Адриан Голдсуорти - Brigantia

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.