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Chapter 30 - Partings

Calvinus found her in the tent, asleep. Her eyes were red from weeping, but she could not have said why she had wept. There were too many things to feel awful about, none so great as to explain her tears. There were also many things that had gone right, but hers had not been tears of relief, either—not entirely.

"Come to the praetorium with me," he said. "Polybius has once again made his notable lamb stew. I suspect that is why Aemilianus kept him around so long." If Polybius was to be there, her promise would not have to be fulfilled right away. She went with the consul.

"You're not walking to your own crucifixion," he said. For a moment she was confused. The Christian Son of God would not be born for a hundred-odd years. But crucifixion had long been the Romans' preferred method of execution. Calvinus was only attempting humor.

Polybius was not there—only his stew was, simmering at the edge of the brazier. She made as if to sit on the folding stool, but Calvinus guided her to the wide couch instead, and sat next to her. "I've learned much from you," he said thoughtfully. "I suspect also that there are things I might have learned, but did not."

What did he mean? His arm around her waist, his other hand on her knee, hinted at the direction of his thoughts. "You taught me how a woman might please a man, yet remain a virgin," he said. "But I have not yet learned to please that woman, who wishes still to remain so."

"That would be . . . difficult," she said softly, not wishing to insult him. "Fear and pleasure are like oil and wine."

"Then put your fears aside, little sorceress. Teach me only what you wish, and then go where you will—to that strange future you have told me of, if it still exists. I release you from your promise."

She was speechless. Was it a ruse, to put her off guard? She knew him better than that. She thought she did. "I mean it," he said as his hand drew her head around, as he leaned forward to kiss her. "Only what you wish."

The sun's diffuse light through the window moved slowly up the walls, then faded, before that kiss, and its aftermath, were concluded.

* * *

"How convenient," he mused as he poured cold wine into two cups, "that my own greatest pleasure was what most pleased you. I had never considered that."

She smiled, and took the cup he offered, and sipped.

"I never dreamed such . . . mutual entertainment . . . could go on and on so," he said. "You realize it is already night out there? The moon is up."

She sipped more wine, dribbling some on her breast. He knelt, and licked it. That soon led to other things—of which, she discovered, Alkides had taught her only a few. Where and when would the discoveries end?

The moon crossed the sky. She remembered dozing from time to time, her limbs entangled with his. Once, when she remembered something tantalizing that she had dreamed of, she tried it on him, and when he awakened, it was to such a strange and intense arousal that he cried out, and the sentry outside inquired if all was well. "I was dreaming," he said, almost truthfully. "All is . . . quite well."

"It's all well for me to dally all night with you," he said at sunrise, "but I received word late yesterday that two more legions are marching from Rhodanus's mouth, and I must meet them halfway. There are still battles to be fought, before this summer ends. Teutomalos has fled to the Allobroges, which gives me adequate pretext to attack them immediately. Are you sure you can't stay with me, at least until fall?"

Could she? She wanted to. But if time on the far side of the veil of years marched at the same rate as here, ibn Saul would tire of waiting for her. And she did not know, for sure, that her success here had changed things there—and she could not enjoy a summer with Calvinus, not without knowing.

"Never mind," he said with a rueful smile. "I should not have asked. Will you leave right away?"

"I must say good-bye to Master Polybius, to Kraton, and to Guihen."

"I thought the Ligurian elf might go with you."

"He will be there when I arrive."

Calvinus drew her to him for one last, naked kiss, then hurriedly pulled on his tunic and caligae, and lifted his breastplate and helmet from the bench by the door. "Good-bye, then," he said.

"Good-bye."

* * *

"You seem pensive, Master Polybius," Pierrette said as she shared a last meal with the elderly Greek. "Is something troubling you?" Outside, the camp was noisy as Calvinus prepared his legions for departure. A garrison, mostly allies, would remain there.

He sighed breathily. "I always ask questions," he said. "The backbone of good history is what's gathered from people who witnessed events firsthand. Now I myself am such a witness—and I don't know what to ask . . . or I don't dare. I'm not even sure I'll write of this battle. After all, I'm quite old, and I might not live to finish it."

Aha! Pierrette understood what lay behind the words he uttered—the thoughts he did not voice. "You can ask that question you want to," she said. "I'll answer it fairly—but my answer will be hedged in even more ambiguity than Apollo's voice at Delphi because . . ."

"Because?"

It was her moment to sigh. "I told you who I am, and why I am here. Whether you believe me or not—and you must at least have some latent trust in what I've said, or you wouldn't even consider asking what you want to—the history I learned in my master's library has changed. Anselm's books recorded a Roman victory three years ago, not two days. In them, Calvinus's legions landed near the Rhodanus to the west, not the Argentia, to the east, and there was no mention of allies remaining overlong within Massilia's walls. The Massilians met up with the legions at Salinium, and were here to dig their share of the ditches that encircle us." She shook her head as if the conflicting stories could be shaken like dried beans and peas in a jar, and would sort themselves out in neat layers.

"Then you'll have to tell me what you read, won't you—and let me interpret it just as I might the Delphic oracle's obscurities, with the same risk of error."

"I suppose so. So ask."

"Should I began the task of chronicling this campaign?"

"You alone can decide. That isn't your real question."

"You'll force me to face it?" Again he sighed, a quavering exhale that evoked her pity for his fear. "Very well then. Simply put: when will I die?"

"I once read—I don't remember where—that you lived . . . would live? will live?—to your eighty-second year, and perish from injuries after falling from your horse. And I remember no forty-first book listed in your index volume. The only evidence that you will write more than you already have is a curious phrasing in Book III, which some scholars say was . . . may be . . . added by a copyist centuries from now, in which you state that the road between Emporiae, in Iberia, and the Rhodanus, has been measured by the Romans and marked by milestones every eighth stade. But as yet the Via Tiberia has not been named, and when it is, it will be called something else, and the treaty allowing Roman passage along it has not been written—if indeed it will be, in this changed history."

Polybius smiled. "Eighty-two? Then I may have seven more years, because I now possess seventy-five! That is plenty of time. And just because you found no forty-first book in my index . . . why, I'll write one anyway, and I'll carefully not include it in the index at all! And I'll wait until the last day before my eighty-second birthday to write about the milestones on the Via . . . what did you call it?"

Pierrette was amazed. The old historian had not lost his edge with age. He had cut to the quick of her own effort to manipulate the course of history, by creating a circumstance that could not be fulfilled unless it went the way he wanted it to go! If he did not amend Book III until he was almost eighty-two . . . But he was forgetting something. . . .

"This history is not the one I knew, master," she said regretfully, not wanting to dash his hopes, but not willing to allow him false ones. "Perhaps when I return to my own era, I will read something different."

"Ah—but that uncertainty I can live with! After all, you said this battle was fought three years late, didn't you? Perhaps I will live another decade, and when you reread my book, you'll find that I have corrected the passage about the source of the Padus as well—the one you tweaked me with the first time we spoke together."

She smiled. Indeed, when . . . and if, for nothing was certain . . . she returned to the fane, and passed through it to a later time when Master ibn Saul and his apprentice Lovi awaited her, she would read Polybius's second and third volumes, and see for herself.

She got up. "No need for you to rise, master," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "I want to remember you just like this, by the comfort of your fire." She leaned down and kissed the top of his shiny, bald head, then whirled away to the door, to conceal her tears. In her mind, already stretching forward to her own time, this dear new friend was already centuries in his grave, and she did not want to think about that.

* * *

"Did Aurinia and Bellagos get away?" she asked Chiomara.

"They are not among the captives or the dead. The consul was kind enough to let us look, before his soldiers buried them in a great trench outside the city wall."

"Should I send someone after them?" wondered Kraton. "After all, they would not be enslaved, because I have chosen only eight hundred and ninety-eight. Two places remain."

"Choose two who are worthy of freedom," Pierrette said. "Aurinia's destiny lies far away from here. And if time behaves as I suspect it must, your courier would not find her anyway."

He nodded. "Good-bye, then. I will speak of you with Onomaris's son when he is older, and bid him remember everything I say. And he will tell his children. . . ."

She smiled and shook her head. "No one will remember, centuries from now. Speak instead of Bellagos and Aurinia, for they will be remembered." She turned away so Kraton and Chiomara would not see her tears.

Guihen took her arm, and led her to the fane. "I'll miss you," he said. The hen—which he refused to call "Penelope"—clucked softly, nestled in the crook of his arm.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "Or surely the day after. Can't you be there to meet me in the Roman baths?"

"I'm not fond of cities," he said. "I doubt that will change. But if I am able, I'll find you before you get home. And for me, I think it will be a very long day, and that that tomorrow will not soon come."

"I suppose that is so," she replied, "but you have your life to live. Why, you have not even met Yan Oors."

Guihen shuddered. "I'm not sure I want to, from what you've told me."

She laughed. "Good-bye, for now." She entered the fane, and quickly shut the door. There had been too many good-byes.

 

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