Beyond the Wall Page 13

  Cassia could see Flavia and Silvio. The light was too dim for her to read the expressions on their faces but they were not bound or chained. Marcus was standing at the far edge of the crowd, and he too looked unharmed.

  A sip of mead. An invitation to stand behind her brother. He leaned into her and she put her arms around his chest.

  Then a harpist began to play. Long fingers, plucking the strings. A single note. Repeated. Once, twice more. Steady, insistent. Like the start of a storm. Single drops of notes. Then a flurry. A patter. Building steadily to a shower raining down on her. A tune, filling the great house, circling the fire, coming back on itself, dancing, whirling. A tune that made Cassia’s heart contract, that brought rapture and longing and terrible sadness all at once. A tune Cassia had long forgotten. But now remembered.

  A song. That rose and fell.

  A song. A story.

  Of a tribe that lived in the valley of the split rock.

  A story sung in the barbarian tongue, which until that very moment she would have sworn she did not know.

  When Rufus glanced up at her, his face was blank. He understood nothing.

  But she did.

  The words.

  She knew their meaning.

  A veil had been pulled aside in her mind.

  She stared into the fire.

  And in the rising smoke she saw shapes stirring, taking form. The face of her mother, close by hers. As it had been night after night before the fever came and carried her away.

  A long-buried memory was prised from the depths and floated to the surface. Their mother’s body had been burned. Cassia – eight years old – had stood and watched, holding Rufus in her arms, seeing the black smoke rise, feeling it writhe into her soul like a serpent that then coiled about her heart.

  This singer, this song: the serpent loosened its grip. It slithered away. Left her. Joined the smoke that rose through the thatched roof.

  The singer sang of the coming of the Red Crests, of the battles that followed, of the building of the wall.

  And then the song departed from the words that were familiar and told a tale she did not know.

  They drew a picture in her head so clearly it was as though she had been there.

  She saw a boy, climbing a hill. A boy older than Rufus, but who looked like him: the same hair, the same skin, the same eyes.

  She watched him from afar, as though she was an eagle soaring above. But then the picture changed and she was inside the boy’s head, seeing through his eyes, feeling the wiry grass beneath his feet, breathing the chill morning air with his lungs, sharing the stream of thoughts that passed through his head.

  Ten days he had been gone.

  Ten days in which he had been tested to the limits of his endurance. He had neither eaten nor drunk, but sat in the mouth of a cave, praying to the gods of heaven and earth, waiting for the vision that would bring his spirit guide.

  And last night it had come. He had left his human body and walked with wolves, tumbled with the cubs, hunted with the pack.

  Ten days ago he had gone from the village – a stripling youth. He was returning a man. His heart, his mind, his soul were transformed. When the men were back from their long hunt, he would join his father and brothers at council. He would sit with them and eat.

  As he crested the hill, the broad valley was spread out before him, the early morning mist lying in a thick blanket, obscuring the village below.

  Smoke curled through the layer of fog in faint wisps.

  But it was not the smoke of hearth fires, welcoming him home.

  The smell of cooked meat drifted up to him in the cold air.

  But not roasting hare, or deer.

  Burned flesh. Burned hair.

  The rank reek of blood and death.

  His smile was gone. He was running, pelting through heather and bog. Falling, rolling, getting up again, running, running, running, breath ragged, coming in pained gulps, crying out the names of his father, his brothers, his sister, screaming each of them in turn. Getting no reply.

  Reaching the village. The mist burning off in the sun. Rolling back, peeling away from the dead. The old men butchered. The women nowhere to be seen. Neither them, nor their children.

  Scatha! Scatha, his twin. His sister. Scatha, one half his soul. Gone!

  There was but one woman left alive. A woman too old to be desirable. A woman too old to be of use. A woman of no value as a slave.

  Mortally wounded, but not yet dead.

  He cradled her in his arms.

  “Stay. Stay with me,” he begged. “Do not go.”

  But he could see in her eyes her conviction that the tribe was destroyed. Broken beyond repair. Dead. Its daughters had been carried away. With no women, there could be no future. What reason was there for her to live?

  “They are gone,” she whispered. “Scattered. Like dust.”

  “Not dust,” he said. He must find some shred of hope where there was none. “Not dust. Seeds. Scattered indeed. But will they not take root? Can something not yet grow from them? This is not the end.”

  She shook her head. Bubbles of blood frothed at the corners of her mouth.

  As she died in his arms, the boy swore by all the gods of heaven and earth that this was not the end of it.

  This was a beginning.

  Cassia was scarcely aware that the singer had ceased. That she herself had taken up the tune.

  That she was singing aloud the other half of the song. That of the boy’s sister, taken south.

  “Scatha. Sold at market.

  Scatha. Slave to a Roman master.”

  A list of names began to pour from her mouth.

  She was chanting them, as her mother had done. Night after night they had been whispered into her ear.

  “My child, my daughter, you are daughter of Annys,

  who was daughter of Brighid.

  Brighid, who was daughter of Scatha.

  Scatha, stolen by the Red Crests.

  Scatha, of the valley of the split rock

  With the rowan, growing from its heart.

  The valley of the Wolf People.”

  Cassia’s words dried in her throat. She could not utter what had come next. Instead it echoed in her mind. Her mother’s voice, come from the world beyond to accuse her. “You are the only daughter of mine to live. Remember your slain sisters. Their future was stolen from them, from the children they would have borne, from the generations that would have followed. Remember them. Never forget who you are. If we lose our memories, we lose everything.”

  A great storm of sorrow broke Cassia’s heart.

  For she had not remembered!

  She had wiped her mother from her mind. She had not held the story in her heart. She had never – not even once – told it to Rufus.

  She had betrayed her mother. Forgotten the women – the ancestors – who had called her home.

  Crushed under a great weight of guilt, Cassia sank to her knees and wept.

  XXXIII

  A very long time later Cassia found herself alone with Marcus.

  She had been claimed: a lost daughter of the tribe. When she’d recovered from her weeping, the celebrations had gone on far into the night. She’d been too dazed, too overwhelmed to feel anything but confusion.

  When the Wolf People had dispersed, she’d lain down to sleep in the place allotted to her, but had woken only a few short moments after falling into an uneasy slumber. Unable to lie still, fearful of disturbing the others who slept there, she’d risen and left the roundhouse.

  She felt bruised. Battered by the waves of opposing emotions that had swept over her. She’d been welcomed. The chief himself had taken her by the hands and called her daughter. Bretha, the woman who’d sat at his right side – the one all had deferred to – had embraced her and wept salt tears into her hair.

  In turn, each person had come to her, laying a hand on her arm, on her hair, calling her sister, cousin, friend. The joy was beyond anything Cassia had
ever experienced. And yet there was an overwhelming sadness mixed with it – a terrible grief that while she understood their talk if they spoke slowly and clearly as if to a small child, Rufus could not decipher a word.

  “He is young,” Bretha had said. “He’ll learn. Before the turning of the year he will have forgotten he ever spoke the Red Crests’ tongue.”

  Cassia was not so sure. Rufus had been damaged these last few months in more than body. She was afraid her brother could never be the boy he was or the man he was meant to be. Quite what he’d now grow into she couldn’t imagine. He’d looked strange that evening. His eyes focused, but not on her. It was as if he was looking beyond, seeing things that were not there.

  She’d translated what words she could for him, explaining that they were welcomed, that they were home, but he seemed scarcely able to take it in. He’d accepted food and drink as if he was in another world. She wondered if he expected to wake to find himself back on the estate as she had, abandoned and alone once more.

  She left the roundhouse, walking out into the cold night. The moon was full, lighting the clouds that drifted across the sky. Marcus was silhouetted against them, standing near the gate, looking down over the valley.

  * * *

  If he’d taken her in his arms then, she would have given herself to him without reservation. Indeed, she longed for nothing more than to stop thinking, to lose herself to a pleasure that was entirely physical.

  He smiled at her approach, but kept his arms tightly folded across his chest. And there was something icily polite in his voice when he said, “A splendid feast, wasn’t it? You must have looked forward to coming home these last months!”

  “Home?” she echoed. “Oh Marcus! I didn’t know it was here.”

  He frowned. Tilted his head to one side. “How could you not?”

  “I was a slave. I was born in the south.”

  Disbelief showed in every line of his face. “And yet you know the tongue?”

  “From my mother. But she died… I’d forgotten.”

  “You’ve never set foot on this land before? Truly?”

  “Only in my dreams.”

  He seemed oddly unnerved, as though this happy outcome was profoundly disturbing to him. She moved closer, but he stepped back.

  “I can hardly believe it…” he said, shaking his head. “You knew nothing of this?”

  “No… Dreams. Memories. Fragments. Nothing that made sense.”

  “You were a slave?” he asked. “No! I can’t believe it! The dress you were wearing when I first saw you – that wasn’t one that belonged to a slave girl.”

  “No, it wasn’t…”

  “You couldn’t sweep a floor! You couldn’t cook a meal!”

  “I worked in the fields. Among the men.”

  “Silvio… He called you queen.”

  “He was mocking me! You didn’t think him serious? It was a game we played. When we were children, there were times we were able to slip away. We went to the woods. Played Britons against Red Crests, battling with sticks as swords. Silvio was the first of my warriors. I was the mighty Boudica.”

  “A child’s game?” He looked utterly bewildered. A silence fell between them broken only by the distant howling of wolves. And then he asked, “You were truly a slave?”

  “For the third time of telling! I was.”

  “Your master was who?”

  “The same as Rufus’s. That was where I was born.”

  “Why did you run away?”

  “Titus Cornelius Festus wished to … use me.”

  “Use you?”

  “Yes!”

  “How?”

  “How do you think? Do I have to describe every detail?”

  “And you wouldn’t submit?”

  “No. I fought. Hurt him. There was nothing for it but to run.”

  “There was talk on the bridge – that day we left – a runaway girl. The offer of a reward. That was for you?”

  “Yes.”

  He breathed out between his teeth. A harsh, sudden hiss. Slapped his hand against his forehead.

  Cassia felt as though a cold fist squeezed her heart. The more she explained herself, the closer she tried to get to him, the further she seemed to be driving him away. It was as though they were having two quite different conversations. She had the strange sense they were divided by a screen that rendered communication impossible.

  “Had you known who I was, would you have behaved differently?”

  Silence.

  She persisted. “Marcus … you’ve protected me these past months. You’ve done more than I could ever have asked from you. I thought you did it from kindness. You said you helped me the same way you would have saved a bird from a cat.”

  “Those were my very words.” There was a bitterness in his voice that made her flinch.

  “Did you lie? Marcus, tell me. What goes on here?” She put a hand on his arm, her fingers pressing into his flesh. “Who did you think I was?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at her, taking in every detail of her face, as if seeing her now for the first time. He dropped his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I was wrong.”

  He reached out his hand and traced the line of her chin with one finger. Leaned towards her as if he wanted – as if he yearned desperately – to kiss her.

  But something in his nature fought him. Mind and body seemed at war with each other.

  Suddenly he threw back his head and yelled, “Gods of Olympus, how you mock me!”

  Pulling his cloak tight about him, he turned and strode away, out of the hill fort and into the night.

  She waited and watched all the hours of darkness.

  But Marcus did not come back.

  PART II: EAGLE

  I

  There are two players in this tale: Cassia, and her Roman. I turn my attention now to him.

  A storyteller can travel through time and across both land and sea in a heartbeat. I go back ten years. To the city of Rome, and to Primus Aurelius Aquila, the father of Marcus, who was returning home that morning having sold his daughter’s mother at market.

  The woman was a slave and he was perfectly entitled to dispose of her as he saw fit. Though Hera had been his whore these last fourteen years he had felt no guilt about her sale. She’d served him well. He’d enjoyed her while her looks had been intact. And he’d treated her kindly. She’d been fed. Clothed. Rarely beaten. She’d had better care from him than any slave had a right to expect. But his appetite for her had waned as her breasts sagged, her stomach slackened, her buttocks hollowed. These past few months, she’d begun to revolt him. Her time was done. He needed someone younger.

  How very convenient then, that as Hera had faded, her daughter had bloomed.

  Phoebe.

  The mere thought of her made the blood race in his veins. Why would he buy a new girl when she was there, ripe for the picking?

  Phoebe may have been daughter to Primus and half-sister to Marcus, but she was born a slave, like her mother. She was her father’s property. Besides which, Primus had created her. He could do with her as he wished.

  He’d not told mother or daughter what he planned, of course. The weeping and wailing of their separation would be more than he could bear. Women made such a fuss! Their noise would have been enough to curdle cheese. No… Instead he’d taken Hera with him to market the way he had so many times before.

  But she’d known, he thought, long before he handed her over to the dealer. She’d said nothing, but there was accusation in her eyes. He was surprised to find that it pricked him a little. He needed a distraction to wipe the memory of her look from his mind. What could be better than to find Phoebe and enjoy her right away?

  Marcus was then ten years old. He should have been at his lessons, but his tutor had been taken ill and, it being a bright spring day, he’d walked out into the gardens with his sister. He and Phoebe were lying on their backs in the dappled shade of a lemon tree. They didn’t see their father return.<
br />
  They stayed side by side in the shade until noon, she begging him for stories of gods and monsters, of death and destiny. Only when their stomachs began to growl with hunger did Phoebe – his sister, but still his slave – go in search of food and drink.

  Marcus waited. And waited. She did not return. Puzzled by her disappearance, he went to the kitchen himself.

  She was not there. And no one would say where she’d gone. So he went looking.

  He searched all the usual places, but couldn’t find her. And then he passed his father’s room. From there he could hear strange, muffled noises. An animal grunting. A gasp of pain. A cry of distress.

  Phoebe’s!

  Thinking robbers had somehow broken in and attacked her, Marcus burst through the doorway.

  His father was kneeling on the bed.

  Phoebe was crouched on all fours in front of him.

  She was crying.

  A boy should not attack his father.

  He was permitted to beat the slaves. To kick a dog, whip a horse, strike a woman: all were necessary to maintain discipline.

  But to raise a hand against the man who’d sired him?

  That day, Marcus committed an unforgivable sin.

  And he was duly punished for it.

  It is possible to take a child’s mind apart. To dismantle a personality. To fragment a soul. Marcus Aurelius Aquila had been systematically destroyed by his father.

  Not with cruelty. He might have withstood that. Brutality would have bred hatred, and with it a fire that might have sustained him.

  Instead it was done with kindness. With compassion. With love.

  After the first beating, when Marcus was bloodied and bruised, afraid and alone, his father had approached him.

  The boy had cowered, but Primus had opened his arms and said tenderly, “Come to me, my son.”

  Marcus had run to him. Begged forgiveness.

  And afterwards?

  Gently, with infinite care, he was made to see the error of his ways.