Then she wrapped her long legs around him, setting free all the hunger she had raised in him. They rolled together on the rough blankets of the bed, until in the outer room the fire sank down to embers, and the oil lamp sputtered and went out.
Afterward they lay entwined, spent, each unwilling to let the other go. Finally Correus sat up and pulled the blanket from under him, drawing it up over them both. Freita sighed and snuggled her head into the hollow of his shoulder. She said, quite distinctly in her careful Latin, “This it is that I trade my freedom for.”
“Heart of my heart, you are free.” Correus drew his hand across her face. “I will draw up the papers tomorrow.”
“No.” Freita propped herself up on one elbow. “No, it doesn’t matter now.” She didn’t add that it hadn’t mattered since she had seen that horrible, haunting vision of him lying blood-covered in a ruined fort. She had realized then that her heart lay where she would not willingly have put it, but it was there all the same, and the rest of her would follow it. But a death-vision is not something to tell a man who goes to fight a war. “No,” she said. “Let it bide until we are gone from here. There will be a new posting for you soon, won’t there? Silvanus says so. The commander of the Eagles here will not like it if you free me, and I do not mind – now.”
“No!” Correus remembered the coming war. It slammed into his mind like a fist. “We’ll do it secretly, but it has to be done.” He rolled off the bed and pulled the curtain back. “There must be something here to write on.”
“Why?” Freita sat up in bed with the blanket clutched around her.
“I may be killed,” he said, rummaging in a storage chest in the main room. “They’d send you back to my family.” He scrabbled among the chest’s contents and found pen and ink.
“Would that be so bad?”
“Yes,” he said shortly. “With manumission papers at least you’d have a fighting chance, depending on how much damage Nyall had done, and what mood they were in. But you’d have a chance. Damn it, there must be a piece of papyrus somewhere!”
“Correus, stop it!” There was something in his taut face that totally unnerved her. “You are not going to be killed,” she said, thinking again of that nightmare vision. She had never had the Sight; please the gods it had not come upon her now. She got out of bed and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Correus, you need witnesses. If you insist, we’ll do it in the morning, but stop making a mess of that chest.”
He scrabbled along the bottom of the chest anyway. She had suddenly become very precious to him, too precious to take a chance with. But there was no papyrus there, not even a wooden tablet, and he began to replace the strewn contents. “Tomorrow,” he said shakily. “Tomorrow. Silvanus and Paulinus. No, Paulinus won’t be here yet. Damn!”
His face was strained, the bones standing out in high relief, and she tugged on his hand to draw him back into the bed. Then he exclaimed:
“Flavius! Yes, Flavius, and he’ll swear… I did my damnedest to give him what he wanted, he can…”
His voice was still shaking, and she pulled him up close against her. She had never seen him like this, and it frightened her, even as his fear for her sounded a small triumphant note at the back of her mind. “Sleep,” she whispered, and stroked his back gently. Eventually his eyes fell closed and his breathing deepened, regular and contented, and he slept, with his face in her hair.
* * *
He awoke restless and still worried, and would not be satisfied until he had found his brother and Silvanus and dragged them out of bed before reveille.
Silvanus came willingly enough when Correus told him what he wanted, and Flavius came grumpily, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The manumission papers were made out and signed four times, one copy for each of them. Correus was taking no chances. Silvanus looked pleased, and Flavius amused, as they signed the papers. Flavius had no high opinion of Freita (“impudent and stubborn” was the kindest remark he had ever made) and Correus suspected that Freita’s views were similarly unflattering. But still, Flavius would swear to the validity of the papers. Maybe more willingly with Correus dead than alive, Correus thought, watching his brother walk away back toward the fort.
The bugle shriek of reveille split the morning air, and Correus pulled Freita to him and kissed her before he made his own way back toward Argentoratum and his appointment with the legate and the legate’s tame German.
Freita looked after him, wistful and content with nine-tenths of her being. The other tenth wondered at Silvanus’s parting comment, made low-voiced to Correus in the doorway: “He’ll cooperate, and if I were you I wouldn’t worry overmuch about the ethics of it. Nyall threw him out at midwinter. He’s more than grateful to be ours now.”
There was something more afoot than a clash of armies, and Correus hadn’t told her. She shrugged her shoulders finally, and picked up her market basket, leaving Julius still asleep after his night’s adventure. There was no reason why Correus should tell her. Later, when he was posted to a place that was not also her homeland, then he would tell her such things.
She prowled the market square, delighted to find spring veal in the butcher’s stall, and bought enough to make a stew. She crossed the square to rummage among the bales in a fabric merchant’s tent. She wanted enough gold thread to work a border on the nearly finished cloak, a domestic occupation to drive the thought of war away. They would have two weeks at least, she thought. Two weeks to make the most of. But the fabric merchant held up his hands in apology. He knew the sort of thread the lady wanted, but he had none. Perhaps with the next shipment.
She was about to retrace her steps when she caught sight of two laden pack ponies, blowing and slobbering greedily in the stone trough at the center of the square. A short, wiry man in hillman’s clothes stood beside them, splashing his face with water. Freita recognized him – Beorn, a northman of no known tribe (outcast, some said) who made his living trading from hold to hold on both sides of the Rhenus. Beorn paid no attention to frontiers, and since he went his own way peaceably, the Romans let him alone. Freita turned and trotted over. You never knew what Beorn might have in his packs; he traded for other goods as often as for silver, and his yearly route took him no one ever quite knew where.
“As it chances, pretty lady,” Beorn said, giving her a smile, “I have just such a thing by me, just waiting for some officer’s lady to come by wanting it.”
In her Roman gown and piled-up hair, it was plain that he didn’t recognize her, and Freita sighed with relief. She would as soon make no explanations. She haggled him down on the price a bit and went home with the gold thread tucked in her basket, feeling pleased with herself. She could give Correus the cloak before the legion marched out. Having something of her by him might bring him back safe again.
It wasn’t until the stew was made and bubbling in an iron stand over the banked-up fire that she wiped her hands on her apron and glanced out the open window to see that it was nearly dusk. If she was going to exercise Aeshma, she would have to be quick about it. She pulled on the old gown that she kept for riding, wincing as her aching muscles protested. She was stiff and sore from last night’s lovemaking, and she wanted to work the knotted muscles loose. Correus would come to her again that night. He hadn’t said so, but she knew he would.
“You aren’t going out now,” Julius said as she put her hand on the door.
“I won’t be gone long.”
“You’ll get into trouble and the centurion will blame me for it,” Julius protested.
She was in too good a mood to fight with him. She took the knife from its rack by the wooden table that served as a cutting board, and slipped it unsheathed through her belt. “I was taking care of myself before you were out of your cradle, little man,” she told him, and was gone out the door before he could protest.
Julius shrugged and sat down by the hearth to mind the stew. He knew a superior force when he met one. Any robber who tangled with that witch would probably get what he deserv
ed.
Freita saddled Aeshma and slipped the bridle on while he danced expectantly about the shed. “Be still, you fool!” She buckled the bridle and pulled the shed door open, and the gray horse trotted out at her side, head lifted to the interesting smells of dusk. She swung herself into the saddle and turned him toward the town and the river road. It was heavily patrolled, especially after dark – a nice safe place for an evening gallop.
Her sore thighs strained as they gripped Aeshma’s wide back, but after half a mile she let him break into a canter, and then a full gallop, on the grass bordering the road. Aeshma snorted and stretched his legs out, bucking a little every now and then out of sheer high spirits, and Freita settled down to hold on, with the cold night wind singing past her head.
She pulled him up after a few miles, as the dusk dropped into true dark, and turned him back toward the fort, pleased to find that her legs no longer ached. It was a starry night, full of the scent of new grass and awakening land, and she rode happily, lost in her own thoughts, until the face of a man she knew leaped up from a pool of light in the fortress gateway with a clarity that made her drag sharply on Aeshma’s reins. The man stood near another face, infinitely familiar, and she swerved Aeshma hard around into the shadows of the deserted market square. Correus’s voice came softly, instantly recognizable in the still night, with another voice, a ghost voice, blown on a ghost wind out of a burning hold. They were too intent on their talk to notice the soft thud of hooves in the dirt beyond them; Freita drew rein and sat shaking in the darkness as the meaning of her chance encounter grew clear.
“We’ll give you an escort as far as our own lines,” Correus said, “but we’ll have to lie well back, and I doubt you’ll see us. If Nyall’s men spot us, you won’t live long enough to tell him your tale.”
“I rode from Nyallshold at midwinter,” the other man said. His voice came to Freita like a cold hand down the back of her neck. “I can ride back again without a nursemaid.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Correus said drily. “Across the Nicer, you’ll be on your own.”
“It wouldn’t hurt if they could manage to chase me across,” the German said. “For the look of it.”
“That can be arranged.”
The German smiled, a surface smile, clear-eyed, like a snake’s. “We understand each other well, then.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Correus said shortly. “We’ll start you off in about four days – these things take time to arrange. In the meantime, keep to yourself. And have a drink on the Emperor.” He fished in his tunic and spun a silver coin into the dirt at the other man’s feet. “Never say Rome doesn’t pay for her work.” He turned back through the gates and the German shrugged and picked up the coin.
He walked purposefully toward the wineshops and other businesses of the night across the empty square, and Freita’s fingers slid along the knife hilt at her belt. He was going to pass right by her. If Aeshma kept still she could kill him… so easily. She knew that bland, smiling face. She had seen it at Jorunnshold, digging away at Nyall Sigmundson’s chieftainship. His name was Ingald, and he had pushed the priest-kind into calling a month’s Dead Sacrifice, until the Romans burned the hold over their heads.
He came closer, and Silvanus’s words came back to her: “Nyall threw him out at midwinter… he’s ours now.” Ours… Correus’s… She could kill him so easily. But what was she now? She also had turned her back on her people. I had no choice, her mind cried out. But this wasn’t war, it was treachery. Ingald was almost upon her, and her hand twitched on her knife, and that awful picture of Correus lying in his own blood rose up before her. She yanked on Aeshma’s reins and spun him around into the darkness, while the German whirled around behind her, his hand on his own knife, peering into the night.
Treachery! her mind shrieked at her as she rode away. You sell your own kind for the love of a man! She slowed Aeshma, her heart pounding, and tried to think. If she turned from her own kind completely, might not her gods turn from her, and take away the one thing she wanted? She bit her lip, half sobbing, torn between two loyalties, and terrified that whatever she did might give truth to those dark visions. She should have listened to Julius and stayed and stirred her pots by the fire; then she would never have seen Ingald’s thief’s face, and Correus’s grim expression as he used him to trap Nyall. But she had seen them, and there was no place to run to. She sat, clutching the horned front-plate of the saddle, while Aeshma fidgeted under her, restless for his stall and his dinner. Slowly, Freita made up her mind. She put her heels to Aeshma’s flanks, turning him from the road home, out toward the clearing just to the west of town, where Beorn the trader was camped. Beorn would want money, but she had a hidden gold ring that she had put in her gown when the Roman soldiers closed in around her at Jorunnshold. And she had never told Correus about it, first because she had thought that it might buy her escape someday, and later because she didn’t want to tell him that. But it would be enough for Beorn, and she could bring it to him in the morning while Julius slept.
The small glow of a banked campfire showed through the night, and she took a deep breath and pushed Aeshma forward. She would do what she could for her people, as long as it had no knife in it. And maybe her gods would understand.
Behind her, another horse trotted by soft-footed in the wet road. The rider drew rein as he caught sight of a pale head bent over the fire beside Beorn’s.
Correus’s German girl, Flavius thought. He shrugged and rode on. If she was running away from his brother now that she was freed, it might be for the best in the long run.
XX Spies and Allies
Hallgerd came down the steps of the hall with an apron full of grain, shooing the birds before her. “Go,” she said firmly. “Back where you belong.” She flung the grain ahead of her into the far end of the timber-fenced yard where she was trying to persuade the fowl to stay. Before she had been wed to Kari and begun to sweep some housekeeping notions into his bachelor hold, they had been practically living in the hall.
The chickens clucked and began to fight for the grain, while a fat duck with a comet’s tail of ducklings behind her quacked importantly and waddled to Hallgerd’s feet, waggling her tail feathers. Hallgerd gave her some grain of her own. It kept her from terrorizing the chickens out of theirs. “Greedy bird,” she said, watching her dabble her beak alternately in the grain and the muddy pond. “I’ll make you into a dinner, see if I don’t.” She wiped her hands on her apron and marched back to the house to stir up the kitchen thralls. Kari would be wanting to eat.
Coming up the hill from the horse barn, Kari watched her affectionately. She was a brisk, busy little person, and he couldn’t think now why he had waited to wed her until she had practically suggested it herself. It had been unsettling at first to have his slovenly, peaceful hold turned upside down and swept out, but a man grew used to lit fires and properly cooked food in a hurry.
Hallgerd was in the kitchen doing something to barley cakes on a griddle at the smoking fire when he came in, and she smiled at him over her shoulder, pulling her sandy blond braids out of the way as she reached across the fire to poke at a pot that hung on a hook at the back of the firepit. The pot steamed appetizingly, and Kari leaned his head over it and sniffed.
Hallgerd shooed him away much as she had shooed the chickens. “It will be ready in a few minutes. Go and wash.” She kissed him, her face flushed from the fire. “Bring the lord something to drink,” she said to the thrall who was scrubbing off the wooden table, “and then you may eat. Rake the cookfire out afterward and clean it,” she added. “It must be a year since it was cleaned.”
The thrall departed, grumbling under his breath, to draw a pitcher of beer from the vat in the storeroom. The new mistress had been ordering things scrubbed, the hold’s thralls included, ever since the lord had brought her home. He hadn’t been so thoroughly washed since he was born. Likely it would give him a cold.
When they had eaten, Hallgerd drew Kari’s arm
through hers. “Come and see what I have been doing.” She led him into the yard behind the main house where a plot of land had been ploughed up and a thrall was setting out young herbs, searched out and dug up from the mountain meadows by Hallgerd herself. A sheet of netting strung on thin poles encircled it, with a second stretched across the top. The duck stood looking wistfully through the mesh at the young greens.
“You’ll set a finer table than the chieftain’s,” Kari said, and Hallgerd looked proud. “You’ve been very busy, child.”
“It is nice, being mistress in my own hold,” Hallgerd said. “And that reminds me—” She led him around the house again and out to where the main gates had been drawn open. Kari’s holding stood on a hillcrest, within a heavy timber palisade that provided shelter and protection for his people when necessary. In peaceable times the hold’s folk occupied the cluster of thatched huts that lay between the foot of the hill and the stream that snaked by beyond. Hallgerd pointed to the two endmost huts. “We had some damage from that last storm,” she said, “and I’ve told them to see to mending it before the rains hit again. Mostly they never think to bother until the water’s pouring in through the roof.” She turned with compressed lips to nod at another hut. “Old Asvald’s been beating his wife again. This time he has nearly broken her ribs.”
“I’ll put a stop to that,” Kari said. “Send someone to fetch him up here before I go out to the cattle.”
Hallgerd nodded. “And it is time to make liniment again. I have a recipe for wound salve that Asuin the priest gave me. I will need some of the women to help.”
The Centurions Page 38