Dreaming the Bull (39 page)

“If death comes faster, then the pain will be greater.”

“No. That is, potentially yes, which is why I have also brought you this…”

The pouch he freed from his belt was of old, weathered doeskin with a drawstring of plaited linen, dyed a deep blood red. Stilted, side-on figures painted in blue and yellow ink processed across it. Some were recognizably human, most
were not. “Alexandrian,” said Xenophon. He prised the neck open as he might the mouth of a patient. “The pharaohs, too, knew what it was to lose their way home and have to find it again in the dark.” He drew out two twists of vine leaf, each tied with the same red linen thread as formed the drawstring. Opened, they contained a fine-ground powder, as much as would fit in the hollow of a cupped palm.

He held one out with great care, away from the draught of his breathing. “Each of these contains a mix of belladonna, poppy and aconitum. The one weakens the heart, the second, as you know, numbs mind and body to pain and the third brings slow paralysis to the legs. If you cannot take weight on your legs, the pressure on the arms and so the heart is greater and, with the belladonna, death comes more swiftly. The poppy, if dosed right, befuddles the soul, carrying it out of the body. There is not enough of any to cause outright death—I cannot do that unless I wish to join you in death and my admiration for your minds and hearts does not extend that far—but it is the closest I can reach. The poppy will take effect soon. The others will be slower, but you will be in the company of your gods by nightfall, I swear it.”

It was a gift beyond price—and not one they could accept in good conscience. Dubornos felt his mouth grow dry. “Xenophon, this is too much. We’re in your debt for your care of us this past half-month. You must not put yourself in this danger.”

The old man laid his treasures on the pallet and leaned back on a wall, his arms folded across his chest.

“The danger is in my being here. If you take this before they come for you and the vine leaves are secreted under the pallets, away from searching eyes, it will not be any greater.
Take it with my blessing. The flasks contain Batavian ale, which I am assured is to barbarian taste. If you mix the one with the other, the taste will not be any worse than the ale alone.”

His lips were pressed tight, and his eyes had narrowed to slits, as if staring into the sun. A lesser man might have been thought to weep.

Dubornos took the offered flask. “Thank you,” he said. “In that case, we accept.” He turned, his heart light, offering peace and oblivion to a man he had come to admire above all others. “Caradoc?”

Caradoc sat again on the pallet. The deepening light from the window made spun gold of his hair. His features were still, carved in marble and very white. He stared at the open vine leaf as a man might stare at a poised snake, awaiting the strike. His breathing was shallow, an afterthought to the struggle within. Presently, lifting his gaze from the fistful of powder, he said to Xenophon, “Can the poppy be taken out of the mix?”

“Hardly. I ground them together myself. Even the monkey servants of Anubis who can discriminate the sands of the desert couldn’t separate them now.”

“Then, no. Thank you, but no. Dubornos should take it—must take it—but I can’t.”

“Really?” Xenophon studied this new phenomenon. His tears, if they had been real, were gone. “You have a need to experience such extremes of pain? I had not thought you afflicted with Roman vices.”

Caradoc laughed, a quick bark drawn from somewhere beyond himself. “No, assuredly not. It would take longer than a month, I think, to acquire that one.”

“Then why not the poppy?”

“Because this is not over yet. I need, at the very least, to have a clear mind and to be seen to do so. If I take poppy, I will fail in that.”

“Oh, my dear man.” Xenophon folded his long limbs and sat, all straight lines and angles, like a cricket, on the pallet that had been Dubornos’. In the days they had known him, he had been brisk and dry and they had thought him a rationalist to the core. Here and now, in the tone of his voice and the unashamed, undeniable tears that did, indeed, fill the corners of his eyes, they saw the depth of his care.

Leaning over, he took one of Caradoc’s hands in both of his own. “My friend, you have more courage than any man I have ever met, but you have to learn, even this late, when to accept that you have lost.”

With his chin, he gestured to the wall above where sunlight slashed citron across the plaster. “They will come for you before the sun reaches the far edge of your window. You have that much time to drink and no longer. I cannot reach the Praetorian centurion in time now to change his plan. He will carry out his side of our agreement and that is not something I would wish on any man. Please, I urge you, for your own sake and that of your friends, take what is offered.”

“No.” It was easier to say it a second time. They could both see that.

“Why?”

“Because even this late, when I have lost—and I do know that—the children and Cwmfen are still my responsibility. We have not yet received word from Mona guaranteeing the emperor’s life. Until we do, their lives depend on my keeping
my bargain with Claudius, clearly and openly. I have sworn that I will do nothing to impede his plans for today. What you are suggesting steps beyond my oath, in spirit if not in word.”

“You think Claudius will keep his side of any pact with such exactitude?”

“I don’t know, but if he believes he has been deprived of his just vengeance, he certainly won’t. I will not give him that excuse.”

On battlefields, in the preparation for war, in nine years of constant armed resistance, Dubornos had watched the breadth and scope of Caradoc’s will. Never before had he seen the sheer immovable strength of it so plainly displayed. He stared at the twin flasks and the mouthful of powder that would have changed the manner of his dying.

By this time tomorrow, or maybe the next day, it will be over.

More likely tomorrow, without the powder, unless the centurion was less than Xenophon believed him to be, but the space between would be worse than he had ever imagined. With a regret as profound as any he had known, Dubornos pinched the vine leaves together again, tying the linen thread at their necks, and set them on the old man’s knees.

The physician’s gaze stitched through his own. Xenophon said, “Claudius has no pact with you.”

“No. Mine is with myself alone. And Caradoc.”

Caradoc flinched. Colour flooded his cheeks. “Dubornos, you don’t—”

“Yes, I do. And you have no power to stop me. Don’t try.”

The strength of his own conviction surprised him. All the dishonours of his life, small and large, linked together to
point him to this: one final act of true worth. He smiled broadly and it was not a sham. “I, too, have pledged my life to the care of the children,” he said.

Xenophon rose, his nostrils pinched tight. “You’re both mad—and that is a professional opinion as well as a personal one. I have no gods but I will pray to yours for a swift passing.”

Caradoc offered his hand to be shaken, Roman fashion. “We thank you sincerely for all you have done. The risk you have taken today is no less because we can’t accept. If we had a way to repay you, we would do it.”

The old man hesitated. “Then, for my sake, would you accept a visitor?”

Dubornos felt the hairs rise on his neck. The gods may have abandoned him, but he had not lost his ability to read a man’s intent. In panic, he said, “Xenophon, no! Not now. Have you lost all humanity?”

“Not at all,” said a voice he had heard only in dreams for half his lifetime. “He thinks we will make a tearful reconciliation. He knows us all that poorly. It’s a failing of Greek physicians; they believe they can alter the fates of other men and that they have the right to attempt it.”

The morning paused in its progress. In the free world beyond the window, a dove bathed in a fountain. Water sputtered finely on the outer wall of the cell.

Caradoc turned with exceptional slowness. The cell was not built for four. Julius Valerius, decurion of the first troop, First Thracian Cavalry and, next to Scapula, the most reviled officer of the invading army, stood just beyond the threshold. He wore full dress armour, his mail polished to silver fish-scales, his cloak the black of the Thracians. His
sword and belt were of cavalry style, embossed with images of the empire’s heroes. No man, seeing him thus, would have deemed him other than Roman. Only the small insignia of the bull at his shoulder, drawn in the way of the ancestors in ox-blood red on a grey background, marked him as something apart; that, and the searching black eyes, which mirrored ones they had seen daily for nine years on Mona.

The room lacked air, or there was too much and the pressure of it crowded the lungs; either way, it was hard to breathe and harder still to think. Forewarned, Dubornos pressed a hand to the wall for support and did not try to speak. Caradoc, who had had no such warning, stared and went on staring. The will that had commanded armies kept his hands from reaching out to touch the man who faced him. That will could not keep the shock from his voice.

“Bán?”

“Bán of the Eceni, brother to the Boudica?” The officer shook his head. “Absolutely not. I am Julius Valerius, decurion of the First Thracian Cavalry. Bán died a long time ago at the hands of Amminios, brother to Caradoc. I am not he.”

In denial, he made it fact. Stripped of the armour, he was his mother’s son; his hair was hers, the high cheekbones and lean contours of his face, the length and beauty of his fingers, the smile that began in mischief and had once ended in joy. All these combined made him the child they had known and all were soured beyond imagining to shape a man they could not begin to know. Still, he was Bán.

If the guards had slain Cunomar and Cygfa and thrown their heads at his feet, Caradoc might have managed himself better; that at least was within the realms of his imagining.
The dignity, the wrappings of self-control so carefully nurtured to sustain him through the coming day, fell away, raggedly. His gaze switched from the figure lounging in the doorway to Xenophon and back again. On the third pass, his eyes settled instead on Dubornos. A glimmer of intellect returned to light the wreckage of his mind. “You
knew,”
he said. “How long have you known?”

“Since the mountainside when we were taken. I wasn’t certain at first, but then he gave me his knife to release Hail from life because he couldn’t remember the words of the invocation to Briga. Who else in the world would have done that?”

From the doorway, the too-familiar voice said acidly, “You knew before that. At the salmon-trap in the Eceni lands five years ago, you knew me as well as I knew you.”

Dubornos shook his head. “No. I knew only that you hated me, not who you were or why you felt so. I had spent too many nights warding the dreamers as they strove to recover your lost soul and return it to Briga’s care. In the chaos of battle, one does not expect to see that same soul living and fighting for the enemy.” For nearly two months he had lived with the knowledge of this and had chosen to forget. Faced with the living reality, the enormity of it left him dry-mouthed. “Do you think if I had known you, I would have rested until you were dead? We loathed you, believing you fully Roman. How much more so had we known the depth of your betrayal?”

“How much indeed?” The black eyes mocked him. “I’m disappointed. I really thought you knew who I was. All those years of vengeance, wasted.”

Dubornos hissed air through his teeth, unable to speak.
Distractedly, Caradoc said to him, “Why did you not tell me?”

“What point was there? Would you go to your death better knowing that Breaca’s lost brother had lived beyond Amminios” attack and had returned to slaughter his own people? Would Cunomar live better afterwards knowing that his own uncle was the one who had enslaved him? The boy has worshipped the memory of Bán Harehunter, saviour of Hail, since he was old enough to hear the tales at the fire. It would do him no good to know the great deeds of the past are wiped out by the calumny of the present.”

He had spoken with intent to wound and saw his effort wasted. Valerius lounged, smiling, in the doorway, untouched and untouchable.

Caradoc was more direct. Until then, they had been speaking Latin, as a courtesy to Xenophon. He changed now to Eceni and, speaking as an elder, giving due weight to his words, said, “Bán, son of Macha, brother to Breaca. For the boy you were, for your own sake and your sister’s, I would gladly have given my life. For the evil you have become, if your emperor did not hold the lives of my children as hostage, I would kill you where you stand.”

“I have no doubt you would try.” The man who was Bán and yet not Bán replied in Latin, pointedly. “Which is precisely why your children did not die on the hillside above the river that marks the site of the governor’s last resounding military victory. There are more ways to defeat a man than simply to kill him in battle.”

It was a practised taunt, the edge dulled with inner repetition. Baldly, Caradoc said, “Scapula is dead.”

“I know. I brought the news to Narcissus. Doubtless I
will follow him. The dreamers have their mark now; it won’t take them long to find those of us they hate most.” Valerius smiled, wolf-like. “It is good to think you will have made the journey ahead of me. I would have hated to die with Amminios’ favourite brother still living.”

Dubornos laughed. “Are you insane? No-one could believe that Caradoc ever lived in Amminios’ favour. They loathed each other and everyone knows it. Amminios betrayed all of us to Rome. Caradoc and your sister were each sworn to kill him on sight. If he had ever had the courage to return to his father’s dun, he would have died within the day.”

“Bán believes otherwise, does he not?” Caradoc had control of himself again. He settled back on the pallet. His eyes searched the other man’s face, absorbing those things that had changed and those that had not. “The last time we met,” he said carefully, “you defeated my brother in a game of Warrior’s Dance as long and hard-fought as any battle. Afterwards, I swore to attend your long-nights and speak for you before the elders. I learned the details of your death—we really did believe you dead, I will swear that by any god in whom we can both trust—only when I returned to Eceni lands in fulfilment of my oath. In none of that would you have had reason to believe I held any love for Amminios. You knew the depth of hatred between us.”