The Greener Shore (39 page)

Part of my mind wondered what Briga would make of this place.

Probus was saying, “Apparently my actions during the mopping-up operations in Gaul were sufficient to cancel out any earlier error on my part. I even received a raise in pay and sixty days’ leave. I spent them both trying to forget. It takes a lot of wine and women to make a man forget war. But Rome was not through with me. Upon reporting back to the legion I learned I was being reassigned to Albion. Another reward for services rendered,” he added in a sarcastic tone.

My attention kept wandering.

Black water, black as death. Yet so sweet. Like little Maia’s curls. Staring down at the water, I tried to envision my child dead. Dead. I who had seen so much death was familiar with all the stages. Bloating, decomposition, liquefaction, disintegration. In my bleakest moments I had never before surrendered to this terminal pain, but it was true. And truth must be acknowledged.

“Ainvar?” Probus touched my shoulder, calling me back. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I am. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

How could I explain the inside of my head to a Roman warrior, no matter how clever? “My little girl,” I said. “Do you have children?”

“None that I know of.”

“It changes everything.”

“I am sure it does, Ainvar. Someday I hope to find out.”

“You’ll go back to Latium, then?”

“No chance of that. I am persona non grata. I will live out my years here.”

“It’s not a bad place, Hibernia.” At least that is what I meant to tell him. Instead I heard myself say, “Eriu.”

The ebon surface of the pool rippled as if a wind danced across it. Yet the wind had abated completely. I gave myself a little shake. “Go on, Probus; finish telling me how you got involved with Cormiac and Labraid. Distract me.”

“Very well. During his time in Albion Caesar had established several frontier garrisons. A century of veterans from the campaign in Gaul, including myself, were assigned to an outpost on a southern headland. Ostensibly the garrison was a trading post; its actual purpose was to collect intelligence about the native tribes. I was admirably suited for this, since I not only understood Celtic languages but was familiar with their style of trade.”

“Did you ever have any business with a man called Goulvan, from Armorica?”

Probus narrowed his eyes. “Let me think; the name sounds vaguely familiar. Was he…a gap-toothed fellow with eyes like a fish?”

“The very man,” I affirmed.

“Once he tried to sell us spoiled grain and old rope hidden in the coils of new. Anywhere in Latium he would have been hauled up before a magistrate and tried for fraud. We let him go with a stern warning and a promise not to show his face in Albion again unless he had legitimate goods to offer. That did not really matter, of course. Trade was not our true purpose.”

“No,” I said. Fully aware that my clan may well have been the “legitimate goods” Goulvan hoped to sell to the Romans in order to put himself back in their good graces.

“We learned that the political situation among the tribes of Albion was highly complicated,” Probus continued. “The Catuvellauni were the most prominent, but alliances were constantly shifting. Friends today were enemies tomorrow. Chieftains were far less concerned about any threat from Rome than they were about guarding their backs from one another.

“Meanwhile Caesar was going from strength to strength, conquering new territory and overcoming old rivals. We followed the news avidly, basking in Caesar’s reflected glory.

“Then we learned that far from being dead, Commius secretly had escaped to Albion, where he had been given sanctuary by the Catuvellauni. When he married a daughter of their king he felt confident enough to surface. As well he might; he had been given enough land to establish a small kingdom of his own and had summoned the surviving Atrebates to join him. United with the Catuvellauni, they made a formidable army indeed. It began to look as if the conquest of Albion might be as difficult as the conquest of Gaul.

“Messages went to Rome asking what Caesar wanted us to do. The reply came back: Send an emissary to Commius. I was the obvious choice.”

“Yes,” I said.

“I was ordered to convince Commius that Caesar held no grudge against him and had no intention of interfering with his new life. He and his people need not fear any further Roman aggression.”

“I assume that was a lie?”

“Not a word of the truth,” the Roman affirmed. “The purpose was merely to mollify Commius until Caesar was ready to mount the long-promised full-scale invasion.

“Now I shall tell you an odd thing, Ainvar. In Gaul I had been part of the most successful military campaign since the days of Alexander of Macedon, yet I could not reconcile what I had seen with the grand vision of a Roman empire that Caesar’s adherents were positing. I began asking myself questions no soldier should ask.”

I pricked up my ears. This was the first time I ever heard a Roman allude to self-doubt. Was it possible they—or at least Probus—were as human as I was?

“I had no difficulty finding Commius,” Probus went on, “and almost none in gaining access to him. He remembered as clearly as I did the details of our last meeting. To my embarrassment, he even thanked me for the part I had played in his survival. He listened attentively while I recited my little speech. I could tell he wanted to believe me; it is the nature of Celts to be credulous. One of the men in our garrison—a hard-bitten fellow named Anicius Bellator—used to laugh about it. He claimed their eagerness to be deceived was what made them ripe for the picking.”

“Yes,” I said.

“But in the end, Ainvar, I could not do it. Is human nature not peculiar? I, who had killed more men than I could remember, balked at being turned into a liar. Perhaps I had spent too much time with the Celts, to whom a man’s honor is sacred.

“For whatever reason, I told Commius the truth as I am telling it to you now. He heard me through without comment, thanked me, fed me, and sent me back to the garrison with an escort to make sure no harm came to me on the way. I do not think we would have acted with the same courtesy if the situation were reversed.

“I dutifully reported the first half of my conversation with Commius to my commanding officer. But I never mentioned the second half; the part where I told him the real situation.”

“Of course not,” I said. Mindful that treachery comes easily to a Roman.

chapter
XXVII

A
S I LISTENED TO HIS NARRATIVE PROBUS AND I HAD BEEN STROLLING
around the rim of the Black Pool. Darkness was rapidly overtaking us. “Briga will be worried if we don’t go back soon,” I remarked.

“Your wife is a good woman, I would not like to cause her worry.”

We began to retrace our steps. I took one last glance at the dark water—and halted without warning.

The sky above us was sagging with clouds yet I could see stars in the water. Stars without number. They were not all white. Some were crimson, some were cobalt, and some glowed with a sulphurous hue I found unsettling. The sky in which they hung was not clear; it was polluted by a sullen reddish glow akin to, but not as clean as, the glow from Teyrnon’s forge.

“Do you see that, Probus?”

“See what?”

“Just there; in the water.”

“All I see is water.”

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The surface of the pool was an unrelieved, gleaming black.

I was disinclined to question Probus any further that evening. A man’s head can absorb only so much at any one time, and I had enough thoughts to be thinking for a while.

We found Labraid with more color in his cheeks and a froth of boasting on his lips. Briga praised Cormiac’s improved appetite. “I’ve never known anyone to be so responsive to my healing,” she told me. But that night the Red Wolf did not sleep well. He tossed and turned, muttering feverishly. Sometimes I could pick out a word or two; for the most part he was unintelligible.

“He’s been injured in almost every part of his body,” Briga told me, “and in spite of all I can do, he’s going to be in pain for a long time.”

“He is going to live, though?”

“Of course he’s going to live,” she said brusquely. “I won’t allow any other outcome. But I don’t think we should try to move him until the next change of the moon, at the very least.”

I agreed with her. It might take that long to make the necessary arrangements anyway. When we set out for Dubh Linn I had assumed we would be able to acquire a cart and team here for the transport of our wounded men, but that was impossible. If worse came to worst—as it so often does—Cormiac, and Labraid if necessary, would have to sit on our horses while Grannus and I walked.

But what of Probus?

The following morning, while Briga was busy with Cormiac Ru, I asked the Roman about his plans.

“I have no plans, Ainvar. In the legions a man makes no plans, he simply follows orders.”

“But you were an officer; surely that’s different.”

“Not really. There is always a higher officer.”

“Why would any man willingly give up his freedom for such a life?”

“I was free,” Probus answered with some asperity.

“You forget that I’ve seen the army of Rome. Every man in identical uniform, all step together, right left right, spears tilted at the same angle, eyes looking in one direction only, ears deaf to anything but the next command, heads empty, no doubt, of anything but obedience…you call that freedom? In Hibernia the slaves are more free than that.”

“Don’t bully him, Ainvar,” said the voice from the bed.

“You’re still alive, then?” I teased.

“I’m hard to kill. If you or anyone else abuses Probus they’ll find out how hard.”

The idea of Cormiac threatening anyone was laughable. He could hardly raise his head from the bed.

But he did raise his head.

Through the smoky interior of the lodge the eyes of the Red Wolf met mine. Colorless eyes, but deeper than the Black Pool.

“I apologize,” I said to Probus.

He smiled; a flash of white teeth in a swarthy face. I was beginning to wonder if his ready smile was actually a ploy to disarm. “You have nothing to apologize for, Ainvar. There is truth in what you say. Perhaps the first free act I have committed in many years was deserting the army.”

“Ah yes; you were going to tell me about that.”

Briga turned from Cormiac’s bedside and made brushing motions with her hands, the way a woman does when she is chasing hens out of the lodge. “Outside, both of you! Healing requires peace and quiet, and the old people would only be disturbed by your talk.”

At that moment, any information Probus might impart to me was not nearly as important to my senior wife as the work of healing. Much later, of course, when our two heads were together on one pillow, she would extract every drop of the story from me. And reward me sweetly.

Sweetly, my Briga.

Grannus was sitting on the packed earth close to the fire. His raised knees were spread wide apart so the heat could reach his groin. Grannus took his pleasures where he found them.

I waggled my eyebrows at him, indicating he was invited to join us.

“It’s cold out there,” he said without moving. “And it’s warm in here.”

Labraid struggled to his feet. “I’m going with you, Probus, I’m strong enough now.”

“You are not,” Briga contradicted.

Labraid took a cloak from the peg and followed us out.

The weather was more than cold; it was bitter. Tiny particles of sleet bombarded my face. When I took a deep breath to clear my lungs of the stale air from the lodge, icy knives stabbed the inside of my chest.

If Probus felt the cold he gave no sign. Roman warriors were trained to be stoic. An interesting word: “stoic.” It derives from an Athenian philosophy extolling the total control of passion and emotion.

There is no word in the Celtic tongue for stoic.

Labraid and I turned our backs on the wind as we trudged away from the lodge. Probus walked on my left. My head wondered if he put his sword arm between himself and others out of force of habit.

So I asked him.

“No, Ainvar. But if I considered you an enemy I would walk to your right, so I could pivot toward you and drive my sword into your belly in one smooth motion.” He spoke with no more emotion than Teyrnon would use describing the forging of a door hinge.

“You’re not carrying a sword now,” Labraid commented. “Even if you were, Ainvar could melt the blade before it ever touched him.”

Probus gave me a wary glance. “Could you?”

I was amused to observe that the Celts had no monopoly on credulity. “Labraid’s having a joke at your expense, Probus.”

“But you can work magic,” the Roman insisted. “The statue at Alesia…”

“We’ve already discussed that. Today I want to hear how you came to be with Cormiac and Labraid, and why you claim to have saved their lives.”

“He did save our lives!” Labraid cried. “This man is a great general who commanded a Roman garrison in Albion.”