That night by the fire, however, a spirit of festivity seemed to come over her. The sword was set out carefully on the floor of the cave between them, where they could both see and admire it. She produced from somewhere a tiny flask and offered it to Lance, her face creasing up like a horseshoe bat’s with merriment. Lance drank and obligingly choked, and she burst into cackles and finished off the potion herself without turning a hair. All she would say about his find was that he should keep it—consider it his own, until time and event told him otherwise. His other questions she deflected with a vacant, senile smile Lance knew by now was entirely feigned.
She did, however, at last tell him her name. It was late, the fire dying, the boy almost asleep on the cloak she’d laid out for him.Viviana, she whispered, and the word fell like rain into his mind, like a cool round stone into a well. Then, when his eyelids were flickering:Viviana. The word-shapes change. The stream divides, but not the source. Viviana. Viviana.
She watched over him that night. He was almost restored to himself, and she could not push on events any further. It no longer lay in the power of Viviana and her kind to awaken or summon the land’s buried dragon. That task now lay in hands that held swords, and all she could do was try to ensure that those hands were the right ones.
In the ancient darkness left behind when the flaring Roman lights had gone—in the new darkness cast by the shadow of Christ—she and her sisters had reached out for one another, and had done what they could. When she threw her knucklebone dice across the floor of the cave, or sang to the fire until its flames turned blue and danced for her, she thought they had succeeded.
She thought all would be well. She was sorry she’d told him about his father, but perhaps he’d disbelieved her, or forgotten her words in the thrill of discovery: he was sleeping with one hand on the hilt of the sword. He knew the use of one already, thank heaven—she was much too old now for that kind of teaching—and a king was coming, a warrior with dragon blood in his veins.
Then, like all the mothers who had come before her, she knew that she mustn’t sit and watch over what she’d sown. In the grey dawn, while he was still curled in his dreams, she got up silently and stretched, relieved at the prospect of her own rest. She thought about the hare, and the freedom of that wild running, but she was done with it for now, and the boy had behaved so well by her that she didn’t need it. Didn’t need anything further from this world, and so she bent over the sleeping boy, allowing herself one regretful caress of his hair.
On her way out of the cave she paused, and wiped off with her thumb one of the few remaining traces of the painted, dancing beasts. The wall was empty now, a rainwashed blank. Then Viviana returned to the lough.
Chapter Five
Lance traced the old woman’s footprints to the water’s edge, and stood there calling her name. Fear stirred in his stomach. Anyone less likely to drown herself he couldn’t imagine, but maybe she’d come to harm by accident. He waded a little way out and searched the reedy shallows. No sign. He waited, thigh-deep in water, beginning to shiver. Then he stripped off his tunic, breeches and boots, threw them to the shore and dived in.
Nothing. She was gone. The moors felt empty, emptier by far than before he’d met her. Loss went through him, keen as a knife. His bare two nights with her had felt in some way like time with his mother, redeemed from the jaws of death. She’d taken him in, and he in his turn had saved her.
He staggered out of the water, gasping for breath. He picked his clothes out of the reeds and put them on, becoming aware of the changes in the world around him. Last night he’d have frozen to death in the water. The night before, he’d have had to crack its surface to get in. He was cold now, but only as he would have been on any spring morning, coming up here with brothers and sisters to bathe.
He had to go. He’d promised Tomas he’d bring food to the survivors in the praetor’s house. The deer would have thawed by now, and he was strong again and could carry it easily. Perhaps the old woman had set off before him and he’d find her alive and well down there, outraging the priest with her herbs and incantations.
Lance ran back to the cave. He had no scabbard for the sword and so pushed it through the slack in his belt. The weapon bumped awkwardly against his thigh as he began to retrace his route through the marsh. He could see the deer in the distance, sprawled where he’d left it. The flesh would still be good, and every scrap would be gratefully consumed, but foolish sorrow filled him at the sight of the carcase. Nothing should be dead on such a morning as this, not a beast or an old woman, not Elena, not brothers and sisters or...
The deer leapt upright. Pale by moonlight, here in the sudden sun the creature shone out brighter than hawthorn. A white hart! Lance stared in astonishment. No beast more magical roamed the loughs and moors. In Elena’s stories, its appearance meant sovereignty, sacrifice, nobility. Lance’s regrets about supper vanished. He watched, immobile, while the hart shook itself and trotted off, head high, towards the ridge.
On instinct Lance followed, not in the spirit of a hunter now but as a worshipper. How his mother and sisters would have exclaimed at such rare news! His father would have called together the men of the village and forbidden them to harm the beast.
For the first time since the raid, Lance felt no backwash of grief at these unstoppablewould-havethoughts. Even his new disbelief and rage about Ban faded off into the distance. Maybe the old woman really had cured him of his sorrows with her throat-stripping watercress soup. Elena’s myths of the white hart might be prophecies, joy returning to Vindolanda with the spring.
He stumbled up the last few steps of the crag. The Wall was falling into disrepair here, and it didn’t take him long to reach its crest. He halted, one hand poised on the hilt of the sword.
The white hart had vanished. Instead, making their way boldly along the valley road to Vindolanda, a dozen men were riding.
Saxons!The thought flashed like lightning through Lance’s mind. His only evidence was the colour of their hair, shining gold and red in the sun. Danes, perhaps... It didn’t matter. Saxons and Vikings seizing land here, Goths and Vandals descending on Rome in such brutal hordes that the army had abandoned towns like Vindolanda and left them to burn... Every loss Lance had endured was the fault of raiders like these, a small-scale invasion he would stop with his own hands right now.
With his own sword. He unhitched the weapon and it seemed to leap to his grasp, no longer a burden but a living extension of himself and his rage. Yes, he would stop them, if his own blood had to be the price.
The riders came to a halt on the road. Had they seen him? Lance almost hoped so. He felt ten foot tall, a vengeful giant on the dragon’s spine. But as he watched, one of the men pointed in the direction of the V-shaped notch in the ridge to the east, to the place where the burn poured through.
The turret, magical gateway guarding the moor. Lady Viviana’s moor, Lance’s sole refuge… Fury swept like a blizzard through his mind, whiting out all thought, all sense of self-preservation, all sanity. He dropped back down the north side of the Wall, landed lightly as a cat, and began to run.
***
It was Bear who had spotted the water. His guardian, a straight-spined old soldier of Roman descent named Ectorius, nodded in approval. The boy must learn to be aware of the needs of horses and troops, and become adept in meeting them. Their journey had been long, and the animals were thirsty. Ectorius nodded, giving permission for him to lead off toward the glittering burn.
They had almost reached the ruined turret when Bear reined in his horse and stood listening. Ectorius exchanged a glance with his own son, Gaius. Neither of them could hear anything but skylarks, and the long-billed water birds called curlew which sang so joyously up on these moors when the sun came out.
It was shining brilliantly now. The locals all the way from Pons Aelius in the east had complained of an endless winter, and although Ectorius had seen signs of it—barely the beginnings of growth in the fields, the people thin and weary, lambs few—all around them, this spring day was perfect. The good weather seemed to be following them. Gaius, a big, raw-boned lad, with a face as kind and ugly as his father’s own, had teased Bear that the sun had started to shine from his regal backside, and the boy had begun to take such nonsense good-naturedly, instead of trying to engage his foster brother in mortal combat every time they quarrelled. Now, as often, Bear had seen or heard something imperceptible to other senses, and Ectorius had learned to take him seriously. “What is it?” he softly asked.
“I’m not sure. Someone coming, I think. But he moves like a cat, or the wind.”
Ectorius drew his sword. He motioned to the armed grooms travelling with them to take up defensive positions. Their journey had been safe so far, but up here in the borders, so the tales said, little Pictish hunters could emerge from the very hills to seek their prey. Their reputation was uncanny. Blue ghosts who sailed in on the wind and snatched up lambs and babies from cradles… It was nonsense, of course, Celtic twilight, but nevertheless he made ready.
Yes. He could hear it now, too. Light, running footsteps. Bear had trotted his horse forward to meet the sound, almost into the shadow of the turret’s arch. Ectorius didn’t think there was much to worry about, and he knew that from now on he had to let the boy fight his own battles. Reining back his horse, gesturing to the others to do the same, he kept a discreet watch.
It was just a lad, and a skinny one at that. But he leapt with such force from the reeds behind the arch that Bear did not stand a chance: in an instant he was dragged from his mount and down into the stream. His thin, dirty assailant crashed into the water with him. “Saxon!” the newcomer bellowed, shoving Bear under the surface, sending rainbows flying. “Danish pig! This land will never be yours. I defy you!”
