The Golden Slave by Poul William Anderson (best desktop ebook reader TXT) 📖

"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."

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