“It’s a puppy!” I exclaimed, as a black button of a nose appeared beneath the eyes. “The poor thing!”
“Looks like a drowned rat to me.” muttered Philip, but he was already pulling off his wool mantle and thrusting it at me to keep me from using my own shawl.
Gently, I scraped away the leaves and mud in which the puppy was tangled and lifted it out. There was no hint of warmth beneath my hand: I would have thought it dead had it not been for the desperate regard of those bright eyes. Murmuring softly, I cradled it against my breast, and imperceptibly, an emptiness that had been there since I lost Eldri began to fill.
“Be careful,” said Coristantius. “It may be sick, and it will certainly have fleas.”
“Oh yes,” I answered, though in truth, I wondered if even a flea would be interested in the skin and bone beneath my hands. But I could feel the flutter of a heartbeat. “I will give this poor mite every care.”
“I will be going, then,” said Constantius as the horse sidled nervously.
“Yes, of course.” I looked up at him, and something that had been strained in his face eased. His returning smile was like a caress. Then he pulled up the hood of his byrrus, reined the horse around, and put it into a splashing trot down the road.
When he had gone, I settled the puppy securely against my breast and carried him inside. A bath and a good meal improved his looks, though his breeding was as mixed as the population of the Empire. His ears were floppy, his coat a mixture of black and white, and there was a hint of a plume to his tail. The size of his paws suggested that if early starvation had not stunted him, he might grow to be a big dog indeed.
The eagerness with which he lapped up the bowl of broth Drusilla prepared for him demonstrated a commendable will to live.
“What will you call him?” asked Philip, less dubious now that the dog was clean.
“I was thinking of “Hylas”, after the lover of Heracles whom the nymphs drowned in the pool. In these parts that is a popular tale.” Indeed, it was in Chios, a few days’ journey to the east along the coast, that Hylas was supposed to have been lost when the Argonauts stopped there on their way to capture the Golden Fleece.
“He certainly looks as if someone tried to drown him,” the boy agreed, and so the dog was named.
That night Hylas slept in my chamber, and although my bed was still empty, it comforted my heart a little then and during the lonely months after Constantius had followed the Emperor southward to Syria to once more hear the patter of paws at my heels.
Constantius had been right about the weather. With summer, the sun shone triumphant from a cloudless sky and baked the grass on the hills to gold. The windows that had admitted so many draughts in February were thrown open to let in the sea breeze in the morning, and the wind off the lake in the afternoon. The local people said it was quite reasonable for the season, but after the mists of Britannia, I found the heat oppressive indeed.
By day, I dressed in the sheerest of gauzes and lay beneath a linen shade by the fountain in the atrium, Hylas panting by my side. At night I sometimes walked by the lake, the dog scampering ahead of me and Philip, clutching a cudgel and glaring suspiciously around him, a step behind. From time to time I would receive a letter from Constantius, who was marching, in armour, through country that made Drepanum sound as cool as Britannia by comparison. When we heard of the victory at Ancyra, the magistrates had ordered a great bonfire lit in the forum, and again after the good news from Antiochia.
With summer, a number of noble families from Nicomedia had transferred their households to Drepanum. Several of the women also had husbands who were with the Emperor, but we had little in common. Drusilla, who picked up all sorts of gossip at the market, told me that the word was going about that I was not Constantius’s wife, but a girl he had found at an inn and made his concubine, and I understood why the ladies had been so distant. She was full of indignation, but I could hardly resent an opinion that from the legal point of view was true. There had been no marriage contract, no exchange of gifts or alliance of relatives to solemnize our union, only the blessing of the gods.