David Drake - Out of the waters

"I didn't expect this," Alphena said, edging close when Hedia walked around to her side of the litter.

"Nor did I," said Hedia. The background commotion probably concealed the flat chill of her voice; but if it didn't, that too was all right.

There were relatively few men in the crowd, but those present were neatly dressed. The women wore their finery and all the jewels they possessed. The children were clean and wore tunics, even the youngsters of three or four who would normally run around in breechclouts or nothing at all.

This litter would draw a crowd anywhere in Carce; it was exceptional even in the Carina District where Saxa and similarly wealthy nobles lived. This demonstration had been prepared, however, which was a very different thing.

Anna has bragged to her neighbors that she's so great a witch that noblewomen came to visit her. She's trafficking on my name-and perhaps my secrets-to raise her status in the neighborhood.

"Candidus," Hedia said, "you and the escort can remain here with the litter. All but one, I think."

The deputy steward didn't object as she had expected him to. He must have understood her expression.

Hedia looked over the entourage, then said, "Barbato?" to a footman whom she thought would set the right tone. "Precede Lady Alphena and myself to the third floor."

The name-Bearded, with a rural pronunciation-was a joke; his whiskers were so sparse that he could go several weeks between shaves by the household barber. He was a slender, muscular youth from the southern Pyrenees, with clear features and a good command of Latin.

He wasn't a bruiser, but he could take care of himself. Because this was daytime, the escorting servants didn't carry cudgels as they would at night, but Barbato wore a slender dagger in an upside-down sheath strapped to his right thigh where the skirt of his tunic covered it

"Come along, my dear," Hedia said, stepping off with a pleasant smile. Barbato was swaggering pridefully; the crowd parted before him, still cheering.

"Anna must have said we were coming," Alphena said quietly.

An eight-year-old girl offered Hedia a bunch of violets, wilted because she'd had nothing to wrap the stems in to keep them wet. Hedia took them graciously and continued into the stairway entrance. To the right side was a shop selling terracotta dishes; on the left-the corner-was a lunch stall and wine shop.

"Yes," Hedia replied. "That's something I'll want to discuss with her."

To her amazement, the stairwell was not only empty but clean. When she had visited the building before, there was litter on the treads and a pervasive odor of vomit and human waste. There were benefits to Anna having turned the event into a local feast day.

The door at the third level opened. Barbato called pompously, "Make way for the noble Hedia and the noble Alphena!"

Anna waved him aside with one of her two sticks. "Bless you both, your ladyships!" she said. "Welcome to the house of my master, Gaius Corylus!"

She wore a long tunic which wavered between peach and brownish yellow, depending on how the light caught it, under a short dark-blue cape to which leather horse cut-outs had been appliqued; Celtic work, Hedia guessed, and probably a very good example of it. She herself couldn't imagine anybody finding it attractive; but then, she wasn't a Marsian peasant who had spent decades among barbarians on the frontiers.

"Thank you, Anna," Hedia said. She turned and added in a sharper tone, "You may wait on the landing, Barbato. We'll call you if we need you."

She shut the door firmly, then slid the bar across. The panel was sturdier than she would have expected on a third-floor apartment. Not that she spent much time entering or leaving third-floor apartments.

"I hope you didn't mind all the fuss below, your ladyship," Anna said. "It's for the boy, you see. How would you like your wine? Oh, and I had Chloe from the fourth landing, right above you see, fetch some little cakes from Damascenus' shop in the next building. I do hope you'll try them, won't you?"

"I'll pour the wine, Anna," Alphena said, forestalling their hostess as she started toward the little kitchen of the suite. She and Hedia knew that the old woman had better days and worse ones. Even at her best now Anna had no business struggling with a tray of wine, water, and the paraphernalia necessary for drinking it.

"You said that the gathering was for Master Corylus?" Hedia said, letting her very real confusion show in her voice. "I had the impression they were expecting my daughter and myself."

"Oh, that, yes, of course they were," Anna said, obviously unaware of Hedia's suspicions. "Do sit down, won't you? I've gotten new cushions. The blue one is stuffed with goose down, so why don't you take it, your Ladyship?"

Hedia settled carefully on one end of a clothes chest being used as a bench. She said, "I don't see, then…"

"Well, it's like this," said Anna, lowering herself onto a stool of polished maple. "The boy grew up in camp, you know. He's used to fetching for himself and he likes it that way, so it's just me and Pulto does for him-and I get the neighbor girls to fetch the shopping, since I'm such a clapped-out old nanny goat myself."

Hedia opened her mouth to protest; Anna waved her blithely to silence. "It suits me better that way too, to tell the truth," she said, "because, well, you know the stories that go around about Marsian witches. If we had servants, they'd be making up tales to cadge drinks and the like. That can get pretty nasty, as I know to my sorrow from when we lived in Baiae before the boy come here to school."

The small round table between the stool and the chest was cedar with a richly patterned grain, oiled and polished to a sheen like marble. Alphena set the tray on it and handed out the cups, already filled.

"I mixed the wine three to one," she said, a little too forcibly. That was the normal drinking mixture which she was used to, and she was making a point that she didn't intend to get tipsy by drinking to limits that her companions might be comfortable with.

"Thank you, my dear," Hedia said, taking her cup-part of a matched service which impressed her as both stylish and beautiful. Clear glass rods had been twisted, slumped together in molds, and polished.

She sipped; it was like drinking from jewels. She wondered if Corylus had chosen the set. Certainly Anna had not, given the taste shown by her garments.

"I'm not clear what the crowd down there…," Hedia said, nodding toward the window onto the balcony. "Has to do with Master Corylus, however."

She wasn't on the verge of anger any more. Clearly she was missing something, but she now knew that Anna hadn't turned Lady Hedia into a carnival for plebeians as a way of bragging to her neighbors.

"Oh, well, you see…" Anna said. Her face was so wrinkled that Hedia couldn't be sure, but she seemed to be making a moue of embarrassment. "Because we don't have servants and because we're up on the third floor-the boy said he liked to be able to look out at the Gardens of Maurianus, and you couldn't from any lower down-folks don't really believe he's quality."

Ah! The higher levels of apartment blocks were successively flimsier in construction and-of course-that much farther to climb on narrow stairs when coming and going. Lower rents reflected this. Corylus apparently wasn't concerned about whether the neighbors thought he was an impecunious phony who only pretended to be a Knight of Carce, but his old nurse cared on his behalf.

"I've been having dreams, Anna," Hedia said. "Bad ones, of course, or I wouldn't be seeing you. And I suppose you heard about what happened yesterday in the theater?"

Anna had been using "their ladyships" as a status tool, but Hedia couldn't be angry about that now, however much she wished it hadn't happened. The old servant was completely absorbed with her boy. No objection, no threat-nothing but death itself-would change that focus.