The Eagle and the Raven (47 page)

She turned and kissed the hot lips, her heart liquid with memories, and he sighed. She felt his body relax against hers, a body so well-known to her, an old, comfortable habit, and she turned on her side away from him, pillowing her face against the palm of her hand and gazing into the quiet, firelit dimness. They had been together for eight years now, through times of disillusionment and despair, great fear, and moments of fragile joy. First love had turned to deep affection. There had been a sweetness about him, a gentleness that had attracted the restless, domineering spirit in her, and though her father had strongly disapproved she had married him. She discovered very soon that under the quiet, mild exterior lay a stubborn will as strong as her own, and all her efforts to rule through him were useless. For the Council elected him ricon, not her, and in spite of her ravings he had quietly given them the security they had wanted. Sometimes she hated him for his refusal to be drawn into the arguments she continually threw at him, when he would answer her with soft words and a noncommittal smile. But he had kept her respect because of it, though he was fast becoming a civilized, genteel figurehead, malleable under the Roman hands that manipulated the tuath behind his thick blond hair and wide, slow smiles. She goaded him frantically, picking away at his dauntless, invincible sureness, beating him with rude words and sometimes even threats, but he would not be roused or driven. He loved his people. He loved the new security that had come with Rome. And he loved her, amused, not offended, by her actions. She was a child to him, tantrum-throwing and spoiled, only daughter of an old madman, and he took her too lightly. The swift uprising of some of his chiefs had shaken him, but not for long. He blamed the rebel of the west, not his wife.

Boudicca felt sleep draw away from her, though she willed it peremptorily to come. She could not still her mind. She had lied at dinner tonight when she said that she had seen Caradoc once, for she had seen him again, three years ago, when Claudius’s beautiful white marble temple had been finished and the client lords and chiefs had come from every corner of the province to take part in the dedication.

Some came unwillingly, like Boudicca herself, for though no pressure had been placed on the tribes it was very clear that their rulers were expected to attend. Some came happily, greedily, like that Brigantian whore Aricia, dragging her miserable husband behind her as she went from celebration to celebration in the streets and houses of Camulodunon. No, it was Colchester now, respectable, bustling Colchester, a town where Rome ruled sunnily and cheerily by day but the ghosts of the mighty hillfort came out by night and drifted in the empty streets, their swords pale under the moon, their mouths and hollow eyes wide with reproach and misery. Prasutugas and Boudicca had stood with the others in the temple, looking with awe at the golden statue of the emperor wreathed in suffocating incense. Plautius had been there, his ascetic face already closed with thoughts of his coming voyage home, his sturdy, arrogant staff ranked behind him.

The rites seemed foolish and unintelligible to the tribesmen, who whispered and shuffled as the hours crawled interminably by, and Boudicca filed out into brilliant sunlight with a tired relief. A curious crowd had gathered at the foot of the wide, dazzling steps—servants and beggars, artists, peddlers and traveling bards come to watch the solemnities and to fleece the visitors if they had the chance, and Boudicca, looking down at them, was filled with an angry shame. No member of any tuath had ever held honor so lightly before Rome came, but now men who could work preferred to beg, and the artists forgot that their calling was noble and became imitators instead of creators, charging exorbitant sums for the rubbish they churned out with one eye closed.

She held back her sun-fired hair with one hand and prepared to descend the steps, and then she saw him. She was instantly certain that it was he. He was dressed in a shabby brown tunic, belted and covered by an equally disreputable cloak. Its hood was up, half-covering his thin face, but she could not mistake the eyes, and with the shock of it her feet stumbled and she would have fallen if Prasutugas had not caught her with his healthy arm. She moved on down the steps, drawing nearer to him, and he did not move. The crowd began to jostle and she was forced to pause. She lifted her eyes to meet him. A spark of fear glowed and died in his eyes as he saw that she had recognized him, then he pushed back the hood a little and smiled disdainfully, hatefully. She was rooted to the step by that emaciated face. She tried with all her will to put into her eyes a little comfort, to say you are not alone, but he saw only the beautiful, pampered wife of the Romanized Prasutugas and with unutterable contempt he spat deliberately on the ground. She recoiled, shocked, and behind her Prasutugas nudged her.

“Move on!” he said. “Plautius is coming.” The governor emerged from the columned shadows at the top of the steps, his tall, black-clad Catuvellaunian lover beside him, and for the last time Boudicca looked into the face of Caradoc. He was no longer watching her. His glance flew to his sister, faltered, then abruptly he turned and was swallowed up by the shouting, pushing people.

The shame of that encounter still burned and Boudicca turned over. Prasutugas lifted his arm sleepily and she snuggled into his shoulder. You must have forgiven me by now, Arviragus, she thought. You know how many of your spies I have protected in secret, how many weapons I hid from the hunting centurions, how many sacrifices I perform alone, no one but Andrasta and I in the hidden grove. You must think better of me than you think of the black Brigantian witch.

Aricia had gloried in her few days at Colchester, secure in the favor of the governor, and Boudicca smiled to herself in satisfaction when she thought of Brigantia’s troubles now.

Venutius was a tormented man. Two years ago he had repudiated his wife, beaten her lover to a bloody pulp, and fled with his chiefs into the west. For three months he had fought beside Caradoc, but his resolve was short-lived. He was like a man dying of thirst in the desert and she the mirage of cool, endless waters flowing just out of reach. He went back to her and Caradoc had understood, but Venutius had retained enough of his pride not to go crawling. His chiefs had surrounded her hillfort, she had impudently sent her henchmen out to fight, and an irritated Scapula had had to send her two detachments of cavalry and a century of precious legionaries before Venutius gave in. He had sent them both stern warnings but his thoughts were tangled around the treacherous passes of the western mountains and the man who crouched there, weaving brilliant strategies and waiting for him. When a wary peace descended on Brigantia once more he had forgotten Aricia. She and Venutius had been reconciled and the maimed lover was dismissed. Passion had crackled into new life between them but they had nothing in common save the blind cravings of their bodies, and soon the tuath had resounded once more to the curses and recriminations of a disorderly house.

Boudicca pitied Venutius. He was an honorable man, loving his rapacious and complex wife with the same singlemindedness he brought to his gods and his people. Although he snarled and hurt he could not cut himself free from the net she cast around him with such consummate skill. She needed him. The people still loved and respected him and she doled attention out to him in doses just large enough to keep him hanging to her cloak when her tribesmen grew restive under Rome’s yoke. But as she rose higher in Rome’s favor, holding as she did the vast tracts of country between the tuaths hostile to Rome and thus saving the expense of untold manpower in patrolling the well-nigh unpatrollable border, her native animal caution waned. Her infidelities were notorious, even remarked upon in the dispatches to the emperor. Her love of luxury ate at her. Yet Venutius stayed by her, conscious of a deep well of insecurity within her, turning aside her insults and sparse endearments on the shield of his love for her. As Scapula gradually mobilized the forces of the whole of the lowlands, his conscience gave him no rest. Caradoc needed him but he was powerless, a puppet without volition, and the cries of his beleaguered countrymen went unheeded.

Boudicca dozed. Outside, the rain stopped. The Roman sentries paced quietly, bored and tired. Under the marshes spring stirred, and the surf broke monotonously upon the empty Icenian beaches.

Chapter Twenty-One

L
LYN
heard them coming first and he dropped to the ground, pressing his ear flat against the grass and closing his eyes. Caradoc waved his men to silence and stood looking down on his son, his arms loose along the rim of his battered shield. They were all tired. The morning was fresh and clear, and the sun climbed slowly in a blue spring sky, but they had spent the night lying high above the narrow path that wound from the fords and bit deep into Madoc’s northern reaches, waiting for the Twentieth Legion. It had come quietly, just after midnight, moonlight glinting from the iron helmets, and the horses’ hoofs muffled on the soft earth. Caradoc and his band had sprung from the trees, leaping upon the advance patrol of auxiliaries and archers and killing swiftly before the main body of the legion came into view. The tussle was fierce though the archers had not had time to draw bow, and the grunts and soft cries soon faded as the warriors melted once more into the night-hung trees, leaving the path deserted except for the bodies that sprawled loosely, stripped of their sword and armor.

Caradoc had allowed himself a grin of satisfaction as he loped beside the river, his men speeding silently behind him. He could imagine Scapula’s face when he was told of the annihilation of his advance guard—rage held tightly in check, the red flooding of the rugged face, the renewed, sour griping of a stomach that contracted in pain every time the rebel leader’s name was mentioned.

The war band had settled for another ambush some miles upstream, where trees clung to the sides of broken scree and overhung the path. They wriggled deep into the brush and kept sleep at bay with difficulty. Caradoc had spent the time of waiting with a busy mind, thinking of Emrys, Gervase, and Sine now also lying in some lonely high place, waiting even as he waited, far to the north. For Scapula was beginning his last and greatest effort, and all the west watched, feeling the hunters come. Caradoc knew that slowly but surely the west was slipping through his fingers. Madoc and the Silures had been forced further inland, steadily but irrevocably, away from their coast and their river valleys, fighting night and day, winter and summer, but giving back month by month. An encampment of the Second now lay where Madoc’s town had once been. He had long since withdrawn from it, running to the hills before the dogged swords of the coastal squadrons and the naves longae, which had landed troops at the mouth of his valley. Now his people, men, women, and children, moved back and forth over the mountains with Caradoc’s armies.

The Silures had suffered. With the ordering of a pitiless atrocitas they were hunted like animals, and often soldiers who became frustrated in their efforts to come to grips with an elusive, ephemeral enemy slaughtered the stragglers instead. Many of the Silurian children lay unburied under the forest’s spreading arms, and the mothers who had ringed them in defence left their bones beside them. Eurgain and Vida with their war band guarded the flanks of each exodus, and the young women under them hardened swiftly to callousness. The sacrifices of each year were no longer slaves or criminal freemen.

Eurgain and her sword-women provided Roman captives and stood coldly by while the Druids chanted and Madoc wielded the sacred knife. Blood was cheap. It flowed without cease and Eurgain, looking back to the first night of Samain she had spent among the Silures, laughed now at the unease she had felt then. They were inured to death, all of them. Death was no longer a matter of honor or sorrow. One body was like another. The only importance lay in how many and who. Even Llyn gave no more thought to the men he slew than he did to the freewomen he made love to, women who went willingly into the strong young arms of the arviragus’s son. Survival was all that counted, and survival meant killing. Only Caelte seemed unchanged, holding to his sunny, gentle world of music and poetry, singing all the old songs to himself and the forest, for Caradoc no longer called for the lays of his youth, and the songs sung around the campfires were all of death, and the freedom to come.

Now Llyn got up. “Perhaps two hundred men, with the wains, a mile away,” he said crisply. “They are very late. I wonder why?”

Caradoc hitched his cloak impatiently, his eyes on his son’s face. At sixteen, the soul of Togodumnus looked out from the brown, darting eyes, and the swift-sweeping, clean bones and cleft chin were all his uncle’s. But Llyn had his father’s cool ability to command without Togodumnus’s impulsiveness, and the thin mouth was Cunobelin’s, cruel and cunning. Women were drawn to him as they had been to Togodumnus, and like Togodumnus, Llyn did not allow them to become an enervating preoccupation. Caradoc, remembering his agonizing over the dishonoring of himself with Aricia, marveled sadly at Llyn’s callous disregard for his conquests. But the times had changed, and honor now meant only the number of Roman heads one swung from the trees. There were no longer any youths among the western tribes. There were only warriors, or children.

“It does not matter,” he replied brusquely. “They play into our hands. Off the path!” he called back, and the war band scrambled up the slope and disappeared under the trees. Caradoc and Llyn followed, and Cinnamus came and worked himself down beside them, digging deep into the leaf mold. Long ago Caradoc had forbidden the wearing of bright colors, and now the brown and gray cloaks of his men and women blended with the forest’s subtle shades.

“Eurgain?” he snapped, and Cinnamus turned cool green eyes upon him.

“She and Vida are hidden farther along, to finish off any that escape us.” He lay quietly for a moment, then he said, “Lord, we must leave this country. This is our fourth ambush in a week and we have lost too many men. If we wait for the Twentieth to close with the Fourteenth we will be encircled.”

“I know. But I hate to do it, Cin. If we go north we leave the Silurian territory to Scapula, and we may never be able to get it back.”

“Emrys is holding them well,” Llyn interposed, “even though the Deceangli are well-nigh finished. We can afford another season here Cin.”

But Cinnamus objected vehemently. “If we are cut off we must die. Let us join forces with Emrys and fight in mountains that Scapula cannot penetrate. Mother! I have no liking for the Ordovices, but at least they still command their territory untouched and, besides, there are the passes there, out of the west and into Cornovii country and Brigantia beyond. If things go ill we can always demand immunity from Venutius.”

“He is not reliable,” Caradoc said. “If we wanted to fight from Brigantia we would have to kill Aricia first.” A thrill went through him as he said the words, and Cinnamus snorted.

“A good idea, Arviragus! I wish you had ordered the spies to kill her a long time ago!”

“Peace!” Llyn hissed suddenly, head uplifted. “They are coming!”

All eyes swiveled to the road. The bulk of the legion had passed an hour before under the hostile eyes of the war band, winding like an articulated, metal serpent into the dawn. The cavalry and few advance legionaries were followed by metatores and their equipment, then the men who cleared the path of obstructions that were often a prelude to engagement, the general and his staff with their mounted escort, more cavalry, the mules dragging the siege machines, officers, and the aquila sparking in the early light and guarded by its men. Then came the monotonous passing of the soldiers six abreast flanked by the centurions, rank after rank pouring into the west. But the baggage train and the rear guard of auxiliaries and soldiers had not come, and Caradoc was seizing the opportunity to take the grain. Food was always short and now, with the new offensive, the Romans held many of the valleys where the crops had been. Caradoc had ordered the Silurian fields and their precious crops burned and his command had been obeyed without emotion, even though the peasants knew that when winter came they would starve. They had ignited their little fields and vanished into the hills, and Caradoc added the burden of their deaths to the already crushing weight of his responsibility.

“Swords out,” he ordered now, and the word was passed. They lay still, watching the vacant bend fill with the uneasy, lumbering vanguard. The wains were overloaded and the oxen strained, the men guarding them whipping at them futilely, the cavalry escort ringing them. The eyes of the perspiring soldiers flicked back and forth between the steep, brush-choked banks. They were afraid, Caradoc could see it. So much the better. He tensed and the eyes of his men turned to him but still he did not give the word, and the first of the wains reached the farther edge of the bend just as the last of the legionaries marched into view. Only then, when he saw that there were no more to come, did he jump to his feet, swinging the sword above his head. “Freedom!” he shouted, his voice as full and sudden as a summer thunderbolt, and the men rose with him and threw themselves forward, taking up his cry. “Freedom!” they called. “Freedom!” and the soldiers below scrambled to form fighting ranks, their own terror hampering the officers from bringing a swift order.

“Wains, Llyn!” Caradoc shouted, then he, Madoc, and Cinnamus were swallowed up in the melee. No quarter was ever given on these occasions by the tribesmen, and the soldiers knew it. They swung their shields forward and closed quickly, their short, lethal swords stabbing. Long ago the officers had given up any idea of mercy and it no longer mattered to them whether they faced the fury of the ragged men or the shrieking, wild-haired women. If they hesitated they were dead men, and they battled stubbornly to come together in compact phalanxes while Caradoc and his men struggled to keep them apart. Romans could not fight well as individuals, and Caradoc had had many successes by surprising and scattering. But this force was large, nearly two hundred legionaries, and the chiefs paid dearly for the grain that Llyn and his followers were calmly unloading from the wains, tossing the sacks to eager hands above on the bank. Beside him, Caradoc could hear Cinnamus’s oaths as he laid about him, and Madoc was grunting and squealing like an attacking boar. For many minutes the issue was undecided, each side swaying back and forth, then Caradoc began to tire. The wains were empty and by now the grain was on its way to their camp hidden deep and high in the forest. He spotted his son, shieldless, dancing about a cavalry trooper who leaned down in a vain effort to reach the flashing limbs. Llyn held a knife in each hand. As the Roman’s arm went out Llyn leaped aside, yelling “Now!” and one of his friends jumped onto the horse’s rump, jerked the man’s head back, and drove his knife deep into the exposed throat. It was a ploy that Llyn had painstakingly taught to his young warriors, and it always worked.

“Llyn!” Caradoc screamed above the din. “The women!” Llyn put a knife in his teeth, pulled the corpse from the horse, and leaped upon it, thrashing it and galloping for the band. Then the Romans knew that they would never leave that narrow, bloodsoaked place, for Eurgain, Vida, and the other women swept around the bend, fresh and terrible, and seeing them come their men fought with renewed vigor. A handful of officers escaped, running weaponless into the dense wood, but by the time the sun had risen far enough to shine undiluted onto the path, the tribesmen had tipped the wains on their sides and piled all the Roman bodies on top of them, blocking the way. Then Caradoc ordered a swift retreat. He knew that before long a detachment from the main body of the legion would be sent out to find the missing rear guard, and there must by then be many miles between the weary chiefs and the scene of the ambush.

“What about the horses?” Llyn asked him and he paused. There were many horses and each horse still bore the soldiers’ packs and equipment, but the way to the camp was rocky and tortuous and they would be slowed if they took time to lead the beasts. “We need the meat,” Llyn pressed, and Caradoc gave in.

“All right, Llyn, but you and your chiefs can see to them. Hurry up!” He turned away and saw his wife sitting beside the path, a hand to her thigh, her face pale. He strode to her, wiping his sword on his cloak and sheathing it swiftly. “Eurgain, you’re hurt.” He knelt and she glanced at him, biting her lip and nodding faintly. He lifted the tunic gently, took his knife and slit the leg of her breeches, and exposed a jagged wound from which the dark blood oozed. He probed it carefully and she winced, then he took his cloak, cutting strips from it and binding the cut tightly closed. “It is not serious,” he said, “but this is your third wound in two months. You are getting careless.” He spoke roughly, worry putting an edge to the impersonal words, and she answered him through clenched teeth as he tugged his bandages tighter.

“We are all tired, Caradoc. We need rest. If you keep up this pace you will lose more chiefs through sheer exhaustion than to the gladiae.”

He let her tunic fall and sat back. “That should stop the bleeding until Bran can attend to it. Can you walk?”

“I can try.” She stood and put her weight on her foot tentatively, and he saw the quick flare of pain in her eyes. He beckoned to one of Llyn’s chiefs.

“Bring a horse for the lady.” Then he faced Eurgain. “You can ride with Llyn. How many women lost today?”

“Five, perhaps more. Caradoc…”

“Not now, Eurgain!” He begged sharply. “I know it all, who knows it better than I? Every decision I make costs lives, every move I make means more sacrifice, more hardship for the people who trust me. If you love me, keep your counsel.”

“Yes, I love you,” she said softly, and the grim lines of his face relaxed into a smile. “Like all your men, I am ready to die for you.”

“But not yet, please Camulos!” He helped her to the horse and she swung herself up with difficulty, her leg already stiffening, her breeches sticky with drying blood. He left her then and she gathered up the reins, waiting for her son to give the marching order to the chiefs who were to ride, watching her husband walk in under the new leaves of spring. His words to her were always harsh and she knew that his love for her was just one more insupportable burden that brought him constant anxiety. No man could speak against her. No chief was allowed to bring her anything but the most respectful homage on pain of the arviragus’s displeasure, and no woman, in spite of his attraction, ever got closer to him than the Council fires. His possessiveness was a part of his torment. She and his children were all he had left to him, and he felt that if he lost them his soul would be gone. Only Cinnamus still teased and chaffered her, argued with her, hunted with her in the easy friendship they had always had, and Caradoc did not mind. Cinnamus, too, was precious to him, as was Caelte, and he trusted their judgment, giving them the last word over Madoc and Emrys.