Part 12 (2/2)

”This is February,” I reminded him. Though we were too near to the straits for snow, the chill had settled in my bones. The villa he had rented for me was damp and draughty-a house built by people who refused to believe it would ever get cold. Not surprising, I thought glumly, since the town of Drepanum, just down the coast from Nicomedia and across the strait from Byzantium, was a popular resort to which the court escaped during the summer heat. In winter, it had only the spa with its hot springs to recommend it.

”Britannia is colder-” he began, the plates of his cuira.s.s creaking as he turned. I had not yet become accustomed to how he looked in uniform, but it was clear to me that the merchant he had played in Eburac.u.m was only half the man Constantius was meant to be.

”In Britannia,” I retorted, ”they build their houses to keepout the cold!”

”It's true that it was summer when I was here before,” he capitulated, looking through the opened shutters at the rain that was dimpling the waters of the lily pool in the atrium. For most of the past two months it had rained. He turned to me again, suddenly serious.

”Helena, did I do wrong to take you from your homeland and drag you all the way here? I was so accustomed to the army, you see, and all the officers' wives who have travelled with them from post to post all over the Empire, I never thought that you were not bred up to this kind of life, and might...

not...” He shrugged helplessly, his eyes fixed on my face.

I swallowed, searching for words. ”My love, you must not mind my complaining. Don't you understand?

You are my home now.”

His bleak gaze brightened, like the sun breaking through clouds. I had a moment to admire him, then he took me in his arms, carefully, for we had already learned that his armour could leave bruises, and for the moment, I was not cold any more.

”I must go,” he said at last, murmuring the words into my hair.

”I know...” Reluctantly I stepped away from his warmth, trying not to remember how soon he would be gone indeed, on the Palmyran campaign. The overlapping plates of the cuira.s.s sc.r.a.ped slightly as he bent to pick up his heavy coat. I noted with sour satisfaction that it was abyrrus , the hairy, hooded kind we made in Britannia.

”By the time you reach the city, you will be wet through,” I told him, not entirely sympathetically.

”I'm used to it,” he grinned back at me, and I realized that not only was this true, but that he actually , liked confronting the weather.

I accompanied him to the entry and opened the door. Our house was halfway up the hill above the main part of the town. Tile roofs and the marble columns of the forum gleamed through drifting veils of rain.

Philip was holding Constantius's horse, an old woollen mantle drawn over his head against the rain.

”I am sorry, lad-I did not mean to keep you waiting!” Constantius reached for the reins. As he started to mount, there was a squeak, and the horse, a skittish chestnut gelding, tossed its head and swung away.

Constantius wrestled it down, and Philip made a step with his laced hands so that his master could swing a leg over the beast and settle himself between the horns of the military saddle.

But I was no longer watching. That odd squeaking noise had come again, or perhaps it was a whimper.

My searching gaze fixed on a pile of debris swept against the corner of the wall by the overflow from the gutter. Had it moved, or was it only the wind? I picked up a twig blown down by the storm and bent to poke at the pile. It quivered, and suddenly I was staring down at a pair of bright black eyes.

”Helena, take care! It might be dangerous!” Constantius nudged the horse closer. From the rubbish came a faint but unmistakable growl. Bending closer, the debris proved to be a sodden huddle of hair, as if someone had lost a fur cap in the rain.

”It's a puppy!” I exclaimed, as a black b.u.t.ton of a nose appeared beneath the eyes. ”The poor thing!”

”Looks like a drowned rat to me.” muttered Philip, but he was already pulling off his wool mantle and thrusting it at me to keep me from using my own shawl.

Gently, I sc.r.a.ped away the leaves and mud in which the puppy was tangled and lifted it out. There was no hint of warmth beneath my hand: I would have thought it dead had it not been for the desperate regard of those bright eyes. Murmuring softly, I cradled it against my breast, and imperceptibly, an emptiness that had been there since I lost Eldri began to fill.

”Be careful,” said Coristantius. ”It may be sick, and it will certainly have fleas.”

”Oh yes,” I answered, though in truth, I wondered if even a flea would be interested in the skin and bone beneath my hands. But I could feel the flutter of a heartbeat. ”I will give this poor mite every care.”

”I will be going, then,” said Constantius as the horse sidled nervously.

”Yes, of course.” I looked up at him, and something that had been strained in his face eased. His returning smile was like a caress. Then he pulled up the hood of hisbyrrus , reined the horse around, and put it into a splas.h.i.+ng trot down the road.

When he had gone, I settled the puppy securely against my breast and carried him inside. A bath and a good meal improved his looks, though his breeding was as mixed as the population of the Empire. His ears were floppy, his coat a mixture of black and white, and there was a hint of a plume to his tail. The size of his paws suggested that if early starvation had not stunted him, he might grow to be a big dog indeed.

The eagerness with which he lapped up the bowl of broth Drusilla prepared for him demonstrated a commendable will to live.

”What will you call him?” asked Philip, less dubious now that the dog was clean.

”I was thinking of ”Hylas”, after the lover of Heracles whom the nymphs drowned in the pool. In these parts that is a popular tale.” Indeed, it was in Chios, a few days' journey to the east along the coast, that Hylas was supposed to have been lost when the Argonauts stopped there on their way to capture the Golden Fleece.

”He certainly looks as ifsomeone tried to drown him,” the boy agreed, and so the dog was named.

That night Hylas slept in my chamber, and although my bed was still empty, it comforted my heart a little then and during the lonely months after Constantius had followed the Emperor southward to Syria to once more hear the patter of paws at my heels.

Constantius had been right about the weather. With summer, the sun shone triumphant from a cloudless sky and baked the gra.s.s on the hills to gold. The windows that had admitted so many draughts in February were thrown open to let in the sea breeze in the morning, and the wind off the lake in the afternoon. The local people said it was quite reasonable for the season, but after the mists of Britannia, I found the heat oppressive indeed.

By day, I dressed in the sheerest of gauzes and lay beneath a linen shade by the fountain in the atrium, Hylas panting by my side. At night I sometimes walked by the lake, the dog scampering ahead of me and Philip, clutching a cudgel and glaring suspiciously around him, a step behind. From time to time I would receive a letter from Constantius, who was marching, in armour, through country that made Drepanum sound as cool as Britannia by comparison. When we heard of the victory at Ancyra, the magistrates had ordered a great bonfire lit in the forum, and again after the good news from Antiochia.

With summer, a number of n.o.ble families from Nicomedia had transferred their households to Drepanum. Several of the women also had husbands who were with the Emperor, but we had little in common. Drusilla, who picked up all sorts of gossip at the market, told me that the word was going about that I was not Constantius's wife, but a girl he had found at an inn and made his concubine, and I understood why the ladies had been so distant. She was full of indignation, but I could hardly resent an opinion that from the legal point of view was true. There had been no marriage contract, no exchange of gifts or alliance of relatives to solemnize our union, only the blessing of the G.o.ds.

And in truth, I was glad to be relieved of social obligations, for with the n.o.bles had come some of the Emperor's philosophers, and one of them had a skinny young apprentice called Sopater, who in exchange for what I could spare from the housekeeping money and a taste of Brasilia's cooking, was willing to tutor me.

The Greek I had learned as a child was rusty, and in this country I needed the common tongue to speak with tradesmen, and the more rarefied language of the philosophers to read the works of Porphyry and others who were making such a stir.

Sopater was both young and earnest, but once he relaxed sufficiently to look me in the face at our lessons, we got on well, and if during those long summer days it was too hot to move my body, at least my mind was active. I needed the distraction; for after the great battle at Emesa, I had received no word from Constantius, or of him, at all.

But just at dusk one evening shortly after midsummer, when I had finished my bath and was considering a walk by the lakeside, I heard a commotion outside, and above Hylas's furious barking, a voice that made the breath catch in my throat. I dragged the nearest garment over my head, and with tousled hair and the sheer tunica unbelted, ran out into the entry.

In the light of the hanging lamp I saw Constantius, fined down by the campaign to bone and muscle, his hair bleached to pale gold and his skin brick-red from the sun. He was alive! Only in that moment did I admit to myself how deeply I had feared his death in those desert sands. From the look on his face I realized that with the light behind me I might as well have been naked. But what I saw in his gaze was something more than desire, it was awe.

”Domina et dea...” he whispered, which was a t.i.tle even the Empress did not claim, and yet I understood, for in that moment I saw him, as I had seen him at that Beltane on Avalon, as the G.o.d.

I motioned to the servants to leave us, and then, holding out my hand, drew him after me into our bedchamber. Hylas, after the first flurry of barking, had fallen silent; perhaps he had recognized Constantius's scent as belonging to this room. As we moved towards the bed, I heard him flop down before the door.

After that I ceased to think about the dog or anything else beyond my own need for the man in my arms.

We came together in that first frantic encounter like wanderers in the desert who finding an oasis, were desperate to a.s.suage our thirst. Struggling with each other's garments, we fell upon the bed. Later, I was to find my tunica in a corner, torn in two. When we had shuddered to completion, I held Constantius in my arms, waiting until his galloping heartbeat slowed.

”Was the fighting very bad?” I asked as I helped him to remove the remainder of his clothing.

Constantius sighed. ”The Arabs plagued us all the way through Syria, picking off men with arrows, trying to raid the baggage train. When we reached Palmyra, Zen.o.bia was ready for us. We couldn't take the place by a.s.sault-the Emperor himself was wounded-so we had to sit down to a siege. Aurelian offered terms, but she thought the Persians would save her. Only their king, Sapor, died, and they were too busy fighting each other to worry about Rome. Then Probus finished dealing with Egypt and came to reinforce us. It was all over, and Zen.o.bia knew it. She tried to flee, but we caught her and brought her back in chains.”

”So you won-you should be triumphant,” I commented, reminded of Boudicca, and repressing my instinctive sympathy.

He shook his head, stretching out and settling me with my head pillowed on his arm. ”Zen.o.bia had sworn to kill herself if captured, but she panicked, put all the blame on Longinus and the other men who served her. And Aurelian executed them. So she will walk in his Triumph after all... I understand why they had to die,” he added after a moment had pa.s.sed, ”but it left a bad taste all the same. At least the Emperor...

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