Alternate Generals (4 page)

All day the battle raged. The Britons broke like waves against the Roman shore. But at last the sheer weight of numbers began to bottle the legions in the defile.

I was so enrapt I didn't notice Ebro slip away. We had no guards—no warrior would have missed the battle to watch two such impotent prisoners—so I hurried after him across the bloody ground, past the contorted bodies of Roman and Briton alike.

Boudica leaned forward in her chariot, her hands upraised as though casting a spell. Her hair fell in red waves down her back. Her green cloak billowed behind her. Brighid's hands were raised in imitation, her own hair flowing free. Behind them slumped Maeve, like a tired schoolgirl wanting nothing more than for the lesson to end.

Several warriors ran by, their long swords mottled with blood. And then I saw Ebro, with a long sword of his own—he'd found it on the field, no doubt. He ran at the chariot, brandishing his weapon, shouting in a deep voice I'd never before heard him use, "Death to the witch! Death to the enemy of Roma!"

He struck at Boudica and her daughters, once, twice, three times, the sword flaring in the red light of the westering sun. Maeve screamed. Brighid gasped and fell against her mother. Clutching her breast, Boudica stared with cold, empty eyes at her attacker. Blood drowned her green cloak and its golden stitches. The startled horses jerked forward. I seized their bridles and stopped them.

Five Iceni warriors fell upon Ebro, cut him down, and kept on hacking long after he was dead. Then they turned to me.

"No," said Boudica. She sank to her knees, clasping Brighid to her side. Maeve sat down with a thump behind them. "Take me away, Marcus. Now."

I led the horses and the chariot away, expecting a spear in my back at any moment. But as the rumor of Boudica's wound swept the field the Britons were maddened. Some threw themselves on the Roman swords. Some threw down their weapons and fled. As I gained the hillside and the dappled shadow of an oak tree Agricola began to drive forward, pinning the Britons between the defile and their own wagons.

Boudica, Brighid, and Maeve huddled in the bottom of the chariot, the discolored cloak spread over them. Ebro hadn't seen the cloak become Britannia. He'd never tasted the liquid from the cauldron. All he knew was that Boudica had enspelled me to betray my duty, and it was his duty to deliver me. I sent Mithras a quick prayer for Ebro. I didn't know which god to address for the women, as Andrasta seemed to have deserted them.

Brighid's cheeks were chalk-white. She was dead, I realized. Maeve cried. In her bloodstained hand Boudica held a vial made of finest Roman glass. She caught the irony in my glance and tried to smile. But her smile was only a feeble grimace.

Behind me someone moved. I spun around. It was Lovernios. "We are lost," he said.

"You can still rally your warriors," I told him.

"No. The queen's body is our own. If she isn't strong and sound, then neither are we."

I'd heard of such a superstition. Had Ebro? That was something I'd never know. I turned back to her.

"Do you hate me?" Boudica asked.

My tongue said, "No. You did your duty, as I did mine. A pity, that my ambition and your freedom couldn't be coiled into the same pattern."

"Duty makes as intricate a pattern as truth. Perhaps there's a greater truth, that in time will receive us both. I'll know, in just a few moments." With her teeth she pulled the stopper from the vial, spat it out, and drank.

I glanced up at Lovernios.

"Wolfsbane," he said. "Poison. You don't think she'd let herself be taken by your people, do you?"

Boudica offered the vial to Maeve. The child shook her head. "I don't want to know, not yet."

I realized by the strength of her voice that she hadn't been wounded. Ebro might not even have struck at her, but twice at Boudica. I leaped forward and pulled Maeve from the back of the chariot. She stiffened at my touch, but didn't fight me as I wrapped her and her stubborn spark of life in my tattered cloak.

Boudica choked, gasped, and died. Maeve's slender body shuddered with hers, and then was still. She turned to Lovernios. "Here is my first and only order as queen of the Iceni. Take them away, and sink them in some deep pool, so that they're lost forever to the sight of men."

"And you?" Lovernios asked. One tear fell from his eye and traced a path into his beard.

"I'll protect her," I said. And that was the first thing I'd said in days that was clean and fresh.

Maeve and I sat together beneath the tree as Lovernios led the chariot and the bodies of the two queens into the green and gold afternoon. Neither of us spoke. Boudica had made a magnificent gamble, worthy of a magnificent woman, and she had lost.

The legions marched over the demoralized Britons, until the bodies of men, women, children, animals lay sprawled as far as the eye could see. At last a centurion ran up the hillside, recognized my clothing and, despite the dark stubble on my face, my origins. He escorted us through the merciful shade of dusk to Agricola. Overwhelmed by detail as any commander would be after such a victory, he barely asked who I was, and paid no attention to Maeve.

I'd wondered many times that spring if I'd ever see Roma again. Returning was like waking from a dream. But it was no dream, for Maeve was with me, first as my ward, then as my wife. It was a year before she smiled again, but smile she did. As did I.

More than once over the years I've stood on the Gaulish shore and glimpsed the white cliffs of Dubris, but I've never again set foot on the island itself. In Maeve's eyes, though, I see every day the clear lapis skies of Britannia.

Ave atque vale
.

The old man laid down his pen. His gut cramped and a cold sweat trickled down his face. The gods had waited long years before taking him as they had taken Boudica, with a bellyful of poison.

His family's delight at his return had become displeasure when he told them his ambition was burned to ashes. But his knowledge of Britannia and the trading of gold made him a successful merchant, so that he sacrificed to Mercury as often as to Mars and Mithras. For truth didn't run in straight lines, but made spirals, and braids, and intricate golden embroideries.

"Good evening, Father," said his son from the doorway.

Marcus looked up. "We've a few moments before the guests arrive. Sit beside me, Artorius, and let me tell you once again that while I was a disappointment to my father, you are not to me."

"How could I disappoint you, when you've taught me so much?" Artorius's even-tempered smile was his mother's, and yet his grandmother's humor, bright and sharp as a golden sickle, lurked at the corners of his mouth. At one and thirty he was in the prime of life, a tall, clean-limbed man with a glint of red in his brown hair. He'd already served as quaestor and curator in Dacia and Macedonia. Now he was going to the province of Britannia as procurator. Which, Marcus thought, seemed only fair.

Maeve walked into the room and handed Marcus the torc. "Here it is."

It was almost too heavy for him. He would've dropped it if Artorius's strong hands hadn't caught it. Marcus passed it gladly to his son. "I know now why I carried this through fire and blood. For you to throw into the Tamesis, in the name of the goddess Andrasta and of peace."

"As you wish," Artorius said, his doubt tempered with respect.

Marcus handed him the scroll, too. "And this is for you to read on your journey north. To remind you that every truth and every duty has many different braided strands. To remind you of Seneca's aphorism: Fire is the test of gold, adversity, of strong men."

"In your veins runs the blood of both Roma and Britannia," Maeve told him. "May you found a new race. May your name and the names of your descendants be long remembered, in Britannia and beyond its borders."

The gleam of the torc was reflected in Artorius's indigo blue eyes. "I'll bring honor to my name and my blood, I swear it."

Marcus smiled through his pain, content.

Rear Admiral Sir Christopher George Francis Maurice Cradock strode briskly along the deck of his flagship, H.M.S.
Defence
, walking off the effects of last night's dinner with the officers of the S.M.S.
Breslau
. Despite the political tension of the past few weeks, it had been a pleasant evening of good food and good talk, punctuated by the clink of silver on china and the gurgle of wine into glasses as the mess stewards kept them filled.

Only once had Commander Kettner revealed any hint of that German confidence which so nearly approached arrogance. "You English—" he had said, his voice rising. Then he had chuckled affably. "You have so much invested in tradition," he had continued, more relaxed. "We Germans have a tradition to make. It is always so for vigorous youth, is it not?" The clear implication that the Royal Navy was superannuated had rankled, but Cradock had passed it off graciously. Time enough to compare traditions when the young eagle actually flew and dared its talons against Britannia's experience. He had no doubt that rashness would be well reproved.

Cradock took a deep breath and eyed the steep tile roofs, bright in morning sunlight, that stepped down to the harbor, its still water perfectly reflecting both ships and buildings. Behind them rose the mountains in which—in happier years—he had hunted boar. No foxhunting here, but a sportsman could find some game anywhere.

He glanced over at
Breslau
, admitting to himself that the Germans had certainly reached a high standard of seamanship. Every detail he had seen the day before had been correct. Several of the officers had read his books; they had asked him to expand on some of the points he'd made. Only courtesy, of course, but he could not help being pleased.

A thicker ooze of smoke from
Breslau
's funnels stained the morning air. Cradock slowed. On her decks a subdued flurry of movement he recognized at once. Astern, the smooth reflection of the mountains shattered like a dropped mirror as her screws churned. He turned to his flag lieutenant.

"What do we know of Admiral Souchon and the
Goeben
?" Cradock asked.

"At last report, sir, the
Goeben
had made port in Trieste, then gone to sea for gunnery practice."

A cold chill ran down Cradock's back. Gunnery practice? If the Germans were intending to declare war first, only they would know when. The Japanese had given no warning to the Russians at Port Arthur in 1904.

"When
Breslau
weighs anchor, send word to Admiral Milne," Cradock said. "And inform Captain Wray that we will be returning to Corfu immediately."

"Sir."

In short order, the German light cruiser was moving out of the anchorage, a demure curl of white at her bow that would, Cradock was sure, lengthen to a streak when she was out of sight.

Admiral Cradock considered, as he took several rashers of bacon onto his plate, at what point his duty to His Majesty might require disobedience to his superior, Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne. It was not a dilemma in which he had ever expected to find himself.

When he raised his flag in H.M.S.
Defence
, a British admiral in command of a cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean could expect a constant round of visits to attractive ports, dinners with dignitaries who all wanted some concession, meetings with other naval officials, all conducted with the utmost ceremony. Here were the smartest ships in the Royal Navy, and the most favored officers.

Now he commanded a squadron at war, a situation calling for very different talents than the ability to dance with a prime minister's daughter or make polite conversation with French magistrates and Turkish pashas. And—more to the point—a situation in which mistakes would imperil not merely an officer's reputation and future career, but the very survival of the Empire.

Cradock knew himself to be an old-fashioned sailor. Seamanship was his passion, correct and accurate handling of ships in all weathers, placing them where they could best effect strategy. Seamanship required comprehensive knowledge of exact details: how to organize coaling, how to coil ropes, how to turn a ship in formation precisely where she should turn. Most important, it required naval discipline, on which both naval tradition and the whole towering edifice of empire depended. Lack of discipline led to slovenly seamanship, and that, in the end, to disaster.

His responsibility, therefore, was to do what his commander told him. Therein lay the rub.

Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne, Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, had in the past few days revealed himself no Nelson. For three days, Milne had thrashed around the Mediterranean in vain pursuit of the German ships, shifting Cradock's own squadron about in useless dashes, a waste of coal and energy. Now, on the second full day of war, when the German ships were in Messina and could have been bottled up by placing adequate force at either end of the Strait of Messina, Milne had instead taken his battle cruisers off to coal in Bizerte—all the way to North Africa. He had ordered Cradock to stay at the mouth of the Adriatic, and placed only little
Gloucester
to watch the exit to the eastern Mediterranean, because he was sure the Germans would try to go west.

Cradock was not so sure of that. What he knew, with absolute certainty, was that the
Goeben
would cause the Royal Navy immense trouble if she were not sunk, and that the Admiralty wanted her sunk. And he could not sink her from here, sitting idly off Corfu waiting for Milne to give sensible orders. That fox Souchon had plans of his own.

As a technical problem of naval tactics, it came down to speed and guns. The German ships were faster, especially the turbine-powered
Goeben
, and
Goeben
had bigger guns that outranged his by several nautical miles. Thus the
Goeben
could, in theory, stand off at a distance where her great shells could pound the cruisers, and their shots would all fall short.