The Eagle and the Raven (35 page)

Caradoc exclaimed in disgust and Madoc withdrew his arm and shook a meaty finger. “No, no,” he said, “it is a good thing. This way when they do choose to obey you it will be out of love, and they will fight better. I know them. They also say that your son must be initiated into this tribe when he comes of age.”

“No!” Caradoc shouted, shocked into rudeness. “Never, never! Llyn is of the House Catuvellaun, and a Catuvellaunian he stays!”

“You must agree,” Madoc said softly. “It is a form of security for them. Besides,” he gasped with cracked laughter. “He may never come of age.”

“Oh Mother,” Cinnamus said softly. “How glad I am that I have no children!” Caradoc glared at them all, disgusted, but Madoc smiled and took his arm.

“Come and eat, all of you, and talk with my chiefs. We live in terrible days, my friends, and must meet the needs of each moment with minds uncluttered by the past.” Caradoc followed him, trapped in bitter awareness that he spoke the truth. Why me? he thought angrily. Why this fate for me and mine? The hut was warm and the odor of roasting pig wafted toward them. They entered, heads high.

Caradoc, his train, and some of his men, together with Bran and Madoc, began the task of traveling throughout Siluria, visiting every hamlet, every farmstead, every proud, impatient chief, and summer fled, autumn riding victoriously over the country with red sword drawn. The trees along the river valley and on the hills were blooded, flaming suddenly red and gold, and for a few weeks the sky cleared and the sun shone hot and strong. Caradoc worked on, arguing far into the night, shouting, pleading, answering the same objections, countering gently the same blind, arrogant ignorance, sitting outside rough wooden palisades, crowded into tiny, stinking huts, leaning on stone walls in cold winds. And always, always, there was the terror at his back and in his mind, of Rome spreading slowly toward him while he wanted to take these recalcitrant men and shake them until their teeth rattled and to shout, Time! Time! No time!

Eurgain did not see him for weeks on end and when he did return to her it was with lines etched more deeply in the weather-beaten face, eyes harder and more cunning, mouth grimmer and less able to break into smiles or laughter. She would lie awake in the cold hours of darkness, listening to him moan and cry out in his sleep, aching with a deep sympathy and feeling a new impotence. He would conquer or he would snap, and she could only hold him in the warmth of her arms, give him forgetfulness for a while, allow him to penetrate her body with the harsh sword of his frustration. He took Llyn with him everywhere and the boy seemed to thrive on the hardships, riding along with a song on his lips, and Caradoc, thinking of Togodumnus as he watched him, was comforted.

Autumn was gone in a night. A cruel, knifing wind sprang up, tearing the crisp leaves from the trees and dashing them to the ground. It brought the icy rains of winter, and for the first time Caradoc felt some hope. He and many of the chiefs had been flung together and had learned a wary respect for each other. The Silurians were seeing Caradoc’s driving, selfless single-mindedness, and they now supported him in his verbal battles with the suspicious, lonely chiefs on the farms and pastures, lending a weight of their approval that was worth more than all Caradoc’s eloquence. The rain halted all travel, turning the tracks into gray quagmires, and the chiefs feasted and quarreled among themselves while Caradoc rested in his hut with Eurgain, glad of the respite.

He had begun to take on the color of his new tribe, cutting his hair shorter and washing it in lime so that its natural color began to fade to blonde and it crested from his furrowed forehead like a horse’s stiff mane. He put aside his Roman bronzes and had the young artist make him new ones, promising payment in kind, not in coin. The Silures had no use for coinage. Their wealth was in their sheep and cattle, and Caradoc had been told that he would have to see to gathering the tangible side of his new honor-price himself. That meant raiding, but raiding was the one thing he wished to avoid. The time was not right and besides, he could not urge unity on the one hand and then go out and kill the very people he wanted the Silures to placate. He told the artist that payment would come in the spring, and the youth shrugged and nodded. He did not need wealth, but payment was a matter of honor. Madoc stood surety for Caradoc with the artist. Caradoc did not like the arrangement, for if he defaulted on the promised payment Madoc would suffer, but he wanted those new bronzes with a perverse, avid thirst.

Eurgain watched the changes with understanding but she pointed out to him the futility of an attempt at any permanent assimilation. “We are different, my husband,” she told him gently one night, sitting on her stool while he combed her long hair, one of the few things he did that still brought him peace. “We will always be different, no matter how often you lime your hair or however many new bronzes you sport. Outwardly we can return to the ways of our ancestors, deny Cunobelin and Tasciovanus and all the years of truck with Rome, but whether you like it or not, those years have changed us.” He did not answer and the comb continued its steady journey through the dark blonde waves that fell almost to the floor. She touched her breast. “In here we cannot go back, though our roots reach deep.”

He grunted noncommittally. “We can try” was all he said.

The rains ceased, the ground hardened with frost, and Caradoc resumed his harrowing rounds. He wanted the Silures to be melded into one fighting force by the summer, but the attitudes of centuries could not be altered overnight, and for every chief who greeted him as a brother there were three who told him to his face that they could defeat Rome with a flick of their cloaks whenever they wanted and they did not need him.

Madoc, however, was pleased. “You have a gift there,” he commented. “A persuasive tongue. The chiefs may scorn you but you make them listen, and they will think on your words. Do not be discouraged. We have plenty of time.”

It seemed that after all, they did have plenty of time. With the first wet, cloying snowfall, scouts rode into the caer with news for the Council. Caradoc sat in the warm Council hut with the others, sword before him, and heard how the legions were quartered for the winter and would do no more campaigning until the spring. The Ninth had halted their road-building in Coritani country. The Second was mopping up the Durotriges and would quarter there, and the other two legions, with Plautius himself, were nesting cozily with Boduocus and his Dobunni. The lowland was quiet, but none of the chiefs failed to note that the Dobunni territory abutted their own.

Then the scout turned to Caradoc.”I have news for you, Caradoc ap Cunobelin. Your sister Gladys is alive. The Romans hold her prisoner but treat her well, or so I have been told. I have not seen her myself.”

He turned away and spoke of other things while Caradoc, on a tide of unreality, felt the shock of the words race through his veins. Gladys alive. It was not possible! She had been so determined to die, so sure of the fate that awaited her. What had happened? His quick mind explored avenues, discarded, came up unsatisfied. Why had Plautius not used her to gain his own submission? Not that he would have surrendered, the idea was inadmissible, but at least there should have been envoys, Druids perhaps. He felt warm and happy knowing that she lived, and some of his guilt was lifted from him, but behind the news was a mystery, and his joy was tempered by anxiety. What did Plautius have up the short sleeve of his pristine, spotless tunic?

That night he lay beside Eurgain, unable to sleep. The hut was quiet, the children cozily asleep, but he stared into the cone of the ceiling thinking of Gladys, of Plautius, of the swift and orderly dispersion of the legions. The Ninth was with the Coritani. And beyond that Coritani was Aricia. Would Aricia fight? He did not think so. Far more likely that she would force treaty on her rough tribesmen. Aricia went with the falling of the dice. Aricia would never be without her creature comforts.

He found his thoughts circling her, the black, foreign witch, with her jutting young breasts, her perfumed hair, the long, lithe beauty of her strong legs. He closed his eyes. How old would she be now? Twenty-four or five, maturity heading into swift middle age. Had she changed? Did she ever think of him wistfully? He doubted it. If she thought of him at all it would be with a thwarted bitterness.

He sighed, moving under the blankets, hot with his restlessness…A hole that would never be filled… But the hole is filled, witch, filled still with fire even here, even now. It was easier to picture her among these men of the west. Her own tuath must be much like this, wild, intense, full of the essence of magic and spells, and her own particularly virulent spell came often to taunt him in the many weary, unguarded moments when he had no reserves of will or energy left. He felt for his wife’s fair hair, wound it around his fingers, and turned on his side toward her, but tonight her aura of tranquillity did not reach as far as the feverish turmoil in his soul.

The snow melted under torrential, freezing downpours, and once more Caradoc and the others were forced to stay in the town. Samain approached. The chiefs went out with their freemen to find their cattle and drive them to the river for the slaughter, and Cinnamus took to fighting. For months he had keenly felt his own and Caradoc’s poverty, and now, with the coming of Samain, the taunts of the Silurian chiefs became more immediate. The Catuvellauni had no cattle to slaughter. The Catuvellauni lived like parasites off the goodwill of their chieftain and the Druid. Cinnamus could bear it no longer and one wet day he rode into the town shouting with delight, blood streaming from a wounded shoulder and mingling with the steady rain. He drove ten head of shaggy cattle before him. Caradoc ran to him in alarm and Cinnamus jumped down while the cattle jostled and lowed impatiently. “Cin, what have you done?” Caradoc said urgently, and Cinnamus cut him short, the green eyes alive with success, the sharp face wreathed in smiles.

“No raid, no raid, Lord,” he assured Caradoc, fingering his shoulder. “I challenged a chief to combat, for he insulted us, and he, in his pride, offered me ten beasts if I won. Of course he intended me to be dead.” He wiped the streaming water from his face and pushed back his dripping hair. “He did not know that I am Cinnamus Ironhand, but ah, Mother, what fighters these men are! I put forth all my skill and won only by a hair’s breadth, but how good it felt to wield blade again! These chiefs are all worthy of the name Ironhand! And he was full of honor. When I had him down I decided not to kill him though he urged me to do so to save himself from shame, and see!” He waved at the cattle, then yelped with pain. “We have cattle. Not many I know, but perhaps enough for the winter.” Caradoc did not know what to say. He embraced his shield-bearer, and Cinnamus left the freemen to corral the beasts, whistling as he strode away to find Vida, and dressing for his cuts.

On Samain Eve the rain stopped, the clouds folded limply and sailed away to the north, and the moon shone full and cold on the stark hills. Caradoc and Eurgain wrapped warmly and set out with the chiefs for their sacred place, leaving the children with Fearachar and Tallia. The town emptied, the people gliding silently one by one away from the river and up the wooded slope of the nearest foothill. Caradoc and Eurgain followed, flanked by Cinnamus and Caelte, and the old fear flicked at their heels, intensified by the wan shadows cast by the pale moon and a destination that was unknown to them. They entered the woods bunched together, while the Silurians passed ahead of them with scarcely a rustle, and above them the winter wind sighed through branches that rubbed together like the bony fingers of evil old men. They climbed steadily along a faint but unmistakable path, not daring to whisper to each other for fear the demons would notice them, and presently the trees began to thin. Lights flickered, the dancing corpse-lights of the dead, and Eurgain’s hand stole into Caradoc’s. The light grew stronger and they found themselves on the crown of the hill, in a bald, grassy space where the wind whipped at the torches. In the center was a single stone, its black shadow feeling for their feet, and they circled it warily, moving in the direction of the sun’s path with almost automatic skill, remembering suddenly old tales, old songs, and the rites of Samain long since forsaken by the Romanized Catuvellauni. Still the silence, like the moonlight, lay heavy and deep. Bran and the invoker stood by the stone, motionless in their white robes now dulled to silver in the night, waiting while the last tribesmen straggled in, and Caradoc, looking around, saw the wooden stakes surmounted by bare skulls. All were old, all tilted drunkenly, but one was naked, its fresh-whittled point now waiting for its bloody crowning.

The last chief circled the stone and stood wraithlike, and the invoker stepped forward, his arms raised, and his robe falling back from silvered wrists. “Gods of the woods, gods of the water,” he sang softly, “Belatucadrus, Taran, Mogons, stay your hands this night.” A murmuring sigh went up and the wind gusted through the trees around them as if in answer. “We offer blood. Drink and be satisfied, and leave us in safety.” Again the people murmured, a rising swell of incantation that died away into a whisper. While the invoker continued the rite, two chiefs, Madoc and Jodocus, came within the torches’ light, with a naked man between them, the fading summer tan of his arms and legs in startling contrast to the pastiness of his chest and buttocks. They led him to the stone and turned him so that he faced the company, and though Caradoc strained in the leaping glare he could not read the impassive face. Black hair fell to the elbows, and Madoc came with rope, tying the hair back gently while the invoker sang on. Then suddenly there was silence.

“A slave again,” someone complained softly behind Caradoc. “It should have been a chief this time.”

Caradoc swung round. “Next year,” he said, his voice low, his eyes narrowed, “I will give you a Roman.” He turned back. Bran walked to the man, taking a long knife from his sleeve. For a moment he spoke quietly to the victim, and Caradoc saw the doomed man nod once, quite composed, then he turned around, leaned against the rock, and closed his eyes. Caradoc thought that he saw the brown knees tremble. Madoc came forward, and Bran handed him the knife. Without pause Madoc strode to the slave, swung the knife, and plunged it deep into the white, defenceless back. A cry went up as the body fell twitching, blood gushing from nose, mouth, and wound, but the invoker and Bran squatted coolly, watching the death throes carefully. Would the winter be without want or disease?