Rufus shook his head to clear it. ‘They said they wanted a messenger.’
‘Clearly not a messenger to the gods, so your message must be for the general. And whom, pray, is the message from?’
‘Caratacus.’
Five minutes later he stood before Aulus Plautius, commander of the British invasion. Rufus knew that Vespasian, legate of the Second, had a reputation for sharing his soldiers’ hardship. Plautius was an entirely different animal.
An elderly slave carefully washed Rufus’s feet at the doorway of the huge cloth pavilion which was erected for the general at the end of each day’s march. Soft slippers were placed on his feet and with Narcissus at his side he was escorted across woven carpets to Plautius’s inner sanctum. The general sat in a padded chair at a large wooden desk, behind which hung a wide drawing of what Rufus realized must be the outline of southern Britain. Much of the map was blank, but he knew that each day of the campaign more and more of it would be filled in as the scouts and reconnaissance patrols brought in their reports of a valley here, a village or a hill fort there; of forests that might or might not be impenetrable. Of wide rivers. It was the rivers that interested Plautius.
The general raised his head as they entered, spearing the intruders with granite-chip eyes in the face of a startled eagle. He wore his grey hair cropped tight and Rufus could see the pink indent his helmet had created on his forehead during the day’s march. It was rumoured the general wore the richly decorated helm even in his sleep, and the young slave was mildly surprised to see him without it. An aide waved them forward, while another entered behind them and scuttled past to update the map with another report. Rufus could see a red line snaking across it from what must be the coast at Rutupiae. He thought it would be longer. As he watched, the second aide carefully drew a ribbon of blue directly across the column’s line of march.
‘You said you had urgent news for me, Master Narcissus. This,’ Plautius waved a dismissive hand towards Rufus, ‘does not appear to be worthy of that title.’
Rufus became acutely aware of his dishevelled appearance. The ragged British clothing stained by Dafyd’s lifeblood; the fact that he had not washed for three days, and that the physical manifestation of his earlier terror seemed to be that he stank like a polecat. But Narcissus was well versed in the etiquette of the Emperor’s court. He smiled his acceptance of the Roman commander’s judgement.
‘That is very true, General, but appearances can be deceptive. This young man is the keeper of the Emperor’s elephant, which you know has an honoured position in the mighty force you have brought to this land. He has also recently been a guest of one you wish to know better.’
Plautius raised his head; a predator sniffing the scent of his day’s meal.
‘Caratacus.’
The general’s face broke into a smile that was even more frightening than his normal expression. ‘Tell me everything you know about this man.’
In a way it was a mirror image of his interrogation at the hands of the British king; shorter, but equally disconcerting. Rufus would describe an element of his meeting with the enemy leader. Plautius would stare at him with the utmost concentration before firing out a series of staccato questions. ‘Did his people look thin, undernourished? Were their weapons well cared for? How many warriors did you see? What were their tribes?’
The Roman commander was so fixated on the character and the mettle of his opponent that it was some time before he realized he had neglected to discover one important point. He frowned. ‘And how did this meeting come about?’
Rufus related his tale of the ambush and of regaining consciousness inside the Wicker Man. And what followed. As he finished he heard a retching sound as one of the young aides was sick outside the pavilion doorway. Plautius stared in disgust. ‘Have that man replaced. I have no room for weaklings in my command.’ He studied Rufus with new respect. ‘It seems the gods protect you, or fortune favours you. I can make use of that kind of fortune. You march with Vespasian?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I may call on you and your elephant. Be ready.’ Rufus bowed, and he and Narcissus turned towards the doorway. ‘There is one more thing.’ Rufus froze. He knew what was coming. Plautius’s tone was mild, but his innocuous words carried the threat of a death sentence. ‘You were with this Caratacus for almost twenty-four hours?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yet in all that time he never questioned you upon our dispositions or our intentions?’
Rufus felt Narcissus tense at his side. ‘He questioned me, sir, but I did not know the answers to his questions. I am only a slave. I care for the Emperor’s elephant and I do my duty. I know nothing of strategy or the intentions of great men.’
Plautius stared at him for a long moment, the gimlet eyes attempting to see into his soul. Then, not quite satisfied, he nodded his dismissal. They had walked twenty paces from the pavilion, along a lantern-lined pathway and past the outer ring of the commander’s personal bodyguard, before Rufus dared breathe. Narcissus laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You have missed your vocation, young Rufus. You should have been on the stage. Now come with me to my tent.’
Rufus protested that he needed to return to his son, if for no better reason than to show the boy he was alive.
‘Nonsense,’ Narcissus insisted. ‘I have already sent word of your unlikely survival and that the general seeks your counsel. We will share a flask of good wine, for I think you need it, and you will reveal to me what truly passed between you and this Caratacus. Hold nothing back, for it could be vital to our endeavours. You may trust me.’
The words sent a shiver through Rufus. Every time he trusted Narcissus someone died.
Two hours later he was not quite drunk, but not quite sober either. Waves of exhaustion threatened to overwhelm him, but every time he tried to leave Narcissus found some new morsel about Caratacus to chew over. ‘So, King Caratacus is aware that our Emperor hounds his servant, Aulus Plautius, and demands an early victory.’
It was only a rumour, Rufus tried to say — but by now coherent speech was beyond his powers — I betrayed no one.
Narcissus stared at him, and his eyes, normally so expressionless, were filled with fire. ‘You have done your Emperor a true service by staying alive. What you have told me may have great bearing on the success of this enterprise. If I read it right you have dealt our enemy a blow at least as great as was dealt to them on the day of the ambush. Go now to your family. You may tell your companions of your experiences and of your interview with Plautius, but say nothing of our talk.’
Rufus didn’t go directly to Gaius; he had another duty to perform first. Bersheba scented him when he was many yards away, raised her trunk and welcomed him with a series of gentle grunts. He stood with her for a while talking quietly and feeding her from the supply of sweet little apples, until the turmoil in his mind calmed and he felt ready for sleep. Gaius lay in Britte’s arms on a blanket in the bullock cart. He kissed his son’s head, marvelling as always at the silky softness of his russet hair, then lay down at his side, exhausted beyond life itself. He feared he would dream of pain and death, but he dreamed only of a great and glorious victory. Which was the same thing.
XV
Caratacus watched his brother with the unblinking stillness of a predatory animal. The scar between Togodumnus’s eyes flared red the way it always did when he was angry or uncomfortable. He had worn the scar for more than twenty years, since the day their father had encouraged them to wrestle together. Caratacus remembered the crunch as the cartilage in his nose was crushed by his brother’s fist and the feel of merciless fingers round his throat. The rock had been lying just close enough for him to reach. Enough strength remained to smash it into Togodumnus’s grinning, triumphant face. There had been a great deal of blood.
Their father had laughed.
‘Ballan tells me your men have been busy?’
Togodumnus shrugged. ‘I have many men. Am I supposed to know what each of them
does every minute of the day? They get bored. They go off. They get up to mischief. You promised them a fight, but all we do is run away whenever the enemy gets close.’
Caratacus smiled coldly. The insult was clear enough, but he chose to ignore it. ‘The boy, Dafyd, ambushed the messenger I sent to the Romans.’
‘You should not have saved him from the fire. He was pledged to the gods. There are other messengers. Ballan would have done the job just as well. Better.’
‘It does not matter. Dafyd failed. Ballan found him lying in a stream with his guts hanging out.’ Caratacus watched his brother carefully and was rewarded by a slight tic in his right cheek.
‘Dafyd had the right to kill the Roman slave. If he did not have the skill, then he deserved to die,’ Togodumnus said coldly. ‘But I wish he had succeeded. The slave is the keeper of the beast. You have told us the beast is no threat to us. I believe you are wrong, but even if you are right and it is no weapon of war, you cannot deny it is a powerful talisman. Killing the slave would have weakened the beast. Anything that weakens the beast weakens the Romans.’
And that is why you ordered his death. Caratacus didn’t say it, but he knew by the look in Togodumnus’s eyes he didn’t have to. ‘You say you do not like running away. That is good. I have a mission for a commander who knows how to stand his ground. It will mean a fight, but I intend it to be a short, bloody fight. Then you will withdraw — not run away — withdraw in good order with your army and your honour intact. Here.’ He took Togodumnus to an area of scattered sand in the centre of the hut. Inscribed in the sand was a rough map. ‘You know the river, ten miles to the east? It is deep and wide, a good defensive line.’ Togodumnus snorted at the word defensive, but Caratacus ignored him. ‘We will not defeat the Romans here. We are not yet ready. I want you to buy me time. Delay the Romans for at least three days. Hold them on the river. You will have twenty-five thousand men; your Dobunni, Bodvoc’s Regni and the Trinovantes. I will give you Adminius and the Cantiaci as a reserve. More than half our strength. Wait until the forward elements of the legions cross, and smash them. Do not get entangled. Do not look for glory. A quick victory against an inferior force, then march north to meet me.’
Togodumnus looked up at his brother. ‘Where?’
Caratacus pointed to the northern edge of the map. ‘Here on the Tamesa, where the sweet water meets the salt. That is where we will combine and destroy the enemy. The river will be choked with Roman dead and the bards will sing of the deeds of Togodumnus and his brother Caratacus for a thousand years.’
‘Why three days? Surely it will not take three days to reach the Tamesa?’
‘Because three days is what I ask and what I need. Will you give me it?’
Togodumnus grunted. ‘I will give you it, but, by the wrath of Taranis, I swear this, when we reach the Tamesa my running days are over, brother.’
Caratacus smiled, and his expression was almost as wolfish as his brother’s. ‘All our running days are over.’
Togodumnus swaggered from the hut, shouting for his lieutenants, but Caratacus sat in silence, deep in his own thoughts. ‘You sanctioned this?’ he said, as if to himself.
‘Sometimes my greater duty is to my people.’ Nuada’s disembodied voice emerged from behind a fur hanging at the rear of the round-house. ‘Do you deny me that right?’
‘I deny you the right to thwart me, priest,’ Caratacus said, his voice the texture of river gravel. ‘You knew my designs, knew the place the Roman had in them, yet you still acted against my will, and with my fool of a brother?’
For almost a minute the only sound in the hut was the harsh sawing of Nuada’s breathing. ‘I fear the great beast. I have dreamed of it each night since we learned of it, and each night its power grows greater. If killing the beast’s servant diminished that power, then I would use even Togodumnus to that end.’
Caratacus gave a humourless laugh. ‘There are greater powers to fear than the elephant, Nuada. The information that boy carried to his masters will help me destroy them. If he had died, Taranis would have had another messenger at the next sunrise.’
‘Togodumnus?’
‘You. Now get out.’
When the Druid was gone, Caratacus called for Ballan, and prepared himself for the long journey north. To an old love and a new hope.
She knew he was coming and had agreed to meet him. He was confident he could persuade her of the justice of his fight, but he feared the effect the shadows of their past might have on her judgement. She had always been wilful, he remembered. When she was angry, logic played no part in her calculations. Yet she was a queen, and if he could convince her that her people’s cause would be advanced by joining him, surely she would act in their best interests. But she was also a woman. What could he give her, and — a shiver ran through him — what would she ask?
The way was easy and they were in Catuvellauni country for the first twenty miles, but Ballan rode as if he were in the very heart of the enemy. He had argued for more warriors, but Caratacus insisted on the minimum escort. He did not want it known that while his people were fighting in the south, their king was riding north. They had compromised on a dozen men, all, including himself, dressed in rough peasant clothing.
‘You are going to get us all killed,’ Ballan complained as they rode together. ‘It was a mistake to let the elephant man go free. Now the Romans know where you are they will try to kill you.’
Caratacus smiled. Ballan: always watching, always thinking. ‘The Romans know where I was. In any case, this is my land. I will know when the first Roman sets foot upon it. Take heart. No Roman sword will reach me with you at my side, Ballan.’
‘It is not a Roman sword I fear, lord.’
They rode north, beyond the boundary stone of the Catuvellauni, and into the land where no man’s hand ruled. Ballan’s vigilance increased with each mile they travelled, for this was the haunt of thieves, bandits and incorrigibles who had been exiled from their communities, whose crimes were so terrible they would receive a welcome from no other tribe. They were desperate men, who lived on the very edge of subsistence and took from whomever they could. Even a dozen men might be prey for them. It was hilly country now, and as unwholesome as those who inhabited it: low crags with sharp scree-scarred crests and deep gullies that might have been chopped out by a giant’s axe.
‘Ambush country,’ Ballan spat, and weighed his spear in his hand. ‘Do you feel it?’
‘How long have they been watching?’
‘An hour, perhaps longer.’
‘Will they attack?’
‘I hope so.’ Ballan grinned. ‘My spear hasn’t tasted blood for too long. It will rust away if you don’t find me some Romans to kill.’
‘Your spear will never rust, Ballan. I hear it is in constant use. How many is it now?’
Ballan roared with laughter, his broad frame shaking and his guffaws echoing around the hills. ‘Six. Four boy brats and two useless girls. And you?’
‘Only the two.’
‘Medb keeps you too close to home.’
‘Will she be safe?’
Ballan knew Caratacus was not talking about his wife. ‘From them or from you?’
Caratacus gave him a hard look that told him he was on dangerous ground.
Ballan shrugged. ‘She’s not stupid enough to travel with twelve miserly warriors. She’s a real queen and she’ll have a real escort. This scum won’t touch her.’ He kicked his horse ahead, leaving Caratacus to ride onwards accompanied only by his thoughts.
Twice, they saw sign of the bandits, but something in the way the thirteen rode must have made the thieves wary, for they reached the standing stone that marked the southern boundary of Brigantia unmolested. The barren hills fell away behind them and they were in gentler, greener country, where small, fast-running streams cut across their path, identifiable from far off by the thick vegetation which fought for position and the promise of water on their banks.
‘We rest here. The meeti
ng is not until four hours after first light and we do not have much further to go.’ Caratacus studied the pretty brook, its clear waters gurgling musically over sand and gravel and the shadowy forms of trout and minnows sheltering beneath the willows that drooped lazily over its banks. They found a small pebble beach by a shallow pool where they could water the ponies, and set up camp twenty paces upstream in the shadow of an old, gnarled oak. The men unfolded their blankets and laid them out in a circle, with Caratacus at the centre. Ballan formed three watches of four to stand guard. They made no fire that might alert another to their presence, but ate fire-hardened corn cakes with a few sips of honeyed ale to sustain them through the night. Caratacus fell asleep with the sound of running water in his ears. For some reason he dreamed of butterflies.
He rose with the sun, and, as Ballan readied his men for the journey, he walked downstream to the horses and unstrapped the pack from his mount’s back, laying its contents carefully by the riverbank. He shrugged off his soiled riding clothes and, naked, slipped into the stream. The sun was warm on his back, but the water was cold, and he gave an involuntary gasp as it reached his groin. He scrubbed his body with clean, white sand from the river bottom. So many scars. How close he had come to death in those days of his youth when any slight had been worth a fight and any risk worth taking if it meant cattle, or gold, or women. The puckered white skin where the spear point had pierced his thigh when the guards on the Iceni village had proved more watchful than he thought; the long thin line where a Durotrige sword had opened the fleshy part of his breast. And the one he never boasted about, not even to Ballan. The little dimple on his right buttock, to remind him of the Silurian arrow. Had she been worth it? Dark-haired and spitting like a wildcat, but with translucent skin that shone like polished marble. He tried to conjure up her face, but couldn’t.
He returned to the bank and dried himself down with his blanket. The pack contained a finespun woollen tunic in a rich, dark green that was the mark of the Catuvellauni royal house, and a pair of full-length trews striped in the same green and a creamy white. When he’d dressed, he fastened a belt of heavy gold links round his waist, and from a loop on his left hip hung the ceremonial sword. The scabbard was made of bronze, but it had been polished until it glowed bright as gold. Both it and the grip were decorated with what looked like rubies, but were actually iron studs covered in scarlet enamel. He had visited the smith in his foundry on the hill at Camulodunum and had wondered at the skill and care he lavished on the sword. It had a dangerous beauty, but he would never carry it in war. The decorated hilt was too uncomfortable to hold for any length of time and the slimness that made it so pretty also made it too light to be truly a killing weapon.
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