A Year of Ravens: a novel of Boudica's Rebellion

by E. Knight

  The warriors were always having fights. By the next day, they’d usually sobered up and forgotten what they were arguing about. But this was broad daylight, and Andecarus could have fitted twice into his foster brother. Besides, he was steady and quiet by nature, not a brawling bully like Verico. My sister rushed across the yard as if she expected to drag them apart herself, and I ran after her.

  The two men were circling each other like fighting dogs, each one gauging who would make the first move.

  Duro had to yell both their names more than once before they took any notice of him. When they were finally listening, he said, “Our Princess Keena is sick and in need of rest, and I will not have her disturbed!”

  He ordered both sons indoors as if they were ten winters old and then seized Princess Sorcha by the arm and walked her back across the yard with me beside her. She did not look very pleased about it.

  “Your mother asked me to protect you,” he told her, ignoring the muffled shouts from inside the warriors’ quarters.

  “I don’t need protecting from our own men!”

  I thought, Then you are lucky.

  Duro should have known better than to cross That Woman’s daughter, though, because as soon as he hurried back to deal with the argument, she said, “Ria. You bed that Verico, no?”

  Who had told her that? “Not willingly, mistress.”

  She looked surprised, as if it had not struck her before that a slave might not have the choices a free woman enjoyed. “Well, anyway, they’re used to seeing you around. Go and find out what’s happening. Mother needs good warriors. We can't have them killing each other.”

  That sounded like something else I wasn't supposed to know. Because why does the queen of a tribe that has been pacified have such dire need of good warriors? I shoved the thought out of my head because it just meant more trouble for me and went obediently to be Sorcha's eyes and ears.

  I never liked going into the warriors’ house even when Verico wasn’t there: the skulls of old enemies nailed up over the door made me shiver. But my sister was right about everyone being used to seeing me; when I wandered in with a couple of blankets to put on the shelf, nobody took any notice at all. I slipped behind a wicker partition and sat on the end of someone’s bed in the dark, trembling at the thought of what would happen if Verico caught me in here. At the moment, he was too busy shouting at his foster brother, “What’s wrong with them drowning in a bog?”

  “Why would they be in a bog if they were looking for firewood?”

  “They weren’t looking for bloody firewood!”

  “Boys!” Duro cried. “Boys! Enough!”

  There was a moment’s silence, and I decided that whoever slept in this bed needed to wash his feet more often.

  “We know they weren’t looking for firewood.” Andecarus’ voice was lower now. “And the prefect must know that we know. But that’s the official line he’s given me.” He paused. “If I’d been told about this as soon as it happened, and if this fool and his pals had had the sense to make it look like an accident—”

  “We’re past that now,” put in Duro.

  “Yes,” Andecarus agreed. “Now I have to give the prefect a story that explains how two of his men disappeared while they were out foraging. Even though we all know they were snooping around for weapons. It has to make so much sense that the prefect doesn’t ask any more questions. Like, where are they now? And, which of your people did it?”

  “No.” Duro again. “You don’t. There is nothing to explain if they don’t find the bodies.”

  “They won’t.” Verico sounded proud of it.

  Andecarus said, “Then it doesn’t matter what I tell him. They’ll keep searching.”

  “The question they’re looking to answer,” said Duro, “is how two men went out of the fort yesterday afternoon and never came back. And the only answer you can give them is, we don’t know.”

  “Never saw them,” said Verico. “Tell them we’ll help them to look if they want.”

  “I can tell you what they’ll want,” said Andecarus. “They’ll want hostages. And then they’ll set the questioners to work on them. Have you seen Roman questioners in action?”

  “My lads are staunch,” Verico said. “They won’t talk.”

  Andecarus sighed and said, “You tell him,” and it was left to Duro to explain that when the soldiers came, they would arrest anyone they fancied. Not just Verico’s lads.

  “It’s a mess,” said Andecarus.

  “Oh, right,” Verico said. “So tell us what you’d have done when they stopped a cart full of weapons, then? You with the fancy training and the—”

  “Enough!” Even Duro was tiring of Verico now.

  Andecarus said, “Does the queen know what’s happened?”

  Duro said, “The queen’s busy.”

  “For how long?”

  “As long as it takes the birthing-women to get rid of that Roman bastard inside the princess,” Verico told him.

  Andecarus swore quietly. Then he muttered something else I couldn’t catch. Duro said, “What?”

  “Deserters,” Andecarus repeated. “We make the prefect think his men have deserted.”

  Verico snorted. “You think he’ll believe that, coming from us?”

  “Roman soldiers run off just like anybody else’s,” Andecarus assured them. “Eisu can go to the fort and complain that he’s had two horses stolen.”

  Verico said, “Eisu?” as if he were the last person who should be asked. “One of us’ll have to go with him.”

  Duro said, “If they think he’s lying . . .”

  “They won’t.” Andecarus was sounding happier now. “They know him; he’s traded horses with them for years. Anyway, he’ll be telling the truth. We can slip across and take a couple of ponies ourselves. It’ll look as if the men hid out overnight and took off today.”

  They were still talking, but I was not listening. I was thinking about the way Verico had said, Eisu? I was remembering a wet afternoon and seeing Eisu’s horse splashing away through the puddles on the track. Duro and Verico had been standing side by side in the gateway, watching the figure huddled in the winter cloak until he was out of sight.

  At the time, I had thought they must be sorry to see their friend leave. But now I thought again about the way he was never left to wander about the royal enclosure alone, and I knew I had been wrong. What they felt for Eisu was not friendship. And I knew, hiding away on the smelly bed behind the wicker partition, that I had found out something I really, really did not want to know. That Duro and Verico didn’t trust the horse trader, but they didn’t want to say so in front of Andecarus.

  The meaning of whatever you know, or you think you know, you will keep all of it to yourself, was shifting in ways that I did not understand. I only knew that the gloom of the warriors’ house suddenly seemed much darker than before.

  The men must have reached some sort of agreement. The talk had ended, and I heard the soft tread of boots on the mud floor. I kept very still as they passed on the other side of the wicker, then the door rattled and crashed shut, and whoever it was had gone.

  Beyond the partition, there was a creak and a sigh as if someone was settling into a chair. Duro said, “From now on, we don’t move weapons in daylight.”

  “The stuff had to be shifted fast,” Verico told him. “The prefect’s men have been sniffing around like they know where to look. Someone’s talking.”

  “I still can’t believe it’s Eisu.”

  “There’s nobody else it can be,” Verico said. “We know he’s still doing business with the Romans.”

  I had seen Eisu doing business with the Romans. He had done it to save me. It was exactly the sort of thing my father had done for years, and it had kept men like these safe so they could plot and practice and brag about what they would do if only they had the chance.

  Duro sighed again. “We used to go fishing together when we were boys.�
��

  I sat very still. The slightest movement would tell them they were not alone.

  Duro said, “Andecarus will make sure he says what he’s supposed to say and no more.”

  “After that, let me deal with him.”

  Duro said, “It’s not so bad. He can’t have told them much.”

  Verico said, “Yet.”

  The silence lasted for several breaths. Finally, I heard that oof noise that old people make when they get up out of a chair, and Duro said, “You’re right, it has to be done. Make it quick. And make it tidy.”

  “Don’t worry,” Verico told him. “It’ll be a tragic accident.”

  They both went outside. I watched through a crack in the door for a very long time until it was safe to slip out after them. I had heard things I should not have heard, and I was very much afraid that I had understood them.

  Princess Sorcha must have been waiting for me because she hurried across to meet me in the middle of the yard where nobody could hear us but a couple of pack ponies.

  “No news,” she said before I could ask, glancing over to where another of the birthing-women was hurrying toward the Great Hall. “Well?”

  I had no idea how much was safe to tell her. “Two Roman soldiers went missing yesterday, mistress. The prefect wants them back, but we don’t know anything about them.”

  “Of course not. Mother’s told everyone to leave the soldiers alone. No reprisals. So what were they arguing about?”

  “Verico says he doesn’t know anything, and Andecarus doesn’t believe him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Verico is a filthy lying bastard and nobody should listen to a word he says, mistress.”

  The expression on her face reminded me of her mother. I hoped she would say something like I shall ask Duro to make him leave you alone, but she didn’t. It was as I deserved. I had not tried to rescue her; she did not try to rescue me.

  I was saved from further questions by a cry from the Great Hall. A young girl, in pain.

  The princess leaned against the nearest pony and curled her fingers into its mane. She said, “I have prayed so hard that my sister will live.”

  “And I have prayed that the men who hurt her will die very slowly,” I told her.

  “Yes.” She bowed her head until it was resting on the pony’s neck. “I would rather it had been me who had to endure this.”

  I would rather it had been her as well because she was much tougher than her sister, but I could not say so, so I said that I wished it had been me, too. For a moment, as we stood together beside the ponies, I wondered if this was what it felt like to be proper sisters. Then she lifted her head and said, “Do you not have work to do, Ria?” and the moment was gone.

  I must have brushed the same pair of trousers a hundred times, trying to tell myself that I had misunderstood what was said between Duro and Verico in the warriors’ house. And that even if I had not, the fate of the horse trader was none of my business. No matter how mad and dangerous That Woman’s plans might be, anyone who betrayed our people to the soldiers was even worse. And had I not sworn before Andraste that I would not reveal anything I knew?

  But . . . surely that vow did not include anything I had found out later? And besides, Eisu, a man I barely knew and who had no reason to show me kindness, had saved me from the soldiers when nobody at the Great Hall had ever offered to help me, even though they knew I had been wronged. There were many good reasons to do nothing, but that one act weighed heavier in the balance. Whatever else he had done, the horse trader had saved me.

  So I watched Andecarus and a couple of the other warriors ride out, and I waited because I supposed they were going to sneak across the fields and steal Eisu’s horses, and then it would take a while for him to ride to the fort and report them stolen, and I knew Verico would not harm him before he had done that. There was time.

  I walked out of the gates carrying a basket filled with hanks of spun wool to deliver to the weaver, but Verico was not around to care. At first, I walked calmly along beside the river, basket in hand. Not looking suspicious at all. Then I began to worry that I would be too late. In the end, I ran as if a troop of Roman cavalry were chasing me, and by the time I got there, I was only fit to hang on to the gate and gasp and thank the gods that Eisu was there in front of me, alive and well and busy working.

  He was training a gray pony to the long rein, standing in the middle of the paddock with it running in a circle around him. “Trot! And whoa, and canter! And whoa. Good boy!”

  With the animal and the man working so calmly together, it seemed unthinkable for a slave to interrupt. And then I remembered how Duro had said, “Make it quick,” and I got my breath back and shouted, “Eisu! Sir!” until both pony and man were so distracted that he had to give up and bring it to a halt.

  “Eisu! Sir! It’s Ria, the laundry slave from the Great Hall!”

  “Ria?”

  I glanced around to make sure there was nobody listening, glad that the paddock was set well away from the house. “Did you go fishing with Duro when you were a boy?”

  “What?”

  “I need to know, sir!” I needed to hear the word “no,” and then I could decide I had made a mistake and run all the way back again, leaving him thinking I was just a mad washerwoman who had escaped from her keepers.

  The word I heard was, “Sometimes.”

  “Verico and his men are coming to kill you,” I told him. “They think you are a spy.”

  His face turned gray. Then he started to gabble. All the sorts of questions people ask when they want something not to be true, silly questions like, why should I believe you? And, who told you? Are you sure? How can I leave the horses?

  “I was there when they said it! If you don’t believe me, you will be leaving the horses whether you wish it or no.”

  He strode toward the pony, gathering up the reins in his gloved hands and tying them in a big bunch above the withers.

  “You must go!” I urged him.

  “So must you.” He asked if I had run all the way, and when I said yes, he called over one of his men to take me back to the Great Hall on his pony cart.

  I didn’t look to see whether Eisu fled. To be truthful, I was past caring. I had repaid the favor I owed him, and now I just wanted to get back to doing the laundry and being invisible and not knowing anything I wasn’t supposed to know.

  We were halfway back to the Great Hall when Andecarus rode up behind us and drew alongside to chat to the driver about Eisu’s missing horses. Seeing me, he leaned across and said, “Is there news of Princess Keena?”

  To my shame, I had almost forgotten about her. I forgot about her again as we heard horses thundering along in our wake and Verico yelling, “Hey! Where is he?”

  There were five of them. They spread out around us so that Andecarus was hemmed in against the cart.

  “Where is he?” Verico leaned over and shoved his brother sideways. “What did you say to him?”

  Andecarus straightened up and said coldly, “Where’s who?”

  “Fucking Eisu, who else? What did you say to him?”

  I said, “He didn’t—” but Andecarus spoke over me.

  “Nothing. We reported the horses stolen, he went home, I stayed on to talk to the prefect.”

  I said, “He didn’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me! You warned that fucking spy!” Verico made a grab for Andecarus' reins. The other hand went for his knife.

  Andecarus kicked the chestnut mare forward, barging the other horses out of the way. I hung on to the bench as the cart lurched and the driver swore, and we nearly went into the ditch. Ahead of us, Andecarus was galloping for the safety of the Great Hall. Verico and his men went after him in a blur of hooves and tails.

  I said, “We must go after them!” I knew Andecarus’ horse was not fresh; she had already been ridden hard this morning.

  “You’re joking, love. You’ll n
ot catch them in this.”

  “If they catch him,” I said, “they’ll kill him.”

  We jolted and banged along through the puddles at a speed that the driver said would have the cart in bits and the animal lame, and what did I think this was, a bloody war chariot? But it was as well that we did. Andecarus had not made it to the Great Hall. He was curled up in a ball on the road by the time we got near, hands over his head, trying to fend off the boots and clubs of men who should have been ashamed of themselves. Perhaps they were, because as soon as Verico noticed the cart, he shouted, “Enough!”

  They hauled him up. He hung between them like a dead man, his dark hair fallen over his face and blood dripping down between the stones. I stared in horror. Andecarus. Son of Duro and once the intended of the Princess Sorcha. Holy Andraste, what had I done now? I was the one who had warned Eisu, and Andecarus had been punished for it.

  Verico took a couple of steps toward the cart, club raised. I had pulled my winter wrap over my head; now I lowered my gaze as if I was frightened. Which I was.

  Verico said, “Stay out of this. He’s being taken in for questioning.”

  “He’s not looking too well,” said the driver, as if this sort of thing happened every day. “I’m on the way to the Great Hall. Why don’t you drop him in the back? Easier than carrying him.”

  Verico still hadn’t recognized me. I dared not look up, but I could picture him with his mouth open, wondering what to do next now that he had been stupid enough to beat somebody up in the middle of the road—and not just anybody, but his foster father’s real son. The son of the queen’s trusted advisor. Perhaps now people would see what Verico was really like.

  “He’s a traitor,” Verico spat.

  “Best to put him under these,” the driver offered, shifting on the bench, and I suppose showing him the jumble of empty sacks in the back of the cart. “In case we run into a road patrol.”

  Andecarus was still breathing when we set off, but we could not tend to him with Verico watching. When nobody else was looking, I managed to jump down with a mumbled excuse to the driver and run across the fields to the Great Hall, calling out that someone had to fetch the healers because there was a badly injured man arriving at any moment. When the cart pulled in, Andecarus was carried into the warriors’ house. Nobody was allowed to follow except Duro and the healers.