Releasing another sigh, Selene said, "It is something I should have told you long ago. I meant to. I didn't think I could explain it to you when you were little, so I kept telling myself: when Ulrika is older. But the right moment never came. Ulrika, I told you that your father was killed in a hunting accident before you were born, during the time he and I were living in Persia. That was a lie. He left Persia. Wulf went back to Germania."
Ulrika stared at her mother while distant sounds floated on the night—wheels creaking by in the deserted lane beyond the villa's high wall, the clip-clop of horse's hooves on the cobblestones, the lonely call of a nocturnal bird.
"He left at my insistence," Selene continued softly. "We had been in Persia only a short while when we heard that Gaius Vatinius had been there before us. We were told that he was on his way to the Rhineland. I urged your father to go, to hurry after him while I stayed behind in Persia."
"And he went? Knowing you were pregnant?"
"He did not know I was with child. I did not tell him. I knew he would have stayed with me then, because your father was a man of honor. And after the baby was born, I knew he would never leave us. I had no right to interfere with his life, Ulrika."
"No right! You were his wife!"
Selene shook her head. "I was not. We were never married."
Ulrika stared at her mother.
"Wulf already had a wife," Selene said quietly, not meeting her daughter's eyes. "He had a wife and son back in Germania. Oh Ulrika, your father and I were never meant to spend the rest of our lives together. He had his destiny in the Rhineland, and you know that I was on my own personal quest. We had to go our separate ways."
"He left Persia," Ulrika said slowly, "not knowing you were pregnant. He didn't know about me."
"No."
Ulrika was suddenly filled with wonder. "And he doesn't know about me now! My father doesn't know I exist!"
"He is not alive, Ulrika."
"How can you say that?"
"Because if he had reached Germania, your father would have found Gaius Vatinius and carried out his revenge."
Horror filled Ulrika's eyes. She said softly, "And Gaius Vatinius is alive. Which can only mean that my father is dead."
Selene reached for her daughter's hand, but Ulrika pulled away. "You had no right to keep it from me," she cried. "All these years have been a lie!"
"It was for your own sake, Ulrika. As a child, you wouldn't have been able to understand. You wouldn't have understood why I let your father leave."
"I haven't been a child for a long time, Mother," Ulrika said in a tight voice. "You could have told me before this, instead of letting me find out this way." Ulrika stood up. "You robbed me of my father. And tonight, Mother, you sat there while I shared bread with that monster."
"Ulrika—"
But she was out the door and gone.
5
ULRIKA STARED UP AT the ceiling as she listened to the distant rumble of night traffic in the city streets. Her head throbbed. She had cried for a short time, and then she had started to think. Now, as she lay on her back, her eyes peering into the darkness, she tried to sort out her emotions. She was filled with remorse over the terrible way she had treated her mother, walking out the way she had, disrespecting her.
I will apologize first thing in the morning. And perhaps we can talk about Father, perhaps it will help mend this rift that should not have happened between us.
Father ...
How could her mother be so certain that he was in fact dead? How was Gaius Vatinius proof of it? Just because the general was still alive did not mean Wulf had not made it back to the Rhineland.
Ulrika rose from the bed and walked to the window, where she inhaled the springtime perfume on the night air. The ground was white, stretching away up the hill like a blanket of snow—petals from flowering fruit trees, pink and orange blossoms, dropped like snowflakes, looking white in the moonlight.
She thought of the snow-blanketed Rhineland, pictured her warrior father as her mother had described him so many times—tall, muscular, with a fierce, proud brow. If he had left Persia twenty years ago, as her mother said, then he would have arrived in Germania after the peace treaties had been signed and the region was stable and no longer at war with Rome. Wulf would have had to settle down, as so many of his compatriots did, to occupations and farming. It was only because of Claudius's recent decree that Colonia be elevated in status, and that the forests surrounding the colony be cleared for settlement, that old wounds were opened, old hatreds flared anew, and fightin g began again.
Was it possible? Could her father be among those fighters? Was he perhaps the new hero leading his people in rebellion?
Now she understood the meaning of her wolf dream. It had indeed been a sign that she was to go to the Rhineland.
When Ulrika was younger and learning everything she could about her father's people, her mother had gone to one of Rome's many bookshops and purchased the latest map of Germania. Together, mother and daughter had analyzed the topographical features and, based upon how Wulf had described his home to Selene, down to the very curve of the tributary that fed the Rhine, they had been able to locate the place where his clan lived. There, Wulf had said, his mother was the clan caretaker of an ancient sacred site.
Selene had marked the spot in ink: the sacred grove of the Goddess of the Red-Gold Tears, explaining to her daughter, "It is said that Freya so loved her husband that whenever he went on long journeys, she wept tears of red-gold."
Hurrying to the mahogany storage chest that stood at the foot of her bed, Ulrika dropped to her knees and lifted the heavy lid to search through the linens and childhood clothes and precious mementoes from a life of wandering. She found the map and unrolled it with trembling hands. There was the place, still marked, indicating where Wulf's clan lived.
She pressed the map to her bosom, feeling courage suddenly flood her veins, and a new sense of purpose. And urgency as well. Gaius Vatinius was mustering his legions at that very moment. They were to begin their northward march tomorrow.
She reached for her robe. I must tell Mother. I must apologize for the selfish way I acted, ask forgiveness for my disrespect, and then ask her to help me plan my new journey.