The Eagle and the Raven (20 page)

“I understand,” she said bitterly, folding her arms tight to her breasts. “The men attack, and we defend.”

“Yes, that is so, this time.”

He went out quickly and Tallia waited, arms full of belts and trinkets, but her mistress continued to stand and stare at the doorway.

The tribes began to assemble and the sword-gathering began. Lords, chiefs, and freemen, farmers, blacksmiths, artists, metalworkers, swarmed over Camulodunon and spilled out into the woods and little fields between the town and the river. By day the forest rang with talk and laughter, and by night the countryside was dotted with the orange eyes of cooking fires. Caradoc had armed the peasants, but as unfree men they were not required to go to war. He gave them weapons only to defend themselves and their huts and farmsteads if the warriors did not come home. For a week the lords and chiefs held Council in the sweet, blossom-heavy air of spring, then they harnessed their chariots, yoked the oxen to the wains, and set out for the coast. The cups of farewell were shared, passing from hand to eager hand, and Caradoc embraced and kissed his wife in the soft, pearly dawn, while Togodumnus paced restlessly in a fever to be gone.

“Remember my instructions,” he told her. “If Rome wins through, tear out the gate and fill the hole with earth and stones. Destroy the bridge over the dyke. If the earthwalls are taken, ring the Great Hall with your women. Do not put the children together in any one hut, for the Romans will fire it. Drive them into the woods, send them west. Sacrifice to the Dagda while we are gone.”

She listened, a faint, tremulous smile on her lips. Neither of them had slept well. Caradoc had dreamed, terror waking him to sweat and anguish, but there was no comfort in the warm dimness, or in Llyn’s loud snores, and he could not sleep again. Eurgain had woken then and they had lain side by side holding each other, talking quietly until Fearachar came to rouse them.

Now she lifted mauve-shadowed eyes to his own. “Go in safety, walk in peace,” she whispered, and suddenly they clung together as if it were farewell, and time, feeling their love and bitter grief, faltered and stood still to watch them wrapped tightly in each other’s arms, holding the Raven of Panic at bay.

“Make haste, Caradoc!” Togodumnus called. “Already the chiefs are quarreling over who should have precedence on the march.” Caradoc pulled Eurgain’s warm arms from around his neck, smoothing down her hair with both wistful hands. Then he knelt and kissed his daughters, their big, solemn eyes fixed on his stern face. He hitched at his sword, took one last look at the huts of his town, empty now, cold and forlorn, and strode down to the gate.

For five days the singing, drinking, squabbling horde moved slowly across the countryside, while the apple trees burst forth into clouds of perfumed white blossoms and the trees opened suddenly, proudly, displaying the delicate freshness of their new green leaves to a low, admiring blue sky. They crossed the Thamus, rattling over the narrow wooden bridge, the water flowing slowly and peacefully below them, and the swifts and swallows looping and diving with high cries around them. Each night Caradoc sent out hunters who slipped quietly through the woods and brought back deer and rabbits. He worried constantly about food, for winter stocks were running dangerously low. He and the other lords had brought with them all the grain and salted meat and fish that the wains could carry, but already the wains rolled lighter and men’s bellies rumbled, never comfortably full. In another three months the new crops would be almost ready for harvest and the woods would be full of edible green things, but Caradoc, walking from campfire to campfire, watching the men wolf down their rations, wondered how many of them would return to their farmsteads and hill forts to celebrate Samain.

They pushed on, striking for the coast, following the old paths that wandered lazily over the gentle, wooded hills. They waited for low tide and forded the Medway, the chiefs splashing beside their chariots, the freemen goading the frightened oxen with whips and cries. And then at last Togodumnus and Caradoc, with the chiefs of the Catuvellauni, stood upon the white cliffs, with the warm wind coursing through their hair, and looked down at the sparkle of sun on foamy breakers and out to where the coasts of Gaul blurred, a thin gray line misted by distance and the damp hazes of spring.

The scouts had no news. The boats were ready on the beaches of the mainland and the provisions were stowed away, but under Plautius’s gray, cool eye the legions still drilled and marched, and the centurions moved among them with curses and blows. The tribes settled down to wait, pitching their little leather tents around the firepits. Gladys tied her sword to her long leg, hitched up her black cloak, and climbed down the cliff face to disappear for two days, meandering alone across the wet, cold sand, singing her melancholy songs of loneliness and magic, and the leather pouch that swung from her belt was soon full of shells and bits of driftwood. The hubbub of the seething host rose above her, but she did not hear it. She sat cross legged in the sand, looking down into warm, limpid pools and tasting the bitter salt on her white fingers.

Two more days went by, and idleness curdled in the restless chiefs like milk souring under a hot sun. They gambled and came to blows by night. They thieved and fought by day. Caradoc went among them angrily, sword drawn, berating, coaxing, swearing, and threatening while his brother laughed at him cynically and spent his time charging the lip of the cliff in his little chariot, cloak and hair flying behind him, flirting with death again and again.

Then one night a boat nudged the dark shore and a scout struggled up the white, crumbling face of the cliff, Gladys behind him. He came to Caradoc, Togodumnus, and the others and ate and drank slowly, with relish, while the circle of men watched him, and the tension heightened. Finally, when the air was fraught with bursting, silent questions, seeming about to explode, he wiped his mouth, belched, and sat back with a sigh. Gladys poured herself wine and sank down beside Caradoc, and the scout grinned cheekily at them all, his spirits reviving.

“Lord, they will not come,” he said. “Once more the soldiers are refusing to cross the water. Three of the legions do not know Plautius and will not trust him when he says that we are only men like themselves. There have been executions, but the mutiny is spreading. Plautius has sent to the emperor for help. Or advice.”

Togodumnus whooped, springing to his feet. “What did I tell you Caradoc, you fool! The soldiers have more sense than you. Now we can go home and attend to our unfinished business!”

Caradoc sat stunned, a running tide of exultation washing over him, but even as he looked up at Togodumnus the tide peaked and began to recede, and doubt crept in on its swift wake. He glanced at his sister. She had not moved. Her head was bent, her eyes on the cup held in both thin hands.

The chiefs were chattering excitedly among themselves, but Cinnamus and Caelte mirrored Gladys’s still thought, and Fearachar grunted contemptuously. “Only a dead Roman tells the truth,” he remarked to no one in particular.

Caradoc turned to the scout. “When did Plautius send to Rome? How long ago?”

“Seven days ago. In a week the emperor will be deliberating, and in another week Plautius will have his orders.”

“Orders!” Togodumnus shouted, “I laugh! A commander who runs bleating to his superiors because he cannot handle his men has lost the respect of all and faces a ruined career, let alone the loss of Albion. And I thought that this Plautius was a man full of authority and power.” He began to saunter away, but Caradoc called sharply, “Where are you going?”

“To order my wains packed and my tent struck,” Togodumnus shouted back over his shoulder. “Your stupidity is unexcelled, Caradoc.” Several of the chiefs rose and began to drift after Togodumnus and one of them, a great, bearded Durotrigan with black hair hanging to his waist, said, “He is right, your brother. Plautius faces disgrace for his failure. The Romans are finished as far as we are concerned.” He nodded his shaggy head and went away, lumbering like an old bear.

“It does not smell right,” Caradoc said to his men angrily. “It is too easy. I know, I know that they will come.”

Gladys answered him softly, a bleakness chilling her voice. “Of course they will come. Plautius is all we have heard, and more. He is a wily man, my friends. I think that he has acted very cleverly in this. He knows that we sit here on the cliffs, waiting for him, and he wants us to scatter. What better way than the rumor of mutiny and a helpless petition for aid to Caesar? He will come. The chiefs must be made to see.”

Caradoc rose, and his men rose with him. “Go quickly,” he said to them. “Talk to the chieftains. I will call a Council tonight.”

“Leave Togodumnus to me,” Gladys said. “I think he is past listening to you, Caradoc, but I will make him see sense.”

They parted, but already the creak of wheels split the night and angry voices cursed the sleepy, unwilling oxen.

The chiefs attended the Council grudgingly, sitting in the open around the fire, the shushing of the sea an ever present taunt in their ears. Caradoc spoke to them for an hour, striding up and down before them, explaining and cajoling, while Togodumnus sat silently between his chiefs, his head bowed on his scarlet chest, and dreamed of his brother’s head swinging impotently from the lintel of his doorpost. The foreign tribesmen did not bother to conceal their contempt for him, this dreamer, this hasty, loud mouthed Catuvellaunian wolf who had dragged them from calving and sowing to lead them after a lie. Many of them had begun to say that it had all been a trick to confuse them, and that before they could reach their territories the Catuvellauni would descend on them in some wild, wooded valley and wipe them out. But Caradoc’s desperate, inspired eloquence rang in their ears and they found themselves agreeing to wait for two more weeks.

The two nightmare weeks went by. The days were pleasantly warm and breezy and in the evenings the sky clouded over and a light, thin rain fell, angling over the cliffs. Gladys went back to the sands, and Caradoc took to sleeping under his wain with Cinnamus and his other chiefs ranged around it. The threats and drunken challenges grew, and he knew that if Plautius did not move promptly the host would break suddenly, and be dispersed. He wondered whether Plautius was waiting also, waiting for his spies to bring him word that his ruse had succeeded and the tribes of Albion had left the coast. His own scouts came to him every day with grim nays—there was no activity outside Gesioracum. He thought of his wife and his little ones now that his woods must surely be carpeted with knee-high bluebells. The girls would be running under the trees, arms laden with blooms, their high, excited voices echoing under the oaks, while Tallia kept an anxious watch for boar and wolf and Eurgain sat rigidly by the gate, waiting for news. News. The chieftains no longer gathered eagerly around him at the first sign of a scout boat, and even Togodumnus kept away from him, trailed by a bored, silent Llyn. Caradoc had forbidden the beaches to him, and he sulked and avoided his father, behaving like a spoiled, younger Togodumnus. Caradoc did not approve, but his mind was too full of anxiety to worry over Llyn’s growing attachment to his uncle.

The fourteenth day dawned, and before its light had turned from pink to strong yellow the chiefs began to leave. Caradoc did not try to stop them. He sat on a bluff, his sword beside him, Cinnamus, Caelte, and Vocorio crouched at his feet, and watched as the wains and chariots rumbled away and disappeared between the wooded hills. All morning their clamor reproached him, and by the late afternoon the countryside was silent but for the lonely, broken keening of the seagulls, the clean, salt-edged air smudged by the smoke of the dying fires.

Togodumnus was the last to go, and he walked to Caradoc, said curtly, “I am going back to Verulamium,” spun on his sandaled heel, and went away. I feel no shame, Caradoc thought stubbornly. They will come. But I cannot sit here with a few thousand freemen to face Plautius and his juggernaut. He saw Gladys walking toward him along the clifftop, her cloak over her arm and her dark hair whipping about her face, and he rose slowly, wearily, like an old man.

“Caelte, find Llyn and then get the wains packed and ready to move. Cinnamus, round up whatever scouts are left to us and tell them…” He paused. Tell them what? “Tell them to keep to their posts until I send them word, or until they bring me word that the Romans have come.”

Gladys approached him. “There is a storm over the mainland,” she said. “Far in the east the sea is hazed and it heaves without breaking.” She stepped closer so that Vocorio should not hear. “Caradoc, have you considered telling the omens?” Her skin smelt of seaweed. It was tanned to a deep, healthy brown and her eyes were clear as a summer night. “Many of the other chiefs did. They said that the signs were not good, but no one was able to tell them why. Have we a seer still, at Camulodunon?”

“He died, Gladys.” The answer came slackly. From somewhere close at hand Llyn’s shrill voice was protesting and Caelte remonstrating with humor in his voice. “I have considered such a thing, yes,” he finished, “but it is too late now. In any case, we would have to apply to the Master Druid on Mona for a new seer, and you know as well as I that the seers couch their pronouncements in such strange language that the sacrifice hardly seems worthwhile.”

“I can read the omens,” she said unexpectedly. “Let me try, Caradoc.”

He was too tired to be surprised. He sometimes wondered if there was anything Gladys did not know, and he did not doubt that she had absorbed some weird, incomprehensible second sight in her solitary commerce with the ocean. Like my Eurgain, he thought suddenly, remembering the hours she had spent sitting looking out her window, oblivious to all save the minute, nebulous shiftings of her own spirit. “No, Gladys,” he said. “We are going home. I need no omens to tell me what I know already.”

The Catuvellauni set out for Camulodunon leaving behind them a thousand black, ash-filled pits and many acres of trampled grass, as well as the hopes, fears, and broken dreams of a swift and devastating victory. They went slowly, savoring the growing, brash ebullience of a summer that promised to be hot and long, camping beside the paths, sprawling laxly around their fires in the deep, leaf-scented darkness. Caradoc no longer cared whether Plautius came or not. He was tired, and not even the imminent threat of Togodumnus’s war could rouse him from his lethargy.