Dreaming the Hound (35 page)

… SENATOR AND VALUED ADVISER TO THE EMPEROR CLAUDIUS, MAY THE GODS FOR EVER HOLD HIM …

If the gods held the governor now, they had taken their time in doing so. His dying had been drawn out over four months and was in every way as unpleasant as that of Scapula, the governor slain by the ancestor-dreamer at Airmid’s request.

The beginning had been slowly insidious; from the last day of the old moon after Eneit’s death, Breaca had lain nightly awake, listening to the winds of the gods whistle south to Camulodunum to take what was theirs from the one who had failed the ancestors’ trial. They did not take Breaca’s soul, nor rack her body with pain as they did the governor’s, and by that fact alone she confirmed that her spear had slain Eneit, and the Roman general’s had not.

Thus was one of her two questions answered - which of us killed

Eneit? The second question - where is Cunomar? - was answered later, near midsummer. As the governor came closer to death, Ardacos had returned from a hunting trip with news that a corn haired youth of the Eceni had been seen to travel north to the mountains of the Caledonii.

Soon after that, Cunomar himself had begun to haunt Breaca’s dreams, stalking naked through untouched forest, painted in the spiralling white lime and woad of the she-bears.

Her son had been taller and broader in the shoulder than she remembered him. He carried a spear identical to the one she had thrown, but that the feathers bound to the haft had come from a cormorant, not a heron, and the blade was not of silver, but of iron, with signs etched along it that she had never seen.

It was a good spear, balanced well for his arm, and he was beginning to learn how to match his soul to its. In the dream, she watched him track a wounded male bear that had already torn the limbs from two others who had tried to stalk it. When, on the second night, he killed it, Cunomar cut the bear’s heart from its chest and held it high in both hands, speaking directly to Breaca with an earnestness that made it essential to hear what he said.

She could not hear him. For three nights in succession, she returned to the same place and time and watched the same kill. Three times, the dream of her son held up the still-beating he-bear’s heart and spoke to her and three times she strained every sense and still could not hear the message it mattered so much to him to give.

Nor could Cunomar hear his mother. There had been no word left when he ran from the theatre, no chance to speak and set right all that was wrong. Wherever he lived - or died - it mattered that he know Breaca had killed Eneit cleanly, that the governor’s spear had fallen into flesh already dead, that Eneit had died with the heart of a warrior, that he had sent his love and his name to Cunomar as his last gift.

Nightly, she struggled to say each of these aloud in the dream, so that he might hear and be healed of his hate, but the soul-song of the spear came out of her mouth and she could not make the words have any meaning. Nightly, the dream that was Cunomar looked through his mother to a space beyond, and Breaca woke, always, with the taint of that gaze clouding the day, and the void of need that was in it.

By late summer, the dreams were different and Cunomar no longer walked in them. The world had moved on and other lives mattered more than a youth who sought manhood. The governor died as the moon turned from old to new, four months after the

spear-challenge and three after the start of his illness. He had known what was coming and had planned for it, but still the emperor and his senate in Rome had not considered it urgent to send a new governor to their northernmost province. The legions of Britannia had once again been left leaderless and the warriors of the west had taken advantage of it, launching waves of attack on the frontier forts.

News of slaughtered legionaries had filtered eastwards and the cohorts stationed around Camulodunum became nervous and took to patrolling the trackways with a fervour that made even trading difficult. Thus Breaca had spent the months leading to full summer trying to find ways for her people to tend to the fields without every adult being held at swordpoint for possession of a hoe and every child beaten for lifting a stone to the side of a paddock.

The ancestor-dreamer had stalked her dreams with images of children starved and enslaved, and Breaca had been perversely glad when the new governor had arrived in the late autumn to restore a semblance of order.

Suetonius Paulinus, fifth governor of Britannia, brought fresh men and officers and the legions had imposed a kind of peace so that the harvest had been brought in without bloodshed and the late-season cattle markets held without the quartermaster at Camulodunum’s commandeering the best bullocks for his men.

With the governor had come Decianus Catus, the emperor’s procurator of taxes, and then, in the spring, the Iberian mason and his slabs of marble, and the old governor became a man recorded in stone, set in earth and swirling mist.

To the last line, it was a worthy memorial. Breaca read it without interest, and then stopped, and read the last line again.

FIRST MAN NOT OF THE TRIBES TO UNDERTAKE THE SPEAR TEST OF THE CALEDONII. BY MY OWN HAND, I CAST IT TRUE.

‘He knew.’

‘Tagos paced the length of the roasting pit that contained the bullock that had been killed too early, especially to feed the procurator and his mercenaries. The procurator had gone, taking his wagonload of gold and a gift of wine from the king of the Eceni.

Breaca watched the darkening space that was the retreating wagon and knew that the godsent mist was lifting. Around her were only Eceni, and Theophilus, who was a friend, and ‘Tagos,

who was unnerved and let it show.

‘ “By my own hand I cast it true.” ‘ He came to the end of the fire pit and turned, abruptly. ‘That wasn’t on the stone at Camulodunum. The old governor wrote this for us. He knew why; he died and he wants the world to know with him. If he wrote of this to the emperor, his successor will crucify us in sight of his monument, so that we, too, will know why we die.’

Breaca sat on a log at the edge of the fire pit. ‘Of course he knew.

There was never any doubt. He sent word to Airmid asking her to help him die cleanly at the end.’

The request had been in part of the note sent with the old governor’s final letter to ‘Tagos, addressed to Breaca of the Eceni and sealed with the elephant mark of Britannia that made it a capital offence for anyone other than the one addressed to open it.

‘Tagos had tried to find what the note said, and failed. Now, he stared openly. ‘Did she give it? Did Airmid make easier the death of a Roman governor?’

‘Yes. Theophilus knows.’

The physician nodded in agreement. Some time after the ceremony, he had swapped his good cloak for one heavier and older, much patched, that smelled of beech smoke and pork fat. He held a jug of ale in one hand and warmed the other in the smoke of the fire pit.

At the sound of his name, he raised his jug in salute. ‘He does indeed know, and is grateful. Xenophon, who was physician to Claudius, knew the skills of these things, but they were not passed to me.’

‘Tagos coughed. A muscle twitched in his cheek. ‘I see.’

‘I’m not sure that you do.’ Theophilus came to sit on the log Breaca had brought forward. ‘That inscription was not only a warning for you. The governor was genuinely proud of his spear throw. He was convinced until his dying breath that his spear had killed Eneit, not yours, and that the gods were punishing him for success, not failure.’

Breaca said, ‘The gods punish no-one. It is men who do that. The gods take what is their due and was given freely as a personal offering. I did try to tell him.’

‘I know. And he believed you did your best to warn him and that you threw as well as you were able - which is exactly why you are not currently dying by slow degrees within sight of an over polished mass of marble. He could not give orders to his successor to leave you alone, but he could honour you and make it clear that

he did not hold you responsible for his death. He has done exactly that.’

The fog had thinned almost to nothing. Breaca could see the full round of the stockade now, and the square, small houses within it. Beads of mist ran like sweat down the oak stanchions of the gateposts and children began to emerge from between them, drawn by the smell of roasting meat. Graine was there, and a half-dozen others of her age who followed her as if she already led them.

They were safe; neither starved nor enslaved. ‘Tagos’ fears remained unrealized. The procurator’s wagon and the century of ex-legionaries he paid to guard it were gone beyond sight and would not be back for a half-year. Neither they nor the marble slab explained the small knot of nausea that had taken root in Breaca’s belly, or the ache along the scar on her palm that was the gods’ warning of danger.

She took a stave and broke open the clay crust on the fire pit. The air became damp with the smell of roast beef. Reaching in with her knife, she said to Theophilus, ‘So what is it about the last governor’s death that we have not read in his stone, but that brings you north in the cold of spring for its unveiling?’

‘Did you know he consistently refused trading rights to the slavers?’

Breaca stared at him through the rising heat of the fire. The knot in her belly swelled to a hammer-fist. In broad daylight the voice of the ancestor-dreamer resounded. Shall I show you, warrior, what it is for a people to bleed until there is nothing more to give?

Graine was a spear’s throw away. She was not weeping tears of gold or of corn.

Reaching down, Breaca cut a long thigh muscle from the bullock in the pit. The meat came away in her hand, greasily friable. She said, ‘No man of honour would grant trading rights to slavers,’ and then, because it must be said aloud, ‘Are we to understand that the new governor is not a man of honour?’

Theophilus leaned in to the heat of the fire. He said, ‘Suetonius Paulinus is a general. He has led legions in the worst parts of the empire. He has been ordered to subdue the tribes of western Britannia, or die in the attempt. Under such orders, would any of us be men of honour? Thank you. I thought you were going to feed it to the hounds before me.’

‘They come next.’ Absently, Breaca tossed a flake of roast hide to Stone, who was closest, and others to the grey bitch and her

whelps who waited beyond. ‘We should be plain. You are saying that the new governor has granted trading rights to slavers?’

Theophilus said, ‘Yes, although the actual administration will be given to the procurator, the sucking leech who has just driven south with a wagonload of your gold. If that man has pity, it is well hidden. If I were you, I would do everything necessary to safeguard my children.’

He said it to Breaca but his eyes, and hers, were on the king of the Eceni, who had listened to his news and had not been surprised.

‘Tagos flushed and made a show of settling the torC he wore at his neck, laying the kill-feather flat against his collarbone. ‘Graine won’t be harmed,’ he said, eventually. ‘He has promised it. The old governor said she could be sent to Rome to be taught the ways of the emperor’s palace, as befits the child of a king. I have said the Eceni would not allow it, but that she is being taught here. The procurator has sworn she will not be touched.’

‘The Procurator has sworn?’

The morning was suddenly thin and brittle, like ice on a puddle. Very quietly, Breaca said, ‘If you tell me you have agreed with that vermin, or with the governor, or with anyone else, a quota of slaves from Eceni lands, I will kill you.’

‘Tagos swallowed on nothing. ‘I have not agreed any quota,’ he said. ‘None has been asked.’

‘But they will come to trade here, in the Eceni territories? They will buy Eceni children from Eceni parents? Or will they simply take them by force or carry them away if they are left unattended?’

Shall I show you what it is for a people to bleed … ?

‘I don’t think even the procurator would allow—’

‘Of course he would.’ Theophilus’ voice cut in the way Airmid’s could, at need. ‘The procurator’s life depends on making a profit from Britannia and tax on trade is his biggest source of income. Slave traders make more profit than all the rest added together. The first group landed at the full moon tide. They’re Latins, men of the country around Rome who have not gained full Roman citizenship. They think themselves almost Roman and robbed of their true rights and are bitter about it and doubly dangerous. Eight of them have crossed the ocean with a group of Gaulish harness makers coming north for your spring horse fair. If the Eceni were in my care, I would watch these men and take whatever steps were necessary to ensure they made no profit from the flesh and

blood of my people.’

XX.

THE SPRING HORSE FAIR WAS AS CROWDED AS A BATTLEFIELD, AND as noisy. The forest around made a wall that sent the sound in again, with only the wide path of the trackway in the south-east to break the circle.

A second circle of gathered firewood lay within the ring of trees and a third of the tents and single-draped hides of the traders made a patchwork in the growing dawn. These, too, sent the hollering of traders inwards and upwards, so that the crows took umbrage and deserted the forest and even the redbreasts, who would have sat around the fires for crumbs, departed.

Within these three rings were gathered traders in their many hundreds, if not the thousands there had once been and that the site was built to hold. The Eceni had travelled in ones or twos from each steading across the territories to sell the produce of a winter’s work; the Gauls and Batavians and Iberians and Mauritanians and Latins and Romans had travelled up in their hired wagons from the sea ports on the great river with the sole aim of taking as much as they could in exchange for as little as possible of their ocean-travelled goods.

This fact was understood between them; it fired the passion of the trading. Always, the first days were spent in setting impossible targets and the next two in whittling down what was offered to what was expected and reaching ever closer to what might be accepted. The site of the horse fair was less than half a morning’s ride from ‘Tagos’ steading, but Breaca had arrived late, when all the trading positions were set. Leading her pack horses through the crowd, she made two circuits of the wide, open clearing before she found an opening that suited her needs. There she laid out the bay horse hide that set off her metalwork to best effect and set about unwrapping the goods she had spent all winter creating.