Daughters of Fire (47 page)

He shrugged. ‘It’s done, I’m afraid.’

‘Hugh.’ She followed him and put her hand on his arm. ‘You don’t need to be like this!’

She saw his face soften as he stood looking down at her. He reached up and touched her cheek lightly with his finger. ‘Viv.’ He shook his head, almost sadly as he whispered her name and Viv knew with absolute certainty that more than anything in the world she wanted him to kiss her. She could feel herself being drawn towards him irresistibly. They were very close when she looked up into his eyes.

And saw the eyes of someone else.

She jerked away with a cry of fright.

‘Where is the brooch?’ His voice was deeper suddenly and threatening. It was the voice of a stranger. ‘By all the gods why do you think I came here?’ He seized her arm and she screamed as his fingers tightened on her wrist. ‘Give it to me and I’ll go.’

‘Hugh! Fight him!’ Viv screamed in terror. She was struggling frantically, trying to free herself. His fingers were ice cold, like an iron clamp on her skin. ‘For God’s sake, fight him!’

‘Viv! What’s going on?’ Pat’s voice in the doorway interrupted them and suddenly it was over. Hugh, white as a sheet, slumped back, releasing her. He reeled towards the door. ‘Dear God! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!’ Pushing past Pat, he headed blindly for the stairs and disappeared, the sound of his footsteps pounding into the distance.

Pat looked at Viv, astonished. ‘What in heaven’s name was going on?’

‘He was possessed! Literally.’ Viv was trying to stop herself shaking. Sitting down on the rocking chair she put her head in her hands. ‘I thought he was going to kill me. He wanted the brooch.’

‘Did you tell him where it is?’ Pat walked over and closed the door. Turning the key in the lock, she came back and sat down opposite Viv. Her eyes narrowed.

Viv shook her head. ‘It all happened so quickly. We were talking about the play and suddenly he changed. His eyes changed. He was somebody else.’

‘Who?’

‘Venutios.’ It was a whisper.

‘Shit!’ Pat dived into her bag and brought out her cigarettes.

‘Where is the brooch, Pat?’ Viv frowned. ‘Pete said you had it at the flat.’

Pat shook her head. ‘No. That was all a bad dream. It wasn’t real. It’s still at Stanwick. It must be.’ She blew out a cloud of smoke.

Viv bit her lip, looking down again at her hands. ‘What’s happening to us?’

Pat shrugged. ‘They want it, don’t they. They all want it. Carta. Venutios.’ She paused. ‘And Medb.’ She took another drag on the cigarette. ‘Why? What is so special about it? Christ, this is scary.’ She glanced at Viv. ‘So what did Hugh say about the play before he was dragged away by our friend ?’

‘That he’s had a word with Maddie, who he knows, apparently, and he told her to bin it.’ Viv’s hands were still shaking.

‘What?’ Pat stared at her, her mouth hanging open.

‘I know. I don’t believe it either.’ Viv gave a stilted laugh. ‘Don’t worry. I’m sure we can sort it.’

‘Too bloody right we can sort it!’ Pat stared at her. ‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. We’ve got a contract! I’ll ring her now. That man’s impossible!’ Her mobile was already in her hand and in a matter of seconds she was through to Maddie’s office.

The short conversation with Maddie’s assistant was inconclusive. Pat switched the phone off impatiently. ‘She’s out. I think I’ll go round there. I’ll camp on her door step if necessary. I’m not letting that bastard spoil everything now.’ She paused. ‘You know, in spite of himself I’ll bet Hugh has done you a bit of good. The book is selling like mad - mostly to people who want to know what the row is all about!’

Viv gave a watery grin. ‘Thank you, Hugh!’ The irony made her feel better.

With a sigh she stood up and walked over to the desk as soon as Pat had gone. What had happened to Hugh just now? She had seen Venutios. Felt Venutios. Dear God, Venutios had taken him over so completely he might have done anything in his rage. She shuddered. Picking up the letter, she read it through again. It hadn’t been a dream. It was true. She had been offered a job. A prestigious job, far away from Edinburgh and away from Hugh. A job which presumably was not dependent on a reference from him as it implied that the author of the letter knew all about their quarrel. The question was, did she want it?

It was three hours before Pat rang her back. ‘Viv? I’ve spoken to Maddie. It’s OK. She had no intention of listening to the mad professor. None at all. She said she let him rant away and assume he’d persuaded her. It was easier that way. What is it with the guy? Anyway, she’s going off on maternity leave at the end of the week but she thinks they’ll be scheduling the play probably for the late autumn or early winter. So, my darling co-writer, we have a deadline. Does that make you feel better? Nothing but writing for the next week or so, OK?’

Carta, watching from the shadows, frowned. Venutios and Medb. Their story was nothing. They were leaves blowing in the wind. She smiled grimly. Venutios she had dealt with at once. He knew where he stood.

‘They are your own people!’ Venutios was furious.

‘They disobeyed me.’

More than a hundred men had died, the rebellion suppressed as fast as it had flared into being, and now she was confronted by the surviving ringleaders. In chains they awaited summary justice here at Dun Righ, in the place of judgement under the great oak near the falls.

She had given orders that no Brigantian would fight Rome. In exchange Plautius confirmed the guarantee that Rome would not attack Brigantia. That was the way the client status worked. They were allies. She would hold the northern frontier and her people would keep their weapons. They were a free people. So, if Brigantians broke the agreement and sent men to support her cousin Caradoc in his war against the legions, she had to act swiftly and she had to act hard to stop them.

Artgenos and Culann, like Venutios, counselled restraint.

‘They have been punished enough. They have lost face; they have lost their best warriors. Leave well alone,’ Artgenos advised, sitting by her fireside, wrapped in his undyed woollen mantle, his face grey with fatigue. He sensed Carta rapidly moving out of his control. The woman was wilful. And she had strength. He sighed again.

Cartimandua’s popularity amongst her people was enormous. She was bringing them peace and prosperity. Through her intervention the gods had smiled on Brigantia. Their granaries were full, their beasts fat and fertile and unlike their conquered southern neighbours in the province they did not have to watch endless wagons of food and provisions that should have been their own, plodding down the trackways to feed the ever-hungry legions of their conquerors. If her warriors needed to fight there were distant northern tribes to be raided for cattle and women. The cream of
the fighting men were part of her own army. Her personal praetorian guard! Any doubts she harboured deep in her heart were buried and hidden. She was determined no one would ever see her weakened by uncertainty or by misplaced compassion.

She sat, the heavy gold torcs, symbols of her power and status at neck and wrists, within the sacred grove with Artgenos and his fellow Druids seated on either side of her. Behind them the tribe was gathered in awed silence. The prisoners had, to a man, chosen their death. Better by far to elect to die in the sacred grove as messengers carrying offerings to the gods than to be executed as cowards and criminals. These men were brave warriors. They would die full of honour and explain their rebellion to their gods, confident of life and contentment in the land of the ever young until such time as their souls chose to be reborn. One was barely more than a boy, by far the youngest; the son of the tribal chieftain and a mere stripling, he stood close to his father, his face set, trying with every last ounce of courage he possessed not to cry. Every now and then his eyes strayed from Carta’s face, up into the great branches of the tree, and she could see him watching the leaves, the sunlight, feeling for the last few minutes the warmth on his face. He could see a squirrel, carefree, leaping about in the topmost branches and she guessed how desperately he longed to join the squirrel in its freedom.

Carta did not allow herself to flinch as she watched the men die. If they could be strong, so could she. Only once, when the boy knelt in the bloody place of death, next to his father’s body to receive the triple death blows did she close her eyes and sigh. She saw him glance up. Saw him look one last time on the green leaves of the oak and the sunshine and the life that would never now be his, then he closed his eyes and waited for the blow. His would be one of the heads she would take as a trophy, making herself the keeper of his soul and the inheritor of his valour and his strength and finally, in private, she would tell him how sad his death had made her.

As the men, women and children of the tribe watched, the boy’s body slumped to the earth. Above the trees the kites and buzzards were already circling. The squirrel fled.

For a moment she saw the boy’s shadow hover over the body, then it had gone. He had made the crossing into the land of the gods. She looked across at Artgenos, who nodded. He too had seen the boy’s soul leave. It was well done.

It was strange how the Romans, brave men undeniably, did not
understand this transition of the soul. They professed shock and horror at stories of the priests being present at executions and supervising this the most important moment in a man’s life. Their own prisoners they butchered without honour, condemning the frightened souls to roam eternally. Such crude viciousness was beyond comprehension.

Slowly she stood up, signalling the end of the ceremony and the end of the rebellion. However bravely a man met his death he did not court it. Better to serve the queen than defy her. The message had gone home.

She paused, allowing Venutios to walk beside her and realised that he was watching her with something like awe. Behind him Vellocatus was following them slowly, carrying his king’s sword. His handsome young face was ravaged with grief and shock at what he had witnessed.

Venutios glanced at his wife again. ‘You were strong today.’ He sounded almost impressed.

She met his gaze gravely. ‘I had to be. There must be no more defiance of my authority.’

His face was grim. ‘I doubt there will be.’

‘Then the deaths have served their purpose. I gave Artgenos the order that their heads be preserved. They were all brave men, if misguided. We will honour that bravery.’ She reached out to touch his arm. Behind her the two dogs which followed her everywhere were, like her husband, uneasy. They had smelled the blood and sensed her resolution and perhaps, unlike him, her inner sorrow, and their hackles were up.

Venutios looked across at her, his jaw set, his eyes veiled. She had made her first big mistake.

Viv shuddered violently. She awakened without warning to find herself sitting on the edge of the rocking chair. She was sweating and shaking with horror and she was, she realised, about to be violently sick. Running to the bathroom she vomited again and again, the sight and stench of the killing grounds still inside her head. So, those were the bloodsoaked groves described with such horror by historians, the human sacrifice so abhorred by the hypocritical Romans who preferred to throw their prisoners to the lions and watch them die as a spectacle in the arena.

How could she? How could she order it? Stand and watch. Not flinch. But then she was a queen and all her reputation and power depended on the fact that she could be strong. Besides, she was warning Venutios that she would not be defied. Venutios, whose eyes Viv had seen looking out at her from Hugh’s.

Splashing water on her face, Viv groped for a towel and pressed it hard against her eyes. She was still shaking uncontrollably.

Hugh slammed down the phone and walked over to the French windows. The heat from the terrace was rising like a tangible wave as he stood staring out. He grimaced. He had been ringing Viv all morning. He ought to go back to Edinburgh now. Campon her doorstep. Search her flat by force if necessary. He clenched his fists. He could feel it again, the strange overpowering anger which seemed to lurk out here in the garden. Cautiously he looked round. The place was silent; nothing stirred. The heat from the stones and the walls radiated out into a stillness which was uncanny and suddenly he knew why. Venutios was there. He listened. There wasn’t a breath of wind; not a bird sang. He could hear nothing. He looked down at his hands and cautiously he flexed his fingers. Had Venutios really invaded his soul for a few terrifying seconds or had it been his imagination? He had felt the man’s anger and his strength. For a paralysing moment he had known what it would feel like to want to kill and to know himself capable of violence such as he had never contemplated. In those same seconds, while he had been on the phone, he had also realised that, however much he tried to deny it to himself, he loved Viv Lloyd Rees, but that one day he might be forced to hurt her.

When he saw the tall figure, over by the laurels, it was with a sense of inevitability and overwhelming defeat. Venutios was standing on the grass, his hands on his hips. His handsome face was hard and set, the blue painted swirls around the temples terrifying, the long hair tangled by a wind Hugh couldn’t feel. Frozen with fear, he watched as Venutios strode towards him, knowing he should
turn back inside and slam the doors; knowing he should ring Meryn; knowing he should throw himself into the car and drive. Drive anywhere, as fast as he could. He didn’t move.

When at last the tall figure was standing only a few feet from him he merely shook his head. ‘I couldn’t find the brooch,’ he said quietly. ‘I did my best. It’s not Viv’s fault. Leave her alone. If you want to blame anyone, blame me.’

‘Viv, we’ve got to talk!’ Hugh’s voice echoed through the flat. ‘I have to have the brooch. It’s the only way to get him off my back. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. Help me, Viv!’

Miserably she stared at the phone. It was the third time he had called her that morning. Fifteen minutes later she was still seated at the keyboard when the phone rang again. This time she switched it off. A mug of coffee, cold and skimmed with a milk slick, lay untouched beside the monitor as her fingers rattled over the keys and the documentation of Cartimandua’s life grew longer and longer, the story loud and insistent in her head.

That was all wrong. Venutios would never say that. Elected as high queen, she must have been able to lead her men herself. Boudica did. And Carta had proved herself. She was strong. And she was ruthless.

How would she address him? How did she address him in the dreams? Viv bit her lip, staring back at her notes.

Oh God, how corny!

Viv began to write again. By the time Pat arrived she had several pages to show her. They sat reading, passing notes and pages of dialogue to each other and then at last they put the sheets down and looked at one other.

‘Well?’ Viv was eyeing Pat nervously.

Pat exhaled slowly. ‘It’s good as far as it goes. But it’s still too self-conscious. You need to lift bits out of your notes in toto. Real language as you’ve noted it down. As we recorded it before. You’ve edited it back into history speak. We need to bring in earlier more of a feel of what Carta’s beliefs - Medb’s beliefs - meant to them. Lift it out of the ordinary. Convey something of the amazing Celtic world view’. She paused thoughtfully. ‘I’ve had a glimpse of what it means to live and breathe a native spirituality from a programme I’ve worked on about the Native Americans. Living as part of the world around them, not top species laying down the law, but being one with it. That’s what we need here. To think as Carta thought.’

There was a moment’s silence. Viv put down her pen. ‘You’re right.’

‘Sound effects are going to be important to help with this,’ Pat went on. ‘Nothing too spooky, but we’re going to need some atmospherics to back up the spiritual link to nature. Waterfalls. Wind on the high moors, that sort of thing.’ She shrugged. ‘I haven’t really got to grips with what Carta’s world looked like, you know. Your descriptions in the book are great as far as they go, but obviously it’s a history book. I want to go and see it all myself.’

‘I suppose we could go to Winter Gill Farm.’ Viv put in. ‘It would be a great place to record sound effects. You could climb Ingleborough. You’re in training now you’ve been up Traprain.’ She smiled.

‘That would be great -’ Pat stopped. ‘You know, I’m learning to notice things I never used to. How one can look into a stream or a pool of water and see the future and the past, for instance. We can do it, just as they did.’ Medb was teaching her.

Viv gave a wry laugh. ‘I should be putting stuff like that into the
dialogue.’ She sounded subdued. ‘I’ve seen it through Carta’s eyes, but when I write I still see it as a historian. I’m as bad as Hugh. I see her beliefs as quaint. Primitive. Pagan. And I am unconsciously editing it accordingly.’

‘Well, she was a pagan in that hers was a pre-Christian world.’ Pat nodded.

‘But I’m using pagan as a pejorative term. You are right. I wouldn’t dare call in question Native American spirituality these days, would I? And Celtic religion is similar. It dramatically effects their attitude to death. That’s important. That’s what we have to get in very early in the dialogue. It effects how she feels about Riach and about Triganos and her baby. She obviously felt sad on a day to day basis, sad because they weren’t there any more, but not as sad as someone feels who thinks ‘‘that’s it, gone for good’’. If they communicated with their ancestors and their gods, surely they communicated with their dead.’ She broke off with a curse as the phone rang again. Hugh had called half a dozen times since Pat had arrived. ‘He’s not going to give up, is he? And he’s going to keep on threatening to come round.’

This time, though, the message was longer. ‘Listen, Viv. This is important. Don’t let anyone else touch the brooch, or touch it yourself again. It was cursed.’ He paused, and they could almost hear his embarrassment down the phone. ‘I’ve been told by someone who knows about these things, that that is how Venutios got to me. And it might affect other people. You. Anyone who touches it!’ There was a pause, then the line went dead.

Pat’s face had drained of colour. ‘I touched it, Viv! I touched that brooch. I held it in my hand.’

Viv stared at her. She was biting her lip. ‘That’s where Medb came from, Pat,’ she said at last. ‘She gave Venutios the brooch. It’s imbued with her power.’

For a moment neither of them said anything. When Pat spoke at last it was one word. ‘Shit!’

In the long silence that followed the phone rang again. They ignored it.

‘You need to move out for a bit,’ Pat whispered. ‘Get right away. Come and stay at Abercromby Place. He won’t know where you are.’

‘No. ‘Viv shook her head. ‘Don’t you see, Pat. I have to get it back to him.’

‘You can’t! It’s dangerous! He just said so.’

‘If it is, it’s too late for us.’ Viv shrugged. ‘We’ve both touched it.’ She glanced at Pat with a shudder. ‘You have to fight Medb. She’s evil.’ She was scanning Pat’s face carefully.

‘Thanks!’ Pat scowled. ‘How exactly am I supposed to fight her?’

‘Don’t listen to her.’ Viv looked down at the manuscript in front of them. ‘Don’t keep writing about her.’ She stood up and walked towards the window uneasily, then she turned and faced Pat again. ‘Medb hated Cartimandua.’

‘Yes.’ Pat gave a small tight laugh.

‘She wanted to see her brought down. She wanted to drive a wedge between her and Venutios.’

‘I shouldn’t think that was hard,’ Pat retorted.

‘You suggested taking the brooch to Stanwick,’ Viv went on thoughtfully. ‘You were the one who didn’t want to give it back to Hugh once the programme was over.’

‘So? You agreed with me.’

‘Did Medb put that idea in your head, Pat? Was it Medb who wants to keep it away from Venutios?’

‘If it’s cursed you’d think she would want him to have it!’ Pat scrabbled for her cigarettes again and shook the packet. It was empty.

‘There is something we are not seeing.’ Viv shivered. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Then don’t do anything. Concentrate on the play.’ Pat stood up. ‘I need to buy some more cigarettes.’

‘Let’s leave it there for tonight.’ Viv was suddenly exhausted. ‘Talk about it some more tomorrow.’

‘When you’ve consulted Carta?’ Pat raised an eyebrow sarcastically. ‘She knows nothing about Medb. And she doesn’t care! She never gave Medb another thought after she had her kidnapped.’

‘Maybe not.’ Viv frowned.

‘The truth will come out in the play.’

‘Will it?’ Viv watched as Pat pushed her papers into her bag and slung it onto her shoulder. ‘We’ll see.’

Vivienne.

The voice woke Viv from an uneasy sleep.

Vivienne. Sweet goddess, protect me and protect my people!

It was just growing light. In the distance she could hear the blackbird. She frowned. Blackbirds sing at dawn because every dawn has a message. A sheaf of messages. She glanced towards the phone, then she shook her head. Every dawn is also a potential gateway, a magical time. Not a time for modern technology. A time to listen to the voices from the past. And to act.

She had to retrieve the brooch. And she had to do it without Pat knowing.

It was still early when she drove out of Edinburgh and the streets were comparatively empty. By nine she was almost there.

Drawing up in the place they had parked before, she headed up onto the rampart wall.

The day was airless and the trees which hung over the track were still. In the short time since they had been there last the undergrowth had grown up even more thickly. Nettles and brambles crossed the track and in places it was hard to see where she was going. Cautiously she made her way down the steep bank to the bottom of the reconstructed piece of wall and began to feel along the stones. It was here somewhere. She paused uncomfortably. She could feel someone watching her. She turned round slowly. The clearing was very hot. No breath of wind stirred down here in the lee of the wall. ‘Carta?’ The word faded into silence. ‘Medb?’