“I do not want to play the game with you, stranger,” Caradoc snapped. “There is no longer any time or place for such pursuits. If you want food and drink, that I will offer, such as it is. If not, state your business. Where are you from? How did you pass the Roman sentries?”
It was the question uppermost in all their minds. This man might be a Roman emissary. Gladys and Cinnamus did not move, and Eurgain slipped quietly and unobtrusively to stand over her children. The man laughed.
“On my belly! The Romans have worked much harder than you, digging into your fine walls for hours on end, and the night is old. The sentries’ eyes are heavy. Now for my business.” He undid his cloak slowly, so that all could see the grass stains on his brown tunic, and he loosened his belt, and sank to the skins with a grunt, the others following, all but Gladys, Cinnamus, and Eurgain. “I have come to take you all away with me, those who will come, of course. My men wait for you in the woods, with horses.”
A stunned, unbelieving silence greeted his words, and a glimmer of understanding flashed across Caradoc’s mind and was gone. “Where are you from?” he repeated, motioning for Cin and Gladys to put away their weapons.
The man clucked impatiently. “You know where I am from,” he said. “We waste time. I am a man of the west. The Silures are my tuath. I have orders to bring you, Caradoc, and all your family and your chiefs to my country.”
‘’Why?”
“Because you will all die tomorrow if I do not. You know this. There is absolutely no hope of any reprieve. Even your own people fight against you, and with your death goes the last resistance of the lowlands. You have always been soft, you river lovers,” he went on derisively. “How wise we were not to trust you! Look at you! The Atrebates surrendered, the Dobunni surrendered, the Iceni, the Brigantians, the Coritani, the Cornovii, ready to sue for peace without raising a single sword! And the Durotriges were defeated.”
Shock tingled in Caradoc’s fingers. So Vespasianus had returned victorious, just like that. Mother! It was not possible! The Durotriges were the best fighters, the wildest, most tenacious tribe of them all! Except… He looked at the Silurian and realized the answer to his own question. Except for the men of the west.
“You dug your own grave with your rapaciousness, Caradoc ap Cunobelin, you and your mad brother, and the tribes have turned against you. The Romans will toss you into the earth tomorrow, and the captured Trinovantian peasants, your slaves, will shovel the soil over you. My lord has been advised to rescue you, though it was against my wishes. I spoke in the Council, but the Druid spoke too, and my voice went unheeded.” He grinned maliciously. “It seems that you are needed in the west. Perhaps as an offering to Taran or Bel.”
The chiefs began to mutter among themselves, but Caradoc caught their sly, sidelong glances and his heart sank. Here, on the edge of eternity, facing annihilation, came a gift from the goddess, a chance to go on living, and suddenly their pledges of honor seemed a tawdry exchange for the hope of one more breath. He glanced at Eurgain as he turned to address the Silurian, but seeing the new hope light in his wife’s eyes, he stayed his eyes on her and kept his voice loud. “I have sworn to defend my birthright to the end, and my chiefs with me. I will not go as a slave and an outcast into the west, carrying with me a load of shame, while the Romans tear down the shrine and plant their aquilae on sacred ground.”
The man snorted rudely. “Rubbish! They will do those things anyway, you fool, as soon as your body is flung on the dungheap with the rest. Besides, I swear on my honor, on pain of forfeiting my honor-price, that you are not needed to haul wood and draw water. The Druithin have a use for you.”
Of course! Caradoc thought frantically. Mother, I know, but how do I know? There is something to remember, I must remember. But the remembering did not come. He shook his head. “This is my tuath. I will not go.”
The chiefs pressed forward shouting angrily, all but Caradoc’s own train. “Call for Council, Lord! We must all decide!” and the man sat back, smiling.
Caradoc kept silent, but then Eurgain stepped forward, her color high and her mouth set in a firm, rebellious line.
“It is time for Council,” she cried. “All slaves depart. All freemen draw near.” Caradoc jumped up but it was too late. She met his eye with a defiant glare and sat down taking Llyn’s hand, and he knew he had lost. Wild rage took him but he could only stand and shake with it, as one by one the chiefs leaped to their feet and voted to go. It did not matter where. Many of them had already decided to escape with the Silurian and then forsake him, heading north or southwest, to the coast, running anywhere but free, free, and only Gladys did not speak, watching them all with a twisted grimace of pure contempt.
She had already made up her mind. She did not want to die, but she had never run from anything or anyone and she was not going to begin now. She had no one to love, no ties to bind her, no one to mourn for her and eulogize her in song. All she had was her honor and her stubborn will, and she knew that if she ran she would leave even those things behind and become nothing. Her thumb found the edge of her blade and she drew it back and forth, feeling its sting.
Finally there was quiet. “What about you, Cin, and you, Caelte?” Caradoc said, holding his temper forcibly in check. “Fearachar? Vocorio? Mocuxsoma? You have a right to speak also.” Fearachar struggled to his feet, his loose jowls quivering and his mournful, hang-dog eyes sorrowful.
“I will stay with you, Lord,” he groaned. “I always knew that I would come to a violent end, but it does not matter. What is the final misery in a life of misery?”
He sat down and Cinnamus rose, his eyes on his wife who stood against the wall sneering, her hands on her curving hips.
“I stay,” he said shortly.
Caelte brought his hand smashing onto the strings of his harp, and a loud, discordant twang filled the room. “I, too,” he said, and then Vocorio and Mocuxsoma nodded.
Caradoc took a step and looked down on the rest. “I cannot gainsay the Council,” he said bitterly. “You are free to go as you have always been free in my service,” but the Silurian was rising, his fleshy hands waving.
“No,” he said firmly. “If the Lord and his men will not go, then my orders are to leave all of you.” An uproar of angry shouts and shaking fists greeted his words, and several of the chiefs turned on Caradoc, who drew his sword and backed against the wall.
“Idiots!” he called. “If you wanted to go why didn’t you just slip over the wall!” He swung the blade and the men retired.
“That was before Council,” someone said in an undertone. “Are we not men of honor?”
Caradoc felt like spitting in his face. Honor! By the Mother! Eurgain came close to him and put her hands on his shoulders, her eyes strained and her mouth trembling.
“My husband,” she said, her voice low. “All of us were prepared to die with you, but the Dagda has sent a chance of escape. Think well. It is good to die for honor’s sake, but is it not better to flee and then to turn and fight again? I know why this man is here. The Silures need you. You know the Romans as none of their people do. You can win the trust of their chiefs. Men follow you. Oh, Caradoc, please, please listen to me. I am not afraid to die. None of us is. But to die without reason, to throw away our lives in pride and stubbornness, this is not our way. If you stay then I and the children will stay and we will perish, but would you not like to see the sun set over the mountains of a free country and know that you live to fight again?” Tears shimmered on the long blonde lashes, and she dropped her hands and clasped them tightly together.
He looked at her for a long time. All his training, all his upbringing urged him to draw his sword and set about them. Before this, before his betrayal by his own people on the battlefield, before his brother’s death, honor had meant the sacrifice of everything else, but now his men had forgotten their honor, and suddenly he knew he could not blame them. Everything else had gone. Only pride remained, and pride, to a broken, dying tuath, was too expen
sive. He knew what Tog would do. Tog would kill the foreign chief and perhaps a few of his own men, and then stay lightheartedly to die. But then, Tog had been crazy. And what of you, my father? he asked in his mind. What would you have done? And again, he knew. Cunobelin had always walked the middle road, and that was why the Catuvellauni had become the greatest tribe in the lowlands. Caradoc sighed inwardly. Cunobelin would run away and live to smite his enemies again, but Caradoc, seeing his own struggle mirrored in the blue-clouded, pain-filled eyes of his wife, feeling her steady empathy, knew that whatever he did would bring guilt to torment him. Honor or life? Die like a warrior or sneak away, leaving the peasants to be slaughtered?
“Hurry!” the Silurian urged. “The moon is setting and soon the choice will be taken from you.”
Reluctantly, Caradoc sheathed his sword, picked up his cloak, and looked around disdainfully at the eager, watchful faces. “I will come,” he said.
The men sprang to life, cloaking and hooding themselves, thrusting their few treasures into their tunics, and Eurgain went to gently rouse the little girls. Fearachar spoke to Llyn, taking him by the hand, and Caelte thoughtfully wrapped his harp, and then they all moved toward the black hole of the doorway.
Only Gladys stayed where she was, leaning against the wall, her sword point in the floor and her head hanging.
Caradoc ran to her. “Gladys, sheath your sword. Be quick!”
“I am not going,” she said, raising her head wearily.
He wanted to slap her, to shake her, to draw his knife and put it to her throat and push her out of the room, the barbed lash of his own faint-hearted decision blooding him, and the undisguised scorn in her eyes a goad to his guilty rage. His head had said Go, but his heart still throbbed with the urge to stay. “You must!” he said, shouting at her. “There will be no one left! We can go on fighting, Gladys!” He took her arm, dragging her away from the wall, but she let go her sword and struck his hand away.
“Someone must be here when the peasants wake,” she hissed “Someone must lead them, someone must put up at least a token resistance. Never before have the Catuvellauni abandoned a stronghold without defence!”
“Gladys,” he replied quickly, while the chiefs shuffled at the other end of the room. “Our father himself would tell us to run if the opportunity came, for never before have we faced the might of Rome. We gave them battle on the banks of the Medway. We held them off for nearly two days. Who else could have done that? We did not dishonor ourselves then and we do not dishonor ourselves now. We run in order to preserve our heritage.”
“What heritage?” she sneered openly, tears pouring down her sallow cheeks. “For a hundred years no Catuvellaunian chieftain has been bested by Rome, or anyone else, until now, and now our heritage has dwindled to a handful of cowards.”
He looked at her speculatively for a moment. “This is not like you,” he said at last. “You of all people have always kept a clear head. You know what Cunobelin would do, and you would have advised him to do it, so why this sudden blindness?”
Her shoulders slumped and she held out her hands. “My fingers are soaked in blood, Caradoc. I cannot wash it away. It is not Roman blood, for Roman blood is thin and cold. This is the blood of my kinsmen, my friends, hot and strong, and the stains will not go away.” She turned to him, tendrils of dark hair curling on her wet, high forehead, and her eyes were full of a suffering he could only see but never feel. “Do you know who I killed, Caradoc?” she said, laughing, the sound coming out breathy and abrupt, strangled. “Do you? I slew Sholto as he swung beside a Roman soldier, before he could cleave Togodumnus in two. What madness took them, the traitors? You and I, all of us, were forced to dishonor ourselves by killing our own tuath, and I dream of their blood streaming around me and I cannot rid myself of the vision of Sholto’s eyes as he went down under my blade. I must stay. I must retrieve my honor somehow.”
Aching with pity he gathered her into his arms. “Gladys, Gladys, do you want to die?” he whispered. “All of us are guilty of this blood. None of us will ever be clean, but perhaps the Roman lives we can yet take will help to wash away that stain.”
She rested against him, her thin, tight body tense, but then she pulled free and bent, picking up her sword. “How do you cleanse a soul, my brother?” she asked him. “Yes, I am ready to die.”
He saw that she would not be swayed. The others were calling to him, their voices sharp with panic, and he kissed her on her forehead. “Farewell, my sister,” he spoke softly.
“Go in peace,” she whispered back, turning away deliberately as he ran to the door, his tears coming slowly, hurtfully.
The Silurian motioned to his followers as soon as Caradoc joined them. “Follow me,” he said curtly. “Keep low and do not speak.” He vanished into the darkness and they crept after him, moving silently through the warm curtain of rain and the gusting freshness of the night wind. He led them down the path that ran to the now impassable gate, crouching swiftly, blending as only he could with the wet darkness, and they hurried after him, gliding unseen between the warm, smouldering heaps of ash that had once been their homes.
Caradoc, a child in his arms, still wept, but his spirits began to rise as he felt an end to the weeks of living with the certainty of death. It was good to be doing something, to be going somewhere, to be able to look ahead without flinching. He would not mourn Gladys and her fate. Each freeman and freewoman had the right to choose death, and if that death was honorable, no tears were expected. Tears were spent on memories, not remorse. Each independent member of the tuath dictated his own fate, and so it was right.
The Silurian veered suddenly, dropped to his belly, and slithered away, Eurgain behind him, and Cinnamus with little Eurgain in his arms behind her. Caradoc, on elbows and knees in the mud, the rain soaking his back, looked up. The wall loomed ahead and lower down. He shifted his daughter’s weight and she whispered, “Father, put me down. I can crawl.” He nodded, gesturing, and she disappeared before him. There was no sign of the peasants. They would be crowded into the few huts still standing behind the Great Hall, probably asleep, and he felt a surge of guilt but quickly beat it back. They were nothing, only peasants, little better than cattle or slaves. But unlike slaves, they are men, his mind retorted. He groaned and crawled on.
At length, the man stopped. They were right against the wall now, at its foot, in a hollow of dryness that the rain could not reach. He waved silently, pointed to a rock, and put his thick arms around it. Two chiefs crawled to help, and with surprising ease the rock moved, came loose, and they eased it outward. The man vanished for a moment, wriggled back and waved them on, and they squeezed after him. Caradoc, pushing his way after little Gladys, found himself suddenly outside Camulodunon, in a place where the wall snaked back on itself and made a sheltered, hidden corner. The valley was shrouded and quiet. The Roman cooking fires had long since been put out, but Caradoc, his ears straining to reach what his eyes could not, fancied that he heard the low voices of sentries off to his left. Now for the dyke. Must they swim? The last chief emerged from the hole and the Silurian motioned to them, striking out once more into the drizzle, running low down the grassy bank before the dyke. With scarcely a ripple he slid into the black, oily water and began to swim, and Eurgain followed after, her tunic billowing about her on its surface for a moment like a gray sail. Caradoc picked up little Gladys and swung her onto his shoulders. She was exposed now and any soldier who happened to look their way with sharp eyes could have seen her, but she was still under the shadow of the wall and the chance had to be taken. In another moment Caradoc was in the water. Gladys slid to his back and clung to him with frightened fingers and he fought his way across, the cold of the water shocking to his bones even though it was high summer. The Silurian had already pulled himself up onto the farther bank and was crawling away, with the muffled, almost invisible line of men and women after him. Caradoc tumbled Gladys onto the bank and climbed out of the water to see Cinnamus waiting in fr
ont of him. Suddenly Caradoc had an idea. He turned to the chiefs behind him. “Here, Vocorio, take care of Gladys. Cin, give Eurgain to Mocuxsoma,” he whispered, and the chiefs took the children without a word and passed on. Caradoc then went close to Cinnamus and put his mouth to the other’s ear. “Adminius,” he said. “Where do you think he is?”
Cinnamus shrugged. “There are thousands of tents out there,” he whispered back. “Any one of them could hold him.”
“But wouldn’t Plautius want to keep him close by? I would like a chance at him!”
Cinnamus pondered briefly, then shook his head. “It is too great a chance to take, Lord. We might find him but it would take too long. He is probably well guarded. No, we must leave him to the demons.”
Caradoc had to agree. It was only a thought, but it had brought him a spurt of pleasure. More than anything else, he wanted his brother’s breast under his knife. He and Cinnamus crawled on.
In half an hour they had passed clean through the neat, precise lines of the enemy tents. The Silurian had chosen a good time to make his bid, for it was the hour when time seemed to slow, when men slept heaviest, when the sentries’ spirits were at their lowest, their heads thick with the need for rest. In two hours the dawn would come, bringing an end to the haphazard, sprawling Catuvellaunian empire. Claudius snored, lying on his back in his spacious, silk-hung tent. Plautius dozed uneasily, worry still dogging his thin dreams like a cloud of mosquitoes, and the Catuvellaunian chiefs gained the cover of the dark woods at last and straightened with relief. The Silurian did not pause. He plunged in under the rustling branches, moving in a half-run, half-lope like an animal, and the others followed. Caradoc knew where they were. He, Tog, and Adminius had used this path many times on their way north, riding out to raid, and memories curled about the trunks of the trees and drifted in the long grasses under his light feet. But the man left the path after a mile, running straight into the brush where the dark brambles hung heavy with beads of moisture. Further on there was another path, Caradoc knew, that would have taken them into Dobunni country, but this man of the west obviously wanted to travel on the border between the Atrebates and the Durotriges. Caradoc looked ahead and saw that Llyn was failing, walking with one hand clamped to his side while his feet stumbled beside Fearachar. Just then they were challenged by a group of men on horses. They all halted, panting, and the Silurian went forward. Caradoc counted five, perhaps six riders, but he could not be sure in the gloom. The Silurian spoke to the horsemen rapidly, then turned and beckoned to Caradoc. Unconsciously, and from long habit, Caradoc drew his sword and then started forward. Cinnamus and Caelte swung in beside him, and together they walked noiselessly to where the black beasts pawed the ground, their harnesses muffled. A tall man dismounted and strode to meet them, his step long and purposeful. His hood was up, and silver gleamed on his wrists as he held out his hand.
The Eagle and the Raven Page 24
