That evening he sat alone, staring into the bright heart of the embers and trying not to think. His body was still bruised and aching from the fight. He was not waiting for her, he told himself that. His only desire was to escape this place. But later, after several hours lying sleepless on the bare mattress, he sat up at the sound of the opening door.
She came to him, as she had before, but they did not speak. That previous time he had been worried about the noise, fearful that someone outside would hear them – he had even put his hand over her mouth to try and quieten her, but she had shoved him away laughing, as if he were childish to care about such things. This time, he knew that it did not matter who heard them. The sex was fast and fierce, and she matched him in angry passion. Only afterwards did she lie still, almost tender in her contentment. He ran his palms over her body, the cold hardness of the barbaric ornaments and the coarse curling lines scored into her flesh with a blade. He was fascinated and repulsed, and filled with a strange warmth beyond simple desire.
‘Thanks for saving me from your friends outside,’ he said. ‘I think they’d rather have killed me.’
‘They would not dare,’ she said. ‘They are afraid of me. Drustagnus is their master, but I am of the royal house, and they would not deny me.’
‘Even so. I’m still an enemy to them. How long will they keep on following your orders?’
‘Orders?’ she said, smiling. ‘You talk so much like a Roman. Here there are no orders. My people do as their rulers direct from love, and respect.’
Castus stifled his laugh. There had been little of love or respect in the way the guards had looked at her earlier. Just a cowed temporary deference. He wondered what sort of game Cunomagla was playing: setting her own authority against Drustagnus, perhaps? Demonstrating that she too could rule men? Either way it was dangerous, and he was the one who would pay the price if she lost.
‘What will you do,’ he asked her, ‘if the Roman army comes here?’
‘Fight them,’ she told him. He felt her body tighten, muscles hardening. ‘I will never be a slave, or run like a dog.’
She raised herself on one elbow, and her hair fell across his chest. ‘And what would you do?’ she said. In her voice Castus thought he could hear a softness, even a sadness, that he had never heard before.
‘If the gods allowed,’ he said, ‘I would be marching in their ranks.’
For three more nights she visited him, coming after dark when the fort was silent and leaving again before dawn. Castus never knew whether she had guards or attendants of her own, who waited outside while she was with him. With every passing day the idea of escape, like the idea of home, the memory of the legion, seemed more distant.
On the fourth night she seemed changed. Castus had little experience of the moods of women; Cunomagla, he had decided, was more than just a woman anyway. She was a barbarian first, a war-leader second, and female third. Even so, he could tell that something was troubling her. After they had lain together, almost before their breathing slowed, she pushed herself away from him and sat back against the stone wall of the hut. The last glow of the fire lit her broad face, the set of her jaw.
‘The men here have sent word to Drustagnus that I consort with you,’ she said. ‘They think I make plots with you to go against their chief.’
Castus sat up. ‘What will Drustagnus do?’ He thought of Strabo’s death, the jerk of his body as the knife slashed his neck, the pump and spatter of blood, and suppressed a shudder.
‘Order them to kill you, I think,’ she told him. ‘Me, they would not hurt. But I can protect you, I…’ Already she was sounding less certain; the true price of her bid for authority was becoming clear.
‘If Drustagnus commands it,’ Castus said between his teeth, ‘I’ll die. Things won’t go so well for you either. But if I was not here… If I escaped…’
She seized his arms, fingers digging into his biceps. ‘No! I cannot allow that,’ she cried.
Castus’s heart kicked at the meaning of her words, the strength wakening again inside him. He rolled forward sud shy;denly, break shy;ing her grip on his arms as he lunged against her. Before she could fight back he had her pinned against the stones of the hut wall, one forearm braced beneath her jaw, her right wrist gripped tight.
‘You can’t protect me from Drustagnus,’ he said in a harsh whisper. ‘You know that. So set me free… or give me a way to free myself.’
‘Never!’ she spat back at him, alive with sudden fury, and he saw her teeth gleam in the darkness. ‘You’re mine… I own you!’
He felt her body flex and writhe against him, the heavy links of the chain she wore at her throat pressing into the muscle of his arm.
‘Think again,’ he said. ‘The Roman army owns me, body and soul – and I’ll never submit to you. If that makes us enemies then so be it.’
A sudden prick of pain against his belly: a knife, held low in her left hand. She registered his flinch, and smiled in bitter triumph. ‘Do you really think’, she said quietly, ‘I’d come to you unarmed?’
They paused, locked together and breathing hard, the unseen blade held between them. Castus felt the warm weight of her hair falling over his arm. He felt his anger shifting; death stood on all sides. Only this woman could help him now. Think, he told himself.
‘You say you had no part in these killings,’ he told her, measuring his words. ‘No part in this war. You say you’re a friend to Rome… Help me get away from here and I can tell my commander that. If I die here, you and your son will both be marked as enemies.’
For a moment she glared at him, still holding the blade against his skin. Then he felt her shoulders drop, and the knife was gone. He eased himself back, releasing his grip on her.
‘You can tell your commander this, in Ebor-acum?’ she said quietly, as if to herself. ‘I and my son both?’
‘Yes. But I can’t do that when I’m penned up here.’
‘You tell them, then,’ she said, staring at him in the darkness. ‘Tell them I am no enemy to Rome.’
‘Prove it,’ he said.
She threw herself against him, kissing his mouth hard.
Later, as he lay in half-sleep, he felt her get up from the mattress. He opened his eyes. The fire was almost gone, and she was a dark moving shape in the deeper darkness of the hut. He saw her stoop, and then fasten the dress at her shoulder. Stoop again, and a faint metallic clink came from the hearth.
‘Cunomagla?’ he said in a low whisper. For a moment she seemed to look at him, but all he caught was the movement in shadow. He heard the door creak open, and thud closed. The faintest breath of night air lingered in the darkness.
Up off the mattress, he felt his way across the dirt floor to the hearth, running his fingers over the cracked and sooty stones of the rim. He touched cold iron, then his hand closed around the haft of the knife. He picked it up carefully and ran his fingers over the blade. Six inches long, triangular and single-edged, with a cruel point.
He kissed the black iron blade, and then grinned with clenched teeth.
11
Crouched beside the door, Castus gripped the knife in both hands, trying to fight down his nervous impatience. A whole day had passed since Cunomagla’s visit – a day of waiting, of pacing circles around the hearth, exercising, pointlessly turning plans around in his mind. He would know nothing until he got outside the hut, outside the fort, and that alone was going to be difficult.
The guards brought him food twice a day, once a little after sunrise and again in the evening. That morning he had eaten, but the evening meal he had ignored. The wooden platter and bowl of gruel sat beside him now, on the worn stone sill before the slat in the door where the guard had placed it. How soon, Castus thought, before the guards peer through the slat and see the food untouched? He had rolled the straw mattress and wrapped the blanket around it: with the fire burning low it might look like a man’s body lying in the shadows at the back of the hut. He prayed they would not summon help – two men, even three he could deal with, but any more and he would be dead within the hour. His stomach clenched, and he felt the pulse jumping in his neck. The black iron knife was an anchor in the darkness, and he clung to it.