The Legions of Fire Read online

  As they watched Scylax, Hedia slid her fingers down Alphena’s arm and let them rest on the back of her hand. “We’re going to be friends, dear,” she said. “It’s important that you and I be friends.”

  Alphena forced a smile. “Yes, Mother,” she said, curling her hand around Hedia’s.

  The previous afternoon she’d realized that Lenatus and his friend Pulto had been killers, for all their politeness and the way they now bowed and scraped to the young mistress. They had been ready to kill again if they thought they should.

  What Alphena had seen a moment ago in her stepmother’s eyes was a colder version of the same thing. Hedia could be a very bad enemy.

  VARUS WORE THE IVORY HEAD around his neck on a thin leather thong. Though he didn’t reach under his toga while he listened to Piso’s class exercise, his fingers curled with memory of how the talisman had felt.

  “You were a prostitute!” Piso said. His left arm was crossed over his chest, while he swept his right out to the side as though he were pointing at a meteor plunging toward the Forum. “You say that you remained chaste and begged for alms instead of surrendering your body to your clients, but the only evidence we have is your word. The word of an admitted prostitute!”

  Piso was declaiming from the rostrum in front of the Temple of Julius Caesar, facing his teacher and the remainder of the class in the Forum below. Pandareus and some of the students—Piso’s friends and sycophants, at least—had notebooks out, either waxed boards or thin sheets of wood to write on with a brush.

  Varus didn’t need notes to remember clever twists that his fellow classmates came up with. Besides, in Varus’s estimation, the chances of Piso doing so were slim to none.

  The subject set for Piso’s speech was whether a woman who remained chaste after being captured by pirates and sold into prostitution could legally become a vestal virgin. The situation was improbable, but it taught logic and technique as clearly as an ordinary case of legacy fishing.

  “Your children would be barred from becoming priests,” cried Piso. He clapped his right arm to his chest now and flung the left one outward. Like his voice, his gestures attempted by enthusiasm to make up for their lack of grace. “Because their mother had carried on a sordid occupation. Are we therefore to say that you are worthy of becoming a priestess yourself?”

  The varied business of the Forum went on untroubled by the declamation. At least three other classes were going on nearby, though the babble of business was enough to drown the speeches in the general noise.

  Occasionally passersby would glance toward them, but the exuberant gestures had probably drawn their eyes. Piso looked enough as though he were hurling things from his raised vantage point that a prudent man would take heed.

  “Should the consul give way to you if he meets you as priestess in the street?” Piso bellowed, changing the angles of his arms yet again. “To you, a woman whom a crippled Levantine properly approached if he still had two copper sesterces in his begging bowl!”

  There were cheers and stampings of applause from behind Pandareus and the semicircle of his students. Though the Senate was in session, the Emperor hadn’t made his appearance yet. Piso’s father and his political cronies had chosen to attend the boy’s declamation, doubtless planning to rush into the session if the glittering progress of a guard detachment warned them that the Emperor was on his way. The session was being held in the huge Julian Basilica today; the entrance was within fifty yards.

  What did the senators really think of the declamation? Perhaps they were impressed by it. This wasn’t an age which valued subtlety, and Piso certainly displayed the present virtues of noise and color to an impressive degree.

  “Do you say, ‘The pirate who captured me can attest my virginity’?” Piso demanded. He’d initially shown some variation in his gestures, but now he seemed to have settled on mirrored pairings of one arm crossed, the other extended. “Perhaps, but your witness won’t be able to visit you in your temple should you become a priestess!”

  Saxa had never come to one of Varus’s declamations. He’d attended early classes occasionally, though he wasn’t an orator himself and didn’t pretend to care about technique or about literature more generally.

  Varus had never cared for argumentative declamations like the present one anyway. They were the stuff of courts and public assemblies, where a bold lie which couldn’t be uncovered was more effective than any amount of calm reason.

  Philosophical declamations were far more attractive to him. Varus had been quite pleased with the way he’d brought his audience to consider whether Alexander should sail from the mouth of the Indus River and turn east, attempting to cross the globe-girdling ocean. He’d summed up on the one hand that water was the first element and should not be conquered by any man, even Alexander; and on the other that this would be the longed-for moment when human civilization and the world should have the same boundaries. Pandareus had spoken highly of some of his figures of speech, and even Piso’s claque had jotted notes.

  But Saxa hadn’t been present. Varus smiled with rueful affection. For as far back as he could remember, his father had been an antiquarian: a man who enjoyed unearthing odd scraps of knowledge. He had a great deal of information, but he hadn’t been able to organize it in any fashion more complicated than a vertical stack.

  More recently, though, his researches had descended into what could only be described as blatant superstitions, sillinesses that were unworthy of the attention—let alone the belief—of an educated man. And Saxa did believe in them. He not only practiced magical rituals himself, he let a self-proclaimed Hyperborean wizard lead him in the gods knew what directions.

  Though Varus no longer saw the twelve dancers, they chanted in his mind as their demon companions hissed in unison. It was a dream, but it haunted his waking hours. It was a dream!

  “You wheedled would-be customers to give you as alms what they had intended to pay as the price of your body!” said Piso. “Well and good—you remain a virgin. But is this the art which a priestess uses when speaking to the goddess of the hearth? Surely not! Yours was a whore’s trick and a whore’s manner. Your very demeanor is an affront to chaste Vesta!”

  Corylus stood to Varus’s left. His notebook was out for courtesy’s sake, but he wasn’t jotting anything down. Varus knew that his friend disliked Piso even more than he himself did, but he was unfailingly polite when they interacted.

  On the frontier where Corylus had been raised, life was harsh and weapons were never far to seek even in the most civilized surroundings. As the chant seethed in his blood, Varus realized for the first time that his friend was always courteous because he was constantly aware of violence, not despite the fact. Varus didn’t doubt what Corylus was capable of if the necessity arose, but Corylus understood better than the other students the difference between what was necessary and what was simply possible.

  Corylus’s declamations were forceful and closely reasoned, but he didn’t gesture nor did he use the flourishes and allusions that would have made his speeches more striking. His wide reading—he wasn’t as widely read as Varus, of course, but given the limited opportunities he would have had on the frontier, his knowledge was remarkable—would have allowed him to sprinkle colorful passages from the great poets and historians whether Latin or Greek.

  It didn’t seem to bother Corylus that Piso and his cronies sneered—behind the backs of their hands—at what they called his lack of erudition. As a knight of Carce Corylus wasn’t eligible to enter the Senate, and he’d been bluntly dismissive when Varus had asked if he hoped to make his name as a lawyer.

  Corylus spoke as a military officer would when suggesting a course of action to a superior or explaining it to his juniors. Varus decided that if the sneers didn’t bother his friend, he could learn to ignore them also.

  “This court, this goddess—”

  Piso thrust out both arms to point at the round temple of Vesta beside where his audience stood. He looked like a bad statue
of Phaethon dragging on the reins as the horses of the Sun ran away.

  “—this sacred sky of Carce—”

  He pointed straight up, though his face still glowered at his audience.

  “—allow only one answer: you must be barred from the priesthood!”

  Piso’s father and his fellow senators called “Huzzah!” and stamped their feet loudly. The other students applauded also, ranging from the enthusiasm of the speaker’s cronies to the polite tap of Corylus’s right foot. Even Pandareus gave a nod which could be taken as approving.

  Piso stepped down from the rostrum and bowed at the waist, sweeping his arms back to the sides as though he were about to dive into a swimming pool. He was smiling with triumph; the neck of his broad-striped toga was as wet as a used towel.

  There’s never only one answer, Varus mused, lost in his own thoughts. There are often thousands of answers, and all of them may be wrong.

  In his mind the dancers whispered Nemastes must die. They had no other answer, and their voices were compelling.

  HEDIA’S CHAIR ROCKED to a threatening halt. The hired bearers looked scrawny compared to Saxa’s team, but they were fit and they got much more experience than the household slaves did. They hadn’t slipped once on the way to Corylus’s apartment on the Viminal Hill. Judging by Alphena’s cries from the following vehicle, the girl hadn’t been so lucky.

  Though Hedia had no complaint about the bearers, the chair itself was another matter. Syra had thrown a cushion over the stains on the wicker seat, but one of the clamps attaching the poles to the chair frame was loose or possibly broken. Hedia swayed unpleasantly at every turn on the way, and as they stopped she was afraid that she was going to pitch over on her face with the chair on top of her.

  “Right here, your ladyship!” cried the courier who’d run ahead to point out their destination. He was new to the household; a young fellow from somewhere in Spain, with curly hair and a good build. “On the third floor, right here!”

  He seemed to fancy himself. He had some reason, but not as much as he thought.

  Hedia smiled coldly. That was generally true of men, she’d found. Women too, she shouldn’t wonder, but they didn’t interest her in the same way.

  Instead of squatting with his partner to take the weight of the chair off their arms, the leading bearer looked over his shoulder at Hedia. She supposed he’d found that raising the weight was more work than simply holding it balanced till he was sure about what his fare intended.

  “Mistress?” he said. “Are you sure about this? The block looks all right, but it’s not the kinda district we usually take quality folks like you.”

  “By Nergal, Blaesus,” grunted the bearer behind her. He spoke in trade Greek, but his accent came from much farther east than that. “We never took anybody like her anywhere before, did we?”

  “My man seems sure,” Hedia said, “so put me down and—”

  “Yoo-hoo, your ladyship!” called a woman on the tiny third-story balcony jutting from the building to the right. “I’m here, bless you for coming!”

  She waved frantically with her right arm and gripped the railing with her left. If Hedia judged correctly, the way she hunched involved more than just that she was looking at someone below her. The rheumatism Pulto had mentioned wasn’t an excuse to try to avoid a visit that embarrassed him.

  Hedia got out; Alphena was climbing from the household chair. Local people stared at the visitors, but they seemed to be cheerfully interested instead of hostile. The score of attendants accompanying the women could have kept them away regardless, but even the children seemed satisfied to gawp at a respectful distance.

  “Wait for my return,” Hedia said to the lead bearer. “And if you’ve managed to attach the chair more firmly before I go back, there’ll be a silver piece for you.”

  “Ahura’s balls!” said the rear man. “We’ll take care of it, lady-sir. We bloody well will!”

  “I’ll lead, your ladyship!” cried the Spaniard. He strode to the door, swaggering and making shooing motions with both arms. “Make way for the noble Hedia, wife of our noble senator Gaius Alphenus Saxa! Make way!”

  Hedia frowned; that might’ve been a good way to catch a handful of rotten cabbage. Instead the three old women sitting on the doorsill got out of the way with an appearance of good humor.

  They bowed low to Hedia. She smiled graciously as she swept past and said, “Thank you, good ladies. I hope you’re well on this fine morning.”

  The staircase was lighted by street-facing windows at each floor and a mica-covered skylight above the fifth landing. It was clean, though the large jar for night soil on the ground level must not have been emptied that morning. Hedia climbed briskly, but even so Alphena’s slippers shuffed on the treads too closely behind her.

  The door on the third floor swept open and the woman from the balcony stepped out. “Your ladyship!” she said. “I’m Anna, Master Corylus’s nurse from the very day he was born. I’m honored, we’re all so honored, that you’re coming. I told the girls in the building, but I don’t think they believed me till you stopped just now.”

  The materials used to build an apartment block became increasingly light—which meant flimsier—at each story upward; rents went down in the same proportion. This third-floor suite was large and well lighted, and though it was above the masonry level, the walls were wood rather than wicker.

  Anna must have understood Hedia’s glance of appraisal. She said, “Yes, if Master Corylus wished, he could’ve had something on the second floor and closer in to the Forum. Master Cispius is a careful man but not tight, and he’s doing right well in the perfume trade, I don’t mind to tell you. But the young master liked this one. You can look right over to the Gardens of Maurianus.”

  She surveyed the apartment possessively. The wooden floor had been brought to a high polish instead of being covered with a mosaic design as would have been more common, and the furniture, including the storage chests, was tasteful and of simple, excellent design.

  “It looks very nice,” said Alphena to call attention to herself. She’d sent the Spaniard and the other servants down to wait in the street, which showed better judgment than Hedia would have expected.

  “My daughter, Lady Alphena,” Hedia said coolly. “I’ve asked her to accompany me. I trust that is all right?”

  “Bless me, your ladyship!” said Anna. “If you want to bring the whole Senate with you, I’m just honored. Though there’d be trouble finding them seats.”

  Anna’s outfit—a blue tunic, a cape which must’ve been cut down from an officer’s red traveling cloak, and a yellow silk scarf to cover her hair—was neither tasteful nor simple. She wore rings on all her fingers, a mixture of silver and iron washed with gold. She had two necklaces, one of rock crystal and the other of painted terra-cotta manikins each no bigger than a thumbnail. The tiny dolls were individually ugly, but they had an unexpected force as their stubby hands clicked into contact and separated.

  Alphena laughed. Anna smiled in a bemused way, but Hedia wasn’t sure that she had intended a joke.

  Anna touched the yellow scarf, patting it against her bun of hair. The strands that had escaped to the back and sides were frizzy and yellowish gray. “Though your ladyship?” she said to Hedia. “There are subjects that I wouldn’t talk about in front of a senator, you know?”

  Hedia sniffed. “Not in front of a senator or any other man,” she said. “But we’re all girls together here, aren’t we?”

  Alphena was looking between the older women, her eyes flicking from one to the other. She looked younger when she was confused—as she was now.

  Anna chuckled. “Here,” she said, pushing aside the curtain covering the pantry alcove beside the door. She lifted out a bowl of wine which she’d mixed before her guests arrived and set it on the small table in a corner of the room. The circular top was a section of pine trunk, carved and stained to look like expensive desert cedar. “We’ll have something to drink while we talk.
”

  “Are there no servants?” said Hedia, raising an eyebrow toward the folding screen across the doorway to the adjoining room of the suite.

  “Bless you, no there’s not,” Anna said, bringing out the cups. They and the bowl were of layered glass, colored to look like the expensive murrhine ware turned from a British mineral which the locals called Blue John. “The boy was raised in camp, you see. He’s offered to get me some help, but truth is I’d rather handle it myself.”

  “But how do you do the shopping?” said Alphena as their hostess filled the cups. It was a tactless question, but it showed the girl had sharp eyes and could think.

  Anna chuckled. “Crippled up like I am, you mean?” she said. “Well, that’s true enough, but a couple of the girls on the fourth floor take care of that for less than it’d cost to feed a gofer of our own. I’ve done them a favor or two, you see.”

  Love potions, Hedia thought as she took the offered cup and sat down. Love potions and herbs to cause abortions; the two went together, after all.

  The two storage chests in the corner had been covered with cushions for use as seats, with the table in the angle between them. There was a proper couch against the outer wall, but even at formal dinner parties women were more likely to sit than to recline on their left side as the men did.

  Alphena hesitated; Hedia patted the cushion beside her and gestured Anna to the other chest. Anna settled onto it with a grunt of relief.

  Turning her head as though she were looking out the window—there were three pots of herbs on the balcony—Anna said, “That’s part of the reason I didn’t want another pair of hands in the household, you see. They’d come with a tongue attached, you see, and there’s stories enough already. Me being Marsian”—she met the noblewoman’s eyes—“and all. Like every Marsian woman’s a witch! Ah, begging your pardon if I’ve misspoke, your ladyship.”