“Yes, sir.” There seemed very little other answer to make to that.
“Then kindly keep this in mind: Your leave due is two months. You have two months and not a day more. If you are not back by the end of it, you will be considered Unlawful Absent. Or dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
“More likely dead,” the governor said.
* * *
Ygerna’s tent was still a shambles. The Dobunni woman was creeping about at the back of it, picking things up and then putting them down again in no particular order. She was plainly too frightened to be any use. The cat was a pair of round gold eyes under the bed. Correus gave the Dobunni woman a black look and picked up Ygerna’s jewel case. He tipped it out on the bed and found the red gold arm ring with the enameled flower on the clasp that the cavalry decurion had stolen for her out of Craig Gwrtheym. Her Silure kinsmen wouldn’t recognize it, but Ygerna would. It might come in handy.
“They will send you back to Isca, I expect,” he told the Dobunni woman. “See that the princess’s things are there when she comes back for them.” The cat looked out at him from the trailing bedclothes. “Take the cat with you.”
* * *
Correus slung the saddle across Antaeus’s back and rubbed the cold nose absently as the horse craned its head around to snuffle at his chest. Julius was packing the saddlebags and watching him dubiously.
“You should take me with you,” he said.
“I shouldn’t. You don’t speak British, and you look more Roman than I do.” There was nothing patrician about Julius’s, thin face and mousy hair, but he had the indefinable air of the city-bred.
Julius snorted and looked at his master. Correus hadn’t shaved, and there was a day’s worth of stubble across his upper lip.
“It will grow,” Correus said, tightening the girth. If it didn’t he’d shave it off again and tell some tale to account for it. It didn’t matter.
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Julius inquired, returning to the subject of greatest importance to him. He was old enough now to resent being treated like a child.
“Go back to Isca with Ygerna’s serving woman, and see that she doesn’t steal everything in sight. Take care of the cat.”
“I am sorry they took her,” Julius muttered. “And I’m sorry I kissed her. Can you find her?”
“I had better,” Correus said shortly.
Julius nodded and looked unhappy. “Do you know where they took her?”
“No, but I think I can find a… guide, near Isca.”
“You’re going back to Isca?”
“I don’t have a choice. She’s got to be in one of the pockets in the mountains we haven’t nailed down yet, and I could wander around in those until I have a long, gray beard like a Druid and still not find her. Also, I need a horse that doesn’t have ‘officer’s mount’ stamped all over it. You can keep Antaeus exercised for me, too, when you get there.”
Correus picked up the reins and swung himself into the saddle. Julius watched him, hands on hips. His expression was troubled and thoughtful. Correus looked back at him over his shoulder. “If you follow me, Julius, I will beat you. There is a first time for everything.”
Julius set his mouth in a stubborn line. “Have I ever disobeyed you?”
“Not yet. If you do now, you aren’t going to help her. Or me.”
* * *
…so I have left the little devil in a camp above Gobannium with instructions to take Ygerna’s slave back to Isca. By that time he won’t be able to follow me if he’s pigheaded enough to try.
Correus dipped the pen in the ink bottle and thought. He had given his brother-in-law and his sister his reasons for going, and they all seemed simpler to put down than his reason for writing to them in the first place.
If anything should happen to me – to put it bluntly, if I end up as a skull over Bendigeid’s doorpost, which is entirely possible – I would be grateful if you would keep my son Felix for me. Even adopt him (with inheritance after your own children, of course) if you are willing. Since my own adoption of him has been formalized, there will be some pension for him, and I think that Julius Frontinus will be willing to give him a hand up in the world later on – he seemed to feel that the circumstances of his birth in themselves marked the child for a career in the Eagles. But unless Felix wants it, I do not wish him to be forced to it. I do not care for the idea of his learning to loathe my memory by being forced to live up to it.
I found Coventina here when I rode in this morning, and she told me that you had offered her service with you when Felix was weaned, and that she’d asked to come back to Britain instead. Unwise of her, I think, although she looked as if some of Martia’s civilization has stuck. She is eagerly awaiting Gemellus’s return to quarters at Isca. I would not regard Gemellus as sufficient inducement to return to Isca, although the fort has improved somewhat over the last two years, but then I am not Coventina. I gather that you gave her a very handsome sum when you sent her back, and I am grateful. You have been very kind to me and Felix, both of you. I have arranged to have a good part of my pay sent to you for Felix, but it can in no way cover what you have done for us. My love and gratitude both go with this letter.
I am going tomorrow to buy a horse and call in a favor. I will write to you again in a few months to let you know I got back with a whole hide…
* * *
“Is this the best welcome the Silures can give to the royal woman?” Ygerna sat on her pony without budging and looked down her nose at the chaos that was the outer courtyards of Dinas Tomen.
Rhodri gave her an admiring grin. The little princess had learned something from the Romans – that lordly expression didn’t belong to the child who had left Porth Cerrig two summers ago to be bargained away to Gruffyd of the Demetae. There were going to be a few sparks now, the next time she clashed with her uncle the king. “It is only that they were not knowing when to expect us, Princess,” he said gravely. “See, here is the king now, and Teyrnon Chief-Druid, too.”
Ygerna watched her uncle thoughtfully from narrowed eyes. The faces of Rhodri and Owen Harper and Llamrei had become familiar again on the wearisome ride on which the Dark Folk had led them. Now Bendigeid’s face leapt up sharply from the rest – a dark face not overly handsome, but strong, unmistakable even over the years, marked with some power that set it apart. If there is anyone who is not human, she thought, it is not the Romans, it is my uncle.
They stepped forward to greet her. The Romans seemed suddenly very safe and normal, swearing at their catapults, compared with the king of the Silures and the chief of all the Druids. The Druids were wisdom and protection, but they were also mystery and never to be taken lightly. Ygerna had always been almost as afraid of Teyrnon as she was of her uncle. She was a royal woman, she reminded herself again. There was power in that. And she was grown now, whatever Correus might think. Ygerna made her expression haughtier. Maybe I can make Teyrnon afraid of me.
“May the sun shine on your path, lord. And on yours, Teyrnon Chief-Druid.” She sat, plainly waiting for someone to help her down from her horse.
A curious crowd was beginning to mill about as the three captains and their warriors slid wearily from their mounts. Rhodri reached up to Ygerna. She swung her right leg over the pony’s withers and let herself be lifted down. The king and the royal woman stood looking at each other.
“It is good that the royal woman comes to the tribe’s hearth again,” Teyrnon pronounced, and Bendigeid nodded.
“You are home now, Princess,” the king said. “It would seem that you have grown since you left us. You have a look of your mother about you now, I think.”
In truth, she had a look of the king about her, Rhodri thought, but he did not think she would care to be told so.
“Thank you,” Ygerna said gravely, nodding to the king, and then to Teyrnon. “I am glad to be home after so long. May the Goddess watch over you, for your care for her priestess.”
Looking into the king�
�s face, she was almost sure he was going to kill her. She hoped that the Goddess would see fit to resent it. Surely the Mother would come back to her now, away from the Roman kind. If she didn’t, would Teyrnon know? “I wish to be alone now, for a day’s passing,” she said experimentally. “I am unclean.”
Teyrnon nodded. “I will send what you need for the herb-fire.”
One bridge crossed. “Set a guard on the door,” she added firmly. “I want no man to blunder in and put his death on my hands.” It was a rite forbidden to men. Not even the king could cross her threshold until tomorrow’s sundown. She had that long, at least. And everyone who had touched her would be unclean, too. Ygerna turned her head to hide a quick, wicked grin as she saw Teyrnon bearing down on Rhodri, Llamrei, and Owen.
* * *
She came out of the guest chambers unsteadily and leaned on the edge of the rain barrel for a moment. A white, pinched face looked back at her under the fall of dark hair that spilled over her shoulders and floated on the surface of the water. Ygerna had used her uncleanliness to buy time, but she had also spoken the truth and had been careful to make the Cleansing properly. She had neither eaten nor drunk in two days, and it had been frightening alone in the guest chambers with only the herb-fire for light. When she slept, there had been visions, and the dark face of her uncle, and Correus calling her name across the pitch-fired grass as the Dark Folk caught at her pony’s bridle, and someone shouting in her ear to ride – if she didn’t want a dagger in her. And there had been another face, a woman’s, golden as the corn and then blood-red, and then black with eyes that had no pupils to them. I still belong to her, she thought, shaken. I don’t think she ever lets anyone go.
There had been something of her own face in the triple features of the Goddess. Ygerna plunged her hands into the water, breaking the reflection into ripples. She splashed the cool water over her face and dragged the sleeve of her gown across it. She pulled her hair away and squeezed the water from the ends. She could go rest in whatever chambers had been allotted her now, with women about her. Rest and eat, she thought hungrily. After that, she had only to keep from being alone with her uncle, until – until what? Until the Romans came and put her in Bendigeid’s place, and there was no one at all of her tribe from whom she didn’t have to fear an “accident” in the dark?
* * *
Correus gave a wide berth to the sentry camp at Coed-y-Caerau and turned the pony’s head northeastward into the woods beyond. Coed-y-Caerau was a watch-post for Isca Fortress eight miles away on the valley floor, and the name meant simply The Wood of the Fort Camps, but it was an older name than the Roman barracks which dominated it now. Just to the southwest of the sentry camp were the old, slighted earthworks of a native holding. And to the northeast, beyond an intervening spur of highlands, was the abandoned fortress of Llanmelin, once a stronghold of the Silure kings. It had been abandoned when the Romans began to build at Isca. And somewhere in between, if Cadal’s runaway slave had told him the truth, was a holding of the Dark People.
The air was warm, and bees swarmed in the hawthorn flowers. At the wood’s edge the light turned green and watery under the new leaf growth. There were trails crisscrossed everywhere through the woods of Coed-y-Caerau – deer tracks mostly, some well worn by soldiers from the camp on a day’s hunt, some barely discernible among the trees and damp undergrowth. Here and there a stream bubbled by, or a spring flowed up from the ground and splashed out a downward course for itself among the fern.
Correus took a faint trail that seemed to push its way into the heart of the forest – the Dark People would be leery of venturing too close to the sentry camp. Whistle for his people in an oak grove, Nighthawk had said – if he hadn’t been lying, but there was very little reason why he should have. Rhys the trader had saved his small hide from Cadal’s men, and by all accounts the People of the Hills took such matters seriously.
Correus looked up at the green canopy. There were oaks here and there, as there were in most woods, but so far not a full stand of them such as made a holy grove for worship. He wondered if he were allowed in such a grove, then supposed he must be, or Nighthawk wouldn’t have said so. Nighthawk hadn’t known he was talking to a Roman.
Nor did the rider on the shaggy chestnut beast look much like one now. He had retrieved his shirt and breeches from the barracks at Isca, and the heavy brown and black cloak was tied on the saddle behind him – a native saddle, similar in style to the Roman ones but worn with years of use and devoid of army markings. His feet, which dangled nearly to the pony’s belly, were shod in wolf-skin riding boots, and his belt buckle was native bronze-work with good enameling on it. The mustache was half-grown in, and a healing cut, self-inflicted, across his upper lip gave a useful reason for having shaved it.
It took him all day to find an oak grove, and part of it he spent dodging a hunting party from Coed-y-Caerau. He didn’t want to have to justify himself to a troop of Spanish auxiliaries who like as not didn’t speak fluent Latin and might be inclined to take him back to camp first and ask the questions there. Coed-y-Caerau was on the edge of the restricted zone and touchy about strangers. He found a likely grove at dusk and tethered the pony outside it, just in case, remembering the iron bridle bit. A spear and native sword were slung behind the saddle (no one with any sense went into a strange wood unarmed), and he pulled the dagger from his belt and stuck it through the thongs on top of his cloak. He settled down with his back against a tree at the edge of the grove and began to whistle the call that Nighthawk had taught him. He hoped he had it right, after all this time – he had practiced it off and on since then. The wood remained silent except for the beginning hum of insects as dusk fell. Every few minutes he whistled again, and after a while he got up and lit a fire just outside the grove. Sometime after that he fell asleep.
He began again in the morning, with the cold suspicion in his mind that Nighthawk might have found the Dark People gone from Coed-y-Caerau because of the Romans. He stretched stiffly, fished some food out of his pack, and gave the pony a measure of grain. When he turned back, the man was there.
He looked like the others of his kind that Correus had seen (he found it hard to tell them apart) among the slaves of the Celtic tribes – small, dark-haired and -eyed, wildly beautiful with the tattooed patterns of his people. He wore only a wolf skin around his waist and a necklace of polished stones. Some of the tattooing on his breast looked newer than the rest, and Correus remembered that certain patterns were only given when a child reached manhood, and Nighthawk would have come to his in Cadal’s slave house.
“Nighthawk?”
“The trader lord remembers.”
“I’m surprised that you remember,” Correus said. “How did you know it would be me?”
“Two of my brothers went to see who it was in the grove and came back to tell the Old One, so I knew it must be you.”
“Then you found your people? I was afraid they might be gone.”
“It takes much to shift us,” Nighthawk said with a grin. He was leaning on a short hunting spear. “These are our woods. The Silures went from Llanmelin when the Romans came, but we – we just dug a little deeper in the hillside.”
His voice still had the accent that Correus couldn’t place. The People of the Hills would speak an older language than the Silures, he supposed. The little man was watching him expectantly. “You told me when you were running from Cadal’s warriors that you would help me if I needed it,” Correus said. “I have come to ask help now, from you and your… your house.” He wasn’t sure how the sidhe-folk grouped themselves.
“I am of the Sidhe of Llanmelin,” Nighthawk said. Correus got the impression that it was a communal grouping, perhaps of many houses. Or perhaps they didn’t have houses apart and were all one. “There is still a debt between me and Rhys the trader,” Nighthawk said. “If there is a forfeit on your life, it may be hard, but we will try, my people and I. Who is chasing you?”
“No one. There is a royal woman
of the Silures who was a prisoner of the Romans. Now she has been stolen away again by her tribe and by some other house of your people, I think. I want to find her again.”
“Why? What is the royal woman to the trader lord? She belongs to her tribe. The Goddess will be angry if she goes away from them again, now that she is safe.”
“She isn’t safe,” Correus said. “Not from the king.” Nighthawk shifted his grip on his spear, so that he leaned on the other foot, and looked worried. “We heard that the king would have killed her if she could not be got away safe, which was an evil thing, but maybe necessary. We heard from the Sidhe of Ty Isaf who helped him,” he explained when Correus looked puzzled. Nighthawk grinned again. “There is nothing that one among the People of the Hills knows that the rest do not.” His face sobered again. “But we also heard that she had been taken safely. Do you wish to steal her again?”
“The king will kill her,” Correus said. “He will kill her even now that she has been got safe away from the Romans, because he is afraid of her. He will kill her and dare the Goddess to curse him if she will. Is that not a great sacrilege?”
Nighthawk nodded, and Correus thought he saw a flash of fear in the small, dark face.
“And might the Mother not curse the People of the Hills as well, for helping him to it?” he pursued.
“Yes,” Nighthawk said slowly, some of his imperturbability slipping away. “To kill her if they could not take her from the Romans, maybe that would have been all right. To kill her now—” His eyes were frightened, and he moved so that he didn’t stand inside the grove at all. “The Sidhe of Ty Isaf didn’t know of that.”
“Will the Goddess be any gentler for their ignorance?”
“No. But why does Rhys the trader care? You are not a Silure or a sidhe-man.”
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