She laughed. “What a sight you are, with that black scowl on your face and your hair hanging down your back in strings! I didn’t find Caesar and keep him here. He ran to me not half an hour ago. I was about to call for someone to take him to the kennels when you fell in. As for Tog, you know you have to take him by the scruff of his neck and shake him if you want anything done. Why are you so annoyed?” She went to him swiftly, tugged the cloak from his shoulders, and, gingerly holding it out, walked to the fire and laid it down. “Warm wine from the land of the sun,” she said gently, picking up a jug that sat in the embers. “Have a cup before you brave the night again, Caradoc. And talk to me. It is Samain, and I am lonely.”
He sensed Caesar’s brown eyes upon him. Go now, he told himself. Go before once again your honor lies around you like pieces of smashed pottery. But she had poured the wine and as she held it under his nose, the spicy fumes steamed in his nostrils. He took the cup and warmed his hands around it, feeling his fingers tingle with new life. Then, he stepped further into the room and turned at the fire to let the heat penetrate his stiff legs.
“I thought you did not fear Samain,” he remarked.
She looked at him swiftly and went to sit on the edge of her bed. “I said that I was lonely, not that I was afraid. But you are afraid,” she mocked.
“I have good cause to be,” he retorted, swallowing a great gulp of wine, feeling it burn its way into his stomach and spread its glow throughout his chest. “I am a chieftain. The demons delight in attacking royalty on this night.”
“So am I of royal blood,” she said tartly, sitting straighter. “Have you forgotten? Have I been at Camulodunon so long that I seem just one more of Cunobelin’s spawn? I have not forgotten,” she finished softly, looking down at her hands, entwined softly in her white lap.
He emptied his cup and reached down to pour himself another. “I’m sorry, Aricia,” he said. “Sometimes I do forget. You have been here for so long and we have all grown up together—you, me, Tog, Eurgain, Gladys, Adminius. How many years has it been since father began to call us the Royal War Band?”
She closed her eyes as if some memory pained her, and he watched her covertly over the rim of his cup. She is so beautiful, he thought in growing resignation, looking at the pale complexion that never tanned with the summer sun, the delicate chin, the long black lashes lying on such high cheekbones. He wondered just when he had ceased to think of her as a hunting companion and begun to see a stranger. When she opened her eyes he recognized the enticing mysteries hidden there, intriguing confusions that he was too young to recognize as insecurities. For a while they scanned each other, he too tired to look away, mesmerized by her black eyes, she not seeing him, feeling back into the past.
Suddenly she giggled. “Caradoc, you are steaming.”
“What?”
“Your breeches are drying out and the steam is rising in clouds! You look like some river god, emerging on a winter morning. Do take off your clothes or go away and stop making my little nest all damp.”
“I suppose I had better take Caesar to the kennel,” he said reluctantly, feeling the wine swell his tongue and turn his limbs to lead.
Shaking her head, Aricia stood up quickly. “Do not tempt your luck! We have already had more than we deserve tonight. Leave him here with me, or take him to your own hearth.” She glided to him, her tunic rustling, bringing with her a whiff of Roman perfume. “I am truly sorry for the trouble I’ve caused today. Tog only insisted on hunting because of a dare I made. If Cunobelin is very angry I will help you both pay Brutus’s price. I don’t suppose the traders will want him.”
“No, I don’t suppose so.” He felt his legs trembling loosely with fatigue and he saw her mistily, through a haze of wine fumes. Seeing his hesitation she began to smile. Ah, not now, not tonight, he thought to himself unsteadily. But it was too late. Already his hand was reaching out, lifting a lock of her hair, running it through his fingers to feel its thick, smooth texture. He raised it to his face, breathing in its perfume and its warmth, and she did not move until he had finished.
“Stay with me, Caradoc,” she said slowly, looking at him enquiringly. “You want to stay, don’t you? I am a Samain demon tonight. Do you feel the spell that I am placing on you?”
She spoke half in jest but he felt the bewitchment stealing over him like a sweet, familiar song. He knew that he should rush to the door with a protecting spell on his lips, but, as always, he only looked at her with hot stupefaction. He and Tog had often joked about this black witch of whom they were so dangerously fond, and they teased her unmercifully about the paleness of her northern skin in the same way that they teased Eurgain about her long silences, or Adminius about his precious collection of boars’ teeth, but they did it without malice and without forethought, the unthinking words of friends of long standing. If she irritated him lately he put it down to the coming of winter, the time when men looked to the months ahead with tight belts and empty bellies, a time of year when he merely existed. And, if he sometimes wanted to slap her for her superior airs and her fiery will in an argument, well, she was, after all, just a girl, only a fourteen-year-old girl struggling to become a woman.
As she brought a handful of her own hair to her face, and closed her eyes, he felt a rush of heat from his loins. “You have no choice, spoiled Caradoc,” she said quietly. “My bed is far more comfortable than the damp forest floor.”
Outside, the rain drummed down. The wind had dropped to a low, persistent moan and inside the room the untended fire was dying, hissing now and then as stray raindrops found it. She reached up to his neck, removed the golden torc, and laid it carefully on the floor. She reached up to unbuckle his heavy belt, and as she did so the sword slid onto the skins. Still he made no move.
A weakening struggle went on within him and his eyes followed her every motion, but when the thin fingers touched his face he surrendered, grabbing her by her arms and pulling her sharply against him.
After all, he told himself, it is Samain. Raven of Panic, you will not find me here, he called silently.
A moment later she pulled away from his grasp. “You are making me wet,” she said evenly. “Take off your tunic, and your breeches. No, I will do it for you. You are standing there as if I have put a holding spell upon you.”
“You always do. Aricia…”
She put a finger to his lips. “No, Caradoc. Don’t speak, please.” Her voice shook. Stooping, she drew the short tunic over his head, and as she did so, he saw a flare of mockery in her eyes.
How strange, he thought. I never noticed before that her eyes are flecked with gold. He grasped her again, kissing her roughly, clumsily, feeling her hands warm on his naked back, losing himself in the softness of her mouth. Her magnificent hair fell tangling over his arms, and as he felt her press against him he caught her up and threw her on the bed, twitching the curtains closed behind them and cutting off the light of the lamp. He looked at her in the dimness as she lay waiting, arms outstretched, her hair spread wide upon the pillow, her thin-lipped smile both enraging him and inviting him to pain.
“Tog knows,” he whispered.
Her smile widened. “I don’t care. Do you?”
“No,” he said softly.
“Then stop talking.”
In his wine-befuddled eagerness he tugged at her sleeping tunic and heard it tear, and then her breasts were under his fumbling fingers, his greedy mouth. She drew in her breath sharply and hissed, and the rain continued to fall, monotonously and dreamily.
He could not restrain himself and it was over very quickly, but tonight she did not complain. It was always like this, an uncontrollable surge, the desperate, compulsive hunt for her, then the sharp, painful satiation. He rolled onto his back, his head on one arm, and gazed at the dim roof above him, wondering how and why as the little needles of shame began to prick. I have done it again, he thought despairingly. It was one thing to tumble a slave in the fields, or even the willing daughter of a freeman
commoner, but this was Aricia his friend, Aricia who had shared in every escapade he and Tog had devised, Aricia, daughter of a ricon whose lineage stretched back much farther than his own. He wanted the earth to swallow him. He wanted the demons of Samain to come and take him to their caves. He wanted to die.
She turned on her side, propped herself on one elbow and, not bothering to cover herself, pushed her hair back impatiently. Incredulous, he felt desire stir in him again.
“Caradoc?”
“Yes?”
“Marry me.”
He thought for a moment that he had not heard her right, but then realizing, he sat bolt upright.
She wrapped her arms about her knees. “Yes, you heard me. I want you to marry me. I beg you, I implore you, Caradoc. Marry me!”
“What are you asking of me?” he said sharply, his mind temporarily freed from its drugged preoccupation with her.
She put a hot hand on his arm. “Are we not old friends?” she whispered. “Would it not be so easy, so very easy, to take the next step and become pledged to one another?” Her grip tightened on his arm. “It’s not such a great thing that I ask. After all, you can take other wives.”
He laughed then, clearheaded. “You mean Eurgain, I suppose. Oh, no, Aricia. We have had great pleasure together, but I do not think we should speak of marriage. Now I must go.” He hurriedly swung his feet onto the cold floor but she restrained him with a force he had not known she possessed.
“Why not? Don’t you think that I have a claim on you, Caradoc?”
“What claim? Do you mean this?” He bent to kiss her but she squirmed away from him and flung open the curtains. The dim lamp light showed him a face shadowed with emotion, lips barely controlled, eyes brimming with tears.
“I will play no more games with you, Caradoc. Where are the words of love you whisper to me in the darkness?”
“Love has nothing to do with you and me, Aricia, and you know it.” He left the bed and dressed quickly, stepping into breeches that were still damp, pulling his wet tunic over his head. “I have made no promises to you.”
She reached out and clung to the curtain as if her muscles had melted with her hope. “Caradoc, I am desperate. Do you know how old I am?”
He buckled on his sword belt. “Of course I know. You are fourteen.”
“The age of betrothal.”
His busy fingers paused and he glanced at her, sensing the truth.
“Very soon an embassy will come from my father, to take me home.” The tears overflowed and splashed onto her hands and she shook them off angrily. “Home! I can scarcely remember the barren moorlands and poverty-stricken huts of my birthplace. Oh, Caradoc, I do not want to go. I do not want to leave you and Tog and Eurgain, and Cunobelin who is like a father to me. I do not want to go away to a place I fear, among fierce, uncouth men!” Her voice faltered, and, sobbing, she slipped to the floor. “I, too, hate Samain and the rains of winter, the loneliness that will come. Must this night go by with no demon come to claim me and no man to wed me?”
He went to her then and knelt beside her, and took her awkwardly into his arms, feeling sympathy rise within him for the first time. “Aricia, I didn’t think, I didn’t know. Have you spoken to Cunobelin?”
She shook her head violently, her face hidden in his neck. “He cannot keep me. My father will want me in Brigantia, for there are no other children to rule after him and the chiefs will certainly elect me.” She looked up then, her eyelids swollen, her skin whiter than he had ever seen it. “If you care for me at all, do not allow this thing to happen to me. I will bring you the greatest dowry the Catuvellauni have ever seen. All of Brigantia! All of it, to share with me. You and I, ruling there together.”
“But what of my own tuath? What of my own kin, and the freemen who depend on me? I don’t want to go to Brigantia any more than you. Can’t you refuse to go, Aricia?” He disengaged himself firmly and stood up. “Forgive me, but I cannot interfere in a matter between foreign kin. I…”
“You what? You are content to use me, and now you pity me? Keep your pity! I want no man’s anxious looks.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks and faced him. “I could make trouble for you, Caradoc, for dishonoring me and yourself, but I will not. I know my father will send for me soon, I have begun to dream about it, but when I go you will be sorry. There will be a hole in your life that will not be filled. I will remember. I swear by Brigantia the High One, goddess of my tribe.”
He looked at the defiant face, the widely gesticulating hands. “We have used each other,” he reminded her quickly. “How has this thing happened, Aricia? How have we ceased to be what we were?”
“Because we have been growing, and you have been too stupid to see it!” she shouted. “You must have known that I love you, you must have seen it, but you stand there with your jaw hanging down like an ignorant Trinovantian peasant! Leave me alone!” She flung herself onto her bed and did not move. For a few seconds he looked at her miserably, wondering whether he was seeing the real Aricia or another one of the masks she slipped on so easily, but he could not linger and he snatched up his cloak and pushed past the doorskins, out once more into the darkness and the rain.
A few steps took him to his own door, and once inside he dropped the still-sodden cloak onto the ground. Fearachar must have come to stoke the fire, for it was blazing brightly and the room was comfortably warm. He quickly stripped and wrapped himself in a blanket, then sat with his legs stretched out to the red flames, his head in a whirl, wishing for the first time in his life that he could live Samain Eve over again.
He had touched more than Aricia’s body tonight. Somehow he had flayed a raw nerve, a part of her that lay exposed, not yet covered by the droll, whimsical, often hard veneer she showed to the rest of them all too often, and he did not like what he had seen. He had not believed her capable of either tears or pleadings, and he wondered if she was lying in the dimness, caught in surprise at herself.
But marriage! His feet were too hot and he sat up, drawing them in under his chair and reaching for the wine placed ready for him. He had no wish to even consider the prospect with her. She was not the kind of woman to bear the sons of a Catuvellaunian chieftain, and his immediate refusal had come from a deep part of him, a part that he, too, did not know existed. He did not deny the spell she exerted on him. They knew each other too well. At least he had thought that they did. He remembered the day she had come to Camulodunon, all big frightened eyes and pathetic, childish haughtiness. Even then, though he himself had been but a child, his heart had gone out to her. For ten years they had all hunted, feasted, and fought together, terrorized the peasants, infuriated the freemen, lied and cheated for each other, and suddenly, between one dawn and the next, it was all over.
It had always been understood that he would marry Eurgain. She was a noble, the daughter of his father’s chief tribesman, and even before she and he and the others had formed Cunobelin’s War Band they had held a great affection for one another. She was tall, also, but more slender than Aricia, a fragile girl, silent, not beautiful but with an aura of peace and assurance that had begun to lure many to her. She had the deep, honey-colored hair and cornflower blue eyes of the best of his people, and she seemed to know his thoughts even before he spoke them.
Eurgain.
A vision of Aricia immediately arose in his mind, naked, black-eyed, shameless, hair falling to her hips and beyond, and he squirmed in his chair. If she loved him as she said she did, how cleverly she had concealed it! Did she, then, hate Eurgain? She had given no sign of that either. Or was she putting on a last, desperate pose, faced with the prospect of the long, lonely ride back to her birthplace? How could it be that he had lived beside her day after day and did not really know her at all? He put a hand over his eyes, overcome with the desire to take those few steps back to her room, to walk in, to say…what? I lust after you, I am eaten away with desire for you, but I do not love you? What am I, of what price my honor if my father and my friends
were to see me now!
He left the fire and went and lay on his bed, his eyes closed, still ashamed of himself, still wondering what would have happened if he had behaved as a freeman ought to behave. If he had walked out the door before she wound those soft arms about his neck. But it was weeks, months too late, and already his will had been weakened. He was vaguely aware that the rain had stopped, though the wind still muttered fitfully beyond the thin walls. He fell asleep, but even in his dreams she snared him like a rutting, netted boar.
He slept late the next morning, waking sluggishly to the sound of his servant whistling as he raked over the ashes of the dead fire and began to set a new one. A shaft of pale sunlight flowed under the doorskins, bringing with it cold, crisp air that blew the last of the night from Caradoc’s head. As he sat up, Fearachar glanced toward him.
“A good morning to you, Lord. How pleased I am to see that you have been preserved and no demons saw fit to disturb your slumbers.”
“And a good morning to you, Fearachar,” Caradoc responded automatically. “I’m hungry.” Feeling clearheaded, he stood, pulled on his breeches and a clean tunic, strapped on his sword, but suddenly the night came back to him. His torc did not lie on the table by his bed. With a shiver he realized he had left it on the floor of Aricia’s hut. Fearachar glanced up to see the dismay on his master’s face, but then rose, dusted off his hands, and produced something from the folds of his short red cloak.
“The Lady Aricia asked me to give you this and to tell you that though it is the badge of a freeman, to her it sometimes seems more like a yoke of slavery.” Caradoc snatched at the torc and slipped it about his neck. “The Lady also said that she has taken Caesar to his kennel. It was foolish of you, Lord, to borrow the dogs. Your father will be angry.”
“Perhaps. But what is that to you?” Caradoc said rudely. Yoke of slavery! How dare she!
The Eagle and the Raven Page 2
