The Death of Attila, page 11
On the other side of the table sat two Huns, one of them the man who had summoned them in, and a man not a Hun: Orestes, the Kagan’s Roman-bred counselor. Slaves passed back and forth around the table, tall goose-necked ewers in their hands, and while Dietric watched, one raised the ewer above a cup and poured a stream of red wine into it. Everybody was watching him and Tacs, even a benchful of servants waiting along the wall. Dietric lowered his eyes.
“Tacs,” one of the Huns said. “Sit down. Who are—oh, Yaya. Of course. But …”
Tacs pulled Dietric forward by the arm. “This is the son of Ardaric the King of the Gepids. Dietric. This is Edeco.” He gave Dietric a little shake.
Edeco was young, handsome in the round-faced way of some Huns, and dressed in a scarlet tunic. He was frowning. “King Ardaric is known to me very well. Sit down. Tacs, are you in command of this escort the Kagan has sent me?”
Tacs slid onto a bench on Edeco’s side of the table; Dietric sat down next to him, and a slave quietly brought them silver cups and filled them with wine. Yaya sat down between Edeco and Tacs. Dietric lifted his cup and across its edge studied the Romans.
Their robes were white as salt, the hemlines embroidered with gold thread, and on their wrists and fingers they wore rings that clicked like little bells. They even smelled different from Germans or Huns, sweet and clean, as all rich things must smell. Like their garments their skin and their features seemed more finely made than Germans’ or Huns’. They sat with their feet together and their knees spread under their robes, their arms folded, and although they turned their heads and occasionally lifted their hands to take food or to drink, Dietric had the impression that they never moved at all.
They were speaking Latin, which Dietric did not understand, and when the Roman who had been speaking when they entered stopped talking, Edeco answered in the same tongue, harsh-voiced as Yaya. He seemed impatient and restless and he clearly disliked the Roman he spoke to. Tacs and Yaya were arguing softly over the quality of the wine, whether it was better or worse than the wine that the Kagan had had of the Romans of New Rome the year before. Dietric could not keep their voices out of his ears; they distracted him, and he grew irritated.
When Edeco finished talking, one of the Romans said something in a careless voice. He spoke through his nose and his voice was thin and unpleasant. Another Roman, younger and with more hair, frowned and spoke to him as if reproving him. Dietric glanced up at Edeco, startled; the Hun, scowling, was staring at the Romans and his hands pressed violently against the table in front of him.
Softly, Tacs said, “The Roman said that we should not compare our Kagan, who is a man, with their Emperor, who is a god.”
Edeco stood up. His voice was choked with rage. The Roman with the nasal voice began to talk, but the younger man put one hand on his arm and stopped him. Beside Dietric, Tacs was looking quizzically up at Edeco. Edeco kicked back precisely, knocked his chair out of the way, and turned on his heel and walked out the door.
Tacs said, “If their Emperor were a man and a Hiung, he wouldn’t pay gold to the Kagan.” He looked into his wine cup and twisted to call a slave.
The Hun who had let them in laughed and glanced over at the Romans, and Yaya gave a drunken giggle. Tacs held up his cup to a slave. One of the Romans—the younger one—turned toward the bench of servants and called, “Vigilas.” A Goth sitting on the bench came up and bent and spoke to him. Across the Roman’s patient, weary face a smile worked; his eyes turned piercing on Tacs.
At the far end of the table, on the Hun side, Orestes leaned forward and spoke to the Romans, his face creased with his smile. Yaya knocked his elbow into Tacs’ arm, slopping wine out of the cup. “What are they saying?”
Tacs lifted his head and listened. “That if the Emperor were a Hiung he would be Attila.” He shook his head. “They should not say such things—it is an insult to the Kagan.”
The Roman with the nasal voice said something in a careless tone and lifted his hand. Orestes smiled the way Tacs sometimes smiled, all teeth. Looking at him unsettled Dietric: Orestes had the face and the hands of a Roman but many of the mannerisms of a Hun, as if two souls lived in him. Ardaric had said once that Orestes had forsaken Christ and now practiced outrageous and disgusting rites in his house at Hungvar. Tacs said, “Now the Roman is making nothing of what he said and asking will someone get Edeco back. If we are to go to Hungvar he says we should try to keep friends.” Tacs lifted his head and called to Orestes, who replied one word, and Tacs said, “This Roman’s name is Maximinus.”
At the sound of his name the nasal Roman looked away. Orestes spoke in Hunnish to Tacs, who got up and went out of the room. Turning toward the Romans, his forearms lying on the table before him and his head thrust for ward over his interlaced fingers, Orestes said something through his eternal sneering smile.
Maximinus, the Roman with the nasal voice, jerked his head back, reddening, but the younger man drew him firmly down, and spoke mild-voiced to Orestes with a polite bow at the end of it. The Goth sitting among the Romans grunted. Orestes leaned back; his eyes flickered toward the door. Yaya’s gaze had been swiveling back and forth between the Romans and Orestes, but now he looked over at Dietric.
“You understand?” he said, hopefully.
Dietric shook his head. “Where did Tacs go?” Through the corner of his eye he saw the Goth Vigilas interpreting.
“Edeco,” Yaya answered. He turned his eyes back on the Romans.
Dietric drank more wine. Neither Orestes nor the other Hun, sitting now between Yaya and the end of the table, was looking at the Romans. Maximinus tapped his fingernails impatiently on the table. Beside him the younger man had taken a wax tablet from his sleeve and was marking it with a slender gold tool. Dietric thought, All these men have come so far together but there is nothing between them except boredom. Suddenly all such doings became in his mind filmed over with grey, nerve-wracking but meaningless.
He drank more wine. The only sound in the room was the slap-slap of the feet of the slaves carrying the ewers of wine endlessly around the table and the minute clicking of Maximinus’ fingernails on the marble tabletop. Vigilas had slouched down on the end of Maximinus’ couch, his shoulders stooped. He was a man of middle-age, with a heavy, shrewd face.
Dietric remembered that Tacs had said they would go to find a whore when they were done here, and his mouth grew dry at the thought. He wondered whether Yaya would come. If Yaya came Dietric knew he himself would fail. A slave was waiting beside him to fill his cup again, and he set the cup down. The sound of the wine running into the cup was like the roaring of a waterfall. Dietric wondered if Tacs knew he was a virgin, recalled the strange look Tacs had given him when they first spoke of whores, and was ashamed to be innocent.
Someone was running in the hall, coming nearer. The light footsteps rattled up to the doorway and through, and Tacs came over to the table. He put one hand on it, taking his weight slightly off his legs, and spoke to Orestes. Orestes nodded and said something, amused, and gestured with his forefinger to Tacs to go. Dietric stood up. Yaya said, “I stay. Warm here, and wine.” He planted his elbows on the table. Dietric went after Tacs toward the door.
Outside, Tacs looked up at him and laughed. “Edeco would not even let me in. He said through the door that he will stay alone tonight and not have to look at Romans again until tomorrow but he means no ill will. I was to tell that to Orestes but I didn’t. Edeco was tired of the Romans and they should know it. Do you remember the way to that shrine?”
“Yes,” Dietric said, and they went down the corridor toward the door.
MOONLIGHT FLOODED THE square before the church, but the porch lay deep in shadow. The tall double doors were shut. Tacs and Dietric climbed the wide steps to the porch and Tacs led the way along it. Dietric could hear the blood beating in his ears and in spite of the intense cold his palms were sweating. Along the building wall, in the shadow of the porch roof, the whores were lined up like horses waiting to be sold. When Tacs and Dietric came toward them they called out in soft voices full of a forced and unpleasant femaleness. One jumped out and pulled open the front of her dress. In the darkness Dietric could barely see her white breasts. She snatched his hand up and pressed it against her flesh, and he jerked it back, horrified.
Tacs said something, and the whore answered in Latin. Dietric could not see her face, only the white breast she had left hanging casually out of her dress. Against the palm of his hand the memory of her nipple burned. She and Tacs argued about something, and finally Tacs with a little shrug seemed to give in. He gestured to her, and she pulled her dress closed over her breast and walked off the porch. Tacs followed her, and Dietric fell in step beside him.
“She wants three coppers each,” Tacs said. “But she has a house. That’s better than the orchard when it’s cold out.”
“Yes,” Dietric said, hoarse.
“Let me go first, and you keep watch outside. In case something happens. Sometimes they are friends with thieves. When you have your clothes off they come in and try to rob you. It’s hard to fight back with your clothes off.”
Dietric could say nothing. They were crossing the square toward a narrow street. The whore walked before them as if she were not with them. Her body fascinated him. She was only a girl, younger than he was, too thin to be pretty, but her long black hair swayed when she moved, disturbing him. They walked into the narrow street. Dogs barked from behind a high fence to Dietric’s left. He smelled garbage. Something touched his wrist, and he jumped, but it was Tacs, giving him money.
“I will repay you,” Dietric said softly. “I promise.”
Tacs laughed.
The whore stopped in front of the house beside the one with the dogs. It was a small stone house with a wooden door. A lamp burned over the lintel. The girl knocked on the door and called out sharply in a strange language. A man answered in a drowsy voice. The girl stood to one side of the door and turned and smiled at Tacs and Dietric, a meaningless, uninterested smile, to keep them happy. In his memory Dietric saw her breast hanging out of her dress, blue- white in the darkness. The door opened, and a short man, covered with wooly black hair, came out pulling a tunic closed around him. He looked incuriously at Tacs and went by Dietric without glancing at him, yawning, off down the street.
The girl spoke, and Tacs said, “She says that’s her brother.” He smiled at Dietric and winked. The girl said something else—Dietric could see her face clearly, in the lamplight; she had small sharp features and a pouting mouth. Tacs answered her and she went through the door, and Tacs following pulled the door shut behind him. Dietric leaned up against it, his legs wobbly with excitement.
Beyond the door, the girl’s voice sounded briefly, and Tacs spoke to her. Metal rang on metal. That was the money falling into her cup. Tacs had said he was to pay her before he—they—did anything. He could smell the bitter odor of his own sweat. Beyond the door, wood creaked. Her couch. They were doing it. Her breast had been soft against his fingers, yielding and soft. He leaned his weight heavily against the door, but it was shut fast.
There were no more edifying noises. Dietric’s ears strained. He looked around; the street was empty. He noticed light shining on the fence next door, and went toward it—it was the light coming through the shutter over the girl’s window, around the corner in the alley. Dietric leaned against the corner of the house, looking at the window. What were they doing in there? He knew, his wild imagination knew, having seen dogs and cattle and now and then people. He slid down the wall to the window and pressed his eye to a crack in the shutter. All he could see was the front of the room, lit by another oil lamp on the table, beside a brass bowl. It was wrong to spy. It was evil and sinful. He bent his knees and moved his eye against the crack, trying to see more, and silently the shutter swung open as wide as the palm of his hand.
He backed up, sure they would see and call to him to shut it, and his scalp heated with embarrassment, but no shout came. He heard harsh breathing—two heavy breathings. The soft crunch of straw. The lamplight wavered along the walls of the room. His throat closed, and he moved sideways until he could see them.
The girl was on her hands and knees on the couch; her head hung down, and all her long black hair spilled over her naked shoulders and her arms. The lamplight shone on her hips and thighs and on Tacs’ hands that lay on her hips, the fingers spread, his knees between hers, and his hips thrust and his hands on her hips drew her back to meet each thrust. Dietric could not breathe. Tacs’ body glistened with sweat. He moved one hand to the middle of the girl’s back and pressed, and obediently she lowered her shoulders to the bed. Tacs’ head rose, mouth open, eyes squeezed shut, the scarred skin of his cheeks golden, like an idol’s, and his hair falling tangled over his back. The rasp of his breathing grew heavier and faster. Dietric clasped his hands together, trembling. He himself was twitching as if he already penetrated the girl. His tunic was propped out in front of him like a tent on a pole. Tacs shuddered. The rhythm of his breathing broke sharply, and he folded forward over the girl’s back. Immediately she wiggled out from under him and went off into a corner of the room. Tacs fell on his side and curled up on the couch like a dog.
Dietric backed away from the window, embarrassed again. He pushed at the front of his tunic until his pole sank down, half limp, and went quickly to the door. Voices sounded behind it, and more coins rang in the girl’s bowl. The door opened. Tacs’ face, bleary and sated, shone in the lamplight. “Go on.” Dietric went into the room. His hand shook, and when he dropped his coins into the bowl one missed and fell to the floor. The girl sat on the bed, watching him. He started toward her, pulling off his belt, but before he went to her he crossed to the window and shut the shutter tight across it and fastened it with the bolt.
PALE FROM HIS SEASON IN New Rome, Edeco sat at a table, eating; he looked up and gestured with his right hand that Tacs should come closer. At first he was more interested in the meat in his hands than in Tacs. Tacs came up to the little marble table and stood across from Edeco, waiting. Edeco looked up and set down his food. As always he was frowning.
“Last night, at first, I thought they had the name wrong. When I left Hungvar everyone was very sadly saying you and Marag were dead. How did you come home? Sit down. They overcook their meat here but there is certainly a lot of it.”
“Thank you,” Tacs said. He looked around the room for something to sit on. In the dimness of an alcove, a slave was waiting, and he came out and put a short wooden bench up to the table opposite Edeco. Edeco took chunks of meat and put them down on the marble tabletop in front of Tacs, where they lay in a pool of juice. The slave came back with a plate, but Edeco waved him off impatiently.
“Go away. All the way out.”
The slave padded to the door. Edeco stared after him.
“They have spied on me three months now. The customs a man falls into under watch aren’t fit for Hiung.”
There was a basket of bread on the table, circular flat loaves still warm. Tacs tore one in half and made a dam on the table against the juice, which was running down toward the edge. He had not eaten yet in Sirmium; that morning they had again tried to make him stand in line for his food, like a slave. “Marag is dead. I came back to Hungvar in the fall, before the snow started. I should have done it before. Everybody treats me very well now, the Kagan also. Tell me about New Rome.”
“You have been to New Rome. Tell me about the old one.”
“The City? We never went past the gate.”
“Ardaric ordered you there. Did you see it?”
“Yes. We stayed there watching three days.”
“Could we take it? If Visigoths could take, Hiung can. How high are the walls? Is it as big as New Rome? Is the harbor as good?”
Tacs took a bite of meat. Rich juices filled his mouth. He swallowed enough so that he could talk and said, “It’s scattered all over hills and marshes and there is no harbor at all, only a river with marshes on either bank. The river can be guarded so that no food is smuggled along it into the City. I don’t think there is much to plunder. The Goths must have taken it all. I heard owls in the city at night and the wolves go right up to the walls looking for food. Why should we take it?”
“Ah. You never heard the old man. He says if we take Rome curses will fall on us and we shall all die miserably, screaming.”
“What old man?”
Edeco spat out a lump of gristle. Picking up the ewer on the table beside the basket of bread, he poured wine into his cup and drank and handed the cup to Tacs.
“Last summer when we were in Italy, an old man brought us the tribute money from Rome, to make us go back. You left the day before he came, I think. He was a high priest, and along with the gold he gave the Kagan a stern lecture about Rome and how it is protected by spirits and the demon Christ and his powers. You know that the Kagan is always tolerant of old men. Since we were all starving and sick, he decided to take the gold and go home, but first he listened to the high priest, very patient.”
Meat fibers were stuck between Tacs’ teeth. He worried them loose with his tongue and his thumbnail. “Why do you want to take Rome, then?”
“To show that our magic is stronger than theirs.”
Tacs drank the last of the wine and set the cup down. “I’m not sure. It is a strange place. I had trouble sleeping there. Maybe there Hiung magic won’t work. It is full of spirits. The old man could be right.”
Edeco shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps. The Kagan did not believe him.” He looked away, frowning again. Tacs wiped his greasy fingers on his thigh’s. He could tell that something was worrying Edeco; out of curiosity he almost asked, but he knew if it were important he would know it eventually anyway.
