Dreaming the Eagle (31 page)

What she was given was home - a magnificent, understated, perfectly replicated version of home.

The greathouse of the Sun Hound could have been that of the Eceni, had they chosen to build it with the door facing south and yellow hangings on the walls, and to have only the sign of one dreamer carved on the doorposts. Because she needed to find fault, she decided that the carvings of bears were oppressive and oddly inept, as if drawn from the outside by one who feared what he saw, rather than from the inside with the understanding and soul-mingling of the dream. She watched Airmid and saw her note it, and saw her, too, pick through the meal with care, testing and tasting for other evidence of failure. There was none to be found. Everything else was in order, and more than that. The Sun Hound displayed his wealth with restrained good taste, letting the quality and quantity of the fare speak for him. At the end of a good harvest, the Eceni could have prepared a meal of this size for numbers such as this but not in early spring, at the end of the hardest winter in the grandmothers’ memory. They were given oatcakes and honey - honey, in spring - and malted barley and good, fresh ale that had not soured with storage and a whole roasted boar with a bull calf for those who preferred it and salted hams that had not yet dried. There was more meat than she would have liked but it was served as a courtesy and they would have done the same, if they could, had the Sun Hound paid visit to the roundhouse. The only clear difference was the absence of women. Togodubnos’ mother was there, a quiet, watchful woman with the height and dark colouring of her son, and a younger woman who fawned on Amminios, but no others.

They finished on more ale and a story from Heffydd, the dreamer, involving a young hero shipwrecked on a foreign shore, who returned home with new companions. The mariners liked it, particularly the vivid, overblown description of the new ship granted by the overjoyed father. Caradoc sat it out impassively. At the end, he stood up and left the room while the others were still complimenting the singer. Presently, the seamen were invited to leave the circle and join in small clusters to discuss trading with certain of the merchants. Segoventos bloomed visibly and his voice swelled to fill the roof space. Dice and a handful of gaming boards were brought out for those not immediately involved in the negotiations. Breaca turned to find Cunobelin at her elbow.

‘They will be well here for a while. We will visit the ship later when the torpor of the meal has passed. Meanwhile, the gods have held the good weather for us. There is wind, but no rain as yet. Perhaps you would care to visit our trading stalls and workshops? Our people would be grateful to meet you in person.’

‘We would be honoured. Thank you.’ She said it automatically; the formalities of conversation had come more easily as the meal progressed. Glancing round, she counted off those who could be relied upon to accompany her. Macha and Eburovic were nearby, enmeshed in an animated, if vacuous, conversation that allowed them to listen to others. Luain mac Calma was arguing with Heffydd; from the far side of the circle she could see the tension in him. The Trinovantian dreamer was subdued but not overtly angry. Airmid sat with Ban playing knucklebones, neither of them paying attention to the game. Further away, ‘Tagos and Dubornos had been seduced by the gaming boards. Already, ‘Tagos had laid his dagger on the ground at his side as a wager. She considered them, thinking. The Sun Hound grinned. ‘Let them stay. They will lose nothing of worth but their pride. In any case, you are safe here, or if not, two untried warriors will make no difference.’

It was what she had thought, repeated exactly as if she had spoken it aloud. The skin prickled down her spine and the mellow aftertaste of the meal soured in her mouth. She wished she had drunk less ale. The Sun Hound raised a brow. ‘The young people are busy. I think we need make no special exit. Caradoc is outside and the grooms hold your horses, waiting. Unless you would prefer to walk?’

‘The Eceni very rarely prefer to walk,’ she said, tightly. Airmid would have recognized the edge to her smile. ‘If they are ready, we should not keep them waiting.’

They made a small party: her family, including Airmid and Luain, accompanied by Cunobelin and his youngest son. Caradoc had relaxed since the end of the dreamer’s tale. His voice had mellowed and the savage glitter was gone from his smile. Some time in the space between the meeting at the gate and the start of the meal, he had passed the hound whelp into someone’s care and regained his armband. She took care to comment on neither. He rode easily along the path, pointing out the things that were new or different: the layer of ashes strewn across the path to soak up the mud and make it easier underfoot, the line of ancient oaks left behind from the days when the dreamers held sway, the river in the far distance and the flat-bottomed barges that ferried merchants and their wares down to the trading ships moored in the deeper docks to the south. She studied him as they rode, seeking the small signs of danger she had come to know. He had seemed relaxed like this before the river race, and on the morning of the elder council, and neither time had it reflected the reality underneath. He glanced sideways at her, amused, and broke off from his description of barges. ‘Have you ever played the Warrior’s Dance?’

He asked it in Gaulish, for no obvious reason; everyone around them spoke it well and if they were overheard it would not give them privacy. Still, she answered as best she could in the same language. ‘The board game your brothers were playing when we left the greathouse? No. Gunovic plays it but I have never tried. I am told it takes great subtlety.’

‘It can do, although not everyone plays it that way. Togodubnos, for instance, wields his pieces as weapons, marching them down the board like horses running down defeated warriors. Amminios can spend all day playing as if he is moving the pieces for the feel of them in his hand or the beauty of the patterns they make on the squares. One could almost forget he was playing to win.’

‘But he does win?’

‘Of course. Every time. He is unstoppable, like a butcher wreaking slaughter in the killing pens. It is painful to watch. If he loses, it is only to lull his opponent into a greater gamble.’

‘Does he win even against you?’

They rounded a corner and met the wind face on. Caradoc narrowed his eyes against the sting of it, looking out past the workshops to the ruffled ribbon of the northern river. ‘The Ordovices have a saying: “A man gains no honour who plays at killing.”’ He said it without rancour. ‘I have not played with my brother since I won my first spear. Before that, yes, he won against me from the day I was old enough to play until the day I was old enough to put an end to the games.’ He smiled at her, brightly. ‘Competition is heavily encouraged in the court of the Sun Hound,’ he said. ‘Losing is not. My brother does not take well to it.’ He had changed his language, sliding easily into her own tongue and carrying it north to the broadest vowels and most lyrical form - the one least likely to be understood by his father. ‘The one to observe is my sire. He is the master but he does not play with a board. Watch him. It is an instruction in the dance of life.’

‘I will.’

They rode on in silence. The wind blustered in from the side, clearing the thick dregs of ale from her head. The path to the trading stands was straight and lined on both sides by workshops and trading stores. Breaca counted four separate forges, marked by the heat of their fires and the paler colour of their smoke. In between them stood leatherworkers, potters, weavers and brewers, traders of salt and, yes, merchants offering the spices and sauces and olives and wine of which she had been warned. None of them was pressed on her and she was spared the discourtesy of refusing.

They stopped at the forges as they passed. At the first, the smith offered her a dagger with a stone in Eceni blue inlaid on the crosspiece and a dolphin leaping on the pommel, and she accepted. The second remarked on the serpent-spear brooch at her shoulder, which she had made. She would not give it away, but offered to come back and cast one similar in his workshop. The third made much of her torc and, on finding that Eburovic had fashioned it, insisted her father remain at his forge to discuss methods for drawing gold and perhaps to engage in some practical experiment. Cunobelin, who was required to approve the visit, gave his consent without demur. Shortly afterwards, Macha was similarly seduced by a weaver who remarked on the fine stuff of her tunic and then Airmid by a woman bearing a small child whose urgent need for vervain was all too apparent. Luain mac Calma went with her, to help in the healing.

Soon they were four: Breaca and Caradoc, Ban and Cunobelin. None or all of it could have been orchestrated and there was nothing to do but nod and smile and listen as the Sun Hound demonstrated the overwhelming wealth of his kingdom.

The fourth forge was set back from the path on the other side from the rest. A slight, blond boy with astonishing blue eyes stood ready to take the reins of their horses. Cunobelin dismounted and threw him the reins as if he were no more than a hitching-post. To Breaca, he said, ‘This is the mint. We strike our coins here. If you would care to join me inside? I believe you would find it interesting.’

The one to observe is my sire. He is the master but he does not play with a board.

‘Thank you. I would be honoured.’ She slid down from the grey and passed the reins with a nod of thanks to the horse-boy. The mare balked at the strange hand on her bridle and had to be calmed. Cunobelin waited beside her, his hand on her arm. His features were clear and free of guile and she could see how he had won an entire kingdom by charm alone. They were at the door when he turned back to his son.

‘Caratacos? You, too, would find it of interest.’

Caradoc shook his head, smiling. With perfect courtesy, he said, ‘I doubt that, father. I have never been one for the use of coins. They lose their value too easily.’

‘Nevertheless, Heffydd assures me these ones are different.’

‘Heffydd? A man who knows me well.’ His brows arched to his hairline. ‘Nevertheless, in this he is wrong.’

‘I think not. And it would upset him to hear that you think so.’

‘Indeed?’

Breaca had the sense of watching hounds fight for pack precedence, or deer clash horns in the rut, except that, here, the circling and snarling and gouging of turf was done with minor inflections in tone and the dip or rise of a brow. The Sun Hound, it seemed, had won this particular round although she could not have said why. After the briefest of pauses, Caradoc swung his leg forward over the dun colt’s neck and dropped lightly to the ground. Ban moved in to take the colt before the horse-boy could grab the reins.

The Sun Hound ducked under the lintel and led the way into the forge. The interior was dark after the afternoon sun. Breaca let her eyes rest on the warm edges of the fire until she could see and then squinted past it to the corners. A smith stood near the back wall, a featureless shape in the gloom, invisible but for the scorched, firepuckered frame of his apron. The fire itself was whitehot in the centre; the man had been working his bellows and had only recently stopped. A mould stood ready but she could see no crucible of molten metal. The smith stepped forward.

‘Now, my lord?’

‘If you please.’

Grains of gold, ready weighed, were already seated in the mould. She had never seen the process of casting coins, nor believed it useful to learn; true traders knew the value of their goods without the need for gold as intermediary. For the sake of form, and because it was the reason she had been invited, she made a show of studying the tongs and the way the smith angled the bellows to draw the heat of the fire across the tip of the mould. In doing so, she used the time to watch Caradoc and his father and to feel the pressures growing between them. She had not been disarmed and the smith did not have the look of a fighting man. If it came to it, they were two against one, three if she counted Ban, and their horses would fight with them. The smith drew his mould from the fire. She eased a step backward, closer to the door.

‘It is done. Now we must stamp the two faces of each.’

The mould was cooling fast. At a tap, nine discs of shining metal fell out to scorch the workbench. The smith lined them up on his block and moved across swiftly, placing a stamp on each and tamping down with his hammer. He changed stamps for each side, creating different faces. The metal glowed, hotly. Wood smoke added to the drifting threads of burned metal so that she felt more at home than she had done in days. It was not a safe sensation. Breaca focused on the fire and was glad of the hiss and fizzle of steam as he doused his work.

‘They are complete, my lord.’ The smith stood back, moulding to the shadows. Nine parts of the sun flared on his workbench.

They were coins, nothing more. Breaca had seen a few; Dubornos had an armband with one set in the face of it. The horse worked on its surface was childlike and she had not paid it great attention. These, however, were more weapons than coins. Cunobelin and his son leaned over to look, each affecting more interest in the gold than in the other.

The smith had expected more than silence. ‘It may be difficult to see them clearly,’ he said. ‘Here, let me set the torches.’ Light flared in the darkness. The smith was a thinner man than she had realized and more nervous. The acid bite of his sweat sharpened the air.

‘Am I right in thinking they are not all the same?’ Caradoc made it such a question as a man might ask his friends on seeing a strange flower bloom at dusk - pointless, but polite.

The question was not for the smith but the man was too nervous to notice. ‘If my lord please, there are three different designs, as commanded by my lord your father.’

Caradoc said, ‘Three?’ rather sharply and the smith knew he had overstepped the mark. Cunobelin sighed.

‘Thank you, craftsman. You may go.’

The smith left, hurriedly. He did not look like a man whose worst hurdle was behind him. He was not, however, Breaca’s greatest concern. Caradoc was leaning back on the forging block by the workbench, his legs crossed at the ankles and his thumbs hooked in his belt. ‘Why three?’ he asked. ‘I thought all lands were one land and all coins one coin.’