Once Every Never (22 page)

“That’s me. Good ol’ Clare, monkeying with the time stream,” she groaned. “Oh, God …”

“Which god do you speak of?” Llassar’s gaze grew sharp with interest. “Are you their messenger? Are you sent by Andrasta? Do you travel her ways? Do her bidding?”

“Uh …” Clare stammered, “I … can’t really say.”

“I understand.” Llassar nodded. “The Fair Folk must keep their secrets close.”

These people take all this paranormal stuff
way
too well
, thought Clare. But in their world it had probably been an awful lot easier to believe in the supernatural than it was for people in the twenty-first century. She suddenly had an inappropriately hilarious mental picture of bringing Al’s laptop with her on the next trip:
“Behold! The power of Google compels you!”

Too bad that shimmering fried electronics. And first-century wi-fi probably sucked worse than it did back in Morholt’s warehouse …
Stop. You need to focus
.

“Comorra is hurt,” Clare said, grabbing the burly smith by the hand and leading him back to the little hill. “She’s bleeding and needs help.”

“The princess!” Llassar exclaimed, his pace quickening. “Where is she? Is she all right? We thought the Romans had captured her.”

“Yeah, uh … they did.” Clare squirmed a little inside, thinking of the part she had inadvertently played in that capture. “She got away.”

They reached the stand of trees where Comorra lay, her breathing shallow but steady. The princess opened her pale blue eyes when Llassar knelt beside her, her pain-clouded gaze registering dull surprise.

Clare shrugged. “If you can’t trust a Druid … who can you trust?”

“Your faerie
is
real, Comorra.” Llassar smiled gently, moving her arm away from the rent in her tunic so that he could examine her wound.

“Of course she is real! I am too old for imaginary play-fellows, Llassar.” Comorra smiled back, trying to muster up a teasing tone. She looked older—far beyond her years—and in her eyes was the weight of unsought wisdom. “Would that I were not …”

The Iceni princess gritted her teeth and hissed in pain as Llassar pulled away the fabric that had stuck to the gash along her ribs. Clare grimaced in sympathy and swallowed against the slightly sick feeling at the sight of the blood.

“It is a long cut, but not deep,” Llassar said. “Not
too
deep, anyway. I think I shall have to practise my needlecraft upon you.”

Llassar got a shoulder under Comorra’s uninjured side and Clare supported her on the other. His travelling pack kept getting in the way, though, so Clare offered to carry it for him. The smith hesitated, but after another glance at Comorra he handed over the lumpy pack. Clare sensed something familiar in its oblong contours, but she shouldered the awkward thing and followed in Llassar’s wake down the darkened path toward the little roundhouse the princess called home. The way was deserted—the entire tribe, it seemed, had gathered in the field beyond the town to hear their queen speak.

Clare and Llassar made Comorra as comfortable as possible on the sleeping platform in the thatch-roofed hut. She looked around as the Druid bent over a brazier, heating a small bronze cauldron that sat on a metal tripod above the coals. Like the inside of Connal’s hut, Comorra’s was tiny, but more cozy than cramped. It was neatly arranged with sumptuous tapestries—rich hangings and cushions and rugs. The furnishings were mostly wood, decorated with intricate, knotted carvings. In the corner a small hanging loom bore a half-finished length of brightly checked green and gold cloth.

Llassar rummaged around in a basket of sewing and weaving supplies and returned with a small spool of finely spun thread and a long bronze sewing needle. Then he went back to the fire and added some kind of powdery substance from a pouch at his belt to the heating water. It smelled the same as the concoction Connal had used to treat her wound—a sharp tang like pine and lavender. Clare sat by Comorra’s head and held her hand as Llassar washed the wound with the hot, scented water.

“The herbs are cleansing,” he explained to Clare, “and they will help to numb the flesh surrounding the wound.”

But Clare could tell from the way Comorra gripped her hand that it didn’t numb it enough. She doubted very much that
she
could have put up with the pain of the slim bronze needle sewing her flank shut, but Comorra barely made a sound as she sucked air through tightly clenched teeth while the Druid smith worked.

After he was done his needlepoint, Llassar took a thin length of plain woollen cloth and began tearing it into strips to make bandages to cover Comorra’s stitches. He had just tucked in the last bandage and was returning the cauldron to the fire when the leather flap that curtained the doorway was suddenly, violently ripped aside. Clare almost went into cardiac arrest as Boudicca stormed into the room.

She scrambled to get out of the way as the flame-haired warrior queen crossed the floor of the tiny hut and knelt beside her daughter.

“Comorra!” Boudicca’s husky voice cracked with emotion. “One of the chiefs told me that he had seen Llassar carrying you this way. Oh, my dear one—I thought the Romans had you prisoner still …” A cloudy frown darkened the queen’s brow. “You are hurt.”

“I’m all right, Mother.”

Boudicca stared into her daughter’s eyes for a long moment. “Yes,” she said finally, as though she had looked for—and found—a strength in her daughter that she hadn’t necessarily known was there until that moment. “You will be, I think.” She took her daughter’s hand gently in her square, calloused fingers. “Comorra … your sister is—”

“I know.” Comorra’s eyes brimmed with pain and loss. Boudicca gathered her into an embrace, careful of the bandages she wore. Llassar eyed the queen’s own wounds and began to tear more strips of cloth.

Watching silently from her place in the corner, hidden from the queen’s eyes, Clare’s heart hurt as she thought about the night that Comorra had tried to barter her brooch so that Clare would watch over Tasca and keep her safe. She wished there had been something—anything—she could have done. But, really, there wasn’t. Not then, not now.

I’m just a girl
. A girl who could travel through time. But still, when you got right down to it, just an everyday, average girl. Clare used to hate the thought of her averageness. But at the moment it seemed to be a lot less complicated and dangerous way of life. The best thing—the
only
thing—she could do now was to leave Comorra and her mother to grieve in private. And so, as the fierce queen rocked her only surviving child gently in her arms, Clare shared a glance with Llassar and then slipped out the door into the night.

17

C
lare headed toward the trees, lost in thought, the toes of Al’s borrowed purple sneakers scuffing along in despondent rhythm. She was just under the canopy of sheltering boughs when Connal caught up to her. Somehow, she wasn’t surprised to see him there.

She nodded at him in wordless greeting and they walked awhile in silence. A short way from Comorra’s house they came to a small hidden garden next to the banks of a little meandering river, barely more than a brook, that splashed through the trees near the timber wall that encircled the town. It was remarkably peaceful. The moon had risen high into the sky and its pearly light fountained down through the leaves, sparkling in the ripples on the water and the dew upon the grass. Clare stumbled in exhaustion and Connal steadied her with a hand on her arm.

“You are weary,” he said. He unclasped his cloak, spreading it on the ground near the water’s edge and bidding her to sit.

“Thanks,” Clare said, sinking down gratefully. Her legs felt like jelly. Having come that close to Boudicca was like falling into the zoo enclosure of a Bengal tiger. A really pissed-off Bengal tiger. Clare’s adrenalin had spiked through the top of her skull and now she felt lightheaded.

“What brings you to visit the Iceni this time, Clarinet?” Connal asked softly.

Clare raised an eyebrow. “You still think I have an uncanny way of showing up at inopportune moments, don’t you?”

Connal glanced sideways at her. “It is … an unsettled time among my people right now. Dangerous.”

“I know. Believe me.” She didn’t mean to snap, but Clare was getting a bit tired of everyone questioning her motivation. “I didn’t exactly plan it, but I’m kinda glad I showed up when I did. If I hadn’t, Comorra might still be lying out in the forest bleeding to death.”

Connal’s eyes went wide with alarm and he started to get up. Clare put a hand on his arm.

“She’s fine. Llassar patched her up and Boudicca’s with her now. I’d give them some space if I were you.”

A look of intense relief washed over Connal’s features as he sank back down beside Clare. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and murmured to himself, “I was so afraid she had fallen to the same fate as Tasca …” Then he opened his eyes and looked at Clare. “The Iceni owe you a great debt of gratitude, Clarinet. Thank you.”

“Hey. No problem. I’m just … just glad I was in the right place at the right time.”

The darkness seemed to settle upon them like a heavy velvet cloak. If Clare ignored what she knew was going on all around them in the rest of the village, she would have said that it was almost tranquil. “Are you thirsty?” the young Druid asked, reaching into the satchel that was slung across his shoulder. He brought out a drinking cup made of polished horn and dipped it into the silvery stream.

Clare nodded her thanks as she took the brimming vessel and tipped it to her lips. She
was
thirsty. Her mouth had been so dry from fear that the cold, clean brook water, even with its slightly metallic tang, went down better than an icy can of Coke. She savoured it, along with the relative stillness of the night away from the mad crowd. Away from the blood and horror and gathering doom. The quiet of the moment and the steady, calm companionship of the young man sitting next to her were wonderful.

Connal seemed to feel no great need to force conversation or to ask her any of the thousands of questions about her that must have been buzzing around his mind. She was thankful for that. In the distance the faint, angry sounds of the gathered tribe rose and fell like surf, too far away to be heeded. But also too close to ignore.

“What happens next?” Clare asked finally.

Connal shrugged. “If the tribe agrees with Boudicca—and I cannot see how they will not—then we go to war. It is as simple as that. And as complicated.”

“Oh.”

“The goddess Andrasta will paint her limbs with woad and wash her hair in blood and hitch twin ponies of smoke and shadow to her war chariot. The fiery trail from her wheels will scorch the sky and the world will burn.”

“Uh … that’s a euphemism, right?” All this talk of Andrasta as if she were a real person—or entity, at least—had made Clare almost believe that such a thing might happen.

Connal uttered a little, mirthless laugh.

“Do you know of war in your world, Clare?”

Clare nodded. “Yeah. Unfortunately. It sucks.”

Connal smiled and shook his head. “You have a succinct way of putting things—even in your strange language. War does indeed ‘suck,’ as you say.”

“Connal … can’t you talk to Boudicca? Can’t you change her mind?” Clare ignored the voice in the back of her head that yelped
Are you insane? You can’t just try and change history like that!
Knowing what she knew, she would have felt like a jerk not to try.

“This is
our
land, Clarinet. The Romans will have it over Boudicca’s dead body.”

“You got that right,” Clare murmured. It hurt her just to think about it. “Connal, talk to her. You’re a Druid. Isn’t she supposed to listen to guys like you?”

“The only one the queen ever really listened to was Prasutagus.”

“That’s just great!” Clare threw up her hands in exasperation. “He’s dead!”

“Aye,” Connal interrupted her. “He is dead. And he might
not
be if
he
had listened to
her
.”

Clare blinked at the young Druid in confusion. “You’ve lost me.”

“What I told you the night of the king’s funeral wasn’t true. I didn’t know the truth at the time, but … the king did not die of a broken spirit, Clarinet. He did not die of illness or accident.” Connal reached into the pouch at his belt and held up a small, dry bit of something that looked like a piece of bark. “He died of
this
.”

“What is it?” Clare began to reach for it without thinking. Connal pulled it away before she could touch it. “It is a kind of mushroom. The Roman is a clever animal, you see.” He smiled mirthlessly. “And somehow, in small amounts, dried and crushed to powder,
this
found its way into the many jugs of rich red wine that the Romans gave to the Iceni king as a measure of their ‘friendship’! How unlucky for Prasutagus that he had a taste for wine.”

“Oh …”

“And how unlucky for the Romans that Boudicca would never touch it.” Connal’s grin faded. “The only thing that she would ever drink was good stout beer made by her own craftsmen … and
that
predilection will cost the Empire dearly. Llassar hasn’t told the queen yet, but she suspects.”