The Eagle and the Raven (14 page)

The evening’s feast was brief. Only the children and a few freemen felt lighthearted enough to laugh. The rest of the people, chiefs and freemen and women, ate quickly and went away. Adminius did not come to the Hall at all, and neither did Gladys. Togodumnus called for music, but both Cathbad and his own bard refused to sing, and Caelte refused also, keeping his temper with difficulty. Caradoc dismissed him, fearing a scene, and Togodumnus came and squatted beside him, smiling gleefully. Cinnamus glowered at him, obviously wanting very much to be dismissed also, but Caradoc only signed to him to take his place and hold himself ready for action, his hands speaking in the language all his chiefs knew. Togodumnus smiled all the wider. He seemed very happy about something, and his light brown eyes sparkled at them and his darting hands played soundless music. The Hall was almost empty now, and the fire dying, the shadows lying long across the floor. The wrinkled head hung quietly on his pillar, the weird leaf tendrils and deadly curling vines writhing about him. Togodumnus hitched himself closer to Caradoc, sat and crossed his legs, and looked at Cinnamus out of the corner of his eye, but Cinnamus carefully kept his gaze fixed down on his feet.

“It’s you and I, Caradoc, just as I said,” Togodumnus declared. “Adminius will not be elected. Cunobelin’s chieftains told me so.” He leaned closer and Cinnamus stiffened, but Caradoc, looking deep into the bright, feverish eyes of his brother, saw something there that he had never seen before, a burning, naked flame of ambition whose light could not be concealed. “What I want to know is this,” Tog pressed on. “If I am elected, will you fight me?”

Caradoc continued to look into those baleful eyes, searching for the gaiety and good-humor and finding only a driving force of reckless self-love. Was this a momentary fit, the kind of mood he was subject to from time to time, or had his brittle, unstable character changed under the pressure of his nearness to power? Caradoc glanced away.

“If you are elected in the proper manner, of course I will not fight you,” he said. “Why should I? In any case, such a thing is forbidden once the vote is cast.”

“I know, but it’s happened before.” He blinked, hooding his eyes, and the fire seemed to go out, but Caradoc could see the embers glowing still when he looked back.

“And what if I am elected?” he countered. “Will you accept the decision quietly, Tog, or will I have to kill you?” He knew that he would not kill Tog, and the compromise which had occupied his mind all day would work, he thought, providing Tog had a shred of dignity left.

Togodumnus laughed shortly, bunching a fist and bringing it to Caradoc’s chin. “What makes you think you’ll be chosen?” he asked. “But if you are, I’ll fight. I want the Catuvellauni, Caradoc, for my very own.”

Cinnamus broke in. He had listened to the conversation in an ever mounting anger and now he could not contain himself. “Nobody owns us!” he hissed. “We belong to ourselves, Togodumnus ap Cunobelin, but we allow our royalty to direct us, that’s all. If you fight and kill my lord then you must fight and kill me, and then Vocorio, and Mocuxsoma, and all the other chiefs who will not be slaves to you or any. Only with men like Sholto will you have success, for he is less than a man.” The inference brought an immediate flush to Togodumnus’s face and he tried to spring to his feet, his hand on his hilt, but Caradoc grasped him and forced him back to the skins.

“Sholto?” he questioned sharply. “What have you been up to, Tog?”

Togodumnus pulled his arm free and shook down his sleeve, scowling at Cinnamus. “Nothing!” he snarled. “Ask the Ironhand, whose long nose is ever poked into everyone else’s business. But you ask too late. I will be ricon, Caradoc, and don’t try to stop me.” He rose in one lithe motion and strode away, his sword rattling in its scabbard.

Caradoc turned to Cinnamus. “You forget yourself,” he said coldly. “You should know better than to interfere between two lords, and besides, I will not allow you to deliberately goad Tog into another fight.”

Cinnamus looked at him calmly, and a tiny smile came and went on his mouth. “Lord,” he said quietly, “if I goad him long enough I will have the pleasure of killing him. He is souring, and the pranks of his youth are no longer sufficient for him to vent his energies. He is becoming a rogue boar, your brother, the black moods coming more frequently and staying longer. Beware him, Lord.”

Caradoc said nothing, aware that Cinnamus spoke not only from observation but also from a deep personal dislike, and perhaps his words were tinged with exaggeration. Tog had always been a creature of moods, flying from elation to glumness and back to elation, a fey, dancing spirit living from impulse to impulse. But was he really changing? “What of Sholto?” Caradoc demanded, and Cinnamus narrowed his green eyes in amusement.

“Sholto is very pleased with himself and cannot curb that spiteful, gossiping tongue of his. Togodumnus tried to bribe him. He has been going about among the chiefs, offering them cattle and money—not openly, Lord, but in the manner of hints, telling them that wealth can be theirs if they vote for him. He began this long before Cunobelin ailed to his death, and I am surprised you knew nothing of it. Most of the chiefs turn a deaf ear, but Sholto is most definitely interested.”

Caradoc did not know whether to laugh or to rush after Tog and slice off his head, but laughter prevailed and he chuckled dryly. “How childish he is! He would denude himself of his honor-price in exchange for a few noncommittal words. As for Sholto, get rid of him, Cin. I made a mistake when I took his oath. Tog is welcome to him.” They sat in reflective silence for a while. The Hall was empty, but in Cunobelin’s corner the blackness still harbored a pale, lingering presence and the shrouded vestiges of a now impotent power. Caradoc wondered whether his father had foreseen the faltering indecision of the Council and the inevitable division of the family. Probably. Cunobelin would have laughed at it, though, and dared fate to gamble as it would. He got up slowly, Cinnamus rising with him, and they left the Hall, their footfalls echoing drearily to the vaulted roof. Tomorrow they would burn Cunobelin and then… Then another tomorrow, bringing with it a wind of change that would blow away the past and bring the future down among them like a howling gale. He said goodnight to Cinnamus and went down to the gate, but instead of passing through it he turned aside and climbed the earthwall, sitting high above the river valley in the darkness, shrouded in his cloak, his hair ruffled by the night wind. He thought long and deeply, knowing that his life and the good of the tuath hung upon a slender thread, and that thread was his brother’s ability to accept the only alternative that was open. Then slowly, peacefully, a sense of destiny took him and stilled his thoughts as he struggled to anticipate the Council’s decision, and whichever way he turned the eye of his mind he saw only himself alone. Of Togodumnus there was no trace.

Chapter Six

T
HE
tuath gathered by Cunobelin s funeral pyre in a cold, late dawn of light that silvered only the edges of the heavy clouds and then faded again. All were arrayed in their best, and the otherwise sullen morning was gay with scarlet and blue, red, yellow, and white. The chiefs wore their bronze helms and carried their coral-studded, pale pink and blue enameled shields, laying their arms along the massive crests, their spears a thicket of iron-tipped formidability. Caradoc stood with Togodumnus and Adminius, each of them surrounded by his chiefs.

Caradoc wore a cloak striped with blue and scarlet. Gold bracelets glinted dully on his arms, and his brooch was of amethyst set in gold. He wore the sword given to him by his father when he had reached his manhood and had made his first raid. It was an iron sword, plain hilted, but its scabbard was bronze, worked in a pattern of sea-waves, the curl of each wave set with a pearl. His torc was also of gold, the torc of royalty, a twist of bright metal ending at each tip in the open mouth of a hound. He rested proudly on his shield and waited quietly, the freemen and freewomen of his train spreading out behind him to the bulk of the earth-wall and the wooden gate.

Eurgain waited also, holding little Eurgain and little Gladys by the hand. She was wearing a tunic of russet embroidered with silver flowers, and her cloak was of russet, also, slashed in green. A thin circlet of plain silver adorned her head, and this day she and Gladys had left their swords propped up inside the door of the Hall.

No wind blew. It was perfectly still, as if the Dagda and the goddess held the breezes tight in their hands out of respect for the man who came now, borne on a great bier by four of his chiefs. Caradoc turned, watching the slow, ponderous sway of the thing, feeling no grief but a deep pride that this was his father, a man who had lived to the full and died well, a man whose place it would be impossible to fill. Togodumnus watched also, pride lighting his eyes, and Caradoc had no doubt that Tog believed himself the one who would not only emulate but surpass Cunobelin in word and deed. Behind the bier Cathbad and Cunobelin’s shield-bearer walked, the latter carrying the heavy shield high over his head, the last office he would perform for his master. Gladys came next, her rough black cloak thrown back to reveal a plain white tunic. Her only ornament was a cluster of pearls worn high on her shoulder. It was obvious to all that she was suffering, yet her head was held high and the tears slid unbidden down her face. The chiefs halted for a moment beside the pile of brushwood and logs, shifting their grip. Then at a cry they lifted Cunobelin, setting him high above the silent hordes of people, and Adminius, Togodumnus, and Caradoc moved forward to take the flaring torches from the servants’ hands. Immediately a great clamor arose as the chiefs drew their swords and beat upon their shields, crying out, “Ricon! Ricon! A safe journey, a peaceful journey!” and Caradoc saw Llyn grimace and cover his ears as he bent and thrust the flame into the wood. It burst into crackling red fire, the little twigs curling and already ash gray, and the shield-bearer ran and placed the shield gently on Cunobelin’s bosom. Then Cathbad plucked a string of his harp and the note vibrated sweetly, carrying far, mingling with the roar of the greedy flames.

“I will sing to you of Cunobelin,” he said, “and the getting of his honor-price.” Then all the people stood still and Cathbad took them back in time, and they found themselves remembering incidents they had forgotten years ago, the feasts, and famines, the times of laughter and the times of sorrow. Such was the bard’s consummate skill that Cunobelin seemed to stand before them as he had so many times before, his burly arms folded, his gray hair whipping about his wrinkled face, those tiny eyes surveying them all with more than a hint of amusement and malice. Gladys had sunk to the ground and covered her head with her cloak. Caradoc watched the greedy, indecent haste of the flames, eating slowly upward while his father waited, hands folded calmly under the protection of his shield, his sword beside him. Now Cathbad sang of the times of tension, the preparations for war with the Brigantians, the embassies and emissaries, Cunobelin’s sealing of a pact with the Coritani that allowed his war band an unscathed passage to the borders of Brigantia, and at last the coming of a small, black-haired girl.

Caradoc felt Eurgain’s eyes sweep over him and he kept his face tight while the memories, unbidden and unwanted, floated like mist in his mind. Seven years. His throat tightened with the old, sweet longing and he bowed his head, closing his eyes against the present…. There will be a hole…ah, you witch, he thought. They say you are married now, to that tall, fierce son of the hills whose beard fell to his waist and whose hand was never far from his sword. I suffered when they told me. But I have Eurgain, my beloved, and what do you have? A House torn with bitter quarrels and a tuath weakened by your ambitions and your greed. Poor Venutius. Does he long for you, even in the midst of his rage, watching you mesmerize the people like a black snake? Caradoc opened his eyes and turned his head, a movement of pain, a stern dismissal, and his gaze met Eurgain’s. She smiled tremulously, seeing the naked bitterness, and he smiled back in relief and shame.

Cathbad fell silent, bowed to them, and retired, and Adminius began the funeral songs. They all joined in, a thousand voices swelling, a tide of victorious music that reduced the fire to a low spitting background, stamping their feet, shaking their shields, and Gladys wept on. Far in the east the clouds were breaking, and shafts of brilliant sunlight sliced like great golden swords to touch some meadow miles away, but here the morning was still dull, and the smoke from the pyre rose in a straight black plume to spread out and hang over the huts and halls of the town. For an hour they sang, song melding into song, a tapestry of shining memories. Then the eulogies began. Cunobelin’s sons fronted the fire one by one, their words carrying far in the heavy air, giving those yesterdays a fleeting, poignant resurrection, and the chiefs stood also, acting out the raids and feasts with glittering, excited eyes and wide, uninhibited gestures. Only Gladys would not speak. She stayed motionless on the ground, just out of reach of the blossoming heat, and her grief spoke of Cunobelin’s power and presence far more eloquently than any word of hers could have done. Finally the host gathered closer together, linking arms, turning their faces to where the sun poured forth a glory far away, and sang the last song of farewell and blessing, swords, shields and spears cast in a heap before them. Then they scattered quietly, while behind them the flames tongued up, curled, and licked at the white tunic, the knotted, defenceless hands, with a clean, mindless hunger.

Caradoc and Eurgain went to their house, the subdued, awed children straggling behind them, and Togodumnus and Adminius retired to the Great Hall with their chiefs to sit around the fire and watch each other with speculative, veiled suspicion. Gladys sat on, her face uncloaked now that she was alone, gazing into the holocaust. Her brief, violent spasm of sorrow had spent itself and left her empty, and the memories filled her mind without rancor and without regret, spilling into her consciousness from some deeply buried well and bringing back to her days of coarse laughter and long night talk, hot arguments and rough, fatherly embraces. Her eyes traveled the shriveling, smoking corpse without recognition. This bubbling, stinking flesh was not Cunobelin, and she wiped away the tears that still lay on her cheeks and she smiled.

All that day and far into the night the flames fed steadily, and the town was quiet. At dusk Caradoc stood in his doorway, watching the pillar of sparks shoot red into the night sky, his mind resting at last. He and Eurgain had spent the day discussing the coming Council meeting, and they had decided that Caradoc should propose his compromise if the chiefs voted solely for him. There was no other way to avoid bloodshed with a Togodumnus who seemed to have flung all caution onto the fire with his father, and every nerve in Caradoc shrank from the necessity of killing his brother and beginning his rule under the shadow of violence and resentment. He knew he could kill Tog. He was a dogged, stubborn fighter whereas Tog leaped in, arms and legs flying in a wild, undisciplined attack that often succeeded, but if it did not, he rapidly tired, resorting to tricks and feints. He had decided to speak also if the vote went to Togodumnus, for he and Eurgain were convinced that the Catuvellauni in Tog’s hands would rapidly become a quarreling, disorderly tuath, bullied by Tog and his young, headstrong chiefs.

Caradoc leaned against the lintel while behind him the girls shrieked and fought as Tallia tried to coax them into bed. Llyn had gone off with Cinnamus, fishing probably, and had not yet returned. Perhaps Tog would kill him anyway, before the Council or in some secret place, but something in Caradoc spoke denial. Tog could be selfish and cruel, but his moods and impulses were always strewn throughout the town for all to see. And what of Adminius? Caradoc slid to the ground and squatted on his doorstep, frowning. He did not know Adminius well, no one did. He came and went as he chose with an understated, smooth confidence, and he did not apologize to anyone for the fact that he disliked fighting and preferred hunting, or that the company of the traders pleased him more than the company of his own kin around the feasting fire. He assumed without question that the title of ricon would fall to him, and he watched Tog’s frenetic scurries from chief to chief with a superior smile. Tog was the baby. Tog would always be the spoiled, unmanageable child, never taken seriously by anyone. What would Adminius do? Caradoc knew but did not bring the thought forward for conscious rumination. He hoped he would be wrong.

By morning the fire had eaten its fill, and Cunobelin’s chiefs gathered up his hot ashes and put them in a tall, curved gray urn. Later the urn would be buried, together with meat and bread, weapons and dogs, and the old man’s jewels and enormous tunics, but now they set a guard over it and left it, eager to attend the Council. The morning had begun to clear. The solid cloud cover was breaking into long, ragged gray streamers, stretched across the sky like the bellies of the traders’ cats, while the wind stroked them into longer and longer shapes. It was cold, but the oppression of the day before had lifted, and the town was alive again with noise and laughter.

Adminius and Togodumnus had been first to take their places in the Great Hall soon after sunrise, their chiefs jostling each other out of the way as they fought for the best positions, and Caradoc and Gladys went in together, Eurgain following with Llyn, all of them surrounded by Caradoc’s chiefs. Cinnamus saw Sholto seated defiantly among Togodumnus’s men, his sour face marked by resentment, and Sholto deliberately tried to turn his back as Caradoc’s entourage swept by. Behind them the freepeople pushed, chattering excitedly, and when the Hall was so full that everyone was squashed knee-to-knee, and those closest to the fire kept edging nearer, nudged by those behind them, the traders came, slipping in one by one to stand at the back in the shadows. Caradoc had ordered Vocorio and Mocuxsoma to stand at the doors and make sure that they did not enter armed, but even so, the sight of them all massed far back, unrecognizable as individuals in the dimness, made him uneasy. He was not sure how he feared them. They were adventurers for the most part, the mongrels of the empire, here in Albion to make fortunes and live more dangerously than they would at home, but they were not uncivilized hillmen like Aricia’s Brigantians. They got drunk sometimes, and made a lot of noise, and then fights would break out between them and the freemen, but on the whole they were simple rough men with no guile in them. Apart from the spies, of course. Caradoc shut his mind to that avenue, an avenue that seemed always to lead him to Adminius.

“I wish we had a Druid,” Gladys said to him anxiously. “Then there would be no fear of the tuath disgracing itself. I’m afraid, Caradoc.”

“You?” He smiled into the clouded eyes. “Have you been hatching your own plots, Gladys? Are you going to try to sway the vote?” But she would not laugh. She sat straighter, her black braid wound in her lap, and he noticed that her scabbard was empty. “Where’s your sword?” he asked sharply, and for an answer she quietly lifted the skirts of her tunic, not looking at him. The naked blade lay under her knees.

“Today the kin of the House Catuvellaun will be sundered,” she said. “It could not be any other way, and so I am resolved not to speak. My heart is full of sorrow, Caradoc, for the days when we all loved one another, and yet the good of the tuath is more important than the love of its ruling kin. My only fear is that the new rule will begin in blood, under bad omens. How I wish we had a seer, also!”

“Will you shed blood?” he persisted urgently. “Gladys, why do you sit on your sword?”

She turned to him savagely. “Because I will not lay it at the feet of Adminius if he is chosen, nor at the feet of Togodumnus! And not at your feet, brother of mine. I will not be trapped into an allegiance that will fetter me if my mind should change!”

“Who did Cunobelin favor?” he asked. “Why did he never speak?”

“Because he wanted to keep your loyalty, all of you, and because he wished to end his days in peace. But he had his choice, as you well know.” She would have said more, but a hush fell, and Adminius stepped into the open space left for the speakers and turned to face his kin.

Togodumnus tensed into high-strung concentration, Caradoc felt Eurgain’s hand steal under his elbow, for restraint or comfort he did not know, and the chiefs rested their big hands on their fringed knees and watched, their predatory hawks’ eyes alive. Adminius began to speak but immediately the crowd was shouting, “Your sword, your sword,” and after a moment he shrugged ungraciously and wrenched it from its sheath, dropping it to the floor. He began again and the muttering subsided, but as he spoke he kept glancing down at it and across at his brothers, and Togodumnus grinned insolently up at him.

“Catuvellauni!” he said. “Freemen of the tuath! My words will be brief and I ask you to consider them well. I speak first because my claim is greatest, that you all know. I am the eldest, Cunobelin’s firstborn, rightful heir to the title of ricon. I will not bring you new conquests. Cunobelin did that. I will not bring you famine and death. Togodumnus, if you are foolish enough to elect him, will do that. I will bring you more wealth—bronze and silver for your wives and your horses, fine dishes, bigger and warmer huts, more grain and cattle. Why should I offer you war? Why should we expand any more? We are already greater than any other tribe and our coins are coveted from Brigantia to the mines of the Dumnonii. How have we become so mighty? I will tell you.” He paused but no sound filled the small silence. He sensed hostility but he plunged on. “I will be honest with you, chieftains. I will not lie to gain your vote. We have grown in strength and riches because it is Caesar’s pleasure to have it so.” He had expected a great outburst of rage, a wave of furious denials and name-calling, but the silence only deepened and he was bewildered. For a moment he forgot the thread of his words, and he stood looking down at his sword and hitched back his cloak, and all the while the fire could be heard roaring steadily. He searched the far reaches of the Hall, trying to divine the sympathy of the traders, but between them was a solid ocean of emotionless, upturned faces. He continued less confidently, an awful awareness growing within him. He was a man of comfortable assurances, blind to all save his own superiority, and the thought that the chiefs did not trust and admire him had never before entered his head. In his arrogance he had not considered failure. A tussle with Togodumnus perhaps, soon quashed by his own level-headed maturity, but defeat, never. Now he felt as though he were crawling from beneath warm skins to stand naked in the pitiless frosts of deep winter, and for the first time in his life he faced a reality that was not of his own making, and the props of his claim and his blood began to teeter. “Caesar’s pleasure,” he repeated slowly. “Our ties with Rome have been growing. For a hundred years we have been allies in all but name, my friends. If Rome withdrew her imperial support from Albion we would be reduced to poverty and impotence in less than a year.” Is that true? he asked himself, doubting for the first time. But why should he doubt when his Roman friends insisted day after day that it was true? He squared his shoulders. “I must be elected so that our prosperity is assured. I will make our relationship with Rome official. I will sign agreements, and thus protect our trade and our tuath forever.” The people before him had turned into wooden images, a forest of frozen statues forever sitting under the holding spell of his words. Even their eyes did not move. He felt that there was more to say but his thoughts were confused. He stood awkwardly for a moment, the only breathing being in that warm, red-shadowed place, then he bent abruptly, picked up his sword, and sat down.