The Eagle and the Raven

by Pauline Gedge

  They led their horses deep in under the arms of the oaks, to a place where the sky was utterly blotted out by high-soaring branches, and there they ate a cold meal and unrolled their blankets. Andocretus ventured farther into the wood to find a stream, for they were very thirsty, but his companion would not stir from the friendly sounds of the snuffling horses. When Andocretus came back, the full skins slung over his shoulder, the other said in a half-whisper, “Who are the gods of these woods, Andocretus, do you know? Who do the Deceangli worship?” Andocretus handed him the water and wriggled under his blanket. “I do not know. But all the men of the west, and the Romans too, move freely here. I do not think the gods of the Deceangli will molest us. Samain is far away.” Nevertheless, they lay side by side while the shadows thickened and the sun vanished, gazing up into the moving darkness above them, their ears straining. Neither of them slept, and when dawn came, colorless and heatless, they got up quickly and left that place.

  All day they plodded through an unending green ocean of summer-lit leaves. Twice they crossed little streams that gurgled hypnotically, running clear and very cold to disappear under last year’s damp russet carpet. Andocretus did not bother to make sure the horses made no mark in the wet spongy moss overhanging the banks of the water. He wanted this silent, tree-prisoned journey to end. When the light began to fail they again left the faint but unmistakable track they had been following and made another fireless camp, noting that the ground was no longer soft and yielding and the soil was thinner, barely covering the broken rock beneath. The trees had been thinning, too, and their girth and height was less. Fear lay like ugly burdens on them now and they kept close together, lying back to back under a tree with their eyes wide open and their hands aching for knife or sword. Stars winked fitfully at them as the night wind stirred the forest’s roof, and apart from the scratching of leaf on leaf, the silence was absolute. Then Andocretus, staring with tired eyes into the gloom, thought he caught the glint of moon on metal. He sat up. It was there again, a flicker of dull light, and he rose to his feet, dragging his friend with him. With their hearts pounding they strove to see with their ears, hear with their eyes, and then they found themselves knocked to the earth with a speed and suddenness that stunned them. Andocretus, the dark forest spinning around him, saw a nightmare bending over him, the frozen snarl of an angry wolf whose black mane tumbled over his chest. He closed his eyes.

  “Kill them quickly and let us be gone!” he heard the wolf say. “We are too close to Deva, and the night is fine. The patrols will be out.”

  “Wait,” a deep voice answered it. “Wait.” Hands touched the jet necklace at Andocretus’s throat, and the bracelet on his arm, and he lay very still and would not open his eyes. Then rough hands lifted him as though he were a wisp of grass and set him on his feet. “Open your eyes, Andocretus,” the same voice commanded, and he obeyed.

  The wolf was standing looking at him, its face a metal horror, but Andocretus, with a rush of gladness, fixed his eyes on the black-bearded chief whose hands still gripped him by his hair. “Domnall! Brigantia has given me luck! My lady is in such trouble but I was afraid that I would never find the arviragus! Will you take us to him?” Behind Domnall and the wolf, seven or eight chiefs stood in the gloom, unmoving, as quiescent and dark as the forest itself. Domnall released Andocretus slowly and the wolf turned its stiff face to him.

  “Then the rumors are true!” it whispered. “Aricia…”

  “Hold your tongue, Sine!” Domnall said, then he stepped up to Andocretus until his breath warmed the other’s cheek. “I must now decide, my one-time brother, whether to kill you here or take you with us. Your facility for lying is well known to me, Andocretus. Indeed, you lie better than you sing, and that is well enough. How come you here?”

  Marshaling his scattered forces, Andocretus lifted his eyes to meet Domnall’s. “I do not come willingly,” he said in a low, hurried voice. “I am afraid of these forests, afraid of the mountains. But my lady is dying, Domnall. Day after day she lies on her bed, and her flesh has shriveled to her bones. The Roman physician can do nothing for her. She longs only to see her husband, to beg from him forgiveness for the wasted years. She sent me to find him, out of her desperation.” Blue eyes locked with brown ones, but Domnall was no Druid. His gaze fell first and he frowned at the ground.

  “‘Happy is he who dies slowly,’” he quoted, “‘for he may recover his soul.’ So say the Druids. And yet…yet…”

  “Kill them now and let us go!” Sine urged him. “That woman has never told a truth in all her life! Domnall, he lies to you!”

  Domnall’s wide shoulders hunched. “Be still, Sine. This is a matter of kin, a private matter, and you may not interfere.”

  “But your lord is now arviragus! His loyalty no longer goes to the kin!”

  Domnall ignored her and Andocretus looked at her curiously. This was no wolf. Only a slender, weapon-girt woman, whose black hair fell over the bronze mask that hid her face. But out of that mask two moon-glittering eyes poured suspicion over him. Finally Domnall straightened. “I do not think that he lies,” he said, “but even if he does, this matter is too weighty for me. My lord must hear. Tie them onto their horses!” he called to the men behind him. “Blindfold them!” Firm hands took Andocretus and the young chief back to the path, and Sine caught Domnall by the arm.

  “You know what this could do to him,” she said. “Even if the young man lies, the doubt will tear him in two. Domnall, I beg you, kill the messengers, kill the rumors. If it is true then no matter. Let her die as she deserves. If not you will have done him a great service.”

  “Sine, I cannot,” he replied, the frown still furrowing his face. “He has ordered all strangers brought to him and, besides, if he knew that I had hidden such news he would slay me. There are Druids in the camp. We…” But she had swung away from him and was disappearing into the darkness.

  For the rest of the night and far into the morning they glided through the forest, and Andocretus, sightless on his horse, his wrists tied together behind his back, marveled at how he seemed to be alone. No sound of human footfall came to his ears, no whiff of human presence, yet he knew that ten people accompanied him. They gave Andocretus and his friend no food or water, nor did they stop to eat themselves. His horse plodded steadily onward, jolting him so that soon his muscles cried out, for they were climbing steadily, weaving back and forth. Wind began to play on his face. At last he began to hear something, or thought he did, a murmuring, a quiet sound of continual movement, and then a word was spoken. His horse came to a halt. Hands reached for him, pulling him down, and he stood shakily while a knife parted the rope around his arms and the blindfold was torn from his head. He looked around him, blinking in bright sunlight. Gray, tattered tents spread like clumsy gulls as far as he could see, half-buried in scrub and rocks. A few small fires burned without smoke, tended carefully by limber, squatting men, and men and women sprawled silently outside the tents or stood in quiet groups. His glance found the horizon, a long, tree-clad slope that ended in naked rock where sentries perched. Behind him the slope continued to a river and on to the eaves of the forest he had left, and more men and women stood like the trees themselves, unmoving, at intervals along the bank, their eyes turned to the cool green depths of the wood. His friend was beside him, pale and nursing sore wrists but unhurt, and they smiled tentatively at each other, acknowledging without words the bare discomfort of this forbidding place, the oppression in the muted sounds of a camp that should have been alive with laughter and shouts.

  He and his companion were ordered to sit next to one of the fires, and they sank to the ground with relief. Food was brought to them—cold rabbit, bitter bread, an onion apiece, and hunks of white, strong-smelling cheese, all washed down with black beer that tasted of sour, rotting undergrowth. Then they sat in that animal quiet, their guard’s eyes fixed on them, while the afternoon drowsed on. They finally dozed also, with two sleepless days and nights behind them, and the
y felt, in some odd way, completely safe.

  Their guard woke them and they rose at once to dusk. Around them the fires were being extinguished and the last of the day’s orange and pink light still lay gently on the lip of the little valley. The forest slumbered in its evening dimness, but long, thin shadows followed the three men who came striding up the slope toward Andocretus and his companion. With a beating heart Andocretus recognized Venutius, but he did not know the short, burly chief who swaggered beside him, or the graceful one who walked a step behind. He faced them, bowing to Venutius, and the familiar riot of red hair and beard, the wild, piercing eyes and swooping nose brought a sickness frothing inside him. Venutius knew that he was more than his lady’s bard, but those alert eyes met his own without rancor. Only Venutius’s mouth betrayed pain. It was slightly parted, ready to tremble into anger or contort with grief. Andocretus remembered that face twisted into agony, shamed under pitiless sunlight, and the blood that had fled down the shuddering chest. The sickness threatened to reach his mouth. He swallowed and faced his greatest test. “Greetings, Lord,” he said. “I am glad to have found you at last.”

  Venutius did not hold out his hand, nor did he introduce his chieftains. He stood looking into Andocretus’s face, afraid yet crying out to find there what he sought. In spite of himself Andocretus’s own face drew into an expression of tense antagonism.

  “You have eaten and drunk,” Venutius said at last. “Now give me your news. No, wait. Emrys, have the Druid called to me.” The chief went away sheltering a disturbing air of latent ferocity. When he returned Andocretus saw to his dismay that the same Druid who had come to see his lady in Brigantia was with him, striding like a man on naked feet, her small, bony shoulders swinging, and her thin face brittle with hostility. The young man beside him stirred and exclaimed quietly and Andocretus wanted to clap a hand over his mouth to him to keep silent.

  “Well,” she said as she came up. “It is the Lady Aricia’s pretty singing boy.” She halted beside Emrys, and Venutius made a swift, savage gesture, but she spoke again. “Now we will discover if the rumors are true.”

  Andocretus looked back at Venutius, whose face had turned ashen. “Speak!” he commanded, and Andocretus forced his eyes to hold Venutius’s. It was hard, harder than anything he had ever done, more distasteful than he thought it would be, but he said the words.

  “Lord, she is dying. She has so little flesh left that she is no longer like a woman. She begs you, she implores you to come to her so that she may tell you how she has wronged you before death claims her. She bade me give you this.” He willed his fingers not to shake as he opened the pouch on his belt and drew out the necklace. “She does not ask that you remain with her, only that you give her a moment of forgiveness.” He held out the jewels and Venutius slowly took them, turning them over in his fingers. Then his other hand came up to grip them also, and his head went down. “Druid,” he whispered huskily. “Tell me again the words she used of me,” and Andocretus saw Emrys and the stout, black-haired chief exchange glances. The Druid answered promptly.

  “I despise my husband, I have always despised him, and I do not want him back.”

  Venutius’s knuckles showed white. “You have called the rumors false,” he said again to the Druid. “What do you say now? Look at this youth, and for the Mother’s sake, give me truth!” His voice rose, a cry of despair, and the Druid looked coolly at Andocretus’s beautiful, tanned face, the clear blue eyes, the blond hair that wafted shining to the slim shoulders. Andocretus kept his gaze fixed on her tiny mouth for fear his eyes would tell her everything.

  After a time she sighed. “He is a liar,” she said bluntly. “A magnificent, handsome young liar. Your wife is not dying, Arviragus. She is not even ill—that is, her body does not suffer. I give you truth.”

  “I told you!” the big chief grunted triumphantly, a smile weaving yet another furrow through his lined face. “Now slay this bird and think no more on the matter!”

  Venutius looked up slowly, and in that moment Andocretus believed that he had won. No one would ever be able to tell the arviragus a truth about his wife. Though he himself had heard the words of hate and treachery from her own lips, though he had torn his body away from her, yet he still chose the mind’s blindness, and in that blindness was a living, growing cloud of doubt that was anchored to his love, so that with her or away from her he no longer believed or disbelieved anything about her. Andocretus spoke again, gently, softly.

  “Lord, you know the hatred the Druithin have for your lady, and so does she for them. That is why she sends you the only treasure left to her, your wedding gift, and begs you, as you once loved her, to listen only to her torment. She is dying. She needs you now.”

  “Ah Lord, how well she knows you!” the burly chief burst out. “Only this could bring you back to her, she knows it, so she is busy dying! This is a trap!”

  “Peace, Madoc!” Venutius was controlling himself with difficulty. His glance slipped from the Silurian to the Druid, from Emrys’s quiet pity to Andocretus, seeking one ray of certitude, one glitter of truth under the impenetrable cloaks of flesh around him. He passed a freckled hand over his face and groaned. “Emrys, come,” he ordered and turned away, walking like a drunken man, swaying a little, one hand on his sword hilt and the other clutched tight over the necklace. Andocretus watched him go but did not dare to glance at his friend.

  Out of sight of the camp, Venutius lowered himself to the earth, wrapping his arms about his legs and resting his head on his knees. Emrys sank cross-legged beside him, watching the night fall and feeling the wind come whispering to him, laden with the subtle scents of forest and water. It stirred the rich hair of the man sunk under the weight of misery beside him, it lightly and warmly fingered the bowed back. Emrys sat on, his thoughts passing slowly to the years of Caradoc, the desperate years, then past them to his own hearth, long cold, his own hut now tumbled into ruin. He surveyed the memories with wonder, he and Sine young and free together, so innocent then, so strong, but a war-battered stranger had come, with his son-child who was also a chief, and he and Sine had not known that he brought with him an ending. Caradoc. My brother, my lord, my fate. So many terrible partings in this life that is a constant death, so many heartbreaks. We did not believe that we could fight on without you, yet with the last breath you drew from Albion’s air you ordered it to be, and lo, the master called forth a new arviragus. The red days stride on, giving us no rest, no rest at all. We are damned, each one of us, and now…this. At last Venutius stirred in the darkness, lifted his head, and Emrys put away the sadness and looked at him.

  “Tell me what I shall do, Emrys.” The voice was tired, formed thickly from a black mud of hopelessness. “Tell me quickly. Who lies and who hates? Who dies and who goes toward death?”

  “I think it does not matter who lies or hates,” Emrys replied gravely. “What does matter is that you are arviragus. You are lord of our life and our death, not your wife’s, and whether she lives or dies is no longer your concern. You have been her prisoner all your life, Venutius. Set yourself free! Send the youths away or kill them, and put Cartimandua behind you. Since you came to us you have had a measure of peace, and out of that peace has come strengths you did not know you possessed. The Druithin chose you well. The time of our deliverance is at hand, you know it, you can feel it just as the rest of us can. The new governor has played wondrously into our hands. Before another moon’s swelling we will have gathered together the greatest force since Caradoc’s last mustering, and Deva will fall to us. That is the beginning, only the beginning. Freedom is in sight after all the years of loss and shame and murder. How desperately we need you, Arviragus! The new campaign is yours—you have plotted it, you hold its execution in your hands. If you leave us now we must delay, and if we delay too long then all is lost. Stay with us. We will smash Scapula’s frontier again like rotten wood, and then the emperor will take the legions away, even as the rumors say.”

  Venutius list
ened, the hand that held the necklace unconsciously pressing it to his chest, and when Emrys’s pleading voice fell silent, he asked quietly, “What would you do, Emrys, if you were I and it was Sine who called to you?”

  “I would go,” Emrys admitted without pause, “But Lord, Sine loves me and gives me only truth. We do not lie to each other as your wife lies ceaselessly to you. Forgive me, but I do not believe she is ill, nor do I believe that she is worth one thought from you, let alone a lifetime of unreturned love and lost honor.”

  “Yet, Emrys, suppose she is really dying? Suppose she calls to me out of a heart burdened with remorse? Must I refuse her?”

  “Yes, you must. You have nothing for which to reproach yourself.”

  Venutius struggled to his feet and Emrys rose with him. Full night had fallen now, and the darkness folded them within itself. To Venutius it seemed that his soul was like that blackness, sealed in on itself, jealously imprisoning the long disease of his love and his hurt so that no cure could reach him. “If the Druids thought to heal me of my sickness by placing the mantle of arviragus around my shoulders they were wrong,” he said harshly. “I am broken, Emrys, every day I am broken anew, my strengths are Madoc’s, Sine’s, yours, not my own. I must go to her, even if she would destroy me.”