The Eagle and the Raven (69 page)

“You look like mother,” he grumbled good-naturedly. “Take care of her, Chloe.” He waved and turned, leaving them to go their way.

“I can take care of myself!” Eurgain called, her echo following him into the dimness.

Llyn ran down the crooked street, plunged into an alley, and emerged at a place where the heavy, stagnant smell of rotting debris came to his nostrils, mixed with the wet earthiness of the river. For a moment he considered making his way to the warehouses and the docks, to stand on the bridge and gaze at the quiet flow of the Tiber, but he soon discarded the idea in favor of the well-lit tavern and his gambling friends. The merchants employed watchmen who patrolled the riverbank and the warehouses with their piled cargoes. He had once escaped arrest only because he had lain in a doorway, pretending to be in a drunken sleep. He did not need that danger now. He jogged along quickly, thinking of his father and mother and Gladys, reclining at the emperor’s table. Gladys must surely be baiting the Greeks. Llyn slowed. Not me, he thought. And what’s more, to have to avoid Nero’s eye. Gladys is braver than I. Ahead, the lights of the tavern streamed yellow from the open door and the hoarse, painful laughter of his friend Valog, the Gaulish gladiator, drifted out into the warm, cloudy sky. Llyn unslung his cloak, cast a last look into the night, and went inside.

A dozen voices greeted him as he pushed his way past the long wooden tables to the rear of the tiny room. A group of men sat around another table, beer before them, and they made room for him. He bundled up his cloak and unhooked the purse from his belt.

“Linus, you are very late,” Valog complained. “We thought you had done so well last night that you would not be back for at least a week.”

“What are you doing here, Valog?” Llyn retorted cheerily. “I thought you were fighting tomorrow. I’ll tell Plautius why he goes through so many gladiators. He should lock you all up.”

“He canceled my fight,” Valog said sulkily. “He has to visit his farm.”

“Well, if he knew you as well as I do he’d never give you the freedom of the city. One day he’ll find his merchandise damaged.”

“By you?” Valog grinned. “You cheeky young rabbit.”

“Careful, Valog. I might make him an offer for you. Would you like to fight for me?”

“Are we going to play or not?” the man at Llyn’s elbow complained.

Llyn turned to him. “Not on duty tonight, Publius?”

“No. Double duty tomorrow. A soldier’s life is not an easy one, Linus!” He shoved beer across the table to Llyn, who drank, emptied his purse, and looked around expectantly. Dice appeared and the men settled to gamble, oblivious of the noise around them. “Will you come to Sabella’s with me later on?” Publius asked Llyn, but Llyn curtly shook his head.

“I’m not going there again. Sabella has sold Acte, I don’t know who to, and the rest of the girls are diseased.”

“It’s not true.”

“I didn’t mean in their scrawny bodies,” Llyn snapped, sweeping up the dice, and Publius rolled his eyes to Valog and laid his coins on the table.

The evening lengthened and passed into cool night. The coins passed from hand to hand. Llyn’s luck was with him and several of his friends got up and drifted away, but he, Valog, and Publius played on desultorily until Llyn got out his purse and began to put his winnings away.

“You go on,” he told them. “I’ll sit here and watch.” The dice rattled in the leather cup, but Llyn called for more beer and sat with his chin in his hand, silent. He was drinking too much, and he knew it. Albion’s beer was dark and thick, and it glided into the brain with mellow slowness, but Roman beer was light and cunning. It strikes all once like a snake, like a Roman assassin, he thought, like a Roman emperor. But at least it obliterates thought unlike any Catuvellaun brew. He gulped at it. Valog looked distracted, and shifted in his seat, while Publius smiled at him greedily. They had forgotten about him, and Publius scooped up the last of Valog’s money, but they sat on, swapping stories, for another hour. Llyn drank steadily, purposefully, until he saw the room floating in a soft, blurred glow. The patrons seemed to shrink, and the voices of the gladiator and legionary sang with intermittent melancholy, seeming to be about him, senseless, insulting him. Their laughter echoed in his head and their movements became perpetual and slow as the sun’s crawl. He drank to take off the edge. One more try, he thought absently to himself. Just one more. Yet even in sleep I cannot escape.

“I don’t really like you, Publius,” he said with labored precision. He carefully put both arms on the table and his tongue worked hard at the words. “I’ve killed too many of your kind to ever like you. I don’t like you at all.”

Publius glanced at him casually and then grinned at Valog. “He’s drunk again. Is it your turn or mine?”

“Yours,” Valog said sourly. “I’m not going up on the hill again.”

“Well, at least he walked for you. Tonight I won’t be so lucky. Perhaps we should leave him here.”

“And have his purse stolen and his head split open? No.”

“It will happen eventually.”

Valog watched, fascinated, as Llyn’s head slid to rest between his elbows. “You don’t understand us barbarians, Publius. One day he will stop swilling beer and feeling sorry for himself. The next we’ll see him sitting in the Coria with the senators. One day when it pleases me I’ll stop fighting for Plautius and take to singing. It doesn’t matter, you see. It’s all the same.”

“It may be all the same to you, but I have to haul the young fool through the Forum. I might be arrested for manhandling him.”

“There are no fools,” Llyn muttered, and his eyes opened. “There are only those who do not understand.”

“Linus, can you walk?” Valog asked him loudly.

Llyn lifted his head from the table and blinked slowly. “Those who cannot walk must crawl, and those who cannot crawl must die so that they may run,” he answered.

Publius made an exclamation of annoyance and stood up, hauling Llyn with him. “He always talks such rubbish when he’s drunk,” he complained. “Yet he’s likeable. Help me, Valog.”

“Have you paid for the beer?”

“What with? You took it all.”

Valog reached gently into Llyn’s purse and took out three coins. “He won’t mind, Publius. He can win it back next time.” They left the money on the table and together eased Llyn out the door and onto the street. Publius cursed. A light rain was falling, but Llyn leaned against the stone wall of the tavern and smiled vacantly into the night. “I’ll walk with you as far as the street of spicesellers,” Valog said. “Come, Linus. And keep your mouth shut. I want no more Druithin maxims tonight.” They put their arms around him and started up the street, now lit only by such pale light as came from the windows of those who were not yet in bed.

The rain was cool and refreshing, and Llyn rolled his face to it, letting his feet go where they were led, that tiny, untouched part of him still whispering of oak woods and hot firelight. “The crooked path seems straight to those who walk it,” Bran’s voice droned on. Llyn’s head whirled. Death is an illusion. Truth is an illusion. Reality…reality is anything you want it to be. And freedom… He began to laugh, quietly at first, but then growing louder, unable to stop.

When they reached the corner where he had left Eurgain and Chloe, Valog bid them both a good night and strode quickly away. Publius took Llyn’s arm and swung it around his own neck. “I don’t know why I do this for you,” he said, knowing the answer to his own question.

Llyn staggered beside Publius, humming under his breath. “If you sing I shall drop you and run!” Publius hissed, but Llyn did not sing. He went on humming, one or two citizens passing them with anxious glances. They came out onto the edge of the Forum and after skirting it safely Publius departed without a word, leaving Llyn standing, swaying, still humming softly. Above him, the slopes of the Palatine boasted the sumptuous sprawl of patrician homes, their frail lights glinting out and in as the wind stirred the trees that filled their gardens. He began the long, slow climb to his father’s house, following the curving line of the stone wall and alley. But halfway up he knew that he could not go on, and he lay down with his face to the sky. The rain had quickened. It pattered over him enquiringly and he listened to it strike the leaves of some hidden tree. How many times, he thought, have I lain under the oaks straining past these notes for the sound of foreign soldiers? How many times have I seen blood dilute Albion’s rain, dying her ferns and flowers scarlet? Albion. He said the word slowly to himself. You exist somewhere, in a place of greenness and silence, but I find it hard to believe that the world is not made of unrelenting stone, of ceaseless noise. Perhaps Albion is only a pretty story. He spread out his arms, feeling his tunic weigh heavy with water. The fabric stuck to his skin, but it was a good feeling, clean. Gladys is forgetting, he thought.

Fear brought him clumsily to his knees and he scrabbled to his feet and went on, groping in the darkness, until he came at last to his father’s gate and the porter’s lodge. He did not have the strength to climb the wall but the porter heard him slip against the iron gate and came out, greeting him and opening for him without raising an eyebrow. He reeled through, hearing the gate click to behind him, and then under his feet there was grass and over him the branches of trees. His father’s graceful portico loomed majestically ahead, gray pillars like the trunks of dead willows, and he sensed rather than saw the soldiers who did duty under their shadows. He bowed to the house profoundly, saluted with a mocking wave, and wended his way around it, still cupped in trees, until he came to the wide terrace and the lawn dotted with rose beds, alive with the monotonous music of the fountains. He crossed the lawn and came to the chest-high wall where on a bright day one could lean and look down and out over the whole of the city. You reward us with the insult of your pardon, he thought. You answer our desperate cries with the soothing poison of riches and hold us down while we eat it. Emrys, Madoc, have you forgiven us yet for living on? I took my first head when I was only a little boy. How strange that I should remember that. I carried it to the well and watched it sink. Madoc was amused. Something in me died that day, and Madoc was amused. Madoc. Emrys. He began to say their names aloud like some spell, gripping the wet stone with eyes closed. All the names he could remember, those he had fought beside, those who had died, those who had given all so that he could stand in a Roman garden with a house of unimaginable magnificence behind him, and be painfully drunk on Roman beer. He raised his voice and the names flowed faster, then he scrambled up onto the wall and began to shout.

Caradoc woke suddenly, thinking that he heard Togodumnus calling to him. He had returned from the palace too uneasy in mind to go to bed and he had been dozing in a chair beside the pool of his wide atrium, lulled by the spatter of raindrops on the water. Now he sat upright, still half in a dream, and there it was again, the high voice of his brother, shouting for him over the noise of rain running down his gutters and swishing over the paving of his terrace. He groaned and stood up, turning to seek his bed, then the voice came again—Tog’s defiant, imperious voice, but the name he heard was Cinnamus’s. For a long second, dread tingled in his fingers and pricked cold on his scalp. Tog was dead. Tog had been dead a long time, and none knew what body his soul now inhabited. He woke fully and half-ran across his yellow tiles, through the colonnade, out into the rain-washed garden of the peristyle, and under the cloistered walk. He ran down the terrace steps, slippery and black with water, across the lawn that squelched under his feet, and then he halted. Tog was standing on top of the wall, a lithe, dark shadow against the darker sky, his hair streaming out behind him, his arms flung wide, names pouring from his mouth. It was Mocuxsoma now, the dead calling to the dead, a summons to this alien garden, a judgment. Caradoc stared wildly, his heart drumming against his ribs, then the figure teetered, regained its balance, and Caradoc let out a sigh. Fear piled on fear tonight, he thought, walking forward. Agrippina and now Llyn. Anger started within him. He reached the wall.

“Llyn. Get down. And stop shouting.”

Llyn peered at him. “You are not dead,” he slurred, then he turned to face the city. “Rome!” he screamed. “Murderers!”

Caradoc reached up, grasped a flailing arm, and jerked his son roughly from the wall. Llyn came down in a tumble of naked wet legs and sopping, flapping tunic. Caradoc bent, and shaking him viciously, set him on his feet.

“You are drunk again,” he said vehemently. “I feel a sickness when I look at you, Llyn. Where is your honor? Your pride?”

“Where is yours, Ricon?” Llyn sneered, rocking to and fro, his face pale and twisted. “You should have slain us all and then yourself when you first saw this marble and damask prison. They are dead! Dead! They believed in you and now they are dead so that you can live here and grow fat on Claudius’s largesse. You had a price. The tribes didn’t know that, did they? Did Cin know? Rome paid it. Rome has seduced you.”

Behind him, Caradoc heard a flurry of movement as his servants came hurrying, some with knives, and his wife sped toward them barefooted, her white and blonde hair loose and her robe clutched tightly to her breast. He did not turn. He stood looking at the rain-darkened, stringing hair, the half-glazed brown eyes, the slack, sullen mouth, then he bunched his fist and drove it into Llyn’s jaw. Eurgain cried out as those watching heard the crack of his knuckles connect with his son’s face, and Llyn thudded backward onto the lawn. Caradoc reached down, grabbed him by his tunic, hauled him up, and dragged him toward the nearest fountain. Then with one swift movement he kicked Llyn’s feet from under him, pushed him hard, and Llyn toppled into the cold, clear water. He came up spluttering, his hands groping for the green and white stone rim, and when he had found it Caradoc squatted before him, taking a handful of slick hair and winding it until Llyn exclaimed in sudden pain.

“They did not fight for
me
,” Caradoc whispered, his voice shaking with rage. “They did not die for
me
.” He flung out an arm, pointing over the wall to where the invisible city lay waiting for dawn, his extended finger rigid, and he jerked Llyn’s head around. “It is there!” he shouted. “It will not go away, no matter how much beer you swill! It has broken better men than you or I, and it will go on breaking them long after you and I have gone! It gloats to see you destroying yourself.” The stiff arm began to tremble with an intensity of rage. “If you wish to kill yourself, then do it as a warrior, with a sword, not as a craven peasant, with a flagon. Grow up, Llyn!” All at once a memory smote him. Cunobelin stood over Togodumnus, rubbing his knuckles as Tog lay stunned from the blow, but before he could hear his father’s words, Caradoc stood up and forcibly sent the remembrance back into the past.