Hadrian's wall (27 page)

This time Valeria knew the way. Time had allowed her to associate landmarks with the daily path of the sun. She knew which direction must lead to the Wall.

After slipping out of Tiranen before dawn, she saddled her mare in the valley below and started south in sorrow, blinking back tears. The barbarians couldn't win, she knew; Rome was too strong. Arden was reckless to conspire with Galba. So now she must lose the only man she'd ever truly loved in order to save him, by warning the Romans of the attack so it could never happen. She'd ride back to the Wall. Back to her husband. Back to a lifetime of regret, as Galba had once warned her.

The gods were cruel, and Savia's new god seemed just as indifferent to her prayers as the old ones.

To avoid pursuit she followed high ridges and empty moors, riding all that lonely day and on through the lonelier night. This time she'd had the sense to bring proper clothing and food, including oats for her mount, but anxiety and the lack of rest exacted a mounting toll. The landscape was gray and cheerless, the wind sharp, the heather brown. Once she heard the distant howl of wolves.

Always she turned to look for pursuit. The tension slowly drained her.

Near the second morning she restlessly snatched two hours sleep in a grove of barren birch, wrapped in her cloak against the cold. She woke to a day cloudy and still, without sun or shadow, and had to use her own rough sense of geography to go on. Her months among the Celts had given knowledge enough that she was able to keep the Highlands at her back and retain a rough sense of direction, but she dared not use road or trail. Her meandering course added many miles.

In the afternoon of the second day it began to snow lightly, small flakes kissing the cheeks where her tears had been. She was too weary to be excited about weather she'd once dreamed of seeing. The snow was wet, soaking her cloak, and made it hard to see. Valeria noticed dully that her horse left a trail of tracks in the snow as it padded across the moors, helping any pursuers, but that when night fell again and the snow stopped, the thin coverlet also brightened the gloom and made it easier to find her way. It was thus both curse and blessing. Mostly, though, the snow simply made her feel colder and lonelier than ever. She felt lost between two worlds.

As she rode south and the number of farmsteads thickened, she'd sometimes hear the barking of dogs or the faint call of human voices, rising from a hollow and echoing across the moors. She'd wearily and carefully veer away. The detours might force her to drive through a thicket or circle a bog or climb an otherwise unnecessary hill, devouring time, but she couldn't risk capture. Finally Valeria would be alone on empty moorland again, making better progress, with the cold north wind at her back and endless rolling hills before her. She was sore to the core of her bones, her rump and thighs blistered, reeling in the saddle from exhaustion. Still she pushed on.

On the morning of the third day the dawn broke on a cold sky of pale blue studded with clouds. At long last, the pale line of the Wall! How endless it looked. It crowned the crest of Britannia's boundary like a great white worm, perched atop an escarpment here, plugging a narrow ravine there. How could the Celts hope to prevail against a civilization capable of building such a thing? How could Rome muster enough soldiers to adequately defend it? She saw legionary pennants flying from each milecastle where a contubernium of soldiers would live and stand guard: isolated, bored, quarreling, gambling, and dreaming. The sight gave her relief and disquiet.

How would Marcus receive her?

How would she respond to him?

She'd encountered the Wall at a place she was unfamiliar with.

Rolling, windswept hills led down to a wet valley of small lakes and bogs. Dark volcanic cliffs on the far side of the marshes were fortified at their top by the stone barrier, making this a place impossible to attack or even approach. What a view the clifftop must have! Had the barrier's builders stood there once, proudly imagining the line they were about to impose upon the earth? Guessing in her fog of exhaustion that Petrianis must lie to the west, she rode slowly in that direction, paralleling the fortification. The muscles of her horse were shuddering.

"Just to the Wall," she whispered, "and then you'll have feed and shelter. Just to the Wall, and then you'll be a Roman horse. Then it will be over."

After two miles the ground in front of the Wall rose out of marsh and grew firmer. She picked her way toward a milecastle, its base marked by a gate. It looked uninhabited. No helmeted heads watched her. No trumpets of recognition rang out.

Up close, the barrier seemed even more impregnable. Its V-shaped ditch exaggerated the effective height of the parapet, and all brush and trees had been chopped away for four hundred paces, the distance of a ballista shot. Even a Roman like herself felt naked and vulnerable when crossing that final stretch of ground. She felt watched, even though she could see no one.

There was a wisp of smoke from a cooking fire rising from behind the crenellations of the milecastle, but still she saw no sentry. They must be huddled inside because of cold. The absence of any visible soldiers made it seem as if the barrier was patrolled by ghosts, but no, that was Samhain, and this was the frontier of Rome: a place of stone and discipline and crisp reality.

It was simply early.

"Is anyone here?" she shouted across the ditch and its bridging causeway.

No answer. She was salivating at the scent of their breakfast.

Valeria got down from the mare, the horse sighing in gratitude. Wearily, she took out the spear she'd slipped into a holster at the rear of the saddle. It was the spear that Hool had given her, the one she'd used to kill the boar. The weapon had been presented to her in honor, and she wasn't about to leave it behind at Tiranen; it was her reminder of that vibrant, lusty, rough-textured, rank, colorful, and communal world, now left behind. She hefted the spear experimentally, her arms having gained a surprising and unaccustomed strength, and aimed at the gray and pitted oaken gate. Then she threw.

It thudded home smartly, the shaft quivering after it stuck, its knock booming inside the milecastle. "Hallo! Open this gate!"

The hurled weapon finally brought oaths and a rattle of footsteps. "Who's there?" someone shouted angrily. She looked up. A Roman infantryman was leaning over the parapet. "This gate is closed to passage, barbarian!" he said in Latin-accented Celtic. "Go down to Aesica if you want through! We're having breakfast!"

"Please! I'm Valeria of the House of Valens, daughter of a Roman senator and wife of the commander of the Petriana cavalry! I'm too exhausted to go anywhere! I've just escaped from the Caledonii!"

The man looked bewildered. "You're a woman?"

She realized what she must look like: Celtic trousers and mud-stained boots, her hair tucked beneath a woolen cap, her cloak hiding any hint of figure. She wore a raw tapestry of stains and spatters and bits of burr and leaf. She'd just hurled a spear.

"I'm a pig after riding two nights and three days, but yes, underneath all this I'm a daughter of Rome! Please open, before I faint!"

He shouted orders, and she heard the pounding of hobnailed infantry boots. The gate was unbolted and swung inward, creaking from disuse. She stepped into the milecastle archway, her horse pushing anxiously in behind her in hopes of food. Beyond was a small courtyard and barracks building where the soldiers slept, with a second gate on the far side. These entrances were traps. Anyone charging through the first gate could be blocked by the second and killed by Roman soldiers firing down from parapets on all four sides.

The barbarians stood no chance without Galba.

"Are you really the lady Valeria?" a decurion asked. This woman looked so wretched. Her face was filthy, her eyes red from lack of sleep and hopelessness, her hair like string. She looked haunted.

"I've come to warn of an attack on the Wall," she whispered. Then she collapsed.

Valeria had struck Hadrian's Wall ten miles east of the fort of the Petriana. She was revived with cider and put to bed over her own exhausted protests, clearly in no condition to push on. Signal flags sent a message to her husband while she slumbered, and before long an answering communication came back: Bring her to me. In early afternoon she was roused and taken to a chariot. She stood in the vehicle numbly, her clothes still filthy, her hair a tangle, her anxiety dulled by emotional depletion, her finger barren of any ring. She gripped the chariot rim tightly.

"Are you all right?" the driver asked doubtfully.

"Just take me home."

The driver cracked his whip, and they jolted forward along the military road, swiftly picking up speed. The wind helped revive her. Tower after tower and milecastle after milecastle flashed by. They dipped down into gullies and up onto panoramic bluffs. After an hour they came down into the river valley behind Petrianis, giving her the same view she'd seen on first arrival. They passed the house of Falco and Lucinda, where she'd been married, crossed the river, and clattered up the winding lane that led through the clinging village. Their route brought back a flood of memories and even more emotional confusion. They rode through the same southern gate she'd first ridden through on her wedding night-once more standing in a chariot, once more uncertain of her husband. It was as if her life had become a wheel, repeating itself. A sentry trumpeted an alert, and then they were in the paved courtyard of the fortress, men relaying shouts, the chariot team snorting and pawing, horses in the stables whinnying in reply. The familiar smell of charcoal fires, stables, fish oil, and olives washed over her.

She was back.

She realized she'd forgotten Hool's spear.

It was almost evening. Marcus was like a statue on the steps of their house, making no move to greet her but waiting instead for his wife to come to him. What must he think? She got wearily down from the vehicle and walked toward him stiffly, feeling the eyes of the sentries upon her. None gave her greeting. None offered help. Then she stood two steps down from her husband and looked up, their positions ensuring that he towered over her. His assumption of male authority, apparent in his bearing and stance, took her by surprise. It was an unquestioned superiority that Arden had never pretended to, even when she was simply a captive. What a change of worlds!

"I've come back, Marcus." She waited, shivering, for an embrace.

"You're dressed like a man." It was not a question.

"For riding."

"You're dressed like a barbarian."

"I rode three days and nights to get here."

"So I've been told. Well." He looked away as if it made him uneasy to meet her eye. Was he embarrassed by her return? Angry at her absence? "I didn't even know you were alive." His tone was remote.

She took a breath and said what she'd rehearsed. "I've escaped to warn you of approaching war. If you act quickly, you can stop it. Even as we speak the tribes are gathering."

"Escaped from where?"

"From the hill fort of Arden Caratacus, the man who told us about the druids in the grove. Everyone's playing a double game, husband, and the Petriana is in peril."

"Everyone?" His mouth twisted. "I'd have thought better, until I was posted here."

And then, as if conceding her despair, he reached out a hand for her to finally, gratefully, take. Perhaps his hesitation was his habitual shyness. Marcus was quiet, she remembered, and undemonstrative. So different from the Celts! So different from Arden. "Come inside, woman, to bathe and eat and tell me what you know."

The warmth of the house enveloped her like a familiar blanket, and suddenly she had a rush of longing for the Roman baths and for everything that Rome stood for. The security! The stability! The predictability! She longed to surrender to order. The furniture and architecture was a reminder of where she'd come from and where she truly belonged. Her sudden nostalgia for the empire caught her by surprise. It was a dizzying attraction, leaving her more confused than ever.

With which man did she truly belong?

Which side of the Wall was native to her heart?

Marcus looked at her clothes with distaste. "Go, discard that filth and wash. I've ordered supper from Marta. There we'll discuss this adventure of yours."

"You need to alert the garrison now! Send a message to the duke now!"

"The men are already alerted. Wash first, it will help calm you. There's time enough for you to become presentable while the slaves make our meal."

"Marcus, you don't understand-"

"I do understand, wife. I understand I want you out of those rags and back in the proper dress of a Roman matron. So go, now!" It was an order.

She went to the baths at the rear of the house without calling for a slave. Their help seemed curiously superfluous. Her clothes, damp with sweat and snow, were peeled off and cast in a corner to corral their smell. Something caught at her neck, and she realized she still had the boar tusks. What must Marcus think? Adorned like a savage! He probably believed barbarians didn't wash at all and that she'd been dirty for half a year. No wonder he was remote. She gratefully but briskly bathed, not lingering as she'd have liked. With no maidservant, she had nobody to help with makeup and no time. Her hair was roughly tied back with a circlet of gold, and the stola she chose was a warm woolen one without style or seduction. The last thing she felt like doing was sharing her husband's bed! A mere half hour after she'd left Marcus, she was back and eating, once more famished by her adventures.

You'll have a bottom like Savia, she scolded herself. And yet her exploits just gave her more muscle. She supposed her husband would not entirely approve of her new fitness. It was unwomanly.

Marcus watched silently as she ate, chewing his own food more absently. It was as if he were trying to decide something about her.

The continued remoteness of his gaze, even more pronounced than she remembered, made her uneasy. Why was he so distant? "Marcus, the Celts are gathering against you," she tried again.