David Drake - Out of the waters

But Publius Corylus had duties and obligations in the real world also, as Pulto had just reminded him. Hedia and her daughter had visited Anna today, and the visit apparently had consequences here in his neighborhood on the Viminal Hill. Now that Tertia-or Quartilla-had addressed Corylus directly, a score of other people were calling to him also.

Hercules! Some are even cheering! He waved again as he ducked into the staircase behind Pulto.

"I'll just have something light to eat and go straight over to Saxa's," Corylus muttered to the servant's back. "Ah-Pulto? You don't need to come with me tonight. There'll be more than enough attendants, I'm sure."

"I guess I do have to come, don't I?" Pulto growled. "I would if you were heading for a dust-up, wouldn't I? And this is a bloody sight worse, the way I look at it."

The way I look at it too, old friend, Corylus thought. But though Pulto wouldn't be of the least use in a situation where the danger was from magic, it was his duty. That was a way a soldier had to think, and it was the way Corylus thought as well.

The door opened before they reached it. "Anna, my heart!" Pulto said, his voice much harsher than was usual when speaking to his wife. "What in buggering Mercury did you say that's got them so worked up down in the street?"

"Never mind that now, Marcus Pulto," Anna said. "You'll give me a hand up to the roof where I'll talk to the master, and you'll stand at the bottom of the ladder making sure other folks understand that he wants his privacy. Do you understand that?"

I do not, Corylus thought. But it took his mind off a quick dinner and what they were going to find in the home of Sempronius Tardus.

"Yes, ma'am," Pulto said in a tone of supplication. That was even more unusual when he talked to Anna than the anger of a heartbeat earlier.

Corylus had wondered how long it would take her to reach the fifth-floor landing, let alone mount the ladder to the roof. Pulto must have had the same thought, because he took her arm as directed, but even that was probably unnecessary.

Anna clumped up the stairs in normal fashion, without pausing or slowing. The doors on the upper landings were all ajar, but nobody actually stuck her head out as they normally would when strangers passed.

"Anna?" Corylus said. "Let me go up ahead of you."

"I can still climb a ladder, master!" she said.

"So that I can help you out over the coaming," he replied, keeping his voice artificially calm. She must be very upset. "And there may be somebody on the roof already."

"There's not," Anna said, her tone contrite; she stepped aside on the narrow landing to let him pass. "But I shouldn't wonder if they'd lift the trap door and listen in once we were up there. I reckon my Marcus can take care of that, won't you, dearie?"

"I guess I could if I needed to," Pulto said. "Which I won't, since nobody in this building is going to show his ass to you. Me included."

He gave his wife a peck on the cheek. Things seemed to be back to normal between them.

The roof was empty, as Anna had claimed. It was tiled, but the pitch was so slight that it was easy to walk on. A poulterer on the second floor supplemented his merchandize by keeping a large dovecote here, and there were eight or ten terracotta pots with flowers and vegetables growing in them.

There was even a spindly orange tree. Corylus lifted Anna from the third rung down, then touched the tree trunk while she closed the trap door. He thought for an instant that flesh wriggled gratefully beneath his fingertips.

"I don't like what I'm going to ask you, master," Anna said. "But sometimes 'like' don't make no nevermind."

She was standing beside him, looking southeast toward the center of Carce instead of meeting his eyes. He put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her. He didn't speak.

"Aye, you know," Anna muttered. She gave him a half-hug also. "You're a soldier's son, and anyway, you're a good boy."

She turned her head to look at him. "It's her ladyship," she said. "She needs something I can't fetch her and I won't ask my Marcus to go for. He'd try, but I think it'd kill him, stop his heart. He'd be that fearful."

"Tell me what you need, Anna," Corylus said. He felt calm."Tell me what the Republic needs, or so I think."

He had been very young, certainly no older than three, when his father came into the room Corylus shared with Anna one night. Something had happened, though at the time he hadn't known what.

Later Corylus learned there had been a battle-not the kind that the historians wrote about, but the sort of little skirmish that happened regularly on the frontier. A party of young Germans had crossed the river for loot, but they got too drunk to return after they captured a handful of wagons loaded with wine.

They were too drunk to surrender also, but Germans never seemed to get too drunk to fight. It had been a nasty one, because the Germans had the wagons in a circle and horses wouldn't charge home. Cispius had dismounted his troop and stormed the laager.

Cispius had taken off his armor before he shook his son awake, but his tunic reeked of sweat and blood. In a voice as rough as stones sliding, he had said, "Don't ever let them know you're afraid, boy. And by Hercules, if you play the man, you'll find you really aren't afraid. Don't let your troops down, and you won't let yourself down either."

Corylus hadn't understood that at the time. He understood it now, with his arm around his old nurse.

Anna nodded and stepped away, visibly calmer. "Lady Hedia came to see me today," she said in the same normal voice in which she would have discussed taking her sandals to be mended. "It isn't her coming, though, because I already knew I'd have to do something."

She sniffed angrily. "I knew from the smell on you when you come back from the theater, boy," she said, "It was her ladyship visiting that showed me I couldn't put it off. I'd been telling myself it wasn't so, like I was a foolish girl."

"Tell me what I must do, Anna," Corylus said, firmly but calmly. He'd never seen his nurse in such a state. Shouting wouldn't help matters, but he did need to get her to the point at some time before Carce's thousand-year celebrations-in two or three centuries.

"There's a thing under the ground," she said, suddenly herself again. "An amulet I think, but maybe something else. I can't see it myself-I don't have that sort of power, boy, you know that. But…"

She swallowed and walked awkwardly over to the dovecote. She used her sticks. She had thrust them down the neck of her tunic so that she could climb the ladder, but they were a doubtful help on the tiles. Still, the surface wasn't any worse than wet cobblestones.

Corylus wasn't certain what to do, but after a brief hesitation he followed her. He tried to keep his weight over the beams, but a flash of humor lighted his face. I wonder what Tertia-or perhaps Quartilla-would say if I entered through the ceiling instead of by the door?

It was good to laugh at something when he felt like this. Especially something silly.

Anna rubbed a dove's neck feathers through the grill; it cooed, squirming closer to her. She looked again at Corylus and said, "I couldn't see things, but the birds, I thought, might; and the little animals. Which they did. Last night I went with a vole down his burrow into the place that the thing was; and this morning, after their ladyships were gone, I hired a chair to the Esquiline with Dromo, Cephinna's boy from the fifth floor. We marked the place, and he'll guide you back to it tonight."

Corylus licked his lips. "On the Esquiline. That will be to the old burial grounds there."

"Aye," said Anna. She looked as fierce as a rebel waiting to be crucified.

"All right," said Corylus, since there was nothing else to do. "We'll leave as soon as it's dark. Ah-will there be difficulties with Dromo? That is, how much does he know?"