The War at the Edge of the World (22 page)

‘Centurion!’

Castus halted, and the spear jabbed against his back. In the doorway of one of the huts he saw Julius Decentius, the renegade, leaning on a stick. The man’s leg was heavily bandaged above the knee.

‘I’m sorry about the way things have turned out,’ Decentius called. ‘Most regrettable. I did all I could but—’

Castus snarled, cutting the man off; anger bulked his shoul­ders and he started forward, fists clenched. Two spears knitted across his chest, holding him, but the renegade had already cowered back into the doorway. His expression was flickering between naked fear and a sickening attempt at a smile.

‘You must believe me, I tried to help you…’ Decentius said, his voice strangled in his throat.

‘I don’t need your help,’ Castus hissed back. Then the guard shoved at his shoulder and he walked on. He could sense the renegade staring after him. Could it be true, Castus thought, that after all his betrayals the man still believed they were allies, fellow Romans? The thought soured his mouth, and he spat.

They reached one of the larger huts at the far end of the compound, and the leading warrior stepped forward and banged on the door with the butt of his spear. The door swung open, and the guards moved aside, gesturing for Castus to enter.

Warmth met him as he stooped through the door, and the smells of cooking food and damp greasy wool. Something else as well: a high keen scent. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and he stood up straight as he felt the bonds slipped from his wrists.

‘The men outside think you are a wild animal, and must be kept tied at all times. But I trust you can behave like a human.’

Castus recognised the voice, that low and heavily accented Latin, before he made out the figure of Cunomagla herself, seated at the far side of the hut. He took a few steps from the door towards the central hearth. There were several others in the room: women in plain gowns kneeling on the floor. One of them worked at a spinning wheel, another at embroidery. All seemed carefully oblivious to his presence.

‘Sit,’ Cunomagla commanded. Castus lowered himself onto a stool beside the hearth. The walls of the hut were hung with woven pictures showing the figures of animals and men locked into a strange stiff frieze. Pale skulls of horned animals were mounted around the slope of the ceiling, and a bronze cauldron hung suspended by a long black chain above the fire. Castus leaned down to rub the ears of a lean yellow dog lying beside the hearth; the animal flinched and bared its teeth at him.

‘I was sorry for what happened to your envoy,’ the woman said. Castus tried to judge the woman’s expression. Nothing in her eyes or her voice suggested that Marcellinus had been important to her, once. The boy, his illegitimate son, was sitting on the floor beside his mother.

‘He chose his own way out,’ Castus said. He could see Cunomagla more distinctly now. She had thrown off her cloak and wore only a sleeveless green dress that gathered in her lap. Her heavy ornaments – the chain of double silver links at her neck, the massive snake-head bands on her arms – caught the glow from the hearth fire. Behind her, Castus could see a broad hunting spear leaning against the wall. He had no doubt that she would use it if he made a step towards her or her son.

But what, he wondered, must he look like to her? His hair and beard had grown out into an unruly yellow-brown scrub, and in his native tunic he could easily pass as some kind of barbarian himself. Only his army boots marked him as a Roman. The Picts went barefoot, and had no need to take them.

‘What do you want with me, lady?’

‘Just to talk. Do not worry – none here understand Latin. We can be plain with each other.’

‘This is your fort, then? You rule here?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘This is Drustagnus’s place. I am his guest… or maybe his prisoner. But Drustagnus has gone to make war on the Roman lands, with his uncle the king. You think they will be… victorious?’

Castus thought for a moment. He remembered the sneering attitude of the young Pictish chief when he had last seen him.
Be careful
, he told himself.
This woman too is one of them
.

‘At first, perhaps,’ he said. ‘But later – no. Once the Roman forces rally against them, your people have no chance. The legions will march north and destroy this country.’ He tried to keep the vengeful anger from his voice.

‘I think so too,’ Cunomagla said quietly. She held his eyes across the glow of the embers. ‘I was two years in your city, your Ebor-acum. Drustagnus also, but he was too young to know what he saw. This city is not the greatest of your empire, I think?’

‘Far from it.’ Castus almost smiled, thinking of Antioch, Nicomedia, even the cities of Pannonia.

‘Yes. And Romans have many legions. This I learn when I live at Ebor-acum. This, and this language, and the stories and customs of your people.’

‘What stories?’

‘I learn that Romans are vicious and cruel, and crush their enemies without mercy. I learn that their armies can be des­troyed, but more armies always come after them. I learn that emperors can be murdered by slaves, and can rise from nothing. Your customs are very strange to me.’

‘Some of these stories are strange to me too.’

She smiled a little at that, just the slightest flicker. The glow from the hearth was very warm, and Castus felt a slow drowsiness creeping through him, a sense of intoxication like the first effect of strong wine.

‘If the armies of Rome destroy the new king, and his nephew Drustagnus too, my son will be one of the few in my land with the ruling blood, of female line. He could become king.’

‘If there’s anyone left for him to rule.’

Cunomagla closed her eyes for a moment, as if gathering her thoughts. ‘There are stories my people tell,’ she said, ‘of when the Romans came to our land, many fathers ago. Your emperor, Sey-verus. We ran from him, to the high mountains, to live like animals in that country. In my father’s father’s time we struggle and fight, all against all, and make ourselves human again. Now we return to our land, and we are strong. We are free, not like Romans. You understand this?’

‘You don’t look like free people to me.’

‘You are Roman,’ Cunomagla said with a dismissive smile. ‘You don’t know what is freedom! But you know we fight for this – our land and custom.’

‘That I can understand, yes,’ Castus said. He had seen it many times before, after all. Seen that determination smashed by the legions, and only the dead and the burning villages left.

‘My son is too young now to rule as king,’ Cunomagla said. ‘But
I
… I could rule in his name until he was of age. If I had a husband to stand beside me.’

‘Take one then,’ Castus said. The woman was staring at him, proud and direct. It was an unfamiliar sensation to him. She laughed.

‘If I take a husband,
he
will want to be king. Drustagnus wants this. Then my son could never rule.’

Castus felt his mouth drying. The mysteries of Pictish roy­alty were beyond him, but now he was beginning to see the connection. Marcellinus, he thought, was supposed to be here instead of him.

‘But only if your husband was a Pict,’ he said.

Cunomagla nodded slowly. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are a brave war­rior. I have seen you, strong in battle. All my people know this.’

She stood up, and in the firelight she seemed to tower beneath the blackened roof. She picked up the spear from behind her. She had never looked as powerful, or as commanding.

‘You… can be my husband. When Talorcagus and Drustagnus are dead, we both rule, in my son’s name. My people are wild and fierce and love freedom, but we could govern them. Make treaty with Rome – peace between Roman and Pict. When they have seen the Roman war, they will understand this.’

‘
Peace?
’ Castus said, sneering. The word sounded incredible, impossible. He felt stunned and angry; the thought of sur­rendering himself to be the consort of a barbarian woman, of the race that had slaughtered his men, was repulsive. But there was another feeling inside him too, almost nauseating in its intensity. Desire, like something slowly uncoiling in his belly. Had Marcellinus killed himself so that he did not have to make this choice?

‘Better to rule over living men than dead,’ Cunomagla said. ‘Better to rule than to die.’ She lowered the spear until the blade pointed at Castus.

‘Why not Decentius? He’s a Roman.’

‘This man is not a man. He is a traitor to his people. He is less than vermin.’

But would I not be a traitor too
, he thought,
if I did what you want?

She raised the spear again and placed it back against the wall.

‘Go now,’ she said. ‘Think on what I say. Soon I call you again.’

Outside the hut, the cold fresh breeze caught in his throat. Castus coughed, and then breathed deeply, letting the clean air wash over him as the guards tied his hands again. He tried not to meet any of their eyes as they marched him back towards his hut. But he saw Decentius, the traitor, watching him from a far doorway with a sly and calculating grimace.

Castus lay on his mattress, staring into the gathering darkness as the hearth fire died down. He could hear the calls of the guards from outside, a doglike yapping and a cackle. The earthy taste of barley porridge was thick on his tongue, and sleep was far away. His body was alive with angry frustration. He was not a slave, to be commanded by savages, or a beast to be driven by the goad. He was a Roman soldier. He told himself that, but what did it mean now? Already Talorcagus could be leading his tribal horde against the Wall. If he had half the numbers that Marcellinus had suggested then the garrison would be overwhelmed. And then what? If Arpagius assembled the legion in time he might defeat them in the field, but if not…

Set against that, what happened to Castus himself seemed utterly unimportant. He was a dead man already, in the eyes of everyone he knew. So what, if he became Cunomagla’s consort? A slave and a prisoner, pretending to rule over savages? But, no, he could not allow himself to do that. He could pretend, until he had a chance to break free, but subterfuge was not in his nature and the idea disgusted him. Better to die, then. He could pound at the door or rip his way through the roof, and throw himself at the guards outside to die under their spears. Maybe even take one or two of them with him. He sat up, determined to do exactly that. But then he remembered the promise he had made to Marcellinus. To escape, and carry word to his family. He still had Marcellinus’s seal ring, concealed in the toe of his boot. A promise to a dying man had the force of a sacred oath.

Castus got up and paced circles in the darkness. It was hot and stale in the hut, and his beard and hair prickled with sweat. Scrubbing at his head, he flung himself down on the mattress again and pulled the coarse blanket over himself. He felt his mind, exhausted with tumbling thoughts, slowly lurching towards sleep.

It was a sound from the door that startled him fully awake again, the rattle of the locking bar and the soft grunt of the rope hinges. An hour had passed, maybe more; he could not tell. He lay still, eyes wide, trying to guess the shapes around him in the dark. Cold night air flowed in from outside. Then a figure entered the hut and the door was closed once more.

‘Who’s there?’ he said, low in his throat, and felt more keenly than ever his lack of a weapon. But only a single figure had entered the hut – and with a quick sense of inevitability he realised who it was.

‘Be still,’ she said, crouching beside the embers in the hearth and feeding them sticks until the fire crackled back into life. The glow lit her face, her thick hair. ‘It is the custom of my people’, she said, ‘that a woman of royal blood can choose her men. Any that she desires can be hers.’

She stood up, a column of shadow above the fire.

‘Do I get to choose as well?’ Castus said.

Cunomagla dipped her head and her face dropped into the shadow of her hair. She lifted one hand and unpinned the brooch that fastened her dress at the shoulder. The dress fell, and she stood naked in the firelight. Castus stared at her, transfixed: all over her body, her powerful arms and broad shoulders, her heavy breasts and wide hips, the flesh was marked with a tracery of scar-patterns. She paced across the hut and knelt beside the mattress. Heavy silver glinted at her throat and on her arms. Then she laid her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down onto his back, straddling his hips and pressing her breasts against him. Her scent was raw and heady: smoke and meat and sweat.

‘Choose, then,’ she said.

They let him out of the hut the next day, and allowed him to walk with hands unbound. The warriors would not look at him, but Castus caught their scowls and sneers, and saw the way they fingered their spears and the hilts of their short swords. One of them, a man with a long-toothed doglike face who seemed to be the leader, threw off his leather cape and walked with chest bared, as if to show off the pictures gouged into his skin. Castus remembered Cunomagla’s skin the night before, the softness over the muscle, and the delicate welts he had traced with his fingers in the darkness after the fire had died down. He could still smell her musk all over him, and knew the guards could smell it too.

He walked a short circuit around the upper enclosure of the fort. Seabirds wheeled over the estuary, catching the level silver sunlight as they turned, but the mountains were black. He checked the position of the sun. The estuary lay to the north, and to the south was high desolate moorland. A crooked valley descended from the high ground, curving around below the north-eastern gate of the fort – Castus could make out a hunting party returning, mounted men with dogs. He glanced around for Decentius, but could not see him.

As he reached the south-western end of the fort enclosure, he became aware that the number of men around him had increased, more warriors joining those that escorted him, a gathering throng of them trailing behind. He tried to appear oblivious, keeping his movements slow and careful, but he could feel his shoulders bunching and tightening under the coarse weave of the Pictish tunic, and the hair that had grown across his scalp and jaw prickled with fresh perspiration.