus lost tomorrow, then the world would be so changed that Anselm would never raise black-and-vermilion Minoan pillars outside his portal, and she herself might be born in a Gaulish Citharista where fantôme soldiers guarded the walls. . . .

"I'll begrudge every minute until the sun sets," he said, now standing by the door as if to see her out. She finished dressing, leaving off her sandals because, though she heard no more rain dripping from the eaves, the camp would surely be a sea of mud, and the tent she shared with Guihen was some distance away.

Hesitantly, she tilted her head, and he kissed her gently, without passion, but with great tenderness. "You are unique," he murmured. "Never have I felt so odd—as if I have both won and lost the same battle."

"You have," she replied. "And so have I."

* * *

Pierrette pondered the wrongness she had felt. Was it that—unlike Alkides—Calvinus had only taken, not given, and her own arousal remained unreleased? But such release was only a bonus, wasn't it? It wasn't a requisite for contentment. But twice now (that she remembered) she had felt that strange, momentary sense of something missing. Now, alone, aimlessly wandering among the seeps and hot springs that welled up near the old fane, she allowed herself to sink back into one of those moments. . . .

* * *

"I've loved you for a thousand years," said the sorcerer-king, brushing back his oiled black locks. Next to him on the bench lay his golden helmet, in the shape of a great bull's head inlaid with blue lapis and garnet. His forehead was still moist with sweat from having worn it, and she had surprised him, she thought, appearing from nowhere within his chambers. "I loved you in the cave of the animals, where we hunted a doe, and you slayed her. I loved you again on the Plain of Stones. When will you come to stay here with me, in this land that time has forgotten?"

But the Stone Age hunter she had loved—and rejected—in the cave had been Aam, the Golden Man of her childhood fantasies, and her time with him had not been real, only a projection of her spirit via the spell Mondradd in Mon, before she had learned to bring her body along, as well . . . if indeed she had.

She shied from that uncomfortable idea, and turned to thoughts of her lover on the Plain of Stones, who had been Alkides, the big, auburn-haired Greek, not slender Minho, with his dark Minoan hair and eyes. But was that indeed so? Why the rightness she had felt then, the wrongness now? Was it that, those other times, there had been a ghostly presence—the sorcerer-king, her counterpart, her equal, with whom she would, or might, or had once, shared a dais with two ivory thrones?

Was that why her tryst with Calvinus had felt like a battle, a siege and the storming of walls—because Minho had not been there, and she was being . . . unfaithful to him? But that was madness, and she was not mad—was she?

 

 

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