Terra Incognita

24

In the rapidly fading light the sensible thing to do would be to hurry straight back to-no, the sensible thing would have been to accept the woman’s grudging offer of a bed for her first night back at home. The second most sensible thing would be to hurry back to her uncle’s house by the fort. Tilla did neither of these sensible things. Instead, she set off up the path to a place she had not seen for three winters and where there would be nothing to welcome her except memories. The woman had made it clear that even if any others had survived, they were not there.

She glanced back at the paddock with the strange ditches cut into a rectangle. With the Votadini for neighbors, this was probably a stupid place to build any sort of a house. She shook her head. Her uncle had always had some very odd ideas. Like giving his daughter a Roman name and insisting that she learn to speak fluent Latin. Her own father had always said it was pointless: The Romans had finally abandoned their attempts to control the northern tribes a few years ago and any fool could see that it was only a matter of time before they gave up here too.

Time, had they known it, was the one thing her family would not be given.

The Votadini had come in the dark. Bandits, thieves-perhaps they too called themselves warriors. Warriors who were too cowardly to show their faces in daylight. She had imagined their approach countless times since that night. Threading their way up through the woods, crouching behind the field wall and listening to Trenus whispering last words of encouragement. Clambering across the ditch and creeping silently over the bank. Excited, perhaps, by their own daring. Slinking across the yard in the dark to surround the house where the family lay dreaming by the warmth of the dying fire.

The dog alone had sensed the danger. He had raised the alarm, but there were too many of them, and this time they had not just come to steal a few cows.

The walls were in poor repair, as she had expected. Yet one paddock was still properly fenced, and a shaggy pony, nothing like the fine horses Trenus had stolen from her family, lifted its head to watch her as she passed.

Someone was living here.

Whoever had built the small round house had set it on the same patch of level ground as the old one. She scanned the earth at its feet for the scars of the burning. Instead the gods had sent new growth. She saw only spring grass, with a couple of chickens pecking for food. The land, it seemed, had a shorter memory than those who tilled it.

She called a soft greeting but there was no reply. Not even a dog. She unlooped the twine and pushed the gate open.

Her ancestors had fought alongside Venutius in the failed struggle for freedom, and her father kept an ancient sword oiled and hidden in the thatch, ready for the day when a new leader would rise up and call them to victory. But the thatch had been ablaze before they realized it. The sword could not be reached.

In the light of the flames she had seen her mother struck down in the doorway. She knew then that the raiders would show no mercy. She had expected to die herself. Instead the knife had been torn from her hand and she had been dragged away into the darkness, still screaming threats she could not carry out.

For the first days and weeks among the Votadini she had waited. Ready to run. She had closed her eyes and her mind whenever she lay crushed beneath the grunting mass of Trenus, and told herself it would not be for much longer. When she was alone, she watched the woods for any sign of the warriors from the south who would come to help her escape. Or even of the army, come to enforce the law they claimed to uphold. But the weeks had turned into months and autumn hardened into winter, and still there was neither a raid nor even any word of anyone offering a deal to buy her back. The melting of the winter snows and the opening of the roads had brought no news. Gradually, deliberately, she had buried all hope of seeing her family again. If they were alive, they would have come for her. She had comforted herself with thoughts of them waiting for her in the next world. But perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps someone was still waiting here.

A lone blackbird was warbling his evening song. The dark bushes behind the house shivered in the breeze. Tilla told herself not to hope too much. Hope would mean disappointment. She looked around her. The sun was gone behind the black skeletons of the trees on the horizon.

That family are all dead.

Dead. As if a family could be summed up and done away with in one word.

She pulled the knotted shawl tighter around her shoulders. Surprised to realize she was trembling, she put her bag down on the stone outside the door-the stone where the water bucket used to rest-and called, “Who is here?”

There was movement from behind the house. Someone was limping toward her carrying a horse harness. A man. A man she had known from childhood…

But the hair was too fair. The frame was too broad.

The walk- The walk had stopped. He was standing there with his mouth open. There was dried blood on his upper lip. Bruising around one eye. He reached one hand out toward the wall as if trying to steady himself.

She said, “Are they all dead, Rianorix the basket maker?”

“All dead, daughter of Lugh,” he whispered. “Have you come to haunt me?”

“No,” she said, pushing the door open. “I have come home!”