by Manda Scott
He saw the blow coming and did nothing to dodge it. The hilt of the governor’s knife took him on the left temple where his helmet might have protected him had he not thrown that, too, onto the shingle of Mona.
He felt the shock and sudden anger that always came when he was hit and then a long, long fall that lasted an aeon and was time enough to see the faces of those he would want to meet when eventually he was allowed to die. He did not think that would be soon, given the depth of the governor’s temper. He saw Ursus, looking concerned, and was not sure if that was in his mind or not. Then he saw Valerius, riding his mad horse and knew he had fainted and so felt free after Valerius had gone to embrace the dark-haired Alexandrian who had given him the falcon of Horus as a parting gift and never come back. Last, he saw his mother, which surprised him, and then not: he had landed as an enemy on Briga’s land; it was right that a mother should come to see his ending.
The Batavians were celebrating, and somebody had killed a pig.
The sound of drunken singing came and went in a rocking rhythm, more sonorous than the sea. It matched the throbbing pain in his head, focused on the left temple. The smell of gutted swine waxed and waned to the same tempo, and failed entirely to cover the stench of wet wolfskin that lined his nose and his head and his lungs, thick and pungent as month-old fish. Corvus lay still, savouring the ugly mix of flavours, and was grateful that he was not going to have to die without the power of smell to remember the world by.
He lay under cover, which surprised him. An uncertain rain stammered on a tent hide above his head, slurring the Batavians’ choruses. Beneath the rankness of the wolfhide, the air smelled pleasantly damp. He lay on linen and was no longer in his armour. Someone had undressed and washed him; his face felt clear and clean and he no longer tasted brine when he licked his lips. He could not bring himself to open his eyes, but the crisp bite of the air spoke of night.
He was not in pain, that was the second surprise, except for his head, which had been broken open like an egg and was leaking his thoughts out onto the floor in a tumbling mess. That had happened before and Theophilus had treated the headaches that ground him down. He spent some time thinking of Theophilus and how he would take the news that his friend the prefect had been executed for failing in his duty.
Corvus wanted to reach him, to explain the nature of the sacrifice, willingly given, and the nature of obligation. He wanted it known, more widely than only by Theophilus, that the gods accepted such things in the spirit with which they were offered and that there was no dishonour, however it might seem in the eyes of Rome. The needs of his own pride surprised him; through all the years of battle, with death never farther than the thickness of his skin and the blade that might sever it, he had thought that what mattered was life and the manner of its living, not the nature and time of his death. Luain mac Calma, for whom he had an abiding respect, had said something similar: Take the life that is offered and live it well, by your own heart’s truth.
It occurred to him that Luain mac Calma could see things that he, Corvus, could not and that the dreamer had not meant him to give his life to Manannan of the wild seas, for no better reason than to assuage the anger of another man.
In the never-ending dark, he heard the Elder’s voice, with the god’s sea behind it: If you are careful from here forward, you will meet my son at least once more in this life.
He thought he had been careful. He fell asleep, reaching for Theophilus and for the dreamer, to ask them where the carelessness had been. In the place of no-time, he dreamed of a decimation, and what it was to watch an entire legion in which nine out of every ten men clubbed to death the tenth with whom they had until that moment shared life and bread and battle and, in some cases, a bed and passion and love. In his dream, he was able to stop it, which he had not been in life.
When he woke next, someone who knew how clear air helped his headaches had lifted the tent flap behind his head and left it open to the sky. The breeze stroking his face was a kind one, not the cutting wind of Mona, which had carried the wailing of long-dead men and old women and the insidious smoke. The smell of swine and fresh blood had changed to one of roasting pork, which meant, now he came to think of it, that in his absence someone else had ordered the slaughter of the Quinta Gallorum’s only hog.
A rough, tired voice said, “That took you long enough. He didn’t hit you that hard. I was beginning to think the dreamers had stolen your soul and I’d have to send Flavius swimming back to Mona to find it. He’d go, you know, for you. After today’s work, I think he would follow you to Hades and back and not speak against it.”
“Ursus.” Corvus said it flatly, which was unkind, and smiled to take the sting from it. He had blocked a sword blow that otherwise would have decapitated Flavius. It had not been an act of any particular merit and he had not thought anyone else had seen it. Possibly, none had, and Flavius had spoken of it, which was telling of something, if he could only work out what.
He considered sitting up and thought better of it and stared up instead at the tent hide and then sideways to the small flickering soapstone lamp that cast odd-shaped shadows across his chest. He watched them awhile and saw that the rancid wolfskin lay on him as a covering. Never, in the five years he had known Ursus, had he seen the man allow another so much as a finger’s touch of his talisman.
He said, “I am more grateful than I can say, but you shouldn’t be here. After today, I’m not safe to be with.”
Ursus sat by his head. He grinned, and was upside down so that when he winked he became for a moment the monsters of Mona’s beach and Corvus had to close his eyes to be free of them. Against the black of his lids, he heard Ursus say, “Safe enough until Paullinus is finished talking to the messengers, which could be morning, by all accounts. He doesn’t often get sent word for his own ear by royalty.”
“Royalty?” Corvus sat up too quickly and the world became a deep, unpleasant red. He bent his brow to his knees and breathed through his mouth. Muffled, he said, “Which royalty? Have the Eceni sent a messenger to the governor?”
“Hardly. If Sabinius is correct — and he’s been spending an untoward amount of time fixing the haft back on his standard very close to the back of the governor’s tent — then the message comes from Cartimandua, by the emperor’s very great pleasure queen of the Brigantes. But then there’s also the legate, two tribunes and the first two cohorts of the Second come up from the far southwest on their own initiative. They’re bringing the same message, which means it is probably true.”
Corvus cupped his palms over his eyes and wished he could think more clearly. The pattern of his dreams pressed in on the sides of the tent, so that he could hear men screaming, and then the sudden quiet when it all stopped.
He said, “What was the message? What is it that brings the fighting arm of the Second this far north and a messenger from Cartimandua south before the trade routes are fully open?”
There was no subtlety to Ursus. The news was bubbling out of him before he spoke, washing him with its greatness, and the implications, both personal and political. As a man offering a gift of great value, he said, “The east is in revolt. The Eceni have risen again and are storming Camulodunum. It will be in ashes by now, and after it Canonium, Londinium, Verulamium. Without any legions to stop them, they have a clear run through all the towns south of the river down into the Berikos’ lands that border the sea.”
It was impossible. It was inevitable. These two raced together into his mind and clashed agonizingly in his left temple. “What happened to the Ninth? They hold the east. They could stop any revolt before it began.”
“Not any more. The Ninth is broken. The Eceni used Arminius’ tactic from the Rhine and cut them to ribbons. What’s left, which is not much, is under siege in the fortress on the eastern coast. Petillius Cerialis is alive, but I don’t imagine he will be for long. If he has any sense at all, he’ll fall on his sword.”
Ursus dismissed it, as if the loss of a legion were a smal
l thing, to ruin only one man, not an event to bring down emperors and the men who served them. Striking back to the track of his heart, he said, “Flavius thinks the woman we freed was the Boudica. It’s lucky you saved his life today, he’d be reporting by now to the governor else, with you and me and Sabinius dead men on the back of it. Paullinus might forgive you for calling him a coward when there was nobody about to hear it. He won’t forgive you for freeing a rebel who has lit the tinder in the pitch pot of the eastern tribes and— Are you listening?”
The Ninth is broken. The Eceni used Arminius’ tactic… Not the Eceni: Valerius. No-one else could have betrayed Rome in the way Arminius did. Seeing him on his insane horse in the Eceni steading, with the procurator at his feet, Corvus had understood that Valerius was going to join his sister, if she lived, if the rest of the Eceni nation would have him and not stone him from their thresholds.
Viewed from a distance, with hindsight and the understanding of the tribes, it was possible to see that Valerius’ whole life had been shaped by the gods just for this, if one wished to believe in the gods and their shaping of men. At that moment, Corvus very badly wanted to believe in something that shaped a life and all that came after it. All things are possible in death, as in the dream … He wanted to believe that, too.
Through the blackness of a sudden, knifing loss, he heard his own voice say, “Of course. I always listen to you. If you had any sense, you’d turn me in yourself.”
He waited for an answer in kind and was met by silence. He took his palms from his face. The flame from the small soapstone lamp was too bright.
Ursus was staring at him, shaking his head. “You’re not listening. Flavius is unstable. He loves you and now he owes you his life and so he resents you as well. He’ll talk because his mouth will run away with him and think of the reasons afterwards. I thought you were going to deal with it, but you didn’t. You could have let him die there on the foreshore with no harm done. No-one else would have known.”
“Perhaps.” The smell of roast pork reached Corvus’ belly and his head at the same time. Hunger and nausea gnawed at him equally, making him salivate. Sometimes eating helped. He considered it and regretted the thought.
Through a rising gorge he said, “I’m a condemned man. The governor can have me hanged in the morning for leading the retreat on Mona, or for freeing Breaca of the Eceni from the procurator’s crucifixion. Either way, or both, I can only die once. You and Sabinius have life still ahead of you. I prefer to think Flavius is his own worst enemy and will kill himself before he kills anyone else, but if you two think he’s a problem, you can decide what to do about him tomorrow, or whenever it is that he forgets I saved his life. In the meantime, if you don’t want me to be sick all over your wolfskin, do you think you could twist some favours out of the Batavians and get me some pork?”
A voice from beyond the door flap said, “I have it. And I may be my own worst enemy, but I won’t forget what you did.”
The air in the tent grew suddenly sour. The smell of the pork was overpoweringly rich and still did not come close to obscuring the stench of wet wolfskin. Corvus shut his eyes and opened them. He said, “I’m sorry,” and the word dropped into the open abyss at his feet. It was not — could never be — enough.
Flavius stood by the door flap to the tent, not quite inside. He shook his head, flatly. “You said what you believed, and he said what he believed before it. It may be he was right. If I had not seen you block the centurion’s sword today, I might be talking to the governor now. And I might tomorrow, whether I remember it or not. But then, I may be too late, and may die with you. I am not the only one who knows what you did; there were twenty of us rode with you into the Eceni steading to face down the procurator and I can’t be the only one who has worked out whom we saved. If you think I am alone in wanting to buy my own life with information, you are more of a fool than I took you for.”
Flavius’ gaze raked the length of Corvus’ body from the scars at his ankles taken on shipboard past the knotted spear-thrust beneath his ribs to the new throbbing bruise on the side of his face. Something flickered in his eyes that could have been grief or spite or contempt or the promise of retribution, saved for later.
He said, “The governor wishes to speak to you in his tent. He has called a tribunal. You should dress first.”
He had brought a board, with three slices of hot meat laid on it and a cluster of olives at the side. The meat was perfect, running a little to pink at the middle. The crackling was brown-edged and fine. The olives had been stoned and were arranged all in a ring, pointing outward. He laid his gift down at the tent’s threshold and stepped back into the unclouded night. He turned to leave and went three paces and turned back and the grief on his face was plain working from his throat to his mouth.
Thick-voiced, Flavius said, “I had thought better of you.”
It had been the risk from the start. From the moment Corvus had ridden into the Eceni steading with the twenty men of his personal retinue at his back and seen a woman he knew on the ground beneath a whipping post; from before that, when he had seen a hawk-scout of the Coritani with a knife wound to his lip and recognized something of the wildness in his eye; from before that, when he had seen a youth of the Eceni in a horse fair in Gaul and recognized more than simply the wildness of him …
Tracing back the lines of intent was pointless. Boundaries had been crossed and trust breached and at each step Corvus had created justifications for himself: that he was not betraying his emperor or his standard or his oath to his general; that he understood the complexities of tribal life and was well placed — possibly best placed — to judge how things might be rescued from the calamities of others’ actions; that he could act out of honour, and that it enhanced the honour of his race and his office.
Walking the short distance across heather and the beginnings of mud to the governor’s tent, he considered saying as much to the tribunal waiting inside but the words warped in his mouth and he abandoned them, unspoken. He was not going to lie, to taint the life that was left. He had learned that much.
He thought of what he could say: I did it because a woman once offered me her blade, when I needed it, and I did not understand, then, the depth of what she gave me. Or, A child gave me her horse, as from a sister to a brother, and in my ignorance I thought then that I did understand what she gave, and did not until I rode it today in the straits and found the greatness of it. Or simply, It seemed only honourable.
The last sounded hollow. It was also the only one any of those inside might hope to understand. On the whole, he considered it might be easier to remain silent; he did not imagine it would make any difference to the outcome.
He reached the tent. The glow of braziers made reddened patches on the hide. He could feel the warmth and damp and sweat and fug of burning charcoal from beyond the door, and then smell them. He himself still smelled of wet wolfhide, which was unfortunate and could not be changed.
He breathed in the air and savoured the heather and the sea and the sharpness of a spring night’s cold and then scratched on the door flap and heard the clerk inside step up to open it, and announce him to those who would judge all that he had been.
It was not a tribunal, but something greater. The legate and tribunes of the IInd legion were there, and the same of the XIVth. Two of the three senior officers of the XXth had died in the day, leaving only a junior tribune to lead his legion.
Eight officers, therefore, sat at the desk made for four, shoulder to shoulder, crowded, with lamps lit in front of them, so that the lines of dark and flame made bands up their faces. A ninth man, bulkier than the others and with white-blond hair, sat at the table’s end, with room to breathe and move and stretch to wrap his thick fingers about his goblet of wine. Thrice three, the number of Jupiter; a full military court.
The rushes on the floor had been cut wet, and had begun to rot. Corvus felt them slip away from his feet as he walked. Time yawned for him, so that the distance fro
m the door to the standing place, where the lamps all shed light, was as long as the swim out to Mona had been. He knew all of the officers who faced him, some better than others. Galenius, legate of the XIVth, had been a friend in his teens; Agricola, tribune of the XXth, shared the governor’s tent. Clemens, senior tribune of the IInd, had quartered in Camulodunum for a winter, and shared baths, wine and dinner too often to count.
None of these men met his eye, or showed any sign that they knew him. It was left to the white-blond Briton to turn and study him, from head to feet and back again, and then to say, “So this is the man you would see dead? He does not have the look of one who would face the gods and live long, in the sea or out of it.”
He spoke Latin, with the accent of the north. No-one chose to respond; in a military court, by consent and order of the emperor, those present deferred to the officer of highest rank, who was the governor. A man of the tribes, even a messenger sent by a loyal queen, was a barbarian, and so excused his ignorance of protocol.
Corvus finally reached, and halted before, the governor. The man at whose favour he might or might not be allowed to live looked up eventually from the two slate-blue running hounds who had held all of his attention. Paullinus was composed again; the rage of earlier had gone, replaced by the familiar dry, acerbic curiosity.
Corvus had seen him condemn men while in exactly that frame of mind. He met the open, brown gaze as evenly as his throbbing head allowed, and waited. It was possible to believe that the men who would judge him could not hear the beat of his heart in his chest. It was less possible that they could not see the shudder it sent through his frame with each spasm. He pressed the tips of his fingers lightly at his sides, to steady his hands.
Eventually, “You have rested and eaten?” the governor asked.
“Yes.” It was a lie; one small untruth of little moment compared to the great well of deceit that Flavius, or one of the others, might choose to open. Of the twenty who had ridden with him into the Eceni steading, eight had died to the sea or the dreamers. He had trusted the others with his life, and they him. He tried not to think who else might betray him; these things showed too clearly on a man’s face.
