“Cunobelin, we must indeed wash and change and eat,” he said slowly. ‘’However, may the feasting be swift and the Council dumb, for whether we will it or no, we must be gone before tomorrow’s dawn.”
Iron lay under the words, and Cunobelin’s men gathered into a belligerent knot, scowling openly at the strangers, but Cunobelin finally smiled again in perfect understanding. None of them, not Venutius and his chiefs nor Cunobelin and his band, cared when death came to Aricia’s father. They were speaking not with their words but with their wills, and the game was as old as the tribes themselves. Cunobelin loved it. He played it with consummate skill and knew how to reduce an opponent to a faltering child without saying one harsh word. But these Brigantians did not enter into his machinations, not yet, and today he did not want to play, so instead of opening the next move, he shrugged, bowed, and led the way inside, leaving his back to the foreign swords. Venutius followed, his back exposed to the Catuvellaunian chiefs, and Caradoc watched the little ritual and wanted to laugh. The older his father became, the more these little games amused him. Caradoc put a hand on Cinnamus’s shoulder.
“Go and find Aricia, and tell her that the time is here,” he said. His voice shook and the green eyes rested on him in understanding before Cinnamus turned away. Caradoc fought a desire to run to his house and seal the door, but he walked slowly after the Brigantian chiefs and into the smell of stale pork drippings and woodsmoke.
Cinnamus found Aricia outside the gate, a few paces in under the trees, picking bluebells. He stood quietly for a moment, watching her bend and straighten, her arms full of the rich blue flowers. He felt no pity for her. She was a foreigner, beautiful, yes, with a veneer of Catuvellaunian culture, yes, but ultimately she did not belong to his tuath. Besides, she was nothing but trouble and she knew it. Caradoc was moody and sharp-tongued because of her, and even Togodumnus had been looking after her lately, an odd, reflective light in his eyes. Such a one could bring dissent and even murder to a ruling house, could weaken the unity and strength of the tribe. He saw more in her than either Caradoc or Togodumnus. He saw a plotting, cold mind behind the lustrous eyes, a dangerous lack of human affection, and he did not like her. He was glad that she was going.
He took a step and she stiffened and whirled, her fingers seeking the knife that was always at her belt, the blooms falling in a damp shower over her feet.
“Cinnamus! You startled me. What do you want?” She did not care for the blond, green-eyed young man. He was so quietly sure of himself though his clothes were threadbare and his ornaments few, and she was annoyed she could never meet his eyes. She bent and began to gather up the flowers.
“Forgive me for frightening you, Lady, but Cunobelin has sent for you and you must go at once. Your kinsmen are here.”
Puzzlement clouded her eyes, but as he continued to stand there politely, looking past her to the cool depths of the wood, she straightened and pink flushed her cheeks and receded, leaving her deathly pale.
“My kinsmen, Ironhand?”
He saw the tremor shudder through the long, delicate fingers, and one by one the blooms began to fall again, already wilting. She leaned suddenly against a tree trunk, feeling weak, breathing in shallow spurts, trying to regain some control of herself, then with a savage movement, flung the remaining flowers behind her and walked to him, the skin of her face stretched tight over the fine bones, her eyes hollows of dark misery. “Lead on, then,” she said, her voice high, and he turned and threaded his way back to the path and the open gate beyond.
She paced behind him, saying nothing, and together they wound their way up through the town to the Hall. Smoke spiraled from the roof, and already they could smell the roasting calf. They went in to find the Hall full of chiefs and idle, curious freemen, come to catch a glimpse of the north-men, and the conversation rose and fell around them as the wine cups were filled and emptied. Cinnamus turned aside, going to Sholto and Caelte who stood just inside the door, heads together, while others of Caradoc’s chiefs clustered nearby. Aricia walked on alone to where Cunobelin and Caradoc waited.
“They have come at last,” Cunobelin said gently as she came up and stood before them, her face a mask of stiff, emotionless control. “I sent them to the guest huts so that they could wash and change their clothes. We exchanged such news as we were able. Will you hear it?”
Her lips trembled and for the briefest moment her gaze rested on Caradoc, then wandered from his tanned face to roam the Hall, seeking an escape, seeking a reprieve. Togodumnus came over and thrust wine into her cold hands. She drank slowly and then nodded. Cunobelin put a heavy arm across her shoulders and urged her down onto the skins, and his sons followed, squatting easily before them. Behind, in the shadows, the groups of men broke up and came and ringed them, squatting or sitting cross-legged to hear what went on. It was their right, but Aricia hated them for it. She clasped her hands in her red lap and sat straight-backed. She saw Eurgain and Gladys come in, take wine, and stand together hesitantly by the door, and she looked away. But wherever she looked she saw only eagerness for news, a callous greed for something to hear, and her eyes found no rest. Cunobelin spoke again, but softly, so that only his sons and his chiefs caught the words.
“Your father is dying, Aricia, and you must go to him swiftly. Your Council awaits you in Brigantia, and your kingdom. You must go to your house and have your servants pack a wain.” The word was passed quickly to those in the rear, and whispering rose and then died away. Aricia answered him without moving.
“You are my father, old wolf, and this is my tuath. I will not go.”
“No daughter of mine would speak thus,” Cunobelin said sternly. “You have a duty to your people. You have no brothers, and Brigantia awaits your rule. Will you say that I have failed in my responsibility to you, that I return to your father a weak-kneed, spoiled brat?” Her eyes burned with unshed tears and she gulped the wine, knowing that he spoke harshly to help her bear what must come, but she felt a pang of resentment nonetheless. She shook back her hair and faced him.
“I know my duty, Cunobelin, but it is a hard one. Can I not be forgiven for wishing to lay it aside? I came here as a hostage but you brought me up as a daughter. Shall the parting of such kin be without pain? Do you feel nothing?”
He embraced her. “I know my loss,” he replied, “but I also know Brigantia’s gain and the gain of this tuath. Will there not be commerce between us, and Samain meetings, and good relations, now that my daughter goes to rule another kingdom?”
She laughed then, a sound without mirth. “Or shall I become what my kin want me to be, a wild hill-queen, loving no one and suspicious of all?” She rose. “I will go to pack, and meet these, my…my kinsmen.” She said the word with contempt and swept past them. Eurgain moved to speak to her but was brushed off deftly, and excited talk began again while the sun poured through the vents, mingling with the smoke and making pale puddles of light on the ash-strewn floor.
That evening, every chief and freeman in Camulodunon attended the feast, and the din and laughter were full of the heady undercurrents of diversion. The members of the royal family sat together with their bards and shield-bearers and Aricia sat with them, dressed deliberately in her best tunic, the one striped in red and yellow and embroidered with gold thread. The thin circlet on her forehead was of gold, as were her bracelets and anklets. She sat on her cloak, her tunic folding softly around her, and she felt the eyes of her strange kinsmen regarding her in speculation. She sensed suspicion in them, a vague, uneasy dislike. Well, let them hate her, she said to herself. She did not care. They would have to obey her, and they knew it.
She ate little and drank much, and her kinsmen, who disdained the Roman wine, quaffed their cheap local beer and watched her from their place beside Cunobelin and his chiefs. Cunobelin’s bard played and sang, but his words were drowned by the noise. Caradoc talked easily with Sholto and Cinnamus, conscious of a spreading contentment and a guilty relief. Togodumnus and Adminius quarrel
ed and finally came to blows, but at Cunobelin’s word, retired sheepishly with black eyes and bloody noses, to drink some more and flirt with the women. Gladys and Eurgain sat together, both glittering in the dark light of the smoking torches, their attendants twittering beside them. Outside the wind blew, soft and wet, and now and then a gentle, warm rain fell. At length Cunobelin sent the slaves out and called for Council, and Venutius rose and told them all gruffly and quickly why he had come.
Aricia watched him carefully. He was handsome in an overpowering way. A physical strength emanated from the long, thick, breech-clad legs, the booming voice, the matted red hair, and his men hung on his words as though he were the most silver-tongued of bards, singing to them of victories to come. Yet he was young, scarcely older than Caradoc. She sipped her wine, relishing it with fatalism, knowing that she would drink no more of it for many a year to come, unless somehow she could turn her beer-drinking savages into Catuvellaunian freemen. When Venutius sat down, his sharp animal’s glance reaching her, she looked at him and then away to where Caradoc was fingering his tightly braided brown hair and listening intently to Tog’s whispers. Venutius was a challenge she would have to meet if she was to do with Brigantia what she would, but perhaps he would prove easier to tame than the sophisticated sons of Cunobelin. One of the chiefs was speaking now but not in dissent, and she knew that the smile on Cinnamus’s face had nothing to do with the effects of the wine. They are glad that I am going, she thought bitterly. All of them. Well then, I will also go gladly. She smiled at Venutius and he smiled back slowly, warily, and looked away. Perhaps she was not as Roman as she looked, his new queen.
In the predawn mist, when the dew lay heavy on the ground and the trees reared like ghostly warriors beyond the gate, Cunobelin, Caradoc, Togodumnus, and the others gathered to share the cup of parting with Aricia and her chieftains. Two wains stood ready, moisture beading on the manes and flanks of the ponies yoked and waiting to draw them, the rich tunics and cloaks, the fine jewels and drinking cups, the beaded curtains covered with hessian to protect them from the morning’s dampness. Aricia stood by her horse, her hood thrown back, her eyes shadowed with stress and weariness, and Venutius stood by her, already possessive.
Cunobelin’s shield-bearer brought her the cup, bowing slightly, and she took it and sipped, then handed it back, and he passed it to the others, who were huddling in their long cloaks. When all had finished he took it away and Cunobelin stepped forward and held her to him. For the last time she rested within the circle of his strong arms and looked into his wrinkled, sly face. “Go in safety, walk in peace,” he said. Then Caradoc stepped to her and kissed her cold cheek. “Forgive me,” he whispered into her wet hair, but she did not respond. Adminius came to hug her next and she still stood like a stone sentinel, but Tog sought her mouth and muttered something in her ear and it brought a fleeting smile to her stiff lips. Eurgain enveloped her in warm arms and perfume, and suddenly Aricia found herself melting. The two girls clung together, and Aricia whispered, “Take care of him, Eurgain. He needs you more than me.” Gladys strode up and kissed her, pressing something warm and smooth into her palm. “A talisman,” she said, and Aricia opened her hand and looked down. It was a tiny piece of driftwood that seemed to writhe on her skin, four snakes intertwining. The wood had been oiled and polished and a pin set in it so that it could be worn on a tunic or used to fasten a cloak. As Aricia stood gazing at it, Gladys’s strange comfort brought tears to her eyes at last and she mounted quickly, and, after settling her cloak around her, drew up her hood and nodded to Venutius.
No one called farewell or waved, and she disappeared quickly into the mist. The wains rumbled after her, and Cunobelin turned abruptly to the gate, Gladys and Eurgain going with him.
Togodumnus turned to Caradoc and smiled. “What will be her fate, I wonder?” he said lightly. “Shall we make war on her in years to come, do you think?”
A hole that will not be filled…Caradoc thought with a pang of deep regret, and then her face was before him, the gold-flecked eyes wide and the arms rising to encircle him. He blinked and smiled back at his brother. “Who knows?” he answered carefully, but he felt the thread that bound him to her lengthening, stretching, growing taut around him with no sign of a break. He did not think that he had seen the last of her.
A week after Aricia’s departure, on a breezy, sunny morning, full of the delicate odor of yellow gorse flowers, Caradoc and Eurgain shared the cup of marriage. The wedding was on the grassy lawn that swept from the earthwall of Camulodunon to become grazing meadow and the short spears of young crops. Eurgain wore a silver circlet on her brow, and her dark golden hair fell loose about the blue folds of her tasseled tunic. Caradoc was arrayed in scarlet. He stood tall and proud while the wine in the cup sparkled red and the gathered chiefs and freemen waited to cheer and sing when the words that would bind the two of them together were pronounced.
He had chosen his wedding gifts with great care. A necklace of blue glass beads from Egypt, a bolt of silk from the island of Cos that shimmered rainbow colors when Eurgain took it up wonderingly and ran it through her fingers, a pair of hunting dogs, and two drinking cups of the purest silver, shipped especially, straight from Rome.
Her dowry had been the greatest ever brought to a warrior of the tuath—two hundred cattle—and as Caradoc took her hand and kissed her soft lips and the uproar broke out around them, he felt Togodumnus’s grinning, wry face by his elbow. Now Caradoc had the highest honor-price of any of his kin. He chose gifts for his chiefs also, careful to offend none of them, but for Cinnamus he had fifty breeding cattle and a new cloak. Cinnamus had protested hotly, talking of the shame of patronage, but Caradoc pointed out to him that he was merely buying future loyalty, and Cinnamus, after weighing the words in cool silence, finally nodded and accepted the magnificent gift, knowing that he would eventually earn it in Caradoc’s train.
Cunobelin had presented the couple with the largest house in the town. It had two rooms, two hearths, and twice the work to keep clean, as Fearachar had pointed out under his breath. Eurgain had spent a happy day hanging her lamps and arranging her belongings, and she had persuaded Fearachar to open a window for her, low down. The view was not as sweeping as the one from her own house, but she. knew she would have little time for star-gazing. She was sorry, but her house soon acquired the brooding, peaceful aura she carried with her everywhere, and her inarticulate longing for the silence of the far-off hills was turning now to Caradoc, her love. The Feast of Beltine was coming, fertility burst forth wherever she looked, and the sun was warm on her face as she turned and smiled at him shyly, putting out a hesitant hand to touch the waving dark hair that framed his brown face. He was hers. Aricia was gone. He would come to love her in time, but if not, it did not matter. He would need her, and with that she would be content.
Chapter Four
VENUTIUS struck out west when they had left behind the bulk of Camulodunon and the knot of silent, shrouded people. He set a brisk pace, and Aricia rode beside him, her throat tight with pain and her hand still curled around the magic serpents. With no more sound than the soft footfalls of their beasts and the occasional jingle of bronze harnesses, they passed like wraiths under the fog-hung trees. They followed the same path that had often echoed to the shouts of the Royal War Band as it merrily hunted the wild boar, and Aricia resolutely shut her ears to those beckoning memories of days far off and gone forever. The straight stretch where the warriors practiced their chariot skill glided under her hanging feet, the ground began to rise slowly, and the trees thinned out. In a little over an hour the second gate was behind them, and Aricia turned once, seeing the shallow, slow-moving flow of the river, the forest, the gateguard motionless in the early morning light, the massive defenses soaring behind him. She looked ahead to where the track wound up to the crest of a rolling, grassy hill and disappeared over the top, and to where the way was lined with spreading oaks and the thin, willowy ashes whose little leaves tossed in the
new wind.
“We must not take much time in reaching the border,” Venutius said. “A Druid waits for us there to see us safe through the land of the Coritani, but he has business elsewhere and will not stay overlong if we are delayed.” She said nothing, leaving his words unacknowledged, and, with a low call to the horses, they started up the path, the wains trundling in their wake.
They stopped once on a wind-raked hill that gave them breathtaking views of the land lying under them like a blanket, patched here there with dark forest, dyed with the bright green of young barley, oats, and wheat, embroidered with slow silver trace of rivers far away, and the blue haze of spring tinging the horizon under the midday sun. They ate quickly, sitting on the grass, and the men talked and laughed, their tongues loosed now that the all-insinuating reach of Cunobelin was a thing for tales and song. But Aricia was quiet, eating slowly, and her eyes traveled the wide sweep of the sky. She tried not to look ahead, telling herself that this was merely a trip, a short, pleasant spring jaunt to worship a goddess in the woods perhaps, and soon she would say goodbye to these unwanted companions and go home. It was a dangerous game to play, but it was the only way she knew to keep at bay the tides of homesickness and grief. Venutius sat beside her, passing her meat and cheese, and giving her strong beer from his goatskin bag.
He watched her out of the corners of his brown eyes, but they eventually mounted and rode on, and she still did not grace him with the smile that had warmed his blood in Cunobelin’s Hall.
At twilight of the third night, when dusk crept upon them from secret places among the trees, they crossed into the lands of the Coritani, riding beside deep pits in the earth, pools of darkness, and raw gashes in the ground where the people had taken soil for the new earthwalls that hemmed the riders in. But Aricia, tired, dirty, and cold, took no interest in the defences that had been thrown up against the Catuvellauni. A little way ahead a solitary light burned and Venutius called a halt, going forward quietly on foot to see what it was. The others sat motionless, Aricia drooping on her horse’s back, her eyes heavy and her hands curled stiffly about the reins. They listened to the stir and scuffle of the wild animals in the undergrowth and watched the blurred stars wink out.
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