“They had power enough to murder at least one man and go unpunished through fear.”
“Some townsman who’d done something to offend them! No. My darling, I’m far from saying that these people aren’t dangerous. I know about them, I know they are-but not to me. To you, yes, because you’re a foreigner and without a place here, and no one would risk offending them for your sake. But I can help you. I can talk to the people I know, the true followers of the old religion, not these visitors from the South. I think they’ll help. They don’t want the Selgovae and Votadini descending any more than the rest of us. All it needs is someone like me to ask them.”
“Pervica!” I said, horrified, “You must not!”
“You forbid it, do you?” she asked, her mouth setting.
“I have no right to forbid. But you must not. Even if you were right to be confident of your own safety from the druids, still you would not be safe. Arshak is a powerful and arrogant man, and totally lacking in caution. He is to go to Condercum after the festival, with the second dragon, his followers, and if he learned that you were stirring up trouble against his lady, he would kill you first and think of explanations for the authorities afterward.”
“He isn’t British. Does he speak British? Then he won’t know anything that’s going on in the countryside. And the people I mean to speak to won’t give my name away. Even if they don’t help, they won’t want me killed, and if they do help, they’ll take the credit for their actions themselves.”
“You cannot go back to your farm and… and spy for me. You cannot. You will be killed.”
“I can, I will, and I won’t be. I’m not going to abandon my property and my dependants, and you can’t expect me to. Would you, in my place? And I’m not going to sit in your wagon like a piece of baggage while you run stupid risks and make terrible mistakes through not knowing things I could easily discover. I’m British: I have more rights in the matter than you do!”
I got up and walked off a few steps and slammed my hand against the wagon. “And what if you are killed?” I asked her.
“What if you’re killed? That’s even more likely. I’m only incidentaclass="underline" you’re the one they want.”
“I have five hundred men at my command, and thirty in particular whose chief task is to preserve my life and honor. And even if they fail, I can face my own death.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “Don’t you understand?” she asked. “Perhaps you could face your own death-but I couldn’t. I never loved my husband. I liked him, I obeyed him willingly, because he was kind, because he loved me, but I could never give him either respect or love. When he died I thought I would spend the rest of my life in independence. I was content enough-until I went into my stable and saw you standing there, with Wildfire eating from your hand. Then I knew that I had never been alive at all. I don’t care if I die now, but I’m not going to live without you.”
I went back and knelt before her. “Pervica, please!” I said. “You have seen what I have done with your horse, how he is beginning to trust me, how he comes to me for protection from the cold, and expects me to feed him? If he came, and I beat him till he staggered, who would he trust then? Do not die, Pervica. It would destroy me.”
She put her arms around my neck. “I will not die,” she told me solemnly. “But I won’t do what you ask.”
XII
Pervica went home that afternoon in exactly the situation I liked least-formally engaged to marry me, planning to continue on her own till the date set for the wedding, and totally determined to carry out her inquiries among her druidical friends. I loaned her a wagon to drive herself back, and I and the bodyguard escorted her all the way to River End, but my continued protests only made her angry. As Longus had remarked, she had a will of iron and she hated to be bullied. I was miserably aware that I had made my explanations to her very badly, driven as I was by my own memories.
When I’d seen her home I rode back to Cilurnum like a thundercloud. I found Kasagos and told him about the cursing tablet-the news was bound to reach the camp within a few days, and I wanted the protection of our own gods; the thing had unsettled me. He was predictably outraged. We sacrificed to Marha, and he lit a ring of fire about my wagon to invoke the god’s protection and keep back the power of the Lie. Then he counted out the divining rods, but their message was ambiguous and uncomforting. I snarled at the bewildered bodyguard, ignored the puzzled questions of my Roman and Sarmatian friends, and went off to work with my horses.
The only other person I spoke to about the tablet was Eukairios. I was afraid that the murdered man was his friend, killed for his inquiries on my behalf, and I sent him into Corstopitum to check.
He returned the following afternoon to report that his friend was safe and welclass="underline" the sacrificial victim had been a carpenter once accused of using wood from a sacred grove. He said besides that a lead scroll that was supposed to be the famous cursing tablet had been found that morning lying on the altar of the Mothers in Corstopitum. One of the local druids was said to have erased the name on it and to have denounced the ritual murder that produced it as blasphemous. The local people were delighted about this-the victim had been a townsman, and it was widely believed that the murderers were Pictish druids enraged by the failure of the raid on Corstopitum. The marketplace was rustling with whispers, and many of the citizens were going to the temple of the Mothers to see the scroll and leave an offering to the goddesses. This was comforting in that it did not sound as though the countryside was eager to harm Pervica, but unsettling in that if the cursing tablet was lying on an altar in Corstopitum, it must be because Pervica had put it there, and made public her opposition to everything it represented.
The news of the ritual murder and the cursing tablet seeped into the rest of the camp the same day, brought by the first people to visit Corstopitum after the festival. As Facilis had predicted, everyone knew what had been written on the tablet. The general conclusion was the same as in the town: that it had been the work of Picts angry at their defeat. I could see, however, that Comittus in particular was extremely unhappy about it. He lost all his bounciness and looked upset whenever he saw me. Several times he tried to speak to me, but I was still in a very black mood and ignored his tentative questions entirely. I think he and Longus both realized then that I hadn’t shared their food or drink since the near-drowning. They were neither of them stupid, and the mutiny and the raid, the drowning and the curse, were obviously and suspiciously connected. Longus tried to talk, too-but I wouldn’t discuss it with him, either.
A few days later, on the second of January, I set out for Eburacum, as the legate had asked. I brought my bodyguard with me under Banadaspos, and Kasagos’ squadron as well, but left Leimanos in charge of the rest of the dragon. We took our wagons to sleep in. I brought Eukairios, both to have his help with the arrangements for the stud farms and also because he wished to consult his fellow cultists in Eburacum and hear their verdict on an alliance. Facilis came as well, muttering some excuse about legion business-though it was clear to me that he came because he wanted to pursue his own inquiries about Aurelia Bodica.