Night of the Wolf (54 page)
Authors: Alice Borchardt
“Faugh!” Caesar said. “First, the oracle. Well, Dryas was near the fire and probably threw something in it that disordered our senses. So she managed to convince the rest of them that she was some goddess.
“And, as to their escape, all that demonstrated was that Gordus knew more about his own ludus than anyone else did. Sooner or later they must surface. And then . . .” Well, he would make sure the barbarian scum paid the price of their folly.
Then he ordered Antony to take care of his hand because they had more important matters to address in the next few days. The army was ready to march, and this number of executions of the conspirators would take time to carry out, even if they took place—as planned—in the camp where the prisoners would be surrounded by his own loyal men.
No, he would never admit to Antony or any of the others that he believed every word she—whatever vixen had possessed the witch—spoke was the truth. And nothing but the truth.
No, whatever he was, he, Caesar, was not a fool. No human being could have done what Dryas did.
And no one could have escaped the way they had from the cell where he had imprisoned them.
Yes, it was over and he knew it with a finality that left him helpless for the first time in his life. Helpless and with nowhere to turn.
In the bed, Calpurnia sighed deeply and, for a short space, stopped breathing. Everyone, the women gathered around her and Caesar, waited until, at last, she began to breathe again.
Last night, the physicians who’d seen her had informed him this was a harbinger of approaching death. The pauses would grow longer and longer and, in time, she would . . . cease. Cease to be. Was that what happened? Should he have asked the “woman,” as Dryas called her? But then, she had given him no comfort about anything else. Why should she send him hope of a life to come? No, best not to know.
He studied the three possibilities she’d offered him. Of the three, the best was to go to the Senate today.
The second option, to die in Parthia . . . well, the Parthians had gutted Crassius, leaving him on the field, dying in agony. His own slaves had to finish him off.
The third, to stay in Rome and avoid the Senate, to live and die in such a way, helpless, strangling when he tried to eat or drink, unable to speak or even perhaps think, soiling himself, lying in filth, at the mercy of his attendants. No.
A soldier, one of the legionnaires who guarded the house, came to tell him Antony and the rest were here.
Oh, well. Go now.
Then he remembered Philo the Greek’s strange question and its even more peculiar answer.
Stardust! What madness, and how typically Greek not to ask any question whose answer would confer an advantage for him, but rather would fly off in the direction of metaphysics.
But then, that was why the Romans had found them so easy to conquer and why so many of their intelligent, cultivated, well-educated, and talented citizens found themselves in the Roman slave markets, undergoing the dehumanizing process of being treated as commodities and sold as slaves.
No. Wealth and power, or perhaps only power, were worth having, worth suffering or struggle to get.
He had achieved supreme power, as so many other conquerors had. And . . . and he found it a disappointment. Inexplicable . . . but he did.
Why? What more could there be?
He never answered the question because Antony waved to him from the reception room near the atrium. Without a backward look, Caesar went to join him.
Maeniel waited at the foot of the Curia steps. He had his hand on the hilt of his sword, concealed under his toga.
The rain had ended, but the walks between the trees in the public gardens were still wet. The sky showed patches of blue.
They had emerged last night from the place of the spring and the mountain, returning to the hills near Aquila’s farm. The wolf had led them because Calpurnia had shown him other portals leading away from Rome, and he had no doubt that were they willing to travel far enough, they might reach any spot on the earth. Aquila had given them shelter for the night, and there was no need to go farther.
They found, when they returned to the city, the conspirators had raised a substantial force of ex-gladiators, as had Gordus.
Beyond the public gardens loomed the high wall behind the proscenium stage of Pompey’s theater. They were in the theater, the rest—Lucius, Dryas, Philo, Aquila, Cut Ear, Gordus, and about twenty of the toughest, most determined swordsmen Gordus could hire. His wife and son were in Ostia along with Octus and Alia.
“You see,” Octus had explained after Philo went to Gordus, “I spoke to Aquila. No one was watching me and I got that, what shall I call it, plum from the wall of your room, my lord. I knew it was no natural thing. In the course of nature, it should have been a prune. So, after I spoke to Aquila, I went to join you. Your friend—” He pointed at Maeniel. “—told me what it was, but I couldn’t think of a way to give it to you until Aquila overpowered the guards. The only thing I really feared was that Gordus or Dryas, one of them, would kill the other, but that didn’t happen.”
“And,” Maeniel said, “I had Calpurnia’s rose.”
But now they were coming, a knot of men in white tunics, togas surrounding the most powerful man in the world.
Maeniel wondered if he was going to have to use the sword.
Antony was the only man who knew him, but before they reached the dozen or so marble steps up to the portico, someone threw an arm over Antony’s shoulders and drew him aside.
Caesar hurried past and, for a moment, Maeniel met his eyes. He found himself sorry to be part of the human journey. He couldn’t tell what he was reading there, bewilderment that it had passed so quickly, sorrow for the loss of the beloved kaleidoscope of existence itself, a final awareness of ultimate aloneness. No way to know. One thing he did know, those eyes and the expression in them would haunt him as long as he lived.
Maeniel’s fingers tightened on the sword hilt, but then Caesar was past and gone.
The multibreasted figure of some eastern goddess looked down on Maeniel and away into the rainy public gardens. His hand slid away from the sword hilt. Above, even beyond the double bronze doors of the Curia, he could feel it, smell it, sense it in ways no human ever could.
He shivered as the pack closed in.
Alice Borchardt
shared a childhood of storytelling with her sister, Anne Rice, in New Orleans. A professional nurse, she has also nurtured a profound interest in little-known periods of history. She is the author of
Devoted,
Beguiled,
The Silver Wolf,
Night of the Wolf,
and
The Wolf King.
She lives in Houston.
BOOKS BY ALICE BORCHARDT
Devoted
Beguiled
The Silver Wolf
Night of the Wolf
The Wolf King
The Dragon Queen
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Copyright © 1999 by Alice Borchardt
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