The Eagle and the Raven (72 page)

In the coolness of evening Plautius’s guest arrived. The steward ushered him into the reception room where the family was gathered, sitting clustered by an open window that gave out onto the scent of roses and a velvet darkness, and Plautius rose to embrace him. “Rufus! How pleased I am that you could come. I have been playing a game tonight, for you did not know that our noble enemy is here and he did not know who was coming.” Gladys rose also and kissed him with affection, then left him to Plautius, who led him further into the room to face the enquiring eyes of the others. “Caradoc, this is Rufus Pudens, who was my second-in-command in Albion. Rufus, here is the man who escaped us.”

Pudens looked startled, then a smile crept over his face, broadened, and his hand went out. “Caradoc! Many times I have wanted to meet you. I knew you were in Rome but I have been in the east with my legion and then on business at my estates. Welcome to Rome!”

Caradoc took his wrist, searching the features. He was tall for a Roman, with straight shoulders under the white toga. His nose was straight also. His black eyebrows, the alignment of eyes and thin cheeks, the fringe of black hair, were all straight and clear-cut, almost painfully so, and he carried with him the brisk air of the serving soldier. He took Caradoc’s wrist in the native fashion, still smiling, and Caradoc could find nothing to say. He was conscious all at once of the irony of the situation, and he quickly turned to Eurgain.

“I thank you for your greeting. This is my wife Eurgain, my daughter, also Eurgain, and my son Llyn.”

“Well, sir,” Llyn said as Pudens turned to him. “Tell us what you thought of Albion, if you remember. You must have seen many another defeated people since then and perhaps we all look the same after a while.”

Pudens’s dark eyes became watchful, and he answered bluntly, taking the goblet offered to him by Plautius’s steward. “Albion is unique, Llyn.”

“Linus,” Llyn snapped, and Pudens’s eyebrows rose.

“I understand. Linus. Your aunt also refused to allow us to call her by name, but now she does not mind when I twist my tongue around it. Albion will always be a mystery. I have never seen such squalid living conditions coupled with such delicate and marvelous works of art, such noble and proud people. I could never decide whether they were very innocent or very clever.”

Admiration crept into Llyn’s eyes. “I think I will like you,” he said gruffly “I might even tell you one day whether we are indeed very stupid or more highly civilized than Romans will ever be.” He sat down abruptly and went back to the wine, and Plautius’s steward came to announce that it was time to dine. Gladys had still not come down.

Pudens was placed on a couch opposite Caradoc, and though he talked gravely and with a friendly attention his eyes kept straying to the lined, still face framed in gray-and-black waving hair, and finally Caradoc leaned forward.

“You may stare at me if you like, Pudens, I don’t mind at all. Look well, and then tell me what you see.”

Pudens was not embarrassed. “Thank you, I will,” he replied. “I have long wanted to study your face.” He propped himself higher on his couch and Caradoc lay motionless, his eyes smiling faintly. Then Pudens gave a nod that was half-gratitude, half-confirmation.

“My sister used to tell her children that if they did not go to sleep the monster of Albion would get them,” he said. “She meant you, Lord.” They all laughed, and in that moment Pudens thought, I see a strength that was once power, grooves of agonies that still make scars. I see eyes that grieve quietly and are still full of visions, eyes that hide far more than they reveal. No wonder the empress was tormented for a while. Aloud he said, “I see one of the greatest men of our age. Forgive me, Lord. I do not mean to discomfit you, but I have heard many men speak of you in this way and I must now confess that I agree.” He shrugged helplessly. “You are arviragus. You will know far better than I what that really means, but I was in Albion long enough to begin to understand. Now may I impose another indignity upon you?”

Caradoc smiled, then gave one of his rare laughs. “I should have known that any friend of Aulus’s would be thoroughly honest. Attack my dignity if you will!”

Pudens sat up, his food forgotten. “Tell me how Ostorious Scapula came to defeat you. Only four hundred of your warriors were killed. Why was it not possible to rally the rest and make a victory?”

Caradoc gazed at him, the smile slowly dying. There was a valley, he thought. Ah Camulos, yes, I remember. The moment the master spoke of, the moment when the path of destiny forked, and I sat on a rock, not knowing which way to go. And you died, Cin. They shot an arrow into your back. He sat up deliberately, and taking a napkin he made it into a crescent and laid it on the table, his eyes meeting Eurgain’s for a fleeting second and reading his own pain and bereavement mirrored there. “I will answer you,” he said steadily, and his hands moved swiftly, scooping up pieces of bread and utensils to make two armies. “The napkin is the place of engagement. There was a valley…”

Plautius drew his couch nearer and the slaves stood patiently, waiting to lay another course on the table, but the three men were soon engrossed in Caradoc’s little tableau. When Gladys heard her hus band say, “Why put the Demetae on the flank if they were unreliable?” and saw Llyn edge closer to his father, prepared to argue also, she signaled to the standing servants.

“Put it all down here. We can serve ourselves tonight.” She smiled across at Eurgain. “Why
did
he put the Demetae there? It seems to me that if they had been in the center, and then broken, their places could have been quickly filled by others.”

“Rome would have filled it first and, besides, he put them on the flank so that Sine and I could buttress them with the women. He thought that it was better to be pressed on the flank than have the tribes divided down the middle and the two halves isolated.”

They ate and talked, stopping every once in a while to listen to Caradoc’s even voice interspersed with Llyn’s abrupt, impatient comments. “Caradoc is happy,” Gladys said softly, “but you are so quiet tonight, Eurgain. Is something wrong?”

The girl lifted her blonde-haloed face to her aunt and smiled. “No, nothing. I was out looking at the grapes today, before it got too hot. They are still green but filling nicely. I think Aulus will have a good crop this year.” Her mother glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. She was a mystery, this girl. Thoroughly selfcontained, with a quiet assurance, she seemed to fear nothing, or if she did she kept it to herself. Eurgain had wanted to talk to her about her wanderings in the city but somehow had not dared, and it was certain that she did not drink and gamble night after night as Llyn did. She had conquered her sword with quiet stubbornness, fought beside the other women without complaint, and been blooded, yet she did not yearn after Albion as Gladys and the others did. She seemed to accept her exile calmly, realistically, and her mother, watching her from day to day, knew that in Albion, this child would have eventually left Camulodunon and vanished into the magic-drenched fogs of Mona. No one crossed the younger Eurgain. There was an authority about her, exercised only rarely, a cool self-possession that brooked no resistance, yet was not Llyn’s bullying rudeness. Her mother did not know it, but she was the distillation of Eurgain’s own essence, stronger, deeper, more powerful. The invisible stamp of Druithin calling was on her. Her mother met the formidable challenge of her blue eyes, and smiled.

“The crop will be heavy if the local children can be kept away from it. I wonder if I should send someone to see to Gladys?”

Her daughter shook her head. “She will come down before long. She and Caelte are in her rooms, singing. I heard their voices as I passed the door.”

The men talked on, hunched over the table, and then there was a flurry of movement outside the archway and Gladys and Caelte swept in. Caelte hugged his harp to his breast. When Gladys saw a stranger at table she paused. “Oh Aulus, I’m sorry,” she said. “If I had known that you had a guest I would not have stayed in my room.” Pudens had risen to his feet. The other daughter, he thought. Of course. Like a man awakened by shafts of sunlight lying across his face, he stared at her, the emperor’s favorite, Nero’s infatuation. She was dressed in native fashion. A long, midnight-blue tunic fell from her shoulders to brush the floor, belted tightly by a thin, intricately tooled leather belt. Her hair was loose and falling straight and shining to her waist, and it was prisoned to her head by a circlet of silver surmounted by one large, milky green stone that dully reflected the candlelight and sat in the middle of her forehead. Around her wrists and on her fingers the same stone caused the light to slide softly over her skin, and as she stepped to her uncle he saw another band of silver around one ankle. Plautius introduced them and she took his wrist firmly. “Forgive my bad manners,” she smiled. “You must put it down to my barbarian temperament.”

“You look very much like your aunt,” he observed, and the smile widened.

“Then I must be beautiful, for my aunt is,” she mocked him gently, her eyes sparkling into his own, but then he saw the shadows under them, the faint marks of nervous strain, and in her gaiety there was an undercurrent of tautness. He felt all at once desperately sorry for her, why he did not know. She reminded him of someone, and as she found her couch and the others began to eat again he tried to remember who it was. Then he knew, and it was all he could do to stop himself from exclaiming aloud. She was like the Icenian lady, Boudicca. Not in the way she looked but in the angry misery inside. You hate us, don’t you? he had said to her, and she had replied affirmatively with brutal frankness. There had been something beneath the honesty, a vast lake of sorrow, and it had touched him. He could not tear his gaze away from Gladys as she ate, and he wondered how old she was. Not more than seventeen, he was sure. He quickly reminded himself that he was well into his thirties, and at last turned to Caradoc, who had made some remark to him, but he could not free himself of the consciousness of her presence.

Later they drifted out onto the lawn and sat or lay in the dry grass, wrapped in whispering darkness. As the stars flared silver and the moon glowed white and small, Caelte sang for them, one soft song blending into another, his head bent over the strings of his little harp. Plautius and Pudens listened contentedly, enjoying the alien flavor of the music, but the Catuvellaunians hung onto it with an intensity that Pudens could feel, and it gave him pleasure. The bard was folding back memories for them, showing them years gone by. So strong was his ability that Pudens found himself gradually drawn into half-glimpsed dreams of places he had never seen, in times he had never known, as though the language, which he had once learned hastily and had as hastily forgotten, was once more insinuating itself behind his mouth and under his skin. Caelte glanced at him and smiled, and Pudens wondered for the first time since he and Plautius had left Albion whether magic was more than a matter of the imagination.

After an hour of wandering melodies Caelte suddenly sat straighter and changed key, and the Catuvellauns’ eyes swiveled to him, glittering. He began another song, plaintive, wild, one that Pudens could not remember having heard before, and it brought a shiver of delight and fear to his spine. One by one they joined in, and in the dimness Pudens saw their hands reach out unobtrusively and clasp. Immediately he felt shut out, and the gentle thread of communion in his mind snapped, yet the song held him. There were tears in the voices, even in Linus’s warm tenor, but the white faces swaying in the night were all dry. When it was over Llyn yawned. “I am sober,” he remarked. “Do I get a laurel wreath? I am also tired.” He got up and walked into the house, the shadows opening to swallow him, and the others rose also, politely bidding Pudens a good night.

Starlight was sunk deep into the stone on Gladys’s forehead as she came to him, and he searched her black, veiled eyes, wanting idiotically to put his hands over them, to feel the lashes flutter against his palms. “Will you come again?” she asked him, and when he had nodded and she had turned away he remembered what the gems she wore were called. They were moonstones.

“Stay the night, Rufus,” Plautius said to him. “It is very late. You can go on to Rome in the morning.”

Moonstones. He made an effort and turned his attention to his host. “Thank you, Aulus, I think I might. I am not expected until the day after tomorrow.”

“Good. We can talk. I want to know how the Pannonian legions have survived without me!”

“You left an enormous gulf to fill, Aulus, and you know it! Goodnight!”

“Goodnight. Gladys will show you to the guest room.”

For a moment Pudens’s heart gave a jolt, then he laughed at himself as he left the garden. Stupid fool. In the morning you will see her as she really is, without her jewels, without her beautiful soft gown, and the sun will not play the tricks on you that moonlight and candlelight do. She is a child.

The next morning Pudens talked of military matters with Caradoc and Plautius, and in the afternoon they all went riding over the windy hills surrounding the estate. He had been prepared to dismiss his reaction to Gladys as a momentary fascination but when she and Llyn came running down to the stable where he and the others waited for the horses to be led out, he found himself fighting a new entanglement. She was clad in native breeches and short tunic, and her feet were bare. Her hair hung in four tight braids, her arms were free of ornament. She greeted him gaily over the clatter of hoofs on the courtyard, and with one bound she leaped onto her mount’s back, holding her seat easily as the startled horse shied and chaffered Llyn. He and the rest of the family mounted also and trotted out the gate and along the road that ran through the grove of trees Plautius’s father had planted. Pudens kneed his horse until he was jogging beside her and she looked across at him and smiled. The signs of strain had gone.

“Where are your estates, sir?” she asked him, and Plautius called out behind her, “You are riding next to one of the richest men in the empire, Gladys. He owns half of Umbria.”