Myths of the Modern Man (17 page)

Dubh paced with his anger, and tried desperately to think of something to say to her, but he was not a clever man, only a strong one.

“
Leave us.” She was talking to Dubh. He looked unspeakably outraged, then his spite shivered into disgust and defeat. He proceeded to leave, but she touched his arm lightly. A reconciliation with a beloved brother?

“
I am your queen. Do not forget, Dubh. Do not forget that. You will bow when you speak to the Queen.”

Appalled at the humiliation, nevertheless he stopped. He bowed to her, with barely contained self control. I had never seen him bow to her before. She never demanded it of her brother. She had been indulgent to him. She would never be indulgent to him again.

He left.

She turned to me. She looked at me hard a moment, but said nothing. The fire in her cinnamon eyes turned to ice. The woman who had wanted me so intensely a moment ago could barely stand to look at me now.

“
I will send you to Cartimandua. I will offer her an alliance in our fight, and you will bring my message. Your three betrayers will take you. You will all return with Cartimandua’s allegiance, or be taken as slaves by her, or be killed by her.”

She turned, and left.

Don’t get involved, huh, Eleanor? When you’re right, you’re right.

I stepped out of the tent, where the woman and the boy waited for me.

“
Did you send the boy for me, or did Cailte?”

“
Cailte sent the boy,” she said, “I would not. You are not hurt?”

“
No. Thank you for offering to sacrifice yourself. I’m glad this did not happen.”

“
It would be better if you had not come.”

“
I told you I would.”

“
You will not be with the queen this night?”

By golly gosh no, I guess not.

“
No,” I said, “Nor do I think Cailte will welcome me back to his tent.”

“
I would welcome you to share my sleeping place with the boy. If it is too humble, say so.”

“
It is not too humble.” A lice-infested heap of straw near a dung pile, but it was the loveliest offer I’d had in thousands of years. She led the way.

I heard the crackle of the straw beneath me as I lay down next to her, as I followed the line of stars that made Orion’s belt above me, as I followed her with my eyes. She sat down in the straw, her back to me, and guided Bouchal down into the straw with her gentle hands. He was still pretty shaken from the evening’s adventure, but he allowed himself to be bedded in the straw. She stroked his hair with light fingertips, observing him quietly until he obediently closed his eyes. I could almost see her look of study and concern, though all I could really see was her rag-covered, round-shouldered back and the cape of light brown hair.

In a moment she was satisfied with her sleeping boy. She pivoted at the waist and lowered herself beside me. From long habit, she did not immediately close her eyes. Instead, she listened a long while, looking up at the heavy stars which looked like they might fall on us.

“
Will you tell me your name now?” I asked, unwittingly destroying the moment.

Her lips parted, and I could barely hear her whisper, “Tailtu.”

Tailtu. In their mythology, Tailtu was the foster mother of the sun god, Lugh. He declared that his name festival, Lughnasadh, be held in her honor. It was held in the summer, on the first day of the month the Romans named for Augustus Caesar, and was something like a kind of Celtic Olympic Games.

No festival would be held in this woman’s honor, though a foster mother she might be, like the one in the myth.

“
I think the boy will honor you in his heart that way Lugh does his foster-mother.”

She said nothing.

“
Will you tell me your tribe?”

She looked up at Orion’s belt, but did not know it was Orion’s belt.

“
The tribe of Cartimandua.”

The Brigantes. I had to remind myself to breathe. The tribe Boudicca wanted to follow her into battle against the Romans. The tribe of the treacherous queen.

“
Did you know your queen?”

She turned her head towards me and looked at me curiously.

“
She was Queen, I was the child of peasants. Not all slaves consort with queens, as you do.”

“
You were not a slave in those days.”

“
I was like a slave.”

“
You were poor, and your family used you as payment for a debt?”

“
All the wretched are slaves, whether they are sold into slavery or not,” a wry smile formed on her lips, “I had some value after all. My family did not starve.”

I lifted my hand and touched my fingertips to her forehead, tracing the tiny line that spanned it. Smoothed beneath my fingers, it became minute. If I took my hand away, it would spring back and intensify, and display all her worry, and doubt.

With the sound of crunching straw as I rolled to my side, I lifted her head and tucked my arm beneath it to become her pillow. I kissed her temple through the veil of her hair, and reached across her body to rub Bouchal’s back.

“
You need have no fear of me,” I said, “I do not own you. I know that.”

“
I wish you did.”

This time I was the one to break eye contact.

“
Go to sleep,” I said, “I will listen for trouble.”

We might all have been slain there out in the open, under the stars. But I trusted, and she trusted, and nothing happened.

CHAPTER 13

Dr. L’Esperance noticed Dr. Roberts’ presence before Dr. Ford did. She nuzzled his neck, and rested her face against his shoulder, lazily casting a contented look over to the door. She saw Eleanor, and smiled, as if she were very pleased to see her.

“
Will you join us, then, Dr. Roberts, and we can talk together?” she asked. Dr. Ford pulled abruptly back from her and shot a look of alarm over his shoulder. Eleanor had waited for that embarrassed, guilty look. It would not be forthcoming from Dr. L’Esperance, evidently. Either she was the coolest and most blasé person Eleanor had ever met, or she simply enjoyed the ease of having no conscience and no shame.

Dr. Ford, however, was possessed of enough conscience and shame for both of them, as he clumsily tried to extricate himself from Dr. L’Esperance’s continuing embrace. Eleanor shot him a look of what she hoped was wry humor and careless open defiance, with none of the hurt she felt.

She turned and left the room, without further look or any words. Passing by Milly’s workstation, she nearly bumped into Milly, who was returning from her break.

“
Here. Done with this,” Eleanor called to her, and pulled the disk from her pocket and flipped it to Milly like a Frisbee, without breaking her stride, and continued down the hall to her lab.

Once in the secure confines of her lab, her first inclination was to lock the door, but quickly decided that would be an act of childish petulance, and she wanted above all to convey the proper attitude to Dr. Ford. She was still sorting out what that attitude was to be, when she heard his knock of propriety on the door, and he entered, quietly closing the door behind him, as if he were entering a sick room. She waited for him to tell her that Dr. L’Esperance had made advances on him, that he was merely fending her off in as gentlemanly a way possible.

He said nothing for what seemed like several minutes.

Eleanor cleared her throat, and did not look at him while she made a performance of rechecking her mission parameters one more time.

“
I will confess, Cassius, that I never considered damage control before. I suppose my sureness prevented me, and now General English is making a politician of me.”

Dr. Ford raised his eyebrows. So, he was not to get a tongue-lashing. She was not going to be the nagging “wife.” His earlier comment had found its mark. He was pleased, more with himself than with her, and with relief announced with assumed authority,

“
You’re getting scared.”

“
I have no reason to be scared. Don’t make accusations,” she said in a low, crisp voice.

He smiled. He admired her bravado. He had always admired the way she had clawed her way out of her poor childhood to become the nation’s pre-eminent theorist in time travel. It made her tough in a way he was not, and yet at the same time he knew she was still awed of his wealthy, well-bred pedigree, and he liked that because he really did not like to work too hard to impress people. He was a noted scholar in his own right, but his work in history did not require him to turn theory into practical application. At least, it did not until this Time Dimension department got underway. Now, more was expected of him and he was not certain he liked that.

“
All right,” Eleanor said, sighing, “let me put it another way….”

“
By all means. Use layman’s terms for my behalf.”

She started.

“
What is that supposed to mean?”

“
Don’t be angry. Your paranoia is very disagreeable at times, but then I suppose that is what makes you a survivor.”

She glanced in perturbation down at her monitor, “Paranoia?” She felt he was goading her. She would not be baited, and let him continue.

“
Survivors are so in vogue now. They’re selling special kits in department stores and supermarkets. Special kits!” he laughed.

“
Sea levels rising every six months make the nuclear scare of the last century seem funny, doesn’t it? The droughts, the warmer temperatures are just beginning to make the populace anxious, the earthquakes along the Pacific Rim, and here you are in your clean white laboratory in your clean white coat, playing survival of the fittest in terms of budget cuts and fall guys.”

He laughed, but it was not in derision. Cassius Carleton Ford wore his upper class heritage with ease and grace, and was never riled nor lowered himself to display bad manners. He left that to the scores of people hell bent on surviving. He preferred to place his luck in the concept of natural selection and a finely tailored jacket.

Eleanor met his gaze of his dark eyes again, chiding, but warm. He always had the ability to make her feel utterly foolish and yet somehow lovingly forgiven in spite of it. She would have to analyze this in her next bath. Could she have a masochistic streak?

“
I don’t want to fight, Cassius.”

“
I know you don’t. You’re like me.”

“
So, what are we going to do about it?”

He came a little closer.

“
We are going to push on, get past this, and do our jobs, and not let any of what’s happened affect our work or affect our relationship, because that is the kind of people we are.”

She took a deep breath and looked up at him, thoughtfully.

“
Actually, Cassius, you’re wrong. That is the kind of person I am. I’m still not sure about what kind of person you are.”

He put his hands in his pockets and considered the floor.

“
You and I are so clever with each other,” she said, “never trusting, only playing with each other like leopards in a zoo cage. It’s a game that suits both of us. But, suppose I took it up a notch? Suppose I didn’t want to share my cage with Dr. L’Esperance, and I got rid of her? Suppose I got rid of you, too, out of similar mistrust?”

She read the disbelief melting over his features in place of where the superior smirk had been.

“
I have my own value, Eleanor. Surely you remember that.”

“
Being male? Yes. You have the good fortune to be a commodity. Colonel Moore is also male, and a hero, and far more valuable to this mission, to this department, to the public, and therefore, possibly, to me. I believe you said as much before? Perhaps I only need one male.”

CHAPTER 14

Colonel John Moore’s narrative:

We rode north, making a wide sweep of Verulamium to the west and also avoiding the remains of the decimated IX Legion to the east. Ironically practically following a Roman-made road, we inched our way into the fringes of the kingdom of the Brigantes, where a messenger had preceded us to tell Cartimandua of our mission to retrieve her response to Boudicca’s offer of an alliance. The messenger, whoever he had been, had been undoubtedly as expendable as we were now.

Dubh rode ahead in the lead, sullen, angry, and a little scared I think that his sister had cast him out on a mission that held more danger than honor. Unless he were successful and brought back a Brigantian relief force. Then all honor would be his as clan chieftain, brother of the queen, and leader of our little band of outcasts.

Nemain rode his horse far enough behind Dubh to avoid being a target to whoever lay beyond the next hill or clump of trees, and would let Dubh take the first hit. I was surprised Boudicca would send him away with us. He was, after all, a high Druid priest. He had magic and power beyond the political.

Unfortunately for Nemain, he had chosen to leave his sphere of celestial influence and dirtied his hands in a politically motivated act of reprisal. That made him less mystical in everyone’s eyes and more just like anybody else. An alliance with Cartimandua, however, would redeem him as well, for it would be all due to his magic.