The Eagle and the Raven (10 page)

The rain thickened as the afternoon wore on, but the men still sang, and at last, when they could no longer see where they were going, they stopped at a peasant’s hovel, pegging their horses and squeezing inside. The hut stank, and a cold wind whistled through the neglected wattle walls. Venutius coaxed the fire into new life, and the lengthening flames revealed an old man and a young woman, sitting with big, dark eyes fixed on them all, their bare feet tucked under rude sacking and their faces all but hidden by tangled masses of black hair. Aricia went to them and tried to talk, but they stared at her in dumb fear and at length she left them and took off her cloak and held it to the fire. It began to steam, and a picture of Caradoc stole unbidden into her mind. He was standing before her fire in the cozy room at Camulodunon, his eyes black and glazed over with desire, his hair stuck to his forehead and his shoulders, and his breeches steaming. She wrenched her mind away after one agonized flash of longing and turned to hold a pot steady while one of her chiefs poured the water that was to be heated for soup. Rain trickled through the moss-choked thatch above them and it soon made cold pools under their feet. They ate uncomfortably, sharing what they had with the pair, who suddenly sprang to life, snatching the bowls held out to them and eating like famished wolves.

“Are all your peasants this poverty-stricken?” Aricia whispered to Venutius.

He was galled at the way the word “your” slid off her tongue. “No, Lady. Only here, close to the border, where the Coritani often raid and the people are parted from their sheep and their goats. They suffer grievously but will not leave their land to move farther in.”

The night was spent in damp, cold misery and they were astir early, in a fever to pack up and be gone. They left a bag of dried beans, a ham, and two cheap knives with the peasants, who did not thank them but stood staring into the drab dawn as they rode quickly way.

The river began to narrow and soon they left it, striking out into the knee-high grass. The land was dotted here and there with small copses, but for the most part it was bare, and in the slanting rain Aricia thought that she had never seen a more desolate place. She shivered and sneezed throughout the rest of the journey, never dry, never warm, dreaming more and more of the huge warm stone house of her childhood, praying that it existed.

At sunset on the third day since they had crossed the border, Venutius grunted, reined in, and pointed. “The heart of Brigantia,” he said, and she looked, her heart sinking. No gates, no defences, no neat, tree-lined paths, no people visible, only a collection of poor, miserable wattle huts, smoke curling slowly and sullenly from their thatched roofs, and a few half-starved curs that slunk amid the old bones and offal of feasts long past. Shock swelled her tongue, and she could not even cry out. Venutius rode forward and she followed him blindly, every nerve in her shouting negation, and they dismounted for the last time. He put his hands to his mouth and called out. Slowly, silently, as if they were wraiths of the mist taking concrete form in answer to Venutius’s voice, the doorskins of the huts parted and men began to flow toward them, tall men, spare, with beards that hung upon their thick tunics and eyes that seemed to gather together and fly to her, holding her in a vise. They came soundlessly, but she stood her ground, knowing instinctively that if she stepped back she would lose a kingdom. Behind them the women glided, tall also, dark-haired and pale-skinned, dressed in wild-patterned tunics that covered their leather-shod feet. Their eyes, too, held the latent ferocity of the barren hills, and they looked at her without respect and without fear. They all came to a halt and there was a deep, pregnant silence, broken only by the pattering of the rain.

Aricia flung back her cloak so that they could see the sword at her belt. “What ails you, all of you, that you stand gazing at me as if I were the Raven of Panic in human form? Do you not know a Brigantian flaith when you see one?” she said haughtily, though she was shaking with fever and her head swam. Suddenly smiles broke out and the people surrounded her, touching her cloak, her hair, bidding her welcome, speaking the words of hospitality one by one until Venutius turned and addressed them.

“Prepare fire and food, and go about your business. The lady must see her father, and then she must rest.” The crowd scattered, but Aricia was not too sick to notice their instant response to his bidding. She wondered whether Venutius had brought her all this way only to challenge her right to rule. She and Venutius walked on through the huts, the chiefs behind them, leading the horses, she swaying a little, sweat breaking out on her forehead. Venutius stopped by a house built, she saw with unutterable relief, of stone. It stood in the center of the village, surrounded by a palisade of tall wooden stakes, and six chiefs lounged at the entrance, leaning on their shields and talking, impervious to the rain. They straightened and saluted Aricia, and Venutius gestured with one brawny arm. “Lady, your father awaits you within. He is very weak and may not even know you, but I think the expectation of your coming has kept him alive, and now he will not linger long. I will see that you get dry clothes and food in a little while.” She smiled wanly up at him and he saw the sweat on the white forehead, the fever-glazed eyes, the trembling hands. A pang of concern went through him but he did not show it, and turned on his heel to go inside.

It was warm and dry within. A fire burned at the central hearth, and sheepskins covered the dirt floor. As she bent her head and entered, a woman rose from a stool at the bedside, but Aricia saw her only through a fog of sickness. She heard her own voice greet the woman but it seemed to come from someone else far away, and the woman’s polite reply reached her tired brain as mere gibberish. She shed her heavy cloak and the woman took it, putting it over one arm and going out. Aricia turned to the low bed with a growing sense of unreality, her heart beating faintly and rapidly.

She lowered herself onto the stool and leaned forward, but it was not Cunobelin who lay there sinking into his last sleep. It was a wizened, gnomelike little man with a thin, drooping mouth and wispy gray hair like a baby’s. He was scarcely breathing, and she thought for a moment that he was already dead, but then the blue-veined hands lying inert on the blanket quivered and she leaned closer, feeling the fever begin to gnaw at her back. “Father?” she said loudly, feeling the terrible, ridiculous nonsense in the word, and he opened his eyes with effort and turned his head. They were brown eyes, rheumy and vague, and they searched the room for her. She stood and bent closer. “Father, it is I, Aricia. I have come.” He saw her then and his eyes wandered over her face. The hands lifted, fell back, and she reached out and clasped them with her own. It was the hardest, most distasteful thing she had ever done in her life, but she took the brittle fingers, feeling the coldness of death in them, and he smiled very faintly.

“Aricia,” he whispered. “Home at last. You have not changed at all, little one.”

She felt a tremor pass from his hands to hers and he closed his eyes for a moment, marshaling his strength. “The chiefs are like children,” he went on slowly. “Swift to anger, loyal to death. Treat them as children. Leave the Carvetii alone. We have a treaty with them, and with the Parisii. Ride against the Coritani and teach them a lesson. Listen to the Druithin. Observe the sacrifices.”

“Hush, old man!” she whispered back fiercely. “Be at peace. Am I not of your flesh? Will I not rule the Council well?” Her head ached, and black spots flickered and burst before her eyes.

His hands went limp and she sat back with relief, but before he closed his eyes he said, “Venutius. Great honor-price. Much power, but loyal to House Brigantia. Give him…give him…” He sighed and slept, and after a moment she rose from the stool and staggered to the fire, sitting beside it, exhausted, and laying her head on her knees. Give him what? Her thoughts echoed in the battleground of her fevered mind. Give him myself?

She fell into a deep, troubled sleep and the woman found her there, moaning and ill, and sent for Venutius. He came and picked her up as though she were a wisp of straw and carried her to the guest hut, laying her gently on the bed and stoking the fire until it roared halfway to the ceiling. He put a hand on her burning brow and then looked down on her as she tossed and muttered, this pampered child, this royal woman. I could kill her now, he thought. I could pick up the pillow and smother her and the chiefs would never know that she did not die of the fever. But instead he smoothed the wet black hair from the tiny face and spoke sharply to the woman who stood waiting. “Undress her and dry her thoroughly. Pile the skins on her and keep the fire high, and send for me when she awakes.” He went out quickly, mud spattering from his boots, and the rain drummed on the thatch like a mad lullaby.

For four days she lay sick, and in that time the rain stopped and a strong summer sun shone out. Her father died on the third day, passing peacefully in his sleep, and his chiefs carried him to his resting place on a bier, arrayed in all his finery, his sword and his spear beside him. They were not sorry to see him go. If he had recovered they would have killed him, for Brigantia the High One was an ugly, incompetent hag, who wandered screaming and cackling over the bare hills, reproaching them for their timidity in not dispatching him a long time ago so that she could grow young again. One of the chiefs had seen her, standing high above the village, her black robe streaming out behind her and her gnarled hands clenched, and Aricia’s father had known that, naturally or unnaturally, his time had come. He wanted only to see his daughter, and having seen her he let go his hold on life and slipped away contented. The funeral would not take place until Aricia could attend, so his body lay deep in the barrow, in a dark, quiet place surrounded by his bronze and silver ornaments, his chariot, his drinking cups, his beer, and his meat. As soon as the stone house was empty, the servants unpacked her wains, exclaiming over the richness of her tunics with their thin, fine texture and their silver and gold embroidery, the softness and length of her gay cloaks. But they thought her brooches and anklets and thin metal headbands crudely decorated, and they handled them with contempt under Venutius’s watchful eye.

On the fifth day Aricia sat up and called for water and fresh fish. The servant went to her and saw the clear eyes of returning health, and Aricia ate and drank and slept again to the sound of the sheep calling on the long sloping hillside beyond the village and the dry smell of a sun that had come to stay. On the sixth day she got up and sat wrapped in blankets before her door. She leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, her sun-starved body basking in the gentle warmth, listening to the people coming and going. Sometimes the footsteps stopped and there were whispers, but she did not open her eyes, drowsing between reality and fantasy, and healing in the strong yellow light while the busy life of the village went on around her, bringing to her a certain pleasant stability. Her dreams had been dark and frightening, the dreams of fever, full of blood and darkness and the tortured faces of those she knew, but now she rested in the real world, and it made her inexpressibly glad.

On the seventh day she moved into the stone house, and that night she went, unsteadily but purposefully, to the great fire that had been lit outside the village just under the dimpled feet of the first long slope that stretched to a summit five miles away. It was twilight, warm and full of the scent of grass and wildflowers, and she sniffed the little breeze with pure delight as Venutius came to greet her, smiling, and her chiefs rose, crashing their swords on their shields and shouting her name. She sank cross-legged onto her cloak, and the sparks roared and leaped into the black, velvety sky now hung with winking stars. The whole village was there, along with chiefs and their wives and families from miles into Brigantia, and the laughter and chatter grew louder as the meat, smoking and dripping, was apportioned and the beer passed from hand to hand. Venutius squatted beside her and she talked to him quietly, stirred by the strength of him, glancing now and then at his rugged face, and he smiled slowly back at her, his eyes boldly meeting her own, feeling the urges within her yet warned by what he read in her eyes. It was the same way that Caradoc had been warned. There was calculation there, and cold reasoning, the flaws of insecurity and self-hate, but above all there was lust, for him or for power or just for a full life, he did not know. He was a warrior, a seasoned fighting man already scarred from many raids, and she was just a child. Or was she? He drank his beer reflectively, and she was silent. At last he stood and bellowed, and the company drew closer to him. The fire was dying, but still the night was soft and warm and no cloud hid the white crescent moon.

“It is time for Council,” he shouted. “All slaves depart. All freemen draw near.” No one stirred. The Brigantians kept few slaves, and even the servants were proud people, bereft of honor-price but not of freedom. Venutius took off his sword and laid it in the grass, and the chiefs swiftly followed suit. “Let the Druid speak first,” he declared and sat down. Aricia stiffened and peered into the crowd. A man had risen and was moving forward, his white robe slashed with red in the light of the fire. He carried his cloak over one arm and he came and bowed perfunctorily to her, but his eyes stayed on the dark bulk of the hill behind her. Then he turned and an expectant hush fell. For a moment he did not speak. He looked up at the stars, and among the eager faces turned to him, and then began to walk quietly up and down before them, his hands behind his back.

“Freemen and women,” he said, his voice friendly. “You gather tonight to elect a new ruler, someone to replace the one who has guided you for many years, and you gather also to welcome his daughter, returning after long years far from you, her people. To some of you, what I have to say will make you angry, to some it will come as words torn from your own doubting hearts, but I beg you all to consider them. You know me well, Brigantians. I come and go. I wander at will among the tribes, I bring to you the wisdom of my travels, and I also bring truths that it is good for you to hear. I am asking you not to elect Aricia, chieftain’s daughter.” Strangely, no whispering broke out, and Aricia felt the mood of the crowd concentrated utterly on the Druid in breathless anticipation. Beside her Venutius stirred but did not look at her. The Druid stopped his slow pacing and stood facing them all. He was so close to Aricia that his robe brushed her feet, and she drew them in under her. “My reasons are few, but damning. Day after day the refugees among our people from the stricken countryside of Gaul pour into Albion, fleeing from the slow march of Roman aggression, bringing with them tales of such horror and degradation that the tribes who give them shelter sometimes do not believe them. Where do these people go? They seek succor from you, from the men of the west, from the Cornovii. They make the long journey to the sanctuary of the holy island, but to the mighty Catuvellauni they do not go. Why?” He paused, and the crowd leaned toward him, their eyes shining in the flickering light. This man, Aricia knew, was no potboy when it came to the slow swaying of simple people. When he spoke again his voice was pitched lower, deeper. “Because the Catuvellauni have grown fat and arrogant on the wine of Rome. Because a freeman who does not love to eat from Roman dishes and barter in the Roman tongue is not safe, even among his own brothers! And this child of yours, this chieftain’s daughter, has lived among them since her earliest days, drinking in the milk of Roman thought, lying on Roman cushions, enjoying every foreign luxury, while her sisters saw their children impaled on Roman spikes and their fathers chained to work in Roman mines. When you look at her, freemen, what do you see? I see a strange, unnatural being, half Catuvellauni and half Roman, but I do not see a free Brigantian!” He strode away abruptly, melting into the press of seated people, leaving dark hints to insinuate themselves into the minds of his audience.