Once Every Never (15 page)

12

T
he first thing she noticed was the screaming.

Terrific
, Clare thought.
Do they ever
not
scream around here?

But then she realized that, like the other time, the sound wasn’t exactly screaming. More like …
keening
. Eerie and raw, the open wound of sound carried on the wind. It was as though it issued from a multitude of throats—a dissonant symphony of grief that raised the hackles on the back of Clare’s neck and made her want to turn and run blindly into the night.

I wonder if I’ll ever materialize in broad daylight
, she thought, fighting down the urge to flee. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Clare took in her surroundings. She was standing underneath the shaggy, overhanging eaves of a thatched roof. Just to the right of her head was a window—a roughly square opening cut in the thick earthen wall, covered from the inside by a soft leather curtain that was drawn aside just enough to let Clare peek in. She stood on the tips of her toes—and saw Comorra, illuminated by the flickering red light from a glowing charcoal brazier, head bowed over something she held in her hands. Her hair was unbound and fell in a rippling wave of rosy gold over her shoulders and down past her waist. Clare saw that what Comorra held in her hands was the raven brooch. She watched as the princess lifted it to her lips and whispered a few words. Then she kissed it and pinned it to her cloak, tears running in tracks down her cheeks. Comorra dashed the wetness away with the back of her hand and, throwing back her shoulders, stalked out of Clare’s line of sight.

From outside, beyond the curve of the house wall, Clare heard the sound of a door creaking open and then slamming shut. She inched forward and caught a glimpse of Comorra’s bright hair as the princess headed down a dirt path that led to an open space in the midst of what appeared to be a settlement of some kind. The clearing looked as though it could double as an open-air market in the daytime. From her vantage point Clare could see people streaming toward it in groups of two and three, most of them striding purposefully as if something important was about to happen. And yet the gathering had a distinctively un-festive air. The faces of the men and women were set and serious. Grim, even.

In the distance Clare could see that surrounding the settlement was a wall—a timber palisade of tall, sharpened stakes.
This must be Venta Icenorum
. The capital of the Iceni territory. She blinked, surprised that she’d remembered the name of Boudicca’s village—the Roman name, anyway. Details from Al’s info-dump sessions had actually lodged in her brain. Now
that
was a first.

Clare followed Comorra at a distance, moving as silently as she could and keeping to the shadows beneath the shaggy thatch overhangs of the scattered roundhouses. There were more of them than she’d expected. It was more like a town than a village. The houses ranged in size from large garden sheds to a huge structure with a soaring, conical peaked roof that looked as though it was some sort of great feast hall. As she darted from house to house, hiding in the shadows, Clare wondered what the dwellings looked like on the inside. She hadn’t been able to make out any details, peering through Comorra’s window, but she suspected that the squat little huts were probably full of ratty animal furs and straw and smoky fire pits. Suddenly it struck her that this might be the same village where she’d found herself earlier, in Llassar’s forge hut.

Clare slowed as she approached the edge of the crowd. Stragglers were still coming in and the last thing she wanted to do was accidentally bump into a stray Iceni warrior. Especially considering the fact that, beneath their flowing, checkered cloaks, all the men carried swords. Most of the women did, too—and they looked just as capable of wielding them.

As she crept closer to the gathering, Clare saw that it was one particular group of women who were the source of the hackle-raising, ululating cry that had frozen the blood in her veins. They stood stone still with their arms raised to the sky, heads back and mouths open, the sound of their frenzied keening like the very edge of madness.

At the centre of the gathering stood the commanding figure of Queen Boudicca. Her now-familiar crown of flame-coloured hair flowed down her back and shoulders like a shimmering cape, its waves capturing the light of dozens of flaring torches carried by the tall, proud men and women surrounding her. She stood beside a pile of stacked logs, intended, Clare thought, for a huge bonfire. Then she saw the body that was carried through the crowd on a bier and lifted up onto the top of the pile.

A swollen, sickly-looking moon shone down, casting the scene in a yellowy-blue pall. Clare gazed at the man who lay upon the funeral bier and felt her jaw drop open in shock and dismay. It was none other than the king. Boudicca’s husband. Comorra’s father. Clare wondered how he had died.

And then, in the next moment, she wondered whether
she
might expire in a similar fashion—perhaps on the point of a sword.

“Do not move,” said a voice in the darkness.

Clare turned slightly to see the handsome young warrior she’d come to know as Connal snarling at her, the blade of his naked weapon gleaming in the pale moonlight. He jabbed the sword at her, forcing her to step back. Clare’s shoulders jammed up against the earth-and-wicker outer wall of a house and she skittered sideways along its curving contour. When she suddenly came to a doorway she tripped over her own feet, tumbled backward through the leather flap that curtained the opening, and landed on a soft, thickly woven rug. Clare gasped and scrambled to her knees, trying to steady herself. By the light of a dozen flickering lamps she could see that the rug beneath her was intricate and colourful, a sophisticated piece of craftsmanship. Blinking up through the tangle of hair that curtained her face, she saw that the one-room roundhouse was elegantly furnished. A pair of low, backless couches faced each other across a central fire pit where the coals of a small, neatly banked fire glowed. On the far side of the room was a raised sleeping platform covered in cushions, a gleaming-white brushed sheepskin rug, and several tasselled woven throws. A pair of windows was set into the curving wall, covered in tacked-down leather curtains, and bunches of dried herbs hung from the rafter, perfuming the air of the hut with delicate, spicy fragrances. All in all, it was cozy and well-kept. Stylish even. A candidate for a feature spread in
Better Huts and Gardens
.

Clare took it all in during the few seconds she had before hot-body Druid-boy had her up off the floor and pinned flat to one of the couches with a sword at her jugular. Again.

“Aren’t you going to get tired of doing this every time you see me?” she asked in a hoarse rasp, fear constricting her throat.

“Perhaps I should just kill you and not have to worry about it.”

Not exactly the response Clare was looking for. Then again, if he was going to kill her outright he would have done that already. Maybe there was a level of respect—or fear—for whatever he thought she was. If so, she could use it to her advantage.

“That would be an overreaction on your part. An unnecessary one,” she said, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. For good measure, she added the old B-movie standard line, “I come in peace,” leaving out the
Take me to your leader
part. Prasutagus wasn’t taking appointments anymore, obviously, and she really didn’t want to be whisked off to Boudicca just then.

“You come in stealth. Again. During an occasion of grief.”

“Last time it was an occasion of celebration, wasn’t it?” Clare countered.

“Your kind are drawn to ritual.”

“Not really. I’ve never liked weddings or funerals and I only went to the school formal because I found a killer dress—”

The word “killer” was probably a poor choice, considering. The blade edge pressed harder against her throat and Clare felt a sharp pain followed by a trickle of blood seeping down toward her collarbone. She couldn’t control the whimper that escaped her lips.

“Please!” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “I’m not here to hurt anyone! Please let me go …”

The young man’s eyes narrowed and he stared at her intently for a long moment. Then he pushed himself away from the couch to stand before Clare, sword held at the ready should she try something. What that something could possibly be, she had no idea. Clare had never in her whole life felt so entirely helpless. A sword pointed at her in the past, a gun pointed at her in the present … it was maddening. It was crazy. How had things gotten to this point?

“Why are you here?” said Connal warily.

Clare sat up and pressed her hand to the wound on her throat. She could feel it was shallow—barely more than a scratch—but blood still seeped through her fingers, warm and sticky. “Isn’t that something you should ask a guest
before
you attack them?”

“Are you guest, or intruder?”

“I came to find Comorra.”

“That is what I was afraid of.”

“I’m a friend of hers!” Clare bristled at the flatly hostile expression on Connal’s face. She
had
actually come to think of herself as the Iceni princess’s friend.

“And so you came to pay your respects to her father, the king, as he lay upon his funeral pyre.” The skepticism was heavy in his voice. “Just as the Roman soldiers stand there even now, defiling our ritual, hovering like carrion crows to pick over the carcass.”

“I didn’t know the king was dead.”

“Did you not?”

“No.”

Connal eyed her with simmering suspicion. “You are not a spirit of this place.”

“How do you know?” Clare bluffed defiantly.

He laughed grimly and shook his head. “You remind me of the Roman girls I have seen in the governor’s villa, with their bright, airy garments and glittering beads and sandals. Tell me—did the conquerors bring their own sprites and spirits with them from their cursed land across the sea? Along with their soldiers?”

“What—wait a minute. You think I’m one of the bad guys?”

“I do not know what I think. I only know that I have never seen one of the Fair Folk of
this
land. And I am Druiddyn.”

“And I guess that makes you super special,” she said bitterly. “I thought you were supposed to be peaceful and smart. The guys with the brains—not the bullies. I guess I was misinformed.”

Yet Clare was actually starting to get the impression that, whatever else he might be, Connal wasn’t in fact the same kind of bully that, say, Stuart Morholt was. It didn’t seem as though he actually wanted to hurt her. Only that he was fiercely protective of his people. Of Comorra. Well … so was she. So there.

Clare stood—carefully, slowly—and moved past the young Druid to push aside the curtain at the door of the hut. Comorra stood on one side of her mother, weeping silently. On the queen’s other side stood Princess Tasca, sobbing unashamedly.

“His name was Prasutagus,” Connal said quietly from close behind her.

“I know.”

“He was a good man. May his shade find the peace he lost in his life in the Land of the Ever Young. And the honour he once had.”

“What do you mean ‘once had’? He lost it?”

“You see the men in the shadows under the tall oak?” Connal pointed past her to a group of five Roman officers in what looked like full ceremonial dress, armed to the teeth with weapons. “
They
are the reason that our king is dead.”

“Did they kill him?”

Connal hesitated, his face darkening. “We Iceni used to call him our eagle. He was so fierce and golden and we were more than proud to have him as our king. But when the Romans came, bearing eagles of their own so bright that the sun turned them to fire, the king’s spirit seemed to weaken. He had seen the other tribes go down to the Roman
spatha
and
gladius
. He had seen the mighty Caradoc of the Catuvellauni tribe to our west turn rebel. And then he saw that rebellion crushed, and Caradoc brought low and taken away across the sea in a ship. In chains. And so, when the time came and the Roman Emperor Claudius set out to tame the Iceni, the king folded his wings and sat upon his perch and let the emperor make of him a pet.” Connal’s frown deepened. “It broke him, I think. He just seemed to grow small and weak. It was not long before the fever took him …”

Connal’s voice drifted away and Clare turned to see his expression go stony with cold rage. She followed the line of his gaze and saw that the group of Roman officers was approaching Boudicca where she stood by the bier. Across the empty space, the head of the Roman representatives locked eyes with the queen for a long moment. Clare watched the queen’s knuckles grow white as she clenched her hand into a fist. Then the Roman spoke. From so far away Clare couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw Boudicca’s shoulders stiffen and the crowd around her shift uneasily.

“What’s going on?” Clare asked, her voice almost a whisper.

“I do not know …”

Suddenly Boudicca turned on her heel and stalked over to where the king lay. The crowd went utterly still as she reached up and, prying the ends open, slipped the great golden torc from off the king’s neck. Clare heard the sharp intake of Connal’s breath as she did so. Boudicca thrust the golden neck ring high into the air where it gleamed dully in the moon and torchlight. Then she strode toward the Romans and, with exaggerated gestures, offered it to the officer in charge.