White Raven's Lover

by Nhys Glover

  Her strange silvery eyes should have frightened him, but instead they mesmerised him, beguiling him into moments of peace whenever her gaze meshed with his. He needed those moments of calm certainty like he needed his next breath, and they intensified his belief in every word she uttered.

  ‘Are you well?’ he asked her, sensing more than knowing that she was having trouble with the rocking craft.

  ‘I will be when we reach shore. Until a few days ago, I’d never been on a boat. I don’t like it.’

  He chuckled, even though there was no reason for humour in the moment. ‘You get used to it. Just pray no sudden storms come up. Then you’ll really wish for land.’

  ‘That’s what Leonis said.’

  ‘What is he to you?’ Did his jealous curiosity come through in his tone? He hoped not. He had no right to be jealous of the Dacian, where this girl was concerned.

  ‘The Lionslayer? He was my companion given to me by his mistress for the journey. No more than that. Although he proved to be a kind and oddly insightful companion. I don’t usually…’ she faltered to a stop, as if she’d said too much.

  ‘Don’t usually what?’ His jealousy finished the statement with, ‘…give my body to strangers, but in his case I made an exception.’

  She shook her head. And his jealousy flared. That was exactly what she was going to say!

  ‘Tell me,’ he demanded, not sure whether he wanted to reject her for her betrayal or draw her closer for momentary possession of the exotic creature.

  This was madness. In the midst of his worries for his son, he was jealous over a strange girl’s sexual choices?

  ‘I don’t usually like men. Braedyn, the druid hermit I lived with, is the only man I have ever… felt comfortable with, before I was taken to the Davrydianus Estate.’

  ‘You don’t like men? Do you mean your preference is for women?’ That was against Roman Law, but he knew such predilections existed. He’d once seen two prostitutes engaged in sex play for the entertainment of their male audience. It had been very stimulating in its novelty. He felt himself begin to harden at the thought of this pale girl involved in such an unnatural act.

  ‘For women? Oh, no. I don’t mean… It’s hard to like men when all you’ve ever experienced from them is derision, cruelty or sexual abuse. Leonis was different. He treats his woman with love and respect. And doesn’t look elsewhere when he’s away from her, like the men I knew in the past. Leonis says Cyra is a wildcat he has never been able to tame. And he smiles when he says such things.

  ‘I thought Braedyn was kind because he was old and past the age to be interested in me in that way. I thought he might have been different when he was young. But Leonis and his mistress’ husband, Allyn, made me see that there are young men who aren’t beasts with only one thing on their minds. I found I liked Leonis, Allyn and the big black man they call Nexus. It felt very strange to realise that was how I felt.’

  ‘You call the master Allyn?’

  ‘Yes. It is a strange household. There are no slaves but Leonis, who can’t be freed. Those who work on the estate call Livia and Allyn by their personal names, as if they were their equals. Allyn was a slave, Livia told me. And so was Nexus. They were her slaves and helped her escape her murderous first husband. I think it’s because they know what slavery is like that they won’t have their people enslaved.’

  ‘My sister, Lara, and her husband are like that. They have no slaves. Lara threw away her patrician status for the life of a liberti and marriage to a man who was once a slave in our household. It took me many years to fully accept that a man is a man, no matter his status. And it’s the manner of a man that determines his worth.’

  Brennwen twisted in his arms so she could look up at him. He found he liked having a woman look up at him this way. Calidia had been only a few inches shorter than he and had looked him directly in the eye. That was, when she wasn’t shyly dropping her head, as was her habit in the early days of their acquaintance. He was glad that in the year of their marriage she’d become comfortable enough with him to look at him with adoration and love instead of shyness.

  ‘I saw that at your home. You were truly concerned about the distress of your slaves, particularly the children.’

  ‘Bellia and her husband, Hermes, were good people. It distresses me that they died trying to keep Calidius safe. That they had to die at all.’

  ‘That is your son’s name? Calidius? I wondered if Cal was a pet name.’

  ‘Calidius is his mother’s clan name we use as his personal name. As my first son, he has my name, Gaius Annius Bibulus, as I have my father’s name. It was too confusing to have yet another Gaius around, so he’s also Calidius, or Cal as we started calling him when he couldn’t say his name.’

  She nodded and looked away, out toward the fast moving coastline. ‘It’s a good name. I was worried it might be Caligula.’

  ‘Little boots? No. Why are you so obsessed with my son?’ He hadn’t planned to ask her such a question, but with his arm around her so intimately, and the intimacy of their conversation, it seemed the right time to satisfy his curiosity.

  Instead of answering his question, she stiffened and asked a question of her own. ‘Do your people believe that a soul can return to this world more than once?’

  ‘Persephone can bring a soul back from Hades if she chooses, so I’m told.’ He quirked his brows at her, waiting to hear more.

  ‘My people believe that a person can live more than one life. When I held my son in my belly I could sense him there. I knew him to be male. When those men raped me and I lost him, I dreamed in my delirium, as I fought to stay alive, that he had found another woman to bear him. A Roman woman. I believe that woman is your wife.’

  Gaius felt his heart sink. She was mad. Her gift, if she in fact had such a gift, had driven her mad. With infinite gentleness, he turned her face up to him.

  ‘My son would have been born long before yours died. I understand that a mother’s grief can be a cruel thing, but my son is not yours.’

  ‘My son was lost to me in late winter four years ago. He would have been born in late summer nearly four years ago.’

  He had forgotten her age. Somehow, he’d gotten it into his head that the loss of her child was a recent thing. And yet she’d told him she’d been with the druid for four years. She’d told him that the druid had saved her life after she lost her son. Calidia would have been pregnant with Cal at the time this strange woman was pregnant with her own son. But the coincidence didn’t make her supposition true.

  Then why had she dreamed of his abduction if he was just a random child? If he’d been a mother who had lost her baby, and then started dreaming of another child, wouldn’t he have assumed the child was his lost baby? More than likely. But such an assumption didn’t make it so.

  Did it matter whether it was true or not? What mattered was his son’s safe return. If her belief meant she aided him, then he was glad of it, truth or delusion.

  ‘I have no desire to claim him, if that’s what you think. He was born to you and your wife. I’m glad he was given such a good home. Had I bore him, his life would have been terrible.’ She frowned and then looked up at him as if confused by her latest thought. ‘Why didn’t you send word to your wife that her son was missing?’

  Gaius jerked back with shock. What kind of cruel question was that? Then he realised Brennwen knew nothing of him but what she had discovered during this impossibly long day. She assumed Cal’s mother was still alive, waiting for his safe return.

  ‘Cal’s mother died giving birth to him.’

  The girls silvery eyes began to sparkle with unshed tears. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. I… I just assumed…’

  ‘Maybe your son and my wife found each other as they journeyed across the River Styx.’

  ‘No. My son lives, and I have to save him.’ Her desperate determination unsettled him even more now that he understood its source. Yet he was even more convinced he could use it to get what he wanted: Cal’s
return.

  Then…

  Well, then his son would need a new nurse. Maybe he could buy her. But she would have to keep her misguided beliefs to herself. He couldn’t have Cal thinking he was the son of a Britannic slave. Such nonsense was unsuitable for a wealthy Roman patrician.

  Cal was tied hand and foot, and put to sleep on a horse blanket beside a smoking fire. They had fed him, but the food tasted bad and hadn’t stayed down. Finally, exhausted, sick and terrified, he fell asleep.

  In his dream, he stood before the white statue of the Goddess in her temple. As she had in other dreams, she turned her head and smiled tenderly at him, her colourless eyes filled with love. But this time the statue didn’t stay seated on her strange box, surrounded by writhing snakes. Instead, she stood up and came over to him, where he lay beside the fire. Though he couldn’t move because he was bound, she lay down behind him and wrapped her arms around his cold, shivering body. Comforted, he relaxed against her warmth.

  ‘Do not fear, my son,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘We’re coming for you. Be strong and do not fear. Your father and I will save you, I promise.’

  He smiled in his sleep, knowing she spoke the truth. His mater and pater were coming for him. He had to be strong and not afraid, and then they would come.

  As he sank deeper into sleep with his mother’s arms wrapped tightly around him, he was content for the first time.

  Vencuros sat on the steps of the government building where Annius Bibulus worked. The boy he’d paid to deliver the second missive didn’t realise he was there as he climbed the stairs to the Praetorian’s side.

  ‘A message for Annius Bibulus or the governor,’ the boy told the guard. ‘The governor’s sick in bed and Bibulus is not here. Give me the missive and I’ll see he gets it.’

  The boy handed over the scroll uncertainly. One didn’t go against the orders of a Praetorian.

  Vencuros rose from his seat on the steps and sauntered away. The proconsul was unwell. To have taken to his bed meant his ailment was not minor. That would interfere with his plans. He wanted Lucullus at the meeting point in three days. The place he’d chosen was at the northern reaches of Catuvellauni territory, but not near enough to any of their villages or towns to worry that they’d interfere with his plans. And Lucullus would arrogantly assume that being close to one of his own forts, Bannaventa, would safeguard him. It wouldn’t.

  But this sickness was an unexpected and unwelcome complication. He would have to find out more before he could modify his plans to accommodate. Not a disaster, he assured himself, just a postponement. What were a few more days in the scheme of things?

  War would come. He could already feel it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  12 April 86 CE, Camulodunum BRITANNIA

  Brennwen awoke, rested and content on the pallet found for her in the governor’s residence. But it wasn’t the comfort of her bed that had helped her sleep so well. It was because, for the first night in weeks, she hadn’t dreamed the terrible dream. Instead, she’d dreamed she’d found Cal, shivering and frightened, and wrapped her body around him, warming and comforting him. She’d never been able to reach him before. In her dreams, she was always too far away, watching, but unable to come closer. Last night, she’d slept contentedly with her child pressed to her heart.

  It was enough.

  When she found Cal’s father waiting for her in the predawn mist outside the villa, she saw that he hadn’t been so lucky. In the torchlight, he looked haggard and aged. His sleep, if he’d managed any at all, hadn’t been as peaceful and refreshing as hers.

  Silently, they made their way down to the harbour to board the imperial naval galley that would take them the rest of the way to the North. This had been a serendipitous occurrence, finding such a craft bound for the North that morning, although the patrician told her that such navy vessels sailed these waters often at this time of year.

  But often meant every few weeks. That one was here, ready to leave for the wilds of the barely conquered North just when they needed it, was the best news possible. It would cut their travelling time by at least a day or two. And that would put them ahead of their prey.

  Brennwen saw the vessel as the first rays of sunlight touched the naked mast. It was a frightening sight with its hooked ram that looked like a giant nose and the big eyes painted onto either side of the prow. It made her think she was about to ride the back of a sea monster.

  That wasn’t all that made the ship look monstrous to her. There were also two rows of oars sticking out of the hull. She counted eighteen oars on each side, looking for all the world like the legs of a giant centipede.

  ‘See those oars?’ Cal’s father asked, indicating the legs of the monstrous centipede. ‘They’ll help us get up to fourteen knots under sail. That’s about the speed of a cantering horse.’

  Brennwen nodded, not really having a concept of speed aboard ship. But it seemed to her that a galloping horse would have got them to their destination faster than a cantering boat.

  ‘I can see that doesn’t impress you. A horse can’t canter indefinitely, but a ship like this can. It is consistent speed that matters over distance. In this case, at full speed, this vessel can reach our destination by dark today. If we had ridden that distance, even on fast horses, it would have taken at least two or more days.’

  ‘I understand,’ she replied as she eyed the craft again.

  If the monstrous looking vessel wasn’t enough to unsettle her, then the forty fully armoured legionaries being boarded onto the decks and seated on benches under wooden shelters lining either side of the ship would have. They looked rough and dangerous, battle-ready warriors who, to a man, towered over her.

  ‘This is half a centuria – five contubernia of eight men, each with their own decanus, a leader from their own ranks. See that imposing looking fellow over there?’ The patrician indicated the supervising officer on deck. ‘That’s a centurion. This is only half the men under his control. The rest will follow on the next available ship. It seems the detachment of infantry newly arrived from Hispania have been arriving in dribs and drabs because of the uncertainty of the weather this early in the season. But Lucullus wanted more men moved north as soon as possible, so he must be prepared to wait on the weather for them.’

  Without being aware she was doing it, Brennwen edged in close to the patrician’s side and was grateful when his arm again came around her to press her against his hard body. With all these frightening, dangerous warriors around her, and she the only woman in sight, she needed all the protection this powerful man could give her.

  If she doubted his power, she need only note the way the centurion in charge addressed Annius Bibulus as they boarded. Even without his patrician’s toga, these warriors knew him, if not personally, at least by sight. Because of that, none of them seemed willing to step out of line with her, even if many watched her speculatively out of the corners of their eyes.

  They were assigned to a sheltered spot at the rear of the craft and seated on a bench like the ones the soldiers sat on. From their position they could look out over the roofs on the lower deck and see the curved prow of the vessel. Not far behind them, on either side of the ship, muscular crewmen manned the two tiller oars. The ship’s naval centurion moved about the lower deck, shouting orders at his men who scuttled about raising the mainsail, a crimson and white striped square of canvas. She couldn’t see most of the soldiers from her vantage point, but she could hear their armour clanking and rattling as they settled themselves for the day’s journey.

  ‘Below decks are galley oarsmen who will keep our pace faster than any civilian craft could travel. They work in shifts so the vessel can keep moving at top speed continuously.’

  ‘What an awful life. Are they slaves?’

  ‘No. They’re all freemen from maritime countries around the empire. They’re well paid for their labours.’

  As the ship moved away from the dock, she heard the oars being lowered. A deep throated drum beg
an to beat like a heart and the sound of grunting, groaning men filtered up to her from below decks. She couldn’t imagine anyone being paid enough to do such a task.

  ‘You look rested,’ Cal’s father said as he handed her bread and cheese to break her fast.

  ‘I am. It is the first night in weeks I haven’t dreamt that dream.’

  The patrician jerked his head up and glanced at her urgently. ‘That doesn’t bode well.’

  She smiled and touched his arm. ‘It does bode well. I still saw Cal in my dreams. He was tied up, but otherwise unharmed. I told him we were coming and to be brave. I think he will remember that when he awakes.’

  ‘I hope so. What did he look like?’

  Brennwen frowned, not understanding his question. She had told him he looked well. What more did he want to know?

  ‘I suppose I want you to prove yourself to me. I’ve taken your word for it that you see my son, but … how do I know it is Cal you see?’

  She nodded and looked away. ‘It’s a fair question, especially after what I told you yesterday. Is it the fact I see him as my son that kept you from your sleep last night?’

  He gave a humourless laugh. ‘I had more pressing concerns to keep me from my sleep than your misguided beliefs. In the early hours of the morning, a person tends to start to second-guess themselves. And you. I have convinced the most powerful man in Britannia to follow my lead, based on the dreams of a barbarian seer. Such would not have been my way in the past.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. I felt like I willed you to believe me yesterday, I was so desperate to save Cal. But I can understand how fragile my proof must seem to you. All right, let me see if I can describe the child in my dreams, the child I slept beside last night.’