The Eagle and the Raven (13 page)

Cunobelin spoke, his voice a cracked, almost incoherent rumble, his breath a cloud of foul odor. “Kill yourself, die with pride you say to me, my son, with the callous ease of youth, you who have killed but not faced an enemy who will not be turned aside. I can wrench no hostage from the darkness that waits for me, and he comes for me without pity, the Chieftain of the Night.” His head dropped toward his massive chest but he lifted it again with a monumental effort, and the company hung breathless, watching the final disintegration of a once mighty man.

“One of you,” he shouted, searching the dimness for the faces of his sons, “one of you will pick up my cloak, and wear the torc of ricon, and then beware! For death will stalk you too, even if you live in pride and with contempt for him as I have done. Greedy and pitiless brutes that you are, come then, and slay me!” He fumbled at his belt, trying to draw his sword, but no one moved.

Caradoc stood rooted in a terrible paralysis that gummed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and turned his limbs to stone. He felt a hand steal into his own. It was Eurgain, white and shocked. “Do something, Caradoc,” she whispered. “Don’t let his memory be sullied by this awful madness,” but still he could do nothing and Cunobelin began to cry soundlessly, his hand falling from his waist. All at once he lunged at them and Cinnamus drew his sword with a ringing clatter, but the old man rushed past them, staggering out the door. Gladys hurried after him, calling his name, and Cathbad ran also. Cinnamus sheathed his sword, Togodumnus made for the door, and then suddenly the whole company surged into the night. Still no one broke the silence. Caradoc, with Cinnamus, Sholto, Vocorio, and Caelte, pushed his way to the front and pelted after Gladys, heedless of the cold wind, the clear, star-dusted sky. They could hear Cunobelin shouting somewhere beyond the last circle, and Gladys was still calling, a note of pleading and fear in her voice. They ran, their feet falling lightly on the frost-hard ground, and they found Gladys leaning against the wall of the stable.

“He’s gone,” she managed. “Taken Brutus and his horse.” Caradoc made as if to plunge into the stable, but Togodumnus pulled him back. “Let him go, Caradoc,” he said urgently. “You heard how he spoke to us. It’s you and me, now, and Adminius. Let the old fool go!” With an oath and an unthinking savagery, Caradoc wrenched himself free and sent his brother spinning.

“This is not the way!” he shouted. “To your horse, Tog!” The stable servant, under Gladys’s shouted command, was already leading out two horses and Caradoc tore the reins from his grip and leaped up. “Move, Tog, move!” he hissed, his eyes already on the gate standing open, and Togodumnus reluctantly swung himself onto the beast’s back, aware suddenly of the people who clustered around them. Eurgain stood beside Gladys. She was cloakless and shivering, but she seemed not to notice, and Adminius stood there also, his arms folded across his broad chest. He had not gone for a horse, and Caradoc, already thundering toward the gate, knew that his older brother would presently walk back up the hill to his own comfortable hut, drink some more, and calmly await any news. He jumped to the ground, led his horse quickly down the steep path and across the dyke, mounted again, conscious of Togodumnus behind him, and together they whipped at their beasts and galloped toward the black smudge of the wood.

For two hours they hunted, impeded in their tracking by the night. While Togodumnus whistled for Brutus, Caradoc often got down and knelt on the crisp grass, searching for the hoofmarks of Cunobelin’s mount, but the frost was hard and the ground frozen. There were tracks but they were old, made when the mud was thick and soft, and then iced into iron-hard pits. He learned nothing but he and Tog did not turn back, riding ever deeper into the forest that closed about them in the cold solitude of early winter. At last they drew rein and sat looking at each other, baffled.

“Perhaps he did not come this way,” Togodumnus offered. “He may have gone east to the river, and from there down to the sea.”

But Caradoc shook his head briefly, thinking. He was sure that Cunobelin had made for the woods in the mindless flight of a dying beast, seeking without reason a dark hole in which to crawl and suffer alone. If they gave up now his father might never be found, and if they went back to Camulodunon and waited for Cunobelin’s horse to come home in daylight the task would be impossible. “We’ll just have to stay here and listen for the horse,” he said reluctantly. “Are you cold, Tog? We could light…” But just then Togodumnus flung back his head, making an impatient gesture with his hand and Caradoc fell silent. They sat uneasily, craning their ears, and far away they heard it, the whining.

“This way!” Togodumnus said, and they set off with no path to follow, dismounting and leading their horses, moving quietly through the thick tangle of dead briars and trailing vines that hung motionless in their way. The low, bewildered whining grew louder. Brutus heard them coming and ran to meet them, his tail between his legs and his half-severed ear flopping. They quickly tethered the horses and drew their swords as if by unspoken, tacit agreement, why they did not know. There was a growing atmosphere of danger, a strange new coldness reaching to wrap them in its spell, and they kept together while Brutus went and sat by the horses and would not come when Togodumnus called him softly.

Then they saw him. Caradoc caught a pale glimmer on the ground, and with an exclamation he ran forward and Togodumnus followed, the sword held tight in his grasp. Cunobelin lay huddled against the trunk of an oak, his head bent below one shoulder and his legs flung out before him. As his sons bent over him, the faintest whisper ran through the naked branches high above, a half-mocking, half-sorrowful sigh of wind, and in the strengthening moonlight the black bars of shadow passed over his face, swaying back and forth, but the eyes did not move. They only stared up at the pair, empty and poignantly defenceless, bereft of all the intricately woven cloaks of deceit, of plot and counterplot, that had long veiled them, and the gray hair had settled into the long grasses. “His neck is broken,” Togodumnus said. “Look at the trail he left behind him.”

Caradoc peered into the gloom ahead, seeing the branches snapped and hanging drunkenly onto the forest floor, the clumps of bramble violently cloven through, and he looked down on the loose, still form, marveling. “What a ride! His horse must have stumbled, or thrown him, and he must have died instantly. We had better get him home, Tog. We’ll put him on my horse and I’ll ride behind you.” They hesitated for a moment, not yet willing to lay hands on him, not willing, in the very helplessness of his heavy body, to admit an ending. But they were tired and cold and they knew that the rest of the kin would be congregated in the Great Hall, hanging about the fire, waiting for news. Finally Caradoc bent and took Cunobelin gently under the shoulders, and Togodumnus wrapped his strong arms about the thighs that weighed like two chunks of stone. Together they staggered to the horses with their burden, their sinews cracking and their breath puffing into white clouds around their heads. Somehow they raised him, laying him across the horse’s broad, warm back. His head had not moved, so sudden and complete had been the neck’s shattering. Then Caradoc wearily eased himself up behind his brother and they set off slowly, and Brutus padded dejectedly by his master’s dangling heel.

They walked the horses right to the door of the Hall and then dismounted, and Gladys came running out, white and distressed. When she saw their burden she stopped, shock taking all expression from her thin face, but Caradoc went to her and spoke quietly.

“No, Gladys, we did not find him in the woods and slay him as he wandered, though we would have done so if necessary, you know that. He had a fall and broke his neck. It was not the most honorable end for him, but better than many.” She seemed to relax then, and she sighed, going to the body and putting a hand gently on the bloodied head. Behind her the members of the tuath drifted, and Caradoc sensed relief, not sorrow. Cunobelin had outlived his tribal value, and though they would remember him with respect and even awe, and listen time and again to the songs and poems of his reign, they were glad that new blood would lead them and a new era was beginning. Togodumnus walked straight into the Hall, his thoughts already on fire and wine, but Gladys, Caradoc, and Eurgain paced beside the horse as it carried Cunobelin to the guest hut, and three of Cunobelin’s chiefs went with them to see to the body. It would be washed and dressed in gold-embroidered tunic and breeches. The hair would be combed and his helm set upon his head, and his sword placed in his hand. Gladys left them, and Eurgain and Caradoc wended their way slowly to their little house. Llyn hovered at the door, his shining head haloed in the glow of the light behind him, and when he saw his father he ran down the hill to meet him.

“Father, what has happened!? Is Cunobelin found?”

Caradoc, obeying some instinct that bent him with a need to hold his son, went down and kissed and enfolded him, feeling the heat of the strong young body, the thick hot blood, the beating of the healthy heart. “He’s dead, Llyn. He galloped into the forest, and the goddess took him. It was a right and proper death.”

“Oh.” Llyn shrugged his father off and turned back to the door. “He would rather have died in battle, I think, but he didn’t have the strength. He waited too long. Well, I will go to bed.” He yawned until his jaw cracked, pushed back the doorskins, and slid into his bed. Caradoc and Eurgain followed, The room was warm and dimly lit, full of the soft sounds of sleeping children. Llyn murmured a good night to them, already set to plunge into his dreams of hunting and rabbit snaring, and the little girls stirred, their faces flushed and loose. Caradoc put wood on their fire, then he and Eurgain slipped into the adjoining room where the curtain was drawn back from their big bed and the flames of their own fire flickered restlessly, nudged by the draft from Eurgain’s window, now tacked tightly shut. Caradoc sank onto a chair and leaned back, closing his eyes, and Eurgain quietly removed his cloak, took the torc carefully from his neck, and slipped the boots from his damp feet. She reached for his bracelets but he caught her wrist, pulling her down onto his knee, and for a while they sat without moving, arms about each other, his chin on the top of her dark gold, warm-smelling head. The night was silent. Far away they heard an owl hoot twice and Eurgain fancied that she caught the echo of a wolf howl, so distant that it might have come from another world where Cunobelin walked, young and free once more.

She stirred but did not leave her husband’s encircling arms. “What happens now?” she asked. “What will the Council do, Caradoc? Will they elect Adminius?” She was uneasy, and she sensed that her question had also awakened a disquiet in Caradoc. He tightened his hold on her and she felt him shake his head.

“I don’t know. Adminius is very sure of the vote, and for a long time he has been strutting about like a ricon already, but if I were a chief I would think twice before laying my sword at his feet.”

“Why?”

“He’s too much of a thinker, Eurgain, and not enough of a fighter. Besides, he spends too much time with the traders.”

She sat up and he released her. “What do you fear? That Adminius will do more for Rome than send hides and slaves and dogs?”

“Perhaps. And the chiefs want war. They are restless and quarrelsome. They will vote for Tog.”

“No!” She got off his knee and stood looking down on him, a rush of love and protective jealousy filling her. The square face framed in dark hair, the warm, smiling mouth, the brown, steady eyes, she knew him so well, better, she thought, than he knew himself, and she found it hard to believe that none of the hints and whispers rife in the tuath had reached his ears. She began to undress slowly, dropping her anklets and circlet on the floor by the bed, pulling her blue tunic over her head, and loosening her hair. He watched her with satisfaction, waiting for her to speak again. She always took her time, his Eurgain. She was never in a hurry, and her words were always worth waiting for. She sat on her stool, holding out the comb, and he got up and took it from her, and drew it through the heavy tresses with long, slow strokes, and she closed her eyes and smiled. “How pig-headed you are, Caradoc,” she said. “What do you think of all the time?” She opened her eyes and took up the bronze mirror, holding it so that she could see his face as he worked. “The whole tuath is divided into factions. Some favor Tog, and a few Adminius, but most of the chiefs are declaring that they will vote for you.” His hands were stilled and his eyes met hers in the mirror, then he resumed his slow combing. The hair under his fingers was gleaming in the firelight and he lifted it free and sifted it thoughtfully.

“If I am elected Tog will fight me,” he said, “and no matter what, I will refuse to kill him. Adminius will not fight. He will immediately begin to plot and make trouble. What of Gladys? Her claim is just as strong as mine.” He went on combing though the hair fell straight and tangle-free, feeling her calm strength flow toward him, and presently she tugged her head away and put down the mirror, swiveling to face him, placing her hands in his. The comb slid to the skins.

“They will not elect Gladys while there are men in the kin to take the ricon’s torc,” she said, “you know that, Caradoc. I think you ought to prepare for a stormy Council meeting.” He began to undress and she went to the bed and got under the covers, lying on her side with her head pillowed on one arm. Then he came to her swiftly and she held back the blankets for him. In the other room Llyn began to snore, and little Gladys cried out in her sleep.

Caradoc lay on his back with an arm around her and she snuggled into his shoulder. He turned and kissed her forehead, but they lay with eyes open, their thoughts seeking the other’s, meeting, meshing. At last she whispered, “Caradoc, there is a way of compromise.”

“I know,” he said shortly, and long after she had relaxed against him, her slow breaths warming his chest, he gazed into the darkness of the curtains and pondered.

The next day passed slowly. Caradoc took some of his chiefs and visited his breeding stock to discuss the coming season with Alan. Cinnamus, Vocorio, and Mocuxsoma went to the river to gossip with the traders and Llyn went with them, streaking up and down the bank, climbing on and off the barges while the men sat and talked desultorily, exchanging the news and watching the water glide by. Eurgain and Tallia took the little girls and went riding, for though the rain clouds had come in the night to hang black and thick over the town, the rain held off and the day had warmed. Togodumnus and Adminius spent the time in Adminius’s hut counting boars’ teeth, laughing over old raids, drinking beer, and watching each other. Their minds were far from hunting or stealing, and their eyes tried to ask the questions that would uncover a new hostility in each other as if they were afraid of plain speech. Only Gladys sat outside the hut where Cunobelin’s body lay guarded by his hoary chiefs. Her knees were drawn up under her black cloak, her chin was on her knees, and her eyes remained blank while her mind seethed with questions and propositions, exploring one avenue the future might take after another. She found herself longing for a seer and a Druid, the one to tell the omens and set her fears at rest, and the other to take charge of the Council. But she knew that the Great Hall would be full of inquisitive Romans, traders and her father’s own craftsmen, all wanting to hear what their future would be, and no Druid dared cross the country of the Catuvellauni unless he was acting as guide for some chief. Down on the flat land before the gate, beside the line of barrows where his ancestors rested, Cunobelin’s funeral pyre grew, and the day wore on.