Night of the Wolf (24 page)

“We had a party last night. Fulvia—my wife, not your sister—took a horsewhip to me. Seems I got it up, but couldn’t get it down. Wine will do that and a horsewhipping always does the trick. But here I am, it’s dawn. My ass is sore. My stomach is upset. My skull wants to explode, and he’s telling me to get you into the Senate.”

“No,” Lucius said mulishly. “I have no intention of—”

“Don’t argue with me,” Antony roared. “Not unless you really want a room in the Tullianum. Let’s see what bread, water, and a week in that hole in the ground will do. I’ll wager you’ll sing another tune then.”

Lucius sighed. “I’ll wager I will, too. All right, but don’t try to convince me he’s doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Tell me what he really wants.”

“I will if you shut up and stop interrupting me. He wants you to spy on the other senators.”

Lucius stood up so quickly he knocked over the stool he’d been sitting on. It clattered loudly on the marble floor. “You . . . you! I may not be a patrician the way you and your ass-kissing friends are but . . .”

Philo walked in just then carrying another towel and a second cup.

Antony slammed his fist down on the water. As a gesture it lacked force, so he snatched up the bowl of nuts at his elbow and threw it at Lucius’ head.

The bowl was a heavy molded stoneware piece. The rim connected with Lucius’ forehead, opening a cut about three inches long. After a few seconds, it bled profusely.

Lucius saw stars. Not only stars, but comets and maybe a few small moons. He staggered and his knees turned to water for a moment.

Philo caught him by the arm, flipped the stool upright with one foot, and assisted him into a sitting position. He pressed the snow-filled towel to the cut on Lucius’ forehead and handed the hangover cure to Antony, who gulped it down. “May I ask what happened?” Philo asked calmly.

“Yes, you may ask,” Lucius snapped.

Antony climbed out of the pool and threw a gown with a hole in the middle over his head. He explained Caesar’s request to Philo.

Philo gave Lucius a sympathetic look. “The man is . . . what and who he is. There is no appeal, my lord.”

Lucius gave Philo a poisonous look and snatched the snow-filled pack from his forehead.

“Shut up!” Antony roared. “Shut up before you commit treason and I have to report it to him! Your man’s no fool and he’s right. There is no appeal. And besides . . .” He ground his teeth. “Once you’ve put up with that gang of liars, thieves, grafters, whores, slobs, windbags, idiots, bumfuckers, thugs, leeches, six-legged bloodsuckers, adulterers, bores, panderers, blackmailers, extortionists, murderers, and—have I missed anything? Oh, yes, snakes—for a few months, you’ll be delighted to pour your frustration and rage into my willing ear.”

He raised his finger. “Trust me, Caesar has lots of spies and you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. Your sister will be happy and, by the way, they tell me she’s a worse harpy than my wife—I’d stay clear of her—and Caesar will leave for Parthia, and you can do whatever you please. Hear me?”

Lucius was tight-lipped with rage, but he managed a “Yes.”

“Fine.” Antony rubbed his hands together. “I’m feeling better all the time. What say you to a few hours at the palaestra and then some lunch?” He slapped Lucius on the back. “My cook is butchering two wild boars for me.” He added gleefully, “My wife will be out of town. Come have supper with me.

“Hey, do you remember our first meeting? We were sitting up late over the wine with that little Alexandrian dancing girl. You remember her. She had two big gold hoops in her nipples. Do you remember the suggestion she made?”

Lucius did and he colored a little at the memory.

“Amazing,” Antony continued. “It shocked me. Imagine that. I was shocked.”

“Indeed,” Philo said, “that is difficult to imagine.”

Antony looked at Philo for a second through his eyebrows. “In any case, at about that point in the . . . ah . . . evening—”

“I think it was closer to morning,” Lucius interrupted.

“Yes,” Antony continued, “at about that time my memory gets a little hazy.”

“I should think it would,” Lucius said. “I didn’t know anyone could drink that much wine and remain upright and moving.”

“Yes, yes, but what I want to know is, did we act on that, um . . . suggestion?”

“I don’t think I’ll answer that right now,” Lucius said. “Sometime when I know you better, maybe. Then I will tell you, but not right now.”

“Ha!” Antony said. “So, turnabout’s fair play. Well, I asked for it.”

“Beautiful room, this,” Lucius said. It gave him an excuse to look away from Antony. He needed one.

“Crap,” Antony answered. “It makes me feel bilious. Now, all you have to do there in the Senate is keep your mouth shut and your ears and eyes open. Go in, sit down if you can find a seat. Or if you can’t, lean on the wall.”

“All the Senate does is dream up new honors for Caesar,” Lucius snarled.

“Yes, Caesar packed it so nicely. Don’t you know anything about politics at all?”

“It seems not.”

“Well, my boy, the members of law-making bodies are helpless until they can form factions, cabals, conspiracies, cliques, parties, associations, or, in other words, find partners in crime. Now, what Caesar did was add three hundred members to the Senate who all owe their elevated rank to Caesar. So all our indigenous criminal class—the patricians—can do now is mill around and talk. Not that they aren’t dangerous enough when they do that.

“But no one faction is big enough to vote down three hundred new members—need I add all loyal to Caesar—so at present they’re harmless. He’s drawn the adders’ teeth.”

“Yes, but they grow back.”

“Not just yet.” Antony gave Lucius and Philo a hooded glance. “You go to the Senate and make your sister happy. Don’t give me any more trouble.” He strode out the door and was gone.

Dryas returned to the meadow. She sat in silence, watching from high up as night claimed the world. The shadow of the mountain stretched out over the plain, sliding over hills, forests, and the villas and pastures of the people.

Her people and the Romans were indistinguishable because of their distance in time and space.

As the sun sank lower, its last rays rose higher, drowning the world in shadow, enriching the heights with golden light. The long, soft, shining green grass in the meadows around her tossed, whispering in the evening wind. The tall blades caressed her ankles, calves, and thighs.

I must love him, the wolf the man-wolf, the way the grass loves the earth whereon it grows and the autumn wind that blows and kisses it to brilliance.

I must teach him to turn his fire to me. Not the way he burned the wheat fields of those who he blamed for her death, but to allow me the fire of desire that weds the fruitful earth to sunfires that draw from the soil the manifold shapes that form the kingdoms of life. The tree bending in adoration before the wind. The tall white barley, yellow wheat, orchards adorned with the multitude of flowers that become the pomes, apples, plums, pears, and downy peaches. The flowers of the waste raising their faces, pledging fidelity to the sun by day and the moon by night.

The stormfire lancing across the sky, sending its blow to earth to bless eternally the sacrificial toil that calls fire from the gods and places it in the hands of man.

Then she took her iron ring and kindled the fire from among the deadfalls littering the grass.

The sun hovered for a moment at the edge of the world, then descended into darkness. This high, her fire was balanced against the light of the ghostly crescent hanging in the clear autumn air, rather like a nail paring discarded by an eternal deity. And, as the last orange and green glow of sunset faded from the horizon, the stars peered in their myriads from the darkness above to look down on Dryas standing alone.

She drew off her shift and threw it into the flames. The fire flared very high, illuminating her flesh as she stood in proud nakedness before night and the stars.

Will he come?
she wondered. She reached for the chain around her neck and her hand made a fist around the golden leaves.

A blasphemy. The thing was a blasphemy.

No one had the right to make such a thing and include in it all the stages of a tree’s life and all the parts, making it share the human universe. There, among the leaves, fruit, and flowers, she felt the dark secret roots twisted into the pattern formed by the artist. The tree informed the earth and gaia. The earth formed the tree. To include all in the circle was dangerous. Her people didn’t usually do it, always leaving something out or breaking it in spots even in a fortress or a crown.

Will he come?
she wondered.
Because his is the choice now. I have already chosen.

Then she heard a movement in the grass and a pair of strong male arms closed around her. She shivered for a second and then yielded to the body, warm and strong behind her.

He kissed her on the throat and ear. Then asked innocently, “Do you like this? Imona did.”

“Yes,” she answered and forbore comment on the fact that he spoke of one woman while in the arms of another.
No,
she thought.
He is not yet a man. I must make him one—tonight.

His hands roamed over her body, searching, testing, exploring until, at last, caressing. “You are made as she was. The first time, I never knew her name; the second was Imona. I have had only two of you. Are you all made so?”

“Yes.” Then she made a small sound. His explorations were now intimate and she found herself electrified by some of the places he found to investigate.

“What does that mean? Is it a word?” he asked. “I thought I knew most words, but I haven’t heard that one . . . before.”

“No, it’s not a word, but an indication of pleasure.”

Then, very gently, he turned her around.

For the first time, she felt afraid. There was an awesome and beautiful innocence in his face. And, for a second, she had the pleasure and guilt of a ravisher who holds helpless, forbidden fruit in his hands. But then no, because there was no sense of theft. It was rather as if he were the cowering, yet eager, virgin bride and she the bridegroom burdened with the duty of initiation into the mystery, and yes, the cruelty, of creation.

But then he kissed her and pressed his body against hers and the illusion vanished. He was male, compellingly, totally male and, for a second, she was only an animal with the freedom from responsibility only an animal knows. Now she’d passed the point of no return.

She’d spread a clean linen coverlet on the ground near the fire. It was padded with the blanket she used when she slept in the open.

He moved her toward it, saying, “Yes, Imona liked to lie on something. In the opening in the earth where we coupled, she said the floor was cold.”

He moved her backward until she was standing on it. “I can touch you. I can smell you.” He bent her body back over his arm and buried his face between her breasts. “Now I want to taste you.”

She stood. He knelt before her. He parted her thighs with his hands.

“How do I taste?” she asked.

“Of yourself, alone.” He did something, she wasn’t sure what, but it made her gasp and she found her fingers tightening in his hair, urging him on.

“Yes, only this is you. The first didn’t taste the way Imona did and you don’t have her flavor.”

“Are women then wine, that each forms a separate kind of cup?” she asked.

But he didn’t answer. He was . . . preoccupied. A second later, so was she because her sex had begun to pulsate in time to the beating of her heart.

She found herself on the ground in his arms without quite knowing how she got there.

“You vanished from my arms last night. How can I hold you here?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Try.”

His weight shifted and she found her body’s pulsations increased. Only now the throbbing was delightful, so delightful in fact that she was sure this must be forbidden. But she could no longer resist it, no more than she could have resisted a current that sucked her down. She wanted more of such joy and she was getting it. It entered her body the way a sword enters a warm padded sheath, penetrating her more deeply by the second until she was sure it would become unbearable and then it did.

The sheer flow of raw pleasure drowned her will, her intellect, and, at last, her very consciousness of self.

The reflexes—back arching, fingers clutching, final outcry—were all no more under her control than the extinction of self in an abyss of surrender. It is the power of creation; she knew it then finally, and struggle how we will, we are all its slaves.

She didn’t know how long she slept in his arms, but when she woke she read the sky and could tell by the position of the stars that it was almost dawn.

Not a man, but a wolf lay beside her. He was a giant, even as the mountain wolves went, and she knew he had but toyed with Blaze. No mere man could stand against this creature.

The chain at her neck moved, making a soft clinking sound. One of his ears flipped back and she knew that even in his sleep, he heard the sound.

For a moment she was afraid, but then she dismissed the fear as unworthy of a warrior. In a duel where one must prevail or die, the acceptance of the mortal alternative is a precondition for beginning it. No one who is willing to join battle fears death.

He truly might kill her. Emasculation would be kinder than what she planned for him.

The fire flared for a moment in a freshening breeze, then sank to coals. The wolf slept on, muzzle on his paws, eyes closed, dreaming.

The darkness pressed around Dryas like a living thing. She heard the voice in the wind or perhaps it
was
the wind—for
she
is not simply mother of the earth, but queen of the winds as well.
Do not tarry. You have not much time.

Dryas rose. She would swear she only looked away from the wolf for a second, but when she glanced back, he was a man.

The black wind hissed over the grass. She walked toward the invisible ladder up to the stone ring overlooking the valley. The long grass blades were tousled like the hair of a sleeping child.