The Divining (2 page)

     "You will know when the time comes ..."

A
S
U
LRIKA ENTERED THE
garden behind the high wall on the Esquiline Hill, she pressed her hand to her bosom and felt, beneath the silken fabric of her dress, the Cross of Odin, a protective amulet she had worn since she was a child. She felt its comforting shape and reassuring hardness against her breast, and tried to tell herself that everything was going to be all right. But the ill-ease she had awoken with that morning had stayed with her all day so that now, as a red-orange sun began to set behind Rome's marble monuments, Ulrika could hardly breathe. She wanted everything to be normal again. Even things that, just one day ago, had annoyed her, she would welcome on this late afternoon. The issue, for example, of everyone's expectation that she marry Drusus Fidelius.

     Ulrika did not want to be disobedient. Rome raised its daughters to be wives and mothers. All of her friends were either married or betrothed (except for poor deformed Cassia, whose cleft lip guaranteed a lifetime of spinsterhood). No other aspirations were considered. A young woman on
her own, without the protection of a man, was a rarity. Even widows were taken in by male relatives. Ulrika had confided in her best friend her wish
not
to marry, Drusus Fidelius or any man, and her friend had declared, "But no girl
chooses
to remain unmarried! Ulrika, what would you
do?"
Ulrika had no answer other than to say that she had always had the vague feeling that she was supposed to do something else. But what that was, she could not say. Her mother had trained her in basic healing arts, the manufacture and use of medicines, knowledge of human anatomy and how to diagnose illness, but Ulrika did not want to follow in her mother's profession, she did not wish to be a healer-woman.

     As she stood in the garden and watched the guests arriving for the dinner party, she thought: Roman men greet their womenfolk with a kiss on the cheek, not out of affection but to see if they detect alcohol on their sisters or daughters—so controlling the men are. But Ulrika had heard that women in Germania were treated with greater respect and equality by their men.

     Ulrika had flowered into womanhood among Rome's villas and streets and temples. She had known crowded and noisy cities, and a life of luxury in a fine house on the Esquiline Hill. But what of alpine forests shrouded in mist and mystery? Ulrika had devoured every book there was on her father's people, the Germans—had absorbed their culture and customs, their beliefs and history. She had even learned to speak their language.

     To what end? she asked herself now as she watched the guests arriving in the courtyard of Aunt Paulina's house. She recognized them all, ladies in flowing gowns, gentlemen in long tunics and handsome togas. Had it all been in preparation to travel to the land where she truly belonged? It would not be an easy journey. Her father, Wulf, had died long ago, before she was born. And if he left behind kinfolk, Ulrika would have no way of knowing who they were, how to find them. She knew only that he had been a prince and hero of his forest people, and that he had bequeathed to her a bloodline of Rhineland chieftains and mystic seeresses.

     A breeze wafted through the garden, stirring branches and leaves and the finely woven linen of Ulrika's long dress. She wore the latest fashion, which called for layers, an effect created by wearing a knee-length overdress as well as multiple shawls, all in varying lengths and shades of blue ranging
from deep azure to the hue of the morning sky. Her long hair was braided and knotted at the back of her head, and concealed beneath a flowing saffron yellow veil, called a
palla
, that covered her arms and fell below her waist. Gold earrings and bracelets completed her wardrobe.

     She shivered. If I am destined to leave, when and how would I go?

     "There you are, my dear."

     Ulrika turned to see her mother enter the garden. Selene, at forty, was poised and graceful, her slim figure draped in layers of fine linen in reds and oranges. Her dark brown hair was swept modestly to a knot at the back of her head and hidden beneath a scarlet veil.

     "Paulina said I would find you out here," Selene said as she approached her daughter with hands outstretched.

     Lady Paulina was a widowed noblewoman, and this was her house. Ulrika called her Aunt Paulina, as she was her mother's best friend, a woman who moved in Rome's highest circles. Paulina only invited the most elite citizens to her table, and Ulrika's mother, Selene, being a doctor
and
a close friend of Emperor Claudius, was one of them.

     Ulrika linked her arm with her mother's, and as they neared the house, they came upon three men of stiff, military bearing debating a point of battle strategy. They wore long white tunics, their bodies draped in purple-edged togas. Seeing the two women, the men paused to greet them and introduce themselves, and when one, an archly handsome man with white teeth set in a tanned face, identified himself as Gaius Vatinius, Ulrika felt her mother stiffen.
"Commander
Vatinius?" Selene said. "Have I heard of you, sir?"

     One of the other men laughed. "If you have not, dear lady, then you have ruined his day! Vatinius would be shattered to know that there was one beautiful woman in Rome who did not know who he was."

     Hearing the strain in her mother's voice, Ulrika looked more closely at the man Selene had addressed as "Commander." He was tall, in his early forties, with deep-set eyes and a large, straight nose. His handsomeness was severe, as if he had been chiseled from marble, his manner arrogant as the hint of a smug smile played around his lips.

     "Are you, by any chance," Ulrika heard her mother ask in a breathless voice, "the Gaius Vatinius who fought some years ago on the Rhine?"

     His smile deepened. "You
have
heard of me, then."

     Gaius Vatinius then looked at Ulrika. His eyes moved up and down her body, lingeringly, making her feel uncomfortable. In the next moment, a slave announced the serving of dinner, and the three men excused themselves and headed toward the house.

     Ulrika turned to her mother and saw that she had gone pale. "Gaius Vatinius upset you, mother. Who is he?"

     Selene avoided her daughter's eyes as she said, "He once commanded the legions on the Rhine. It was years ago, before you were born. Let us go in."

     Four banquet tables were set, each bordered on three sides by couches. The placement of guests followed strict protocol, with the honored ones reclining on the left edge of each couch. The fourth side of the table was open, to allow slaves to come and go with food and drink. Roasted pheasant, dressed in their feathers, dominated the tables, surrounded by a variety of dishes from which the guests were to help themselves. The conversation of thirty-six people filled the dining room as they took their places, nearly drowning out the solo performance of a musician playing panpipes.

     As Ulrika was about to take her place on a couch next to a lawyer named Maximus, she glanced across at Gaius Vatinius and stopped when she saw a peculiar sight.

     Sitting on the floor at the Commander's side was a large dog.

     Ulrika frowned. Why would a dinner guest bring his dog to the party? She looked around at the other guests, who were laughing and helping themselves to wine and delicacies. Did no one else think it odd?

     Ulrika brought her gaze back to the dog. Her lips parted. The breath stopped in her chest. No, not a dog. A wolf! Large and gray and shaggy, with keen eyes and sharp ears, like the one in her dream. And it was looking straight at her while Gaius Vatinius engaged in conversation with his fellow diners.

     Ulrika could not take her eyes off the handsome creature.

     But as she stood and watched, the wolf slowly vanished until he was completely gone. Ulrika blinked. He had not risen from his seated posture. He had not left the dining room. He had simply faded away, right before her eyes.

     Ulrika felt the floor drop from under her. She reached for the couch and slumped down. Her throat tightened in fear. Now she understood why the ill-ease had plagued her all day.

     
The sickness had returned.

U
LRIKA HAD THOUGHT THE
secret sickness that had clouded her childhood, and which she had told no one about, not even her mother, had ended when she was twelve.

     She could not recall the first time she had seen something that other children did not, or had dreamed of an event before it happened, or had brushed someone's hand and had felt that person's emotional pain.
When she was eight years old, in a butcher shop with her mother, the butcher searching for a cleaver while customers waited impatiently, Ulrika speaking up, "It fell under a table in the back," the butcher disappearing into a room in the rear of the shop to return with the cleaver and a strange look on his face.
Ulrika had seen enough of those strange looks to know that the things she saw or sensed, in dreams or in visions, were not normal. As she already felt like an outsider in every city she and her mother briefly lived in, Ulrika had learned to hold her tongue and let people hunt for missing cleavers.

     And then finally, on a summer day seven years ago, Ulrika and her mother had enjoyed a picnic in the countryside, and in the heat of that day,
amid the drone of bees and the heady perfume of flowers, Ulrika had seen a young woman suddenly come running from the trees, her long hair flying behind her, mouth wide in a silent scream, arms stained with blood.

     "Mother, what is that woman running from?" Ulrika had said, thinking they should go to her aid. "Her hands are covered in blood."

     "What woman?" Selene had asked, looking around.

     When the woman faded before her eyes, Ulrika realized in shock that it had been one of her secret visions, but more vivid and lifelike than any she had seen before. "No one, mother, she is gone now."

     That was seven years ago, and no more hallucinations had visited Ulrika after that, no strange dreams of precognition or fantastical places, no sensing other people's emotions, no knowing where lost objects could be found. Ulrika had entered puberty and become at last like all other girls, normal and healthy. But now, at Aunt Paulina's dinner party, a vision like those of years ago had just visited her.

     Ulrika was brought out of her thoughts by the voice of Gaius Vatinius.

     "The Germans need to be taken in hand," he was saying to his table companions. "We signed peace treaties with the Barbarians during the reign of Tiberius, and now they are breaking them. I shall quell the unrest once and for all."

     The guests in Lady Paulina's dining room reclined on couches, supporting themselves with their left arms while helping themselves to food with their right hands. The place of honor at Ulrika's table went to Commander Vatinius. Her mother, acting as hostess, lay on the couch to his left. Ulrika was opposite. In between were a couple named Maximus and Juno, a retired accountant named Horatius, and an elderly widow named Lady Aurelia. They reached for mushrooms fried in garlic and onions, crispy anchovies, plump sparrows stuffed with pine nuts.

     When he saw how Ulrika stared at him, Commander Gaius Vatinius, a lifelong bachelor, fell silent and stared in turn. He could not fail to appreciate her unusual beauty—the ivory skin and hair the color of dark honey. Blue eyes were a rarity, too, among Rome's ladies. A glance at her left hand told him she was unmarried, which surprised him, as he guessed she was past the age.

     He smiled charmingly and said, "I am boring you with military talk."

     "Not at all, Commander," Ulrika said. "I have always been interested in the Rhineland."

     Lady Aurelia said fretfully, "Why can't they settle down and be civilized? Look what we have done for the rest of the world. Our aqueducts, our roads."

     Vatinius turned to the older woman. "What has the Barbarians so upset is that, four years ago, Emperor Claudius elevated a settlement on the Rhine from the status of garrison to colony, naming it Colonia Agrippinensis in honor of his wife, Agrippina, who was born there. That was when the new raids truly began. Apparently the Romanization of an old Germanic territory has stirred up feelings of some outmoded tribal patriotism and racial pride." Vatinius waved a long-fingered hand laden with rings. "Claudius has given me the honored duty of seeing to it that Colonia is defended at all costs."