A cry that might have been grief or triumph, or something of the two oddly mixed, came from the tribe circled around the fires, and Aedden bent and laid his knife beside the body of the king. He straightened slowly, turning in the firelight to show himself to the people, so that they could see that he was still unmarked. The king became the land and a maimed king brought a ruined land. He turned slowly so that they could all see him, with the blue paint of the King’s Mark dark on his forehead. Tomorrow the priests would prick it in with needles and blue dye, and then he would bear it forever, until he died. But already he was king, and a king made this way could only be unmade by death. It was for this that Bendigeid had walked into the fires with him.
Aedden finished turning and came to a stop with his face to Teyrnon, and the old Druid came down from his dais and lifted the horse’s crest from the head of the dead king. He fidgeted with it for a moment, and Aedden realized that it had been bound to the king’s hair so that it would not slip. When it was free, Teyrnon lifted the red horse cap above his head so that the sun disc between the ears showed clear, and then he set it on Aedden’s head.
He turned him gently by the shoulders, outward to face the people who were his people now, and from far away below the mountain the drumming began again, as if the People of the Hills knew that a new king was crowned in Dinas Tomen.
King – the chosen of the Sun Lord, the Horse Lord. The red stallion cap felt hot, as if something of the old king lingered in it still – or the power of the thing itself. The music of the pipes had begun again, too, from somewhere he couldn’t see, and the night was laced through with it, a wild, white sound that ran through blood and bone. It seemed to him that he could see, just above the fires, a bright, terrible shimmer that would have burned his eyes before. He was Aedden, lord of the Silures, now, and it would never leave him, not until he, too, went at the end into that terrible blinding light.
Someone came forward and put a cloak around him, and he walked from the circle between the first fire and the ninth, where the old king had come in. He turned back once to see the man who lay still at the center of the fires. Bendigeid’s chest was dark with blood, but his face was calm and oddly untroubled, more at rest in this death than he had been in life. It was like seeing a fire burned out to cinders.
They buried him the next day in a grave mound at the foot of Dinas Tomen, in the shadow of Ty Isaf. Above the wailing grief-song of the women was the harsh, triumphant cry of curlews overhead.
* * *
“We’ve got company, Governor.” The chief optio’s face had a slightly startled look. A little fall of snow drifted from his cloak and melted on the tiled floor.
Governor Frontinus glanced up. He was building a miniature watercourse across a table with a set of marble blocks and a bowl of damp sand. It was the dead of winter and cold even in the Praetorium with the hypocaust fired up and three-legged iron braziers burning in all the rooms. Outside it was snowing like hell.
“How did he arrive?” he inquired mildly. “Wings?”
“Horse,” the optio said succinctly. He had been the governor’s chief of staff for a long time. “And ‘he’s’ a woman.”
The governor waited. Optios never interrupted him without good reasons.
“Claims to hold rank in the Silure war band,” the optio said, “and to come from the king. Got a piece of evergreen stuck in her belt.”
The governor heaved himself up from the floor and dusted the sand off his hands. “Mithras! Bendigeid does pick a time.”
There was a certain amount of sympathy on the optio’s face. “I expect they’re hungry, sir.”
“I expect they are.” He shouted for his cloak and helmet, and two slaves bustled forward with them at once. “Where is she?”
“In your office, sir.”
The governor strode across the snowy courtyard to the Principia, with the optio and the chilly legionaries who were his personal guards that day scurrying after him like harbor boats in a quinquireme’s wake.
The woman was warming her hands at a brazier, and he paused for a moment in the doorway, inspecting her from under his helmet rim. She raised her head and appeared to inspect him, also. He handed his cloak to his optio, brushed the snow from the eagle feathers on his helmet, handed it to one of his guard, and closed the door in their hopeful faces.
“I am Llamrei,” the woman said. “I have given my weapons to your soldiers.”
“I expect you have,” Frontinus said gravely. She wouldn’t have had a choice, and they would have searched her, too, which must have been unpleasant, but she showed no signs of indignation. He looked at her curiously. He had heard that occasionally a woman of the tribe chose to spend her life in this fashion (all were trained for it in their girlhood and could fight with the men if worse came to worst), but he had never met one.
She had a dark, grave face and a low, attractive voice, and her hair was cropped off at shoulder-length. She wore a man’s shirt and breeches of good cloth and a gold torque on her neck. There was, as promised, a green branch stuck in her belt, but he thought briefly of the tribune who had come back across his horse, and said brusquely, “Stand still.” He ran his fingers around the insides of her boot tops and found an empty scabbard.
“They looked there,” Llamrei said dryly.
“So I perceive.” Frontinus straightened up and bowed her gravely to a chair. “I am Sextus Julius Frontinus, military governor of the Province of Britannia, in the name of Vespasian Caesar. I have the authority to speak with his voice.” His British was badly accented, but clear enough. He settled himself behind his desk and crossed his arms on it. “Do you speak for Bendigeid, Llamrei the envoy?”
For a moment the woman’s face seemed to cloud over into a mask, fixed and painted as a stage player’s, with only some dark life behind the eyes, and then she spoke and the impression was gone. “I speak for the king of the Silures, who is Aedden ap Culwych, who was made king between the Nine Fires on Midwinter Night.”
“Bendigeid is dead?” The governor’s eyes dug into hers. “Why?”
“He was king,” Llamrei said. “It was his time. There needed to be peace between us. Between your kind and mine, Governor.”
“Do you mean he killed himself?”
“He chose his time,” Llamrei said evenly. “If you mean, whose hand held the knife, it was the young king’s. Kings made in that way, Governor, are never unmade.”
“And so he fought us to the end, even with his death?” Governor Frontinus slammed his fist down on his desk. “Damn him! Damn him for the waste of it all!”
Llamrei sat looking at him.
“No,” the governor said finally, “not a waste, was it?”
“He kept faith with his kingship,” Llamrei said. “The Druids say that is never wasted.”
The governor had a snort of irritation for the Druids. But all the same, he thought, Bendigeid had fired his parting shot at some target, and gestures like that had a way of hitting home. And what about you, he thought, looking at Llamrei. What are you really thinking behind your druidical platitudes? “Midwinter Night,” he said. “The young king was speedy enough in sending you to Isca. I don’t expect the old king’s body was cold.”
“Everything is cold at Midwinter,” Llamrei said. “Even dead kings. I am still cold.” She moved closer to the brazier.
“I am surprised you got here at all,” the governor said, “in this weather.”
“We wished to talk peace,” Llamrei said with a wry note in her voice, “before you put your Eagle soldiers on the war trail again – and maybe found it easier to go on than to stop.”
“Tell your young king,” Frontinus said, “that I am always willing to stop when there is the possibility of peace. I wish the old king had believed that.”
“Your definition of peace and his differed somewhat, Governor,” Llamrei said.
The governor sighed. “Very well. In the morning we will argue over the differences. I am sure that you have your instruct
ions, but it is necessary that I consult with my staff. I will have my optio show you to your quarters and bring you some clean clothes.” He looked at her checkered woolen trousers and wolf-skin riding boots and the heavy cloak wound around her shoulders. “Does the king’s envoy prefer men’s clothes or a woman’s gown?”
“Whichever is handiest.” Llamrei said. “I am the king’s envoy, not his dancing girl. But there are clean clothes on my horse, if you will have someone fetch them.”
“Of course. I shall expect you to dine with me tonight,” the governor added.
“Of course,” Llamrei replied. “I should think the novelty will give your staff something to keep them amused.”
“Oh, I should think so,” the governor said.
“They must be very bored in the winter.”
“Indeed they are,” the governor said, “but they won’t be dining with me.”
* * *
She wore a gown. He wasn’t quite sure why. She wore it with a certain natural grace but with none of the airs of a woman. The neckline was cut like a tunic, loosely draped, and he could see part of some pattern of tattooing above it.
For his part, the governor wore a tunic, gold-bordered, with military leggings under it, his concession to the cold, and no armor. She could strangle him over the sweets and wine, he supposed, but he doubted it.
His hair was neatly brushed. Hers was pulled back into a soft braid at the nape of her neck. He had lost more men and time than he wanted to think about to the stubbornness of her war band. She had watched her people grow few and hungry before the relentless march of his army, and the only man who had ever touched her soul walk to his death. They eyed each other warily and stretched out on the couches to eat.
A slave filled the two-handled silver wine cups and the governor lifted his. “To peace,” he said over it.
“To life,” Llamrei said. She sat up. “I am sorry, but I cannot drink this way. I will spill it.” She curled herself up with her feet under her.
“It takes some getting used to,” the governor said. He stretched himself out comfortably and dipped his hand into a plate of pastries. “Eat. You will need your strength to quarrel with me in the morning.”
“Are you so sure we will quarrel?”
“A peace treaty is always one long quarrel. Each side throws its conditions at the other like so many half bricks until one has more bruises than the other, and then they sort out the bricks and make peace.”
“We have only one brick to throw, Governor. The others are all yours.”
“And whose name is written on it?”
“Aedden ap Culwych. Our terms are simple enough. You may build your roads and we will pay your taxes, but you must leave the tribe to its own governance.”
“You should never give your terms away before you come to the treaty table. Have some of this. It’s very good.”
“Thank you. It doesn’t matter. The terms won’t change.”
“And if I don’t agree?”
“We are still strong enough to make trouble. Not to win maybe, but to give you great trouble with our dying. If you don’t agree, I will go back to Dinas Tomen and show you that.”
“I could always send you back to Dinas Tomen the way Bendigeid sent me my tribune,” the governor said thoughtfully.
“You could,” Llamrei agreed. “But will you?”
“No.” The governor leaned across the table and poured some more wine in her cup, without calling the slave back. They watched each other across the four-legged silver lamp that lit the table. “Military governors are not kings,” he said at last. “They don’t last a lifetime. I am being recalled next season.”
“Why?”
The governor shrugged. “It is thought best that a man not have that sort of power for more than four or five years. Any bargain made with me might hold with my successor.” He looked at her gravely across the wine cup and the lamp. “It might not. I find your company makes me honest.”
“What kind of bargain did you have in mind?”
“The treaty table kind. Nothing more.”
She ate a pastry and sipped her wine.
“I have a wife in Rome,” he said idly.
Llamrei looked him in the eye. “You are asking if I find you attractive. For yourself.”
“I am.”
“And telling me I would not be binding myself to more than I wanted.”
“Yes.”
“Give me some more wine, Governor, but the answer is no. You do attract me – I didn’t think a man of your people could, but you do. But I let one man touch my life who had another faith to keep than one with me, and I watched him die. With the rest of his captains, I dressed him for death, and I watched the life go out of him to keep that faith. I do not want to care, Governor, when your ship sails for Rome.”
Frontinus nodded. “Nor I. I think maybe you are right, Llamrei king’s-messenger. Bring your brick to my office in the morning.”
XVIII A Kindness Done to Lovers
There was peace. Of a sort, and for a time. Llamrei took the governor’s message back to Aedden, and Aedden met with the Romans at Isca after the first thaw. He looked older than he had before Midwinter, and the King’s Mark on his forehead had faded so that it seemed always to have been part of him. The conditions of the treaty were read in Latin and British – rate of taxes, civil upkeep of roads, any defenses over a certain height to be pulled down; two cohorts of men drafted for the auxiliaries, and all others to be pardoned. Not such harsh terms, all in all. A ruined land was of very little use to Rome.
For his part, the governor decreed the Druids outlaw (a stipulation he could not have avoided had he wanted to – and he didn’t) and left the tribe to its own governance in all other matters.
“Until the summer,” he said. “I am going back to Rome in the summer, and you will have to fight that one over again with my successor.”
Aedden nodded. They were speaking formally, with Centurion Julianus as an interpreter, his usefulness as a spy having been ended at Dinas Tomen. “Tell your governor that I am king of the Silures, and that that is a choice that the gods make, not men, not even Romans when they have won. Tell him that if he thinks to change that, he will undo more good than his little queen is worth.”
The governor watched them sweep away across Isca Bridge toward Venta, where the new tribal capital had been – ostensibly – settled. The king would spend no more time in it than was needed to keep his side of the treaty. The Silures would never develop a liking for having Rome looking over their shoulders. And that was why, perhaps, they would need Ygerna in the end.
The governor sighed. He had done his best to warn them of that. He had no liking for making promises he would have to break. I shall go home and build waterways, he thought again. And enjoy this season’s campaign against Cadal in the knowledge that the outcome would be something some other poor fool would have to deal with.
* * *
There was peace. Peace to take the ruined fields back under the plow, to reclaim the orchards and entice the honeybees back into their abandoned hives. In the east, the Ninth Hispana was minding its steps and drills so well that the governor had pulled the Second Adiutrix out of Lindum entirely and parked them on the northern edge of Ordovician lands where they were turning the site of the old frontier post at Deva into a legionary base. The Twentieth Valeria Victrix at Viroconium had already begun the campaign to give Cadal of the Ordovices cause to wish that he had listened more carefully to the king of the Silures. The governor was at Deva or in the marching camps of the Twentieth or somewhere in between. In the south of West Britain, the Second Augusta found itself on garrison duty, a pleasant summer task which consisted largely, as Silvius Vindex said, of looking martial in the right places and keeping their beady eye on the civil officials who were being appointed for the territory, to make sure they didn’t cheat the natives blind.
Correus and Vindex had their hands full, coping with the natural exuberance of legionaries let loose in
spring with nothing to do but peacock about in parade dress and chase the local women. With the peace had come a civil population of wine sellers, tarts, traveling scribes, potion peddlers, and third-rate actors who seemed to spring up in the army’s footsteps like so many mushrooms after a rain. Most of these new towns were no more than the beginnings of a vicus outside some fortress gate, with no guards or patrols of its own, and the centurions found themselves knocking civilian heads together – unofficially – as often as military, until the frontier settled down somewhat.
It was fun. They sampled the wine merchants’ wares, listened to traveling players on makeshift stages where the “god in the machine” was the lead actor on a rope that broke, prowled marketplaces suddenly full of goods, and chased women themselves. A middle-aged innkeeper’s widow fell in love with Vindex, much to his chagrin.
Correus found that that now half-misty interlude with Ygerna had loosed some things that had been lying low, and he took up with a whore named Aifa in an inn at Venta. She had red hair the color of a copper pot and reminded him a little of Emer, who was his father’s kitchen slave and had been his first woman. Except that Emer must be older now, he supposed. Aifa was twenty, as close as she could remember, with a plain outlook on life. She liked to make love and she liked men who were good at it and she liked money, and for all of these reasons she liked Correus. He gave her a fair amount over and above the inn’s charge, which she squirreled away in some secret recess in her room, and a red silk gown, which clashed horribly with her hair and which she adored. He spent most of his off-duty time in her bed, and killed a lot of memories, for the time being at least.
At midsummer the governor’s replacement was announced. The southern frontier pulled itself together, paid its tavern bill, and shook the vine leaves out of its hair. Gnaeus Julius Agricola had served twice in Britain, first as a military tribune and then as legate of the Twentieth, and he was already legendary.
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