Dreaming the Hound (14 page)

His nostrils pinched and the skin blotched on his face. Almost silently, he said, ‘Not a gift. Never that. Seneca does not give gifts. I have accepted a loan of ten million sesterces on which I pay one tenth per annum interest. From the rest, I pay taxes and bribes, buy grain in winter and grazing rights in summer, buy gifts for the governor and his wife that they might believe themselves flattered by royalty. I set up trading routes by sea and land and am permitted to tax those who bring us the wine and olives and figs that allow us to appear more Roman.’

On the word, a wall-lamp guttered and went out. It had been filled with sheep’s fat, made liquid with other oils. Lacking Efnfs’ pine resins, the smoke that rose from the wick was black and stank of late-season rams.

The gods pass comment in many ways. ‘Tagos stopped and stared and then, defensively, ‘I do this because these are my people, in my care and I would not see them reduced to the abject servitude of the Trinovantes. Rome respects two things: force of arms, and wealth. If we do not have the first - which manifestly we do not, and never will have, whatever you may think - then we must have the second or become less than cattle.’ He paused a moment, thinking, then turned on his heel. ‘If you are to stay here, there are things you must understand. Watch and learn.’

He walked past her, slamming open three other chests that stood against the wall opposite the bed. Trinkets that had sat atop them fell to the floor and broke or scattered: a small green bowl with a gilded rim, a horse made by a child in rough clay, a long-handled comb with an angular pattern painted in blue on the handle.

Ignoring them, he said, ‘Nero is a child, he has no more control of Rome than I do. But two men rule through him and of those, Seneca is the one who has wealth to spare. He uses it to create greater riches. This’ - he hurled the first of the chests on its side ‘was once full. And this. And this.’

Out of eight chests, three lay on their sides, empty. ‘Tagos stood at the very edge of the lamplight, shaking as if in battle. His empty sleeve had come unpinned and he pushed it back over the stump of his arm. The flesh was purpled where Airmid had sewn it over the stump of the bone. Above, the skin was the colour of any man’s arm, but pale for lack of sunlight.

He said, ‘Breaca, we were not all able to run west and become heroes. Every night for fourteen years I have dreamed that Amminios’ man did not strike my arm, or that I moved away, or that I raised my blade to block his and so was left whole to fight with you at the invasion battle. I have dreamed that we defeated Rome together, or that I was with you when you led the children and the warriors of Mona west to continue the fight. In my dream, we stand together and Rome is pushed back into the Ocean to be swallowed for ever and not return. Then I wake, and I am not whole and the legions have not drowned and my people are dying of hunger, of disease, of the punishment inflicted by the legions who will inflict reprisals on us for the damage done them by tribes they cannot reach in the west.’

She should pity him, and could not. She said, ‘You are saying that you trade now as a Roman, and that I should not despise you for it.’

‘Yes! In Briga’s name, yes! The children must eat, Breaca. This is the reality and you cannot change it. You think you can ride in and raise your standard and the warriors will gather at your

call and, come spring, you can lead them in glorious defeat of Rome. It is not like that, never will be. Live here one winter and you will see why there are no warriors left who could gather to your standard, why all of the people, men and women, are broken: they are too hungry because five-tenths of their corn has been paid in tax and they have lived for days drinking snow-melt so that they might feed the children. Your children will not die this winter because I have taken coin from Seneca and I use it to feed those whose lives depend on my protection. This is my battle and my way to fight it. You will learn it also. If you would teach Graine to lead as befits her blood, this is what you will teach her. There will be no army, Breaca, the Eceni do not have the heart for it. Do you understand that?’

‘No. But I understand that you believe it.’ Breaca rose. She looked at each of the three overturned chests. Not a single coin lay in the bottom of any. She became aware, suddenly, that she had not eaten since daybreak and that her stomach had long since turned in on itself, grinding. ‘What will happen when Seneca calls in his loan and you are unable to repay it?’ she asked.

‘I am not unable to repay it. I have made more than there was here in trade and taxes of my own. It’s not all here and it’s in Eceni coin but silver is silver and he won’t argue.’ He grinned, thinly. ‘But if, by chance, I were to become impoverished and be unable to pay, then, naturally, he is entitled to take goods to the full amount; gold, corn, horses, hounds …’

‘Slaves?’ Cold curled in her chest. Shall I show you, Breaca of the Eceni, what it is for a people to bleed until there is nothing more to give?

Misreading her concern, ‘Tagos said, ‘Of course, slaves. But not members of the royal household. They are careful of that. Those whose claim to royalty relies on the thinnest of blood ties and officially sanctioned incest are strangely respecting of those whose claim is genuine and goes back through uncounted generations. Whatever happens, they will not take you or your children. Even Cygfa who is yours in name only is safe. They will take whomsoever else they feel will fetch a price at market.’

‘You would allow this?’

‘I have no power to stop them, Breaca. I am a king because they choose to call me such. If they wish to name another in my place, I cannot stop them.’

‘And if we cease to be royalty, then our family is no longer safe.’

‘Exactly so.’

It was hard, then, to set aside the vision of a slave pen. Graine’s tears were not of gold, but blood, and they made of her face a battlefield.

A bed lay along one wall, covered in dyed sheep skins and, underneath, a whole horse hide. Breaca sat on the edge of it and stared at the backs of her hands until she could see them clearly through the image of her daughter.

‘Tagos smiled, a little sadly. ‘The Romans don’t want war in the east,’ he said. ‘Your battles in the west have achieved that much. To keep peace, they will not provoke us. To keep our lives, we will not provoke them. It is not something one dreams of, but it is enough.’

He offered her this as if it were a gift, his accolade for what she had been. The strength of it, or the power of the wine, pushed him past the invisible shield that surrounded her. Coming close, he ran his fingers down the length of her arm. Her control of her body was less than that of her mind. The skin of her forearm rose in gooseflesh behind him.

He leaned down and kissed her brow. ‘I do think you should have some wine.’ He poured and set the beaker on the floor beside her. She ignored it.

With his fingers stroking the back of her neck, he said, ‘You have not asked how your family will sleep.’

‘I don’t have to.’

The torches were guttering. One by one their oil failed and they sent spider-threads of smoke to the ceiling. Breaca closed her eyes. It was nearly dawn and the spear wound in her arm ached and she was as tired as if she had been fighting all day, and she wanted water, or ale, not wine.

‘Tagos’ thumb circled over and over on her neck. There was a reasonable chance she was going to be sick, which would be too humiliating. Reality weighed on her after the days of living by the ancestor’s words and he was right, it was not in any way as she had imagined. To ride into battle was far, far easier.

There were things yet to be said, boundaries to be set so that they might both know them.

‘We have an agreement,’ she said, wearily. ‘We should be clear of the terms. You have stated yours: I will be your wife in all things and will support you in your rule of the Eceni. My terms are

equally certain. If my children, or Airmid, or any of those sworn to me is harmed, if either of the women is touched against her will, you will lose me and your hope of rule over the Eceni. Our people may not be prepared to fight, but they are not the sheep you make them out to be and they do not have to accept your rule. The royal line has always been a link between people and the gods. You break that link at your peril.’

‘Obviously.’ ‘Tagos did not like to be patronized. His hand left her neck. She breathed deeply.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘No. One other thing. We will have no children.’

‘What?’ His control broke at last. ‘You have sworn before the elder council—’

‘—to be your wife in all things. I am fully aware of what I have said and what it means. I have not, however, sworn that I was capable of bearing children. I am not, or so Airmid believes. To know the detail, you would have to ask her but I understand that Graine’s birth caused scarring that cannot be mended.’

He stared at her, only half hearing. He was breathing too fast and the pits of his eyes were wide. ‘And is that all?’

‘It is.’

‘Good.’ With that word, they reached the moment she had accepted as the best possible option in a cave on the side of a mountain. It was neither as good nor as appalling as she had expected.

He stood in the last light of the torches and she watched him begin to remove his tunic one-handed. He had a lifetime of practice and was as deft as any whole man. The stump of his arm, revealed, was a mess of scar tissue. He stood very still, awaiting comment. He was not lacking courage; his eyes remained on hers in the silence. She had seen worse on a hundred battlefields and said nothing. Nodding, he shed the undertunic and the belt that held it.

He was so close to what he wanted. He sat on the edge of the bed and his hand moved unbidden to her waist. He kissed her hand and then her arm and then her neck. His voice, muffled by the pulse of her throat, said, ‘I may not have children, but I have my life and I will keep it. Know now that if I am harmed, if I die, if your dreamers, in fact, do not work their hardest to keep me in health and long life, those of my men who have taken Roman names will see to it that the ones you care for most suffer hardest

in the retribution that will fall. Are we clear on that, my wife?’

He used the Roman, uxor, there being no equivalent in any language of any tribe. Twenty years of waiting sank into the word.

‘Quite clear.’

‘Excellent. In that case, we should celebrate, you and I. If you won’t drink wine, there are other ways to seal a bargain. It has been a long time since Caradoc was taken. You must hunger almost as much as I do.’

He was naked and required her to be also. He was not such a child and did his best to be attentive. She lay in the lamp-fouled darkness and thought of Caradoc first, then Airmid and Graine, Cygfa and Cunomar and last, inevitably, because she was home, of Ban.

II. SPRING AD 58.

IX. ‘b; ‘BELLOS? BELLOS, WAKE UP.’ The boy lay still, with his white face crushed into black ‘peat and both arms thrown out, embracing the earth. Valerius knelt at his side and struggled to clear his mind of the night’s dream.

It took longer than it should have done. The dream clung tightly so that, even as he felt the fluttering pulse and lifted the boy’s slack lids, the greater part of Valerius still rode the red mare’s foal in the heart of battle. As Airmid had predicted, the dream-colt was black with a shield and slanting spear in white splashed across its forehead. Grown to adulthood, it carried its rider with all the passion of the Crow-horse, that had been lost to the legions.

For a man whose life had been given to battle, it was a dream to revel in, bittersweet with the urgency of action and the knife-edge of hope that lingered long after waking. Airmid had always been the most careful of dreamers; if only half of her promise came true and the foal grew to be the barest shadow of the Crow-horse, Valerius believed his life would be the richer for it.

That hope seemed less certain now. Pulled unwilling from the clamour and noise of dream battles, Valerius had staggered out into the mild night and across the foaling paddock behind the smithy to find another kind of carnage, less readily resolved.

There, beneath an oak tree, in a mess of wounded turf, the red mare that had been mac Calma’s gift lay stretched flat, shuddering. There was no foal at her side, nor any sign of one emerging, but the honey-salt smell of birth waters was all about, and the mare groaned the deep belly-groan of a mother who has given everything to push out her infant and has failed in the trying.

All this Valerius understood as he crossed the paddock. Coming closer, he had found Bellos lying near her hind feet and the black stain of peat on the white blond of his hair showed where one hoof had caught him squarely and hard behind the left temple.

It was dark and Valerius had brought no flame. He had already lifted the boy’s head and pinched his cheek and spoken his name twice before he noticed the dribble of blood coming from his nose and the other, finer, thread at his ear.

He froze and his mind froze with him.

‘Bellos?’

Valerius smoothed the hair from the boy’s lifeless face, tucking it in behind his ears in a way he would never have dared do if he were awake. Six years in each other’s company had not broken the barrier of formality that had been raised in the first days of their meeting when Valerius had still lived for the legions and Bellos had been the boy whore bought, not out of pity, or love, or even to use, but in the hope that he might keep one of the more persistent ghosts at bay.

The understanding that he had won his freedom for who he was not had damaged Bellos’ pride even in their first days together in Gaul as he had clung to Valerius for safety in the face of the legions and the malign power of the ocean. His growth to adulthood, so clear this last winter, had sharpened, not lessened, the hurt.

For his part, Valerius had never known what to say and so had said nothing. In half a decade, they had not spoken of love, or its lack. Only the red cavalry mare, with her clear care for the boy and none at all for the man, had come to embody the wall between them and opened the wounds again.