‘Please, Valerius.’ She tore at his tunic and when it was gone grasped him to her, desperate for him now. But Valerius would not be hurried. He fought her grip, knowing how much better it would be for her if she would allow him to be patient.
Much later, when he gave her that which she had coveted, but feared, her cry of joy split the air.
There were other times, but when he thought of the cave it was always the first he remembered.
Afterwards they held each other drowsily in the silky warmth of the furs, well satisfied with what had gone before but full of anticipation for what was still to come.
‘My father would kill you if he knew,’ she whispered sleepily. Valerius opened one eye and looked into hers. She wrinkled her nose in a way that made him smile. ‘Well, my father would try to kill you if he knew. And you would have to let him. I could never love a man who killed my father.’
She talked of her world, and the way it had changed. Camulodunum had been the capital of the Trinovantes and the family of Lucullus ranked high in the royal line, but that was before Cunobelin, father of Caratacus and king of the Catuvellauni, had usurped Trinovante power and installed himself as their king. Lucullus’s father had been spared and exiled to the estate on the hill while Cunobelin took over his palace.
‘When the Romans came my father thought to win back his family’s inheritance,’ she said sadly. ‘But nothing has changed.’
He asked her how women like Boudicca and Cartimandua could hold sway even over great warriors and she shook her head at his naivety. ‘ Because they are women,’ she said. ‘And because, even if Cartimandua is a traitor, they are wise and brave and have the aid of Andraste.’
‘Andraste? I do not know that name.’
‘The goddess,’ she explained, as if to an infant. ‘The Dark One who holds power over all men and women and breathes fire in her anger and turns the air to sulphur.’
He told her about Rome and he loved how her eyes opened in amazement at his descriptions of the palaces and the basilicas, the great temples and forests of pillars topped with statues of gold, and the way the whole city looked as if it was on fire when the sun shone in a certain way. ‘I would like to visit Rome one day,’ she said quietly, and he answered, ‘You will.’
She asked him what it was that made the Roman legions so powerful and he explained about the siege weapons he’d seen used against the Celtic hill forts: catapults and ballistas, siege towers and even something as simple as ladders which the tribes had never thought to use for war. She listened intently, frowning when some fact eluded her, and he loved her all the more for the obvious effort she was making to understand him.
Occasionally, Maeve would be away visiting some needy tenant or pregnant estate worker’s wife when Lucullus invited Valerius to visit the villa on the hill, ostensibly to discuss business matters or the politics of the province. But these days would inevitably degenerate into marathon drinking bouts which the old man viewed as a challenge to the depth of his wine cellar and the breadth of Falco’s stock.
During one wine-soaked afternoon Lucullus allowed the clown’s mask to slip.
The principia, extended, refurbished and unrecognizable now as the old legionary headquarters, had just been dedicated to the god Claudius with a lavish ceremony which the little Trinovante had funded. But it was its function, as they sat well rested and on their second flask of one of his best Calenian vintages, that drew the sharpest barbs of Lucullus’s bleary-eyed bitterness. For the principia stood at the centre of a vast bureaucratic network of officialdom that regulated every facet of British life; which weighed, measured and valued everything that was grown, made or reared under its all-seeing eye.
‘You Romans…’ You Romans! This from a man who worked every day and used every deception to try to become one. ‘You Romans think you can rule everything in the world, tree and field, bird and beast, man and woman. Everywhere there must be order. Everything must have its place and its price. Everything must be on a list. It is not our way. Not the way of my people.’ He shook his head to emphasize his point. ‘Before you came we did not have things like this,’ he waved an arm distractedly round the room, ‘but we did not need them. We lived in huts with mud floors, drank beer from clay pots and ate rough porridge from wooden platters, but still we had more than we have now. We had our honour.’
He paused as if expecting an answer.
‘You are surprised that I, a Celt, talk of honour? Yes, Valerius, I know that even you, whom I think of as my friend, consider me a mere Celt. What was I saying? Honour? Yes, honour. You would be amazed at how much talk there is of honour in places not so far from here. We have lost much, but some people’ — he said the words with that particular inflection that meant they were a significant ‘some people’ — ‘some people believe it is not too late to restore it.’
By now, Valerius was wishing the Trinovante would stop lecturing him and call one of his slaves to bring more of the excellent wine from his cellar. But Lucullus in full flow would not be halted by anything less than a bolt of lightning.
‘Your roads and your fortresses are like a boot across our neck and your temple is sucking us dry. Did you know that the cost even of being a member of the Temple of Claudius is ten times more for a Celt than for a Roman citizen? Ten times! If I told you how much I borrowed to secure the priesthood your head would fall from your shoulders. It is we Celts who must pay back the loans taken out to build it. We who pay for the sacrifices and the upkeep and for that great golden whore of Victory they have placed upon its pediment.
‘While we sit here in this,’ the arm was flung out carelessly once more, ‘there are men, Valerius, great men, proud warriors, who live in the ruins of their burned-out huts and watch their children starve, because they once had the temerity to stand up for what was theirs. And there are other men, who were once farmers and wanted only to keep what they had, who now have nothing, because you,’ an accusing finger pointed disconcertingly straight into Valerius’s face, ‘stole everything they had: their land, their cattle, their women. Everything.’
Valerius shook his head. ‘No. Not me.’ Did he say it or only think it? It did not matter. Lucullus ignored him in any case.
‘It could have been different. Did you really think you could grind into the dust with a single blow a people who have survived for a thousand years? Did you believe that men whose courage and prowess with sword and spear was their whole life would simply disappear after one defeat? You could have used their skills. You could have taken them into your service; they would have fought even for you. Better, even, that you had killed them all or sold them into slavery, but no, you did not do any of that. Instead, you did the worst thing possible. You ignored them. You left them to sit in their huts, to see the bones in their little ones’ faces become more obvious every day, and the breasts of their wives grow empty and dry… and to hate.
‘They are out there now,’ he said, and the message in his voice was matched by that in his eyes. He had seen them, these Roman-haters, and they frightened him.
XX
Saturnalia passed and the snow vanished before the Celts celebrated the rebirth of life in secret ceremonies at their festival of Imbolc. Valerius hadn’t forgotten the concerns of Castus, the Londinium camp prefect. By now he was a regular, if reluctant, attendant at meetings of Colonia’s ordo and, recalling Lucullus’s words and Cearan’s warning of the previous autumn, he wondered aloud if it was worth checking on who attended the celebrations.
‘It does not matter who attends, they will all be drunk,’ quaestor Petronius said dismissively. ‘And when they are drunk they play their childish fire games. You are young, tribune, and must leave such concerns to those who understand them best.’
The exchange was quickly forgotten. Valerius had other things on his mind.
Soon, probably in a matter of weeks, his orders would come through to return the First cohort to Glevum. When he had completed his duties at the legionary headquarters it was certain the legate would send him directly to Londinium… and a ship to Rome. The thought sent an unfamiliar shiver of panic through him. Maeve’s face continued to haunt him and the need to be with her tantalized his nights. He realized that, whatever happened, he couldn’t leave her behind.
A few weeks after Imbolc, he set out north on the Venta road to inspect the work his legionaries had carried out and check for any damage that might have been done by the winter frosts or by the floods that followed the
