“An old woman who used to be my sister’s nurse and mine sent me the news of her death,” Valerius went on, “and I found out by asking some questions about the trouble her husband’s in. I’ve seen him only a time or two, but he had a foster brother who’s with the auxiliaries who told me that Hadron is one of the Ravens and has been proscribed. The thing is, she left a small daughter, and I don’t know what’s become of the child. Didn’t you know a couple of the Ravens?”
“I knew some of them, yes,” said Gaius, thinking of Cynric. Considering the conditions of Cynric’s birth, he did not wonder that he had joined a secret society dedicated to revenge. In similar circumstances, he thought, he might have felt much the same.
“Somehow or other I must find my sister’s child. Hadron’s foster brother is one of the auxiliaries, as I said, and he has no wife to whom he could consign a female child, which leaves me the girl’s nearest relative. Can you think of me as the guardian of a little girl?
I have not seen the child since she was in swaddling clothes; I suppose she must be eight or thereabouts.”
“First you have to find her . . .” said Gaius slowly. Cynric might know where Hadron had gone with his child. And in the process Cynric, who knew what it was to be separated from his beloved, might be able to help him see Eilan.
“Can you really help me?” Valerius slowed. They were almost at the Prefect’s offices now, and the secretary was well aware of Macellius’s disapproval of any contact between his son and his mother’s people.
“Perhaps . . .” Gaius said cautiously. “I might know someone who could inquire for you.”
He had heard that Cynric had been summoned south to ride with the legionaries who had been despatched to punish the raiders who had burned the house of Bendeigid. It had amazed him at the time, but revenge made strange bedfellows. The word was that Cynric was now working with the auxiliaries as a guide and interpreter, Gaius wondered if he had changed his mind or if he still belonged to the Ravens.
If he tried to contact Cynric through army channels, his father would hear, but he was bound to see the young Briton sooner or later, hanging around the taverns that served the fortress.
“May Bona Dea bless you!” Valerius reached out to clasp Gaius’s hand. Then the door opened, and both men stiffened to military attention.
Only a few days later Gaius, making his way through Deva’s crowded marketplace, saw Cynric standing head and shoulders above the crowd. His curls had darkened somewhat, and his face now bore the beginnings of a beard. Gaius shouted, saw Cynric frown, decide this young officer was no one he knew, and prepare to move on.
Gaius swore and thrust through the crowd to face him. “Wait, man – don’t you know me?” He stopped, tensing as the blue gaze descended and darkened. Surely the lad wouldn’t hold his own deception against him now, when he too was serving Rome! “I think I still owe you a drink for hauling me out of that boar pit,” he said companionably. “There’s a wine shop here; let’s try its wares.”
Gaius drew a breath of relief as Cynric’s frown changed to a rueful grin. “I remember you now,” he said, adding, “but I don’t suppose your name is Gawen. What do I call you, Tribune?”
“As a matter of fact,” Gaius said, “my mother named me Gawen and called me so until the day she died. I told you the truth as far as I dared. But in the Roman town I bear my father’s name: Gaius Macellius Severus. My mother was a woman of the Silures; I bear the cognomen Siluricus after her.”
“If I had known this at the time I would have killed you,” admitted Cynric. “But a lot has happened since then. I’ll drink with you, Roman, or whatever you may be.”
In the dusty darkness of the wine shop, Gaius said, “I was sorry when I heard of the burning of your house; I could hardly have been more distressed if my own kin had been killed by those Hibernian bastards. I am glad that your father was not hurt, and more sorry than I can say that your mother died.”