windswept that they were stripped at their tops to raw rock, the lichen like spilled paint. The view seemed endless, and yet never a glimpse of the Wall! Then he took her down into narrow, shadowed valleys to fish. She caught some, their scales slick as oil and their muscles jumping.
He never touched her, yet never stopped looking at her.
She was haunted by him.
Brisa continued to teach her to shoot. Valeria's fingertips callused to pull the bowstring, and her aim became good enough to hit a target. Once, in a meadow, her rival Asa set a sewing basket on a rock, and Valeria impulsively put an arrow through it, pinioning the wicker against the ground and making her tormentor jump. The Roman didn't say a word, but her message was plain enough. She was becoming dangerous.
Asa's tricks stopped.
Inside the hill fort, Valeria weaved tartan on the clan looms and traded recipes with her captors. At night she listened to the stories of their gods and heroes, and told her own of Hercules and Ulysses and the court of Jupiter.
At Harvest Home, the animals came down from high pastures to winter barns. Vegetables were pickled and meat salted. Fruit was stacked in fat casks. New beer was fermented in vats smelling of malt and barley. Night overtook the day, the first frosts and bitter winds came, and leaves came showering down from the trees. Here was a breath of winter far deeper and more enduring than Italy's, and, despairing of rescue, she braced herself for a harsh season. Now, at Samhain-the end of autumn and beginning of winter, that time when the dead can walk and the faery kings emerge from their barrows-the clan would celebrate the New Year.
She'd been chosen by lot to play the central role.
At Kalin's command, each young woman had woven a tassel of individual pattern. Brisa taught Valeria a swirling Celtic design of saffron and cobalt. As they wove, the Roman admitted to herself that by now she was captive in name only; she could ride away at any time with a rough understanding of which direction the Wall must be. Yet the failure of Marcus to rescue her, the seasonal cycle, and her interest in Arden had all conspired to still impatience.
She was still gathering intelligence on these Celts!
She was still disturbed by her abductor.
Her tassel went with the others in a covered wicker basket.
Three nights before Samhain, Kalin stood before the clan to choose the woman who would play the role of the good and terrible Morrigan, and drew Valeria.
There was a confused and knowing murmur.
'She doesn't even believe in the goddess she's to represent!' Asa protested.
'How can a Roman play a Celt?' added Luca.
Kalin listened judiciously to their complaints. Valeria was horrified at her selection; she'd planned to watch the ceremony from the shadows! Why had fortune selected her for a central role? She glanced at her maidservant. Savia's eye avoided hers.
'The goddess herself guides my hand,' Kalin said. 'This year, for whatever reason, Morrigan has decided to be danced by the Roman.'
Valeria felt trapped. This new honor picked her out again just as she was fitting in. She feared she'd embarrass herself at the pagan festival, or make new jealousies.
Brisa tried to reassure her. 'Morrigan will inhabit and guide you. She's honoring you because of the boar.'
'You must tell me what to do!'
'Ask the goddess.'
'I'm asking you!'
'Calm yourself. I'll come the evening before Samhain and make things plain.'
Brisa came as promised and found Valeria worriedly combing her long dark hair before a mirror of polished bronze.
'I don't want to dance the part, Brisa.'
'Kalin believes you touched with magic. As Asa said, it's peculiar the goddess would pick you. Maybe she wants you to understand the ways of the Caledonii, should you ever go back to your wall.'
'Of course I'll go back! Soon! I must!'
'Yet will you?'
Valeria wasn't sure of the answer anymore. Tiranen was a cruder place: its rooms colder, its courtyard mud, its latrines mere pits in the ground, its food plainer, its conversations less witty and knowledgeable. She missed many things. And yet all the restrictions that had bound her old life had fallen away. Instead of feeling captive she felt strangely liberated. A woman was more equal with these people. Her life could be less calculated. Friendship simpler. Pleasure quicker. Worries less complicated. And yet this wasn't her. Was it?
'Look.' Brisa held up a carefully selected and polished apple. 'To tap Morrigan's magic, you need the fruit of the gods. Slice this with your dagger to reveal your future.'
'My future? I paid for that in Londinium, and little of it has come true.'
'Sometimes the future takes time. Slice it.'
Valeria reluctantly started to.
'Not that way! Crossways, the blade level.'
She cut horizontally as directed, and Brisa gestured at the five-pointed star that the core made in the severed halves. 'Here is a fruit of the earth that reflects the stars. It's one more sign that all is one. Can you see it?'
'Yes.'
'Now take a bite as you look in the mirror. Legend has it that over your shoulder you'll see the image of your future husband.'
'Future husband?'
'It's Celtic custom.'
'Brisa, I have a husband.'
'Then what are you hesitating for? Take a bite.'
Valeria lifted the apple to her lips. There was no one in the mirror but herself and the warrior woman, of course. No Marcus, just as he'd been absent all summer. No husband at all. Was that what the goddess meant? She bit. 'I see nothing.'
'Swallow.'
She did so. The fruit was crisp and sweet. Her eyes closed to remember her soldier husband, and she was surprised that her picture of Marcus had become cloudy. She remembered the stolid sense of him more than his appearance. So odd…
'Valeria?' It was a male voice.
Her eyelids fluttered open in alarm.
There was a figure in her mirror, she realized, dimly reflected from the doorway, but it wasn't her Roman. She whirled around in her seat.
Arden.
His mouth was open to speak, but he'd stopped in surprise at her shocked expression. He noticed she was holding something shiny in her hand.
'I didn't mean to surprise you,' he said, looking confused. 'I came to speak about Samhain. It's important for the clan that it goes well. Are you all right?'
Valeria turned away in alarm.
Brisa spoke softly. 'It's all right, Arden Caratacus. Valeria will play her part well. Leave now, for you've done what you must. We'll see you at the fire.'
Valeria wouldn't look back at him. She dropped what she was holding, and he saw it was half an apple, a bite taken. It rolled under her stool.
He swiftly disappeared.
'I saw him,' Valeria whispered.
'You saw what Morrigan wanted you to see.'
The celebration would take place at midnight on the horse meadows below the hill fort. It would give time for a banquet in the Great House by the legions of the dead, who could return this one night from the realm of Tirnan
