Elements 03 - Monsters of the Earth Read online

  The bartender suddenly grinned. “My father, he got a vineyard right up on the mountain,” he said, meaning Vesuvius. The volcano wasn’t the only hill in the vicinity, but its steam and rumbling made it the only one people on the Bay thought about. “You guys are all right.”

  He turned and walked back to his friends at the counter. Corylus thought about what had just happened. His left hand was flat on the table; to his surprise, the dimly viewed elm sprite was smiling at him.

  “That could’ve gone another way,” Pulto said. “I was about ready to pick this table up and start swatting wogs with it.”

  “I’m glad it didn’t come to that,” Corylus said mildly.

  An old man came in from the street. Instead of sitting at the empty table, he stepped toward Corylus. He was holding a scrap of parchment.

  “Excuse me, master,” he said.

  “If you’re a beggar,” Corylus said, “get out of here.”

  “If he’s a beggar, I’m going to help him out!” said Pulto, getting to his feet and reaching for the old man’s neck.

  “No!” said Corylus, jumping up also. The stranger looked like a bundle of sticks, scarcely a threat. Further, he was well-groomed and wore a clean tunic of good quality.

  “I am not a beggar,” the old man said. He had flinched when Pulto reached for him, but by effort of will he had managed not to turn in terror toward the threat. “My name is Lucinus and I own a farm on the Nola Road four miles out of Puteoli. I just want you to read this.”

  I wonder how old he is? Corylus thought. His face has wrinkles on wrinkles.

  Lucinus set the scrap of paper on the table and stepped back slightly. He added, “It’s a line of verse which my uncle wrote some five or six years before he died.”

  Corylus picked up the document and tilted it to catch the light through the front of the shop. It was a palimpsest: a used sheet from which earlier writing had been rubbed off with a block of pumice, leaving a blotched surface that would do for notes and scribbled drafts.

  Aloud to make Pulto part of the discussion, Corylus read, “‘Someday, my brethren, even these things will be pleasant to remember.’”

  He looked at Lucinus and said, “Your uncle wrote this?”

  “That is correct,” the old man said.

  “Then your uncle was a plagiarist,” Corylus said, more sharply than he had intended. He’d detected a hint of smugness in Lucinus’ voice, and that offended Corylus as a scholar. “This is by Vergil: from the first book of the Aeneid, to be more precise.”

  “My uncle was not a plagiarist,” Lucinus said in the same half-mocking tone. “My uncle was Vergil. You know that he was a poet, but he was also a great deal more of which you may not know.”

  Corylus picked up the document again, frowning at it. “Vergil died fifty years ago,” he said. “Longer than that, even.”

  “Yes,” said Lucinus. A tiny smile cracked his Stoic calm. “And though you haven’t asked why I brought the draft to you—”

  That would have been my next question.

  “—I did so because I could talk to you and you can talk to your friend Gaius Varus. If I were to have attempted to accost him in the street today…”

  Lucinus turned up one of his hands and gave Corylus a wry smile.

  “You’d have been pushed aside by the attendants,” Corylus said, completing the thought.

  “No,” said Pulto. “There’s three different squads on duty—Daddy’s, Mommy’s, and the lad’s. Between them all, they’d have beaten the crap out of this fellow”—he nodded—“and tossed what was left into an alley.”

  “Yes,” said Corylus. He tapped the palimpsest on the table as he considered the situation. “I’ll show this to Varus, yes. Then what?”

  Lucinus shrugged. He said, “Then it’s up to Lord Varus, whether he wishes to join me in saving the world from disaster. If he is willing to help, then the sooner he visits me at my farm, the better. Time is very short, even with the help of so great a magician as he is.”

  Lucinus turned and walked out of the tavern, moving briskly despite his apparent age. The bartender and his friends continued to talk, apparently oblivious of the world around them.

  “Do you believe him, master?” Pulto asked, his eyes on the street into which Lucinus had turned.

  “I believe this,” said Corylus, waggling the scrap of papyrus. He stared at the line of verse again, then said, “Pulto, go back to the house and tell Father that I may be late for dinner tonight. If he asks—”

  Cispius wouldn’t ask. He might assume that Corylus had met an interesting girl, but he trusted his son’s judgment in that sort of thing.

  “—tell him I needed to see Varus immediately.”

  “Right,” said Pulto, dropping bronze coins to the price of the wine on the table. He drained the carafe without bothering to pour the remaining contents into his mug.

  Corylus clapped his old servant on the shoulder as they parted in the street. He set off northward toward the house of Senator Saxa.

  Was Varus so great a magician or a magician at all? Corylus had no way of telling: he wasn’t a magician himself.

  The fact that Lucinus felt he could judge implied that he was something more than a frail old man himself.

  CHAPTER III

  Because of her mother’s training over the past two months, Alphena was able to recognize that though this arcade was small by the standards of Carce, its shops catered to a very wealthy clientele. The Bay Region contained Italy’s main commercial ports, but it was also the summer resort for senatorial families and their hangers-on. There was more real wealth per acre here than in any district of Carce.

  A striped linen awning, tan on the natural off-white, threw a golden shadow on the interior of the arcade. “There aren’t any hawkers,” Alphena said in surprise as her eyes adapted.

  The central open space was crowded, but the crush mostly consisted of attendants waiting while their mistresses were being served in the shops. In most arcades there were barrows and small traders dealing in inexpensive goods. Many people came to admire gold and silk but bought the brass and linen that they could afford.

  “Much chance any cheapjacks would have getting into here,” said Florina with a sniff. She had taken to her new role as the maid of a fine lady with much more enthusiasm than Alphena had to becoming a fine lady. “The doormen would sort them out before they had time to take a breath!”

  Besides the usual shutters to close and lock up for the night, many shops in this arcade had bronze grills. The attendants standing outside wore expensive tunics, embroidered and fringed with silk or precious metals, but they were all impressively big men. Florina was certainly right that they had the secondary duty of keeping the arcade clear of cheap goods—and very possibly clear of the sort of people who shopped for cheap goods.

  “Who does Your Ladyship choose to first honor with your custom, Your Ladyship?” Florina said. She coughed, realizing as the words came out that they didn’t sound as cultured as she had meant them to be.

  “I don’t know,” Alphena said, looking about the arcade. She was standing with her escort just inside the western entrance archway. Because she was short and the plaza was crowded, she couldn’t see very much. She started down the long side to her right, walking slowly.

  She didn’t have any reason for coming to this arcade or for going anywhere at all. She had been dreaming of three plump, dark-skinned women—not the tall purple-black Nubians whom some wealthy people bought as showy attendants, the way they might keep a leopard with a jeweled collar as a pet.

  The women she dreamed of were naked except for bits of rainbow-colored glass strung on twine, and in their midst was a foggy egg that rippled with the same colors that their belts did. They turned their heads toward Alphena when they danced close. Though they didn’t speak, they left Alphena with an urge to find something. She had the same dream every night of the past three, and today the urge was even stronger after she awakened.

  Flor
ina slowed and turned her head as they passed a clothier’s; she was eyeing the vivid yellow cape being displayed by three boys dressed as cupids complete with gauze wings. The proprietor sat on a low stool, personally offering slices of candied fruit to the severe-looking female customer who reclined beside him. The customer’s maid stood behind the couch, intent on her mistress’ face rather than on the cape.

  “Not there!” Alphena snapped, quickening her pace. The ten men of her escort wore matching blue tunics with a white stripe down either side. The four in the lead jumped to stay ahead of their mistress, while the remainder sprinted a moment later to keep up.

  Hedia didn’t have this problem. Hedia was always in the place she wanted to be, doing the thing she wanted to do. Or at any rate, that was what it seemed like to watch her.

  Hedia’s maid Syra would never try to guide her mistress while shopping!

  A thought struck Alphena and made her half-step, almost falling. Her escort was in a thorough jumble because of her changes of pace. I don’t have experience being a fine lady, so I’m hard for my escort to follow. But Florina doesn’t have experience being a fine lady’s maid, either.

  Florina had just been purchased when she was assigned to serve Alphena. She had done well in difficult circumstances. Because Alphena was trying to learn to act like something other than a screaming harridan, she had made Florina her chief maid. It might have been better to appoint a girl who’d been serving Hedia for long enough to know the details of deportment, but …

  On thinking about it, Alphena realized she didn’t want a servant who sneered at her mistress’s ignorance. That was even more true if the scorn was silent and the servant was a model of decorum in all public fashions. Florina’s the right attendant for me, though I might ask Hedia to lend me a more experienced servant to coach her.

  Alphena said, “Stop now! We’re all stopping!” and did so herself.

  When they stopped, most of the escort turned their backs to Alphena and watched the crowd. That was their duty. They didn’t know that their mistress wanted to talk to them, so they continued to look for threats.

  “Right,” Alphena said, suddenly sure of herself. “I’m going into this jeweler’s right here.”

  She turned. It’s the right place! Pulto’s wife, who was Marsian and a witch, had told Alphena that she was a witch also. Alphena knew that she couldn’t control anything consciously … but this was the right place.

  It was one of the fancier shops, even in this arcade. The grill of gilded bronze was closed though not locked. The attendant standing before it wore a red tunic on which Mars and Venus were embroidered with gold thread. They reclined to either side with their feet intertwined in the center.

  The attendant didn’t move aside as Alphena started toward him.

  For a moment, Alphena didn’t understand what was—what wasn’t—happening. Florina strode forward and said in a clear, cutting voice, “Make way for the Lady Alphena, daughter of Gaius Alphenus Saxa, senator and former consul!”

  I’m dressed to visit an animal compound, not to shop in a store like this!

  In the past Alphena had worn short tunics and heavy boots suitable for fencing exercises. As a senator’s daughter she had gotten away with eccentricity; and if her behavior reduced her desirability in the marriage market, so much the better.

  Recently she had begun to wear more ladylike garments, at least when she went out in public. That was partly at Hedia’s urging—not orders; Alphena knew how stubbornly she would have resisted an order to dress in a different fashion, and Hedia knew also.

  But it was also Hedia’s example, and Hedia’s insistence that Alphena could look pretty if she tried. She didn’t really believe she was pretty—certainly not as pretty as Hedia was!—but she had begun to half-believe; and anyway, it made Hedia happy to see that her daughter was trying.

  Today Alphena wore a plain linen tunic and a short cape of fine Spanish wool that had been bleached white and appliquéd with signs of the zodiac. Though she wasn’t wearing army boots, her sandals were thick soled and suitable for walking rather than creations of silk and glove leather that demanded that the wearer be carried in a sedan chair rather than depending on her own legs for any distance over cobblestone streets. She was properly dressed, but she didn’t look like a customer for this shop.

  Florina’s shrill direction made the doorman stiffen, hiding his obvious uncertainty. Alphena noticed that the fellow’s left forearm had been broken and his face was slightly asymmetrical. She stepped forward and said, “You’re the Macerator, aren’t you? I saw you box the Seven-Foot Thracian in Carce last year. You were paired directly below our seats in the senatorial loggia.”

  “I was indeed, Your Ladyship,” the boxer said, bowing as he opened the grill behind him. His Latin was as cultured as that of Agrippinus, majordomo of Saxa’s town house in Carce. “You honor the premises of Syenius.”

  Alphena was glowing with pride at having overcome an unexpected obstacle in her own way. I wonder if Mother would be pleased? Hedia might feel that if Alphena had been better dressed, there wouldn’t have been a problem to begin with.…

  No, Hedia would be pleased. She made her own rules when she believed she had the power to force them on society. She wouldn’t object to Alphena doing the same—so long as she was successful, as she had been this time.

  Instead of sweeping straight into the jewelry shop, Alphena paused and said, “I was impressed by that fight, Macerator; the Thracian had the reach on you as well as fifteen pounds, I would have said. But you put him down with the last blow when I thought you were finished.”

  “Thank you, Your Ladyship,” said the boxer. “It was twenty pounds, actually, and that was my last bout. In the third round he broke my arm—”

  He held his arms out in front of him, so that kink in the left ulna was obvious.

  “—but I had to keep blocking with it. After that, well.…”

  He shrugged. The Macerator had seemed small to Alphena when she watched him fight the Thracian, but his shoulders were like a bull’s.

  “I had a bit laid by, you see, betting on myself, and my brother-in-law Syenius had been asking me to come in with him anyway. After the fight it was ten days before I stopped having spells where the pain made me dizzy and I’d see double, so I took him up on it.”

  The doorman cleared his throat and added, “Your Ladyship? I’m proud you took notice of me like that, but the Macerator’s gone this past year. My name is Theodromus now, if you please.”

  Professional boxers wrapped each hand with a caestus, a bullhide strap with bronze studs on the outside and a bar of lead to grip, weighting the blow. Alphena looked at the doorman and said, “Certainly, Theodromus.”

  She entered the shop, accepting the bow of the fat Egyptian merchant who had waited for her to conclude her conversation with his doorman. Theodromus had earned the right to be called by any name he pleased.

  The merchant bowed and said, “I am Syenius, Lady Alphena. How may I serve Your Ladyship?”

  “I’m looking for something,” Alphena said. Her mouth had gone dry with embarrassment because she didn’t know what to say next. In a burst of inspiration she went on, “Something special, that is, unique. I want a gift for my mother, the Lady Hedia.”

  “Ah, the Lady Hedia,” Syenius said in evident satisfaction. “Your mother patronizes Pompilio in Baiae when she’s visiting the Bay. Pompilio is all right for ordinary wares, but I feel that you were wise to come to me. If you’ll just relax on the couch, I’ll see how well I can suit you.”

  He looked past her with a slight frown and said, “If you’ll tell your servants to wait outside, we’ll have more room. I assure you, Your Ladyship, you’ll be quite safe without them.”

  “She’ll be bloody safe with us inside too, buddy,” rasped Drago, who, with his cousin Rago, led Alphena’s escort. They had entered behind Alphena and her maid.

  Drago and Rago were Illyrians, probably former pirates. The best that could be
said of their Greek was that it was better than their Latin; but they were quick-witted, fearless, and had demonstrated that they were willing to face death on their mistress’s behalf.

  Alphena considered the situation for a moment. The Illyrians were unnecessary, and their presence would irritate the jeweler. On the other hand, Syenius would serve her to the best of his ability regardless, and she had no reason to care about his opinion. She might need the cousins to face a gang of bandits—or demons.

  “They will stay,” she said, reclining on the couch covered in pale green silk. “Show me what you have that would be worthy of the Lady Hedia.”

  Two young men came from the curtained rear of the shop, carrying a small, round table of desert cedar, waxed and polished to a luster that brought out the grain. The servants mixed wine one to three with water at Alphena’s direction. They poured it into a cup with a stag hunt in gold pressed between two layers of clear glass.

  Servants brought out wonders on trays or cushions. Alphena examined them, sipping wine and feeling satisfied with herself.

  It was meaningful that Theodromus hadn’t stopped her Illyrians from entering. Alphena didn’t imagine that he was afraid of them or of her whole escort together: they might well kill him, but the man who had battered the Seven-Foot Thracian unconscious wouldn’t back down for a pack of scruffs.

  By letting Rago and Drago inside, Theodromus had avoided a scene in front of the shop, whether or not his brother-in-law realized it. There was another possibility too, though Alphena might be flattering herself to consider it: the Macerator was no longer fighting, but Theodromus might make allowances for a knowledgeable fan whose escort didn’t have all the polish of some noble entourages.

  Syenius began with polished jewels—he claimed the seven large emeralds set into a gold breastplate had come from lands beyond the Indies—but he quickly realized that his customer wasn’t particularly interested in them. Close up, Alphena could see that a ruby was far more brilliant than a bit of red glass and that diamonds really did have an internal fire like nothing else. She could see those things—but she didn’t care.