Barbarian Princess

by Barbarian Princess (retail) (epub)

  Correus put an arm around her shoulders reassuringly. “Yes, I will be there. I will even hold you over the rail if you get sick.”

  “I shall not be sick,” Ygerna said firmly.

  X Ygerna

  They went back to winter quarters in Isca Silurum by ship, a more practical mode of transport than a three-day march through presumably hostile territory. Correus wangled permission to sail in the flagship with the governor and his prize hostage. Domitius Longinus announced testily that he was going to put in for another cohort centurion since one of his – he favored Correus with a dark glare – seemed always to be detached for duty as either a spy or a nursemaid, but he gave permission all the same. Correus took it gratefully, knowing that Longinus had a point – he was going to have to spend the winter getting his cohort firmly back under his thumb. An absent commander was generally the equivalent of no commander in the eyes of a legionary, although Octavius, the second-in-command, seemed to have them well in hand. Still, it was hardly fair to Octavius to give him what amounted to a cohort of his own for six months and then step in and take it back again. That had happened to Correus once, and only the knowledge that his own command was due soon had made the position tenable.

  The Silures were a coastal tribe, and most of them had been out at one time or another in the small open boats of the fishing fleets. Ygerna, once she had mastered her fear at the sheer size of the galley, had proved a good sailor and after only an hour or two of queasiness was asking Correus more questions than he could answer. He hunted up the ship’s master, who proved to be an indulgent father with children of his own. He spoke enough British to get by, and Correus thankfully watched her trot away with him. Calmed by her growing easiness with Correus, she was gradually learning to banish her fear of the rest of them.

  Governor Frontinus, ensconced under a canopy on the deck, saw him and waved him over. “Longinus tells me, with as much force as he dares put in it,” Frontinus said, “that if I had wanted a staff aide I should have requested one. Do get back to your cohort and pacify him when we get to Isca, will you, Julianus?”

  “Yes, sir,” Correus said. “I expect he’s right, you know.” He gave the governor a careful look, and Frontinus folded his big hands across the gilded front of his cuirass.

  “I never act on a whim, Centurion,” Frontinus said placidly. “How are you getting on with that Silure child?”

  “Fairly well. She’s left off being scared of me – and most of the rest of us as a result, I think. To tell you the truth, sir, I like her. She reminds me of my sister when she was a young ’un.”

  “She’s growing used to us?” Frontinus asked again.

  “I think so, sir. Children are very adaptable, and I expect she’s had more care from us than from her own people. She seems to have ranked high as a bargaining counter with Bendigeid, and not much else.”

  “Keep it up, Centurion. This is one bargain that’s going to turn around and bite him, one way or another.”

  * * *

  In Isca they made the happy discovery that the garrison cohort that the Second Legion had left behind had done a good deal of building. The commander’s quarters and the hospital were finished, the heating system was ready to be fired up, and the smaller houses allotted to the tribunes of which they were, as Domitius Longinus said, mercifully one short at the moment, were ready for occupancy. Like a good many career officers, he was not overly impressed with two-year soldiers hopping their way up the political ladder with a short stint in the army. They installed Ygerna in the extra tribune’s house and found a Dobunni woman from Glevum to wait on her.

  The legion was at work on the half-finished barracks rows, but it wasn’t an unpleasant task. There were good stands of timber to be had, and the men, given the choice of sweating on the barracks now or shivering in tents that winter, fell to with a minimum of complaint. The same could not be said of Ygerna, who was bored and still frightened and inclined to haughty dissatisfaction as a result. After the first week Correus had a thought, and he set out for the quartermaster’s domain on an errand he mightn’t have had the heart for earlier.

  He repossessed the cat, which gave him a look of grave suspicion and then appeared to recognize him, and silenced the quartermaster’s protests with the promise of any subsequent kittens. Correus looked at the cat and for a moment he saw Freita behind it, but he gritted his teeth, and the image faded out again. It was only a cat, and he had a better use for it than did the quartermaster. He turned back toward the barracks rows with the cat like a package under one arm. There was something vaguely comforting about the way it wound itself about his wrist.

  He dumped the cat on the bed while he shucked off his lorica and helmet and began to unbuckle his greaves. It tucked one foot up and began to wash.

  “Don’t settle in,” Correus said. He knotted a clean scarf around his neck and scooped up the cat again.

  Ygerna was sitting on a rug on the plank floor of the house, trying to teach the Dobunni woman to play Wisdom. She waved her into the back room when she saw Correus. “She is very ignorant,” Ygerna said, sweeping the pieces into a sack.

  “No, she’s not. She’s a peasant. You’re a king’s daughter. You’ve been playing that game since you were five.”

  “I suppose so,” Ygerna sighed. “But I am so lonesome, and there is nothing to do, and you’re out with your Eagle men all day, marching them around in squares, which I don’t see the use of anyway.”

  “I know,” Correus said. “I brought you some company.” He dumped the cat in her lap. It looked mildly surprised for a moment, made two experimental turns and settled down in a lump.

  “Her name’s Baucis,” Correus said.

  Ygerna ran a hand through the gray-and-white fur and snuggled her face down onto the cat’s flank. “Where did you get her?”

  “She was my wife’s,” Correus said.

  Ygerna ran her fingers along the cat’s back, making patterns in the fur. “You never said you had a wife.”

  “She’s dead now. A Demetae tribesman tried to kill Governor Frontinus. He got my wife instead.”

  He had sat down beside her on the rag, and Ygerna put a hand on his arm. “Truly I am sorry. You must miss her.”

  He remembered her, green eyes and gold hair and a cavalryman’s sword scars on her legs, and the night they broke the bed in Rome and how she had insisted on dragging that cat two thousand miles with her.

  “Yes. I miss her.”

  “Maybe you should keep the cat,” Ygerna said hesitantly.

  Correus smiled down at her. “No. The cat needs a lap. That’s a German cat, did I tell you? She came all the way from beyond the Rhenus in a wicker basket.”

  “Was your wife a German?”

  “Yes. She is buried here, just across Isca Bridge.”

  I shouldn’t have asked that, Ygerna thought. The cat began to purr and knead, shredding the embroidery on her gown. Ygerna batted at its paws, and it yawned and looked at her through slitted eyes. “What does Baucis mean?”

  “It’s just a name from a legend. Philemon and Baucis were an old couple, very poor and very devoted to each other. When Zeus, who is the great god above all the others, was traveling in disguise, they were the only ones who would give him shelter. He made them priests in his temple afterward, and because their one wish was to die together, he changed them both to trees.”

  Ygerna shivered. “Like Gwydion turning Blodeuwedd into an owl. How awful to be a tree after you’d been a person.”

  “No, I don’t think so. They only wanted to be together, you see. Baucis was a very good and faithful woman. I’m not sure it’s a suitable name for that cat.”

  The cat yawned again and tapped at the gold balls on the end of Ygerna’s belt. Ygerna scratched its ears. “No, she’s just as she should be for a cat. I like her.”

  When he came back the next day Ygerna was curled up on the couch puzzling over the Latin letters he had set her to learning, with the cat droning like a hive of bees agai
nst her stomach.

  “I came to tell you that the governor sent out an envoy to your uncle.”

  The stylus skidded across the wax tablet.

  “Bendigeid had him killed,” Correus said. “And sent him back across his horse.”

  Ygerna took a deep breath. “And what did the envoy say to… my uncle, first?”

  “We can hardly know that can we?” Correus said grimly. He noticed the Dobunni woman for the first time. “Go somewhere else.” She picked up the shift she had been mending and trudged into the back room. “He had instructions to say,” Correus went on, “that the governor would offer a treaty that would leave Bendigeid the kingship of the tribe and return the royal woman to him.”

  “And for that?”

  “Forts and roads to be built to link Isca with Moridunum, an end to raiding, and proper taxes paid.”

  “I could have told your governor that my uncle wouldn’t buy me back,” Ygerna said. “I didn’t think he really thought he would.”

  “He may not have,” Correus said harshly, “but I don’t think he thought Bendigeid would murder a legionary tribune, either. He gave him back to his men, with his throat cut and somehow they had the sense not to fight and be slaughtered, too.”

  Bendigeid would have despised them for that “good sense,” Ygerna thought. Briton warriors would have fought and been killed, because it would have been dishonorable to do otherwise.

  “They went in there with a green branch in their hands,” Correus went on, as if in answer to that.

  Ygerna sat up shivering. To kill a man with a treaty branch in his hands – that was a great dishonor, a thing to make you accursed and unclean. Unless it was true that the Romans weren’t human. Then maybe it would be all right. But they would pay Bendigeid back. She knew the Romans that well by now.

  “And me?” she whispered. The safe feeling was gone, and the old terror of the unknown was in its place.

  “It appears that the king of the Silures does not want the royal woman back,” Correus said. “He told the decurion of the tribune’s escort that the governor could kill you if he wanted to. And if you were really Goddess-on-Earth, then the Mother would save you. And if not, then you were no use to him.”

  Ygerna crumpled up on the couch while he stood glaring at her, the infamy of the murdered tribune still burning on his mind. She started to cry. “You can see how your tribe loves you,” he said harshly.

  “It’s not that – it’s the Goddess! She’s gone away from me in this place, and she won’t help me!” She was sobbing now, loud hiccuping gulps. “They’ll kill me, and she won’t help!”

  I’m a beast, Correus thought. She’s just a little girl. “Damn. Here.” He sat down on the couch and pulled her onto his lap, cuddling her against his chest. “No one’s going to kill you. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t know you’d think we really would.”

  “The k-king would,” she said, “if it w-was him.”

  “Well, Bendigeid isn’t the governor,” Correus said. “I don’t know what Bendigeid is. I think he’s a monster.” He took the gold fillet off and smoothed her hair.

  “Why sh—shouldn’t he kill me?” Ygerna said. She huddled against him, clinging, because she had thought for a moment that he, too, had gone away from her.

  Because Rome makes use of what comes to her hand, Correus thought, and you’re too valuable to waste. That was too brutal to tell a child. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. “He just won’t,” Correus said. “I promise.” He put his cheek against her hair.

  * * *

  They spent the winter making ready for the spring campaign, Bales of pilum points and arrowheads and even dismantled catapults were sent in from the supply base at Glevum. The legionary armorer’s shop mended dented gear and made replacements where needed. A shipment of cavalry remounts had been earmarked for Britain, and Governor Frontinus diverted the largest part of them for use in the western campaign.

  “A bit nerve-racking having the governor of the province keeping his beady eye on you all the time,” Vindex said, “but it does have its compensations. Some of those cavalry nags were on their last legs. The wing commander was so tickled, he was practically on the beach to meet ’em.”

  “Don’t feel left out,” Correus said. “The legate’s ordered up a surprise for us, too. Ever put a catapult together?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Two came in yesterday – one apiece; nice, isn’t it? And being the most expendable, we get to do the honors.”

  Assembling a catapult was a task which most commanders would duck when they could, especially since the governor, who liked anything mechanical, had a habit of coming down in person to help tinker with the works. No one wanted to be the man who had accidentally blown a military governor’s head off. Each cohort commander from the primus pilus on down had pointed at the man with less seniority and said, “Him”, until the process had ended with the Ninth and Tenth Cohorts and their respective commanders, Correus and Vindex.

  The catapults proved to be not two but three, an onager, the monstrous stone-thrower built for sieges, and a pair of bolt-throwing scorpions. Correus, who said he disliked them all equally, tossed a coin with Vindex and drew the bolt throwers. It took all day to set them up, calibrate the left and right torsion springs to an equal tension, and note the range and force of impact achieved for each trajectory. Since the torsion springs were made of animal tendon, the resulting differences in elasticity made the calibration a wearisome, fidgety process of trial and error. Unequal tension would throw the bolt off center, so they worked on cleared ground outside the fort, and anyone with any sense got out of the way. The maddening thing was that when all this had been done, they would have to be dismantled again to be moved, but the testing process would turn up any missing pieces, and Correus’s careful pages of notes on the calibration would give the catapult crews a place to start when the machines were set up again in the field.

  It was almost evening by the time they were finished, and the governor, who had indeed been helping and enjoying himself hugely, put up a prize of Falernian wine for a test of marksmanship with Vindex’s onager crew. Correus went and got Ygerna and held her up on his shoulders to watch the scorpion crews as they wound the torsion springs back while the rest of the cohort made side bets with Vindex’s men. It was cold and the sky was leaden, and Correus took his cloak off and made her wrap it around herself. She was still feather-light, pounds less than Julia had been at that age, but her face was no longer so pinched and thin, and her cheeks were flushed with the chill air.

  “I’m too big to be carried,” she said with as much dignity as she could summon with her chin in the scarlet brush of his helmet crest.

  “Then I’ll put you down, and you’ll miss the show.”

  “No. I want to watch anyway. Are you going to win?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Sure we are, missy,” the legionary beside her said. “You just hold tight and watch now.”

  She’s becoming a pet, Correus thought.

  The crew completed their adjustments and nodded to Correus for the signal. “Ready to fire, sir.”

  “Fire.”

  The crewman struck the trigger pin with a mallet, and the bolt shot out. They cheered and made rude noises at Vindex’s crew when it struck within a foot of the white chalk target.

  Ygerna wrapped her fingers around the shoulder straps of Correus’s lorica for balance and watched the second scorpion bolt fly upward in a low trajectory and then bury itself in the ground by the chalked “X”. It would go right through a shield and the man behind it, or a wooden wall, she thought in awe and looked down at the machine again. It wasn’t even magic – she had watched the pieces being unloaded earlier. Just a thing – a monstrous thing built out of bits of wood and cow’s tendon. It was terrifying, but exhilarating, too, to watch the bolts shoot out of its mouth.

  “Correus, that thing scares me.”

  “It scares me, too.” He had his hands
around her ankles in case she slipped, and he loosened one carefully to show her a blackened thumbnail. “The damned thing got me once already, when we were stretching the skeins. I hate catapults.”

  To her folk a machine like that would be a magical thing, and the Druids would mutter over it and keep its use to themselves, she thought. To Correus it was just a tool, to be kicked when it didn’t work and cursed when it smashed his thumb. I am beginning to understand Romans, she thought.

  Vindex’s crew was lobbing stones at their own target, and then the governor went out with one of the engineers, averaging the scores and making allowances for the stone throwers’ less accurate aim. He decided for the scorpion crews, and they cheered and went off to strong-arm their bets out of Vindex’s men. Correus swung Ygerna down from his shoulders and took her back to the house.

  “I’d better go see they don’t drink themselves into a stupor.”

  Wishing he hadn’t brought her back so soon, she gave him back his cloak, and he patted her head and trotted off, fastening it as he went. The cat nudged at her ankles and she scooped it up and sat down with it in her lap, trying not to think about those bolts punching through walls like a god’s arrows.

  * * *

  Governor Frontinus spread a map out on his desk in the Isca Principia – the third map of the winter, twice updated from the reports of scouts, tribal defectors, and rumors in the wind. Domitius Longinus and the legate of the Twentieth Legion hitched their chairs forward. The air was still wet and cold, but in it there was the scent of something about to bloom. Spring – thaw and good sailing weather.

  With rebellion being the common activity among the wild tribes of the north and east for so long, the grasp that former governors had gained on West Britain had slipped. Now the Iceni were no more, and the Brigantes were controlled so long as their garrison kept its sword hand plainly in view. There was the leisure – and the necessity – once more to attend to West Britain. Not a punitive strike, but a locking up, a settlement, of lands left wild for too long.