She gasped. “Oh, long ago!”
“About two thousand years, I believe. He lost count, and later when he tried to consult the records they were fragmentary and in disagreement. No matter.”
“Did he meet the Savior?” she whispered.
He sighed and shook his head. “No, he was elsewhere at that time. He did see many gods come and go. And kings, nations, histories. Perforce he lived among them, under names of their kind, while they endured and until they perished. Names he lost track of, like years. He was Hanno and Ithobaal and Snefru and Phaon and Shlomo and Rashid and Gobor and Flavius Lugo and, oh, more than he can remember.”
She sat straight, as if ready to spring, whether from him or at him. Low in her throat, she asked, “Might Cadoc be among those names?”
He kept seated, leaned back, but eyes now full upon hers. “It might,” he answered, “even as a lady might have called herself Zoe, and before that Eudoxia, and before that— names which are perhaps still discoverable.”
A shudder passed through her. “What do you want of me?”
He set his glass down, most carefully, smiled, spread his hands, palms up, and told her in his softest voice, “Whatever you choose to give. It may be nothing. How can I compel you, supposing that were my desire, which it is not? If you dislike harmless lunatics, you need never see or hear from me again.”
“What … are you … prepared to offer?”
“Shared and lasting faith. Help, counsel, protection, an end of loneliness. I’ve learned a good deal about surviving, and manage to prosper most of the time, and have my refuges and my hoards against the evil days. At the moment I command modest wealth. More important, I stay true to my friends and would rather be a woman’s lover than her overlord. Who knows but what the children of two immortals will themselves prove deathless?”
She studied him a while. “But you always hold something back, don’t you?”
“A Phoenician habit, which a rootless life has strengthened. I could unlearn it.”
“It was never my way,” she breathed, and came to him.
THEY LOUNGED against pillows at the headboard of the huge bed. Talk grew between them like a blossoming plant in spring. Now and then a hand stroked across flesh gone cool again, but those were gentle caresses. A languor possessed them, as if part of the lingering odors of incense and love. Their minds roused first. The words were calm, the tone tender.
“Four hundred years ago I was Aliyat in Palmyra,” she said. “And you, in your ancient Phoenicia?”
“My birthname was Hanno,” he answered. “I used it the oftenest, afterward, till it died out of every language.”
“What adventures you must have had.”
“And you.”
She winced. “I would rather not speak of that.”
“Are you ashamed?” He laid a finger under her chin and brought her face around toward his. “I would not be,” he said gravely. “I am not. We have survived, you and I, by whatever means were necessary. That’s now behind us. Let it drift into darkness with the wreckage of Babylon. We belong to our future.”
“You … do not … find me sinful?”
He laughed a bit. “I suspect that if we both grew quite candid about our pasts, you’d be the one shocked.”
“Nor do you fear God’s curse?”
“I have learned much in two thousand years, but nothing about any gods, except that they too arise, change, age, and die. Whatever there is beyond the universe, if anything, I doubt it concerns itself with us.”
Tears trembled on her lashes. “You are strong. You are kind.” She nestled close. “Tell me of yourself.”
“That would take a while. I’d grow thirsty.”
She reached for a bell on an end table and rang it. “That we can do something about,” she said with a flash of smile. “You’re right, however. We have the whole future wherein to explore our past. Tell me first of Cadoc. I do need to understand him, that we may lay our plans.”
“Well, it began when Old Rome departed from Britannia— No, wait, I forgot, in all this joy. First I should tell you about Rufus.”