by E. Knight
One good thing happened that day: although the little mouse looked paler than ever when I saw her lying beside the fire, she had survived whatever potion they tipped into her. The invader growing inside her had not.
Andecarus, too, survived. But his foster brother was not exposed as a vicious brute. Instead, morning brought the news that Andecarus was to be taken before the queen and the elders and tried for treason.
It was always gloomy in the Great Hall, even when the doors were open, and this morning they were shut and guarded. I only got in by telling the guards I was wanted as a witness in Andecarus’ trial. Inside, by the light of a thin fire—it was good that the days would soon be warming into spring because there was almost no wood left—I saw the queen sitting tall in the carved chair, surrounded by the soft shapes of furs, and on her neck the golden torc I had thought was stolen by the Romans, and which must have been safely hidden, after all. Around her, the elders’ faces were pale and serious. Duro looked as if he had been carved out of ice. Verico and his pals were standing to one side in front of the wall hangings. At first, I could not make out Andecarus. Then I realized he was the shape on the floor. They were going to kill him if I did not speak.
They were going to kill me if I did.
Knowing that you will be in the next world very soon makes you surprisingly bold, even if you dread the pain of the journey. I had never known what it was to be free, but I felt it as I stepped over Andecarus’ body and stood facing the queen across the fire. I was not afraid now. Not of Verico, not even of the—well, perhaps of the Romans. But I was no longer afraid of That Woman. She had punished my mother for my father’s lust, she had kept me in slavery to my sisters, and she had brought us to the brink of starvation and the point where we were killing each other instead of the Romans. I would no longer do her bidding. She saw it in my eyes as I stood before her and declared, “Andecarus is innocent. The one who warned the spy was me.”
Boldness does not thrive in the cold and dark. That night, I shivered in the empty storehouse, feeling for the first time the hated weight of a slave collar around my neck. I tried not to think about what had happened to my sisters the last time I lay cowering on this floor, nor about how the queen was going to have me killed. I would be an example to everyone, like the food thieves executed in the woods, but I could not expect the mercy of a swift sword. Betrayal was much worse than theft.
Even my little flash of courage was nothing to boast of. I would have been found out anyway. My elder sister would have told her mother that I had been eavesdropping in the warriors’ house. If they asked Eisu’s driver, he would say I had been to visit his master. Duro, doing his best to save his son, would say that Andecarus had not been there when the spy was discussed. Confessing was not a brave act. It was just walking forward into the approaching storm.
When faint gray began to show around the outline of the door, I felt the insides of my empty belly shrivel even smaller. I closed my eyes tight shut, but I could still hear the birds singing in the new day. Then came the rattle of the latch and rough hands dragging me up from the straw.
She was sitting in the carved chair again, but the elders were gone. The space where Andecarus had been lying was empty. I stood before her, my head bowed, my neck clamped in the iron collar that was a mocking echo of her golden torc.
“Daughter of Prasutagus.”
My head jerked up. She had never called me that that before.
“I knew from before you were born that you would cause trouble.”
Her eyes glittered in the firelight. I did not lower my gaze. I had not asked to be born.
“I tried to have your mother sent away, but my husband the king did not like to make harsh decisions.”
My father had insisted I should be brought up at the Great Hall. He could not have known how much easier life would have been for all three of his daughters if we had been ordinary people rather than the children of a king.
“And now one of our best young men lies injured. Because of you.”
I told her I was sorry for what had happened to Andecarus. It was true.
“What shall I do with you?”
I swallowed. There was no good answer to that question.
“I have spent much time thinking about what sort of punishment you deserve.”
So had I. I doubted I had enjoyed it as much as she had. Hide away inside yourself until it’s over. It feels like it will never end, but it does.
“So,” she said, shifting in the chair as if she were tired and stiff, “you have a choice.”
What will it be like in the next world? Will I—“What?”
“A choice,” she repeated. “You can swear loyalty to me in front of the gods and make it your task to tend the man who was falsely accused of your treachery. If he dies, you die. If he lives, you will have your freedom when he returns to the ranks of our warriors.”
Freedom? Had she really said—
“Or you can die this morning and join your mother in the next world. Out of respect for your father, and for no other reason, I will tell my men to make it swift.” She sat back in the chair. “It makes no difference to me which you choose.”
Freedom?
“One breath of betrayal and you will be dead either way.”
I swallowed. I was having trouble standing upright.
“So, Ria, daughter of Prasutagus. Make your choice.”
I hated the slave collar, and I hated the laundry, and I hated having to sit spooning broth into the unshaven and understandably not-very-grateful Andecarus, but it was better than being dead with my head on a pole.
Nobody was speaking to me. Apart from Andecarus, who babbled in his sleep, and to my surprise, my younger sister. She came in one sunny morning carrying a bowl of broth from the kitchen and announced, “My sister says I’m not allowed to talk to you, Ria.”
“Thank you, mistress.” I took the bowl of broth and blew on it. “I am glad to see you looking better.” In truth, she did not look a great deal better. She might be up and about again, but she still had her mouse-like scuttle, and her eyes were shadowed and unsmiling. She jumped at the smallest noises and avoided almost everyone she met.
Except me, it seemed. She seemed to be worried about me. “People are saying neither you nor Andecarus can be trusted.”
“I have sworn to follow the queen, mistress.”
She peered at Andecarus. “Poor man. Is he very ill?” Keena was more interested in the healer's arts than the warrior's, and I was glad to see a flare of her old self as she looked over Andecarus' injuries.
“The healers say he was lucky nothing was broken, but he was hit on the head and bruised all over, and his knee is badly wrenched.”
“Luci from the cooking-house told me that the cook says you and Andecarus are two traitors who deserve each other.”
I smiled. “The cook will never have any secrets while Luci is around.”
Keena put a hand on my arm. “Was it really all your fault, Ria?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“You must feel very bad when you see him like that.”
“Yes. I am trying to make amends by nursing him.”
Andecarus stirred. Even a little motion like that made Keena jump to her feet. “I have to go now.”
I said, “I’ll tell him you were here.”
“I told my sister she should come and see him, but she won’t.” Keena shook her head. “She doesn't trust anyone who deals with the Romans.”
It seemed unfair, but I never did understand my older sister.
I was looking at my patient and wondering whether to wake him while the food was hot and whether I could steal some by dipping one finger in to test the warmth when Andecarus said,
“Why does the cook think I’m a traitor?”
I noticed he did not mention Princess Sorcha. “You were awake?”
“Answer the question.”
“You’re an Iceni who speaks Lat
in in your sleep,” I told him. “That’s enough.”
His hand went to the swollen side of his jaw. “So it would seem.”
I said, “I am truly sorry. I did not know Verico would blame you.”
He winced, trying to ease himself up in the bed. I lifted his head and moved the pillow.
When he was settled, he said, “What did I say I in my sleep?”
“I don’t know.” And then, without thinking, “Was Eisu really a spy?”
“Probably,” he said and opened his mouth for the spoon.
Probably.
I spent a long time wondering whether probably made it better or worse. The gray pony I had last seen on the long reins was in amongst the new horses grazing in the paddock. I wondered where Eisu was now, and whether, if he was still alive, his life had been worth what had happened to Andecarus.
You do a lot of wondering when hardly anybody will talk to you. I wondered if I would ever get my freedom, and if I did, where I would go and whether anybody would want me. I wondered why the queen had shown me mercy. Wondered if perhaps I had been wrong about her. Wondered whether she was right when she said that my father did not like to make harsh decisions. He had tried to pacify the Romans, putting up with their arrogance and their interference, and look how it had ended. He would never have had that hungry boy and his father put to death for stealing oats. And perhaps the stealing would have carried on until some people were fat and a whole lot more were dead from starvation. Maybe, if you looked through the eyes of our queen, the world was a very different place from the one you thought you understood.
Within a couple of weeks, quite a few people had started talking to me again, if only to get the right clothes back from the washing. If they suspected me of muddling them on purpose, they couldn’t prove it. In any case, most of them had more important things on their minds. I was surely not the only one who dreamed of food and woke hungry and disappointed. As we tightened our belts and dreamed of the sweet fruit that would one day come from the early spring blossoms, the regular sight of well-fed Roman soldiers stung like an insult.
The princesses were both looking stronger now, and although the queen was still pale, I was sure that was more from her travels after dark than from the wounds of the flogging.
No one ever talked about where she went at night with Duro and her other advisors or what they did when they got there. I guessed they took paths through thick woods and across the wetlands, where a horse and rider who strayed off the path could sink without trace, and where the Romans only dared venture in daylight. The queen was never gone for long, but Duro and some of the other elders disappeared for days. Then suddenly they would be back, as if they had never been away.
Every sunrise, the sounds of chanting rose louder from the woods, and every day more merchants and messengers came to the Great Hall. Even the Romans couldn’t fail to notice.
They spoke about it to Andecarus when the queen sent him to ask whether we would be allowed to hold the spring gatherings this year. He told the Romans we were chanting prayers for the food to last out and that travel was easier for the traders now that the weather had improved. Besides, he said, if you will keep building roads, you must expect people to use them.
I know this because not long after he got back, he came and stood in the steamy air around the linen tub and told me. I wasn’t sure why. At first, I thought it was because he was proud of his reply. Then I wondered whether he was not sure he had given the right answer, and he was waiting for me to say that he had done well. Then I saw how silly that was: a warrior asking the opinion of a slave. If he wanted an opinion, he would have gone to his father or maybe to the queen. I decided it was because he was worried, and he needed to tell somebody who didn’t matter and wouldn’t pass it on.
So I spoke of things slaves are allowed to talk about and said, “How is your knee?” I was sure he no longer needed the support of the stick, and it was just a good excuse to keep away from the other warriors.
He said, “Painful.”
“Really?” I carried on swishing the linens around with a long wooden spoon. “Did the queen tell you that when it is healed and you join the warriors again, I will have my freedom?”
He looked at me as if I had promised him a honeycomb and handed him a wasp’s nest.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “I shan’t tell them.”
“Tell them what?”
“That your knee is fine.”
“No, it isn't—”
“Really?” I raised my eyebrows. “Then you need to limp all the time, not just when you think people are looking.”
He grinned. “It’s not entirely true that you can’t be trusted, is it?”
I banged the spoon on the side of the cauldron. “It is mostly,” I admitted. “But I’m trying to improve. Why don't you want to go back to the warriors?” I wished he would. I wanted my freedom, even though I was not sure what I would do with it. Not laundry, for certain. Perhaps I would learn to weave or grow vegetables or find a husband—or all three. Perhaps Verico would finally get the message to go away.
“The warriors all want vengeance against Rome,” Andecarus said. “They don't understand what it will mean. Nobody bloody listens. I keep telling them the Romans aren’t fools. They’re mounting extra patrols. This game can’t go on much longer.”
“No,” I said, thinking of the queen's night travels and the hidden weapons and all the unexplained visitors. “It can't.”
Andecarus studied me. “At least somebody around here has their feet on the ground.”
I much preferred his company to that of his foster brother, but now I wished he would either go away or talk about something else. You never knew who might be listening, and the queen was a woman who kept her word. She had offered me freedom. She had threatened me with execution for the least breath of betrayal.
She had also promised her people the vengeance Andecarus dreaded.
Some mornings, I watched the Romans tramp past on their patrols, and I marveled at their confidence—they seemed to have no idea how much danger they were in. Then another day, I would catch one of our warriors picking his nose, and I felt a jolt of terror about what was going to happen to all of us when we were caught.
With ten days to go, the Roman prefect decided that groups of no more than thirty might be allowed to meet for the spring gathering as long as things remained peaceful beforehand. How they ever imagined they could control the numbers, I don’t know. They never had the chance to try.
I dreamed I heard chariots in the night: the creak of harness and the stamp and shuffle of impatient ponies. The rumble of iron wheel rims on cobble gradually fading into—
A sudden rush of cold as the blanket was whipped away, and a voice cried, “Up!” and then groans of complaint and someone saying, “It’s still dark.”
“Up!” The slap of a hand on flesh. “Work to do!”
There was always work to do, but not like this. As I groped about for my boots, I heard the scrape and swish of bedding being dragged across the floor. People were moving beds and making space as if we were expecting to be overwhelmed with guests, but the ripping of old linen into bandages told a different story. So did the position of a heavy table near the light of the door and the sight of the healer sitting on it, sharpening his surgical knives.
Someone had built up the fire from the embers, and my younger sister was sitting beside it, rolling bandages along her knee. There was a bowl of what looked like porridge uneaten beside her, but when I urged her to try it, she said she wasn’t hungry. Princess Sorcha and the queen were nowhere to be seen.
After all the activity in the house, the yard was strangely silent. The only men of the tribe I could see were two sentries standing lookout on the bank above the gates, their oval shields stark against the dawn sky. I squinted into the gray light, but no matter how hard I looked and listened, there were no men clumping about the yard as they usually did. The ponies really we
re gone, just as I had heard in my sleep, and as I looked again at the two men above the gates, I saw the lines of forbidden swords at their sides.
I felt oddly calm. Maybe others felt the same; we barely spoke as we cleared space to lay out the wounded warriors who were clearly expected. Whatever fate awaited us, we were powerless to do anything about it.
Well, almost.
“Buckets,” said the slave-master, grabbing my wrist and beckoning two more slaves as he led us outside. I gazed up into what was turning into a bright and clear morning.
“Every bucket you can find,” he said, and I guessed he had only just remembered this part of his instructions. “Tip out whatever’s in them unless it’s water.” He indicated the porch of the Great Hall. “I want this barrel filled and at least eight full buckets of water along here, but not where somebody’s going to fall over them. Then four outside each of the smaller houses. Quickly.”
We hurried across the courtyard from the cooking-house, empty buckets swinging in each hand. Usually at this hour the gates were open, but today one of the lookouts on the bank above had to signal to the two below to lift the bar.
As one gate swung open, I gazed up into cloudless blue. Somewhere under that sky, our people were killing or being killed. Our queen. My older sister, too—the thought of a sword piercing that perfect pale skin made me shudder. Duro and Verico and—no, there was Andecarus, still supposedly only fit to drag the gate open—but so many of our people were out there somewhere, fighting for their lives. Fighting for us. And if things went as they had the last time our warriors took on the Romans . . .
My calm did not last. As the families from the houses outside the royal enclosure began to flock in for protection, I wanted to tell the slave-master that it was useless to fetch water. What was the point of sluicing the thatch if we couldn’t defend the banks around us? We would all be trapped inside the houses, choking on the smoke and—