He nodded. “I’m sorry, Ariantes.”
I shook my head. “No-I am grateful to you. If she had gone home and died because of me, I would…”
I didn’t know what I would do, and my mind suddenly threw up before me the image of Tirgatao, vivid as a thing seen through a window-torn open, a horse-head thrust in her womb, burning on the corpses of our children. I nearly dropped the lead sheet, and I had to set my teeth together hard to stop myself from screaming.
“Are you hurt?” asked Facilis. He tried to take the cursing tablet away, as though afraid it might have poisoned me.
I rolled the lead sheet slowly into its scroll and shook my head. It wasn’t true, of course. I was hurt. I had been hurt badly early that summer, and the wound had just been kicked open. “I am sorry we cannot be allies, Marcus Flavius.”
“What do you mean?” he asked. “We are allies. But I’ll keep quiet about it.”
The next morning I rode down to the fort village early, knocked at the door of Flavina’s house, and asked to speak to Pervica. She herself came running at the sound of my voice, and greeted me with a smile so joyful I felt sick with fear and grief.
“I must speak with you privately,” I told her.
“If you like,” she agreed, her eyes dancing. “But not too private: spare my reputation before the wedding, please!”
“Come up to the camp with me, then,” I said, “and we will find somewhere suitable.”
We walked back up to the camp, leading my horse, because she was reluctant to ride through village, fort, and camp perched before me on the saddle. My leg ached by the time we arrived back at my wagon, I was tired from a night spent sleepless, and I was in a very black mood, which the cheerful greetings and congratulations of everyone around us only made worse. I pulled some rugs over from in front of the ashes of the fire and set them by the door of the wagon, right at the back of the awning. “Is this suitable?” I asked. “We can be seen here, but will not be overheard.”
She laughed. “Very scrupulous! I wish we couldn’t be seen either-but reputations are like eggs: there’s no mending them once they’ve cracked.” She sat down on the edge of the wagon, inside the open door, and stared curiously backward into it. “You know, it is pretty in there. It’s like… like the inside of a jewel box. All those rugs and swords and things. What’s the hairy thing over on this side?” She reached under the bunk, by the door, and pulled out the pile of the scalps I had removed from my horses’ bridles when I first arrived in Britain.
I pushed them hastily back, and she looked at me in surprise. I drew my finger across my forehead and around the side of my head.
She didn’t understand for a moment-and then she did. She looked at the scalps again, this time in revulsion.
“I am sorry,” I said. “It is a custom of our people.”
“There are a lot of them,” she said quietly.
“Twenty-eight. All men I have killed with my own hands. There were others, too, whose scalps I had no opportunity to collect. I have stopped collecting them now, because the custom horrifies the Romans, but most of my men took some from the Picts we defeated, and I have said nothing to them about it. They take great pride in their strength and skill, and so they should.”
“I suppose I will have to get used to it,” she said slowly. “But I’d like it if you’d bury these.”
I sat down on the rug at her feet and leaned my head against my bad knee. Her calm resolution to adjust to everything made it harder for me. “Pervica,” I began helplessly-and stopped.
She stroked my hair away from my face and rested the long, firm hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said humbly. “I know you’re not Roman. I don’t expect you to become Roman either, really, but it’s just hard for me to… to grasp it all at once.”
“That is not it! Pervica, I was wrong to ask you to marry me.”
All the joy went out of her in an instant: she stared at me with a face like a woman glimpsed by lightning, white and terrified. I turned and caught both her hands in mine. “Listen to me,” I said. “I have enemies. I knew my life had been threatened, but I was confident they could not reach me here, in the middle of my own camp among my own men. I thought that no one would trouble the innocent, that no one would know or care about you, secure in the countryside, but I see now that I was wrong, and I have put you in danger. Look.” I pulled out the lead scroll, which I’d shoved into my belt. “Facilis showed me this last night. It was found in the mouth of a man who’d been murdered in a sacred grove.”
She took it slowly and unrolled it, then stared blindly.
“It is my name,” I told her.
“I can read,” she replied, sharply. “If you don’t want to marry me, say so plainly. Don’t make excuses.”
“Do not be a fool. I wanted to badly enough that I forgot to think, to take any precautions. I was stupid and made a serious mistake: we must do what we can to retrieve it now. You must not go back to your farm as my betrothed. Either we must marry at once or you must pretend to quarrel with me, say that the engagement is off, and go home as though you were angry.”
“And which would you prefer?” Some color had come back to her face, and there was a hint of anger in her voice.
“I would prefer it if you married me, of course. I would give you an armed escort back to River End, and you could send your people to safety, then return here.”
She stared at my face searchingly, then slowly relaxed. She dropped the lead sheet onto the carpet beside me and stared at it, as though only now was she able to take in all that it meant. “Who did this?” she demanded in a whisper. “You know, don’t you?”
I hesitated, then took her hands again. “I will tell you,” I said, looking into her face, “but you must tell no one else.”
I told her everything I’d heard or guessed about Aurelia Bodica from the time I arrived in Britain up to that moment. I told her hurriedly and angrily, and she sat and listened in silence. At the end she covered her face with her hands.
“I am sorry!” I said, wretchedly. “I should not have involved you, and I regret it.”
She leaned over and grabbed my shoulders, looking angrily into my eyes. “Don’t regret,” she commanded. “I love you. How can you regret loving me?”
“I do not,” I answered. “But I regret very much that I have put you in danger.”
“If you don’t regret loving me, then I will not pretend to quarrel with you and go home angry.”
“Then we must marry at once. I will try to find out what the legal situation is today. I am not a citizen, and it may need some special-”
“I won’t do that either! I’m not going to be chased about by these people, or send Cluim and the others away from their own home. I know a druid. He blesses our orchard every year, and we give him a basket of apples and a jug of mead made with our own honey. I will talk to him about this Aurelia Bodica and her vile cruelty, and see what he has to say for himself! Give me this!” She snatched up the cursing tablet. “I’ll take it to the temple of the Mothers. I’ve worshipped them all my life, and they’ve always been kind. This… this is wicked. Calling on the gods to commit murder is a crime against gods and men both.”
“No!” I said, now very alarmed.
“You know nothing about the old religion. This”-she hit the leaden scroll-“this is a twisted parody of it, a gall, a deformity. They have no business murdering anyone, and most of them know it. And I am not someone they could murder. Everyone knows me, Saenus’ widow Pervica. Everyone knows I honor the gods. They couldn’t string me up just because they hate you.”
“If they want this kingdom of the Brigantes, they would accuse you of treachery for opposing them.”
“ They may want one, but ‘want’ must be their master. There are men, no doubt, who long for revenge on an enemy, or an escape from their debts; there are ambitious nobles who dream of holding power in their own hands instead of bowing to legates and prefects; there are druids who long for an end to persecution. There are probably enough of them in all that when they talk among themselves they think everyone supports them. But there won’t be any more general uprisings of the Brigantes, certainly not here near the Wall. We depend on the army here for our livelihoods: without the troops to buy our grain and our meat, the whole region would wither away. And an alliance with the Picts which involved giving them our farms to plunder-no, no, no! It’s as ludicrous as the idea of a princess of the Coritani calling herself queen of Brigantia. No. You’re not British or a farmer, or you’d realize at once that these people have no power in the countryside.”