"Hail, my love" by Garon E. Whited

 I’m going to kill her.

 The thought beat within my brain, over and over, thundering with rage and pain and betrayal.  Outwardly, I nodded and scowled, returned the salutes of my men as they passed.  My mind was not on my duty to the Emperor and his conquests here in Brittany.  Oh, no.  My mind was on my new wife and her midnight forays out of my house.

 I ignored the inquiring look from my valet and seated myself at the table in my office; if anyone wanted me, this is where I would be, thinking black thoughts and trying to plan.

 Being the local legate for Rome is seldom an easy job.  At least I didn’t have to conquer the barbarians first and then try to lord it over them; Anadraxis conquered them and spent six years beating them down.  I was sent because they rebelled against him—and Rome—twice in the past three years.  Anadraxis put down the revolts both times, but was brutal about it.

 I’ve been no harsher than I have to be.  Things are quiet.  Taxes are low, search and seizure unneeded, and there’s no soldier in my legion that gets away with raping a local.  They’ll be Roman citizens, by Jupiter!  Not barbarians to be slaughtered or killed on a whim.  Even slaves have certain rights.

 By Pluto’s nether region!  I even married one of them.  And her father had led the last revolt!  I thought it would be a good political move, to show that the past wasn’t to be held against them, and I was right.  Plus, she’s pretty enough.  As a gesture of respect, I’ve also come a long way in learning their barbarous tongue; she helps with that every night, since I haven’t insisted that she learn Latin.  It’s the only way we can talk.

 True, some hotheads had been trouble in the beginning, but I didn’t execute them.  I told them that there was a new legate in town and that I don’t do things the way Anadraxis did.  There are still some malcontents, but nobody who wants to fight about it.

 I had thought all was well.  I had thought that she’d found me fair, and even cared for me.

 I flatter myself.

 The night before, I had woken to the casting of Jupiter’s javelins; the flash and bang startled me out of a sound sleep.  It was then that I discovered she was gone.

 I rose immediately, worried for her.  I searched the house, room by room, then the inner court.  There was not a trace of her to be found.  But her sandals were gone from beside the inner door, the door itself unbarred, and I knew she had crept out into the night.  I touched the hinges; there was fresh oil, to silence the squeaking.

 I’m going to kill her.

 That was my thought.  A rage deeper and vaster than all great Neptune’s ocean swelled within me, more bitter than the gall of Orpheus.  Until that moment, I did not know how much she meant to me.

 Must we always lose the things we love before we realize how precious they truly are?

 I wanted to charge out of the house and kill something.  Preferably whoever she was with.  No sword, no javelin; only my bare hands and his throat.  I did not want anything to come between me and my victim; I wanted to feel the flutter of a stopping heart, the hitch in the closed throat, the shudder of a dead man in my grip.

 How long I stood there, staring at the empty place where her shoes had been, I do not know.  A long time, I think—long enough to die a thousand times, for the pain within me was greater than any I had ever been dealt by flesh or steel.  It pierced my heart like a cold blade and spread fire through my guts.

 But I did not die.

 I’m going to kill her.

 She has a lover, I know it.  Some local lad that she goes to, dallies with, and whose son should play the cuckoo’s get in my house.  I think it shall not be so.  Now I know what I shall do.

 Tonight, I shall follow her with all the skill and guile at my command.  Then we shall see who lives and dies.

***

 My heart heeled hard over and nearly turned when I came home.  She was lovelier than I remembered, and thrice as precious as ever I had felt.  And that wounded me the more, to know that this magnificent girl, my first and only wife, would go to another man’s arms so swiftly!  Barely three months, and already . . .

 No.  No, I must not dwell on that.  I must turn to the thoughts of the future, check the rage, hold it until it has a proper target.  I must see them in each other’s arms, hear them murmuring together, see them kiss.  Then can I loose it fully, like Neptune’s kraken upon a city, or Jupiter’s thunderbolt.

 We ate in silence, and she respected that silence, watching me from half-lidded eyes.  Whenever she caught my gaze, she licked her lips and smiled, charming as ever.  It made me believe that she wanted me, that she loved me, even though my heart bled at every gesture, every nuance.  Harpies haunted my soul, and the food was dust in my mouth.

 When time came for bed, she held me in the darkness and cooed into my ear.  For a moment, I resisted.  Why should I give her anything?  The bitch had sworn to me in her own tongue that she would be my bride; now she reneged on that promise and betrayed me.  I would have her sewn to her dead lover with salted string and set adrift on the ebbing tide.

 Yet still she caressed me and touched my flesh.  Why not? I asked myself.  Give her what she seems to want and show her how a citizen of Rome and a commander of its legions can love a woman.  By the gods, I did show her, by lamp and by moonlight, in shadow and in darkness, long into the night!  First roughly, then tenderly, then roughly again; I drew her to me, onto me, under me—every way and form that man and woman can join, I used.  Well indeed had my father seen me educated; a Greek slavegirl makes the best instructor for such arts.

 When I was finished, she lay in the blankets with me, weeping and shivering and murmuring my name again and again, clutching me fiercely.  Yet even this I bore, though the blood upon my back was nothing to the wellspring that poured from my bleeding heart.  Why did I have to love her so?  Why?  She could never have hurt me so deeply had I not—and deeply hurt I was, a mortal wound, to bleed my heart dry and slay the soul itself within me.

 In her embrace, I would have slept and rested from my labors; but I held myself awake, feigning sleep, awaiting the moment I thought would come.  True to her nature, the lying bitch slithered away from my arms in the night.

 I counted her paces as she stealthily crept from the room.  I waited, soundless and still, until I heard the lifted bar.

 Then I moved.  Out of the bed, silent as a wraith, throwing on a loose, dark tunic and disdaining sandals.  Padding barefoot to the door, I saw it closing, ever so carefully.

 I waited, counting the heartbeats that hammered so hard upon the inside of my breast.  Now would come the test.  I would follow her and I would see the betrayal enacted.  And the murder in my heart would find its outlet through my hands.

 A score of heartbeats, and I moved to the door, cracking it open.  She fled at a swift walk, a figure of shadow in the moonlight.  I slipped out the door, closed it, stood in the portico and shadows until she neared the turning of the path.  Then I hurried after her, gaining the turn only a little after she disappeared.  Thus did I follow her, always close enough to catch her, never close enough to tread upon her heels.  And, for her part, she looked not once behind, secure in the knowledge that I slept as one dead, exhausted from her charms.

 I would kill someone this night.  My fury would permit nothing less.  I swore this to myself and to Mars:  Whatever man outside our marriage bed she took for a lover, I would kill him first, so that she might see the result of her faithlessness, her treachery and betrayal.

 Her path took her beyond the village and hence to the woods.  I did not care where we went, only that she was before me, a will-o-wisp to lead me on to our destination and our doom.  For what else could this be, but our mutual destruction?  I would not long survive her, that was certain.  Her death would be quick as I could make it; mine would last as long as my strength held against the thrice-damned agonies of the Furies.

The roadway forked left and she took this path, winding through the trees and around great stones, until she came to a hut.  I heard her call out in a low voice, and heard some sort of response from within.  She pulled aside the flap and entered.  I crept up beside the entry and listened, crouching like a hunting beast, silent.

 “Ah!  You return yet again.  Do you have it?” asked a voice.

 By the golden apple!  That was no man’s voice; that was the croak of an old woman!  The sound of it was like being plunged from nightmare into cold water.  Now I knew where I was!  The witch of the upslope woods, the crone who foreswore the gods of Rome!

 “I have, just now, tonight.  Freshly drawn, as you asked.”

 “Sit, then, and let me . . . ahh.  Yes, the smell of it is strong and sweet; you have a man, my girl!  A man both powerful and dangerous.”

 “Don’t tell me—” she broke off, then gasped and hissed in pain.  “Don’t tell me what I already know, old woman.  Just take what seed you can and make your potion.”

 It was well that I was crouching, or I would surely have fallen.  I grew dizzy and weak with the thoughts that coursed through my head.  It was a feeling unpleasant, akin to being dragged behind a team after the chariot’s frame has given way.

 Potion?  What magic be this that would bear the stamp of my own seed?

 “I have what of it I need, child,” the crone replied, and I damned the moonlight for being bright; had it been darker, I might have lifted the hem of the doorway’s drape and peeked within.  I heard the rattle and clack of earthenware bowls and wooden spoon.

 “Will it take long?”

 “Hush, child.  I’ve magic in the making.”

 It certainly stank like magic, whatever it was.  Foul odors and fair both wafted from the hut.  I waited; the rage was no longer burning within me and the weakness left my limbs.  That left only a strange confusion.

 At last the crone cackled, “Done!”

 “Give it to me!”

 “Ah-ah-ah!  Knew you that a price would be exacted!”

 “Very well,” replied my wife, a frost in her voice that I had never heard before.  “What will you have?”

 “I’ll have you intercede for me with your mighty lord, girl.  I’ve been persecuted for holding to the Old Ways and honoring the Wee Folk.  I’ll have my hearth and home plagued no more by those who would call me a blasphemer of his gods.”

 There was a thick silence.

 “I will do what I can, whatever that may be.  But you must also understand that I have no power over him.”

 “You could,” she crooned.  “You could have power.”

 “I will not!” she declared, her voice as hot as it was cold a moment ago.  “Never!  He is not one of us, but his heart is good!  I’ll place no bindings on his soul!”

 I married a witch, I realized.  Then I realized, I married a witch who refuses to ensorcel me.

 That left me thinking.

 “Then you’ll persuade him with your caresses and your kisses and your fair young body,” the crone answered, sounding resigned.  “You’ll make an oath to me that you will do all you can, or I swear your belly will never quicken but to bear only twisted monsters.  Swear it, girl.  Swear!”

 “I swear it.  I swear it by blood and by water, by earth and by fire,” she whispered.  I almost could not make out the words.

 “Then here, take it!  Take it back to your butchering Roman!  Drink it down in a single draught and hold tenderly to your good-hearted killer.  Love him as you will, but get his seed within you again tonight and your belly will wax before the season turns.”

 I heard the gulp and the wretched gagging as she drank it.

 “Ha.  Not the mildest potion,” said the crone.  “But effective.  Get you home, girl, and see that he is pleasured before the rising of the sun.”

 I crept away, my heart and mind a mixture of confusion and sudden changes.  I had been so sure that she was dallying with some local boy, going to him and cuckolding me.  I had known it . . . and I was wrong.

 She had come here, to this crone . . . for what?

 To become quickened with child.

 The potion of which she spoke… and my seed.  And the need to be with me before the rising of the sun…

 I hurried home to wait, doubt rippling from my heart like the banners of a legion in the breeze.

 I did not wait long.  Fleet of foot I am, but she would have outpaced hunting hounds.  I was barely undressed and in the bed before I heard the scrape of the door, the soft thud of the bar, and then the rapid patter of her bare feet as she moved to the pool.  I listened to her bathing, knowing what was coming next, anticipating.

 She wanted my child.  She would have it. 

I will never doubt her again.

***

 It has been six years—six wonderful years!—and I am well content with both wife and daughter.  Both are merry, both laugh often, and both tickle me to make dour Daddy smile.

 Things have changed for the better, I think.Rome seems even more far-distant and cares little what gods we worship if we send our taxes and pledge our fealty.  The crone is dead, a year agone, and happily so; she saw many things that she had never thought possible under a Roman’s rule.

 I revere my gods.  But I will not mock those who have aided me.  I owe them for the two gifts they have brought me.

 The legion is mostly settled; hard Romans, tilling fields and building barns, tending sheep and goats.  Once a tenday, we gather in groups to practice our skills in war, and once in fifty we all gather together to drill and parade.  It is an occasion for us all, and a holiday.

 It is a day when I march with many men at my back, singing songs of victory and war, while my wife watches with a bemused smile, and my daughter laughs to see her Papa dressed in all the shiny metal.  I hope she will never see her Papa’s armor covered in blood.  Or know how close Papa came to having a bloodstain on his soul forever.

 I love them, more than Rome, more than the gods, more than even life itself.

Ave!