Dreaming the Bull (45 page)

The delivery was prolonged and painful. Outwardly, the warrior of the Ordovices had changed little since her capture, but each passing month of the emperor’s hospitality had softened the trained iron of her muscle until, when her time came, she was no more fit for the bearing of children than any other of Rome’s women.

It was the first childbirth Cunomar had ever seen; when his mother had given birth to Graine, she had done so with only the dreamers to attend her and he had seen the infant only afterwards, when the blood and the screaming were done. He did not believe his mother had screamed. He was sure he would have heard her, however far away she went.
Since coming to Rome, he had heard the sounds of birthing often enough to know it was different here. The walls of the second floor apartment in which they lived were so thin that he might have been in the same room as their neighbours on either side, above, and below, and what noise did not come in from them radiated across from the opposite side of the street and those behind. The fat Latin woman whose apartment shared their stairway had, as far as he could tell, a child every year and shot them out as a hen lays eggs, but the freed slave-woman downstairs and the silversmith’s woman and the sullen, silent one who lived alone and the Latin woman said was a whore had each passed through long, painful births in the last two years, all of them noisily.

Cwmfen screamed and was ashamed of it, Cunomar could see that. In order that he would not shame her further by witnessing it, he spent the day fetching water. In the early morning, he took the half-dozen buckets they owned and filled them one at a time from the sunken cistern on the ground floor that served their apartment and four others near it. Carrying water was always his job and on most days he resented it, as he resented all things Roman. In his world, the one the gods had made, water was a gift from Nemain, flowing in streams and rivers, or from Manannan when he made the endless sea. One gave thanks to the god and used it with care, but it never ran dry. In Rome, water came in aqueducts or underground pipes and was delivered directly to the houses of the rich and the public baths. For those, like Cunomar’s family, who lived in penury and not near a baths, there were wells and cisterns, but they were privately owned and if one did not have to pay for the water one had to carry
it. Either way, it became another symbol of drudgery and separation from the gods.

On this day, uniquely, the slow walk up the stairs with water slopping onto his legs was a blessed relief and Cunomar repeated it frequently, even when the water was not truly needed. In the afternoon, when the buckets were all still full, he borrowed a pair of sewn goatskins from the fat Latin woman and carried them down the long hill to the public baths and the cracked fountain that served the houses and market stalls that surrounded them. He craved sunlight by then, and had the excuse that he had three newly made belts to deliver to the merchant who sold them for him. The money he made scarcely paid for the leather, but his tool work was improving and he could make three or four belts in a day and, from those, earn enough to buy bread and ale, or a jointed hare, or, better than these, a sea-fish freshly caught and brought in from Ostia.

It had taken some time for the family to find ways to survive. In the early days after their release, they had been novelties, and Caradoc especially had been in demand to appear at supper with senators and consuls and those who hoped to become so, who needed to demonstrate their support of Claudius and saw in the pardoned captive a means subtly to do so.

The serpent-spear brooch that he wore had been borrowed—for a fee—and replicated and became, for a while, the symbol of support for the emperor before the fad passed and something less barbaric replaced it. The brooch had been returned by the silversmith who copied it, who had stayed for the afternoon to discuss its making and the creation of other pieces, similar but not the same. It had
seemed that something might come of that to earn an income, but the silversmith had died of eating bad pork and no others had come in his stead.

Caradoc’s appearances had not been paid, but each time a fresh set of clothes had been provided, each outdoing the last in ostentation and poor taste, and these had been sold later to feed the family for a while and perhaps pay for firewood as well. Later, as the invitations dwindled, they had found that Dubornos’ skills were most marketable. There was little call for a trained warrior, particularly not one damaged for life by the attentions of the emperor’s horse-guard, but a storyteller with a barbarian accent was welcome, and particularly so if he were a healer. Xenophon had helped in this, supplying herbs and bland bases for ointments and salves, and they had lived from these through the first winter.

In spring, inactivity had driven the others to action as a way to keep from going mad. After several false starts, they had found that Ordovician leatherwork was valued even if those buying it could not decipher the symbols burned and worked into the hides. Cygfa had come out of herself a little and made a belt, spending days on the tooling. It had sold quickly and the rest had learned from her. It was not warriors’ work but better than the alternatives. They made belts and pouches and scabbards for the weapons they themselves were forbidden to wear and, once, a consignment of boots that they found later, appallingly, was destined for the cavalry fighting in Britannia.

Standing in the raw September sunshine, Cunomar weighed the copper coins he had been given for the belts and decided that, today of all days, his father needed ale more than anything, and that Cwmfen would probably appreciate it when the babe was out. He bought a flagon and set it in
the water of the fountain to chill for a while before he carried it back, hoping the whole mess might be over by the time he returned.

It was half over, which was better than nothing. When he had left, Dubornos had said he could feel the first arc of the crown against his searching fingers. When Cunomar slipped into the room and took his place sitting in the far corner, he had almost the whole head.

Experience of foalings and lambings in the time before Rome told Cunomar that the worse part was the shoulders and that a head alone was not enough, but this babe had a narrow chest and the shoulders came as the last of the sun tipped over the edge of the rooftops to the west so that the infant emerged soon after into lamplight and the arms of his father. He was bald and wrinkled and red and ugly but Cunomar had learned that was to be expected and did not remark on it.

For Roman propriety, they named him Gaius Caratacus. Amongst the family, he was to be Math of the Ordovices, a name his father had used in his youth and, for his parents if not for Cunomar, sang of freedom. In accordance with what little of his heritage it was possible to recreate, Dubornos spoke the words of Briga’s welcome while Caradoc carried the child two flights downstairs to the small plot of their vegetable garden and, with Cygfa and Cunomar as witnesses, showed him to the night sky, to the earth and to water, and then returned him to his mother who was already asleep. The child had wide, pale eyes and after the first squalls of birth viewed them all in shocked silence, as if he had come expecting a roundhouse and a world at war and had prepared no response for the sight of four walls and a city that pretended peace.

Afterwards, the ale was as welcome as Cunomar had
hoped it might be. They built a small fire, although it was not truly cold, and sat with it for a while in silence, enjoying the warmth of the flames and the bite of the drink and the quiet of the evening before retiring to sleep.

Cunomar worried constantly about his father, who worried constantly about all of them. Each did his best not to let it show. The crowded living of the apartment had demonstrated early that none of them could afford to give way to petty resentments if all were to keep their souls and sanities intact. Cunomar lay awake most nights reminding himself that Rome was the enemy, not Cygfa or Dubornos or Cwmfen or, gods forbid, his father. If it was hard for him not to descend into petty squabbles, how much harder for Caradoc, who shouldered the burden of care for the family while still the subject of talk wherever he went? If Cunomar found the limitations of life in the apartment drove him to distraction, how could he show it when his father bore for life the stigma of the pardoned captive and the damage of his imprisonment?

The physical scars were most obvious if not necessarily the most damaging. Despite Xenophon’s best efforts, neither Caradoc’s ruined shoulder nor the shackle-sores on both Dubornos and Caradoc had healed fully. The sores festered and neither man had recovered full use of his wrists and hands afterwards. Caradoc’s wounds were worse, Cunomar thought, because he had been bound more tightly and because he had fought against the shackles that day in the blood-red room when the emperor had used Cunomar as a lever in an effort to extract the words he wanted from his enemy. It was then, too, that the strings of his shoulder had been ripped apart and Xenophon had said at the outset that the warrior would never recover full use of that arm.

Knowing that, Cunomar went to lengths both to support Caradoc and to hide that he was doing so. In little ways, he did what he could to save him from having to use his hands for delicate tasks. He worked the finest tooling on the leather, he chopped wood for kindling, because it was hard for Caradoc to wield an axe left-handed and his right arm did not have the power to split logs into splinters. He learned to fillet fish and never brought one home but its guts were already gone. Caradoc had spent a large part of his life aboard ship in his youth in the days when he was Math and the few years after when he abandoned the pretence and was known clearly as Caradoc, renegade son of the Sun Hound. He had acquired a taste for sea-fish then and never lost it. There was a possibility that he might have preferred fish even to ale as a treat for the evening.

Cunomar was lying awake with his mind drifting from ale to fish to the memory of how carefully his father had grasped the new child, as if afraid he might damage it, when Cygfa appeared in the doorway.

Stiffly, unwillingly, she said, “Dubornos, can you come? Cwmfen’s bleeding. I can’t make it stop.”

It was too dark to see. Cygfa had always had the eyes of a cat. Cunomar heard Dubornos’ muffled answer and the sound of his feet on the floor; the singer must have been awake already, to respond so quickly. Rising, Cunomar found the doorway by habit and then saw his way to the front room by the poor light of the lamps still lit within. By those, also, he saw how still Cwmfen was lying on the bed and the spread of dark blood on the floor. Ahead of him, Dubornos grasped Cygfa’s arm.

“We need help with this. Go to Xenophon at the palace.
Ask for his ergot with my sincere apologies for not accepting it when he first offered.” His eyes shifted past her to the doorway and he said, “Take Cunomar. It’s not safe for you to be out at night on your own.”

Cygfa opened her mouth and closed it again. Of them all, she was the one who had adjusted least well to life in Rome. She had no visible scars and had not, besides the examination by Xenophon in the emperor’s quarters, been physically assaulted in any way. Nevertheless, that examination, and the fact that she had passed to womanhood and not yet taken her long-nights, had been enough to cut her off from the world and her family with it. For the whole of the first year, she had spoken to no-one but her mother and then only at times of absolute necessity. The making of the belts had been a turning point and she had begun after that to speak to her father and brother, seeming at times almost recovered. With Cunomar particularly, she had begun to develop a true friendship so that he had begun to understand at last what it meant to have a sister and to rejoice in it.

Dubornos was different. Cygfa loathed Xenophon with a cold, consuming passion and Dubornos was his friend. Caradoc was his friend too, but he was her father and could not be held at fault. In any case, he had not been present in the audience room on the night of their arrival. Dubornos, who had been present, had not been forgiven, nor, perhaps, ever could be.

Cunomar had been sure that his sister had loved the singer once. Certainly she had yearned for him and her withdrawal from him in the messy, tangled winter after their reprieve had the brittle feeling of one whose offer of love has been rejected, or honour besmirched. His closeness to
Xenophon, Cunomar thought, gave her an excuse to behave the way she did, but it was not the first reason.

Whatever the cause, Dubornos had felt it and been hurt. Over the past two years, he had made every effort to show her respect, to treat her exactly as he treated her mother, as a warrior and an adult. Faced with her unyielding resistance, he had, in the end, become as formal with her as she was with him until they barely spoke from one month’s end to the next.

Only now, with Cwmfen’s life in danger, had Dubornos’ careful formality slipped, and then badly. To imply that the streets of Rome were more dangerous for her than they were for Cunomar was tactless at best. Cygfa was a proven warrior with eight kills to her credit. Moreover, for the past two years, she had worked to keep herself as fit as she had ever been in the days when they were free. The streets were safer by far for her than for Cunomar who had killed no-one and to suggest otherwise was an insult. She stood in the hallway and it was quite clear to all of them that the only reason she had not struck Dubornos was her mother’s need for him.

In the lamplight, Cunomar sought her eyes and, meeting them, sent a silent plea that she let go of the insult and do as she was asked. If Dubornos wanted them gone, it was for a reason and there was nothing to be gained by pulling holes in his logic. The new friendship between them worked. Before, she would have ignored him. Now, delighted, he saw her waver and change her mind. Nodding, she said, “What are you going to do?”

Dubornos was already halfway into the room. “Pray,” he said. “And see if I can find where she’s bleeding and stop it.”

“It’s deep inside. She can feel it. Ask her; she’s still with
us.” The girl turned and squeezed Cunomar’s arm. “I’ll get my cloak. You should bring yours. It’s not cold now, but it will be later when we’ve walked to the palace.”