Brigantia

XVIII

ENICA RODE WELL.

‘She’s Brigantian,’ Vindex said, as if that should be clear to anyone. ‘Of the royal house, granddaughter of Cartimandua and Venutius – of course she can ride. Bet she can drive a chariot too. They say Cartimandua was better than any man, rivalling the heroes of legend. The women of that line are special.’ Ferox had never heard his friend speak in such admiring tones of anything, let alone anyone.

She did not dress for the journey like a Brigantian or a Roman. After sending Vindex to fetch their horses and telling Ferox to drag the body of her servant out of the fire and carry him to the chasm, she had vanished behind the rocks. When she joined him by the river she was wearing baggy trousers and a long-sleeved tunic, with another short-sleeved one over the top. She had kept her felt boots, and girded the tunics with a wide leather belt.

‘I suppose you had better have this back,’ she said as she handed him his sword in its scabbard. She had the sica on her left hip and a plainer gladius on the right.

‘Thank you.’ If she had the blade, then she must either have been in the warehouse and led him out or known who did. Ferox nodded at the corpse. He had rolled the man up in a blanket, leaving only his face exposed. ‘I have seen him before.’ It was the scarred man who had brought the first message that night he had been ambushed in the amphitheatre.

‘I know.’

‘We should talk.’

‘Later.’ Enica put two fingers to her lips and kissed them, then leaned over and pressed them to the dead man’s forehead. ‘Give him to the river. It is the best we can do.’

Ferox obeyed, lifting the body and walking over to the brink of the chasm. He let the man fall, saw him vanish into the foam, and part of him half expected the woman to step up behind and push him over as well. When he turned he saw that she was already on her way back to the camp. As soon as Vindex returned with their mounts, they set out, riding north for an hour before they made a cold camp. They left the Ordovices to lie and hoped no others would appear seeking revenge. Before dawn they woke and set out once more.

Enica dressed like a Parthian and rode like one as well, her grey seeming to respond to her merest thought without need for any gesture. At times she did not even hold the reins, merely looping them round one of the pommels on her saddle. Before she swathed herself in a hooded cloak the next morning, Ferox saw that her trousers were russet, her tunics a pale blue, and all of them from silk.

‘Any fool can be uncomfortable,’ Enica told him, noticing his surprise. ‘Lice don’t seem to like it, which means it’s also the best way to keep free of them.’ Ferox wondered whether that was true. Vermin were simply a fact of life. You could cull them now and again, smoke them out if you did not mind your clothes reeking of charcoal for a month, but only really be free of them if you lived close to a good bath-house, used it often, and changed every day. Otherwise, lice were like the weather, sometimes a torment but usually bearable.

‘It makes you conspicuous,’ he said. He guessed that with the silks, the princely grey horses, the young woman was probably wandering around with the equivalent of a hundred years’ pay for a legionary.

She gestured with her hand, splaying the fingers like a fan as she passed by her face. ‘I am conspicuous.’

‘That you are, lady,’ Vindex said admiringly.

She smiled at him. ‘The Carvetii are a courteous folk. Sadly, the Silures mistake silence for wit.’

The tracks to the north were hard to find, and they got lost more than once or came to a dead end beyond which the horses could not pass. At first they said little, although Vindex sang softly for much of the way. He did not have a pleasant voice, but he sang stories of the old days, of the proud kings and magical queens of the Brigantes, of feasts and rivalries, contests and battles. Enica smiled at him often. Now and again she caught Ferox’s eye and then she would screw her face up in a scowl, mocking him.

Twice Ferox saw a warrior up on the peaks above them, squatting beside a boulder, watching as they passed. He was not sure, but thought that it was the same man each time, and a nimble man on foot could easily have kept pace along the heights, given how slow and winding were the paths they took. At noon they reached a bridge, much like the other one, save that it had been deliberately broken. There were tracks of around thirty or forty horses; the mud was too churned up to be more precise. The horses were heavily laden and all much the same size, and the prints left by the men who had dismounted showed hobnailed caligae. Cavalry had come here, crossed over and then ripped up the planks, piling them neatly on the far bank.

‘I’m guessing you are not with them,’ Ferox said.

‘I am with you, centurion, hadn’t you noticed?’

Ferox ignored Vindex’s chuckle. ‘Then who are they? They cannot have been far behind you all this time.’

‘Is it my fault if men follow me?’ The voice was pure Claudia, in spite of the Parthian rig and swords at her belt. She sighed. ‘You can be rather dull, do you know that? I had always understood the Silures could look at tracks and tell you what colour eyes the wife of the rider’s cousin has. No? Pity.

‘They are Brigantes, since your art fails you so lamentably. Men from the royal ala, and led by my brother.’

‘And what does he want?’ An arched eyebrow prompted him to add, ‘My lady.’

‘At last, a tiny piece of courtesy. Maybe there is hope for you after all, Flavius Ferox. My brother does not want what I want. He never really has, since the days when I followed him around and his pride took daily insults because his little sister was better than him at everything.’

‘Apart perhaps from modesty?’

‘That is merely a fancy way of telling lies. Why should I deny the truth? I thought that at least was something Silures understood?’

‘You need to tell me what is going on, my lady.’

‘Do I?’ She gave him a coy look. ‘Do I really? Perhaps later.’

‘I could make you,’ he said, growing tired.

‘You could try.’ She walked her horse away from the river. ‘Had not we better move on? As we climb nearer the source of the stream there is bound to be a spot narrow enough to cross. Come along.’

‘I am not your whisperer, lady.’

‘Indeed not, Achilles can be amusing. He is also one of the finest bookkeepers in all the lands. Vindex?’

‘Yes, lady.’

‘If this fellow insults me again, will you be kind enough to kill him?’

The scout gave a broad grin. ‘Happily, lady.’

‘If he is a only little rude, just chop something off.’

‘Happy to oblige.’ He rode after Claudia Enica. Ferox stayed where he was, and after a moment Vindex turned back and leered. ‘You don’t have to come.’

Soon they were leading the animals more often than riding. Claudia Enica kept pace and showed no sign of being more tired than either of the men. They kept climbing and eventually reached a wide plateau. The stream was smaller there, chuckling along at the bottom of a gully. After a search they found a spot where it was only a few yards across, and the banks looked firm on either side. Vindex insisted on going first, and whispered in his horse’s ears before he put her at the jump. The mare sailed over, landing well. Before Ferox could offer to help, Enica took both her greys over at the same time, riding one and leading the other on a long rein. They were superb animals, smaller than Frost and Snow, a pair of matched greys given to Ferox by King Tincommius, but alike in many ways. He wished he had either of those mounts with him now, but one was lost and the other still recovering from a wound.

Ferox came last, and his gelding was not keen at all. Twice it refused, and he had to slap it hard on the rump several times. First it bucked, then it shot forward and bounded over the gap so suddenly that he almost lost his seat. The others watched with amusement.

The afternoon wore on as they began to follow the stream and go down to where they could hope to find a better path. As the sun started to set, Vindex cantered ahead to look for somewhere to camp for the night.

‘I suppose you expect to share my food,’ Enica said as she watched him vanish into a dell.

‘We have some.’ In truth they had little left, for most of the provisions were on the pack animals with the main party – or scattered in the chasm and down the flowing stream in the case of the lost pony. ‘And are used to going without. I am sure you are too. The Mother teaches hard lessons to her sons and daughters.’

‘She does.’

‘When I met Claudia Enica in Londinium I would never have imagined you now, or fighting with those warriors. She – well, you – seemed so…’ He sought for the right word, sensing that all the time she was testing him and that so far he had not done well.

‘Soft,’ she said. ‘Weak and silly.’

‘No.’ In truth that was just what he had thought. ‘But precious, like a glass vase. Beautiful and perfect, and so fragile that it must ever be wrapped in silk and kept safe.’ He felt he was getting it right. ‘I fought alongside the sons and daughters not long ago. The sons were not far into their training. The daughters were good, although not as good as you. You reminded me of the Mother.’

‘You were with her when she died.’

How did she know that? Ferox had been the only Roman in that desperate fight on the clifftop. Vindex had arrived later, and not really known who the Mother was. Ferox had never said much to anyone about the woman and her pupils. He was not quite sure why; it just felt as if their world should remain secret, a living memory of the old world of heroes, before the Romans came. ‘I was,’ he said at last. ‘We were losing. There were just too many of them and they kept coming. She knew the price of breaking her oath, but did it for her children, and it saved them.’ That was only half-true. Vindex, Longinus and the others had come to their aid and the main force of Romans was on its way. Some of them might have lasted until that help arrived. ‘She killed and died because of it.’

‘She was special, even among the long line of Mothers back to the beginning.’ Enica’s voice had a reverence Ferox had not heard before. ‘Brigita of Hibernia may be another.’ The solemn face broke into a smile. ‘You are surprised? The whispers of the Mother reach her children wherever they are. For our whole lives we are bound to her and each other.

‘Brigita was coming to the end of her time of training there when I arrived. An older one is given as a guide to the newcomer, and I was bound to her. She was…’

‘A tough bitch.’ There was enough sheer admiration in his tone for her to nod. A queen of a Hiberian tribe, Brigita had been abducted by a band of deserters from the army, the same ones who had taken Sulpicia Lepidina. Ferox led the rescue, and then watched as the queen fought alongside his men. When it was over, she turned her back on her tribe and homeland to become the new Mother.

‘She was hard on me, very hard, and so I learned well.’ She lifted up her right leg and spun so that she was sitting in the saddle as if it was a chair, facing him. The horse did not stir and her balance was perfect. ‘You don’t often swear, do you? I hear that is the way with Silures.’

‘Waste of good anger. But these days I seem to curse a lot more.’ He snorted with laughter. ‘I must be turning into more of a Roman.’

‘To live in two worlds at once.’

Ferox nodded. ‘I guess in that we are alike. You are young, though, and I know you were educated in Gaul, so how did you find the time to go north?’

‘My mother – my real mother – decided, and father did as he was told. They sent me to Lugdunum when I was eight and then later Massilia to improve my Greek and gain understanding of the philosophers.’ She shook her head. ‘Very dull old men, most of whom have never lived and will never live, but love to talk.’

‘Unlike the Brigantes.’

‘We talk, it is true. You Silures should try it sometime. It is very freeing. So I learned, and they condescended to say that I was quite bright for a little girl. So I smiled as if I was proud, and made a joke about Epicurus, but made sure to get the details of the story slightly wrong so that they could feel secure in their wisdom. Soon I was nearly fourteen and it was clear I would not be a girl for much longer. The features your friend so admires appeared overnight. Well, began to show anyway. My tutor sent word home, and my parents whisked me away less I be debauched by fellow pupils or master. As if any of those fools had a chance! Pigs and apes the lot of them, and all so very stupid. They brought me home and then sent me to the Mother, to learn and to stay chaste. A son and daughter are not permitted to lie together,’ she explained. ‘Three years on and the Mother told me that I was ready to go back. I knew it too, although I feared being made to take a husband on my return.

‘Thankfully, my parents sent me to Rome instead, to “complete my education”.’ She snorted scornfully, and the grey horse shook its head in surprise. Without shifting from her awkward, sideways posture, she cooed to the animal and it calmed. She even crossed her legs and somehow remained balanced. ‘What a place. You have been there, I know. So many people, so many temptations and vices. Thus Claudia was born. Yet I had a guide and she steered me through. What is it Caesar said, like a helmsman avoiding a reef. Though if I recall he was speaking of oratory.’

‘So I understand.’

‘Do you, or are you just pretending? Half of life seems to be about pretending, doesn’t it? Not making others feel uncomfortable. In the old tales the heroes boast all the time and parade their prowess. I sometimes wonder whether wisdom is about hiding who you really are and what you are capable of doing.’

‘Yesterday you killed two men. At the amphitheatre you killed two more. From the ease with which you did it I doubt that they are the first. Now you ride like a centaur and speak of hiding your skills.’

She stuck her tongue out at him like a child. ‘Half of life, I said. And here there is no one to see, apart from you. Even so, those are just a few of my talents. There are lots of others. I can stand on one hand with my feet straight up in the air, but I hardly ever do. Especially when I’m wearing a dress. And if Vindex were here he would no doubt have muttered “Pity” at that point. And I can juggle.’ She frowned. ‘Your seriousness can be a bore, do you know that? Try acting as if you are entranced by my wit. I well see that my beauty stirs you.’ She glanced down, and before he knew it he did the same. There was nothing to see, as he should have known. ‘Got you,’ she said, and stuck out her tongue again.

‘Who was your helmsman?’

‘Oh, back to business. Can’t you guess? I thought you were supposed to be good at rooting out the truth.’ He said nothing. ‘Then perhaps if I say that my family’s old friendships and the emperor’s favour recommended me to the house of the Sulpicii?’

Ferox laughed and once he started he could not stop. Claudia Enica watched him with the expression of an indulgent parent. For a while they rode side by side, until she hooked her right leg back over the saddle, then pushed on the horns and jumped, placing her boots on the saddle. She stood upright, arms straight out on either side. The grey walked on, apparently oblivious.

‘Clever.’

‘Not really. Clever would be if the horse could stand on my back. Still, at least it has brought an end to your yokel-like merriment. As you have guessed, I met Sulpicia Lepidina four years ago and we got on from the start. I think she found it a pleasant change from conversation with the buffoons in her family. She was not married then, and her brother was busy getting exiled, while her father drank too much, made unwise investments and generally wasted the family’s wealth. Frankly she needed company. She took me in hand, refined my manners, we talked for days about clothes and then went shopping, came home and talked even more. Better yet she sneaked me into the local ludus. Of course they thought two noblewomen were only there for a bit of rough. You know what some are like. Personally, I could not see anything very appealing about muscle-bound and scarred heavies, but each to his own. One tried it on, so I slid his knife out of its sheath, gave him a cut on the arm and then had the point at his throat ready to press. After that they were all lambs, and they let me train and taught me the curved sword and more than a few tricks of the arena.’

‘Sulpicia Lepidina did not join you?’ For all his surprise, Ferox found the story all too easy to believe. The lady was never one to be bound by convention and clever enough to hide it. Still, the thought of her handling a sword was unlikely.

‘She just watched. I made her laugh, you see. She did not have much to cheer her in those days. She kept a couple of the bigger household slaves with us in case of trouble, but there wasn’t any need. She charmed them. You know how she can, and I amused them, and they could see that I was good. The lanista even wanted me to be in a show fight at the games!’ She slid down, smacking into the saddle and making the grey bound forward. ‘Good boy,’ she said, stroking its ears.

Vindex appeared and raised an arm to show that he had found somewhere suitable. The ground was too uneven and broken by little gullies to risk a canter, so they walked towards him.

‘She loves you very much,’ Enica said softly. ‘And the boy is everything to her. You have given her glimpses of happiness. There can never be more, for that is not fated, but never doubt that her love was real.’

‘I do not know what you mean.’

She leaned over and patted his arm. ‘Aren’t Silures supposed to be good at lying? I told you, we are close friends and friends talk. Unlike Claudia Severa I am not shocked. It gave Lepidina pleasure to live the moments again in the telling and I was the only one to trust. I’ve shocked you. Well, that is something.’

He sighed ‘I have more questions.’

‘Is this the vanity of man?’

‘Not about that.’

‘Sshh. Later.’ Vindex was close now. ‘Another time.’

The scout chattered away happily, joking with the lady, while always keeping his humour just this side of Brigantian courtesy. She responded, with the greater licence permitted to someone of her rank. They spoke about his father, and she surprised Ferox by also knowing the name, if no more, of his mother, a servant at his homestead who had caught the young chieftain’s eye.

‘I am more like him,’ Vindex admitted. ‘They say she was a beauty, although I do not really remember her face as I was little when the fever took her. The chief has been good to me.’ Vindex never used the word father when speaking of his lord.

After that they spoke for hours about horses, and a little about chariots. Ferox admired both, and could watch them or try them out for as long as anyone. Talking about them always seemed a waste of breath and effort. He had never met a silent Brigantian. More than any other tribe they prattled away, whether or not they had anything worth saying, as fond of their own voices as any sophist. Sometimes they spoke over each other, and he was baffled because they still seemed to follow what everyone else was saying. Claudia, the fashionable Roman woman, had barely stopped for breath. During the rest of the day and the evening Enica the princess of the Brigantes did not appear to need to pause at all.

Ferox left them, saying he would take the first watch. At least they had the sense to keep their voices low, although now and again Vindex brayed with laughter, making Ferox wince. It was a clear, still night, and the sound would carry a long way. He went a fair distance from the camp until he could barely hear them, and then kept moving, circling the walled sheep pen they had settled down in, stopping often and listening. There was no sign of anyone out there. They were still high up, where no one lived in winter, and although the cold and snows would most likely hold off for another month or so, already the high pastures were almost empty.

Eventually Vindex came to relieve him. Back at the camp, Ferox found Claudia Enica soundly asleep. There had been no later for them to talk, and there were still so many questions. Often silence and stillness cleared his mind. He could never remember working out a problem, yet somehow afterwards answers came clearly. That had not happened tonight, and instead he still had mysteries and suspicions. Claudia Enica was a skilled warrior, and he guessed Ovidius was right and she was almost as skilled an actress. Vindex worshipped her, and not simply because he had been raised to be loyal to her family. She was beautiful and charming, and it was hard not to like her.

Many years ago, Caratacus had told him that Silures were always wary of charm because they did not have any of their own. The old man had said it as a compliment, for he admired Ferox’s people and always said that if he had stayed with them instead of trying to rally the Ordovices, then he would still have been free and fighting into his old age. Caratacus had charm, but the Lord of the Hills trusted him because he had seen the man fight. His grandfather had told him that sometimes in life you met someone who truly was as amiable, capable and trustworthy as they seemed, and the danger was that you would miss the chance of making a true friend because you were too suspicious.

Enica claimed to have saved his life twice and he believed that, albeit at the arena he had had to survive the first attack for her help to have mattered. He believed her too when she claimed close friendship of Sulpicia Lepidina, for there was no other way she could have known so much. Ferox’s life was pledged to the mother of his child, a woman who had reawakened feelings he had thought long dead with his first lost love. Sulpicia Lepidina was also the wife of another man, daughter of a senator, and intrigue and politics were in her blood. Someone had tried to arrange his death in the arena, that night when Enica’s dead servant had come to him, and he wished that he could be sure it was not Lepidina. If it was Enica, then she had changed her mind, and if it was all Domitius’ plan, then how had Enica known about it?

She was a killer. He had seen that now. Caratacus was dead these long months past, and they said the killers were led by a woman, and presumably a woman familiar enough with the ways of Rome and Italia to pass without notice. Another woman, bold and quick thinking enough to bluff the soldier who stumbled upon her, had been there when Narcissus died, and had ridden off on horseback afterwards. Ferox tried hard to remember the voice of the woman paid off by Acco and Domitius while he was their prisoner. He did not think she had sounded like the young woman softly sighing in her sleep just a few feet away. Yet if Claudia the Roman and Enica the Brigantian were themselves performances, then perhaps there were other parts she could play just as convincingly. Cartimandua had betrayed Caratacus. Had her granddaughter murdered him?

Ferox had never fought a woman. The closest he had come had been when he and Vindex faced the masked Enica and that had never become serious. He feared having to kill her or any woman. The Silures did not kill women, or children for that matter, for it was seen as unlucky. They took captives on the raids, and the women suffered and became slaves or sometimes wives. It was not the softest of lives, but over time many became as much part of the tribe as those of the blood. That was if they realised that being of the Silures was to be of the finest people in the world, the only true people.

His instincts revolted at the thought that he might have to kill a woman, or hand her over to let someone else do the job since that was simply a cowardly way of doing the same thing. All boys born to his tribe were bound by bans against doing certain things. These were secret, known only to them and whoever had prophesied their fortune after their birth. He was bound never to harm a woman, child or creature from the deep sea. His soul, his very essence and certainly his power as a man would decay and crumble if he violated any of these taboos. The one about the sea creatures was easy enough, and the others fitted the beliefs of the Silures, although he suspected these were rare as he had never heard of any past warrior of his tribe bound in the same way. He wondered whether Acco was the one who had given him such a strange fate. After so many years as a Roman, Ferox should probably have dismissed all this as mere superstition. Yet not long ago he had seen the Mother break her oath and die moments later. There was so much about the world the Romans – or even the Greeks with all their cleverness – could simply not understand.

He must have slept in the end, for Vindex’s snoring woke him with a start. The sky was clear, the stars beginning to fade, and dawn not far off. Enica was gone, so he rose and went to find her. It was good to move to shake off the chill and stiffness of the night. He found her easily, standing straight, her heavy cloak pulled tightly around her. For a moment he thought of one of those statuettes of Ephesian Artemis that he had seen many Romans from the east carry with them. She was staring out across the valley at the high peaks in the far distance. Some still had snow on them from the last winter.

Enica smiled. ‘You came at my summons. Good.’

‘I just woke up, my lady. Vindex’s snores would wake a stone.’

‘Just chance, you think.’ She had coiled her pigtail and piled it on top of her head, making her almost as tall as him. It was a style he remembered Brigita using. ‘Have you become so much the Roman?’

He did not answer.

‘You know who my grandmother was, and you know of her power. Do you know of her grandmother? No. She was Mandua, daughter of Manubracius, King of the Trinovantes, at least until Cunobelinus defeated him. You know of him, at least, the father of Caratacus, although from all I hear the son was the greater of the two, though the father was great enough. I liked Caratacus, although of course I only met him when he was very old. We spoke of Britannia and he liked that, and I joked with him and he told me I was a naughty child and that next time if I did not behave he would spank me.’ She laughed. ‘I was so sorry to hear that he had passed.’

That could mean anything and nothing, and Ferox let her talk.

‘Mandubracius was ally of Julius Caesar in his war against Cassivellaunus. Heard of them?’ She pulled a face that was pure Claudia the Roman. ‘At least you must have heard of Caesar?’

‘I have.’

‘Silures.’ She shook her head. ‘My family say that Caesar took a shine to Mandua. That was his way, they say, and of course she was a beauty because all the women in my family are beauties. Soon afterwards she was sent north to marry the high king of the Brigantes – he was only a man so his name matters little – and at the end of the year she gave birth to a daughter.

‘My brother believes that the girl was the daughter of Caesar and not Mandua’s husband, so that we are of the line of Caesar himself.’

‘And what do you believe?’

‘I do not believe; I know. Some of Mandua and Cartimandua is reborn in me, each of us a different part of the same soul, and we see things that others do not. Caesar was my ancestor, and that is honourable enough, if of little consequence compared to being part of them.’ She reached up and plucked two pins from her hair, letting the ponytail drop down behind her back. ‘I know other things as well.’

‘We ought to rouse that snoring ox and tend to the horses. It will be time to leave very soon.’

‘You are mine.’ Enica took hold of her braided hair and toyed with it. ‘You are mine, prince of the Silures and centurion of Rome, as surely as if I were to tie you with my hair. It is the will of the gods. Your soul kneels to mine. I shall have to think what to do with you, shan’t I?’

Ferox was in no mood for more games. For all the confidence in her voice, this woman had seen just twenty-one summers. ‘Shall we go?’

Enica shook her head again. ‘Silures. So used to hiding the truth that they often cannot see it when it stares them in the face. Very well, let us go. But do not forget what I have said.’

Ferox bent his knees as if to kneel, then stopped and shrugged. He strode away and did not look back.