Chapter 22
My heart broke. Thrust into that wagon against my will, stuffed in like a bundle of rags with sacks and barrels and baggage heaped over me, I cried. Despair drew its black wings over me like a preying bird, and the tears ran freely. I thought about my father and that hideous attack that cost him his life . . . about Augustus and Tomos, good and faithful friends that I would never see again . . . about Dunstan, Justinia, Docilla who had helped me on my way, and even Addas, who even now was probably looking for me and wondering what had happened. I thought about all that had brought me to this place—only to end my life smothered under a weight of cargo in the wagon of a malicious, devious merchant.
I cried, each breath depleting my strength. But I ceased to care. Let me die, I thought, and be done with it.
It occurred to me to say my prayers and confess my sins so that I might be carried away to paradise where I would see my mother whom I had never known, and my dear father who had loved me as much as any two parents. I closed my eyes and, with shaky breath passed out of consciousness.
At some point, I became aware of a sharp pain in my chest and awoke in the land of the living, still angry, still hurting, and still in that hateful wagon. My next thought was that the wagon was no longer moving and there were voices outside—muddled and indistinct, but someone was talking. Then the weight on me began to lessen as bags and bundles were pulled off me and I was dragged back into the world of men. Bad men, yes, but alive all the same.
The thug who had stolen me dragged me from my rude nest and stood me on my feet outside the wagon. Gnaeus appeared and mumbled something. I touched my ear and said, “I don’t hear well.”
“How old are you?” he asked, raising his voice and speaking with exaggerated care.
“Fourteen summers,” I admitted.
He looked me up and down, then grunted as if this somehow confirmed some private speculation. “Can you cook?”
“I can,” I replied, and looked around. We had stopped for the night in a hollow—little more than a wide spot beside the road with a spinney of rowan trees and a stream nearby. Three servants were pulling things from one of the other wagons and setting up camp, and the other two were making a fire.
After a moment’s deliberation, Gnaeus turned and, pointing toward the two at the fire, said, “Over there. Get busy.”
He made a flicking motion with his hand to dismiss me. I swallowed my indignation and joined the two menials who had been tasked with preparing food. Neither of these appeared to speak any language that I could recognize, so we communicated through grunts and signs and gestures and got along with our work. Easy enough: chopping up root vegetable and gobbets of meat and chucking them into an iron pot with a little water. I was given a knife and a board and did most of the chopping while the others gathered bowls and ladles and other bits of this and that. Meanwhile, the three remaining servants prepared sleeping places around a second fire their masters would recline beside.
It soon became apparent that, aside from boiling up stuff, the two I was with knew next to nothing about cooking. Possibly, they had been abducted, too and, like myself, forced to work. However it was, I shortly found myself ordering them around and took control of the chore: adding salt to the water for the onions and turnips, and instead of boiling the pork, threaded the chopped gobbets onto long forks to act as skewers. It would be nice to have some garlic, I thought, so went in search of it. I wandered only a few paces and came upon a clump growing beside the road—planted by the soldiers in earlier times as they marched from garrison to garrison across Britannia. As Tullius had once explained, at each place a legion made camp the soldiers would push a thumb in the soil and plant a toe of garlic; that way, they would have it should they pass that way again. From one end of this island realm to the other, travelers could find little pungent bulbs. I pulled up a few, thinking: the legions might have left Britain, but the garlic was still here.
I returned to the cooking pot where the vegetables were boiled and soft, I put them in a bowl and mashed them up together with salt, dried parsley, and a knob of butter—all of which I found in the store of provisions. My two helpers were more than glad to be spared these tasks, leaving me to get on with it and the work took my mind off my plight—if only for a little while.
The merchants kept to themselves. They had bought jars in the market, and these they brought out and all four sat around the fire and shared out their beer while awaiting the meal. They talked together, their voices low; I could not make out what they said, but the occasional gusts of laughter gave me to know that if they did not enjoy one another’s company, at least they had learned to tolerate one another.
Night had fallen full dark when the meal was finally ready. I spooned the mash into a wooden bowl and piled the fire-roasted meat onto a platter, sprinkling salt over it. I took a stack of bowls and a clutch of wooden spoons to the campfire and passed them out, then ladled the mash into the bowls along with cubes of roast pork and a thick slice of buttered bread. The men received their bowls and began to eat, mostly in silence. I retreated to the cooking fire and shared a little of the meal with my fellow slaves. When the merchants finished, I set about collecting up the spoons and empty bowls.
“That was good,” Gnaeus told me when I picked up his bowl. “What’s your name?”
“Aurelia,” I said.
“Eh?” He did not understand the word.
“That’s my name—Aurelia.”
His eyebrows lowered in thought. “Where are you from? Your people—who are they? Demetae?” he asked. I touched my ear and he repeated.
“Silures,” I told him. “My people were Silures.”
“Ah.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I knew it was one or the other. Ever been to Maridunum?”
I shook my head. Of course, I’d heard of the place from the time I was a able to walk, and I knew that it was said to have been an important place somewhere down along the coast from Venta. Not all that far, I think, but who ever had reason to go there? Anyway, it was in Demetae territory.
Gnaeus thumped himself on the chest proudly. “Maridunum—that’s where I grew up.”
I forced a smile, and nodded as if this was the most fascinating fact I’d learned all day. “Venta,” I told him. “That’s where I grew up.”
He considered this and appeared to think that this made us somehow friends. “Well, cook like that,” he concluded. “And we’ll get on.”
“Get on?” I said, anger igniting once more and flaring up. “You stole me! And you stole my purse!”
If my rash outburst was meant to provoke him, it failed. Instead, he regarded me with that shrewd, thoughtful look. “You wanted to go to Deva. I’m going to Deva.”
“And you’ll take me there?” I said, a faint hope stirring in my breast.
He nodded and said, “You agree to cook for us until we get there and I’ll take you to Deva.”
“And you’ll give me back my purse?” I said, making this a condition of my servitude.
“I’ll give you back your purse,” he agreed. “But not until we get there.”
I accepted his terms. What other choice did I have? If I yet held any hope at all of reaching my friends, this was my only chance. “Done,” I told him. “I’ll be your cook.”
Gnaeus gave me his fishy smile. “We’ll get on.”
The camp settled down for the night. After everyone had tended to nature’s necessities, we made our own beds where we could and went to sleep—the four members of the so-called Triumvirate around the campfire and the rest of us hugging the cooking fire. I lay a long time awake, unable to rest for distressing thoughts of all that could befall a girl on her own amongst a gang of brutish men. Sometime during the night, sleep over took me and I knew no more until I awakened the next morning, cold and aching and miserable, to begin my bondage as a cook.
The day dawned fair and bright with no hint of rain. We did not pause to break fast, but made to push on as soon as camp was struck and everything packed away. While the horses were tended and put to harness, I climbed back into the wagon, the main cargo of which was made up of bundles wrapped in skins and leather; there were also a goodly number of small wooden casks and chests. In amongst these were tight-bound rolls of cloth that looked to me like some of the stuff produced from somewhere far beyond the shores of Britannia. There were some grain sacks, too—mostly oats meant for the horses—and these served me as a nesting place. My roost was lumpy, but nowhere near as uncomfortable as the day before, and with a little arrangement I was able to gain enough vantage to allow myself to see the road ahead and some of the passing countryside. We paused briefly at midday to eat and water the horses, then travelled on without stopping again until dusk. It seemed the traders were intent on covering as much ground as possible each leg of the journey—which was all very well by me.
The travel the next day was the same as the day before, but I noticed that the land had begun to rise: the hills were higher, more rugged, the trails narrower, rockier. We reached a well beside the road at the bottom of some nameless valley, and here we paused. All the water vessels were emptied and refilled, the horses watered, and I made a cold meal of cheese and brown bread smeared with honey before moving on.
That night was more or less the same as those before, and the next day—aside from the sharpening wind and low, menacing clouds—much the same again: plodding through empty hills over bare, broken trails, passing lonely settlements and holdings and occasional flocks of sheep, cattle, or goats. Upon reaching one such settlement, we were met on the road by the farmers who sold us fresh meat and vegetables to replenish our stocks, and sealed jars of mead. That done, we moved on.
I cooked a good and hearty supper that night such as we had not had since starting out. I was even able to make a batch of sweet honey cakes which the traders wolfed down with childlike delight, and drew praise from Gnaeus who, a little woozy from the mead, gave me a smile and a wink when I fetched his empty bowl.
The sun was already down behind the western hills when we reached a fair-sized holding the next day. Larger than any we’d seen since leaving Caer Gwyn, it lay at the far end of a very long, slender lake called—if I caught it right—something like Llyn Tegid. The lake was pleasant enough in its way, with blue misty hills rising in the distance and green meadows all around, but it was the settlement that impressed: proper villa in the old Roman style surrounded by numerous dwellings, barns, granaries, store houses, and sheds. The central complex was constructed mostly in dressed stone with timber outbuildings. The main compound was bounded on three sides by a stone wall, and the land outside the wall given to pens for animals and, beyond those, cultivated fields. A nearby stream supplied fresh water, and a substantial forest lay no great distance to the north and east would provide ready access timber.
It was easily the most prosperous steading I had seen since Viroconium, no mistake. Home to perhaps fifty or so—including wives and children—and I did not wonder but that the man who owned it exulted in his wealth and the power it gave him. He even wore a chieftain’s golden torc—an ornament often spoken of in the old tales, but one I had never seen. Head to toe, the man styled himself a king. Perhaps, among his kind, he was just that.
Ederyn Long Knife he was called, and tokens of his authority were everywhere—most obviously in the number of well-armed men he kept: young, for the most part, muscular, agile, and bristling with the tell-tale swagger that suggested aggression barely under control. Warriors all, and just as assertive were the dogs ranged around them; great, shaggy, long-legged beasts—big as the boars they hunted—the creatures roamed about the place, scrappy, ill-tempered, and loud.
We had met some of these—both men and dogs—when a greeting party rode out to meet us on the road. I suppose very little passed in the region that the residents of the villa did not regard, and the approach of wagons in that wild hill country was certain to draw attention. Among those who stopped us to enquire after our business were two or three who recognized the merchants, so the implied challenge turned into a genuine welcome and we were escorted to the villa where, it soon transpired, we were to spend the night.
With much hailing and back-slapping and gripping of arms, the traders were welcomed into the king’s villa. Mind, I don’t know if this Ederyn, or Eternus as others knew him, possessed any genuine royal blood at all, but in that wilderness country such niceties tend to matter less than they do in more civilized regions. Be that as it may, from what I saw around me, Ederyn did possess wealth and, no doubt, the strongest arm in the province to go with it. Backed up by his private army—a warband, it was called—this chieftain took it on himself to rule and I could not imagine another in that remote province to challenge him. This, I thought even then, was the way the world was going.
In any case, the traders were invited in to accept the welcome cup. The servants, myself included, were left outside to tend the wagons and ready the goods for whatever trade was to be done. I did not think it likely much business was to be had in this place, but this notion was wholly mistaken. Our presumed king, it turned out, was one of Gnaeus’ better clients.
I soon learned why—and in doing so, discovered the true purpose of our little trading company and their dark secret.