Savia.
Valeria took the circular bracelet and began to walk back to the tree.
'There! Stop and turn!'
She did so.
'Now, hold the bracelet out at arm's length…'
Valeria lifted. Before her arm had steadied, the Celt pulled and shot. A puff of wind kissed the captive's fingertips, and the shaft sang through the bracelet and hit the pine beyond. It was so sudden that the Roman heard the arrow hit wood before realizing what had happened.
She dropped the ring as if it were hot. 'You could have killed me!'
Brisa walked over and scooped up her bracelet. 'I didn't touch you, but I can put my arrow through any Roman's eye, so don't quarrel with me until I've taught you to do the same. If Arden lets you live.' She shouldered her bow. 'Which I suspect he'll do, from the way he looks at you. Come, the food smells ready. You need meat on those bones of yours if you're going to stay warm in the north.'
The food and the fire were restorative, and despite her apprehension, Valeria felt a drowsy relief. The barbarians gathered around the flames afterward to sing and boast. None bothered to post a watch. No rescuers appeared. Instead, the captives had to hear their enemies crow, each in turn, about their prowess in the ambush. To these ragged people the mere deed was not enough, it seemed, but only took on true importance in the retelling. They were as vain as children. 'The Romans understand our tongue, brothers,' the woman told them. 'Let's remind them of what they have seen.'
Brisa boasted that shooting through the neck of the Celtic spy had been 'like threading a bone needle in a lightless room.' Luca recounted how he'd tripped the Roman tribune with a stick shoved out from the bushes. The warriors guffawed at the memory of Clodius's awkward sprawl. A Celt named Hool bragged that his second arrow at the Roman soldiers was notched and drawn before the first had even hit home. The stripling named Gurn claimed to have stolen all the Roman horses before their riders were dead.
Only the chieftain Arden stayed quiet, declining to retell how he'd killed the Roman tribune with a bold and desperate thrust. Instead he studied Valeria across the fire, as if speculating what to do with her. As the eating ended and the warriors rolled themselves up in their cloaks, swords alongside, he came around to sit by her. She stiffened warily.
'I saw what Brisa did with her arrow,' he said quietly. 'Don't be afraid. We're warriors, not thieves. You're a prize of war and will be kept safe.'
'But there's no war.'
'There's been a war ever since your husband burned our sacred grove. He united the tribes as no druid could have.'
'That was because you attacked me before! The ambush, in the forest!'
'The druids had nothing to do with that.'
'That's not what our spy told my Marcus.'
'Told Marcus? Or told Galba?'
'They wanted to burn me in a wicker cage.'
He smiled. 'You know nothing of what's going on. But there are men in your cavalry who know the truth.'
'Which men?'
He wouldn't answer.
She studied him curiously. He'd killed Clodius, true, but his bearing and words suggested he wasn't a simple savage. His look was thoughtful, his manner almost courtly, his bearing slightly Roman. 'You don't have the beard or the mustache or the manners of a Celt,' she said. 'Your Latin is fluent and your swordsmanship trained. Who are you?'
'I'm of my people.'
'No. You're something more.'
'You seem very confident in your judgment.'
'You don't conceal yourself as well as you think.'
He smiled. 'Roman aristocrats judge and rank people as surely as a Briton hound trails a badger.'
'There, you see? You know too much about Roman aristocrats!'
He laughed. 'You're my prisoner! I should be asking questions of you!'
'But you act as if you know all about me. It's I who am in your power, and who doesn't know her fate. Why have you taken me, and what are you going to do with me?'
He thought before answering, studying her features in the fire like a trophy long sought. 'I'm a Caledonian of the Attacotti tribe,' he said finally, 'with a long bloodline among the tribes of the north. But yes, I know something of Rome.' He raised an arm, revealing a tattoo. 'I enlisted in your army.'
'You're a deserter!'
'I'm a free man, come back to help my people remain free. I enlisted to see this Roman world of yours and learn enough to beat you. I'm a patriot, lady, fighting against the suffocations of your world.'
His conviction was maddening. 'I was wrong in my guess,' she said. 'You know nothing of Rome.'
'It's you, pampered and highborn, who knows nothing. How much do you know about the commoners who groan to feed your kind?'
'I know more than you think! My father is a senator with feeling for the poor.'
'Who sent his own daughter to the edge of the empire for enough coin to maintain his office. And so now you sit captive and cold, with a deserter and murderer and traitor like me, while he gives speeches and takes bribes a thousand miles away.'
'That's not fair!'
'It's the morality of a poisoned empire.'
'We brought the world peace!'
'By leaving it a wasteland.'
'Yet you don't fear my husband's revenge.'
'My fear is why you're alive. Your safety is our own. Our doom is yours.'
Valeria drew her cloak around herself, pondering. It was odd being outdoors at night, the fire's warm fingers caressing the front of her, the night's cold teeth biting at her back. With no roof overhead, the dark emptiness yawed above like a pool she could fall into. 'There's something more,' she said with sudden certainty. 'Some other reason you hate Rome and have made me captive.'
He stood up. 'I need to sleep now.'
'But you haven't even told me your name yet.'
'It's Arden. As you know.'
'Yes, but what other name do you go by? What's the name of your clan?'
His response was so quiet she almost missed it. 'I go by Arden Caratacus. Caratacus the patriot.' He gave her a quick look and then stepped away.
Valeria watched him disappear into the shadows. Arden Caratacus: Galba's spy.
XXV
The dungeon of the legionary fortress of Eburacum was hewn out of foundation rock by captive Britons some three hundred years ago. The prison, when its oak and iron door is swung open, has the encrusted odor of blood and tears of all that time. Stone steps, worn down in the center from the ceaseless tramp of hobnailed boots, descend into lamp-lit gloom. Even I, who have interviewed countless prisoners in the meanest of cells, hesitate. The Roman sentry beckons impatiently. I follow, my footfalls returning to me as echoes, and I wonder what it must feel like to be dragged down this stone staircase and hear the door slamming ominously above for the last time, cast into darkness and lost forever to sunlight.
Up to now my informants have been brought to me. This one, the Celtic priest Kalin, I must visit myself. The soldiers fear him and will not risk allowing him up to the surface. He's a druid with claim to ancient magic and