Night of the Wolf (34 page)

The oppidum was located on a natural hill. Near it, the ground dropped away steeply, so steeply that, for a time, the wolf found it hard to keep his mount on solid ground. But then the land rose again. There had been farms here, when the town had been the center of a powerful tribe. They were still worked, but the farmers lived in the oppidum, fearing to dwell on their land any longer.

The marsh retreated and Maeniel entered the edge of a large holding, broken into ploughland and pasture. Now he rode more cautiously. The sharp-hooved tracks of deer were among the furrows. Then he saw them, brown shapes, a winter bachelor herd: all males, from spike bucks to six-pointers.

He eased his mount toward the forest, riding slowly. The wind was still at his face. The horse stepped along quietly and he drew closer and closer to the deer.

When he judged he was close enough, he lifted one of the spears from its sheath and nudged the horse into a run. The deer had been feeding near the river. They bolted up the slope for higher ground.

He loosed the first javelin the way Dryas taught him and scored a clean miss. Under him, he felt the horse gallop faster and faster.

Several of the biggest, oldest bucks disappeared behind a rise in the ground. He found he cradled the second javelin without even realizing that he’d plucked it from the sheath.

A spike buck darted just in front of him. He loosed the shaft automatically. Also without thinking he led the deer slightly, again as Dryas taught him.

He was sure he’d miss, as the deer rose with almost birdlike grace to clear a low stone wall. The javelin and the deer came together at midleap. The animal died at once, falling in a heap next to the wall.

The horse was up the hillock, running flat out. Maeniel’s thighs tightened on the withers, holding his body set forward just above his mount’s neck. Another javelin was in his hand. Below him, the herd was a semicircle, the two leaders just about to enter the marsh. The deer at the points were easy targets, but they were small, yearlings at most.

The closest deer to the trees was in his prime, a big four-pointer. Maeniel made his choice, not as a wolf, but as a man. He didn’t even feel the spear leave his hand, but a second later, it was in the shoulder of the biggest buck as it vanished into the brush and small trees.

Maeniel vaulted, clearing the horse’s neck, and hit the ground running. The blood spoor was clear, big, scarlet drops leading into the trees. Maeniel could hear the animal ahead of him crashing through the brush at the forest edge and then the drumming of hooves as it cleared the barrier of vegetation and flew into the open.

Maeniel lifted his mantle and covered his face to protect it from the thorny canes of wild rose, blackberry, and hawthorn and followed, slamming through the hole the deer made.

In a second he was past, just in time to see the buck leap a shallow ditch that led to the river. It didn’t appear on the other side. Still, Maeniel didn’t slacken his pace until he reached the edge of the ditch.

The buck lay on the downslope, stretched out, tongue protruding from its open mouth, eyes staring, dead.

Maeniel found he was holding his knife in his hand. He hadn’t been aware he’d drawn it. For long moments he stood, still listening to the wilderness silence settle around him.

Yes,
he thought. “Yes,” he said aloud. “We are the very king of killers.” A wolf would have taken one of the slow ones, tested the herd for the old, cripples, and weaklings. But not a man. He chose the best because he had the means and skill to take it, for himself and his kind.

Then he remembered others would have the first choice of the cooked meat at the feast tonight. The champion’s portion would go to other men, not him. And right now, the barley gruel he’d had for breakfast sat sour on his stomach.

He walked down the slope, grasped the antlers, pulled the carcass to the top of the bank, and began the task of butchering it. Before he finished, he ate the heart and liver, hot and steaming in the frigid air. They had a good taste. He hoisted the dripping meat to the lowest limb of a tree and went to deal with the other animal.

When both were cleaned and dressed, he felt warmer and full fed. He’d also eaten the heart and liver of the second deer.

The horse, lather drying on his flanks, grazed in the open near what had been the farmhouse.

His hands were dirty and he walked down to the river to wash them and clean his knife. Besides, it would be safer to let the meat cool before loading it on the horse. The animal was steady, but Maeniel didn’t want to have to talk to it for any length of time.

Horses tend to be thickheaded and somewhat impervious to rational persuasion. While working in the stables, he’d come to speak a little of their language, not a lot, but more than any human ever would. Like humans and wolves, they tended to differ in intelligence and personality, but they seemed to cross the line into irrational rage or panic more quickly than either the human tribe or the gray. Probably an advantage, considering their survival depended on unmonitored automatic reactions to threats posed by either nature or predators. But this strong tendency in their nature was a nuisance to the humans who enslaved them and expected a modicum of restraint and intelligence even from their slaves, human or otherwise.

Near the river he found a small pond dug out in a low area. It seemed it might once have had sluice gates so that it could be flooded from the river when it was high and to keep it filled when the water was low.

He tried to approach its edge and found the area around it was mushy. As he neared the water, he came close to sinking to his ankles.

He was annoyed at first, then the wolf woke. It shocked the man because he’d begun to believe his alter ego forever gone. It glared at him, yellow-eyed, from some hazy place of exile.

Fool!
The words formed themselves in his brain out of his nightmare brother’s disgust.
Have you become so enmeshed by their easy blindness to the world around you that you cannot hear the warning both wind and water shout to your eyes and nose?

Yes, the earth was churned up at the pond’s edge by the feet of both horses and men. Maeniel stood silent, as the wolf will, his mind emptied of all else, trying to read the mass of information pouring in.

Men, yes, no, not just men, soldiers: leather, steel, sweat but no fear. A woman! A young one, traces of perfume, raw sexuality, anger. A dominant she, like the mother of the pack. Horses, military mounts. They’d stopped here, relieved themselves, yes, even the woman, in the willow, cherry, and poplar thickets near the water. Then they ate, cooked food, bread, meat, cheese, and waited for someone. The absence of anger smells said they were not attacking or on the hunt.

What? What were they doing? He began to circle slowly. Actus.

Actus, a layer of odors. Man, clothing, perspiration, drink. Actus had the characteristic smell of those humans who ingested large quantities of wine. Anger and illness, peculiar to the man himself. He and only he left that signature in the air, on the ground, on leaves, trees, twigs, and bushes when he passed. Recognizable as a well-known face is to a human being.

Maeniel knew and understood them far better now, but this puzzled him. Yet he was not alarmed. They were all gone, no threat as far as he could tell to himself or anyone else.

He found a spot where he could wash his hands and clean his knife in a freshet that broke through the ice on the shingle riverbank. He rubbed the knife with deer suet to oil the blade before he sheathed it.

The sky was growing darker, but the light at the edge of the clouds was bright, and a pale, weak, setting sun shone through them, dusting the brown and gray winter landscape with swift golden light.

He thought of beauty as perceived by men. Yes, wolves knew that, too. A sense of rightness, the dialogue between the spirit of life and the souls of those who come and pass in the tides of time. No matter what happened to him, he would do well in the world, as either wolf or man, and he would be faithful to himself as either one.

The golden light faded and he turned to climb the hill, load the dressed deer on the horse, and return to the oppidum.

Mir was waiting at the gate when he returned, leading the heavily laden horse. The old man took the animal to the stable and told Maeniel to go help the cook.

The great hall was being readied for the feast. Fresh torches burned on the walls. A dozen joints of meat already hung over the fire pit in the center and, in a few moments, the two deer joined them. The four-pointer brought a gasp of awe from the gathering crowd. There was talk and laughter among the men and women readying the big room about who would claim the champion’s portion from such a magnificent beast.

Maeniel left the hall and went to visit Mir. Dryas, Mir, Blaze, and Maeniel were quartered together. They’d taken a semiruined building at the farthest edge of the encampment. When they had arrived, the room was empty, the roof sagged, and snow had blown in and covered a floor already warped by rain. They cleaned it, covered the windows with oiled parchment, propped the roof, and moved in. Dryas and Mir slept in beds fitted into alcoves in the wall. Blaze had a cot and Maeniel stretched out on a table.

Maeniel had made a friend, Evars. It was she who swept the hearth and floor, then washed the clothes and bedding, placing it out in the snow to clear out lice or bedbugs. Dryas was clean and neat, rather in the way a soldier is, but not domestic. Evars could cook, and usually did, even when there was no need for it, like tonight. Soup bubbled on the hearth away from the fire, just at a simmer. Mir was reading, Blaze writing, and Dryas using a whetstone to sharpen the three javelins he’d used today.

Maeniel dipped himself a cup of the warm broth and sat down at the table. “I want the champion’s portion tonight,” he said.

Blaze continued writing and said, “Don’t be a fool.”

Mir continued reading and said, “Eh, what?”

Dryas rasped the whetstone at the tip of the spear and said, “It’s yours if you want it, but you will probably have to kill one or possibly two men to get it.”

Blaze and Mir both looked up, rather the way two birds at a fountain turn their heads at one time toward the same noise.

“He’s not good enough,” Blaze said flatly.

“He’s not good enough. Is he?” Mir asked.

“Yes, he is,” she said to the two men, then turned to Maeniel and repeated, “Yes, you are. You are the best I’ve ever seen and, for certain, the best I’ve ever trained. If you feel ready to accept the challenges of the other bulls, stand your ground. I can’t guarantee you will win. No one can give you that sort of assurance, but I think it quite likely that you will.”

“He is not noble. His blood—”

“Oh, be quiet,” Dryas said to Blaze. “What is noble? He is the son of the giver of madness, she who inspires prophecy in women and battle madness in men. His house is the house of the wolf. He was their leader and will be a leader here among men.”

She could feel the necklace and only just kept her hand from touching it. It crawled, actually crawled like a serpent, beneath her linen blouse. Maeniel raised his head and looked into her eyes. “I am not for you,” she said. “If I were to return, I would have to bring a king to my people, and I may no longer do so. I am not fit to rule.”

Mir shook his head. “Wolf, a child stretches out his hand to the fire. The child says, ‘Pretty. I want that,’ not truly understanding the nature and the dangers of what he so admires. You are yet as a child among men. I beg you, search your heart before you snatch at a prize because it seems attractive to your untaught eye.”

“My name is not Wolf, it is Maeniel. You didn’t tell them,” he said to Dryas.

“No, your name is your own, seeing your patroness bestowed it on you—a name and much else. Mir’s advice is good. Weigh it, then decide at the feast how you will proceed. If you snatch at a flower, you never know when there might be a wasp among the petals. Or even an adder coiled in a crown. But, being a certain type of male creature, you will probably need to find out. So, good luck. I think you will probably need it.” Then, as she began oiling the spearheads, Evars entered to call them to the feast.

XVIII

Lucius organized his housekeeping arrangements. The old doorkeeper, Octus, looked to be an excellent manservant, at least as far as Lucius was concerned. He was, as Aristo said, quiet. He didn’t fuss over Lucius, who loathed being fussed over. He kept Lucius’ clothes clean, made his bed, straightened his things, and then left him alone to pursue such activities as he cared to, without comment or complaint.

Lucius let one day go by. Philo was recovering well and was already up, walking around and eating everything Alia brought him.

Cut Ear brought his things from the Gallic senator’s house and moved in. His things were mostly more edged weapons and woolen clothing. Cut Ear was sophisticated enough to have a banker in the Forum, and Lucius suspected his gold went there, except for the coin Alia got.

Lucius told Octus he was going to visit Caesar and needed to dress well. He bathed and Octus came in with a magnificent ivory linen and silk tunic. Lucius climbed out of the tub in the tepiderium and studied the garment. “It’s not mine.”

“I think it is. Your father bought you a number of nice things after you left to do your military service. Somehow quite a few of them found their way into Firminius’ rooms. Aristo retrieved them.”

It was very plain, but beautifully cut and woven. Then Octus draped his senatorial toga over it.

It was near noon and Lucius wasn’t looking forward to this interview at all. No, he didn’t think he would wind up being beheaded, but confessing to Caesar that he’d been wrong about Philo having no information wasn’t pleasant to contemplate.

When he arrived at the dictator’s house, a soldier admitted him as before and he was shown into the same peristyle garden he’d seen the night before last.

He found the residence surprisingly modest for a man who commanded the wealth and power Caesar had now. But then, as he strolled around the pool in the center of the garden, he began to understand how a tired campaigner, worn out from the wars, might be grateful to come back to a quiet spot like this. In the sheltered garden the winter herbs—elecampane with its large yellow flowers, sage bearing tall blue spikes—bloomed everywhere. There were roses still, the sweet rose of Pistem, its petals growing purplish as the flowers aged; big rosemary bushes growing against each column of the porch; and even the sunburst calendula clustered around a sundial shaded by a blue-flowered chaste tree, its violet flower spears erupting from the dense, aromatic foliage. Orris, iris, and Egyptian lotus flourished in the pond along with a spiky blue waterweed that seemed to have run wild all around the margins of the peristyle pools.

A statue divided the two pools. The figure was diminutive, done in some sort of greenish black marble. At first, Lucius thought it a bronze, but then as he drew closer, he saw the material was oddly colored stone.

She was old now. This must have been done when she was young, because she wore a toga practexta, the dress of an unmarried girl not yet a mature woman. It confirmed to Lucius that she had once been extraordinarily beautiful. Calpurnia, Piso’s daughter, Caesar’s wife, born to live and die between the two men.

He remembered how Philo had described her this morning. “Yes,” the Greek had said. “A great lady and a very sick woman.”

“She’s not just jealous of Caesar, as they say?”

“No, they are wrong. She understands the duties and burdens of being married to one of the great political dragons of your city and she accepts them. She was brought up to be fully aware of her obligations to husband, family, city, and even class. Her family is shadowed by a problem of a mysterious and terrifying nature. I studied in Alexandria with a specialist in trephination. Do you know what that is?”

“Knocking holes in the skull.”

Philo nodded. “Just so. She fears these headaches greatly because . . . she believes they sometimes bring with them a knowledge of the future. Who knows? She may be right. She foresaw her sister’s death and her father’s, but the big problem is the headaches have been increasing in the last few years. They’ve gone from two or three times a year to one every week to two weeks.

“They are terribly painful, but brief, only about a half hour by the clock. And I can make them shorter by administering a mixture of opium, feverfew, and valerian. But she needs the surgery and won’t have it. I think it’s now her only hope, but she fears it may leave her deranged, a very real possibility, or do no good at all, again a very real possibility. Sometimes it simply doesn’t work.

“A male relative of her mother’s had a trephination and lay as one dead for a week. Then to the chagrin and disgust of all his relatives, who were already dividing up his property he made a complete recovery and survived to a more than ripe old age. However, his sister was left bereft of the power of speech and hearing, lost the use of the right side of her body, and died, as did one of Calpurnia’s younger sisters. She was, after an apparently uneventful night’s sleep, found dead still in a position of repose by her attendants when they went to awaken her in the morning.”

“Mysterious,” Lucius said.

“Yes, very, but at least in me she has someone who takes her pain and fear seriously and doesn’t attribute it to her possession of a uterus rather than a prick and balls. I’m certain from my experiences in Alexandria that her disease is both real and quite dangerous.”

“How so?”

“The increasing symptoms. When this disorder is benign, and it can be, the frequency and duration remain stable. But when it is not, and a rapid increase in frequency or even severity takes place, the physician is confronted with the potential for incapacitation or even death.”

“Very bad, and in a lady of her rank, not so good for the physician either.”

“Yes,” Philo said glumly, “and don’t think I haven’t given that some thought from time to time.”

But looking at her now, her youth frozen in stone as an image of beauty, grace, and delight, he could see why Caesar had to have her, and remained as faithful as a man of his kind ever could be, for so many years.

Just then, a secretary came to call him and told him Caesar would see him now.

Lucius followed the secretary through two large reception rooms filled with some of the most important, influential, wealthy, and powerful men in Rome. He knew and recognized most of them from the Senate chamber. He tried to avoid their eyes because he knew what they were all thinking: “Why is this low-class, skinny nobody being led into the presence of the first man in Rome ahead of all of us?” And Lucius was wondering about that himself.

Caesar sat at a writing table between two secretaries. He dismissed them both when Lucius entered and pointed to a chair. Lucius sat. “You sent me a note saying you wanted to see me.”

“Yes, I . . .” Lucius’ voice emerged as a croak. He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t totally truthful . . . no . . . no, truthful is not the word I want to use, accurate is better, much, much better.” Lucius noted in passing that his palms, armpits, and forehead were damp. “I . . . Philo, no . . . I and Philo, I mean we both . . . had a talk after he was . . . tortured. No, I don’t really mean that word . . . tortured. Naturally you wouldn’t—”

“Oh, yes I would,” Caesar said.

“Certainly you . . . aah . . . would.”

“What does Philo know?” Caesar looked both suspicious and angry.

Lucius was sick of the whole business. “Not one damned thing, but he heard rumors and, since I gave you my word, I feel I must . . .”

“Trip over your tongue every other sentence,” Caesar supplied.

“Yes . . . no . . .yes . . .”

“Stop!” Caesar raised one finger. “Take a deep breath and tell me this rumor, Regulus.” Caesar now looked amused.

“Regulus? Philo called me that. He’s probably right. He usually is. The story goes some fifty senators have . . . are considering killing you.”

Caesar raised his eyebrows. “Fifty. A nice round number. Sounds more like a faction than a conspiracy?”

“Some say forty,” Lucius replied unhappily. “Some say sixty. I split the difference—the workings of the mercantile mind, Caesar. It runs in the family.”

“Any names?”

“A few, about four certain, two probable. Tillius Cimber, Casca, Brutus,” Lucius hesitated, “and Cicero.”

“Naturally,” Caesar said. “He hates me.”

“Cassius and the other is a nonentity and I can’t remember which one.”

Caesar raised his hand. “Don’t bother, but thank you. I know it was difficult for you to come here today, but I’ve been hearing these stories since I returned to Rome.”

Lucius heaved a deep sigh of relief. “So it’s nothing new. Well, I’m now glad I came. I feel much better. So you don’t give any credence to these tales.”

Caesar shook his head. “No, I don’t. They’re always vague and the names are different each time. Some of those mentioned today are my intimates, waiting in the antechamber out there to see me. What am I to do? Have my soldiers take one or two of them into the garden and behead them on the pretext that they are plotting treason?”

“They wouldn’t see it as treason, Caesar, but as a form of service to the state.”

Caesar leaned back in his chair and began laughing.

“It’s not funny. They’re dangerous.”

Caesar’s laughter ended in an ironic smile. “I’m betting they wouldn’t have the courage.”

“Too rich for my blood. I wouldn’t make or take such a wager. The stakes are too high.”

“What should I do? Load the dice?”

“In the games you play, the dice are always loaded, but I’d just make sure I had the best pair. They’re not only dangerous to you, Caesar. I’m here to say I don’t want to be entangled in their plotting and dragged to my doom for nothing.”

“A sensible attitude. Very well, you may go. But before you do, I have a warning to give you. I value your sister’s friendship and would not take kindly to any interference in or curtailment of her business or personal activities. So leave patria potestas and paterfamilias to molder in the law books where they belong.”

Lucius felt a wave of rage sweep over him, one so powerful he could feel it in the pounding of his heart and the numbness of his skin. True, part of it was generated by the fear of this man’s overwhelming power, but the other part was sheer, heedless outrage at the direct affront to his manhood.

He leaned forward in his chair, knuckles whitening on the curved finials of the arms. “Caesar, Fulvia and I understand each other. She stays on her side of the house and I remain on mine. She handles most of the family money and I don’t care as long as I get whatever I want, when I want it. But she doesn’t get a free pass to attack my friends, blow my nose for me, or use my penis and balls to make an heir for the Basilian family. And as for that sewer rat Firminius, he’s a poisonous little viper that tried to sink his fangs into the heel of a friend of mine. He’s lucky the law was on my side because if it hadn’t been, I’d have used something else and he’d still be trying to pick up his guts from the floor of his fancy perfumed bedroom. As for those devious backstabbers in the Senate, no, you’re right. I don’t plan to join them in any of their vicious cabals, but not because I’m afraid of failing, but because when I go down, I plan to deserve it. Truly, richly, and deeply deserve it.”

Caesar drew back. “Regulus indeed. I feel as if I’ve tapped a sheep between the horns and roused a lion.” Then he gave a nasty chuckle. “Perhaps your sister’s right. I should appoint you a legate and let you work off some of your vile temper on the battlefield. You’ll find it a more appropriate venue for venting your considerable spleen than in the direction of a man with the power of life and death over you and your dubious associates.”

Lucius felt his skin grow cold, but he was not ready to give ground. He felt he’d suffered enough indignities from Antony and this man. Being sent to the Senate as a spy. Being told with such casual cruelty to vacate his position as head of the family. Top that with an attempt on Philo’s life.
No! Enough,
he thought. “Caesar, someday you’re going to make one too many enemies.”

“Yes, I may have already, but you won’t be one of them. Do you know your father recommended your sister to me, but not you?”

“Doesn’t surprise me much, Caesar. I don’t think he was happy with my mother or cared much for her son.”

“I think you might be wrong there. He said of you that you were as free of artifice as a child and as transparent as a crystal goblet. He forgot to mention you were as headstrong as an infuriated bull when finally angered.”

“Coming from him, those aren’t compliments.”

“No, probably not, but think. Everyone fails to value candor and honesty. Truth has its uses. It’s just not popular right now in Rome. Have you any political ambitions?”

“No.”

“Good, then I might offer you a command. Not a high command, but if you serve on my staff, you would rise quickly. But I cannot find it in my heart to worry about your enmity. A man you were at odds with would always see you coming.”

“Am I supposed to be reassured by that? You have a short way with your enemies. You had Vercingetorix strangled at your triumph and another one, the name escapes me, flogged to death. I talked to a centurion who was present when the sentence was handed down and carried out.”

“The Gauls were impressed.”

“So was the centurion and so was I. Thank you, but no thank you. I have no hankering to be placed between you and the Parthians. Now or ever. And I feel the same about the senate I would be very careful of those worthies especially the ones closest to you.”

“You believe them to be dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Indeed.” For a moment, the ruler of the world looked sad. “I don’t believe so. The Rome that destroyed Carthage and faced Hannibal down is no more.”

“Yes, I agree, but they don’t know that. Their thinking hasn’t caught up with the times. They believe the Senate would be what it was if the new men polluting it were driven out. And if you were dead.”

The mask dropped. The curtain slipped and, for the first time, Lucius saw the man himself. Or, at least, this was how he thought about it later, when he was alone and considering Caesar’s words.