Dreaming the Bull

by Manda Scott

  “Cunomar—” His father’s voice was unusually soft. “Put the pack down and come here.”

  Doing as he was bid, he ran across the room, panic pushing at his guts. His father’s arms enfolded him. Strong hands that had once led armies ruffled his hair in a way they had not done since childhood. His father’s lips rasped drily on his forehead and the deep voice of council said, “My son, can you stay with Cwmfen? She needs someone to help her.”

  Cunomar went, not asking what a warrior who had just given birth might need help with in the face of the enemy. Cygfa was already there, alert and watchful. She smiled wryly at Dubornos as she had not done these past two years and the singer met it with relief. If he had had any time for regret, Cunomar would have mourned the fact that it had taken the certainty of death to begin to heal that rift.

  The door crashed open. Cunomar saw Caradoc meet Dubornos’ eye and step round to stand with him, shoulders pressed together in front of the bed. Neither was armed; their amnesty had expressly forbidden the keeping of weapons. There were knives for cooking but none within reach. Dubornos began to sing the song of soul passing, quietly.

  Caradoc said, “And so we argued for nothing. The gods, it seems, would prefer us to stay.” It was said wryly, with humour at last, another brought to wholeness by the promise of escape from life.

  A helmetless, dark-haired man poked his head round the door. Smoke framed him. He scanned the room, taking in its occupants, and jerked his head, speaking over his shoulder. In harsh, parade ground Latin, he said, “Here. Three adults, two children and the doctor’s boy.” He turned back. “And a babe.” He was puzzled. “We don’t have a babe.”

  “We don’t need one,” said a voice that stopped the world. “The fire will be good. No-one will be looking for an infant.”

  It was a nightmare, a dream without substance. Relief crushed the air from Cunomar’s throat; however bad they may seem at the time, such things were escapable. On Mona, every apprentice had been taught the techniques to ensure safe waking from a dangerous dream. For the dreamers, it was life-saving; for the children, an escape from unpleasantness that made the nights safe. Airmid had taught Cunomar the way to do it long ago when he had dreamed three nights in a row that Ardacos made the protection wards wrongly and the enemy had found them. All he needed was to find something that should be solid and prove that it was not, then he would know he was dreaming and his mind would wake him up.

  Focusing on the upright of a corner between two walls, he began to do as Airmid had taught him and was surprised to see Dubornos do the same; he had not expected to be sharing his nightmare. It might have been comic were it not so desperate. In an effort to prove that nothing was real Dubornos did his best to pass his hand smartly through the wall to his left. His knuckles barked on rough plaster and he scraped skin off his palm when he tried the other way. Cunomar, watching in astonishment, tried the same and was equally hurt.

  “Hitting walls won’t stop the fire, singer.” The voice mocked from the doorway, in Eceni. “You can roast if you like, but I would consider it churlish myself, as would the shade of the emperor, I have no doubt. And it would leave those who remain behind to explain why the bodies of two identical red-headed singers were found in the ashes of the fire, which would be damnably inconvenient.”

  Cunomar lifted his eyes slowly, still locked in the nightmare. The man he had been told was his mother’s brother, the most revered of all Eceni warriors, stood before him in the uniform of an Urban Guard, grinning. It had been so once before, on the arid plain where Caradoc had faced the emperor. There, the man had been an interpreter and had tried to have them killed. In horror, Cunomar looked up into his father’s eyes and knew he was not dreaming: the pain and loathing etched on Caradoc’s face were too real for a dream.

  Sharply, Dubornos asked, “Why are you here?”

  “To escort you to freedom.” The officer smiled like a hunting snake. “I made an oath in ignorance, possibly in arrogance, and this is the penalty. I suspect we can blame Xenophon for it but he’s beyond our reach. Whoever is at fault, your safety is my responsibility up to the boarding of a ship on the northern coast. On my own honour and that of my god, I am sworn to protect you or die in the attempt.” His tone took any honour out of the words. “Because I prefer to live, we will do what we can to ensure that your escape is not suspected by those who might wish to follow.” He turned to the doorway. In Latin, quite differently, he said, “In here. Quickly.”

  Half a dozen men entered, laden. Their burdens, when dropped to the floor and rolled from their sackcloth bindings, were recognizably human and dead, if not freshly so. Their hair was most striking, being the most un-Roman. The tallest pair of adults were blond, as were the two youths. The single, slightly smaller man was a redhead, balding on top. On his chest, beneath the torn stuff of his tunic, a knife-wound showed in the corpse-grey skin.

  Cunomar felt tides of nausea wash over him. His father’s hand gripped his shoulder, keeping him steady. Caradoc was as close to losing control as Cunomar had ever seen him. His voice sliced through the smoke. “You killed them?” he asked. “These people died in our place because you took an oath?”

  “Of course.” The traitor stared him down. Cunomar remembered those eyes sometimes, on the worst of nights when the noise of the city and the cold and the smell of mouldy plaster all conspired to keep him awake. Then the black eyes of a falcon laughed at him from a man’s face. He had never thought to see them again in life. They flickered over him now and barely noticed his existence. The voice, full of scorn, said, “This is war, Caratacus. If you want to live, others have to die. When you return to Britannia, you will find it the same. Unless you want to die here, and your children with you? You should choose quickly. Fire has even less patience than I do and I have little enough.”

  They were already risking their lives. Orange flames raged outside the southern window. Patches of soot feathered up on the heat. Caradoc glanced there once and Cunomar saw the decision made. “We are packed. We can leave now, but we cannot press the pace faster than Cwmfen and the babe can manage.”

  “Clearly not. Xenophon thought as much after his apprentice boy left. She will be escorted in a litter to the city walls and thence on a wagon until she is fit to ride. If we are lucky, we will still make the coast at Gesoriacum before the ship leaves. If not…”

  “We will spend six months as fugitives on Roman soil?”

  The decurion shook his head. His smile was poisonous. “Not Roman, no. I had rather thought we might find somewhere quiet in Gaul. But I think we should all pray it doesn’t come to that. Half a year in each other’s company might be too much for any of us to bear.”

  CHAPTER 25

  At dawn, in a riverside clearing half a day’s ride south of the sea port of Gesoriacum, beside the glowing ashes of a night’s fire, Valerius, oath-bound decurion, lay awake as he had done for most of the night, counting the fading stars in an unsuccessful effort to forget where he was and whom he was with and how he had come to be both.

  He wanted wine, badly, and there was none to be had. He had brought three flagons with him from Rome, thinking them more than enough to last the journey. Night and morning, he had measured the doses, using as much as he needed to keep the ghosts at bay and the voices quiet and his smile sharp against the constant loathing of Caradoc and his family.

  The longer they travelled and the closer they came to Gesoriacum with its memories of Caligula and Corvus, of Amminios and Iccius, of hate and love and vengeance and death, the more wine it had taken to retain a semblance of stability. The last flask had run dry three days since, leaving Valerius afraid for his sanity. Surprisingly, Philonikos had helped him, supplying from his medical stocks a fierce, honeyed liquor of a strength to burn the throat and send numbness streaking down the limbs. In the face of spirit that strong, the whispers of the past had withdrawn and even the present pressed less closely so that, for two nights, Valerius had slept. Only in this last evening, with th
eir destination close at hand, had the physician’s apprentice inexplicably withdrawn his gift and Valerius felt the lack.

  The stars faded too fast. Unlike Britannia, where he prayed each night for the god’s light to rise and banish the dreams, here, in this place and this company, the decurion had no wish for day to begin. He would have welcomed dreams if they could have displaced the memories of his first visit to Gesoriacum, of who he had been before he arrived, and who before that, and before that; or if they could have erased for one moment the presence of Caradoc and the accusations the man carried with him.

  The monumental irony of the oath Xenophon had wrested from Valerius had been its own shield in the apartment and for the first days out of Rome but it had not survived long on the road north. The decurion was used to being feared—even Longinus was afraid of him now—but he was still respected, even by the Gauls who had supported Umbricius. Until this journey, he had not known how his spirit fed on that respect, or how its opposite drained him. Because he must, he believed that, with the god’s promise of success to lead him on, he could survive this final day without any outward sign of what it cost. More deeply, he knew that one day was the most he had left.

  The stars were gone. The sun cracked open on the eastern horizon and the god’s light spilled through the trees, smothering the dim glow of the fire. The fire had never given smoke—Valerius had built it with care using wood dried the previous night—but a rising ruffle of hot air tilted mildly to the left, showing a southerly swing in the breeze. The music of the river changed note as the wind backed round and somewhere, a long way distant, a cock crowed.

  Valerius pushed off his cloak and rolled to his feet. It was a matter of pride that he rose first, as it was to find the fires of those who hunted them. They were hunted, there was no doubt of that, and in this the decurion had the better of the warriors he led; he knew intimately the exact danger posed by the hunter, his strengths, his weaknesses and, he believed, his intent.

  There was relief in movement. Soundlessly, he crossed the clearing and took a path through the sparse woodland. Behind him, he heard the soft padding of the warriors as they, too, rose and took other routes through the woodland. Soon all he could hear were the noisier strides of the child, Cunomar, who had been too long in Rome and had not yet learned to walk silently.

  The river was high after ten days of rain and ran turgid with mud. He found a leaf-stirred eddy at the side in which to relieve himself and then moved upstream to check the horses and splash his face in cleaner water. He felt better for that, the wine-deprived thickness in his head and tongue less than they had been. The bank led south and west to a place where the river widened and the torrent slowed. He crossed on greasy, treacherous stepping stones, taking each one slowly and testing the footing. On the southern bank, a deer path led through thorn scrub and round a sunken, grassy dell that rose on its far side in a steeply wooded slope. He climbed up, using the angled trunks of the scrub thorn as handholds. Shed beech leaves, shiny as beaten bronze, crisped beneath his feet. On the thorns, the berries were crinkled for winter, holding the damp in heavy drops that drizzled his thighs and wept coldly onto his cheeks.

  Reaching the crest of the slope, he squirmed forward under low branches until he had a clear view out over a broad stretch of water meadow to a cluster of oak and beech beyond. Smoke rose faintly over the canopy. Marullus, centurion of the second cohort of the Praetorian Guard, had never learned the art of smokeless burning, or perhaps he was intent on signalling his presence, a warning sent by a Father to one of his many sons, one under the blessed cloak of Mithras, set on opposing sides by ill-fortune and an oath carelessly taken. They were not yet in conflict and might never be. The god, one hoped, would prevent it.

  Valerius lay still under the thorns for a while, letting brisk air and the relief of solitude work a measure of healing. Presently, as the inner and outer mists thinned, he saw what he was looking for: a handful of men moving jerkily amongst the trees, readying horses for travel, and the one who lay in the deep cover opposite, watching.

  “They’re playing with us. They know we’re here.”

  Valerius jumped. The speed of it bludgeoned the delicate parts of his brain as he turned. A bubble of pure, easy rage rose to his head and burst. Almost, he struck out. A decade’s training as an officer stopped him, and the oath to his god.

  If the girl Cygfa saw the danger and its passing, she showed no fear. She had come up behind him silently and sat, as silently, watching. More than Caradoc with his frigid scorn, or the child Cunomar with his all-consuming loathing, Cygfa unnerved Valerius. She spoke little and never willingly to him and yet he had never once moved apart from the others but she was there on cat’s feet, following. She crouched now in a hidden space between the thorns, staring at him with her father’s eyes.

  Some time in the journey, she had begun to braid her hair in the way of the warrior—an act forbidden in Rome—and overnight she had found three crow feathers and woven them into the left side. They hung damply in the mist and her face, thus framed, was that of sexless, androgynous youth so that Valerius, biting his lower lip, had to repeat aloud in his mind the single fact that this was a woman, not a man, and that the god would never return Caradoc to him cleared of age and all betrayal, or those who had been lost to his treachery. Amminios was lying … What would you have done if you had known Breaca was still alive…?

  Enough. Stop now. He knows.

  The decurion held himself still and believed he showed nothing.

  Cygfa raised a familiar, mocking brow. “Do you not intend to slay these men as you did their tracker?”

  She asked it to goad him, not because she was interested in his answer. Early in their flight, two days out of Rome, he had left his charges for half an evening to hunt down and cut the throat of the single Dacian tribesman who followed their trail. He had said nothing to the others but Cygfa, following, had witnessed it and word had spread amongst the others of the man’s death and, perhaps, of the needlessness of it; the tracker had lost their trail when he died. If he had been confronted, Valerius could have countered with his argument that the group would travel faster without the need for secrecy and that one dead tracker was one fewer enemy wielding a blade against them later, but the question had never come and he had not chosen to raise it himself.

  All this, he read in Cygfa’s eyes as she watched him watch the watchers. On any other day, Valerius would have walked away, but her choice to braid the kill-feathers had made of her presence a greater challenge and, on this last day, he was tired of challenges. Answering the words, if not their intent, he said, “We can’t attack now. We are too few against their many.”

  “And yet they still don’t attack us. We were vulnerable when Cwmfen was lying ill in the wagon, less so now that she is better and can ride,” she said. “Why do they stay back?”

  She thought like her father, or like Longinus. It was not good to think of him. Longinus had charge of the wing while his decurion was away. Their parting had not been easy but nothing between them had been easy since Valerius had come back from Rome with the need for wine increased.

  Valerius eased back to a place he could sit up without being seen. It might not have been necessary, but there was an integrity in the fiction of concealment. “They are waiting for a signal,” he said. “When they have it, they will attack.”

  “Or they wait until Claudius is dead.”

  “The two are the same.” Her Latin was stilted, not as fluent as her parents’. Easing himself down the bank to the shallow dip of the dell, Valerius found himself matching the cadence of it. “When Claudius dies and Nero is made emperor, the signal will come. Then they will be safely under Agrippina’s command and can act without the dishonour of treason.”

  Cygfa sneered. “So in Roman eyes, it is honourable to kill an infant of fourteen days if the command comes from the woman who is the emperor’s mother, but not if it comes when she is only his wife and his niece?”

  The d
ell was crowded with the debris of the forest. The hollow carcass of a beech trunk lay across it, speckled with bright, toxic droplets of red and orange fungi and old rodent droppings. Valerius jumped onto the top, rocking it rottenly beneath his feet. The action matched the rhythm of the throbbing in his head and soothed it. He thought the girl might walk on alone, but she waited, her eyes still asking the same fatuous question about Roman honour as if anything other than that same honour had kept her alive these past fourteen days.

  Bluntly, he asked, “Have you ever slain a man in battle?”

  The grey eyes scorned him. She raised a finger to the topmost of her feathers. “You have seen me do so.”

  “And they were men, who were once fourteen-day-old infants, yet you killed them without hesitation, am I right?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Is it so? Is life less precious to the grown man who loves life and understands exactly what he has to lose, than to the infant who knows only the comfort of the womb and the muzzling warmth of his mother’s breast? I think not.” A dog fox had used the log as a marking post. The musk of its scent rose with his rocking, metallic as horse sweat and the tears of the dead. Breathing it in, Valerius said, “This is the reality of war. Thirty years spent living and growing make little difference if the soul you set free is that of an enemy. A child slain today will not grow to be the warrior who drives a blade into your back twenty years hence and that is what may keep you alive. You are a warrior; you should know that.”

  She said, “We would never kill the children of our enemies.”

  “I know. That is why you will lose the war and we will win it.”

  He jumped down from the log and began to force a way through the scrub beyond. Cygfa’s voice sought him out. “If you despise us so much,” she asked, “why do we yet live?”

  In half a month of travel, not one of them had yet suggested he might betray them. Valerius stopped still. Her gaze speared his back. He spun slowly on one heel. “I told you in Rome,” he said. “I took an oath. Before my god, such things are binding.”