The Eagle and the Raven (64 page)

“Where have you been?” she scolded loudly. “This is no night for you to be wandering about on your own. Your father would be angry if he knew. Come inside!” For a moment Boudicca thought the servant was addressing her, but then she saw Ethelind and Brigid wandering slowly up to the house. Boudicca shrank back into the shadow and the girls brushed by without seeing her.

“I would have pushed him out of the tree,” Ethelind was saying stoutly. “Everyone knows that if Father didn’t want the Romans here he would send them away. But I feel sorry for him, having someone like Priscilla for a mother. She can’t even ride.” The two disheveled girls disappeared into their room, oblivious to Hulda’s admonitory words. The door closed, and the lamplight was cut off.

Boudicca stood in the darkness a moment longer. The big fire was dying, its flames a gentle glow, and fewer freemen and chiefs ambled back and forth, silhouetted against it. Night had fallen, full and soft, but as yet the moon had not risen, nor had the stars become wholly visible. There was no sound from the room behind her where Prasutugas lay on the bed, stiff and unsleeping, and she did not consider going back to talk with him. As yet, there was nothing more to say. The night air was still chilled with the fading ghost of winter and she shivered, but her cloak lay inside that fast-shut door and not for anything would she have gone to pick it up. She stepped off the porch and walked alone through her town, flitting past huts full of chatter and laughter, feeling like a being from somewhere else, from a star perhaps—not human, not wanted, not of the earth but of the night and the wind. I did not know, she thought as the gray paths glided by under her bare feet. I did not know that more than half of me is Prasutugas and without that half I am a wraith, gibbering helplessly in the cold. Is any cause worth this terrible self-destruction? If there is a choice between my husband and freedom—if it has come to that—is one worth anything without the other? Has it come to that? She stopped outside her bard’s doorskins and rapped softly on the lintel. “Lovernius, are you there?” she called, and presently the skins were pushed back and he greeted her and ushered her in. His hut was bare of hangings or fripperies. He had only his bed, a table for his lamp, and his harp. Yet his home was warm and welcoming, as though its walls had absorbed something of the music that he made, sitting by himself in the evening, forming an invisible blanket of sweetness. He stepped with her into the room, his quick eyes on her tear-swollen face.

“Have you come to gamble, Lady?” he enquired. She sat on his cot and folded her arms yet again, groping for an assurance of substance. She felt fragile and empty.

“I have given up gambling with you, Lovernius. You either cheat or have become too expert for me, I don’t know which,” she said with an attempted humor. Her arms clutched tighter. “I have spoken with Prasutugas. He got the news from Favonius. As usual, he will do nothing.”

“It is not usual for him to reduce you to tears, Lady,” he answered forthrightly.

Her tears began again with his refusal to circle her distress. “He is afraid that I will incite rebellion here in Icenia,” she said brokenly. “He will put me away from him if I do. He said so. He has never threatened me thus before, Lovernius. He does not say it, but he means that if he must choose between me and Rome then he will choose Rome.”

Lovernius squatted before her, looking up into her face. “I do not think so. He is simply begging you not to force him to the point where that choice must be made. He must consider all of Icenia, Boudicca, not just his family. And in his eyes, Rome is good for Icenia. You must never force that choice upon him, for he will indeed choose Rome, and then die of a broken heart. If the choice between your husband and freedom for Albion was put before you, what would you do?”

“I do not know!”

“And neither does he. You must trust each other, for if you cease to trust then your marriage is finished.”

Trust. She loosened her arms. Yes, that was the heart of the matter. Not Rome or freedom or love or hate, but trust. He did not trust her anymore. She should have told him about the weapons, she should have assured him that it meant little. But she had not told him because it did not mean little. It meant much, it meant everything, and she could not lie to him. Sometimes, living is worse than dying, she thought bitterly. To die is simple. To live is too hard. She rose abruptly. “Lovernius,” she said. “I want to hunt tonight.”

He nodded. “If you like. I don’t know what game we can flush though, Lady. The wolves have gone away now that spring has come but we should be able to find a boar, even in the dark.”

“I do not want a wolf,” she went on quietly, “or a boar. I want to hunt the Annis.”

He felt the blood leave his face. “What?”

She turned swiftly to him, and in her eyes he saw such anger, such pain, that for a moment he was afraid of her. Then he understood. Like her father before her, her wounds could only be healed under the balm of furious action. She was a creature of movement, not contemplation. I hurt, those big eyes told him. I have never hurt like this in all my life before, and I must hit back or die of my pain.

Nevertheless he tried to dissuade her. “An Annis has not been set loose since your father’s time,” he objected. “If we are caught, Favonius will have us executed immediately. Besides, there is no time for the ceremonies of choosing.”

“There will be no choosing.”

“The season is not right,” he went on desperately. “Winter has gone and spring is well advanced.”

“I do not want to kill winter,” she shot back. “We will kill Rome. Rome is our eternal winter. Rome is our Annis. No choosing, Lovernius. Get me a Roman. Turn out the hounds.”

“Lady,” he pleaded, “think again. It is a terrible thing, to hunt the Annis. It will reawaken the demons.”

“Yes it is a terrible thing,” she agreed, “but the times are terrible also, Lovernius. I will direct the powers of the forest toward Rome.”

“If they do not turn to rend us instead. I am afraid, Lady.”

“Then I will hunt on my own. I don’t care. Have there been any foxes snared lately?”

“Ethelind brought one in yesterday,” he admitted reluctantly. “She cut off the brush for Marcus, but the carcass hangs outside the Council hut.”

“Are there chiefs to hunt with us?”

“There are chiefs who are loyal to the cause of freedom, Lady, but none whom I would dare approach to hunt an Annis.”

“Then it is you and me.” She was still crying, but Lovernius saw that she was unaware of the tears that had already soaked the neck of her blue tunic. “There is always a soldier sent to the river from the garrison, to draw water for the morning. We will take him.”

“He will be missed.”

“Of course he will be missed!” she shouted. “But if he is found, Favonius will believe that the wolves got him.”

“In the spring?”

“What other explanation will there be? A Roman Annis, Lovernius. It is right. It is just. Now go and leash the hounds. I will bring the fox and meet you by the river, where it flows closest to the garrison.”

They left the hut and parted, Lovernius creeping unseen to the kennels and Boudicca to the Council hut, now quiet and empty but for the few chiefs who had been too drunk to find their own hearths and had curled up on the warm sheepskins on the floor. The night held the town under a wide, star-splattered sky, and the wind was drowsy and fitful. The huts no longer showed light under their doorskins or spilled the warmth of human commerce into her ears. They humped solid and black like tombs, the now-risen moon giving them streaming dark shadows through which she waded silently. The fox was not hard to find. Boudicca’s questing fingers brushed its cold, soft pelt, and she drew her knife and cut the rope that held it to the eaves of the hut. She slung it over her shoulder and began to make her way to the low stone wall that surrounded the town, and then to the silver and soft blackness of the meadow beyond.

Lovernius was waiting for her, six hounds leashed and muzzled beside him, and as she ran in under the darkness of the trees they smelled the fox she carried and began to whine. She dropped the dead beast with a thud onto the grass and Lovernius hauled back the dogs.

“You wait here,” she whispered. “There are four sentries standing watch tonight instead of two—I suppose because of the alert—and if they hear the dogs they will come and investigate. I will waylay the water carrier.”

“No need,” he whispered back. “I nearly ran into a sentry in the woods to the west of the town. Favonius must be taking his orders seriously and has placed men under the trees, but singly, not in twos. He is not very clever, our commander. Take one of them, Boudicca and I will go deeper into the forest, north, away from the river.” She thought for a moment, then nodded, and he picked up the fox, kicked at the dogs, and was gone.

With a steady, purposeful silence Boudicca worked her way through the trees until the garrison lay between her and the river and she had counted three soldiers standing uneasily just within the eaves of the forest, their backs to the garrison’s squat security and their faces to the slow-shifting night shades of the trees. They were out of sight of each other and out of earshot, also, Boudicca thought, but she would take no chances. She chose the fourth man after watching him carefully for some time. He was nervous, changing his weight from one sandal-clad foot to the other, turning to face the garrison, peering to right and left, his hand never leaving the hilt of his gladius. She wriggled closer to him, blending with the ever fluid shadows, came around to his back, then stood and stepped to his side, clamping one strong hand over his mouth and hissing in his ear.

“Do not be alarmed, soldier. It is only I, Boudicca. Do not cry out.”

His fingers clawed at her arm and his eyes rolled toward her. Before he could drag her hand from his face she whispered again. “The men of the west are coming. My bard and I have caught one of their scouts but we dare not march him to the garrison alone. Please come. Do not disturb your friends. They should stay where they are in the event that more scouts have broken through into Icenia.”

He was bewildered, she could see his doubt. Taking a chance, she released him and tugged at the short sleeve of his tunic. “Follow me,” she called softly, moving away from him. “Hurry!” She did not look back, but after a while she could hear him trotting after her, breathing heavily. Smiling, she quickened her pace until he began to pant. Annis, her feet rustled to her, blind Annis, black Annis, even if you wanted to turn back now you could not.

Already the spells have begun to coil around you, already Andrasta has turned her gaze upon you. She led him north for two miles and then veered west, slowing so that he could catch up with her.

“What were you doing so far from the town?” he asked her, now into his second wind and jogging by her side.

She glanced across at him and grinned. “Hunting” was all she said, yet there was something in the way she said the word that caused him to look over his shoulder. He was not sure where he was. Each dusky tree resembled the one next to it and the one after that, an infinity of night-painted trees, and suddenly all the stories he had heard about Icenia’s chameleon, blood-drinking goddess came back to him. He had laughed at this primitive deity who could transform herself into a raven and go flapping about in the forests. His commander had instilled in him a scorn for her, together with a distaste for the Druids who served her, but now, deep into the vast oak groves that even in daylight seemed to trap some dark essence of night, her presence sprang into life. The Icenian lady did not seem afraid. She half-ran, half-loped in the natives’ awkward gait that nevertheless covered the ground without tiring the runner, her eyes ahead, her hair tangled on her shoulders, her limbs moving in a weird, complex rhythme. She did not look as she usually did. There was something foreign in her face. Her eyes were swollen, as though she had been weeping, and as she ran her lips moved. They had come farther than he had imagined they would and she showed no signs of stopping. He wanted to rest, to grasp her arm, drag her to a halt and demand from her a new explanation, but the impulse seemed to die before it reached his body, and the sense of unreality grew around him. They hurried on.

Then all at once her pace faltered. She raised her head, and the man could have sworn that he saw her nostrils dilate like an animal taking a scent. Then she was off again. Minutes later he heard something, a snuffling and pattering. She spurted ahead, and before he could snap this new puzzle together she had shouted, “Lovernius, take him! I am tired,” and he found himself face down in the earth, his arms wrenched up and back between his shoulder blades. Stunned, he lay there trying to get his breath, twigs and dead leaves scratching his cheek. His helmet was tugged from his head and he heard it go bumping into the undergrowth. His belt with the gladius and his knife followed. Then hands began to unlace his sandals and he struggled to turn and sit up, still in the grip of his unseen assailant. The lands loosened, but only so that other hands could unbuckle his breastplate. “What are you doing?” he demanded at last, and the lady tossed the breastplate into a bush.

“Turn him about and let him sit, Lovernius,” she said, moving to untie his leather jerkin.

“Lady, have you lost your mind?” the soldier shouted, and those other hands hauled him around until he was sitting upright. Boudicca coolly took her knife and cut the linen tunic from him, and his iron-stripped apron came with it. Then he saw the dogs, leashed to a tree, saliva dripping from their huge muzzles, but even then he did not understand, though an icy mouth suddenly pressed itself over his heart. The Lady reached for his undergarments and though he exclaimed sharply and tried to pull away, the man behind him tightened his hold and forced him to his feet. The soldier found himself naked. The cold, night-darkened eyes of the lady did not change expression as they flicked over him. She walked away and bent, and when she came back to him she had a dead fox under her arm. A quiver ran through the watching dogs. She laid the carcass down and with one sure stroke of her knife opened it, then felt about inside it, pulling the flaccid intestines out to slither gray on the grass. Her slimed hand came up, the knife glinted, and she stood, the fox’s bladder balanced on her palm. The soldier could smell it as she walked to him, a stench of old blood, an odor of putrefaction. The dogs began to whine, an excitement rising in them, and Boudicca lifted the obscene thing under his nose.