“I don’t know!” Gertrude screamed as the iron grip closed more tightly around her neck.
The old woman’s jagged teeth gritted, her face set in a hateful scowl, as Gertrude had seen it when she had issued the vilest of curses. She looked as though she might crush the life out of her.
“Please…sacred…lady,” Gertrude struggled to speak as tears streamed from her bulging eyes.
Her pleas had no effect, initially, but something of their long-standing relationship must have broken through the druidess’s anger. Eventually, the old woman’s face softened, and she released her grip. Struggling to regain her breath, Gertrude fell to her knees and rubbed the claw-like red marks left on her neck.
“Find the Roman!” the druidess snapped at the others. “Search every house, if you must, but find him, and bring him to me!”
After the rustle of white-robed men had left to carry out her orders, the old woman turned to the coughing Gertrude.
“I warned you of him, my child. You failed to heed my counsel.”
“You said…he would bring life to me, sacred lady. I only wished to preserve him from the flame, that the prophecy might be fulfilled. I intended no harm.”
“He did bring you life. He saved you before. His thread was woven with yours for a purpose, and that purpose has been fulfilled. If his thread continues it will bring about chaos. The fragile balance we have maintained so long between your people and the spirits of the forest. The Roman’s thread must be cut off or your people will be doomed to serve under the yoke of the infidels.”
Gertrude’s eyes were full of tears, and the old woman reached out a hand and began gently stroking her hair.
“Rest easy, my child,” the druidess said. “It is out of your hands, now.”
With that, the druidess left, leaving Gertrude crying softly on the floor.
Gertrude felt ashamed at having put herself above the welfare of her tribe. She felt ashamed at having stirred the wrath of the sacred lady, whom she had shared a special relationship with for so long. Most of all, she felt ashamed because the search of the town would turn up nothing. The Roman was not in the town, nor anywhere within several miles of this place, she reckoned.
She knew this because she had helped the Roman to escape.
XXI
"This way," Alain called, turning his head once to glance back at the lagging Lucius.
The boy moved like a gazelle, and even Lucius, who took pride in his own stamina, had trouble keeping up with him. Add to that, he carried in his hands an ancient, heavy spear that had been propped in a corner of Gertrude’s house. It was his only weapon.
"Are you certain?" Lucius said between breaths. "How can you be sure?"
"I've travelled this path many times, running errands for my mistress."
Lucius might have thought the boy mad, if the lad had not had such confidence. There was no path that he could see. The cross-hatched hedges of the Nervii countryside, made one place look like another. Lucius had followed Alain through the rough country all morning, and it seemed that each time they broke through a cut in one of the hedgerow barriers they found another several hundred paces beyond. The small hills they had surmounted on their trek had only allowed Lucius to see so far, but he thought he had seen a line of dust hanging above the trees in the distance, and he surmised it to be the Roman column on the march.
Alain led Lucius through some of the most rugged country he had yet seen, but the boy seemed to know every hollow, every stream, and every hidden opening through the living barriers. The paths were well-concealed, but they were there. Of course, they had to be, Lucius considered. How else could the Nervii so easily shadow the Roman columns marching on the road?
As Lucius ducked the low branches, trying hard to keep up with Alain, he began to worry that they might come across Belgic troops using these same paths.
"The army won't go this way," the boy said, as if reading his thoughts.
"Why not?"
"Hardly anyone knows about it. This is the spy path. The way the Nervii get their infiltrators to and from enemy lands. The chieftains don't let the commoners know about it."
"And how do you come to know of it?"
"Gertrude is a stubborn daughter," he grinned. "She never does what she's told. Many a time she brought me with her to nose about her father's business. She likes to know all. Her father wishes she would stay home and have babies, but I don't think that will ever happen. She's too headstrong."
Alain had said it cheerily, as if every thought of his mistress brought him delight. Lucius knew that she had fulfilled a mother's role for the boy. Though Alain was her slave, she loved him like a son, and he loved her like a mother. That was one of the reasons Alain had agreed to help him escape and guide him through the forest to the Roman column. Not just because Gertrude had ordered him to do it, but because saving Caesar's life seemed to be the best chance for his mistress to survive the coming Roman storm. No matter how long it took, no matter how many battles had to be fought, Rome would prevail in the end. Lucius felt Gertrude understood that. The things he had said about Senator Valens seemed to have struck a nerve with her, too.
After her anger had calmed that night, she had returned to the hut.
"He will betray my father. You are sure of this?" Alain had translated for her.
"Yes," Lucius had replied, surprised that she was so apt to take his word to heart. "Your Druids call Caesar a devil. Maybe he is, but he's not half the devil Valens is. I know the man. Even if your father wins the battle, he will savor the victory but a short time. Valens will come back and annihilate your people. He will show no mercy. Your only hope of stopping Valens is to kill him."
"And if I help you escape," she had said hesitantly. "You think you could do this?"
"I've told you what he did to my family. I want nothing more than to cut off his lying head." Lucius saw Gertrude considering, and then added, "And I vow, on my honor, ma'am, that you and the boy will be under my personal protection. No Roman will touch you. Not while I draw breath."
"I do this for the sake of my people," she said finally. “Alain will go with you. He can see you safely through the forest."
Now, hours later, Lucius followed the boy into a shadowy green glade that was bisected by a stream. "This stream is a tributary of the river. It's mostly marsh from here on." He pointed to a hollow in the brush on one side of the clearing. "That way leads to the road on the ford, on the north side of the river, where the Belgic army is." He pointed to another path on the opposite side. "This way will take us across the marshes to a hidden ford. There we can cross the river unseen, and you can find your army."
Alain knelt and cupped his hands to take a drink from the stream, all the while eyeing Lucius suspiciously.
"That's why she likes you, you know," he said suddenly, as he wiped the water from his lips.
“What did you say?” Lucius did not know what the boy was talking about.
"She's been told by the seer that you are her savior, so she believes everything you say. She believes you are her lucky talisman. That’s why she didn’t have you whipped for calling her father a fool. That’s why she let you escape.”
Lucius was stunned. “She believes in such nonsense? And what about you?”
Alain shrugged. “I don’t like you, Roman. But, my mistress thinks you will save her. If that is what she believes, I believe it, too.”
Lucius laughed and then planted the spear upside down in the earth and leaned down to take a drink from the cool stream.
He had just finished drinking when he heard voices and the whinny of a horse. The boy grabbed his arm and put a finger to his mouth, urgently gesturing for Lucius to follow him. Plucking the spear out of the ground, Lucius darted with the boy into the cover of a nearby thicket. There, they waited.