Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  Regina made for the largest building in the complex. Probably it had once been a reception room. The roof was long gone, save for a few stumps of rotting beams. The floor was covered by a litter of soil and leaves, and after years of exposure to the weather the painted plasterwork had crumbled off the wall in great sheets. The walls themselves were intact, and still the room impressed by its sheer size. But the room had long since been stripped of furniture, and even the little sockets on the walls were empty of the oil lanterns they had once held.

  Regina got down on her hands and knees and started to comb through the dirt. After so long, anything large enough to be seen easily had long since been smashed or carried off, and the only hope of finding anything was a fingertip search, bit by bit. But in a time when even a shoe nail was precious, it was worth the effort. Last time she had been here, in fact, she had found a small perfume bottle. As she had raised it into the light she had been stunned by its symmetry and perfection compared to the crude bowls and wooden pots she was forced to use at home, as if it had leaked into this world from some better place. She kept the bottle in the little alcove she had built for the matres, and every so often she would hold it, and take it out into the light.

  Through the ruined walls she could see Brica. She had settled to a heap of dirt in one corner of what might once have been a kitchen and was exploring it carefully. It was a disconcerting juxtaposition of images, her daughter in her grubby shift rooting under a wall that still bore the marks of shelving, and even a hint of flower-design fresco work. She knew Brica felt uncomfortable in such places as these ruins, as if she believed they were ghost-haunted relics built by giants of the past, as the children's tittle-tattle had it. Sometimes Regina worried about what would happen if this unsatisfactory situation went on so long that the last of those who remembered died off, leaving only ruins, secondhand memories, and legends.

  She thought about Bran. He was a little dull, but he really wasn't a bad young man, Regina thought. And it wasn't as if Brica had much choice.

  There was no civic structure here; there was no nearby town or functioning villas. But as time had passed Regina and her people had settled into a loose community of neighboring farmsteads. They were somewhat wary — some of these hillfolk were very long established and were suspicious of newcomers — but they would help each other out with harvests or medical emergencies. And they would trade, vegetables for meat, a wooden bowl for a blanket of woven wool. If not for such contacts, Regina mused, it was probable none of them would have survived.

  But the population was sparse. The land had drained as people fled south, dreaming of Armorica, abandoning even farms on the best land, driven away by the rumored advances of the Saxon raiders in the east and the Picts and Irish in the west and north. And in this empty landscape of ghost towns and abandoned farms, there was a paucity of suitable mates for Brica, that was for sure.

  Regina's opposition to Bran didn't make much sense, then. But she was opposed even so. It seemed there was some deep instinct inside her about the destiny of her daughter. Yet when she thought hard about this her mind seemed to skitter away, like a pebble over a frozen pond. No doubt she would eventually figure it out.

  Absently Regina brushed at the debris, she exposed a bit of floor, revealing scarlet, a patch of color picked out in tesserae. It was part of a mosaic.

  With sudden eagerness she brushed aside the dirt with her forearm, exposing more of the mosaic. It showed a man's face, large-eyed, bearded. The head was surrounded by colors, gold, yellow, orange, bright red, in a sunburst pattern. It might have been Apollo, or perhaps it was some Christian symbol. Though some of the gold-leaf tiles had been prized out by hopeful robbers, most of the colors still shone as bright as the day they had been laid down. With obsessive motions she began to clear more of the floor. It seemed wrong that such beauty should be wasted under dead leaves and crawling worms, as if the young man in the picture had been buried alive. Suddenly it struck her how the farmstead, much as she was proud of it, was a place of drab gray-green and brown, as if everything had been molded from mud. How she missed color! She had forgotten how bright the world used to be. She was carried back to another time, impossibly warm, bright, and safe, when she had crept into the ruined rooms of her parents' villa and discovered another mosaic...

  A single scream pierced the air. It was cut off suddenly.

  Brica.

  Regina's thoughts evaporated, replaced by hard, cold fear. She got to her feet and ran out of the room.

  • • •

  Brica was standing in the kitchen. Her gray eyes were wide with terror.

  The man behind her was taller than Brica by a head. He held Brica easily with one hand clamped over her face, and in the other he held a short iron sword with an elaborately cast handle. He wore a cloak of dyed wool. His blond hair was long and tied back from his head, and his drooping mustache was clogged with bits of food. When he saw Regina he smiled, showing yellowed teeth. He said something in a language she did not understand.

  He reached down, dug the heft of his sword into the neck of Brica's tunic, and let the corner of the blade cut through the soft wool. When he had exposed her chest he massaged her breast with the fingers of his sword hand. He seemed to enjoy the way she flinched when his cold metal touched her bare flesh. Again he spoke softly to Regina, as if inviting.

  He was a Saxon, of course. She had seen his like before — scattered parties of them, riding west along the old Roman road. They had always kept on past the poor farms of this hillside. But now this Saxon had her daughter; now he cupped her whole life in his hands. It was as if the room expanded around her, as if time itself stretched, so that past and future were banished. There was nothing in the universe, no time or space, nothing but this moment and the three of them, locked in fear and calculation.

  She forced herself to smile. It was the hardest thing she had ever done.

  Looking at the Saxon, not at Brica, she walked up to him. He eyed her expectantly, as if trying to see her figure through her shapeless, leaf-strewn shift. She pulled at the fabric over her thigh, and parted her lips. She reached out to her daughter, and touched Brica's breast as coarsely as had the Saxon.

  He laughed out loud. She could smell barley ale in his breath. His huge hand still clamped over Brica's mouth, he dragged the girl sideways, so his body was exposed; he was wearing a torc of tarnished silver around his neck. Regina stepped closer to him, touched his chest, then ran her hand down over his crotch. She could feel the bulge there. She smelled urine, semen, the stink of horseshit and the road. He grinned and spoke again, and she pressed her body against his.

  The knife slid easily out of her sleeve. Using all her strength she rammed it through layers of coarse cloth into his crotch, above the root of his stiff penis.

  His eyes bulged. The Saxon brought down his sword arm. But Regina was standing inside the arc of the stroke and he could do her no harm, not in that first crucial heartbeat. She got both hands on the hilt of the knife and dragged it upward, cutting into flesh and gristle.

  And now Brica was at his back, her cut-open tunic flapping. She thrust her own knife into his back and twisted it, seeking his heart. Still the Saxon stood, flailing with his sword arm, as the women ripped and tore with their knives. It was like a dance, Regina thought, a gruesome dance of the three of them, in wordless silence.

  Then the Saxon clutched Regina against his torso, and blood dark as birch-bark oil spilled from his mouth into her face. He shuddered and toppled like a felled tree, pulling both women down with him.

  With disgust, Regina slithered backward across the dirt-strewn floor. She wiped the blood off her face with her hands. Brica fell on her mother, burying her face in Regina's chest. Regina tried to comfort her daughter, to stroke her hair and soothe her.

  Their return to the farmstead created panic. Marina insisted on treating the bloody scrapes on Brica's chest with her poultices.

  Regina longed to get the Saxon's blood off her. But first
she instructed the younger men to round up the children and animals, while others checked over their simple weapons — a few iron swords and knives, mostly spears and arrows tipped with wood or stone. Meanwhile, led by limping, ancient Carausias himself, now more than sixty years old, others were to go back to the villa, take what they could from the Saxon's body, and dispose of it. The rest of his raiding party might yet ignore the farmstead, as had others in the past — but they surely would not ignore the murder of one of their own.

  When everything was in hand, all Regina wanted was to get to her pallet. In the gloom of her house she curled over on herself, as if trying to escape the world.

  She had done many things over the years in order to survive. But she had never killed a human being before. She remembered the little girl who had once run to her mother as she dressed for her birthday party. That child is long dead, she thought, the last vestige of her now gone; and I am like her ghost, or her corpse, kept alive but steadily decaying.

  Not without purpose, though. Poor or not, she knew that what they had built here — what she had built — was something to be proud of, something worth saving.

  But now the Saxons were here. And Regina must decide what to do.

  • • •

  With the dawn she was awake.

  After a brief toilet she pulled on an old tunic and cloak. She slipped out of the compound and walked down the hillside to the marshy land at the side of the river.

  On some level she had always known this day would come. She had put it out of her mind, hoping, she supposed, that things would return to normal before she had to face it. But now the day of trial was here, and she had woken with shame that in her denial she had left her people, her own daughter, woefully undefended. They hadn't even built a palisade around the compound.

  She waded out into the water and began to rummage in the black, reed-choked mud. The weather had been dry since spring and the water level was low. She had not forgotten the rusted iron dagger she had once found here, and she had always wondered if any more of that long-dead warrior's hoard might have survived. If so, it might provide better weaponry than their own poor wooden sticks and stone-tipped arrows. It was a poor idea, but she could think of none better.

  She had found nothing but a shield, so corroded it was no more protection than a papyrus toy, when Brica came running down the hillside.

  "Regina! Oh, Regina! Mother, why are you here? You must come!"

  Regina straightened up, startled. There was smoke in the air. It came from the west. "Exsuperius's farm," she said grimly. "The Saxons—"

  Brica reached her and grabbed her arm. "We have visitors," she said.

  "Who?"

  "I don't know — you'll see — you have to come—" She grabbed her mother's hand and dragged her from the marsh. Together they hurried up the hillside to the farmstead.

  A group of soldiers stood before the largest roundhouse, their hands resting casually on the hilts of their swords. They wore leather body armor, short tunics, and woolen trousers. The people of the farmstead stood in a sullen row before the soldiers. With them was the boy Bran, grandson of Exsuperius. His face was blackened by soot, perhaps from the burning of his home, and he stood in subdued silence, a mute testament to the power of these new arrivals.

  "There are more of them down on the road," Brica whispered. "A few carts, too, and a sort of trail of people behind them. Their leader came up and demanded to be let in — we didn't know what to do — you weren't here—"

  "It's all right," Regina said.

  "Are they Saxons?"

  "I don't think so."

  One of the soldiers was taller than the rest, obviously the commander. He wore a red cloak and an elaborate leather cuirass, inset with metal buckles. He was perhaps thirty, but his face was lined with the dirt of the road. Regina's first impression was of strength, competence, but fatigue. And his short brown hair was brushed forward, in the Roman style — even his garb was almost Roman. For a brief moment her heart beat a little faster. Was it possible that the comitatensis had returned?

  She stood between her people and the interlopers. She drew herself to her full height, disregarding the dirt on her face and legs, her disheveled clothes, the people in their mud-colored clothes behind her.

  The leader hadn't even noticed her. "Riothamus—" One of the soldiers tapped his shoulder, indicating Regina. He seemed surprised to find himself facing a woman. He asked, "Are you the leader here?"

  "If you wish it. And what rank are you, riothamus?" She pronounced the word mockingly, masking disappointment. It was Latin, but a version of a British word — 'high king.' This was no soldier, no officer of the imperial army, but a mere warlord.

  He nodded. "That is the only rank I have, and not one I wished for."

  "Oh, really?"

  He spread his hands. "I am not here to harm you."

  "Oh," she said. "And you did not harm this boy, Bran, by burning down his home."

  "I did him the least harm that way."

  "Your definition of harm is interesting."

  He grinned, his eyebrows raised. "Defiance! We have found a new Boudicca, boys." He won a ripple of laughter from his troops.

  She drew herself up. "You will not mock us. We are living poorly here; I can't deny that. But if you think we are illiterate Saxons—"

  "Oh, I can see you are no Saxons." He waved a hand. "Your grain pit, for instance... I have seen some Saxon farmers. There are many in this country already, you know, off to the east. The way they do things is sometimes better, sometimes worse than what you have worked out here. But they do not do things quite like this. And it is the threat of the Saxons that has brought me here. Listen to me," he said, raising his voice to address the rest of the people. "Things have changed. The Saxons are coming."

  "We know that," Regina said.

  He growled, "Perhaps you have heard of Vortigern. That foolish kinglet was much troubled by Pict raiders from the north. So he invited in the Saxons, to help keep the Picts at bay." It had been an old trick of the Romans, Regina knew, to allow in one set of enemies as allies to oppose another lot. "I will not deny that the Saxons did a good job. They are sea pirates after all, and fared well against the Picts in their clumsy coracles.

  "But," said the riothamus, "the Saxons, under their brute of a leader Hengest, who is already notorious on the continent, betrayed Vortigern. They brought in more and more of their cousins, and demanded more and more in tribute from Vortigern. But the more they took from him, the less he could pay them, and the weaker he became.

  "Now Vortigern is dead, his council slain. And now that they have a foothold in the east, the Saxons are becoming greedy.

  "You may have heard of their cruelty. They are not the Romans! They hate towns and villas and roads, all things of the Empire. And they hate the British. They are spreading across the countryside like a plague. They will burn these flimsy huts, they will drive you out of here, and if you resist they will kill you."

  "The Emperor will help us," somebody called.

  The riothamus laughed, but it was a grim sound. "There have been pleas. No help comes. We must help ourselves. I will help you," he said boldly. "I am building a new kingdom in the west — I have a capital there. It is a place the Romans themselves struggled to defeat, and it will see off a few hairy Saxons." There was a little laughter at that, and Regina saw the skill in his mixture of fear and humor. "But I need you with me. The land is emptying. Everybody flees, fearing the raiders. And if you come with me—" He drew his sword, and flashed its polished surfaces in the air above his head. "—I swear before the gods that I and Chalybs will protect you to my own death!" Chalybs, which he pronounced Calib, was the Latin for "steel."

  He was met by uncertain silence.

  Regina stepped forward to face him. "We don't need you, or your shining Chalybs. For all your posturing and speeches you are just another thug, another warlord, as bad as the Saxons or the Picts."

  The riothamus eyed her. "You have d
one well to survive here, Boudicca. Few have prospered so well. I can see you are a strong woman."

  She glared. "Strong enough not to be patronized by a popinjay like you."

  He seemed to want to convince her. "I am earnest in what I say. I am not a Saxon or a Pict. I am like you. I am your kind. I grew up in Eburacum, where my father was one of the landowners..."

  "Earnest or not — son of a citizen or not — you are still a warlord. And if I submit to you it will only be because I have no choice, because of your force, not because of your rhetoric."

  He laughed. "Are you bargaining with me? I offer you survival, with me, in my compound. But you want more than survival, don't you?"

  She glared at him. "I am old now—"

  "Not so old."

  "—and I may not live to see the day when the emperors return. When we don't have to scratch at the land like animals, and live in fear of barbarians. I may not see it. But my daughter will, and her daughters. And that is what I want for my family. For them to be ready..." She fell silent, suddenly aware of how wistful she sounded, before this silent tower of muscle in his scuffed cuirass.

  "I have met Romans," he said softly. "I have dealt with them in southern Gaul and elsewhere. You know what the Romans call us? Celtae. It means 'barbarians.' Their Empire is a thousand years old. We were barbarians before our assimilation, and we are barbarians now. That is how they think of us."

  She shook her head tightly. "My daughter is no barbarian. And when things get back to normal—"