The Eagle and the Raven (98 page)

She was sitting in the denuded hall, Lovernius and Aillil beside her, and a sheep was roasting over the fire, turned slowly by a slave. Chiefs and freemen wandered in and out and occasionally one came to her for a word of advice or an explanation of the day. Ethelind sat against the wall, dipping bread into a soup bowl and eating quietly, her dark golden head down and her legs folded under her red and blue striped tunic. Around her there was a hiatus of loneliness, a space respected now by all the tuath, and her servant squatted well away from her, under the shadows.

Brigid was in her hut, watched carefully all the time. She walked every day around the inner circles of the town but only occasionally was she brought to the hall, to eat with the freemen. She had upset them with her babbles about the Raven of Battle, but now that battle flared in every heart they had ceased to be wary of her and many regarded her as the special messenger of Andrasta herself, hungry for fresh Roman blood after the years of neglect.

There was a sudden commotion by the door, a flutter of excited voices, and Lovernius broke off his whispered account of the night’s progress and ran across the hall, with Aillil beside him. Boudicca watched and waited and when they came back, a stranger was between them. He was tall, well-made, and dark. His free-flowing hair blew softly back from a high, lined forehead, his eyes were firmly guarded but not wary, and his mouth, above a broad, clean-shaven chin, was straight and delicate. She rose as he came toward her, and she held out her hand. “Welcome! Food, wine, and peace to you.” He took her wrist in a swift, businesslike swing, and dropped it again.

“Show me,” he said.

She and her men exchanged glances, then she turned and slipped down her tunic, covering her breasts with her cloak. He grunted, and for a second she felt his fingers light against her welted back, then she shrugged her tunic on again and faced him.

“Romans?” he enquired crisply, and she shook her head.

“None in the town,” she answered. “They stay within the garrison. You are quite safe this night.” Some of the tension left him, and they lowered themselves to the uncovered floor. A crowd of inquisitive freemen had gathered, and Aillil and Lovernius firmly placed themselves so that words could not penetrate. “You have news?” she pressed him. “Will you share it now, or eat first?”

“I will share.” He took the cup of wine held out to him by a servant and drank steadily, tossing the dregs onto the floor for the gods of the Iceni. Then he tucked his feet under him. “I am Domnall,” he said. “Chieftain of Brigantia.” Boudicca let the shock enter her and crumple against the wall of her inner defences. So Aricia knew what they were doing and was going to inform on them, and this chief had come to warn. But how had she known, with the Coritani between the two tribes? Domnall saw her expression and shrugged impatiently. “No,” he went on. “When my ricon betrayed the arviragus, and Venutius left her to go into the west, she sent me south to live among the Trinovantes and direct his spies there. I have been working for Rome, building roads and digging ditches.” He spoke offhandedly, but she knew the price he had paid in setting aside his pride to do such work. “The Trinovantes and the remnants of the Catuvellauni have suffered hardest under the conquerors. You must know this. You surrendered here without raising sword and were rewarded with prosperity, but the arviragus’s people and their former slaves who resisted have been punished unceasingly since that time. Many of them were shipped to Rome as slaves to fight in the arenas or to train with the legions. They have labored in the soil, they have died on the roads, they have starved, they have built fine houses for Rome and left their bones beneath the foundations. Colchester is growing. Now, more and more of them have had their lands stolen from them and given to retiring soldiers, who chain them in their own storehouses and make them farm their own lands, reaping the crops for masters who do not care that their children cannot be fed. Their load is crushing, and now they have had news of your humiliation. They wish to know if you will fight.”

“And if I will?”

“They will fight with you. My spies tell me that other tribes will join if you win through to Colchester. They are ashamed, Boudicca. First the arviragus is defeated, not by might but by the treachery of one of the people. Then you are wronged for no reason. They are afraid, trusting neither friend nor foe. This is the time, while the governor hunts men on Mona.”

“Will they be led by me?”

“I do not know, but it is certain that there is no man remaining in the lowlands who can command. Have you weapons?”

She was silent, studying his face. He could be a truth-sayer or he could be just another tool of Rome, come to discover if certain rumors were true. If he were a spy and she opened her mind to him, the Iceni would be destroyed. If not, and she sent him away empty, the chance would go by forever. She looked at her men. “Lovernius?” He nodded imperceptibly. “Aillil?”

“We need a Druid,” he said with worry, “but I think he says a truth. “

“So do I. Very well. We will fight, Domnall, and soon. Our weapons lie hidden and the people have once again the wit to use them. Tell the tribes that.”

His eyes searched the blunt, freckled face, the waving riot of red hair. How different she was from his own ricon. The last scion of the House Brigantia was slender, delicately beautiful, with eloquent eyes and fingers, but this hoarse-voiced, big, quick-spoken woman had a driving force of rough attraction, like the tugging gales around the vortex of a storm. Yet she had married a peacemaker and loved him until the day he died, whereas his own lady had wed a warrior and destroyed him. Men made good ricons, he thought, but women were either brilliant or ruinous.

Those flecked brown eyes were fixed on him impatiently, and he replied. “How soon, Lady?”

“Before the old moon turns young again.” Her voice dropped to a racing purr. “Due south of this town, Domnall, between the two roads that desecrate my country, there are wooded hills that fold deep within the old Catuvellaunian borders. Do you know the place?”

“I know it.”

“Meet me there at the time I spoke of, with all who will come with you. Bring food if you can, and chariots, and any weapons you can steal. But come quietly, I beg you. I do not want Colchester suddenly refortified and held against me.”

“I am no fool, Lady.”

“And send word to the lords of the west. Let them know what I am doing.” Would Caradoc hear? she wondered with a pang of sadness. Would he then forgive? The tribes knew only that he still lived, somewhere amid the teeming maze that was the city of Rome. The thought of Caradoc brought another thought to mind. “The temple to Claudius,” she snapped. “Is it still standing?”

“Of course!” Domnall retorted with surprise.

“And Decianus?”

“The procurator?” He could not follow the darting of her mind. “He is at Colchester.”

“Andrasta, Andrasta,” she whispered, her eyes shining. “Sharpen your blade. Deliverance comes with the spring.”

In that last month, cold ungraciously gave place to warm, wet winds and intermittent rain, which sank beneath the drab sleep of winter and coaxed the first faint green of the coming spring from the rich soil. Boudicca’s preparations were completed and at last she issued orders for the wains to be loaded. The people packed up their few belongings in readiness and then waited in an anxious, tautening excitement. No crops were sown that year. Seed was scarce, for the procurator had taken most of it, and besides, there was to be no going back, no second chance at peace. They would win through to the grain-stuffed forts and freedom, or they would perish. No one was to stay behind. The whole countryside was to be emptied. The old songs of battle and victory began to be hummed under anticipant breath, the old war cries sprang to life on tongues that thought they had forgotten what to utter. Andrasta and the Iceni. Death or freedom. Heads for the House Icenia, heads for greedy Andrasta. The time dragged by in sprinkling rainfall, and the trees began to bud.

The moon waxed, sat at the full, and then slowly waned. Favonius watched it from the window of his office, unable to sleep though the nights were sweet and warm. Boudicca saw it as she circled the town again and again, exchanging words of encouragement and cheer with the freemen. She stood before the dark Council hall in the small hours of the morning, her cloak wrapped about her, gazing at it as it floated in its lake of blue mist, and Subidasto muttered in her ear, “Hurry, Boudicca, hurry! Paulinus is nearing Mona. Soon he will turn again, and it will be too late.” “I know, I know,” she answered him aloud, the night drifting by. She felt the need to gather in her own forces as her people gathered in their weapons and goods. She felt lonely and afraid there in the spring darkness, unwilling suddenly to say farewell to the town, to take her sword and ruthlessly sever the past from the future. She shivered with this aloneness, wishing that she could turn from the calmness around her and walk to her house where Prasutugas waited in light and warmth, his shoulder an inviting hollow of security and love, his lips gentle on the wounds of her pain and rage. She knew that an uncharacteristic cowardice held her also, an unwillingness to say the word that would begin a time of agony and death. She remembered the hours spent with Priscilla and Favonius, dining on oysters and mutton at their spotless silver-strewn table, drinking watered wine and arguing with mingled suspicion and respect far into the night. Those days had fled like visions glimpsed at the bottom of some still, dark pond. She went to her bed and slept a brief, fragmented sleep.

Then it was time. The moon had shrunk to a thin curve of ivory light and in the woods and meadows the first brave, tentative flowers unfurled pale colors to a strengthening sun. She called the royal war band to her and they set off through a cool, dark night to the garrison, clad only in breeches and short tunics, their knives tucked safely into their belts. The town they left was quiet, dreaming a last illusion of peace, and they slipped down the long, grassed slope and were lost in the fuzzed shadows of the copse.

Once through the trees she motioned them down into the new grass and lay with them, looking out at the lights of the garrison. All seemed quiet. The sentries stood on either side of the high wooden gate, torchlight flickering dully on their armor, their naked legs planted stolidly apart. In the detachment’s stables the horses rustled their straw, and from somewhere behind the warriors an owl screeched and dipped low to flap heavily away beyond the road. Nothing else was stirring. Satisfied, she rose and gestured, and the war band crouched and flowed over the remaining ground to mingle silently with the dense shadows of the wall. She nodded to Lovernius and Aillil, pushed her knife farther along her belt so that her sleeve hid its glint, then the three of them walked boldly up to the gate. One of the sentries loosened and came forward, but when he saw Boudicca his suspicious scowl gave place to a respectful smile. “Lady! I didn’t recognize you without your horse. It’s very late to be calling on the commander.”

“I know,” she answered levelly, “but there is an urgent matter that requires me to seek his advice.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the other sentry lean back against the wall and yawn, and behind him a deeper shadow moved. “Do you think he is still up?”

“A lamp is still burning in the office. I think he is working. Shall I call someone to escort you?”

Lovernius began to sidle around behind the man and Boudicca folded her arms casually against her waist, feeling the hilt of her knife. “That will not be necessary. I know my way.” He pushed open the gate and stepped back. “You should by now. A good night to you, Lady.”

“Farewell, Roman.” She nodded sharply at Lovernius as the vague shape under the wall solidified to become a chief that sprang like a lean cat upon the second sentry. She drew her knife smoothly, quickly. For a moment it felt alien in her hand, like a clumsy appendage, then Lovernius spun on his heel, clapped a hand of iron around the man’s mouth, and as his eyes widened to white rims her wrist seemed to tighten of its own accord and the knife slid into the pale throat. With no more sound than the troubling of wind in pliant grass they dragged the bodies under the concealing blackness of the wall, then Lovernius whistled, the broken piping of a curlew, and the other men came gliding out of the dimness.

“A stiff gamble, but the stakes are high,” he whispered gleefully to her but she did not reply. The stakes were high indeed, and now the dice had been thrown. Even if she wanted to she could not reach out and pick them up, and they must go on rolling to the feet of Paulinus. On noiseless feet they entered the wide, faintly lit courtyard and immediately spread out, the men hugging the inner walls and vanishing toward barracks, officers’ houses, and granaries. She paced steadily and openly toward the administrative building while Lovernius and Aillil began the circle that would bring them there also, up behind the sentry that strolled back and forth along the porch, his silhouette crossing and recrossing the blade of yellow light cutting under the office door. Just before she reached it, the sentry paused at one end of the covered way, turned, and then seemed to drop backward into the shadow behind him. She came to the step, mounted briskly, knocked on the door, and went in.

He was alone, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands, and he looked up slowly as she closed the door and came to him. His eyes were bleary, his gray-peppered hair tousled, and he showed no surprise at seeing her there. “Boudicca?” he rubbed his face with both hands and sat straight. “I must have fallen asleep over my work. It feels very late. What do you want?”

Her eyes shifted about the room and came back to him. His breast plate stood in a corner, his helmet beside it, but his knife hung from his belt. “It is late, Favonius, but I wanted to talk to you. Have you heard anything from the governor?”

“Yes, I have. I intended to come and tell you what he said but I did not particularly want your company, just as I’m sure you would have hated mine. He has promised to look into the matter when he returns to Colchester.”