“Eurgain should train with me,” Cinnamus said as they crossed the scuffed bare patch of earth before the doors of the Hall. “Her stroke is good but she throws herself off balance by pulling up and back too far.”
“I don’t think she cares enough about her skill to pit it against you and perhaps lose her head,” Caradoc replied as they came up to Gladys and Eurgain, now sitting on the ground. They squatted, and Llyn flung his arms about Eurgain’s neck. She winced.
“You were very good, mother,” he said seriously, “but you keep your feet too close together for proper balance. One day Aunt Gladys will kill you by accident because you slipped.”
Gladys smiled, wiping her face on her dirty tunic. “Aunt Gladys would not be so careless,” she said. “I am always prepared for accident, Llyn, and your mother and I have been pitting swords against each other since before you were born. We know what to expect of each other. Did I hurt you, Eurgain?”
Caradoc eased back the neck of the tunic but the wound was not deep and she shook her head. “Not much. Well, Cinnamus, what did you think?”
“Llyn is right,” he said promptly. “Part your feet and do not swing so high.”
Gladys sighed. “I am tired and thirsty. And very dirty.” She rose abruptly and walked away slowly and Eurgain rose also, a hand to her neck, the blood still seeping between her fingers.
“Llyn,” she said, “run to the house and tell Tallia to prepare hot water. Caradoc, did you have a good hunt?”
“Not bad, but the dogs are very undisciplined. Caelte made the kill.”
“I thought it was Sholto’s turn.”
“Actually,” Llyn broke in, “it was my turn, but father…”
Caradoc slapped him on the rump. “Get about your mother’s business!” he said, and Llyn ran for the house. “He wants so much to make a kill,” Caradoc told her, “but even if I allowed it I don’t think he has the strength yet to kill cleanly.”
“He wants to fight with iron instead of wood, too,” Cinnamus said. “He is a persistent child.”
“Keep him at the wood!” Eurgain said sharply. “Don’t give in to him, Cin.”
“I have no intention of letting him kill himself,” Cinnamus said, and Caradoc kissed Eurgain on one hot cheek and turned away.
“We need drink and food,” he said, “and you need water and clean clothes.” He and Cinnamus went into the Hall and Eurgain walked slowly up the hill to her house, hearing Tallia playfully scolding little Eurgain while the child laughed delightedly. Llyn came out but did not run to her. He waved and vanished in the direction of the kennels and she climbed the last few yards wearily, her body glowing but tired.
Cunobelin sat alone on blankets wedged into a corner of the Hall, his stiff, swollen hands around a drinking cup and his legs folded under him. None of his men were with him and Caradoc wondered angrily where they were. No chieftain was supposed to walk, sit, hunt, or fight without at least two of his chiefs beside him, and it was suddenly brought home to Caradoc how old his father had become, how dull in wits and immovable in body. Cunobelin gazed in front of him, his face expressionless, and when Caradoc had eaten and talked for a moment more with Cinnamus, Caelte, and Sholto, he drew wine, picked out a handful of dried peas from the sack behind the door and went over to his father. Cunobelin’s head turned slightly but he gave no other sign, and Caradoc sank cross-legged beside him. He saw Togodumnus and three of his chiefs come in but they settled themselves at the farther end of the long, dark room. Caradoc knew that they were discussing the hunt while Tog relived it with the gestures and words hallowed through a thousand years of storytelling. He wondered whether Adminius would return from his raid before this evening. Cunobelin had kept up a steady pressure on the Coritani in the last five years, and Adminius and sometimes Caradoc, himself, had spent much time lying cold and wet in the woods, waiting for night, in order to slip over the border to kill and to steal. The Coritani could do little. Cunobelin insulted them and drove them to a fury simply by creeping around their vaulted hill forts and striking deeper and deeper toward their capital.
They had no king, the Coritani. They were ruled by a Council and two judges who could never agree on whether it would be better to declare war on the Catuvellauni or keep protesting to Rome, and while they dithered, Adminius, Caradoc, and Togodumnus struck again and again. The Coritani hoped for great things when they sent angry emissaries to Rome. Tiberius had died after forty-five years of rule. He had been a just and clever man, farsighted, using the army and the law to create the Pax Romana, but he had had definite views on the place of Albion, and that place was outside the Pax. Albion was good for trade, but too expensive for conquest, and Tiberius declared his western border to be the coast of Gaul. Beyond that was the ocean, and the ends of the earth. But Tiberius was dead and Caius Caesar strutted in Rome, a pimply seventeen-yearold, burning to show what he could do. At present he was uncomfortably close, nosing out conspiracy in Germania and massing his unruly, undisciplined legions for a push across the Rhenus, but Cunobelin and his sons dismissed him as they had dismissed Tiberius. Rome had tried Albion, and Albion had slammed the lid on Rome’s fingers. There was no more to be said, and Caius could spend his time harassing his long-suffering generals and embarrassing the senate all he wanted. The Coritani hoped for a change of imperial policy toward the predatory Catuvellauni, but so far they could only hope, while Caius dithered in Germania and his troops rampaged through the countryside.
Caradoc sipped his wine and crunched on the peas, and Cunobelin seemed to ignore him. Caradoc could hear his labored breathing, the air wheezing in his lungs, and his glance strayed to the blue-tinged, arthritic fingers, bare of rings, for Cunobelin could no longer slip them over his swollen knuckles. At last Caradoc spoke gently. “Are you well today, Father? Where are your chiefs?”
Cunobelin slowly swung his head. The tiny pig eyes that had always gleamed in mischief or wrath were sunken and filmed over, and the heavy flesh of his face now hung pendulous and white. The gray hair was undressed, hanging in greasy strings, and Cunobelin’s neck was so enlarged and puffy that the ring of his golden torc bit deep, half-buried in the folding, pale skin. He took a long time to smile at his son, if it could be called a smile. It was more of a grimace, and a waft of sour breath assailed Caradoc’s nostrils, wine fumes and a stomach in turmoil. “When am I ever well these days, Caradoc?” the old man said hoarsely, with great effort, and Caradoc realized that Cunobelin was deeply, soddenly drunk. “As for my chiefs, if you can find them, ask them yourself what they are doing. They will not hesitate to tell you. They plot against me, and thus they are ashamed to look me in the face.” He raised his cup with both hands and took a long swallow, and wine dribbled from the corner of his mouth and trickled down his neck. Then he put his head against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing stertorously.
Caradoc did not answer immediately. He knew the chiefs of the tuath, all of them, and he knew that if they had grievances they would shout them out at Council and not go slinking about behind their lord’s back. It was far more likely that his condition alarmed them and they did not know what to do. For a year Cunobelin had not left the Hall. He ate and slept there on a pile of old blankets. He made Cathbad sing to him by the hour the songs of his life, his loves and conquests, his dreams, his hundreds of raids, but not of his failures, not of the skeins of ambition collected to weave into a picture that still lay, its colors fading, in the dimness of his mind. His chiefs could see that the end was coming, everyone could see it, but Cunobelin was as strong as he was complex and he lived on, weakening but still fighting back death, the last enemy. Eventually the interest of the tuath had declined and they had gone about their business. The chiefs did not want to kill him, Caradoc knew that. They would rather he died by his own will, if not by his own hand, but things were bad. It was obvious that the goddess tottered unsteadily, her powers of protection waning. The summer had been wet and many of the crops had rotted in the ground and could not be harveste
d. There had been a late frost in the spring, and many calves had died. Something would have to be done, but they stayed their hand out of love for the man who had raised them all to unimagined wealth and power and given them a kingdom. All this Caradoc pondered as he listened to the conversations going on around him, well away from the invisible circle of isolation that Cunobelin had drawn. Then he took the cup firmly from the cold hands and threw it across the Hall.
“You have drunk enough,” he said. “If you are to die, then at least do it as our fathers have done, with clear eyes set steadily to the next life and a laugh on your lips! What ails you? Are you afraid?” That word went deep as Caradoc knew it would, pricking somewhere under the thick layer of intoxication and despair, and Cunobelin grunted and heaved himself upright, steadying himself with hands beside his knees, on the floor.
“No, I am not afraid,” he rasped venomously, his words slurred and broken. “I have seen death too many times to be afraid. I sit and remember all the things I have not done and an anger curdles within me. My body will not obey me anymore, but my spirit leaps and dances, mocking me, so I drink and I wait. Perhaps they will have the guts to dispatch me after all.” He attempted a chuckle, gasping and shaking, and Caradoc looked away, sickened. He had seen Cunobelin roaring drunk, fighting drunk, but never like this, twisted and bitter, huddling in his corner like some foul insect and brooding.
“Perhaps it is time they did,” he said, his grief and disappointment strangling him. “And if they do not, perhaps I will. A sacred knife, Father, flung in the sunlight, an honorable death for the good of the tuath. You care only for yourself, sucking on your dead dreams of conquests that can never be, while the Dagda hates the goddess for her ugliness, and the power of the tuath is shaken. Kill yourself, die with pride! What has happened that you squat here in the dark and destroy us all?” He got up clumsily, throwing his empty cup after his father’s and tossing the peas on the floor. He went out, mad to breathe fresh, untainted air, to see men walking and laughing. Togodumnus’s sharp eyes had seen what had passed and he followed Caradoc, running to catch him up as he strode down the hill.
“What did he say to you to make you so angry?” he asked curiously.
Caradoc stopped and Togodumnus saw his face. “He will not die,” Caradoc said, a pain beyond tears making his voice break. “He sits there consuming himself day after day, but today he was worse than I have ever seen him and I fear for us all. If he lingers another season the Catuvellauni could once more be nothing but a few scattered kin wandering in the forests. And he is strong. He could wake and ride again if he chose!”
“He doesn’t choose,” Togodumnus replied. “He has run out of time and he knows it, and it galls him beyond bearing. The chiefs want to kill him but they don’t dare.”
“How do you know?” Caradoc asked sharply, and Togodumnus showed a crooked smile.
“Gladys told me. They came to her because she knows him better than any of us, but she sent them away and told them to make up their own minds. I think she is disappointed in him too.” Caradoc did not trust himself to speak again, but left his brother without looking at him, and went on toward the gate.
Adminius returned that evening with his chiefs, driving thirty head of Coritani breeding stock before him. The night’s feasting had begun and the Hall was full. He went straight to Cunobelin, who was drinking again in his corner, and gave him a full account of the raid, but Caradoc, watching them, noted that his father gave no sign of having heard a word, or even of being aware that his eldest son squatted beside him. After a moment Adminius rose and went and sat among his own chiefs and Cunobelin continued to drink. “It was a successful raid, apparently,” Cinnamus whispered in Caradoc’s ear, “but I think Cunobelin is wrong to push so hard and so fast. Any day now we may find ourselves facing a maddened Coritani war band, and we with no lord to lead us in battle.”
Sholto had heard. He leaned over Caradoc to where Cinnamus was mopping up his gravy with a piece of bread. “I disagree,” he said. “We have three lords to lead us, Adminius, Caradoc, and Togo dumnus. Let the Coritani come. I, for one, would welcome a clean fray for a change.” Sholto then retired to finish his meat.
Caradoc stared into the fire, his chin cushioned in his hand. We have no lord, he thought, for surely the man who was once my father, the fat hulk in the corner, is no longer lord, and the Council sits in silence night after night, powerless without a ricon. But Adminius is the eldest. It is his place to act. Why should Tog and I take the responsibility? He knew that Adminius would shrink in horror from patricide, steeped in Roman mores as he was, and his thoughts went round and round, getting narrower and narrower as the night progressed. His little girls left Eurgain and came to him, snuggling onto his knee, and he held them and kissed them, but still his mind would not be still. Servants flung more logs on the fire and the sparks showered around him. Cunobelin did not call for music and Cathbad sat with Gladys, his harp across his folded legs, but Gladys’s eyes, like Caradoc’s, strayed often to the dark corner from which emanated an almost visible odor and the shadow of the power that had once been.
He saw Tallia hovering by the door and he sent the girls to bed. He was tired too, and his head ached. At last he rose, Cinnamus with him, but just then a sudden, frozen silence fell. All eyes swiveled to the corner behind him and he whirled round, the quality of the silence causing him to reach for his sword. The shadow in the corner was moving. It stirred, grew tall, and Cunobelin stepped unsteadily into the firelight. In the startled hush he staggered forward and came to a halt, swaying, in front of Caradoc. Cinnamus moved, drawing closer to his lord, and Caradoc felt Togodumnus come up quietly behind him, for the glaring red eyes, the bared teeth, belonged not to the father he had known but to some renegade old boar. Cunobelin was struggling, marshaling all his forces to speak, but Caradoc’s hand remained on his sword hilt and the men with him were poised for whatever might come, for all knew how the wild boar could feint defeat and yet rise at the last and maim and tear in a paroxysm of malevolent and reckless hate.
Cunobelin spoke, his voice a cracked, almost incoherent rumble, his breath a cloud of foul odor. “Kill yourself, die with pride you say to me, my son, with the callous ease of youth, you who have killed but not faced an enemy who will not be turned aside. I can wrench no hostage from the darkness that waits for me, and he comes for me without pity, the Chieftain of the Night.” His head dropped toward his massive chest but he lifted it again with a monumental effort, and the company hung breathless, watching the final disintegration of a once mighty man.
“One of you,” he shouted, searching the dimness for the faces of his sons, “one of you will pick up my cloak, and wear the torc of ricon, and then beware! For death will stalk you too, even if you live in pride and with contempt for him as I have done. Greedy and pitiless brutes that you are, come then, and slay me!” He fumbled at his belt, trying to draw his sword, but no one moved.
Caradoc stood rooted in a terrible paralysis that gummed his tongue to the roof of his mouth and turned his limbs to stone. He felt a hand steal into his own. It was Eurgain, white and shocked. “Do something, Caradoc,” she whispered. “Don’t let his memory be sullied by this awful madness,” but still he could do nothing and Cunobelin began to cry soundlessly, his hand falling from his waist. All at once he lunged at them and Cinnamus drew his sword with a ringing clatter, but the old man rushed past them, staggering out the door. Gladys hurried after him, calling his name, and Cathbad ran also. Cinnamus sheathed his sword, Togodumnus made for the door, and then suddenly the whole company surged into the night. Still no one broke the silence. Caradoc, with Cinnamus, Sholto, Vocorio, and Caelte, pushed his way to the front and pelted after Gladys, heedless of the cold wind, the clear, star-dusted sky. They could hear Cunobelin shouting somewhere beyond the last circle, and Gladys was still calling, a note of pleading and fear in her voice. They ran, their feet falling lightly on the frost-hard ground, and they found Gladys leaning against the wall of t
he stable.
“He’s gone,” she managed. “Taken Brutus and his horse.” Caradoc made as if to plunge into the stable, but Togodumnus pulled him back. “Let him go, Caradoc,” he said urgently. “You heard how he spoke to us. It’s you and me, now, and Adminius. Let the old fool go!” With an oath and an unthinking savagery, Caradoc wrenched himself free and sent his brother spinning.
“This is not the way!” he shouted. “To your horse, Tog!” The stable servant, under Gladys’s shouted command, was already leading out two horses and Caradoc tore the reins from his grip and leaped up. “Move, Tog, move!” he hissed, his eyes already on the gate standing open, and Togodumnus reluctantly swung himself onto the beast’s back, aware suddenly of the people who clustered around them. Eurgain stood beside Gladys. She was cloakless and shivering, but she seemed not to notice, and Adminius stood there also, his arms folded across his broad chest. He had not gone for a horse, and Caradoc, already thundering toward the gate, knew that his older brother would presently walk back up the hill to his own comfortable hut, drink some more, and calmly await any news. He jumped to the ground, led his horse quickly down the steep path and across the dyke, mounted again, conscious of Togodumnus behind him, and together they whipped at their beasts and galloped toward the black smudge of the wood.
For two hours they hunted, impeded in their tracking by the night. While Togodumnus whistled for Brutus, Caradoc often got down and knelt on the crisp grass, searching for the hoofmarks of Cunobelin’s mount, but the frost was hard and the ground frozen. There were tracks but they were old, made when the mud was thick and soft, and then iced into iron-hard pits. He learned nothing but he and Tog did not turn back, riding ever deeper into the forest that closed about them in the cold solitude of early winter. At last they drew rein and sat looking at each other, baffled.
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