The Druid King (42 page)

But this was the last night of the feast, the last night before they rode out to battle, and it could be the last time they would ever meet. So Vercingetorix went out into the streets, allowed a tankard to be pressed into his hand, allowed men to hail him and women to flirt, and both to follow in his aimless wake as he wandered from bonfire to bonfire, ate proffered boar and venison, listened to bards and musicians, even joined for brief moments in dance.

But he moved through the celebration without feeling part of it, and when Marah did find him, she seemed the only one in the whole fête to be entirely a creature of flesh and blood.

The street was smoky with the cookfires of stalls offering slices of spitted boar, whole roast pigeons, and brochettes of tiny ortolans. On one side of the street, a bard recited odes to a small crowd; on the other, a piper played for a group of wildly drunk dancers.

Marah approached through the cookfire smoke clothed in a plain white shift, reminding Vercingetorix of the nameless woman who had appeared to him out of the luminous mist in Bourges. And bent the path of his destiny.

“I see that tonight you descended to the feast,” Marah said dryly.

“And I see that you have had little trouble finding me.”

“All eyes and ears lead to the hero of Gergovia. You would be hard not to find tonight, Vercingetorix.”

Then she sighed, and a wistful look replaced her air of mildly mocking banter.

“But it has certainly been a long journey from a boy and a girl kissing beside a stream to where we find ourselves now, has it not?” she said, moving closer, so that he could smell the floral sweetness of the perfume she wore, mingled with the tangier musk of her body.

“And where do that boy and girl find themselves now?”

Marah sighed once more, close enough for Vercingetorix to feel the breeze of her breath, taste its warmth.

“Why ask me?” she said softly. “I have lost myself often enough along the way. I lost that girl who kissed you when I became the sophisticated student in a Roman grammaticus. I lost that woman when Caesar became a worse barbarian than any Teuton.”

“And now?” Vercingetorix asked testily. “Now who are you?”

“Who do you wish me to be?” said Marah.

No answer could have been worse. This woman whom his body longed to embrace had embraced Caesar when it seemed expedient, had embraced Rome as the future of Gaul when it had seemed inevitable, would embrace him now as its future king if destiny gave him the victory that made it so.

“Someone I can trust!” said Vercingetorix, speaking the angry truth.

“You do not trust me?” Marah asked in a voice so even and with eyes so devoid of any hint of emotion that Vercingetorix could not begin to guess what feelings were behind them.

“How can I?” he said. “Are you the girl I longed for as a boy? Are you the bait Caesar dangled before me? Are you the woman who arrived here two days ago to publicly accept an offer I made to you as a boy? Who are you, Marah?”

“She who has been all those things, one after another. Who else could I be?”

“And
this
you ask me to trust?”

“Remember, Vercingetorix?” Marah said softly. “We were walking on the beach, and you asked me if I trusted Caesar. And I said, yes, I trusted him to be Gaius Julius Caesar. To be what he was. As I trusted you to be the Great Leader of Warriors. To be what you are.”

She shrugged, and Vercingetorix could see her nipples caress the fabric of her dress with the motion. “Can you not trust me in like manner?”

And he wanted to.

“Between a boy and a girl there should be something more than that,” he found himself saying instead.

“Long live Vercingetorix, king of Gaul!” gabbled a glazed-eyed woman in middle years, one of a group of dancers whirling up the street, as she grabbed Vercingetorix by the hand, whipped him around once, twice, thrice, and threw him off balance into the arms of Marah.

“The hand of destiny!” Marah exclaimed with a laugh, and kissed him deeply, and Vercingetorix found himself returning the kiss. He felt her breasts, and then her thighs, pressing against him.

But then there was raucous and lubricious laughter.

Vercingetorix pulled away, his ears burning, as he discovered to his mortification that a circle of warriors and townspeople, good-naturedly drunk, had surrounded them and were cheering them on.

The black look with which Vercingetorix regarded the onlookers cleared them away as surely as the threatening sweep of a sword.

“If you cannot trust me, let me prove myself,” Marah said in a voice loud enough for the closest of the crowd to overhear. “Give me a horse, and a weapon, and a shield, and let me ride to battle beside you as your warrior woman does.”

To his chagrin,Vercingetorix heard a few mutters of encouragement and approval. Was she doing this for the benefit of their ears and the tales to be told by generations of bards? Or was this truly the offer of a brave and loving heart?

And why not both?

“You cannot be serious!” Vercingetorix whispered.

“But I am!” Marah declared, and this time for his ears alone, and when Vercingetorix saw the ferocity in her eyes, it sent his spirit soaring.

But what he saw also was a soft woman in a clean white dress without a battle scar on her body, who had probably never even lifted a weapon, let alone wielded one.

“It cannot be,” he said.

“Why not?” Marah demanded.

“Because you are a woman, and you would not last five minutes on a field of battle.”

“Then so be it. Let me die at your side.”

“No!”

“And what is your warrior lover, Rhia?”

“She is not my lover!” Vercingetorix fairly shouted, then was mortified to realize that they were being overheard once more.

“And
I
am supposed to trust
you
? What would you have me believe next, that Rhia is really a man?”

“We swore a blood oath—”

“Yet another blood oath!” Marah shouted for all to hear. “Very well, then, why should I not swear my own?”

The music had stopped. The dancing had ceased. At once they were surrounded by a crowd that openly pressed in upon them, and it was to them that she spoke, and through them to Bibracte, and to Gaul beyond, and to the bards who would bear her words into the Land of Legend.

And Vercingetorix could do nothing to stop her. And when he heard them, he did not know if he would if he could.

“I do love you, Vercingetorix, future king of Gaul, and if you would not have me as your queen, I would be your whore. Like it or not, where you go, so go I, and no one shall prevent me, not Gaius Julius Caesar, not the gods themselves, not even
you
!”

And to a roar of approval, with a swirl of her robe, and her head held high, and with Vercingetorix’s ears burning and his heart aflame with both love and fury, she turned on her heel and marched off into the night.

As might a queen. Marah had gone to her bedchamber and doffed her robe, and was sitting on the chamberpot when there was an insistent knocking on the heavy oaken door.

“A moment, please, Vercingetorix,” she said in a voice crafted not to sound flustered but failing to succeed.

She finished pissing as quickly as she could, slid the chamberpot into a far corner well away from the bed, put on her robe, did the best she was able to rearrange her hair with her fingers, then went to the door and opened it.

Rhia stood in the doorway.

“What do
you
want?” Marah demanded.

“To help you keep the oath you have made,” said Rhia. “May I enter?”

She was dressed as a warrior and wearing a sword, though not a helmet. In her arms she carried a shirt of mail armor, a pair of orange-and-gray-striped pantaloons, a horned helmet, a heavy cloak of Arverne orange, and a scabbarded sword with its buckler.

With a bemused expression, Marah nodded. Rhia entered, and laid out what she had been carrying on the bed as Marah closed the door behind them.

“Take off your robe,” Rhia said.

“What!”

“Come, now, we are both women, are we not?”

“Why should I do such a thing?”

Rhia picked up the pantaloons in one hand and hefted the heavy mail shirt in the other. “So that we may dress you as a man.”

“As a man. . . ?” Marah said slowly.

“As one of thousands of warriors following the man you too have vowed to follow tomorrow,” said Rhia.

“Why . . . why are you doing this? Why would
you
help
me
?”

“Did you not say there is no reason why we cannot be friends?”

Marah regarded Rhia suspiciously.

“You have nothing to fear by standing naked before me,” said Rhia. “I am not a man, nor am I your rival.”

“The former I can believe,” said Marah, “the latter . . . ?” She shrugged, but she took off her robe and stood there naked, looking questioningly into Rhia’s eyes.

Rhia stared back, gazed slowly down the contours of Marah’s soft-muscled but well-formed body, then smiled, if only wanly, for the first time. “And even if I
could
be your rival . . .”

She handed Marah the mail shirt. Marah put it on. Then the pantaloons. Rhia picked up the sword and its belt, put her arms around Marah, and buckled the weapon around her waist. She took the helmet in one hand, balled the train of Marah’s long hair into an untidy fistful with the other, and held it atop her head while she jammed the helmet down over it.

Rhia stepped back and studied her appraisingly.

“Now put on the cloak,” she said.

Marah draped the orange cloak around her shoulders. Rhia shook her head. “Close it across your body to hide the bulges of your breasts, and keep it that way,” she said.

Marah did as she was told.

Rhia cocked her head, left, right, left.

“Pick up some dirt and rub it on your cheeks tomorrow,” she said, “and keep your head down when you ride, as if fatigued. It’s the best we can do to hide your lack of beard.”

“I ask you again, why would you help me?” said Marah. “I tell you truly, in your place I would not help my rival.”

“And
I
tell
you
truly, Marah, I am not your rival,” said Rhia.

“And will you tell me that you do not love him?”

Rhia sighed. “I am his sister of the sword. Is that love? Who am I to say? Who am I to know? I am but the flower.”

“I do not understand what that means,” said Marah.

“Then understand and believe this,” Rhia told her. “I have an oath to keep and so do you. And by aiding you in keeping yours, I aid myself in keeping mine. So we are not rivals, Marah, we are oath-sisters.”

And the warrior woman kissed Marah on the cheek and was gone.

Once more Vercingetorix found himself taking refuge from the fête high up on the ramparts. For those seeking them, the sky held a surfeit of portents, for it was as clear as the waters of a still lake and full of stars. One might read anything in the pictures they made, victory, defeat, love accepted or love spurned, destiny for good or ill.

But Vercingetorix had had his fill of omens and messages scrawled across the heavens. He had followed them since he was a boy, and where had they led him? To a fate that on the morrow, or on some day soon after that, would depend not on his ability to read the heavens like a druid but to read the mind of Caesar like a general. A man he feared was a greater general than himself, and certainly one who wielded an army that even in defeat was a keener-honed weapon than his own.

If he won, he would be king. And if he did not . . .

Enough of signs emblazoned across the heavens!

But at that very moment, the pale white trail of a falling star slipped across the sky toward the earth, and Vercingetorix’s eyes, following it, were drawn to a figure standing outside the city gates.

It was the Arch Druid Guttuatr.

And in his right hand he held aloft the staff of his office, as if he had used the fallen star that crowned it to draw down another star from the heavens, and Vercingetorix to him thereby.

When Vercingetorix emerges from the city gates, he sees that Guttuatr seems to have aged decades, his visage thin, not in the manner of emaciation, but like that of a ghost on the verge of fading away. Only his eyes, sparkling starlight, seem to remain in the land of the living.

“Why did you summon me?” Vercingetorix asks.

“The time has come for me to say farewell,” the Arch Druid tells him.

“You’re leaving?” says Vercingetorix. “On the eve of battle?”

“My story is over; the victory is yours to win, not mine,” Guttuatr tells him. “But walk my path with me one last time.” He turns, and he walks down the slope of the hill toward the edge of the forest below— slowly, not like a frail old man, but deliberately, with a kind of majesty, using his staff as both a cane and a scepter.

“Victory!”
says Vercingetorix as he walks a half-step behind. “The sure and easy victory I must throw away for the sake of what our people believe is honor and glory?”

“Did
I
not throw away the world of the spirit and come down into the world of strife when the voice of the people bade me?” says the Arch Druid. Vercingetorix hears no bitterness in his voice, only a questioning regret.

“As I now must do as the people demand and lead them into a battle in which even victory will be defeat,” he replies in kind.

They have neared the margin of the forest, and the Arch Druid pauses, turns, regards Vercingetorix with eyes that seem pathetically imploring.

“If the man of action sees that victory will be defeat, then the man of knowledge—”

“—must find a way to turn defeat into victory,” says Vercingetorix, completing his words. And Guttuatr seems pleased that he has.

“Fitting words of farewell,” he says. He turns again, and continues walking toward the forest. “The time has come for me to go.”

“To go where?”

“To where all men go,” says Guttuatr.

They are at the margin of the forest now, and though the darkness is deep within, in the silvery starlight Vercingetorix sees, or imagines that he sees, shadows or shapes, moving among the trees—whether approaching or receding, he cannot tell.