The time went by. Samain came and went, a momentary lull in an otherwise keyed-up and preoccupied Camulodunon. In a month the chiefs were ready and once more they gambled and quarreled around the great fire. In six weeks Togodumnus and Caradoc prepared to say goodbye, for Togodumnus and his men were to spend some time at Verulamium, seeing to the fortifications in the unlikely and laughable event that the Dobunni or the Coritani should chase the Catuvellauni home.
Then one afternoon, when Caradoc and Togodumnus were standing outside the stables watching their chariots being harnessed before they set out to race each other along the path that ran under the leafless trees of the wood, Cinnamus came pounding up from the gate, his horse lathered, his tunic streaked with sweat, his face an urgent message of fear. He clattered to a halt before them and tumbled off his mount, leaning against the beast for a moment to still his heaving chest, then motioned to the stable servant to lead the horse away. He turned to Caradoc. “The traders!” he gasped, and Caradoc left his glittering harness and went to him, sending Fearachar for water from the trough. Cinnamus wiped his gray-spotted face on the corner of his cloak and then bent, hands on knees and head hanging, struggling to get his breath. He had ridden from the river at full gallop and his heart still pounded out the rhythme of his horse’s flying hoofs. Fearachar ran up with water in a wooden bowl and Cinnamus straightened, plunging his face into its coldness. Then he took it and drank deeply, handing it back and grinning crookedly at the men who were watching him in puzzlement. “Lord, the traders are leaving,” he said. “Already five boats have gone with the tide and another ten wait. They will not talk. All they do is sit on the bank, their belongings around them, but the wine merchant was more amenable.”
“Wait a moment, Cin,” Caradoc said. “Get your breath,” but Cinnamus was already recovering. He squatted on the hard earth, and Caradoc and the chiefs squatted with him.
“Caius Caesar is moving,” he said. “He is within a day’s march of Gesioracum, and three legions, perhaps four, march with him. The merchant says he is going to cross the water.”
No one spoke. Cinnamus’s words hung in the frosty air, and Caradoc looked at the ground while behind him his ponies shuffled restlessly and the wheels of his chariot rolled back and forth. Then Togodumnus swore, a loud, rude expletive that startled them all, and jumped to the earth.
“We know who is with him, too!” he shouted. “That thrice damned Adminius! We should have pursued him and taken his head, Caradoc. Now look what he has done!” Caradoc looked enquiringly at Cinnamus, and Cinnamus nodded once.
“It is true. Such is the madness of Caligula that he imagines Adminius to be offering Rome the whole of Albion, and he is coming to claim it. The traders want no trouble. They will sail to Gaul and scatter, waiting until the legions have come and conquered, and trade begins once more.”
“What of Caius’s generals?” Caradoc asked. “Surely they are sane enough to see that Adminius is only a fugitive, not a ricon. In any case, a ricon from Albion who voluntarily sold his tribe into slavery would obviously be mad.”
“Of course they know,” Cinnamus answered him. “But how can they persuade Caesar and keep their heads? Pity them, Caradoc. And hope that one of them can somehow convince the emperor that Adminius is a criminal fool.”
Togodumnus spat into the dirt and scowled. “Let them come!” he said. “What did the wits of Rome say when Julius Caesar slunk home, his tail between his legs because the mighty Cassivellaunus sunk his teeth into the august rump? ‘I came, I saw, but failed to stay.’ Rome met its match in the Catuvellauni a hundred years ago.”
“It was not Cassivellaunus who defeated Caesar, it was the weather and the tides of the sea,” Caradoc said automatically, then he frowned in shock. Who had told him that? Togodumnus stuck out his tongue in the direction of the river and then laughed.
“Rubbish! Is that what Julius said? I suppose he had to say something.” The chiefs laughed, their momentary anxiety dissipating as swiftly as a summer mist, and they all rose and passed their interest to other things. They walked away and Togodumnus got into his chariot. “You have exhausted yourself for nothing, Cinnamus Ironhand,” he laughed in derision. “Caradoc, I will wait for you by the river.” As he rumbled away, Caradoc looked at Cinnamus.
“Is this thing real?” he asked quietly. “Will mad Caius come, Cin?”
Cinnamus shrugged in his own cool, inimitable fashion. “I do not know, but the traders would not be panicked by rumor alone. They know something, Lord, and if I were you I would keep Togodumnus and his chiefs here, ready for battle, until rumor becomes fact or sinks under the weight of another wonder.”
“Adminius has done this,” Caradoc said bitterly. “Sneaking, crawling Roman-lover! He has played on the emperor’s feeble mind. If Caius comes and is defeated I will take Adminius and burn him alive on his own funeral pyre.”
Cinnamus laughed shortly. “Gladys should have killed him when she had the chance,” he observed. “She will be eternally sorry that she did not.” He walked slowly and stiffly up the hill, and Caradoc beckoned to Fearachar and got into his chariot, lifting the reins and calling to the ponies. He rolled to the gate, while his mind strayed to the ocean and the port of Gesioracum where Caligula pouted and fretted, and his generals held secret, frantic meetings, trying to decide who should tell the ruler of the world that Albion would greet him with bunched spears, not flowers of welcome.
Caradoc persuaded Togodumnus to postpone his departure, but it was not easy. Tog fumed and shouted, cursed and raged, but the chiefs listened to Caradoc, trusting his judgment, and the Council voted Tog down. He sulked for a day, got drunk, then flirted with Vida, went fishing with Llyn, and finally settled down contemptuously to wait with Caradoc. The river was empty. The Catuvellaunian coracles and coastal vessels rocked gently at anchor, the piers were bare of barrels, boxes, sacks, and dogs, and day after day the freemen straggled into Camulodunon from the coast, reporting no sails. Even the weather seemed to hush and pause. The winter wind dropped, the fogs hung motionless in the trees, and the chiefs sat in their smoky huts, polishing swords and spears that already gleamed sun-bright.
Two weeks dragged by. Caradoc and his men sacrificed three bulls to Camulos and went into the woods to propitiate the goddess and the Dagda. But still the ocean lay unruffled by burden of war or troopship, and Caradoc was beginning to berate himself as an overanxious idiot when a freeman came to him in an early dawn, squatting before him in his house. The children still slept, but Eurgain was up, sitting among pillows, heavy-eyed but alert, and Caradoc flung wood on the fire before he dared to order the man to speak. Then he squatted beside him. “The news,” he said tersely, and the freeman smiled.
“The news is good,” he said, and behind him Caradoc heard Eurgain sigh. “Ships came in the night but they did not bring soldiers. The traders are coming back.”
Caradoc felt a great weight roll from him, and he was suddenly very hungry. Beside him the fire crackled with new life, and in the other room he heard Llyn cough and turn over. “And?” he pressed gently, and the man hurried on.
“The traders say that the generals could not dissuade the emperor, but the troops mutinied. They would not cross the water. They said that Albion is a magic island full of monsters and terrible spells, and even for Jupiter Greatest and Best they would not set sail. The traders say that the emperor was furious. He frothed at the mouth and ran about cursing. He had a dozen legionnaires crucified there on the beach, but it made no difference. In the end, the generals were able to turn him around, and he is going back to Rome. Some say he may be deciding to claim Albion anyway.”
Caradoc began to laugh. He threw back his head, lost his balance, and fell back hard onto the skins and still he laughed. Llyn woke up and came sleepily to see what had happened, and Eurgain watched her husband with a glad smile, the full-throated, gay sound filling her with weak relief. He had been so humorless lately, with a cutting edge to his words and a new hardness to his deci
sions that had begun to alarm her. Caradoc struggled to his feet, still shaking. “Monsters and spells!” he managed. “Of course, and worse! Swords and spears and giants! Oh Eurgain, did you hear? Well, let him claim Albion, the poor, witless wretch.” He hauled the freeman to his feet and embraced him. “Go to Togodumnus and give him your news,” he said. “Now hurry up and dress, Eurgain. This morning we will hunt boar, and tomorrow we will hunt the Coritani!”
Chapter Eight
THEY all hunted, feasted, laughed, and drank, and then they went to war. The threat of Rome had been no more than the fangless petulance of a gust of summer wind. Rome had once more tried and failed, and the last restraints fell from the lords of the Catuvellauni. Togodumnus and his chiefs packed up their wives, children, and baggage and left for Verulamium, accompanied by loud music and raucous song. Caradoc made the last plans for his assault on Verica, and then, in early spring when the buds on the apple trees burst into white, fragrant blossom that perfumed the echoing halls of the forest and the sun probed the earth with gentle, warm fingers, he and Togodumnus thundered into action. On a high tide of reckless young strength and bursting confidence they careened across the borders, with their yelling, blood-drunk hordes behind them, and the Coritani wavered, broke, and ran. Verica, after a wild and desperate struggle high above the eastern coast, took ship and fled in anger and defeat to Gaul. It was only the beginning. Throughout that summer the Coritani, bunched together in their northern fortresses, turned at bay and fought Togodumnus with steady ferocity, but Caradoc spent the months of heat chasing this way and that, trying to find the remnants of Verica’s kin who had melted away into their forests like handfuls of snow.
In the autumn, when the trees lit suddenly with a fiery, flaunting glory, both of them returned tanned, healthy, and tired, to Camulodunon, the wains and chariots trundling behind them laden with booty, and the herds and flocks of stolen animals before them. There, in the Great Hall, Togodumnus and Caradoc met and flung their arms around each other. “What a summer!” Tog declared as they sat cross-legged by the fire. “Ah Caradoc, I wish you could have seen us! Those Coritani can fight after all. We charged them, we beat them back, we hacked their chiefs to pieces and then chased them into the hills, but they turned on us and gave us a stiff resistance. I nearly lost my head, did you know? A massive chief with bull’s horns on his helm leaped upon me from his chariot, and I standing fighting in a dyke. He bore me down but I wriggled free. He swung at my neck, growling all the while like a bear, but ah!” He tossed back his hair and brought his bronze-braceleted arm slicing through the smoky air. “One blow and I cut him nearly in two!” He sighed happily. “What a summer!”
The chiefs mingled around them, telling their own excited tales to each other, and the women chattered contentedly, glad to be settling once more into their snug town quarters. The children ran about the Hall, chasing the dogs or wrestling each other, and the bards sat thoughtfully tuning their harps, their eyes on the cavernous depths of the ceiling as their newest songs took shape in their quick minds. Fearachar brought wine and steaming pork, and there was silence for a while as the lords and their attendants ate.
“Tell me, Tog,” Caradoc said, taking a sip of hot wine, “will another season see the Coritani beaten? Can we move some of our people up there next summer, or will the Coritani make treaty with the Brigantians and face us a thousandfold next spring?”
Togodumnus chewed reflectively. “I do not know. The Coritani and the Brigantes do not like one another and are always raiding, but perhaps Aricia will push for a treaty, knowing that I plan to attack her just as soon as the Coritani are subjugated. She would do better to make treaty with us.” He grinned. “Then we can take over Brigantia while she is still arguing about her principles.”
“She knows that,” Caradoc answered. “So she will not treaty with us. I think she will sit down in Council with the judges of the Coritani and they will face us together.”
Tog swallowed his mouthful. “Then they are stupid. From what we have heard, Aricia has flung away any principles she may have had, which weren’t many as you, of all people, should know. She will speak fairly to the judges, and then if you and I go down in defeat—bang!” He clapped his hands together. “She and that wildman of hers, that Venutius, will be down on the Coritani like thunderbolts, and they will regret that they did not accept our domination.” He picked up his cup and drank deeply, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “And what of the Atrebates?” he asked. “How have you fared?”
“Verica has gone to Rome, as you know,” Caradoc replied, “and his people are clever. They hide in the woods and will not meet me in battle. To tell you the truth,” he said ruefully, “I have spent my summer chasing shadows. But I think in the spring I will move some of the freemen families into Verica’s territory and make their menfolk chiefs. The resistance is so spotty and poor that they will easily be able to handle it—particularly with the goad of enormous honor-prices. Then,” he smiled. “Then for the Dobunni. Already they quarrel among themselves, with Boduocus hanging onto the south and the renegade chiefs in the north. It should be easy to turn them all into Catuvellaunians.” He and Togodumnus looked at each other smugly. “An empire,” Caradoc said softly. “Already we have made a good beginning, Tog. One day the whole of Albion will be ruled by Catuvellaunian chieftains, and you and I will be richer than Seneca.”
“They say that even Caesar is not as rich as Seneca,” said Tog. “What about the traders, Caradoc? Many of them went home this summer because commerce was not good with all of us away. We will have to do something about that.”
Caradoc shrugged. “Let them go. The bigger we are the less we will have to rely on Rome for goods, and when we are big enough the traders will be lured back for pickings a hundred times more valuable.”
“Cunobelin would laugh loud and long if he could see us now!” Tog finished his wine and sat back against the wall, and the company began to settle themselves on the floor. “Our names will be feared from one end of the earth to the other. What about the Durotriges, Caradoc, and the men of the west? Shall we save them until the last?”
Caradoc shuddered. “We will leave them. Even Cunobelin did not dare to anger the men of the west, for they fight as though the Raven of Battle lived in each one of them. As for the Durotriges…” He frowned. “The Cornovii first, Tog, and then we will see. We must be far stronger if we want to cross swords with them.”
Conversation had dropped to a faint murmuring. Cups were refilled, the children taken away to bed, and Eurgain came and sat between Caradoc and Cinnamus. Caradoc put an arm around her and kissed her cheek. “Now we will hear the stories of our summer,” he said to her. “Are you glad to be home, Eurgain?” She nodded and put her head on his shoulder, and he called for Caelte. The bard stood, unslinging his harp, and a hush fell. He had taken a spear in his shoulder and still favored it, moving delicately, but his fingers were unscathed, able to coax music like the swift passing of wind in the treetops from his little instrument. He plucked at it, tightened a string, smiled around at the gathering, and cleared his throat.
“People of the tuath,” he said quietly. “I will sing to you tonight of Caradoc the Magnificent, and the Dishonoring of Verica.”
“My bard has made a song for me that takes an hour to sing,” Togodumnus whispered to Eurgain, but she did not look at him, only smiling politely and distantly while Caelte’s high, sweet voice rose like the rising of the lark from the meadows of summer.
Caelte, Togodumnus’s bard, and the people sang the night away. After the summer had sped before them, blown through their minds on the warm breath of Caelte, they called for the songs of Cunobelin, and Tasciovanus, and still they were hungry. The story of Julius Caesar and Cassivellaunus made them laugh. The haunting, lost lays of their ancestors, now only dimly understood, filled them with passionate nostalgia, and they wept. An atmosphere of emotion-charged poignancy throbbed in the Hall, a billowing, wreathing cloud of pathos that curled around them alo
ng with the woodsmoke, and it permeated their souls. The fire was replenished again and again, and the red flames soared on the wings of their melody, sweet or bitter, melancholy or searing. The wine barrels were emptied. Sweat ran down the faces of the bards and their fingers grew hot, but the music took its own power and left them wordless at last, able only to follow stumbling where its rainbow cloak brushed them in its journey. Then Togodumnus shouted, “‘The Ship,’ Caelte, ‘the Ship’!” and the others took up the cry. “‘The Ship,’ oh please master, ‘the Ship’!”
Caelte shook his head, his throat raw and his face streaming, but they called all the more and finally he stood, a wry smile on his face. Immediately deep silence fell. “‘The Ship,’” he said huskily and began, and after the first few hoarse notes his voice gained strength in an inhuman, lovely cadence of sorrow.
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