by Manda Scott
In this new place, the bricks of the wall were so close that the wash of his breath came back to lift his own hair. The muted crackle of burning charcoal to his left and right spoke of at least two braziers alight in the corners. The lamps above were filled with finer oil, and had recently been lit with flint and tinder; the sharp smell of it lingered.
The only door was behind him and to the right. Two guards stood there. The one on the left suffered from impacted sinuses and breathed with a whistle while the other maintained the drifting inhalations of near-sleep. They were horse-guards, the vast Germanic tribesmen who wore their hair tied in a warrior’s knot over the left ear. Their reputation had spread to Mona as the men who had carried Claudius to power and ensured that he kept it. The Romans considered them dull-witted but feared them as barely controllable savages. Having watched them through part of the previous evening, Dubornos believed both assessments to be reasonable and accurate.
He was about to turn over when he heard the slow, still breath of a man sitting awake and alert on the opposite side of the room. Two in-breaths later, he knew who it was.
“Caradoc?”
“I’m here.”
“Gods…” Relief washed him, as the fear had done earlier. “I thought they would hold us apart. Have you seen—” The guards shifted warily. Dubornos bit off the words. Without turning his head, he said, more slowly and still in Eceni, “The larger of the two guards fornicates with pigs. The smaller is his child by a lop-eared sow.”
In the hush that followed, the Batavians straightened themselves and became more attentive but did not offer violence.
Caradoc laughed softly. In the same tongue, he said, “Nicely done. They speak Latin and Batavian and, I think, a little Greek, but not Eceni unless they can act better than any paid performer and they don’t have the wit for that. In any case, even if they understood what you said, they have orders not to kill us. If we die, the fate that would have been ours will be theirs. I think it is safe to assume even the horse-guards fear that.”
Dubornos opened his eyes. The cell was smaller than he had thought; his pallet took up half the width and two-thirds of the length. The door was oak with iron binding the planks. The walls were poorly plastered, showing the underlying pattern of the bricks beneath; the sanatorium had been done better, the underground holding cell not at all. The ceiling was flat and, unnervingly, it seemed likely that it was not surmounted by a roof, but by yet another storey of the building. Only aboard the ship had Dubornos experienced life with others walking above his head. He had not found it comfortable then, either.
Three guttering lamps hung from brackets on the wall. In the curling shadows beneath the central one, dressed in a tunic of un-dyed wool, Caradoc sat up on an identical pallet with his back to the plaster, his knees hugged to his chin and his arms wrapped loosely round them.
Bandages of unbleached linen cuffed his wrists, the right one crusted a little with dried blood. The contusions on his face from when they took him prisoner were fading and his hair shone cleanly gold as it had not done since the battle at the Lame Hind, lacking only a single lock, shorn short to the scalp on the right side where Cartimandua had cut away the warrior’s braid to keep “as a remembrance”. Sometime since his capture, they had returned to him the brooch in the shape of the serpent-spear that was the only item of jewellery that he ever wore. It needed polishing, but it was clean of blood and the pin whole. Two threads of red-dyed wool hung from the bottom loop, their ends a little frayed. One of them had become stained during the journey and was stiffly black.
Like Dubornos, he was unshackled, and the lack of the irons, or perhaps three days’ rest, had set him right again, lifting the haggard weariness of the Brigante camp so that he looked once more the warrior who could lead a nation. Under Dubornos’ scrutiny, the cool, grey gaze remained level, with a dry spark of irony at its core. If they had not shared a slop bucket for ten days in the sea port before the first ship departed, Dubornos could have believed him unafraid.
“You didn’t drink the poppy,” Dubornos said. They had each taken the same oath against drinking wine; only Dubornos had broken it. Shame was a small thing, a distraction from terror; he welcomed its familiarity.
Caradoc shrugged. “I wasn’t offered any. Tonight, if they offer us both, you can keep watch and I’ll drink the wine and then sleep.”
“Will they do so?” Will there be a tonight and will we be in a position to choose to drink or not drink, to sleep or not sleep?
“I don’t know. Narcissus, the freed slave, seems to be in charge. If word on Mona is right, the man is shrewd and intelligent and has no great lust for blood.”
“But he answers to an emperor who is neither of those things and who enjoys the spectacle of slow death more even than Caligula whom he replaced.”
Caradoc blinked slowly, exhaling through pursed lips. “Thank you, yes. In which case, we should be grateful that Claudius is said to be weak and ruled by his wives and freed-men. If he had Caligula’s instincts and the same lack of restraint, the dying would already have begun. That one once made a father sit and drink wine while his son’s skin was flayed from his body before him. I don’t recall what happened to the father.” The grey eyes flickered. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Dubornos’ skin prickled beneath his tunic, as if the nerves were already exposed. He said, “Sooner started is sooner ended,” and knew as the words left his mouth that he was not alone in thinking it and that it should not have been spoken aloud.
“They have the children,” said Caradoc flatly. “Xenophon the physician has been tending them. He came here this morning to make sure that you were still asleep. He believes that Cygfa and Cunomar may be allowed to live, if only in slavery. If there is anything—anything at all—that we can do to keep them alive, we must do it. It’s all there is left.” He looked up sharply. “And don’t say what you were about to say. Xenophon knows it, but has told no-one else as yet.”
Cygfa is no longer a child.
Dubornos sucked in air and made himself unsay the words that had so nearly rolled off his tongue. They hung in the clotted air, a sentence of death unspoken.
Caradoc’s smile was a brief baring of teeth. “Thank you. If this is over in less than a month, it may be they will never find out. Meanwhile, you could tell me your entire stock of heroes’ tales, or we could find some other way to pass the time.” He eased himself down on the pallet until he lay on one elbow, Roman style. “I don’t suppose you still have your knucklebones with you?”
Dubornos’ knucklebones had been taken from him soon after his capture and he had not made any more, but they fashioned gaming pieces from fragments of plaster with crosses or lines scored on them with a fingernail and played with them a primitive version of Warrior’s Dance. Through the passing afternoon, with the autumn sun baking the southern wall of the cell so that the place became a roasting oven and sweat ran freely from guards and prisoners alike, they played a game that neither had taken the time to practise since before the invasion. From that, they relaxed slowly into talk and the sharing of such news as they had garnered since their capture.
Moving a piece idly forward, Caradoc said, “Do you remember Corvus? The Roman who was shipwrecked at the same time the Greylag went down?”
Dubornos looked up. “How could I not? He beat me in the river race, knocked me into the water and then helped pull me out before I fell into the gods’ pool. He was the hero and I the fool. I hated him for it.”
“And now he is prefect of a Gaulish cavalry wing and we could both hate him if we chose.”
“Do we choose?”
“I think not. He had integrity then and he has it still. He was here on other business but he found I was here and came last night to see that I was being treated well. He left our land only four days ago and sailed direct to Ostia.”
“So he has recent news.” Dubornos tried not to make it sound like a question. From the moment of his capture, the thing he had wanted
most was word of Mona and those he loved.
For Caradoc it could have been no different. He nodded, a little tightly. “He does indeed. If he’s telling the truth, the western tribes are buzzing like bees round a kicked skep. They wiped out two troops of cavalry in as many days leaving only one survivor, and he lived only because he convincingly feigned death. If he is right, the attacks were led by Breaca, which means she—”
He stopped abruptly.
Breaca.
The name rattled in the stifling dark, a reminder of all that was lost. It was the first time any of them had spoken her name in Dubornos’ hearing since their capture. Even now, he thought the word had leaked out accidentally, sprung under pressure from a mind that knew no rest.
Very quietly, Caradoc said, “Which means she knows what has happened and is, predictably, angry about it.”
He strove for irony, or a measure of humour, and failed. The saying of the name had broken something in both of them. Without either asking the other, they abandoned the game. Dubornos gathered the pieces and slid them under his pallet, for later, perhaps. Caradoc pushed himself back until his shoulders were against the wall. He covered his eyes with one hand, hiding them and whatever anguish they might betray. The fingers of the other ran over and over the serpent-spear brooch pinned to the front of his tunic.
The central lamp above his head had run out of oil and not been relit. The poor light carved hollows beneath his cheeks, made plainer the tensions in his face, which had not gone, but been hidden by an effort of will, or by a deliberate act of leadership, even in this place where there was only one other man to lead. He looked now as Dubornos felt, a soul adrift in a limitless space, shouting aloud for his gods and hearing not even the echo of his own voice. His breathing, which had been deliberately slow, became progressively more ragged.
Dubornos waited, holding his breath. He was reaching for air when Caradoc’s fist smacked on the wall, lifting a scallop of badly laid plaster. His voice cracked with hard-contained passion. “I wish to all the gods I knew how she was.”
It was the first move either prisoner had made that could be considered violent. The guards, clearly, had been awaiting some such. Grinning, they moved their hands to their weapons. They could not kill, but were permitted a measure of entertainment. Menace, that had been distant, came closer. The smaller guard clutched a fodder of lead. Through the whole afternoon he had toyed with it, folding and refolding, moulding it to his hand like fine beeswax. It fitted perfectly now in a strip across the outer ridge of his knuckles. Experimentally, he flexed his fingers. Dull metal rippled across them. Stepping in to face Caradoc, he drew back his arm.
A horn sounded in the distance, a rising wail. Mid-stride, both guards fell to attention, carved statues of disappointment. A second detail marched the length of the corridor and halted somewhere behind the door. A password was requested and given, both in guttural Latin. A single man stepped forward.
Dubornos found a knot on the bare wood of the pallet and rubbed around the edge of it with the ball of his thumb. Counting the rhythm slowed the screaming panic in his mind. On the other pallet, Caradoc made a peak of his fingers and rested his chin on the point. His hands were still but the rims of his nostrils flared white and one who knew him well could see that he fought to steady his breathing. In the sweating gloom, the only sound was the rush of blood in the ears and the nasal whistle of the taller guard’s impacted sinuses, faster than it had been.
The approaching feet stamped to a halt. The door opened. A centurion of the Praetorian Guard, resplendent in precious metal, said, “The emperor commands your presence.” When Dubornos rose, stretching the stiffness from his calves, he met a sword’s point, at eye-height. “Not you. The leader only. Caratacus who defied him for nine years. Claudius will see him now and judge him.”
Dubornos said, “Then you take me with him.”
“Not unless you wish your head to go as a gift to the emperor.”
“If it’s necessary, yes.”
“Dubornos, no. One of us has to stay. For the children.” Caradoc rose smoothly, saluting the guard as one officer to another. They shackled him again at the wrists, crushing the bandages. Before they were done, blood was leaking onto the rusting metal. Raising both hands together, he made something close to the warriors’ salute to Dubornos. “The children,” he said in Eceni. “Do whatever it takes to keep them alive.”
“I will.”
Afterwards, when the sound of footsteps had gone, Dubornos used the slop bucket and did not care that the guards were watching.
CHAPTER 19
The children: do whatever it takes to keep them alive. Caradoc walked to the beat of the words. The wrist chains chimed it, brisk as armour. He had no idea how he could do anything to protect anyone. It was enough to walk steadily, ignoring the old and the new pain, and to close his mind to what might yet come that was greater than either, to acknowledge with courtesy the guards on either side of the door to the audience room, to enter into the presence of an emperor he despised and display the demeanour and bearing proper to a warrior and leader of warriors.
He passed from a poorly lit corridor floored in black and white mosaic into an open, sunlit audience room laid with vast slabs of finest red porphyry, crimson as aged wine, unevenly spattered with snowy flecks. The walls were of marble-smooth plaster, painted crimson and decorated on the far side with a frieze of the monster Polyphemus, arraigned in unhealthy love before the sea nymph Galatea.
On Mona, the singers told the myths and fables of Greece and Rome alongside their own. Travelling bards of other lands had given them colour and performed them as plays in the great-house. As a youth taking ship to the sea ports of Gaul to escape the long reach of his father, Caradoc had seen attempts to bring them to life on walls or ceilings, cluttered frenzies of paint created by minor, unskilled craftsmen. He had never seen them executed with such quality of purpose as he saw in the imperial audience chamber, or with such wild abandon.
An exhausted, pain-racked mind, seeking distraction, could readily become lost in that frieze, falling into the flowing colours and the relief they gave from the concussive red of the walls and the naked passions so readily displayed, but Claudius was there, somewhere, in the sunlight flooding in from the garden, or more likely in the shadows it threw, so bright after days in half-darkness, so bright—
“Father!”
In all the blood-red was a child: Cunomar, thin and hollow-cheeked, his hair roughly cut, a great scab on one earlobe. He was running, his arms wide open. Free. Six guards blocked the doorway, all armed. Who can tell their orders if a headstrong boy skids on polished marble and runs into them? … do whatever it takes …
“Does a warrior run in the presence of an emperor?”
The child faltered, his face crumpling. Caradoc made the salute of one warrior to another and saw its hesitant return and the indecision that followed it. My son, we did not train you for this. I am so sorry. Stepping forward, he scooped his son into a shackled embrace, holding the tousled head close to his shoulder. You weigh nothing; if you live, your growth will be lessened. “My warrior-to-be, have the Romans treated you well?”
Safe, in his father’s arms, the child chattered boldly. “I had the flux but it got better. I’m well now and the Greek physician with the long nose let me eat proper food today, not the milk porridge they gave me on the ship.” The small face darkened, showing his mother’s anger in miniature, a thing to be cherished for itself alone. “But he defiled Cygfa. He should die for it. And the one who gave the orders.” Blessedly, he spoke Eceni, but Claudius was famed for his mastery of foreign languages and he was still there, watching and listening, invisibly.
Caradoc said, “I heard what he did. He, too, follows orders. The gods will take care of it. We may not do so here. Have you spoken with the emperor?”
“The old man with the palsy? He dribbles. He touched my hair. I hate him.”
“But a warrior behaves always with courtesy to his
enemies, in victory and defeat.” We should have told you this long ago, spoken it daily from birth and before. Why did we not? “Do you know where the emperor is?”
“There, by the columns into the garden.” The child pointed, but not usefully. His attention wandered and, with it, his arm. “There are statues and fountains all the way along. Even the flowers are planted in rows, the way the legions fight. They leave nothing to the gods here.”
He had been right, then, to think the brooding presence sat in the denser shadows. Still with Cunomar in the crook of his arm, Caradoc turned.
A row of columns broke the way through to the garden. A thin voice from the shade of one said, thoughtfully, “He is very clearly yours. Your hair is his and the stamp of you stands clear on his face. None would doubt you his sire.”
Cunomar frowned up at his father, confused. The words made no sense. No-one had ever doubted that Caradoc was sire to Cunomar. Half a battlefield had been present at his conception; he had been told so often enough. Caradoc saw his son draw a breath to ask the obvious question and made a sign for silence. He was relieved beyond measure to see it understood and obeyed.
The shadow-voice said, “The child does not understand Latin?”
The child had been taught Latin and Greek by the best of Mona’s dreamers, but the emperor’s Latin was archaic even by the standards of those for whom Latin was a child amongst languages, too new to be fully formed. One could not say this. Caradoc inclined his head. “He understands, but only if the words are spoken clearly.”
“Then we will speak them so. Come here, boy.”
If you harm him, you will die for it, if it kills all of us, I swear it.
Smiling, Caradoc shoved his son gently in the small of the back. The child stepped warily into the sunlight, his straggled hair melted to a pool of tarnished silver. The shadow-movement came from the third column from the left and, this time, Caradoc could see its origin; a man in his sixties, showing his age, stooped at the shoulders, with untidy grey hair and a weak chin and bat-wing ears. He walked lame on his right foot and his right arm was withered, shaking out of time with the rest of his body. As not with other men, one looked at his head last, after the withered limb. The skin of his face was an unhealthy grey, blushing overmuch at the cheekbones. His eyes were bloodshot, with dark rings beneath from lack of sleep. In the first moments of meeting, they shied away from direct contact; one would not care to buy goods from this man, or follow him into battle.