The Many Lives of Sexta Sertorius
Chapter Three
Last chapter: Quintus told Sexta his story for the first time and he omitted nothing. Nothing that is, except for any mention of his wife and adopted daughter…Instead, he dwelt on the memory of his purchase (or rescue) of a pregnant Berber slave girl in the privacy of his own thoughts.
Caffa – 1357
Sexta listened in awed silence and waited patiently, at least for a while, as Quintus stared absently at the wall panelling for a long time after finishing the censored tale of his own origins.
At last, she thought she understood his previous reticence. She had hoped she would feel closer to him because of it but he seemed even more unreachable – sitting there motionless, as cold and distant as the moon.
She began to feel invisible and insignificant, as inconsequential to him as the chair she was sitting in. At length, unable to bear the suspense any longer, she placed a sympathetic hand on his.
Quintus physically leapt out of his reverie as her touch jerked him back to Caffa.
'Oh Quintus,' said Sexta. 'I'm so sorry. That's why you hate the Master so much - he killed your mother…'
'My mother…?' murmured Quintus. 'Yes…' He paused for further contemplation. He seemed to be trying to reach a decision about something.
This time, it didn't seem to take quite so long before his head turned her way again. He seemed resolute, braced for whatever the results of his revelation. 'Sexta there is something I must tell you…'
Her eyes seemed huge as they gazed, innocent and trusting, into his. He took a deep breath and began. 'Fifteen years ago, five years before you were born, a great host of Mongol horse-warriors came against this city. They were "The Golden Horde", led by Jani Beg, descendant of the legendary warlord Genghis Khan…'
'Yes, I know all of this part…' interrupted Sexta.
'No, child, you do not "know all of this part". Remain silent now and allow me to continue.'
She obeyed without resentment. She was used to taking his commands and as his voice was quiet and his tone mild, she knew she hadn't offended him too seriously.
'The horsemen still numbered in their tens of thousands,' Quintus resumed. 'Yet many multiples more than this had set out from their Steppe homeland on Mongolia's borders with China. The Horde had been drastically depleted by the disease the humans call "the Black Death". They infected each other and the communities they pillaged along their way, spreading the infection westward along the Silk Road.
'As they neared Caffa, another disease seized the opportunity to hide itself amongst the plague-ridden horde. The Master's Strain took hold.
'The Horde travelled by day and the prevalence of the Strain naturally fluctuated according to the sunlight exposure. Those "turning" in the night survived and fled, hiding in caves before sunrise (but not before infecting their comrades). Others suffered a different fate. Unable to seek shelter because of the Horde's code of honour and their bonds of loyalty to Jani Beg, they shrivelled and died in the sun. Some were probably shot as deserters when a new Lord took over their will and demanded fealty.
'When the doubly infected Horde reached Caffa, they found a heavily fortified city within two concentric walls. Unable to penetrate the defences, they laid siege. What was not immediately apparent to the invaders was that Caffa was afforded additional protection by the Ancients' Hunters waging an unseen war against the Master's minions. Outside the city walls, the Hunters were under the direct control of their respective Sires but I led the defence inside the citadel.
'Jani Beg faced this unforeseen resistance of ours in addition to recurring outbreaks of bubonic plague and losses due to attacks by the Master and the other Ancients. In the winter of 1346-47, the Khan assayed a horrific innovation in the art of warfare: he ordered dead bodies to be loaded into the trebuchets. Most of the cadavers were infected with the Black Death, others carried the Master's disease in addition and a few were super-infected with the other Ancients' strains.
'One night in 1347, the captain of the militia was leading a crew following me around the internal perimeter of the city walls. The city militia were not Sun Hunters, humans who knew our secret, but I had warned them not to touch any corpses and to prevent contamination by burning all bodies on sight. However, the captain – a friend of mine, and an otherwise excellent man - was a devout Christian and felt increasingly sickened by this latest tactic of people he regarded as heathens.
'I had left his squad behind to dispatch any stragglers as I led a mixed force of Hunters and Sun Hunters. Several hours into a successful patrol, one of the captain's men came towards me, screaming. My team melted away out of sight and the guard panted out his message. His lieutenant had sent for me as a matter of prime urgency, having taken over the watch as his captain became incapacitated with a virulent infection.
'It seems the captain had been rash enough to ignore my directions when a Mongol cadaver catapulted over the walls and crashed through a church roof onto an altar. Despite his men fervently reiterating my instructions, he thought it best to rush into the building, drag the body out into the street and urinate over it.'
Quintus paused, aware that his disapproval of her father's foolish failure to prioritise human life over religious jealousy must be audible to Sexta. However, she was simply gazing up at him, absorbed in the story. She had never heard it in such personal detail before.
'Go on,' she encouraged him. 'Please, Quintus.'
He readily complied, wanting to make a clean breast of this particular secret.
'When I reached the lieutenant, it transpired that he had counselled the captain to return home while the men finished their patrol. This advice had, to my mind, merely compounded evil upon evil, because I knew – as did the lieutenant and all the captain's men – that he had a wife and newborn daughter at home.'
'Me,' said Sexta.
'You,' Quintus nodded. He stole a quick glance to see how she was receiving the story before continuing.
'I made my way to the captain's home with all haste but it seemed now that every strix in Europe were between my destination and me. When I eventually arrived I was so frustrated with my impeded progress that I broke the door down in my impatience.
'I assessed the situation at a glance. Your father was well advanced in his transformation and your mother too, was already pale and sick because of Wormwood of Ukraine's infection pumping through her body. To my horror, she was clasping you to her breast, in an instinctive attempt, I can only assume, to comfort you. You sucked ravenously, taking in great mouthfuls of breast milk. Milk that, like the placental blood in my case and those of Primus, Secunda and Tertia and the semen of Quarta's father, contained strix taint but no worms. But of course, you were not at the foetal stage like we half breeds were. Nor were you an embryo that grew from strix essence combined with that from two human parents as in the case of the three-quarter-breed, Quarta.
'You were human, infected in the very first days of life with blood but not with worm.
'Within moments, I had released your mother and father and held you safely away from the worms. You were so small then, you fitted in one of my hands.' He paused, looking wistfully into the past.
'I held you there, my gladius pointing at your throat. Not deciding whether to spare you; I had already determined that you also must die. However, it took me an inordinately long time to complete the task. I, the gladiator who had challenged the gods, was unable to kill a helpless newborn.'
Quintus stopped again, this time recalling the birth of his wife's child. He could not explain to Sexta that she was the second babe to be held in his arms and that his love for his adopted daughter and the enduring pain of her loss was the reason for his misguided reluctance to accept Sexta in the same relationship. He also dared not tell her that he had stared into the infant Sexta's eyes for several seconds before telling her, 'No. Never again,' replacing her gently in her cradle, and abandoning her to her fate.
It was bad enough that he had just confessed to the murder of both her parents. He watched Sexta for a time, keen to see how she had taken the news. She was scowling, not meeting his eyes. Unconsciously, he held his breath, as if her response were of life-and-death importance to him.
It took far too long but eventually she looked at him again and said, 'So…I'm not really Born at all?'
'Sexta, I killed your parents,' Quintus said, slightly exasperated. 'Have you nothing to say about that?'
'I am sorry you had to release your friends, Quintus,' she said. 'But I'm glad it was you and that it was quick. You must see that you have been my entire world for as long as I can remember. You, Quintus, not the woman who bore me or the man who sired me… oh, and Bernarda and the Piambos, I suppose.'
She thought for a moment, while Quintus stared again, unable to understand her attitude and feeling a little bit let off the hook.
'So if you are a half-breed and I am more human, does that mean I'm a quarter-breed?' she asked next.
He shrugged. 'I suppose that would be a reasonably accurate supposition. It is not only your external appearance that is intermediate between that of an ordinary human and mine. Your growth rate, for example, has been approximately half of mine. You are only ten years old yet seem to be a fifteen-year-old human, but when I was your age, I was fully matured.'
She mulled this over for a moment and then followed a different tack. 'Would other quarter-breeds be created if the blood - but not the worms - of a turning human were to corrupt another person?'
'I do not know Sexta, but the book, Filii de Opacare, suggests that you are the only one of your kind - the only quarter-breed, as you put it - that has ever been or will ever be. And to my knowledge, the circumstances of your origin have never occurred previously. Usually the worms would also reach the victim. It was only my swift attendance that prevented them doing so in your case.'
Quintus omitted one more detail - that, ten years ago, he had left the infected baby to just such an end. Fortunately for her, she had objected so loudly and tenaciously to his desertion that her distraught wailing had tormented his conscience as well as his ears and he had returned two minutes later, frowning.
'Very well,' he had said, picking her up. Her noisy distress had ceased the instant he touched her.
'What are you?' he'd whispered. She had then, only minutes after her feed of virus-infected milk, seemed completely human.
Quintus remembered perfectly, her wiggling a tiny fist and smiling so disarmingly that he had almost returned the gesture before recalling some ancient wisdom. Instead, he had muttered sternly, 'It is probably only wind.'
He could not submit himself a second time to the bondage of human affection. He could not give the Master a chance to hold over him the fate and love of a second child. He could not and he would not. It had taken more than a dozen centuries for the power the Master exerted through his Berber family to diminish thus far and Quintus remembered the pain and weakness too vividly to soon wish his neck bent once more beneath that yoke.
'Whatever kind of thing you are… you will never be my daughter,' he had warned the child. 'Do you understand?'
Baby Sexta had blown a bubble with a tiny burp.
That crusty old midwife had been right: It was only wind.