The Eagle and the Raven (17 page)

Chapter Eight

T
HEY
all hunted, feasted, laughed, and drank, and then they went to war. The threat of Rome had been no more than the fangless petulance of a gust of summer wind. Rome had once more tried and failed, and the last restraints fell from the lords of the Catuvellauni. Togodumnus and his chiefs packed up their wives, children, and baggage and left for Verulamium, accompanied by loud music and raucous song. Caradoc made the last plans for his assault on Verica, and then, in early spring when the buds on the apple trees burst into white, fragrant blossom that perfumed the echoing halls of the forest and the sun probed the earth with gentle, warm fingers, he and Togodumnus thundered into action. On a high tide of reckless young strength and bursting confidence they careened across the borders, with their yelling, blood-drunk hordes behind them, and the Coritani wavered, broke, and ran. Verica, after a wild and desperate struggle high above the eastern coast, took ship and fled in anger and defeat to Gaul. It was only the beginning. Throughout that summer the Coritani, bunched together in their northern fortresses, turned at bay and fought Togodumnus with steady ferocity, but Caradoc spent the months of heat chasing this way and that, trying to find the remnants of Verica’s kin who had melted away into their forests like handfuls of snow.

In the autumn, when the trees lit suddenly with a fiery, flaunting glory, both of them returned tanned, healthy, and tired, to Camulodunon, the wains and chariots trundling behind them laden with booty, and the herds and flocks of stolen animals before them. There, in the Great Hall, Togodumnus and Caradoc met and flung their arms around each other. “What a summer!” Tog declared as they sat cross-legged by the fire. “Ah Caradoc, I wish you could have seen us! Those Coritani can fight after all. We charged them, we beat them back, we hacked their chiefs to pieces and then chased them into the hills, but they turned on us and gave us a stiff resistance. I nearly lost my head, did you know? A massive chief with bull’s horns on his helm leaped upon me from his chariot, and I standing fighting in a dyke. He bore me down but I wriggled free. He swung at my neck, growling all the while like a bear, but ah!” He tossed back his hair and brought his bronze-braceleted arm slicing through the smoky air. “One blow and I cut him nearly in two!” He sighed happily. “What a summer!”

The chiefs mingled around them, telling their own excited tales to each other, and the women chattered contentedly, glad to be settling once more into their snug town quarters. The children ran about the Hall, chasing the dogs or wrestling each other, and the bards sat thoughtfully tuning their harps, their eyes on the cavernous depths of the ceiling as their newest songs took shape in their quick minds. Fearachar brought wine and steaming pork, and there was silence for a while as the lords and their attendants ate.

“Tell me, Tog,” Caradoc said, taking a sip of hot wine, “will another season see the Coritani beaten? Can we move some of our people up there next summer, or will the Coritani make treaty with the Brigantians and face us a thousandfold next spring?”

Togodumnus chewed reflectively. “I do not know. The Coritani and the Brigantes do not like one another and are always raiding, but perhaps Aricia will push for a treaty, knowing that I plan to attack her just as soon as the Coritani are subjugated. She would do better to make treaty with us.” He grinned. “Then we can take over Brigantia while she is still arguing about her principles.”

“She knows that,” Caradoc answered. “So she will not treaty with us. I think she will sit down in Council with the judges of the Coritani and they will face us together.”

Tog swallowed his mouthful. “Then they are stupid. From what we have heard, Aricia has flung away any principles she may have had, which weren’t many as you, of all people, should know. She will speak fairly to the judges, and then if you and I go down in defeat—bang!” He clapped his hands together. “She and that wildman of hers, that Venutius, will be down on the Coritani like thunderbolts, and they will regret that they did not accept our domination.” He picked up his cup and drank deeply, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “And what of the Atrebates?” he asked. “How have you fared?”

“Verica has gone to Rome, as you know,” Caradoc replied, “and his people are clever. They hide in the woods and will not meet me in battle. To tell you the truth,” he said ruefully, “I have spent my summer chasing shadows. But I think in the spring I will move some of the freemen families into Verica’s territory and make their menfolk chiefs. The resistance is so spotty and poor that they will easily be able to handle it—particularly with the goad of enormous honor-prices. Then,” he smiled. “Then for the Dobunni. Already they quarrel among themselves, with Boduocus hanging onto the south and the renegade chiefs in the north. It should be easy to turn them all into Catuvellaunians.” He and Togodumnus looked at each other smugly. “An empire,” Caradoc said softly. “Already we have made a good beginning, Tog. One day the whole of Albion will be ruled by Catuvellaunian chieftains, and you and I will be richer than Seneca.”

“They say that even Caesar is not as rich as Seneca,” said Tog. “What about the traders, Caradoc? Many of them went home this summer because commerce was not good with all of us away. We will have to do something about that.”

Caradoc shrugged. “Let them go. The bigger we are the less we will have to rely on Rome for goods, and when we are big enough the traders will be lured back for pickings a hundred times more valuable.”

“Cunobelin would laugh loud and long if he could see us now!” Tog finished his wine and sat back against the wall, and the company began to settle themselves on the floor. “Our names will be feared from one end of the earth to the other. What about the Durotriges, Caradoc, and the men of the west? Shall we save them until the last?”

Caradoc shuddered. “We will leave them. Even Cunobelin did not dare to anger the men of the west, for they fight as though the Raven of Battle lived in each one of them. As for the Durotriges…” He frowned. “The Cornovii first, Tog, and then we will see. We must be far stronger if we want to cross swords with them.”

Conversation had dropped to a faint murmuring. Cups were refilled, the children taken away to bed, and Eurgain came and sat between Caradoc and Cinnamus. Caradoc put an arm around her and kissed her cheek. “Now we will hear the stories of our summer,” he said to her. “Are you glad to be home, Eurgain?” She nodded and put her head on his shoulder, and he called for Caelte. The bard stood, unslinging his harp, and a hush fell. He had taken a spear in his shoulder and still favored it, moving delicately, but his fingers were unscathed, able to coax music like the swift passing of wind in the treetops from his little instrument. He plucked at it, tightened a string, smiled around at the gathering, and cleared his throat.

“People of the tuath,” he said quietly. “I will sing to you tonight of Caradoc the Magnificent, and the Dishonoring of Verica.”

“My bard has made a song for me that takes an hour to sing,” Togodumnus whispered to Eurgain, but she did not look at him, only smiling politely and distantly while Caelte’s high, sweet voice rose like the rising of the lark from the meadows of summer.

Caelte, Togodumnus’s bard, and the people sang the night away. After the summer had sped before them, blown through their minds on the warm breath of Caelte, they called for the songs of Cunobelin, and Tasciovanus, and still they were hungry. The story of Julius Caesar and Cassivellaunus made them laugh. The haunting, lost lays of their ancestors, now only dimly understood, filled them with passionate nostalgia, and they wept. An atmosphere of emotion-charged poignancy throbbed in the Hall, a billowing, wreathing cloud of pathos that curled around them along with the woodsmoke, and it permeated their souls. The fire was replenished again and again, and the red flames soared on the wings of their melody, sweet or bitter, melancholy or searing. The wine barrels were emptied. Sweat ran down the faces of the bards and their fingers grew hot, but the music took its own power and left them wordless at last, able only to follow stumbling where its rainbow cloak brushed them in its journey. Then Togodumnus shouted, “‘The Ship,’ Caelte, ‘the Ship’!” and the others took up the cry. “‘The Ship,’ oh please master, ‘the Ship’!”

Caelte shook his head, his throat raw and his face streaming, but they called all the more and finally he stood, a wry smile on his face. Immediately deep silence fell. “‘The Ship,’” he said huskily and began, and after the first few hoarse notes his voice gained strength in an inhuman, lovely cadence of sorrow.

There was a ship, her sails were silken red, Peaceful she lay, upon a golden sea And all about, the graceful seagulls glided, crying. He stood like stone upon the deck, Like gods of old, the evening wind Was in his floating hair, the sun upon his face. He looked toward the seaweed-crowded shore, The silvered path that wound down from the wood Where long the pools of liquid light were lying. She did not come, she did not come, She lay under the oak trees, dreaming, Between her fingers grew the yellow celandines. The sun burned out, the stars hung white-bespangled, And still he waited, dying in the darkness, And still she lay, white limbs upon the grass, Until the seaward night wind filled the whispering sail And the ocean took him on its murmuring tide.

Togodumnus opened his eyes as Caelte bowed, mopping his forehead, and sank to the floor. “Aaaah,” he whispered. “How good it is to be alive, eh Caradoc? If I had been Cerdic I would have left the ship with my chiefs, then fallen on the village and cut her miserable father into a thousand pieces. Then I would have carried her body away with me and sunk her and myself in the ocean.”

“But Cerdic did not know that she was dead,” Caradoc said, one ear open to his brother while Aricia twisted in his entrails, lying under the oaks, black hair spread upon the grass and red mouth open under his own. Eurgain stirred and sat up, yawning, and the people began to file out.

“I could sleep until another sunset,” she murmured. “But it was a good homecoming.” She and Caradoc spoke their goodnights and went out, accompanied by Fearachar, Cinnamus, and a lagging, weary Caelte. But Togodumnus lay on the skins by the fire, dreamily watching the embers darken and fall, thinking of Aricia, and the battles to come.

Chapter Nine

I
N
the late winter when the war bands were again preparing to depart, this time to sweep unlooked-for upon the Dobunni and the southern marches of the Iceni, the traders brought word that Caius Caesar was dead. Caradoc listened incredulously to a tale of insanity that had driven the all-powerful Praetorian Guards to an act of brutal murder and turned Rome into a dangerous whirlpool of treachery and betrayals. Togodumnus whooped and danced, twirling his red cloak above his head. “And what did his precious horse, the newest consul, say?” he crowed. “Oh brave and noble guards! I wish I had been there!”

“Is there a successor?” Caradoc asked the man, wishing irritably that Tog would go away, and the trader nodded, his eyes twinkling.

“Oh yes, Lord, indeed there is. The Praetorians were desperate, knowing that if they did not choose the next Caesar themselves they could all die for their presumption. They found him, I believe, cowering behind a curtain and weeping for fear. He is Tiberius Claudius Drusus Germanicus, grandson to Augustus, a mild, book-loving man. It is obvious to all, now, that the Praetorians rule Rome.”

Caradoc felt a strange thrill course through him. It tingled in his fingers, prickled across his face, and Cinnamus looked at him enquiringly. “Is he old? Young? Married? What?” He pressed in a sudden urge to know this man, this Claudius, but the trader could tell him no more. Caradoc sent him away, and Togodumnus sidled close, his chiefs with him.

“Now is the time,” he said eagerly. “Now we must order Rome to send Adminius and Verica back to us!”

“What for?” Caradoc said, still frowning over the information brought to him, and Togodumnus shook him gently.

“So that the last hope of the Atrebates is dashed, and so that we can get rid of Adminius. With the two of them sitting in Rome, pouring sedition into the ears of all who will listen, we are not safe. Besides,” he said haughtily, “this is a good time to let Rome know that we have dignity, that we Catuvellauni are a force to be reckoned with. Let us test this poor, timid little Claudius, Caradoc. Let me order the traitors home!”

“If you like,” Caradoc replied absently. It would give Tog something to occupy his mind during the coming months, and it seemed to Caradoc that Rome was in no position to retaliate, even if she cared a scrap about two disinherited chieftains. Caius had sent a flurry of formal, strongly-worded protests to the Catuvellauni when the Roman traders had reached Gaul and spread the word of a new militancy rising in Albion, but Caius was dead, and he no longer mattered. “Be careful that you do not demand from Rome, Tog, if you really want to see Verica and Adminius here at Camulodunon. Be tactful in your request.”

“Pah!” Tog said, and swirled away, and Caradoc turned slowly to Cinnamus.

“Come to the practice ground and give me some exercise, Cin,” he said. “My body feels old and tired.”

“It’s raining, Lord,” Cinnamus pointed out, but he drew his sword and they walked from the Hall, shedding their cloaks and tying back their hair. For an hour they slashed at one another, slipping in the mud, becoming drenched to the skin, entirely alone there in the shrouded quiet day. Finally, Cinnamus called a halt. He could no longer see his opponent for the water pelting into his eyes and he went off to get dry, but Caradoc stood there on the practice ground, resting on his shield, the aura of unreality still wrapping him in a many-fibered net.

Togodumnus sent off his impertinent demand and waited impatiently for an answer, but winter faded into spring and neither Adminius nor Verica came. Nor did any word from Rome. The battle season opened. Caradoc and Togodumnus fought together this time, for the Coritani had concluded treaties with Aricia and with Prasutugas, chieftain of the Iceni. When the Catuvellaunian spies told this to Caradoc he was surprised, wondering what had happened in the far marsh country after the death of Subidasto, and why the little Boudicca did not captain the tribe. He remembered her vaguely, a brown-eyed slip of a child with thick, waving red hair and chunky hands, and tried to imagine her a woman now, sixteen or seventeen years old. She had been clever, that he did recall. She had accused them all of suffering from the Roman disease, and at remembering it, he smiled to himself. He wondered what she was calling them now.

He and Togodumnus rode north, the summer passing in fire and blood, a summer of unusual heat in which the grass withered to a dirty brown and the streams in the woods shrank to trickles of muddy water. Caradoc fought without appetite, continually afraid that one day he would see Aricia herself, standing in her chariot with her chiefs around her, and here, so close to the rolling marches of her land, he began to dream of her again in the hot, dry nights. But battle followed battle, one red, tired dawn after another, and if she was there among the shouting, boasting, bronze-bedecked Coritani chiefs, he did not see her. The Coritani, their numbers swelled by silent Icenians and huge, bearded Brigantians, held on. Even their women, great-armed and tall, took to the field, screaming strange curses, but still Caradoc refused to let the Catuvellaunian freewomen fight. Gladys had disobeyed him but he overlooked her flagrant disregard for his authority. Gladys had always been a law unto herself, and besides, as she reminded him, she had taken no oath to any chief. She rode by herself, cared for her own belongings, fought where and when she would, and he left her alone.

Autumn closed in quickly, as if the summer had burned itself out before its time, and the Catuvellaunians went home to Camulodunon unhappy with the months of war. Too many freemen had been lost, too little ground gained. Caradoc was resolved to press the Dobunni next spring, instead, and he and Togodumnus stared moodily day after day from the shelter of the Great Hall upon the saturated, puddle-riddled countryside. They had grown tired of the petty squabbles and bloodletting of their chiefs closeted in the huts with nothing to do, tired of the weather which poured out a steady rain and precluded hunting or chariot riding, and tired of themselves and each other. Togodumnus became surlier and more unpredictable as the winter dragged on. He did his best to pick fights with Caradoc, insulting him, and pricking him with the smarting pins of his sarcastic wit, and at last Caradoc, goaded beyond restraint, shouted at him, “Damn you, Tog! Why don’t you take your worthless chiefs and go to Verulamium as we agreed! I’m sick of you. I don’t want you here any more!” Togodumnus considered it, his head on one side, unmoved by Caradoc’s livid face.

“Good!” he said finally. “I think I will. It’s not good raiding weather, but raiding is preferable to this stinking, damp inactivity.” He swaggered close. “And I may not come back. Think about that, my brother. You’ve been ordering us all as though you were ricon, you alone, and we do not like it. Besides, you did not lead us well this year, and the chiefs are saying that it is my turn to champion them.” Caradoc was speechless. He struggled for words, strangled by his rage, and Togodumnus flung out into the rain, his shield-bearer and his bard trotting behind him.

Caradoc was still angry when Eurgain handed him the comb that night, sitting before her mirror, and he pulled it through her hair with quick, sharp strokes that made her wince. Tog had gone. In a short time he had gathered his chiefs and his freemen and women and had ridden off without saying goodbye, the horses splashing through the mud and the wheels of the wains slithering this way and that. In the end, Eurgain took the comb gently from his cold fingers and threw it on the table, swiveling to face him.

“Why do you glower, my husband?” she said. “You know he will be back.”

Caradoc did not move. “I do not think so. At least, I do not think he will be back for the next season of fighting. He wants to face the Coritani on his own, the reckless fool. He will undo all the planning we had done together.”

“Well then, let him go. Let him lose his chiefs’ respect by making a mess of his campaigns, and then see him coming running home!” She was afraid to tell him what she was really thinking, but that tiny fear passed from her to him when their eyes brushed, and he smiled unwillingly, picking up the comb and drawing it more gently through the lustrous tresses.

“I am sorry, Eurgain,” he said quietly. “It is the weather. And you know, of course you know, that I fear Tog’s ambition. Once he has the bit between his teeth there at Verulamium, and particularly if he is successful in his battles next spring where I failed, it will be an easy matter for him to persuade the chiefs of his new Council to ride against me.”

She bent her head, looking at the long hands clasped tight in her lap, and the comb continued to move, slowly and hypnotically, through her hair. She wanted to laugh, to say—Oh Caradoc, not Tog!—to toss off a light remark, but the moment slid into a longer moment, and the meaning of his words deepened in her mind. He was right. Togodumnus was dangerous. Caradoc had kept him busy, but now there was rain and boredom and the rapid disintegration of an unpredictable mind. She had seen the symptoms before. They all had. She reached up, grasping his arms and, drawing him down, kissed him urgently, as if by her actions she could send his bitter, lonely thoughts back to a place beyond memory. He knelt by the little chair and embraced her, laying his head against her full breasts, but beneath the blind assertion of their passion he could hear her heart beating like the wings of a frightened bird.

Two weeks after Togodumnus had ridden blithely away, Fearachar came to Caradoc as he sat by the fire in his house. The rain had stopped. The sky was low with more moisture, but the clouds were breaking and now and then a weak, apologetic sun bathed Camulodunon in momentary brightness. At the first sign of better weather the children had scattered, Llyn to the woods on his horse, and the girls to the grass before Gladys’s hut, to play with her seashells. But Caradoc, bored and depressed, sat drinking, while Eurgain bent over her table, polishing the crystals and humming.

Fearachar nodded glumly. “Your pardon, Lord,” he said, “but there is a strange animal waiting outside to see you.”

“Oh?” Caradoc did not even smile. Anxiety still pained him. “What kind of an animal?”

Fearachar was disappointed at his lack of reaction. “The kind of animal that says he is a trader but is not. That kind of animal.”

Eurgain stopped humming though her hands still moved among her treasures, and Caradoc felt his lassitude begin to fade. “Tell me, old friend,” he said softly. Fearachar fixed his loose, heavy-lidded gaze upon the ceiling.

“He dresses like a trader but looks like a patrician. He is too stupid to even disguise his hands. And he’s not a common spy. He can’t disguise his eyes, either.” He chuckled a little at his witticism. “He says he wants to talk to you about the poor trading we’ve been doing lately, but of course he’s lying. Even I could do better than that.”

Caradoc sat straighter in his chair, the wine forgotten. He felt his body tense slowly, the way it did before he raised the carnyx to his lips to signal the first charge of battle, and he and Fearachar looked at one another in perfect understanding. “Where are Cinnamus and Caelte?” he asked quickly.

“I sent for them and they are waiting also. A nice, friendly trio they make out there, the trader shivering in the wind and the chiefs spitting him with their eyes. You will not see him alone, will you, Lord? He is probably armed with a poisoned needle, or some such diabolical Roman invention” The doleful face grew even more lugubrious, but Caradoc did not need the freeman’s clumsy attempt at humor.

“Of course not!” he snapped, rising and pulling his sword belt forward. “Send Cin and Caelte in first, and then the trader.” Fearachar bowed and slipped through the doorskins, and Caradoc spoke quickly over his shoulder. “Go on polishing quietly, Eurgain, and set your memory to work. Remember every word that passes here.” She did not reply but he knew that she had heard, and then his men shouldered their way into the room. “Stand beside me,” he ordered them. “And listen. I have a feeling.” It was more than a feeling. Something rushed to meet him, a premonition, a mind-freezing blast, and as the tall, thin man walked slowly toward him, letting the doorskins fall silently, he saw a hole gape open in the mad whirl of his panicked thoughts. Then his head cleared. Fearachar was right. This was no coarse dog and wine dealer. The eyes were level, full of a calm cunning. The face was long and thin, the nose straight, the mouth sensitive but capable of callousness. The man was dressed roughly. A dirty gray tunic hung on his spare frame, covered by a tattered brown cloak. His belt was of plain, undressed leather, and a simple knife hung from it. The breeches were baggy and mud-spattered. And the hands. Looking at them, Caradoc knew what this strange animal was. He went forward, arm outstretched, and the other grasped it with his thin, supple wrist and elegant fingers.

“Welcome to the tuath,” Caradoc said evenly. “May your stay here be one of rest and peace. There is wine and barley cakes. Will you eat and drink before you share your news?” The man’s startled eyes met his own, then he laughed, a friendly, warm sound.

“I have underestimated the wit of the Catuvellaunian chieftains,” he said dryly. “What trader has ever been accorded a tribal welcome? Well, Caradoc, your chiefs are right. I am not a trader, but I did not want to die with a sword buried in my belly, so I have posed as one.” He fingered his long jaw but his eyes never left Caradoc’s own. “I will gladly eat and drink with you,” he went on. “It is a long way from the river if one does not own a horse.”

Cinnamus pushed a chair toward him but he did not sit until Caradoc sank back onto his own, then he lowered himself slowly and began to eat. Caradoc poured him wine and the man’s cool eyes flickered over the decorated silver cup before he raised it to his lips. Of course the cup comes from Rome, like everything else about you, Caradoc thought. What did you expect, a ravening horde of barbarians? He refilled his own cup and drank slowly, and his men stood very still, watching. When the man had finished the last crumb of barley cake he turned to Caradoc with a smile, and Caradoc knew that every detail of the room and of they themselves had been noted.