A Year of Ravens, page 11
Everything.
I tried to think what I might have lost in the ground in someone else’s paddock. Nothing came to mind. Every part of me was trembling, and my legs burned from the strain of kneeling at this angle.
“This land is imperial property. Looting on imperial property is a serious offense.”
I said, “I came to find news of my aunt.”
“And what did the worms tell you?” The southerner was enjoying himself.
The soldier in charge said something to him. My Latin is only good for the marketplace, but it sounded as though the southerner was being scolded for speaking his own thoughts.
The officer’s thoughts were that if this was my aunt’s land, and there was something buried here, then perhaps my family was guilty of withholding assets from the imperial authorities.
“Hiding the goodies,” the southerner added, in case I was too stupid to understand how much trouble I was in. “Or are you hiding illegal weapons?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“The officer says you can keep digging.”
Praying there were no weapons here, I scraped and scooped the cold earth with my bare hands while the four men watched. At least it was a chance to move. The pain in my legs eased. The fear did not.
My fingertips stubbed against a smooth surface. I cleared more of the mud away and saw oiled wood. The officer gave an order to his men, and the southerner told me to get out of the way.
They hauled the box out. When I said I had no key, one of them broke the lock open with his knife. I caught a glint of silver inside, but they snapped it shut before I could get a proper look. Whatever it was, they seemed pleased with it.
They were making me carry it to the gate when a new voice called across from the track by the ruined house, “Ho! Optio!”
The gray-headed figure on the horse was Eisu, the Iceni trader from near the fort who had come to the Great Hall yesterday with a gift of three ponies. He used to visit the Great Hall whenever my father had Roman guests who might pay well for horses, and he spoke Latin with ease. Listening to him now, I understood, “What have you found?” but after that, the words ran by too fast.
The officer seemed to know him. From the way they were looking at me as they spoke, I wondered if they wanted to trade me, too. Then Eisu said, “Give them the box, girl.”
I was glad to hand it over.
He said, “The officer thanks you for finding the money this treacherous family tried to hide, but he wants you to know that from now on his men will do their own searching.”
He was thanking me? I looked from one to the other of them and tried to make sense of it.
“Clear off,” said the southerner.
Still covered in mud, I raced for the Great Hall before they could change their minds.
I had not gone far when I heard the thud of hoof beats growing louder behind me. There was open grazing on one side of the path and the river on the other: nowhere to hide. I turned. Eisu drew his horse to a halt and looked down at me.
“Whatever you know,” he said, “or you think you know, you will keep all of it to yourself. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“Swear before Andraste.”
Swearing was not difficult. I did not know why he had stepped in to save me, but I never wanted to speak of this afternoon ever again. It was not until he was riding away that I remembered to shout, “Thank you!” but I don’t think he heard.
I washed off the mud as best I could, but I forgot the laundry. As I stumbled in past the gates, Verico grabbed me by the arm. “What happened to you?”
“Soldiers,” I gasped, breathless from the running.
His yell of “Soldiers!” was so loud it made me jump. There were echoes of “Soldiers!” all around us, and then the high wail of the alarm horn.
He said, “Where?”
I shook my head. “Gone now.”
Verico swore and yelled, “Too late!” and someone shouted, “What?” and Verico shouted back, “False alarm!”
The horn gave the three blasts that told of safety, and all the people who had run out of the houses inside the enclosure turned to go back inside, and all the people outside who were rushing for the shelter of the gates stopped and gathered to talk instead. I prayed the horse trader would keep silent about saving me. I did not want to guess what would happen if word got out that the laundry slave had revealed hidden Iceni money to the Romans.
Verico turned to me. “Weren’t you doing some laundry?”
“I dropped it in the river, running from the soldiers.”
He dragged me to one side and reached behind the open gate. Then he brought out the bundle I had hidden in the reeds and held it up in front of me. “Something you want to tell me, Ria?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll find out,” he promised. “Remember that next time you think about running to Duro to complain about me.”
I was afraid of more questions about the soldiers, but back in the courtyard, the slave-master just looked me up and down and said, “Go and wash.” I did my best to become invisible again and prayed that was the end of it.
Winter is always hard: first for the weak and the sick and then, as the stores run low, for the rest. Some of the tribe were poor now for the first time in their lives, and the bite of hunger and cold was sharpened for everyone by knowing that the fort half a day’s walk away held enough stolen Iceni grain to feed five hundred men for a year. Andecarus, the sleek-plaited son of Duro’s who had been fostered by the Romans, was sent back and forth on his smart horse to plead with the commander, but he never came back with anything more than words, and there were those who said he only went there to get himself a good meal. I thought they were unfair but said nothing. I was doing my best to be invisible.
I was avoiding Verico because I was afraid of him, and the Romans because we all knew they were vicious and dangerous, and my older sister because there were days when she would snap at the smallest fault. Andecarus must have noticed the difference in her, too: she had a grim set of the mouth that had not been there before, and although I saw her watching as he came and went, the warmth of her welcome was gone. She trained harder than before with Duro and the other fighters, and everyone pretended not to hear the clash of forbidden swords coming from the warriors’ house.
The little mouse was paler and quieter than ever and vomiting every day. She must have understood why, and I grieved for her, but the slave-master told us we were all to mind our own business. So I cleaned up after her and pretended not to hear the worried conversations between her mother and the birthing-women, and I thanked the gods—and the charm I had bought from one of those women—that I wasn’t in the same state after Verico’s “comforting.” He was still bothering me, his horrible hands grabbing and fondling whenever I sidled past, and I dreamed of killing him before he could go any further—but the truth is that I dared not even complain. All I could do was duck into the shadows whenever I saw his big swaggering shape and never be caught alone.
I kept my eyes open for Eisu, hoping to offer him the thanks I still owed him for saving me from the Romans—and to beg him not to mention my failed treasure hunt to any of our people. But whenever he came on business with his ponies, Duro and Verico always greeted him like an old friend and went about everywhere with him, and I dared not approach him in their presence. So I had to hope he knew I was grateful without me saying so.
I gave up all hope of ever seeing the brooches. It was sad to have nothing from my father, but my present troubles were eclipsing the shame of what had happened in the storehouse, and I saw now that no amount of jewelry would ever be a comfort to my sisters.
Meanwhile, the queen was more and more in control. That would not have surprised my mother, who always said she behaved as if she had been chosen queen in her own right instead of just being the wife of a king. First, she ruled from her bed, with Duro and the other elders gathered in council around her, deciding how the remaining food and firewood and blankets should be guarded and shared. Later, she hauled herself into the carved chair where my father used to sit—not the backless Roman chair given to client kings; they had snatched that one back from us—and made the speech about how thieves and secret hoarders were our enemies and should be reported and punished.
That was what she wanted the emperor’s spies to report: a woman organizing food. Did they not see how she was placing herself as protector of the people? Did they never wonder why so many traders came and went through the worst of the weather that winter to do business in a Great Hall where nobody had money to spend anymore? Did it not strike them that if you can organize food, you can organize anything? But Romans do not think like we do. I know for a fact that there are Romans who think every beehive is under the control of a King Bee. They would rather believe a male can lay eggs than accept that a female can be in charge.
Besides, they never had the benefit of growing up with my mother, who had learned even before I was born how unwise it was to cross That Woman.
The truth of that became clear to everyone just after the first lambs had been born to shiver through the tail end of winter. A hungry boy and his father were caught stealing a very small sack of oats. The queen had them brought before the elders in the Great Hall and then had both father and son marched into the woods and beheaded there amongst the white anemones. I heard she wept at their deaths, but the heads were still put on poles outside the gates.
There were not many reports of theft after that.
I had sworn before the gods not to reveal whatever I knew or thought I knew, and I tried not to wonder exactly what the secrets were that Eisu thought I might betray. About him? About hidden hoards of treasure? But trying not to think about something just makes it sing louder in your ear, and as the days went by, there were more and more things I began to think I knew.
Perhaps because I was always on the alert for Verico, I noticed how many new warriors seemed to appear and disappear. The rasp of saws seemed especially loud on the east wind, and the clang of the smiths began at dawn and carried on past the ends of the short days. They must have had a ferocious number of broken carts and tools to fix.
I would not reveal what I thought I knew, but I feared that now that my father was gone, his people were being led into exactly the kind of conflict he had tried to avoid. The queen’s revenge was going to be beyond anything any of us had imagined.
Andecarus still rode his smart cavalry mare back and forth to the fort, bringing orders from the prefect, but I could not imagine what he was telling them in return. It was obvious they were not expecting trouble. Their vehicles traveled lightly guarded and unhindered. Their road patrols still barged everybody else aside, and I heard that their foraging parties wandered out from the fort collecting firewood as if they were taking a stroll. Every few days, their centurions took groups of legionaries out on what they called “routine training runs” that gave them the chance to snoop around the countryside.
They still sent soldiers to watch what used to be the market, although it was now more of a sharing-out of food stores. One damp morning after the worst of the frosts were over, I had just come out of the weaver’s with a length of wool for my younger sister’s new tunic when one of them stepped up far too close and looked to see what was in my basket. “Very nice, love,” he said in Latin slow enough for me to understand, and blocked my path. “I like a girl in blue.”
The thought of a man like this going anywhere near the little mouse made me want to vomit just like she did. I pretended not to understand, and he said it again more clearly, pointing at the cloth and then at me with a broad smile over his stinky breath. Then he glanced at his comrades, who were watching from across the street, before he pointed to himself and then to me and said, “Friend? What is ‘friend’ in Iceni?”
I told him. He repeated it. Then he reached under his cloak and held out an apple. It sat in his callused palm looking shriveled and yellowish and bruised and wonderful. I had not eaten since the night before.
“No, thank you.” I pushed it away, looking around for someone to help, but the weaver had gone back into his workshop, and nobody else seemed to be watching.
The soldier shoved the apple back in front of me. “For you.”
“No!” Since I could not move forward, I stepped back and then around him. To my relief, he did not try and stop me, although he called out something, and all his comrades laughed. Perhaps he really was trying to be friends. But I knew better than to trust a man, and besides, we Iceni were past friendship. We were what they called “pacified.”
I had no trouble believing the stories of Romans waving loaves of bread at hungry children so they could watch them beg. Nor those of women who offered themselves to soldiers to get extra food for their families. Perhaps their officers did not know. Perhaps they thought our women did not mind. More likely, though, the official line from the Great Hall—no reprisals—suited them so nicely that it never occurred to them to wonder at the strength of will that held us back. The will, mostly, of one woman.
It was a few days later and very early in the morning when the queen shooed everyone out of the Great Hall and told to us stay out. In case we had other ideas, she had two warriors stationed outside. Even my older sister was not allowed in, although the younger one remained. We all understood why when one of the birthing-women hurried past the guards carrying a covered basket, and we heard the door-bar drop behind her.
I watched Princess Sorcha go out with Duro and some of the other elders, two of them moving gracefully beneath the antler headdresses they wore when they made special offerings. I too spoke prayers for my little mouse sister while I was smoothing the linens. There was no way to do what the birthing-women were trying to do that was not dangerous.
The sound of chanting drifted in from the woods for a long time, but when it was over, the door was of the Great Hall was still barred.
It was still barred at midday when Andecarus arrived. I was sitting on a bench by what was left of the woodpile, scraping dried mud off a pair of trousers in the hope of brushing them clean. My older sister was doing what the cook used to tell me off for—standing in the opening of the cooking-house door so she got the warm air from the hearth behind her and a good view of the courtyard in front while everyone else inside had to put up with the cold draught. She was pretending to be busy sharpening her knife, but every few moments she paused to put one hand on the little bronze figure of a boar strung around her neck, and I knew she was thinking of the hidden battle being waged behind the doors of the Great Hall.
We both stopped what we were doing to watch as Andecarus leaped down from his big chestnut mare and threw the reins to one of the boys. The horse’s coat was dark with sweat, and there were flecks of foam around its mouth.
Andecarus ran to the doors of the Great Hall. When the guards blocked his way, he hurried over to the warriors’ quarters instead. Within moments, the yelling started. People paused to listen as it got louder. Andecarus and Verico. Some of the onlookers shouted encouragement, mostly for Verico.
The warriors were always having fights. By the next day, they’d usually sobered up and forgotten what they were arguing about. But this was broad daylight, and Andecarus could have fitted twice into his foster brother. Besides, he was steady and quiet by nature, not a brawling bully like Verico. My sister rushed across the yard as if she expected to drag them apart herself, and I ran after her.
The two men were circling each other like fighting dogs, each one gauging who would make the first move.
Duro had to yell both their names more than once before they took any notice of him. When they were finally listening, he said, “Our Princess Keena is sick and in need of rest, and I will not have her disturbed!”
He ordered both sons indoors as if they were ten winters old and then seized Princess Sorcha by the arm and walked her back across the yard with me beside her. She did not look very pleased about it.
“Your mother asked me to protect you,” he told her, ignoring the muffled shouts from inside the warriors’ quarters.
“I don’t need protecting from our own men!”
I thought, Then you are lucky.
Duro should have known better than to cross That Woman’s daughter, though, because as soon as he hurried back to deal with the argument, she said, “Ria. You bed that Verico, no?”
Who had told her that? “Not willingly, mistress.”
She looked surprised, as if it had not struck her before that a slave might not have the choices a free woman enjoyed. “Well, anyway, they’re used to seeing you around. Go and find out what’s happening. Mother needs good warriors. We can’t have them killing each other.”
That sounded like something else I wasn’t supposed to know. Because why does the queen of a tribe that has been pacified have such dire need of good warriors? I shoved the thought out of my head because it just meant more trouble for me and went obediently to be Sorcha’s eyes and ears.
I never liked going into the warriors’ house even when Verico wasn’t there: the skulls of old enemies nailed up over the door made me shiver. But my sister was right about everyone being used to seeing me; when I wandered in with a couple of blankets to put on the shelf, nobody took any notice at all. I slipped behind a wicker partition and sat on the end of someone’s bed in the dark, trembling at the thought of what would happen if Verico caught me in here. At the moment, he was too busy shouting at his foster brother, “What’s wrong with them drowning in a bog?”
“Why would they be in a bog if they were looking for firewood?”
“They weren’t looking for bloody firewood!”
“Boys!” Duro cried. “Boys! Enough!”
There was a moment’s silence, and I decided that whoever slept in this bed needed to wash his feet more often.
“We know they weren’t looking for firewood.” Andecarus’ voice was lower now. “And the prefect must know that we know. But that’s the official line he’s given me.” He paused. “If I’d been told about this as soon as it happened, and if this fool and his pals had had the sense to make it look like an accident—”
I tried to think what I might have lost in the ground in someone else’s paddock. Nothing came to mind. Every part of me was trembling, and my legs burned from the strain of kneeling at this angle.
“This land is imperial property. Looting on imperial property is a serious offense.”
I said, “I came to find news of my aunt.”
“And what did the worms tell you?” The southerner was enjoying himself.
The soldier in charge said something to him. My Latin is only good for the marketplace, but it sounded as though the southerner was being scolded for speaking his own thoughts.
The officer’s thoughts were that if this was my aunt’s land, and there was something buried here, then perhaps my family was guilty of withholding assets from the imperial authorities.
“Hiding the goodies,” the southerner added, in case I was too stupid to understand how much trouble I was in. “Or are you hiding illegal weapons?”
I hadn’t thought of that.
“The officer says you can keep digging.”
Praying there were no weapons here, I scraped and scooped the cold earth with my bare hands while the four men watched. At least it was a chance to move. The pain in my legs eased. The fear did not.
My fingertips stubbed against a smooth surface. I cleared more of the mud away and saw oiled wood. The officer gave an order to his men, and the southerner told me to get out of the way.
They hauled the box out. When I said I had no key, one of them broke the lock open with his knife. I caught a glint of silver inside, but they snapped it shut before I could get a proper look. Whatever it was, they seemed pleased with it.
They were making me carry it to the gate when a new voice called across from the track by the ruined house, “Ho! Optio!”
The gray-headed figure on the horse was Eisu, the Iceni trader from near the fort who had come to the Great Hall yesterday with a gift of three ponies. He used to visit the Great Hall whenever my father had Roman guests who might pay well for horses, and he spoke Latin with ease. Listening to him now, I understood, “What have you found?” but after that, the words ran by too fast.
The officer seemed to know him. From the way they were looking at me as they spoke, I wondered if they wanted to trade me, too. Then Eisu said, “Give them the box, girl.”
I was glad to hand it over.
He said, “The officer thanks you for finding the money this treacherous family tried to hide, but he wants you to know that from now on his men will do their own searching.”
He was thanking me? I looked from one to the other of them and tried to make sense of it.
“Clear off,” said the southerner.
Still covered in mud, I raced for the Great Hall before they could change their minds.
I had not gone far when I heard the thud of hoof beats growing louder behind me. There was open grazing on one side of the path and the river on the other: nowhere to hide. I turned. Eisu drew his horse to a halt and looked down at me.
“Whatever you know,” he said, “or you think you know, you will keep all of it to yourself. Is that clear?”
I nodded.
“Swear before Andraste.”
Swearing was not difficult. I did not know why he had stepped in to save me, but I never wanted to speak of this afternoon ever again. It was not until he was riding away that I remembered to shout, “Thank you!” but I don’t think he heard.
I washed off the mud as best I could, but I forgot the laundry. As I stumbled in past the gates, Verico grabbed me by the arm. “What happened to you?”
“Soldiers,” I gasped, breathless from the running.
His yell of “Soldiers!” was so loud it made me jump. There were echoes of “Soldiers!” all around us, and then the high wail of the alarm horn.
He said, “Where?”
I shook my head. “Gone now.”
Verico swore and yelled, “Too late!” and someone shouted, “What?” and Verico shouted back, “False alarm!”
The horn gave the three blasts that told of safety, and all the people who had run out of the houses inside the enclosure turned to go back inside, and all the people outside who were rushing for the shelter of the gates stopped and gathered to talk instead. I prayed the horse trader would keep silent about saving me. I did not want to guess what would happen if word got out that the laundry slave had revealed hidden Iceni money to the Romans.
Verico turned to me. “Weren’t you doing some laundry?”
“I dropped it in the river, running from the soldiers.”
He dragged me to one side and reached behind the open gate. Then he brought out the bundle I had hidden in the reeds and held it up in front of me. “Something you want to tell me, Ria?”
I shook my head.
“I’ll find out,” he promised. “Remember that next time you think about running to Duro to complain about me.”
I was afraid of more questions about the soldiers, but back in the courtyard, the slave-master just looked me up and down and said, “Go and wash.” I did my best to become invisible again and prayed that was the end of it.
Winter is always hard: first for the weak and the sick and then, as the stores run low, for the rest. Some of the tribe were poor now for the first time in their lives, and the bite of hunger and cold was sharpened for everyone by knowing that the fort half a day’s walk away held enough stolen Iceni grain to feed five hundred men for a year. Andecarus, the sleek-plaited son of Duro’s who had been fostered by the Romans, was sent back and forth on his smart horse to plead with the commander, but he never came back with anything more than words, and there were those who said he only went there to get himself a good meal. I thought they were unfair but said nothing. I was doing my best to be invisible.
I was avoiding Verico because I was afraid of him, and the Romans because we all knew they were vicious and dangerous, and my older sister because there were days when she would snap at the smallest fault. Andecarus must have noticed the difference in her, too: she had a grim set of the mouth that had not been there before, and although I saw her watching as he came and went, the warmth of her welcome was gone. She trained harder than before with Duro and the other fighters, and everyone pretended not to hear the clash of forbidden swords coming from the warriors’ house.
The little mouse was paler and quieter than ever and vomiting every day. She must have understood why, and I grieved for her, but the slave-master told us we were all to mind our own business. So I cleaned up after her and pretended not to hear the worried conversations between her mother and the birthing-women, and I thanked the gods—and the charm I had bought from one of those women—that I wasn’t in the same state after Verico’s “comforting.” He was still bothering me, his horrible hands grabbing and fondling whenever I sidled past, and I dreamed of killing him before he could go any further—but the truth is that I dared not even complain. All I could do was duck into the shadows whenever I saw his big swaggering shape and never be caught alone.
I kept my eyes open for Eisu, hoping to offer him the thanks I still owed him for saving me from the Romans—and to beg him not to mention my failed treasure hunt to any of our people. But whenever he came on business with his ponies, Duro and Verico always greeted him like an old friend and went about everywhere with him, and I dared not approach him in their presence. So I had to hope he knew I was grateful without me saying so.
I gave up all hope of ever seeing the brooches. It was sad to have nothing from my father, but my present troubles were eclipsing the shame of what had happened in the storehouse, and I saw now that no amount of jewelry would ever be a comfort to my sisters.
Meanwhile, the queen was more and more in control. That would not have surprised my mother, who always said she behaved as if she had been chosen queen in her own right instead of just being the wife of a king. First, she ruled from her bed, with Duro and the other elders gathered in council around her, deciding how the remaining food and firewood and blankets should be guarded and shared. Later, she hauled herself into the carved chair where my father used to sit—not the backless Roman chair given to client kings; they had snatched that one back from us—and made the speech about how thieves and secret hoarders were our enemies and should be reported and punished.
That was what she wanted the emperor’s spies to report: a woman organizing food. Did they not see how she was placing herself as protector of the people? Did they never wonder why so many traders came and went through the worst of the weather that winter to do business in a Great Hall where nobody had money to spend anymore? Did it not strike them that if you can organize food, you can organize anything? But Romans do not think like we do. I know for a fact that there are Romans who think every beehive is under the control of a King Bee. They would rather believe a male can lay eggs than accept that a female can be in charge.
Besides, they never had the benefit of growing up with my mother, who had learned even before I was born how unwise it was to cross That Woman.
The truth of that became clear to everyone just after the first lambs had been born to shiver through the tail end of winter. A hungry boy and his father were caught stealing a very small sack of oats. The queen had them brought before the elders in the Great Hall and then had both father and son marched into the woods and beheaded there amongst the white anemones. I heard she wept at their deaths, but the heads were still put on poles outside the gates.
There were not many reports of theft after that.
I had sworn before the gods not to reveal whatever I knew or thought I knew, and I tried not to wonder exactly what the secrets were that Eisu thought I might betray. About him? About hidden hoards of treasure? But trying not to think about something just makes it sing louder in your ear, and as the days went by, there were more and more things I began to think I knew.
Perhaps because I was always on the alert for Verico, I noticed how many new warriors seemed to appear and disappear. The rasp of saws seemed especially loud on the east wind, and the clang of the smiths began at dawn and carried on past the ends of the short days. They must have had a ferocious number of broken carts and tools to fix.
I would not reveal what I thought I knew, but I feared that now that my father was gone, his people were being led into exactly the kind of conflict he had tried to avoid. The queen’s revenge was going to be beyond anything any of us had imagined.
Andecarus still rode his smart cavalry mare back and forth to the fort, bringing orders from the prefect, but I could not imagine what he was telling them in return. It was obvious they were not expecting trouble. Their vehicles traveled lightly guarded and unhindered. Their road patrols still barged everybody else aside, and I heard that their foraging parties wandered out from the fort collecting firewood as if they were taking a stroll. Every few days, their centurions took groups of legionaries out on what they called “routine training runs” that gave them the chance to snoop around the countryside.
They still sent soldiers to watch what used to be the market, although it was now more of a sharing-out of food stores. One damp morning after the worst of the frosts were over, I had just come out of the weaver’s with a length of wool for my younger sister’s new tunic when one of them stepped up far too close and looked to see what was in my basket. “Very nice, love,” he said in Latin slow enough for me to understand, and blocked my path. “I like a girl in blue.”
The thought of a man like this going anywhere near the little mouse made me want to vomit just like she did. I pretended not to understand, and he said it again more clearly, pointing at the cloth and then at me with a broad smile over his stinky breath. Then he glanced at his comrades, who were watching from across the street, before he pointed to himself and then to me and said, “Friend? What is ‘friend’ in Iceni?”
I told him. He repeated it. Then he reached under his cloak and held out an apple. It sat in his callused palm looking shriveled and yellowish and bruised and wonderful. I had not eaten since the night before.
“No, thank you.” I pushed it away, looking around for someone to help, but the weaver had gone back into his workshop, and nobody else seemed to be watching.
The soldier shoved the apple back in front of me. “For you.”
“No!” Since I could not move forward, I stepped back and then around him. To my relief, he did not try and stop me, although he called out something, and all his comrades laughed. Perhaps he really was trying to be friends. But I knew better than to trust a man, and besides, we Iceni were past friendship. We were what they called “pacified.”
I had no trouble believing the stories of Romans waving loaves of bread at hungry children so they could watch them beg. Nor those of women who offered themselves to soldiers to get extra food for their families. Perhaps their officers did not know. Perhaps they thought our women did not mind. More likely, though, the official line from the Great Hall—no reprisals—suited them so nicely that it never occurred to them to wonder at the strength of will that held us back. The will, mostly, of one woman.
It was a few days later and very early in the morning when the queen shooed everyone out of the Great Hall and told to us stay out. In case we had other ideas, she had two warriors stationed outside. Even my older sister was not allowed in, although the younger one remained. We all understood why when one of the birthing-women hurried past the guards carrying a covered basket, and we heard the door-bar drop behind her.
I watched Princess Sorcha go out with Duro and some of the other elders, two of them moving gracefully beneath the antler headdresses they wore when they made special offerings. I too spoke prayers for my little mouse sister while I was smoothing the linens. There was no way to do what the birthing-women were trying to do that was not dangerous.
The sound of chanting drifted in from the woods for a long time, but when it was over, the door was of the Great Hall was still barred.
It was still barred at midday when Andecarus arrived. I was sitting on a bench by what was left of the woodpile, scraping dried mud off a pair of trousers in the hope of brushing them clean. My older sister was doing what the cook used to tell me off for—standing in the opening of the cooking-house door so she got the warm air from the hearth behind her and a good view of the courtyard in front while everyone else inside had to put up with the cold draught. She was pretending to be busy sharpening her knife, but every few moments she paused to put one hand on the little bronze figure of a boar strung around her neck, and I knew she was thinking of the hidden battle being waged behind the doors of the Great Hall.
We both stopped what we were doing to watch as Andecarus leaped down from his big chestnut mare and threw the reins to one of the boys. The horse’s coat was dark with sweat, and there were flecks of foam around its mouth.
Andecarus ran to the doors of the Great Hall. When the guards blocked his way, he hurried over to the warriors’ quarters instead. Within moments, the yelling started. People paused to listen as it got louder. Andecarus and Verico. Some of the onlookers shouted encouragement, mostly for Verico.
The warriors were always having fights. By the next day, they’d usually sobered up and forgotten what they were arguing about. But this was broad daylight, and Andecarus could have fitted twice into his foster brother. Besides, he was steady and quiet by nature, not a brawling bully like Verico. My sister rushed across the yard as if she expected to drag them apart herself, and I ran after her.
The two men were circling each other like fighting dogs, each one gauging who would make the first move.
Duro had to yell both their names more than once before they took any notice of him. When they were finally listening, he said, “Our Princess Keena is sick and in need of rest, and I will not have her disturbed!”
He ordered both sons indoors as if they were ten winters old and then seized Princess Sorcha by the arm and walked her back across the yard with me beside her. She did not look very pleased about it.
“Your mother asked me to protect you,” he told her, ignoring the muffled shouts from inside the warriors’ quarters.
“I don’t need protecting from our own men!”
I thought, Then you are lucky.
Duro should have known better than to cross That Woman’s daughter, though, because as soon as he hurried back to deal with the argument, she said, “Ria. You bed that Verico, no?”
Who had told her that? “Not willingly, mistress.”
She looked surprised, as if it had not struck her before that a slave might not have the choices a free woman enjoyed. “Well, anyway, they’re used to seeing you around. Go and find out what’s happening. Mother needs good warriors. We can’t have them killing each other.”
That sounded like something else I wasn’t supposed to know. Because why does the queen of a tribe that has been pacified have such dire need of good warriors? I shoved the thought out of my head because it just meant more trouble for me and went obediently to be Sorcha’s eyes and ears.
I never liked going into the warriors’ house even when Verico wasn’t there: the skulls of old enemies nailed up over the door made me shiver. But my sister was right about everyone being used to seeing me; when I wandered in with a couple of blankets to put on the shelf, nobody took any notice at all. I slipped behind a wicker partition and sat on the end of someone’s bed in the dark, trembling at the thought of what would happen if Verico caught me in here. At the moment, he was too busy shouting at his foster brother, “What’s wrong with them drowning in a bog?”
“Why would they be in a bog if they were looking for firewood?”
“They weren’t looking for bloody firewood!”
“Boys!” Duro cried. “Boys! Enough!”
There was a moment’s silence, and I decided that whoever slept in this bed needed to wash his feet more often.
“We know they weren’t looking for firewood.” Andecarus’ voice was lower now. “And the prefect must know that we know. But that’s the official line he’s given me.” He paused. “If I’d been told about this as soon as it happened, and if this fool and his pals had had the sense to make it look like an accident—”
