Not only meet her but find how the wind blew now over Britain. There was hardly a comer of the land where her incarceration wasn’t known and discussed, and Lucullus needed to know every ramification. While we smiled and drank each other’s health, that was his job.

The stop at Wight bothered me. It was not inconceivable that Rome’s friendship could be balanced on a hinge between Cerdic and me. No one has fewer friends than a defeated king.

“The queen is unavailable though she will grieve to have

missed you.”

Lucullus draped himself in regret. “And I her. Is she not called unique as far as Byzantium? Not only beautiful by report, but a ruler worthy of legend.”

Enough panegyric. I tried a quick jab through his guard. “And the only one currently in jail.”

It caught him unprepared but Lucullus recovered quickly. “So we heard. Most unfortunate. May my poor efforts urge clemency and reconciliation.”

“It is unfortunate, Lucullus, but let Rome see our true image in this mirror. We are the last undefeated province of the old empire. When it was truly Roman. We’ve held our borders against barbarism for an hundred years and don’t intend to flag now. The emperor’s word must be good and his peace inviolate. Surely a Roman, with his instinct for precise justice, can understand that. If the law and peace are not for all, they’re for none.”

“Most assuredly,” Lucullus agreed. “Yet this estrangement in the royal house must—especially now—give rise to apprehension among tributary princes. The Parisi, for example.”

I thought I would spare him Peredur’s agonized letters and merely refilled his goblet. “Does the oak tremble at one stroke of the ax? Britain is sound as your father made it, Lucullus. And now I must meet your train, your consorts, and give order to set a dinner to honor Lucullus’ return to his native soil.”

He rose with a charming, deprecatory laugh. “Too much honor.”

“Not at all. They tell me there’s roast peacock.”

“Peacock! Surely not.”

“The absolute last in Britain, my stewards assure me. Pity. We have no more time to enjoy them esthetically, but we can still cook them to a turn.”

“Ah—yes. And who adorns my lord’s arm at table?”

“Tonight,” I assured him, “my guests are my jewels.”

Lucullus bowed and recovered with a knowing look. “Still, a king need not want for such comforts.”

I gave him a light pat on the back. “Nor an ambassador with two such pliant consorts. However do you manage?”

“It is busy,” he simpered.

“All those decisions.”

“Ah ha\ Right, right, but surely Venus’ fire burns as brightly in a king’s chamber.”

“Ah, you flatter me, dearest cousin. If your bed is a busy Crossroad, mine is a mere footpath: a pleasant ramble somewhat lai disuse.”

“My lord is a veritable wit.” His jeweled fingers caught the again. “Touching Ambrosius, there are letters he charged

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me long ago to deliver when I could. Letters to him from my aunt Julia, your grandmother.”

“Yes, he did mention them once. Shall we join the court now? After you, cousin.”

I breathed his strong perfume as he passed.

If you find all this sickening, remember that kings and scullions have much in common. We both get the jobs no one else wants.

I met his luggage at dinner. Lucullus might have aged, but his tastes did not. The girl was very young, willowy and vapid, the boy poutish and pretty. Conversation was a one-sided effort. Both spoke the vulgate of the Roman street, which was more than ample for any audible thought required of them. Lucullus chose his consorts as he might a garment or wine. Frankly, I missed Gwen.

That night, propped up in bed, I studied the packet of letters tendered by Lucullus. The brittle brown pages were parting along their folds, written more than sixty years ago by my grandmother Julia to her young brother Ambrosius when Britain’s patricians were prouder of their Roman heritage than their British Wood. Mundane letters describing travel with her husband Metellus Tiberius, embassy-at-large for harried Vortigem. They were seldom at home, life a dreary round of strange places and stranger people, bad food and worse weather. They longed for the sound of Latin, a hot bath, food seasoned with something other than wild garlic.

One theme wove through all Julia’s letters, her need for children and her despair of ever having one.

Our physicians say the constant travel interferes with the natural urges of my constitution. There is no problem in conceiving, only in carrying the child. Our household gods are bored with my pleas as must be my dear, patient brother.

She finally stopped pestering the gods and conceived once more. This time the crucial third month passed without mishap. Hardly daring to hope, Julia wrote from north of the Wall, where Metellus was on a mission to King Brude.

These Venicone are crude and superstitious. When I asked about the markers around this village, they said

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it’s to keep out “Faerie,” the stunted nomads who inhabit the surrounding hills, wild-looking creatures beside whom Germans seem positively urban. Once when I was waddling about just before my time, I saw one of the hill women watching me from just outside the pale. No proper garment, just some sort of animal skin wrapped around her.

Suddenly, when the child was due, Julia began to bleed. She was put to bed by her physician and forbidden to move; even so there were grave doubts she would deliver a live infant. Her Venicone servingwoman suggested that, with proper precautions, the Faerie women excelled at midwiving. Julia was ready to try anything.

The woman came next day.

—young and handsome enough in her wild way, but half starved, poor thing. They tell us this is a bad year for the northern cattle, and the nomads always suffer most when that happens. My servingwoman was frightened of her and wouldn’t stay in the room. The creature set about bargaining for her services in a very matter-of-fact way, and I thought, well! She can’t be too lethal if she’s dickering like a fishwife. One of her conditions was that she be allowed to deliver me with no help from anyone else, that this would hinder the circle of power she raised about me—or something like that. Since my doctor gave no hope of a live child, desperate as I was, it was now or never. I said yes.

Julia offered a fair price in gold solidi and the woman seemed content. She gave Julia a draft to induce labor and agreed to return later when it took effect. The pains started—

—but I hardly felt them. I was really quite drunk and only wanted to go on floating in this delightful limbo. I hardfy noticed the woman when she came back into my room with a big, covered basket.

: The woman took something from a corner of the basket and mixed another draft. After examining Julia’s dilation, she said lhat the child would come easily. My grandmother would feel no at all.

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—and I didn’t—felt nothing, saw nothing, just floated away into the silliest dream where I was an ocean and someone was trying to take a fish from me.

I put the letter aside, bothered by the inconsistency. Prydn women never used drugs to induce labor or during it. She must do her part, Hke Dorelei and Morgana. And to render a woman unconscious was unheard of.

This woman truly worked magic. Ambrosias, for when I woke there was my daughter in her arms, clean-washed with none of that angry red one sees in newborns. The bed was a mess, even blood on the floor. The woman was crooning to the child with soft, weird sounds. Then, while I was still in a haze, she placed the child at my breast—and oh, the dear little thing tugged at me, so hungry! I could see the tiny fingers that moved and toes and little legs kicking. The woman said that since I was so generous with my gold, she would preserve the umbilicus to make strong magic for my child. Generous! Ambrosius, can I describe the delirious joy! The foolish tears running down my cheeks, thinking all at once to send for Metellus, then forgetting it to thank the woman again and again, thinking of the sacrifices / would make to my gods for this gift. A hundred doves! And maybe a little something for Jesu, too.

In unslaked gratitude, Julia wanted to double the fee, but the woman seemed very anxious to be gone, barely bothering to count her fee. Julia was determined some extra gift must be hers. She sent for the woman repeatedly through the week. Finally, the Faerie returned word that she would come only to the pale. Julia must not under any circumstances bring the child, for that would destroy much of the beneficial magic woven in its behalf.

Her two husbands were with her, wretched, scrofulous beggars. She hardly looked at the gold coins I gave her. She asked only did my daughter thrive and was pleased when I said yes. I asked her name that I might at least send the blessing of my gods to her tribe. One

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of her little husbands stepped forward with all the pomp of an Egyptian minister, pointed to the woman and said with a pathetic flourish, “This is Gernafane.”

Then that would be part of the payment. The child must be named for Metellus’ mother Fulvia, but her second name would be Gernafane.

My benefactress said nothing, just muttered at her husbands, then hurried away with the men trotting after. I’d swear she was crying. Odd little things, but they do seem quite human at times.

Julia kept her promise about the name, though they shortened it to the British Ygerna.

—which I like much better than Fulvia, but then you know my opinion of Metellus’ mother. Except for duty, I wouldn’t put her name to a dead cat.

The last letter was dated ten years later, when Metellus was dying. Evidently the paternal bequest would leave his daughter a wealthy woman, and what the family knew or guessed they kept to themselves. Julia’s last reference was rather cryptic.