“Do you not bow to the throne?” he asked, almost mildly. His Latin came as easily as any Senator’s.
“My Lord,” said Eodan, “I beg forgiveness if I, a stranger, have unknowingly offended. I gave to you that sign of respect we have in the North, when one of royal blood meets a greater king.”
He had made it up himself the day before, but no one had to know that. He hazarded a cruel death ― far safer to proclaim himself dust beneath the royal feet ― but as one more humble suppliant among thousands he could not have hoped for much.
Mithradates leaned back and rubbed his chin. Curious, thought Eodan in a far part of his being, the king’s nails are blue at the base.… “My captain told me what little you would say to him,” murmured the Pontine. “I trust you will be more frank with me.”
“Great King,” said Eodan, “I have so little to bring you I am ashamed. May you live forever! All the world lays its wealth in your hands. I can but offer the salvage price of my ship, paid at Rhodes, which Arpad insists is his. I leave to your judgment, Wise One, whether the monies do indeed belong to him, or to me who would give them as an offering to Your Majesty. But one gift at least I bring, if you will accept it ― my story, what I have done since leaving my own realm, and what I have seen from Thule to Rhodes and from Dacia to Spain. Since this tale is my gift to you, I did not think it fit that Arpad, your servant, should have its maidenhead.”
Mithradates opened his mouth and bellowed with laughter.
“Well, your gift is accepted,” he said at last, “and I shall not be miserly myself if the tale be rich. From what country are you?”
“Cimberland, Great King.”
“I have heard somewhat of the Cimbri. Indeed, one of my neighbors sent them an embassy a few years ago. Surely this will be a night’s entertainment, though you humble my pride by making me hear it in Latin. Chamberlain! See to it that these three are given a suite, changes of raiment and whatever else they require.” Mithradates said it in the Roman tongue, doubtless for Eodan’s benefit, since he must repeat it in Greek. “Go, I will see you at the evening meal. And now, Arpad, about those monies.”
“Great King of All the World,” wailed Arpad, flat on his belly, “may your children people the earth! It was but that I, your most unworthy subject, thought to offer you―”
As he went to the guest chambers, Eodan asked the slave who led him ― an Italian, he saw with glee ― what the king had meant, that he was ashamed to hear the tale in Latin. “Know, Master,” said the boy, “that our puissant lord keeps no interpreters on his own staff, for he himself speaks no fewer than two and twenty languages. You must indeed have come from far away.”
The suite was as luxurious as one might have expected. Phryne said doubtfully, “We build our hopes on Vesuvius. The soil there is surpassingly rich, but sometimes the mountain buries it in fire. I will be happy if we can get from here unscathed.”
“Why,” said Eodan, surprised, “I would have thought you could dwell here more gladly than any place else in the world. They are a mannered folk, it seems.”
“They are more alien to me, a Greek, than the Romans — or the Sarmatians ― or the Cimbri.” She looked out the window, down to gardens where paths twisted so a man could lose his way. “If we stay long enough, you will understand.”
“It may be. Nonetheless, I have a feeling no few arts could be learned here that might take root in the North.” Eodan went over to her. “Though one of the greatest could be taught me by yourself.”
She turned about with an eagerness that astonished him. “What do you mean?” Her face flushed, and she lifted her hands like a small girl.
“I mean this craft of writing. Not that we would have much use for it in the North … and yet, who knows?”
“Oh.” She looked away again. “Writing. Indeed. I will teach you when the chance comes. It is not hard.”
Near sundown, an obsequious eunuch informed them they would soon dine. They left Phryne to a solitary meal ― women did not eat before the king ― and followed him to a lesser feasting hall.
Music sounded from a twilight peristyle ― flute, lyre, drum, gong, sistrum, and other instruments Eodan had not heard, yowling like cats. The diners, arrayed in their silks and fine linens, gold and silver and jewels, lay about a long table on couches, in somewhat the Grecian manner. Mithradates came last, to trumpets, and all but Eodan prostrated themselves.
There was silence. A slave brought forth a cup and knelt to offer it to the king. Mithradates looked over his half-guests. “Tonight I drink hemlock, in memory of Socrates.” A kind of unvoiced whisper ran about the assembly as he drained the beaker.
“Now,” he said, “let the feast begin!”
Eodan, who was hungry, paid little heed to the succession of artificed viands. Cordelia had offered him enough of that; let a man be nourished on rye and beef, with a horn of ale to wash it down. He took enough mutton to fill himself and barely tasted the rest. For the hour or so in which they ate ― this was no elaborate banquet, only the king’s evening meal ― no person spoke. Eodan did not miss the talk, and the music he ignored. The dancers were another matter. He studied the acrobatic boys closely; this or that trick could be useful in combat. When the supple women came out with dessert and dropped one filmy garment after the next as they swayed about, he knew his hurts were scarring over. He would have traded all these for Hwicca ― yes, all women who lived ― but since she was gone and they were here …
Finally, with some decorum restored, there was general conversation. Mithradates talked impatiently to various self-important persons, dismissed them at last with plain relief and roared the length of the table: “Cimbrian! Now let us hear that tale you promised!”
Eodan followed his beckoning arm, to lie beside the king himself. Envious eyes trailed him. Not everyone listened ― the whole room buzzed with talk ― but he was as glad of that. He had not wished to make the Cimbrian destiny a night’s idle amusement; but to this gray-eyed man, himself a warrior, it was fitting to relate what Boierik had done.
Now and again Mithradates broke in with a question. “Is it true that sky and sea run into one up there, as Pytheas has written? … How high does the sun stand at midsummer?
… Do they know of any poisons? This is a self-preserving interest of mine ― too many kings have died of a subtle drink. I take a little each day, so that now they cannot harm me, neither hemlock nor arsenicum nor nightshade nor ― But continue.”
The lamps burned low; slaves stole about filling them with fresh oil. Eodan’s throat hoarsened; he drank one cup of wine after another, until his head buzzed like all summer’s bees in a clover meadow in Jutland…. Mithradates matched him, goblet for goblet, though the king’s was larger, and showed no sign of it.
And at last Eodan said: “Then your ship found us and brought us hither. So it may be the gods have ended their feud with me.”
“That Ahriman has,” corrected Mithradates, “but he is the common enemy of all men and ― Could it be, I wonder, that the Bull in whose sign you wandered the world was the same that bleeds upon the altars of the Mystery? But enough.” His hand cracked down on Eodan’s shoulder, and he raised his cup, clashing it against the Cimbrian’s. “What a journey!” he cried. “What a journey!”
“I thank Your Majesty. But it has not ended yet.”
“Are you certain?” Mithradates looked at him, with gravity falling like a veil. “I wonder if you are not too much a man to be flung back on any northward wind. Would you like to fight Rome?”
Eodan answered harshly, “There is blood of my blood on their hands. I count it defeat that I shall not meet the man Flavius again. I will set up a horse skull in the North and curse him, but it is not enough.”