He thrust sadness from him and continued north, downhill, until he found the house he wanted. Outwardly it was an unpretentious three-story building, hemmed in by its neighbors, the facade rosy-plastered. But that was ample for one woman, her servants, and the revelries over which she presided.
A bronze knocker was made in the form of a scallop shell. Cadoc’s heart skipped a step. Had she recalled that this Western Christian emblem of a pilgrim once belonged to Ashtoreth? The fingers with which he rattled it were damp.
The door opened and he confronted a huge black man in Asian-like shirt and trousers—an entire male, likelier hireling than slave, well able to remove anyone whom his employer found objectionable. “Christ be with you, Kyrie. May I ask what is your desire?”
“My names is Cadoc ap Rhys. The lady Athenais awaits me.” The visitor handed over a piece of parchment bearing the identification, given him when he paid the price to her broker. That woman had had to decide first that he was suitably refined, and still she had told him no time was available for a week. Cadoc slipped the doorman a golden bezant—a little extravagant, perhaps, but impressiveness might help his chances.
It certainly got him deference. In a twittering cloud of pretty girls and two eunuchs he passed through an anteroom richly furnished, its walls ornamented with discreetly erotic scenes, up a grand staircase to the outer chamber of a suite. This was hung in red velvet above a floral Oriental carpet. Chairs flanked a table of inlaid ebony whereon stood a flagon of wine, figured glass goblets, plates of cakes, dates, oranges. Light fell dim through small windows, but candles burned in multiple holders. Sweetness wafted from a golden censer. A lark dwelt in a silver cage. Here Athenais was.
She put aside the harp she had been strumming. “Welcome, Kyrie Cadoc from afar.” Her voice was low, scarcely less musical than the strings had been—carefully trained. “Twice welcome, bearing news of marvels, like a fresh breeze.”
He bowed. “My lady is too gracious to a poor wanderer.”
Meanwhile, keenly as if she were an enemy, he assessed her. She sat on a couch, displaying herself against its white-and-gold back, in a gown that enhanced rather than revealed. Her jewelry was a bracelet, a pendant, and three rings, small but exquisite. It was her person, not her wealth, and her spirit more than her person, that she had the intelligence to emphasize. Her figure was superb in a voluptuous Eastern fashion, but he judged that suppleness and strength underlay it. Her face he would simply have called handsome: broad, straight-nosed, full-lipped, eyes hazel beneath arching brows, blue-black hair piled thick around the tawny complexion. It was not looks that had brought her to this house, it was knowledge, skill, perception, the harvest of— how long an experience?
Her laugh chimed. “No poor man enters here! Come, be seated, take refreshment. Let us get to know each other.”
She never rushed to the bedroom, he had heard, unless a patron insisted, and such a one was seldom allowed back. Conversation and flirtation beforehand were part of a delight that was said to have a climax unrivalled.
“Marvels have I seen,” Cadoc declared, “but the finest of them today.” He let a servant remove his upper garment and sat down beside her. A girl knelt to fill their glasses. At a tiny gesture from Athenais, all attendants bowed out.
She gave him a subtle flutter of lashes. “Certain men of Britannia are more polished than news of it led me to expect,” she murmured. “Have you come directly from there?” He observed the sharpness of the demure glance and knew she was taking his measure. If he wanted a woman who had more in her head than a mouth, that was what she would provide.
Therefore—
His pulse stammered. The self-control of centuries underlay the calm wherewith he regarded her, took a sip of the estimable wine, and smiled. “No,” he said, “I have not been in Britannia, or England and Wales as they call it nowadays, for a rather long time. But then, though I told your ancilla that is my country when she asked, I am not really a native of it. Or of anywhere else, any longer. On my last visit here I heard rumors about you. They caused me to return as soon as possible.”
She half shaped a reply, aborted it, and sat cat-watchful, too wise to exclaim, “Flatterer!”
He calculated his grin. “I daresay your ... callers ... number some with various peculiarities. You gratify them or not according to your inclination. It must have been a cruel struggle to win this independence. Well, then, will you indulge my whim? It is perfectly harmless. I only wish to talk for a short span. I would like to tell you a story. You may find it amusing. That is all. May I?”
She failed to quite hide her tautness. “I have heard many stories, Kyrie. Do continue.”
He leaned back and let the words flow easily while he looked before him, observing her from the corner of an eye. “Call it the kind of yarn that sailors spin during calm watches or in taverns ashore. It concerns a mariner, though afterward he did numerous different things. He thought himself an ordinary man of his people. So did everybody else. But bit by bit, year by year, they noticed something very odd about him. He never fell sick and he never grew old. His wife aged and finally died, his children turned gray and then white-haired, their children begot and raised children and likewise fell prey to time, but everything in this man since the third decade of his life stayed changeless. Was that not remarkable?”
He had her, he saw, and exulted. Her gaze was utterly intent.
“At first it seemed he might be blessed of the gods. Yet he showed no other special powers, nor did he do any special deeds. Though he made costly sacrifices and later, approaching despair, consulted costly magicians, to him came no revelation, nor any solace when those he loved went down into death. Meanwhile the slow growth of awe among the people had, with equal slowness, become envy, then fear, then hatred. What had he done to be thus condemned, or what had he sold to be thus spared? What was he, sorcerer, demon, walking corpse, what? He barely evaded attempts on his life. Finally the authorities moved to investigate him and he fled, for he suspected they would question him under torture and put him to death. He knew he could be wounded, although he recovered fast, and felt sure that the worst injuries would prove as fatal to him as to anybody else. Despite his loneliness, he kept a young man’s desire for life and the savoring of it.
“For hundreds and hundreds of years he was a rover on the face of the earth. Often he let his yearnings overcome him and settled down somewhere, married, raised a family, lived as mortals do. But always he must lose them, and after a single common lifetime disappear. Between whiles, which was mostly, he plied trades where a man can come and go little remarked. His old seamanship was among these, and it took him widely across the world. Ever he sought for more tike himself. Was he unique in the whole creation? Or was his kind simply very rare? Those whom misfortune or malice did not destroy early on, they doubtless learned to stay hidden as he had learned. But if this be the case, how was he to find them, or they him?
“And if his was a hard and precarious lot, how much worse must it be for a woman? What could she do? Surely none but the strongest and cleverest survived. How might they?
“Does that conundrum interest my lady?”
He drank of his wine, for whatever tranquility might lie within it. She stared beyond him. Silence lengthened.
At last she drew breath, brought her look back to engage his, and said slowly, “That is a curious tale indeed, Kyrie Cadoc.”