“Something very like,” Llywarch said. He bent his head a little against the breeze that blew in from the channel and crossed his arms on the wall. With Bendigeid it was as well to go carefully. “He took a Roman courier with a secret in his head at the fighting at Dun Mori and then went to ground with him in Carn Goch to try to beat it out of him. It must have been important, because the Romans came and took him away again, and burned what there was to burn in Carn Goch in doing it. He was happy enough to make alliance after that. He’ll be away into the hills now, to lie low and wait for us to pull the Romans off his tail.”
The king of the Silures spoke softly, but his was always a voice to remember. There was an edge to it, like a skinning knife. “You have never been a fool, Llywarch. Why in the Mother’s name did you leave the girl? If Gruffyd has no chariots, I could make better use of her with Cadal of the Ordovices. We met at Lughnasadh and snarled like dog and wolf and exchanged guest gifts, and he went away again, thinking. But it is all still talk. The girl might have turned it.”
“For a one-war peace?”
“I don’t know,” Bendigeid said, “but it might have turned Cadal to promise.” Ygerna had been promised often enough before now.
“Gruffyd still has the horseflesh we need,” Llywarch said.
“And no choice but to give it to us now, without a royal woman for payment.”
“There was one other matter,” Llywarch said. “Gruffyd was afraid. Afraid of the Romans, and afraid I might learn why the Romans sailed for Dim Mori when he hadn’t yet broken peace with them.”
“That is Romans,” Bendigeid said. “Dun Mori gives them another foothold before they strike at us.”
“Not entirely. Gruffyd sent a man into the new fortress at Isca to try to put a knife in the Roman governor. A Silure knife. If he thought I knew that, there would be a Demetae rider in Porth Cerrig now, telling you I died when the Romans fired Carn Goch. To take the girl out with me might have made him think.”
Bendigeid didn’t speak, and Llywarch gave him a cautious look. The king was neither a tall man nor more than passably good to look at, but he was the kind of man upon whom the kingship sat like a mantle that was felt and not seen. It had nothing to do with the gold fillet in his hair or the fine woven breeches and shirt or the gold at his arms and throat. It went deeper than the blue patterns tattooed on his face and breast, and it was brighter than the fire. It would still be there if he were stripped naked. It came from the god, and when the king died it would go back to the god. Llywarch had known the king since before the old king died, when Bendigeid was twelve, and he had been afraid of him then.
“I curse him.” Bendigeid’s voice came in a low murmur like the surf beneath Forth Cerrig. “I curse him by the Morrigan and by Lugh, by the Darkness and the Light, by the land, the sky, the flame, and the water. May the green earth open to swallow him, the sky come down to crush him, the fires of his hearth burn no more, and the sea come up to drown him.” Bendigeid picked up a pebble from the ground at his feet and dropped it over the wall. It fell away in silence into the sea below.
Llywarch shivered. Not even a Chief Druid could undo the king’s curse. “How if Gruffyd goes to the Romans now, instead?”
“Send word to Gruffyd that we have taken the war trail and will join him north of Cara Goch,” Bendigeid said. “And may he still be waiting for us when the Romans find him.”
* * *
“Centurion, I am gladder than I can tell to have you back among us.”
Flavius opened his eyes in the hospital tent at Moridunum and found the governor looking down at him.
“Thank you, sir,” he whispered. “I am… somewhat relieved myself.” He was still unutterably weary, but he managed the ghost of a grin. “The last thing I remember before this place is clinging like a limpet to a horse and yelling ‘I can ride!’ I, uh, gather that I couldn’t.”
“No, your brother had you on a horse in front of him. I might add that he lasted long enough to tell me that you were alive and that you hadn’t told the Demetae anything, other than to go take a dip in the Styx. He then let go of you, you fell off the horse, and he passed out and fell on top of you. It was most impressive.”
“Correus! Where is he?” It must have been a full two days since they’d ridden in, he thought. He remembered waking several times and being fed and drifting into sleep again.
“Over there.” The governor jerked his head toward the next bed. Correus lay with his face to the wall, one arm under his cheek and the other flung out across the blankets. He was perfectly still.
“Is he all right?”
The governor deferred to Silanus.
“Perfectly. The only thing that’s wrong with him is what’s wrong with you. You both need a week’s sleep.”
“What about this man’s hands?” Frontinus said. He looked at Flavius hesitantly. “Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes.” Flavius looked down at his hands. They were both bandaged to the first joint, and oddly long and narrow, like a bird’s claws. “I remember.” They hurt, now that his mind had cleared.
“I doped you up and took the stumps off even at the knuckle,” Silanus said. “There will be less risk of infection that way, and you won’t be catching them on things. I have thanked the gods, incidentally, for the Briton that stuck your hands in that fire. It is probably why you’re still alive.”
“Yes.” Flavius lay looking at his bandaged hands, but said nothing more.
“Now see here, Centurion,” Silanus gave him a hard look. “Not even Aesculapius can regrow a severed limb, but the human body is remarkably resilient. Unless you want to play the lyre, you should be able to get along very well. As far as I am concerned, you are not to be considered Unfit-for-Service. You will be able to ride and drive, write and eat, and swing a sword in the bargain. You may have more trouble with a pilum, so it’s as well you’re an officer. Does that set your mind at rest?”
“Yes,” Flavius said. “Yes, thank you. But I was really thinking… It’s odd to find out just where your limits are… How far you’ll… stretch, before something breaks… like looking in a new sort of mirror.”
“Most people wouldn’t care for that sort of knowledge,” Frontinus said.
“I wouldn’t have asked for it,” Flavius said, his hands laid lightly on the blanket. “It… came.” He looked up at the governor. “Thank you for getting me out of there, sir. Believe me, I’m grateful.”
“So am I,” Frontinus said. There was more to Julianus’s brother than he had thought. He began to see some of the tangles in that relationship. “Gaius Gratus would have skinned me alive,” he added, turning the conversation back on course. “I’ve sent a courier off to Eburacum to say ‘Message received’ and that you have been wounded, and I’ve given you leave to recuperate in Aquae Sulis – I believe your wife was to meet you there?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you. I’d just as soon she didn’t hear about this from anyone else. She’s very young.”
“Whereas you are getting older by the minute,” Frontinus said dryly. “I expect you are, at that. I’m going to send your brother with you. It will relieve his mind to see you safely out of here, and Silanus tells me that he shouldn’t go into battle again just yet. Having ignored that advice when I sent him after you, I feel I should listen to him now.”
“Thank you, sir. I’d like that. I was afraid he’d have to go straight back on duty, and I don’t think he should, either.”
“Oh, I expect we can do without his services for a month,” the governor said. “Especially as he seems to have set fire to most of the enemy’s chariots already. And I’d just as soon have him out of here for awhile. He looks enough like you to be a twin, and he’s the only other one besides my legate here and his primus pilus who knows why Gratus sent you to me in the first place. And since some of the Britons also know him, and know him as a Briton, I’d like both your faces gone out of here before someone sees the light.”
Flavius gave his brother a long
look, and while he was digesting this, the governor threw his parting shot. “Oh, by the way, Centurion, you have been awarded the corona aurea, and your brother the corona civica.”
At the door the governor paused and spoke quietly to the optio who followed him. “You will find a letter addressed to Rome in my desk, on the right-hand side, I want it posted, please.”
* * *
Flavius and Correus sat in a pair of camp chairs in the captain’s cramped quarters aboard the supply ship Capricorn, returning empty from the coastal run to Moridunum. They were still bone weary and sore in mind and body, but they had the resiliency of youth. Each had awakened gratefully to find the other alive and recuperating. And carefully packed in his kit each carried the official promise of an award that most men could only dream about – the corona aurea, the golden crown that signified bravery above and beyond the standards already expected of a Roman officer; and the corona civica, the golden wreath of oak leaves given to one who had put his own life on the line to save that of a fellow citizen. The crowns themselves would come later, a dress award to be worn proudly on parade, in place of a helmet, but it was the papyrus sheets, written in the governor’s own hand and packed reverently between clean tunics in their kits, that really mattered.
There was a letter from Paulinus, also, to be delivered to Julia in Aquae Sulis, where he had already written her to take the servants and the baby and wait for him in comfort. Paulinus had seen his wife’s brothers off affectionately but had flatly refused to accompany them. He had pried a pass out of the governor somehow – he wouldn’t say how – and had every intention of sticking to the army’s heels until the governor revoked it.
“He’s been drawing maps and writing descriptions of the weather for want of something else to do,” Flavius chuckled, “and pestering the life out of your legate. I think Longinus would have chucked him out on his ear if he hadn’t produced that magical pass. What Governor Frontinus was thinking of to let Lucius into camp, I can’t imagine.”
“Us, I think,” Correus said. “I’m not sure why, but I smell a connection.”
“I would have thought our dear nosy brother-in-law would have been the last person he’d want about.”
“So would I, but there’s something there. I’ve chewed it over until my head aches, and I still can’t figure it out, but there’s something there, all the same.”
“The army moves in mysterious ways,” Flavius said solemnly. He picked up the stoppered jar of wine they had been sharing and refilled their cups.
“Let me do that.”
“No, I’ve got to learn.” Flavius’s hands were still bandaged, but Silanus had lightened the dressings so that his other fingers were fairly free. He raised his cup. “To Aquae Sulis, home, and family.”
A shadow passed over his brother’s face, and Flavius bit his lip. “Damn! Correus, I’m sorry. It must be unbearable, losing her that way.”
“Not unbearable, no. I’m beginning to grow used to it, I think. But I feel as if something was… broken. As if it won’t heal.”
Flavius steadied his cup with both hands as the ship rolled on a swell. “Uncomfortable place to drink. Correus, I wish I had some words of comfort to offer. I don’t think there are any.”
Correus studied his brother’s face curiously, trying to appear not to. It was the same face it had always been, his own face in fact, but there was a new look in it that Correus could not name.
Six months ago Flavius would have tried to find the words anyway and botched it, and they both would have been touchy – prickly and uncomfortable like a man forced to sit facing a mirror. Now… something was different.
“I told Father about the baby,” Correus said at last. “Before Julia did. I sent Julius home with Aeshma and a letter. I… I’d been fighting with him over Freita, and I didn’t feel like telling anyone before… It was Paulinus who told you? I’m glad. I—I should have. I’ve adopted the child, or rather Lucius has done it by proxy. And I’ve put all the complications of having him granted a citizenship into the works, so I had to write to Father. It wasn’t easy, getting started.”
“‘Dear Father, you have a grandson, whom I am adopting. I will argue about it with you when I come home. Please tell Mother and Lady Antonia to keep their traps shut on the subject or I won’t come home at all. Your loving son, Correus,’” Flavius suggested.
Correus began to laugh, and Flavius looked relieved. “Is that how you would have done it?” Correus asked.
“I wouldn’t have had the nerve,” Flavius said frankly. “But it might be the best approach all the same. Father will rule you all your life if you let him.”
“It’s not all that easy to go against someone you’ve worshiped since you were two,” Correus said. “Do you remember the first time he came home on leave? He was a legate then, and I thought Mars himself had come down from the sky.”
“Yes,” Flavius said. “I used to think I was the sole owner of that burden. I’m sorry.”
Correus was silent, listening to the splash of water and the cries of the gulls hunting garbage in the ship’s wake. “I think I’ve needed someone to talk to since she died,” he said at last. “I have never felt so alone. If it hadn’t been for Lucius and Julia, I think I would have gone mad. We had so short a time, especially here, where she was content. It was dreadful in Rome, and she had too many conflicting loyalties in Germany to be happy.”
Flavius gave him a cautious look. “I wasn’t sure you realized that.”
Correus shook his head. “Freita wasn’t the sort of woman to abandon a loyalty because she fell in love with a man. She was a… warrior. She wounded two of our men before they brought her in, did you know that? Even later, after that last fight with Nyall’s army, there was never a time we were in Germany that I wasn’t afraid for her.”
“You knew about that?”
Correus gave his brother a startled look. “About what?”
“That it was Freita who warned Nyall about the legate’s tame German and kept him out of our trap,” Flavius said bluntly. “I didn’t put it together until afterward when I remembered seeing her in that trader’s camp the night you turned your German loose to run back to Nyall. She must have seen him, but at the time I thought she was just running away from you.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
Flavius looked embarrassed. “No. At the time I thought it might be just as well if she did.”
“But later? When you knew what she’d done?”
“It was done,” Flavius said. “It was over, and we’d beaten Nyall anyway. And I’d begun to get a better idea of what was between you. I’m not such a beast as all that.”
Correus let out a deep breath, blocking out a mental picture of what would have happened to Freita if anyone had known that “I… I owe you a lot for that,” he said shakily.
“Don’t be an ass,” Flavius said. “You’ve paid…” His voice also began to shake. “Mithras god, you’ve paid in full. I’ll remember that British hut as my view of hell for the rest of my days.” He steadied himself and poured the rest of the wine. “I think,” he said carefully, “that we should both get drunk. Because I’m going to voice a suspicion that may make you want to punch me.”
Correus was beginning to feel as if he were drunk already. Flavius was an unknown quantity now, the man he had been was slipped sideways to show another man behind him.
“When you and I went into the Centuriate,” Flavius went on relentlessly, “our father made you swear something, didn’t he?”
“Swear what, for the gods’ sakes?” Correus’s voice wasn’t quite level.
“Look me in the eye, Brother, and tell me he didn’t,” Flavius said. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you what it was. I have a damned good idea. No one in his right mind would have posted us to the same legion in Germany unless you asked him to. I don’t know why it took so long to dawn on me. And I’m willing to bet our father had something to do with our both getting shipped to Britain.”
&n
bsp; “No,” Correus managed to say. “No, you’re wrong there. You got the staff post because you’re the only man in the whole army who isn’t scared to death of Gaius Gratus. No, that wasn’t Father.”
“But the rest was,” Flavius said grimly. “He had you nicely over a barrel, didn’t he? He adopts you, gives you the family name, and your heart’s desire – a post in the Centuriate. And then extracts a promise from you to play nursemaid to your brother.”
“Flavius—”
“No, just listen. You’re absolved. Officially. By me. And Father’s going to get an earful.”
“It wasn’t that he didn’t think you couldn’t take care of yourself,” Correus said helplessly.
“Yes, it was,” Flavius said. “But I don’t care now. But if we’re ever going to be friends, you’ve got to let me mess up my own life. Will you swear that to me?”
Correus began to smile. “I wouldn’t save you if you were drowning. How’s that?”
Flavius smiled back. “A bit extreme, but it’ll do.” Then his face grew serious again. “Drink your wine. I want to ask you a question.”
“Ask.” Correus felt that nothing could surprise him now.
“Back… there,” Flavius said. “In that hill fort. You knew what I was carrying. What would you have done… if you couldn’t get me out?”
Correus took a deep breath and then a deep drink of the wine. Everything seemed very odd and clear-cut, as if only truth would serve. At last he looked Flavius in the eye and said in a low voice, “I would have killed you.”
The answer came back clearly, and there was no uncertainty in Flavius’s dark eyes.
“Thank you… Brother.”
VII Festival at Veii
Julius approached the town of Veii cautiously as Aeshma swerved and snorted at the traffic. He had purposely taken the gray stallion through Veii to avoid the congested streets of Rome, only to discover that it was festival day in Veii. Julius counted on his fingers, but he couldn’t decide which festival. Some obscure local deity maybe – Veii was an old town.
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