Raptor (129 page)

“Good, good,” I crooned. “I thought he would. How far behind you is he?”

Ewig shook his head, gulping for breath. “Came not… this way… Tufa went south…”

Again being most unladylike, I snarled, “Skeit!”

When he had got his wind, Ewig told me, “Tufa never passed where I was stationed, my lady. Since I could watch only the marsh road, I have been inquiring of local folk, with gestures and dumb show. They seem not at all reluctant to tell me, as best they can, what they know of Tufa’s doings.”

“I too have noticed,” I murmured, “that his subjects are not overly protective of him.”

“If their reports are to be believed, Tufa left Ravenna with only a single turma of horsemen—his own personal palace guard, I gather. He and they rode swiftly south to Ariminum, there to take the Via Flaminia, still going southward.”

“The main road to Rome,” I said. It was disappointing but understandable. With the second-greatest city of the peninsula in Theodoric’s grasp, it made sense for Tufa to hurry to the first-greatest, and see to its defenses. Half to myself, I went on:

“Well, it would be foolish for me to try chasing after him all over the countryside. And his own Bononia is no inconsiderable city. He will hardly abandon it to the enemy. He must return here sometime.” To Ewig I said:

“If you can catch up to Tufa’s company and follow it without being discovered by its outriders, do so. And since you are so clever at enlisting the aid of the Italian peasantry, go on doing that too. Send one of them to let me know when Tufa gets to Rome. You stay on watch there, so you can advise me when he leaves there and where next he is bound.”

If there is one thing absolutely essential to any murder plot, it is that the murderer be able to get at his victim. And that was
all
I required, because the rest of my plan for killing Tufa was simple in the extreme. But the victim, although he could have had no hint of my presence or intentions, continued to balk me by staying out of my reach. To compress into a few short words what was a frustrating and exasperating time: I was immured in Bononia all winter long.

Now and again, from one of Ewig’s conscripted messengers or from some local source, I would hear that Tufa was on the move, but none of his moves during those months brought him to Bononia. After a while in Rome, he reportedly went to the bronze-working town of Capua, then to the iron-working town of Sulmo, from which I deduced that he was urging his Roman weapons-makers to greater effort. I was informed that he was marshaling the various scattered components of southern Roman forces into a cohesive whole. Again I would hear that he was visiting one of the seaports on the western side of the peninsula—Genua or Nicaea—which seemed to indicate that he might be trying to bring into Italia fresh Roman troops from legions stationed in lands abroad.

I might have got weary of my wait, and gone north to rejoin Theodoric, where I could have been of some military use. But, early in November, Hruth brought to my hospitium another intercepted torch message, and this one I read as TH MEDLAN HIBERN—Theodoric was settling his army for the winter in his captured city of Mediolanum.

It might be supposed that a Mediterranean land like Italia would not have winters so rigorous as to impede an army’s movements and fighting efficiency. However, in Italia’s northern provinces, during the months from November to April, the Apenninus mountain range blocks off most of the balmy Mediterranean airs, so that the chill winds coming down from the Alpes are not much mitigated. While it is true that a winter in Mediolanum is mild compared to that in, say, Novae on the Danuvius, still a prudent commander would prefer to keep his army in garrison quarters rather than active in the field. So, since there would be no more warfare waged until spring, I decided to stay where I was.

I must confess that, although I often chafed at my indolence while I resided in Bononia, I was by no means bored. Thanks to the arrangements I had made, I never got bored. I had diversions aplenty.

During my early days here, and for some while afterward, my man Kniva most assiduously followed the instructions I had given him. He went from one drinking place to another, and in every one loudly commended the virtues (if “virtues” is the right word) of the lady Veleda, newly come to the city. In short order, my hospitium was beset by men seeking a taste of those virtues. Of course, in the beginning, most of the men were the roughs and louts that most commonly frequent the wineshops, and those I disdainfully turned away.

Then, as Kniva continued to proclaim my beauty and my accomplishments—and as the rejected early suitors spread the word of my beauty
and
my haughty fastidiousness—I began to be approached by petitioners of better quality. But those too I refused, until eventually I was being visited by the servants of men of high rank, sent to solicit my favors on their masters’ behalf. When I dismissed those emissaries, I did it not too rudely. I merely told them that I must see and appraise and approve each supplicant in person, whatever his title or entitlements. The servants went away wringing their hands, sure to get a beating when they returned such a supercilious reply to their masters.

It was some while before those notables deigned to come calling, such men being accustomed to summoning such females as myself with no more than a snap of the fingers or a jingle of coins. Then, when they did come to me, they usually came under cover of darkness. But they did come. Before the winter’s first snowfall, I was picking and choosing from among the most eminent clarissimi and lustrissimi of Bononia. And my being by now far-famed for my unapproachability made me so irresistibly alluring that, from those I chose, I demanded—and got—a quite incredible remuneration for each smallest favor I dispensed.

What I wanted was to achieve a notoriety that would reach the ears of Tufa and make him, when he did return to his city, urgently desirous of seeing for himself the woman of such resounding acclaim. Therefore, in choosing from the droves of candidates who sought my favors, I maintained strict standards. For example, some of those who called on me, bearing heavy purses generously opened wide, were men young and handsome enough to have been desirable even in pauper rags, but I turned them away. Of the many wealthy and prominent petitioners, I gave consideration only to those whom I could judge to be of Tufa’s immediate social circle. Since even those were numerous enough, I could further winnow them down to only the ones I found physically attractive.

There was one other thing I insisted on. As I have said, many of those men made their initial call on me after nightfall, arriving muffled in their cloaks, probably having sidled into the hospitium through its back-alley door. But they did not do that twice; every time we met thereafter, it was in their homes. The local dignitaries might have wished for furtiveness and obscurity in their dealings with me, but I decidedly did not. I wanted Tufa to realize, from the first time he heard of me, that he would have to receive me in his legative palace. So I refused ever to entertain anyone in my hospitium chambers. I made it a condition that, if a man desired to disport himself with me, it would be only and always under his own roof. Some of them made loud protest—most were married, after all—but only a few weak spirits declared themselves unable to comply, and went regretfully away. Others, like the judex Diorio, contrived errands on which to send their families off to distant places. Others openly took me home and dared their wives to object, under threat of violence. One, the medicus Corneto, took me home and brazenly offered his wife a choice: allow our frolicking or join in it with us. Even the venerable Bishop Crescia took me home, in daylight, to his presbytery at Bononia’s cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul, to the great scandal (or admiration) of his housekeeper and priests and deacons.

Besides my getting to see the sumptuous interiors of numerous mansions and palaces—and the cathedral’s unique relic, the bowl in which Pontius Pilate so famously washed his hands—I found another advantage in visiting those places. A man is always liable to speak more freely in his own accustomed surroundings than in even the most luxurious lupanar or borrowed bedroom, and these men were Tufa’s intimates. Thus it was that I heard about Tufa’s travels hither and yon, more than I could have learned otherwise, and heard also conjectures about what he was doing here and there throughout Italia.

Since there was no further need for my man Kniva to go on proclaiming Veleda’s accomplishments all over the city—because I was now flagrantly flaunting those accomplishments—and since the poor fellow had drunk himself so sodden that he was absolutely reeling from taberna to taberna, I bade him desist and take a rest. Then, when he was sober and steady again, I sent him north to join Theodoric at Mediolanum. I sent also a message, telling everything I had so far heard about Tufa’s peregrinations, and what deductions I had made as to the purpose of those travels. I could not know whether the information would be of any value to Theodoric, but it made me feel that I was not spending all my time here in wastrel self-indulgence.

Not until early April did Hruth bring me another intercepted Polybian signal that was anything more than a routine reiteration that TH was still garrisoned in MEDLAN. At least I supposed this message to be something out of the ordinary, because it was the first and only that had not commenced with the repeated “thorn, thorn, thorn.” However, that was all I
could
tell about it; the message was incomprehensible to me. In toto, it read thus: VISIGINTCOT. That string of letters I could have broken apart in innumerable ways, making innumerable meanings, but I could trust none of my readings.

I mused aloud, “The first letters… could it be that they refer to Visigoths? But that makes no sense whatever. The nearest Visigoths are in far-off Aquitania. Hm, let me think. Vis ignota? Visio ignea?
Skeit!
You must simply keep alert for other signals, Hruth, and fetch them to me instanter.”

But the subsequent messages he brought were just as baffling: VISAUGPOS and VISNOVPOS. Could POS again mean “possidere”? If so,
who
was taking possession of
what?
Then Hruth brought me this: VISINTMEDLAN. Well, whatever was happening, it involved Mediolanum, where Theodoric was still encamped. But that was all I could make out.

The next night was one of the three nights a month reserved to the judex Diorio. After I had given him an ample measure of pleasure, I lay back, wearing nothing except my ever present modesty hipband (and my irremovable Venus collar), and said playfully, “I do hope you will recommend me to your friends.”

With amused indulgence, he said, “How can I? All my friends tell me you say those selfsame words to
them.
Are you insatiable, woman?”

I tittered girlishly. “There is one I have not met yet. Your friend Tufa.”

“You ought shortly to have an opportunity. I hear that the dux is on his way back here from his travels in the south.”

In the manner of a vain and silly woman, I cried, “Euax! All that way, just to meet the irresistible Veleda!”

“Do not give yourself airs. The dux has collected a fresh army from the Suburbicaria provinces. He leads it hither on his way to confront your cousinly invaders and their newest allies.”

I pouted prettily. “You men are so tedious, so literal-minded. My being of Germanic lineage, dear Diorio, does not make me cousin to the invaders. Or make me the least interested in them. I confine my interest to one man at a time.”

“Eheu!” he groaned, feigning dismay. “So now, having drained me dry, your interest fixes on my lord Tufa. Faithless wench!”

“Only a
common
wench would think you drained dry,” I said archly. “I wager this uncommon wench can plumb deeper wells in you… and waken fountains…”

When I had done that, and skillfully, I lay back again, waiting until Diorio finished gasping and composed himself for sleep. Then, pretending drowsiness myself, I murmured, as if it was of no real moment, “What did you mean: newest allies?”

He mumbled, “Visigoths.”

“Nonsense. There has not been a Visigoth in Italia since the days of Alaric’s depredations.”

“Another one named Alaric,” he muttered. Then he roused himself slightly, to say with mock severity, “And never, my dear, tell a magistrate he is talking nonsense, even when he is. In this case, I am not. I speak of Alaric the Second, current King of the Visigoths away out west in Aquitania.”

“He is here? In Italia?”

“Not in person, I think, but I hear that he has sent an army. Alaric apparently expects your cousinly Ostrogoths to be successful in their conquest here. And apparently he wishes to show solidarity with them. So he sent a sizable force from his land, eastward across the Alpes.”

In my head, I was dissecting that recent puzzling torch message—VISIGINTCOT—Visigoths, the verb “intrare,” the mountain pass called the Alpis Cottia.

“From what I hear,” Diorio went on, “they overran our fortress town of Augusta Taurinorum at our northwestern frontier, and then took possession of the next easterly town, Novaria, and at last report they had joined your cousins in Mediolanum. That report—not your notorious allure, dear Veleda—is what occasions Tufa’s hasty return from the south. Now, may I beg leave to sleep?”

“Sleep?” I said loftily. “When your nation is in such turmoil? You seem to take it very lightly.”

He gave a lazy, comfortable chuckle. “My dear young woman, I am the furthest thing from a patriot or a hero. I am a licentiate of the courts of litigation, meaning that I am a champion of the highest bidder, whoever he be. Barbarian invaders are no more repulsive to me than any of the wretches whose causes I have been well paid to plead. In my time I have supported the wrong and the guilty, when the stakes were high enough, as wholeheartedly as the right and the innocent. Now, in wartime, my survival being high stakes indeed, I shall favor the litigant that looks likeliest to win, right or wrong. Unlike Odoacer or Tufa, I need not fret and worry, wondering what will be the name and complexion of Rome’s next ruler. My sort will always survive.”