Hadrian's wall

XXIX

Valeria woke to the sound of lapping water. She was inside, she sensed dimly, but the murmur of waves and play of sun still filtered through the woven wattle of an undaubed wall. Light ignited dust motes in the air. The roof was lost in shadow but smelled of damp thatch. She was lying on a straw mattress-she could hear it crinkle beneath her-and covered with thick wool blankets. She also ached so much that she could barely move. Half her body felt like it had been drummed with hammers. Her ankle throbbed, and cuts and scratches added a slighter but sharper discomfort.

Only the water was soothing.

She was thirsty, but it would hurt too much to turn her head and look for something to drink, so she concentrated on noises instead. A faint sough of wind. The cries of waterfowl. The splash of water as if she were on a boat, except her boat wasn't rocking. And the gentle breathing…

Of a man.

She forced herself to turn then, gasping at the pain. There was someone sitting in the dimness of what appeared to be a crude hut. Even in shadow his profile was unmistakable. Arden Caratacus had been watching her sleep.

"Morrigan has come back," he whispered.

She was confused by the name. "Where am I?"

"A safe place. A healing place."

She lay back. "I hurt so much."

"That's because the best bear the most pain."

"Oh."

Then she fell asleep again.

When she came awake a second time, her entire body felt like a vast, rotting bruise. It was dark, the hut still. She could hear Arden's soft breathing on the other side of the enclosure, asleep. Pale moonlight filtered through the wattle, weaving a silver tartan on the floor, and again there was that odd sound of wavelets rippling. Trying not to groan, she stiffly sat up and put her eye to the wall. There was water on the other side, a lake or bay. A corridor of white, reflected light led across it: the hall of the moon. Maybe they were on a boat, a boat gone aground. Maybe she wasn't alive after all.

Something touched her lightly. A hand.

"Here, something to drink," he whispered.

Then he left her alone again.

When Valeria awakened the next time, she was hungry. Sunlight again, a small window open to scrubbed blue sky. Arden was gone. She stood and staggered, momentarily dizzy, her bare feet on rough wood. She was wearing a woolen tunic that came to her calves.

A window revealed a small lake, its surface reaching under the floor where she stood. Reeds grew in nearby shadows, and bright birds, red and black, darted there. Shuffling to the other side of the little hut, she found a door and opened it. A wooden ramp led to a grassy shore, a curtain of alder riffling in the wind. Geese were feeding in the shallows. She was on a dock, suspended on pilings. The hut was like a little island, the water making a moat. A catwalk connected it to another hut on pilings, a short distance away.

She wondered, illogically, if she'd been abandoned. Then she saw Arden walking along the lakeshore, a pole over one shoulder and two fish hanging from the pole. He waved to her-as if this strange habitation were the most natural thing in the world-and in moments he was treading good-naturedly across the boards of the ramp to join her, his cheerful stride making the planks thump.

"You're up!" he greeted. "And sooner than we hoped. You've got the stamina of a Brigantia. The mettle of a Morrigan."

"I've got the bones of an old woman and the muscles of a baby," she replied softly. "I feel like raw meat. Where are we, Arden?"

"A crannog. My people like the protection of water, so we build small islands or platforms for refuge. You were too badly injured to take back to Tiranen, so we brought you here."

"How long have I been here?"

"Three days."

"Three days!"

"That boar gave you a beating. Have you looked at yourself?"

"No."

"Your entire side is purple."

Valeria nodded, beginning to remember now. "I thought he was going to kill me. Such a vicious-" She stopped. "And how did you see my side?"

"We had to get your bloody clothes off you."

"We?"

"Kalin helped too."

"Kalin!"

"He's a healer, Valeria. It's his broth that's brought you around."

She didn't remember any broth. "It's not right for you two to be looking."

"We couldn't bear the stink of you."

She was embarrassed, grateful, and resentful at her dependency. She changed the subject. "Where's Savia?"

"Taking over Tiranen, I suppose. When she heard you'd been hurt, she told me exactly what she thought of me, which you can well imagine. I think you'll recover faster away from her, so in her boredom she's got the rest of the clan under siege. She wants to convert and reform us at the same time."

"That sounds like Savia." She was beginning to remember. "And Hool?"

He looked at her gently, reaching up to touch her cheek as softly as the fox cape that had wrapped her neck on her wedding night. She shivered.

"Alive, Valeria." So startling, that touch. Her name on his lips. He caressed her skin. "Saved by your courage. He's in the hut next door, taking strength from your own healing. You will get well together."

She blinked. "Can I see him?"

The Celtic hunter was on the same kind of straw mattress she had found herself, his skin pale and his frame shrunken, as if the near passage of death had collapsed him in on himself. At first he seemed confused by his visitors in the shadows, but then he recognized the young woman and cracked a smile. "Morrigan," he croaked.

She knelt by him. "It's Valeria, Hool."

His hand reached out and grasped her forearm, the grip still surprisingly strong. "The others told me what you did."

"Let you get trampled, it looks like."

He coughed a slight laugh and then lay back, still in pain. "I owe you my life, lady. Saved by a woman! For that, I give you my spear."

"Don't be silly-"

"I give you my spear in debt for my living. It marks you as a Celt."

She blushed. "I'm only a Roman."

"Not now. You're one of us."

Valeria shook her head. "That will only be when you're well, Hool. When you can take your place in the hunt again. Let me help you to get better."

"You are here. It's enough-" He was drifting off, slipping back to sleep.

"And your survival helps me."

He lay still, breathing slowly.

She stood, shakily. "I'm tired now, Arden."

He took her elbow. "Yes. Rest some more."

Valeria was young, and impatient to heal. The next day she began to move about, appalled at her discoloration but relieved she was still alive. She dipped into the lake, the shock of cold water countering the pain of her injuries. She'd had an adventure! In time she'd be well. Then she visited Hool, checking his dressings. He too seemed to be healing, without infection, and had lost none of his good humor. These were a tough people.

The crannog's ramp could be raised like a drawbridge, and now that Valeria had strength enough to lift and lower it, Caratacus instructed she do so. As a result she felt curiously safe in her hut: the ramp up, a gap of water between herself and the shore, and herself sitting gratefully in the summer's sun. How peaceful it was here! How removed from the cares of the world, after the recent tumultuous days of fear and emotion! She liked to watch the alder as it was riffled by the wind, or study how the trees lent their green color to the water. The crannog let her stop thinking. This, she knew, was why the man had brought her there.

He wanted her to think less and feel more.

He wanted her to understand the Celts.

A day and a night went by, and then she saw someone approach again, strange and yet familiar. She touched the rough hemp of the drawbridge rope, uncertain what to do.

It was the druid, Kalin. She still feared the priesthood's reputation.

"Will you make me swim, Roman lady?" His hood was back, his smile disarming.

"Where's Arden?"

"He'll be along soon enough. I've brought you some gifts, but if you want them, you'll have to let down your little bridge."

She stalled by teasing him. "I thought druids could walk on water and fly through the air."

"Alas, I get just as wet as you, lady. Don't you remember seeing me, soaked and shiny as a crow, when I came into the Great House?"

"I remember how frightening you were. So how do I know you don't want to burn me in a wicker man now, or put me in a pot, or drown me in a bog with a golden cord around my neck?"

"I'd not waste something as valuable as a golden cord, I don't have a pot, and I've never seen a wicker man. Besides, you seem to know less about the future than any of us: I don't think you're much use as a portent. The killing of that boar was a sign of some other purpose. Just what, we don't know."

"You're healing me for this purpose?"

"I'm healing you so I can stop making the walk from Tiranen."

"You don't have a horse?"

"I can't see what I need to see from a horse."

"What do you need to see?"

"Fern and flower, herb and sprig. My plants for healing."

She was far from Roman medicine, and this herbalist was as good as she was going to get. Besides, he could also check on Hool. "Come across, then."

Kalin's medical manner proved gentler than she expected. He had her unpin her tunic on the sunlit porch so he could briskly inspect her bruises while she clutched it around her private places to give herself dignity. He touched lightly, murmuring approval at her progress, and then turned discreetly to let her redress.

There was a raised hearthstone inside the hut, and Kalin stoked the embers, added fuel, and put water on to boil. Then he sorted through what he'd brought.

"First, a package from Savia." He handed over a leather pouch. "A comb, pins for your hair, some perfume. She said it will make you feel Roman."

Valeria was delighted. "It will make me feel human!" She held up a sweet-smelling bar that puzzled her, however. "What's this?"

"Soap. It's an essence of animals that cleans the skin. We scent it with berry."

"What essence?"

"Their fat."

"Ugh!" She dropped the bar.

"It works better than Roman oils."

"I can't imagine how."

"You don't have to scrape it off. It rinses with water."

"How does the dirt come off, then?"

"With the soap and the water, in a trinity."

She looked at the brown bar dubiously. "Then why hasn't Rome adopted it?"

"You live in a primitive world, lady." Now he was teasing her.

"What else?" she demanded. She liked presents!

"This is from Arden." He unfolded what seemed like a shimmering curtain of water, and she gasped. It was a tunic of emerald green that would reach to her calves, made out of silk as thick and fine as anything available in the markets of Rome. Such a prize was worth its weight in gold, and only the richest could afford it. "It comes from somewhere beyond your empire, as you know. Caravans carried it thousands of miles. It's surprisingly tough and warm."

"How smooth it feels!"

"He said it would be a salve for your bruises."

She held it against herself. "So soft, in so hard a place."

"Is it really so hard, Valeria?" He handed her a lock of hair that was bound with a twist of grass. "This is from the clan, cut from the mane of the horse you rode to the hunt. It's a promise to find you another."

She was flattered, and surprised. "I hope I can take better care of the next one."

"It's obvious you have a love of horses. Like a Morrigan."

That name, again. "And your own present, priest?"

"My knowledge." He untied a bundle of herbs. "The forest balances all things, and is thus eternal. Each danger is countered by a remedy. All that you and Hool need to recover, lady, is in the wood." He began adding flakes from his packages to the heating water. "You're both young and strong, but these drugs will speed the healing. We'll bring the broth to him when it's ready."

A scented steam began to arise. "How do you know which plant to pick?"

"It's lore that dates to the dawn of time. Our elders teach our acolytes. We don't put things down on dead tablets; we carry them in our hearts and sing the truth like birds. Each generation memorizes anew." He gave her a sip of the tea.

"Generations of druids?"

"Yes. Memory is our job, as well as healing and ceremony."

"And sacrifice."

"Any wise man gives back to the world a token of what he receives. Arden showed me the cones you brought."

"My stone pine? Where are they?"

"He burned them to Dagda shortly before he captured you."

The idea chilled her. Had her own offering been turned against her? It seemed a blasphemous thing for Arden to have done. "And now you're calling your people to war."

Kalin shook his head. "War is coming, but not at our call. The proper sign hasn't arrived yet. All we druids have done is give the oak's strength to our warriors and remind them of ancient ways. They know your wall is an abomination against nature that must be swept aside. Whether your husband and his men will be swept aside with it is up to them, not us. We are tools of the gods."

"Your gods."

"Britannia's gods. Your Roman ones are half forgotten, your temples weed-grown, your beliefs changing as frequently as the hairstyle of the empress. Ours endure."

She sipped, feeling the medicine ease through her bruised body. "Yet for all your confidence you find it necessary to keep me, a woman, a helpless captive."

He laughed. "How helpless, boar-slayer? How captive, when the control of your little drawbridge is in your hands, not mine? It's not chains or cages that's keeping you here, and we both know it."

"What, then?"

"The man who captured you, of course."

"You mean Arden. That I'm his prisoner."

"No. I mean he's yours. That you won't leave until you've taken his heart."

After Kalin left, Valeria was tempted to flee again, just to prove the druid wrong. She didn't need to wait for cocky and carefree Arden Caratacus! He was thief, spy, traitor, killer, and barbarian, and the idea that she cared a bronze coin for him or his feelings was ridiculous. He'd abducted her! He'd threatened all her plans! All her dreams of home, career, children, and status had been overthrown by his ruthlessness! It was simply that she must use Arden as he was using her, trick Arden as he'd tricked her, so she could report his vulnerabilities.

But only when she had the spirit to go. Only when she'd learned enough. It still felt good to be in this isolated refuge, her choices simple, her life placid.

Arden came at sunset, the sky a soft rose against the enclosing hills and the lake molten glass. He was triumphant at having killed two ducks with his arrows. "I shot them on the wing, breast and neck. The second one was a lucky hit. Here's wild carrots and bread from Tiranen, as well. And wine, stolen from Rome."

So, her stomach growling, they prepared the simple meal together. While he cleaned the birds, she built up the fire and put on water for the carrots. Then she began roasting the fowl on a spit, their fat spattering to erupt in little spouts of flame. Arden stood close to help. He was like another wall, enclosing her.

As evening came, she lit a candle.

Her captor, or caretaker-she was no longer sure which-had brought his wine in a leather bag and showed how she could jet a stream into her mouth. Her laughter at the trick made the liquid splash her chin. The domesticity was so typical of the lower classes that her mother would be shocked, yet it left Valeria strangely content. They were alone in the wild and yet not alone, because they had each other. She had to remind herself not to trust him too much. He was still a barbarian. But he was also becoming a kind of friend, like Brisa.

She could hear and feel the silk whispering against her body and knew he could see its borders peeking from beneath her Gallic coat. He didn't mention it, however, and she was too shy to thank him.

"You can walk," he commented instead.

"I can hobble."

"Savia suspects me of torturing you. Tomorrow I'll bring my horse, and you can ride behind me back to Tiranen. There's a meeting of the clans I've got to go to, and you're strong enough now to finish your recovery there."

She was surprised at her own disappointment. She liked the quiet of the crannog. She liked being alone with Arden outside the crowded and noisy hill fort. But certainly her place was back where she could be found and rescued, wasn't it? "Planning another abduction?"

He didn't rise to her provocation. "There's rumor of trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"None that concerns you, yet."

"You haven't heard from my husband?" She was annoyed he wouldn't confide in her and couldn't resist asking it.

"I told you he won't move against us."

"Marcus isn't afraid of you." She insisted on it without knowing why.

"But he's afraid for you, Valeria, and because of that he's afraid for himself. As long as you stay alive, he retains his office. If you die, his future is in peril. By capturing you, we've captured him."

The thought depressed her. "You pick on a woman to defeat a man?"

"What kind of man is so easily defeated?"

She had nothing to say to that.

"Is it really so bad, my clan and my crannog?" he persisted.

"It's not my home."

"What if it was?"

Here was his weakness, and it gave her an opportunity to sting him. "You know I could never belong here. Never belong to you." There. She'd said it.

"Celtic women belong to no man. And yet you do belong here, among the free. It relaxes you, I can see it. I know we don't have your fine things, but we do have great spirit. We have each other."

"So do Romans."

"I admire your loyalty, but you have to be realistic. Your husband might worry for you, be embarrassed by your capture, even miss your company. But he won't risk his career when he doesn't love you."

"You don't know my husband's heart!"

"I know the emptiness of yours. He's not in love with you because you aren't with him."

"The presumption of you!"

"Why are you always upset by simple truth? I didn't abduct you, I rescued you, from an arranged marriage and Roman ambition."

"Now I should thank you?" She was flushing.

"You enjoy this crannog. I can see it on your face."

She turned away. "This is dinner, not a lifetime."

"Sometimes a dinner is all a lifetime allows." He stood close, lightly touching her arms. She trembled. "Come, you know I've treated you well. Let's eat, not argue, and let the Wall take care of itself for an evening."

The simple food was good, her body ravenous. How could such a meal taste better than an elaborate banquet? How could a rude hut seem as comfortable as a Roman mansion? They chatted for a while of simpler things, of the hunt and horses and history of his clan, and let the wine numb their frustration and desire.

At length they pushed themselves back from the food. He was watching her more lazily now, seemingly content to drink in her features in the candlelight. It both flattered her and made her nervous. She still looked like a bruised pear and wished she was prettier, and yet also wished he wouldn't look at her at all. She'd promised her fidelity to Marcus! Yet she wanted Arden to want her, if for no other reason than to turn him down.

How mixed-up she felt.

"You pretend to know a lot about love," she said finally.

His smile was wistful. "That's because I've been in love and know how terrible it can be, this thing that all young women long for."

Suddenly she saw it. There'd been a romance. "When?"

"Before, when I was in the Roman army." His gaze was lost in memory.

"Please tell me what happened."

He shook his head. "I don't tell it to anyone. It's bitter, not sweet."

"But you must to me."

"Why?"

"You must trust me."

He was amused. "Why must I trust you?"

"Because I must trust you, the two of us alone, a thousand miles from Rome." Each the other's prisoner, Kalin had said.

He knew what she meant: the price of friendship, or something deeper. He considered, then shrugged. "Her name was Alesia."

"A pretty name."

"Just why I first noticed her I can't truly say. By the time I saw her, I'd marched past a thousand women, or ten times a thousand women. She was pretty, almost as pretty as you, and had a kind look, and yet that doesn't fully explain it. I'd seen other women equally pretty, and equally kind. There was simply a peculiar radiance to that moment, a trick of light that made me feel directed by the gods. Have you ever experienced it?"

"No."

"The setting sun had backlit clouds beyond the Danube, turning them black, and the Roman shore was golden. Alesia was fetching water, her back straight and neck erect, the jar balanced on her head, and the light turned her shift white and translucent. I remember her steps, small and careful, the slim silhouette of her form, and her manner, graceful and chaste. I walked past without stopping, on an errand to buy some wine for my comrades, but something made me look back."

"You fell in love." She was envious.

"We hadn't said a word, and yet I lost my heart. I wanted not just to possess her but to know her, to protect her, to besiege her heart."

Valeria swallowed.

"She glanced back at me," he continued, "and with that our fates were sealed."

Where was this woman? She couldn't ask that yet. "Why were you in the army?"

"My family was rich and had come to partial accommodation with the Romans. We had lands south of the Wall. We tried your civilization, but it trapped us in debt. When my father couldn't pay the Bite, he was arrested, and our lands were confiscated. When he went to Rome for justice, he was ignored and died of illness. My mother died of grief. I was left with revenge. So I joined the legions." "You joined the empire you hated?"

"Not hate, not at first. I was young enough to think that perhaps it had been my father's fault, because he wasn't Roman enough. I Latinized my name to Ardentius and marched where the army told me. At first, everything Roman seemed grand. I heard the roar of the mob at the Coliseum. I guarded generals who dined at the villas of Italian millionaires. I prowled the wharves of Ostia, where all the wealth of the world comes and goes. My first impression was yours. Rome was universal and eternal and necessary."

He made it seem false. "It's brought order to the world." "And slavery, poverty, and hollowness. Cities so great they can't feed themselves. Taxes no one can afford to pay. Army life was callous, and the Romans I met were a soft, spoiled people, ignorant of who they ruled and unwilling to fight. They got tribute from places they couldn't name."

"Yet you took their pay and wore their clothes and slept in their barracks."

"For a while. When I knew enough to beat you, I wanted out." "With an Alesia, after your twenty-year enlistment?" "No, I wanted Alesia then, when I saw her on the grassy bank of the Danube. Not that part between a woman's thighs, which can be bought by soldiers for a coin, but her, to end the loneliness of the legions. I found her owner, Criton the leather maker, and began bargaining for her freedom. I trailed her to the market and to the river, finding excuses to talk and help carry her things. She was frightened of disappointment but alive with hope. I told her about life here, how the sun in summer seems to linger half the night and stars in winter are thick as snow. I told her we'd never be treated as equals within the empire-I an alien and she a slave-but that here we could make a free and happy life." "She believed this?"

"Her eyes, Valeria! How they ignited with the promise of it!" The woman said nothing. Was she herself some kind of replacement for this slave woman? Had she been captured to replace a memory?

"What I hadn't anticipated was the jealousy of Lucullus, the centurion who commanded my unit. He hated happiness because he was incapable of it himself. The man was piggish, with that kind of animal cunning that thrives in the army. He'd tried a particularly insidious form of the Bite, demanding that his soldiers give him a portion of their pay to be granted any leave. Their families, crops, and financial affairs were hostage to his greed. This went too far, and the others persuaded me to speak for them to the cohort commander. Lucullus was reprimanded, his pay fined, and his power curbed. I was a hero for a day. Then my comrades forgot. Lucullus didn't."

"You're an idealist!" Arden was the kind of man her politician father had always disparaged. The senator said empires were sustained by accommodation and that self-righteous men caused grief. Valeria had secretly disagreed. She thought people should believe in something, but her father would have called her foolish.

"I see things clearly," Arden went on, "which is a curse. Anyway, word of my intentions toward Alesia came to Lucullus, as it must. Nothing is secret in the army. Reports that Ardentius the troublemaker was about to spend all his savings to buy a slave's freedom caused my commander much amusement, and then much thought. He went to Criton and bribed him to tell when and how I was going to buy the girl. Then he came to a grove of poplar where Alesia waited, arriving before I did. He seized her, embraced her, whipped her, raped her, and burned her-all to get back at me." "Oh, Arden…"

"She hanged herself for shame. I'd come with a wedding present and found a corpse." His voice was hollow. "What present?"

He swallowed, looking away from her eyes. "That silk you're wearing."

She blushed, suddenly alarmed at the gift. Horrified. Flattered. Confused. It felt as if it were on fire.

"I won it for a deed in battle. I've had no one else worthy of it until now."

"Arden…"

"I didn't have an instant's doubt who killed her," he cut her off.

He was like that probatio who she'd watched training in the courtyard, letting his shield drift and exposing his heart. "So you killed him."

"No man had ever beaten Lucullus in a fight, fair or foul. But I found him that night, knocked away the dagger he kept at the small of his back, and strangled him with my own hands. I killed Criton, too, and took both the money I'd paid for Alesia and the bribe Lucullus had left and threw it to the beggars. I dumped my Roman armor into the river and swam for Germania. Eventually I made my way back here."

"To drag others into revenge."

"To warn others of Rome. It took my father. My mother. The woman I loved. So I took you."

"To get back at the empire," she whispered.

"That was my motive, at first."

She looked away. She must not fall under his spell. "But you can't mean to sweep all of Rome away from Britannia for-" She gestured around the hut. "This."

"This is all I need."

"Except for that wine you brought. I, too, am a product of the empire you despise. If Rome is so worthless, why do barbarians try to plunder it? And if you plunder too much, where will your sons and daughters get their goods?"

"And if you Romans conquer too much, who will you ever learn from but yourselves? Why does one nation need to own the entire world?"

"The world is that nation now!"

"Not my world. Not my life."