Dreaming the Serpent Spear (24 page)

The ditches and dykes that had protected Cunobelin’s steading in the days of his power were easily passed and not close to the city. The trenches and walls that had served the fortress of the XXth in the early years of its existence had been pulled down and filled in when it became instead a veterans’ colony. They were no barrier any longer, only a line of rubble with grass growing thinly through to show where it had been; an infant learning to walk could have stepped over to get into the city, or to leave it.

The streets had been less quiet than Breaca had imagined; looking down from the slope above the city, there had seemed few fires, and so few people out after dark, but she and Valerius had been stopped and challenged four times in the first hundred paces by groups of men who gathered by
the dozen under the shaded light of tallow tapers and reed-bunched torches.

They were Roman for the most part: dark-haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed veterans, closer to sixty than fifty, with flab at the belly where once-fitness had lapsed. Some talked animatedly, and only fell to silence when the newcomers were seen, but most had been building barricades or digging trenches against incoming horses and were more suspicious than their fellows. They stopped the strangers at blade point and demanded to know their business. Valerius answered shabbily, in Catuvellauni, and then stilted Latin, saying that he had come from the northern quarter of the town and was bringing his woman to see the physician. They let him go. Nobody asked him why.

There were women, too, under the tallow tapers, but fewer of those; young and underfed, with the smoky grey eyes and red-blond hair of the Trinovantes, they were pregnant or nursing or with silent children at foot, gawping and shadowed by a fear they did not fully understand.

None of these chose to stop the pair of natives, dressed in the brown stuff of merchants with clan markings worked at the hem. Only a child, looking at them, had removed its fingers from its mouth and said, “Who’s that? Have they come to help us?”

She had spoken Latin with a tribal accent. Her mother had hushed her, saying, “They’re Catuvellauni, friends to Rome.” It had been hard to tell if she considered that friendship a good thing, or despicable.

They had abandoned the main thoroughfare shortly after that and taken to smaller streets with deeper shadows. A lone veteran with a drawn sword had challenged them in
the first of those, his voice rusty with fear. Breaca answered this time, saying that she was suffering from bloody flux and stinging water and was being taken to the hospital for urgent treatment. The veteran backed away, making the sign against evil with his left hand.

The mention of flux had been more than a lucky guess; the stench of rancid faeces had been with them for a while now, mingling with the thin, scouring stench of fear that robbed Camulodunum of its heart. Once, the streets had stunk of life and vibrant feeding; now they smelled chiefly of rats’ urine and rotting vegetables. The smell stuck to the back of the throat and made slime on the tongue. Breaca put her hand to her nose and walked on. No-one else stopped them. Nearby, echoing, a man began shrilly to scream.

Valerius tapped her shoulder, making her jump. “Left. Here.” His voice was light with half-suppressed laughter. She had heard him like that in Longinus’ company once or twice; whatever the danger, he was enjoying himself — perhaps because of the danger. She followed him into a street even smaller than the one they were on, barely wide enough to walk down without shuffling sideways, and then into a solid brick-built house camped improbably in a row of wattle and daub huts. Stepping inside, she nearly tripped over Valerius, who crouched in the middle of the floor.

Looking up, he said, “Help me lift this?” and she knelt, and did so.

There were two rings set into the floor, covered by an excess of dust and old straw. They took one each and pulled and a section of the floor came up smoothly on tallowed hinges so that it smelled meaty even while it hissed to vertical.

He said, “There are steps down. You could have light but it’s as easy to feel the way, and you’re less likely to risk being seen. There will be light in the well room if anyone is there. I’ll wait here and make sure you’re not followed. Shout if you need me. Theophilus will be surprised, but not, I think, discomfited.”

He had been right, of course, which was why she had asked him to come. One of the reasons why she had asked him. She had felt her way blindly along a short tunnel of rammed earth and into a cellar of neatly fitted stones, as flat and smooth as any in the forum or other buildings of state. Further along, they were layered with plaster and white lime that flaked off under her fingers. Then a flame had flickered in the dense black ahead, and an old friend had trodden on the pavings, muttering and breaking wind, who had no reason to consider himself overheard.

She had scuffed her foot to let him know she was there, believing it necessary for his pride, and he had thought she was Valerius, which was probably reasonable. Unreasonably, she was angry that he had not known her better.

She answered him too sharply, and was sorry, and he saw both of these. She had forgotten his prescience; he could read her almost as clearly as Airmid, and perhaps in some places better because he was not so close, nor blinded by love.

“Breaca?” He reached out and drew her forward into the lamplight. His hand was on her shoulder, and then he had turned her and was running long, lean fingers across the span of her back, which was not a good thing at all. Her flesh cringed from his touch as it had not done from Airmid’s who knew her.

She made herself stand still, not to insult him. He was delicate and adroit in his investigating. He stopped quite soon and took his hands back to himself. If she kept her eyes closed, or her back turned, his voice was ageless and belied the weariness she had seen on his face under the probing light of his oil lamp.

Quite steadily, he said, “Have you come to me in my role as physician? Airmid has done well by you, but a true healing of the soul takes longer than the healing of the body and even that is barely begun.”

She turned to face him, trying not to be angry again. “Is it so obvious? Or did the veterans tell of all that they did over cups of wine when they came back?”

“Both.” He shrugged an apology. His face was long and lined and grey under the haphazard orange of the lamp’s flame. “The veterans sang of it over their wine for the few days before the siege began when they thought themselves safe and needed something to banish the disgrace they had suffered at Corvus’ hands. They sang of a legionary flogging inflicted on a woman of the Eceni, and then, when the wine hit, they sang also of the irreparable damage done to your daughters, for which I cannot express enough sorrow. But of you, I would have known the most of it as soon as I saw you, from the keening and black wind in your soul which is there to be heard by someone who knows how to hear it. Your brother was much the same; that’s why I mistook you. You must grant me that much in my craft: I can hear the mourning of what has been lost. Would you have me lie and pretend ignorance to my friends?”

He was her friend. He had sent warning of the procurator and so saved the war host at a time when discovery
would have destroyed it. Before that, he had been friend to Airmid and Graine, to Cunomar and to Corvus, who had loved — who still loved — Valerius, and was loved by him. He had helped her in the killing of Eneit, when it had needed to be cleanly done. For all of these, and basic decency, she owed him honesty.

The rim of the well was of rough stone, with fish-tailed goats stamped head to tail into the mortar on the flat surface. Breaca sat beside one and traced the curled and scaled tail with her finger.

She said, “Valerius has come into himself as a healer, as well as a dreamer. There are things he can do that Airmid cannot, and things she can do that he will never aspire to, but still—”

“But still, you are trying to fight a war when your soul is broken apart and your body does not yet answer the commands of your mind. And yet, however damaged, you are here and your warriors are camped within sight of the city and nightly Trinovantes who are loyal to you wreak havoc with what attempts are made at forming defences. The veterans dig trenches against your horses and the youths and children of this city fill them in; the Romans build barricades and they are torn down before dawn. Two nights ago, the statue to Victory was pulled from her plinth; a thing of marble, bigger than you and I together and yet nobody heard it fall. A man was hanged for that. The two veterans who hanged him are dead now. If you wait, Camulodunum will fall to mutiny and insurrection without a blade raised against your warriors. Is that what you plan?”

“Not entirely. We will wait a little longer, but not indefinitely; I would not have innocent men hanged on my account.
And I have warriors who need to learn to fight. The scouts say you had reinforcements sent from the west. Is it true?”

“Partly. We have two hundred mercenaries who marched up from the port at Vespasian’s Bridge when the watchtowers first burned. They came on the pay of an Atrebatan glass merchant who keeps a villa here. A quarter of them have the bloody flux. Fifty more have counted the numbers of your warriors’ watch fires and have handed back their pay to their employer. They’ll leave in the morning if your warriors will let them out as they have let out everyone else who has attempted to leave. The rest will fight, I believe, as will the veterans. Then there are two or three thousand Trinovantes who swear they are loyal to Rome and will fight against your war host. I believe perhaps half of them may be telling the truth?”

He had better manners than to look at her for an answer. Breaca studied the workings of the well. The bucket was of waxed pigskin, held agape with a loop of iron at the mouth. The rope from it led up to a pulley and an assortment of wheels and it was not immediately obvious how it might be lowered and then raised again. Examining it, she said, “About half, yes. And those who will fight against us are known by those who will not. Many will be dead before— Is that one of your patients?”

The scream died away, echoing from floor to ceiling.

“Indeed.” Theophilus grinned, fleetingly. “You will have to take my word for it that his health is improving. But if you were to listen on the streets, you would hear that the ghost of Cunobelin walks again and seeks vengeance for the desecration of his tomb. This, too, does not speak well for the defence of our city. If you will allow me—”

He reached past her to the well’s mechanism. “An Alexandrian friend made it when he was stranded here for the winter. It is designed to be effortless to use for an old man with limbs not as supple as they once were. I take it as a gift, grown out of a magnificent intellect, not an insult.”

The physician wound a handle and three sets of cogs turned. The bucket disappeared jerkily into the dark beyond the lamplight. A while passed, and they heard it hit water. Theophilus said, “If you turn the handle beside you, it will rise again.”

She did, and felt the almost-weightlessness and thought, obscurely, that Cunomar would have enjoyed the mechanics of it. She thought, also, that Theophilus had given her more information than she would ever have asked for and ought not be pushed further on the weaknesses in Camulodunum’s defence. She had not come, after all, to extract from him details of defences that could be seen in the streets. She had not come intending to ask him for healing, either, but he had spoken of it and Airmid before him and there had been time to think between.

Winding slowly, she said, “When Dubornos came back from Rome, he told me of Xenophon, who was your teacher. Valerius has some tales of him also. He seemed … a very learned physician.”

“He was. And I was, indeed, his pupil in my younger days. If you are asking whether I have his skills, then no, there are things he took to his grave that none of his pupils will ever know. If you’re asking if I know some things he did not, then yes, I believe I do. The winter I spent as your guest in Airmid’s company was worth years of learning. You need to stop winding now, and move the brake onto the handle.
Then I swing this lever — so — and the bucket moves towards us. You see? Effortless.”

The bucket tilted a little and slopped water onto the floor. The smell of it rose chalky and cool. Theophilus stepped back into darkness and returned bearing two beakers in green glass with gems set round the rim.

Seeing her look, he grimaced. “I took four of these in payment for a difficult childbirth. It’s not generally considered wise for a physician to question the good taste of a first-time father. Particularly not if that man is the Atrebatan sub-chief who controls all the trade in glassware from here to the southern sea ports and has command of two hundred mercenaries. In those days, his men were young and well armed and did not have flux, nor were they queuing at the gates to go home. Would you drink water with me, in spite of the colour of the glass? I regret that I have no ale and would not insult you with Rome’s wine.”

She accepted his water. Regarding her over the rim of his beaker, he said, “And so I ask again, have you come to me for healing?”

“I came to ask if you would leave Camulodunum before we burn it to the ground; I would not see you dead by any act of mine. But now that I am here and you have made the offer, then yes, I would be glad of whatever healing is possible. Certainly, I am not fit to fight long as I am.”

His face was green behind the glass. She thought she read a sudden encompassing peace, as she saw sometimes in Airmid when her craft had been best used and gave most joy: at the end of a hard birthing, perhaps, or when a warrior had been brought back to health from battle wounds that had seemed fatal.

For that moment, she saw all of his soul, then a part of him withdrew and something else she could not reach came to the fore. That part explored her as his fingers had done, but more deeply, so that she felt flayed again and had to hold the edge of the well to stay upright.

She stood rigid, drinking water and looking down at the fish-tailed goats through green glass. After a while, when her beaker was empty and he had still not spoken, she looked up. Theophilus was weeping, silently, and holding the glass to hide it so that green tears rolled down green cheeks.