Drake David

To Bring the Light

David Drake

To Bring the Light

King Amulius’ herdman (whose name is said to be Faustulus) found the infants and brought them home to raise. … When the youths [Romulus and Remus] grew up, they made a habit of attacking bandits [herdsmen of Numitor, King Amulius’ brother], … The bandits ambushed the youths while they were performing a religious rite. Romulus escaped, but Remus was captured. … Numitor recognized the youths as his grandchildren. They wove a plot against Amulius … and killed him.

Livy: Ab urbe condita, Book I

Numitor gave Romulus and Remus everything that was necessary to found a city. … Some say Remus yielded leadership of the colony to Romulus, but with resentment. … Whereupon Celer … stuck Remus with a mattock and killed him.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus: Roman Antiquities, Book I

Flavia Herosilla leaned on the bronze balcony railing and craned forward to get a better look at the placard which the wagon-driver’s attendant held over the snarling tigers. “Egypt?” she read aloud. “That’s nonsense! There aren’t any tigers in Egypt! If the emperor doesn’t have better generals than he has geographers, Rome won’t last another thousand days, much less years.”

“Well, I suppose they’re talking about the port of entry on the Red Sea, then down the Nile and by ship to Rome,” said her host, Gnaeus Julius Maternus. “India isn’t part of the Empire.”

Herosilla snorted. “Neither is Dacia, not really,” she said. “But there’s supposed to be a Dacian display coming later in the day.”

Maternus had extensive shipping interests which paid (among other things) for this mansion on the Palatine Hill. The high balcony, facing the Sacred Way with the Forum on the left, was the perfect location from which to watch the parades Emperor Marcus Julius Philippus—Philip the Arab—was giving to mark the Thousandth Anniversary of the founding of Rome.

Herosilla frowned thoughtfully and added, “I wonder if the Dacian display will have the traditional Sarmatian wagons with painted frames?”

Following the caged tigers were a dozen men whose leader waved a placard reading GUARDIANS OF THE NUBIAN FRONTIER. The dark-skinned men had bushy hair into which ostrich plumes were woven, adding to their already amazing height. Their shields were naturally-patterned oxhide, and their spearheads seemed to be hammered out of pig iron.

“If that’s what’s guarding Egypt from the south,” Maternus said, “then I’m thankful Rome’s grain supply comes from Africa now.

“I suppose the emperor’s picking the most colorful troops for the festival,” Herosilla said. She lived most of the year in Cumae on the Bay of Naples, so she could afford to be philosophical about the chance of bread riots among the Roman poor. “There are wonderful opportunities for an ethnographer here.” “Perhaps you should write a monograph,” Maternus said, shaking his head. He looked up at the clouds. The sky rumbled though there was no immediate sign of rain.

On the broad Sacred Way, a dozen armored horsemen blew a cacophony on silver-mounted horns. Behind them was a convoy of caged hippopotami, one to a wagon. The hippos would soon die along with the tigers and thousands of other animals in the arena, as part of the month-long festivities.

“My goal is to know rather than to teach,” Herosilla said. She was thirty years old and already—in her well-justified opinion—the finest mind of her day. “Although the emperor could do worse than have me for a teacher.”

She gestured at the parade route. A squad of horse archers interspersed the procession of hippos. “For example, I know that the best authorities follow the dating of Eratosthenes. The real thousandth anniversary won’t be for another two years.”

Maternus began counting. The gold and polished stones of the several rings he wore on each finger winked in the wan sunlight. Finally he gave up. “What would the founding date be according to the Christian reckoning, then?” he asked.

“Have you added that superstition to your ridiculous list as well?” Herosilla asked with curl of her lip. Her face had the chiseled beauty of a statue. Men had told her often enough that she was as hard as marble; but for that, it depended on the man. “Since you ask, though, it would be 751 BC.”

The calculation had been easy for her. She’d learned the Indian method of counting, using a zero.

“One can’t be too careful, my dear,” said Maternus. “What I’m really looking for is one that’ll let me take it with me.”

He lifted two fingers without looking behind him. A slave wearing a silk tunic as fine as Herosilla’s own put a bite-sized fishball in the comer of her master’s mouth.

Maternus chewed, grinned at Herosilla, and continued, “Of course one reason Philip probably chose the earlier date because he can’t be sure he’ll still be emperor in another two years. Recent history makes a depressing study, and I must say—”

He glanced at the grim sky again.

“—those clouds provide no good omen for him.”

“Don’t spout superstitions even you can’t believe,” Herosilla said tartly. “As for your real point, the state of the empire—the things that happen on the frontiers needn’t bother a truly civilized person. Now of course I’d rather be reading in my villa at Cumae, particularly since I agree with you that it looks like a storm coming. But these celebrations are a unique event for which a true scholar is willing to undergo the discomfort of a trip to Rome.”

Next in the procession, dark-skinned pygmies led a pair of—were they deer or oxen? Herosilla had never seen anything like them. The beasts’ hides were a dun that was almost purple, with horizontal stripes on the haunches. The long necks suggested kinship to the giraffes that would doubtless be following soon.

“Your problem, my dear,” Maternus said in a voice that was hard beneath the banter, “is that you’re always a scholar. You should remember occasionally that you’re a woman.”

“Oh, I assure you I’m aware that I’m a woman, Maternus,” Herosilla snapped. “I just don’t choose that to be a factor in my relations with you. You’re an amusing enough companion and your house has an excellent view of the procession route, but that’s all. If you need another lesson in what I mean by, ‘No,’ however—”

“Peace, my dear, peace!” Maternus said, holding his palms forward. “I’m still bruised from the other evening.”

“One of the men who had no reason to doubt my femininity,” Herosilla said with a satisfied smile, “was a Bactrian wrestler whom I kept for a time. I learned quite a number of useful things from him.”

She returned her attention to the parade. Egyptian slaves in cotton breechclouts carried pallets with models of the Sphinx and the Pyramids. The men must have been miserably cold, dressed like that in the middle of February in Rome. Perhaps they were giving thanks that they were only part of the display, not the slaughter to come in the Colosseum.

“Of course,” Herosilla said thoughtfully, “any date is really guesswork. All the stories say gods were involved in the founding of Rome—which means all the stories are fantasies.”

“Oh come now, my dear!” Maternus said. “It’s bad enough that you sneer at other people’s gods. Now you’re blaspheming your own! This is really too much.”

“They’re not my gods,” Herosilla said. “They’re not anybody’s gods because they don’t exist. Isn’t that a simple enough concept for you to understand?”

Maternus sucked in his lips and shook his head in disapproval.

“Well, what will you take for proof, then?” Herosilla said. She heard her voice rising with the frustration that she felt so often, an intelligent woman in a world of credulous fools.

She raised her clenched fist to the heavens. “You there! Gods!” she shouted. “If any of you really exist, I demand you strike me down this instant!”

A big drop of rain whacked the railing. The bronze rang in echo. The hair on Herosilla’s neck prickled.

The thunderbolt an instant later was all the light and noise in the universe, focused on a single point.

Herosilla’s vision pulsed. Her nostrils were full of the sulphurous stench of burned air. She didn’t think she’d lost consciousness but she wasn’t sure.

For a moment she wasn’t even sure she was alive.

The veils of throbbing color thinned slowly. The roar that filled her ears was her own blood; that began to subside also. Beneath Herosilla’s palms was dirt mixed with pebbles and coarse grass, not the smooth mosaic floor of Maternus’ balcony.

She was aware of figures or at least shadows that moved and gabbled words at her. There was a sudden consciousness of pain: burning sensations from her arms, ankles and around her throat where her gold filigree necklace hung.

Her jewelry was blisteringly hot. Now that the reek of the lightning had dissipated somewhat, she could smell her hair singeing around her jeweled diadem.

Herosilla shouted and jumped to her feet, shaking the anklets of gold chain away from her flesh. She stripped off her armlets: double-headed snakes with ruby eyes. All she could do about the necklace was bend forward to let as much of the metal as possible hang away from the white skin of her breast. She’d never be able to release the catch in a hurry. In fact she didn’t even remember how it worked; that was a task for her maids.

The world came into focus around Herosilla.

She stood on a hill. The oak tree beside her had been struck by lightning so recently that the stump still burned. Splinters of the upper trunk smoldered in a circle thirty feet in diameter. A dead sheep lay at the edge of the blasted area with its stiff legs in the air. Other sheep faced Herosilla, their jaws working in a sideways motion as regular as the drip of raindrops from a gutter.

Two muscular young shepherds flung themselves on the ground. They were grunting something at her.

By the stars! The shepherds were calling her, “Goddess,” in the most barbarous Latin Herosilla had ever heard in her life!

“Get up, you idiots,” Herosilla snapped. She was dizzy and completely disoriented. There were no buildings in any direction unless the beehive of rocks a little higher on the hill was a shelter of some land. “I’m not a goddess!”

Lightning flashed; Herosilla flinched involuntarily. The bolt struck one of the hills across the valley. Rain came in a rush, making the tree stump hiss and kick out clouds of steam.

Just a moment ago, Maternus’ slaves had been waiting with a furled rain canopy. Now they’d vanished along with every other aspect of the mansion. “Where on earth are we?” she said to the shepherds.

The taller, leaner man turned his head slightly so that he could look up at Herosilla without breaking his neck. He spoke a connected sentence. His stockier fellow watched Herosilla silently.

For a moment the sound was merely a series of grunts; then the syllables fell into focus in Herosilla’s mind. “Say that again,” she directed.

“We’re watching the king’s sheep in the north pastures,” the shepherd repeated obediently.

Their accent wasn’t barbarous, it was archaic! The lightning bolt had somehow flung her to the countryside so far from Rome that the peasants still spoke Old Latin. Herosilla couldn’t imagine how the flinging had been accomplished—much less how she’d survived it—but it was all perfectly natural. Like volcanos and earthquakes, excessive humors of one sort or another caused disruptions in the earth. There was no need to invent gods for the cause...

“Very well, my good men,” Herosilla said, shifting her speech as well as she could into the archaic dialect. “You may rise, now.”

She’d never expected that her studies of the ancient Laws of the Twelve Tables would help her communicate in the present day. Perhaps all peasants spoke Old Latin? Now that Herosilla thought about it, she didn’t recall ever before having spoken to a peasant.

The men got up hesitantly. They weren’t quite as young as Herosilla first thought, but she’d seen gladiators who weren’t so lithely muscular. Perhaps she should have visited the country earlier, and by more orthodox means.

“Goddess?” said the broader-built shepherd, though the stars knew neither man was wispy.

“Stop calling me a goddess,” Herosilla said firmly. Given her consistent failure to rid her wealthy peers of vain superstition, she choked off a lecture on the nonexistence of gods that these rural louts wouldn’t even be able to understand. “Now, take me to your supervisor.”

The men spoke to one another in voices too low for Herosilla to make out what they were saying. ‘King’ in their usage obviously meant the man who owned the land and perhaps owned the shepherds as well. Even if these louts were technically free, they were so unsophisticated that she felt it was better to deal with their immediate superior instead of demanding the shepherds lead her to the manor house themselves.

“We will take you to our father, goddess,” the stocky man said. He held himself straight, throwing out a chest that a sculptor could have used to model Apollo. Each shepherd wore a tunic of coarse wool and, in place of a cape, a whole fleece with the hind legs tied around his neck. Their legs were bare. For footgear they had crudely-shaped pieces of hide in which the soles and uppers were the same single thickness.

“Don’t call me goddess,” Herosilla repeated with a sigh. “You may call me lady or mistress. Either is proper. Now, let’s not delay further while the rain falls.”

The taller shepherd gave a penetrating whistle. The bellwether, a grizzled ram which might be as old as the man himself, blatted in reply and set off toward the south. Three baked clay rods hung around his neck. They clacked as he moved, guiding the remainder of the herd.

The shepherds bowed deferentially to Herosilla and walked to either side of her as they followed the ram. “It’s clear proof of my high station that the lady appeared to me,” the stocky man said to his brother as though Herosilla wasn’t between them.

“She appeared to both of us,” the taller brother replied. “And also to ten tens of sheep. They’re sheep of high station, belonging to the king as they do. Perhaps she was sent to them.”

The stocky brother snorted angrily. Conversation lapsed.

Herosilla started to shiver. The rain was cold on clothing that was never intended to be waterproof; and the walk also gave her time to think about what had happened to her… and how much worse it could easily have been.

* * *

The village was at least a dozen round huts with walls of woven twigs plastered with mud—wattle and daub. Brushwood laid on the roofs prevented high winds from blowing away the thatch. Among the outbuildings was an open-fronted shed in which women milked ewes from flocks whose herdsmen had returned before Herosilla’s pair.

Perhaps there were more dwellings; she couldn’t be sure because of darkness and the complete disorder of the village layout. Certainly there was nothing of any size or built of stone—unless you wanted to count the sheep pen made by laying rocks on top of one another without mortar.

The area between huts was a waste of mud and sheep dung except where the soil had been trampled down to bare rock. There were no proper streets.

“Dad!” Herosilla’s taller companion called. “We’ve a lady here brought by a lightning bolt!”

“She’s a messenger sent to me by Mars!” his brother said. He raised his voice even louder, perhaps hoping volume could compel belief.

Heads turned as soon as the brothers spoke. When the folk outside saw Herosilla in her silks and jewelry, their excited babble drew others from the huts.

“I’m a gentlewoman of Cumae, visiting Rome for the celebrations,” Herosilla said crisply. “My arrival here is a purely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with gods. I want you to take me to your master immediately. I’ll see to it that you’re all well rewarded.”

The rain had stopped. A full moon began to edge into the gap between clouds. She’d been sure—she’d thought—the moon had been in its last quarter the night before…

The brothers and Herosilla stopped in front of a hut no different from the others. The opening cut in one sidewall for a window was shuttered. There was no hole in the roof peak. Smoke from the fire within seeped through the thatch and lay like a cloud over the brush roof weights.

An old man hobbled from the hut, leaning on a staff and the arm of a woman who was possibly somewhat younger. The other villagers stood close but didn’t crowd Herosilla and her guides. The brothers’ ’dad’ was the supervisor or at least first among equals in the community.

“Oh, she’s Greek!” the woman with ‘dad’ said. Switching to that language she went on, “Lady, I am Acca and this is my husband Faustulus. We make you welcome.”

To Herosilla’s further amazement, Acca spoke with an Ionic accent rather than the simplified common dialect. Homer might have sneered at Acca’s diction, but he wouldn’t have had any difficulty understanding what she was saying.

“Ah!” said Faustulus in the same archaic Latin that his sons used. “We’ve had traders come through here from time out of mind, mistress, but never a Greek lady before.”

“I—” Herosilla began. She’d planned to explain that she wasn’t Greek. She realized the effort would be pointless. All Herosilla cared about was returning to civilization: her books, her circle of learned friends; her home and the wink of waves on the Bay of Naples. If these yokels wanted to think she was Greek, so be it.

She spoke the language, of course. Half of Rome’s population, Emperor Philip included, came from the east of the empire and spoke more Greek than Latin. Any educated person had studied the Iliad and Odyssey, so Acca’s dialect provided no difficulties.

Why on earth would the villagers equate traders with Greeks, though? Had the lightning cast her all the way down the toe of Italy to where families traced their ancestry to Greek settlements centuries older than Rome’s expansion into the region?

“I really need to see your master,” Herosilla said. Cold, exhaustion and the shock of whatever had happened struck her suddenly humble. “But may I buy some dry clothing? I’ll pay whatever you ask.”

“We’ll have to hold a council on this,” somebody rumbled from the crowd.

“Yes, yes, you hold your council,” Acca snapped, “but I’ll take this lady inside for something warm to put on and put in her besides. You’d like a bite of food, wouldn’t you, dearie?”

“Yes,” Herosilla said. She almost staggered at the thought of food. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until Acca spoke. “Yes, I really would. I’ll pay you—”

“Tush! Why speak of pay when there’s been no honor so great to the village in the time folk have pastured their flocks here?” Acca said, drawing Herosilla after her into hut. The interior was dark and smoky, but the warmth was wonderfully comforting.

“You’re not a goddess, you say, lady,” Acca said. “But do you speak for the gods like the Sibyl of Samos does?”

“No, I’m a scholar,” Herosilla said. She thought about the question and asked, “Why do you say, ‘the Sibyl of Samos’, woman? If you’re going to mention one of the ten sibyls, why didn’t you say, ‘the Sibyl of Cumae’? Cumae is much nearer.”

“Oh, is there a sibyl in Cumae now?” Acca said in surprise. “There didn’t used to be.”

Acca stoked the fire with a stick of brushwood. By the light of fresh flames she rooted in one of several wicker hampers. The only other furnishings were the low bed and a loom on which she was weaving a strip of wool banded by selecting naturally colored yam.

“My best,” Acca said with pride as she brought out a tunic. “I wear it to town on market days.”

Herosilla couldn’t see how the coarsely-woven garment differed from the one her hostess wore now, but it looked warm and dry which was all the recommendation required at the moment. Herosilla spread her arms, then realized that she didn’t have a maid to dress her. “Oh,” she said in embarrassment. “I…” Acca nodded knowingly. “First we’ll feed you,” she said, switching back to careful Greek. “Then I’ll help you change. You’ve come from Chalcis, I shouldn’t wonder?”

She set the tunic on the hamper and took a shallow wooden bowl from a shelf. Tools and bundled vegetables hung from the roof beams. The shelves held utensils and more wooden dishes, but the only pottery was the earthenware pot on the fire and a small jug with a tawny glaze and a simple geometric design. Absurd as it seemed to Herosilla, the jug seemed to be kept as a showpiece rather than for use.

“I’m, ah…” Herosilla said. “I live in Cumae, actually.”

Cumae had been settled by colonists from Chalcis in Greece; by legend, shortly after the Trojan War, but certainly in the distant past. Why would anybody think a Greek lady came from a backwater like Chalcis now, though?

“You’re so lovely that I thought you were from Chalcis,” Acca said as she dipped a horn spoon into the pot. She filled the bowl with steaming porridge and handed it to her guest. “There’s many fine ladies there, I’m sure.”

Herosilla paused for a moment, then realized she was meant to slurp the meal with the aid of her fingers. She was too hungry to protest.

Outside, male voices rose in the rhythmic patterns of oratory. Apparently one facet of civilized society held true here: not even sex intrigued males as much as the sound of their own voices.

“I lived in Cumae for a time,” Acca said in a wistful tone. “That was long ago when I was young, though.” She stepped behind her guest and carefully untangled the saffron-colored shawl as Herosilla ate. “Oh, what wonderful cloth! Could you teach me to weave like this, lady?”

Herosilla blinked. She wasn’t sure how to answer without insulting a woman whom both decency and self-preservation demanded she treat well. “I couldn’t weave these myself,” she said. “Someone else made them. This is delicious porridge, Acca.”

The porridge was remarkably tasty. It seemed to contain primarily millet and cheese, with no spices but a chopped onion and the natural pungency of ewe’s milk. Herosilla would have turned up her nose at the dish at a dinner party, but hunger made her willing to find excellence in simple things.

“Such lovely clothing,” Acca said, relapsing into Latin as she fondled the silk, “We can’t hang it to dry until the morning.”

“That will be fine,” Herosilla said. Grimacing, she urged more of the thick porridge toward her mouth with her fingertips. She thought of asking for bread, but she hadn’t seen any sign of an oven outside the house. “Can you get my necklace off?”

“Oh, may I?” Acca said, touching the catch. “Such lovely things.”

Herosilla let the hut’s warmth penetrate her muscles as Acca removed her clothing and ornaments. If Herosilla closed her eyes, she could imagine that she was in her study with a charcoal brazier beside her, preparing to write an account of her translation from Rome to this village. Lightning, an aspect of the element of fire, had rent the air—a denser element—as air itself bubbles violently through water…

The borrowed tunic itched terribly, the more so because Herosilla’s skin was still damp, but it was an improvement on wet silk. She put down the bowl, looked for a water dish to wash her fingers—and licked them instead, feeling terribly uncomfortable.

The male voices outside continued to drone. “What are they discussing, anyway?” Herosilla asked.

“Why, you, lady,” Acca said in surprise. “Nothing so important has ever happened to our village before!”

“I should have known,” Herosilla said. “Well, I’d better join them or they may never get around to choosing someone to lead me to the manor house. Do you have a wrap for me?”

Dealing with this village reminded her of the time she’d had to walk in mud when her carriage threw a wheel on a rural track. A process as simple as raising one foot, then the other, took three times as long as it would on civilized pavement. Perhaps mud conditioned every aspect of peasant life.

Her back and shoulders covered by a fleece that was even filthier than the ones the brothers wore, Herosilla ducked out of the hut. About twenty men sat on stones around a fire built near Faustulus’ hut. The village women squatted behind them, and children down to the age of toddlers stood at the back.

The shorter of Herosilla’s guides was standing as he spoke. When she appeared he gestured and said, “Behold, the god-sent messenger who proves the grandeur of my destiny!”

“Nonsense!” Herosilla said. “I just need someone to take me to the landowner. To your king, that is, or his steward if the king’s not in residence at the moment.”

Villagers moved out of the way as she strode to a place to the right of Faustulus. The man beside the leader jumped over the fire itself to make room.

The taller brother stood. “It’s my right to guide her.”

“I—” said the other.

“You took the lambs to town for the last feast,” the taller man said. “It’s my right.”

“For pity’s sake!” Herosilla snapped. “I’m perfectly willing to pay both of you. So long as I’ve one guide, I don’t care if you all come. I’ll reward the whole village, those who come with me and those who stay.”

“It’s not that, lady,” another man said. Toothlessness distorted the dialect to the point Herosilla could barely understand his words. “With both the boys gone at the same time, what if we’re attacked? It’s not safe.”

“Sit down, both of you,” Faustulus ordered with the weary tone of repetition. “Roscio still hasn’t spoken.”

A man with short legs and long, hairy arms hopped at once to his feet but then waited, glancing diffidently at the brothers. They glared at each other for a further moment, then sat down in unison.

Roscio began to speak. He waved his arms in a fashion that seemed to have nothing to do with the emphasis in his voice. As best Herosilla could tell, the man was talking about a great battle in his youth. He appeared to be in his midtwenties now.

It struck Herosilla as she looked around the circle that there were only three real men in the gathering: Faustulus and his sons. The other males could have been molded from the surrounding mud. The brothers had fire inside, and their father had at least the warmth of coals beneath the crippling pain of his arthritis.

Most of the villagers watched Herosilla sidelong. The young woman standing behind the stocky brother glared straight at her. Herosilla hadn’t seen such hatred in another’s face since the morning she corrected a grammarian’s derivation of the word ‘rich’ (it really meant ’well-manured’) in front of several wealthy patrons.

There was a rustle as Acca squatted behind Herosilla. Roscio continued to maunder; now he was talking about the time somebody had threatened him with a rock.

Herosilla leaned back and whispered, “The woman across the fire with the sour expression. Who is she?”

Acca put her lips to Herosilla’s ear. “That’s Ganea,” she said. “Jealous, I shouldn’t wonder. She and my boy have an understanding. But I think what he understands isn’t quite what she does.”

Herosilla looked at the stocky youth. Ganea glowered threateningly and put a hand on his shoulder. He swatted it off. His eyes measured Herosilla like a side of mutton.

Herosilla’s nose wrinkled. “Ganea needn’t worry,” she whispered.

“Aye, I know that,” Acca said. “But the girl’s young and hasn’t learned that some women are interested in more that what a man’s got hanging between his legs. Though that too.”

Herosilla blinked, then nodded. “Yes, that too,” she said. She’d always claimed to appreciate plain speaking, but it was nonetheless disconcerting to hear it from a near stranger.

Roscio finally finished. Ran out of words, at any rate. He looked around in puzzlement. The man seated next to him tugged his tunic; Roscio sat down hard.

Faustulus planted his staff in front of him and levered himself upright with the strength of both arms. Acca braced her husband midway in the process, then stepped back.

“We all know there was trouble with Numitor’s herdsmen before my boys got their growth,” Faustulus said without preamble. “And we know that since then there’s been trouble the other way, with Numitor’s folk showing splints and bandages any time their flocks get too near our grazing.”

He paused. There was a chorus of, “Aye, that’s so,” and, “Just what I said.” Given the length of time the council had been sitting, Herosilla would have been amazed if there was anything that hadn’t been said at least once.

“That’s well and good,” Faustulus continued, “but there’s us and there’s all the men in the three other villages besides. Are you going to tell me that Numitor’s going to run us all off if both the boys are gone for a day or two? Is that all you are, sheep yourselves?”

“It’s not like we’re afraid,” said the man to the other side of Herosilla. “It’s just, you know, we need somebody to lead. And you don’t get around so good any more.”

The stocky brother jumped up. “If there’s no more manhood here than that,” he said, “then Mars strike me if I’m going to stay any longer! I’m going to town with the lady messenger tomorrow. The only question you all can decide is whether I bother to come back. The only question!”

He crossed his arms and stood with lowering fury. The man beside him, the rural equivalent of a rich man’s toady, cheered.

The taller brother had risen also. “It’s my right, so I’ll go,” he said and crossed his arms in turn.

“Well, one day,” muttered the man beside Herosilla. “Maybe one day,” Roscio said. “Could be two, easy could be two.”

“Are we all agreed, then?” Faustulus said in a voice that was nearly a growl. “Will anyone stand to say he’s afraid to spend a day in the pastures without one of my boys to hold his hand?”

“Oh, let them go,” a man said. “But it don’t make sense, I say.”

“It’s decided,” Faustulus said. He turned to his taller son and continued, “Remus, you’ll guide our lady guest to Alba in the morning to see the king. Romulus, since you’re so set on going you may; but the next trip to town is your brother’s again.”

Herosilla tried to stand. She stepped on the hem of her borrowed tunic. She toppled backward and would have fallen if Acca hadn’t caught her.

“Romulus and Remus?” she said. “Is this the Palatine Hill?”

“Well, our village is Palatium, lady,” the taller brother—Remus!—said. He looked puzzled by her sudden question. “I guess you could call the hill the Palatine, sure.”

“By the stars!” Herosilla said.

The lightning had indeed thrown her a long way. The distance, however, was through time rather than space.

“By the very gods.”

“All praise to the gods who rule men’s lives,” Faustulus said, in what he thought was agreement with his guest.

Herosilla sat on the roots of a pine, looking down over the moonlit plain where some day the Circus Maximus would seat a quarter million Romans watching horse races. There wasn’t a single horse in present-day Palatium. Presumably there were a few in the royal town of Alba.

A thousand years. A thousand years.

The villagers must all be asleep by now. The occasional gust no longer brought snatches of speech as folk chewed over the marvelous events of the day. The arrival of a Greek woman from Cumae was as amazing to them as the truth was to Herosilla herself.

A thousand years.

Footsteps crunched behind Herosilla. She stood and turned, stepping around the tree. Romulus was walking down to where Herosilla had gone to think after awareness of the situation struck her like a second thunderbolt.

She could easily have gotten home from some rural valley outside Rome. There was no way back from the past, except as bones.

“No one believed me when I told them my destiny,” Romulus said. “They didn’t laugh to my face, but I knew what they were thinking. Now they have to believe.”

“I’m not—” she said. But Romulus was right: he was destined for greatness. It just had nothing to with what had happened to Flavia Herosilla, gentlewoman and scholar.

“I’m the son of Numitor’s daughter,” Romulus said. “The king is my granduncle. Some day I’ll be king myself, but a great king—not a worm like Amulius!”

“The king’s brother Numitor is the rightful king?” Herosilla asked. She’d always assumed the stories of the founding were legend; that they had no more reality than similar tales of Olympus or Thule, written by folk to whom the truth would only have been a hurdle to leap in the course of their fictions. “Amulius ousted him?”

“What?” said Romulus. He was a tall man; only in the company of his brother would he have looked stocky. “Really? I wouldn’t have thought Amulius had the backbone. The gods told you this?”

Herosilla opened her mouth, then closed it again. She’d never understood how a king who’d let his brother depose him had gained the manhood decades later to take his throne back. But then, she hadn’t believed any part of the legend.

“But you and Remus are Rhea’s twin sons, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Oh, not him,” Romulus said scornfully. “He’s just a shepherd like the rest of them here, Faustulus’ son by Acca. But I’m the son of Mars, just as Rhea claimed. The king said Rhea’s son had died with her in childbirth, but really he had me set out on a hillside because he was afraid. Faustulus found me and brought me here to be suckled with his own son.”

Facts were all Flavia Herosilla had ever cared about. The thunderbolt had destroyed her previous certainties along with all other aspects of her former life. Parts of the legend passed to her down a thousand years were perhaps true; other parts were certainly wrong. Romulus couldn’t rationally be sure about things that had happened before he was bom... but perhaps a god really had whispered them in his ear! She couldn’t prove otherwise.

The only thing Herosilla could be sure of now was that she stood on a hilltop and the winter wind was cold.

“So you see I’m descended from a god also,” Romulus concluded. “Therefore it’s proper that you and I should mate.” He put his hand on her arm.

“What?” said Herosilla. She backed away. “Don’t be an idiot!”

Romulus laughed with the confidence of a strong man fully conscious of his power. He caught Herosilla by the arm again, above the elbow. “Goddess you may be, but I’ll bet you’re a woman as well. Don’t try to run or you’ll get hurt and spoil your part of the fun.”

Herosilla knew better than to run. She stooped, caught Romulus’ unloaded ankle, and twisted as he tried to shift his weight. He went over her back and hit the rocky slope with a crash and a bellow.

Herosilla started toward the huts at a brisk pace, stooping once to grab a handful of dirt to throw in Romulus’ eyes when he caught her. It was mud rather than dust or fine sand, but it would have to serve. From the sounds behind her the big man had rolled some way while stunned from landing on his head.

Acca, Remus, and several others trotted from the village. The moon behind Herosilla’s back lit them brightly. “Lady?” Acca called.

“I’m here!” Herosilla said.

“We heard you…” Remus said doubtfully. Romulus, panting like a blown horse, caught up to them.

“Your brother slipped,” Herosilla said. “I was coming for help.”

She turned. Romulus looked at her with slitted eyes. There was a dark blotch on his forehead. “That’s right,” he muttered. “But I didn’t need help.”

Herosilla threw down as much of the dirt as she could and tried to wipe off the sticky remainder between her palms. She wondered what served the village for a water supply. Puddles, she feared.

“I’d like to sleep now,” she said. “Is there a bed I could use?”

“Ours, lady,” Acca said. “My husband and I will give you our house and sleep with our sons.”

“If you wouldn’t mind, Mistress Acca,” Herosilla said, her eyes on the lowering Romulus, “I’d prefer that you remain with me tonight.”

“I’m going to bed,” Romulus said. “We’ll get an early start for town.”

“Why of course, lady,” Acca said.

Romulus stalked up the path, pushing aside villagers who didn’t get out of his way in time.

In her own day Herosilla had visited the villas of wealthy friends around Lake Albana, twelve miles from Rome. That hadn’t prepared her for the experience of hiking to the region over a track surfaced in mud and sheep dung. The only vehicles in Palatium were wheelbarrows. There wasn’t a mule or donkey to ride, much less a horse. The risk of being carried in a litter by herdsmen who’d never done anything of the sort before was greater than the discomfort of walking.

But the discomfort was worse than anything Herosilla’d experienced since she spent her first and only sea voyage leaning over the ship’s railing and wondering whether it wouldn’t be preferable to drown.

“That’s it?” she said as they reached the top of the hill. She’d thought the huts glimpsed from the bottom of the long final climb from the lakeside were Alba’s outskirts: the shanties beyond the walls occupied by poor people.

There were no walls. There was no more street plan than there had been in Palatium. Muddy tracks meandered between hovels much like those of the village. A few had a stone foundation course; a few had a small courtyard separated from its neighbors by a fence of twigs woven on a frame of vertical posts. Some houses were oval and perhaps contained two rooms instead of one, but they were the exceptions.

“Makes you feel cramped, doesn’t it?” Remus said, mistaking Herosilla’s shudder. “They’ve got tens of tens of tens of people here. It’s too much.”

“A real king would have a real city,” Romulus said. “Like Troy, with stone walls. And think of how great Agamemnon was in Mycenae, to have conquered Troy!”

“Men aren’t meant to live like that,” his brother retorted. “Wars are because folk go mad when they’re pressed too tight. They act like rats in a basket.”

The first spikes of winter-sown grain showed in the fields below Alba. The town’s immediate vicinity was cultivated; the pastures were around outlying communities like Palatium because live animals could be driven a greater distance than vegetable crops could be hauled over what passed for roads.

Children and dogs played in the streets. A few women sat on their lintels, talking and spinning yam between their palms. They watched the visitors. One of them called a knowing greeting to Romulus, but for the most part their eyes were on Herosilla’s saffron shawl. It was the only item of her own clothing that she’d dared bring on the muddy track.

A horn blatted from deeper into town. “We’re here on market day,” Remus explained. “That’s the signal that the king is ready to hear petitions in the forum.” “Better if we’d gotten here sooner,” Romulus said. “It can’t be helped now.”

“It couldn’t be helped at all unless you were willing to carry me on your back,” Herosilla snapped.

Both brothers had been surprised at the slow pace she set them, though Remus had been more polite in his comments. The ability to stride swiftly through muck had never been a virtue Herosilla thought to cultivate. Now she felt unreasonably angry at herself for that failure.

“There’s no great hurry,” Remus said. “Amulius would want to see her even if it weren’t his petition day.”

For all that, Remus moved faster through the twisting streets. Herosilla quickened her step despite fiery pains in both shins. The brothers led her by half a stride, clearing obstacles with their spearshafts or shoulders regardless of complaints from townsfolk.

Despite herself, Herosilla was expecting Alba’s forum to have some kinship with the forum of a town of her own day. No commemorative arches or statues of leading citizens, but a covered porch for market days in bad weather and at least a few stone buildings.

This forum was a wide junction of the streets feeding it. That would have been greater praise if the streets had been more than dirt alleys. There were several hundred people present, some of them crying the remainder of their produce at reduced prices. Most of the citizens were indistinguishable from the shepherds of Palatium, though a few of the wealthier sort wore dyed cloth and metal or amber jewelry.

On one side of the forum was a compound surrounded by a log stockade. Two spearmen with bronze breastplates, plumed helmets, and large round shields guarded the gate. Across the forum was a similar stockade, marginally smaller.

“That’s the king’s palace,” Remus said, nodding to the first compound. “The other’s Numitor’s. He’s an envious little toad.”

If Romulus disagreed with the description of the man he claimed as grandfather, he didn’t do so aloud. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s get to the front.”

The gate of the royal compound swung inward, opening. The stockade enclosed four or five buildings much like those in the rest of town. Amulius lived with guards and servants, maybe even courtiers if the term could be applied; but he lived in conditions very like those of Alba’s other three thousand or so residents.

The horn sounded twice from within the compound. Four more guards and several attendants walked through the gate accompanying a man in his sixties who wore an embroidered purple robe.

One of the attendants carried a cow horn with a wooden mouthpiece; another held a wooden staff with knob of carved ivory; and the third had a folding stool which looked similar to the senatorial chairs of Herosilla’s day except for being wood rather than ivory. The gate guards fell in at the end of the procession, leaving the stockade open behind them.

The brothers led Herosilla to the front of the crowd with the same strong-arm technique that had cleared the route through town. Citizens bleated at being shoved aside, but when they saw who was responsible they merely muttered about ‘wild men from the hills.’

Herosilla smiled wryly. The folk of this day saw gradations in a culture which was from her viewpoint as uniform as a mud puddle. To the townsfolk, the shepherds were uncouth thugs who couldn’t be expected to understand civilized norms.

The attendant spread the legs of the stool. As he did so, the gates of the other compound opened. Two spearmen with helmets but no shields or breastplates led out a man in a blue cloak. A group of blue-clad servants already at the front of the crowd opened space for the newcomers.

“Numitor,” Remus whispered.

“So I gathered,” Herosilla said.

Amulius sat on the stool, careful not to overbalance. He was somewhat overweight, while his brother was as thin as an aging weasel. The staffbearer raised his arms and said, “Citizens of Alba, your king is now—”

“King Amulius!” Romulus boomed as he stepped forward. “I bring you the messenger sent me by the gods in a lightning bolt. She—”

“Seize that man, Amulius!” Numitor cried. “And his brother too! They’re the leaders of the bandits who’ve been attacking my herdsmen!”

“Seize me yourself, Numitor!” Remus said. He faced the king’s brother, holding his spear held upright with the point down. Though not directly threatening, Remus could rotate and throw his weapon in a fraction of a second.

The crowd was already backing away. Amulius’ guards moved in front of the king and raised their shields. From their shelter he cried, “Stop this! Stop this right now!”

The staffbearer leaned down and spoke in the king’s ear. Numitor’s guards raised their spears. Numitor touched their arms, restraining them.

“Citizens of Alba!” the staffbearer said. “There is inviolability for all during the king’s petition time. Put down your weapons.”

“Another time,” Numitor said. He hadn’t flinched during the confrontation, though he must have known as Herosilla did that Remus was strong enough to strike his target even if that meant the spear went through a guard first. “Let’s hear the messenger of the gods, shall we?”

“King—” Romulus resumed, turning his own spear butt-down again.

“I can speak for myself,” Herosilla said, stepping in front of Romulus. That brought her almost in contact with the king’s guards. She prodded the shepherd with her elbow to back him up. “King Amulius, I am Flavia Herosilla, a gentlewoman of… of another place.”

‘Rome’ would mean nothing. Saying she came from Cumae wouldn’t dispose the king to help her.

Amulius leaned forward and tapped his guards to move them aside. He peered at Herosilla without expression.

“lightning struck an oak tree in the storm yesterday and she appeared,” Remus said. “We saw her, my brother and me, while we were herding your sheep.”

“She’s proof of my high destiny,” Romulus put in. Nobody seemed to pay any attention. Even in Alba they’d probably heard the claims often enough.

Amulius and his attendants bent their heads together for a moment whispering, their eyes on Herosilla. The king sat up again and said, “Are you claiming to be an oak dryad, then?”

“Nothing of the sort!” Herosilla said. “I’m a gentlewoman, a noble of my own country. I—”

Spectators laughed. Herosilla realized she was dressed for the most part as a peasant and was filthy from the joumey besides.

Amulius’ eyes narrowed in puzzlement. The staffbearer whispered to him again. “Well, what is it you want from me, woman?” the king said.

“I—” Herosilla said. She paused, stunned when her mind burst through the wall it had raised to protect her from the full horror of her situation.

She wanted to return to civilization. There was no civilization. Rome didn’t exist. Athens and the other cities of Greece would scarcely be intellectual centers in this age. Writing was a new art, and literature was limited to drinking songs and oral renditions of Homer.

Should she go to Egypt, the source of so many of the beggars clogging the streets of Rome in her day?

Or should she simply open a vein and end this misery?

Herosilla stiffened. Weakness was the worst of vices; worse even than ignorance. “King Amulius,” she said in a firm voice. “Provide me with a house and servants. There are many things I can teach you.”

The laughter was louder this time. Amulius grinned; his staffbearer said something to him in a normal voice, but the crowd’s merriment hid the words.

“Are you a goddess after all, then?” the king said when the noise had died down. “Only, I thought goddesses would be able to speak proper Latin.”

Everybody laughed again.

“Of course I’m not a goddess, you witless clods!” Herosilla shouted. That she could speak their barbarous dialect even with an accent made her a marvel of her own time—but this wasn’t her time. “I’m Flavia Herosilla, one of the most learned persons of any age, let alone this swamp of mud and boorishness! You should provide me with the basic amenities because I’m the closest thing to civilization that you’ll ever see!”

The laughter finally ended. Romulus and Remus edged close to either side of her, disconcerted by the turn of events.

Herosilla doubted anyone in the crowd had heard her outburst. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they did. Amulius was a worm, not a man who might have had her executed for telling him the blunt truth.

“Well, Flavia Herosilla,” Amulius said with false geniality. “I suspect you can get something for that shawl you’re wearing. As for the rest of your needs…”

He gestured toward Romulus. “You men. You’re the sons of Faustulus, my herdsman at Palatium, aren’t you?”

“You know we are,” Romulus growled, too angry to claim heavenly parentage.

“Since you found her,” the king said, “I give you full responsibility for her. She’ll no doubt teach you many things. Now, is there other business to come before me?”

Herosilla turned and walked away. She was blind with rage. Citizens moved out of her way, but Remus put a hand on her arm to stop her before she collided with a house at the far end of the forum. The brothers were beside her, wearing troubled expressions.

“The ignorant fools,” Herosilla said.

“They didn’t see you come from the lightning,” Remus said. “If I hadn’t been there myself…” He shrugged.

“I would have believed!” Romulus said.

“You’d believe the sun rises in the west if you thought it would prove you were king!” Herosilla snapped. Open anger immediately made her feel better. She tossed her head, shaking the cobwebs loose from her brain.

Amulius and his advisers were ignorant fools, but that had been true of most people in Herosilla’s own day. She was a fool herself to have thought the situation would be better during the barbarous past. The question before her was what to do now?

Her clothing and jewelry was unique and doubtless valuable in this age. Unfortunately, no one in Alba—and perhaps no one in Italy—had sufficient long-term capital to pay the amount Herosilla would need to live the remainder of her life in reasonable comfort. Any ruler who did have that wealth probably had also the will and ability to take the items by force from a friendless stranger.

She supposed she could live in Palatium on the villagers’ charity. She visualized the prospect: she couldn’t imagine any existence that would be more dreary and miserable. There didn’t seem—

“So you two own her, huh?” said an unfamiliar voice. Herosilla looked around. A local man had walked over to the brothers. He wore an iron ring on his right index finger and a russet cloak over a tunic with a patterned border. The garb and his fat belly marked him as one of Alba’s leading citizens.

“Go away,” Romulus said.

“Now, don’t be hasty,” the fat man said. He was clean-shaven, but his bushy mustache flowed into his sideburns. “I was hoping we could do business. I think she might clean up into something interesting.”

He gripped Herosilla’s jaw with a thumb and forefinger to turn her face in profile. She slapped his hand away in amazement.

The man chuckled. “Now, she’d have to stay in Palatium,” he continued. “My wife would—”

“You moronic pig!” Herosilla shouted. She kicked at the man’s crotch. The purse hanging from his belt got in the way. Nearby citizens turned to watch the commotion. “You fat cretin! I’d fling myself off the Tarpeian Rock before I’d let you touch me!”

The local backed away, then turned. A heavily-built woman wearing a mantilla of imported lace trotted out of the crowd. She made a beeline for him. The man began mouthing excuses, but they obviously weren’t going to do him any good.

“We’d better get out of here,” Remus said somberly. “I want to get home before dark. I don’t trust Numitor if we give him time to prepare something.” “I’d like to see him try,” Romulus said. His voice rasped like a file cutting iron.

The three of them strode through Alba in silence. When they reached the path down to the lake and home, Remus said, “Lady?”

“Yes,” Herosilla said.

“I was wondering…” Remus said. “What is the Tarpeian Rock?”

“Why,” Herosilla said in amazement, “it’s the outcrop on the Capitolium where—”

She stopped. The story of Tarpeia betraying Rome to the invading Sabines hadn’t occurred yet. There wasn’t a city to betray.

“I’ll show you some day,” Herosilla said. After a moment she went on, “I can see that if I’m to live in civilized surroundings, I’m going to have to create them myself. Which I will!”

The vermin in the bed she shared with Acca didn’t keep Herosilla from getting to sleep, nor did the bustle of the shepherds taking out their flocks awaken her in the morning. Only when the sun found a gap in the clouds and streamed past the hut’s half-closed door did she rouse from dreams as sharp-edged as the walls of a Greek temple.

Herosilla straightened her legs and groaned. She ached in every muscle, even those she wouldn’t have thought had anything to do with walking.

Acca opened the door fully. “Are you up, dearie?” she said. “I have some breakfast for you here.”

Herosilla thrust her feet into her own sandals. They wouldn’t have lasted a mile of the journey to Alba, but the loose-fitting local products she’d worn instead—hide wrappers, really—rubbed blisters in several places. She stumbled out to join her hostess.

Acca handed her a wooden mug of beer and an ashcake made from left-over porridge cooked all night on a flat rock beside the fire. Herosilla thought she could get used to the beer in time. There was nothing in Palatium to drink except beer or water, and she didn’t trust water from the shallow well near the sheep pen.

There was probably wine in Alba; certainly there would be in Cumae. It wasn’t Herosilla’s first priority, but she’d see to it in time.

“It didn’t go as you’d hoped, the boys told me,” Acca said as Herosilla began to eat. None of the other women joined them, though most watched Herosilla as they continued with their own tasks. Ganea, Romulus’ doxy, glared briefly before she went back to chopping vegetables against a treetrunk split to form a flat surface.

Herosilla dipped the ashcake into the beer to soften it. “Not yet,” she said. “It will eventually.”

She looked around the straggling village. She hadn’t paid it much attention before; hadn’t been here in daylight except a snatch the previous morning before she set out to Alba with the brothers.

Drainage ditches would be fairly easy. Paving or at least stepping stones shouldn’t be difficult either. Improvements to the water supply were trickier, but hollowed logs could bring adequate clean water from a distance. She wasn’t an engineer, but her studies in natural philosophy provided a basic awareness of slope and flow.

Herosilla swallowed the bite she was chewing and said, “Tell me about your sons. Is Faustulus really their father?”

Acca looked around to see if any villagers were nearby. She said, “I suppose I’d better tell you about myself. Most of those who knew are dead or they’ve forgotten…”

She stared at the backs of her spread hands. “It was a long time ago.”

Herosilla dipped more ashcake and waited.

“I was betrothed to Faustulus as a girl,” Acca continued, raising her eyes to Herosilla’s. “But a trader came by, a Greek like you. Not so fancy as you, lady, but… I’d never seen clothes like he wore, and he had lovely bronzeware on his donkey.”

“I understand,” Herosilla said. She didn’t, really; her own affairs—in all senses—had been arranged after a cold balancing of costs and benefits. She’d seen the normal cycle of passion and disaster often enough in others, though.

“So I went to Cumae with him for a year,” Acca said in a quiet, calm voice. “That’s where I learned to speak Greek, lady. But when he went home to Chalcis, I, well, he didn’t take me. I came back to Palatium and Faustulus married me as if nothing had happened.”

She added fiercely, “He’s a good man.”

“Ah!” said Herosilla at what she thought was a light dawning. “So the boys weren’t really suckled by a wolf. ’She-wolf is just the slang your people used for prostitute.”

“What?” Acca said. She frowned. “I’d never heard that.”

The older woman’s mouth opened in amazement as the implications sank in. “You mean you think I’m a whore because I spent some time with the wrong man? Oh, lady! Is it like that with your people?”

Herosilla thought of the morals of her age. Of her own morals, for that matter; though she’d never considered that what she chose to do with her own body was a moral question.

“No,” she said. “I certainly didn’t mean that. I apologize for giving the impression that I did.”

Acca smiled wryly. “Though I’ve been lucky,” she admitted. “There’s few enough husbands who wouldn’t have thrown the business in my face a time or two when we argued. Faustulus is a good man.”

“I see that,” Herosilla said. This time she meant the words as more than a placeholder to entice a story from the embarrassed teller.

“Anyway, Faustulus took a flock to Alba a few days after I gave birth,” Acca continued. “Gave birth to his son—it was a year and more since I’d come back from Cumae. There was a babe, a little boy, left to die by the lakeside. Faustulus couldn’t let that happen, he’s too soft hearted. He brought it to me to raise with our own.”

She shrugged. “What could I say, lady? When he’d been so kind to me? We’ve brought them both up the same with no differences between them.”

“Was Numitor’s daughter Rhea the mother?” Herosilla asked.

Acca dipped her chin in denial. “Rhea and her baby died at the birthing,” she said. “I knew the midwife. There’s some believe that Numitor was more than the child’s grandfather, if you catch my drift.”

She looked toward the distant horizon, thinking about the past. “The mother of the child my husband found was just some girl who got into trouble and took the only way out. I was lucky it wasn’t me, off in Cumae.”

“But it’s still true that Romulus isn’t your son?” Herosilla prodded gently.

“Romulus?” Acca said. “Oh, no, he’s our son all right. It was Remus that my husband found by Alba.”

The old woman shook her head in amusement.

“I’ve never understood where Romulus gets his notions. The only thing special about his father—”

Her tone hardened.

“—is that Faustulus is a better man than any other I’ve met!”

The afternoon rain had passed; the sky to the west was clearing enough to let reddened sunlight through again. “They’re coming,” said Acca. “That’s Grayleg, my boys’ ram.”

Herosilla turned. She’d been sketching a drainage plan in the soft ground, using a long stick so that she didn’t have to bend. If she listened carefully she could hear sheep and a faint clatter that could have been the bellwether’s neck rattle, but it was hard to believe Acca could identify the sound as that of a particular ram.

“Mostly my boys are the last in,” Acca said with quiet pride. “In case there’s trouble with Numitor, you know. But because of tomorrow they’re coming in early.”

Sheep came over the crest of the hill behind the brothers’ gray ram, as Acca had predicted. Romulus and Remus walked at the back of the flock.

Remus played a simple tune on a reed pipe. Wax stopped the bottom of the single tube; he varied the notes by opening or closing holes in the shaft with his fingertips.

Ganea ran to Romulus and ostentatiously kissed him. Remus stuck the pipe through his sash and called, “I see you’re able to move today, lady. Last night we weren’t sure.”

“I’m in perfectly fit condition,” she said sharply. “Walking through mud was an unfamiliar exercise, but I assure you I’ll adapt.”

The women of the village were taking the sheep in charge. Ganea tried to hold Romulus with her, but he shook her curtly from his arm and walked over to see what his brother and Herosilla were discussing.

“If I’m to live in Palatium, as it appears that I am for a time,” Herosilla said, including Romulus with her eyes, “then I intend to pay my way by improving the life of everyone in the community.”

She allowed herself a self-deprecating smile. “My own included, of course. Tomorrow we can start with detailed planning of the drainage route I’ve sketched to direct waste and rain water away from the village.”

Other herdsmen were bringing in their flocks. Pressure in their udders made the fresh ewes eager to be milked, and the other sheep were too strongly group conscious to hang back from a general movement.

“We can’t do it tomorrow, lady,” Romulus said. His tone suggested that he didn’t like to get orders from females, even females he thought might be divine.

“You two and your father are the leaders of the community,” Herosilla said, “and he can’t walk the ground. I don’t expect you to do the digging by yourselves, but—”

“It’s not that, lady,” Remus said apologetically. “The two of us with Roscio and Celer have a religious rite tomorrow we call the Lupercal. We run—”

“I know what the Lupercal is,” Herosilla snapped. “Who do you think—”

She caught herself. The brothers thought she was a foreigner who wouldn’t understand a fertility rite unique to their village—nude men, Luperci, running around the Palatine daubed with the blood of a sacrifice to ensure the success of the Spring lambing season.

“Ah,” she said. “I, ah—” the word ’apologize’ caught in her throat. “I’m familiar with the Lupercalia, that is.”

Another piece fell into place in the legends of a thousand years later. “Oh!” Herosilla said. “But you can’t run the Lupercalia tomorrow. Numitor’s men will attack you while you’re unarmed!”

“Is she on about the future again, Romulus?” asked Celer, the toady Herosilla had noticed the day before. Returning shepherds were joining the brothers after handing their flocks over to the women.

“Go talk to your sheep, Celer,” Remus said. “You may know something a sheep’d be interested in hearing.”

He turned to Herosilla and continued more gently, “Lady, we’ve lived with Numitor’s threats for a long time. We can’t hide all day because we’re afraid of him.”

“Listen to what I’m saying, you numskull!” Herosilla said. “Numitor is planning to ambush you. No buts, ifs, or maybes. You can’t run the Lupercal, period.”

“You’ve seen this, lady?” Romulus said. He was frowning, though perhaps as much at Herosilla’s tone as at what she was saying. “Or your god whispered it in your ear?”

“I read it!” Herosilla said. “I—”

Her own mind put her suddenly more on the defensive than anything these yokels could say. She’d always believed the accounts of Rome’s founding were legends or worse, fictions invented by historians of later centuries to inflate the genealogies of rich patrons in their own day. There was obviously some truth in the legends; she had the evidence of her own eyes as proof.

That didn’t mean that every detail—the attack on the Luperci, for example—was accurate. Even if the story was basically true Herosilla couldn’t be sure the attack would occur this year rather than next year or ten years in the future.

Unless of course a god or gods was controlling events, using Flavia Herosilla as a pawn. That thought made her very uncomfortable.

“What’s reading, Romulus?” Roscio asked.

What an age, what a world! “An activity for which you are wholly unsuited, Roscio,” Herosilla said aloud. “Like childbirth!”

“Well, we appreciate your concern, lady,” Remus said in obvious embarrassment. “We’ll come look over the drainage with you in the next few days. Right now we’ve got things to get ready for the morning.”

The brothers turned away, drawing the remaining shepherds with them. Celer said something that made several others laugh. Remus didn’t smile; nor, more surprisingly, did Romulus.

The moon lit the tops of reeds growing below Herosilla, where the Forum would be. The broad valley would be a swamp during the winter rains until the Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer, was built to drain it in a century or so.

Beyond the Forum Herosilla could see the comer of the Capitoline Hill from which the Tarpeian Rock jutted. During the Republic murderers were flung to their death from the outcrop. The emperors had substituted more refined methods of execution.

She didn’t turn when she heard footsteps behind her. The slope before her was steep enough that death for herself and her attacker would be the probable result if she launched herself outward. Either outcome would satisfy her in her present state of mind. Herosilla tensed, waiting for the hands to grip her shoulder.

“I brought you some supper,” Remus said.

“I’m not hungry,” Herosilla said. She relaxed. She realized that she was hungry, very hungry. Frustration always increased her appetite.

Remus seated himself and handed her an ashcake with a slab of cheese. “I’ve got beer in a skin here,” he said. “Mom’s keeping some broth warm back at the hut.”

Herosilla nibbled at the cheese. The cake was too hard to chew unsoftened. Perhaps if she held a sip of beer in her mouth…

“Even if you’re right about Numitor, lady…” Remus said. He laced his fingers together and stared across the valley so that he didn’t have to meet her eyes. “And I don’t say you’re not. But the strongest men in the village owe it to the gods to run the rite.”

Herosilla swallowed a bite of cheese. “There are no gods,” she said. “There is Numitor and chances are there’ll be an ambush. I’m not so confident about the details though—like the fact you survive!”

“There are gods here, lady,” Remus said quietly. “I don’t know about your countiy.”

He turned his troubled face toward her. “Lady, if there’s a bad lambing season Amulius won’t starve. He’ll just eat less meat with his bread. But we here in the hills depend for our very life on the half the increase that’s ours. We don’t have grain except what we trade lambs for to the farmers at Alba. What our women raise in their plots won’t keep the whole village alive over the winter. We have to honor the gods properly.”

Herosilla smiled bitterly. “Remus,” she said, “do you believe that events just happen or do you think men make them happen?”

Remus pursed his lips. He was a strikingly handsome man, a lean Mercury to his brother’s muscular Apollo.

“Well, lady,” he said. “I’ve always thought the gods set up the pattern and we mortals pretty much run or fall depending on how well we follow it. My brother, now, he thinks the gods have chosen him to make a pattern.”

He shrugged and gave her a wry smile. “My brother has great dreams,” he said. “For a city bigger than anywhere else in the world. All built of stone, like traders say they do in Greece. Is that true, lady?”

“Most places in Greece, yes,” Herosilla said. Even in this day, she supposed. For a region as rocky as Greece, there was very little choice.

“For myself,” Remus continued, “I think even Alba’s bigger than a city ought to get. So many people cramped together like that, it brings out the wrong things in them.”

He grinned, cheerfully this time. “Though after the Lupercal, we’ll look into this drainage you want. I never found there was anything romantic about mud either.”

Herosilla laughed and rose to her feet. She’d come to a decision. She was still a little stiff from yesterday’s exercise, but with Acca’s help she’d be able to repeat the hike to Alba the next morning even if she had to crawl the last of the way.

“Walk me back to the village,” Herosilla said, offering the shepherd her arm.

“Lady?” he said, but he obediently took her arm.

“Remus,” she said, “I respect your attitude, but for myself I’m unwilling to imagine a world without the greatness of—of its greatest city.”

“Chalcis, lady?” Remus said.

“Not Chalcis,” she said crisply as they walked slowly along a path sheep had worn to the bedrock. “You will run the Lupercal because your gods direct you to do so. And I will do what I need to do according to the forces directing me.”

Herosilla pursed her lips and added, “Which I must admit are looking more and more like gods.”

She squeezed Remus’ arm. It was a good, strong arm. Remus was a lad who had possibilities that the right woman could bring out.

“Hoy, child,” Acca said. Walking to Alba at the best speed Herosilla could manage hadn’t winded the older woman, even though she was the one carrying the bundle of clothing along with food and drink for the trip. “Are you Tertia?”

The little girl rocking an infant in a wicker cradle in front of a house dipped her chin solemnly. “I’m Quartilla, Aunt Acca,” she said.

“Well, run tell your mother I’m here with a friend and we’re going to change clothes in your house,” Acca said. “I’ll watch the—”

She peeked into the cradle and lifted the covers.

“—boy while you’re gone.” She nodded to Herosilla. “Go on inside. Clodia’s probably with her sister-in-law and the new baby.”

The house was similar to those in Palatium, though the inner walls had been whitewashed. There was a hanging lamp in the form of a bronze griffin which Herosilla would have been proud to find a place for at her villa in Cumae. A shield, a spear, and a helmet of hardened leather stood against one wall.

Besides shutters, the two windows had grates of thick withies to maintain security while allowing air to circulate in hot weather. Herosilla remembered Remus’ comment about cities encouraging the worst in men.

She began to take off her borrowed village garb. Acca came in a moment later, carrying the cradle. The infant remained asleep or at least quiet.

“Oh, lady, your skin is as fine as the cloth you wear,” Acca said in amazement. She was seeing her guest undressed for the first time by daylight. She set the bundle of silk clothing on the bed frame and untied it with sure fingers.

Herosilla hadn’t had a bath or a bed free of vermin in the past three days of exercise and exposure. She thought of how a woman of her time and class would rate her now and shook her head sadly.

Acca wasn’t a trained maid, but she had good hands and there was light to work by. Besides, the audience wasn’t going to be as fastidious as a gathering of upper-class Roman women.

Herosilla dressed quickly, then put on her jewelry. Her earlobes were still tender; lightning had heated the wires hot enough to blister. She hung the earrings anyway. Garnets and faceted gold beads dangled from the lowest of the three tiers. The effect was spectacular enough to be worth minor pain.

Acca stepped back to view the completed result. “Oh, lady,” she whispered.

“Let’s go,” Herosilla said curtly. She smiled with satisfaction nevertheless. She’d have liked to view herself in a mirror, but Acca’s reaction was really a better way to judge how she looked to the folk with whom she’d have to deal.

Acca led; Herosilla couldn’t have hoped to find her way through this warren. The streets were crowded. Because it wasn’t market day Alba had fewer visitors from the outlying villages, but the local women generally worked in the street before their houses rather than going to the forum. Acca didn’t have her sons’ brute strength, but she cleared a path for her guest without overmuch delicacy.

Citizens gasped and stared when they saw the shimmering silk and jewelry. Herosilla smiled again.

The guards outside Numitor’s compound were the same pair who’d attended him at the royal audience. As before, they weren’t fully armed like the guards across the forum. Amulius, though a spineless fool, wasn’t so great a fool that he didn’t preserve some marks of his superior status to his brother.

“You there!” Herosilla said to the taller guard. She needed to pick one, and they didn’t wear indications of rank. “I’m here to see your master Numitor.”

“Nobody can go in today,” the guard said nervously. He’d never supposed an apparent goddess would appear before him. He looked to his partner for support.

The other guard edged a little farther away. He acknowledged Herosilla’s presence only by sidelong glances. Folk in the Forum drifted closer to watch in awe. The guards at the royal compound were interested also, but they didn’t leave their posts when citizens blocked their view.

“You will not keep me out, you rural simpletons,” Herosilla said in a venomous tone. “Your only choice is whether you willingly admit me to give your master the information about the ambush he’s waiting for; or I enter over the lightning-blasted ashes of your bodies. Do you understand?”

“She’s the messenger?” the shorter guard asked, trying to look at his partner without letting his eyes fall on Herosilla. His question answered Herosilla’s doubt about whether this was the correct year.

“Sorry, lady,” the taller guard muttered. He pushed the gate fully open as he stepped aside. “We were expecting Talpus.”

Herosilla strode into the compound. It held four two-room huts. Female servants prepared food in front of one. The women glancing up from their weaving beside the next were better dressed; the fat one wearing bronze armlets was most likely Numitor’s wife. Across the compound, a third hut had a litter of tools and spearshafts leaned against it, though none of the male servants or other guards were present.

That left the other as Numitor’s dwelling. Herosilla walked through the open door and surprised Numitor talking to an attendant with white hair and a sour expression. Both men jumped up.

The hut’s front room contained an ornate bronze tripod supporting a brazier. The charcoal was laid but not lighted; apparently the locals didn’t consider the day chilly enough to require heat.

A pair of large jugs with geometric designs stood to either side of the door into the bedroom beyond; shelves displayed half a dozen drinking bowls on edge so that the figures in black glaze could be seen. One of the bowls had the characters’ names written in Greek above the figures: Herakles and the centaur Cheiron.

The names were written backwards. The illiterate artist had copied them out as he would have any other design element, but he hadn’t realized that the order of the letters was significant. It didn’t matter to the owner either: he was just proud to own an item with writing on it.

“Guards!” Numitor shouted.

“Stop blustering, you fool,” Herosilla said. “I’m your only chance of getting the kingship that you want more than you do your right arm. Shut up and listen or I’ll walk across the street to your brother.”

“I’ll get—” the attendant muttered as he stepped toward the door.

Numitor caught his arm. “Wait a moment,” he said. His eyes didn’t leave Herosilla.

She smiled coldly. “Now,” she said. “You’ve set an ambush for the men from Palatium as they run the Lupercal. I suspect you’ll capture Remus and some of the others but not Romulus. None of that matters. What matters is what we do next.”

The attendant blinked at ‘we’.

Numitor said, “Who told you that?” His voice was deadly.

“Would you be happier if I said the lightning told me?” Herosilla snapped. “I told you to shut up and listen. If you try to bring enough of your own men into Alba to unseat your brother they’ll be noticed. The citizens may not have much affection for Amulius, but they know you’re a vicious little snake. They’ll resist and you’ll lose.”

“You’re a very interesting woman,” Numitor said softly.

“Instead, I’ll use the herdsmen from Palatium and the nearby communities to deal with your problem,” Herosilla said. “After that, I’ll—”

“They’re Amulius’ men,” the attendant protested.

Herosilla’s earrings clinked as she turned her head quickly. “They’re my men, so far as you’re concerned,” she said.

“I don’t see how you can achieve that,” Numitor said thoughtfully. “But then, I don’t suppose I need to understand. Since I’ll have no involvement in the entertainment if it fails. That is correct, is it not?”

“Quite correct,” Herosilla said. Numitor was one of the most unpleasant men she’d ever met, but he was clearly not stupid.

“And I suppose you’ll want some position for yourself if you succeed?” Numitor said. He glanced through the doorway toward the women’s quarters across the compound. “Well, I suppose that can be arranged also.”

“That is not what I want in return,” Herosilla said in an icy voice. She didn’t bother to state her loathing for Numitor: he was observant enough to read it in her expression.

“What you will do, as much for your own safety as because I require it,” she continued, “is send a colony from Alba to where Palatium now stands. The sons of Faustulus will head the new community. Alba’s bursting at the seams, besides which at least some hundreds of the citizens are going to be direct threats to your rule if you don’t get rid of them. You’ll solve both difficulties this way.”

“A very interesting woman,” Numitor repeated, this time in a musing tone. “When would you expect this… change in government, we’ll call it… to be achieved?”

Herosilla sniffed. “In ten days or so. I’ll send my men into Alba over a few days to stay with friends and kin here. Too much haste could arouse suspicion. In two market days, let’s say.”

She turned and looked through the doorway. Numitor’s fat wife was staring into her husband’s dwelling, nervously twisting one of her armlets.

“Of course,” Herosilla added with her back to the men, “you’ll have to release the Luperci you’ve captured this morning. I’ll need them to lead the assault.” There was commotion at the gate of the compound. A man in a tom tunic entered and ran to Numitor’s dwelling. Leaning on the doorpost he gasped, “We caught three of them, but one of those damned brothers got away!”

Blood spattered the messenger’s tunic. He didn’t have an open cut, though his left cheek was swollen from a blow. He paid no attention to Herosilla despite having to look past her to see Numitor. “Servius wants to know what to do with the ones we’ve got?” he added.

“Release them to me,” Herosilla said. “Talpus here can lead me to where they’re being held. I’ll return with them to Palatium.”

“Huh?” the messenger said as his eyes focused on Herosilla for the first time.

“Yes,” Numitor said. He smiled like a weasel moving toward its prey. “Do as this one says, Talpus.” Herosilla smiled back at him. Numitor’s attendant and the messenger looked at them in fear and horror.

The bonfire in the center of Palatium was stoked high as a beacon for herdsmen coming in from the surrounding communities, but it hadn’t illuminated the track up the hill’s steep southern face. Herosilla stumbled repeatedly during the climb; once she would have fallen except for Remus’ quick hand on her shoulder.

Acca and the three shepherds hadn’t had any difficulty. Even Roscio, half delirious from the pain of the broken bone in his right forearm, plodded surefootedly through the dark.

There were scores of men around the fire; perhaps as many as a hundred. A fellow Herosilla didn’t recognize turned at the sound of the returning Luperci and cried, “It’s an attack!”

“No, we’re coming home!” Remus shouted. “And if you ever want to see your home again, Balthus, you’d better not aim that spear at me!”

Remus had been clubbed unconscious, but the bloody bandage around his head was the only present sign of the attack. He spoke and moved like a man in perfect health.

Romulus pushed through the crowd of assembled shepherds. “Remus?” he said. “We were coming to get you.”

“You were coming to have your heads lopped off,” Herosilla said, pitching her voice to carry. “What did you think was going to happen when you attacked Alba, you dimwit? There’s five townsmen for every one of you, and I shouldn’t wonder if they had better weapons besides.”

Romulus scowled like the start of an avalanche. “Women don’t understand these things,” he said.

“This woman understands quite well,” Herosilla said. “Which is why you’re going to do this my way instead of cocking it up again. I can’t afford a failure.”

She’d changed back to peasant garb before leaving Alba, so she didn’t have silk and ornaments to overawe the gathered herdsmen. The climb up the Capitoline would have wrecked the fine clothing anyway.

“I’ve been wondering, brother,” Remus said. His tone was reasonable, but he spoke loudly enough that he could be heard well into the crowd of armed herdsmen. “How is it you happened to be a hundred strides behind the rest of us when Numitor’s men attacked? You’re usually a better runner than that. Is it because you believed the lady’s warning?”

“I turned my ankle at the start,” Romulus said. His voice dropped in volume with every syllable. “I was coming to get you. You can see that.”

“Then let’s listen to what the lady has to say,” Remus said loudly. “After all, she rescued us from Numitor’s men.”

“Sure, we’ll listen,” his brother agreed, mumbling now. “I don’t see there’s much to talk about since you’re all free.”

“Come,” Herosilla said, striding toward the bonfire in the correct expectation that the men would jump out of her way. It put the seal on her dominance of the assembly. “I want to sit down, and I want all of you to hear.”

The closest thing to seats in Palatium were the stones set around the fire for village councils. Herosilla took one that was a hand’s breadth higher than the others. She needed not only rest for her legs but also the effect she would gain by standing again. Romulus and Remus seated themselves to either side of her.

Faustulus was across the circle. He gestured to the fire and ordered, “Let it burn down. No one else will be arriving tonight.”

Herosilla waited for the assembly to settle around her. Most of the men were strangers. Local shepherds whispered to their neighbors, telling them who the lady with the strange accent and manner was.

The only women present were those from Palatium, and they kept very much to the fringes. War was men’s work; though women were the second booty after sheep.

In clear, ringing tones trained by declamations to groups much larger than this one, Herosilla said, “We are going to put Numitor on the throne of Alba.”

The shepherds buzzed. “We are going to do that,” Herosilla said, ripping through the amazement the way a sickle saws grain, “because Numitor has enough intelligence to give us what we want. If Amulius had the wit the gods gave to sheep, he’d have put his brother out of the way ages ago.”

Faustulus lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Lady!” he cried. “We’re Amulius’ men, all of us here.”

“Are you?” Herosilla said. “Is that what you believe?”

She stood and pointed to her right. “Remus, when Numitor would have seized you the other day, was it Amulius or your own right arm that preserved you?” She turned and pointed to Romulus on her other side. “Romulus, when you gathered men to free your brother, did you bother to ask Amulius for help? No, you expected to have to fight all the men of Alba, because you knew the king’s spine is as soft as wax in the August sun!”

Her tone was harsh and hectoring. The shepherds had never heard a trained voice before. It stunned them the way sight of Herosilla’s finery had blasted the wills of those she needed to impress in Alba.

Herosilla swept her eyes around the assembly. “If your children were starving this winter, would Amulius feed them? Though you know his table never lacks for the meat you raise! If this Amulius owns your souls, then indeed the gods have sent me to the wrong place. I was meant to go to a land of men, not ewes!”

As a scholar, she sneered at the notion of deities. When she fought—verbally or in other fashions—she used any weapon she thought would be effective.

Herosilla paused, letting the murmurs die down. Before she could resume, Remus said, “Lady?”

She nodded curtly to him. Remus remained seated, but everyone in the village could hear his voice.

“Lady,” he said, “all you say about Amulius is true. But how can we trust Numitor after we’ve made him king?”

“An excellent question,” Herosilla said, directing her cold smile to the full audience. “When we’ve succeeded, you and your brother will lead a colony of the citizens of Alba who hate Numitor worst. You’ll found a new town right here in company with the folk of Palatium and the other villages on these hills, brought together in such strength—”

The crowd gasped with a sound like surf on gravel. Romulus jumped to his feet.

“—that Numitor won’t be able to touch you!”

Herosilla crossed her arms. No one could have shouted over the shocked babbling. Trying to do so would have made her ridiculous.

The brothers looked at her from either side. After a moment, Romulus began to smile.

The sun was still a finger’s breadth below the eastern horizon, but a few early comers were arranging their wares in Alba’s forum. The owner of a fish stall bartered with a herdsman’s wife as she hung skeins of naturally colored wool on a tripod of sticks.

Servius, the chief of Numitor’s guards, opened one leaf of the gate enough that Herosilla could slip out. Servius himself stayed hidden.

Herosilla stalked across the forum in brisk majesty. The fishmonger, then the wool seller, turned and gaped.

The guards at the king’s gate didn’t notice Herosilla until she was halfway toward them. They stiffened. One lifted his spear, then leaned it against the stockade behind him as if embarrassed by his initial impulse.

Herosilla wore her festival garb. The predawn halflight didn’t show her to best effect, but the glinting, shimmering adornment still provided a more-than-regal effect in this drab age.

“Oh cursed man!” Herosilla said. She pointed her left arm toward one of the guards: limb and index finger made a single threatening line. “Open the gates that I may warn your master of the doom that awaits him!”

“The king will hear petitions after midday,” the other guard said. His shield was a heavy concave round of wood with a bronze facing. He twitched it forward slightly as if he were about to meet the shock of an enemy charge.

Herosilla lowered her left arm. Her right hand continued to grip the hanging end of her shawl. “Fool!” she said. “Do the gods wait on man’s convenience to voice their warnings? Will you send your master screaming to the Underworld because you didn’t choose to break his sleep? The death you bring him will be a sleep never broken, you blasphemous yokels!”

The guards looked at one another; neither found an answer in his fellow’s face. “Mistress,” said the one who’d spoken before, “we can’t let you in. If Amulius didn’t flay us, his chamberlain Oscus would. Please, mistress.”

“Then send for Oscus,” Herosilla said flatly. She put her left hand on her hipbone and flared the elbow out akimbo.

“Right,” said the other guard in relief. “Let him sort it out. Boy!”

“Sir?” peeped a small voice from the other side of the gate.

“Get Oscus here right now,” the guard snarled. “I don’t care if you have to drag him by his pecker!.”

“Yes sir,” the boy said. The words faded slightly as he sprinted across the compound.

Herosilla waited, as still as a statue. She faced the closed gate with a grim scowl. The guards fidgeted to either side of her glare.

Nothing happened for several minutes. Stars faded in the eastern sky. There were sounds within the compound: footsteps, a querulous objection, and finally the crossbar rasping through the shackles that held it.

The gate leaves swung inward. A man in his tunic stepped into the opening. He was the attendant who’d carried Amulius’ staff during the audience. He held a crimson sash in his hand, but he hadn’t managed to tie it around his waist.

“What in the name of Jupiter is this—” he said.

Herosilla swung her right arm. There was a rock the size of her fist in the tip of her shawl. It struck the chamberlain in the middle of the forehead, felling him in the gateway like a sacrificed lamb.

“Hell and Death!” a guard shouted. He seized Herosilla with his right hand; the shield bound his left. She elbowed him reflexively. The blow clanged on his bronze breastplate and her arm went numb.

“Attack!” the other guard cried. “We’re being attacked!”

Herosilla bit the hand of the guard holding her. He batted her against the stockade, once and again as she continued to struggle. Her sight dimmed. The other guard was trying to close the gate, but the chamberlain’s body lay in the opening the way Herosilla had planned. The guard bent to drag Oscus clear, still bellowing a warning.

Herosilla heard a loud clang. The man holding her grunted and let go. She fell into a sitting position, her back against the stockade.

Romulus rammed his spear with both hands into the remaining guard’s back. His bronze armor made the spearhead chirp, but it couldn’t stop a thrust with the shepherd’s full strength behind it. Remus, his spear already bloody, jumped the body and led dozens of bellowing herdsmen into the royal compound.

Herosilla tried to get up. The guard who’d held her lay across the hem of her tunic. He’d knocked off his helmet when he fell against the stockade wall, showing his bald patch.

She tugged the tunic free. The man made a faint gurgling sound. Only his fingers moved, clasping and unclasping on nothing. Blood oozed from the hole in his backplate.

Shepherds milled in the forum. Those nearer the front of the attack blocked the gateway to Amulius’ compound. Numitor and his own six guards, fully armed with breastplates and shields, came from their stockade in close formation. Citizens appeared, then vanished into their houses to arm themselves and wait nervously.

“Let me through,” Herosilla said to the back of a shepherd in the gateway. She gripped his shoulder to steady herself. His forearm was splinted.

The man turned; he was Roscio. “Lady!” he said. “Here, make way for the goddess!”

Using the butt of the spear in his good hand, Roscio forced a path for both of them through the confusion. A shepherd trying to hold in his intestines lurched against Herosilla as he plodded toward the gate. A woman was screaming.

The crowd parted. Celer came from the king’s house, ducking under the low doorway. He wore a looted helmet.

“Where’s Amulius?” Herosilla demanded. “Is he dead yet?”

Remus, then Romulus, came out of the dwelling. They dragged Amulius between them. Romulus held a straight-bladed sword that he’d taken from a guard.

Amulius was naked. His eyes were wild, and there was a fresh gash on his left cheek.

“Why isn’t he dead?” Herosilla said shrilly. “Even a cowardly worm like that is too dangerous to let live now! Do I have to do everything for you?”

For a moment she viewed the scene from high above her body. The spell of dizziness passed.

The brothers stared at her. “No,” Romulus said. “You don’t.”

He stabbed Amulius in the chest. The king screamed and gripped the blade with both hands in a vain attempt to prevent the iron from grating deeper through his ribs. The edges cut his hands, but he didn’t let go until blood gushed from his mouth and his body collapsed in spasms.

Herosilla was above her body again. She sneered at the clumsy blow. Romulus was a herdsman, unfamiliar with swords. Flavia Herosilla had hundreds of times watched experts in the arena.

“Now I’ll go outside and tell the people that justice has been done,” she heard her mouth say. “The heaven-born twins have removed the usurper Amulius and set the real elder brother, Numitor, in his rightful place as King of Alba.”

And by the end of the month, even the folk who’d grown up with the Numitor and Amulius would believe the story…

The moon in its first quarter rode in and out of the clouds. If Herosilla squinted she could imagine that the sheen of the boggy pasture was marble rather than standing water and that the shadowy trees were the columns of the great public buildings that would someday surround the Forum.

This time she recognized the firm steps coming down the track behind her. “Tonight I ate before I came,” she called without turning her head.

“I know,” Remus said. “There’s wolves here occasionally, and you’re not really familiar with the path in darkness. Although—”

She heard the smile in his voice; not quite a chuckle.

“—I suppose you will be before long.”

“Come sit,” she said, patting the smooth stone beside her.

“I was planning to wait up by the cypress,” Remus said. “I just wanted to tell you I was here so that you didn’t think I was spying.”

“Sit,” Herosilla repeated. “It’s a good place to think. I’ve been wondering if Aeneas was real too.”

Remus lowered himself onto the seat with the careful grace of a cat relaxing. “Aeneas?” he said.

She smiled wryly. She said, “Nobody you’ve heard of, then. He was a Trojan hero who was supposed to have founded a colony here after the fail of Troy four hundred years ago. Four tens of tens of years.”

Remus shook his head. “Four tens of tens,” he said. “It’s hard to believe anybody knows what happened so long ago.”

He turned his face toward her and added, “It’s because you can read that you know about these things?”

“I suppose so,” Herosilla said. “I know a lot of things that aren’t true as well. Since I came here last month I’ve had a hard time deciding which things belong in which category.”

Remus laughed, then sobered slowly. “It’ll be good having our own grainfields with the new colony,” he said after a time. “I’m not sure that I’m going to like living in a city of six hundred people, though. It’ll take some getting used to. At least we’ll be able to get the drainage right.”

“You’ll have more power,” Herosilla said, watching her companion to see how he would react. “Real power. The ford here is the best route across the river for many miles. You can grow wealthier than Numitor ever thought of being.”

“I’m not my brother,” Remus said; an observation rather than a gibe. “Living as a free man among free men is…”

He looked directly at her again. That he desired Herosilla was as clear as the fact he had no intention of acting on that desire unbidden. “I was going to say ‘enough’. But I honestly can’t imagine anything better.”

Herosilla didn’t speak for a moment. She’d met very few people whom she really liked, and there were fewer still natural gentlemen. To find both rarities combined in a shepherd from a barbarous village was as remarkable as the lightning bolt that had transported her here.

A very handsome shepherd, besides.

“Remus,” she said briskly. “Do you ever worry about dying? Of being killed?”

“No,” he said with a dismissive shrug. “Oh, I expect it’ll happen. I’m not one to start trouble, but often enough somebody else will and I’m not going to stand back, either. A man can’t worry about that, though. Not and live like a free man.”

“Much as I thought,” Herosilla said. She patted his arm. “Help me up,” she directed. “We’ll go back to the village now.”

As they rose, as graceful as a pair of panthers, Herosilla added, “And since you’re not going to worry about keeping yourself alive, I’ll take care of that too. Along with the drainage.”

The colony celebrated its first night on the Palatine with mutton and vast quantities of beer. It seemed to Herosilla that at least half the settlers ate and drank more like mourners at a funeral feast than in joyous anticipation of the future.

The moon was full again. Flavia Herosilla had lived in this age almost exactly one month. The location was nearly the same as well: the brothers had decided to place the settlers’ temporary shelters on the broad pasture at the north side of the hill rather than clustering them around the existing houses of Palatium.

Herosilla thought of looking for the oak that lightning blasted when she arrived; she decided the sight would depress her even more. Besides, several families were probably using the stump to support one end of their lean-tos.

She’d been alone during most of her former life. Now she was lonely: there was no one in this age with whom she shared more than a month’s worth of memories.

“Mistress Herosilla?” Romulus said, coming out of the shadows. Dozens of small cookfires burned among the warren of shelters, but at any distance the vagrant light they threw was more distorting than an aid to vision.

“Leader?” called a burly man coming from the other direction. He wore a cape with a patterned border, marking him as a person of wealth. “Can I speak to you? I’m Gaius Helvius and I’ve got a pottery workshop.”

“Co-leader,” Herosilla said.

“Co-leader,” Romulus agreed with a nod. He looked over the other man and added with a slight frown. “Are you a member of the colony, Helvius?”

“We’d like to be,” Helvius said nervously. He was wringing his hands beneath his cape. “I wasn’t going to come, you know, not and live in a field for, well, the gods know how long. But the wife and I talked this morning and with Numitor king… well, can you take another household, us and my slaves?”

“Always glad to have another citizen, Gaius,” Romulus said. “We’ll be making the allotments at the assembly tomorrow, so you’re not even late.”

He turned his back on the potter to end the conversation. Helvius babbled thanks anyway, then scurried into the darkness.

“There’s a hut on the knoll,” Romulus said to Herosilla, nodding toward the drystone building she remembered from the evening she arrived. “Will you walk up there with me where we can talk without people interrupting?”

“Yes, all right,” Herosilla said after a moment’s consideration. The beehive structure was slightly above the camp, but it was well within the distance she could shout if there was trouble. “But we’ll stay outside.”

“Whatever you want,” Romulus said curtly. He led the way up the track worn by generations of sheep. Herosilla followed, stumbling occasionally but better able to stay with him than she would have been a month before.

Sheep rubbing themselves on the shelter’s lower layers had worn the stones smooth. Tufts of wool fluttered from crevices and the air breathed the warm, slightly sweetish odor of lanolin. Herosilla could see and hear more of the encampment’s sad bustle than she had when she stood on a level with it.

“You don’t like me, do you, lady?” Romulus said bluntly.

She sniffed. “No, of course not,” she said. “Why should I like you? You’re a boor, a braggart, and you tried to rape me. Nonetheless, I want the same thing you do: a city here that will become the greatest the world will ever see. You—your presence, your vision—is necessary for that dream to succeed.”

Romulus nodded. He didn’t appear to be offended by her equal frankness. Though pride got in the way of his thinking on occasion, Herosilla knew Romulus was far more than a stupid shepherd.

“And you do like my brother,” Romulus said. “That’s true too, isn’t it?”

“As a person?” Herosilla said. “Yes, I rather do. He has just as much will and intelligence as you do, though he directs it differently. Do you know, he says he wants to learn to read?”

She smiled ruefully. “Not that there’s a great deal to read in this age.”

She heard the rustle behind her. Thick cloth covered her head before she could turn. She tried to strike backward but Romulus snatched her feet into the air.

Herosilla hit the ground hard. The impact knocked the air from her lungs; the cloth was smothering her. She stabbed with her fingers and tore flesh.

“Death take you, Celer!” Romulus snarled. “Get her arms!”

Callused hands twisted Herosilla’s wrists together. She tried to shake the bag away from her head. A fist hard enough to drive tent pegs slammed the pit of her stomach.

For a moment Herosilla’s consciousness was a red glow hovering close to black. She felt herself being moved; the movement stopped. Hands stuffed a wad of raw wool in her mouth, then tied a strip of cloth at the back of her neck to keep the gag in place.

A figure knelt over her, silhouetted against the low door arch. She was in the herdsman’s shelter; hints of moonlight came through chinks in the stones.

“Listen to me, lady,” Romulus said. He paused to control his breathing. “I can’t trust you not to turn the crowd against me at the assembly in the morning. You’ll wait here until it’s decided who rules the colony. If you’ve been quiet, you’ll be released with no harm done… but if you try to raise a fuss, well, Celer’s going to be right outside. He’ll hear you before anybody else does, and he’ll cut your throat.”

Herosilla’s ankles were bound; her wrists were tied behind her to a peg hammered into the hard dirt floor. She tried to kick Romulus. He chuckled and backed out of the hut.

The men thrust a thick bundle of brushwood into the opening, closing it more effectively than a door. Flavia Herosilla, scholar and gentlewoman of Rome, was alone with her thoughts.

The horn blew a second summons across the camp. Herosilla had pulled her wrist peg from the ground instants before the initial warning at dawn. There was light enough to read by now, and she was well on the way to getting her hands free.

“Citizens of a new city!” Romulus shouted in the meadow below. “Citizens chosen by the gods to rule a new future!”

Attaching Herosilla’s wrists to a peg had been a mistake. The bindings were strips of half-tanned goat hide, too tough and flexible for her to have worn through against the interior walls if she’d been left to thrash around the hut. She’d gained a minuscule purchase on the main knot when she got the peg out by working it in a circle, though her wrists bled and her hands were numb.

Romulus let the rustle of excitement die down. Either he was a natural orator or he’d learned from Herosilla’s performances. “This new community is the seed of the greatest city in the world,” he continued. “Greater than Troy, greater than Knossos when Minos was king!”

Herosilla’s fingertips gently teased the outer coil of leather. It was a job for care and delicacy, not desperate tugging that would only draw the loops tighter.

“We will be a new kind of city,” Romulus said. He certainly had the lungs to address a large crowd. Now that Herosilla thought about it, she supposed that was true of most shepherds, accustomed to bellowing information across valleys to their fellows. “Open to anyone who can contribute to our benefit, whatever they may have been or done somewhere else.”

A coil came loose. Herosilla picked the ends of the strap free, then twisted her wrists slightly to relax the inner loop.

She could hear low voices outside the hut. Celer was talking to someone. She hadn’t yet determined a plan for the next stage of her escape, but this would complicate it.

“The man who may have been a slave or an outlaw in another community,” Romulus boomed, “can be a valued fellow-citizen to us! My brother and I were threatened with outlawry by the court of the usurper Amulius!”

“No!” Remus said. “No, that’s not what we’ll do!”

“Wait your turn, brother!” Romulus said.

“This is my turn,” Remus said. His voice was a carrying tenor in contrast to his brother’s thunderous baritone. “No decent man wants to live in the company of robbers and runaways!”

Herosilla’s hands were free. She ignored the pains lancing along her fingers as she scrabbled to remove the gag. She’d controlled her reaction to the gag for as long as there was no choice, but the chance to remove it now drove her frantic.

“It’s my destiny to found a great city!” Romulus said. “You all heard Lady Herosilla, the messenger of the gods, say so. I am the son of Mars!”

Herosilla pulled the bandage from her face and spat out the wad of wool. She almost fainted with relief from the choking sensation.

Someone spoke again outside. The faggot in the door opening rustled as if kicked.

“Alba’s already too large!” Remus said. “We’re six hundred now, the right size for a community where everybody knows and trusts his neighbors.”

“The lady said both of you were sons of Mars, Romulus,” called a voice from the crowd.

“I don’t know that I want a gang of cutthroats in the next house either!” somebody else shouted. “Say, where is the lady, anyway?”

Somebody outside pulled on the brush. The faggot was stuffed tightly against the stone; sticks crackled against the stones.

Herosilla’s fingernails nibbled at the strap binding her ankles. Even with her hands free, the tight knot wouldn’t loosen easily.

“Lady Herosilla probably went back to the gods now that she’s delivered her message!” Romulus said.

The assembly was dissolving into uproar. The colonists weren’t a single community yet, and the rules of precedence in council hadn’t been set.

The faggot slid all the way out. Ganea knelt and crawled through the opening.

“You thought your fine clothes and jewels would take him from me, didn’t you?” she said in a voice that rasped like sand on stone. “But you were wrong, lady. And he was wrong, thinking he could hide you away safe!”

She had a bloody knife in her right hand.

“I’ll let you have him!” Herosilla said, letting her voice rise into a shrill falsetto to project false terror. She backed away. The hut was too low to stand in.

“Bitch!” Ganea said and slashed at Herosilla’s face. Herosilla caught the knife wrist in both hands and pivoted on her left buttock. Ganea flew past Herosilla’s shoulder, straightening from her kneeling posture until her forehead hit the wall with a hollow clunk.

Ganea’s body shuddered and went limp. Her breath drew in with a loud snore. Herosilla leaned over the body to get the fallen knife.

The assembly’s shouted arguments merged into a shout from hundreds of throats. “Let them fight!” a man screamed in a brief silence. “Let the gods decide!”

Herosilla sawed methodically at the strap holding her ankles. Her hands tingled. When the blood wiped off, the edge of the blade gleamed white from recent sharpening.

The crowd bellowed again. Words of joy or concern wove a delicate counterpoint around the bloodlust of the main audience.

The strap parted. Herosilla crawled out of the hut, holding the knife by her side so that it couldn’t be snatched by anyone waiting outside.

Celer lay on his back. His eyes and mouth were open, and his throat had been slashed to the backbone. Blood was a gummy pool beneath his shoulders; it no longer drained from the wound.

Herosilla stood, using her left hand on the hut to steady herself. Her feet felt as if they were resting on hot coals. She walked around shelter to look down on the assembly.

Romulus knelt over Remus and was choking him. Beside them was a small altar made of turf squares laid dirt-side up. They’d been preparing to bum an offering to consecrate the new settlement. Nearby were a mattock and the small, straight-bladed shovel that cut the turfs.

“Sons!” Faustulus called from the front row of spectators. He was crying. Two men, neither of them from Palatium, held the old man back. “My sons!”

Remus bowed his back. His long legs came up together and scissored around his brother’s waist. Romulus gave an inarticulate cry as he went over backward to slam his head and neck on the ground. The crowd howled, sensing the kill.

“Remus!” Herosilla said. “Don’t kill him!”

Remus rolled onto all fours and scrambled to his brother. Romulus tried to rise. The impact had left him groggy.

Remus seized him by the throat and banged his head down again. Remus’ back and shoulder muscles bulged as he began to strangle his brother. The spectators inhaled instinctively. Romulus’ arms and legs thrashed without direction.

“Remus!” Herosilla cried in the hush. “We need him! The future needs him!”

Remus looked up, over his shoulder. “Remus, we need him!” she repeated.

Romulus’ hand touched the mattock’s haft. He swung it up and caught his brother’s skull a ringing blow with the side of the iron tool.

Remus sprawled sideways, blood streaming from the cut in his scalp. Herosilla started down the slope. She was still too stiff to run, even in daylight.

Romulus stood, swaying. His head was bowed. He rotated his grip on the mattock so that the cutting edge was aligned for the next stroke. Remus lay face down. His arms moved slightly as though he was trying to gather strength to rise.

“Romulus, stop!” Herosilla said. “You’ve won, but you’ll die if you kill your brother.”

Romulus looked at her. His face was distorted but unreadable. “Why?” he said in a snarl. “Will the gods strike me down, lady?”

“No,” Herosilla said. She threw down the bloody knife. It stuck quivering in the soil at her feet. “But I will.”

Romulus continued to look at her. He was twice her size and armed. He laughed.

The laughter rang false. His brother’s handprints were livid on his throat.

“He can’t stay here,” Herosilla said. The crowd was silent. “He’ll come with me to Cumae. You’ll have your city, your Rome. But you won’t have his life.”

“Take him, then!” Romulus said. “But if I see him again—”

He drove the blade of the mattock haft-deep into the ground.

“—I’ll split his skull!”

“Yes,” Herosilla said. She knelt beside Remus and dabbed at the cut in his scalp. Faustulus and Acca joined her; Acca held a skin of wine.

“I dare say there’ll be other people who can read and write in Cumae even now,” said Flavia Herosilla, once a gentlewoman of Rome. She gave Acca a vague smile. “Cumae can use a Sibyl to foretell the future, don’t you think, Acca?”

Content

Drake David To Bring the Light

David Drake To Bring the Light