“A little.” He rubbed the markings out with his foot. Like Victor, he didn’t seem to like the look of them. He sighed, staring at the rubbed earth, then looked up suddenly and met my eyes. “Have you ever heard of the druids?”
“No.”
His mouth twisted. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t have. They’re… another illegal religion.”
“Like yours?”
“No. Oh no. Not ‘like’ at all. But… we know of each other. We’ve shared hiding places with them, and the names of officials who could be bribed; we’ve exchanged information about arrests, journeys, boats that could smuggle a passenger to safety. I think we both know that if the other group became legal, it would be an enemy, but we’re both threatened with death for our faith, and that creates a bond, even unwillingly. The druids think we’re atheists and we think they’re addicted to sorcery, but we help each other.” He paused, then went on, “They are the old priesthood of the gods of the Celts. Britain was the center of their cult. That writing is the kind they use.”
I had a feeling like the moment in a hunt when you sight the quarry. I knew that a number of things I hadn’t understood were about to be explained. “If they are the priests of an old religion, why are they illegal?” I asked quietly.
“Because they are enemies of Rome.” Eukairios looked at me levelly and spoke in a steady voice, though his shoulders were hunched with tension and his hands locked together in his lap. “They were enemies of Rome before there was a province of Britain, before there was a province of Gaul. When Italians first fought Celts, the druids cursed them, and they’ve been cursing them ever since. Britain was always the center of their cult, the place they came to study their sacred mysteries, and when Britain first became a province, the druids took shelter in the West and preached rebellion. The Romans marched on them and slaughtered them, together with their wives and their children. That was about a century ago, and they and all their schools have been banned throughout the island ever since. It’s not true elsewhere in the empire. In Gaul they’re perfectly legal-but in Gaul they’re not the same. The ban hasn’t destroyed them. I’ve sometimes thought that their power is greater as a thing of whispers and shadows than it ever would be if they were legal, as they are in Gaul. They even send out emissaries to the Gaulish druids, whom they regard as heretical, telling them to mend their ways.”
He fell silent for another long moment, then went on painfully, “I met one of them in Natalis’ house in Dubris, a man called Cunedda. He’d been an emissary to Gaul, and once I gave him some information about a ship which probably saved his life-he was being hunted by the authorities at the time. We were very surprised to see one another, but when he learned that I had become your slave, he was pleased. He knew who you were, my lord. He asked me my name-I never told him that when we met before-and then he asked what it means. When I said that it means ‘well timed,’ he said, ‘I accept the omen! I pray that this meeting is well timed indeed.’ He wanted me to arrange a meeting with you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, my lord. I… didn’t know what you would do if I did, how you’d answer him. I didn’t want to betray him to the authorities, but I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything seditious, either. I made excuses and hoped he’d go away. But I met him again in Eburacum, and then again here, in Corstopitum. He was growing impatient, and said that you were avoiding those who might help you. My lord, he has an ally in the legate’s house.”
It was everything I’d thought. “Aurelia Bodica,” I said.
The hunched shoulders slumped with relief. “You know, then.”
“I had heard nothing. But it fits.”
“I saw her with him, in the legate’s house when I was billeted there, my lord. I left the house to avoid them. I was afraid, I… You see, I wouldn’t do what they wanted, wouldn’t arrange the private meeting, and it would be so easy for her to destroy me; all she would have to do would be to tell her husband that I’d stolen from her. I went into the town and stayed with my friend. I told him about her and about Cunedda, and he told me what he’d heard about the lady from his
… contacts. It’s the same here as it was in Gauclass="underline" the Christians and the druids exchange the names of people who are sympathetic or bribable, or hiding places which the authorities know nothing about-though, of course, the druids are very much more powerful here, in their homeland, and the Christians are very weak. The lady is known to be eager to protect the priesthood of the old gods, and is thought to be devoted to one of the most extreme sects. My friend said that there’s been a lot of tension just in the past year, with the druids pushing the limits of official blindness, and he found it very easy to believe that an extreme sect has been growing in influence. I was very alarmed. I realized that I’d been a fool not to speak to you about it before, and I asked Banadaspos to let me know when you got back. Only you didn’t come back.
“I was very frightened. I asked around at the stables and I found out that the lady Aurelia had had herself driven out of Corstopitum, to visit a shrine of the god Silvanus. I rode out to the shrine myself, and I learned that when she’d arrived there, she turned her slave and her driver out of the chariot and drove on alone. There were troops searching the road for you by then, so there was nothing I could do but ride back and pray. I thank God that you are still alive! That’s not the end, though. Yesterday morning, when I was here in the stables looking after the horse you lent me, Cunedda came in looking for me. He gave me this message: ‘Your master refused to listen to us. It’s true that he still lives, but he will not live long. Before this season is ended he will die, and die not by any human hand but by the power of the sacred ones. You will see it and believe.’ ”
So. A threat. I had heard many of them in my time, and it didn’t trouble me unduly. “A curse or an assassination?” I asked.
He hesitated, then shook his head. “A curse, my lord, at least at first. They are famous for working magic, sir, famous. They claim superhuman powers. They’re certainly used to killing people secretly. Before the Romans came they practiced human sacrifice, mostly on willing victims. The official druids in Gaul now say that human sacrifice is hateful to the gods, and even some of the other British druids say that if the victim’s unwilling, the sacrifice is useless. But there have been bodies found, strangled and dumped in the sacred wells, or hung from the sacred groves, and it’s been clear that they weren’t willing. People are afraid of the druids. If they don’t talk about them much, that’s the reason.”
I was silent for a little while. “This sorcery,” I said at last. “Is it powerful?”
“The druids claim it is, my lord. For my own part,” he said defiantly, “I know that no power on earth or under it can stand against my God.”
“Who is not mine. Still, I trust Marha, the holy one, is not his inferior. And from what you say, the druids have been cursing the Romans for centuries, and the power of Rome has only grown greater. But I will be on my guard. What did this priest mean by ‘before this season is ended’? Before the end of the winter, or before this matter is settled?”
“I imagine it means before the end of the month, sir,” he said unhappily. “ This season would naturally mean the season we’re in now, midwinter. The midwinter solstice is holy to the druids. It’s only ten days from now.”
“So, I do not have long to wait? That is good.”
He obviously thought I wasn’t taking it seriously enough. “Be careful what you eat, sir!” he exclaimed urgently. “The druids study drugs and poisons as well as magic.”
The memory of the lost hours shifted again in my mind, chilling me, but again subsided. “Thank you,” I said then, looking him in the eyes. “Thank you very much. You have given more loyalty than I have deserved of you.”
“No, my lord. I have given what my duty demanded, but given it later than I should. If I had warned you earlier…”