The Eagle and the Raven (97 page)

He cocked an eye at her. “Such small things you want! I have come out of the west, Boudicca, where Paulinus is nearing holy Mona. My brethren are preparing for their last great battle, knowing that they are forbidden to raise swords themselves, and Venutius, Emrys, and Madoc have sent many of their chiefs there. They cannot come to you.”

She went white. “Andrasta! Must the Iceni fight alone, then? What hope have we?”

“More hope than there has ever been since the Catuvellauni met Plautius at the Medway,” he said. “Listen well. Over half the troops in Albion are with Paulinus, two hundred and seventy miles from Colchester, and the lowland is virtually undefended. The Ninth is intact but it lies to the north of you, not to the south. The Second is at full strength also, but divided. Oh, there are posting stations, detachments, the odd garrison here and there, but other than that, the towns of the south lie open. Do you hear me?”

Lovernius returned with a jug of wine, cups, and a platter of mutton and flat bread. He served them silently, then went to the fire and sat cross-legged, and soon the clicking of his dice punctuated their conversation.

“The Iceni can do nothing alone,” she went on. “If the men of the west cannot aid us, who can?”

He swallowed his wine and broke off a piece of the black bread. “Once,” he said, “the western tribes fought alone, and even they might have succumbed to Rome if Caradoc had not risen as arviragus. The lowland people became like shadows beside their fiery reality, and like shadows they have been forgotten. But Boudicca, the Iceni are a lowland tribe, and will you say that your people still walk in shadows? I tell you that in this month, this long, pain-wracked month, the tribes of the south have been waking. The news of your dishonoring has gone among them like the cold wind that heralds the dawn. They are shocked for you, they are enraged at their own trials. They have borne their slavery for many long years, but your betrayal has caused their uneasy grumbling to have purpose once more. If you call them, they will come.”

“Why are you so sure? Caradoc called them, he called us, but we refused to listen.”

“In those days, Rome’s domination was new, gloved in soft words of prosperity, oiled in money and promises. They have slowly learned what domination really means, and now they see its claws, the claws you have felt on your own body. Trust me, Boudicca. I know. Begin a march south, and they will run to join you as you go.”

She lay for a while with eyes closed, then she reached for her cup and drank slowly. “I wish I could believe you, but I know how deep the thrall of Rome can go. It has more spells and faces than Andrasta herself.”

He tutted impatiently. “Do not say that. Rome is only a city. Romans are only men. Andrasta is the Queen of Victory. Believe me, Boudicca. Do the Druithin lie?”

“No, but neither have they yet discovered a truth that is the same tomorrow as it was yesterday. Do you surmise from intuition only?”

“No. Rumors and tales filter into the west, and this last month has seen an added fire blown from mouth to mouth. You can ignite a great conflagration.”

“If you are wrong then the Iceni must march and perish alone, for march we will. Dishonor demands judgment.”

“I see that you remember the teachings.” He wiped his mouth, rose, and yawned widely. “First, a healing for you, Boudicca. Sleep. I will stay in the town until you can walk, but then I must return to the west and to Mona. Your fate is in your own hands. Instruct your freemen to carry messages to the tribes when you have made your plans, and do not fear. This is the time of reckoning.”

Then, with a curiously humble gesture, she put out a hand and pulled at his tunic. “Do me a service, if you will. My daughter…”

He sighed gently and sat again. “I know, I know. I cannot return her soul to her, but perhaps I can relieve her of some of her torment. Have her brought to me.”

She nodded at Lovernius. “Bring Brigid,” she said, and he went away. They waited in a cup of quiet, while outside the sleet hissed monotonously. Then he said, “I knew your father once, long ago.”

Her head turned to him. “Subidasto? So many changes since then, my friend!”

“Yes,” he answered simply. “I myself was an Icenian. Once.”

Surprise and shame flooded her. “I am sorry,” she said, and he raised one eloquent shoulder and laughed.

“The time for regret is over, Boudicca, and I think I shall soon be an Icenian Druid again.”

Lovernius returned, holding back the doorskins, and Brigid entered. She was dressed in a warm red tunic that Boudicca remembered from days of horse racing and fishing in the snow, but now it seemed to hang on her slim frame like a graceless sack, and her hair fell unbound in a pale river over her thin neck and shoulders. One hand rested in Hulda’s, the other patted and pulled at her mouth as though she was constantly trying to set it in place. Her eyes, like drowned flowers, wandered the room and came to rest on her mother, but no flicker of recognition lit them.

“She sits on the roof of my hut,” she said. “The rain gleams on her feathers and she croaks blood, blood, all night long. Where is Pompey? I am so cold. Pompey will warm me with his soft breath, and tell me where to go.” The hand left her swollen lips and fluttered to her throat with an artless loveliness. “Blood is black under the moon, and eyes are white. My mother should remember, but she has gone to be the Queen of Victory, and I must go to Rome.” At the mention of the city her hand left Hulda’s and began to trace a pattern of distress in the dimness. “All men are filled with blood, black blood under the moon!”

The Druid rose and went to her, taking the aimless fingers of both hands and imprisoning them in his own firm grip. “Brigid,” he said kindly. “Blood is warm and sweet. Blood makes music, blood makes laughter. Trees have golden blood and rivers have silver blood, and the sun is full of hot, life-giving, glittering blood. Look at me.” The drenched eyes slowly found his, and he smiled. “Tell her about the rivers as she perches above you and calls you in the darkness. Tell her about the sun, and the trees.” The working mouth became still, then Brigid swallowed twice. She frowned, tried to speak, but her hands remained limp in his and her eyes were enmeshed with him.

“Trees,” she whispered. Then suddenly she began to laugh, a shrill peal of coarse mirth, and her hands wrenched free. “I killed him, poor Marcus,” she snickered. “Oh Marcus, my dear, my love. I stabbed him, pretty Marcus, and the trees clapped their black hands, black, like his blood under the moon.”

Boudicca stared aghast at her daughter. Her own blood seemed to rush back into her heart, leaving her head, her arms and feet, lying iced and dead while in her breast a monstrous hot ball throbbed unevenly. “Why are you shocked?” Subidasto whispered in her ear. “She is naked too.” Lovernius cried out. Hulda swayed. Only the Druid was unmoved, his sad, level gaze fixed on Brigid. Then all at once he stepped forward and enfolded her in his wide embrace. “Child,” he murmured. She stopped giggling and began to sob, moving from his arms to the comfort of Hulda’s hand, and Boudicca said wearily, “Take her away, Hulda. And braid her hair. She looks so disheveled that way.”

“She will not let me,” Hulda answered. “I thought it best not to trouble her with it.”

They left, Lovernius with them, and the Druid raised his eyebrows at Boudicca, and his face was grim. “Heal quickly, Lady,” he said.

She felt an enormous fatigue leaden her body and she sank her head into the pillow. “Ah desolation,” she murmured, a catch in her deep voice. “Even though I should slay every Roman in Albion, the times have changed and nothing will ever be the same again.”

“The times are always changing,” he replied, swinging his cloak around him and going to the door. “It is the changes within ourselves which bring despair or contentment, Boudicca. I will come in the evening and anoint your back again.” He pushed past the doorskins, and in a while Lovernius returned.

“She is settling for sleep,” he said. “I think she is calmer.”

“What of Ethelind?”

“Ethelind walks the town, and eats and rests, but she will still speak to no one.”

“I want to sit up, Lovernius. Help me.” He went to her, lifting her carefully and turning her around, and though her head suddenly swam and her back screamed a protest, it was good to view the room from a sane angle. “Bring me my comb.”

He handed her the carved, delicate comb and she began to draw it through the dark, red-lighted tangle. Not until her hair lay submissive and shining around her did she give it back to him.

“Now. Take Aillil and go into the forest. Find a nice, private clearing and build huts, and a forge. Dig up all the weapons and have them cleaned and sharpened. Make swords and spears and knives. Make torcs. Ask Aillil himself to check all the chariots and take any that need repairs into the woods. Make slings and axes for the peasants. I want every Icenian—man, woman, and youth—re-armed within two months.”

“The young girls also?”

“Yes. Their mothers were sword-women and it is time they learned what that means.” She folded her arms, gripping herself fiercely. “Ah Lovernius, is it too late? Can the people remember old skills after all these years? Will a thirst for vengeance be enough to rekindle their spirit?”

“If they remember nothing else they will remember that an honorable death is better than the life of a slave. We have nothing else, Lady.”

“I know.” They smiled ruefully at each other before she went on. “Take my own chiefs. Send them out to all the tuath. Tell them to give the people sword practice in whatever secret places they can find. Use poles, kitchen knives, anything, until the swords are ready. But make sure that no man from the garrison is killed, Lovernius. If Favonius hears even the faintest rumor of what we plan, then all is lost. We must have spies out in the forests and on the farmsteads to warn of any straying soldier.”

He nodded brusquely and went to the door. “And no gambling!” she called after him. “Tune up your harp instead!”

“A man must have some peace!” he shouted back, annoyed, and she answered sharply, her voice like whetstone on rusty iron. “When you are in your grave!”

So, like a wondrous, invisible metamorphosis within the cocoon of winter, the Iceni began to change. Outwardly the tuath settled to a sullen peace once more. The people struggled to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives, rebuild gutted homes, collect whatever flocks and herds had scattered into the forests, but under the slow reordering a new and terrible embryo of militancy moved toward birth. The tuath lived two lives. By day the towns and villages went about their business, but by night the surrounding forests hid the low cries of warring men and women, the white fire of the perspiring metalworkers, the murmurings and whisperings of a thousand dark transformations. Favonius sensed it. In his grief and loneliness he walked the garrison late at night, feeling the minute stirrings of something alien and new on the chill winds. Beyond the soft, white wall of the Icenian cocoon he saw the shadows shape themselves, turning from nothing into something so faint that he could not discern what it was. In the end he attributed his anxiety to the turmoil within his own mind. He had not found his son’s murderer. There had been rumors aplenty. He had even heard it whispered that poor, witless Brigid herself had struck him down on that mercilessly cold, catastrophic night, but he had not believed it, nor could he prove such a thing, and now it seemed that Marcus must lie unavenged.

The governor had replied to his small bleat of protest at the pro curator’s avarice with a brusque, almost rude communique. Paulinus had his hands full, he could do nothing until his campaign was completed. When he returned to Colchester he would look into the matter but until then he expected his garrison commanders to keep the peace. After all, that was their job. As to transfer, it could not be considered at this time. Such details were irrelevant to the business in hand. Favonius paced in the wet, late winter nights, full of an irrational fear. He had often had dreams where some unimportant, everyday event, like a morning cup of wine with his secretary between requisitions and dispatches, became luminous with terror. The people chatted and laughed and the sun shone, while all the time, like an insane, unrealistic backdrop, the fear rose up and became more real than the prattling, the paper figures, and the feeble sun.

He felt this way now, in his waking hours. His duties were performed, the winter bored them all, he read the letters from Priscilla in Colchester, but all the while this other thing lived within him and turned his world to fantasy. He was not an imaginative man, nor was he clever. He was simply a common, down-to-earth soldier of the empire doing the task his superiors had set for him, and now, though all seemed normal, he felt that the task had outrun him and had torn itself from his hands. He was puzzled, and afraid.

When spring was no more than a hint of change in the smell of the wind, Boudicca had a visitor. She was up from her bed now, and the wounds on her back had closed to become red, furrowed scars that were rough and sore to the touch. The Druid had gone with no word of farewell, vanishing toward the west, and though he had seen Brigid every day there was no suggestion that the girl’s wits would return. She seemed meeker, more docile, but at the mention of trees or other innocuous things she would become agitated, pouring out a stream of chilling nonsense and driving herself into a frenzy. Ethelind, too, bore scars, but they were less visible. She kept her distance from all and would not speak, though sometimes she was heard crooning to herself in the long nights.

Boudicca forced a world between herself and her broken children, and filled it with the plans of war. New weapons gleamed in the huts of her people, hidden in barrels, under grain, in the thatching of the roofs, beneath beds; and bodies that had stiffened under peace became fluid with the dark oils of war. The disused wicker weaving of the chariots was ripped out and replaced, the harness mended and hung once more with the fierce, long-idle bronzes of Andrasta. Chiefs sat by their fires at night and fondled new torcs and freshly polished helms glinting with hope, and though the tuath shouted silently with an uprushing intensity, until it seemed that even the marshes and the meadows trembled with the word War, Favonius did not suspect the true cause of his anxiety. The gates of Albion had slammed shut on him before he had ever set foot on her shores, and he did not know it.