They stood before a sheer ten-foot wall. “The house lies within a garden,” she whispered. “No one watches the rear… guests come in at the other side… there is a gate, but it would be locked now. If you can raise me to the top, I will tie my belt to a bough I know and you can follow.”
Eodan made a cup of his hands. She stepped up, in a single flowing movement, caught at his head to steady herself and murmured, “Now.” He lifted her carefully, but aware of her leg sliding along his cheek. Then she had scrambled to the top, and he felt his way past rough plaster until he found the cord she let down. He climbed it hand over hand.
“Where is your staff?” hissed Phryne. “Down below,” he said. “Have the gods maddened you, to mark your own path? Back and get it!” she snapped.
When at last they stood in the garden, Eodan peered through the crooked branches of a tree. No lights showed on this side. He guessed, from remembering the villa, that kitchen and slave quarters were at this end, but there would be a separate corridor on one side that the owners used. Phryne led him to such a door. It creaked beneath her touch. She halted, and time stretched horribly while they waited.
“No one heard,” she sighed. “Come.”
Two hanging lamps gave just enough light for them to see down the hall. “To the atrium,” whispered Phryne. “Nobody seems to be there. But the Cimbrian girl stayed here―” She stopped in front of a door and touched it with hands that shook. “Here, Eodan.” He saw her mouth writhe, as if in pain. “O Eodan, the Unknown God grant she be here!”
He found himself suddenly, coldly his own master. His fingers were quite steady on the latchstring. The door opened upon darkness… no, there was a window at the end, broader than most Italian windows; he had a glimpse of gray-blue night crossed with a flowering vine and one trembling star.
He went through. His dagger slid from its sheath. If Flavius was here, Flavius would not see morning. But, otherwise, he told himself, he must keep Hwicca from yelling in her joy. Put a hand over her mouth, if he must, or at least a kiss; silence was their only shield.
He padded over the floor, Phryne closing the door behind him. They stood in shadows.
“Hwicca?” he whispered.
It rustled by the window. He heard a single Latin word: “Here.”
He glided toward it. Now he saw her, an outline; she had been seated by the window looking out. Her long loose hair and a white gown caught what light there was.
“Is it you?” she asked, uncertainly. She used the “thou” form of closeness, and it twisted him.
He reached her. “Do not speak aloud,” he said, low, in the Cimbric.
He heard her breath drawn in so sharply that it seemed her lungs must rip. He dropped his knife and made one more step, to take her in his hands. She began to shiver.
“Eodan, no, you are dead,” she cried, like a lost child.
“If he told you that, I shall tear his tongue out,” he answered in a wrath that hammered against his skull. “I am alive ― I, Eodan, your man. I have come to take you home, Hwicca.”
“Let me go!” Horror rode her voice.
He caught her arms. She shook as if with fever. “Can you give us light, Phryne?” he asked in Latin. “She must see I am no nightwalker.”
Hwicca did not speak again. Having risen, she stood wholly mute. Her hand brushed him, and he felt the palm had changed, had gone soft; she had ground no grain and driven no oxen for nigh to a year. Oh his poor caged darling! He let his own grasp go about her shoulders and then her waist. He raised her chin and kissed her. The lips beneath his were dead. In an overwhelming grief, that she should have been so hurt, he drew her to him and laid her head on his breast.
Long afterward Phryne found flint and steel and a lamp. A tiny glow herded immense misshapen shadows into the corners. Eodan looked upon Hwicca.
She had not altered greatly to his eyes. Her skin was white now ― the sun had touched it seldom, the rain and wind never; but the same dear small freckles dusted across her nose. She had taken on weight; she was fuller about breast and hip. Her hair streamed in a loose mane past a Roman gown and a Roman girdle, thin sheer stuff broidered with gold; she wore a necklace of opals and amber. He did not like the perfume smell, but―”Hwicca, Hwicca!”
Her eyes seemed black, wrenched upward to his. They were dry and fever-bright. Her shaking had eased, until he could only feel it as a quiver beneath the skin. “I thought you were killed,” she told him, tonelessly.
“No. I was sent to a farm south of here. I escaped. Now we shall go home.”
“Eodan―” The cold, softened hands reached down, pulling his arms away. She went from him to the chair in which she had been seated when he came in. She sat upon it, her weight against one arm, and stared at the floor. The curve of thigh and waist and drooping head was a sharp pain to him.
“Eodan,” she said at last, wonderingly. She looked up. “I killed Othrik. I killed him myself.”
“I saw it,” he said. “I would have done so, too.”
“Flavius brought me here,” she mumbled.
“That was not your wish,” he answered, through a wall in his throat he had raised against tears.
“There was only one thing that gave me the strength to live,” she said. “I thought you had died.”
Eodan wanted to take her in one arm, lead her out, hold a torch in the other hand; he would kindle the world and dance about its flames. He went to her, instead, and sat down at her feet, so she must look at him.
“Hwicca,” he said, “it was I who failed. I brought you to this land of sorrow; when we were wedded, I could have turned our wagon northward. I let myself be overcome by the Romans. I even left you my own task, of free ― freeing our son. The anger of the gods is on my head, not yours.”
“Do you think I care for any gods now?” she said.
Suddenly she wept, not like a woman but like a man, great coughing gulping sobs that pulled the ribs and stretched the jaws. She lifted her head and howled, the Cimbrian wolf howl when they mourn for their slain. Phryne stepped back, drawing her knife by the door, but no one came. Perhaps, thought Eodan, they were used to hearing Flavius’ new concubine yell.
Hwicca reached for him with unsteady hands and brushed them across his mouth. “You kissed me,” she cried. “Now see what you kissed off.” He looked upon a greasy redness. “My owner likes me painted. I have tried to please him.”
Eodan sat in numbness.
Hwicca fought herself to quiet. Finally she said, stammering and choking, “He brought me here. He left me alone… for many days… until I had used up all my tears. At last he came. He spoke kindly. He offered his protection if ― if ― I should have asked him for a spear in my heart. I did not, Eodan. I gave him back his kindness.”
He had thought many ugly fates for her. This he had not awaited.
“Go,” she said. “Go while it is still dark. I have money, I will give you what I have. Leave this place of men’s deaths, go north and raise me a memory-stone if you will ― Eodan, I am dead, leave the dead alone!”
She turned away, looking into night. He got up, slowly, and went to where Phryne was standing.
“Well?” said the Grecian girl. “What is the trouble?” Her tone was unexpectedly stinging, almost contemptuous; it jerked him like a whip.
He bridled with an anger at her that drained off some of the hurt Hwicca had given. “She yielded herself to Flavius.”
“Did you expect otherwise?” asked Phryne, winter-cold. “It is one thing to fall on your own sword in battle’s heat ― another to be a captive alone, and get the first soft word spoken in weeks! Romans have long known how to harness a soul.”