The Eagle and the Raven (29 page)

The estuary was busy. Beyond the sodden marshes where the river dawdled out to linger before it trickled into the ocean, a camp had been set up, white tents and earthworks, and the bay was full of the slim ships of the newly formed Classis Britannica. Gladys could make out sailors leaning over the sides and enjoying the sun, and the gay standards and pennants of the ships ripped frantically in the onshore breeze. Their barge came to rest against a new, solid pier, and the sentries ran to make it fast, stiffening and saluting as Plautius and the officers got out, with Gladys following. Shouts and the clamor of unloading came from the beach, and an officious soldier approached Plautius, worry creasing his brown forehead, a slate in his hands. Plautius turned to Gladys. “Where do you want to go?” he asked, and she looked up to where the stark, bird-circled cliffs rose from the bay and gained height, their shoulders grass-covered and their feet planted among black rocks.

“Around that curve there is sand and pools and silence,” she said. “Let me walk there.”

He nodded. “Quaestor, see to the tally. I will come too.”

Gladys spread out her arms in pleading. “Oh sir, let me go alone,” she begged, but impatiently he brushed her off.

“What kind of a fool do you take me for?” he snapped as the quaestor took the slate, already preoccupied, his eyes on the mountains of sacks and boxes by the water. She turned away, Plautius moving behind her while the quaestor strode under the shadow of the ship.

The yells of the officers, the grunts of the perspiring soldiers, the crashes and thumps slowly faded. She took off her sandals and laid them on a rock, putting her cloak over them. Then she straightened and drew a long breath, and shook her head as the wind found her hair and sent it floating out behind her. The breakers boomed as they rolled toward her and collapsed in white fury almost at her bare feet. “Plautius, don’t be alarmed,” she called. “I am going to run!” She saw him nod, his face shaded under the helmet, then she pelted down the sand, her arms wide and her eyes squinting in the blinding glitter of sunlight on blue water. The curve of the bay narrowed but she did not slow. She turned in a shower of sand and careened back, her breath coming fast, her heart beating strongly, and a mad gaiety tingling in her fingers and hot, bare toes. Plautius watched her, amused, with his arms folded over his bronze breastplate, and she came up to him and stood, hands on knees, panting and laughing at him.

“Now I will walk!” she puffed. “How hot you look! Take off your helmet and your armor! You do not need defence from me. I have no knife!” He gestured to the top of the cliff. “I might be shot at from up there,” he protested, and she laughed at him again, her eyes slitted and her black hair whipping about her shoulders. He removed the helmet, unbuckled the breastplate and let it fall, and the hot wind ruffled his gray-sprinkled hair with dry fingers. She turned away and walked down to the water, squatting, catching a wave in both hands and raising it to her nose, putting her tongue into it, and rubbing wet palms over her face. He stood behind her looking down on the thin curve of her green-clad back, and the tangled, falling hair. She was all innocence today, making him feel worn and old, and a tenderness flooded him. He wanted to hold her in his arms like a mother cradling a wounded child, but she reached out to catch a piece of seaweed that went floating by and the sleeve of her tunic fell back. Her arm was scarred and pitted with dozens of white, puckered sword slashes, and once more he felt confusion.

She rose, and together they explored the beach. They stood ankle deep in the warm, translucent pools left by the tide. They teased the irritated crabs that vainly rose up on their silly legs and clicked at them with offended claws. They pried the mollusks loose from rocks festooned in gray, rotting weeds, and Plautius scraped out the juicy, strong-smelling meat, offering it to her on the point of his knife, smiling at her, and she found herself suddenly laughing over nothing like an idiot. Then, when the sun began to drop toward the cliffs and the light that streamed over the water no longer blinded them or made them sweat, they sat side by side, their feet buried in wet sand, and fell silent. The gulls wheeled above them, crying. The wind veered and began to gust from the summit of the cliffs, and down where they were there was a sudden lull. They watched as the sun behind them opened a wide, scarlet pathway, a water road leading to the dark blue, far horizon and their shadows mingled. Gladys looked out upon the ocean now slowly changing from bright blue to a somber, cool gray. Ah, freedom, freedom, she exulted, boundless wealth of my soul, and she turned her head to find him watching her. All at once freedom seemed to dwindle, shrink, and become contained in those crinkled eyes that held within them the color and mystery of the sea. She looked away quickly, but now the ocean only reflected his steady, gray gaze, and its depths flung back at her his thoughtful face. She sighed. What is freedom?

“I am grateful for this,” she said. “I do believe I am fully healed.”

“I am grateful, too,” he said simply. “I needed a few hours of peace.”

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked him, her eyes fixed on the horizon where evening clouds were forming, and he followed her gaze.

“There are several possibilities,” he said evenly. “I could send you to Rome as an important prisoner of war and you would be paraded through the streets in chains. I could keep you here as an encouragement to the remnants of your people to cooperate without fear. I could kill you and send your body to your brother.” She did not stir.

“And what do you
want
to do with me?” she pressed.

“I don’t know. You could be useful, but without your cooperation you are just a nuisance. I should send you off to Claudius and forget you.” Something in his voice warned her not to argue and she changed the subject.

“Where is Adminius?”

“Your brother? He has gone on a little tour with one of my cohorts in an effort to reach the chiefs and people still living in the woods. I also sent him to Cogidumnus and Boduocus. He is proof that Rome is not bent on the destruction of the tribes. He will return in two or three days. Do you want to see him?”

“Keep him away from me!” she exploded. “Slave! Stinking Roman pig! I disown him! I have only one brother!”

She had begun to tremble and her voice held such anguish that he was embarrassed. “Tell me about your brother,” he said quietly. “What kind of a man is he? You know I saw him once, standing on the earthwall, and something about him made me want very much to meet him.”

“Not kill him?” she snapped, her mouth twisted and her color still high. Then she loosened, drew up her knees, and began to studiously trickle the warm sand through her fingers. “I am sorry. I find my position extremely difficult, and moments such as this only serve to make my future look more dark. About Caradoc.” She smiled, a lingering, gentle smile of reminiscence and love. “He is upright, full of honor, a great warrior. Men count it a privilege even to be his enemy.”

“It is a privilege to me,” he said softly, and she turned to the lean, stern face.

“Is it? How can you, a Roman, understand that an enemy may be loved even while your sword cleaves him in two?

How can you, with your disgust for us and our barbarism, begin to know the meaning of a warrior’s honor?”

“I feel no disgust for you or your people,” he said. “I, too, live by honor. It is simply interpreted in a different way. I do my duty and am proud of it, and if my duty included atrocitas for the sake of my emperor, then I would order it. But Gladys, I prefer swift battles, and then a slow, peaceful transformation.”

“Well, you will not get it here!” she retorted.

“Why not?”

“Because the tribes value one thing above all others, and that is the one thing Rome can never promise, pay for, or bestow. Freedom. Freedom. You will never kill all resistance no matter how many years you squat here in Albion, let alone turn the warriors into Roman citizens apart from a few weaklings like Cogidumnus, because death is always preferable to slavery, and freedom is the jewel beyond all price.”

“How like a bird you are indeed,” he said. “A poor, struggling bird with wings cut and claws filed. I wish that I could set you free.”

“It is easy enough,” she answered lightly. “Open the door of the cage and let me go.”

“Where would you go?”

“Into the west. What difference can the detention of one aging, miserable freewoman make to the great Roman war effort?” She turned her face away to hide the beginnings of tears, so close to the surface after days of physical stress and mental torment. The sun finally sank, picking up its red skirts and hiding them behind the cloak of the cliffs. Twilight descended, a dim, warm shadow, and in a sky still tinted with melancholy light the first stars appeared, faint and pale.

“You underestimate your value,” he reminded her, tactfully ignoring her struggle to contain herself, and she shook her head emphatically, lifting the hem of her short tunic to dry her face.

Then she turned back to him. “My only value lay in Caradoc’s willingness to surrender to you, but I know he would never do that. Would you? He has the chance to go on. He will not give it up in exchange for seeing me again.” They stood then as if by unspoken agreement, and began to wander back to where her cloak and sandals and his helmet and breastplate lay, a black huddle on the rock. It seemed to him that he had shed them years ago. When they reached them Plautius took her cloak and laid it gently around her shoulders and she thanked him briefly, turning for a last look at the placid, star-silvered water and the empty sweep of rock-strewn beach. The ecstatic, sparkling child was gone. Plautius, a hand under her elbow, his eyes scanning the sharp profile as she looked back, felt the guarded dignity of a royal captive wrap her again. By the barge his officers waited, torches lit in their hands, and the aft light on the tall seagoing ship cast red ripples that danced on the water. He felt her move away from him, lifting her elbow from his grasp, and he realized that he had been gripping her too tightly for politeness. He adjusted his helmet.

“Lady,” he said as they neared the boat. “Will you have dinner with me and my staff tomorrow night in the Hall? I can promise you good conversation, a few jokes, and of course a change from a prisoner’s diet!”

“I do not wish to sit all evening and be stared at!” she retorted, but she was smiling, the silver at her throat glinting as her breast rose and fell.

“I will order ten lashes for the first man who raises his eyes to you!” he promised and she laughed suddenly, pitifully, the humor catching in her throat and turning to sadness, dimly aware of the new course her life was taking, a new thread waiting to twine about her. In the boat she sat far apart and silent, already fighting a future that promised only more sorrow.

Pudens himself came to fetch her when the broad blade of sunset still blooded the horizon. He was dressed in his toga, the white linen folding softly about his legs, and he bowed to her and offered his arm. She stepped from the hut, with Eurgain’s long blue tunic swishing about her. Her hair fell clean and shining, and her little remaining silver was polished and bright. Plautius, in his explorations, had come across one of Eurgain’s tiring boxes shoved under the bed, and in it had been a tunic and a thin silver circlet. He had sent them to Gladys in the morning and she had sat for a long time, fondling the cool, regal gown. It smelt of friendship and happiness, bouts on the practice ground, and drinking together in the Hall while Llyn chased his sisters and Caelte sang softly. She put it aside, determined not to wear it, but it lay on the bed all day, reproaching her as Eurgain herself would have done, and she paced before it, her eyes never leaving it. If she put it on she would be admitting something to herself and to Plautius, something unlooked for and unexpected that as yet she could not face. If she went to the Hall in her worn, war-torn green male tunic she would be saying something else, something that would take the fragile, delicate growth of a spring flower in the middle of her winter and crush it forever, leaving her frozen in the grip of her self-made isolation. In the end she stripped, washing in the hot water the guard brought to her. Then she slipped Eurgain’s tunic on, tying it with her own plain leather belt, and setting the circlet on her brow. You are a fool, she told herself. You are more crazy than Tog ever was. She placed a hand on Pudens’s arm and walked slowly to the Hall.

Candlelight and firelight spilled out to meet her, and in the doorway Plautius stood waiting to receive her, imposing and foreign to her eyes in his snowy toga bordered with senatorial purple. The hand he offered to her was heavily ringed and his wrists were covered by embossed arm bands of gold. He inclined his head. “I will not insult you, Lady, by welcoming you to your own Hall,” he said. “Let me rather welcome you to the company of my friends and my table. It occurred to me in the night that perhaps my invitation would seem like a new ploy to gain your support. What I could not win by coercion I might succeed to by a kinder, more devious route, eh?” He smiled. “If I gave you that impression I apologize, and deny any such intent.” She took his metaled wrist, thinking how grossly, how finally Tog and Caradoc and all the others had underestimated the Roman mind. There had to be more to men that made them masters of the world than the unexcelled ability to wage war, and she understood how Plautius had come to be a senator, a general, a much-loved and respected man. She swallowed. Forgive me, my brother, she thought. Forgive me, Cunobelin, true father, forgive, forgive, members of my Council. She spoke slowly, her words almost drowned by the laughter that gusted from the Hall and the rattle of dishes and cups.

“Welcome to this Hall,” she said, her grip firm. “May your stay here be one of rest, and peace.” For a long time he studied her face, seeing a proud submission there, the promise of a gift, and he was profoundly moved. He knew that the words were not for Rome but for him, yet in declaring him formally safe from her she was also facing the final ostracism of her tribe. He slid his hand back and took her fingers in his own, finding them warm and firm.