The Eagle and the Raven (2 page)

Soon he relaxed and opened his eyes. A solitary oil lamp burned on a little table opposite the door. Soft hangings covered the walls, and, at one end, curtains were drawn back, revealing a low bed with a blue and red cloak trailing across it. But this was not his hut. Beside the bed was another table, a mirror lying on it, and with it a gold head circlet, a pile of bronze arm bands, and a brightly enameled girdle that snaked to the floor. With a whine of welcome Caesar rose from his place before the smoking fire and padded across the room toward him.

Aricia spun round in shock. “Caradoc! You gave me a fright! What do you want?”

He hesitated, torn between an embarrassed confusion and overwhelming relief that he had found the dog. There was no demon here, only a dog, and a girl. She was standing barefooted on the skins that covered the hard clay floor, and her white sleeping tunic fell around her like drifting snow. She held a large comb in one hand, and her black hair fell straight and thick to her knees, spreading over her pale arms and gleaming in the firelight as she stepped toward him. He mumbled an apology and turned to go, an irrational anger rising in him, but she spoke again and he paused.

“How wet you are! Have you been looking for the dogs all this time? Take off your cloak or you will catch cold.”

“Not tonight, Aricia,” he said firmly. “I am soaked and tired, and angry with you for keeping Caesar here. And I am angry with Tog for leaving me to seek on my own. I am going to find my own hearth.”

She laughed. “What a sight you are, with that black scowl on your face and your hair hanging down your back in strings! I didn’t find Caesar and keep him here. He ran to me not half an hour ago. I was about to call for someone to take him to the kennels when you fell in. As for Tog, you know you have to take him by the scruff of his neck and shake him if you want anything done. Why are you so annoyed?” She went to him swiftly, tugged the cloak from his shoulders, and, gingerly holding it out, walked to the fire and laid it down. “Warm wine from the land of the sun,” she said gently, picking up a jug that sat in the embers. “Have a cup before you brave the night again, Caradoc. And talk to me. It is Samain, and I am lonely.”

He sensed Caesar’s brown eyes upon him. Go now, he told himself. Go before once again your honor lies around you like pieces of smashed pottery. But she had poured the wine and as she held it under his nose, the spicy fumes steamed in his nostrils. He took the cup and warmed his hands around it, feeling his fingers tingle with new life. Then, he stepped further into the room and turned at the fire to let the heat penetrate his stiff legs.

“I thought you did not fear Samain,” he remarked.

She looked at him swiftly and went to sit on the edge of her bed. “I said that I was lonely, not that I was afraid. But you are afraid,” she mocked.

“I have good cause to be,” he retorted, swallowing a great gulp of wine, feeling it burn its way into his stomach and spread its glow throughout his chest. “I am a chieftain. The demons delight in attacking royalty on this night.”

“So am I of royal blood,” she said tartly, sitting straighter. “Have you forgotten? Have I been at Camulodunon so long that I seem just one more of Cunobelin’s spawn? I have not forgotten,” she finished softly, looking down at her hands, entwined softly in her white lap.

He emptied his cup and reached down to pour himself another. “I’m sorry, Aricia,” he said. “Sometimes I do forget. You have been here for so long and we have all grown up together—you, me, Tog, Eurgain, Gladys, Adminius. How many years has it been since father began to call us the Royal War Band?”

She closed her eyes as if some memory pained her, and he watched her covertly over the rim of his cup. She is so beautiful, he thought in growing resignation, looking at the pale complexion that never tanned with the summer sun, the delicate chin, the long black lashes lying on such high cheekbones. He wondered just when he had ceased to think of her as a hunting companion and begun to see a stranger. When she opened her eyes he recognized the enticing mysteries hidden there, intriguing confusions that he was too young to recognize as insecurities. For a while they scanned each other, he too tired to look away, mesmerized by her black eyes, she not seeing him, feeling back into the past.

Suddenly she giggled. “Caradoc, you are steaming.”

“What?”

“Your breeches are drying out and the steam is rising in clouds! You look like some river god, emerging on a winter morning. Do take off your clothes or go away and stop making my little nest all damp.”

“I suppose I had better take Caesar to the kennel,” he said reluctantly, feeling the wine swell his tongue and turn his limbs to lead.

Shaking her head, Aricia stood up quickly. “Do not tempt your luck! We have already had more than we deserve tonight. Leave him here with me, or take him to your own hearth.” She glided to him, her tunic rustling, bringing with her a whiff of Roman perfume. “I am truly sorry for the trouble I’ve caused today. Tog only insisted on hunting because of a dare I made. If Cunobelin is very angry I will help you both pay Brutus’s price. I don’t suppose the traders will want him.”

“No, I don’t suppose so.” He felt his legs trembling loosely with fatigue and he saw her mistily, through a haze of wine fumes. Seeing his hesitation she began to smile. Ah, not now, not tonight, he thought to himself unsteadily. But it was too late. Already his hand was reaching out, lifting a lock of her hair, running it through his fingers to feel its thick, smooth texture. He raised it to his face, breathing in its perfume and its warmth, and she did not move until he had finished.

“Stay with me, Caradoc,” she said slowly, looking at him enquiringly. “You want to stay, don’t you? I am a Samain demon tonight. Do you feel the spell that I am placing on you?”

She spoke half in jest but he felt the bewitchment stealing over him like a sweet, familiar song. He knew that he should rush to the door with a protecting spell on his lips, but, as always, he only looked at her with hot stupefaction. He and Tog had often joked about this black witch of whom they were so dangerously fond, and they teased her unmercifully about the paleness of her northern skin in the same way that they teased Eurgain about her long silences, or Adminius about his precious collection of boars’ teeth, but they did it without malice and without forethought, the unthinking words of friends of long standing. If she irritated him lately he put it down to the coming of winter, the time when men looked to the months ahead with tight belts and empty bellies, a time of year when he merely existed. And, if he sometimes wanted to slap her for her superior airs and her fiery will in an argument, well, she was, after all, just a girl, only a fourteen-year-old girl struggling to become a woman.

As she brought a handful of her own hair to her face, and closed her eyes, he felt a rush of heat from his loins. “You have no choice, spoiled Caradoc,” she said quietly. “My bed is far more comfortable than the damp forest floor.”

Outside, the rain drummed down. The wind had dropped to a low, persistent moan and inside the room the untended fire was dying, hissing now and then as stray raindrops found it. She reached up to his neck, removed the golden torc, and laid it carefully on the floor. She reached up to unbuckle his heavy belt, and as she did so the sword slid onto the skins. Still he made no move.

A weakening struggle went on within him and his eyes followed her every motion, but when the thin fingers touched his face he surrendered, grabbing her by her arms and pulling her sharply against him.

After all, he told himself, it is Samain. Raven of Panic, you will not find me here, he called silently.

A moment later she pulled away from his grasp. “You are making me wet,” she said evenly. “Take off your tunic, and your breeches. No, I will do it for you. You are standing there as if I have put a holding spell upon you.”

“You always do. Aricia…”

She put a finger to his lips. “No, Caradoc. Don’t speak, please.” Her voice shook. Stooping, she drew the short tunic over his head, and as she did so, he saw a flare of mockery in her eyes.

How strange, he thought. I never noticed before that her eyes are flecked with gold. He grasped her again, kissing her roughly, clumsily, feeling her hands warm on his naked back, losing himself in the softness of her mouth. Her magnificent hair fell tangling over his arms, and as he felt her press against him he caught her up and threw her on the bed, twitching the curtains closed behind them and cutting off the light of the lamp. He looked at her in the dimness as she lay waiting, arms outstretched, her hair spread wide upon the pillow, her thin-lipped smile both enraging him and inviting him to pain.

“Tog knows,” he whispered.

Her smile widened. “I don’t care. Do you?”

“No,” he said softly.

“Then stop talking.”

In his wine-befuddled eagerness he tugged at her sleeping tunic and heard it tear, and then her breasts were under his fumbling fingers, his greedy mouth. She drew in her breath sharply and hissed, and the rain continued to fall, monotonously and dreamily.

He could not restrain himself and it was over very quickly, but tonight she did not complain. It was always like this, an uncontrollable surge, the desperate, compulsive hunt for her, then the sharp, painful satiation. He rolled onto his back, his head on one arm, and gazed at the dim roof above him, wondering how and why as the little needles of shame began to prick. I have done it again, he thought despairingly. It was one thing to tumble a slave in the fields, or even the willing daughter of a freeman commoner, but this was Aricia his friend, Aricia who had shared in every escapade he and Tog had devised, Aricia, daughter of a ricon whose lineage stretched back much farther than his own. He wanted the earth to swallow him. He wanted the demons of Samain to come and take him to their caves. He wanted to die.

She turned on her side, propped herself on one elbow and, not bothering to cover herself, pushed her hair back impatiently. Incredulous, he felt desire stir in him again.

“Caradoc?”

“Yes?”

“Marry me.”

He thought for a moment that he had not heard her right, but then realizing, he sat bolt upright.

She wrapped her arms about her knees. “Yes, you heard me. I want you to marry me. I beg you, I implore you, Caradoc. Marry me!”

“What are you asking of me?” he said sharply, his mind temporarily freed from its drugged preoccupation with her.

She put a hot hand on his arm. “Are we not old friends?” she whispered. “Would it not be so easy, so very easy, to take the next step and become pledged to one another?” Her grip tightened on his arm. “It’s not such a great thing that I ask. After all, you can take other wives.”

He laughed then, clearheaded. “You mean Eurgain, I suppose. Oh, no, Aricia. We have had great pleasure together, but I do not think we should speak of marriage. Now I must go.” He hurriedly swung his feet onto the cold floor but she restrained him with a force he had not known she possessed.

“Why not? Don’t you think that I have a claim on you, Caradoc?”

“What claim? Do you mean this?” He bent to kiss her but she squirmed away from him and flung open the curtains. The dim lamp light showed him a face shadowed with emotion, lips barely controlled, eyes brimming with tears.

“I will play no more games with you, Caradoc. Where are the words of love you whisper to me in the darkness?”

“Love has nothing to do with you and me, Aricia, and you know it.” He left the bed and dressed quickly, stepping into breeches that were still damp, pulling his wet tunic over his head. “I have made no promises to you.”

She reached out and clung to the curtain as if her muscles had melted with her hope. “Caradoc, I am desperate. Do you know how old I am?”

He buckled on his sword belt. “Of course I know. You are fourteen.”

“The age of betrothal.”

His busy fingers paused and he glanced at her, sensing the truth.

“Very soon an embassy will come from my father, to take me home.” The tears overflowed and splashed onto her hands and she shook them off angrily. “Home! I can scarcely remember the barren moorlands and poverty-stricken huts of my birthplace. Oh, Caradoc, I do not want to go. I do not want to leave you and Tog and Eurgain, and Cunobelin who is like a father to me. I do not want to go away to a place I fear, among fierce, uncouth men!” Her voice faltered, and, sobbing, she slipped to the floor. “I, too, hate Samain and the rains of winter, the loneliness that will come. Must this night go by with no demon come to claim me and no man to wed me?”

He went to her then and knelt beside her, and took her awkwardly into his arms, feeling sympathy rise within him for the first time. “Aricia, I didn’t think, I didn’t know. Have you spoken to Cunobelin?”

She shook her head violently, her face hidden in his neck. “He cannot keep me. My father will want me in Brigantia, for there are no other children to rule after him and the chiefs will certainly elect me.” She looked up then, her eyelids swollen, her skin whiter than he had ever seen it. “If you care for me at all, do not allow this thing to happen to me. I will bring you the greatest dowry the Catuvellauni have ever seen. All of Brigantia! All of it, to share with me. You and I, ruling there together.”

“But what of my own tuath? What of my own kin, and the freemen who depend on me? I don’t want to go to Brigantia any more than you. Can’t you refuse to go, Aricia?” He disengaged himself firmly and stood up. “Forgive me, but I cannot interfere in a matter between foreign kin. I…”

“You what? You are content to use me, and now you pity me? Keep your pity! I want no man’s anxious looks.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks and faced him. “I could make trouble for you, Caradoc, for dishonoring me and yourself, but I will not. I know my father will send for me soon, I have begun to dream about it, but when I go you will be sorry. There will be a hole in your life that will not be filled. I will remember. I swear by Brigantia the High One, goddess of my tribe.”

He looked at the defiant face, the widely gesticulating hands. “We have used each other,” he reminded her quickly. “How has this thing happened, Aricia? How have we ceased to be what we were?”