ing leadership would bring her praise or blame.
“Riga wanted to see the shops,” Argantilla said precisely, “but I
saved the boy!”
“Ah yes . . .” For a moment she considered the younger girl. Rigana
had always been more aggressive, but clearly Tilla also had steel. Then
she sighed and turned to the boy. “Well, let us take a look at you, child.”
She lifted his chin and gazed into dark eyes wide with defiance and fear.
“What is your name?”
“He called me ‘you little bastard,’ ” muttered the boy, “but there was
a woman who called me Caw.” She could see now that he was desper-
ately thin, and she glimpsed the weals of the whip beneath the tattered
tunic he wore.
“Was she your mother?” Boudica asked more gently. He spoke with
the accent of the Trinovantes, but that was to be expected. With such
hair and eyes, he could be a Roman bastard or the child of a Silure
woman taken in war.
“Dunno . . .” Caw looked down.
“Well it’s no matter, you belong to us now. We will make your free-
dom legal once you are grown. And we do not beat our servants, slave
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or free!” She turned to the warrior. “Calgac, will you take our new
child and find him food, a bath, and clothes? When you are recovered,
Caw, you will attend my daughters. I expect you to help them, but you
must not let them push you around. And you two—” she turned to the
girls, “—must treat him with courtesy.”
“Yes, Mama,” they chorused, impressed into good behavior, at least
for now.
It was hot in the square. As the line of richly dressed men and
women moved sedately forward, Boudica pulled her veil forward to
create a little shade. Prasutagos looked at her enviously. His hair was
growing thin on top, and he would have a very red pate by the time
they were done. The Roman citizens among them had pulled the ends
of their togas over their heads. She had always assumed that the volumi-
nous folds of the toga were intended to demonstrate that the wearer
was not expected to do anything practical while wearing it, but clearly,
in their native land, the garment also served to provide protection to
men who had to stand about for hours of offi
cial ceremonies in the hot
Italian sun. She could feel sweat trickling down her back beneath her
linen gown.
Sweet smoke eddied through the air, veiling the tile roofs of the
buildings that surrounded the square. This place was the most emphati-
cally Roman part of Colonia. It had been laid out at the eastern edge of
the town, where the battlements had been leveled to provide more
room. On one side the half-built walls of the new theater gleamed
white in the sunlight. Though she saw no image of Jupiter, his brooding
presence hung over the place like an invisible cloud. But the fi gure of
Victory on her tall column gazed complacently upon those who had
come to the civic altar to offer incense to the genius of the emperor.
Boudica had no objection to participating, though this rite seemed stiff
and perfunctory after the power of the Druid rituals. Anything that in-
creased the virtue of the ruler could only improve the way he dealt with
Britannia.
Prasutagos gave a patient sigh as step by step the kings and chieftains
moved forward. At least he had been able to amuse himself by looking
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at the buildings. She had learned to interpret his sighs as she did his si-
lences. This one expressed a number of things he was too politic to say,
such as his opinion of the togas some of the Catuvellauni wore. Britons
who had come over to the Roman side early had been rewarded by
making their tribal center a town, Verulamium, and given the status of
citizens. The Peace of Rome required her to be polite to them, as it kept
her from speaking her mind to Cartimandua.
Through the smoke she met the Brigante queen’s dark eyes. You de-
spise me as a traitor, they seemed to say. Yet here we both are. Caratac came to
you in secret, but to me he came openly. Can you swear that faced with my choice
you would not have done the same? And Boudica, recognizing that she
might have betrayed Caratac herself if giving him up had been the price
of her children’s safety, was the first to look away.
Her nostrils flared at the sweet spicy scent as they came to the altar.
She bowed her head and cast a pinch of crumbled resin on the fi re. Then
they were done, and moving toward the chattering group gathered un-
der a sunshade at the edge of the square.
“Do they really think that going through this show will make us
love Rome?” she murmured.
“I don’t think it matters,” Prasutagos replied. “Romans are always
most concerned about the forms of things. So long as we go through the
motions, they don’t seem to care what we really believe. I think they
show their faith in the things they build . . .” His gaze went back to the
square. “Even the walls of their houses are straight and tall, like ram-
parts, hiding what lies within.”
Boudica smiled, wondering what he was dreaming of constructing
now, and let him lead her into the shade.
It was cooler beneath the awning. Slaves in green tunics moved among
the crowd, bearing trays of spicy tidbits and wine in cups of blue glass.
Boudica’s expression of pleasant interest grew a little fixed as she saw
Pollio coming toward them.
“A lovely afternoon, is it not? Almost warm enough to make us Ro-
mans feel at home.” His tone was casual, but she flinched from the in-
tensity of his gaze and drew her veil around her shoulders and across her
breast as an additional shield. “It is my honor to present my new
assistant—Lucius Cloto from Noviomagus in the Atrebate lands.”
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Boudica blinked, mentally subtracting fat and facial hair to match
this narrow- eyed man to a boy shouting curses as Ardanos dragged him
away. Unfortunately Cloto had been right about the power of Rome,
and clearly he had been rewarded, though his awkwardly draped toga
looked as though it was about to trip him. From the new name, he must
have become a client of Pollio when he became a Roman citizen.
“King Prasutagos, of course, you know, but you may not have met
his lovely wife, Boudica,” Pollio went on.
“Oh I knew Boudica when she was only a gangly girl, long ago,”
said Cloto. He and Boudica exchanged edged smiles.
“Since then many things have changed,” she said blandly. It would
probably be neither politic nor dignified to mention that in those days
she had outrun him on the hurley fi eld.
Indeed, my lovely wife, said Prasutagos’s raised brow, I sense a tale I have
not heard.
“No doubt we will meet again this fall, when we make the rounds
after the harvest,” said Cloto. I was right . . . and now you will pay, he
&n
bsp; smiled.
“Did you know that the people here call him by the name of one of
the Greek fates, ‘Clotho’?” asked Prasutagos when the two tax collectors
had gone. “He measures out the amount due.”
“He was a student at Mona when I was there,” said Boudica, “and
just as unpleasant a boy as he is a man. He’ll be dangerous—he knows
what people are likely to have and what they will be trying to hide . . .
Will this affect the building project at Teutodunon?” The double-tiered
roundhouse had not satisfied the king for long. Prasutagos’s new plan
called for a group of buildings in a vastly expanded enclosure.
“I shouldn’t think so,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m providing work for
people who would otherwise be potential rebels. The Romans ought to
thank me for getting them off the roads.” He shrugged. “The Romans
say that fate is something that no one can evade.”
Prasutagos smiled but Boudica did not. Certainly all that the Druids
had done to evade the fate foreseen by the seeresses had only helped to
bring it to pass. Which of their own efforts to preserve their people
would instead bring disaster? Despite the warmth of the day, she felt a
chill.
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The day had dawned clear but a cold wind was herding clouds
across the sky. The Turning of Spring always brought unsettled
weather, thought Boudica, picking up a bundle of bedding to transfer
from the two-tiered great house to the new roundhouse that had been
built for the women beside it. Geese were winging northward, and the
royal family was moving out of the two-tiered hall. It would be a re-
lief, she thought wryly, not to have to fall asleep to the sound of men
arguing around the central fi re.
“Mama! Bogle is gone!”
Boudica turned as Argantilla came running toward her.
“He’s an old dog, darling. I am sure he has only lain down some-
where out of the way for a nap.” Though it was hard to know where
that might be, with the dun a-bustle with men digging the new bank
and ditch, now that they had finished the roundhouses that would fl ank
the council hall.
“But I’ve looked everywhere!” At eight, Argantilla was growing into
a sturdy, responsible child, red- faced with exertion just now, with her
father’s thick fair hair. It was a relief to have one daughter who could be
depended on to know where she had left her shoes the night before, but
Tilla’s conviction that she was the only responsible person in the family
could sometimes annoy.
“No, you have not,” Boudica said tartly, “or you would have found
him. These days he is too lame to have gotten far. Ask your sister to help
you look, or Caw.”
“Rigana is out on her pony, helping the men bring in the cows,”
Tilla said disapprovingly. “I think Caw is watching the blacksmith.”
Raised in the Roman town, Caw did not have the ease on horseback
of her girls, who had ridden since before they could walk, but he was
clever with his hands. Argantilla still regarded him as her discovery, and
the boy revered her as his rescuer. Boudica had no doubt he would drop
whatever he might be doing if Tilla asked.
“Go find him, Blossom,” she said aloud, “and find the dog, and then
you can come back and help me.”
Prasutagos ought to be helping as well, but he had discovered a
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con venient errand to Drostac of Ash Hill. Now that the two round-
houses flanking the Council Hall were completed, Boudica and the girls
were taking all their things to the one allotted to the queen. Except for
a few things he would need at night, the king’s gear had to be moved
to the Men’s House on the other side. The gods alone knew how he and
his house guard would orga nize things over there, but that was not her
problem.
What she would have preferred, Boudica thought wryly, was a sepa-
rate house just big enough for her and him. It was time the king and
queen made another journey through the tribal territories, though now
that he was High King she supposed they could never be as entirely
alone as they had been when she ran away from their wedding feast and
woke to find him cooking breakfast over her fire. She smiled reminis-
cently, then gave herself a mental shake and picked up the bundle of
bedding once more.
She had arranged all her own gear and she and Temella were mak-
ing up the great bed when Caw appeared at the door. It was a new bed,
and she was looking forward to testing it when her husband got home.
“My Lady,” said Caw with the formality that even after three years
in their household he still used. “We have found the dog.” He waited.
“Is he injured?” Boudica asked.
“I believe something is wrong. He lifts his head, but he will not rise.
Argantilla is with him down at the end of the new ditch. He is too
heavy, Lady, for us to carry home.”
“Of course he is.” Lately the dog had lost flesh, but he still probably
weighed as much as one of the girls. Argantilla would have not hesitated
to order the men to help them, but she could understand why the girl
had stayed with the dog. She was always the one to whom people would
bring a bird with a broken wing.
“If he is hurt he should be moved carefully. Run to the workmen
who are building the palisade and have them use some of the poles to
make a litter. Tell them it is my order,” she added when he looked du-
bious.
Leaving Temella to finish with the bed, Boudica sniffed the air,
then took up her shawl and strode across the yard. The sky was now
completely gray, and the air heavy with the promise of rain. She could
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have wished that Prasutagos had not designed the new rectangular en-
closure to be so big. He could have fitted an entire Roman fort inside.
The original bank and ditch had been filled in, and as each section of
the new one was finished the woodworkers were adding the palisade,
while the diggers extended the ditch some more.
As she hurried toward the far corner of the enclosure she glimpsed
Argantilla’s fair head and then the sprawled, creamy limbs of the dog.
Bogle lifted his head as she neared, tail twitching in welcome.
“Hello, old friend,” she murmured, kneeling beside him and set-
tling the great head in her lap. “How is it with you?”
The dog gave a gusty sigh and closed his eyes as she began to fondle
his ears. Boudica’s heart twisted in pity, feeling the bone beneath the
loose skin. She had known Bogle was aging, but he was a white dog,
and there was no graying at his muzzle to warn her just how old he had
become.
“Where is the trouble then, my lad?” Gently she worked her hands
along his spine, flexed the joints, probed the long muscles of back and
thigh. The dog did not wince or move, except for the lazy beat of his
tail.
“Mama, what’s wrong with him?”<
br />
Boudica shrugged helplessly. “I can find no injury, Blossom. I think
he is simply old and tired.”
“Like Grandma got?” asked the girl.
“Yes, darling.” Boudica’s mother had died the year before, and in
her last days Argantilla had been the one to keep her company. “Bodies
wear out, for dogs and humans as well.”
“But he is only two years older than Rigana!” Tilla exclaimed.
“Dog years are different,” said Boudica. “For a big dog, Bogle is
very old . . .” As old as her little son would have been, if he had lived.
How strange that a dog’s whole life could have passed, when her baby’s
death still seemed like yesterday.
It was getting cold. Where were the men with the litter?
“But I don’t want him to die . . .” muttered the child.
Beyond her, Caw’s face had grown very pale. He has seen death,
thought Boudica, and knows what it is. Do I?
When her mother died she had been away from home, and the
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shell that was left seemed unreal. If she had seen her son’s body, per-
haps she would not have been haunted for so many years by dreams in
which she heard him crying that she had abandoned him, or if she had
felt his little life flicker out beneath her hand, as she felt Bogle’s life
fl ickering now.
She bent closer, trying to soothe the dog as he twitched and shiv-
ered in her arms.
“They will have to be very careful when they lift him,” Argantilla
was saying as Bogle stiff ened, relaxed, and began to tremble once more.
“Oh my poor puppy,” Boudica whispered, “be at ease, be at peace.
The fields of An-Dubnion are full of hares, they say, and Arimanes loves
a good hound . . .”
Death had surrounded her in these years when the Romans had
killed her brothers and so many other men, but she had always missed it.
She had no choice but to embrace it now.
“You were a good dog, Bogle, a good dog . . .” she got out through
an aching throat. Thank you for all your love for me . . .
The plumed tail slapped the ground. She held him tightly as he con-
vulsed once more, and then was still.
“We have made a litter, Lady. Shall we take the dog to the house?”
Boudica straightened, acknowledging their presence, though at this
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