David Drake: To Bring the Light

Herosilla swallowed the bite she was chewing and said, “Tell me about your sons. Is Faustulus really their father?”

Acca looked around to see if any villagers were nearby. She said, “I suppose I’d better tell you about myself. Most of those who knew are dead or they’ve forgotten…”

She stared at the backs of her spread hands. “It was a long time ago.”

Herosilla dipped more ashcake and waited.

“I was betrothed to Faustulus as a girl,” Acca continued, raising her eyes to Herosilla’s. “But a trader came by, a Greek like you. Not so fancy as you, lady, but… I’d never seen clothes like he wore, and he had lovely bronzeware on his donkey.”

“I understand,” Herosilla said. She didn’t, really; her own affairs—in all senses—had been arranged after a cold balancing of costs and benefits. She’d seen the normal cycle of passion and disaster often enough in others, though.

“So I went to Cumae with him for a year,” Acca said in a quiet, calm voice. “That’s where I learned to speak Greek, lady. But when he went home to Chalcis, I, well, he didn’t take me. I came back to Palatium and Faustulus married me as if nothing had happened.”

She added fiercely, “He’s a good man.”

“Ah!” said Herosilla at what she thought was a light dawning. “So the boys weren’t really suckled by a wolf. ’She-wolf is just the slang your people used for prostitute.”

“What?” Acca said. She frowned. “I’d never heard that.”

The older woman’s mouth opened in amazement as the implications sank in. “You mean you think I’m a whore because I spent some time with the wrong man? Oh, lady! Is it like that with your people?”

Herosilla thought of the morals of her age. Of her own morals, for that matter; though she’d never considered that what she chose to do with her own body was a moral question.

“No,” she said. “I certainly didn’t mean that. I apologize for giving the impression that I did.”

Acca smiled wryly. “Though I’ve been lucky,” she admitted. “There’s few enough husbands who wouldn’t have thrown the business in my face a time or two when we argued. Faustulus is a good man.”

“I see that,” Herosilla said. This time she meant the words as more than a placeholder to entice a story from the embarrassed teller.

“Anyway, Faustulus took a flock to Alba a few days after I gave birth,” Acca continued. “Gave birth to his son—it was a year and more since I’d come back from Cumae. There was a babe, a little boy, left to die by the lakeside. Faustulus couldn’t let that happen, he’s too soft hearted. He brought it to me to raise with our own.”

She shrugged. “What could I say, lady? When he’d been so kind to me? We’ve brought them both up the same with no differences between them.”

“Was Numitor’s daughter Rhea the mother?” Herosilla asked.

Acca dipped her chin in denial. “Rhea and her baby died at the birthing,” she said. “I knew the midwife. There’s some believe that Numitor was more than the child’s grandfather, if you catch my drift.”

She looked toward the distant horizon, thinking about the past. “The mother of the child my husband found was just some girl who got into trouble and took the only way out. I was lucky it wasn’t me, off in Cumae.”

“But it’s still true that Romulus isn’t your son?” Herosilla prodded gently.

“Romulus?” Acca said. “Oh, no, he’s our son all right. It was Remus that my husband found by Alba.”

The old woman shook her head in amusement.

“I’ve never understood where Romulus gets his notions. The only thing special about his father—”

Her tone hardened.

“—is that Faustulus is a better man than any other I’ve met!”

The afternoon rain had passed; the sky to the west was clearing enough to let reddened sunlight through again. “They’re coming,” said Acca. “That’s Grayleg, my boys’ ram.”

Herosilla turned. She’d been sketching a drainage plan in the soft ground, using a long stick so that she didn’t have to bend. If she listened carefully she could hear sheep and a faint clatter that could have been the bellwether’s neck rattle, but it was hard to believe Acca could identify the sound as that of a particular ram.

“Mostly my boys are the last in,” Acca said with quiet pride. “In case there’s trouble with Numitor, you know. But because of tomorrow they’re coming in early.”

Sheep came over the crest of the hill behind the brothers’ gray ram, as Acca had predicted. Romulus and Remus walked at the back of the flock.

Remus played a simple tune on a reed pipe. Wax stopped the bottom of the single tube; he varied the notes by opening or closing holes in the shaft with his fingertips.

Ganea ran to Romulus and ostentatiously kissed him. Remus stuck the pipe through his sash and called, “I see you’re able to move today, lady. Last night we weren’t sure.”

“I’m in perfectly fit condition,” she said sharply. “Walking through mud was an unfamiliar exercise, but I assure you I’ll adapt.”

The women of the village were taking the sheep in charge. Ganea tried to hold Romulus with her, but he shook her curtly from his arm and walked over to see what his brother and Herosilla were discussing.

“If I’m to live in Palatium, as it appears that I am for a time,” Herosilla said, including Romulus with her eyes, “then I intend to pay my way by improving the life of everyone in the community.”

She allowed herself a self-deprecating smile. “My own included, of course. Tomorrow we can start with detailed planning of the drainage route I’ve sketched to direct waste and rain water away from the village.”

Other herdsmen were bringing in their flocks. Pressure in their udders made the fresh ewes eager to be milked, and the other sheep were too strongly group conscious to hang back from a general movement.

“We can’t do it tomorrow, lady,” Romulus said. His tone suggested that he didn’t like to get orders from females, even females he thought might be divine.

“You two and your father are the leaders of the community,” Herosilla said, “and he can’t walk the ground. I don’t expect you to do the digging by yourselves, but—”

“It’s not that, lady,” Remus said apologetically. “The two of us with Roscio and Celer have a religious rite tomorrow we call the Lupercal. We run—”

“I know what the Lupercal is,” Herosilla snapped. “Who do you think—”

She caught herself. The brothers thought she was a foreigner who wouldn’t understand a fertility rite unique to their village—nude men, Luperci, running around the Palatine daubed with the blood of a sacrifice to ensure the success of the Spring lambing season.

“Ah,” she said. “I, ah—” the word ’apologize’ caught in her throat. “I’m familiar with the Lupercalia, that is.”

Another piece fell into place in the legends of a thousand years later. “Oh!” Herosilla said. “But you can’t run the Lupercalia tomorrow. Numitor’s men will attack you while you’re unarmed!”

“Is she on about the future again, Romulus?” asked Celer, the toady Herosilla had noticed the day before. Returning shepherds were joining the brothers after handing their flocks over to the women.

“Go talk to your sheep, Celer,” Remus said. “You may know something a sheep’d be interested in hearing.”

He turned to Herosilla and continued more gently, “Lady, we’ve lived with Numitor’s threats for a long time. We can’t hide all day because we’re afraid of him.”

“Listen to what I’m saying, you numskull!” Herosilla said. “Numitor is planning to ambush you. No buts, ifs, or maybes. You can’t run the Lupercal, period.”