HISPANIA TARRACONENSIS,  October, AD82.

 

Marella struggled against her bonds.  If they meant to send her to the underworld, she would at least do her best to send his name ahead of her. 

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” she screamed again, fighting to keep her legs from folding.  “Leucetius has to answer for this.”

Even through her desperation, his name dragged up bile.  It burned against the tight choke of plaited ropes, where useless screams had scraped her throat raw.  Terror froze her naked flesh, numbing her to all but the desperate need to breathe. 

Staggering, slithering down over pebbles and shale, she fought to keep her feet.  Holding herself upright against all probability, she managed to turn, managed to fix her fierce hatred onto his shadowed form.  Another shove and she would not have the strength to get back up.  One more punch and she might surrender to the darkness.  “Vile dog,” she hissed.  She couldn’t spit.  Her mouth was as dry as a crypt.

Beside her, a novice drew a hard fist and slammed it into her stomach.   

She crumbled to her knees; her mouth open over air that would not move in or out and he kicked her into water.  In the silent world of asphyxia, she almost smiled.

Her vision was a sepia cloud where the gritty sludge of the riverbank washed into her eyes and mouth, waiting.

Her body heaved and jerked over its effort to drag air into the vacuum left by his blow.  When it came, her breath would pull death and water deep into her lungs, and her struggle would be forfeit.  The harder her body fought for life, the sooner it would end.

If only she had caught Leucetius’ robe, she might have dragged him to meet death with her.  But nothing mattered so much now. 

Blessed was the child who would never see the sun in any world where he drew breath. 

Blessed was the child. 

Innocent and blessed.

##

Drawing the fine strands of hair as he would have drawn fleece, Marcus rolled them through wax between his palms to form a fine cord.  Even under the amber influence of the bees, the strand of her hair shone golden. Catching the light; holding sunshine in its depths.

Below him on the slopes of the River Iberus, a dozen sheep grazed in peaceful oblivion, hardly needing his attention.  The milk cow moved with slow precision, her jaw clacking back against the hollow brass at her neck to mark her progress; and beside her, her calf and Marc’s single store bullock stood, staring back to meet his gaze.

“You’ll be meat soon enough, my friend,” he said quietly. 

There was little enough cause to speak since his wife’s death, and the animals asked him no difficult questions.  Above him the long spine of the mountain marched away from the weakening sun, shining gold through its usual coat of silver dust and sparse grey foliage.  Behind him Max, the great mountain dog, lay beside his son, drooling while it watched the child eat corn cake.

As he rolled the precious lock of her hair into a fine twisted thread, Marc smiled at the idiot expression on the dog’s face.  Its rough creamy coat ruffled in the late autumn breezes, trembling as if the wind itself encouraged the pursuit of a biscuit. 

Marc gave a short whistle that brought the dog from its trance to his knee.  From the riverside, the bitch too, came at a steady lope to sit at her master’s foot.  The child looked up from his snack, gathering up his carved wooden horse, and ran after the dog to his father’s side.

The sky was coloring toward evening.  It was time to take the stock back to the pens and the boy in for a meal. 

Life went on.

“Time to take the woollies in, lad.  Will you send the dogs after them?”  He looked to the boy, waiting while the four-year-old considered the difficulty of his job.

Pursing his lips, he tried to whistle, pointing down at the green riverbank. 

Both dogs cocked their ears at the hiss.  Max tilted his great head comically, waiting for someone to translate the sound into something he could follow. 

Smiling, Marc said, “And again.  They want you to tell them what to do.”  He sent a shrill whistle out over his lip, and the child waved determinedly at the sheep.  This the dogs could understand.  Separating silently, they moved down along the river, bunching their flock together, moving the cow and calf and the laconic bullock into the midst of the sheep.

His hands worked against the thread all by themselves, rolling and twisting the hair and the wax, and at last he looked down at his work.  So little.  Nothing left of all her light and joy but a thin waxed line of thread.  Carefully he measured it around his neck and marked the place he would tie the knots, ensuring he had strained enough length from it.

“What’s that Dad?”  The boy put his small hand on Marc’s thigh.

His eyes were dark, deeply brown and serious.  His hair was dark; soft and straight.  There was nothing of his mother’s golden light; except when he smiled.  Sometimes when the child smiled, there was a naive joy in his eyes and full cheeks that carried her memory in its glow.

“Mamma’s hair,” Marc wrapped the thread around his throat again, demonstrating his intention of tying it there.  “I made a thread so I can keep her with me.”

“Mamma’s gone now, isn’t she?”

“Aye, lad.”

“She isn’t coming home anymore is she, Dad?”

“No,” he said quietly.  “She can’t come home to us now.”

They’d had this conversation before.  More often than he cared to remember.  Sometimes it was harder than others.  “Come on, lad.  Let’s follow the dogs in.”

Scooping the child up as he stood, he straightened the heavy brown wool of his kilt and reached for his crook.

The house was still too new.  It had not had time to settle.  None of its edges had softened into familiarity.  Only the thatch was graying to match the limestone surroundings, dusted and harsh.

Rough wooden pikes formed a circle, daubed and sealed with clay and cut grass and covered by high domed thatch.  Behind it, a wooden lean-to served as a barn, and rough timber rails ran away around the stock pen.  To this the dogs pushed their few animals and with the boy in his arms, Marc lifted and slipped rails across behind them.

“You can bring me in the firewood now.”  He set the child down, “And I’ll fetch up water.  Go now, take it in and pile it by the hearth.”

A snapped command brought the dogs to his side.  He pointed obviously at the ground, ordering the bitch to the boy’s side, while he tapped his thigh and walked to the pail and away with Max beside him.

As they wound down the long rocky path between spindly brushes toward the Gallego River, it was the sudden catch in Max’s run that first caught his eye.  The dog stopped short, lifting his great head in the dim light and twitching his ears at the unknown ahead.  A soft growl rose in his chest, and Marc slipped into a reflexive crouch, stepping to the side of the track and feeling without thought for the knives at his belt.

Raised voices suggested a small group, five, maybe six men ahead at the riverside.  And a woman’s scream.

This language still confused his ears.  Always on the brink of familiarity, but distinctly different from the Celtic tongue he knew, he repeatedly found himself waiting to understand known words, rather than listening to translate.

He slipped forward, silently ordering the dog to his side.  Past the last slim shafts of the trees, he made out the forms ahead.

Druids.

Despite his Celtic heritage, he had been raised Roman enough to hate the priesthood.  He had ridden with Agricola’s auxiliary cavalry, one of the first to cross the Menai Straight to the Isle of Mona.  He had seen more bloodshed in the Cambrian campaign against the Druids than in all his twelve long years of Roman service.

And before him, they were about blood again.

The woman was naked; her wrists caught behind her and bound by leather thonging that twisted up around her throat.

Robed, as if to conceal their guilt from their gods, they moved as one against her futile resistance.

She turned again, alone but screaming her defiance.  Hopelessly, she proclaimed her innocence. 

Her trial, it seemed, was over; they had no interest in her arguments.  The figure beside her smashed a fist into her soft flesh, and she crumbled down into the cold wash of the river.

A final kick seemed to satisfy her attacker.  He stepped back, making way for another to move in.  The second man had a long pike raised, nudging her form with his foot to open her back. 

In a moment he would plunge the weapon down, and stake her to the riverbed.

In a moment he would be too late.

Old skills lay deep in the muscles of Marc’s arm.  His eye gauged the distance without a second thought and the knife was in the air before he had considered the options before him. 

By the time he stepped forward to judge the opposition he met, the blade had buried deep in the throat of her assailant and he'd dropped to his knees beside her, pained surprise gaping from his mouth.

By the time he had counted the men on the lower bank, judged them mostly unarmed and leapt from the stones at his feet into the rushing water, another blade had found the ribs of her second attacker.

Max did not need any more incentive to attack.  Throwing his hundred and forty pounds into the balance, he leapt into the rushing water beside his master.  As Marc fought for balance crossing the slipping rocks and cascades, the giant dog seized a priestly arm and drove his weight in against the trio standing on the bank above.  His victim went down screaming as the others shook free of their surprise and turned to rush downstream into the cover of dusk.

Marc ignored the cries of the fallen man, striding into deeper water to grasp the ghostly arm of their victim.  The current had moved her lifeless form, carrying her almost from his reach.  When he caught her, the bindings that ran from her hands, up behind her shoulders and around her throat pulled tighter, strangling her.

Feeling blindly in the darkening water for the hilt at his calf, he rushed another razor sharp blade against the leather of her ties.

“Max!”  The dog stood back, shaking as the wolf in his blood begged to be allowed back at the throat.  Gore stained the thick white of his breast and he licked at his slobbering jowls, harsh breaths hacking over his tongue.

Moving as quickly as her weight allowed, Marcus staggered back up the rocky river bed.  Knowing that the Druids were fleeing did nothing to reduce the hot burn of vulnerability that sharpened in the skin between his shoulder blades.  A soldier’s awareness of exposure ached into his spine as he fought to a safe distance. 

On the stubbly grass away from the water’s edge he stopped, taking a moment to scan the river, before he turned his attention to the woman at his knees.

Shaking, he rode the cresting wave of adrenaline too long suppressed as he moved his knife blade back to the plaited thonging that pulled into the grey flesh of her throat. 

Her eyes were barely opened, staring after visions of an afterworld less painful than the one she left.

He was too late. 

Looking down on the lusterless silver of her skin, he choked on rising fury.  Futility bunched his fists against all the failures of his life. 

He didn’t want to let her go.  He had no way to bring her back.

Savage with grief and frustration, he clasped her shoulders.  Lifting the frail weight of her easily, shaking her, he bellowed into her face, “Breathe!”

Her head lolled back, unaware of his anguish and he groaned as he let her sink slowly back onto the stone.

But her body resisted its abuses.  Low in the soft curves of her abdomen, jagged contractions forced themselves around the unseen life within.  Even as he moved to squat back onto his heels, her body heaved against itself, vomiting water and gagging on air.

The tiny form within her cried out in its distress and her deepest instincts called her from the edge of the eternal, back to pain.  The first hoarse breath she drew was crushed out of her again on a cry of agony.  Then a second, a third, a fourth; groaned as her blood found air, and that brought with it pain.

Caught between surprise and relief, Marcus stood quickly.  Stooping to force his arms under her shoulders and knees, and trusting his feet on the uneven path, he ran with her up the trail toward the sanctuary of the hut.

##

The High Priest paced the floor, his hands locked behind his back.

The girl was dead, he was almost certain.  Almost certain.  He couldn’t be sure.

All the gods should pour their malevolence over her infinite rebirth. 

It was frustration that fuelled his endless tread.  Fear and frustration.  What he needed was a clear head, a chance to think everything through from beginning to end.  What he needed was a way to turn this debacle to his advantage.

“Do you know who he is?” 

The question jolted through his novice companion.  “No, Sir.  I’ve never seen or heard of him before.”

It was impossible.  No man could stand apart so obviously and not be known.  Someone in Caesaraugusta must know of him.  “I want you to comb the city.  I want information from anyone who might recognize the description.”  He turned the heat of his ire on the youth.  “You saw him.  Find anyone who knows of a fair-haired man, head and shoulders taller than most, who lives in this area.  He must be a farmer; a shepherd or cattleman.  If nothing else, the tattoos on his arm will have been noticed.”

The boy looked back, his own shock at the evening’s events written clearly in the white glare of his eyes.  “Tonight?  Now, Sir?”

“Yes idiot, now!  Go now and don’t rest until you can come back to me with the information I need.”

The stranger had to live nearby in the foothills. 

On the city side of the Iberus River, the valley was wide and flat.  Good farming and grazing land was owned by families of note.  But on the far side, where the Gallego rushed down to a confluence, the dry slopes gave less to stock.  Poorer men might take a holding there.  The poorer, or weaker they were, the further back they would be pushed into the lap of the great Pyrenees Mountains.

This man was not weak.

Three of the novices were dead at his hand, and in the work of a moment.

That was a light in his night, at least.  Three men who might carry her claims abroad had been silenced.  The fourth, this last idiot, had been scared from his wits.  He would be silent for a time.  Time enough to force some order into the mess this damnable woman had made.

Damn her.  Damn her face.  Damn the full curves of her flesh.  Damn the pretension that flowed in her blood.  Damn it all!

First, he had to keep the night’s events from her brother.  That was the first thing he had to ensure.

Or not.

He’d been at such pains to show she was with child to a Roman; the idea of a poor foreign farmer had never crossed his mind.  If the family hated the idea of a Roman lover, how much more would they hate a low born foreigner?  A runaway slave?

Marella was the sister of Taran di Lusone, dux of the Lusone clan.  Only the Arevaci had higher status, and for a noble family any scandal of this type would ensure her death.  It was untenable; and now he had not just the pregnancy, not just a rumored lover, but a real life scapegoat.

Oh yes.  Yes.

This could all come together nicely.

If he could find the stranger, whether the girl had survived or not, her family would be quick to exact revenge on the man they thought she had whored for.

For the first time since darkness had settled, he drew a deeper breath.  As his thoughts raced over complications, straightening and smoothing any hitches in his fiction, he even allowed himself a small smile.

Of course, Taran wanted her dead and the fiction that went with that was irrelevant, but these things were always much better if all the loose ends could be neatly tied up.  Especially loose ends that threatened to tangle around Leucetius himself.

If he had a choice, he would have kept the sweet little whore alive for himself, but her pregnancy had to be explained, and there was no good way to excuse a priestess of Diana who was suddenly with child.  It was a waste.  But she was trouble.

Any other woman would have hidden the problem.  A discreet abortion and no one would have been endangered; no one would have been shamed.  Leucetius could have had her still, along with a powerful secret to ensure her compliance.  If she’d shut her mouth.

Taking a wooden mug from his table, he moved to the decanter and prepared to pour himself a wine. 

He stopped, smiled again, and went instead to the chalice of Diana.  As he filled Her goblet to the top with blood red libation, he sized up the image of the goddess raised in the silver.

“Keep your beauties for yourself, will you, good lady?”  Leucetius laughed like a vat of bubbling sulfur and stroked the fine hair of his moustache.  “Not while men have all the power.”  He laughed again and tipped the wine back into his dry throat.  And not while the world gave priests more power than other men.

He had that power.  And while he had that power, he had to ensure he kept it. 

But power itself was a shifting concept here.  

Iberia, Hispania Tarraconensis as the Roman invaders named the north of the country, was volatile at best.   The Lusones, among whom he was staying, shared borders with Euskaldunak and Iberian states as well as fellow tribal Celtiberians.  Allegiance and loyalty were like sand and water, they moved with the wind.

Except when it came to family.  Loyalty to family was never questioned, and a pact with the gens nobilis could not be broken but by death.  For nobles, there was no crime greater than disrespect for the family honor.

And Rome.  Hatred for Rome never failed.  Even if men might fight beside them as dedicated warriors, or as mercenaries, they could never do less than hate Romans.

That made the Roman city of Caesaraugusta the safest place to wait out the fallout over her death.

True, the Romans had no love for the Druidic priesthood.  But a Roman city was ordered.  Roman cities all over the empire had learned to tolerate those they considered their inferiors.  Mostly.

For now, if he could find this stranger and convince her family he was her lover, Leucetius could go back to the comforts of his temple in Okilis and leave these provincial Celtiberian nobles to kill their friends and their enemies in peace. 

Some women were just more trouble than they were worth.

##

Taran clenched a fist around the handle of his beer mug.  It would be done by now and the only thing that made the whole foul mess bearable was that their father was not alive to hear the worst himself.

A whore.

Damn and curses on the high minded woman.

“So,” his wife’s voice cut through the darkness he had ignored, stabbing at his ears like an accusation.  “It’ll be done by now, and you’re going to sit and drink yourself into forgetfulness, are you?”

Servants rushed in past her, bringing with them light and heat.  Even as he frowned away the fire’s intrusion into his funk, she moved into closer range.

“Three deaths, Taran.  Strangled.  Stabbed.  Drowned.  Your sister will be three times dead by now and all the beer in your vat won’t change that fact.”  She circled behind him.  “Dead.  And silent.  Just as the priest wanted her.”

“It was her choice.”  He wanted his words to be clear, to be sure and final, but they rasped from his throat like they dragged over gravel.

“Her choice?  To die like that?”

“Her choice.  In all ways, her choice.”  His volume increased to cover the pain that rose with it.  It was pain born of shame.  “Her choice to refuse to marry the Arevaci kinsman.  That went close to my life she risked when she offended Sarnicio like that. 

“Her choice to consecrate herself to the Goddess as perpetual virgin.  She chose that to escape her responsibilities, you know that as well as I do.”

He raised his eyes to meet his wife’s cold disdain.  “And her choice to whore herself for some Roman scum.”  He’d said enough.  “In all ways, this was her choice.  Leave me alone with it.”

Suelta stood closer to her husband, put her hands down onto his broad shoulders and leaned her support against the strength of his grief.   Her words were softer, “I’ve yet to see any sign of this Roman.”

“You don’t want me to believe the story she concocted, surely?”

“She is your sister.  You know her better than anyone.  You know she would die before she’d back down.  She told you it was the priest who fathered her child.”

“I know she’d die rather than name the Roman.  If she loved the man.  She knows I would disembowel him and her beside him.”  He put a hand up onto hers, pressing her touch against the tension in his neck and back.  “We’ve discussed this all before.  If it was the priest, if it was against her will; she would never have waited four full months before she revealed his crime.”

“Well, my dearest husband,” she rested her lips down onto his hair.  “Let’s both hope you’re right.  It’ll be over, and she will be dead.  If she was innocent, the Goddess will be after revenge.”

“Let’s hope we never learn I’m wrong, or I’ll hang Leucetius from the city walls by his cojones.  Let him hope the Goddess gets to him before I do.”

She nodded.  There was nothing to be gained by going over it all again, but the frustration of being powerless to stop this senseless loss was too much to bear in silence. 

Marella had been her closest friend. 

Yes she was headstrong.  Yes she was smart-mouthed and too loud. 

But she was also courageous and principled.

She’d avoided a political marriage, and her reasons for that were her own.  He’d been a good man.  Good family.  Wealthy.  And the Gods only knew if Taran would ever really forgive her for that humiliation.

But in avoiding the marriage arranged for her, she’d chosen to forgo marriage entirely.  There were vows she could have made that were not so extreme as perpetual virginity.

Then to take a Roman as a lover?  Never.

And she was smart.  She knew better than to fall pregnant in the first place. 

If she’d taken a lover, any lover, even Gods forbid it, a Roman, she would have had the sense to keep his seed out of her belly.  If all else had failed; if she’d wanted a child, knowing what it would cost her and her family, she would have fled. 

She would have taken her lover and his bastard and she would have run.  The world was a big place and growing bigger with every Roman day.  She had no reason to die for a man.

And Marella was not a liar. 

However it might have happened; even if it seemed too far-fetched for words, the priest was responsible if Marella said he was. 

So long as men had power over the lives of their women, he would be believed and she would be condemned.  The knowledge bunched into her hand and she tapped it against her leg in irritation.

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