Dreaming the Bull (35 page)

“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.

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.

An unsteady hand reached forward to caress Cunomar’s hair. The boy stood rigid, his skin flickering like that of a horse bothered by flies. Caradoc stepped up behind him, granting the comfort of a father’s presence. The sunlight scoured his prison-darkened eyes. The air smelled too heavily of fruit and sweet autumn flowers. With a little time, it became clear that Claudius was the source of the strongest smell, of concentrated roses, and that it covered imperfectly other scents of rosemary and pungent garlic and underneath of old age and dried spittle.

“So clearly yours,” said the emperor wistfully, and this time his eyes held contact a fraction longer, so that soul, fleetingly, could meet warped and pensive soul, could plumb the depths of a fierce, thwarted intellect locked in a marred body. Caradoc felt ice track down his spine and fought not to shudder.

Claudius smiled. “They say your family has been your first priority since their capture,” he said. “And that their concern has been first for you and then for each other. This is, of course, a truly Roman virtue and most commendable. My wife has expressed a desire to meet you and I have allowed it. In fact, I have commanded all of my family to meet you and your son. Together, you are an instruction in what binds a family close in love and in adversity.”

A brass bell decorated with geometric symbols lay on a table close at hand. The emperor rang a trilling peal. Echoing bells rattled on down a corridor and were answered presently by the scuff of footsteps. A youth only a little older than Cunomar ran in with little ceremony although the guards saluted as he passed between them.

Father greeted son stiffly, but gladly. Claudius said,
“This is my son, Britannicus. He is named for the conquest of your country. Your presence here means he will be able to visit your province in safety long before he becomes emperor.”

He cocked his head, the better to judge the impact of his words. Caradoc smiled and let his eyes take in the full length of the child. The boy was flat-footed and small. His wavy mouse-brown hair was not his father’s, nor did his features carry Claudius’ stamp, a fact for which he may well have been grateful. When he grinned at Cunomar, he radiated an innocence and charm his father lacked. He could have been any man’s son. There was nothing to mark him as Claudius’ get.

“A fine child,” said Caradoc. “I trust he will make as fine an emperor.”
If his stepmother does not have him slaughtered to put her own son on the throne.
On Mona, it was not Claudius’ son who was considered most likely to be the next emperor, but his stepson.

Claudius laid his good hand on the child’s arm. There was a pattern to his tremors: they were worse when he was making decisions and stilled afterwards. Reaching for the bell, he rang it again. The violent shaking of his hand steadied as the peals fell to silence. “You must meet the remainder of my family,” he said.

Caradoc, smiling steadily, retrieved his son and brought him to a safe distance.