‘Do you, or are you just pretending? Half of life seems to be about pretending, doesn’t it? Not making others feel uncomfortable. In the old tales the heroes boast all the time and parade their prowess. I sometimes wonder whether wisdom is about hiding who you really are and what you are capable of doing.’
‘Yesterday you killed two men. At the amphitheatre you killed two more. From the ease with which you did it I doubt that they are the first. Now you ride like a centaur and speak of hiding your skills.’
She stuck her tongue out at him like a child. ‘Half of life, I said. And here there is no one to see, apart from you. Even so, those are just a few of my talents. There are lots of others. I can stand on one hand with my feet straight up in the air, but I hardly ever do. Especially when I’m wearing a dress. And if Vindex were here he would no doubt have muttered “Pity” at that point. And I can juggle.’ She frowned. ‘Your seriousness can be a bore, do you know that? Try acting as if you are entranced by my wit. I well see that my beauty stirs you.’ She glanced down, and before he knew it he did the same. There was nothing to see, as he should have known. ‘Got you,’ she said, and stuck out her tongue again.
‘Who was your helmsman?’
‘Oh, back to business. Can’t you guess? I thought you were supposed to be good at rooting out the truth.’ He said nothing. ‘Then perhaps if I say that my family’s old friendships and the emperor’s favour recommended me to the house of the Sulpicii?’
Ferox laughed and once he started he could not stop. Claudia Enica watched him with the expression of an indulgent parent. For a while they rode side by side, until she hooked her right leg back over the saddle, then pushed on the horns and jumped, placing her boots on the saddle. She stood upright, arms straight out on either side. The grey walked on, apparently oblivious.
‘Clever.’
‘Not really. Clever would be if the horse could stand on my back. Still, at least it has brought an end to your yokel-like merriment. As you have guessed, I met Sulpicia Lepidina four years ago and we got on from the start. I think she found it a pleasant change from conversation with the buffoons in her family. She was not married then, and her brother was busy getting exiled, while her father drank too much, made unwise investments and generally wasted the family’s wealth. Frankly she needed company. She took me in hand, refined my manners, we talked for days about clothes and then went shopping, came home and talked even more. Better yet she sneaked me into the local ludus. Of course they thought two noblewomen were only there for a bit of rough. You know what some are like. Personally, I could not see anything very appealing about muscle-bound and scarred heavies, but each to his own. One tried it on, so I slid his knife out of its sheath, gave him a cut on the arm and then had the point at his throat ready to press. After that they were all lambs, and they let me train and taught me the curved sword and more than a few tricks of the arena.’
‘Sulpicia Lepidina did not join you?’ For all his surprise, Ferox found the story all too easy to believe. The lady was never one to be bound by convention and clever enough to hide it. Still, the thought of her handling a sword was unlikely.
‘She just watched. I made her laugh, you see. She did not have much to cheer her in those days. She kept a couple of the bigger household slaves with us in case of trouble, but there wasn’t any need. She charmed them. You know how she can, and I amused them, and they could see that I was good. The lanista even wanted me to be in a show fight at the games!’ She slid down, smacking into the saddle and making the grey bound forward. ‘Good boy,’ she said, stroking its ears.
Vindex appeared and raised an arm to show that he had found somewhere suitable. The ground was too uneven and broken by little gullies to risk a canter, so they walked towards him.
‘She loves you very much,’ Enica said softly. ‘And the boy is everything to her. You have given her glimpses of happiness. There can never be more, for that is not fated, but never doubt that her love was real.’
‘I do not know what you mean.’
She leaned over and patted his arm. ‘Aren’t Silures supposed to be good at lying? I told you, we are close friends and friends talk. Unlike Claudia Severa I am not shocked. It gave Lepidina pleasure to live the moments again in the telling and I was the only one to trust. I’ve shocked you. Well, that is something.’
He sighed ‘I have more questions.’
‘Is this the vanity of man?’
‘Not about that.’
‘Sshh. Later.’ Vindex was close now. ‘Another time.’
The scout chattered away happily, joking with the lady, while always keeping his humour just this side of Brigantian courtesy. She responded, with the greater licence permitted to someone of her rank. They spoke about his father, and she surprised Ferox by also knowing the name, if no more, of his mother, a servant at his homestead who had caught the young chieftain’s eye.
‘I am more like him,’ Vindex admitted. ‘They say she was a beauty, although I do not really remember her face as I was little when the fever took her. The chief has been good to me.’ Vindex never used the word father when speaking of his lord.
After that they spoke for hours about horses, and a little about chariots. Ferox admired both, and could watch them or try them out for as long as anyone. Talking about them always seemed a waste of breath and effort. He had never met a silent Brigantian. More than any other tribe they prattled away, whether or not they had anything worth saying, as fond of their own voices as any sophist. Sometimes they spoke over each other, and he was baffled because they still seemed to follow what everyone else was saying. Claudia, the fashionable Roman woman, had barely stopped for breath. During the rest of the day and the evening Enica the princess of the Brigantes did not appear to need to pause at all.
Ferox left them, saying he would take the first watch. At least they had the sense to keep their voices low, although now and again Vindex brayed with laughter, making Ferox wince. It was a clear, still night, and the sound would carry a long way. He went a fair distance from the camp until he could barely hear them, and then kept moving, circling the walled sheep pen they had settled down in, stopping often and listening. There was no sign of anyone out there. They were still high up, where no one lived in winter, and although the cold and snows would most likely hold off for another month or so, already the high pastures were almost empty.
Eventually Vindex came to relieve him. Back at the camp, Ferox found Claudia Enica soundly asleep. There had been no later for them to talk, and there were still so many questions. Often silence and stillness cleared his mind. He could never remember working out a problem, yet somehow afterwards answers came clearly. That had not happened tonight, and instead he still had mysteries and suspicions. Claudia Enica was a skilled warrior, and he guessed Ovidius was right and she was almost as skilled an actress. Vindex worshipped her, and not simply because he had been raised to be loyal to her family. She was beautiful and charming, and it was hard not to like her.
Many years ago, Caratacus had told him that Silures were always wary of charm because they did not have any of their own. The old man had said it as a compliment, for he admired Ferox’s people and always said that if he had stayed with them instead of trying to rally the Ordovices, then he would still have been free and fighting into his old age. Caratacus had charm, but the Lord of the Hills trusted him because he had seen the man fight. His grandfather had told him that sometimes in life you met someone who truly was as amiable, capable and trustworthy as they seemed, and the danger was that you would miss the chance of making a true friend because you were too suspicious.
Enica claimed to have saved his life twice and he believed that, albeit at the arena he had had to survive the first attack for her help to have mattered. He believed her too when she claimed close friendship of Sulpicia Lepidina, for there was no other way she could have known so much. Ferox’s life was pledged to the mother of his child, a woman who had reawakened feelings he had thought long dead with his first lost love. Sulpicia Lepidina was also the wife of another man, daughter of a senator, and intrigue and politics were in her blood. Someone had tried to arrange his death in the arena, that night when Enica’s dead servant had come to him, and he wished that he could be sure it was not Lepidina. If it was Enica, then she had changed her mind, and if it was all Domitius’ plan, then how had Enica known about it?