The Eagle and the Raven (16 page)

“They will kill me,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Caradoc and Tog. In a moment they will remember that I am free and they will come for me. They cannot let me live, Gladys, and you know it. But I will be revenged. Caesar will listen to me. He’s mad, everyone knows it, and the right words can control him. I will ask for justice, and Caius will give it to me because I will tell him…” He swung away from her and mounted and she stepped out of reach of the sidling hoofs. “I will tell him that the Council elected me, and my brothers drove me out. The traders will back me up. I will tell him that if he does not help me all his trading connections in Albion will be broken.”

“You dare not!” she flashed at him. “What of your honor-price, your freedom? Adminius, if you leave then the Council will pronounce you unfree, a slave, and all your riches will be forfeit. Is that what you want?” He sat looking down on her, teeth bared, hands clenching and unclenching on the reins.

“What is the goodwill of the tuath to me?” he ground out. “Henceforth I am a Roman.” He wrenched the torc from his neck and flung it at her. It struck her on the cheek, grazing her, and then fell with a tinkle to the floor. “What are the Catuvellauni but a mud-caked rabble of quarrelsome, ignorant peasants?” he screamed. “When I return it will be to see you all ground under the boots of Caius’s legions!” He kicked his horse viciously in the ribs and the animal snorted and made for the door, Adminius bent low on his back. Then man and horse were gone and Gladys stood shaking, dabbing at her bloody cheek with her sleeve. The horses had stopped chewing and their heads had turned, the liquid brown eyes rolled toward her in enquiry. She calmed them automatically, with silly, soft words pouring from her lips, and she picked up the torc and walked unsteadily to the entrance, passing out under the sun. Already the men were running toward her, Caradoc and Togodumnus in the lead, and she waited for them, a hand on her cheek, her eyes squinting in the bright light. The shreds of cloud had thinned to nothing and the blue sky held only a white, warm radiance.

“Where is he?” Togodumnus panted, coming up. “Where has he gone?” But she turned to Caradoc, meeting the dark eyes calmly.

“He has gone to Caligula,” she said. “He has gone for vengeance.” She turned away then to hide tears, while Togodumnus burst into derisive laughter. Caradoc came and put an arm about her.

“Are you hurt?” he asked gently, and she shook her head, mutely holding the torc out to him. He took it in wonderment. “Does he knew what he has done?” he said, and she nodded, Adminius’s own words falling from her lips like poisoned berries.

“Shall we go after him?” Sholto asked eagerly, but Togodumnus spoke.

“Let him go, the arrogant fool,” he said scornfully. “Caius cares no more for us than Tiberius did. He will not make war for the sake of one more disgruntled chieftain.” He spread his arms expansively and raised his face to the benison of the winter sun. “Now we can proceed! Let the war band come to arms! Oh, Caradoc, an empire as great as Rome’s for you and me!” Cinnamus met Caradoc’s wry smile with a whimsical, quick grin, and Gladys stifled her tears and moved away.

“Where are you going?” Caradoc called to her as she passed under the black shade of the stable’s entrance, and she paused and said contemptuously, “To the sea.”

Chapter Seven

C
ARADOC
, Togodumnus and all the tuath prepared for war on a great tide of excitement. Not for thirty years had the war band gathered, but now Camulodunon hummed to the sound of impending battle. The blacksmith’s forge glowed day and night. The Great Hall was full of people who hung about to gossip at all hours and watch the freemen run in and out on their errands, and the big fire was always hung with boar or steer. The chiefs spent much time by the river, dashing up and down in their chariots, and their freemen sharpened and polished the bright swords and massive shields. The women were restless also, caught up in the constant, feverish flux, and fights often broke out among the wives of the freemen’s circle, as the bragging and strutting men drew their women into their own heated arguments over who deserved the title of champion.

Caradoc and Togodumnus had decided to divide their force and strike simultaneously at the Coritani under Tog, and at the Atrebates under Caradoc. The spies crept back to Verica and the Coritani, and those tribes made their own preparations, cursing Caius Caesar for his lack of interest in their plight, and cursing the Catuvellauni for their rapaciousness. Llyn spent all his time begging Caradoc to let him fight too, and the little girls chased each other around their house with wooden sticks. The women were not going to fight—Caradoc had decided that they were not needed—but they would, of course, follow the warriors with the children in wains, and watch the excitement from the nearest high point. Caradoc and Tog were blithely convinced that no tribe would be able to stand against their own. They spent hours in Tog’s hut, drinking wine, talking of how the enemy chiefs would fall before the chariots like wheat before the shining blades of the reaping scythes, and any misgivings Caradoc may have had were swamped in Tog’s enthusiasms.

Eurgain said little to him of how she felt. Vida stormed and cursed at Cinnamus because she was not to draw blade, Gladys spent more and more time in her cave, watching the breakers roll in and weaving her own strange enchantments, but Eurgain went about her duties quietly and dumbly. Caradoc tried to tease her out, but she seemed to be withdrawing, drifting back to the time before he had married her. She once more sat by her window in the early afternoons, chin in hand, her blonde hair stirring in the cold winds, and her eyes fixed broodingly on the distant, tree-covered hills. She still played with the children, and rode and hunted, and attended the Council meetings. She still went into his arms with the same warm willingness, wrapping her sweet freshness around him. But she and Gladys no longer sparred though the other women battled on the practice ground, and Caradoc was too busy to unravel the tangled obscurities of her mind. He and Togodumnus had decided to strike in the spring, when the tribes would be busy with sowing and birthing. The Catuvellaunian peasants who wanted to fight were to be armed, at the chiefs’ expense, but many of them were to stay on the land to see to the cropping and the stock.

The time went by. Samain came and went, a momentary lull in an otherwise keyed-up and preoccupied Camulodunon. In a month the chiefs were ready and once more they gambled and quarreled around the great fire. In six weeks Togodumnus and Caradoc prepared to say goodbye, for Togodumnus and his men were to spend some time at Verulamium, seeing to the fortifications in the unlikely and laughable event that the Dobunni or the Coritani should chase the Catuvellauni home.

Then one afternoon, when Caradoc and Togodumnus were standing outside the stables watching their chariots being harnessed before they set out to race each other along the path that ran under the leafless trees of the wood, Cinnamus came pounding up from the gate, his horse lathered, his tunic streaked with sweat, his face an urgent message of fear. He clattered to a halt before them and tumbled off his mount, leaning against the beast for a moment to still his heaving chest, then motioned to the stable servant to lead the horse away. He turned to Caradoc. “The traders!” he gasped, and Caradoc left his glittering harness and went to him, sending Fearachar for water from the trough. Cinnamus wiped his gray-spotted face on the corner of his cloak and then bent, hands on knees and head hanging, struggling to get his breath. He had ridden from the river at full gallop and his heart still pounded out the rhythme of his horse’s flying hoofs. Fearachar ran up with water in a wooden bowl and Cinnamus straightened, plunging his face into its coldness. Then he took it and drank deeply, handing it back and grinning crookedly at the men who were watching him in puzzlement. “Lord, the traders are leaving,” he said. “Already five boats have gone with the tide and another ten wait. They will not talk. All they do is sit on the bank, their belongings around them, but the wine merchant was more amenable.”

“Wait a moment, Cin,” Caradoc said. “Get your breath,” but Cinnamus was already recovering. He squatted on the hard earth, and Caradoc and the chiefs squatted with him.

“Caius Caesar is moving,” he said. “He is within a day’s march of Gesioracum, and three legions, perhaps four, march with him. The merchant says he is going to cross the water.”

No one spoke. Cinnamus’s words hung in the frosty air, and Caradoc looked at the ground while behind him his ponies shuffled restlessly and the wheels of his chariot rolled back and forth. Then Togodumnus swore, a loud, rude expletive that startled them all, and jumped to the earth.

“We know who is with him, too!” he shouted. “That thrice damned Adminius! We should have pursued him and taken his head, Caradoc. Now look what he has done!” Caradoc looked enquiringly at Cinnamus, and Cinnamus nodded once.

“It is true. Such is the madness of Caligula that he imagines Adminius to be offering Rome the whole of Albion, and he is coming to claim it. The traders want no trouble. They will sail to Gaul and scatter, waiting until the legions have come and conquered, and trade begins once more.”

“What of Caius’s generals?” Caradoc asked. “Surely they are sane enough to see that Adminius is only a fugitive, not a ricon. In any case, a ricon from Albion who voluntarily sold his tribe into slavery would obviously be mad.”

“Of course they know,” Cinnamus answered him. “But how can they persuade Caesar and keep their heads? Pity them, Caradoc. And hope that one of them can somehow convince the emperor that Adminius is a criminal fool.”

Togodumnus spat into the dirt and scowled. “Let them come!” he said. “What did the wits of Rome say when Julius Caesar slunk home, his tail between his legs because the mighty Cassivellaunus sunk his teeth into the august rump? ‘I came, I saw, but failed to stay.’ Rome met its match in the Catuvellauni a hundred years ago.”

“It was not Cassivellaunus who defeated Caesar, it was the weather and the tides of the sea,” Caradoc said automatically, then he frowned in shock. Who had told him that? Togodumnus stuck out his tongue in the direction of the river and then laughed.

“Rubbish! Is that what Julius said? I suppose he had to say something.” The chiefs laughed, their momentary anxiety dissipating as swiftly as a summer mist, and they all rose and passed their interest to other things. They walked away and Togodumnus got into his chariot. “You have exhausted yourself for nothing, Cinnamus Ironhand,” he laughed in derision. “Caradoc, I will wait for you by the river.” As he rumbled away, Caradoc looked at Cinnamus.

“Is this thing real?” he asked quietly. “Will mad Caius come, Cin?”

Cinnamus shrugged in his own cool, inimitable fashion. “I do not know, but the traders would not be panicked by rumor alone. They know something, Lord, and if I were you I would keep Togodumnus and his chiefs here, ready for battle, until rumor becomes fact or sinks under the weight of another wonder.”

“Adminius has done this,” Caradoc said bitterly. “Sneaking, crawling Roman-lover! He has played on the emperor’s feeble mind. If Caius comes and is defeated I will take Adminius and burn him alive on his own funeral pyre.”

Cinnamus laughed shortly. “Gladys should have killed him when she had the chance,” he observed. “She will be eternally sorry that she did not.” He walked slowly and stiffly up the hill, and Caradoc beckoned to Fearachar and got into his chariot, lifting the reins and calling to the ponies. He rolled to the gate, while his mind strayed to the ocean and the port of Gesioracum where Caligula pouted and fretted, and his generals held secret, frantic meetings, trying to decide who should tell the ruler of the world that Albion would greet him with bunched spears, not flowers of welcome.

Caradoc persuaded Togodumnus to postpone his departure, but it was not easy. Tog fumed and shouted, cursed and raged, but the chiefs listened to Caradoc, trusting his judgment, and the Council voted Tog down. He sulked for a day, got drunk, then flirted with Vida, went fishing with Llyn, and finally settled down contemptuously to wait with Caradoc. The river was empty. The Catuvellaunian coracles and coastal vessels rocked gently at anchor, the piers were bare of barrels, boxes, sacks, and dogs, and day after day the freemen straggled into Camulodunon from the coast, reporting no sails. Even the weather seemed to hush and pause. The winter wind dropped, the fogs hung motionless in the trees, and the chiefs sat in their smoky huts, polishing swords and spears that already gleamed sun-bright.

Two weeks dragged by. Caradoc and his men sacrificed three bulls to Camulos and went into the woods to propitiate the goddess and the Dagda. But still the ocean lay unruffled by burden of war or troopship, and Caradoc was beginning to berate himself as an overanxious idiot when a freeman came to him in an early dawn, squatting before him in his house. The children still slept, but Eurgain was up, sitting among pillows, heavy-eyed but alert, and Caradoc flung wood on the fire before he dared to order the man to speak. Then he squatted beside him. “The news,” he said tersely, and the freeman smiled.

“The news is good,” he said, and behind him Caradoc heard Eurgain sigh. “Ships came in the night but they did not bring soldiers. The traders are coming back.”

Caradoc felt a great weight roll from him, and he was suddenly very hungry. Beside him the fire crackled with new life, and in the other room he heard Llyn cough and turn over. “And?” he pressed gently, and the man hurried on.

“The traders say that the generals could not dissuade the emperor, but the troops mutinied. They would not cross the water. They said that Albion is a magic island full of monsters and terrible spells, and even for Jupiter Greatest and Best they would not set sail. The traders say that the emperor was furious. He frothed at the mouth and ran about cursing. He had a dozen legionnaires crucified there on the beach, but it made no difference. In the end, the generals were able to turn him around, and he is going back to Rome. Some say he may be deciding to claim Albion anyway.”

Caradoc began to laugh. He threw back his head, lost his balance, and fell back hard onto the skins and still he laughed. Llyn woke up and came sleepily to see what had happened, and Eurgain watched her husband with a glad smile, the full-throated, gay sound filling her with weak relief. He had been so humorless lately, with a cutting edge to his words and a new hardness to his decisions that had begun to alarm her. Caradoc struggled to his feet, still shaking. “Monsters and spells!” he managed. “Of course, and worse! Swords and spears and giants! Oh Eurgain, did you hear? Well, let him claim Albion, the poor, witless wretch.” He hauled the freeman to his feet and embraced him. “Go to Togodumnus and give him your news,” he said. “Now hurry up and dress, Eurgain. This morning we will hunt boar, and tomorrow we will hunt the Coritani!”