“Agh—” His tone was dismayed. He pulled her roughly against him.
Diana winced as her arm twinged.
“What is it?” Verus loosened his hold. “Your arm?” He pulled her cloak aside. “Did Father hit you again?”
“I fell getting the wine down tonight,” Diana lied. When Verus’ fingers continued to probe her arm she added, “Truly, it is nothing. A bruise.” She wiped her tears away to see if Verus believed her.
His face was studiously blank but anger grew there. “Mother said nothing?”
“She didn’t see me fall.”
“Fall? Stars above! Nothing has changed, has it? I suppose Lucilla still ignores you too?”
“You know she’s busy with her own children.”
“I know that she’s the oldest daughter and every other daughter is considered a waste. But Minna is Father’s favorite—no, everyone’s favorite—and you get ignored. I’m going to speak to Father—”
“No!” Diana grasped his arm. “Please don’t!”
“It’s high time something was done. They should have found a husband for you seven years ago. You’re twenty-two—”
“Twenty-one.” Diana was unwilling to have unnecessary years added to her already advanced age.
“Twenty-one. How long are you willing to creep around the estate hoping no one notices you?”
“What else is there for me?” Diana asked reasonably. “Father has his one daughter. I’m extra, a waste. They can’t marry me off without a dowry. Not at my age. Minna’s lucky. With her looks there will be men aplenty willing to marry her when she’s of age. The only alternative for me is the convent north of Eboracum…and I would suffocate there.” She smiled to remove the challenge from her words. “What else is there?”
Verus sat for a long time, frowning. At last he said slowly, “There must be something.” His frown deepened. “I have learned something from Arthur’s army, Diana. If Britain is to survive, we must examine the old ways of doing things with new eyes. That is what you must do too. You need to find your place in the world.”
“This is my place.”
“Do you believe that? In here?” And he touched the center of her chest.
It was her turn to frown. In her mind a mist shifted, revealing hazy shapes. It was exciting, a hint of an unsuspected future. It was terrifying too. She struggled to see the whole shape of the idea as it slipped away. Then it was gone.
“There is nothing else for me. I am content with my place.” But even as she spoke, she questioned the opinion. The act of questioning established customs scared her—it was like a rebellion.
“Tell me about Arthur,” she said quickly.
Verus smiled as if he recognized that she was shepherding his attention away from her. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you must defy your father, leave your family and risk traveling in winter to join him.”
“Traveling isn’t that risky, yet. Winter is late this year. But I need to go back very soon. Before winter does arrive.”
“Before the solstice?” Diana asked, appalled.
“Sooner. Perhaps even tomorrow.”
“But you just got here three days ago!”
“I know already that Father will never accept my plans. Besides, Arthur needs every man he can get.”
“Explain it to me!” Diana cried, feeling fresh tears building. “I want to know why. Why you?”
“It’s not just me, it’s many men. Hundreds of men have learned about Arthur’s plans and agree with them. Even here on the estate, the men I’ve spoken to have been curious, interested…”
“Why?”
“Arthur gives men hope in the future. It’s as if he knows, somehow, what is coming. As if he can see farther ahead than any man. He is determined to make what he sees happen.” Verus stood up, as if his enthusiasm couldn’t be contained while he was sitting. He faced Diana with one foot on the lip of the spring and spread his hands for emphasis as he spoke.
“Do you remember years ago when the farmers wanted their tithes lessened? Remember they marched to the villa and Father stood in front of them?”
“I remember.” She had been frightened and had hidden behind the oak tree to watch, unable to run away completely.
“Father stared the leader down. He just looked at him and the man gave up. Do you remember?”
She nodded.
“Arthur is like that, only…ten times stronger. When you look at him you can feel your soul being drawn to him.”
“He sounds evil.”
“He’s good, Diana. You would know that just by looking at him. He’s good and kind but he will not rest until he has achieved all that he can see in Britain’s future.” Verus’ face was alight with passion. When had he grown so tall? He was eye to eye with her father and his shoulders had filled out…he was truly a man. No, he was a warrior—Diana could even see a faded scar on his arm. It peeked beneath the folded-back edge of the thick cloak he had tossed over his shoulder. He was leaner too, as if he had spent a lot of time working hard and growing stronger.
Verus had run away last summer—May it was, for they had been completing the second plowing of the fallow fields. He had simply been her big brother then, confused and frustrated. He had come back a different person, alight from within, powered by an obsession with a man and a vague dream.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand,” she confessed, “and I don’t like it. It sounds foolish, Verus. An ordinary man chases a vision and you follow blindly. He has offered you nothing in return, no proof…how can you believe him?”
“There was no choice involved. I listened and I believed him. I wish you could do the same.”
“I wish I could too,” Diana admitted. “I wish I could run away with you.”
Verus rested his hand on her shoulder in sympathy. He reached under his cloak and withdrew something, which he held out to her. “Here.”
It was his knife with the bronze and jeweled hilt. Eboracus, the Bishop of Eboracum, had given him the knife upon his christening. Diana had seen it in his hand at every meal she had ever shared with him.
“I want you to keep it, Diana. That little thing of yours has long passed the time when it should have been replaced. This knife has a good blade and it is long enough to reach any vital organs.”
Diana had reached out to take the knife but recoiled at his words, shocked.
Verus laughed. He picked up her hand and placed the knife in it. “Keep it as a reminder of me if you prefer, my gentle Diana, and when you think of me, remember that I made you a promise.” He straightened up and put his hand on his chest, over his heart. “If you need me, send word. I will come.”
Diana weighed the knife in her hand. “Where you are going, you will need every blade you have.”
“The jeweled hilt gets in the way and holding it throughout a whole day of fighting…” He reached for his belt again and withdrew a long, heavy knife with a plain hilt. “This is a much better tool for my needs.”
Diana stared at it. “Where did you get it?”
“Spoils of war,” Verus said off-handedly. His casualness told her how much Verus had truly changed. He meant he had killed the previous owner of the knife in combat. She swallowed.
Verus held out his hand. “Come, I’ll walk you back to the villa.”
“Where are you going?” She accepted his hand and stood.
“I’m meeting some of the men tonight to tell them tales of my glorious life in Arthur’s army. Bedivere the Great!” He laughed and started down the hill with her.
“Bedivere?” It was the Celtic rendering of Verus. “You call yourself Bedivere, too?”
“It goes easier on most men’s tongues,” he said with a shrug. “There are no benefits in being from a Roman family there. Every man is equal.”
“Equal?” Diana gave a startled snort of laughter. It was another revolutionary idea, one that kept her occupied all the way back to the villa.
* * * * *
The screaming woke her.
Diana laid blinking away sleep and listening, puzzled, when the door curtain was thrown aside.
“Diana!” It was Lucilla’s voice.
Diana sat up. “What is it?” she asked her sister’s shadow.
“Wake the children and bring them to the triclinium. Hurry!”
Diana automatically reached for her cloak and girdle, while her mind dealt with a thousand questions. The screaming was coming from outside. Beneath the shrieks was a low heavy booming that filled her with foreboding, even though she did not recognize it. She shook Minna.
“What is happening? Why are the women screaming?” Diana asked Lucilla.
“Saxons!” Lucilla hissed, then spun away and was gone.
Coppery fear flooded Diana. Saxons! Here! She shook Minna harder, her own body trembling violently. She now knew what the booming noise was.
The Saxons were ramming the gates to the villa.
As soon as Minna roused, Diana pulled her out of bed and threw her cloak around her shoulders. She scooped up Titus, the smallest and pushed him into Minna’s arms. Diana picked up Marcus, who snuggled sleepily on her hip, then pushed Minna out of the room ahead of her.
Predawn light filled the sky. By the stout villa gates, short Roman sword in hand, Ambrosius stood with Lucilla. As Diana and Minna hurried along the verandah to the dining room, Lucilla turned and ran for the wing where she and Ambrosius and their boys lived.
Diana pushed open the heavy door and they moved inside.
Her father was standing at the main table, his arms up in the air, while her mother buckled the fastenings of his grandfather’s old legionnaire armor. At the sight of the polished chest plate, Diana felt dizzy. Her father was too old to be fighting!
Yet he had to fight.
Diana put Marcus on his feet and pushed him toward the divan, where Minna curled up with Titus. The little boy ran over and climbed up with his siblings and sat watching, his eyes enormous.
Ursula stepped back from her husband and picked up the short sword from the table. Her eyes met Diana’s and Diana saw tears glistening there. Ursula turned back to strap the sword around Marcellus’ waist.
“Hurry, woman!” her father hissed, his voice trembling.
Lucilla came into the room weeping, shepherding her three boys with her.
Marcellus’ jaw clenched. “No tears, daughter. We are Romans. Have Verus and the others gone to defend the gate?”
“Oh, Father! He’s not here! Verus has gone and so have nearly all the men—slaves, freedmen, even the farmers! Gone!”
“Gone where?”
“Sosia told me—they left last night. They’re going to join the Pendragon. Ambrosius is out there alone. Father, we’re completely defenseless!”
Marcellus’ face grew gray and mottled. “Gone? Left us? All of them?” he whispered.
“Mama!” Minna wailed, reaching for Ursula, who pulled her daughter into her arms.
“Hush, child.” Ursula looked to her husband expectantly.
Alarmed Diana stepped closer. “Father?” she whispered. She saw his lips working but no sound emerged.
Outside, the heavy pounding on the outer gates was punctuated by sharp cracking and a strange tearing sound. Triumphant cries sounded.
“The gates have been breached,” Lucilla breathed.
“Mother of god save us!” Ursula invoked.
Lucilla whirled and slammed the door shut. She pushed the bolts home, weeping again.
Diana caught her father’s hand. “Father?”
His hand suddenly clenched hers, mashing her fingers together and a rictus of pain contorted his face. His right hand grabbed at the metal over his breast.
“Mother!” Diana cried out in warning as her father began to fall.
Ursula pushed Minna aside and leapt to help Diana lower Marcellus to the floor. His whole body was contorting with pain.
“The armor! Get it off!” Ursula ordered.
Diana worked frantically on the old leather buckles, her fingers trembling and unwieldy.
Shockingly, the door to the dining room shuddered under an almighty blow.
Ursula looked up, her eyes wide with fear.
“Lucilla!” Minna screamed.
Diana whirled around to Lucilla. Her sister had Marcellus’ sword and as Diana turned, Lucilla pushed the sword deep into her body and sagged to the floor. “I go to join Ambrosius,” Lucilla whispered weakly. “They will not reach me there.”
Minna screamed again, a wordless cry of protest.
Another blow on the door dislodged the bolt and the door quivered aside. Diana leapt to her feet and backed away from the doorway, away from the warriors with metal helmets who stood on the other side with their bloody battle axes glinting in the rays of the rising sun.
They boiled into the room, dozens of them and the smell of hot blood came with them. The women and children, all who were alive in the room, shrieked and fell back.
From between their ranks stepped the tallest of them all. He was a huge man with a dirty beard which curled over his thick belt. He looked around, sizing up the room.
Diana looked to her mother for it was Ursula’s place to stand before their attackers. Her mother lay across her husband’s body, her eyes glazed and empty. From beneath her glinted the handle of her husband’s sword.
Diana held back her cry of dismay and horror. They had deserted her and the younger ones—all of them had escaped and left her alone to face her fate.
She glanced at Minna, who held Lucilla’s three boys and Titus and Marcus. They were shivering, watching her.
If Diana had ever doubted how insignificant her place was in the family—her place and the place of those trusting children she looked at now—then she doubted it no longer.
She barely hesitated. With a cry that sounded like an animal in pain, a cry she would never have thought herself capable of sounding, she spun and rushed at the Saxons. She had no idea what she intended.
The leader dealt with her with an ease that astonished her. She was flung across the room to smash against the wall with a solidness that stopped her breath and made her groan. Knowing there was no other choice, she turned and rushed back at him again.
He grabbed her arm and she froze as his knife pushed against her throat. He laughed, showing foul teeth amid the hairy lips.
He spoke a badly accented Latin. “Peace, woman. Dead I do not want you yet. There is fun to be had first.” Again he roared with laughter, his men laughing with him. As he laughed, his glance took in Minna and the boys and his laugh grew louder.
Fear grabbed Diana’s throat and clenched her stomach. But cold reason whispered to her. I am alive. I’m alive and while I breathe still I will do whatever I must to keep us all alive. I, Diana, swear this by whoever listens.
From the corner of her eye she saw the old wall fresco of the moon goddess, Diana, smiling upon her.
Chapter Two
470, one year later
The knife bit deeply into the sheep’s throat and blood gushed from the wound. Sosia pulled the knife out, her hand moving in a practiced sweep and let the animal’s head go. She stepped back. As the sheep’s kicks weakened, the blood flowed onto the earth and formed a large round pool.
Diana felt her stomach and heart were about to seize. She wanted to cover her eyes and turn away but everyone was watching her so she used the hand she had raised to her mouth to rub at her chin thoughtfully. Hot beads of sweat sprang out at her temples and the need to bathe was almost irresistible.
Thank god she’d had the foresight to send Minna back to the threshing! If she had seen this…
Sosia crossed her arms, the hand holding the bloody knife on top and glanced at Diana for approval. She stood a head and shoulders higher than Diana and there was more dignity in her round, protruding cheekbones and squared shoulders, more wisdom in her odd blue eyes and unwavering stare than Diana could ever aspire to—for all that Sosia’s people had been conquer
ed and enslaved three generations ago.
“Thank you, Sosia. Can you slaughter all the sheep that I picked out? Or do you want someone to help you?”
“This, I can do.” She stooped down to peer into Diana’s face. “They will feed us throughout winter. You know that.”
Diana nodded. The knowledge was burned into her mind from endless worry.
“Diana!” Marcus appeared from around the corner of the barn, his tattered cloak flapping. “They want you at the thresher for counting!”
“I will come now.” She looked at Sosia and the other women standing around the pen. Some of them looked a little pale too—the women who had not been farmers’ wives, who had spent their days indoors.
Well, we’re all forced to learn new skills these days. She straightened her spine. “Once Sosia has finished, you will need to hang the carcasses for draining,” she told the women. “Then Sosia will show you how to skin them.”
Diana took Marcus’ hand and walked slowly, heading for the gates of the villa. She hoped her pace looked dignified but in truth her legs were unsteady. It wasn’t until they turned the corner of the villa wall that she could draw a proper breath.
Once around the corner she stopped and leaned against the wall, her head hanging.
“Diana? Are you ill?” Marcus asked. “Should I get Sosia?”
Diana forced herself to breathe steadily. “I’m fine,” she assured the boy and tried to smile. When she could, she straightened and started to walk again.
She checked the fields as she walked. They were laid out between the villa walls and the old Roman road that ran as straight as an arrow down the middle of the dale, heading for Lindum. Ermine Street, it was called.
The fields were harvested—a giant achievement. There had been virtually no grain for sowing. Diana had spent days sweeping out the furthest corners of the grain stores, picking up fallen seed one forgotten grain at a time. They had planted less than half the usual fields. But they had grown and the summer harvest would give them a slight surplus for seed.
Diana by the Moon Page 2