The Boat of Fate (41 page)

There was a scraping at the door. I sat up alarmed. It was the girl Pelgea. She set down a pitcher of water and a bowl. I smiled at her uncertainly. She slipped back through the door and was gone.

Oddly, I didn’t want to wash. It seemed I was laving some part of her presence from me. When I’d finished I found my tunic and dressed. I stepped outside. The sun was just up. The lawns were grey with dew; across them lay the long, angled shadows of the buildings.

She was waiting for me. The triclinium looked strange in the early light. There was bread and fruit, milk, well-watered wine. A bowl of honey. I ate awkwardly, in silence. Then I looked up. I said, ‘Crearwy . . .’

She smiled. She said, ‘Was it nice?’ Her voice sounded small.

I said, ‘I didn’t want to wash. It was strange.’

She said, ‘I know.’ She came to me. We kissed. This time there was warmth. She pulled away. She said, ‘Oh, no. No, no ...’

‘Crearwy ...’

‘Yes?’

I said, ‘The Nymph came. After all’

She said, ‘I didn’t know it was going to happen. You made it happen.’

‘I?’

‘You shouldn’t look at a woman like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘That first night. It was terrible. It went right through me.’

‘What?’

She said, ‘Didn’t you know? It was your eyes. They get bluer.’

‘So do yours.’

She broke a piece of bread, smeared it thickly with honey. She said, ‘I’m sure they don’t.’

‘Have some bread with your honey.’

She started to laugh. Her mouth was full and she coughed. She said, ‘It’s ridiculous.’

‘What is?’

‘Us. Sitting like this. Talking. No, not ridiculous. Strange. Nice.’

I said, ‘I shall call you the Honey Princess. It’s your hair colour.’

‘Mmm. That’s nice. Sergius ...’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you angry with me?’

‘Should I be?’

She said, ‘I thought you’d be ... disgusted. You wouldn’t want to see me again.’

‘I’m not disgusted.’

I pushed my plate away. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I don’t want you in trouble.’

‘I shan’t be in trouble. I shall be all right.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m always all right.’

I said, ‘I must go now.’

‘Not yet. In a little while.’

‘I must.’

‘Your horse isn’t saddled,’ she said. ‘Walk up to the temple with me.’

The pool was eight-sided and shallow. Its water was crystal clear. She leaned over it. She said softly, ‘Thank you, nymph.’ There was something scratched roughly on the sill. I hadn’t noticed it the night before. The Greek letters Chi and Rho, for the Christos. I touched the mark vaguely with my finger. I said, ‘Are you a Christian?’

‘I believe it’s all the same God. I don’t know what I am.’

‘But you believe in him.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

‘When shall I see you again?’

She smiled, watching back at me; and I saw something I was to notice many times, how her eyes were never quite still. They moved constantly, in little shifts and changes of direction; yet all the time stayed fixed on my face. Many lovely women seem to have the trick.

She said, ‘Will you come soon?’

‘Yes.’

‘How soon?’

‘When I’ve made a bow.’

She walked with me to the gate. The villa was awake now and bustling. Pails clanked and rattled; there was a noise of hammering, somewhere a man sang lustily. The place sounded like what it was; a great farm. I turned back. The lines of windows seemed to be staring. I said, ‘If you write, use better messengers.’

‘Why?’

‘Felix reads your letters.’

She coloured instantly. ‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

She bit her lip. ‘I’ll be careful. But I can’t write much.’

‘I know.’

My horse was waiting, a slave holding its head I mounted I said, ‘Thank you for a pleasant stay, Domina. My regards to your husband, if he’s back before I come again.’

She stared up at me. She said, ‘Have a safe journey, Praefect.’

‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

The hooves echoed under the arch. Then the place was behind me. I turned once. She was still standing by the gateway. We didn’t wave.

I let the horse walk, feeling the sun warm on my neck. I had entered a new state, a state I as yet barely understood Yesterday the future had stretched as barren as the past. Now it was confused and rich. Yesterday my life had been my own. Now it was divided. It came to me, not for the first time, that a man is the sum of what he knows, that as the total of experience inexorably mounts so the breathing creature alters, is reborn. Yesterday I had been a virgin. Now I was not. I searched my awareness for the sense of sin. I found nothing. Our coming together had been a Fact; as the green grass round me was a Fact, and the bushes and waving trees. Parts, all, of the great Fact that is It, the unknowable, Oneness. Lost in the welter of Being, right and wrong lose coherence. I can neither excuse nor justify in the conventional terms of faith. Let the pure among you, blind things acting blindly, cast your stones.

I left the track where a wood swept down to meet it. It was cool beneath the trees. There was a streamlet, chuckling among boulders. In one place it had swelled to form a little pool. The water was clear and cold, like the pool in the temple. I sat and watched the weed move slowly, like graceful green hair. A close sound startled me. I turned. The horse was drinking noisily.

I rode on. Eventually I came to a clearing. There was a stockade, with a round thatched hut. Children played in the doorway. I called, and a woman answered. I knew a few words of the local tongue. I asked her for something to drink. She brought a bowl of milk. It was all they had.

I sat a while in the shade. I had lost my way. When I rose I said, ‘Corinium?’

She pointed. Corinium, yes. There. Corinium. There ... I gave her a piece of gold. She stood staring at it, biting it wonderingly.

The walls of the town were bright in sunlight, striped with their long bonding courses of red brick. The sentries at the gate saluted me. I rode through. It was market day, the streets were crowded. I stabled the horse, walked to my office by the basilica. Valerius met me. He stared curiously. He said, ‘Did it go off all right, sir?’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘yes.’

‘We were expecting you last night.’

‘It got late.’

I slung my sword and baldric on the bed. My desk looked cluttered. I sat down. He tapped the door behind me. Little noises still tended, obscurely, to make me jump.

‘Come.’

His hands were full of papers. He said, ‘Despatch from Com. Lit. Sax., sir.’

‘Who?’

‘Count Hnaudfridus.’

I said vaguely, ‘Must you use that horrible slang? What’s the other?’

‘From Camulodunum.’

‘Thanks. I’ll look at them later. Right now I want to bathe.’

‘Yes, sir. By the way ...’

‘Hmm?’

‘Any idea when we’re leaving for Isca?’

‘Not yet a while. I may leave it over. Valerius ...’

‘Sir?’

‘Can you lay hands on a good bowyer?’

If he was surprised he didn’t show it. He said, ‘I expect so, sir.’

‘Good. Get him to come along this afternoon, if you can.’

‘Very good sir. It shall be done.’

Insensibly, in my memory, the season alters. The leaves deepen from their first translucent green. Oaks hang out their massive clouds of foliage. The barley ripens in the little square fields. The thin spears of spring are gone; now the grain stands heavy and tall. Soon it will turn golden.

Nessa rides to meet me, across the field. She’s whooping, holding up a freshly killed rabbit. Her arrow still transfixes it. Blood from the trophy has run back down her arm. In her triumph she is unaware of it.

Crearwy said, ‘You love them, don’t you?’

‘Who?’

‘The children.’

‘No.’

‘I think you do.’

‘I don’t.

‘Why not?’

‘They’re not mine to love. I can’t afford it’

I was lying, of course, to suit my own queer humour. Those long-haired rats, shinning up apple trees, showing their funny little drawers, delighted me. But love is a two-sided coin. Sorrow must balance joy.

We were sitting in the little temple. The warmth had made me drowsy. There was a scent of thyme and lavender and the midsummer hum was loud.

She said, ‘I love this place.’

I didn’t answer.

She said, ‘There’s peace here. This is where the bees come to die.’

I said, ‘Why did you marry him?’

She had been plaiting stems of lavender. She put them down. She said, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you love him?’

‘He was good to me.’

‘Isn’t he now?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In his way. Sometimes. I don’t know. He’s kind.’ She looked up. ‘There was another child,’ she said. ‘The first. It died.’

I waited.

‘He wasn’t here,’ she said. ‘He went to Gaul.’

‘Till the fuss blew over?’

‘Something like that.’

‘That sounds a kindly act.’

She said, ‘He gave me a roof.’

I turned to look across the green expanse of lawns. I said, ‘Such a roof.’

She said, ‘He’s coming home tomorrow,, by the way. He’s in Britannia again. I had a letter.’

I got up. I said, ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

‘Don’t be angry. I couldn’t help him coming back.’

‘You could help being so bloody casual. Couldn’t you have told me?’

‘I did tell you.’

‘Yes. When you had to.’

She bit her lip. She said, ‘I didn’t want to spoil what we had.’

‘Meaning we’ll have no more.’

‘I couldn’t help it. Please don’t go.’

‘I’d better. He might be back sooner than you think.’

‘He won’t be. He always stays a few nights in Dubris.’

‘Excellent. I’m glad you all work to a system.’

‘You are in a bad temper,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t matter, anyway, if you were here.’

‘Maybe not to you.’

She flared at me. ‘You’re not the only one with pride!’

‘From where I’m standing,’ I said, ‘it looks as if I might be.’

Her face was like an animal in pain. When she was hurt she always looked like that. I wanted to take her in my arms; but also, obscurely, I wanted to wound her again. Her off-handedness infuriated me. If that was all our relationship meant it was better ended quickly. I turned to walk away.

She said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It matters to me. You know it does.’

‘It sounds like it.’

She put her face in her hands. She said, ‘Anyway, it wasn’t your business.’

‘What wasn’t my business?’

‘When he came back. I can be nasty too.’

I said, ‘You certainly can. Thanks for a pleasant summer.’

‘There’s no need to insult me!’

‘I didn’t insult you.’

‘You bloody well did!’

‘Well, it makes a change,’ I said. ‘Usually it comes my way.’

She stared at me, tear-stained and angry. ‘Sergius,’ she said, ‘please don’t let’s quarrel. It’s been so lovely.... Oh God,’ she said, ‘what’s going to happen to us?’

‘What should happen to us?’

‘Do you expect me to run away with you or something?’

‘Any other man might Not me.’

‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t. If you had children, you’d know.’

‘That,’ I said, ‘is the hammer I was waiting for you to use.’

‘What hammer! I don’t understand!’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘The children come first. They always come first. I always put them first’

‘Except once.’

‘When was that?’

‘The night you seduced me.’

‘I didn't seduce you!’

‘I can’t think of a better word for it right now.’

She said, ‘You’d better go. No, please don’t.’ The tears were splashing again, unchecked. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she said. ‘Do you think I ever pleaded with anybody before?’

‘I don’t know what you did before.’

She scrubbed angrily at her face. She said, ‘It’s only the children.’

‘And the rest.’

‘What rest?’

‘A cosy little villa.’

She said furiously, ‘Do you think that matters?’

‘It mattered when you married him for it.’

‘I didn’t marry him for it. If you want to know, he bought me.’

‘There’s two sides to that,’ I said. ‘He bought. You sold.’

‘You never loved me. Ever.’

‘I always loved you. I still do. But I feel .out of place.’

‘You’re not out of place! Please stay. I don’t want you to go.’

‘I don’t particularly want to meet your husband.’

‘Why? Is your conscience troubling you?’

‘My conscience is clear. I’m just tired of his manners.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with his manners!’

‘There was plenty wrong the first night I came here.’

‘Oh, that,’ she said. ‘Why do you keep going on about that? It was only a joke. Oh, believe what you like. I don’t care. You won’t believe the truth.’

‘I saw the truth. You rather wanted to show off the British standard of living. I admit it’s higher than mine.’

She muttered, ‘It needn’t have been.’

‘What was that?’

‘Nothing. Forget it. Just go.’

‘I asked you what you meant.’

She rose slowly to face me. Her voice was low and clear. ‘The first night you came here,’ she said, ‘you were offered the Purple. And you turned it down'

I rode to Isca. I spent a month in the town. My days were tiring, but I found I couldn’t sleep. I took to drinking more wine than was good for me. In time I sickened of it. I still slept badly.

I’d expected the pain to ease by degrees. It didn’t. I lived a second shadowy life. I saw her and heard her, in the quiet watches; her laughter, the turn of her head and ankle, the flash of her eyes. If she’d laid some Island curse on me it couldn’t have been worse. I saw the villa and the temple, the white gleam of its columns. Later I saw her body. She put the fillet from her hair, slipped the robe down low round her hips. Her waist was slender as a statue, her belly full and not like a girl’s. Her nipples jutted boldly, pointed and pink. She shaved her armpits but not her body; her loin hair was harsh and dark and curly. Sometimes after we had made love she used to sing; a little nonsense song, in a lisping voice. She would never tell me where she learned it, or what it meant.