The Roman Girl

by Arnamentia

She's a Roman who hates Britain. He's a druid who hates the Romans. When she crashes into his world, will they have the courage to let love overcome the hate, or will the might of the Roman Empire destroy them both?

31. Chapter 31

Chapter 31: Bella

Lughnasa is coming. The fields are white with ripening crops, the spring-born animals are grown. The days are long and warm. The smile has returned to his face at last. There were many dark days, before Summer's End, when I thought I might never see that smile again.

I also thought, for a while, that I would lose him. Not to his wound, which, the gods be thanked, did not become angry and inflamed, but to Lavena, somewhere over the hill, in another village. I don't know why, but when he disappeared for a day and a night at a time, I had it in my head that he was seeking solace in her arms, rather than mine. He and the others suffered greatly at the hands of the Romans, and perhaps I reminded him of that too much. That was my thinking. I did not seek an answer in the smoke; sometimes it is best not to know.

A couple of months or so after the men had left, a few weeks after Lughnasa, when the leaves were beginning to turn, I was in the fields with the goats when we heard a wave of shouts coming down the village and spreading out. People started running towards the gates. The commotion could only mean one thing: the warriors had returned. Those of us in the fields abandoned our work and ran as well.

I got there as riders came in through the gates. Ten of them had ridden out, but there were not ten horses coming in. There were only three. Only two carried riders: the third pulled a cart. It looked like the men, like it could drop. My heart rose into my mouth.

Kaswallon, the chief, waited at the top of the main avenue. Brina waited behind him, tall and expressionless. When the procession reached him, the riders slid from the horses' backs. But as they rode through the village, it was possible to see who was not there. A noise arose, the weeping began, even before the riders dismounted and acknowledged Kaswallon. They were filthy with dust, their heads were down.

I grabbed Adsiltia's hand and my knees almost gave way in a huge rush of relief as I recognised Eadweard, although he now had a long, unkempt beard the colour of fallen leaves and his red hair, made grey by the remains of the lime, was covered in dust, his cloak ragged. He was enveloped in an embrace by Kaswallon.

'There are no heads,' Adsiltia said, puzzled. 'No enemy heads.'

The chief aged before my eyes. He visibly shrank, and Brina stepped forward to support him at the elbow.

'Where is Cador?' Adsiltia asked, her voice rising in panic.

But we knew where Cador was, as Eadweard led his father to the cart. The riders opened the back, and many hands helped them to gently remove three bodies, wrapped in stained, grubby sacking, and lower them to the ground. Eadweard knelt by one body and uncovered the head, so Kaswallon could look on the face of his fallen son. I could not stop my tears at this point. I heard Adsiltia start to sob, then she ran away, a hand covering her mouth. I could not follow her; I needed to be there for Eadweard.

Finally, when the bodies had been put back in the cart and driven up towards the fields and Brina had led Kaswallon back to their house, Eadweard approached me. It was my turn to take him in my arms, and press his face to my neck. It was then that his tears flowed; he had managed to hold them in until that moment. The horses were led away; no need to ask anyone to deal with them. With him leaning on my shoulder, we walked slowly to his house. Only then did I realise he was guarding his left side, holding his left arm pressed close to it.

In the house, while he lowered himself on to the bed, I remade and lit the fire, in case he was cold. He was exhausted. He could not stop himself lying down and closing his eyes. I had to rouse him, and persuade him to sit up so I could remove his cloak. When I did, I saw a dark brown, dried patch which seemed in the low light to cover a large part of the front of his tunic.

'Should we take this off?' I asked.

He nodded. I took off his belt, putting the silver knife carefully to one side. The tunic was stuck to him at the darkest part of the stain, which also had a long slash through it: the strike of a Roman sword.

'You must cut it off,' he said.

When I got to the stuck bit, he lay down again so I could soak off the last bit of cloth.

'How does it look?' he asked.

It was difficult to see. I had to fetch a torch and light it from the fire. It was a large gash on his left side, below the ribs. Someone had stitched it: ugly stitches, but they had done the job. There was dried blood all round it, all over his stomach, matting the hair, disappearing into his breeches, also stained dark. Not much weeping; not much moss stuck to the wound, but bits of moss stuck in the dried blood.

'It looks all right,' I said. Not pretty, but all right.

'Bearchan did a good job, then.'

'Bearchan?'

'There was no-one else. Only Jori.'

Tentatively, I pushed the flesh round it, looking anxiously at his face as I did so. He moaned a couple of times.

'Sorry,' I said.

'I think it's clean. I had no fever with it.'

'But it hurts, though?'

He nodded. 'It's deep.'

'I can put a salve on it.'

'Not now. Give me a pain-killing draught – or a sleeping one.'

While he slept, I washed him. His hands, his face, wiping away the tracks of his tears. That beautiful body, now damaged. There would be a large scar. He was gaunt and aged, covered in bruises, scratches and cuts. Fontus in his pool seemed a lifetime ago. He flinched in his sleep as I cleaned round the wound. I had missed his touch every single day he was away, and I had not imagined his homecoming would be like this. In my mind, our reunion was joyous; he was going to run to me and sweep me off my feet in a huge, heartfelt embrace. I had no idea of the realities of war, despite all the stories I had been made to hear.

When I had finished, I covered him. After a while, I lay down beside him and put my arm across his chest, well away from the wound. The amulet was gone. I rested my lips against the point of his shoulder. I just wanted to feel the nearness of him, and take in the scent of him after so long. He sighed deeply, and put his hand on my arm, seemingly without waking. My body ached for him. Tears of relief rolled, unbidden, down into the pillow.

I have never been in battle, but I had been badly shocked by my only fight, my only killing. And not just because I am a woman. I, of all people, knew to wait for him to speak, not to ask questions. But when he did wake, he had duties. He needed to speak to his father, to arrange the funeral rites for Cador and the only other two they had been able to bring home.

'We must give them the honour due to warriors,' he said. 'All of them.'

He made his preparations. His green eyes were dead; he did not feel the need to speak most of the time. When he did, it was to the point.

'Where are Cador's dogs?' he asked.

Without their master, they had run wild for a short time, looking for him, till one of the elders had taken them in hand. Eadweard pushed his knife into his belt.

'Cador will need them in the other world,' he said. In the doorway, he turned. 'I will need help.'

When I hesitated, he rolled his eyes, frowning, and left. I watched him and Bearchan lead the dogs into the forest. He returned covered in blood.

'It is our way,' he said, although I had not spoken a word. He ripped off his tunic as best he could with one hand. No ritual cleansing after this blood-letting.

The whole village followed behind the sad procession up to the burial grounds. The dead were laid to rest with their swords, their personal possessions, and Cador with his beloved dogs. They had not been able to bring home all the bodies. Ansgar was among the missing. They had not had time to find his body, nor the strength to carry so many away from the battlefield. Eadweard held himself together to conduct the ceremonies. Kaswallon was like stone, expressionless and still. The widows, the fatherless children, the bereft parents cried and sobbed for their loss.

'Tonight we feast,' Eadweard told me. 'We must tell the stories of the fallen. Their families will want to know how they died. In this way, they live a little longer.'

'Am I allowed to come?' I asked.

'Why not?'

'I am Roman, after all. I do not want to give offence.'

'Are you? Still? After all this time?'

'People see me as Roman. Doesn't that make me so?'

'You are foreign, definitely. They only have to look at you to see that. You are not of this tribe.'

So harsh, so direct. It was as if he found the usual niceties of conversation to be unimportant, and not worth bothering with, any more.

'But I also have – I have been lucky, my man has returned. The gods have blessed me. I wish to pay my respects to the fallen.'

'Your man.' Suddenly his mood softened. He took my hand and fingered the bronze ring.

'I waited for you. And I will still wait. For you to come back to me, from wherever it is you have to go,' I said, my voice shaky. 'From wherever it is you have to come back from. Do you wish to be free?'

I was afraid of his answer. Although he had promised to come back to me, even in death, he was different.

He embraced me, holding me close, for a long moment.

'Bella, Bella, Bella. You have no idea how many times I thought about you. All the time I was fighting, I was fighting to get back to you,' he said. 'I will come back to you. I promise.'

'I know.' But part of me was not so sure.

He escorted me into the feast, so that people knew I had a right to be there, but I did not sit with him or Kaswallon and the family. I made myself as inconspicuous as possible, easy for a Roman woman. The three who had returned told their story.

After many days of trekking, they had found the Iceni-led force in Verulamium, north of Londinium. They were sacking the city. Our warriors had not joined in with the blood-letting: they were not needed, there were so many fighters desperate to join the action. Many thousands of Roman citizens died, women and children among them. They did not describe the horrors they saw, but it was possible to see it in their eyes, on their faces. Some of the villagers looked askance at me, to see how I was reacting to the news of Roman deaths, which they cheered.

The Celtic army, led by the Iceni Queen Boudicca, hounded the Roman Governor and his two embattled legions north. Suetonius chose his ground and turned to fight. There were so many warriors, so few Romans, the victory was almost assured. Cador and Ansgar disappeared into the throng, keen to be at the front of the battle. There were countless fighters, a dizzying number, as far as the eye could see. And behind them, the supply wagons and the women and children, all confident of celebrating the destruction of the legions and the governor.

Cador and Ansgar and the others roared in the faces of the legionaries, killing many of them. The soldiers became afraid to face them. Their commanders had to call upon mighty Jupiter to intervene, which he did. Our men were struck by thunderbolts from on high, at the very moment that the legions were going to run away. Eadweard, Bearchan and Jori took wounds as the thunderbolts swept through the Celtic ranks.

We drank to the brave deeds of the menfolk, to their valiant efforts to rid the country of the invaders, to the safe passage of their spirits to the other world. We drank to ourselves, and drowned our sorrows.

I had never drunk so much alcohol in one session, and I was soon outside the meeting house, on my knees, throwing up. I found my way back to the house. Eventually, when Eadweard returned and slipped into bed beside me, he told me the true story, how Cador and Ansgar and the others fell in with another druid, how they believed him when he said he could protect them with curses. They argued with Eadweard and Bearchan, and left them to go as far forward as they could. Only Jori remained with them.

When the battle started, the first few thousand were cut down by a storm of javelins, then came the legionaries behind their shields, thrusting, thrusting with their short swords, in a formation he had never seen before. The legions fought their way through to the wagon train, then massacred everyone they could find, women and children included. They spared no-one.

'So how are you . . . ?'

'Celtic warriors fight to the death. We don't run,' he said in the darkness. 'But Bearchan and I realised it was hopeless. We fought as long as we could, but there was no point sacrificing ourselves. Jori is a child – we felt we had to keep him safe. Suetonius and his two legions – they beat us, even though there were more of us than – than – ears on all the fields of wheat between here and the sea. Bella, you must never repeat what I have just told you.'

'You did your best,' I said. It was inadequate, but it was all I could think of in my drunken state.

'I didn't stop him.'

'You couldn't. He was a warrior. That was his choice.' I could hear myself slurring.

'I should have been able to protect him.'

So this was the burden he carried, this was what he had to come to terms with. Perhaps that was why he had taken off his amulet. I squeezed his hand, turned on to my side and fell asleep.

Brina appeared in the hut the next evening, and scooped him up.

'He needs to be in his father's house,' she said.

She had tried to be nice to me, once Lavena left the village, but I know she thought I had stolen Eadweard from her sister. I am sure she thought I had no right to him, as a Roman, an outsider. Without Eadweard, I returned to the women's hut, where I had lived while he was away. The women there, my British sisters, as I thought of them, looked at me sympathetically, but there was no advice they could offer me against the will of the chief's wife.

It took only a night before he came looking for me, entering the women's hut and causing no end of agitation and disturbance, like a fox among the chickens. I knew at once it was him, as soon as I heard the raised voices. I leapt out of bed. Adsiltia was attempting to persuade him to leave, with no success. I tucked his arm under mine, intertwining our fingers, and led him out. Outside, Brina and Kaswallon were waiting. I started to lead him back to their house, but at the entrance he stopped. This was not where he wanted to be. We walked barefoot over the dewy grass to his hut, cold in its turn. I did not attempt to light the fire, merely encouraged him into bed. I got in beside him and kissed his cheek, then stroked his hair.

'I am here. It's all right. It's all right.'

He settled; we slept, close up against each other for warmth.

After that, Brina did not stop him returning to his own house, although we ate in their house, and she expected me to help with the chores.

Ula came after a couple of days, escorted by her father and brother. Eadweard and I watched them walk up the main avenue, to where Kaswallon and Brina waited for them. She held her head high as she walked through the village. I felt Eadweard start away beside me, but I grabbed his wrist.

'You must speak to her,' I said.

'Why don't you?' he snapped. 'I'm sure she'd love to hear it coming from you.'

I stared at him in shock and surprise. He had narrowed his eyes and compressed his lips into a thin line. He was angry with me. For the first time ever, he was angry with me. For something that was not my fault, something I could do nothing about.

'I will not take reminders of my duty from you.'

He was also exerting his authority: as a druid, as a son of the chief. How dare I lay hands on him and tell him what to do? He jerked his arm up and wrenched himself free of my grasp. He gave me a look of contempt and stalked off, his hand pressed to his side.

This was not him. He was tolerant, kind, and usually wore his status lightly, graciously. Except not at that moment. Not with me. Before he went to war, he would have had nothing but compassion for Ula.

He did speak to her. I took myself off to the goats, to console myself and keep myself busy. From there I could just about see Ula, her family, Kaswallon and Brina in the burial field, by the grave. She seemed composed and in control of herself until Eadweard approached. Then she appeared to burst into tears. She grabbed him and put her arms round him, holding on tight to him. That must have hurt him, but I could not see his face clearly to see how he reacted. He put his arms up in surprise when she did that, but slowly he put them round her, to comfort her. After a short while, when she was calmer, he spoke to her, saying, I imagined, whatever he felt she needed to hear, at whatever cost to his own pain.

It was a long time after Ula and her family had left that he returned to the hut. He had nothing to say to me. It was almost as if I was not there. Pressing my lips together, I also said nothing, not knowing how to make things better between us. He obviously wasn't going to. But he slept up close beside me, as was becoming his habit.

A day or two later, Kaswallon appeared in the doorway of the hut. He held up a hand to Eadweard, to indicate he was not here to talk to him.

'Walk with me,' he said to me.

We walked slowly up the main avenue to the burial ground. He made sure I walked beside him, not slightly behind him, which was where I would normally expect to be. People looked; they commented quietly to each other. We stood by Cador's grave for a while.

'When you are a warrior, death is always a possibility,' he said. 'They know that. You work hard. They see what you do for the village. They will bend in time.' He turned towards me. 'I have lost one son. I do not wish to lose the other.'

I wasn't totally sure what he meant.

'I will do my best for him,' I said. 'Thank you.'

He nodded. He escorted me back to the door of the hut, dignified, solemn. It might take time, but he had indicated to everyone that he attached no blame to me, that I was not going anywhere. This was my home now.

It looked to most people as though Eadweard returned to normal, but he spent a lot of time with Bearchan. They would disappear off to the top of the village, where they would drink ale and smoke some leaf that was unfamiliar to me. He would roll back at some point, throw himself on the bed and fall asleep. If he did talk, he was not always coherent. He spoke always in Celt, never Latin; he expected me to understand, which was hard sometimes. And when I didn't know what he meant, what he was asking, he became frustrated with me. It was difficult to remember that this wasn't him, this was his pain speaking. But it still hurt, even if I did not know what he was saying about me. There was no-one I could ask to translate, apart from Valeria; I didn't want anyone to know that perhaps he no longer loved me, if he ever did. I didn't want to know.

I missed my mother, but I missed her most at this time. I wanted to talk to her, to confide in her, and get her advice. There was no-one in the village I knew well enough to share this with. Despite Kaswallon's intervention, there were not many women, including the influential elders, who were prepared even to pass the time of day with me, now the extent of the village's loss was known. I spent a lot of time with the goats, as I did when I was a child, and spoke my thoughts aloud to them. They mostly ignored me, when they realised I had no food for them. They cropped the grass round me, or explored a bit, butting each other and bleating. One or two came to stand by me, as they knew me by then. They looked like they were listening. As I talked through the problem, I started to realise what my mother would have advised me: that I am a Roman, that I must endure this, and get through it. This was the path I had chosen for myself. I thought of Cinnia's advice: everything changes eventually. I just needed to wait.

He left more and more of the healing to Adsiltia and me, as we had done it in his absence. We struggled. I thought I knew a lot, but I still knew less than Adsiltia, and she knew nowhere near as much as Eadweard. While he and Bearchan were drowning their sorrows, we frequently had Jori in a messy heap behind the hut, distressed by his dreams and memories, desperately wanting to be with the two older men, and Jori's mother inside the hut, distraught because she did not know how to help him. We didn't, either. When I approached Eadweard about Jori, he and Bearchan came to sit with him and talk to him, but that just ended up with Jori joining them in their drinking and smoking. Bearchan's wife and children had to be taken to the safety of the women's house, to escape his sudden, unpredictable, violent outbursts. Nothing the elders could say to him made any difference, and he refused our remedies – not that we really knew which one was the best to help him. There was no point asking Eadweard for advice.

'I am worried,' I said to Adsiltia one day.

'So am I,' she said, 'but I don't know what to do. I wish the grandmother was here.'

Then he disappeared. He set off on a trail that led out from the fields towards the hills. I wasn't aware that he had another sacred grove anywhere. I watched him walk away, following the path Lavena had taken when she and her sons left the village.

'He could be going anywhere,' Adsiltia said. 'He used to go off when he had things to think about. It might take him a while.'

But he did not come home that night.

'Has he left like this before?' I asked.

She couldn't reassure me, and I couldn't tell her what I was worried about. She was too young to share such thoughts with. I couldn't confide in Brina, for obvious reasons. The sight of crows circling over a copse on the top of the hill unsettled me.

While the men were away, I had prayed to Jupiter to protect them and to Adiona to bring them home safe. I had not known how to reach the Celtic gods. I tried; I stood in the clearing where I thought I had seen the fallen bull at Beltane, and I listened. I tried to make my mind open to the spirits of that place, but I did not know what signs to look for. When he disappeared over the hill, into the early dusk, I prayed to Venus. I had nowhere to go if he left me, no parental home to which I could return. There would be no way that Kaswallon would be able to take me under his protection, even if he wanted to.

The guard changed at the garrison soon after the men rode away. I watched Lucius Rusticus march out at the head of the column. They had handed over to a new detachment days earlier, so clearly the legion was not expecting to march away to join the fight against the rebellion. I thought I could see Cinnia at the rear of the column. I was pleased to think that Decimus was taking her with him. For me, it was the last link with my former life, but it also meant more freedom; surely there was no-one at the fort now who knew who I was and what I had done. The second time that Eadweard walked over the hill, for the first time since I killed my step-father, I ventured back to my old altar to Venus in the wood beside the fort.

My altar was still there, still in the same state it had been in after Publius trampled it. His ring was still among the ashes. There was no sign on the ground of the killings, of the blood loss that had occurred, except that the grass grew thick and lush where the blood had soaked the earth. The spirits of this place had reclaimed it. I rebuilt the altar. As I was thinking about making an offering, I heard rustling through the grass behind me. It was Adsiltia.

'I didn't know where you were going,' she said. 'I was worried.'

'There is no-one left at the fort who knows me,' I said.

'Is this is where Eadweard used to meet you?' She came to sit beside me.

'Yes.'

'Your special place. I remember it.' She was quiet for a moment, pulling at the grass. 'If you want him, you must fight for him. You fought to stay alive, to be with him. So fight for him. I'm not saying he's with Lavena, but . . .'

'I don't know how.'

'You do if you think about it. Men are like dogs. If you let them do what they like, then they will. Go to her village. Bring him to heel.'

I very nearly laughed at the idea of telling a chief's son, a druid at that, what to do, after my recent experience.

'You're going back to your Roman ways, and just waiting. She won't, if that's where he is. It was only ever sex between them – you do know that, don't you?'

I did not know that. I had not wanted to know if they were sleeping together, but Lavena had made it quite plain that they had been.

'See, your Roman manners get you nowhere. I hear a lot, in the women's house. But he is hand-fasted to you, and that will mean something to him.'

'And will – sex – with Lavena mean anything to him?' I thought of the conversation with my mother, about the animals.

'I don't know if he thinks sex with Lavena doesn't count. There's only one way to find out.' She jumped up. 'Next time he goes off, follow him. See where he goes. If it is to her bed, then drag him home.'

Words of wisdom from a child. So that is what I did. He came home after a night, but a week or so later, late one afternoon, he set off again. When he was half-way up the trail, I threw on a cloak and set off after him. I was surprised to find him waiting at the top of the hill. But not waiting for me; sitting in a makeshift shelter, just off the track. If I was surprised, he was more so. I squeezed into the shelter and sat beside him. I smiled and took his hand. We sat in silence for a while, in the cold wind, watching the sun go down over the far hills, watching the shadows lengthen round the distant village. He put his arm round me, to warm me a little.

'After Beltane, this is where I hid out,' he said. He forgot himself, and spoke Latin. He wanted me to understand. He wanted to talk, for once. 'Cador had a plan for what to do if the Romans came for me. This was the first part.'

'He was a good man.'

'He looked out for me, even though he was younger. And I – didn't look out for him.'

'Do not chastise yourself.'

'I do. Every day.'

Eadweard's thoughts went like this: if Cador was a warrior and chose a warrior's death, then he also should have followed the same path.

'But you are a druid,' I said gently.

He put a finger to my lips. Listen, it meant.

If it was not the duty of a warrior to fight to the death, then he should have saved them all. After the initial onslaught of the spears, as they watched the legions start to cut through the mass of fighters, he and Bearchan realised that they would be lucky to get out with their lives. They now saw themselves as cowards, and therefore disgraced.

Suddenly I understood what Kaswallon had been trying to say to me.

'Don't you dare,' I said. 'Don't you dare kill yourselves.'

'You of all people should understand honour.'

'I of all people understand how wonderful it is to be alive, to be spared. No-one in the village is calling you cowards. If you do it, then Jori will feel he has to. Don't make him do that.'

'But Cador's spirit does not speak to me. The gods, the ancestors, do not speak to me any more.'

'You cannot hear them because you are grieving. As you should.'

His green eyes were deep pools of pain.

'I am not the man I thought I was.'

On an impulse I took his face in my hands and kissed him. There was no answering spark.

'You are the man I thought you were. Kind. Caring. Compassionate. Strong.'

He wasn't any of those things at present, but I wasn't going to tell him that. That was a discussion for another time if at all. I hoped my lie did not show in my face. He needed to believe it, and I needed to believe that the man I had fallen in love with had heard me.

He shook his head.

'I am not going to leave you by yourself, then. I am not going to let you do this. Your people need you. I need you. I love you. So, so much. More than I can ever say.'

Those were not lies: they came from the heart. With tears in my eyes, I hugged him, then I took his silver knife from his belt and slid it through my own. It was dark by then. We lay down to sleep. He put me behind him, to the back of the little shelter, and I put my arm round him. It was cold and uncomfortable, and I was convinced I did not sleep a wink. He had brought no food or blanket, no doubt hoping that one very cold night he would not wake up. He had not been in Lavena's bed, as I had feared, but he was possibly in a worse place. I would still need to fight to get him back.