“Closer, please.”
“Closer?”
“I wish to see your face.”
Alaric stooped to peer through the woven iron grille. He could see nothing on the other side but thick darkness.
“If I could have your antecedents,” the bodiless voice spoke.
“The gods preserve us!” Alaric swore. “Who are you?”
“I assure you, you do not know me. Your father’s name?”
“Ulric, of Mariddunum in Guent.”
“His occupation?”
“He’s dead,” Alaric said sharply. After a moment he added “He was a solider in Uther’s army and died in the same battle as Uther.”
“And your mother?”
“Lynn, princess and granddaughter of Ban, the King of Guent.”
“Yes, those Celtic kings are rather numerous, aren’t they?” the voice commented dryly.
Alaric smothered his response by gritting his teeth.
“And your wife’s name?” the voice asked.
The blood thudding in his temples seemed to swell to the thunder of an army of horses beating across the plain of his mind. This is what she’d most likely gone through, that night. The questions, the disdain and finally, the turning away.
“Ygraine,” Alaric said. Through the booming in his head, his voice sounded thick and almost slurred. “Her name was Ygraine.” He took a deep breath. Another. The beating in his mind retreated a little.
Under the hand he had rested against the wood for support, he felt the gate shift. He hadn’t heard the locks turning or any sound of movement on the other side but the gate was now unlocked and opening.
“You may enter,” the voice said.
“My men, too?”
“We will let them in.”
Alaric tugged on his horse’s reins and stepped through the gate. It was dark in the vestibule, a deliberate ploy designed to blind newcomers until they could be inspected.
“Your sword—you will leave it here.”
Alaric blinked, forcing his eyes to adjust as rapidly as possible. There was a slim man in front of him, wearing a tunic that was whiter than any garment Alaric had seen before. His face was slim and his chin sloped away to nothing. Alaric didn’t know him.
“Your name?” Alaric demanded roughly.
“Publius Theophilus, late of Luguvallium.”
Theophilus. Of Luguvallium. Under the spurt of blind fury, Alaric found his hand reaching for his sword of its own will.
Publius scurried backward, his hands raised. “I am unarmed, warrior!” he squeaked. “Your identity had to be established conclusively! I alone know your face and your history. It was the most convenient means of confirming you were who you said you were.”
Alaric enjoyed the thought of what it would feel like to run his sword through the man, armed or not. It was a sweet idea.
“The Bishop awaits you,” Publius added hastily. He swallowed convulsively. “You would not want to disappoint the Bishop or your leader by failing to deliver your message, would you?”
Deliberately or accidentally, the man had hit upon the one reminder that was enough to overcome Alaric’s need for bloodshed. Arthur’s orders had been explicit. Maintain peace. Merlin’s had been more detailed and at the time, mysterious. Merlin might be a cousin but he kept his own council. Alaric hadn’t understood the man’s heavy emphasis on avoiding bloodshed until this moment.
Alaric suspected that Merlin had seen into the future in the way he did and had known all along that Alaric would meet one of his wife’s murderers.
* * * * *
The Bishop held Arthur’s letter between thumb and forefinger as if more substantial contact with the parchment would contaminate him. It was all the answer Alaric needed but he remained standing, knowing he had to play out the formalities.
The Bishop was almost entirely bald. His irregularly shaped fat head sat atop a corpulent body swaddled in layers of dirty toga and tunics. He moved very little, as if restlessness was too much effort. He waved the letter, the rings on his pudgy fingers catching the light from the oil lamp hanging on the wall next to them. One of the rings held an enormous pale yellow stone and in the light it seemed to stare at Alaric with a baleful, fevered eye. Alaric found his gaze drawing back to the ring again and again.
“If I am to understand this man properly,” Eboracus said at last, “he wants me to quarter your men for the winter.” He spoke Latin. Badly. From his accent, Alaric judged the man’s mother tongue to be Celtic. He had begun the interview in Latin to cow Alaric and to force him to request they speak Celtic. When Alaric had replied fluently, surprise had flitted across the man’s round face. Forced to continue in Latin, Eboracus had betrayed himself.
Alaric shook his head in response to the Bishop’s interpretation of the letter. “It is a proposal for you to provide garrison quarters, Your Excellency in exchange for the protection my men and I can give you. We are a trained and fully armed fighting force.”
Eboracus cleared his throat noisily. “And this beacon business?”
“That is an idea we borrowed from the Roman legions—a line of signal fires running the length of the country, so that word of the Saxons may reach Arthur no matter where he is. We will need to set up one here in Eboracum. Of course, anyone may use the beacon, Your Excellency.”
Eboracus pursed his lips and frowned.
Alaric let the silence grow. He found his gaze drawn back to the ring again and he watched it wink at him. It was compelling, like the measuring stare of a predatory creature.
“Explain to me why I need a garrison of heathens in my city.”
Alaric’s attention jerked back to Eboracus. “There are Christians in my company, Your Excellency.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You do not feel that Eboracum would benefit from the presence of a garrison of armed men?”
“In winter? With the seaways closed?”
“There are other threats besides the Saxons.”
“And we have good strong walls that have never been breached.”
Alaric frowned. “Then you decline the invitation?”
Eboracus got to his feet and settled his toga properly. “Decline? I’m insulted that you and your Pendragon thought I would entertain the notion at all. By what authority does that Celtic bastard claim control of Britain?”
“Since Rome deserted us.”
“Rome did not desert us!” Eboracus roared. “Britain is still a part of the Roman Empire and until he dispenses our independence, our allegiance is to the Emperor of Rome.”
Alaric could not resist the temptation. “You mean the heathen emperor, Theodoric the Barbarian?”
Eboracus’ face turned an interesting combination of red and gray-white. “Get out!” he spluttered. “Get out of my city! Go back to the Pendragon and that pagan minister of his and tell them that I would sooner rot in hell than let them step foot inside Eboracum.”
Alaric picked up Arthur’s letter. “You may live to regret your words when the Saxons are at your gates,” he said mildly, although the singing tension was back in his head. Keep the peace, Arthur’s words whispered to him. Keep the peace. Alaric crossed to the door.
“Rome has stood for hundreds of years and will still be standing a hundred years after Arthur is gone and forgotten! His ambition is greater than he will ever be!”
Alaric spun to face the Bishop. He could not let the insult to Arthur rest unchallenged.
Eboracus smiled. “Yes, strike me down,” he coaxed. “Let Arthur’s hand strike the representative of Christ and I will have every Christian from Hadrian’s Wall to Totnes revile him for the pagan interloper he is!”
Alaric clenched his fists tightly. This was not what Arthur wanted or Merlin intended. There were other ways of completing his work. Other ways, he repeated to himself.
“Your insult to Arthur is unforgivable and one day I will call you out upon it,” Alaric said slowly, measuring out his words so that he could
control his anger. “People like you have sat around for fifty years bemoaning the loss of the crutch of Rome in your nasal Latin. You’ve had time to do something and you chose not to. Now it is Arthur’s time. Arthur will see Britain united and the Saxons rebuffed, despite you.”
Alaric stalked from the room, pounding out his anger with each jarring stride.
The Bishop’s voice followed him, “I will live to see you and your kind thrown out of Britain, Celt!”
There are other ways, Alaric reminded himself. Arthur said in or around Eboracum. So find another way.
* * * * *
“You jest, don’t you?” Rhys looked horrified.
“You would rather stay here in Eboracum?” Alaric waved his hand at the leaking, drafty hut they had been given as shelter from the rain.
“But…there must be something better than returning to that woman, cap in hand.”
“We could roam the valleys looking for another hill until the snow buries us. I won’t do that. I want us settled in by the solstice.”
“She’s already rebuffed you once, sir. You’re willing to be humiliated again?” Griffin asked quietly.
Alaric moved his hand in a flat negating motion. “I’ve had all the insults and Roman superiority I can stomach.”
Rhys looked hopeful. “So…no more pandering to a woman?”
“I want her hill. I promise you, Rhys, she will cooperate,” he said grimly. “She is only a woman, after all.”
Rhys rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Then let’s get out of this accursed city.”
* * * * *
The child Sosia sent after Diana was afraid of the forest. While his eyes rolled in an attempt to spot any spirits before they saw him, he mumbled out a garbled message.
“I’m wanted back at the villa? Why?” Diana repeated, shifting the heavy basket on her arm to ease the load.
The lad was already edging backward.
“Wait!” Diana called but at her sharp command the boy turned tail and ran back the way he’d come.
Diana turned to Ambrose, Sosia’s son, a weed-thin tall lad of eleven and the only child on the estate capable of carrying any responsibility. “I’ll go ahead. Will you bring them back? We’ve got enough nuts for now.”
“Yes, my lady.” He took her basket, his tendons straining as he took the weight.
Diana pulled her cloak closer for it was dank under the trees. She headed for the villa. When she reached the rough track that led from the road to the villa gates, she saw through the gaping gateway a number of riderless horses grazing on the sparse tough grass that grew inside the courtyard.
Horses. Diana instantly thought of the soldiers who had arrived yesterday and began to run. Why would they be back? What had they been doing while she was not there?
She ran through the gateway and down the worn path that led straight to the house, pushing through the milling horses. They weren’t steaming so they must have been here for a while. What had that captain done in her absence?
Along the verandah stood the soldiers of yesterday. Worse, each held a cup while Florentina and her daughters filled them. Florentina was wasting their precious reserves of wine!
“Florentina!” Diana called. The old woman scurried over. “Why are you wasting wine on these men?”
Florentina looked puzzled. “I couldn’t give them water. Not these men.”
“Why? Because they are men or because they are soldiers?”
Florentina continued to look perplexed and Diana shook her head. “Never mind. One cup each and that is all. Where is their leader?”
“In the triclinium.” Relief spread across her face.
Diana groped for the man’s name as she walked to the dining room. Alanic? Alaric? Alaric. Of Mariddunum. She entered to find him standing with one foot on the low table, arm resting on his knee, her father’s bronze goblet in his hand. His cloak had been thrown over her mother’s dining chair, the heavy round shield on top.
He had been studying the patterns formed by the tiles on the floor but his head came up as she entered. His gaze ran over her, sizing her up. He was a tall man and broad at the shoulders. His arms were rounded, large as only a soldier’s could be and in the dim light of the dining room the flesh gleamed with good health and a summer tan from endless hours spent in the sun. His neck rose from the tunic, wide and strong. His black hair was short. It was commonly kept that way, Verus had told Diana, for comfort beneath a war helmet. In every way he was a typical soldier—even the intractable square chin and wide jaw spoke of dogged, unimaginative persistence and strength. That was a soldier’s value, after all—obedience. But the eyes betrayed him.
They were the deep black of a Celt and the thick dark brows over them added to the general impression of darkness that had earned the Celts their reputation for black humors and ferocious tempers. There was feeling there, buried deep.
He was a captain of his own cavalry. If Verus had spoken truly, it took a gifted man to lead and control his own troop away from the influence of Arthur’s discipline. She could not afford to underestimate him.
Diana took off her damp cloak and pushed at the loose curlicues of hair that had escaped their ties. “You have made yourself comfortable, I see.” She dropped her cloak over the back of the divan.
He lowered his sandaled foot to the floor, put the goblet on the table and straightened. “Your women, in your absence, were generous.”
“So I see,” Diana responded dryly. “I presume you have returned because you found your welcome at Eboracum less than warm and you now wish to renew your request to place a beacon on my hill?”
“No,” he said flatly. “My business at Eboracum is finished. I have returned to tell you I am taking your hill for my beacon.”
Diana felt her mouth begin to open. “Taking?” she repeated. “By whose authority? This is my estate and that includes the hill.”
He dug into a pouch at his waist and removed a rolled letter. “By authority of Arthur.” He put it on the table and folded his arms.
Diana made no move to pick up the letter. “I do not recognize his sovereignty. We live under Roman law here.”
“If that is the case, then under Roman law you should know that it is illegal for a woman to own property.”
Diana felt a chill run down her spine. Something was different this time—whatever had forced him to concede to her before was gone. There was a look in his eyes under the thick brows that was part anger, part impatience. She could read his readiness for battle in every stiff line of his body.
“How do you come to know Roman law?” she asked.
“We have lived with it for over four hundred years,” he said dryly.
“And your own laws permit you to…manipulate a woman in this way?”
“My lady, you are the one hiding behind the shield of laws. I am merely following the set of rules that you selected. It is your people’s custom to sequester maiden women without a male protector in the nearest convent, is it not?”
Fright tore through her. “You wouldn’t.” The room was too hot. He was taking up too much space—he was so large! He towered over her…
“Is that not the way of things here?” He was utterly without sympathy.
“All for the sake of a beacon?”
“It isn’t just the beacon I want, anymore. I want your villa too.”
Diana caught at her chest as it clamped down on her breathing the way it had when Alaric’s two lieutenants had dealt with her so easily yesterday. “No…”
“I have been charged by Arthur to establish an outpost in this area. The villa is perfect for my needs. I can house the men here and maintain the beacon. The road to hand is the swiftest way to travel anywhere.”
“My family has lived on this estate for generations,” Diana began, her voice barely stronger than a whisper. “You can’t…”
“My lady, I can do anything I want to. I have thirty men and weapons at my disposal.”
Diana wanted to sit down f
or her legs were shaking but she couldn’t get her feet to work. She was unable to tear her gaze away from his face. It seemed to loom over her—the dark eyes and brows on the tanned skin.
“You would turn out everyone here? The women, the children?” she whispered.
“You will do that by not cooperating.” His teeth seemed very white in the darkened room. Outside, thunder rumbled. Daylight was fading.
“Cooperate?” she repeated, her heart starting to beat again. If he was speaking of cooperation then maybe he was only threatening her when he spoke of the convent.
“My men and I will need quarters, food and room in the barn for our horses. We are thirty in number.”
Thirty men! Diana could barely feed the people already here. But if she did not accept, he would put her in the convent and turn the others out…
“For someone in your circumstances, my lady, I would consider this a bargain. You will be gaining the protection of my men.”
He had been merely threatening her! The realization angered her and pushed away her fear. “I will feed and quarter your men for you, on the proviso that I remain in charge of the estate,” she said.
He shrugged. “I care nothing for the estate itself. It is the shelter it affords and its strategic location that I value.”
“That and the fact that I could be forced into this. The Bishop wouldn’t bend to your might, would he?”
An expression crossed his face too swiftly for Diana to name. It was as if she had seen past an internal shield. Astonished, she tried to name it. Pain? Hurt? Anger?
“Just agree, woman and let us get on with this,” he growled.
“Agree? What choice do I have?” Diana was bitter. “Why are you doing this to me?”
He grimaced and it felt like an apology. “For reasons that are more important than anything you or I could ever possibly hold dear.” He picked up his shield and cloak. “You can show me where my room is, now.”
Chapter Four
It was the winter solstice and the morning repast was gruel, as it had been every day for the past two weeks. As had the noon meal and every second evening meal.
Diana by the Moon Page 4
