Gladys returned after a few days, and with her came a scout, one of the few left to watch the legions. Caradoc and Eurgain, standing high above the valley, saw them come and scrambled down to greet them as they slipped through the slit that had been left in the wall.
“They are waiting for the emperor, for Claudius himself,” the scout said without preamble. “They are camped in the woods not five miles away, and Plautius is fuming at the delay but dares not move until the party from Rome arrives. In the meantime he has sent Vespasianus and the Second against the Durotriges.”
“How long?” Caradoc interjected.
The man shrugged. “How should I know, Lord? It has been two weeks since the message went out. Perhaps another two.”
“And then?”
The scout looked at them curiously. There was something so fatalistic, so immovable about their faces, that he scarcely recognized them. Caradoc had a hand on his lady’s shoulder, but it rested lightly, almost confidently, and she looked before her with eyes that were clear and untroubled.
He felt a strange respect, as though the two were gods above all fear and uncertainty, and he shuffled, aware of his own mortality. “Then the emperor himself will lead the troops to an easy, safe victory, and the legions’ aquilae will ring the Great Hall.”
Caradoc and Eurgain remained motionless when he had finished, still showing no emotion, and Gladys left them and strode away toward her own spartan hut. At last Caradoc smiled, a whimsical, warm smile that lit his face with sympathy. “Go to the Hall and eat. We cannot spare much but there should be meat at least. Then sleep, and return to the forest. If you are wise you will not come back.” The scout nodded curtly and went away, climbing the steep path with weary feet, and Caradoc turned to his wife. “The news does not alarm me,” he said. “Indeed, Eurgain, I can feel nothing. In two weeks we will be dead and Camulodunon in flames, yet I look at you and my heart laughs. Why?”
She faced him and cupping his lean jaw in both of her hands, kissed him on his mouth with cool, steady lips, and then, rising on tiptoe reached to touch his eyes. “Because there is nothing left to face, no unknown,” she replied lightly. “There is only you, and me, and the sunshine, and death.” They stood for a long time with their eyes closed, pressing against each other in the deep shadow of the earth wall, while above them the swifts darted, crying joyously in the free blue sky.
Chapter Twelve
THE time passed slowly. Claudius and his entourage lay seasick on a stormy ocean while the Catuvellauni waited almost listlessly with nothing to do. There were no fights or petty squabbles, for there was not even anything to quarrel over, and the men and women withdrew into their last dreams, sitting in the sun or walking slowly, wrapped in a drugged peace.
Only Gladys was restless. She got on her horse and rode in turmoil around and around beside the dyke like a newly trapped deer or a young boar at bay. Her life suddenly seemed to her to have been worthless and useless, a journey never begun. Fiercely, bitterly, she did not want to die, but honor was all she had lived for, and now she knew that only by dying could the years behind her be proved to have been of value.
In an early summer dawn of silence and cool, still air, the Catuvellauni rose to find their town ringed with a dense mass of helmets and studded shields. They were not alarmed, and they buckled on their swords calmly, took their spears, said their last farewells quietly, and moved to their appointed places, breathing deeply in the sweet morning.
Caradoc gave Tallia a knife and herded her and the children into the Great Hall. “When the Romans can be heard on the path below,” he said, “kill the children. You will know that I am dead, and Eurgain with me. Farewell, Tallia.” Llyn flew at him, hugging him and shouting incoherently, beating at him with balled fists like little stones, and Caradoc took him firmly by both wrists and forced him back.
“Llyn!” he said sharply, though he wanted to gather his son into his arms and cry with him. “How does a Catuvellaunian chieftain die?”
The boy raised a flushed, tear-strained face. “He…he dies like a warrior, without fear.”
“Even so.” Caradoc did not trust himself further. He tore away the pleading, clutching fingers roughly, and turned to the girls who stood silently watching him. He knelt and kissed them, hearing the sound of the incursus and then Cinnamus shouting “Lord! Come!” from without. He dared not look again at the tiny, bewildered little group, and he drew his sword and ran outside.
Cinnamus, Caelte, and Eurgain joined him as he came. Already a clamor rose from the walls, and below he heard the sharp, clear orders barked as the legions surged forward to lay wide planks over the dyke. Halfway to the stopped gate Gladys joined them, her arms bare but for her silver, her hair piled haphazardly on top of her head and already loose, her eyes still swollen with sleep. Together they reached the top of the wall and peered over.
The valley below was swarming with soldiers, and Caradoc’s sweeping glance took in a little knot of men far back, standing on a knoll and watching. He pointed. “That must be the emperor, curse him! Where is Plautius? And what is this?” The ranks parted directly below him and he saw something being wheeled forward.
“Ballista, Lord,” Cinnamus answered coolly. “They will weaken the walls and the soldiers will tear a hole. Then they will pour in like water through a breached dam.” Even as he spoke a dull boom reverberated through the air and the ground shook beneath their feet.
“We cannot fight, not yet,” Gladys said, the frustration and venom in her tone causing Eurgain to look at her sharply. “We must sit up here like stupid pheasants in a tree, and wait to be struck down.” She looked along the curve of the wall, where the chiefs stood resting on their spears, their women beside them, splashes of scarlet, blue, and yellow. “Like stones, like dead, useless branches,” she spat. “We should leap the wall and die quickly.”
“Peace,” Cinnamus said easily. “You sound like Vida,” and incredibly, wonderfully, they laughed, the swift ripple of mirth reaching the soldiers beneath them who paused to look up. In that moment Cinnamus coolly leaned out and threw his spear, and one of the men below crumpled backward. His fellows raised their shields again and went back to their digging, while the ballista let fly with a crack and a whizz and the stones from the peasants’ slings clicked and rattled.
“Where is Vida?” Eurgain asked.
Cinnamus shrugged. “She is still in bed,” he grunted. “She will come when she is ready.”
For a moment Caradoc was back in the Great Hall. The fire leaped merrily, voices rose and fell, the meat spat and smelled delicious, and he, Tog, and Adminius raised their cups while Cunobelin swayed to Cathbad’s music and Aricia and Vida argued and shouted, their black heads together, their black eyes flashing and their hands flying through the smoky air like the ashes spiraling to the roof. Eurgain put a hand on his arm, and he was recalled to himself by her touch.
“What about fire, Caradoc? Have you forgotten…”
He clapped his hands to his helmed forehead in exasperated disgust. “Fire! Of course! Caelte, run and find Mocuxsoma and the others. Begin tearing down the kennels and the stables. Cin, find Fearachar and tell him to bring us fire. What is the matter with me? I feel as though I have been in a deep sleep.” His chiefs quickly ran to do his bidding and he, Gladys, and Eurgain crouched against the wall, feeling the vibration of the siege machine quiver in their feet and hardpacked earth under them crack and loosen.
Vida sauntered over and sat beside them, yawning, her face pale, blinking in the strong daylight. She was dressed in one of Cinnamus’s simple tunics, but her legs were bare, and her feet were unshod. Her sword was held in one languid, uncaring hand and two knives were thrust her belt
“Vida, where is your shield?” Caradoc asked.
She yawned again, then grinned at him, her big white teeth flashing in the sun. “I lost it to one of my husband’s freemen last night, Lord—at the gambling.” Caradoc was angry. He began to lash at her, words of anxiety, but Fear
achar and the other chiefs came running, arms full of wood, and he rose.
“Make a fire here,” he commanded. “Pile on the wood. Get anything that will burn. If we can hold the soldiers back for a time it will be something.” They all hurried to fling brush, thatch, sticks from the walls of the huts, planks from the stables, on Fearachar’s fire, and soon it began to roar, the flames pallid in the sunlight.
The ballista hummed. Beneath them, the soldiers doggedly picked away at the wall, and the other chiefs, seeing what was in Caradoc’s mind, ran to take their own brands from the fire. Soon a hundred fires flickered, a ring of heat around the lip of the defences, and the heaps of wood grew beside them. Caradoc was satisfied at last. With a shout he grasped a burning brand, leaned over the edge, and dropped it. A scream went up below him. Gladys stamped her foot. “Right in the face, by the Mother! At them, Eurgain!” And Eurgain and Vida began to drag wood from the fire while Fearachar fed it.
All that day the Catuvellauni kept the legions from the walls, until the wood was gone from the kennels, and the stables, and all the huts of the freemen’s circle. Claudius, who had been watching greedily from his little hill, began to sweat under the noonday sun, and he called for his canopy, and sat under it, wiping his brow. Plautius finally ordered in the tormentae and the scorpios, and the chiefs began to fall from the walls, pierced by arrows as they stood to cast their fire downward, but the rain of orange hail did not stop, even though several of the fires, their tenders now dead, had gone out. Plautius ordered again, calmly, almost regretfully, marveling at the desperate tenacity of these uncouth people, and a great cry went up from the Catuvellauni. Flaming arrows now flew above them, burying deep in the dry, summer-parched thatch of the remaining roofs of the chiefs’ circle, and the huts burst into bright conflagrations, red against the slowly deepening, late afternoon sky.
“Caradoc, the children!” Eurgain screamed at him. “The knife is one thing, but I will not have them burned alive!”
Caradoc paused, wiping the sweat and grime from his eyes, and looked up. The Great Hall was untouched, rearing tall and proud against the gathering clouds of evening, just out of reach of the range of the scorpios. “I need you here, Eurgain,” he said shortly. “The Hall will stand until the walls crumble.” She thought for a moment, nodded grimly, and went back to her work, her blonde braids gray with ash, her hands swollen and burnt, her arms bleeding from a hundred scratches.
Night fell, and Plautius ordered the retreat sounded, well pleased with the day’s progress. The walls of the town were now so weakened that his men could pull them apart with bare hands, and the enemy had lost many men to the arrows of his scorpios. He stood beside a sleepy, grumpy emperor and watched the fiery destruction of Camulodunon. The tormentae had done their work well. The whole town was ablaze, all but the large, wooden building at the summit. It still stood defiantly, a black, flame-shadowed bulk, mocking him, but in the morning, when the fires would have eaten themselves out, the legions would at last be able to go in and they could complete their slaughter.
Somehow, in some strange, twisted way, he was sorry that it would all be over. He would have liked to meet this Caradoc, the chief whose determination in the face of certain defeat had kept his men fighting like lost demons. He would have liked to have shared a cup of wine with him, to have talked pleasantly of tactics and deployments over a good dinner. Already he felt the mystery of this land. It whispered to him as he lay in his tent at night, and it taunted him as he rode through its dense woods, a land full of spells and subtle, luring magic.
The cooking fires of his troops sprang up around him like sparks dropped from the colossal inferno that raged before him, and he thought of the tall chief he had glimpsed standing on the wall, bronze helm glinting in the sun, but Claudius spoke to him, a whip of annoyance in his voice, and Plautius sighed and bent to answer. He was not so sure now that he was more fortunate than his colleague Paulinus.
The chiefs sprawled sweating in the Great Hall, gnawing on chunks of cold meat and drinking the last of the beer as they listened to the steady wind of flames that was burning their town to ashes. Caradoc, sitting beside Llyn, with the little girls in his tired arms, felt a pang as he looked at them. So few had left. So few. Eurgain sat with her hands in a bucket of cold water, her eyes closed, and Gladys, her head sunk on her breast, was hunched against the wall, her naked sword resting across her knees. Vida and Cinnamus lay side by side on the skins and seemed to be asleep, and Caelte, who had recovered his harp from the corner where he had hidden it, sang softly to himself, seemingly unmindful of the angry red weal of a burn that snaked along one arm.
Caradoc knew that he should order them all out again to watch in case the Romans breached the walls under cover of darkness, but he did not have the heart to do so. Let them rest. What was the point of a sleepless night when here, for a time, they could forget their last tomorrow? Caradoc noticed that no one had crawled to the welcoming shadows of Cunobelin’s corner. The old warrior’s spirit still brooded there and would until the Hall fell in ruin, and Caradoc smiled in spite of himself.
“Caelte,” he called. “Sing us a song!”
There was a shocked silence, but Caelte’s kindly face lit up in answer. “What would you hear, Lord?” he asked.
Not of victories, Caradoc thought quickly. Not of raids or conquests. There must be no tears tonight. “Sing to us the song my father would not let Cathbad sing all those years ago, if you remember it. Sing the ‘Lady of Togodumnus the Many-Handed, and the Twelve Lost Cattle.’” A ripple of cracked, mirthless chuckles spread and Cinnamus sat up as Caelte struck a jaunty lilting chord and began to sing, the music slowly kindling the dull eyes that filled the Hall.
Togodumnus crept out in the deep, dark night,
He took with him no chief.
He wanted no man to spy him out—
Togodumnus was a thief! …
Caelte tapped his foot, his cheeky lyrics bringing smiles to the company, and they began to sway and hum under their breath, forgetting the desolation around them. When he had finished they applauded warmly, and Cinnamus shouted, “Ah, Caelte, what a good song! The best song you have ever composed! Sing it again!” So he sang it again, and they sang snatches of it with him, their quick ears picking up the words, and Caradoc, his heart lighter, glanced to the corner and fancied that he felt two spirits watching there, the heavy, cloying emanation of his father, and a merry, capering Tog.
Caradoc gently laid his sleeping daughters beside him on the skins while the Hall quieted down, and Fearachar came with cloaks to cover them and Llyn who was stretched out by his mother, already dozing. Caradoc sat back against the wall and Eurgain moved over to sit beside him. He put an arm around her and her head found his shoulder.
“How are your hands?” he asked softly.
“Better,” she answered. “But there are many blisters. If I want to swing a sword tomorrow I will have to bind them tightly.”
“It is not too late to leave,” he said after a moment. “I could let you and the children over the wall on a rope.”
“Oh, be quiet,” she murmured, and at last he laid his head on hers and fell asleep.
Chapter Thirteen
SOMETIME in the night, in the middle of a nightmare, Caradoc felt a hand on his arm. He was standing above a rocky valley, and the oppressive, sticky atmosphere, fraught with terror, turned his bones to sodden wood. Behind him waited a group of strange, unknown chiefs. A black spot appeared in the sky, grew rapidly, and became the Raven of Battle speeding toward him with a rustle of black wings, and just when his breath grew shorter and the sweat began to pour down his face, he felt one of the chiefs take his arm. He shouted aloud in shock, reaching for his sword, and sprang to his feet to find himself in the Great Hall, Eurgain struggling up beside him, and Cinnamus swaying blearily toward him, fumbling with the knife at his belt. One lamp burned, and around it the shadows were thick and black and utterly still. Outside, the roaring of the fire had died to a fit
ful crackling, and light rain pattered on the roof, while now and then the thunder rumbled discontentedly.
Caradoc came fully awake. A tall figure stood before him, hooded and cloaked. Nothing of the face could be seen. There was only a deeper blackness within the long oval of the hood, and Caradoc, his mind still teeming with the vivid images of his dream, cried out and raised two crossed fingers. In the unseen depths of the Hall the chiefs stirred, whispering, and blundered toward him, and Gladys strode under the lamp, her sword already raised high. As the Catuvellauni crept closer, peering in the dimness, the figure bowed, put a hand to its head, and folded back the hood. Black hair rose stiffly in a great crest from the forehead high above the two black, sharp eyes, and a black beard bushed around the hidden mouth and fell into riotous curls upon the massive chest. The hand moved to the beard and parted it, momentarily revealing a plain bronze torc, and the thick fingers then extended in greeting and Caradoc stepped forward to grasp the wrist. Gladys still held her sword above her shoulder and Cinnamus’s hand stayed on the hilt of his knife.
“No words of welcome to your Hall, Caradoc ap Cunobelin? Am I not bidden to rest in safety?”
Caradoc withdrew his hand. “There is no longer any safety within my walls, freeman, nor can I offer you anything but old, cold beef and the barrel’s dregs. I do not speak the words of hospitality until I know whether I face friend or foe.”
The man gazed around at the listening chiefs. “At one time the proud Catuvellaunian tuath and its Roman friends would have regarded me and mine as foes,” he said, “but it seems that certain friends have had a falling out and the tribes of the lowlands tumble over each other to snatch up the pickings. What shall I be to you, ricon without a people. Friend or foe?”
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