The Eagle and the Raven (56 page)

The escort straggled to a halt and Scapula shouldered through, nodding at his centurion. “Give them a moment,” he said, and the soldiers parted.

Caradoc bent, picked up his chains, and half-ran, half-stumbled to the tiny window. Her fingers were on his cheeks, his lips, and he grasped the bars of her cage, the chains rattling against the wall.

“Eurgain! Aricia said that you had been taken but I thought she was lying. Has he treated you with courtesy? Where are the children?”

“In the next cell.” She pressed her face against the cool iron and dropped her voice, ashamed of the question she was impelled to ask yet knowing that no peace would come to her until she unburdened herself. “Caradoc, why in the name of Camulos did you go to Aricia? You must have known that she would deliver you up.”

He looked at her speculatively for a moment, then the harsh face split into a lingering, warm smile. “No, my love, I did not run to her because in my extremity I longed for her arms. I was seeking Venutius, and Caelte and I trusted ourselves to a guide who betrayed us. Is Bran here?”

She rested her forehead against his fingers. “They executed him. Ah Caradoc, so many gone! Sometimes I think that I cannot bear it!” Her voice began to tremble, but all he could do was stroke her face.

“Cinnamus fell beside me, Eurgain,” he said gently, and she ground her head against his hand.

“I know, I know. Vida took her sword and vanished into the woods when Bran told us. They are at peace, all of them, yet still we go on suffering.”

Llyn’s arm reached out from the window beyond. “Father! Is that you?” Caradoc moved to touch him, but Scapula barred the way.

“That is enough,” he said crisply. “Form ranks!”

“Freedom!” Llyn shouted after them. “Freedom, freedom!”

“Freedom,” Caelte whispered as Caradoc returned to walk beside him, and they looked at each other with a wordless, gnawing hunger. Then the column began to move, and the timorous twilight edged quietly into the town.

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
HE
liburnian from Gesioracum docked in the estuary one week before the autumn storms were due to rake the channel. It was late, and Scapula hung about the crowded cells with griping belly and aching head, praying that the knifing, turbulent winds would be late that year and that he could get rid of his responsibility at last. Colchester was stiff with troops. They ringed the cellblock. They crowded the streets, they guarded three deep by the gate and fell over each other by the river, but Scapula was taking no chances. The dispatches from Rome had been excited and congratulatory and his messengers brought him word that the west was in confusion, his soldiers pushing unchecked through the forests. But night after night he stood by his window, looking out over the star-speckled countryside that dreamed quietly below him, anxiety keeping sleep at bay.

In spite of all the reports he did not believe that the men of the west would let their arviragus go, and he strode uneasily about the town at the thought that the weather might close in early and prevent the ship from leaving. He wanted to be rid of Caradoc and then hurry back to the west, for soon the snows would come, high in the mountains, and the legions would have to retreat to winter quarters, leaving the tribesmen unwatched. He had the dismal feeling that all was not over in that land of magic and madness. For five years his life had had only one purpose, to capture the spearhead of the people’s desperate resistance and thus behead the insurrection. Now Caradoc lay in chains, but the undercurrent of hostility had seemed to intensify, the country seemed alive with whispers, and his hatred for it and its people flared up anew.

He had sent for the rebel the morning after his arrival at Colchester but in the end there had been nothing much to say. The two men had stood looking at each other while the hum of the town drifted cheerfully through the window, and, searching the dark, level eyes before him Scapula had felt his new confidence ebb away. He had captured a body, that was all. The spirit was still as free and light as a gliding bird, alien and frightening to him, and forever beyond his angry reach. He felt cloddish and heavy, a clumsy, ignorant soldier, and Caradoc had smiled at him slowly as though he divined the other man’s muddy thoughts.

“It has been a good fight, governor,” he said quietly. “But do not spend too much time in congratulating yourself. You think to send me to Rome, but I will not go. You are beginning to realize that, aren’t you? Even now, in the west, a new arviragus will be rising, and my spirit stays here, with him.”

“Rubbish!” Scapula blurted testily. “Your fame has gone to your head, Caradoc. You are a talented man, wasted, I may say, among savages when you could have been a great general. With you gone the natives will lapse into confusion.”

“I do not think so. Your predecessor understood us very well, and would not cross his frontier zone, but although you have been here for many years you have refused to learn.”

“It was a matter of imperial policy!” Scapula knew he should not become angry but he could not help himself. “And you yourself forced that policy when you moved to unite the west!”

I can never explain it to him, Caradoc thought in despair. I will not even try. He let his glance stray to the patch of blue, milky sky, and after a moment Scapula shrugged.

“How foolish it is, Caradoc, to become incensed over what has already passed and cannot be changed. I will admit that you have broken my health, strained my relations with the emperor, and robbed me of the opportunity to continue the good and peaceful progress that Plautius began here. But all that is over. When you are gone the west will lie open to me, and in five years the people will be cursing your name for keeping Rome’s prosperity from them for so long.”

“Oh Scapula,” Caradoc laughed. “How blissful is your certitude, how blind your confidence! The name of Vercingetorix is still breathed with love by the honorable chiefs left in Gaul, though for a hundred years the people have been enjoying the Roman prosperity! How true it is, that memory is more potent than the strongest wine!”

For a second they smiled at each other, acknowledging a respect that bordered on mutual admiration though if swords had been placed in their hands they would have battled to the death. Then Scapula dismissed him and Caradoc went back to his damp cell where Caelte sat with his eyes closed, already humming new songs, his indomitable optimism reasserted.

Scapula turned to his second. “Tell me, Gavius,” he said. “Who was Vercingetorix?”

On a cold, misty morning, when the town stirred sluggishly under the grayness of autumn and the wet trees ranged motionless, their tips already crisped to red and yellow by an early frost, the cells were unlocked, and Caradoc, Caelte, Eurgain, Llyn, and the girls stepped over the threshold for the last time. Outside, their escort waited, dim shapes in the clinging whiteness, and in the moment when the final orders were given and Scapula mounted his horse and settled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders, Caradoc enfolded his wife, took his son’s wiry wrist, kissed his daughters. “Have courage!” he whispered. The girls smiled at him tremulously, but Llyn shot him a mutinous glance.

“Do you think that the chiefs will rescue us today?” he hissed. “Surely my war band will not see me go into slavery without raising a hand!”

“There will be no rescue, Llyn,” Caradoc answered emphatically. “The chiefs have not had enough time and, in any case, they are not so foolish as to attempt such a thing here, in the heart of the province. They will fight on, but my destiny is accomplished and the Druids will find a new arviragus.”

A muffled command was given and the escort moved quietly down the road, past the temple, past the new, compact little forum, past the spacious houses still shuttered and dawn-drowsy. The hoofs of Scapula’s horse rang flatly on the pavement and they filed out the gate to the waiting wain, the horses hung with dew, the breath steaming from their nostrils. The family and Caelte scrambled up and sat meekly while the chains were fastened to the sides of the cart. Another order rang out, and with a jolt they set off along the path that had seen chariot and war band, hunting party and reveller, lover and trader. Ghosts lined it, shades in gray cloaks, their pale, expressionless faces wreathed in streamers of thin mist even now dissolving under a benign sun.

Unmoved, Caradoc watched them glide by. Colchester was full of them, and beneath the bright bustle of a Roman town the deep, rich darkness that was Camulodunon would always flow, a river of pungent memories. He heard Scapula’s strident, tension-strung voice shout “Close ranks! Hurry!” and with a start he realized that the silent shapes lining the route to the river were not ghosts but men and women from the surrounding territory who had gathered in mute, passive protest, and as the wain and the detachment passed they closed in behind, a weaponless army of sympathy.

At the river a barge waited, rocking gently in a cloud of river fog. The chains were unfastened, the prisoners embarked, the chains attached to the boat, and then they cast off, floating swiftly with the ebbing tide toward the estuary and the ocean. The river, too, was thick with tribesmen, hooded and cloaked, standing under the trees, and as Caradoc glided by them they raised white arms. Suddenly a voice rose, high and clear above the murmur of water, a woman’s voice.

“A safe journey!” The words were like the first stone that rattles down to begin an avalanche. The holding spell broke. All at once they began to roar, a tumult of sound, an accolade, the final tribute of the people.

“A peaceful journey! A safe journey, Arviragus! We will remember! Freedom, Arviragus, freedom! Go in safety, Ricon, walk in peace!”

Eurgain’s hand found his and gripped it with a fierce passion. His own closed around it and he sat with his chin high, a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes.

Scapula watched thin-lipped, his jaw tight with fury, but he dared not interfere. He did not want an eruption of mob violence, not now. The soldiers looked uneasily at one another and held their swords warily. One more bend and the ship would be in sight. At least the beach was heavily guarded.

The shouting turned into song. A few voices began it, the marching song of the Catuvellauni, and it raced along the riverbank from mouth to mouth, gained strength, and rose in one towering, raw-rhythmed crescendo of defiance and solidarity. The people clapped and stamped, flinging back their hoods and shaking down their hair, and as if at the sheer force of their singing the mists lifted. Sun sparkled fresh on the river and licked the flaming treetops, and soon the booming of the surf joined in the song, a joyful, vengeful torrent of liberty.

The barge nudged the landing stage and the soldiers jumped hurriedly to shore to ring the captives as they climbed onto the jetty and began the slow walk to the ramp of the tall-masted ship whose imperial flags hung limp. The captain stood at the foot of the ramp, his feet apart, his eyes darting from his passengers to the dense crowd that spread out over the sands. They had begun to gather before dawn, standing quietly just out of reach of the water, and for hours they had poured out of the woods, down the cliffs, rounding the headland, and he could do nothing but wait and watch. They had not been violent but had ignored him and his contingent of armed sailors with supreme indifference. His anxiety had mounted and he was more than glad that the governor had arrived on time. Two cohorts had been detailed to guard the last stage of this perilous undertaking and they were enough.

Caradoc and Eurgain, still holding hands, began to ascend the ramp, Llyn and the girls behind them. The sun was now fully risen and with it came a light, odorless breeze that flicked the crowds with a hint of the winter to come. It was a bright morning, a cheerful, gloriously brisk morning, a morning to set the blood racing and the eyes dancing.

Caradoc paused, let go of Eurgain’s hand, and turned. Immediately, a hush descended, and the only sound was the slapping of waves against the ship’s hull and the greedy mewing of the seagulls. He breathed deeply, his gaze traveling the expectant, multicolored host, seeing the eager, loving eyes meet his own in comfort. Blue eyes, brown eyes, clouded with age or clear with hope; black hair, blonde hair, a motley, haphazard multitude of peoples. With a growing ache in his heart he looked beyond them to the white cliffs, the rippling grasses, the thick-massed, dark trees already half-asleep, tossing fitfully in the wind.

Albion, Albion, he cried out in his soul. Turbulent and treacherous, wild and magical, you dreamed a dream with me. We dared to hazard a great thing together and I have emptied my soul but I have failed you. The ashes of my dearest dead lie cradled in your soil. Guard them well.

Slowly, he raised his arms, and brought his manacled wrists crashing together.

“Tell them I did not surrender and neither must they!” he shouted. “The fight goes on! Tell them that!” He turned abruptly and walked forward, and when he reached the deck Scapula motioned him along the rail and the others ranged beside him.

“I am not an unreasonable man,” the governor said. “You may remain on deck until the horizon is clean.” The word was deliberate.

Caradoc flushed but did not reply, and Scapula received the salute of the captain and walked quickly back down the ramp. Sailors rushed to draw it up, and behind and below him Caradoc heard a shouted order and the regular boom, boom of the massive drum that beat to time the oarsmen.

How many of you down there in the galleys once galloped free across the meadows? he wondered as the ship began to move ponderously, with a weighty dignity.

Llyn clutched the rail and Eurgain stepped to her husband, but Caradoc’s eyes were fastened on the crowded, still-silent shoreline.

For one moment all caution left him and he felt in his legs, in his arms, the frenzied desire to leap over the side and run the warm sand of his own beaches through his fingers once more. As a slave, as a miner, as a peasant laboring to build for Rome, I will suffer any indignity but ah, Mother, let me die in my own country!

As if in answer a call came floating. He could not catch the words but it seemed to embody all the loveliness, all the sweetest memories, all the hopes of his youth, and then the crowd surged into the water. He could see them dimly now, standing waist-deep in the heaving waves, casting brooches and bracelets, coins, beads, anything they had. Then they seemed to slide away from him and become a black line at the foot of the gleaming cliffs.

Eurgain was sobbing openly but he did not move to touch her and she did not invite his comfort. Llyn was leaning out over the side, light brown hair streaming behind him, the girls standing on either side of him with arms folded under their cloaks and faces stiff, like Sine’s wolf mask. All at once Caelte began to hum, his eyes on the dwindling bay. The tune was familiar to Caradoc, vibrating a long-silent chord in him, and, as his bard began to add the words, he remembered a night of feasting long ago when he and Togodumnus had returned to Camulodunon to celebrate their first season of war against the neighboring tribes. All night the Catuvellauni had sung, drunk with power, drugged with heady dreams of an empire all their own, and he and Tog had flamed with the rash, reckless certainty of their own omnipotence.

There was a ship, her sails were silken red,

Peaceful she lay, upon a golden sea

And all about, the graceful seagulls glided, crying…

He smiled in spite of himself, seeing Caelte’s wry, sweat-streaked face as he rose to sing it in answer to the demands of the people. How good, how good it all was, in those days! And then, listening to the plaintive words, a new understanding came to him. The song had always had a strange power to touch the chiefs in a way that no other song could, and it was sung by every tribe. He had often wondered why, but now, with Albion sinking forever below the horizon, he thought he knew. A bard in some far-distant time had taken up his harp and conjured words of prophecy. None save perhaps the Druithin down all the long years since had understood them, but they had brought to their hearers the dim mystery of a truth, and that was why the song had never died. It was not the simple song of a warrior and his murdered love. Albion herself lay dying slowly under the trees and he himself was the warrior who died also, heart emptying while the ship took him away from her.