The Eagle and the Raven (82 page)

Venutius did not hold out his hand, nor did he introduce his chieftains. He stood looking into Andocretus’s face, afraid yet crying out to find there what he sought. In spite of himself Andocretus’s own face drew into an expression of tense antagonism.

“You have eaten and drunk,” Venutius said at last. “Now give me your news. No, wait. Emrys, have the Druid called to me.” The chief went away sheltering a disturbing air of latent ferocity. When he returned Andocretus saw to his dismay that the same Druid who had come to see his lady in Brigantia was with him, striding like a man on naked feet, her small, bony shoulders swinging, and her thin face brittle with hostility. The young man beside him stirred and exclaimed quietly and Andocretus wanted to clap a hand over his mouth to him to keep silent.

“Well,” she said as she came up. “It is the Lady Aricia’s pretty singing boy.” She halted beside Emrys, and Venutius made a swift, savage gesture, but she spoke again. “Now we will discover if the rumors are true.”

Andocretus looked back at Venutius, whose face had turned ashen. “Speak!” he commanded, and Andocretus forced his eyes to hold Venutius’s. It was hard, harder than anything he had ever done, more distasteful than he thought it would be, but he said the words.

“Lord, she is dying. She has so little flesh left that she is no longer like a woman. She begs you, she implores you to come to her so that she may tell you how she has wronged you before death claims her. She bade me give you this.” He willed his fingers not to shake as he opened the pouch on his belt and drew out the necklace. “She does not ask that you remain with her, only that you give her a moment of forgiveness.” He held out the jewels and Venutius slowly took them, turning them over in his fingers. Then his other hand came up to grip them also, and his head went down. “Druid,” he whispered huskily. “Tell me again the words she used of me,” and Andocretus saw Emrys and the stout, black-haired chief exchange glances. The Druid answered promptly.

“I despise my husband, I have always despised him, and I do not want him back.”

Venutius’s knuckles showed white. “You have called the rumors false,” he said again to the Druid. “What do you say now? Look at this youth, and for the Mother’s sake, give me truth!” His voice rose, a cry of despair, and the Druid looked coolly at Andocretus’s beautiful, tanned face, the clear blue eyes, the blond hair that wafted shining to the slim shoulders. Andocretus kept his gaze fixed on her tiny mouth for fear his eyes would tell her everything.

After a time she sighed. “He is a liar,” she said bluntly. “A magnificent, handsome young liar. Your wife is not dying, Arviragus. She is not even ill—that is, her body does not suffer. I give you truth.”

“I told you!” the big chief grunted triumphantly, a smile weaving yet another furrow through his lined face. “Now slay this bird and think no more on the matter!”

Venutius looked up slowly, and in that moment Andocretus believed that he had won. No one would ever be able to tell the arviragus a truth about his wife. Though he himself had heard the words of hate and treachery from her own lips, though he had torn his body away from her, yet he still chose the mind’s blindness, and in that blindness was a living, growing cloud of doubt that was anchored to his love, so that with her or away from her he no longer believed or disbelieved anything about her. Andocretus spoke again, gently, softly.

“Lord, you know the hatred the Druithin have for your lady, and so does she for them. That is why she sends you the only treasure left to her, your wedding gift, and begs you, as you once loved her, to listen only to her torment. She is dying. She needs you now.”

“Ah Lord, how well she knows you!” the burly chief burst out. “Only this could bring you back to her, she knows it, so she is busy dying! This is a trap!”

“Peace, Madoc!” Venutius was controlling himself with difficulty. His glance slipped from the Silurian to the Druid, from Emrys’s quiet pity to Andocretus, seeking one ray of certitude, one glitter of truth under the impenetrable cloaks of flesh around him. He passed a freckled hand over his face and groaned. “Emrys, come,” he ordered and turned away, walking like a drunken man, swaying a little, one hand on his sword hilt and the other clutched tight over the necklace. Andocretus watched him go but did not dare to glance at his friend.

Out of sight of the camp, Venutius lowered himself to the earth, wrapping his arms about his legs and resting his head on his knees. Emrys sank cross-legged beside him, watching the night fall and feeling the wind come whispering to him, laden with the subtle scents of forest and water. It stirred the rich hair of the man sunk under the weight of misery beside him, it lightly and warmly fingered the bowed back. Emrys sat on, his thoughts passing slowly to the years of Caradoc, the desperate years, then past them to his own hearth, long cold, his own hut now tumbled into ruin. He surveyed the memories with wonder, he and Sine young and free together, so innocent then, so strong, but a war-battered stranger had come, with his son-child who was also a chief, and he and Sine had not known that he brought with him an ending. Caradoc. My brother, my lord, my fate. So many terrible partings in this life that is a constant death, so many heartbreaks. We did not believe that we could fight on without you, yet with the last breath you drew from Albion’s air you ordered it to be, and lo, the master called forth a new arviragus. The red days stride on, giving us no rest, no rest at all. We are damned, each one of us, and now…this. At last Venutius stirred in the darkness, lifted his head, and Emrys put away the sadness and looked at him.

“Tell me what I shall do, Emrys.” The voice was tired, formed thickly from a black mud of hopelessness. “Tell me quickly. Who lies and who hates? Who dies and who goes toward death?”

“I think it does not matter who lies or hates,” Emrys replied gravely. “What does matter is that you are arviragus. You are lord of our life and our death, not your wife’s, and whether she lives or dies is no longer your concern. You have been her prisoner all your life, Venutius. Set yourself free! Send the youths away or kill them, and put Cartimandua behind you. Since you came to us you have had a measure of peace, and out of that peace has come strengths you did not know you possessed. The Druithin chose you well. The time of our deliverance is at hand, you know it, you can feel it just as the rest of us can. The new governor has played wondrously into our hands. Before another moon’s swelling we will have gathered together the greatest force since Caradoc’s last mustering, and Deva will fall to us. That is the beginning, only the beginning. Freedom is in sight after all the years of loss and shame and murder. How desperately we need you, Arviragus! The new campaign is yours—you have plotted it, you hold its execution in your hands. If you leave us now we must delay, and if we delay too long then all is lost. Stay with us. We will smash Scapula’s frontier again like rotten wood, and then the emperor will take the legions away, even as the rumors say.”

Venutius listened, the hand that held the necklace unconsciously pressing it to his chest, and when Emrys’s pleading voice fell silent, he asked quietly, “What would you do, Emrys, if you were I and it was Sine who called to you?”

“I would go,” Emrys admitted without pause, “But Lord, Sine loves me and gives me only truth. We do not lie to each other as your wife lies ceaselessly to you. Forgive me, but I do not believe she is ill, nor do I believe that she is worth one thought from you, let alone a lifetime of unreturned love and lost honor.”

“Yet, Emrys, suppose she is really dying? Suppose she calls to me out of a heart burdened with remorse? Must I refuse her?”

“Yes, you must. You have nothing for which to reproach yourself.”

Venutius struggled to his feet and Emrys rose with him. Full night had fallen now, and the darkness folded them within itself. To Venutius it seemed that his soul was like that blackness, sealed in on itself, jealously imprisoning the long disease of his love and his hurt so that no cure could reach him. “If the Druids thought to heal me of my sickness by placing the mantle of arviragus around my shoulders they were wrong,” he said harshly. “I am broken, Emrys, every day I am broken anew, my strengths are Madoc’s, Sine’s, yours, not my own. I must go to her, even if she would destroy me.”

“Venutius, the whole of the west is paused on the brink of victory, waiting on your word! This is madness! Men and women have died, died I tell you, so that this day would come! I will not let you go!”

“I have no choice!” Venutius cried to him. “Surely you see that! Think of your Sine, and help me, Emrys!”

“Then let me go,” Emrys said gently. “Sine and I will carry your words to her, and if I am wrong, if she is indeed near death, I will return to face your sword. You cannot, you must not go.” In the darkness he could sense the struggle played out, and he was very glad that the night hid his arviragus’s face from him. Venutius turned and leaned his forehead against a tree, his eyes squeezed shut. After a long time he whispered, “You are wise, Emrys. Very well. I will not go, but neither must you. You are needed here. I will send others.”

“Who?”

“Domnall.”

“No, he has not been with us for long enough and, besides, you will not trust the word of one man. Let Sine go, and perhaps a member of your family kin.”

“Yes. I will send my nephew Manaw, and Brennia, his wife.” He left the tree. “Forgive me, Emrys. I was not thinking. I will not break thus again.”

Emrys did not answer, and Venutius turned and walked back to where the camp hunched almost invisibly in its protecting valley.

When Venutius handed the necklace back to Andocretus and told him that he could not go with him there was a moment of dumb founded silence, then Andocretus exclaimed, “But Lord, if you do not come she will cease to fight for life! My lady will turn her face to the wall and die!” Tears glimmered on the long, fair lashes. Andocretus was indeed overcome with emotion, but it was at the thought of Aricia’s face when he had to stand before her and tell her that her husband was no longer altogether her slave. Venutius could take no more.

“Emrys, tell him,” he said brusquely, then he turned on his heel and walked off in the gloom.

“He has not said that he will not go,” Emrys told Andocretus coolly. “But until he can know without doubt that your lady ails he does not dare to leave the west.”

“But he offends my honor! He doubts my word! I…”

“Young man,” Emrys cut in wearily. “The whole of Brigantia is tainted with your lady’s dishonor and you know it. No Brigantian chief is taken at his word anymore. My wife will accompany you home, together with the arviragus’s own blood kin, and ascertain as quickly as they may whether you have told the truth. When they return, and swear oaths that she is indeed near death, then he will go.”

There was nothing Andocretus could do. He nodded curtly to Emrys, thinking with dismay of the miles he and his friend would have to cover in the company of rebels, and what would happen to them if the Romans caught them and did not give him time to explain his errand. Emrys went away, and he shook out his blanket behind a rock and composed himself for sleep. No music fluttered through his mind that night.

The five of them left camp with the dawn, striking east through the pathless trees. “We will veer south through Cornovii country and then back up into Brigantia to avoid Deva,” Sine had told Andocretus firmly and he had not dared to argue with her, afraid as he was of her battered metal wolf’s face and her long iron sword. He vaguely remembered Venutius’s nephew and his wife, two young, silent freepeople with whom he had never shared a word in the days of growing, before his lady had called him to her bed. He was no more interested in them now than he had been then. They were the arviragus’s blood kin, but they came from his brother’s farm far to the north, where Venutius himself had been reared and where most of his loyal chiefs had grown up. Although Venutius loved his kin fiercely and had spent much time in the north with them after his marriage, they had not come to the town.

Andocretus mounted his horse in the stale, used air that waited to be blown away by the dawn’s rush, feeling sick with apprehension as he saw Emrys and the wolf mask draw away from the company together into the morning mist and realized that Sine held him and his friend in the palm of her hand. He did not know Cornovii country or the routes into Brigantia from the little-used paths of the central south, and if the woman chose to leave them suddenly they were as good as dead.

Emrys lifted the grotesque mask from his wife’s face and took her in his arms. “Do not trust the pretty boy for one instant,” he said. “Do not let him leave your side to hunt or draw water, or for any other reason, and give him no chance to talk to his friend in private. If Aricia is whole, as I believe her to be, and one of those youths brings her word of your coming, she will kill you. Your only chance of return if she is well is to see her and run before she has time to collect her wits. If you feel yourself to be in the slightest danger on the journey, kill the Brigantians and come back. The arviragus’s peace of mind is not worth your life.” Be careful, he wanted to say to her. Be cowardly, be craven, be as the Brigantians are, but come back to me! He gently kissed the firm, cruel mouth that softened only at his word, smiled into hard eyes that only he could turn into wells of brief laughter or passion, and for a moment she rested her head against the warmth of his shoulder.

“This journey is so useless, so senseless,” she whispered. “Why should he care anymore whether she lives or dies? Why should I risk my life for the sake of his stupid, doomed obsession?”

“For the sake of our own stupid, doomed obsession,” he replied, his swords lost in the blackness of her hair. “He must be free, the end is in sight, his mind must be wholly on war. He could be as brilliant a leader, in his own way, as Caradoc was, if only he could shake himself free of this woman.” They stood straight and he handed her the mask. “Walk in safety,” he said at last. “I love you, Sine.”

“And I you, Lord. Go in peace.” She raised an arm. Once more the wolf snarled a hungry warning at him, and she turned away and left him.