Dreaming the Bull (40 page)

“But still you betrayed my sister, my father—all of us—to him before you left to take ship for Gaul.” He was a child again; they all heard it.

“No.” Caradoc was standing now, his head high, his anger no longer restrained. With quiet force, he said, “Whatever Amminios told you, whatever you chose to
accept, you cannot believe that I would have damaged Breaca. I won’t allow it. Your sister is my heart and soul, the rising of my sun in the morning. She has been from the first meeting and will be until I die and beyond. I would no more betray her than I would cut the throat of our newborn daughter. If Amminios told you otherwise, he was lying to hurt you.”

“Or he was telling the truth to achieve the same end?” Valerius’ lip curled. “The sons of Cunobelin were ever famed for their quick ways with words. You may squirm now to save your dignity but I overheard your brother speaking of it to his factor at a time when he had no idea I was listening. He had no reason to lie; you have too many to count. In this, I choose to believe the dead before the almost-dead.”

“You would believe
Amminios
over me?”

“Yes.”

It was said with perfect certainty. Only his eyes, at last, betrayed the first edge of doubt.

Dubornos took a step towards him. “Bán, you don’t believe—”

Caradoc said, “But he does, he needs to. His life has turned on this, hasn’t it, Valerius?” He spoke in Eceni, the single Latin name harsh in the flow of rounded syllables. “What other lies did Amminios tell you? Did he say that your family were all dead and there was nothing to come home to? That you would be blamed, perhaps, for the defeat at the valley of the Heron’s Foot? He could lie so well, my brother. I know; I grew up in the shadow of his tongue. I took to the sea at twelve to escape it. But you had no escape, did you? Amminios had closed all the routes. What would
you have done if you had known at the time that Breaca was still alive after the battle? Would you have come home to find her, to fight at her side in the invasion? Even to die for her?”

He spoke to a ghost. Bán stood in the doorway, bone-white, his eyes black holes in his skull. He swallowed and opened his mouth and no sound came out.

Caradoc said, “If you had the chance now, would you still—”

Dubornos laid a hand on his shoulder. “Enough. Stop now. He knows. There is nothing to be gained by making it worse.”

Bán—Valerius—found voice enough to laugh. “Worse? There is nothing you can say that will make anything worse. You are lying—every word confirms it, and it counts for nothing. It would be amusing to talk more, but the emperor orders otherwise. The crowds must be entertained and they find the death of others most engaging. Very soon your dying will begin. Eventually, it will end. Afterwards I will continue to serve my emperor and my god to the best of my ability until your cursed dreamers—”

“Stop.” Caradoc could still lead, effortlessly. The once-Eceni stopped in mid-sentence, his mouth agape. A flash of anger gathered and fell away as Caradoc said, “Listen…”

Dubornos listened and, unwilling, heard. Time had moved on. The citron sun had passed beyond the limits of their window. Outside, a half-century of men marched at parade pace up the hill towards the palace. A cartwheel squealed, wanting oil, and halted outside at the end of the corridor.

The fear, so long held at bay, rushed to return.
Dubornos swayed, light-headed. Bán stared at him for a lingering moment and then spoke past him to the physician standing at the back of the cell.

“Xenophon, you should not be here.”

“And you should?”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me; I became diverted by the amusements of our captives. I am to lead the prisoners in the procession and escort them to the tribunal. Claudius commands it. He requires a man who speaks both Latin and Eceni to translate the final speeches.”

They had been speaking Latin for over half their conversation, faultlessly. Caradoc said, “We need no translation. Claudius knows that.”

“Nevertheless, it will be done. The emperor wishes his defeated barbarian savages to be truly barbarian. It goes against the grain to execute a man who speaks Latin better than half the Senate.”

I am Julius Valerius, decurion. I am sworn to the infinite Sun. Mithras, Father, help me.

The words ran in Valerius’ head, marking time with the beat of the small drum by which each part of the procession was driven. They gave him little solace. No part of the emperor’s triumphal parade was going to plan. At the most mundane level, the white, blue-eyed mare he had been loaned was afraid of mules and riding her close to the prisoner’s mule-drawn carts took more than half his attention. Beyond that, he was assailed on all sides and it was not only the prisoners who were the enemy.

From the procession’s first creaking progress, the crowd lining the parade route had been difficult. The vast majority of Rome’s population had already gathered under awnings on the plains in front of the Praetorian camp where the culmination of the parade was scheduled to take place in the third hour before noon. The thousands who had lined the via Tiburtina were the dregs of the city, those lacking either the influence or the money to gain a worthwhile stance on the plains.

They had been enough to hamper the procession’s progress. In the beginning, it was the quantity and quality of the precious metals on the carts that had caught the crowd’s attention. Every item of gold and part-gold taken from the tribes of Britannia and presented to the emperor, his wife, his sons and his freedmen had been loaded onto eight long, low-sided platforms, the better to be seen by the people. The morning sun had made of them a lake of flocculent butter, each item lost in the dazzle. Torcs of twisted gold wire hooked through others of hollow metal sheet embossed with wild animals and scenes of battle; enamelled armbands a hand’s breadth wide gleamed near delicate, intricate necklaces of gold and silver, amber and pink coral; silver mirrors thrown in at random made moons in the shining day.

It was an impressive display. Inspired by it to holiday mood, slaves, lesser merchants and their filthy, snot-nosed children had run alongside the procession or, easily outrunning the mules, had taken short cuts through back streets to come out ahead and watch the carts pass again.

Captives had followed the spoils, providing even greater entertainment. First had come four carts of women and children destined for slavery. Those bearing the scars of battle had been placed on the inside, that the people might not readily see the evidence that barbarian women fought alongside their men.

Nearly two hundred men followed, all acknowledged warriors. Already some wore gladiatorial armour, if not yet their weapons. Their public combat, in pairs or groups, had been scheduled for the following day. A hundred tall Numidians had been hand-picked to fight against them. Thus
would the two barbarian ends of the empire be brought together, each demonstrating their inferiority to Rome.

Last in the procession came the family of the rebel king, Caratacus; his wife and two children had been granted a cart to themselves. The two women were dressed in modest white linen, moderately clean. They stood upright with commendable dignity and had not been chained. The boy Cunomar swayed between them. A beautiful, almost feminine child, he bore the marks of recent bruising about his face and his hands were bound behind him with cord; an afterthought, or an emergency measure against a child’s instinct to fight his captors. Women in the crowd cooed as he passed and some of the younger men blew noisy kisses. His face became paler and more fey as the cart ascended the hill.

The family was followed at the last by Caratacus himself, the barbarian king who for so long had spurned the rule of Roman law and would pay the price. For a while, the crowd had been impressed by him.

Bigger than the others, his cart was drawn by two grey geldings with black trappings and black feathers in their brow bands. The horses were pale, almost white, and someone with more imagination than experience had painted swirling whorls on their quarters and flanks with deep grey-black river clay to represent barbarian woad. Later, a legionary who had served in the invasion forces and knew more of what he was about had added the sinuous lines of the serpent-spear in ox-blood red on their outer shoulders.

The man himself stood tall in his chains, his eyes straight ahead, as befitted his rank. His dress was pure barbarian; his tunic, breeches and cloak were of rough wool in loud Gaulish check with his only armour a leather corselet
stitched about with the crudest of metal plates, some so poorly polished they could have been lead and not iron. His brother, standing alongside, was a poorer imitation, the lesser in all respects, including his inability or unwillingness to maintain a dignified silence. He spoke constantly to the officer at his side, ignoring his status as prisoner.

From Valerius’ perspective, the trouble had started in earnest when Dubornos began to pass comment on the things around him. They had been crossing an intersection. Sunlight leaked between tall buildings, the houses piled on houses that kept the populace of Rome concentrated within an easy walk of the forum. Here, costs had been cut and margins creamed; the windows were placed so close together that a whore could lean out of one and offer her services to a man at the other and he, if he were daring and chose to believe the building might remain upright for the duration of the transaction, could clasp her hand and accept. Along the length of the street, mortar flaked from the lintels and gaps with streaks of green slime below showed where roof tiles had slipped and gutters failed.

Dubornos had said, “I have seen two grandmothers walking the streets, both lame, neither supported by a youth to be their eyes and limbs as would happen even now in the tribes.”

The soft, rolling Eceni fell into the crowd and was not welcome; those for whom his death was the day’s entertainment resented being excluded from his pleadings. Someone hissed. Others began the low, pulsing groan that greeted the loser of gladiatorial combat.

Ignoring them, Dubornos said, “Were you not the eyes and limbs to the elder grandmother after your sister sat her
long-nights? Does it not shame you to be part of this? Does your god look on and feel his people well cared for?”

“My god is not your—” It had been a mistake to answer. Silence had been Valerius’ best—his only—defence. The mare jerked her head and a small cheer rose from a different part of the crowd, congratulating the captive on his strike; not all of the city’s population favoured the legions.

Whatever their allegiance, the masses wanted most an excuse for a riot and were close to finding it. A hand’s length of firewood bounced on the edge of the cart near the mare’s eye. She skittered sideways, her hooves sliding on the metalled road. Her hindquarters knocked up against a doorway and hit something soft. A woman screamed from low down underfoot.

Caradoc, who had been silent since the cart had left the prison, said distinctly, “Watch yourself, fool.” The tone of it stung.

Valerius hauled on the reins, swearing in Thracian. The mare backed out of the doorway, lifting her feet too high. Beneath them, bleeding freely but still living, the drunken, par-blind beggar-woman who had chosen it for her night’s rest lay on her back with her legs splayed, yammering incoherencies. Her left leg was withered from the thigh down. Her left wrist, which had been whole when she lay down to rest, was broken.

“Help her, god damn you!”

It was said in Eceni, but the meaning was clear to the entire crowd. Somewhere, a man laughed coarsely. “Go on, decurion, get her up. Look what she’s offering. How can you resist?”

A small group of youths near to the old woman began to cat-call, as they would a prostitute out alone too late.

“Bán, for god’s sake—”

I am not Bán. I am Julius Valerius. Your gods are not my god.

In the time it took to think this, to repeat it, seeking certainty, Valerius lost control of the crowd. Caradoc’s voice had cracked like a whip above the tumult, losing him what small sympathy his position might have garnered. The crowd booed. From the rear ranks, someone made the sound of a horn blowing the legionary order to advance.

The driver of the captives’ cart, who had been chosen for his youth and beauty before any ability to deal with complex matters of imperial decorum, let the grey horses idle to a halt. Caught by the noise, the teamsters driving the mule carts did likewise; their orders had been to keep the procession intact. The cat-calls, trumpet-noises and whistles grew to a common jeering, gathering rhythm with volume.

Valerius cursed, looking round for help. He had dealt with crowds often enough to know their patterns. Soon, they would begin the slow, taunting hand-clap of the circus and soon after that there would be blood; the century of Urban Guard escorting them was not enough to prevent it. A movement on the cart caught his attention. Swearing passionately, he wrenched the mare back.

Caradoc was contained, but only barely so. A Praetorian legionary was at the cart’s side; his drawn sword was all that prevented the prisoner from jumping down.

Dressed in the ludicrous lead-stitched armour, with clay sworls flaking from his cheeks, Caradoc radiated anger. His eyes locked with Valerius’. If ever the one god lived in a man, he did so now. The blazing gold hair was the newly risen sun, the fury fuelled by centuries of imperfect worship. In perfection was beauty and astonishing nobility. That it
should come here and now, in this man, was unthinkable sacrilege. Valerius felt his diaphragm clench and fought not to vomit.

The grey gaze could not be broken. The immeasurable voice of the god said, “See
to her. Now.”

The part of himself that dismounted and knelt by the old woman was not one that Valerius remembered with any certainty. When he spoke, it was at first in a language he had neither heard nor spoken in nearly twenty years. With considerable effort, he set aside the tongue of his ancestors and repeated his question in Eceni, Gaulish and finally Latin, working his way from distant youth to adulthood. Only at the last did the old woman understand him. “Grandmother, where are you hurt?”