Red Queen, White Queen Read online

  The men, sprawling under the trees, laughed loudly at the song, and called for more. But Duatha sat down, shaking his head.

  ‘Nay, fellows,’ he called, ‘but my brother has warned me with his eyes not to sing any more of that sort! A terrible man, my brother! He’ll have me out at dawn, drilling with full equipment, for that song!’

  Prince Gathwac smiled at them both. Then he leaned over to Bran and said, ‘What will you sing for us, Prince Bran?’

  Bran’s face was stern. He said, ‘I know no songs. I am not a music-maker like the others. It is not to my taste to offend women.’

  Eithne, who was sitting apart, in a shelter which the Prince had had erected for her, called out, ‘My brother sets women on a marble pedestal, Prince Gathwac. He thinks they know no dirty words!’

  Bran turned and gave her a dark look. It seemed for an instant that brother and sister might quarrel in public. But then Dagda rose to his feet, unsteadily, and said, ‘I am like the Prince Bran, I cannot sing. Yet I am often able to do other things which some men consider to be as entertaining.’

  The clumsy figure shambled to the centre of the firelit glade. Men stopped talking and laughing, wondering what he was going to do, to amuse them. He did not look to be the sort of man who might amuse anyone, with his hunched shoulders and his dangling arms, his bleached eyes and hair, his solemn, almost imbecile cast of countenance.

  Then Dagda stopped and held up both hands. He stood in the firelight like that, quite still, for a while, until men began to suspect that he was playing some sort of trick on them.

  And suddenly the glade was filled with a great rustling, as of a myriad wings, all fluttering and beating through the twilight air, among the tree-branches. Leaves began to fall from the boughs above Dagda.

  And then all the fires seemed to glow a little less brightly, until the light sank and sank, and men could only just distinguish the form of the man as he stood quite still.

  Then Dagda began to whistle, gently, on three low notes, and of a sudden, birds appeared, swirling about his hands, and then his head, and then his body. They were all white birds, no bigger than the wren, yet shaped like the falcon. And when the spiralling whorl of birds was so thick that Dagda’s hunched shape could not be seen, the glade resounded with a high and piercing shout.

  Suddenly the birds had gone, the fires had flamed up again, and Dagda stood there, his eyes closed, his hands still raised. He was white-faced and as stiff as a marble statue. When at length his eyes opened and his colour came back, men breathed again, and made way for him, half in respect, half in fear, as he walked woodenly back to his place by the Prince.

  Men did not laugh now, nor did they cheer, as they had done for the singers. This man was not of the common sort, they told each other in whispers. He was not one to be treated lightly, as one would a singer or a dancer.

  A broken-nosed tribesman, with many scars across his broad chest, knelt before Dagda and said hoarsely, ‘Take my sword and my neck-ring, master. You are a great one.’

  But Dagda merely stared ahead, without speaking.

  Duatha motioned the tribesmen away from him, saying in a whisper, ‘Such tricks take all the strength from him. Do not interfere with him, man, until he shows that he wishes to be spoken to.’

  It was then that Aba Garim appeared in the middle of the glade, his black hair flying and his dark face alive with excitement. His mouth was wide open, but no sounds came from it. He moved like a man in a trance, a dreadful trance which might only be broken by one who took no care of the consequences.

  Gemellus said, ‘I have seen this before. These men of the east will eat a root, the root of a tree they know, before they go into battle. Then they fight like demons, not men, they care not who they kill, nor if they are killed. They glory in their wounds. This is such a trance, brother.’

  Duatha smiled slowly and answered, ‘I know it, brother. Aba Garim always carries such a root in his pouch. Sometimes I have seen him grind it into his wine before a cavalry charge. Sometimes, he will chew or suck the root when we are on a long ride into enemy country. Then he knows no fear, poor devil!’

  They said no more, for the Arab had suddenly rushed towards the glade and had snatched up two sticks, which he brandished as he ran back to the centre.

  He placed one stick across his arm, so that it balanced evenly on either side. Then, with a smart stroke, he hit the end of this stick with the other. The stick flew through the air, rotating rapidly. The Arab caught it deftly as it flew and brandished it. Though the movement of his hands was adept in the extreme, certain of the drunken tribesmen now felt free to criticise the entertainment.

  One of them, a big bear of a man, flaxen-bearded and raucous, yelled out, ‘Swords, master monkey! I give you a stallion to do it with swords!’

  He leaned back, pleased with himself, while his fellows slapped his back.

  Aba Garim bowed to him and then ran towards him, holding out his dark hands. The man had no alternative but to put his sword into the Arab’s hand. Another tribesman offered his weapon.

  Then the Arab stood once again in the centre and balanced the heavy bronze sword. It was a little while before he could find the point of balance, and the man who had challenged him laughed aloud.

  ‘See,’ he cried, ‘the monkey cannot do it!’

  But he did not laugh long, for suddenly the blade was poised, then there was a quick click and the thing whirled through the firelit air.

  The hand of Aba Garim darted forward. Then all men saw that he held the sword by the hilt, smiling and bowing.

  Only the big man who had bet the stallion was dissatisfied.

  ‘Come, monkey,’ he said, ‘give us a better taste of your skill before I part with my horse! Play fair, monkey!’

  The Prince Gathwac glared at him sternly, but the man regarded himself as a free-born tribesman who could speak his mind. He nodded coolly at the Prince and still went on, ‘Come, monkey, another trick, or you don’t get even the droppings of my horse!’

  Aba Garim ran forward to the man and raised him to his feet. The big man went, protesting, but spurred on by his friends and by his desire not to part with his stallion.

  The Arab led the man to the centre of the glade. Then he gave him his own sword and made the motions of throwing it at an enemy. After that he pointed at his own chest. The big man roared with laughter.

  ‘Why, he wants me to throw the sword at him!’ he said. ‘Well, master monkey, that’s certainly a way of keeping my horse! Stand back!’

  As the Arab stood away, the big man flung the heavy-bladed sword.

  Men gasped, for even the quickest-sighted of them thought that he saw the weapon so close to the Arab’s breast that it must have entered it.

  But when they looked again, Aba Garim was smiling and bowing and holding the weapon, the hilt in his dark hand.

  Prince Gathwac rose and said, ‘That is fair, Mathog. You will give the man your stallion. If you do not keep your part of the bargain, he shall have a claim to all your goods if he cares to come to Brigantia. That is my word, and I will see that it is upheld.’

  Sullenly the man went beyond the firelit glade, as though he meant to fetch the horse for the Arab who had won it. But when he was beyond the first trees, he suddenly turned and shouted, ‘May the crows let fall their droppings in your eyes, Prince Gathwac! I am a landowner in my own right. No petty princeling shall tell me who shall have my stallion!’

  Men rose from their places, in anger, but the Prince stilled them with a wave of his hand.

  Yet even as they sat again, they saw that Aba Garim was no longer within the circle of light. He had run like a white flash through the wood, past them, in the direction which Mathog had taken.

  Then all men heard the sounds which followed. First they heard the shouting of Mathog as he untethered his stallion to ride away. Then they heard the horse pawing the ground and snorting in eagerness to go. Then they heard the quick thudding of feet and a high cry of vengeance.
This was followed closely by a scream and the tumbling of a great body.

  And as men stared through the trees, they saw Aba Garim come riding the white stallion, its breast spattered with red. And he was smiling like a man in a trance. He carried something flaxen and round and red on his lap as he rode.

  Gemellus rose to his feet and cried, ‘You fool, Arab!’

  Duatha rose too and restrained Gemellus, whispering, ‘What is done, is done, brother. Now we must look to ourselves.’

  17: Flight

  As the Arab pressed the white stallion forward, his knees tight to the creature’s flanks, an arrow whistled across the darkening glade.

  Aba Garim gave a high cry and pitched forward from the saddle, the bloody head of Mathog rolling with him across the grass.

  Then all was chaos and shouting.

  Gemellus ran forward to raise the Arab, but saw that he was unable to aid the man, for the shaft had been truly sent.

  He turned to see Duatha and Dagda standing amid a throng of angry tribesmen, fending off their blows as best they could.

  Bran raced away to where his sister had been placed for safety.

  Suddenly men were clustering about Gemellus, men with knives and short-swords. He swayed and kicked and punched at them. Once he picked up a cooking-pot and struck down a tall savage who wielded a sword like an iron bar.

  Gemellus broke away. A man came staggering towards him, hands over his face. Gemellus backed away from him when he saw the blood which ran between the fingers like a stream. But when the hands fell away and the man reeled and fell forward, Gemellus recognised Dagda despite the strange new colour of his face.

  He turned then and leapt towards Duatha, who towered above the hounds who worried at him. The Celt saw him coming and called out in his sing-song war-voice, ‘Up the Legion! Up the Legion!’

  As if he broke through the cobweb walls of a dream, Gemellus saw a sword in his hand. It was a heavy, clumsy thing, no more like the short stabbing gladius he had been trained to use than a donkey is like a stallion.

  Yet men fell away from that length of bronze like corn before the scythe. True, the Roman did not go scot-free; there was a shallow gash half the length of his thigh, and his right arm ached near the elbow. The breast of his tunic stuck to his body and he knew that the moisture which held it there was not the sweat of battle.

  Then he was next to Duatha, and they were back to back, moving this way and that in concert, splashed with what came from their swords whenever they swung them back.

  And at last there were no opponents before them; only men on their knees grunting, spewing in the dying firelight; men at the edge of the wood, glaring with eyes like cat’s; men cursing them, reviling Rome, hating the ill-chance which had flung them into this maelstrom of death and agony.

  Then Duatha said, ‘Where is Bran, brother? Where is the Princess Eithne? We must find them. It is little use wasting time over Aba Garim and Dagda now; they are beyond us—and they amused themselves while they could!’

  The Roman and the Celt raced across the strewn glade to the place where the tent had been set up for Eithne.

  They were not long in finding it, torn from its poles and tattered though it was. The girl sat screeching, her legs wide apart, her hands in her torn hair.

  One of the golden armbands had been twisted from her arm and hung, dangling, down. Her tattooed thighs were splashed with red.

  And before her, in the tussocky grass lay two men, locked close together in death. Though the Prince Gathwac had taken his opportunity to run his sword through Bran, Bran had been true to his duty and had kept his fingers tightly clenched about the throat of the Brigantian until the light had left his glaring eyes.

  Duatha dragged the screaming girl to her feet and pulled her away from the two in the grass. Gemellus caught at two pawing horses and hauled them forward. Then, with the girl slung across the neck of one, and the other being kicked forward cruelly, they broke through the undergrowth of the glade and so out to a long natural avenue that led away from that place of suffering.

  And always the girl cried out for her brother, Bran; but Duatha shouted at her to be silent, for they were all likely to lose their lives before that night was out.

  For a while they heard feet drumming behind them in the darkness, and then there was silence. A silence broken only by the cries of startled birds and of prowling beasts.

  Far away in the distance behind them, the camp fires slowly died to white ashes.

  18: The Ruined Villa

  Half a day’s march from the fortress of Glevum lay a ruined Roman villa. The cypress trees still swayed with the morning and evening breezes, as though they noticed no change, or as though they were self-sufficient in their beauty, their grace, whatever happened in the world about them. The grey-breasted doves still purred to each other, perched on the crumbling white walls that overlooked the shady garden, where the fish-ponds were.

  The fish had long since gone, and now the pools were cloaked by water-lily and pond-weed. The sly, quicksilver-moving little newts slid in and out of the water. Gnarled brown frogs sat on the marble balustrades at evening and croaked at the ivy-festooned statues of Priapus and Pen which overlooked the ponds.

  Where once the magnate who owned this farm had strolled with his stiff-necked wife and his long-legged daughters, worrying about the price of barley and the cost of a new chariot, the sturdy sycamore now pushed up the flagstones and tumbled the mosaics into nonsense.

  Before the porticoed doorway a polished slab of marble was inscribed in careful Roman lettering: ‘Cave Cane’.

  But that dog had been dead for fifteen years; he had died with the other occupants of that house, on the night when the Silures had drunk too much of their local brew and had decided to celebrate their river god, Nodens, by running amok.

  And now the place was left to the ghosts of that household, and to the two young folk who lay in the sun at the edge of the lichened bath-place.

  The young Tribune, Gaius Flavius Cottus, lay with his black hair braided and a piece of cloth of gold across his loins, enjoying the sunshine and twisting his fingers in and out of the hair of the girl who reclined beside him.

  Suddenly she stopped smiling and said, ‘Stop it, Gaius, you beast! That hurt! Why don’t you do that to the Celtic women you lie with? They would soon show you what they thought of it! But because I smile as though I like it, or as though it didn’t hurt, you take me for granted. You are an upstart, a spoiled upstart!’

  The Tribune twisted the girl’s hair again and grinned. He was very handsome, particularly in the sunlight, when his teeth gleamed so whitely and his carefully oiled body rippled, like that of a trained gladiator.

  ‘You know you like it, you little bitch,’ he said, smiling. ‘You know that if you didn’t like it you would have got your father to post me away to Germany, or Scythia, or somewhere horrible, long ago.’

  The Lady Lavinia pouted and nodded, as though she was giving thought to the matter.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘I suppose I would. But you are rough at times—a little too rough. And it is customary for a lady to protest, a little, from time to time.’

  The Tribune slapped her on the backside, quite hard, and waited to see what she would say. She laughed and turned towards him, holding out her arms.

  As he held her to him he said, ‘Yes, you are a bitch, Lavinia; but how could you be otherwise? With a stinking camp like Glevum to live in, and only those flat-chested hags of officers’ wives to talk to, and a father who doesn’t know which end he stands on half the time—how could you be otherwise!’

  The Lady Lavinia said, ‘Yes, indeed, Gaius! And when a handsome young warrior like yourself comes along, who is to blame me if I forget my status and behave like some randy village wench?’

  The Tribune chuckled and said, ‘I have yet to meet the village Wench who can.

  The Lady Lavinia clapped her white hand over his mouth.

  ‘Stop!’ she called in mock alarm. �
��You will say something Crude if you are not silent. After all, dearest, I am a Patrician! And do not forget that you most definitely are not! I am not allowed to have crude things said to me by mere Tribunes Whose fathers made their money by trade.’

  Gaius Flavius Cottus rolled the girl over and lay heavily upon her, spreadeagling her arms so that she could not move.

  Then he kissed her a number of times, and between each kiss said, ‘You are a teasing little bitch! You are indeed a Patrician, but you could give most Roman street-walkers a lesson in their trade.’

  The girl turned her head a little and was able to say, ‘Yes, dear heart, but a Patrician does not indulge in trade. I should do it for love!’

  The officer smothered her words again. Then he sat up suddenly for he heard the sound of a footfall outside the garden wall. He rose and went quietly to the wall and called out, ‘All well, Gracchus?’

  A gruff and soldierly voice from the far side of the wall replied, ‘The Prefect has been searching for you since midday, sir, I came out as soon as I heard of it to warn you. He is in a rare rage, sir. I suggest you ride back without delay.’

  The handsome Tribune leaned against the sun-scorched wall for a moment, his long chin in his delicate hand.

  ‘What is worrying the great Prefect, Gracchus?’ he asked quietly, so that his voice should not carry to where the Lady Lavinia sat, stroking her sides with oil.

  The soldier came nearer the wall and whispered, ‘Things seem to have gone wrong with your plan, sir. Badly wrong, I hear.’

  The officer waited a moment and then said, ‘What plan, my friend? There are so many plans these days, it is hard to keep abreast of them all. What plan?’

  The soldier’s voice now sounded so far away that the Tribune was hard put to it to hear it.

  ‘The Boudicca plan, Tribune,’ he said. ‘A messenger has come in with bad news. King Drammoch has turned against Rome and has moved out to join Boudicca because the party we despatched to kill the Queen has stolen his daughter, Eithne. And now we hear that the Brigantes are out too, because their Prince has been butchered in a wood by our folk. It is a bad business, sir, all round.’