And so it finally sank in. The thought Clare had been actively avoiding.
She and Milo shared a glance.
“Okay.” Clare held up a hand. “May I just express—for the record—the unknowably deep depths of my horrification at the very concept of Stuart Morholt getting jiggy with a Druid priestess way back in the day, just so he could leave me his diary to read?”
“No need.” Milo’s expression twisted with distaste. “Right there with you.”
“Gech!” Clare shuddered. “Can you imagine? He’d be all like … first-century lounge lizard and stuff.”
“Please.” Milo squeezed his eyes shut. “Stop.”
The two of them cringed in tandem.
“Well, yes,” Piper said. “But there’s rather more to it than that.”
“Is it gonna make me wanna barf?” Clare asked.
“Possibly.” Piper tapped the cover of the book. “You see, according to this … Stuart Morholt’s Druidess lover, Mallora, was an older sister to Boudicca, the Queen of the Iceni. And she was far more powerful to boot.”
11
Morholt turned to Allie, slapping the palms of his manacled hands together. “Right!” he said. “Let’s get cracking on the time travel then, shall w—”
“Shh!” Allie gave Morholt a fierce look.
There were voices just outside the tent. She recognized one of them immediately—the young one.
“I’m telling you, she’s not like the others,” he was saying. “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say Junius is right. I mean, I wouldn’t tell him that—he’d just want her dead. But I think maybe she is a Druidess. And if so, that makes her valuable to us. Or, at the very least, valuable to them. We should think twice before simply bundling her off to a slave ship.”
“If she’s one of those responsible for bringing this red ruin down upon us, then I say I agree with that musclehead Junius.”
That was the centurion’s voice. Allie remembered the flat, jaded tone. It sent ice down her spine.
“Why not kill the bitch? Maybe that’ll end it.”
“I disagree,” the legionnaire said.
Shuffling as close to the entrance of the tent as she could, Allie strained to hear compassion in the younger man’s voice, but all she could discern was cold logic. For an instant she’d dared to hope that he’d be, if not exactly a friend, at least maybe an ally. But apparently he saw her as only a pawn in a big, deadly game.
“She’s a bargaining tool,” he continued, confirming as much. “A hostage.”
“They’re murdering us out here, in case you haven’t noticed,” the centurion snapped. “We’re pinned to this piece of ground. We try to leave, they pick us off one by one. We try to stay, they burn the supply caravans to starve us out. It’s not as if they even want us to retreat—they’d be perfectly happy if the whole lot of us stayed here on this gods-forsaken hill to wither and die!”
“I know that,” the young soldier answered calmly. “But while we wait for the praefect to regain consciousness, we need to keep her alive.”
“So they can keep on murdering us?”
“It’s what Commander Postumus would want.”
“You presume.”
“Aye. But until he awakens to confirm that assumption, I would think it prudent to leave him the option. Don’t you?”
There was a long pause. Then the centurion said, “Get her out here.”
Allie was already scrambling back from the tent entrance when one of the guards pushed through the flap and glanced around. Then he stepped over the other prisoners and grabbed Allie by the back of her head, dragging her forward.
“What? No!” Stuart Morholt squawked, his eyes going wide in panic above the unkempt goatee. “You can’t take her! I need her. Tell me you’ll bring her back! You—”
Morholt shuffle-lunged toward them on his manacled feet. When he got too close, the guard simply stuck out his pilum and thrust him back, sending him into a clumsy rolling tumble over the other captives’ legs. Then the guard dragged Allie outside.
As Allie blinked in the watery sunshine the centurion leaned over and grabbed her face roughly in one meaty paw, lifting her almost off the ground. But as he held her there, two men hurried past carrying a bloodied soldier on a stretcher between them. The centurion turned, and the rage on his face told Allie that the soldier’s wounds had come from fighting the berserker women.
His eyes turned back toward Allie, searching her face. He was so close she could feel his breath, hot on her cheek. She did her best not to actually blubber with fear, even as she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks, collecting in a puddle between the man’s finger and thumb as he gripped her jaw.
“Savages,” the centurion snarled finally and released his punishing grip.
Allie collapsed onto her knees, chains clanking, a fog of panic dulling her mind. The centurion spat to one side and turned back to the legionnaire. While the two soldiers debated her fate as if she were no more than livestock and they discussing dinner, Allie’s gaze roamed over the details of the legionnaire’s uniform: the brass fasteners on the plates of his armour, the leather thongs of his sandals, the buckles on the wrist bracers he wore. The thick woollen cloak he’d acquired since she’d last seen him wasn’t as nice as the centurion’s, but it was brushed and looked cared for, with only a few mud spatters on the hem. The knapsack slung over one shoulder was made of heavy cloth and leather, and looked as though it could have come from the latest Roots Back to School collection. Or maybe Abercrombie and Fitch.
It’s nice. Clare would like that—
And then she spotted something else.
Something that, she was almost shockingly positive, had come from a store in a mall. Sometime in the eighties. A worn, skinny leather tie. Just like the one Mark O’Donnell had been wearing in the photograph taken before he’d disappeared at Glastonbury. She thought of that image—the goofily grinning kid, just a skinny, awkward, pasty-faced, big-haired boy—and, glancing at the hardened expression on the angular, sun-darkened face of the soldier standing in front of her, she could almost picture the two of them meeting unexpectedly on the open moors. Two young men from different eras, unable to communicate …
Oh my god, Allie thought. This guy must have killed that poor kid!
It was obvious. The Roman soldier had found Maggie’s fellow student lost in time and alone, helpless … He must have figured Mark was just another outlandishly dressed Celtic local. And he’d killed him and taken his leather tie as some kind of war trophy. Allie looked back up at the legionnaire’s face, her chest constricting with anger.
“What a benighted, sorry race these Celts are,” the centurion was saying. “Do you know they even kill their own countrymen and collect their heads because they think it gives them power? Mystical power. They’re damned headhunters.”
Allie thought about the skull she’d found and shivered, wondering.
“We’ve all fought the scathach, sir.” The younger man took a step forward. “And whatever it is they use to fuel their mystical rage … it seems to work just fine for them. They’re winning.”
“Perhaps that’ll stop if we start collecting some heads of our own. Eh, little witch?” The centurion glared down at Allie. “What do you say? Might be worth a try …”
“It might,” the legionnaire said with a shrug. “Only then the praefect loses a potentially valuable prize. And I don’t think he’d approve of the method in which it was lost.”
“Quintus Phoenius Postumus”—the centurion turned toward the younger man, his face twisted into a mask of disdain— “‘wouldn’t approve.’ Ha! The coward. Makes me long for a commander like Suetonius Paulinus. He had no such qualms about ‘methods’ when he dealt with that upstart demon-bitch queen in the east.” The centurion smiled grimly. “I only wish I’d spent these last few months there with the Twentieth Legion instead of out here in this damp, damned wilderness hunting phantoms.”
Okay, Allie thought, at least I know w
hen I am. Approximately …
It made her feel the tiniest bit better knowing that, at the very least, the vengeful Iceni queen had met her ultimate fate. Boudicca had scared the crap out of Allie. Maybe even more than the Romans did.
“I, for one, am glad I wasn’t there,” the legionnaire said.
“Squeamish, Legionnaire Donatus?” The centurion’s tone dripped sarcasm. “You? Postumus’s pampered pet?”
“I can’t see how I’m so very pampered. Not when I’m stuck out in this muck hole with the likes of you lot,” he answered his commanding officer.
The centurion’s flinty gaze narrowed and he drew back his shoulders, chest expanding beneath the creaking harness of his armour. Allie wondered if he was about to strike the young man, who stared back impassively, eventually adding a belated “Sir.”
After a long moment, the centurion let his breath out in a gusty, harsh laugh.
If she hadn’t been so terrified, Allie might have found herself silently rooting for Legionnaire Donatus. She felt almost as if he was a kindred spirit. As if there was some kind of connection between the two of them—a feeling that intensified for an instant when he turned and she accidentally locked eyes with him. It was like being hit with an electric shock.
“Well then, pet? What ‘methods’ do you think we should employ?” The officer turned and grinned viciously at Allie.
She felt like her heart would stop. What were they going to do? Torture her? Kill her? Worse?
“I think we should talk to her.”
Talk? Okay. Allie could handle talk.
Donatus smiled wanly. “As you say, I’m a useful pet, Centurion. Like a well-trained puppy. And I can speak her language.”
“If that’s what you call that appalling barking of theirs,” the officer muttered, staring at Allie sideways.
The legionnaire walked toward her where she still knelt on the ground. “I can at least try.”
Damn, Allie thought. I don’t speak Celt!
Whatever flavour of Celt she was supposed to be, she didn’t speak it. She was doomed. She’d know what he was saying because she understood Latin, but no way would she be able to respond in the language he expected her to know—
“Listen to me,” he said in a low voice.
Wait. What?
He’d said it in perfect, precise, modern English.
Allie knew perfect, precise, modern English. She was very good at it. Usually.
“Wha …?”
Allie had the brief sensation of understanding what the hell was going on, but then her brain recoiled from the thought the second it began to formulate deep in its brainy depth.
I know what you’re thinking, her brain said. And you’re an idiot. What you’re thinking is not possible. Clearly. I mean … look at this guy.
Allie frowned. Her brain had a distinct point. As her gaze travelled down the young soldier’s corded, defined muscles she suddenly felt like one of those Star Trek computers Captain Kirk was always talking into self-destructing.
Illogical … Illogical … Does. Not. Compute.
Legionnaire Donatus and Mark O’Donnell couldn’t possibly be one and the same person. Allie tried to picture those skinny tartan trousers covering that pair of legs.
Okay, no. Just … no.
She felt herself on the verge of blushing as she stared at his muscled calves. Allie wrenched her gaze back up—only to be met by that steely glint in his eyes. How was it that Maggie had described the O’Donnell kid again? Right. “Soft-spoken. Slight of build, with soft eyes … soulful, really. And he had rather large hair.”
Soulful? Yeah … again, no.
How about “arrogant”? Or “pompous”? Allie shook her head. She was catastrophically wrong about this. “Soft-spoken”? Ha! Not this guy. Even compared to the brute manners of the centurion, there was nothing soft about him.
“Well, Marcus Felix Donatus?” the centurion drawled mockingly. “I’m waiting for your useful skills to prove useful …”
Marcus … Mark …?
Allie felt her eyes growing impossibly wide. “Holy crap,” she whispered. “You’re—”
“Shut up and listen to me,” Marcus snapped.
He crouched down on his haunches and stared into her face, his eyes like two hard, cold stones beneath the bronze brim of his helmet. Maggie had said that Morholt made a pet out of Mark O’Donnell. And the centurion had just baited him with that very same insult. But this boy—this young man—was nobody’s pet. This guy commanded respect.
“The centurion doesn’t know that I’m not speaking to you in the language of the ancient Durotriges,” he said in a low, whiplash crack of a voice. “But you aren’t an ancient Durotrigan. Are you?”
Mute, in shock, Allie could only shake her head.
“So we’re going to pretend, you and I, that I am speaking to you in Durotrigan.” His stare burned into her. “And maybe that way I can keep him from getting either suspicious or bored—and killing you—while he waits for his commanding officer to recover enough from his wounds to properly decide what should be done with you. Agreed?”
“How did you—”
“Now is not the time,” he cut her off abruptly, a stern warning in his gaze. “Just tell me if you agree.”
He waited for an answer as she struggled to form a coherent thought.
“Uh. Yeah,” she stammered. “I guess. I mean … Agreed.”
He straightened up and turned back to the centurion with a sigh. “Hers is a difficult dialect to make understood,” he said, speaking Latin once more as if he’d been born knowing it. He shrugged. “This may take a while, but I think I can talk to her. It will be easier if she’s less nervous. I think you should keep her separate from the others. Take her to the praefect’s tent. Secure her there, with a guard.”
“The praefect’s tent!” The centurion regarded Allie with a mix of wariness and distaste. “I think we’d get more answers out of her if we chained her to a stake in the midden pit.”
“Except that I don’t want to interrogate a prisoner in the midden pit,” Legionnaire Marcus Felix Donatus said dryly. “And the more we can manage to put this creature at ease, the better time we’ll have of it.”
Creature? Allie thought. He called her a creature. Nice.
The centurion looked as though he was wavering.
“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Centurion.”
“Huh,” the man grunted. “I like that. Who told you that?”
Marcus shrugged and glanced at Allie. “Just … an old saying I heard.”
“I’ll have to remember it.”
Allie wondered vaguely if this was when the “old” saying was actually coined. Marcus grabbed her by the shoulder, hauling her to her feet.
“Play along now,” he muttered in her ear.
He did have a hint of a Scottish accent. She was sure of it.
“Veni!” he barked and gave her a rough shake. “Move!”
Allie winced and cowered away from him, even though his grip on her arm wasn’t nearly as punishing as he made it look. Okay … After three years of summer drama camp with Clare? This she could pull off. At least until she had a chance to figure out just what on earth was going on.
He dragged her past the lines of neatly laid-out tents toward the centre of the encampment. Behind her curtain of tangled hair, Allie glanced around as she stumbled in his wake. She could see where they’d dug a ditch around the entire circumference of the square-shaped camp and used the dug-up earth to form a defensive embankment inside the ditch. It was topped at intervals by sharpened wooden stakes pointing outward at angles to deter any hostiles from rushing the earthen wall.
These things were meant to be temporary camps, Allie knew from what she’d read about Legion methods and techniques. Except that this one had a slightly more permanent air. She remembered what she’d heard the two soldiers saying about the siege tactics the Celts had been using against them. Rough wooden palisade gates made of lashed, s
harpened tree trunks had been put up at the camp’s two entrances, and a watch platform seemed to have been hastily erected at the north end of the camp. The south end was protected by the sloping sides of Glastonbury Tor itself.
When they reached the praefect’s empty tent, the centurion ordered Allie’s manacles to be secured to the central tent pole. He set a sentry guard outside the entrance, then left Marcus alone to deal with his prisoner, citing vastly more gripping things to do than watch the young legionnaire try to wring sense out of a “skinny-arsed barbarian waif.”
Allie tried not to collapse in a heap. She needed to focus. To concentrate on the situation at hand, and how the hell she was going to get herself out of it. She needed information. And she needed to know just where (she already knew when) Marcus Donatus was coming from.
He stood for a moment after the centurion left, looking down at his hands. They were smeared with dried mud. And blood. So was his uniform, beneath his cloak. It looked as though he hadn’t had a chance to clean up after the fight the night before. When he’d saved Allie from a flaming shish-kabob fate.
“Good god, what a mess,” he muttered to himself in English.
And he totally had a faint Scottish accent. It was ridiculously sexy. Sexier, even, than when he’d been speaking Latin.
Could we focus on the situation at hand, here, Little Miss Easily Distracted?
Allie wondered if Clare had experienced something similar when she met Connal, her blue-painted Druid hottie, on her first shimmer trip. She decided to ask the next time she saw her. For the moment, there was a bit more to worry about. Especially since her own hottie didn’t seem the least bit inclined to even be polite.
She decided to confirm her theory as to his identity. She was still having difficulties reconciling Mark O’Donnell and Marcus Donatus as far as appearances went. Was that what forced marches, fresh air, and legion rations did to teenage boys? Wow. And she thought the high school football team grew up fast.
Allie cleared her throat. “Don’t you mean ‘By Jupiter, what a mess’?”
Ignoring her, he strode over to a folding stand that held a bronze bowl and pitcher. He poured water into the bowl and began to wash the dirt from his hands.
Every Never After Page 11