The Eagle and the Raven (105 page)

“The people will flee into the forest across the road,” he panted. “We can regroup tomorrow and fight again. Run, Boudicca!” But she staggered suddenly as though a sword had found her back, and she fell to her knees. “Look, Lovernius,” she whispered. “Oh look!”

There was nowhere to run. Across the narrow mouth of the valley the wains and carts were parked seven, eight, nine deep, a broad wall of heaped booty drawn up by the people in arrogant confidence so that the older women and the children could watch the victory. The valley was sealed, a tight, blocked tomb, and even as Boudicca rose horror-stricken, the leaping, careening chiefs saw it too, the wall without door or chink, the executioner. They flung themselves upon it hysterically, overturning wains so that silver cups, gay linens, bronze-plated chairs, all the gaudy knickknacks snatched from the tortured cities they had burned, went tumbling amid the dogs and screaming children. But it was too late. There was no retreat. The Romans saw it, too, and a great triumphant shout went up. The cavalry came pounding after them, the soldiers ran, and the chiefs died.

“Oh, no,” she whispered. “Andrasta, no, no, no. Not like this.” Then the thought of Brigid came sharply into her mind and the surge of groveling terror passed her by. Dropping into the mire of corpses and pink-sprayed gravel she began to crawl, Lovernius behind her, not toward the carnage of the wains but toward the side of the valley. It was not far. How well you chose, Paulinus, how well you chose, she thought, not looking to right or left where dead hands brushed her and dead faces leered at her with white reproach. But you will not take me. No chains for my ankles, no long humiliation in the dungeons of Rome. Then suddenly thorns were tearing at her tunic, and the dull green of an elder brush brushed her shoulders. “Now run, Lovernius,” she called softly, but there was no reply. Getting to her feet she looked behind her, but she was alone.

Hulda and the young chief were standing close together, deep under the trees, and Brigid walked to and fro before them, her fingers entwined in her long hair and her eyes on the ground. Hulda ran forward when she saw who it was, then she halted. The blue tunic was smeared in blood. Earth and gravel clung to the fiery, disordered hair, the helm was gone, and the face that wrung a cry from her was convulsed, scarcely human in its agony.

“Lady!”

Boudicca leaned against a tree. “The battle is lost,” she forced out. “The tribes are laid to waste. Flee, both of you. Go north, go west, run, run!”

“But Lovernius, Aillil, where is Domnall, surely…”

“Dead, all dead. Now take your goods and run.”

“But Lady, what of Brigid? Where can you go with her?”

“She is no longer your concern, Hulda, and if you want to save your own life you had better leave this place.”

Hulda said no more. She went to the girl, kissed her gently on the forehead; then she gathered up her belongings and walked away, with tears slipping silently down her cheeks.

The chief unsheathed his sword and hesitated, his eyes on his lady, and she stood away from the tree and smiled painfully at him. “You also, my friend,” she said quietly. “You cannot save us now.”

He smelled it already, the sickly-sweet odor of death seeping slowly into the clearing, and he raised his sword in salute. “A safe journey, Lady,” he said, “A peaceful journey.”

“To you also,” she responded, and he spun on his heel and vanished.

For a moment she stood listening to the violent, insane roar of the slaughter; then she laid down her sword, drew her knife, and went to Brigid. The girl stopped pacing and looked at her enquiringly, her hands leaving her hair to flutter over Boudicca’s soaked tunic. “Blood?” she said. Boudicca pulled her gently forward and put her face into the warm, gleaming tresses. I don’t want you to suffer any more, Brigid, she thought. If I leave you the soldiers will come and it will be as it was before, yet there is nowhere to take you, nowhere at all. We can never go home again. Her fingers found the ribs, so thin, so poignantly thin, and the blade slid between them. Brigid sighed, the pale, matchless beauty of the girl’s head slumped against her mother’s breast, and weeping, Boudicca lowered her onto the fragrant grasses. She lay quiescent, wildflowers between her fingers, her hair over her face and her tunic floating to settle around her, and Boudicca turned swiftly. Bending, she dug in the rich damp loam; then she tossed the knife away, swept up her sword, and rammed it hilt down in the hole she had made. She secured it with small stones, her hands fumbling, her eyes blinded by tears.

“Where are you going, Boudicca?” the voice of Subidasto the Raven croaked in her ear.

She straightened. “I do not know,” she whispered aloud, “I do not know.” Like a withering leaf lifted from the branch of a dying tree and whirled onto the surface of a river, she spread out her arms, and fell.

Chapter Forty

T
HE
night was stiflingly hot but the shutters had been flung back and a fitful breeze stirred the hangings and made the dozens of candles and lamps gutter spasmodically like golden drunken butterflies. Gladys nodded, and the slaves moved silently and unobtrusively to clear the debris from the white-draped table and brought silver bowls laden with dusky grapes, fuzzed peaches, and shiny purple plums. Greedy hands reached out, and from behind the gilt couches the patient servants came with more wine, but Caradoc put his fingers lightly over his cup, smiling across at his wife, and Plautius refused also. Only Llyn held his cup to be refilled and drank quickly, his spare frame slumped deep into the inviting cushions, his eyes half closed.

“The wheel came right off,” the younger Gladys said, “but the chariot went on rolling for a good sixty feet. You should have been there, Mother, the crowd went mad. We all yelled ourselves hoarse, but naturally it did no good. Poor old Aulus! That’s the third race your team has lost, isn’t it?”

“Did you bet?” Eurgain smiled at the black hair piled high in tight curls and hung with pearls, the swinging earrings, and the red, gold-bordered stola, and Gladys made a face and flung up her hands.

“Yes, I did, and Rufus lost a lot of money.”

“Will you please let me finish my story” her husband said with exasperation. “The servants have gone. Well, no one would have noticed if Vespasianus hadn’t started to snore, but snore he did, like a bull, and the emperor stopped singing. “Is someone ill?’ he asked, and everyone froze and tried not to look at everyone else.”

Eurgain spat a pip onto her plate. “Then what happened?”

Pudens shrugged. “Absolutely nothing, and don’t forget that it was the second time Vespasianus has fallen asleep during one of Nero’s recitals. The emperor ordered him out and then went on singing.”

Plautius stirred. “It’s not a good idea to spread such stories in these times, Rufus,” he remarked softly, and the company fell silent, but Llyn struggled to a sitting position and yawned.

“Plautius’s walls have no ears,” he drawled. “If they did, we would have all been crucified or tossed into boiling oil for treason a long time ago.”

“Ah hush, Llyn!” his mother urged hastily, but he only swilled more wine and closed his eyes again. Caradoc swung his feet to the warm tiled floor.

“Once again we have abused your hospitality, my friend,” he said to Plautius, “and stayed too late.” But before Plautius could reply his steward glided into the room. For a long time he whispered in his master’s ear and the assembly watched anxiously as Plautius’s face became grave and then bleak, and when the man had bowed himself out they began to fidget. Plautius seemed to be having trouble with his speech. He tried to form words, stumbled over them, spewed forth an uncharacteristic obscenity, then he rose slowly.

“There is news from Britannia,” he said with difficulty. “The Iceni staged a revolt, and pulled most of the lowland tribes in with them. They almost succeeded in killing every Roman on the island, and three towns and a legion have been wiped out.”

“The
lowland
tribes?” Caradoc stiffened incredulously, a long-forgotten wave of feverish gladness washing him. Llyn’s eyes flew open. “Great Mother!” he whispered, but the elder Eurgain said sharply, “Almost succeeded, Aulus?”

Plautius cleared his throat and went on huskily. “It seems there was a pitched battle, and the rebels were overwhelmingly defeated. Boudicca took her own life.”

“What else?” his wife demanded sharply.

Suddenly he sat down on his couch and rubbed wearily at his forehead. “I don’t understand it. My good friend Paulinus is massacring the Iceni. Eighty thousand warriors fell in the battle and he is pursuing the survivors, hunting them down. Icenia is a wasteland.”

No one moved. The wind sighed around them with a dry, dusty breath, and the darkness from beyond the window seemed to seep toward them, chilling their hearts even as the heat of the night brought sweat to their brows.

Then slowly, heavily, Caradoc got to his feet. “Your pardon, Plautius,” he said evenly, and he left the room, walking quickly under the archway and into the shadowed atrium where a fat harvest moon was reflected on the motionless surface of the little pool and in the garden beyond smooth grass smelt of dew and roses. He went on across the deep, slanting shadows of the pillared courtyard, along the deserted cloister where his feet rang loudly on the pavement, and came at last to the little path, and then to the rustling plane trees and the wrought-iron gate. He leaned on it with his hands clasped together, looking out below him to where the myriad lights of the city twinkled in the velvet darkness. He heard its heart beating—a dull, never-ending roar, a ceaseless grind of industry, the heart of an empire whose blood was made of suffering, whose food was oppression, whose blind hands carried death. Little Boudicca with the red hair, he thought. What did they do to you, that caused you to deliberately spill your blood upon a soil already drowning under an ocean of such agonizing sacrifices? Why am I standing here, grown old and useless, while this same moon slants down through the wet, secret oak groves, and the hazel thickets are laden with ripening nuts, and the young deer run silent through the crystal-beaded grasses?

A warm hand descended lightly on his naked arm and Eurgain looked up at him, her face bathed in the pitiless moonlight that seemed to suck all color from it and make it drawn and lined. “The others are going home,” she said. “All except Llyn. Gladys is putting him in the guest room.” Caradoc unclasped his hands.

“It’s no good, Eurgain,” he said flatly. “They bow to me in the streets, the emperor calls me his noble barbarian, my daughter has made a good marriage, I am welcome in every senator’s house as though I were some kind of god, yet I dream night after night that I am back at Camulodunon and the rain is falling, and Cin is calling to me.” He sighed. “For ten years I have existed here, closing my eyes and ears to Albion’s torment, then something like this happens and I know that I am nothing but a stranger mourning in a foreign land.”

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. “I, too, want to go home,” she whispered. “So does Llyn. Do you think that when the time comes they will let us be burned on some funeral pyre taken from the sweet Catuvellaunian forests?”

He put an arm around her and drew her close. “All we wanted was to be left alone,” he said quietly. “Such a little word, freedom, such a small request, and yet the asking of it has consumed the soul of a people.”

She rested against him and they stood together while the moon slowly shrank to a hard silver brilliance, its white beams flooding the shadowed vineyard, and below them the city hummed and pulsed.

Far away, in the swirling autumn mists of Albion, the light of freedom flickered and went out.