The Eagle and the Raven (54 page)

“It’s not too late to find yourself again, Aricia,” he said softly. “If Brigantia joined with the chiefs of the west then the Romans could not stand.”

Astonishment wrung a sharp, choking laugh from her and she left the fire and came close to him, stroking his face, his neck, his hair with black-ringed fingers whose touch belied her words. “You poor, mangy old wolf! What ancient songs of victory still thunder in that muddled head of yours? I need the money you will bring to pay for the services of the architect I have engaged from Rome. You see, Caradoc, you are no longer worth any more to me than the price of my comfort.” Her hands pressed down on his shoulders, and before he could draw back she had kissed him loosely on the mouth. “From one child to another,” she whispered. She flung herself into a chair and crossed her legs, looking up at him soberly. “Forgive me, but if I do not hand you over, Scapula will think that I have changed my allegiance and he will march against me, whereas if I do my reputation as a loyal daughter of Rome will be enhanced a thousandfold. Do you at least understand this?”

“Yes,” he replied patiently. “I understand.”

“Oh you fool,” she murmured. “Why did you allow yourself to be taken?”

There was nothing more to be said and they both waited in a resigned silence for the coming of the guards. Caelte had sunk to the floor where he squatted, head bowed, and the fire sparked joyfully on. Presently the door was flung open and six legionnaires rushed in, swords drawn, helmets and broad breastplates filling the room with a brisk efficiency. The centurion saluted Aricia and then turned curiously to the quiet, almost meek, bedraggled man who met his gaze with a steady scorn.

“This is their arviragus?”

“It is.”

“You are sure, Cartimandua?”

“Of course.” She was breathing quickly, lightly. “I have known him well.”

Disappointment flooded the officer. He was such a common-looking chieftain. Where was the noble, cunning barbarian of his imagination? But then he scanned the face again, and he knew. “Optio,” he snapped. “The chains.”

Caradoc stood quite still as the heavy iron rings went round his wrists. He looked at Aricia as the soldier knelt to fasten them about his ankles. She was swinging her foot and gazing at the floor, and suddenly he shouted, “Look at me, Aricia! Or are you too cowardly? You wear them too, though you cannot see them!”

She did not respond, and as the optio hauled Caelte to his feet and chained him also, Caradoc struggled against panic. The man returned and unbuckled his sword belt, and Caradoc was a freeman no more. “Out,” the officer ordered curtly, and the soldiers closed. Unthinking, Caradoc took a stride. The chains caught him and he stumbled, and then Aricia stood and laughed, a wild, undisciplined peal of glee. She spoke as he shuffled past her.

“One thing more, Caradoc,” she said. “Your family is well. Scapula has them, at Camulodunon.”

He turned slowly, seeing in her eyes the gloating eagerness to rip him apart, but he refused to bend under the weight of humiliation already setting upon him.

“You lie.”

“Not this time.”

“Bitch.”

“A safe journey, a peaceful journey,” she mocked, and then he was out under the soft night sky, warm wind in his face, and the door slammed shut behind him.

She slumped back into the chair and closed her eyes. Brigantia, I am tired, she thought. So tired, tired to my bones, and tomorrow Venutius will be here, with his hangdog, beseeching looks and his big, clumsy hands. Your hands were never clumsy, Caradoc, and you begged with honor, like a lord. What times we had, you and I, when our blood ran hot and the rain sang to us in the night! She reached into her tunic and drew out a small, wooden brooch, and absently her fingers traced the writhing snakes, smooth and warm to her touch. I have lived for this moment through all the long years of my exile, she told herself. Then why is it not sweet? Why this pain, this awful hurting? Her hand closed about the brooch, gripping it tightly, and desolation swept over her. Nothing satisfies me anymore, she thought with anguish, each triumph is a wasting and this, my greatest prize, is already spilling through my fingers. I cannot hold it. Suddenly she felt tears burn behind her closed eyelids and she opened her eyes. The walls blurred around her and the fire swelled to a rain-bowed lake, but when she blinked the tears flowed faster. “Ah Sataida, Lady of Grief, leave me alone!” she whispered fiercely. “There was nothing else I could do!”

She spent the night in the wicker chair, drinking a little, feeding the fire in the small hours when her servants slept, seeing him in her mind’s eye rocking and jolting in the cart toward Lindum, chained under the stars. Bitch, he had called her, his ravished face twisted into bitterness for a moment. She savored the epithet, turning it over slowly. Bitch. Well, so she was. She could not call Caradoc a liar. All the men she had met were lustful dogs sniffing around her—Caradoc, Togodumnus, Venutius, even Cunobelin in his way, all of them and the rest—so many tongues hanging out over the years, so many panting mouths! But, watching the night shadows move on her smooth yellow wall and feeling the firelight touch her cheeks, she knew that Caradoc had not meant this. Better, she thought, wincing from the sting, to stay away from all contemplation of what was his true insult. Honor in time of war was a luxury, in time of peace a safeguard. Nothing more. She should have told him so when she told him that men must change or die. She fell back in thought and explored the limits of her own change, realizing for the first time that it had not been deep enough. The young Brigantian ricon torn from the womb of Camulodunon still cowered, crouching in the recesses of mind and memory, bereft of honor, dependent on the frail support of a dead father, mourning in betrayal and hatred for her Catuvellaunian roots. Years ago she had taken a step away from that young girl, but it had not been wide enough. You poor, friendless little thing, Aricia thought as she emptied the wine jug. I thought I had killed you long ago.

Venutius arrived with the dawn. She must have been dozing, for she came to herself with a start to hear his deep voice raised in anger on her porch. “Out of my way, bastard whelp! Let me pass or I’ll spit you like a suckling pig!”

She heard a scuffle and rose stiffly, her tongue furred and her head heavy from the wine. A yelp, an oath, and her door burst open, he lunging toward her, kicking the door closed behind him. He stopped inches from her and flung his sword onto the floor.

“Tell me it is not true!” he shouted. “Tell me before I throttle you with your own hair! Did you sell the arviragus to Rome?”

She faced him calmly, unimpressed by the rage she had seen so many times before, confident that in the end it would turn into fawning, pathetic apology.

“Yes, I did.”

“Aaah!” He stood, fists clenched before him, long legs quivering, red hair falling over one shoulder. “I did not believe. I did not want to believe! You…” Words would not come.

“Bitch?” she finished softly for him. “Caradoc called me that too. I agree with him entirely.”

“Why? Why? Every other indignity, Aricia, every other vileness. I have taken it all from you, but oh not this! A man of such miseries, such honor!”

That pernicious, meaningless word again. She shrugged. “I had to, Venutius. I couldn’t turn him loose again. It would have been the end of Brigantia.”

“You care nothing for Brigantia! You never did! Caradoc goes to his death so that you can at last warm your hands at the flames of revenge!”

“Think what you like. I did it, and I would do it again, and now get out. I’ve had no sleep tonight and I’m tired. Come and eat with me later—if you are in a better humor.”

He did not respond as he usually did to the faint hint of waiting pleasure. Suddenly he half-stumbled, half-leaped upon her. Taking her by the shoulders he began to shake her viciously, snapping her head back and forth, and she could not find breath to cry out. Her necklace broke and jet showered them, catching in his hair, tinkling to the floor. He began to slap her face. At the first blow she fell backward into the chair, gasping, screams gathering behind her throat as he went on striking her and madness flickered in and out of his eyes.

“You will kill me, you will kill me. Stop, Venutius!” she shrieked.

At last, when she felt the skin of her cheek and temple split open and he saw the blood appear on his hand, he stood upright, breathing coarsely, loudly, and she slid to the floor, weeping and cradling her aching face in both hands, the jet stones hard and gritty beneath her knees. He was weeping also, the tears pouring down his cheeks.

“Even now I cannot make an end of you!” he sobbed. “Aricia, Aricia!” Reaching down he took her hair in one big fist, hauled her to her feet, and, dragging her to the door, opened it and pushed her out into the bright sunlight and warm wind.

Her bodyguards came racing across the courtyard, their swords drawn, but they found themselves cut off from her by their own kinsmen, Venutius’s war band, who were planted stolidly in their way. The men eyed one another in silence. Venutius brought her to the middle of the stone-ringed yard and let her go. Still weeping, he began to remove his jewelry—the black jet from his arms, his throat, his waist, the cloak’s clasp from his shoulder—dropping the glinting pieces onto the ground. In one lithe movement he pulled his jet embroidered tunic over his head and it collapsed gently onto her feet.

“I repudiate Brigantia,” he whispered hoarsely, taking a little knife from his leather belt and quickly slicing across his broad chest. Blood leaped up to meet the blade from left collarbone to waist—slick, wet, and glittering in the sun, and slapping his palm against it he stepped closer to her and rubbed it into her face. “My blood!” he spat at her. He stooped and worked loose a clod of earth from the ground with the knife, breaking it in his strong fingers, then he slammed it against her cheeks. “The blood of Albion! You have slain us both. May I be cursed if I ever reach for you in love again.”

She stood with head bowed before him, her hands trembling upward to hide her humiliation, and he turned on his heel and strode out the gate, blood spattering the ground around him. Aricia slumped onto the tunic, still warm from his body. She made no sound, but the men watching saw shudders jerk through her limbs. One by one Venutius’s men sheathed their swords and followed until only her bard and her shield-bearer were left, squatting awkwardly in the dust, afraid to touch her.

The sun rose to stand at its zenith, and the sparrows, emboldened by the silence of the courtyard, fluttered down to scratch and squabble where Venutius’s blood had already taken on the color of the earth itself.

Caradoc was taken to the fortress of the Ninth at Lindum, just inside Coritani territory, he and Caelte chained to an oxcart and surrounded by two centuries of soldiers. His arrest had been so swift and secret that none but a handful of Brigantians and the soldiers knew, and the green countryside lay peaceful and empty as they passed. The centurion was plainly nervous. Caradoc watched him striding up and down the tight lines of his men, the sting of fear goading them in his raucous voice, and his own eyes often strayed to the tree-shrouded hills that dipped to meet the road. But Madoc did not crouch with his chiefs above the gullies and no Emrys waited to sweep away his chains. In a day and half a night the gray, comfortably solid block of the fort loomed ahead. The centurion mopped his brow and sighed with relief but the prisoners, chafed and sore, knew as the vast gates thudded shut behind them that all faint hopes of rescue were vain and their days of freedom were gone.

The praefectus came out to meet them, and half the soldiers stumbled from their warm cots to crowd the cart, eager for a look at a legendary man, but Caradoc gave them no satisfaction. He did not growl and shake his chains like a captive bear. He did not stand and rain foreign curses upon their heads. He did not even carry a shrunken head on his belt, and many of them went back to bed, disgruntled. He stepped down calmly, swinging his legs together so that the chains would not trip him and make him fall before his captors, and he followed the centurion and the praefectus into his cell, with Caelte behind him.

The room was small and bare. There was no cot, no table, and no window, and dampness rose from the hard floor. The chains were removed but only so the two men could be stripped and searched, and Caradoc, standing naked and shivering under the praefectus’s cool, cynical eye, saw the magic egg jerked from his neck and the pouch torn open. The soldier gingerly held up the egg, and the praefectus raised his eyebrows.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, sir. It looks like a lump of gristle from the guts of some poor beast.” He poked it, tossed it up and caught it. “What savages these people are!”

The praefectus held out his hand, and the egg was passed to him. He turned it over, sniffed it, then threw it contemptuously at Caradoc.

“Here, you cannibal, catch!”

Caradoc’s fingers closed around it. He held it fiercely, lovingly, his hand shielding it reverently from such ignorant blasphemy, and his face burned with shame on behalf of these unmannered men.

The torc was wrenched from his neck and Caelte’s was taken also, but this time the praefectus held them respectfully, running his fingers along their delicate curves.

“These things are beautifully made,” he said. “What odd fellows you are, you barbarians! I’ll keep the bronze one, but I suppose the governor will want the gold.”

Their clothes were slung at their feet and they were curtly ordered to dress, but they stood silently, incapable of movement, the nakedness of their necks finally bringing to them the full realization of despair. At another sharp word they slowly bent, picked up their breeches and tunics, and pulled them on, but Caradoc knew that clothes would no longer cover the bare, scoured bones of his soul, and the brand of his slavery flared out like an angry beacon in the night, invisible to Rome, but a roaring conflagration for every tribe to see. The chains were fastened again, and the centurion turned to his superior.

“Who gets the reward, sir? Does my detachment?”