The Eagle and the Raven (59 page)

Such grandeur. Such magnificent, opulent splendor! And I have fought all this, he marveled to himself. I must have been mad. He thought of Aricia’s pride in her little wooden imitation of a Roman house. He thought of the tiny forums in which he and the others had stood, sweating and dirty under the stares of the crowds, then stared up at the emperor, a little man dwarfed by eternal stone, sizzling in sunlight. Suddenly he wanted to laugh.

His chariot finally came to a halt, and while a tribune and a soldier strode to unfasten him, he searched for Eurgain but could not see her. Claudius beckoned, the trumpets spoke again, and Caradoc and the tribune mounted the steps together, the chains clinking against each marble rise.

Claudius watched him come and his wife leaned toward him and whispered, “How tall he is!” her voice thick with titillation. Claudius nodded, his eyes on the lowered head, the arms outstretched with chains between them, guarding for a fall. He knew the fate of this man, and it gave him no satisfaction. The years ahead would kill what the executioner’s spear could not. He had attended the special session of the senate the day before, and sat listening while the senators rose and came down onto the cool, tessellated pavement of the Curia to speak of Syphax and Scipio Africanus, of the clemency of Aemilius Paulus toward the great Perseus, their suave hints dropping like tinkling fountain-water into his ears. This barbarian king had been an enemy to respect, an antagonist worthy of the might of Rome. Besides, the populace held him in favor and Claudius needed that favor also. Attentively, the emperor heard them play on his reverence for the Roman past, his pupilage of the great Livy, and though he smiled a trifle cynically to himself, he was flattered. The people demanded a gesture of magnanimity from their noble, well-educated ruler, a proof of disinterested superiority and humanity, and the senate subtly demanded it, too. So be it. Rome would be merciful. The times had changed since Julius Caesar had had Vercingetorix strangled, and Rome would show that she was not threatened by her most ungrateful province’s response to occupation.

Agrippina fidgeted with excitement as Caradoc breasted the last few steps and came to a halt before the emperor. Claudius motioned him in under the shadow of the columns.

“So we meet at last,” Claudius said, bending his mild gaze upon the other’s face while the uproar beyond them continued unabated. “It was a gallant fight, barbarian, but hopeless from the start, as I am sure you realize. You have the right to speak before I sentence you, if you wish.”

Caradoc looked into the sad, worldly face, reading weariness there in the droop of the stern mouth and the tiny furrows between the wide eyebrows. Try as he might, Claudius could not still the minute, uncontrollable wobbling of his head, and already his nose had begun to run with the stress of the occasion. Caradoc was filled with pity. This man may be at the pinnacle of the empire, he thought, but he is not as free as I, though he is swathed in soft purple and I stand before him in peasant’s garb and chains.

He did not look at Agrippina but noticed the empress’s hands gripping the sides of her gilt chair, her black eyes consuming him from a white, carefully powdered face that hid the encroaching signs of age. Her perfume filled his nostrils with its musky, heady scent and the jewels that studded her piled hair and clustered in her coronet winked at him invitingly. With his sharp, animal divination he smelled the odor of rapacious corruption under the graceful, rich folds of the stola, and he knew that she was to be feared more than her husband.

He kept his eyes on Claudius, and wondered what to say.

He was not speaking to a ragged tuath, he was addressing an empire, and for a moment shyness seized him, but then he recovered. I am arviragus. I love my people. For their sakes I will not bow my head, nor will I bring disgrace to those who have died for me. He began to speak slowly, feeling his way.

“Had my high birth and rank been accompanied by moderation in the hour of success I should have entered this city as a friend and not as a prisoner. You would not have hesitated to accept as an ally a man of splendid ancestry, bearing rule over many tribes. My present position is degrading to me, but glorious to you. I had horses, warriors, and gold. If I was unwilling to lose them, what wonder in that?” His voice strengthened. Power slipped to his tongue like golden mead and unconsciously he raised his manacled arms and flung one foot before the other, a gesture of pride. “Does it follow that because you desire universal empire, all must accept universal slavery? Were I now dragged here as one who had surrendered without fighting, no fame would have attached to my fall, or to your victory. If you punish me they will both be forgotten.” For you, Eurgain, I say this, he thought deliberately, and for you, my Llyn, and the girls, but I will not beg. He threw his head back defiantly, and the eyes that met Claudius’s were haughty and cool. “Spare me, then, as an eternal example of your mercy!” The words rang out, echoing through the dim, regally clustered pillars of the Curia, and Agrippina began to smile.

Claudius watched the heaving chest, the feet planted sturdily apart, the flashing, unapologetic eyes. You ask me to spare you as though you were challenging me to a battle, he thought with an amused respect. Now I can understand poor Scapula’s desperation. You are formidable, you wild chieftain. With a graceful gesture he rose.

“Listen to the people, Caradoc,” he said. “They honor you, they shout for your deliverance. Never let it be said that Rome does not reward valor, whether it be in her own beloved citizens or in her noble enemies. You are deserving of our reward for your fearless resistance. Therefore, in the name of Jupiter and the gods of Rome, I pardon you. Strike the chains!”

Members of his bodyguard moved smoothly, and in an unbelieving daze Caradoc felt his wrists and ankles suddenly lighten and heard the chains clatter to the marble. Free? Just like that? So quickly, so easily hope returns to bear me once more on its wings?

Claudius stepped to him and, laying an arm across his shoulders, turned him to the populace, and together they went into the sunlight. Claudius slowly raised his other arm, the purple cloak slid back, a great howl of delight and approval went up as the people saw their emperor and their enemy side by side.

Caradoc did not heed them. The holding spell of his amazement still gripped him and his eyes searched among the throng below for his family. He caught a glimpse of Eurgain’s shining blonde head but could not read her face. For a moment he and Claudius stood pressed against each other, and then the emperor drew him back into the welcome coolness.

“There are conditions, of course,” Claudius said. “You must swear on whatever gods you worship that you will never again bear arms against Rome.”

Now, hope, your silvery wings falter, Caradoc thought, and again my feet must brush despair. To swear this thing is to hold out my hands once more for the chains of slavery, yet what difference will it make in the end? Living or dead, Albion must fight on without me.

“I will swear,” he answered unsteadily. “I swear by Camulos, by the Dagda, by the Great Mother, that…that…” His courage almost failed him but he rallied. “That I will never again raise sword against the people of Rome.”

Claudius nodded. “Good. That was hard for you, I know, but necessary, Caradoc. You must also understand that you are exiled from your country. You may have your freedom within this city and under certain circumstances within five miles of it, but any transgression of this edict will bring immediate death.”

Caradoc met the gray, shrewd eyes and saw his own thought mirrored there. You must be strong to die the slow death, Claudius was saying to him even as he said it to himself. Immediate death would be kinder but mercy has nothing to do with kindness.

“The senate has voted you a house and you will be supported at public expense. You have already cost us a great deal of money,” he went on with humor, “but I suppose we can spare a little more.”

I feel it already, tightening around me like a hunting net, Caradoc thought in fear. How long can I cling to what I am? How long will the children speak to me in the accents of their home, and share with me the memories of times past? This too you know, you cruel, implacable Roman. Then know that I resist, and I will go on resisting until the day my body dies. He made no comment, and finally the empress got out of her chair and came forward, reaching for his hand.

“Grieve if you must for your damp little island,” she said, “but do not grieve too long, barbarian. You will come to be happy here, for Rome is a city of endless fascination.” And so am I, her impudent, cool glance told him. “I congratulate you on a fight well fought.” He withdrew his hand and did not reply, but she was not offended. She merely smiled knowingly and went back to her chair.

“I have arranged a small surprise for you,” Claudius said, and with a spasm of shrinking Caradoc suddenly knew what was coming. He turned to run, but there was nowhere to go.

“Plautius, my friend, come out!”

Caradoc swung to the dimness behind him, his heart galloping. Two figures were emerging from the shadows, tall, quiet-moving, and the bodyguard parted to let them through. The man was straight, gray-haired, with a thin, commanding face and sea-gray eyes. He was smiling as he came forward with his sure, soldier’s gait but after one quick stare, Caradoc looked past him, emotion strangling in his throat, blood pounding in his ears and throbbing in his limbs. She had not changed much, his sister. She was plumper, the once-angular, taut lines having become curves of contentment. The smooth black hair, now heavily streaked with gray, was bound up on top of her head. But the eyes, though nested in myriads of fine lines and filled with tears, were still steady and full of mysteries and there was the same self-contained beauty in her regally black-swathed figure. They stared at one another for a long time, his face gradually becoming whiter and whiter, until he abruptly closed his eyes and wrenched away. “I cannot,” he said. “I cast her from the tuath, I cannot speak to her. I swore an oath!”

“Caradoc,” she said huskily, slowly. “By Camulos, how changed you are. I recognize an arviragus, the stamp is on you, but where is my brother? What have they done to him, those lost years?” She spoke to him in his own tongue, lyrical and full of melody, threaded with a precise Latin accent. “I heard that you broke a sword in wrath against me. I heard you spoke the curses and swore an oath. Then I wept, Caradoc, having no tuath and no kin. I felt myself abandoned by all, even as you felt yourself to be. Yet I have been happy. My choice, if it were choice, was a good one.” She walked to him then but did not touch him, though her arms ached to hold her own flesh once more. “Caradoc, I know that you will not forget your roots. What Catuvellaunian could ever forget the soil that bred him and the forests that blooded him? I have been in Rome for almost ten years and no day has gone by that has not been a day of longing for the smell of wet oaks and the touch of a bright sword in my hand. I am without tuath or kin, by your command. And now you stand here, also without tuath or kin, by command of the emperor. Dissolve your oaths, my brother! Let us support one another and share together the load that we must carry. I fought beside you, risking my life for the tribe whose ricon cast me out. Now I beg him to recognize a debt, out of his own extremity.”

Caradoc listened to the soft voice, his face still turned away to where the crowd seethed in the swelter of the noon sun. “I cannot unsay the words of banishment, and you know it,” he said flatly. “When I left the Great Hall that night, fire all around me and guilt in my heart, you were leaning against the wall all alone. I never dreamed I would see you again, and it was with such pain that I fled into the west. Ah, Gladys, where has all the time gone? What does it all mean?”

“Caradoc, please.” She could see the muscles of his neck drawn tight, his shoulders hunched as though warding off a blow. Claudius, Plautius, and the soldiers stood watching quietly, caught up in the ebb and flow of a private misery voiced in a language full of sweet, wistful cadences, carrying the breath of a way of life beyond their comprehension. But Agrippina sat drumming her long fingers against the arm of her chair, suddenly bored and hungry for food.

Caradoc turned slowly, almost unwillingly, as though invisible hands pulled at him from each direction and he could not direct his limbs. “Sometimes it is necessary for a man to put aside the right and wrong he has been taught, and shed one truth to find another.” He said with difficulty. “So say the Druids. I do not think that the Druithin had such a shedding as this in mind, Gladys. Nevertheless, I will attempt it.” He took a step and then another. His arms rose, and all at once she ran across the polished pavement and flung herself upon him.

Claudius smiled like a beneficent uncle. Plautius felt a vast relief that did not betray itself on his face, for he had spoken in the senate urging clemency for this, his relative by marriage, knowing the amusement his speech had brought to his fellow senators. His wife had asked nothing from him, but for the last month she had been unable to sleep, pacing his tiled halls in the dead watches of the night, her arms folded on her breasts and her head down. There had been no word of his that could comfort her. Agrippina yawned under her ringed hand.

Claudius inclined his head and the bodyguard came to attention. “Now we will eat together,” he said. “I trust, barbarian, that you will have no scruples about tasting my wine as your foolish sister did, so many years ago!”

“Elephants and emperors never forget,” Plautius whispered to Gladys as she left Caradoc’s embrace and went to link arms with her husband. “It seems that I shall have to wait yet again for that private dinner I desired with your brother when I saw him striding the ramparts of Camulodunon!”

The ramparts of Camulodunon. Gladys let the quick spurt of longing catch in her breath, and then held out a hand to Caradoc.

Agrippina rose. She and Claudius proceeded slowly out into the blazing sun, the others following to where Eurgain, Llyn, and the girls sat at the foot of the steps, a tiny pool of sane familiarity amid a desert of dark, foreign faces.