The Eagle and the Raven

by Pauline Gedge

  Saloc smiled faintly as he interpreted, and the tribunes grinned ruefully into the fire. Pudens sat looking at Prasutugas, taken aback for a moment, then his glance slid to Boudicca and noted her quivering lips, the rapid blinking of her eyes. He squared his shoulders against a fleeting breath of shame.

  “Very well,” he said loudly. “I am glad, Lord, that I do not have to couch those terms in pretty language. Some chiefs are so touchy!” He smiled. “The terms are thus. The Divine Claudius gives gold to you. It is a gift, a token of his good will. As a pledge to Rome of your own honesty and fair dealing you will swear oaths not to bear arms against any citizen of Rome. If you have grievances in the future you will bring them to the courts at Camulodunon. You will also allow a small garrison to be built here, near the town, and posting stations every ten miles along the road that will be built to the garrison. Later, if all goes well, there will be another road.”

  Again Prasutugas raised a hand. “I want no roads cutting across my people’s fields. No oaks are to be felled to clear the way for such roads, either. How many soldiers will man this garrison? What authority will they have over us? I will allow no interference with my rule, Pudens.”

  Rufus nodded. “The roads will be built along the existing paths. I have ridden them here, coming up from the south, and they need little changing. The garrison will hold eighty to one hundred men, depending on the state of peace in the province from year to year. The commander will have no authority whatsoever over your internal affairs, Lord. He will be concerned only with keeping the peace, and he will be invaluable to you as an intermediary between yourself and the governor.”

  “That depends entirely on what kind of man he is,” Boudicca spoke up sharply. “If he is a barbarian-hater he could make our lives a torment.”

  “That is true,” Pudens acknowledged. “Therefore I will request that he be sent here on probation. If after six months you are not satisfied with him, the governor will replace him.”

  “Why do you want a garrison here?” Boudicca persisted. “Icenia is surrounded on three sides by the ocean, and to the south there is only land that Rome already holds tight. You want to spy on us, don’t you?”

  Carefully Pudens lifted his cup, put it down, poured into it from the silver jug at his elbow, then, having given himself time to think, he answered her. “I must presume, Lady, that you are no child either. Your people want peace at the moment, but what of next year and the one after that? Surely you understand that Rome must protect her own interests by making sure that no disaffected elements rise within your tuath and turn your husband’s good work into chaos in the future. The commander will not spy on you, but he will be always present to make sure that there is never any need to do so.”

  “Well, you are honest in this, at least!” she snapped. “But as I see it, Icenia will be in the hands of one man. If he is fair and just all will be well, but if not, we are prisoners. We will not be able even to reach the governor’s ear.”

  “You presume that men are either all evil or all good,” he said with a smile that was almost indulgent, “and of course Romans are all evil, and if they are not then they hide their wicked hearts behind a mask. Your fears will soon be seen to be unfounded, Lady.” He returned to Prasutugas. “There is also the matter of tribute.” Boudicca let out a long breath and her husband’s face hardened. “I cannot tell you with any certainty what the taxes will be, for the procurator has not yet arrived from Rome. But he will visit you and assess your land and the numbers of your herds and flocks. You are very wealthy, Lord, and your taxes will be high,” he warned.

  Prasutugas kept his eyes on the glowing depths of the fire, wondering at Boudicca’s stillness. She had slumped back into the shadows but he felt her distress. Where is her rage? he thought to himself anxiously. Where the flood of barbed questions?

  “I will pay the taxes,” he said slowly. “We can afford this, in exchange for peace. But I absolutely refuse to allow any Icenian freemen or women to be taken as slaves, nor will I send levies of my young men for the legions or the arenas. I cannot bargain with you on this, Pudens.”

  “I understand. You still do not quite believe, do you, that Rome is kind? I will tell you the truth, Prasutugas. No free people will be taken as slaves, but I can make no promises about the levies. Rome needs healthy young men, and Albion has them in abundance. I think that in this you will have no choice.”

  His voice was firm, hard, and Prasutugas answered bitterly, “I see that we have no choice in anything. Yet I will not complain. I thirst for a life of contentment and growth for my people. The price is high, yet we will pay it.” Still Boudicca did not comment. She, Lovernius, and Iain sat hunched in the darkness, but Prasutugas felt her agony like a smothering weight. His head ached and he felt older than his years. “I have a request to make of you,” he said. “I have heard that the philosopher Seneca is a very rich man, and is willing to lend his money to any who can afford to borrow from him. I and some of my chiefs wish to borrow.”

  Boudicca jerked upright. “No, Prasutugas!” she cried out. “No, no! We do not need this money! Such a debt is without honor, and who will stand as surety for you if you cannot pay? Who will make the promises?” Saloc began to translate her words but she silenced him with a vicious oath. “My husband,” she pleaded softly. “Already we swim desperately, afraid lest the waters close over us. Leave all as it is. Ask for no more, or we will drown.”

  He turned to her and grasped her hot hand in his own. “My love,” he whispered, near to tears. “Can’t you see that I am doing what I can to save the people? The money will soothe the pain of transformation. It will quicken the time it takes to put the tuath on Roman feet. For the Catuvellauni the time was long, a hundred years of slow weaving, but for us it must be now, today, this year, a swift slash to sever all the yesterdays, and then a slow, easy healing. I know what I am doing. I am killing, I am murdering, so that something else can be born. Understand! Please, Boudicca, do not fail me now!”

  Pudens and his men sat with lowered heads, fidgeting with their cups, the raw, unselfconscious emotion in Prasutugas’s words making them squirm inwardly with embarrassment, but for a while the two did not care that they were present.

  Boudicca rose, took a step, and then knelt before Prasutugas, putting her head onto the warmth of his chest. “Help me,” she whispered. “I want to do what is right. I cannot bear what is happening tonight, I cannot bear it, Prasutugas, and I am the first you kill.” His arm closed around her and he put his cheek against her hair, but he had no more words to say to her and in dumb unhappiness they swayed together, then he pushed her gently away. She rose, signaled to Saloc to continue, and went out of the hall without another glance at any of them.

  When Prasutugas finally came to bed she was still awake, lying on her back with her eyes on the ceiling. Beside her, in its cradle, the baby slept deeply, and one lamp burned on the low table opposite the door.

  “He is leaving in the morning,” he said. “Aricia and Venutius are expecting him in Brigantia. I have arranged the loan, Boudicca, on behalf of myself and the other chiefs who wanted it.” He looked toward her for comment but she said nothing. She did not even blink. The eyes went on staring, and in the end he stretched himself beside her with a groan of pure exhaustion. “I am too tired to even undress myself,” he sighed. Before long his breathing deepened and he relaxed against her, but he did not feel the tears that trickled over her temples to wet his tangled hair.

  After a polite but hurried meal eaten in the hall, Pudens and the soldiers said their farewells. None of them had slept well. Their faces were gray in the strong summer morning light, their eyes bleary, and Boudicca looked as though she had not rested at all. Saloc, who had been oddly attracted to her, tried to engage her in small talk while her husband pointed the tribunes to the northwest tracks, but she edged away from him and refused to take his hand. Finally Pudens mounted, the infantry formed ranks, and at a brusque command the little cavalcade set off toward t
he forest. For a moment Boudicca watched them go, new sunlight glimmering softly around them, then suddenly she picked up the hem of her tunic and raced after Pudens. He glanced back and saw her coming, and he reined in his fretting, impatient beast. Panting, she grasped his leather-shod heel.

  “‘Let me remind you of one thing,” she said hoarsely. “Even dogs have dignity. Do you understand me?”

  He gazed down into the freckled, chestnut-haloed face for a long time, feeling those capable, tough fingers bite into his ankle, seeing the mingled pleading and defiance in the mauve-shadowed eyes. He nodded curtly. “I do.” She let go of him and he wrenched on the reins and cantered after his men, and she walked slowly back to Prasutugas.

  “What did you say to him?” he asked curiously, and she shrugged.

  “Nothing very much. I simply wanted to know if he was fond of dogs.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  BRAN reined in his tired horse, dismounted, and strode back to Caradoc, who sat still, Cinnamus and Caelte beside him, and Eurgain behind. “We have arrived,” Bran said. “Leave the horses here, they will be attended to.”

  Caradoc slid from his mount and gently set Gladys on her feet. The child was ill and shivered continually. She whimpered as she felt the sodden ground quelch under her boots and Bran, bending and peering into her flushed face, scooped her up and walked away. Caradoc stretched, loosened his sword, then ordered Cinnamus to take Eurgain and follow Bran. He looked around him. There was not much to see. The night was very dark and rain poured down in a chill, never-ending curtain. It had been raining for five days, and Camulodunon lay three weeks behind them, back where the summer was hot and dry and a man could stand on the hill by the Great Hall and see for miles over the forest and the river. He could not see them but he could feel them here, the mountains, rising from low, treeclad foothills, ragged heights bare of snow in the fleeting warmth of summer. He felt uneasy, knowing that they were there. They dwarfed him.

  For a week they had ridden hard during the day and half the night, through tinder-dry woodland, beside warm streams, sleeping with their faces to the stars and their cloaks flung from hot limbs. But gradually the weather had changed. Summer did not hold the west for long. The party began to climb imperceptibly, the ground rising and falling in long, thickly treed troughs, but always rising more than it fell, and one day the rain came. At first it was pleasant, a cool, cleansing draft after the summer heat, but as they rode on the rain became heavier, colder, and the children sneezed and huddled deeper into cloaks that were never quite dry. Bran and Jodocus led them confidently, oblivious of the weather, and they saw no man in all the miles lengthening between them and their familiar country. Some times there were little fields hewn out of the forest’s greedy fingers, crops standing yellow and tall, splashes of color and order in an otherwise wild land, but the peasants who tended the fields had vanished. Only the animals watched them with hidden, bright eyes as they passed along the hunting paths as furtively and swiftly as the wolves themselves. At night Caradoc heard them crying far away, a chorus of howls and yips that froze his blood, for the moon was nearing the full and magic ran strong and deep under the dark, dripping trees. More often than not the company did not know the names of the goddesses whose woods they crossed and they could not placate them. Only Bran and Jodocus were at ease. They sat talking softly together at night, sitting cross-legged by the fire that hissed as the raindrops steamed in it, black beard and gold wagging in the flickering light.

  Then the morning came when Eurgain woke early, rose from the mossy ground under the oaks where they were camped, and stepped through the trees to where pale light was flowing. For a moment she stood unbelieving, her cloak bundled against her breast, and she whirled and ran back, taking Caradoc by the shoulder and shaking him urgently. “Get up, get up,” she whispered. “Come and see!” He came awake immediately, grabbed up his sword, and ran after her. They broke through the edge of the wood and she pointed, hardly able to speak for the excitement bubbling within her. The trees ended abruptly and right at their feet the land fell away, sloping steeply in a long, running curve that ended on a wide valley floor through which a river snaked, red in the morning sun. The valley bottom was patchworked with golden, cropped fields. Two miles away they could look across the chasm and see the land struggling up again like the crest of a huge, frozen wave, but it was not the valley that made Eurgain’s voice tremble. Far beyond, over the scrub that lipped the other side of the valley, was a marching line of hills dressed in forest, crowned bare like the knobbled spines of sleeping monsters. And farther back still, so far that they seemed to drift on a sea of pink mist, were the mountains.

  “Ah, Caradoc, to see them, to actually see them!” Eurgain breathed. “What strange rocks and crystals lie hidden there, waiting for me to discover them! I could only dimly sense their secrets, sitting at my window at home, but here they have a voice!”

  “They sing a song of promises to you, beloved,” he said. “But take care. Do not give them your heart. You will be very lonely if you do.” She turned and smiled at him, kissing him on the mouth and laying her tousled head against his neck.

  “Are you jealous, Caradoc?”

  “Perhaps. There are many things far stronger than another man that wait to take a wife’s love away from her husband.” She raised her head.

  “And what of the things that divide husband from wife? You from me? How many more times will I hold you in some quiet, peaceful place such as this, far from councils and war and all the other things that claim you? Oh Caradoc, I wish that fate had not seen fit to choose this way for you. I love you. How can I live, wondering, not knowing from day to day whether you live or die?” She seldom let down her cool guard, even to him, and he held her tightly. There was nothing to say. The very pores of her body were better known to him than his own, yet after ten years of marriage she could still surprise him, still intrigue him with glimpses of a character that ran infinitely deep, each layer carefully covered over with a mystery of which he would never tire. He took her hand and led her quietly in under the trees, away from the still sleeping camp, and the brief moment of watery sunlight went out as the day’s rain clouds began to gather.

  To Eurgain’s disappointment, they did not enter the mountains. They picked their way onto the valley floor and then turned south, riding beside the river. For two days they followed it without sheltering trees, defenceless under the rain’s fierce lashing. Then they forded it at a place where it widened into a shallow, rocky pool. Caradoc thought that he could catch the tang of the ocean mingling with the river’s dank odor and the smell of sour earth, and with a queer twist of the heart he thought of Gladys’s cave, its dry dimness empty now forever. Then they clattered up the farther bank and pressed on, skirting the dark foothills that bulked sullenly on their right. In another four days and half a night they had arrived.

  Caradoc waited while Eurgain dismounted stiffly and came to him, then they followed Bran, and the silent Catuvellaunian chiefs straggled behind. The village was small, three or four circles of round, wooden huts with thatched, sloping roofs, but the huts themselves were large and spacious, each with a low gate followed after a few steps by doorskins. At the gate to the largest hut a man waited, uncloaked, and as Caradoc walked forward the man spoke, holding out his arm. “Welcome to this hall,” he said. “If you come in peace, then stay in peace.” Caradoc’s cold, wet fingers found the other wrist, strong and warm. “I am Madoc, of the House Siluria. I apologize for the rain. Our summer is almost over, and between it and the autumn there is always a period of turbulence.” He withdrew his hand and turned, bidding them to follow, and they stumbled after him, eager faces and hands reaching out to the room’s welcome heat.

  Slaves waited to take their sodden cloaks, small, dark men with blackbirds’ eyes. In the center a huge log fire crackled, its smoke hanging thick about the airy ceiling, and Caradoc, shedding his cloak and going to the fire, felt as though he were in a big, pleasant tent. Madoc drew h
is knife and hacked part of the haunch from the pig that turned slowly over the flames, handing it to Caradoc, and easing him to a place on the skins. Another slave brought dark, strong beer and a dish full of new peas, green and juicy. Llyn and Fearachar had entered, the boy swaying on his feet, blinking in an effort to keep his eyes open, and Madoc beckoned them over. Caelte had not waited to be invited. He was already settling himself by Caradoc’s knees, and his glance flicked over the company. About forty chiefs squatted on the skins, with the remains of their meal on the floor in front of them. Their gaze went unashamedly to the bedraggled, dirty foreigners. Little Eurgain was already asleep, too tired for food, rolled in a dry cloak against the wall, but of his wife, his other daughter, Cinnamus, and Bran there was no sign. Madoc, seeing his anxious, roving glance, gently pushed the dish closer to him. “Eat. Eat! The Druid ministers to the little one. A fever is a small thing for him to cure with his herbs, and with good sleep she will be well by the night after tomorrow.” Caelte met his master’s enquiring eye and nodded.

  “They have gone to another hut,” he said. “Eurgain went too,” and Madoc chuckled.

  “You do not trust us fiends of the west! Well, you will learn. And you will learn also!” he roared at his still-staring, silent men. “Where’s my bard? On your feet, man, and sing! The foreigners are hungry and tired and there will be no Council tonight.” His odd, stiffly frilled hair seemed to bristle at them, and he lay back on his skins with a grunt and closed his eyes. “Food and sleep, and then war, eh Catuvellaunian? I hope you are worth all the trouble we have taken over you, as the Druid says you are.” The bard tuned his little harp and cleared his throat, and Caelte’s eyes began to shine in the firelight. Presently Cinnamus and Eurgain pushed back the doorskins and slipped to Caradoc’s side.