Although the hour was late, the town bustled cheerfully. Traders carrying torches strolled to and fro, freemen sat before their doorskins and gambled or told tales, and here and there a soldier moved, bent on some business of their own. No one took any notice of the travelers as they passed through the gate sunk in the small defence wall, and there was no gateguard to challenge them. They began to climb the smooth, well-laid path that circled the town, rising in lazy spirals. To right and left of them the huts were built, well-spaced, neat, almost regimental in their placement, and Caradoc, rounding the bend that took them to the third circle, felt a wind that was laden with the pungent, rich tang of the sea. He stopped dead.
“We cannot have been moving north,” he said. “The ocean must be very close, and Brigantia’s coasts lie to the east.” He took one stride and grasped the chief by the neck of his tunic, shaking him. “I closed the eye of my mind and trusted my safety to you, vermin!” he ground out. “Now tell me where we are or I will slice you in two.” The man’s eyes darted this way and that like a cornered rat and his teeth chat tered under Caradoc’s tossing.
“You swore me protection!” he bleated, and suddenly Caradoc let him go. He shrugged down his tunic, ran a hand around his neck, and looked at Caradoc reproachfully. “I have led you well,” he sniffed, “and Venutius is here, as I said. Yes, we veered east, and we were almost too late, for the lady’s town lies not far away, half a day’s journey to the southeast, and tomorrow Venutius would have been with her again. Waste no time in foolishness, but follow me.”
Caradoc and Caelte glanced at each other. Having once relinquished their instinct for direction to this man they had not carefully noted the way they had come. Now they were lost and they knew it. If they killed him and left the town they might never find Venutius. They were trapped.
Caradoc turned angrily. “Lead on then,” he snarled, the tart, fresh sea-wind still buffeting him with doubt as they walked on together.
In the center of the first cycle, high above the town, they came at last to a house ringed by a high stone wall. Here the gate in the wall was guarded by a tall, black-visaged chieftain who was fully armed. His spear rested in his hand, his shield hung from one arm, and his sword hung from his belt. Beyond him, in the dimness of the court, more chiefs gathered silently, a bodyguard, and even before the three men had covered the last approach the gateguard had spoken a swift word and they came pouring to cover the gate. “Wait here,” their guide whispered, and left them, going forward to speak with the chiefs.
Caelte leaned closer to Caradoc. “Now is the time to flee,” he hissed. “I smell treachery, Lord, and I am sorry now that I swayed your judgment. Venutius is not here. He would never quarter in a place like this. The stench of Rome is overpowering.”
Caradoc put an arm around his friend’s shoulder. “All my decisions have gone amiss since I bowed my authority to the Council and thus angered Camulos and the Dagda,” he replied wearily. “I am sorry, Caelte. I fear you are right, but it is too late to run anymore.”
The man was beckoning them and the chiefs had drawn back, their black eyes full of a thinly veiled excitement. Caradoc and Caelte walked slowly through the group of men and on past the gate, which swung to behind them with a rude suddenness. The man made them wait once more and hurried away into the shadow, and Caradoc looked around him. Torches hung around the wall, casting a leaping, red light onto flagstones, fitfully revealing a large, wooden house built in the Roman style with four rooms all opening onto a raised covered porch. One of the doors stood open and candlelight gently warmed the gloom in a long yellow tongue. The feeling of treachery was claustrophobic, a suffocating pressure of deceit that filled the empty courtyard and turned the Catuvellaunians’ blood to water. Caradoc looked behind him to the bolted gate and the chiefs clustered behind it. He looked to the walls, high, smooth, too high to leap, too smooth to scramble up. He looked to the open door, where even now the man was walking back to them, smiling. Fool! Fool! his mind shrieked at him. Trapped like an unblooded boy! His hand flew to the magic egg and clutched it tightly, but no calming emanation of Druithin spells warmed his fingers and he could only follow the Brigantian, who led them to the farther door, opened it, and bowed them through.
Caelte, brushing past him, noticed a new, bulging pouch hanging from his leather belt, but there was no time to wonder.
The man smirked. “A safe journey, Arviragus,” he remarked sarcastically.
The door thudded shut behind him and they were alone.
They dismally surveyed their surroundings. A small fire crackled brightly in the hearth set into the wall. White sheepskins were scattered about, the walls were neatly plastered and painted in yellow and purple, and three wicker chairs were placed haphazardly. There were three niches set in one wall. One held a likeness of some goddess. Brigantia the High One, Caradoc guessed by the carved profusion of wild hair, the half-closed, glutted eyes, but the other two were strange to him. He turned to Caelte, but before he could speak the door opened again and the goddess herself glided to stand before him, flanked by four armed chiefs. He sensed Caelte move to stand to his left. He saw a Brigantian chief softly close the door and the others range in front of it, but the woman’s face sucked all reality from the stuffy, foreign room and left only a whirl of shifting images, a fire-shadowed fantasy.
The black hair, now slashed with long tendrils of gray, still fell in an almost lewd profusion down her straight back, and the pale skin was even whiter than he had remembered, but it was tinged with an unhealthy hue that was somehow slack, as though the flesh beneath had been sucked inward. Some mysterious black stone ringed her high brow and her tall neck, and glinted sullenly from the belt that clasped her full, soft, red tunic to her, and imprisoned her naked arms. But it was her eyes that commanded the summoning of his will. They were still blacker than night but the impudent liveliness he had remembered with such a spasm of sick longing over the years, the hot imperiousness that had challenged him, had swelled to become the festering disease of devious selfishness. Caradoc stared with steady concentration, feeling the unslaked appetite of a deep self-hate come flowing to him from under lids that were swollen, folded at the edges into pouches of aging flesh, but he was oblivious to all save the thunderous crashing of the waves of memory and old desires washing within him. Aricia. Then, with a queer shifting of perspective that he felt almost to his bones, the room and the persons in it regained solidarity and she changed also. The fogs of that childhood obsession blew away and he found himself looking at a body that had once fascinated him, that had held a complex, tempestuous girl who had been left behind in the mirage of the past, and the well-remembered shell now held someone he did not know. The witch of his young lusts called once, a faint, dying echo, and he took a deep, free breath and spoke quietly. “Aricia.”
“Caradoc.” She smiled, a tiny twitch of pain and puzzlement, and then slid toward him, still with that easy, tempting swing. “But for the cleft in your chin and your way of holding your head I would never have recognized you. I left a brash, impulsive Catuvellaunian whelp to find a king wolf.” She came closer and her hand trembled as she lightly touched his arm. “You do look like a wolf, you know. Lean and gray, lined and famished, burning with lost causes. It hurts me somehow, to see you like this. I have thought of you often over the years but my memories played me false, it seems.”
He could not return her smile, and he took her fingers sadly. “Mine also, Aricia. I did not think that I had changed so much within myself until I saw you come into the room. It hurts me also, to have to bury my childhood at last.”
“I buried mine long ago,” she said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “On the day I left Camulodunon. You are lucky to have clung to yours for so long. I hated you, Caradoc, did you know that? For years I hated you. But now…” She shrugged. “Now I have no reason to hate any man. Love and hate belong to ignorant youth and grand dreams, and I have conquered both.”
“Then you must truly be at
peace,” he said, wondering whether she knew that she was lying.
She shot him a dark glare and drew away a little. “I am content, which is more than you can say. I have followed your doomed path for years, Caradoc, ever since you deserted Gladys at Camulodunon. I have pitied you.”
“Why?” He was still standing calmly but she had begun to fidget, the thin fingers pulling at each other.
All at once she turned from him and paced agitatedly by the fire. “Because the times have changed and left you behind,” she replied in a high, hurried voice. “You and those deluded savages in the west. There must be change, Caradoc, men must change, or wither and die. The day of the tribes is over. Honor is a Roman word too, and it does not mean bloodshed.” She suddenly stopped pacing and cried out to him, “Oh Caradoc! Why did you not accept, just accept, and be at peace?”
“Is that how you justify your own position?” he retorted, anger uncurling in him. “What has happened to you, Aricia?”
Her face hardened into a mask and the irrational rages that always simmered just below the surface of her control burst forth. “You dare to stand there in your stinking rags and ask what has happened to me? To me? What of yourself? All the blood in the west has not quenched the old dreams of conquest in you. Like your father and crazy Togodumnus you want to battle the world. You have used the poor, simple western chiefs without compunction, you have fed on their tender sheep’s flesh, and they have gone down into death because you will not admit that you are wrong!” She almost ran to him, holding both quivering, outflung hands before his face. “You are only a man, only a man, you have faults and you fail and you hide shameful secrets, like everyone else! What gives you the right to destroy a people?”
He took her wrists in both his hands, feeling the anguished deluge of self-destruction pounding through her rigid body. “I cannot give you what you want of me,” he ground out. “Do you want me to say that I am selfish, cruel, and unyielding? I know that I am those things. Did you offer money for my capture in order to hear me say that I wronged you all those years ago and that I admit it? I do admit it, Aricia, I treated you despicably, but do not lay the source of your torment at my door. Seek elsewhere.” She wrenched herself free and he could see in her eyes the urge to strike him. “Nor will I say that I have donned the cloak of arviragus unworthily and led the tribes for my own ends. But you cannot deny this charge. You have ruined your people and your husband for no reason at all.”
“Leave Venutius out of this,” she snarled, walking to the fire, her red tunic swirling and her hair swinging with it. “You do not understand, Caradoc. You are an ignorant man.” She turned from him and rested one limp arm along the mantel of the hearth and watched the embers glow.
All at once, in the moment of silence, he felt very weary. Fatigue scratched at his eyeballs and ached in his limbs and he wanted to sit down, but she looked suddenly across at him and smiled, and this time he saw her again, his fey, eager partner in the driving needs of youth.
“Ah Caradoc,” she said. “It is a good thing that you no longer resemble that handsome son of Cunobelin or I might be tempted to keep you here with me. Tell me, is Eurgain well?”
“I do not know.”
The black eyebrows shot up. “And your children?”
“I do not know.”
“Where is Cinnamus Ironhand?”
“Dead.”
Her lips parted in a sneer. “Brigantia, how ruthless you have become. The Druithin chose you well, didn’t they? I do not think that even I pity you anymore.” Her hands went to her temples and she massaged them briefly, then she nodded coolly in the direction of her chiefs. “Domnall, fetch the centurion.” When he had gone, closing the door behind him, she walked to Caradoc. “The bloodshed ends here, Arviragus. Vercingetorix went to Rome in chains and so will you. Then perhaps there will be peace. I could have cut off your head, you know, and sent that to Scapula, but I decided that it would be better to send a living man to circle the forum. The tribesmen will not like to be shamed by an arviragus who has become a slave.”
“It’s not too late to find yourself again, Aricia,” he said softly. “If Brigantia joined with the chiefs of the west then the Romans could not stand.”
Astonishment wrung a sharp, choking laugh from her and she left the fire and came close to him, stroking his face, his neck, his hair with black-ringed fingers whose touch belied her words. “You poor, mangy old wolf! What ancient songs of victory still thunder in that muddled head of yours? I need the money you will bring to pay for the services of the architect I have engaged from Rome. You see, Caradoc, you are no longer worth any more to me than the price of my comfort.” Her hands pressed down on his shoulders, and before he could draw back she had kissed him loosely on the mouth. “From one child to another,” she whispered. She flung herself into a chair and crossed her legs, looking up at him soberly. “Forgive me, but if I do not hand you over, Scapula will think that I have changed my allegiance and he will march against me, whereas if I do my reputation as a loyal daughter of Rome will be enhanced a thousandfold. Do you at least understand this?”
“Yes,” he replied patiently. “I understand.”
“Oh you fool,” she murmured. “Why did you allow yourself to be taken?”
There was nothing more to be said and they both waited in a resigned silence for the coming of the guards. Caelte had sunk to the floor where he squatted, head bowed, and the fire sparked joyfully on. Presently the door was flung open and six legionnaires rushed in, swords drawn, helmets and broad breastplates filling the room with a brisk efficiency. The centurion saluted Aricia and then turned curiously to the quiet, almost meek, bedraggled man who met his gaze with a steady scorn.
“This is their arviragus?”
“It is.”
“You are sure, Cartimandua?”
“Of course.” She was breathing quickly, lightly. “I have known him well.”
Disappointment flooded the officer. He was such a common-looking chieftain. Where was the noble, cunning barbarian of his imagination? But then he scanned the face again, and he knew. “Optio,” he snapped. “The chains.”
Caradoc stood quite still as the heavy iron rings went round his wrists. He looked at Aricia as the soldier knelt to fasten them about his ankles. She was swinging her foot and gazing at the floor, and suddenly he shouted, “Look at me, Aricia! Or are you too cowardly? You wear them too, though you cannot see them!”
She did not respond, and as the optio hauled Caelte to his feet and chained him also, Caradoc struggled against panic. The man returned and unbuckled his sword belt, and Caradoc was a freeman no more. “Out,” the officer ordered curtly, and the soldiers closed. Unthinking, Caradoc took a stride. The chains caught him and he stumbled, and then Aricia stood and laughed, a wild, undisciplined peal of glee. She spoke as he shuffled past her.
“One thing more, Caradoc,” she said. “Your family is well. Scapula has them, at Camulodunon.”
He turned slowly, seeing in her eyes the gloating eagerness to rip him apart, but he refused to bend under the weight of humiliation already setting upon him.
“You lie.”
“Not this time.”
“Bitch.”
“A safe journey, a peaceful journey,” she mocked, and then he was out under the soft night sky, warm wind in his face, and the door slammed shut behind him.
She slumped back into the chair and closed her eyes. Brigantia, I am tired, she thought. So tired, tired to my bones, and tomorrow Venutius will be here, with his hangdog, beseeching looks and his big, clumsy hands. Your hands were never clumsy, Caradoc, and you begged with honor, like a lord. What times we had, you and I, when our blood ran hot and the rain sang to us in the night! She reached into her tunic and drew out a small, wooden brooch, and absently her fingers traced the writhing snakes, smooth and warm to her touch. I have lived for this moment through all the long years of my exile, she told herself. Then why is it not sweet? Why this pain, this awful hurting? Her han
d closed about the brooch, gripping it tightly, and desolation swept over her. Nothing satisfies me anymore, she thought with anguish, each triumph is a wasting and this, my greatest prize, is already spilling through my fingers. I cannot hold it. Suddenly she felt tears burn behind her closed eyelids and she opened her eyes. The walls blurred around her and the fire swelled to a rain-bowed lake, but when she blinked the tears flowed faster. “Ah Sataida, Lady of Grief, leave me alone!” she whispered fiercely. “There was nothing else I could do!”
She spent the night in the wicker chair, drinking a little, feeding the fire in the small hours when her servants slept, seeing him in her mind’s eye rocking and jolting in the cart toward Lindum, chained under the stars. Bitch, he had called her, his ravished face twisted into bitterness for a moment. She savored the epithet, turning it over slowly. Bitch. Well, so she was. She could not call Caradoc a liar. All the men she had met were lustful dogs sniffing around her—Caradoc, Togodumnus, Venutius, even Cunobelin in his way, all of them and the rest—so many tongues hanging out over the years, so many panting mouths! But, watching the night shadows move on her smooth yellow wall and feeling the firelight touch her cheeks, she knew that Caradoc had not meant this. Better, she thought, wincing from the sting, to stay away from all contemplation of what was his true insult. Honor in time of war was a luxury, in time of peace a safeguard. Nothing more. She should have told him so when she told him that men must change or die. She fell back in thought and explored the limits of her own change, realizing for the first time that it had not been deep enough. The young Brigantian ricon torn from the womb of Camulodunon still cowered, crouching in the recesses of mind and memory, bereft of honor, dependent on the frail support of a dead father, mourning in betrayal and hatred for her Catuvellaunian roots. Years ago she had taken a step away from that young girl, but it had not been wide enough. You poor, friendless little thing, Aricia thought as she emptied the wine jug. I thought I had killed you long ago.
The Eagle and the Raven Page 51