Barbarian Princess

by Barbarian Princess (retail) (epub)

  “Grab him! Back off now, Julianus, that’s an order! Someone get a surgeon!”

  “Probus has already gone, sir,” one of the sentries panted, pulling Correus away from the still form of the tribesman.

  They tugged at his shoulders, and he rose slowly, shaking. There was blood in his mouth and a wet feeling on his arm where the knife had slashed him. “You won’t help her by killing him,” Frontinus said, and the words came a little clearer now through the mist in his head.

  “Freita!”

  She lay hunched on the bed, cradled carefully by a brawny sentry whose face was shocked and miserable. He was holding the bunched bedclothes to her ribs to stanch the bleeding, but there was a faint froth of blood on her lips and he knew from his own grim experience what that meant.

  “Freita!” Correus knelt by the bed, ashen faced and panic-stricken.

  “Careful, sir, don’t bump her. The surgeon’s coming.”

  Correus took her hands in his, and she opened pain-filled eyes and looked at him, recognition coming slowly. “The baby,” she whispered.

  He didn’t care about the baby. He would have sacrificed the baby gladly, this one and all his hopes for the future, to keep Freita from slipping away from him. “Hush,” he whispered. “The baby’s all right.”

  The swell of her belly showed clearly under the night-shift and the shaken sentry watched it quiver as the child kicked; a trapped child now, he thought, his face twisting.

  Freita’s eyes clouded again. “Don’t leave me!” Correus pleaded frantically, trying to drag her back, trying to hold her eyes with his. “Hang onto me. The surgeon’s coming.”

  She said something he couldn’t understand, and her hands tightened on his.

  “All right, son, let me look at her.” Silanus, senior surgeon of the legion, laid a hand on Correus’s shoulder. He was also dressed in an undertunic and hastily caught-up cloak, but his face was alert and worried under a tousled shock of gray hair. “Move back, Centurion,” he said again, and Correus drew away, his face gone white and haggard. Silanus set his medical kit on the floor and motioned an orderly forward to take the sentry’s place. The orderly began slitting the white night shift down from the neck.

  “Get those lamps lit,” Silanus said curtly. “And everybody clear out. You too, Centurion.”

  Correus didn’t move, and a cohort centurion in full uniform took him gently by the arm. “Leave her with Silanus, Correus.” He drew him toward the door.

  Correus looked at him numbly. Vindex. His cohort must have had sentry walk again tonight. His men who had let the shadow with the knife slip through. He shook himself. It wasn’t Vindex’s fault, but he could see by the look in his friend’s dark eyes that Vindex thought it was. He let himself be led away, out into the commander’s private office beyond the bedroom.

  The sentries had thrown the attacker into a chair and none-too-gently tied his broken wrist to his good one behind him. The man’s face was bloody and gray with pain, and he sat slumped in the chair, staring bleakly at the governor and Domitius Longinus the legate.

  “What tribe is he, Centurion?” Frontinus said as Correus and Vindex came through the door.

  Correus looked at the faded blue patterns tattooed on the man’s face and forearms. His hair, tied back with a rough thong, was dark and so were his eyes, but he was too tall for one of the hill folk. “Not Silure,” Correus said, looking at the patterns again. “Demetae, probably.” Vindex eased him down into a chair, and he sat stiff and immobile as Frontinus turned back to the tribesman.

  “Answer the governor or I’ll twist that wrist again,” one of the sentries suggested in rough British.

  “Demetae,” the man said. He licked his lips.

  “Would you like some water?” Frontinus asked.

  The man didn’t speak.

  Frontinus nodded at a sentry, and the man went out and reappeared with an earthenware jug and a cup. Frontinus set them on the desk. “Pain makes men thirsty,” he said noncommittally. “There is water when you talk.”

  The man licked his lips again and looked at the circle of armored sentries and the angular gray-haired man in the gold and purple cloak, and once briefly at Correus. They would kill him, but water would make it more bearable. And there would be no second chance for his tribe now. He began to speak while the man he had been sent to kill watched impassively, heavy callused hands resting on his purple-cloaked knees.

  He was a man of the Demetae, and it had been fear that had sent him over the Roman walls. Fear and the hope that a knife in the dark might do what the Demetae were not strong enough to do with men and chariots. Bendigeid of the Silures wanted the Demetae to make a hosting against the Roman Army of the Eagles which sat poised on the frontier of West Britain. The Demetae had a treaty with Rome, but that would be little salvation while Bendigeid’s host lay between them and the Romans. By the time Rome avenged the Demetae, the Demetae would be gone. And if they made an alliance with Bendigeid, then they would die at Rome’s hands instead – Bendigeid would use the Demetae warriors and horse herds as he saw fit to break Rome’s advance, and the men who would be left when Bendigeid had won would not be Demetae.

  The tribesman spoke dully, in a monotone, while Correus, equally lifeless, translated automatically when the tribesman’s British went beyond the Romans’ understanding. It was an interrogation within a nightmare, while his mind returned in agonizing fear to the blood-soaked bedchamber beyond.

  “And so you thought that if the Army of the Eagles had no general, there might be no war after all?” Frontinus said. “Why not put your knife in Bendigeid instead and keep your treaty? Did you think Rome would take no vengeance for a murdered governor?”

  “The Roman kind are followers,” the Demetae man said. “Without a strong one to follow, they sit and wait for orders. By the time a new governor could be sent, there might be trouble elsewhere to turn Rome’s hand to, such as Boudicca made for us.” The previous campaign for West Britain had been cut short by that vengeful queen’s rebellion in the east. “But the Silures would have held King-making over Bendigeid’s body. Like us, they are warriors.” There was a touch of bitter pride in his voice at that. “And Rome could not have helped us in time against their new king. If Rome would. Also—” He looked at the knife that lay on the governor’s desk, the blood slowly drying along the blade. “That is a Silure knife.”

  Frontinus almost laughed and then bit the sound back as he remembered Correus. “And so you would have killed me and put the blame on Bendigeid. Commendable foresight.” His voice hardened. “Instead you have tried to murder a woman more than eight months with child. Your own folk would give you to the Dark Goddess for that. I may give you back to the woman’s man.”

  The Demetae man looked at Correus. “It was not meant.”

  The governor looked at Correus also, searchingly. “Do you want him, Centurion?”

  Correus shook his head. The fury and the red mist were gone. “In cold blood… no,” he said thickly.

  Frontinus nodded in satisfaction. “Good. That kind of thing puts a darkness on the soul that never quite washes out.” He motioned to the sentries. “Take him out. If he has any prayers to make to his own gods, let him make them. Crucify him in the morning, but keep it out of sight of the Silures’ hills.”

  They pulled him roughly from the chair.

  “Take the water with you,” Frontinus said.

  Correus watched them go, his face still numb, as if he sat in some other man’s body. He felt Vindex lay a hand on his shoulder in awkward friendliness.

  In the stillness created after the sentries had trooped out, the murmur of voices could be heard from the room beyond, and a sharp expletive from Silanus that made Correus’s shoulders tense like a spring. Vindex shot a glance at the two commanders and tightened his grip on Correus’s shoulder.

  “Sit still, friend. You can’t help.”

  They sat, the four of them – Correus, Vindex, Longinus, and the governor of Britain in his
night tunic – through what seemed like an aeon but was probably only a few more minutes. Correus’s hands clenched tightly into fists in his lap, and he was seemingly uncaring that he was shivering now with cold. Vindex took off his uniform cloak and put it around him.

  There was a short, wailing cry, which Correus seemed not to hear, and the other three exchanged glances again. The door swung open, and Silanus came out. There was blood on his tunic, and his arms were red with it to the elbow. His face was tired… and old.

  He stood silently before Correus for a moment, then shook his head. “She died, Centurion. I am sorry. The wound was in the lung.”

  Correus sat unmoving, his face wiped clean of life. The surgeon hesitated and went on. “The baby… it was alive, and kicking, and I took it from her when she died. It is early, but it will live, I think.”

  The orderly came in behind him, carefully holding a small bundle wrapped in a purple cloak – Governor Frontinus’s spare one, ransacked in haste from the clothes chest. “You have a son, sir,” the orderly said. He held the bundle out to Correus, who seemed not even to see it.

  “Do you want to see her?” the surgeon asked gently.

  Correus stood up and went through the door. Freita lay against the pillow, her golden hair fanned out about her head. The bedclothes were pulled up above her breast, but he could see that her swollen belly was flatter now under the blankets, and something had been wrapped tightly around it. He did not look beneath them. Her hands were arranged on top of the bedclothes… long-fingered white hands, still warm. Her face was at rest, but a look of pain and fright clung to it He knelt down beside her, put his head against the hollow of her throat, and cried.

  In the outer room the orderly stood uncertainly, holding the baby as a man would hold a strung catapult.

  “It’s only a baby,” Vindex said mildly. He took off his helmet with the centurion’s transverse crest of red, set it on the desk, and unbuckled his lorica. “They need to be cuddled. That’s what my mother always said. Here, give him to me.” Vindex had bright, dark eyes and a sleek, dark cap of hair like a seal, and he bent over the baby affectionately. The orderly relinquished it gratefully. “He’s a fine one for an eight months’ child,” Vindex said with approval. “Gemellus in my cohort has a woman who just had a child. Go and roust him out of bed for me. Second tent, fifth century.”

  The orderly departed, and Vindex looked at the governor. “I’ll, uh, return your cloak, sir, when Gemellus’s woman has cleaned it.”

  Frontinus smiled. “Domitius, would you be kind enough to call one of your men to get these braziers lit. My mother always said that a nursery should be warm. Have Julianus keep the cloak for him, Centurion. It is not every soldier who can boast that he was born in a camp of the legions and swaddled in a military governor’s cloak. Maybe it will be a sign.”

  Silanus looked dubious. “I hope I have done the right thing.”

  Frontinus hitched his chair forward to put his bare feet on the Persian carpet that graced the commander’s study. “You had no choice. I am not aware that the Caesarean Law has been changed.”

  “There is always a choice in the end, Governor,” Silanus said, “for a surgeon. Most of us have a choice or two on our consciences already when we get to my age. I am going back to my hospital. I don’t think Centurion Julianus will be wanting to see me just now.”

  Frontinus looked after him. “Army surgeons unsettle me. I understand civilian physicians, and I wouldn’t let most of them touch me with tongs. I understand soldiers and I understand aqueducts, both of which are highly predictable. But I have never met an army surgeon yet who didn’t baffle me.”

  “It’s the training,” Longinus said as a pair of legionaries came in to light the braziers. “The civilian gives you a lot of large talk about the phases of the moon and the will of the gods, because there’s no arguing with that and it’s a nice excuse if you die. An army surgeon knows enough to know that he doesn’t know, and it makes him odd. Ah, this must be your man, Centurion.”

  The orderly returned with a sleepy legionary in tow, hastily dressed and more than unnerved by a midnight summons to the commander’s quarters. He wondered which of his illicit pursuits was dire enough for the governor to take notice of it. He blinked in surprise at the sight of his cohort commander with a baby in his arms.

  “It’s not mine, sir,” Gemellus said jumpily.

  “Of course it’s not, you fool,” Vindex said. “It’s Centurion Julianus’s, and the mother is dead. Has your woman enough milk for two, do you think?”

  “Yes, sir, more than enough,” Gemellus said, relieved. “Good. Go and wake her up and tell her to get ready for us.” Vindex filched a wax message tablet from the study desk with his free hand and scratched a note on it. “This will get you through the gate.”

  “Yes, sir.” Gemellus looked thoughtful. “Uh, will the centurion be payin’ her a bit, sir? She’ll need extra food and the like to nurse two.”

  “Yes, he will be paying, you greedy oaf, and he will be grateful.” Vindex fixed Gemellus with a steely eye. “But if you mention it to him before he’s ready to talk about it, I’ll see that you’re cleaning latrines for a month.” Gemellus departed in haste, and Vindex looked sadly through the open doorway to the still figure by the bed. “I’d better go and get him. It won’t do for him to grieve in that room all night.” He hesitated and looked at the baby, which was sleeping peacefully now, muffled in the purple cloak.

  “Give him to me,” Frontinus said.

  “Sir?”

  “That poor woman is dead because she was in my bed. It’s hardly an affront to my dignity to hold her baby.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you.” Vindex laid the baby in the governor’s lap and approached Correus hesitantly. “Correus?” The still figure looked up, and Vindex flinched. His’s face looked like a death mask. “It’s time to go now.”

  Correus stood up. He gave a last look at Freita and brushed a hand across her cheek.

  “Correus,” Vindex said.

  Correus turned and followed him out of the room, closing the door behind him. Vindex bent down to take the baby from the governor, but Correus suddenly put out his own arms.

  “No, I’ll take him.”

  * * *

  Gemellus’s woman was fat and none too clean, but her own baby looked healthy, and she cradled Freita’s child capably against her breast when he woke and began to cry.

  This house also was little more than a tent with two wattle-and-daub walls, but there was a banked fire still glowing warmly, and the floor was thickly laid with rushes. If the hut didn’t catch fire, Vindex thought, the child would be well enough here. He put a coin in the woman’s hand, and she nodded briskly.

  “He’ll be all right, sir,” she said to Correus. “See, he’s hungry already.”

  Correus took a deep breath and for the first time looked carefully at his son. The baby had a crown of pale fuzz and a red, wrinkled face. He could see nothing of himself or Freita in him. Freita, he thought miserably, his stomach clenching. His beautiful, beloved Freita, gone forever, irrevocably, leaving him nothing but a child he had no way of raising. A bastard child, like his bastard father. Correus made a choking sound and left the hut, Vindex trotting anxiously after him.

  * * *

  They buried Freita the next day in the little cemetery that had already begun to grow up along the road to Glevum across the Isca River.

  DIS MANIBUS…

  TO THE GODS OF THE SHADES…

  Correus paid a legionary stonecutter to chisel the short inscription.

  FREITA, LOVED WIFE

  OF CORREUS APPIUS JULIANUS,

  CENTURION OF THE NINTH COHORT,

  LEGIO II AUGUSTA.

  Governor Frontinus was in attendance, and he didn’t even raise an eyebrow at the word “wife.” It was all very illegal, and he didn’t give a damn if it was.

  Correus’s cohort turned out unasked, in full parade kit for their commander’s lady, and a full century
of Vindex’s Tenth Cohort was with them, on their commander’s order. The legate and the governor himself made a prayer for the lady’s soul.

  Julius watched from the edge of the crowd as Correus laid a wreath of fern and summer wildflowers on the grave. He had liked the lady, he thought miserably, even when they quarreled. He wished he could have told her so. Julius had never known a kind word or a gentle hand until the centurion had brought him to look after the lady, who had been a slave, too, in those days. Julius knew that the centurion’s will contained a clause that freed him, also, and the centurion would do it before that – when he was old enough to look after himself. Julius responded with a devotion far greater than that which he gave the gods. They had done little enough for him. If there was a god in Julius’s life, it was the centurion. It wasn’t fair that he had lost his lady, Julius thought angrily. Not when he had loved her so much.

  When the last prayers were made, Correus turned his back on the grave and walked alone across Isca Bridge back to the fortress. For the rest of his life he would never fully remember the next two days. They were the leave that was to have been spent with Freita, and the day he buried her he passed up the leave and went back to his cohort. He rode Aeshma, who was in such a state of nerves, triggered by Correus’s and Julius’s moods, that Julius couldn’t handle him. He checked on the baby and gave Gemellus’s woman some money. He drilled his men and called a weapons inspection under the sympathetic eye of Octavius, his second-in-command. Correus didn’t remember doing any of it.

  He looked like the walking dead, Octavius thought nervously. If the commander cracked up, there would be hell to pay when the legion marched, and that would be any day now. Before he hit the Silures, Governor Frontinus was going to show the Demetae what a mistake they had made. Correus told his cohort so at their first parade, but Octavius wasn’t sure the commander really heard his own words. His face had the hunted look of a man who turns back to hide in his own mind. He might have slipped over the brink entirely if it hadn’t been for the arrival of his brother-in-law and his half sister on one of their frequent travels.