Pendragon

by James Wilde

Bellicus and Solinus crashed into the clearing, their spears dripping blood, but Lucanus could not see any sign of meat.

  ‘Come,’ Bellicus called, beckoning.

  At the note of warning in his voice, everyone except Menius and Marcus followed the two men back into the depths of the woods. The path meandered past dense clumps of hawthorn and bracken flecked with new green shoots.

  Lucanus smelled the iron tang of blood in the air, but it was only the carcass of a boar, Bellicus’ and Solinus’ prey, no doubt. Or so he thought.

  But then the two wolves came to a halt by a listing ash tree, and he realized there was more to it. Three bodies were littered at the foot of the trunk, cut down by swords or axes by the look of it, half an arm and a leg and the top of a skull scattered nearby. Each man had a bow and carried a quiver. ‘Hunters,’ he murmured.

  But as he knelt to examine the kill, he saw what had truly concerned the other two men. Butcher’s marks scarred the pale flesh of two of the fallen.

  ‘The Attacotti,’ he said.

  ‘The barbarians are still moving south?’ Galantha said.

  Bellicus ran a hand through his red hair. ‘It’s more than that.’

  Lucanus stood up and cupped his ear. ‘No sound of an army advancing. This is a few men, scouts perhaps. The Attacotti are stealthy, we know that from the ease with which they moved through Vercovicium. But …’ He looked at Catia. ‘They may be hunting us.’

  ‘Why would those barbarians be interested in a handful of fleeing Romans? We have no gold,’ Amatius demanded.

  ‘Be that as it may, we should heed Lucanus’ warning. We must not take any risks,’ Catia said.

  When the Wolf looked round at his brothers, he could see from their narrowed eyes that they knew there was something he had not told them. ‘We’ll speak of this later,’ he said. ‘For now, we should act as if they are hunting for us and will not relent. Bellicus, Solinus, hurry to the camp now. Guard Marcus and Menius.’

  ‘We’ll pick up the boar as we pass,’ Bellicus said. ‘Some meat in our bellies will not go amiss.’

  Lucanus felt Catia’s hand linger on his arm for an instant as she eased past him to stand on the edge of the blood-soaked area. She eyed the bodies for a moment, then plucked up a bow and a quiver.

  ‘This will be mine. I want to be of some use on the road.’

  ‘A bow?’ Amatius said. ‘You couldn’t draw it, never mind loose an arrow.’ Lucanus could hear the contempt in his voice, but Catia showed no sign that she cared, or even heard her husband any more.

  She stepped up to Lucanus, slinging the leather quiver over her shoulder. ‘Remember when we were children? Thumping shafts into the old oak? Your father was a good teacher.’

  ‘And he cuffed me round the head because you were better with a bow than me.’

  ‘But you were better with a sword.’

  Lucanus shrugged. ‘Not much, wolf-sister.’ He sensed Amatius bristle at his words. But as he turned to make light of them, Catia’s husband was already stalking back towards the camp.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  On the Trail of the Dragon

  Rome

  A RABBLE OF laughing children on the water’s edge hurled stones at the floating corpse. The gulls feasting on the remains soared up in a thunderous beating of wings, circled once, and then flocked back. More missiles, more shrieking, the cycle repeated.

  ‘Another poor bastard executed at the Stairs of Mourning.’ Corvus shielded his eyes against the glare coming off the Tiber. ‘You spend all your life struggling and striving and you end up as bird food.’

  Pavo cracked the knuckles of his huge hands. ‘If you ask me, there are no good deaths.’

  Corvus looked up past the Tabularium to the grim front of the Mamertine prison. That view was probably the last thing the dead man had seen before he ended up in the river. ‘One thing’s for sure. In a city founded by men raised by a wolf, you can’t afford to be a lamb.’

  ‘Then I’d suggest you grow some teeth, and fast.’

  Sighing, Corvus drifted down a set of stone steps to the river. The sound of hammers beat out and his nose filled with the conflicting scents of pitch and fresh-cut wood. A little further along the bank, he could see their destination: a small boat-builder’s yard that carried out repairs on the skiffs and smaller craft that were the only ones able to navigate the Tiber past the city.

  He’d spent long days searching for the man Severus had told him about, the one who had once worked for his mother. Questioning suspicious owners of taverns near the Pinciana gate, convincing them he was not a debt collector or a man with a grudge, following the dismal trail through places where unskilled men found hard work for little reward.

  Others would not have been so dogged, but he wasn’t someone who was easily deterred. The secrets that his family kept drove him on.

  ‘You’re thinking of the witch again,’ Pavo taunted. ‘It’s all over your face.’

  ‘I’m worried about her.’

  ‘You talk as if you’ve drunk too much wine. You and I both know you’d like to be holding hands and skipping with her through fields of corn.’

  Corvus sighed again.

  ‘Oh? The thought has never crossed your mind?’

  ‘I’m not a boy still yearning for first love.’

  Pavo snorted. ‘Of course. How wrong I am.’ There was a long silence, and when Corvus looked at his friend he saw how serious he’d grown. ‘I don’t want to see you hurt, you know that. But your brother—’

  ‘Stop bringing up my brother.’

  ‘I can’t. He doesn’t care about you.’

  ‘Enough.’ Corvus felt his anger mounting. At his friend for bringing up things he wanted to ignore. And at himself, because he knew that everything Pavo said was true.

  ‘I’m going to talk to our man alone,’ he said.

  ‘Then I’ll wait. Enjoy the sun. Torment the children. Sit here and be your conscience.’

  Corvus strode on along the edge of the glittering Tiber, glancing back only once. Pavo was a smudge of shadow in the bright sunlight flooding the stone wall against which he leaned.

  As he became engulfed in the sound of hammers from the boat-builder’s yard, he thought how distant his mother and brother had grown since the raid upon the temple. Ruga had roamed around with a face like a man who had been stung by a bee, snapping at anyone who came near him. But it was his mother who troubled him the most. Whenever she was sad or suffering, he felt gloomy, as if he were responsible. That had always been the case, since he was a boy. And now she looked on the verge of tears all the time. She sat in her room for long hours, emerging in the dark when the day turned only to huddle with Ruga. Their conversation always ended when he came near. That stung him too.

  Skirting the heaps of ballast, he studied the boat-builders sawing fresh wood and stretching hide to dry. One caught his eye, a familiar face rising from his memory, though much younger then; not these crumpled features like a weather-beaten cliff face and hair more silver than black. He was stirring a barrel of pitch with all the enthusiasm of a man who had been told his balls would be fed to the yard dog as soon as he was finished.

  ‘Titus Didius Strabo.’

  The man looked over, shoulders growing taut. Someone used to being cornered, Corvus thought.

  ‘It’s taken me a long time to find you.’ He bowed, trying to put the other man at his ease. ‘Do you remember me?’

  Strabo’s eyes narrowed as he looked this stranger up and down. He shook his head slowly and returned to his stirring.

  ‘You used to work for my mother, Gaia—’

  The other man stiffened. Was that anger Corvus saw? Suspicion? Hurt?

  After a moment, Strabo grunted, ‘You were the strange one.’

  ‘If by that you mean the witty, charming, courageous one who was filled with an unbounded sense of adventure, then yes.’

  ‘Why are you here? We agreed terms. I have not gone back on my word.’

  ‘Terms?
My mother paid you?’

  ‘Not enough.’

  Corvus looked around the yard. ‘All gone now, I’d wager.’

  Strabo’s top lip twitched, but he said nothing.

  ‘A little more gold would not go amiss?’ Corvus jangled a leather pouch.

  The other man eyed it, unable to hide his hunger. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘To hear what you know. About my mother, and my brother, and the time you spent with us.’

  Strabo took the skin hanging at his hip and swigged back the contents. Red wine trickled from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand and jerked his head, indicating that they should move beyond a heap of timber where they would not be overheard. As expected: loose lips, easily bought. Strabo slumped down in the shade and watched with wary eyes.

  Corvus perched on the end of a half-cut log. ‘You worked for my mother and father in Britannia?’

  Strabo smirked. ‘I did. But not for your mother and her husband.’

  While Corvus was trying to make sense of this word-play, Strabo flexed his fingers. Corvus tossed him the purse and watched him inspect the contents. He seemed satisfied.

  ‘Your mother was married to another in Vercovicium. A man named Menius. He failed her, or so she said. Too weak, too …’ He waved a hand in the air. ‘Who knows? She took up with his brother.’

  Corvus flinched. This was news to him. He didn’t want to think of his mother in that way. ‘This can’t be true.’

  Strabo sniggered. ‘Are you sure you want to hear more?’

  His unease growing, Corvus nodded for him to continue.

  ‘I worked for your father at the time. A strong arm when he needed it, some hunting. He was tupping your mother long before she left Menius.’ He shrugged. ‘Might be that he is the true father of your half-sister. Or sister. Or … families, eh?’

  This time Corvus gaped, unable to hide his shock.

  ‘Didn’t tell you about her, I see. Aye, Catia’s her name. I bet your mother didn’t tell you that she robbed her old husband blind when she ran off with his brother, either. Took his gold, all his trade, his slaves, everything he had apart from a little bit of land. Left him to scratch his way back up or starve.’

  ‘That I cannot believe.’

  Strabo eyed him for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, there’s worse than that.’

  Corvus slipped into the modest house on the Via Flaminia that his mother had bought with his father’s gold when she had arrived in Rome. Gaia was sitting in her chamber, looking out of the window over the orange-tiled rooftops baking in the sun. She jerked round when he swept in.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she began, trying to read his expression. ‘Is it Ruga?’

  ‘It’s not Ruga.’ He pushed aside his annoyance that his brother was the first thing which came to her mind.

  ‘What’s wrong, my love? Come. Sit beside me.’ She beckoned him over as if he would fall on to the floor by her legs as he did when he was a boy.

  Instead, he prowled around the chamber, watching her. ‘Do you remember Titus Didius Strabo? He remembers you well.’

  Gaia’s smile drained away. ‘Strabo is …?’ The words died in her throat.

  ‘I have a sister. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  He watched her flick her hair back from her face, composing herself while she bought herself time. ‘What’s gone is gone. It’s too painful for me to think about the poor child … about what I have lost. And I wouldn’t wish that pain on you, when you can never see her. Her father would not allow it.’

  Corvus moistened his lips. ‘You’ll forgive me if I have some difficulty in accepting your hurt, Mother. Not after Strabo told me you ordered him to take my baby sister out into the wilderness to leave her to die. Your own daughter.’

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘A lie.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘There’s more to it than that. So much more.’

  ‘Then tell me.’

  ‘I cannot, I cannot.’ She bowed her head, covering her face with her hands, in grief or shame, he couldn’t tell. ‘Nothing is as it seems,’ she murmured through her fingers.

  ‘Did you want her dead?’ His voice was almost lost beneath the sound of voices and rattle of cart wheels rising from the street outside.

  Gaia crossed the chamber to him, holding out her arms. ‘Could you think that of me? After all the love I lavished on you? I sheltered you from the storms of life, I gave you all the hugs and kisses a mother could, and stroked your hair and rocked you in my arms whenever you were sad.’

  Corvus took a step back and that seemed to cut her more than anything. ‘Strabo told me the babe was saved by a pack of wolves. Suckled by the she-wolf. An act of the gods, he said, damning you. And after that you couldn’t live in Vercovicium any more. You ran away with my … my father to Banna, and then here to Rome, because you were too afraid to live in Britannia any more.’ He couldn’t bear to wound her further with talk of how she’d robbed her husband in the process and left him broken.

  She whirled away to the window. ‘Yes, I was afraid. When you and your brother were born at Banna, and when we fled by sea that night.’ She paused. ‘Afraid, even here.’

  ‘Of what?’

  She shook her head, still not looking at him. ‘The less you know, the better.’

  ‘You don’t need to spare me. I can protect you now.’

  Gaia looked back at him, her smile wistful. ‘I will always fight to keep you safe. You were such a troubled child.’

  ‘If Father were here—’

  ‘Your father was a cruel man, a violent man. He took me, with force, time and again.’ She swept across the chamber to him. ‘If we are speaking truth now, you should hear me out …’

  Corvus held up a hand to stop her.

  ‘You knew. You saw once. You heard my screams, and found him upon me on the floor. And you fought to protect me, my love. But you were too small, too fragile.’

  ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘Of course not. What boy would, seeing his mother in such a state. But a part of you never forgot, my darling boy.’

  Corvus shook his head, trying to get the visions his mother had created out of it. ‘Enough. You’re telling me this to distract me.’

  ‘No, my love, no. I tell you this because it is the truth, and a hard one. What son should think of his father that way? As a brute who rapes his wife. You were born from that violent congress. For that pain and suffering I was rewarded with you, my wonderful boy, and I showered all my love on you, and Ruga—’

  Ruga. Corvus jerked back from her. ‘Ruga was the one who had all the love, all the opportunities, I remember that.’

  ‘No, my darling, no.’ Gaia cupped his jaw in her hands as she had done so many times since he was tiny. He pulled back and jabbed a finger at her, then regretted it. She looked so frightened, as if she thought he was his father, about to attack her. ‘I’m sorry …’ he began.

  His mother turned away, blinking back tears, her hand to her mouth.

  ‘The plans you and Ruga have been concocting …’

  ‘You are too delicate to be burdened with such a thing,’ she interrupted, her voice a low croak.

  Corvus stifled a smile. How many days had he returned from the front line drenched in the blood of the Alamanni? ‘Delicate, yes. A little flower. But I’ve had my fill of being kept outside this wall you and Ruga have built around yourselves.’

  ‘No wall, my love.’ She tried to cup his face again, but he pulled back. His mouth was dry, and he hated how she made him feel, as if he were in the wrong here.

  ‘I don’t want to be excluded from your plans any longer. I want …’

  He flinched at the sadness he saw in her eyes, and the rest of his words became a rock in his throat.

  Gaia sighed. ‘You must trust me.’ A familiar smile. ‘Have I ever lied to you?’

  Corvus shook his head. He turned away, looking out on to the sun-drenched rooftops. ‘I will see my sister one
day,’ he murmured to himself, trying to imagine what his sibling looked like. When he turned back, he said, ‘One question, then. For now. What part does Hecate play in all this?’

  For a moment, his mother weighed her response. ‘You remember Varro the merchant? Of course you do, the foul man. He stole something from me, something of great value. For a while, all seemed lost. I could no longer see the way ahead. But now, perhaps, Hecate can help.’

  ‘How? Ruga says—’

  ‘Ignore what your brother has to say.’ He watched her search his face and then a smile crept to her lips and she nodded. ‘Know that I already love her as a daughter. You have no need to worry. She will be well taken care of. You are a good boy, pleading for her so. You always think of others.’ She reached out to stroke his cheek. ‘You must trust me. And let that be the end of it.’

  Furious voices rang out over the rooftops of the grand houses of the wealthiest Romans. As Corvus hurried along the street, he realized they were coming from his destination, the camp of the strangers, the castra peregrina, high on the Caelian Hill. The barracks was an old building, but the camp commandants had kept it well repaired across the years, a monument to the most glorious days of the empire.

  Corvus wheeled along its stone walls, glowing the colour of honey in the late afternoon sun, and slipped past the guards at the gate into what seemed to be a simmering battle between two groups of soldiers.

  Since the return from Gaul he’d spent too long roaming this barracks yard while Theodosius conducted the Emperor Valentinian’s business – sourcing the supply lines for the coming invasion across the Gaulish frontier into the territory of the Alamanni. It was this place the frumentarii called their home, the former wheat-collectors who travelled the length and breadth of the empire acting as spies.

  And there was his friend, at the centre of the commotion, staring down a hook-nosed magister who loomed a good head above him. As always, Theodosius showed an emotionless face, seemingly unruffled. But Corvus recognized those eyes like nail-heads and knew he was simmering inside.

  ‘Back down, I say.’ The hook-nosed man’s hand slipped to the hilt of his sword. It was an instinct, nothing more, Corvus was sure, but tempers were still high.