Every Never After (21 page)

And now, tied to a tent pole in the middle of a Roman army camp somewhere in the wilds of first-century Somerset, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu washed over her as she squished and squeezed the bones of her hands together, contorting in ways that would make Houdini proud.

Once free, she glanced around the dim confines of the tent, taking thorough, analytical stock of her situation.

There was only one entrance—the flap-covered doorway guarded by some poor schmuck sentry who’d have to hear about the praefect’s remarkable recovery secondhand. Allie could see his shadow as he paced back and forth, but he had yet to poke his head in to check on her. The other three sides of the square, spartan enclosure consisted of blank canvas walls stretched and pegged tight to the ground. Allie tried to remember what she’d learned about the configuration of a Roman marching camp from all she’d been reading. The thing about the Legions was that they were all about conformity. Everything they did, they did with as little deviation from established procedures as possible. They were a machine. Ruthlessly efficient. It was one of the reasons they’d been so successful in their military campaigns. They didn’t waste time screwing around trying new things like different camp layouts.

Allie knew with certainty that this, the commanding officer’s tent, was usually situated somewhere close to the centre of the camp. She was pretty sure that the forward half of the camp quartered the elite soldiers—the best fighters—and that the rearward half quartered the auxiliaries, along with the supply tents and the cavalry if there was any. At least some horses were attached to the Second Augusta—there had been during the battle—so there’d have to be some kind of stabling or picket lines for them. Allie figured the tent opening faced forward, toward the enemy. So she turned now and tiptoed to the back wall.

The thing about the terrain around Glastonbury was that, because the Somerset Levels had yet to be drained and converted into arable farmland, most of it was in a state of perpetual marshiness. The ground on which the camp stood was spongy. Spongy enough to let a slender, seventeen-year-old girl—wriggling like an eel and with a reasonably modest set of boobs mashed flat— squeeze herself under the edge of the heavy canvas and out into the narrow alleyway. She could smell meat cooking from somewhere north of her, wafted on a hint of a breeze. Okay, so … the mess tent was off to her left. She turned to her right.

Allie knew that the camp would have two main “avenues” leading north-south and east-west, cutting the enclosed area into quarters. She’d have to avoid those. She edged her way to the corner of the tent. The coast was clear down a side alley between two rows of tents that looked as though they might be used for either storage or the infirmary—they didn’t have the same sort of inhabited air she’d seen when Marcus had led her to the praefect’s tent. She heard the soft whickering of a horse off in that direction. So she’d go south: it was her best bet to make it undetected to the bankand-ditch enclosure that surrounded the camp. Thank goodness for the kind of mind-numbing fear that drove her forward without hesitation—and that silenced the voice asking her what the hell she was going to do once she managed to get outside the walls. She had, frankly, no idea. But it couldn’t be any worse than being a prisoner. And if the Romans had captured Llassar the smith,
^it
wasn’t entirely inconceivable that—scathach notwithstanding (Allie didn’t want to ponder what might happen if she ran into any of
them
)—other Clare-friendly Celts were roaming the moors nearby. And if Al could maybe get to them … or something …

Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Anything has got to be better than chains.

Allie ran from tent to tent. When she was close enough to see the defensive fortifications, she found a spot to hide in the shadows beneath a provisions wagon. She willed herself to be patient as a pair of soldiers passed by on patrol. Then she willed herself to be even more patient until they’d passed her for the second time, heading the other way. They were discussing the evening’s feast with anticipation. Apparently, with provisions growing thin thanks to the scathach siege, the cooks had been forced to ration things like seasoning and the better cuts of meat. From what Allie gathered, last night’s stew tasted as if it had been made from cavalry mounts fallen in battle (she thought she might barf on hearing that and really hoped they were joking). Finally the sentries moved on, muttering to each other about “just what in Hades the Second Augusta was doing in this gods-forsaken marsh-ridden demon-plagued land anyway, by Mars and Mithras …”

Allie held her breath until she could no longer hear them, and counted to ten just to make sure. Then she wriggled out from under the cart, leaped to her feet, and made a run for it. Scrambling up the earthen bank that surrounded the camp was easier said than done. At least the sharpened stakes were on the other side, pointing out—the Romans hadn’t expected having to keep anyone
in
the camp—and so she didn’t have to worry about being impaled. But the dirt was only loosely packed, and it was hard to find handand footholds. Still, desperation gave Allie the determination she needed, and she reached the top of the bank, tumbled over it, and rolled all the way down the other side into the surrounding ditch, just as she heard the sentries returning.

Her mouth and nose were filled with grit, her eyes stung, and her hair was a matted mess. Her clothes were a mass of grass
stains, dirt, and ripped bits. It was not, sartorially speaking, her finest hour. Still, she was elated. Almost as elated as when she’d made another escape—in Stuart Morholt’s limited-edition Bentley, which she’d driven into a utility pole just to let him know that kidnapping two teenage girls wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had and he should think twice before doing it again. Ha.

Okay, maybe Marcus hadn’t exactly kidnapped her. Maybe he’d saved her life. Maybe he’d continued to do so in weird, off-putting ways. Still. He’d left her tied to a tent pole. That—in the language of his eighties upbringing—was bogus. And Allie wasn’t about to hang around waiting for that Junius guy to decide that maybe she wasn’t so scary with her hands shackled and maybe his superiors wouldn’t mind so much if he did just run a sword through her guts. She was
so
getting out of there.

Once outside the camp walls, Allie ran for all she was worth. She headed west, not because she knew where she was going or what she’d do when she got there, but because that was, in some other world, where home was. Even if it was an ocean and a couple of thousand years away.

It was probably, in retrospect, the exact wrong direction in which to head. As Allie soon discovered, and in such a way as to make her think some higher power with a really twisted sense of humour had broken out a big ol’ bucket of popcorn and was sitting on a couch somewhere just waiting and watching to see how she’d deal with this one.

She had to stop running because there was a river in front of her.

And there was someone in the river.

And damn it all, that someone was Marcus.

16

M
aybe Clare
shouldn’t
have had the fish and chips. But in retrospect it wouldn’t have made much difference, since it swas Nicholas Ashbourne gazing into the eye sockets of his own damned cranium that had flipped Clare’s stomach to the point of no return. Back inside the shop, she took a long swallow of water from the bottle Milo handed her and tried not to heave again.

But … the thing was
staring
at her.

She imagined a faintly amused expression on its grim, bony visage.

“For crying out loud,” Clare muttered peevishly. She picked up a dust rag lying on the counter and tossed it over the skull.

Nicholas Ashbourne emitted a small, mirthless laugh. Then he took another slug of brandy, sighed, and removed his ridiculous pith helmet for the first time since Clare had met him. She noticed that the professor’s demeanour had subtly changed. His posture seemed more relaxed. His gestures were less flamboyant. Even the goofball moustache seemed almost … dignified.
Almost.

Ashbourne ran a hand down his face, smoothing the bristles as if he were distantly longing for a straight razor.

“I’m not exactly sure where to begin,” he said in a voice that was lower, more solemn. And apparently less inclined to add the word ‘marvellous’ to every utterance, although he did seem to have stocked up on a few other adjectives. “It’s a complicated story. Fantastical. Unbelievable …”

Clare refrained from rolling her eyes, but only because she was becoming well and truly freaked out. Still, she could give Bloody Nicky a run for his money when it came to those three things.

“Go on,” she said. “I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to complicated, fantastical, and unbelievable. I promise I won’t laugh or anything.”

Milo grinned wanly. “She won’t. Trust me. Neither will I.”

Ashbourne and Piper exchanged a glance and the archaeologist shrugged.

“All right then,” he said. “I am not Nicholas Ashbourne. Well … that’s not strictly true, I suppose. I suppose I am he as much as I am anyone. But it is certainly not who I started out as. A long time ago, a young man by the name of Quintus Phoenius Postumus was born in the year
AD
20 by our present calendar standards and grew up to become an officer in the Roman army, serving at the siege of the Druid stronghold of Mona under the command of one Gaius Suetonius—”

“Paulinus?”
Clare interrupted, agog with astonishment and disgust. “Not
that
guy again! I’m seriously
so
sick of hearing about that bloody Roman wanker.”

Milo turned and raised a grimly amused eyebrow at her. It seemed that, in the few weeks she’d been across the pond, Clare had acclimated nicely. Peppering her speech with bon mots like “bloody” and “wanker” just like a native; Maggie would be proud. Ashbourne, for his part, did a double take.

“Spoken like someone with firsthand knowledge of the man,” he murmured.

“I am,” she snorted. “Oh, the good old days.”

“Clare … is special,” Milo explained. “In a lot of ways, but temporally speaking,
really
special.”

“Oh yes. I know all about that.”

“You do?”

“About the fact that Miss Reid carries a Druid blood curse in her veins?” He chuckled at Clare’s reaction. “Come now, Miss Reid,
surely you don’t think you’re the only one who’s fallen prey to a centuries-spanning Druid blood curse?”

“Um. No?” Clare blinked. “Well … yes. I actually kind of did.”

She was startled to the core. But then her gaze locked with Ashbourne’s and it dawned on Clare that he knew about her …
condition
because it was something they shared.

“You,” she said quietly. “You were this Postumus guy …”

He nodded.

“… and the Druiddyn blood cursed you.”

Ashbourne’s mouth half-bent in a mirthless smile and he nodded faintly. “I suspect, though, that mine was rather more malicious than yours.”

“Yeah, well. I was a girl in a sundress who time-travelled by accident.” Clare couldn’t help the abruptly snarky tone; her mind had just flashed on the mental picture of him in full Roman armour, standing against a backdrop of fire and smoke. “You, on the other hand, were a commander in the army that was kind of busy trying to wipe out a large percentage of the native Briton population. I imagine that didn’t exactly stir up the warm fuzzies among the Druiddyn, y’know?”

Ashbourne sighed. “I’m sorry you think of me that way.”

“I’m sorry you
make
me think of you that way.”

Milo put a hand on her shoulder. “Clare … this isn’t getting us any closer to finding Allie. Dr. Ashbourne, please. Go on.”

“Sure. Right. Go on.” Clare bit her lip and struggled to keep a lid on her temper. She couldn’t help seeing Bloody Nicky Ashbourne not for who he was now but for what he’d been. Comorra had died—before Clare had altered the course of history just a teeny bit—because of the actions of men like him. A lot of the Iceni had died. Boudicca, her daughter Tasca, her husband … and those were just a few of the faces Clare could put to the dead. There’d been so many more. All because a bunch of stupid men from a stupid country thousands of miles away decided they wanted a little more space to spread out.

She simmered silently while Ashbourne told them about the siege of the Druid Isle of Mona, where the Roman governor, the brutal Suetonius Paulinus, had ordered the sacred oak groves burned before he had to hurry east to take care of Boudicca’s rebellious uprising.

“He commanded me to follow him once we were done with the job on Mona …”

“Job?” Clare muttered. “Is
that
what they called a massacre back in the day?”

Ashbourne’s shoulders stiffened, and a slight flush—whether of anger or shame, Clare couldn’t tell—suffused his face. But otherwise he ignored the dig.

“I declined to follow that order,” he continued.

Clare swallowed another knee-jerk snark.

“Declined?” Milo said. “You mean you disobeyed a direct order from your commander?”

“I did. But only because I had other orders—imperatives, really—from higher up the ladder. Paulinus was a … driven man, shall we say. He was single-minded in his quest to beat the Britons into submission—especially when it came to Boudicca and her rebels. And the Druiddyn. What happened on Mona was … not honourable. And I knew it would be even worse with the Iceni: Boudicca and her people would fight to the bitterest end, and Paulinus and his men would be merciless. The Fourteenth—the Legio Gemina—had a reputation as the most brutally efficient of all the Legions, and it was not an unearned one. Under the command of Paulinus, the Fourteenth was a well-oiled killing machine. My own men—the Second Augusta—had cultivated a different reputation. One of honour. We were in Britain as keepers of peace. Arbiters of civilization and progress.”