Dreaming the Bull Read online

  He said, “I have no brother, as you well know. My sisters are both dead at your hand.”

  Valerius sighed, pointedly. “Warrior, are you tired of life?”

  The singer held his enemy’s gaze and found, surprisingly, that he did not flinch. “Would you like to return my father’s blade and see which of us wishes most to die?”

  The decurion smiled. Irony tainted a genuine humour. With studied courtesy he said, “Thank you, but no. Later, perhaps, but not today. I have particularly precise orders and they do not permit the indulgence of killing Caradoc’s relatives.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Dubornos, will you listen and try to understand? I know exactly who and what you are; that is not in question. You should know that if we capture a warrior of the enemy, he, or she, will be passed to Scapula’s inquisitors, who travel with him for just this eventuality. You may not have seen the results of their work but you should take my word for it that anyone so questioned wishes for death long before the sun sets on the first day—and there are many days. The order extends to every living captive with the sole exception of those who are direct kin of the rebel leaders. These are to be transported unharmed to Rome to await the emperor’s pleasure. So, I say again that here and now we have taken Caradoc’s brother, his wife and his two children. If you wish to deny this, I won’t stop you; your life is yours to prolong as you wish. I would suggest you do not extend the same discourtesy to the women, or to the boy.”

  It was a day for god-sent choices, none of them easy. Dubornos asked, “What happens in Rome?”

  “That depends on the emperor. I couldn’t say, but even public crucifixion would be better than what will happen here if you are found to be, say, a dreamer from the rebel isle of Mona.”

  “Or a singer?”

  “The distinction is not one that Scapula will recognize.”

  Dubornos had trained for years in the ways of the dream. At times and in places it was given him to hear the voices of the gods, or to see their sign. Praying to Nemain, whom he favoured, he looked around at the grey rock and purpled wash of the mountains, at the flesh-greased smoke that rose from the valley, drifting south on a light wind, at the countless crows gathering to feast on the dead. He was considering his death and the means by which it could be brought most swiftly closer when a flicker on a far hillside drew his eye. There, partly hidden by berried rowan and rock, a handful of white cloaks flew in the wind of their owners’ riding: the honour guard of Mona. At their head was Caradoc and at his side, freshly mounted on a new horse and with the gift of a Roman legionary shield, rode the scout of the Brigantes whom Dubornos had last seen cantering down a mountain track towards a lost battle. All rode north, at speed.

  It was a small thing on which to hang a life, but it was enough. The decurion had seen the riders with him. His eyes met the singer’s and Dubornos said, “It seems my brother lives to continue the war.”

  There was a moment before the words and their meaning were clear, then Valerius saluted. On his face was the barest mockery, of whom it was impossible to tell. “Thank you. I will enter it so in the reports.”

  The horses were brought forward. The wrists of the captives were bound. They were helped to mount and were led at a slow walk down the hillside. On the path behind, a cairn of rocks the height of a mounted man marked the last resting place of a battle hound.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Breaca? Breaca, wake up.” The night was dark, with no moon. In her dreams, Caradoc slew both Scapula and the pied decurion and rode back to her with their heads wrapped in his cloak as a gift. Delivered to Mona, the head of the decurion had become that of Amminios, Caradoc’s older brother who had sided with Rome. It sang in Latin and mocked her, promising vengeance for a death in which she had taken no part.

  “Breaca? Can you hear me?”

  She stirred, glad to escape the dream. In the half-world of waking, she knew that her daughter suckled her left breast and should be moved to the right and that cool fingers gripped her wrist, firmly. With some thought, she recognized Airmid’s touch; it was how they had always woken each other. Sleep-sodden, she opened her eyes.

  “Caradoc?” she asked. “Has he won?”

  “I don’t know.” Airmid stood at the bedside, shapeless in her cloak, her hair black to merge with the night. “There’s a messenger waiting on the far side of the strait. I’ve sent Sorcha with the ferry to bring him over. I thought you might want to greet him.”

  I thought you might want to … I have seen you force yourself to eat these past three days for your child’s sake when your body would have refused food for worry, and I have watched you walk the slopes above the strait from dawn to dusk that you might see a messenger riding down the far mountain and know the message that much sooner.

  The promise of news brought her awake, and Graine with her. The child gurned and fell silent, feeding. Airmid fetched a torch and lit it from the fire. Breaca followed her along the path to the jetty where the ferry would put in. Rain, the young hound who was son to Hail, ran ahead, snuffing the night; all day he had been restless and was better out. At the standing stone on the hillside, they stopped, looking down onto the straits below. The barest outline of the ferry was visible, a sleek shape sliding black on black like a hunting otter. The backwash of the steering oar stirred green light from the water behind, a gift of the sea god Manannan to fishers and ferrywomen that they might see and be seen. The wind blew briskly from the north, lifting the tidal swell. In the quiet of the night, they heard the sound of retching and the soft consternation that followed from Sorcha who could not understand that her beloved sea might cause some to feel ill.

  The ferry reached them. Wood bumped lightly on wood and a rope was made fast. Sorcha stepped ashore and turned to offer a hand to her passenger. “This is Lythas,” she said. “Venutios has sent him with a message.” And then, redundantly, “He’s been sick.’

  Torchlight showed a small, neat young man of Ardacos’ build, who had, indeed, been sick although that was only the latest hardship in his recent past and not the greatest. His tunic was torn at the shoulder and hip as if he had rolled through thorns, or slid down a rocky hillside, and his left forearm was bruised along its length, but even these were only markers to the upheavals within. He finished the last bout of sickness and hauled himself ashore. Exhaustion lined his eyes and the hollows carved beneath them from days and nights on horseback. Breaca studied them as she might any other warrior returning from a skirmish, but nothing protected her from the shock that rocked him when he looked up and realized who she was. His message, a day old at least, rushed to the front of his mouth and he would not, or could not, speak it aloud.

  “Tell me,” said Breaca. “It is best I know quickly. Is he dead?”

  “No, lady, not dead. But perhaps better if he were.”

  Airmid grasped her arm. By the pressure of those fingers, Breaca stayed upright and kept her fear hidden. “He’s taken, then? Scapula has him?” I will kill them all. I will unleash such vengeance as has never been—

  The messenger swallowed. “Not yet.” With evident reluctance, he said, “Cartimandua has him and will give him to the governor as a guest-gift. They lured him north by treachery. A messenger was sent—Vellocatus—to meet Caradoc at the river of the Lame Hind. He carried news that Venutios was held captive by the Fourteenth legion and that was why he wasn’t able to bring the three thousand—”

  It was too much and made too little sense. Questions tumbled over themselves. “Vellocatus is loyal to Venutios. How could he—” And then, as the strategies of a summer collapsed at her feet, “The three thousand didn’t come? So we lost to Scapula? Or did Caradoc beat him and then take the warriors north to rescue Venutios?”

  Airmid’s fingers still encircled her wrist, pressing firmly as if waking her from a second sleep. “Breaca, forgive me, but we should move. Lythas has ridden through two nights to reach us. He needs food and water and perhaps some ale. His message will make more sens
e if he gives it as it was told him and he’ll do that best when he is seated before a fire with a drink inside him and out of sight and smell of the sea.”

  The man said nothing but exhaustion and gratitude lit his smile equally. Airmid said, “Come with me. A place is prepared,” and they followed her, with the hound behind.

  Airmid had been awake a while, it seemed, and expecting company. The place she had prepared was her own, set on the western edge of the settlement, the place of deepest dreaming. It was built with stone walls and turf on the roof and a burn ran within an arm’s stretch of the doorway, keeping her close to the waters of Nemain. Inside, a fire was already laid and lit, with folded hides placed at three points around it for seating. Lacking other light, the walls were in shadow and it was impossible to see what else of Airmid’s was present, but the scents of rosemary and sage, of pine resin and sea-wrack, mingled faintly with the rising smoke. This was not a usual place in which to greet a messenger, but it was not a usual message, nor a usual time. They were still between midnight and dawn. Hounds stirred, and night hunting beasts, but the dreamers, for the most part, slept on in the great-house and no apprentices had been woken to serve the messenger with food and ale as would ordinarily have been the case.

  Airmid excused herself briefly and returned with a fresh cloak and a beaker of water for Lythas, but not yet food. She said, “Maroc is preparing meat and oat bannocks. It’ll be ready soon but you should give us the message now, if you will, so we can act without delay.”

  The man was willing, seeing a day’s rest ahead of him. By the light of the fire he seemed less sick, his face less pinched, his eyes less haunted. He sat opposite Breaca on the cushion of hides and relayed his message, word-perfect, as it had been told him.

  “The first thing you need to know is that Vellocatus is Cartimandua’s man. He has been from the start, from before Venutios ever returned to us from Mona. He has been her eyes and ears in our meetings, her voice in council, saying only what he was given permission to say by her. He told her of the salmon-trap and the plan to raise the two thousand to aid Caradoc. When he suggested that he go north to request aid from the Selgovae, the idea came first from her. It gave him a reason to travel ahead of Venutios without arousing suspicion.

  “When the time came to gather the warriors, Venutios found himself betrayed. Two cohorts of the Fourteenth and a wing of Batavian cavalry surrounded him and his sworn companions. They couldn’t condemn him—he is father to Cartimandua’s child and they deem him royal for that—but they have hanged all his closest kin and companions from the gateposts of his roundhouse and he is forced to stay inside while they rot. I was spared because I am no-one, neither kin nor sworn spear-chief, not even known as a friend.”

  He spoke this last as steadily as he had the rest, as if it, too, were part of a message learned by heart. His face, moulded tallow in the firelight, was a mask of death and damaged pride.

  Breaca said, “Whom did you lose in the hangings?”

  He looked at her sharply. “My father, my sister, two of my cousins and … a friend. A good friend.”

  “And you think it would have been better to die with your kin and those you loved rather than to live, to fight, perhaps to avenge their deaths.” The Boudica nodded, her gaze lost in the heart of the fire. She spoke thoughtfully, as if to the glowing embers or to herself alone. “It may be that each of them considered the shining honour of it as they choked out their last air on the end of the rope. It may be there would have been another, similarly overlooked, who would have had the courage to ride out of an armed and guarded encampment if you had been considered dangerous and had been honoured with the same death as your kin. But it was not so. The gods chose you to live and to bear the message.”

  She looked up. A veil of flame separated them. He could not look away. “We are not given the choice of how and when we must serve, only whether we do so with courage and so perhaps succeed, or with fear, in which case we will certainly fail. You have shown courage so far, but if you wish to ride back and give yourself up to the legate of the Fourteenth legion there is no-one here who will stop you. Alternatively, you could continue to act with the courage you have shown so far and pray for the chance to see those you cared for avenged, their families and their land freed from oppression and slavery. These are your choices. If you had to pick one now, which would it be?”

  He stared at her. Simply to ask was an insult, and yet she was the Boudica, whose honour could not be impugned. “I will choose to fight,” he said, “Always.”

  “Thank you.” She smiled and his world became a lighter place. “Then tell us what you know of the battle in the mountains, how it went for Caradoc and the warriors of the western tribes.”

  He shrugged. “We don’t know very much, and all of that is second-hand from those who captured Caradoc. The rest we must guess.” He drank water from the beaker and began again in the rolling lilt of the trained messenger, speaking the words of another as if they were his own.

  “It’s clear that, without Venutios, the salmon-trap in the mountains failed. Caradoc and the warriors of the tribes fought with outstanding courage and left behind them eight or nine dead of the enemy for each one of their own, but the smashing fist of the trap could not close and when Caradoc realized they had been betrayed, he ordered the tribes to leave the field. Better to live and fight on than die in a hopeless cause.”

  “It is always so. He had arranged it beforehand.”

  “Yes. Venutios knew it, and so Cartimandua knew it too, through her spy. She alone knew both sides; the setting of the salmon-trap and that it would fail. She sent Vellocatus so that he would come upon Caradoc as if by happy chance just as he was leaving the battlefield to join the warriors of Mona and the spear-leaders of the other guards. He told him…” He slowed and drank again, gathering himself. This time his gaze rose to Breaca’s face, but not her eyes. “He told him that the Boudica was in danger, that Cartimandua had lured you north with a tale of Caradoc’s capture, but that you were travelling slowly for the sake of the babe and that if they—Caradoc and Vellocatus—rode swiftly, with little encumbrance and only a few of the honour guard for company, he might overtake you before you reached the strongholds of the north. He went. How could he not?”

  Breaca said, “That’s madness. I wouldn’t go north, and even if I did, I wouldn’t take Graine. Why would Caradoc believe it?”

  “Because they told him you were in danger and that you had gone believing the same of him. And because the message was given by Vellocatus, whom he trusted, and who had brought with him, as evidence of good faith, the salmon carved in blue stone that is the mark of Venutios.”

  “Taken by force.”

  “Of course, but he couldn’t know that.”

  Airmid said, “He wouldn’t ask. His only care would be for Breaca and Graine. It is his weakness and they know it. As Caradoc is ours.” The dreamer sat in the shadows beyond reach of the fire. The stream ran behind her, a liquid song in the night. For nearly twenty years, she had lived and dreamed here, and when she spoke in this place the god spoke with her, changing the air. Speaking thus, she asked, “Lythas, what symbol do you bring as proof of your good faith?”

  Freed from the burden of the message, the messenger had relaxed. One could see more clearly the man in him, through the frightened youth. He was older than he had first seemed. “I have brought no token. There was none left of any worth beyond Venutios’ word and mine that what I have said is the truth.”

  He leaned towards Breaca, his face flushed. His smile, and the margin of hope it offered her, were worth more than any ring or brooch and he knew it.

  “Caradoc is held alone and well guarded,” he said. “It would not be possible to rescue him with an army. The Fourteenth are waiting for just such an attack. It would be suicide for the warriors and Caradoc would die before they ever came close to him. But a small group, perhaps the Boudica and one or two of Ardacos’ bear-warriors, might be able to reach him. If not t
hat, I believe—and this does not come from Venutios but from me alone—that there is still time to talk to Cartimandua. She is a mother and she has protected Venutios from Rome though she loathes him and he her. She would understand a plea from the Boudica as a mother and a lover. For that, she might return Caradoc to you alive.”

  Breaca said, “Rome would never allow it.”

  Lythas shrugged. “Rome hasn’t got the power to stop it. The legions travel slowly and against resistance—Gwyddhien’s falcons and Ardacos’ she-bears harry them as they march so they must build secure camps at night and cannot move faster than the slowest legionaries for fear that the rear of the column will be cut off and destroyed. If we were to ride fast in a small group, we could still reach Cartimandua days ahead of Scapula.”

  “But why would she agree to let Caradoc go? She hates him. He refused her a child and she has never forgiven him. For that alone, she’ll see him crucified and be glad of it.”

  “Possibly, but she is less influenced by her own petty jealousies than she was and more aware of the pressures of rulership. She commands more spears than any other from the east coast to the west and that has its cost. If they revolt, she’s lost. Moreover, she has to contend with the northern Brigantes who are oath-sworn to Venutios. They number thousands and are close to rebellion. To free Caradoc now would raise her standing with them, possibly enough to prevent an uprising. It would not harm her in the eyes of Rome. She’s already saved them once from defeat; they can’t reasonably ask more.”

  In entirely her own voice, Airmid murmured, “And, of course, Rome only ever asks what is reasonable.”