“So the soldiers are not at the door, then?” Conn smirked at his audience. “She thinks we are as stupid as the people she works for.” He ordered the men to wake the prisoners up. “We will take the officer first,” he said. “The child stealer can watch and see what awaits him.”
People craned to see what was happening on the far side of the fire. Some of the men began to kick and slap the prisoners to rouse them, and she saw Cata’s sister trying to force Daminius’s mouth open while somebody tipped up a jug and water splattered over his face. Someone struck up a chant of “Wake them up! Wake them up!”
All this time Senecio had not spoken. She shouted over the chant, “You cannot let this happen!”
He shook his head, and when she leaned closer he told her, “I am an old man, Daughter of Lugh. I do not have much longer. This offering is the only thing I can do for my son. If the gods are pleased, they will show us where he can be found.”
So it would be the entrails, then. Or he might prefer to read death throes. There were many ways of interpreting the threefold death.
Daminius was squirming and gasping for breath. She heard Mallius cry out in pain.
From somewhere deep in her memory came her husband’s voice telling someone that he could never reason with Tilla because reason was a blunt weapon in the face of belief.
“Is this why my mam left you?” she shouted. “Because she would not be a part of things like this? You said, ‘No more killing’!”
The chant faltered, as if people had dropped out to listen.
“A life for a life!” Senecio’s cry cut through the last of the voices. “I will have my son back!”
That was when she said it. The thing she had not even been aware of thinking. “Will you not listen to your own daughter?”
It had been a guess. A tiny suspicion that had taken root. He did not deny it. He did not even seem surprised. All he said was “This is not the time, child.”
And that was how she knew it was true. On this strange and terrible night, her Samain prayer had been answered.
“This is the only time!” she urged. “There will be no other time after this. The gods will turn their backs on you when they see you murder this man Daminius who was sent to help you. Conn will have to kill me too, because I will not keep silent. Then my husband and his men will hunt you all down.”
“If it will bring my son back,” Senecio said, “I will do this thing. And you, child-you must decide whether you are with your father and your brothers, or with your Roman husband.”
“For what? Is this what you want Branan to come home to? Burned houses and memories and ghosts?” She knelt beside his chair. “Am I worth less to you because I was not raised in your home? Or because I am a woman? Will you lose your only daughter too?”
“Enough!” Conn roared, seizing Tilla by the arm and dragging her away from Senecio’s chair. “You talk too much.”
“I am trying to help!”
Conn shoved her so hard she stumbled and fell. He told Enica to get the bread ready and his men to strip the victims.
“You call yourselves heroes and warriors?” Tilla shouted from the shadows by the hut wall, seeing a dark stain of urine spreading on the front of Mallius’s tunic as they cut his bonds ready to drag off his clothes. “You cowards torment two helpless men while a real warrior has gone to rescue Branan! Why are you not riding to join him? Why-”
But nobody was listening to her, because the door had crashed open and a voice was yelling in British with a Roman accent, “Nobody is to move!”
Chapter 70
Too late, Ruso realized he had just scooped up somebody else’s son in an enormous hug. He was not given to displays of affection; the closest physical contact he usually had with children was when his nieces and nephews leapt on him uninvited. And now here he was, with a boy helpless in his arms. How long should one hold on before letting go? Branan was surprisingly heavy and beginning to slide out of his grasp. Ruso lowered him to the floor, aware that various parts of himself that had stopped hurting were now starting again. He patted the boy on the shoulder, cleared his throat, and said, “I’m glad you’re safe.”
Branan retreated to a safe distance and peered at Ruso’s battered face in the lamplight with unashamed curiosity. Then the boy said, “Are you not going to thank me for rescuing you?”
Ruso sat down on the bed, hoping the room would stop dancing around him. “Did you?”
“I shouted at them not to hurt you,” Branan explained. “I kept on shouting, ‘Help me, I’ve been stolen!’ and the horrible man with the furs round his neck said he would slit my tongue if I didn’t shut up. And then a lady said, ‘Are you the missing boy?’ and I said, ‘I’m Branan,’ so she started telling everybody who I was. And then most of them stopped hitting you.”
“Then I thank you very much,” he said, trying to focus on the boy’s face and remind himself that his jaw was not broken: It was only toothache. “Very much indeed.”
Branan bowed his head graciously. At that moment an orderly poked his head around the door and asked if he could come in. He turned out to be the advance guard for a squad of hospital staff who all wanted to see the famous Branan. “Everybody knows about you,” they told him. A couple of them pressed small gifts into his hand. One was a honey cake.
The boy grinned, showing the gap in his teeth. Ruso thought he had never seen such a fine sight.
“Shall we go home now?”
“I’ll see to it,” Ruso promised.
Ruso was aware that he was behaving just like his most annoying patients: the sort who had no time for doctors, always wanted to do too much too soon, and refused to listen to advice. At last, he felt, Pertinax had a reason to be proud of him. The man himself could not have done a better job of complaining about his confinement. Finally the local doctor agreed to let him leave on the first carriage that would take him tomorrow morning, but only after Ruso had promised that nobody here would be blamed if he dropped dead on the road. “The only other problem is,” Ruso confessed, “I’ve got no money.”
“We’ll club together,” the medic assured him. “It’ll be worth it to get rid of you.”
Ruso attempted a smile and wished he hadn’t. He suspected it came out as more of a lopsided leer. Then, remembering, he said, “I left a lame horse at the inn.”
“They’ll sort it out. It’s a decent place. They would have helped you get the boy back if you’d asked.”
“I didn’t know who to trust.”
“No?” The medic grinned. “Welcome to the border, soldier.”
Chapter 71
There was a collective gasp and a shuffle of confusion as people fell over each other in their haste to get away from the door. Tilla heard the word “Traitor!” breathed in her ear.
“Nobody move!” yelled the soldier again. “Give us our men!”
Tilla heard the swish of swords being drawn, and Conn’s command of “No weapons!”
Her opinion of him rose. In a confined space like this, weapons were useless. They might hold the soldiers at bay, but he would know that none of his people could escape even if they broke the walls down. The soldiers were not fools. They would have the place surrounded. The doorway was wide enough only to show a couple of iron helmets in silhouette, but there were torches blazing outside in other hands. The dim-witted lookout and the man sent after the soldiers must have been captured.
“Give us our men! Now!”
Daminius and Mallius were staggering to their feet, Mallius pulling down the tunic Conn’s people had tried to tear off him.
Tilla did not recognize the voice of the soldier. She had no idea what he knew or how they had found this place so soon. But she knew that if she did not think of something quickly, then everything she had feared would come to pass. Mallius would tell them he had been lured into a trap and leave out the reason why. Daminius would be punished for his part in it, Senecio’s family would be executed, and her husband would be disgraced by the shame of a treacherous wife.