Not only was the food excellent in itself, it was not flawed as it would have been at a rich man's table by being eaten from metal dishes. The slightest astringence - pomegranate cells or a vinegar dressing - would bring with it an aftertaste of silver or even gold. Poor men who drank their wines from glazed earthenware tasted them with a purity denied to those who could afford the best - in jeweled metal. The water of the valley was all that thus far had been offered to accompany the food, however. It was clean and cool, complementing the meal without attempting to compete with it.
Eventually, even Gaius was full to repletion. The young courier swayed in a forgetful attempt to recline on a stool. The bulk of the meal had left Perennius logy. The headache with which he had tramped for a day and a half was gone. Even his wounded thigh could almost be ignored. The agent was wondering whether or not he could bathe
BIRDS OF PREY
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now. It would make a perfect conclusion to the relaxing meal.
Father Ramphion rose. The building whispered slowly into a hush as before. At the priest's side stood another villager with a goblet. The vessel was of glass so clear and colorless that it might properly have graced an emperor's table. The wine within it was of a tawny hue accented by the flaring rush-lights.
Ramphion took the goblet and raised it. "May all those present be turned to the Lord's service," he said, "as Dioscholias taught." He drank noisily from the goblet, then handed it to Sestius. The level of the wine had dropped appreciably.
The centurion had asked for wine twice in the course of the meal. Now he took the goblet in surprise. The priest continued to stand. Sestius obviously wondered if he should stand up also, but Father Ramphion's eyes held no such encouragement. Sestius drank and passed the cup.
Sabellia's hesitation had come when the wine was offered to the centurion. When it came her turn, she gripped the slick glass surface without concern. Because the villagers had tacitly barred her from full membership in the circle of their faith, there was a bitter reaction in the Gallic woman to damn them all as heretics themselves. Like the wine, her red hair absorbed highlights from the blazing, grease-soaked rushes. The color was no bad suggestion of the anger within Sabellia. But with her temper came control, and a remembrance of the mission for which she and the others had suffered so much already. Sabellia drank quickly and handed the goblet to Perennius. She wiped her mouth with her shawl.
It was not a particularly good vintage, the agent thought. More tannin, it seemed, than was to be expected from a white wine. Though one got used to the resins and honey added to amphoras to preserve wines for hard travelling. There was none of that in this local vintage. Perennius passed the cup.
Gaius drank with the noisy assurances of a youth whom exhaustion and a full belly had robbed of such sophistication as he might otherwise have displayed. He slurped, belched, and then took another deep draft though the level in the wide-bellied goblet had already sunk near the bottom.
Perennius was trying to decide whether to negotiate for donkeys now or to wait for the morning. It was not a hard decision. He was tired. The feeling of sluggish tranquility that blotted away his aches and pains at the close of the meal would make him a less-effective bargainer. This valley community might well feel it needed its livestock more than it needed gold. Father Ramphion stood, his shaven pate gleaming in the lights above him. He looked as if he were one of the haloed figures painted on the walls. The agent's eyes focused but his head did not seem to want to turn away from the priest's fixed smile.
Calvus lowered the cup. The wine had been strained through cloth. Nothing clung to the inside surface of the glass but a film no yellower than the light itself. Fire wavered on the whorls which marked the goblet's colorless purity. There was a collective babbling from the surrounding tables. Villagers were standing up.
"Aulus Perennius," the tall woman said. She was speaking Schwabish. Sabellia and Sestius might understand her, but the less stable Gaius would not. "There was an alkaloid in the wine. It should not be fatal, but it will numb you all."
Perennius clenched his left hand on the table's edge. He stood up. It was as if he were a squat male caryatid trying to lift the roof of a temple. The agent's stool crashed to the stone floor behind him.
"Aulus," the bald woman said, "I don't think this is a good idea. If they meant to kill us, they would have used something else, surely. ..."
Father Ramphion's deep-sunk eyes glared at the agent. Villagers who had been chattering with joy now noticed the Illyrian's struggle with himself. There was further commotion behind Perennius, toward the door of the church. He could not turn to see what it was. "I'm as much of a man as this bastard," the agent whispered. He stared back at Ramphion while his right hand tried to find the dagger in his hem. There was no feeling in the agent's fingers, in any of his limbs.
Sestius slid to the floor, Sabellia did not fall, but she
was obviously fighting as hard to stay upright as Perennius had fought to stand. Gaius flopped forward. He was trying to mouth the words of a song through lips too numb to have formed sounds. Perennius' ears were buzzing. Over that empty burr came Calvus' voice saying, "He has built up an immunity to the drug, Aulus. This must be part of a long practice for them. Let yourself go or they may - "
Someone kicked Perennius' feet sideways. The agent crashed to the floor. He did not feel the impact, though he could still see perfectly well. The two women toppled, Calvus by choice with the appearance of collapse, Sabellia when her stool was jerked away. Rough farmer's hands gripped the table and the trestles supporting it, spilling Gaius beside his would-be protector in happy somnolence.
Father Ramphion had been leaning much of his own weight on the table. Villagers, one of them the young man who had brought the goblet, stepped close to the priest as the panel was removed. Ramphion straightened slowly. He did not need the hands that hovered in nervous helpfulness near his elbows. "Praise be to God," he said, enunciating very distinctly.
"Praise be to God!" rattled the response of his congregation among the curves of the chamber.
No one bothered to move the drugged victims from where they sprawled. The sound in Perennius's ears was taking on the magnitude of the roaring surf. The scene was becoming darker though no less sharply defined. Four villagers, one of them a husky woman, were carrying a naked, bawling stranger toward the pillar behind Father Ramphion. Other villagers plucked the rush-candles from sconces on the same pillar. A crucified man was painted garishly against the double-lobed surface of the column. The sconces, Perennius noticed now, were of heavy iron. They were set into the wrists of the painted figure.
"Dear God," wailed the stranger in Greek. "I'm a Christian! You mustn't do this!" His nude body was pale and soft-looking. Folds in the skin of his abdomen suggested recent privation. Someone's house-slave, run away from Tarsus or even further to a valley of fellow-believers? Or perhaps a government official, making quiet inquiries into the district's tax rolls? In any case, a man alone or in
a small group, charmed no doubt by the hospitality offered by these jovial sectarians. . . .
" 'This is my body, that is broken for you,' saith the Anointed," Father Ramphion recited. His voice was made squeaky either by the drug he had taken or by the dose now ringing like a carillon in Perennius' ears. "So must we break the bodies of the unbelievers who oppressed him, that the Anointed may return to rule on Earth. All praise be to God, and to Dioscholias who taught his commandments to us!"