Dreaming the Bull

by Manda Scott

  “Stay then,” Valerius had said. “Keep watch. Look, you can wait in the doorway to the tanner’s. Here, take this.” He had given him a denarius, flashily silver. The boy had clutched it as if it were more food. “If anyone in a uniform comes asking questions, get word to me.”

  The lad had scuttled into the tannery doorway. He might leave, he might stay. Valerius had no way to predict, nor, particularly, did he care; he had bought the boy on impulse and was putting some effort into not dissecting his motives for having done so. It would be a blessing in many ways not to have to make any further decisions regarding his future.

  In the front room of the tavern, amongst drinking, fornicating men, Fortunatus was waiting, wringing fat hands. “The room … I have clients … they need privacy.”

  “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” The tavern-keeper stank worse than the boy had done, of stale sweat and unwashed man-meat. The urge to kill him, as an act of mercy and a cleansing of the world, was overwhelming. Valerius kept both hands by his sides. “You’ve been paid enough. We’ll be gone before dark.”

  “Good. Will you? Thank you. Good.” Fortunatus nodded. Flesh-bound eyes glinted, piggily, seeing greater fortunes. Valerius pushed past, taking care not to touch either the man or his nearest client, and slid into the back room.

  In the other world beyond the curtain, lamps had been lit and food shared. The claustrophobic space had been tidied to warrior neatness with fresh straw on the floor and the foul bedding rolled away in a corner. Bread, cheese and olives had been eaten and the remains stored for later. In a corner, seated on clean straw, the physician’s apprentice was tending Cwmfen, who bore his ministrations with the fortitude of a mother who humours a child. At her side, Cunomar played knucklebones with Cygfa. The girl had braided the crow feathers back into her hair in a clear act of defiance. Valerius saw it distantly, noting it with that part of his mind that could still function, the same part that saw the flask of wine and judged it almost full. The rest faced the three men sitting round the table, each one armed with a sword of Gaulish making, each of whom laid a hand on his weapon as the door-skin fell and was still.

  Three men.

  Valerius had left two.

  Nothing had prepared him. Nothing could have prepared him. He stopped, his legs at once ice and water, too stiff and too weak to move. On the far side of the room, a bare spear’s length away, Luain mac Calma, heron-dreamer of Hibernia, elder of the council of Mona, once-lover of Macha, who was dead, rose smoothly on long, angled legs. After a moment’s appraisal, he extended his arm in the traditional salute of dreamer to warrior.

  “Bán mac Eburovic. Welcome. They told me you had changed. I would not have believed how much.”

  Valerius felt his jaw slacken and shut it tightly. Bán mac Eburovic. His name means white in the language of the Hibernians, Excellency, the place where he was conceived. He had heard that long ago, and believed it; the one who had spoken had no reason to lie and every reason to know the truth. Unlike the man opposite with his lean face and straight black hair and high brow, who held a hand out to Valerius and named him son of Eburovic, the man who must have known that Eburovic, master-smith of the Eceni, had never been to Hibernia and could not have sired a son there on Macha or any other woman.

  I am Valerius, decurion, child of the one god and of my Father under the Sun. The name and nature of the one who sired me matters not. The words beat on the inside of his temples, awakening the headache, which had all but gone. Without his directing it, the heel of his hand passed over his sternum, pressing squarely on the raven brand, and then touched briefly to the bull on his shoulder. In his mind, he spoke the name of the god.

  Aloud he asked, “What are you doing here?”

  Mac Calma sheathed his sword. “We were awaiting your return. You need a ship. By now, you will have found that the master of the Gesoriaca will not sail before dawn. There is a second ship, anchored offshore a short distance westward along the coast. She sails under a master of greater courage. I will take you to him.”

  “Really? How thoughtful. I’m sure Caratacus is grateful that his dreamer knows the minds of other men. Sadly I have other plans.” Valerius’ voice was softer than it had been. A Gaulish actuary had died hearing just such a voice. “Perhaps I did not frame the question correctly. How do you come to be in this room in this town when our flight was known only to the emperor and to Xenophon?”

  “And to the Empress Agrippina. You know Marullus is searching the town from south to north seeking word of you?”

  “And you, presumably, know the fate of any dreamer caught alive on Gaulish soil. Neither point answers my question. How did you know of our flight and how, exactly, did you know we were here?”

  Images of Fortunatus, skewered for treachery, etched themselves across Valerius’ mind. He cleared them temporarily, awaiting an answer.

  “I have friends in the port. They tell me things that may be useful.” Luain was smiling. His eyes were those of a heron, stalker of still waters. Gulls cried in the harbour. I have heard they can send their spirits as white birds on the wind …

  The dreamer said, “You and the Belgic boy can hide out in the harbour-master’s whorehouse if you choose, but I will not let you take Caradoc or his family to a place where they will be caught like cornered rats. The gods have other need of them. They come with me. If you value the oath you made in the name of your foreign god, you can come with us west to the Sound of Manannan and see them safely aboard the ship that will sail with the moonrise tide. Alternatively, if you surrender now to the centurion who hunts you, you may be able to persuade him that you are as loyal to the new emperor as you were to the old and perhaps he will lift the charge of treachery that is laid against you.”

  Treachery. The god had promised success. Whatever the dreamer said, Marullus was only a centurion; he did not have the power to lift a charge of treason, or the penalty of death that accompanied it. Only the new emperor could do that: Nero, whose mother ruled for him. Agrippina was not known for the breadth of her mercy.

  Valerius did not waste his breath asking how the dreamer knew of the harbour-master’s whorehouse; the mere fact that he did was enough to render it unsafe. He weighed the risks and his options. The charge should not have come as such a surprise. Xenophon had been explicit and the risks had always been clear: if Valerius was careless, he would die. He did not believe he had been careless so far. He tried to build the image of the god on the dirty plaster of the far wall as he had done in the emperor’s palace and could not do so. Striving for distance, he said, “An enticing choice. Which did your dream tell you I would do?”

  Luain mac Calma stared at the same patch of peeling paint and shook his head, as if the effort and its failure were clear to him. “My dreams tell me nothing,” he said. “What you will do is not yet known. At any given time, the gods offer different paths to the future. They never force our choice of which to take.”

  Valerius was losing composure. His smile stretched too tight over his teeth. His skin had shrunk, or his skull grown, and his joints had stiffened. The Infinite Sun, in whose name he had given his oath, was silent and yet the oath remained. He said, “They must at least laugh at our indecision.”

  The dreamer shook his head, his hunter’s eyes wide as the moon. “I doubt that.”

  The pressure in the air was enough to crack open a walnut. Valerius squeezed his eyes closed. Orange shapes flared out into the blackness of his mind. His mother Macha appeared before him, speaking Eceni, and he ignored her. Iccius followed her, the Belgic slave-boy who had died in a hypocaust and was not, absolutely not, come back to life in a slave-boy newly bought. If Iccius had lived, the world would have been a different place.

  Valerius had long ago learned to shut out both of these two voices. In their presence, and in the absence of the god, he could resort only to the oath that bound him. He forced his eyes open. “You should leave here,” he said. “Fortunatus has already sold your presence to the town guard. They wait o
nly for dusk so that they may seem to find us by accident and he will not die for it.”

  “And you?” asked mac Calma. “What will you do?”

  “Me? I will watch your backs as you leave and take the time to remind Fortunatus that treachery is unacceptable. When he is chastened, and I am sure you are not being followed, the boy and I will join you.”

  He forgot, in the end, that he had named the child Amminios.

  CHAPTER 26

  Luain mac Calma led them. Valerius brought up the rear. They rode in single file along the margins of the sea-turf. The smell of it rose in the still air, sharply sweet and spiked with the sorrel freshness of shoreline herbs crushed underfoot. The light was failing fast. Out on the ocean, the ship that promised freedom was a ghost barely seen in the grey dusk, the sail a billow of white, still too far away for safety. The sea was restless, white manes cresting the waves as Manannan rode to greet them, or to kill. Along the shingle, the hush of each receding wave brushed the stones, a little closer each time as the tide came in. Cunomar watched it, marking in his mind where the next biggest wave would reach and counting a tally for when he was right. It was a child’s game, but it kept his mind free of fear and he would die before he showed fear in the presence of the traitor who claimed to be his mother’s brother and yet wore Roman uniform.

  The horses walked like hounds, their hide-bound feet falling softly on the turf. Cunomar rode third from last in the line. Cygfa rode behind him, keeping him safe both from the pursuing Romans and from Valerius. She had become more protective since the morning when she had spent time in Valerius’ company, and her disdain of the man had become more apparent.

  The decurion had joined them late, as they were collecting the horses, and Cunomar had seen him sheathe a bloody knife, then draw his sword and slide the length of it into the mud and ordure of the butcher’s holding pens. Sensing himself watched, the man had raised his eyes and smiled his cold snake’s smile and said, “The moon is up and the sky clear. It will help us see the way to the ship but will also show us to Marullus and his men. I would advise that you cover your brooches and bridle bits and if you would not have your weapons give you away you, too, drag them through the mud. I apologize if it offends your warriors’ instincts.”

  This last had been directed with heavy irony at Cygfa, who had ignored it but nevertheless had done as the man suggested. Cunomar, disgusted, had watched as his father, Dubornos and Cwmfen had all drawn the blades given them by the dreamer mac Calma and had similarly sullied them. At the last, he had done the same with the blade they had given him, but only when ordered to do it by his father. It was not a way for true warriors to ride into battle.

  Riding in the dusk, Cunomar’s ears ached with the effort of listening for the sounds of attack. The solid weight of the sword tapped against his thigh with each stride of his horse. It should have been reassuring, but was not. All his life, he had wanted to be a warrior, and now the chance had come he knew himself unfit. Cygfa had practised daily with the seasoned men and women of Mona before her first battle. Cunomar had lived more than two years in Rome where the carrying of weapons was forbidden him and practice impossible on pain of death for the entire family, but even had he practised, the blade he had been given was a man’s and too heavy for a boy. Testing it in the small back room of the inn before the decurion had returned, he had found that if he held it with both hands, he could perhaps swing it once with credible force before the enemy closed on him. He had read the disappointment in his father’s eyes and been ashamed, the more so when mac Calma had gone out again and returned with two small, sharp-pointed daggers, one each for Cunomar and Philonikos. The physician’s apprentice was tall enough and old enough to bear a blade but had no skill to use it and was thus treated as a child; it hurt to be considered in the same thought.

  In the time before Valerius walked in, Caradoc had shown both youths how to use the knives if there were any danger that they might be captured alive, drilling his finger over and again into the place between the sixth and seventh ribs on the left side where they should stab, angling the blade in towards the breastbone so that the heart and great vessels would be split. Dubornos had repeated it later when they reached the horses and then Cygfa had shown them again after they had mounted, to make sure they understood. In the eyes of each warrior could clearly be read the absolute certainty that it was better to die early than to face the new emperor’s executioners.

  Cunomar knew it was better to die in battle than on his own knife, but he had listened and repeated their instructions until the act was so real in his mind it was astonishing that he was still alive. Imagining it as they rode the shoreline, he knew both that he could do such a thing for himself and that the Greek youth did not have such courage. When the counting of waves could not take his mind off what was coming, he thought through the hundred ways in which Cunomar, son of Caradoc, outliving all of the adults, would kill two Romans and end Philonikos’ life before turning the small, cheating blade on himself. With constant repetition, he could feel the bite of the blade through skin and muscle and on into his heart. He could see the disappointment on the faces of the enemy as they were deprived of their prize and feel the blackness draw in and the face of Briga grow more clear as he died. Even such thoughts of defeat were better than the other, greater fear that nagged at the borders of his awareness: the cold, clinging question of how his father was going to wield a blade in battle when his prison-wrecked body could not properly wield an axe.

  The ship remained at a distance. For each hundred strides forward, it seemed a hundred further away. The shoreline changed. Scattered boulders more frequently littered the margins, the same grey as the dusk so that the horses slowed, picking their way. In time, rocky outcrops stretching for a hundred paces or more forced them inland and hid the ship from view. At one such, the path angled so sharply that, for a few strides, Cunomar had a clear view of the decurion riding behind. What he saw did not cheer him. Valerius was drinking openly. He held his naked sword in one hand, laying it across the neck of his mare, and with the other he poured tavern wine into his mouth.

  The slave-boy rode double behind, clinging in terror to his tunic. He was not a born rider, that much was clear, but he had witnessed whatever chastisement Valerius had visited on the obese tavern-keeper and his fear of the man was far greater than his fear of the horse. Cunomar watched as Valerius reached back, offering the boy a taste of his wine, and saw the urchin, terrified, shake his head. Undeterred, the officer waved the flask to the sides, offering it to invisible passers-by. His face was blandly still, beaded with sweat that gathered in the dewdrop above his upper lip and ran in runnels at his temples. It had been the same each morning and evening as he drank steadily beside the fire, causing deliberate offence to those who rode with him. In the fourteen days of their journey, Cunomar had learned to gauge the progress of this man’s inebriation. He judged him barely conscious now.

  “Do you think to escape the pain of battle, or to find the courage to fight your own kind?”

  His voice betrayed him. It broke in mid-sentence so that while the beginning was deep and resonant, the end piped high and shrill and far too loud. On the ship they could have heard him, or inland, where the Roman guards were seeking their path. Cunomar felt his father turn sharply and saw Dubornos lay a calming hand on his arm and was grateful.

  Valerius slewed sideways in his saddle to face him. His gaze came eventually to rest on Cunomar’s face.

  “If I did, there will be no escaping now, so you had better hope I have found the courage as you say. Or perhaps the god will stay Marullus’ hand long enough for words to do battle instead of blades. You could pray for that.”

  Valerius spoke quietly, his words barely carrying over the waves. He did not sound drunk, but then Cunomar had seen him finish an entire flagon before this and not yet heard him slur a single word.

  The path widened between one outcrop and the next. Cygfa rode forward to Cunomar’s side, as restraint, perhap
s, or protection. Perversely, Valerius rode up at his other side, coming so close that the legs of the slave-boy riding behind him brushed Cunomar’s thigh. The tremor of fear passed from one to the other, destroying the calm of the sea.

  From the left, Cygfa said, “Do your ghosts warn you now of your death, Roman?”

  Valerius rolled his eyes in mock horror. “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “They don’t speak to me.”

  “No, of course not.” The decurion focused elsewhere on the night around them. “They warn of nothing yet. And my god promises success.”

  “Is continued life all you need to judge success?”

  Valerius laughed aloud. The wine in him made the sound less than controlled. Gathering himself with some difficulty, he said, “You have spent too long on Mona, warrior, listening to the rhetoric of your elders. Yes, at any other time than this, life would be success enough. Only tonight, your life and that of your family must also be preserved for one to judge it victory.”

  “And you think to do that through wine?”

  “I will do it by whatever means are to hand.” The man raised the flask, smiling. Behind it, his eyes burned black with anger and unfathomable pain. Cunomar, seeing it, understood then that Valerius could have drunk any amount of wine in this company and never been less than sober.

  Dusk progressed towards night. The sun carved indigo cracks in the cloud and lined them with fire. Slowly, the refugees came closer to the ship. At a certain point on the headland, Luain mac Calma cupped his hands to his mouth and made the sound of the hunting owl. It was well done, but he might as easily have shouted; only a man born and bred in the city would believe that an owl might hunt over the sea and Cunomar did not believe that Marullus, the centurion who tracked them, was a soft city man.