Dreaming the Bull (47 page)

They were weapons Dubornos had no right to use, and he did so shamelessly. Caradoc stared down at his feeding son. From the bed, Cwmfen said, “He’s right. You have to
go. You and the children.” She was a warrior; her voice never wavered. That Agrippina would kill both her and the infant was obvious to them all.

The babe squirmed and was changed to the other breast. In the streets outside, a hound barked and was kicked to silence. A legionary coughed and his armour rattled. Caradoc knelt by the bed, staring at a world none of them could see. Cunomar set his fingers to his brow as he had seen his mother do before battle and prayed to Briga and Nemain and the great, vast god of the ocean that his father might, this one last time, set aside his pride and let Dubornos have his way.

The ringed scar left by the shackles at Caradoc’s neck wavered in the fey light, pulsing to the slow and steady rhythm of his heart. Without doubt, Cygfa got her courage from her father. Cunomar kept his gaze on his father’s face, offering silent support. He brought his mother to mind as he had not done in two years and sent the essence of her into the room to call him.

When Caradoc raised his eyes, they fell first on his new son and then on Cunomar who saw the full measure of pain and unbearable burdens. The voice he heard was the one his father used in council but only rarely, announcing the dishonourable death of a warrior. “I rode away from battle once leaving others to die in my place,” Caradoc said. “I do not believe the gods would ask it of me again. We go together or not at all.”

Cunomar choked and did his best to keep it silent.

After a space that lasted for ever, Dubornos said, “Then we stay. Cwmfen can’t ride.”

“But she might travel if we find her a litter. Is that not
so?” Caradoc turned aside to Philonikos who was standing apart, doing his best not to be included. Pressed into a response, the lad gave a half-hearted nod.

“Good.” Caradoc stood. He had more certainty then than Cunomar had seen at any time since the day on the plain under the burning sun when he had faced down the emperor. Cunomar thought he might break with pride until he heard the next words his father said.

“Dubornos will ride ahead with Cygfa and catch the ship. They can carry the news that we’re coming. The rest of us will travel slowly, at whatever pace Philonikos allows, and if we reach the coast late we’ll find another ship, or wait until spring. The fighting season is over. Mona will live without us another half year and if the dreamers know we are coming, that will be enough.”

Dubornos and Cygfa,
the two warriors, who could ride and fight. Cunomar heard the names and his breath clogged his throat. His mind screamed, an incoherent welter of pain without words behind it.

Dubornos, friend for ever, heard him and shook his head, saying, “The ship can carry the message, but not us. You said it: we go together or not at all. I will not sail to Mona without you.”

So then, whether it was safe or not, the mettle of each man was tested and found equal by the other. The hush of the room held them long enough for this last confrontation, for the seeking of weaknesses and the acknowledgement, at last, that they did not exist.

Caradoc broke away first. Rising, he gave his son to Cwmfen and kissed her. To Cunomar and Cygfa, he said, “Start packing. You will need travelling clothes, gold and
a knife each, nothing else.” To the physician’s apprentice, who stared as if his ears had lied, he said, “Philonikos, bring what you need to care for Cwmfen on the journey. If Xenophon sent you now, he meant you to come with us at least to Gaul. He values your life and safety as much as ours. If he is in danger, he would want to know you were safe.”

It was not a request but a command, given by one with long experience of leadership. Philonikos opened his mouth and shut it again. In eighteen months of service in the palace, he had learned when not to argue.

The fire began as they packed. Smoke leaked through the floorboards, giving form to the lamplight. In the next apartment, the fat Latin woman howled in alarm and was echoed by others on either side and across the street. The guards posted outside were already helping to evacuate the building. A detachment crashed upstairs, passing in single file up the narrow space. They came burdened, their footfalls weightily unbalanced as if by firewood or weapons or both. It would not be the first time; everyone knew someone who had died at Claudius’ command and others who had succumbed to fires in the ill-protected tenements.

Cunomar was carrying his father’s pack to the front room when the soldiers reached the door.

“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.”

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 their 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.