by Ilka Tampke
I dismounted and filled my pouch, then sat on a log by the stream to drink. Caradog sat beside me. His finely-muscled neck, bare of its torc, looked pale and soft emerging from his farmer’s shirt. I fought an urge to press my mouth to its skin. ‘What ails you?’ I asked gently. ‘We heard good news this day, and you have mourned it ever since.’
‘Nothing ails me. I am well.’
My patience cracked. ‘As Lleu is my witness, Caradog, I will not ride another pace with you unless you tell me what is wrong. Are you not pleased for Venutius’s alliance?’
‘Of course I am pleased,’ he said. ‘But it condemns us to yet more waiting, more secrecy. Forgive me if I had hoped to raise a more glorious war band.’
‘Glory does not mean strength—’
‘But men do!’ he flared. ‘For every follower I may have among the Brigantes, Cartimandua will have three. If she joined me, we would win this war. But I failed to convince her, and so did you.’
I swallowed the barb. ‘Your sister observed her own wisdom as we must observe ours.’
‘Yet ours sees me travelling by stealth, creeping under rocks like a spider.’
‘By the Mothers, Caradog, what did you intend?’
‘I have fought for five seasons in darkness. I intended to return with a war band strong enough to fight in the light.’
I looked out. Late sun turned the birch trunks bronze against the grey sky. ‘Do you think you are stronger if you are better seen?’
‘Yes, Ailia.’ He looked at me. ‘I tire of hiding.’
I thought of my promise to Cartimandua. ‘And yet to be hidden is our greatest power. We are named for it…Night People, Secret People…We are the unseen. This is our strength.’
‘It is your strength Kendra, the journeywoman’s strength—’
‘It is the strength of us all.’ A certainty was unfurling within me. Something I had heard many times, but never fully possessed. ‘You are a craftsman, Caradog, you know that your designs are full of riddles, their meaning for us alone. And Rhain does not commit his poems to Latin letters that any fool may know them, but protects them in land and memory. Something too easily seen has no power.’
‘This is pretty, Ailia, but it has nothing to do with war—’
‘Yes it does.’ I was surprised at the sureness in my voice. ‘You want to fight in the Roman way, Caradog, where your strength is on show. But the reason you have succeeded above all others is that you have fought in the way of the tribes. We are tricksters, conjurers, shifters of form. And so too must your war be a riddle to the Romans, a seduction, a trick.’
Caradog was silent.
My fingers had gone to the scars on my chest, tracing their familiar bulge through the fabric of my dress. ‘The answer is not in greater numbers. The answer is in protecting what is hidden. Venutius has promised you men. But the bonds must be secret. If Scapula learns of the ties you made with the Brigantes, your power will be gone. What is unseen is always greater.’
Caradog gave a soft chuckle. ‘You make even my weakness sound like a poem.’
His smile was heavy with regret. At last I realised this was no sour temper. This was the affliction that changed him as night changes day. How had I not seen it sooner? ‘War King,’ I ventured. ‘Your illness returns—’
‘I said I am well!’ His mare startled at the force in his voice.
He drank from his water-pouch. Torment strained at his skin.
I was about to speak when he took a sharp breath and threw his bladder to the ground with a strength that split its seam. ‘I do not wish you to see me in this way!’
‘Then show me something else!’ I cried, unnerved by his violence. ‘Show me what wound lies within, that I might help you heal it!’
He stared at me.
A crow’s call fell through the sky.
‘If I speak, then no other can know what I say.’
‘I see no other, do you?’
‘Aedic was one of the fiercest chiefs Albion has ever known,’ he said. ‘And when she was made queen, Cartimandua was a mighty and loyal tribeswoman. If souls such as these are kneeling to Rome, then how can I hope to escape it? Am I so much stronger than these?’
‘You are.’ It was not comfort. It was the truth. ‘You must fight this doubt.’
His eyes briefly closed then he looked to the ground. ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘I am unafraid of Rome’s most brutal soldiers, yet I am powerless against this…despair.’ He met my eye. ‘Do the Mothers punish me with this suffering, Kendra? For this war? Am I so mistaken in it? Do they want Rome’s great temples on this land, and I cannot see it?’
Never had he revealed to me such frailty. Only with his question laid bare between us, did I realise how truly I believed that he was Mother-chosen. He was flawed, turbulent, proud and rash. But all this converged to a greater purpose. Even his sorrow brought a necessary tenderness to what might otherwise be too hard.
I reached for the fist that was balled on his thigh and gently opened his fingers.
He grasped my hand with a swordsman’s strength.
‘Caradog, I can help you. I can give you the plants and treatments that will strengthen your spirit, but more than this, I can see this part of you and tell you it is well. You are imperfect. You are as stupid as you are brilliant and as ass-headed as you are noble. But you are not mistaken, and you are strong enough to win this war.’
Then Caradog, war king of Albion, wept in my arms.
The hour was late. We needed to remount and continue riding if we wanted to beat the darkness.
I released Caradog and walked a short distance into the forest to piss. Just as I squatted behind a clump of bracken, I heard horses approaching. I peered through the tangle of bracken, then sank back down behind my cover, chest pounding, as my skirts soaked in my own water.
The riders were Roman auxilia.
Should I stay hidden? Caradog stood to greet them. He carried only a simple peasant’s knife. I had a journey-sword, but it would reveal me if they discovered it. I could hide it beneath the bushes and approach without it, but then I would be unarmed, for my sling was useless in hand combat.
‘State your business!’ said one of the soldiers to Caradog in the language of the Empire.
Caradog spoke perfect Latin. Please Mothers, would he remember not to use it? No farmer would have ever known that droning tongue. ‘I travel to the borderland,’ he answered in our own language, impersonating a northern accent, stammering slightly as if he were only guessing at their question.
I exhaled silently in relief.
‘For what purpose?’ The second soldier knew our language. His accent was Gaulish, I guessed, and I hated him all the more that he wore his conqueror’s clothes.
‘I bring this horse and its saddle as a gift to my wife’s family.’
‘And where is your wife?’ asked the soldier.
‘She awaits at our farmhouse near Stenwic.’
I crouched, frozen. He did not wish me to appear.
‘It is a fine horse,’ said the first soldier, stepping his mount closer to my young grey mare. ‘Far finer than a farmer’s horse.’
‘I would not gift a nag to my family.’
The soldier stared at him. ‘What would you give the soldiers of Claudius?’
‘Their dues,’ said my husband.
Be careful, I begged, do not provoke them.
The soldier dismounted, followed by his companion.
Caradog straightened. He was a head taller than each of them, with the powerful shoulders of a swordsman. He had no limp, no blisters, no callouses from the plough. His back was not bent and his skin shone, well-fatted and rosy from the abundant meat of the nobleman’s cauldron. He was no more a farmer than I was the Emperor’s wife.
‘Men have told us the dog, Caratacus, rides through these roads in disguise with his sorceress-bitch,’ said the first soldier stepping closer.
My breath went still.
‘Tell me, farmer, have you seen s
uch figures in your travels southward?’
‘I could not be sure,’ he answered. ‘Though surely the leader of the free tribes would not be so stupid as to ride through country under treaty to Claudius?’
Hush, Caradog, I willed him as I stared through the branches. Do not stir agitation.
‘He is exactly so stupid,’ said the soldier, ‘He squanders half the fighting men of Albion in fruitless battle. Why would he not also risk squandering himself?’
‘Well then how would I know him?’ said Caradog, as if taking pleasure in the game. ‘Is he handsome? Strong?’
‘Ugly as a snake’s arsehole,’ said the soldier. ‘But tall, even among his own kind.’
The soldier drew and raised his sword until its tip was parallel with Caradog’s forehead.
Even from this distance I smelt the fight hunger that rose from Caradog’s skin. ‘Then it seems,’ he said slowly, ‘that with neither skill nor strategy, you have stumbled upon your prize.’
My heart stopped.
In an instant, both soldiers had raised swords and shields. ‘Be still!’ shouted one. ‘You are captured, enemy.’ He began to laugh. ‘What favour it will buy us to bring Scapula your head!’
‘He will want to meet me alive, surely?’ said Caradog.
My chest hammered. He goaded them.
‘Of course. You will whimper for your life before him, then he will take you to Claudius in chains and let him strangle you in the forum.’
With swords poised, they manoeuvred to surround him.
Still Caradog did not draw his knife. What was his intent? Surely his despair did not compel him to submit?
Both soldiers stood half-facing my direction. If I moved now, they would see me straight away.
‘Come then,’ said Caradog, stepping backwards and turning slightly. ‘Claim your prize.’
I saw now his purpose. He was positioning them that I might rise unseen.
The soldiers edged towards him, turning their backs to me as they tracked Caradog’s movement.
Caradog glanced fleetingly in my direction and I saw the almost imperceptible shift of his head that told me which one he wanted me to take.
I searched the ground near my feet, praying for a stone and finding none. But there was a small chunk of black ironwood that was heavy enough. Silently, I unhooked my sling, loading the missile and rising to stand in one deft motion. I began to swing.
Caradog met my eye and nodded.
‘Mothers curse you!’ My target turned at my scream. I released the stone, sending the first soldier to his knees as Caradog seized the second from behind, breaking both his arms and pressing his farmer’s knife to his throat.
I ran forward. The soldier I had hit was pierced at his shoulder but not dangerously. ‘Shall I kill him?’
‘No,’ said Caradog, releasing his soldier to the ground and starting to strip him. ‘Let them know shame to have let the war king escape. Let them be forced to confess it.’ He wanted to humiliate them, to humiliate Scapula.
We stripped them naked and tied them face-to-face on either side of a birch trunk, using rope from our packs. Caradog gagged them, then broke off two low-hanging branches of spiky spruce.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed, keen to make our escape.
‘Leaving my standard in the conquered land.’
The soldiers both moaned in pain as he stuffed one branch firmly into each of their arses.
‘Enjoy claiming your prize from Scapula,’ he told them as we mounted to ride. ‘Please tell him that he can pursue me until his balls swing at his knees and I will never whimper before him. Tell him that as I have stated it.’
I smiled as we rode on. His melancholy had not dulled his tongue.
Scapula would now know that we had been in Tir Brigantes. It was dangerous to remain here, but Caradog was determined that we meet with all Venutius’s sworn resistors, even if it meant a more winding route through enemy land.
Over several weeks of deep winter, we followed a pathway of chieftains and chieftainesses who opposed the alliance their queen had made with the Empire and were ready to act against her. They were furious that she had sent no fighters in support of the Iceni. ‘Our ties to the Iceni are old and deep,’ said many, ‘yet she betrays them to please Rome.’
These were different leaders from those we had met on our approach to Stenwic. They did not fear Cartimandua. They had tolerated her flirtation with Claudius only for so long as their own independence was retained. But now the brutal war on the Iceni—and the disarmaments that had triggered it—showed that the Romans could turn on even a sworn ally at any moment. Cartimandua had lied, they said, as we gathered in their halls. This was no friendship between equal powers. This was theft of land. The coals of hatred were beginning to glow.
‘Be ready for my word,’ said Caradog, grasping the wrists of every one of them. ‘I will be back within this fighting season and we will claim the Brigantes back.’
Slowly, farm by farm, settlement by settlement, we built an iron chain of agreement that ran the length of Tir Brigantes, reaching from the border townships to Venutius’s chamber and beyond. This chain would be our message pathway, where news of our war would be borne by riders, or, where the terrain was too slow, by billows of smoke, or an echo of horn or voice across a valley.
By day at the council fires, Caradog was ablaze with battle-spirit, but by night in the guests’ huts he was often subdued, and I knew that the darkness had not yet fully lifted, that he was still unresolved to the shape of this war.
‘When we return I will prepare you a tonic,’ I said, as I climbed into my bedskins after an evening when he had been especially quiet.
It was our final night in Brigantes territory. Tomorrow we would pass back into Tir Deceangli and, soon after, into Tir Silures. I looked forward to seeing Rhain and Manacca, and returning to songcraft. But I would miss these nights when the war king was mine alone.
‘Sing to me,’ he said as he stared up at the bay leaves hanging from the beams. He had asked often for my songs as we had journeyed, and I had willingly given them. Since we had left Stenwic he had begun to seek my counsel, to trust my judgement, but never did he listen so attentively as when I sang.
I sang a lament for a long-ago war, where two serpents, one white, one red, writhed in a battle for a magical mountain. The serpents were the kings who fought for the land, and the mountain was all of Albion.
‘Your voice is why I fight,’ Caradog said when I was silent.
Then call me to your bed, I thought, hating my need.
But he did not this night, as he had not any other.
We arrived at Llanmelin as the first lamb spilled from its mother’s belly. Spring would soon return. The townspeople laid down their tools to line the road and cast grain over their high king and his sovereign queen as we rode in.
Euvrain greeted her husband when we had dismounted in Hefin’s courtyard. I looked away as Caradog held her against his chest. His long embrace and murmured words must have left no doubt that he had kept his promise.
‘You were missed,’ whispered Rhain as he kissed my cheek.
‘As were you.’
We walked towards the hall where Hefin and Prydd awaited.
‘You are changed, Kendra,’ Rhain said, turning to me.
‘Exhaustion is all, I am sure.’
‘Nay, nay,’ he said, ‘You are renewed.’
I shook my head and smiled at his words.
‘Has the journey borne fruit?’ said Prydd to me across the hall fire. ‘Did your Kendra’s allure persuade Cartimandua?’
‘She would be no tribal queen if she were swayed by mere allure,’ said Caradog.
Prydd frowned. ‘So the Brigantes have not agreed to an alliance?’
‘Oh, we have made firm our allies there,’ said Caradog. ‘But Cartimandua is not among them.’
‘A divided tribe,’ said Prydd, ‘does not make a useful ally.’
‘I will make use of them,’ sa
id Caradog.
‘Still,’ said Prydd turning to me, ‘You must be disappointed that the marriage did not achieve its purpose.’
‘Our land has a king,’ said Rhain. ‘Is that not the marriage’s purpose?’
‘Of course,’ said Prydd.
‘So how fares the mare of the Brigantes?’ said Hefin, holding out his ale horn for the servant to refill. ‘Is she as headstrong as I remember her?’
‘More so.’ Caradog smiled. He spoke of Cartimandua’s refusal and the alliance that had been made with her husband.
‘So we lie in her bed skins, but not with her!’ said Hefin, delighted. His amusement only increased when Caradog told the story of our encounter with Scapula’s soldiers.
‘And what is your intention now?’ said Prydd to Caradog, when the laughter had subsided.
‘Now we make Scapula think that we are planning another attack in the south. We disrupt his supply lines and damage his forts so that he must send more men to rebuild them. Then, when he has drawn his strongest numbers to the south, I will move north to the Brigantes and claim it back.’
‘Good,’ said Hefin. ‘The Silures are ready to fight.’
‘As always,’ said Caradog.
I stared at him. He had not shared this plan with me. ‘What if Scapula moves in the north?’
‘Why would he?’ said Prydd. ‘It is Caradog he seeks. He knows that Caradog is here.’
‘But Scapula is a man of harsh retribution,’ I persisted. ‘We have seen from the disarmaments how swiftly he acts to douse even the possibility of dissent. The Deceangli are the only free tribe on the Brigantes’ borders. If he learns that their chiefs have forsworn he will seek to subdue them, and quickly.’
Prydd’s eyebrows rose. ‘Did you learn augury during your three days in Môn, Kendra? Or was it two?’
The council laughed, but suddenly I was very certain. ‘It is not augury. It is merely my sense of this man and this war. Scapula knows we have been in Tir Brigantes. It would be naive to think that he does not suspect we have made ties there. He will want to sever them by claiming the Deceangli. We should act before he does.’