“I’ve been settled hi Burdigala a fair number of years.” A knock on the plank door was handily timed. “Ah, here comes the excellent Perseus with those refreshments I ordered. I daresay you’ve slightly more need of them than I do.”
The majordomo brought a tray of wine and water flagons, cups, bread, cheese, olives in a bowl. He put it on the ground and, at Lugo’s wave, departed, closing the door behind him. Lugo sat down on the bed, reached, poured, offered Rufus a drink not much diluted. His own he watered well.
“Your health,” he proposed. “You pretty near lost it today.”
Rufus took a long swallow. “Ahhh! Bugger me if that don’t go good.” He squinted through the dusk at his rescuer. “Why’d you do it? What be I to you?”
“Well, if nothing else, those proles had no right to kill you. That’s the job of the state, after you’ve duly been found guilty—which I am sure you are not. It behooved me to enforce the law,”
“You knew me.”
Lugo sipped. The wine was Falernian, sweet on his tongue. “I knew of you,” he said. “Rumors had reached me. That’s natural. I keep track of what’s going on. I have my agents. Nothing to frighten you, no secret informers. But street urchins, for example, who earn a coin by bringing me word of anything interesting. I determined to seek you out and learn more. It’s lucky for you that that chanced to be exactly when and where I could snatch you from your fellow sons of toil.”
The question soughed through him: How many chances had he missed, by what slender margins, throughout all the years? He did not share the widespread present-day faith in astrology. It seemed likeliest to him that sheer accident ruled the world. Perhaps today the dice had been due to roll in his favor.
//the game was real, //anyone like him existed, had ever existed, anywhere under the sky.
Rufus’ head thrust forward from the heavy shoulders. “Why did you?” he grated. “What the dung be you after?”
He needed calming down. Lugo check-reined the eagerness within himself, that was half fear. “Drink your wine,” he said. “Listen, and I’ll explain.
“This house may have led you to think I’m a curial, or a mildly prosperous shopkeeper, or something of that kind. I’m not.” Had not been for a long while. Diocletian’s decree had supposedly frozen everybody into the status to which they were born, including the middle classes. But rather than be crushed, grain by grain, between the stones of taxation, regulation, worthless currency, moribund trade, more and more were fleeing. They slipped off, changed their names, became serfs or outright slaves, illegal itinerant la- borers and mountebanks; some joined the Bacaudae whose bandit gangs terrorized the rural outback, some actually sought to the barbarians. Lugo had made better arrangements for himself, well in advance of need. He was accustomed to looking ahead.
“Fm currently in the pay of one Aurelian, a senator in this city,” he went on.
Hostility sparked. “I heard about him.”
Lugo shrugged again. “So he bribed his way into that rank, and even among his colleagues is monumentally corrupt. What of it? He’s an able man and understands that it’s wise to be loyal to those who serve him. Senators aren’t allowed to engage in commerce, you may know, but he has varied interests. That calls for intermediaries who are not mere figureheads. I come and go for him, to and fro, sniffing out dangers and possibilities, bearing messages, executing tasks that require discretion, giving advice when appropriate. There are worse stations in life. In fact, there are less honorable ones.”
“What’s Aurelian want with me?” Rufus asked uneasily.
“Nothing. He’s never heard of you. Fate willing, he never shall. I sought you out on my own account. We may be of very great value to each other.” Lugo sharpened his tone. “I make no threats. If we cannot work together but you have done your best to cooperate with me, I can at least get you smuggled out of Burdigala to someplace where you can start over. Remember, you owe me your life. If I abandon you, you’re a dead man.”
Sullenness and the gesture of the fig: “They’ll know you hid me here.”
“Why, I’ll tell them myself,” Lugo declared coolly. “As a solid citizen, I did not want you unlawfully slaughtered, but I did feel it incumbent on me to interview you in private, draw you out—Hold!” He had set his cup on the ground as he talked, expecting Rufus might lunge. Now he gripped the staff in both hands. “Stay right on that stool, boy. You’re sturdy, but you’ve seen what I can do with this.”
Rufus crouched back.
Lugo laughed. “That’s better. Don’t be so damned edgy. I really don’t want to cause you any harm. Let me repeat, if you’ll be honest with me and do as I say, the worst that will happen to you is that you leave Burdigala in disguise. Aurelian owns a huge latifundium; it can doubtless use an extra workman, if I put in a good word, and the senator will cover up any little irregularities for me. At best—well, I don’t yet know, and therefore won’t make any promises, but it could be glorious beyond your highest-flying childhood dreams, Rufus.”
His words and the lulling tone worked. Also, the wine had begun to. Rufus sat quiet a moment, nodded, beamed, tossed off his drink, held out a band. “By the Three, right!” he cried.
Lugo clasped the hard palm. The gesture was fairly new in Gallia, maybe learned from Germanic immigrants. “Splendid,” he said. “Just speak fully and frankly. I know that won’t be easy, but remember, I have my reasons. I mean to do well by you, as well as God allows.”
He refilled the emptied cup. Behind his jovial facade, tension gathered and gathered.
Rufus drank. His vessel wobbled. “What d’you want to know?” he asked.
“First, why you got into grief.”
Rufus’ pleasure faded. He scowled beyond his questioner. “Because my wife died,” he mumbled. “That’s what broke the crock.”
“Many men are widowed,” Lugo said, while memory twisted a sword inside him.
The big hand tightened around the cup till knuckles stood white. “My Livia was old. White hair, wrinkles, no teeth. We’d two kids what grew up, boy and girl. They be married, kids o’ their own. And they’ve gone gray.”
“I thought this might be,” Lugo whispered, not in Latin. “O Ashtoreth—”
Aloud, using today’s language: “The rumors that reached me suggested as much. That’s why I came after you. When were you born, Rufus?”
“How the muck should I know?” The response was surly. “Balls! Poor folk don’t keep count like you rich ‘uns. I couldn’t tell you who be consul this year, let alone then was. But my Livia was young like me when we got hitched— fourteen, fifteen, whatever. She was a strong mare, she was, popped her young out like melon seeds, though only the two o’ them got to grow up. She didn’t break down fast like some mares.”
“You may well have reached your threescore and ten, then, or gone beyond,” Lugo said most softly. “You don’t look a day over twenty-five. Were you ever sick?”
“No, ‘less you count a couple times I got hurt. Bad hurts, but they healed right up in a few days, not so much as a scar. No toothaches ever. I got three teeth knocked out in a fight once, and they grew back.” The arrogance shriveled. “People looked at me more and more slanty. When Livia died, that broke the crock.” Rufus groaned. “They’d been saying I must’ve made a deal with the Devil. She told me what she heard. But what the muck could I do? God give me a strong body, that’s all. She believed.”
“I do too, Rufus.”
“When she fell bad sick at last, not many ‘ud speak to me any more. They’d shy from me in the street, make signs, spit on their breasts. I went to a priest. He was scared of me too, I could see it. Said I ought to go to the bishop, but the bastard stalled about taking me to him. Then Livia died.”
“A release,” Lugo could not help venturing.
“Well, I’d gone to a whorehouse for a long time,” Rufus answered matter-of-factly. Fury flared. “Now they, them bitches, they told me go away and don’t come back. I got mad, raised a ruckus. People heard and gathered around outside. When I came out, the scumswine yelled at me. I decked the loudest mouthed o’ them. Next thing I knew, they were on me. I barely fought free and ran. They came after me, more and more o’ them.”
“And you’d have died under their feet,” Lugo said. “Or else presently the rumors would have reached the prefect. The tale of a man who never grew old and was dearly no saint, therefore must be in league with the diabolical. You’d have been arrested, interrogated under torture, doubtless beheaded. These are bad times. Nobody knows what to expect. Will the barbarians prevail? Will we have another civil war? Will plague or famine or a total collapse of trade destroy us? Heretics and sorcerers are objects to take fear out on.”
“I be none!”
“I didn’t say you were. I accept you’re a common man, as common as I’ve ever met, aside from— Tell me,
