She fumbled with the straps to undo one side of the face mask, the first time any motion had been clumsy, but it was a hard thing to do one handed. Persisting, it came loose and the chin strap followed. There was more of her usual grace as she plucked mask and helmet off with one motion and let it fall onto the grass. Claudia Enica smiled. ‘You have taken a while to work that one out.’ Hand now free, she covered her chest again with her torn tunic. She took a step towards him, until the tip of her sword pressed lightly against his mail shirt. He did not move back. ‘You really did. You were almost a disappointment, Flavius Ferox, after all that I had heard. And would not that be terrible, disappointing a lady. Of course it would.’ Her voice changed, and even in the firelight so did her face, and it was easy to imagine the ornate hairstyle and heavy makeup of Claudia, the Brigantian princess raised as a Roman noblewoman.
‘Oh shit,’ Vindex said, the truth sinking in and no doubt remembering what he had just said.
‘Why are you here, lady?’ Ferox used one arm to nudge the sword away from his stomach. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Blunt as ever.’ Her voice took on a harsher air and she switched back to the language of the tribes. ‘And still slow to catch up. Try not to disappoint me again after all the trouble I have gone to. Well, among other things, I am trying to stop a war.’ She stepped closer, staring up at him challengingly. ‘Is that enough for the moment?’
Vindex sat up and sucked in his breath. ‘Sounds like we’re hum…’ He stopped, remembering whose presence he was in. ‘Omnes ad stercus,’ he said instead. ‘I mean,’ he spluttered, realising that the lady spoke Latin. ‘I mean to say, that is… We are at your service, my lady.’ He stood and bowed. ‘My sword is yours, my life at your service.’ It was an old oath among the Brigantes and their neighbours.
‘Thank you, Carvetian. Your service is accepted.’ She did not turn and kept her eyes staring straight at Ferox. ‘And I suspect you are right. We probably are humped.’
Vindex laughed so much he had to sit down again.
XVIII
ENICA RODE WELL.
‘She’s Brigantian,’ Vindex said, as if that should be clear to anyone. ‘Of the royal house, granddaughter of Cartimandua and Venutius – of course she can ride. Bet she can drive a chariot too. They say Cartimandua was better than any man, rivalling the heroes of legend. The women of that line are special.’ Ferox had never heard his friend speak in such admiring tones of anything, let alone anyone.
She did not dress for the journey like a Brigantian or a Roman. After sending Vindex to fetch their horses and telling Ferox to drag the body of her servant out of the fire and carry him to the chasm, she had vanished behind the rocks. When she joined him by the river she was wearing baggy trousers and a long-sleeved tunic, with another short-sleeved one over the top. She had kept her felt boots, and girded the tunics with a wide leather belt.
‘I suppose you had better have this back,’ she said as she handed him his sword in its scabbard. She had the sica on her left hip and a plainer gladius on the right.
‘Thank you.’ If she had the blade, then she must either have been in the warehouse and led him out or known who did. Ferox nodded at the corpse. He had rolled the man up in a blanket, leaving only his face exposed. ‘I have seen him before.’ It was the scarred man who had brought the first message that night he had been ambushed in the amphitheatre.
‘I know.’
‘We should talk.’
‘Later.’ Enica put two fingers to her lips and kissed them, then leaned over and pressed them to the dead man’s forehead. ‘Give him to the river. It is the best we can do.’
Ferox obeyed, lifting the body and walking over to the brink of the chasm. He let the man fall, saw him vanish into the foam, and part of him half expected the woman to step up behind and push him over as well. When he turned he saw that she was already on her way back to the camp. As soon as Vindex returned with their mounts, they set out, riding north for an hour before they made a cold camp. They left the Ordovices to lie and hoped no others would appear seeking revenge. Before dawn they woke and set out once more.
Enica dressed like a Parthian and rode like one as well, her grey seeming to respond to her merest thought without need for any gesture. At times she did not even hold the reins, merely looping them round one of the pommels on her saddle. Before she swathed herself in a hooded cloak the next morning, Ferox saw that her trousers were russet, her tunics a pale blue, and all of them from silk.
‘Any fool can be uncomfortable,’ Enica told him, noticing his surprise. ‘Lice don’t seem to like it, which means it’s also the best way to keep free of them.’ Ferox wondered whether that was true. Vermin were simply a fact of life. You could cull them now and again, smoke them out if you did not mind your clothes reeking of charcoal for a month, but only really be free of them if you lived close to a good bath-house, used it often, and changed every day. Otherwise, lice were like the weather, sometimes a torment but usually bearable.
‘It makes you conspicuous,’ he said. He guessed that with the silks, the princely grey horses, the young woman was probably wandering around with the equivalent of a hundred years’ pay for a legionary.
She gestured with her hand, splaying the fingers like a fan as she passed by her face. ‘I am conspicuous.’
‘That you are, lady,’ Vindex said admiringly.
She smiled at him. ‘The Carvetii are a courteous folk. Sadly, the Silures mistake silence for wit.’
The tracks to the north were hard to find, and they got lost more than once or came to a dead end beyond which the horses could not pass. At first they said little, although Vindex sang softly for much of the way. He did not have a pleasant voice, but he sang stories of the old days, of the proud kings and magical queens of the Brigantes, of feasts and rivalries, contests and battles. Enica smiled at him often. Now and again she caught Ferox’s eye and then she would screw her face up in a scowl, mocking him.
Twice Ferox saw a warrior up on the peaks above them, squatting beside a boulder, watching as they passed. He was not sure, but thought that it was the same man each time, and a nimble man on foot could easily have kept pace along the heights, given how slow and winding were the paths they took. At noon they reached a bridge, much like the other one, save that it had been deliberately broken. There were tracks of around thirty or forty horses; the mud was too churned up to be more precise. The horses were heavily laden and all much the same size, and the prints left by the men who had dismounted showed hobnailed caligae. Cavalry had come here, crossed over and then ripped up the planks, piling them neatly on the far bank.
‘I’m guessing you are not with them,’ Ferox said.
‘I am with you, centurion, hadn’t you noticed?’
Ferox ignored Vindex’s chuckle. ‘Then who are they? They cannot have been far behind you all this time.’
‘Is it my fault if men follow me?’ The voice was pure Claudia, in spite of the Parthian rig and swords at her belt. She sighed. ‘You can be rather dull, do you know that? I had always understood the Silures could look at tracks and tell you what colour eyes the wife of the rider’s cousin has. No? Pity.
‘They are Brigantes, since your art fails you so lamentably. Men from the royal ala, and led by my brother.’
‘And what does he want?’ An arched eyebrow prompted him to add, ‘My lady.’
‘At last, a tiny piece of courtesy. Maybe there is hope for you after all, Flavius Ferox. My brother does not want what I want. He never really has, since the days when I followed him around and his pride took daily insults because his little sister was better than him at everything.’