Part 5

"I know what I have said," he replied slowly. "I have sworn an oath that is not able to be broken."

He felt the cold and the wet gloom before dawn close in on him. What had he done, indeed? he thought. It was not well to make such enormous promises without thinking carefully. He had belike pledged himself to death.

But, if so, death was his weird and would not be stayed; for he had invoked the very river of Time.

He shuddered with the awe of it, his teeth clenched together. "I will leave in a few days, as soon as I can," he said. "You will forget we ever spoke of this, will you not?"

Phryne rose again. She leaned against the wall, her cheek and palms to its rough brick, her eyes closed. It was as though she drew on her own roots of strength. At last, in a faraway voice, she answered him: "No, I shall help you."

VI

Not till four days afterward did Phryne stop Eodan on the portico and breathe: "I have made ready. Meet me in my chamber--do you know where it is?--after sunset, and I will try to disguise you. Can you get horses?"

His heart raced within him. He thought for a moment, standing under fluted pillars with a green lawn and broad fields before him, standing among thunders and drawn swords. At last he nodded. "There are stableboys who sleep among the animals, but it will be simple enough to frighten them, if I have any weapon. No one else will know until morning."

"Then the gates of Tartarus will be opened!" Her eyes were huge and her cheeks pale. "Let me see," she murmured. "I will have a sword for you--I know where such tools are kept--and a couple of daggers as well. You can overawe the boys, so they let themselves be bound and gagged one by one. Drop a little word here or there, as if in carelessness, to make them think you plan to flee into the mountains. That would be the expected direction, anyhow, to reach Helvetia. Where did you think to go, in truth, after Rome, Eodan?"

"I do not know," he said. "North, to some place where men are still free. I do not know what the best way is."

"There is none," she told him. "They are all beset." Quickly, leaning close so he could feel her breath upon his breast, swift and frightened: "I am not so sure your best hope lies to the north. You would have to cross too much Roman country. In the east or the south, now.... But we can speak of that later. We dare not be seen lingering like this. After dark, then--do not fail! I have contrived that the two girls who sleep with me be out tonight. My supplies would be discovered before another such chance came. So tonight!"

She went from him, almost running, the breeze fluttering her light white gown about her. Eodan could not hold himself from staring. A slave with the soul of a chief's daughter, he thought; surely some Power had sent her across his path. He would have promised sacrifices if he had known what Power it was, but the gods of this land were unknown to him, and Cimberland's too far away to have heard about his trouble.

Well--tonight!

He went on into the villa. It was hours till sundown; how would he live through them without roaring his secret to the world? He would get Cordelia's permission to go for a gallop. Yes, a good plan, thus he could spy out his road of escape....

He found her in the peristyle. Her maids twittered and giggled, a plump little scurrying bevy, wisps of cloth gay about a delicious roundedness fore and aft. They were laying out towels, clean garments, the mistress was pleased to swim in the pool. Cordelia stood aloof among them. As she saw Eodan come between the pillars, she drew her half-discarded stola about her. The dark Etruscan head lifted, and she said with an unwonted chill, "What would you? Did you not hear the household was forbidden to come here?"

"I beg pardon," said Eodan. "I was out--"

"Out! You have been out far too much. This is the place you are supposed to guard. Where were you?"

Eodan thought back. On a certain morning he had made his vow to quit this kept life. The next night she had still been exhausted, and he slept in the guards' chamber. Since she had said nothing about it, he had again slept with the guards the following darkness. The next morning he offered the cattle overseer to help bring several beasts of good stock from a neighboring plantation; they had not come back till well after sundown, and he was tired and went directly to his pallet.... Yes, by Fire itself, he had scarcely seen Cordelia in three days!

"I am sure you knew my whereabouts, Mistress," he answered her. "If you do not summon me to--to help you--." An uncontrollable giggling tinkled around the sunlit space; Cordelia frowned and thinned her lips--"I would not trouble you, Mistress," he finished.

She said slowly, "Is gratitude, then, not a barbarian habit?"

"But how have I done wrong?" he asked. He knew very well, and he could not dissemble bewilderment he did not feel. Cordelia's face darkened.

"Go, all you women!" she snapped. "Let no one in here."

They fled, with squeaks of dismay; now Mistress was angry! Cordelia walked slowly toward Eodan across gleaming mosaic. Her knuckles, where she held up the loosened ungirdled stola, were bloodlessly taut.

"If you think so little of me that you will only come on command ... that you will drive cows till midnight rather than even ask me if that is my wish--" She was close to him now, speaking through knotted jaws. "Don't think I have not seen you in corners with that Phryne! If you find me dull, you may as well go back to the fields!"

I find you not dull but a foe, he wanted to say. There is too much blood between us.

Aloud: "Mistress, I did not understand. I thought you would summon me."

Something eased within her. She laughed, low, and put her hands on his shoulders. The gown fell about her feet. It could have been one of the statues he had seen--Venus, in her aspect of hot sleepless nights--that stood before him, save that veins pulsed under this skin and sweat jeweled it in the sun. "Hercules, Hercules," she cried, "can you not get it into your thick yellow head, I want to be the one commanded?"

He stepped back, stammering, feeling the will of Venus but remembering she was Hwicca's enemy. "Mistress ... I cannot ... I am--"

"Tonight," she said eagerly. "Just at day's end. We will watch the sun go down and we shall not sleep before it rises again."

O my weird which I invoked, help me now! he thought.

It came to him what he must do. And because the day was warm, and she stood clothed only in sunlight and her loosened dark hair, and he had slept alone for three nights, and he might be a flayed corpse in a few days ... he trod forward with the Bull strong and exultant in his soul.

"Oh!" said Cornelia. "Hercules! No! Tonight, I told you!"

He grinned, pulled her to him, and held her one-handed with muscles that had wrestled horned kine to earth, while his lips bruised hers and his free hand roved up and down her body. "Well," she sighed finally, "well, just once--"

When they had rested for a time, he stood up. "Come, into the pool!" he said. She hung back. Laughing, he sprang. Water spouted, drenching her. He swam to the edge where she crouched and hauled her after him. She came up sputtering. He kissed her. She gave in and paddled about, while he snorted and churned, porpoiselike, darting in again and again, until at last it was she who urged him back onto the tiles.

Thereafter she complained that her body was sore from the hardness, so they sought her bedroom. After a while she clapped her hands and had a girl bring refreshments. And so it went till sundown.

As the first darkness came out of the east and up from the lower valley, like smoke, Cordelia drew Eodan's head down upon her bosom and held him there, with a grasp made gentle by weariness. "O Hercules," she whispered, "I thought there were no more men in the world worth caring for."

He lay with closed eyes, drained of strength, wishing he could sleep, wishing this were Hwicca.

"It is not only that you still my hunger," she murmured. Her voice was trailing off, swallowed by sleep. "It is yourself. I am not lonely under your kisses.... Be with me always, Hercules! I ask you--as a beggar--I who love you...."

Eodan waited until he was sure she slept deeply. Then he took her arms from about his neck and sat up. The room was dark and hot. He heard the night outside, noisy with crickets. It was hard to remember that he must not be contented with she who lay beside him. For a moment he cursed his own foolishness, which had laid a weird on him.

But what was said could not be unsaid. He sighed, got to his feet and fumbled about after his tunic. When he found it he stood for a little while looking down at Cordelia; but his eyes were blurred with night. Finally, not knowing why, he stooped and kissed her, not on the mouth, but the brow.

Barefooted, he slipped across marble to the small tiring room beyond. A bronze mirror caught enough light to prickle him with a thought of ghosts. Beyond stood Phryne's door. The only bar was on this side, but he knocked and waited till she opened it.

She stood with a lamp in her hand, dressed as during the day but with her hair tumbled about her shoulders. The smoky oil flame touched eyes that were too bright and lips that lacked steadiness. "So you came after all," she said.

"I agreed to, did I not?" Eodan sat down. His knees shook with exhaustion; he was unable even to feel afraid. He looked dully about the room--a mere cubicle, three pallets on the floor, a table with some combs and other things, a shelf holding many rolled-up books. Those must be hers, he thought. A window faced unshuttered on blackness.

"I hope you completed your task," spat Phryne. "It would not do to leave your owner unsatisfied before you go to your dear wife, would it?"

"Oh, be still," he said. "I had no choice. She would have had me come to her and stay all night."

"Did you enjoy your work?" jeered the whisper.

"I did," he said, flat and cold on the unmoving air. "I do not know how this concerns you. But, if you are so angry with me, I shall depart without your help."

He half stood up. She pushed down on his shoulders. "No, Eodan!" Suddenly frantic: "Zeus help us, no, it would be your death! I am sorry for what I said. It was indeed no--no c-concern of mine."

He looked up, startled. She had turned her head and was wiping her eyes with her knuckles, like a child. "Phryne," he asked, "what is the matter?"

"Nothing. Come, we are spilling time." She drew a shaky breath, squared her shoulders and went over to the table. From beneath it she dragged a small wooden box. Squatting on the floor--as he saw her by that guttering light, against monstrous unrestful shadows, he thought of a Cimbrian god-wife, but a newly initiated one, young, shy, fair, riven by the Powers she must now rein and drive--Phryne took out a bundle of harsh gray cloth, a sheathed Roman sword and two long daggers, some pots and bowls, and more.

"I have stolen enough money to fill a purse," she whispered. "And these clothes will pass for a poor smallholder's. The hat will shade your face from chance eyes. We will dye your hair black and cover that barbarous tattoo with a bandage, as though it were some injury. Here, bend over."

It was soothing to have her work upon his head, rinsing, rubbing in the dye, combing. He felt a little strength flow into him. When she was done she washed her blackened hands, cocked her head and smiled. "There! Though we must take along a razor and shave that flax stubble every day."

"We?" It grew upon him what she meant. He gaped. "But--you are coming, too?"

"Of course," she said. "It would be--Eodan, if you tried to go out alone, hardly knowing the road, not knowing Rome at all, with that atrocious Latin and--" Her words became feverish. "Oh, Eodan, Eodan, you Cimbrian mule, would you even know where to buy food? As well fall on this sword at once and save everyone trouble!"

"Phryne," he said, wholly overcome, as though he were caught in floating dreams, "your place here is good. What can I do for you? Why?"

She bit her lip and looked away. "It would be too easy to find out who had helped you. I dare not stay."

He leaned forward, taking her hands. "But what am I to you? Why should you help me at all, then?"

She jerked free, angrily. "I am a Greek," she snapped. "My grandfather was a free man. None of this concerns _you_!"

Eodan shook his head in wonderment. But indeed, he thought in the darkling Northern part of his soul, this was brought on when I invoked the Powers; she is a part of my weird.

He dared ask no further. There was too much awe about her. Had he indeed let a vessel of Power touch him, and lived?

"Freedom, freedom," said Phryne. "In a barbarous land, in sod huts and stinking leather clothes, with not a book or a harp for a thousand miles ... oh, truly, I shall be free!" Her laughter rattled. Eodan made the sign against trolldom.

"Well, quickly," she said. "I could not be taken for any peasant girl, so I must be a boy. There are the shears."

She crouched before him and waited. He took the long crow's-wing-colored tresses in his hands, feeling that he offended some spirit of loveliness. But--He cropped away until there were only ragged bangs falling over her brow and her ears could be seen. She looked in a mirror and sighed. "Gather them up," she said. "When we make a fire, I will offer them to Hecate."

She pointed to the clothes. "Now, put that on! Do not stand there gawping!" With a movement as of defiance, she undid her girdle, threw it on the floor and stepped from her gown. Indeed she was beautiful, thought Eodan. Her womanness did not flaunt itself, bursting through its clothes like Cordelia's; it waited cool among shadows for one discoverer. He grunted some apology when she glared, turned his back, and fumbled on the garments laid out for him--a gray, patched woolen tunic, scuffed sandals, a felt hat and a long wool cloak. He picked up the heavy purse, slung a sword next to his skin and put a knife in the rope belt.

As he took up his staff, he saw Phryne clad like him. The baggy cloth would hide the shape of her body; she must hope the dirty old cape would shield slim legs and high-arched feet. She was turning from the shelf of books. She had run her fingers over the scrolls, just once, and tears lay in her eyes.

"Come," she said. "We have only till morning; then they will start to hunt us."

VII

To Eodan, Rome had been two things. First was the city of the Cimbrian dream, all golden roofs above white colonnades, shimmering against a sky forever blue. Then was the avenue of the triumph, where he bent his weary head lest the hurled muck take him in the eyes, and thereafter the slave pens and finally a stumbling in chains, one dawn, out onto the Latin Way. Neither was of this earth.

Now he entered Rome herself, and he saw just a little of a city that toiled and played and sang and dickered and laughed, plotted, feasted, sacrificed, lied, swindled, and stood by friends--a city of men and women and children like any others, built by men's hands and guarded by men's bodies. He had thought Rome was walled, but he found as he trudged through hours of buildings that she eternally outgrew her walls, as though she were a snake casting skin, so that the old gates stood open in the midst of a brawling traffic. He had thought of Romans as divided into iron-sheathed rankers, piggish man-traders, and one woman who shuddered in his arms; but he saw a gang of children playing ball in the dust, a leathery smith in a clangorous tiny shop and a limping man who cried out the roasted nuts he bore for sale in panniers slung from a yoke. He saw Romans spread their wares in flimsy booths while a temple gleamed purity above them. He saw a Roman matron, in clothes no better than his, who scolded her small boy for being reckless about passing horse-carts. He saw a young girl weeping, for some reason he never knew, and he saw two young men, merry with wine, stop to rumple the ears of an itinerant dog.

It growled about him, the heavy sound of laden wheels, echoing between grimy brick walls. A haze hung in the air, smoke and dust, tinged with garlic, cooked meat, new bread, perfume, horse dung, sewage, garbage, human sweat. Folk milled about, shouting, waving their arms, chaffering, thrusting a way past the crowds, somehow, anyhow. Once Phryne was whirled from Eodan in such an eddy. He gasped with terror, knowing he was indeed lost without her. She found her way back to him, but thereafter he held her wrist.

They threaded their way toward the Esquiline Gate. "We must find an inn," Phryne said; she had to shout through the noise. "The house is on the Viminal Hill, but we could not go there clad as we are, nor before dark in any case."

Eodan nodded dumbly. He let her lead him under the portal. A distance beyond it was a shabby district of tall wooden tenements, where the streets were slimy with refuse and the landless, workless scourings of war and debt crouched in their rags waiting for the next dole. He was too tired even to feel anger at the shouts from tooth-rotten mouths. "Hail, peasant! A son of the soil, there are straws in his hair! Aha, will you not lend us that pretty boy for a while? No, he will not--they're a hard-fisted lot, these farmers. Cisalpine Gauls for certain, see the ox look about 'em. But then where are their Gaulish breeches? Ha, ha, lost their breeches, did they--now was it at dice or what?"

Phryne, gone pale with wrath, led Eodan through twisted alleys until they found an inn. The landlord sat outside, yawning and picking his teeth with a thumbnail. "We would have a room for ourselves," she said. "Half a sesterce," said the landlord. "Half a sesterce for this flea pit? One copper as!" cried Phryne. They haggled while Eodan shuffled his feet and looked about.

When at last he was alone with her, in a windowless box of a room, he said, "The night winds take you, girl, what do we care for a copper more or less? I feel a fool every place we stop, listening to you!"

"I wonder what they would have thought of two people who did not bargain?" purred Phryne. "That they were in a suspicious haste to get off the streets?"

It was too murky to read her face, but he had come to know that tone. He could almost have traced out the quirk of her mouth and the mockery of her eyes. "Oh, well, you rescued me again," he said. "I am a blundering dolt. What shall we do next, captain, sir?"

"You have a wit like a bludgeon," she said. "Be quiet and let me think." She threw herself on a pile of moldy straw and looked up at a ceiling hidden as much by grime as by dimness.

Eodan hunched among the stinks and choked down his wrath. She had saved him too often, in the days that lay behind. Her right to badger him was earned.

He could have guided the first wild gallop himself, out of the estate and down ringing dirt roads to the south. When they reached a stream, they had dismounted and led their horses several miles northerly in its channel, slipping and stumbling while the dark hours fled them; but he would have done that, too, to cover his trail. They found another road at last and went mercilessly along it toward the Latin Way; the horses were ready to fall down by sunrise. Eodan would have turned them loose then and gone ahead on foot; Phryne had made him, unwillingly, lead them into a brushy ravine and kill them. But that was not a thought Eodan might never have had--it was another trail-covering, after all, and a chance to sacrifice for luck. She had told him to offer the beasts to Hermes, whom he did not know, but he felt any god would have been pleased.

No, he thought, thus far he could have come without her. He might even have gone for many miles, sleeping by day and walking by night. But when he blundered into a sheep-fold, and the dogs flew at him and the shepherds came to club him for a thief, he could not have fobbed them off with so ready a tale as Phryne had. He could never have passed himself for a harmless man when they bought bread and wine on the way; he would have had to steal his food, with all the risks. He reckoned himself brave, but he had gone chill when she chattered merrily with a wagoner chance-met at an inn; yet it ended with two days of riding on a load of barley while the blisters on their soles eased. (He recalled seeing in the first dawn how her feet bled from the river stones; but she had said nothing.) She saved him having to answer any questions at all in his accent when she remarked calmly that her poor brother was a mute. The last two days, with houses and villages grown so thick they dared not sleep out in the grass like vagabonds, she had gotten rooms for them. (Formerly they had lain side by side, wrapped in their cloaks, looking up at a sky frosty with stars, and she had told him unbelievable things that the wise Greeks thought about heaven, until he begged her to spare his whirling head. Then she laughed very softly and said he knew the stars themselves better than she.) And now in Rome--Yes, surely she belonged to his weird, for he saw now how moonstruck had been his notion of entering Rome alone.

Nonetheless, at the few times weariness or wariness had not forbidden them to speak freely, she was apt to be curt with him. He wondered how he offended her. Once he asked, and she said for him to cease plaguing her with foolish questions.

She stirred on the straw. "I will go out and buy us better clothing," she said. "After sunset I will take you to Flavius' house. I know a way we can get in. But then it must be you who leads, for I have no more plans in me."

"I have none," he said. "I will trust in whatever gods are willing to guide us."

"If they guide us not to our doom," she said.

"That may well be. But if so, what can we do to stop it?" Eodan shrugged. "I had thought we might steal Hwicca from the house--buy boy's dress for her too, Phryne--and then if we could all get on a ship bound somewhere--"

The girl sighed and left. Eodan stretched himself out and went to sleep.

She came back with cloaks and tunics of better stuff than they wore, a lamp and a jug of hot water and a basin borrowed from the innkeeper. Once again he submitted to her razor. When she was done, she gestured curtly at a loaf of bread and a cheese. "Eat," she said. "You may need your strength."

He had been tearing at it for some time when he noticed that she sat unmoving. "Will you not have some?" he asked.

Her tone was far-off, as if she had small care for what was to happen to them. "I have no appetite."

"But you, too--"

"Let me alone!" she flared.

Presently they were out again upon the street. It was sunset time and the crowds had thinned, so they moved quickly over mucked cobbles. "It is as well to get into a better part of the city before dark," muttered Phryne. "There could be robbers out."

Eodan lifted his staff. "I would give much for a good fight," he said.

Phryne looked at him, his eyes two heads above her own. "I understand," she said. Her fingers stroked lightly over his arm. "It will not be long now, Eodan."

The tightness in his breast grew with every pace. As dusk settled over the city, he found himself climbing a wide well-paved road up the Viminal Hill, so that he could gaze down across roofs and roofs and roofs, here and there a last pale gleam of temple marble, hazy blue fading into black in the east, and many lit windows making an eldritch earthbound star-sky, farther than a man could see. Faintly to him came smoke, a sound of wheels or tired feet, a distant hail that quivered upon still air. Once a horseman went by, casting the two plebeians an incurious glance.

Hwicca, thought Eodan. Hwicca, I have not seen you for a thousand years. I am going to see you tonight.

Though all the earth stood up to bar my way, I will hold you again tonight.