The Greener Shore (5 page)

“It was, I assure you. Before Briga and I were married she said dreadful things about me, it was her way of hiding her true feelings.”

Goulvan looked at Briga with renewed interest. “Is that a fact? I like a spirited woman.”

My senior wife scowled at me. “Ainvar,” she said in the low, deadly voice a husband learns to recognize. Her intonation told me that I would not be warming myself with her body that night.

IN THE NORMAL COURSE OF EVENTS, A MAN WITH THREE WIVES COULD
seek comfort from one of the others. Unfortunately that option was not open to me. Sometimes I actually suspected—with no proof at all—that my three wives were in a gleeful conspiracy against me.

From the beginning Briga had undertaken to make allies of the other two. Because she and Lakutu shared an interest in herbalism she had led the Egyptian from one patch of weed to another. My eyes had observed my second wife solemnly nodding as Briga explained how chewing this green leaf could relieve toothache, or a paste made from those stems could be smeared on the lids of clouded eyes to improve sight. The exchange of information was not all one way, however. Briga once informed me that among Lakutu’s people strange spices were used to preserve the bodies of the dead for all eternity.

How she learned this, when I could get almost no information about Egypt from Lakutu, I shall never know.

Briga had established a bond with Onuava through their shared nobility. Soon Rix’s widow thought of Briga as a sister, while I was merely the husband. Whenever a dispute arose between myself and either of them, the pair looked down their noble noses at me in unison.

My three wives presented me with a united front in all domestic matters. It was enough to make me consider taking a fourth wife and keeping her well away from the others. But the only other adult females in our band were Keryth the seer, who had lost her husband and children in the war with the Romans and vowed she would never marry again; Sulis the healer, who was the sister of the Goban Saor and married to Grannus; and Damona, the only wife of Teyrnon.

While one may sleep with another man’s wife if both parties agree, one cannot marry another man’s wife if he is still able to protect her himself. Besides, we had seen too much of war already. I did not want to have one of my few remaining friends come after me with his knife in his hand.

Arrangements in the boats were determined by kinship. With Goulvan in the lead vessel was my family, consisting of myself, my wives, and their children. Except for the son of Vercingetorix. As a show of independence Labraid demanded to go in the second boat. Although he could not yet be counted as a man, he was big and burly and increasingly felt a need to prove himself.

He and Cormiac had begun eyeing each other in the way of hounds with raised hackles.

Goulvan told me our voyage would follow the route of migrating birds. “It’s a good omen, Ainvar. Immense flocks set off from these shores to enjoy the fruits of Albion.”

“Albion?”

“Your destination,” he said firmly. “No doubt about it; Albion’s the place for you. Wonderful climate, hospitable people, and the entire island is fertile. In one summer your clan will be fat.”

The trader claimed to be on excellent terms with the tribes in the south of Albion, where we would go ashore. “Everyone who matters knows me,” he boasted, sucking the stumps of his rotten teeth. “The great chieftains of the Catuvellauni, the Dumnonii, the Atrebates—they’re all personal friends of mine.”

My head warned me that he was lying; great chieftains would not bother with someone like Goulvan. I chose to ignore my head’s wise counsel. We had been driven to the edge of the Earth and must jump off, even if we died for it.

Death is of little consequence. However, Celts have a visceral aversion to rigidity. Because the natural world is full of movement, the curve and the spiral are beautiful to us. Romans, on the other hand, are addicted to straight lines. The squares and boxes they construct imprison free-flowing spirit. Even a day spent in a Roman cell would cripple our children.

Vercingetorix had been imprisoned in Rome; left to slowly starve in a cramped cell, he whose roof had been the stars. He whom duplicitous Caesar had promised to treat as befitted an honorable opponent. In the end, Rix had been dragged through the streets in a final act of humiliation and publicly strangled.

For this alone my spirit would hunt that of Gaius Julius Caesar down all the roads of Time.

BOATS ON THE OPEN SEA HAVE A NASTY EFFECT ON THE BELLY. THE
only person who did not vomit over the side at least once was Labraid. When the two boats were close enough together to make conversation between them possible, Labraid called to his mother, “I think I was born for the sea. From now on you can call me Labraid Loingseach; the Speaker Who Sails the Seas.”

Youngsters are not given the privilege of naming themselves arbitrarily. I caught Onuava’s eyes with a question in mine. She shrugged one shoulder to indicate she had no objection.

“Labraid Loingseach,” I repeated, validating the new name. “Don’t get too used to the title, though. We’re not going to do this again.”

The boy grinned and tossed his head exactly the way Rix used to do. “I might,” he said. He began pestering Grannus to be allowed to take a turn with the oars.

Unfortunately Ainvar the druid did not have a warrior’s belly. Members of the Order of the Wise pride themselves on their dignity, but mine came pouring out of me in ugly gobbets that floated on the surface of the waves as if to taunt me. When I tried to read the omens in them, they capriciously dissolved.

At sunset the Armoricans took down the heavy sails and let us drift with a current which, they swore, was going in the right direction. Some of my people slept, but I could not. I lay awake with my head pillowed on Briga’s warm belly and gazed up at the stars. They had changed, those stars. Their configuration was not quite the one I knew.

Would their changed Pattern change ours?

When the sun rose, the sails were raised also and we continued our journey. There was no land to be seen in any direction. Even the seabirds that frequent the coast had deserted us. Yet on we went, until a misty headland rose before us. “Albion!” Goulvan announced happily.

The relief I felt was short-lived. Even as we were bumping through the pebbled shallows, I spied a settlement on a promontory. A square, sturdy, fortified settlement built in a style I recognized.

I rounded on Goulvan in a fury. “There
are
Romans here!”

He tried to look surprised. “Are there?”

“You know there are! What place is this again?”

“Why, Albion. I told you.”

“By some terrible chance could Albion also be known as the land of the Britons?”

“I believe it is,” the scoundrel conceded.

“Which means the Romans are here before us, you wretched pustule! What was your plan, Goulvan—to sell us to them like bags of wheat?”

The trader held out gnarled hands. “By the wind and the waves, I swear—”

“Swear nothing. Your words are brass posing as gold.” I turned toward the second boat, which was following close behind us. “I need a sword!” I cried. We all carried personal knives but I wanted something more intimidating that could be clearly seen by the crews in both boats.

Although his beard had not begun to grow, young Labraid’s body housed a fully fledged warrior spirit. His proudest possession was a shortsword modeled on the Roman gladus. Labraid had coaxed and bullied Teyrnon into forging the weapon for him shortly before we left Gaul.

In response to my cry Onuava’s son drew his sword from its sheath. Holding it by the leather-covered grip, he brandished it in the air. “Here, Ainvar! Catch!”

“No!” I shouted. If either boat rolled at the wrong moment, a useful weapon would be lost to the sea.

I need not have worried.

While Labraid was waving his sword around, Cormiac Ru assessed the situation accurately and sprang from his boat to ours in one tremendous leap. He landed in a crouch at my feet. Straightening up, he drew his sword from its bronze-and-leather sheath. My father had carried that sword. Made in the ancient Gaulish design, longer and heavier than a shortsword, the weapon had fought in many battles. The iron blade was permanently discolored by old bloodstains.

On his fifteenth birthday, the age when Celtic boys traditionally took up arms and were counted as men, I had given my father’s sword to the Red Wolf.

Now he offered it to me.

“It’s still yours,” I told him. “Show Goulvan how sharp your blade is.”

The sword sprang forward to press against the trader’s neck, delicately slicing the flesh until a thin red line appeared. A necklace of tiny ruby drops on a windburned throat.

Goulvan rolled his eyes like a panicked horse.

I asked him, “Is this the only island?”

“There’s one farther west of here,” he stammered, “but not nearly as big as Albion. And you wouldn’t want to—”

“Have your men row away from the shore as fast as they can,” I demanded, “and order your crew in the other boat to follow us.”

“Where shall we go?” His voice was a hoarse croak.

“Toward the sunset.”

“No!” Goulvan cried.

The very fact that he did not want to go in that direction was enough for me. “Yes!” I roared with all the power in my lungs. “We go west! What is the name of the next landfall?”

Goulvan muttered under his breath.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“I said ‘Hibernia.’ If we’re lucky. Or unlucky,” he added cryptically.

By this time I had no faith in Goulvan’s word. Perhaps there was no other island. Or if Hibernia existed, perhaps it too had been seized by the Romans. In that case I would force the crews to row on and on until we were swallowed by the endless sea, which might not be the worst fate for us.

At least we would be free.

Accepting the inevitable, I sat back down in the boat and surveyed the heaving sea with something akin to complacency.

The Armorican crewmen were not so sanguine. They dug their oars into the water so violently I feared we would overturn while they jabbered of boiling seas and monsters as big as mountains.

Onuava soon lost her temper. Onuava in a rage was like a huge male swan protecting his brood: terrifying and gorgeous. More the former than the latter, however. “You’re frightening the children,” she shouted at the crewmen, “and I won’t have it! If you won’t take us any farther I’ll personally throw the lot of you over the side. We can row the rest of the way ourselves.”

The Armoricans shuddered at the threat. Like most seamen, none of our crew could swim.

chapter
III

W
HILE WE BATTLED HIGH WAVES AND ROUGH WEATHER, DAY DIED
and was born anew. The color of the sea changed from sullen gray to a blue so dark it was like a well of night. The height of the waves lessened but my stomach was not mollified. There was nothing on, under, or above the earth that I wanted as much as I wanted to set my feet on dry land. Nothing except the knowledge that my children were beyond the reach of the insatiable brute called Caesar.