realized to her horror that the cup was in fact the crown of a skull, hacked from some victim, given two handles and plated with yellow gold.
'You drink from the dead?'
'We honor the spirit of our enemies by venerating their heads,' Brisa explained matter-of-factly. 'The head is the seat of the soul.'
The Celts paid their prisoners no particular mind, neither honoring a Roman lady with proper seat and deference nor putting her in shackles or bonds. Savia was drafted to help with the serving, but Valeria was spared that indignity, the rough warriors glancing almost shyly at her beauty while their tall chieftain pretended indifference. Their lack of watchfulness astounded and somewhat heartened her. I could thrust this carving knife right into one of their eyes, she thought. Yet she also feared that such an assault would be more difficult than it seemed in the genial chaos of supper, that a strong arm would be quick to deflect her blow or a maid to cry warning, and then she herself would be dead. So she did nothing, eating an embarrassing amount because she was so famished, and watched with fascination the pride and equality that the women assumed with their men, challenging their boasts and braying their own jokes and offering their own opinions on the pasturing of the clan herd, the tyrannies of weather, or the impotence of Romans. A single turma of disciplined cavalry could slice through the lot like a pin through a grape, she knew, and yet the warriors who'd captured her boasted yet again of its prowess at the spring, and the haplessness of her doomed rescuers.
The forced memory brought to mind the death of Clodius and the waste of his young life, depressing Valeria anew. The barbarian had slain her best friend, the man she'd ridden to protect! He'd belittled the power of her husband! He was a sworn enemy of Rome! She glanced at his handsome figure at the head of the table, hating his triumph. Should she endure existence among them and wait for fate, as Brisa had suggested? Somehow try to signal the soldiers she was certain must be searching? Or escape to find a way home?
While the men seemed less threatening than she'd feared, one of the women seemed more so. She was a Celtic beauty with a proud and watchful manner and flame-red hair who periodically would cast a glance of distaste at Valeria and then look past to give a covetous stare at Arden. Well, that was plain enough. You can have him! Yet the chieftain seemed to pay no mind to her, either. If the maid hoped to cast a spell with her eye, the chieftain just as assiduously avoided it. Valeria asked Brisa who she was.
'That's Asa.' She speared a piece of pork. 'A lover of Caratacus but not betrothed as she'd hoped. She's as skilled with weapons as I am, and dangerous to cross. Stay friends with Brisa, Roman, if Asa becomes your enemy.'
'She's very beautiful.'
'She's used to having men's eyes on her, not you. Don't be alone with her.'
The songs turned from skirmishes with the Romans to older and grander tales of great raids and foggy voyages, of dragon hoards and mythic beasts. While the company lingered at table, they ate sparingly, Valeria realized, avoiding the intentional gluttony she'd seen at Roman banquets. Savia kept munching contentedly, as starved by the recent adventures as Valeria was, and Brisa began looking disapprovingly at the maidservant's steady consumption. Finally she spoke sharply.
'Leave off, freed Roman, or you'll owe the table the fatgelt.'
Savia looked up with her mouth full. 'The what?'
'It's a useless Celt that can't run and fight. We levy a tax on anyone who gets too fat. A body's form is a reflection of the gods. Eat too much, and you'll pay for it until you lose enough to earn it back.'
'But I'm not a Celt.'
'You are if you prove yourself useful. Turned out to starve if you don't.'
Savia glanced around at the others and reluctantly sat back from her plate. 'Yours is a cruel country, to prepare all this food and not eat it.'
'Only Romans eat everything. We eat only what we need. That is why your side of the Wall is so poor, all cut over and the earth sliced open and streams impounded, while on ours it is more like the gods intended it, where flowers still sing to the sun.'
'If you farmed better, you could eat more.'
'If I built a fire twenty feet high, I could sit farther away, but where's the sense in that?'
At length it was late, and Valeria longed for sleep, yet the assembly showed no sign of breaking up. She could hear a hiss of rain and guessed that most of the clan had decided to sleep through the coming wet morning. Perhaps time had less meaning here.
There was also a camaraderie that made clan members linger. Most of these Celts were related, and all had a role to play in their small society: the storyteller, the jokester, the warrior, the mother hen, the tippler, the magician, the singer, the cook. They knew each other's strengths, weaknesses, skills, feelings, and past, and interacted without rank. Valeria herself felt isolated, defeated, and homesick, and wanted only to crawl between the woolens and furs of her bed. She began to watch for an opportunity to creep off and do so, but before it came, there were shouts, the opening of a door that let in a blast of wet wind, and then its slamming shut behind a newly entered guest, hooded and mud-splattered. It was a man, Valeria saw, stamping and wet, his frame tall and gaunt, his features shrouded. At his arrival the crowd grew quiet.
The newcomer lingered in shadow a moment, his gaze briefly holding every eye, and Valeria felt chilled at realizing who this must be, this figure of dark gods and blood sacrifice. Would she be given to him for his magic?
'You've come to us like the midnight owl, Kalin!' Arden called.
'An owl, yes, but not wise enough to stay out of the rain.' The self-deprecation surprised her. 'It's wet as a crannog in a spring freshet out there. Cold as the butt of a bony woman. Dark as the hole in a centurion's ass.'
The assembly laughed.
The druid put back his hood, and Valeria could see he was balding on top, his hair cut short, his nose like a beak, and his eyes sly and inquisitive. The man's flickering gaze picked her out, too. He came through the group, making quiet greeting, working his way to the head of the plank table while occasionally glancing at her, and finally came to Arden with his eye still fixed on the Roman. 'Well, Caratacus. Is that piece of downy fluff your latest capture?'
Valeria felt physically and emotionally ragged but still carried her Italian beauty and Roman poise: her complexion unblemished, her stola stained but fine, her figure trim, her carriage delicate. Unconsciously, she held herself straighter.
'Our highborn guest,' Arden replied.
'Welcome to the north, Roman lady,' the druid said. 'Refuge of the free, home of the unconquered, where we give no tribute to distant emperors and honor the gods of the oak. I've heard your tale. You've Celtic spirit to ride to save a friend.'
'And yet he wasn't saved,' Valeria replied more coolly than she felt, startled at the sound of her own voice in the quiet. 'And I'm not really free.'
'A temporary situation. Soon all Britannia will be free. When it is, you will be too.'
His smug confidence annoyed her. 'No, soon this fort will be burned by the Roman cavalry, and you'll cook in its flames. That's when I'll be free.'
The assembly cheered this boldness.
'You haven't won her over yet,' Kalin observed to Arden.
'She's not an easy one to win.'
'Do you fear her?'
'I respect her.'
'And will her husband come after her?'
'We can hope, but I've no word of it yet.'
This news stung. Surely the men of the Petriana were looking by now! Perhaps they were waiting for Marcus to hurry back from his meeting with the duke. Perhaps this conversation was a trick to make her give up hope. 'He'll come,' Valeria promised.
'No,' the druid said. 'He'll bluster, but he'll not risk your death or his own career by challenging us so deep in Caledonii territory. We're letting him know that it would be your dying throes we'd use to forecast the course of battle.' Savia took sharp breath at this threat. 'Unless your husband is a very stupid man, lady, you'll be our guest for some time. As a water girl, perhaps. Or a grinder.'
