“If you give it then you must learn to take it,” he said shortly, and she sneered.
“From you?”
They rode slowly past a row of shops that sold everything from locally brewed beer to Roman confections. The chiefs dismounted and crowded into the tiny, dark rooms to finger and exclaim over the goods displayed inside. They came out laden with gifts for their families at home in Icenia, for they did not lack Roman coin, and their pleasure seemed only to emphasize Agricola’s insistence that Rome had indeed brought only good. And so she has, Boudicca thought. Then what is it that I mourn for every day? Why do the western tribes prefer to die than to wander down a street in Colchester with their purses bulging with money? The reason is so deep, so far be neath sun, soil, air, and light. The dignity of choice. The freedom to say yes or no without fear. Rome brings us everything but that precious right to choose our own destiny. She had struggled, through the years since the legions came, to put this thought into words for Prasutugas but she had failed. Yet here it came, clear and sweet and sane, with the wholeness of a Druithin truth. We are above the gods, for even the gods can be bound by spells. We are more than tame animals who do not care how their bellies are filled. We are men, whose existence as men depends absolutely on the preservation within us of a dignity that is tied to freedom. I must remember that. I must tell him. But looking at him quietly astride his patient horse, the reins held loosely in his one hand, his arm resting against the horse’s neck and his back bowed, she realized that the time had come when she could no longer tell him anything that would bring him hurt. He was dying. It was in his face. Now she must swallow all dissent and approach him with nothing but her strength. She must do him the honor of divesting herself of all defence even though it would mean that before he left her she would not have time to rebuild that half of herself that was him now, and later would have to be composed of something else.
The chiefs were mounting again, their purchases stowed in purses or stuffed into their tunics, and Agricola led them to the end of the street to an open place where huge vats bubbled over fires and the ground was littered with frames hung in freshly dyed cloth. Boudicca slid from her horse. “I want to buy something that Hulda can make up for the girls,” she said, and the little cavalcade stopped. The dyer came toward her, his arms stained purple to the elbows, and his wife and son hovered behind him. Boudicca nodded. “Greetings, freeman.”
He looked her over swiftly, then smiled. “Is it the Lady of Icenia?”
“It is. How did you know?”
“Colchester is still small enough to be rife with gossip and, besides, there is only one ruling house whose lady has red hair and whose lord is one-armed. Shall I show you my wares?” She nodded again and prepared to follow him into his tiny hut, but Agricola’s voice brought them both to a halt.
“Bring out your work and spread it on the grass,” he called. “Perhaps others in the company might also like to buy.”
Boudicca understood and she graced the Roman with an insolent grin. The man shrugged and entered the hut. “Aren’t you going a little too far, sir?” she called back. “I might become offended, and complain to the governor!” Unexpectedly, Prasutugas laughed, and then the man was back, his arms full of gay bolts of material which he proceeded to unroll at her feet. “Are you under suspicion?” she whispered to him as he bent. Then in a louder voice, “They are quite lovely. Tell me of your dyes.”
“Yes,” he whispered back, his mouth hidden by his lowered head. “They watch me all the time.” Then he raised his tone to match hers. “This cloth was dyed in primroses. You can see how fresh they were when picked. The color came out so bright and fragile that I decided not to pattern it. This one was steeped in elderberries, a very rich and thick dye, and the purplish blue it makes is now enjoying popularity. I find it too heavy, and would have it embroidered in silver to lighten it.”
She bent also, running the cloth through her fingers. “I have never seen a paler green!” she marveled. “And the red patterning on it is so even! How do you make such a green?”
“You would have to ask my son,” he replied. “He makes the dyes—and wanders far to find the ingredients that he needs. My wife weaves the cloth, and I attend to the patterning.”
Wanders far. Boudicca did not miss the almost imperceptible emphasis on those words. “Prasutugas,” she called. “Do you think that Ethelind would like the primrose yellow?”
“She would look better in the green,” he replied. “Buy the yellow for yourself, Boudicca, and the red one there for Brigid.”
She moved through the rivers of color, feeling and exclaiming, taking the dyer farther away from the men on horseback. She made her selections, called for a chief to roll them up and lift them from the ground, then said in a loud voice, “How much do I owe you, free man?”
“Ten denarii.” Then he said quietly, “Did you enjoy your dinner last night with the governor? I hear he is very closemouthed.”
“Lovernius!” she shouted. “Bring money! Not closemouthed enough,” she whispered. “I can give you no definite message. Tell them only to guard the holy island.” She reached for her coins and Lovernius put them into her hand. She tossed them to the dyer and bid him rest in safety, then walked back to her horse. “Really, sir,” she expostulated to Agricola. “If I had wanted to talk to a spy I could have waited until I reached home. You made the poor little freeman look like a fool.”
“All I did was to ask him to bring his wares outside,” he objected. “Who said anything about spies, Lady? You have a suspicious turn of mind.”
“Dyers are all mad in any case,” she concluded as they clattered on. “It comes of leaning over hot colors all the day long. They see nothing in black and white.”
If Agricola heard her he gave no sign, and they spent the rest of the morning admiring the smart new houses going up within the old first circle of Camulodunon.
That evening Agricola entertained them in his own house, together with certain merchants and prominent moneylenders of the town. The men brought their wives, and Boudicca had to sit for an agonizing four hours listening to the women gossiping among themselves and the men discussing the latest rumors out of Rome and their own flourishing businesses. She felt more than ever like a creature from another world, though she sensed that these people were provincials themselves. She sat in a corner, well away from the circles of the lamplight. Both hands clutched tight around her cup of mead, and she felt as though she had stepped outside the flow of time. The rough winds of Icenia, the clean crackle of the cooking fires, the multi-colored swagger of her bearded chiefs, all seemed as much a part of an old, discarded dream as did this gathering of complacent, overperfumed foreigners. I belong in the west, she thought suddenly, where time has no meaning, where Camulodunon is still earthworks and Cunobelin stands outside the huge Council hall with fists on his big hips while his chiefs hew at each other on the practice ground. Where, in Icenia, Prasutugas and I are young and deeply in love, and Subidasto, my father, bows with the Druids in the groves of Andrasta. The past is there, in the mountains. The future is here, all about me in this hot, dainty room, and I sit with my drink in my hands and know myself to be cast out from both.
Prasutugas was drinking too much, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he did at home when the pain attacked him, his carefully braided blond hair lying against his black and scarlet chest, and the gold circlet shining on his head. His eyes shone also, a feverish blue glint as he glanced at the company and talked with seeming ease, but Boudicca saw that he was gripping his knee tightly, and every once in a while he reached out unobtrusively to touch his shieldbearer’s elbow. Agricola must have noticed, for toward the end of the evening he came and sat beside Boudicca.
“I did not realize that he was so ill,” he said. “If I had known I would have seen that this trip was postponed.”
“Well, at least you can now make your plans for the future of my territory,” she answered bitterly. “It must be gratifying to be given so
much warning of a royal death.”
“What care is he receiving? Is there a surgeon stationed with the garrison in Icenia?”
“There is, but Roman medicine is crude. Cut off a bit, burn it a bit more, slather it with salve. He needs the care of a Druid but he refuses to disobey your senseless law.”
He sat thinking for a moment, his eyes on her flushed, sad face, then all at once he put his hands around hers as they clutched the cup. “If there is anything I myself can do,” he said softly, “anything at all, I hope you will lay aside your prejudice and ask me for help.”
She did not stir, and he withdrew the warmth of his clasp. “It is not wholly a matter of my prejudice, Agricola,” she said. “I think he wants to die. There is enough of the chieftain left in him to feel shame of his disfigurement, and I know that it angers him to become more of a burden to me than a joy.”
“Why won’t his wound heal? It was a clean severing, was it not?”
She did not want to talk about it but there was comfort in the young man, a moment of human concern that eclipsed his significance as Roman to her, and she answered him without sarcasm, challenge, or strain under the rise and fall of the conversation around them. “I do not know. Perhaps there was a spell of pain laid on the sword. The Druithin would say that it does not heal because there is a deep sickness in his soul, deeper than thought, but… I do not know. I only know that over the years it has closed and opened, and now will close no more. He may live to see another Samain, but not beyond.”
“I see. And has he secured his succession in Icenia?”
The moment of mutual sympathy had gone. “He is not dead yet!” she snapped in a fierce undertone. “Ask the procurator what you want to know!”
Agricola rose. “I simply wanted to make sure that he had taken every step to avoid confusion,” he said stiffly and went away, and the two Icenians went on drinking, Prasutugas to dull the pain of his body and Boudicca to kill tomorrow.
In the morning they began the long ride home. Prasutugas had admitted that he did not have the strength to face another day of official visiting, and so Boudicca, Iain, and Lovernius had gone to Agricola and requested that they be allowed to go. The request was granted, and the governor rode with them for an hour before he and his escort left them to walk their horses slowly under the now-leafless Catuvellaun forests. Then they turned their faces toward their own border, six days away. But Prasutugas did not reach it sitting upright and alone on his horse. Three days out of Colchester he collapsed, and was carried home on a litter fashioned from the pretty cloth his wife had bought.
AUTUMN, A.D. 59
Chapter Thirty-Five
BRIGID swung herself up onto her horse’s back and leaned down to grasp the reins. She smiled across at Marcus. “Are you ready?”
“Ready. Once around the tree, on to the lake, and finish where the river enters the forest.”
“But Marcus, that’s too far. Last time we finished at the lake.”
“Yes, but last time you were only thirteen. Today you are fourteen and you can go further,” he teased her.
She made a face at him. “You must let me win, since it is my birthday. You haven’t given me a present yet, you know.”
“I know. This year I have decided that you are not worth the money I would have to spend. I’m saving for my trip to Rome, after all!”
She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the wind. “Oh Marcus, what a beautiful morning. Isn’t it good to be alive on such a morning? Come on! My turn to start us!”
They backed their horses into line, shortened their grip on the reins, and while Marcus was still clucking to his restive mount, she called, “Go!” and her horse leaped out across the flat.
“Brigid!” he shouted, “that’s not fair!” He pounded after her with his knees hugged tight to the warm horseflesh, and his tall body bent level with the whipping mane as the wind sang in his ears.
It was indeed a beautiful morning. The flat, scrub-dotted Icenian marshland lay clean and sparkling under a cloudless blue sky, and the thin wind that fretted the long grasses nipped with a dry, invigorating promise. She was already halfway to the tree, a speeding blur of bright scarlet, and he hissed softly at his mount and thundered over the soft turf. He saw her sit upright for a moment as she shouted to her horse. The beast skidded onto its haunches and veered, and she flogged it around the tree and careened madly onto the dimpling reaches of the north end of the lake. He skittered around the tree and then gave Pompey his head and he slowly began to gain on her. The lake edge flashed by, and the white birds, which had begun to settle once more to their feeding after Brigid had pelted by, rose again in a screeching, impatient cloud. He was gaining, and excitement flared in him and began to throb with his quick pulse. He was soon abreast, and he grinned across at her. “I’m going to win again!”
“But Marcus! My birthday!”
For a moment they hung neck and neck, but slowly he began to pull away. He quickly reached the willows along the riverbank, where he stopped short and slid from Pompey’s hot, wet back, pleased he had time to turn and watch her canter up.
She tumbled to the ground, flushed and panting. “You ought to give me a head start at least, Marcus. I only lose to you because you have the better mount.”
“No. You lose because you ride like a woman.”
“And how does a woman ride?”
“Daintily.”
“That’s not true and you know it. I ride far better than you.”
“Would you have been happy if I had cheated, and let you win?”
She sighed, still annoyed. “No, I suppose not. But one of these days my mother will retire this old lady to pasture and provide me with a real horse.”
“Such excuses! Shall we go into the woods and look for cuckoo spit?”
“No. Let’s sit in the grass, in the sun.” She flung the reins about a willow branch. “This weather won’t last, and when it breaks, autumn will be here.”
“Brigid,” he said softly. “I was only teasing you before. I really do have a birthday gift for you.”
“Of course you do, Marcus. Every year you give me something lovely. What is it? Can I have it tonight at the feast?”
“You can have it right now. In fact you’ve been looking at it all morning.” He smiled broadly at her mystified expression. “Do you want to guess what it is?”
She ran her eyes over him, then shook her head. “I can’t see anything that it might be. Tell me quickly!”
He bowed with a flourish and waved at the horse, which had begun to crop the lush, wet grass beside the water. “There it is.”
Her eyes widened in shock. “Pompey? You are giving me Pompey? Oh no, Marcus, I couldn’t accept—you love that horse. And he’s a fine animal, worth a small fortune!”
Marcus looked down, embarrassed. “I didn’t know what else to give to a lady who has everything. Besides, Brigid, I want you to have him.” He looked up at her shyly, grinning. “We will race again tomorrow, and then you will win!”
She did not know what to say and went to the beast, stroking its tangled mane, reaching down to carress its gray muzzle. “Thank you, Marcus,” she said soberly. “I don’t deserve him, and I don’t deserve a friend like you, either. I promise to give up teasing you, forever.”
“Oh I hope not!” he responded lightly. “At least it makes a change from my mother’s nagging! Come on. Let’s find a place to sit.”
They left the horses and wandered into the meadow, where they cast themselves down in the tall, sweet-smelling grasses. Marcus rolled over on his back with a sigh of pleasure, lacing his fingers behind his head and squinting up into the deep, sun-filled sky. “I shall miss all this,” he remarked. “No doubt Rome is a very enthralling place, but I think I prefer Icenia to the city’s heat and stink.”
Brigid got up off her stomach and sat upright. “Then you are no true son of Rome. Didn’t Aristotle say that the countryside existed only to serve the towns?”
“No, he d
idn’t. He said man is an animal that lives in the city. I don’t think my tutor would get very far with you.”
She began to pick the wildflowers that nestled in the dry grass around her, tossing them into her red lap. “I’ll miss you.”
He looked up at her, but she was studiously bunching the flowers together into a tight, colored knot. “There’s plenty of time yet, Brigid,” he said softly.
“But everything is decided, and you’ll leave us for good and never come back.” She dropped the flowers onto her tunic and slowly began to bunch them again. “Are you happy to be joining the cavalry at last?”
“I shall only be a general’s dogsbody, you know. It will be years before I can even start the training.”
He was not happy to go, and he watched the play of sunlight on the silken sheen of her hair. Her older sister was blonde also, a deep, red gold, the color borrowed from both Prasutugas and Boudicca, but Brigid had the palest, white-blonde tresses he had ever seen among this tribe of blonde, blue-eyed people, and he could never look at her without wanting to touch her hair. He had been fascinated by it even as a small child, when they had played together in the shade of the earthwall.
He had known no other life than the peaceful, fun-filled days in this wealthy little kingdom. His mornings were usually spent with his tutor, his afternoons with Brigid and Ethelind, riding the fields, hunting in the woods, paddling the coracles on the river or among the pools and the flat, muddy shoals of the marshes. He had been to Rome with his mother four times, and did not particularly like it. The crowds, the odors, the sophisticated, painted socialites, had bored and frightened him. He was a provincial, no matter what his mother would like to think. Icenia was his home, Brigid and Ethelind like his own kin, but now his father was about to send him away to start at the very bottom of a military career in a country he was born to but did not love. The prospect was alternately thrilling and horrifying. Until today it had had no reality, but today was Brigid’s birthday and all too soon it would be time to pack and say farewell to his home, all too soon he would make the long trip to Rome where he would find lodgings and meet his training officer. Suddenly his dreams of success seemed hollow and forbidding.
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