London - Edward Rutherfurd [13]
The terrible bargain had been made when the noble from the great chief Cassivelaunus had first come to plan the river defences that spring. Perhaps the idea would not have occurred to her if it had not been for a casual remark he had made to the women of the hamlet while he was inspecting the weapons of the men.
“If the Romans come to the ford here, you’ll all be moved upstream.” The dark-bearded captain did not like having women near a battle. In his opinion, they got in the way and distracted their men.
But the remark was enough to set her thinking, then to give her inspiration. That evening, seeing him alone by the fire, she had ventured up to him.
“Tell me, sir,” she asked, “if we go upstream, will we have a guard?”
He shrugged. “I dare say. Why?”
“All the people round here trust my husband,” she stated. “I think he would be the best one to accompany us.”
The noble looked up. “You do, do you?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. She saw him smile to himself as one who, having authority, has known every kind of proposition.
“And what,” he asked gently, as he gazed at the darkened waters, “would make me think that?”
She stared at him. She knew her attractions.
“Whatever you wish,” she replied.
He was silent for some time. Like most military commanders, he did not bother to count the women who offered themselves to him. Some he took; others not. But when his choice came, it was a surprise.
“The fair-haired little girl I noticed beside you this afternoon. She is yours?”
Cartimandua nodded.
And in just a few, brief moments, she had given little Branwen away.
It was all for the best. She had told herself so a thousand times. Branwen would belong to the captain of course. Technically, she would be a slave. He could sell her or do what he liked with her. But the fate of such a girl might not be bad. She would be at the court of the great Cassivelaunus; if the captain liked her he might free her; she might even make a good marriage. Such things happened. Better than waiting around this village where everything was so dull, Cartimandua reasoned. If the girl could learn to control her temper, it could be a fine opportunity.
And in return, her husband would not fight the fearsome Romans, but come with her to safety up the river.
“You will all go upriver,” the captain had told her bluntly. “You will deliver the girl to me at the summer’s end.” Meanwhile, all she had to do was to hide the bargain from her husband. For though she knew he would never agree, once it was done, it would be too late. An oath was an oath in the Celtic world.
No wonder, therefore, that from the day when the wolf nearly killed her, Cartimandua kept the girl always at her side.
Still no news was heard of Julius Caesar.
“Perhaps,” Segovax’s father cheerfully remarked, “he will not come.”
For Segovax, these summer days were happy. Though his mother continued in her strange, dark mood and kept poor Branwen always at her side, his father seemed to delight in spending time with him. He had mounted one of the wolf’s pads for the boy, and Segovax wore it round his neck like a charm. Every day, it appeared, his father was anxious to teach him some new skill of hunting, or carving, or guessing the weather. And then, at midsummer, to his surprise and delight his father suddenly announced: “Tomorrow I shall take you to the sea.”
There were several kinds of boats in use upon the river. Normally his father used a simple dugout hollowed from an oak trunk for setting his nets along the bank or crossing the river from time to time. There were rafts, too, of course. The boys of the hamlet had made their own the previous summer, mooring it out in the stream and using it as a platform from which to jump and dive into the river’s sparkling waters. There were also little coracles, and occasionally Segovax had seen traders from upriver come by rowing long boats with high,