by Sheila Finch
Tiberius spoke to the prisoner in the tongue of the Britanni, then switched back to Latin, for the sake of the tribune. “Will you join me in this, Tarvos, or would you forsake the ways of our ancestors?”
“Wait!” the tribune said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but –”
Tiberius stretched his right hand out to the prisoner. The prisoner hesitated, then slowly put out his own hand. Tiberius grasped it. His other hand held the mistletoe over their clasped hands.
“May Holly King and Oak King sanctify what we do here,” Tiberius said. “I give you my pardon under the sacred mistletoe for whatever assault you have made on the peace.”
“And in return under the mistletoe I swear peace to you,” the man muttered, sounding as if someone was holding a knife to his throat.
Tiberius lowered the mistletoe and released his hand. “Now go!”
The man scuttled away into the darkness beyond the reach of the firelight.
“I don’t believe what I just saw!” the tribune said. “You’ve just released a dangerous prisoner!”
“You are witness to my justice, Tribune. He was given into my custody to deal with as I saw fit. He is Britanni. I’ve dealt with him according to Britanni law. He is no longer a threat to Rome.”
“You’ve released a rebel, a –”
“By Bacchus himself,” Gallus interrupted.“Never mind this King Holly and Father Oak business. I’m ready for that hot wine now! Let’s all go inside –”
She realized the old man was trying to avert the conflict.
Didius held up his hand, silencing Gallus. “This has to be reported to the centurion immediately.”
He strode through the snow drifts to the stable to retrieve his horse. Tiberius watched him in silence, snow piling on his shoulders.
“What shall we do now?” A fit of coughing took her by surprise, and it was a while before she could continue. Her head pounded.
He glanced at her. “What’s done is done for good or bad. But you’re shivering. Are you not well?”
She shook her head. “It’s just very cold out here.”
“We’ll go in.”
The Yule log had gone out, in spite of Niko’s best efforts, smothered in the snow.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
[AD 67]
The stable boy came up to him with Stormfellow’s saddle, and hovered by the horse’s side, ready to assist. An icy wind fluttered the boy’s cloak and the horse’s mane.
Togidubnus waved the boy away. “Get out of the cold, lad. We’ve had enough sickness in this house.”
The sky was full of racing clouds. Most likely there would be more snow flurries before nightfall, winter’s last assault. He hoped that riding out to survey his herds would allow him to work through this bleak mood that had held him for too many days. It always lifted his heart to spend time with the men who tended the cattle that had belonged to his family since his father’s day. It was still early in the new year, but some of the herd would probably be calving. The wheel of birth and death and birth again among the animals, the plain conversation of simple men around a good fire, these were pleasures he valued, a refuge against the storm of problems that plagued him.
He’d been angry when he’d learned Antonia had planned a Yule celebration without consulting him. He hadn’t intended the occasion to be anything more than a ritual to command Tarvos’s good behavior. He was angered when he learned she’d somehow made a list of people in Noviomagus to invite. That in itself was bad enough, but they’d shown their contempt by not coming, and that shamed him. Other than Pudens, a true friend, the ones who did come were trash who would have gone to Hades itself if there was a chance of free food and wine. Was there no end to the humiliation and scorn she could bring down on him? He’d given up celebrating Yule long ago. Certainly, he hadn’t interfered when Breca took the boys to her uncle’s house to keep the old traditions; he’d even accompanied them. But the old ways meant nothing to him. That was another thing he’d learned at the court of Augustus. The old gods were just stories, some kind of magical charm to keep the unlearned in their place.
Someone had obviously helped her do this. Not Gallus – he sensed the old man didn’t like Antonia. The Greek? The man was devious, a cipher, like others of his race he’d encountered as a boy in Rome. Athens might’ve been conquered by Rome, but as far as he understood it, in their hearts the Greeks felt themselves superior to everybody else. But Niko had shown his usefulness when Antonia fell sick after Yule. He possessed knowledge of healing plants and herbs that matched Breca’s Aunt Adraste’s own – perhaps even surpassed what the Druid knew.
He mounted Stormfellow and the horse obediently started forward. There weren’t many travelers on the road today. That was just as well. He was in no mood to acknowledge anyone, Roman or Regni. Before he reached Noviomagus itself, he would head off on a narrower track to visit a small cluster of houses where his herders lived, in the rich grazing meadows at the foot of the Downs. Signs of winter’s end were everywhere, the tiny globes of snowdrops poking hesitantly through the still half-frozen mud, a bird flying past with twigs to make a nest. Somewhere in the fields, a fox barked, signaling good hunting for its cubs back in the den .
Angry as he’d been with Antonia, he hadn’t wished her to suffer in her sickness as much as she did. Niko wouldn’t let him enter her room to see her, but he’d stood by the door listening to her rasping breath, as if every mouthful of air was torture. She was burning up with fever, Niko said, ordering the servants to bring snow and ice from the garden to try to bring the fever down. The child had wailed when she too had been denied entry into her mother’s chamber, but Niko was adamant. One night he’d felt sure she would die, fighting for every breath; he’d watched her through the door a servant had left ajar, thrashing about in pain on the bed, gasping for air.
Two days earlier, Gracila had sent her own slave to help nurse Antonia through her sickness; the girl was standing near the Greek, holding a bowl he’d asked for. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, Niko with a knife – holding it to Antonia’s throat – the slave holding the bowl to catch the blood. Just as he was about to throw the door wide and enter the forbidden bedchamber, Antonia’s body went slack. But she wasn’t dead. He saw her chest heaving as air rushed in through the hole Niko had cut in her throat.
Whatever the Greek was, he was more than just a freed slave.
He thought about this as he rode, a light fall of snow dusting his shoulders, quickly turning to slush under the great horse’s hooves. The Greeks he’d known in his boyhood year in Rome had been a proud lot; many of the freemen among them disdained taking Roman citizenship. He still found that hard to understand. The Romans tolerated them for their knowledge and their culture. The Greeks in their turn were scornful of Roman attempts at art, especially sculpture – which they said was a poor copy of Greek achievement. He didn’t know if they were right; he had no skill at judging art.
A vivid flash of red against white bushes caught his eye. A lone robin out to find breakfast. Birds and trees, sheep, goats and wolves, the hills, the clouds and the stars in the night sky, these were the things he understood and valued. It was because these things were precious that he believed in cooperating with Rome to the extent of putting Rome’s laws ahead of Celtic desires. He couldn’t expect his people – or even his own family – to understand that immediately, but he must try harder to convince them it was for their own good.
Smoke stood straight up from the low roundhouse ahead. Hearing the clatter of Stormfellow’s hooves on the packed earth of the path, a young man appeared in the doorway, his arm raised in greeting. He’d taken over his father’s position when the old man grew too weak to work. Two hounds bared their teeth at the visitor, but dropped their heads when the young man raised his hand to them, sullen in their obedience. A red-cheeked woman – hardly more than a girl – came to take the reins. He’d known them since they were children. From the look of her, the woman was about to produce anoth
er child; one, a boy about the age of Lucia, clung to her skirt.
He walked with Colinus, keeper of his herd, to the nearby barn where the cattle about to give birth were kept, a noisy place full of the earthy stink of dung.
“Twelve should give birth in the next week or so,” the man told him. His pride showed in the way he carried himself, his confident speech. Togidubnus appreciated that in his steward..
He inspected the cattle one by one, soothed by the feel of warm flanks under his touch, the steam of breath rising above each beast, the placid eyes that turned to watch him. Colinus commented on each one’s good points. The herd produced good quality milk with thick cream that Old Nev would turn into the cheese he loved. Any excess – and there was usually an abundance once the grass in the river meadow came in thick in spring – would sell to the garrison in Noviomagus. The older cattle that no longer produced milk were slaughtered each year before the winter set in to save on the cost of feeding them. Much of that meat went to supply the legion too. His steward talked on, this many sides of beef, that many amphoras-worth of milk to be looked for once the cows had calved, the price the legion was willing to pay for good meat. The talk washed over him with the healing comfort of household prayer.
After the inspection was done and the accounting fully made of monies spent and monies coming in, they sat in the warmth of the fire in the tidy house, the old farmer nodding contentedly as his son talked to their king, a man both farmers had known for many years. The young wife served hot beer with honey from the bee-houses she kept nearby – a cup for each man present, a sign the gathering was in friendship not ritual – and roasted cakes heaped with thick dark cream from his cows. When he smiled at her in approval, she dimpled and laid a strip of smoky dried meat before him.
“A new thing for her,” the husband explained. “They didn’t smoke the beef in her family.”
“Well done.” He chewed the savory meat. “It’s very good.”
The young woman dimpled again..
Two more men came in from the fields and she served them too. The old man sat smiling toothlessly at the talk that flowed, the younger man’s father who had been steward to his own father. He remembered the many times he’d sat in the smaller house that had stood on this site, accompanying his own father, listening to the talk about calves and milk yields, just as they were doing today. He felt at peace for the first time in many months.
He spoke to them of the temple he was building in Noviomagus, careful to emphasize that it would honor Sulis in her Roman garb for he knew they, like so many of the Regni, held onto the old ways.
“We don’t get into town much,” the young man said, carefully. “Calving time takes good watching. And after that...”
He laughed and clapped the man on his shoulder. “Once a year should keep our Roman friends happy.”
“That’s important, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Firelight sparkled in their eyes, and their ruddy cheeks spoke of the beer warmth in their bellies. His too. He was neither Roman nor Regni here, king nor warrior, just a farmer talking about his fields and his herds and the weather. But the look that passed between these honest people at the mention of Romans didn’t escape him.
“Lord,” his chief herder began hesitantly. The other men were quietly watchful over the rim of their beer.
“King, now,” someone muttered the correction.
He held up a hand, staying them. “Speak, Colinus,” he said. “We are men of the land here, freemen all.”
“I would like to ask –”
He waited, his senses heightened by the man’s obvious nervousness.
The young man swallowed another mouthful of beer, gained courage and said, “Will the legions stay in Britannia, do you think? Or will the land be ours again some day?”
He was silent for a moment, weighing his words. Then he nodded slowly. “Yes, they will stay. And yes the land will be ours – It already is. We are all Romans now, and all will be well.”
But in his mind, he saw Tarvos’s sullen face lit by the Yule flame. He’d think about what this might mean later; right now, he would enjoy the moment. He planned to ride through his tribe’s land, doing what a chief must, listening to grievances and settling squabbles. Time enough to examine this undercurrent of unrest he sensed even in the house of herders who’d served his family for more than a generation.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Antonia leaned forward in the chair Niko had placed on the colonnade and allowed the young slave girl, Delamira, to tuck a blanket over her shoulders. Though the sun shone, the air was still cold. The garden she hadn’t seen for several weeks was like a strange country with a frenzy of vivid spring growth in the trees and hedges, the new grass so green it hurt her eyes.
“It’s still too cool for you to stay outside for long,” Niko said. “You’re not fully well yet. But a little fresh air will do you good.”
A sudden memory of an odd, slightly gritty taste came to her mind. “What was that liquid you made me drink while I was ill?”
“Silver dust. A Greek remedy to prevent sickness from getting worse.”
“How very strange!”
She touched the bandaged place on her throat where Niko had made a hole for her to breathe through. That was stranger still! The wound was sore but healing. Niko’s potions made sure of that.
Somewhere at the far end of the garden, she heard her daughter’s voice. Niko had been adamant that the child not come anywhere near her mother during her sickness. He had some odd notion that if she did, she’d become sick too, as if the sickness could just pass between them instead of when the gods so willed. That seemed like Greek superstition to her. How good it was to feel superior to arrogant Greeks for once! But she didn’t deny that – counselor, teacher, now healer – the Greek was a treasure. She was lucky that he’d chosen to accompany her after the family’s downfall.
Odd, that he hadn’t wanted to go home to Greece when her father freed him. Given the opportunity, she’d go back to Italia any day. No wonder she’d fallen ill in this damp climate. Home crowded everything else out of her dreams, the family’s villa on the hillside overlooking the sea, the rich perfume of the grapes at harvest, her mother contentedly spinning outside on a warm summer evening while her father spoke of affairs of the senate with her oldest brother, Julius, before he left to join the legion.. Sometimes, the longing to go home was too much to bear.
A small brown bird with red-capped head swooped over her, a twist of something white and furry in its beak. She watched to see where the nest was. It disappeared into a young tree just beginning to leaf out.
“Linnet,” Niko said.
“How do you know so much about everything?”
“I make it my business to learn about my surroundings.”
“Doesn’t that grow tiresome after a while?”
He didn’t bother to answer, and she hadn’t regained enough strength to pursue the thought.
She’d been sick a very long time, the days and weeks blurring together in her memory. Vague pictures of Niko trickling broth into her mouth, her difficulty swallowing, the coughing that wracked her chest as if she would tear herself apart, the sound of Lucia crying because she wasn’t allowed in the room, the rasping pain of trying to breathe with lungs on fire. She’d thought she was going to die. Somewhere in that haze, Gracila Pavonia had swept in, installing Delamira, the dark-skinned slave from Carthage, as Niko’s helper. Once, she remembered seeing Tiberius peering around the door. Niko had waved him away.
“Where’s my husband?”
“He rode out two days ago. Tribal matters,” Niko said.
“Two days?”
“Some family squabbles that needed the king to settle them.”
Surprised by his odd tone, she looked up at him. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”
“A Celtic king is the tribal arbiter.”
“He thinks of himself as a Roman.”
“The question is,” Niko said, “do
they think of him as one.”
“Ma!”
She squinted across the grass and saw three blurry figures, backlit by the sharp sun, racing towards her. Her daughter, a boy child – and an animal. A dog?
“Ma!” Lucia threw her small arms around her mother in a fierce embrace until Delamira scolded and pulled her off.
She looked over Lucia’s head at the boy. Older than Caelius . Red hair. Not Gracila’s boy.
“This is your husband’s second son,” Niko said.”The oldest, you’ll remember, stayed in Rome with the emperor.”
“What’s he doing here?”
The boy scowled at her, and she realized he understood Latin. That didn’t surprise her; his father had probably taught him a few words.
“Tiberius wants his son to be tutored.”
The illness that had almost claimed her life had not completely faded, leaving her quickly tired. Conversation was stressful. “Tutored? By whom?”
“I can as easily instruct two as one,” Niko said.
“A teacher and a healer too. What a surprise you are, Niko.”
“Little surprise that Greece knows more about medicine than Rome.”
He shooed the children away.
She closed her eyes against the sun’s glare. “What was this sickness that almost killed me, Niko?”
“What do names matter?”
“You’re the one who’s interested in knowing things for their own sake. I just want to know.”
“It’s known as the ‘leather sickness,’ for what it does to the sufferer’s throat.”
“How horrible! But tell me –”
“No more talking. You’ve had enough excitement for today. Delamira will take you back inside.”
* * *
It rained the next two days, but not the icy torrents of winter; these were the softer showers of spring, carried on the west wind, more heavy mist than downpour. With the shutters open to the garden, she smelled the sharp, fresh scent of grass and new leaves; yellow and white butterflies crowded the blossoms on the apples trees, and she heard the cuckoo call to its mate. The slave Gracila had sent to her was busy overseeing her food in the kitchen, but Antonia didn’t want to wait to have the girl comb and arrange her hair. Niko was occupied with the children and Tiberius still hadn’t returned.