Birds of Prey (29 page)

Villagers were entering and filling the long trestle tables set up between the two rings of columns. The movement was not quite formal enough to be a procession, but many of the local people were singing. The agent was not sure whether a number of separate hymns were being intoned at the same time, or whether the acoustics of the room were so terrible that they created muted cacophony from a single work. The drab, joyous villagers flitted among the brilliantly-painted stones like sparrows in a flower garden.

Perennius paused and waved on the other members of his party as they followed the village priest. Sabellia was at the end of the line. The agent fell in step beside her and asked in Celtic, “Where's the altar? You have one for sacrifice, don't you?”

“Not for sacrifice,” the woman snapped. “
Christ
was the world's sacrifice.” But her face promptly pursed into the look of uncertainty it had shown before the agent's gaffe. “It must be movable,” Sabellia said. “The building isn't like any church I've been in.
Anything
I've been in.”

“Sit down, guests,” Father Ramphion said with a two-handed gesture. “Accept the thanks of this valley which your presence blesses.”

The central table was, like those around it, a cloth-draped panel supported by two trestles. There was nothing of civilized formality about the meal, with guests reclining on couches around a small table filled with delicacies. At the other tables, villagers sat on benches. In the center, six stools surrounded the table. Father Ramphion had positioned himself at the end further from the hidden door. Perennius nodded and took the chair across from the local man. When the remainder of the party had seated themselves along the sides, the priest clapped his hands. The singing and shuffling of feet on stone floors ceased at once. Muffled echoes continued to rasp among the odd angles for long seconds thereafter.

Villagers joined hands with their neighbors to either side. Those who were standing moved into the gaps between tables and joined them so that the whole room was linked by a double ring of hands. Father Ramphion made a ritual gesture, crossing his torso. Then he lifted his eyes and his hands. “Almighty God,” he prayed in a voice which the room made reedy, “we thank you for blessing us, your servants, by sending the Anointed and Dioscholias his apostle into our midst to make known your will. For thirty-three years we have kept your ordinances that the Anointed may return when the way has been made smooth for him. Continue to bless your servants, and bless these strangers to your use. Let it be so.”

Sixty-odd feet above the table, the bell clanged twice. The dim air quivered among the heavy columns. The priest relaxed. “Welcome, strangers, to our feast of love,” he said in a normal voice. When he sat down, the cheerful bustle resumed all around.

While the offered meal was not of urban refinement, neither was it a simple one. The skeleton of it was wheat bread and chunks of lamb roasted on skewers. Both dishes were marvelously fresh and delicious. Beside those staples of a rural feast, there were a score of different cheese, egg, and vegetable courses, most of them offered cold. The one most to Perennius' taste was a collation of cucumbers and cultured goat's milk touched with additional herbs. The agent noted Sabellia's eyes open in surprise. Her tongue spread the morsel she had taken carefully around her mouth as she separated flavors and piquancies. Her expression was appreciative.

There was no difference Perennius could see between the servitors and the villagers eating at the other tables. They all wore homespun and had the calluses and sunburn of people who worked outdoors. Those who carried food and water among the diners did so with enthusiasm if not the polished obsequiousness of men and women whose whole lives were sent in ministering to others. As the meal progressed, those who had first been doing the serving sat down to eat. They were replaced by some who had eaten already.

Sestius noticed the situation, too. He pointed with a cheese-laden wedge of bread and remarked, “Father, where's all the slaves? Don't tell me you
all
work your plots alone out here.” Sestius' Cilician was rusty, but it was still more serviceable than the agent's own.

Ramphion smiled. “We have no slaves in this valley, no. But then, we have no private plots of land, either. We decided, our forefathers—” Someone came by with a bowl of chives in yogurt. The priest dipped some out with his index and middle fingers, licked the taste off, and waved the dish down to the others at the table. Perennius noticed that each dish was offered first to Father Ramphion, and that he always sampled it openly—even ostentatiously—before the strangers were asked to try it.

“Everyone in the valley was touched with the fire of truth when Dioscholias preached,” Father Ramphion resumed. “Slaves and free-holders, men and women together.” He gestured, crooking his elbow so that the arc of his hand did not threaten the centurion or Calvus who sat nearest to him. “It was a night whose like may never again take place—until the return of the Anointed, of course,” the priest added quickly. “You who are not saved cannot possibly imagine.”

Sabellia coughed and shot an offended glance at the local man. She had not, Perennius noticed, made any mention of the fact that she too was a Christian.

Father Ramphion took a skewer of meat from a tray, offered the skewer and then the tray itself to Sestius, and continued, “We could not continue a society in which man was the servant to man, once we knew that all men were the servants of God alone. That night we carried away the stones of fences which had stood between fields for as long as human memory survives. We plowed across the old boundaries. Since then we have lived in common, as the Anointed taught us through Dioscholias.”

The grilled lamb was delicious, particularly as it was set off by the tartness of some of the vegetable side-dishes. Perennius swallowed a bite and said, “Including your Ophitics, Azon and Erzites? In the commonality, that is?”

Father Ramphion spilled water from the earthenware goblet at his lips. He lowered the vessel and patted himself hard on the breastbone until the fit let him speak again. “Yes and no,” the priest said. He raised his eyes to the agent's. “Their father was a local man who returned here after he received his discharge from the Army.” All three of the other men at the table nodded in understanding. “That was after Dioscholias had brought the fire of the Spirit to fall on the valley, however. There was discussion and prayer about the matter, of course. At last Dioscholias announced that the Lord would not have so arranged events except as evidence of his purpose. The father and his wife, and the sons of their marriage, have since shared fully in all the valley's wealth—save its greatest wealth, the faith by which we are saved. They are not our slaves or our servants, but they perform tasks which free the rest of us to worship together in full community.”

Perennius nodded again and took more meat. He had wondered who stood guard while the whole village feasted. The symbiosis Ramphion had described made sense. The agent imagined that each party felt superior to those on the other side of the equation. The Christians could look down on the brothers damned to eternal Hell, while the brothers could sneer at the remainder of the village which labored in their behalf as surely as in its own. The present feast made the valley's wealth certain; and from their generosity to strangers, Perennius did not doubt that the Christians treated their local sectarians as well as Father Ramphion had suggested.

Perennius was no longer worried about Sabellia. Father Ramphion had made it clear if not overt that the village did not want proselytes. It was equally clear that to the locals, the only Christians were those who were present or descended from those present when Dioscholias converted the village. The apostle was probably a local man himself, given the introversion of the faith as practiced here. A convert returning home from Caesarea, Egypt—some center of the new sect—with his own slant on the faith to which he was devoting himself. The situation seemed to make Sabellia angry, probably because of the sense of kinship she had briefly expected. That thought—that the Gallic woman had hoped for a sodality from which her present companions were barred—was unexpectedly painful to the agent. He returned to his meal.

Not only was the food excellent in itself, it was not flawed as it would have been at a rich man's table by being eaten from metal dishes. The slightest astringence—pomegranate cells or a vinegar dressing—would bring with it an aftertaste of silver or even gold. Poor men who drank their wines from glazed earthenware tasted them with a purity denied to those who could afford the best—in jeweled metal. The water of the valley was all that thus far had been offered to accompany the food, however. It was clean and cool, complementing the meal without attempting to compete with it.

*   *   *

Eventually, even Gaius was full to repletion. The young courier swayed in a forgetful attempt to recline on a stool. The bulk of the meal had left Perennius logy. The headache with which he had tramped for a day and a half was gone. Even his wounded thigh could almost be ignored. The agent was wondering whether or not he could bathe now. It would make a perfect conclusion to the relaxing meal.

Father Ramphion rose. The building whispered slowly into a hush as before. At the priest's side stood another villager with a goblet. The vessel was of glass so clear and colorless that it might properly have graced an emperor's table. The wine within it was of a tawny hue accented by the flaring rush-lights.

Ramphion took the goblet and raised it. “May all those present be turned to the Lord's service,” he said, “as Dioscholias taught.” He drank noisily from the goblet, then handed it to Sestius. The level of the wine had dropped appreciably.

The centurion had asked for wine twice in the course of the meal. Now he took the goblet in surprise. The priest continued to stand. Sestius obviously wondered if he should stand up also, but Father Ramphion's eyes held no such encouragement. Sestius drank and passed the cup.

Sabellia's hesitation had come when the wine was offered to the centurion. When it came her turn, she gripped the slick glass surface without concern. Because the villagers had tacitly barred her from full membership in the circle of their faith, there was a bitter reaction in the Gallic woman to damn them all as heretics themselves. Like the wine, her red hair absorbed highlights from the blazing, grease-soaked rushes. The color was no bad suggestion of the anger within Sabellia. But with her temper came control, and a remembrance of the mission for which she and the others had suffered so much already. Sabellia drank quickly and handed the goblet to Perennius. She wiped her mouth with her shawl.

It was not a particularly good vintage, the agent thought. More tannin, it seemed, than was to be expected from a white wine. Though one got used to the resins and honey added to amphoras to preserve wines for hard travelling. There was none of that in this local vintage. Perennius passed the cup.

Gaius drank with the noisy assurances of a youth whom exhaustion and a full belly had robbed of such sophistication as he might otherwise have displayed. He slurped, belched, and then took another deep draft though the level in the wide-bellied goblet had already sunk near the bottom.

Perennius was trying to decide whether to negotiate for donkeys now or to wait for the morning. It was not a hard decision. He was tired. The feeling of sluggish tranquility that blotted away his aches and pains at the close of the meal would make him a less-effective bargainer. This valley community might well feel it needed its livestock more than it needed gold. Father Ramphion stood, his shaven pate gleaming in the lights above him. He looked as if he were one of the haloed figures painted on the walls. The agent's eyes focused but his head did not seem to want to turn away from the priest's fixed smile.

Calvus lowered the cup. The wine had been strained through cloth. Nothing clung to the inside surface of the glass but a film no yellower than the light itself. Fire wavered on the whorls which marked the goblet's colorless purity. There was a collective babbling from the surrounding tables. Villagers were standing up.

“Aulus Perennius,” the tall woman said. She was speaking Schwabish. Sabellia and Sestius might understand her, but the less stable Gaius would not. “There was an alkaloid in the wine. It should not be fatal, but it will numb you all.”

Perennius clenched his left hand on the table's edge. He stood up. It was as if he were a squat male caryatid trying to lift the roof of a temple. The agent's stool crashed to the stone floor behind him.

“Aulus,” the bald woman said, “I don't think this is a good idea. If they meant to kill us, they would have used something else, surely.…”

Father Ramphion's deep-sunk eyes glared at the agent. Villagers who had been chattering with joy now noticed the Illyrian's struggle with himself. There was further commotion behind Perennius, toward the door of the church. He could not turn to see what it was. “I'm as much of a man as this bastard,” the agent whispered. He stared back at Ramphion while his right hand tried to find the dagger in his hem. There was no feeling in the agent's fingers, in any of his limbs.

Sestius slid to the floor, Sabellia did not fall, but she was obviously fighting as hard to stay upright as Perennius had fought to stand. Gaius flopped forward. He was trying to mouth the words of a song through lips too numb to have formed sounds. Perennius' ears were buzzing. Over that empty burr came Calvus' voice saying, “He has built up an immunity to the drug, Aulus. This must be part of a long practice for them. Let yourself go or they may—”

Someone kicked Perennius' feet sideways. The agent crashed to the floor. He did not feel the impact, though he could still see perfectly well. The two women toppled, Calvus by choice with the appearance of collapse, Sabellia when her stool was jerked away. Rough farmer's hands gripped the table and the trestles supporting it, spilling Gaius beside his would-be protector in happy somnolence.