The Songs of Slaves (62 page)

“This is Connor,”
Lucia
said. “He ha
s protected me on my journey
here.”

Suddenly
Lucia
looked as if she might cry, as if she might drop the stoic mask and weep outright and never stop. But she pushed her will forward once more, with one more tremendous effort. Connor felt his heart caving in.

Julia put her arm around
Lucia
’s shoulders. A second woman entered the courtyard – a lovely, brown-haired woman in her thirties. She, too, came beside
Lucia
and laid a hand on her shoulder.
Lucia
acknowledged her aunt by taking her hand, but said nothing. Connor knew that she could not speak any more than he could.

Lucretius Montevarius looked at her, confused by all that he was seeing and hearing.

“
Lucia
, my child, follow Priscilla and Julia into the sitting room. I will be with you soon.”

Lucia
gazed once more at Connor until Priscilla drew her away. She followed her two kinswomen out of the courtyard and did not look back.

“What in the name of Christ and all the gods i
s going on here?” Lucretius demanded
, the warm-hearted uncle gone, the Roman of the Equestrian Order stepping forward. “Who are you?”

Connor was still staring at the door where
Lucia
had disappeared.

“You heard already,” he finally said. “And can figure out the rest. I am Connor. I rescued your niece and brought her here – the only safe place I could think to bring her. She is under your charge now. If I ever hear that you have mistreated her I will come back and tear this place down stone by stone to bury you.”

“How dare you speak to me of mistreating her – in my own house – while I am her true kinsman and you are barbarian thug?” Lucretius said hotly. He stepped forward to meet Connor’s stare of defiance, flanked by his
bucellarii
. The old butler retreated to the imagined protection of a doorway. But even as Connor glared he saw that his emotion had caused him to misspeak. He could see that Lucretius was a good man. The way he reacted to
Lucia
and the way that she reacted to him was enough evidence. Connor had chosen the right path.

“Where is my brother?” Lucretius demanded.

“Dead.
Slain by evil men.
I and my friends have avenged him. His son, Lorentius, is dead too; and though I shed no sad thought on his wicked bones I believe he too may be avenged before long. I have brought you
Lucia
from Lucius Montevarius’
lands in Gaul. When this war ends you can restore her to it. Meanwhile, see to her life and to her safety. Help her to find a happy match and to prosper. Live to see her children grow, and keep watch over them as your own.
”

Connor turned to go.

“
And if she ever asks what I said, tell her that I bless her. I bless her. And tell her that I
wish I could have done better.”

“Wait,” Lucretius said, recovering. “I have more questions.”

“I have no more answers.”

Connor pushed past the two armed men and left the rose-fragranced courtyard. He crossed through the foyer towards the door.

“Good luck, kid,” he said to the boy holding the bowl. He jerked both doors open and strode out into the sunlight.

The soldiers jumped to their feet, hands on their spears. But Connor gave them nothing more to react to. He took the reins of his horse from the groom and mounted. He left
Lucia
’s horse behind.

Lucretius ran out to him before he crossed to the gate.

“Wait!” he called. “Wait. I do not mean to be rude to you. I only have questions.”

“
Lucia
can answer them all,” Connor said.

“At least take this,” Lucretius said, offering a full leather bag the size of a fist. “If what you have said is true, then it is only a small part of what you deserve, but it is all I have within reach at the moment. Take it. If you could only stay and talk with me, I could perhaps get you more.”

“Save your gold,” Connor answered. “You may one day want to use it to put a price on my head.”

He turned Fingal toward the gate.

“
Salve
, Lucretius Montevarius
Corvinus
,” Connor said. “I loved your brother. I hated him at first, but he died my friend. And I love
Lucia
. Remember that much as the truth, whatever may happen and whatever you may hear.”

Connor spurred Fingal into a canter, crossing the gateway and turning up the road. He wanted to believe that from one of the windows of the villa green eyes gazed out at him. He suppressed the wish. He had hurt her enough. If the soldiers followed him he did not notice, and they would not have kept up for long. Connor’s mind was a torrent of insensible thought, but he found the prudence to leave through a different gate and was soon outside the walls of Asisium.

Dusk fell as he picked his way down Monte Subasio. He could not cry. He could not think or curse or pray. He could not remember and he could not forget. Darkness consumed him as he travelled the ancient road into the wooded hills.

XXIX

             
“What is the password?” the Visigoth patrolman demanded. His tone was unfriendly, but the way that he leaned on the horn of his saddle spoke more of indifference. He had no reason to feel threatened. It was not just the numerical superiority of his six men against one – the Visigoths had marched all the way to Rome and arrived at the walls unopposed. Apparently, there was no force in the world that would fight them.

             
“I have no idea,” Connor said. “I have been gone some weeks.”

             
The six patrolmen looked at each other.  Baking in the August heat their horses stood languidly, exerting no more energy than they had to. 

             
“I am Connor. I am one of Lord Valia’s men. I was away on a
mandata
to Umbria.”

             
“We have been here nearly two weeks,” the lead patrolman said. “Umbria is not that far away.”

             
“I got lost.”

             
“I can see that. You look like hell. So, if you are one of Lord Valia’s men then you are one of the heroes
of the field of Ravenna, and we shouldn’t bar your way.”

             
Connor lifted his gold chain, though of course the men had seen it resting on his mail.

             
“I will tell you what chafes me, sir,” the patrolman continued. “What
chafes
me is men who flock to us at the last moment, ready to take hold of the prize we are about to rest without having shared in the sufferings that brought us here.”

             
“I assure you, Captain, I have suffered.”

             
“Rulf, see our friend to Lord Valia,” the captain said. The youngest of the patrolmen, a man of about fifteen or sixteen years, rode forward on a bay gelding.

             
“I do not wish to thin your patrol,” Connor said. “I can find my own way.”

             
“We would be remiss if we did not provide a guide for one of the heroes of Ravenna,” the patrolman said through a crooked smirk. “The camp is a big place. We do not want you to get lost again.”

             
Connor bowed without dropping his eyes. The patrolmen parted to allow him to follow Rulf down the broad Flaminian Way.

             
“Do not mind him,” Rulf said when they were out of earshot. “He believes that being unpleasant makes him seem fiercer than he really is. Are you really one of the heroes of Ravenna?”

             
“I was in the shield wall at Ravenna, along with my Lord Valia and the King, and many men who now lie in the ground.”

             
“Tell me about it,” Rulf said. “I have heard the tales around the fire of how the fighting went, but I have not heard from someone who was actually there. Tell me everything.”

             
The lad had heard the tales around the fire indeed, Connor thought – these people commemorated everything. He had left just a few hours after being rewarded for his service, and returned a few weeks later to find that he was already part of a legend. Connor was about to attempt to explain that he had not spoken to anyone in many days, and that even if he could generate the energy and the clarity of mind to relive such events
that he certainly had no desire to right now. But as the wide road crested a hill and the vista opened up before him, all protests and explanations were silenced in his throat.
Before him lay Rome, spreading out over seven hills.

             
At first it seemed like some sort of trick of his world-weary mind, but it was real. Where there may have be
en slopes
, plains, bogs, and forests there were only buildings – massive edifices of marble and granite. The sun shone off the domed roves of structures that seemed built by the gods, shimmering on surfaces literally touched with gold. Connor’s eyes were drawn to the center of the Rome, the gigantic circle of the Coliseum like the hub of a great wheel. Around it were palaces and compounds, temples to thousands of gods, pleasure gardens, markets, and bath houses each the size of a village. High above the web of white streets, long aqueducts snaked down from the mountains, linking the city fountains together in inexhaustible water. Scanning out to the left he saw the oblong Circus Maximus, the raceway that routinely held a quarter of a million frenzied spectators. Grand basilicas and churches dotted the manicured city scape, the efforts of the last seven or eight decades of Christian emperors,
vying for grandeur with their Pagan cou
nterparts. Closer
lay
the Forum
of the great Republic; and high arches commemorating epic battles and the victories of these people who had made the whole world their own. A thousand years of engineering and the wealth of generation upon generation spread out before his eyes – Rome, the Eternal City, home fit for the gods, the capital of the world and the soul of the
Imperium
. 

Like Adam who had tasted the fruit of knowledge, Connor suddenly felt naked and ashamed. What was his village in Eire to this place? What was the security of a hill fort palisade to the twenty one miles of ten meter-high walls that encircled this city? What were his people’s accomplishments – or the accomplishments of the Visigoths, or any of the Germani – to these masterworks he now beheld? For the first time in Connor’s life he understood what they meant when they called him a barbarian.

Then Connor’s eyes wandered out from the gleaming white marble of the heart of Rome, out to the city houses of the opulently rich, then beyond to the quarters of town where the plebian poor lived in towering brick tenements. Even from his great distance,
Connor could see these crowded, leaning structures propped up almost by their proximity to one another. Titus had once explained to him that three hundred thousand people lived crammed in these places, living indolently for their next rations of bread and the cheap, subsidized wine and their next outing to the races and games. Forced out of jobs by slave labor, the Roman poor were merely pacified until they died early deaths, replacing themselves with babies born into meaningless entitlement and resentment of those who horded the riches that they could always see but never touch. All this was before the troubles – before the siege of the Goths and the embargoes of Honorius, and now the siege of the Goths again. How these hapless souls must suffer as they bear the worst of the weight of change, their famine-shriveled corpses the first to pile in the gleaming streets?

Connor’s gaze expanded past the formidable walls that surrounded the city proper on both sides of the green river Tiber. He looked past the great basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which out of respect the Goths left inviolate though they were
built
outside the walls. He looked to what had been the sprawling suburbs of Rome
–
houses of every description from
villas to hovels. These had grown gradually over the centuries as the citizens of the world flocked to Rome to make their fortunes or make their money off others who were. It had been eight hundred years since Rome had been under siege. Though constantly at war, not since the days of Hannibal had a threat even seemed real to the people who lived here. Though emperors – including Honorius – had looked to the strength of the walls, it had never seemed possible that Rome might fall. Now these suburbs outside these tremendous walls formed the camp of the Visigoths. The former owners had long since fled, been forcibly evicted, or even slain. All that had remained there had been plundered. For almost two years the Goths had occupied this ground – the strength of their forces waxing and waning as they worked their plans across Italia. They had returned in full strength two or three weeks before, bereft of their dream and full of cold anger; again besieging the shocked senators, equestrians, plebes, and slaves who had so recently been their allies under Attalus. The wolves had come to stay, surrounding the pen, licking their muzzles, just awaiting their chance to cross the walls and take their revenge. For long ago they had felt the shame that the sight of the shining city had
conjured. They had realized their nakedness; but that realization had eventually turned into covetousness, and covetousness to envy. Seething, they waited to satisfy their lusts and greed and assuage their victimized pride.