"He rose from the dead."
At this she showed more respect. "When was this?"
"More than three hundred years ago."
Now she looked skeptical. "And where is he now?"
"In heaven."
"Well." She looked at them with doubt. "Each woman finds her own goddess or god who speaks to her heart in a special way, like a lover or brother or husband. So you can have this alive-and-dead-and-remote god if you wish, it matters not to me. But our gods are all around us, in the rocks and the trees and the flowers, in every spring and every cloud, and they've kept my people free of you Romans for that same three hundred years. In Caledonia it's these gods that have power. My advice is to listen for the god that sings to your heart and ask him or her, not me, what will become of you."
"You suggest this," Valeria objected, "after we've been abducted and brought here against our will and shown to this small room."
"But perhaps not against your god's will." Brisa gave them a slight smile. "You're of our clan now, Roman lady, and your fate is linked to ours. You can spend your days wishing you were somewhere else if you want, but I say you should eat and sleep and weave and hunt and wait for gods, not men, to tell us what to do."
A hundred people ate in the Great Hall, women shocking Valeria by sitting casually on the benches alongside their men. Both sexes helped cook and serve, children fought and crawled underfoot, dogs prowled for scraps and nipped each other's flanks, and the hearth fires cast a red, wavering light. A great iron kettle was filled with water and warmed by heated stones for the company to wash there before eating, the Celts surprising her with their fastidiousness. Contrary to what she'd been warned in Rome, they cared how they looked and smelled! For this celebration of Arden's return, the men and women had carefully combed their hair and chosen their best jewelry, some men painting the stripes of war on their faces, and some women using berry juice and ash to accent their lips and highlight their eyes. Yet just when she was ready to admit that Romans had some things in common with these rough people, and hope that she might understand them, a common cup was passed down their rank, and Valeria realized to her horror that the cup was in fact the crown of a skull, hacked from some victim, given two handles and plated with yellow gold.
"You drink from the dead?"
"We honor the spirit of our enemies by venerating their heads," Brisa explained matter-of-factly. "The head is the seat of the soul."
The Celts paid their prisoners no particular mind, neither honoring a Roman lady with proper seat and deference nor putting her in shackles or bonds. Savia was drafted to help with the serving, but Valeria was spared that indignity, the rough warriors glancing almost shyly at her beauty while their tall chieftain pretended indifference. Their lack of watchfulness astounded and somewhat heartened her. I could thrust this carving knife right into one of their eyes, she thought. Yet she also feared that such an assault would be more difficult than it seemed in the genial chaos of supper, that a strong arm would be quick to deflect her blow or a maid to cry warning, and then she herself would be dead. So she did nothing, eating an embarrassing amount because she was so famished, and watched with fascination the pride and equality that the women assumed with their men, challenging their boasts and braying their own jokes and offering their own opinions on the pasturing of the clan herd, the tyrannies of weather, or the impotence of Romans. A single turma of disciplined cavalry could slice through the lot like a pin through a grape, she knew, and yet the warriors who'd captured her boasted yet again of its prowess at the spring, and the haplessness of her doomed rescuers.
The forced memory brought to mind the death of Clodius and the waste of his young life, depressing Valeria anew. The barbarian had slain her best friend, the man she'd ridden to protect! He'd belittled the power of her husband! He was a sworn enemy of Rome! She glanced at his handsome figure at the head of the table, hating his triumph. Should she endure existence among them and wait for fate, as Brisa had suggested? Somehow try to signal the soldiers she was certain must be searching? Or escape to find a way home?
While the men seemed less threatening than she'd feared, one of the women seemed more so. She was a Celtic beauty with a proud and watchful manner and flame-red hair who periodically would cast a glance of distaste at Valeria and then look past to give a covetous stare at Arden. Well, that was plain enough. You can have him! Yet the chieftain seemed to pay no mind to her, either. If the maid hoped to cast a spell with her eye, the chieftain just as assiduously avoided it. Valeria asked Brisa who she was.
"That's Asa." She speared a piece of pork. "A lover of Caratacus but not betrothed as she'd hoped. She's as skilled with weapons as I am, and dangerous to cross. Stay friends with Brisa, Roman, if Asa becomes your enemy."
"She's very beautiful."
"She's used to having men's eyes on her, not you. Don't be alone with her."
The songs turned from skirmishes with the Romans to older and grander tales of great raids and foggy voyages, of dragon hoards and mythic beasts. While the company lingered at table, they ate sparingly, Valeria realized, avoiding the intentional gluttony she'd seen at Roman banquets. Savia kept munching contentedly, as starved by the recent adventures as Valeria was, and Brisa began looking disapprovingly at the maidservant's steady consumption. Finally she spoke sharply.
"Leave off, freed Roman, or you'll owe the table the fatgelt."
Savia looked up with her mouth full. "The what?"
"It's a useless Celt that can't run and fight. We levy a tax on anyone who gets too fat. A body's form is a reflection of the gods. Eat too much, and you'll pay for it until you lose enough to earn it back."
"But I'm not a Celt."
"You are if you prove yourself useful. Turned out to starve if you don't."
Savia glanced around at the others and reluctantly sat back from her plate. "Yours is a cruel country, to prepare all this food and not eat it."
"Only Romans eat everything. We eat only what we need. That is why your side of the Wall is so poor, all cut over and the earth sliced open and streams impounded, while on ours it is more like the gods intended it, where flowers still sing to the sun."
"If you farmed better, you could eat more."
"If I built a fire twenty feet high, I could sit farther away, but where's the sense in that?"
At length it was late, and Valeria longed for sleep, yet the assembly showed no sign of breaking up. She could hear a hiss of rain and guessed that most of the clan had decided to sleep through the coming wet morning. Perhaps time had less meaning here.
There was also a camaraderie that made clan members linger. Most of these Celts were related, and all had a role to play in their small society: the storyteller, the jokester, the warrior, the mother hen, the tippler, the magician, the singer, the cook. They knew each other's strengths, weaknesses, skills, feelings, and past, and interacted without rank. Valeria herself felt isolated, defeated, and homesick, and wanted only to crawl between the woolens and furs of her bed. She began to watch for an opportunity to creep off and do so, but before it came, there were shouts, the opening of a door that let in a blast of wet wind, and then its slamming shut behind a newly entered guest, hooded and mud-splattered. It was a man, Valeria saw, stamping and wet, his frame tall and gaunt, his features shrouded. At his arrival the crowd grew quiet.
The newcomer lingered in shadow a moment, his gaze briefly holding every eye, and Valeria felt chilled at realizing who this must be, this figure of dark gods and blood sacrifice. Would she be given to him for his magic?
"You've come to us like the midnight owl, Kalin!" Arden called.
"An owl, yes, but not wise enough to stay out of the rain." The self-deprecation surprised her. "It's wet as a crannog in a spring freshet out there. Cold as the butt of a bony woman. Dark as the hole in a centurion's ass."