... for the greatness of the Roman people has carried a reverence for the empire beyond the Rhine... (Tacitus)
As evening wore on, more villagers piled into our home at Varus’ request. His slaves left and returned with amphoras of wine, baskets of bread, olives, cheese, a horrifying fish sauce, and their beloved olive oil. I hastened about the village to assemble more food and drink for our guests. To their credit, our scalcs responded admirably, especially under Jotapa’s skilled supervision. Hospitality was serious business across Germania. In a land as unforgiving and hostile as ours, welcoming people was no idle matter. All visitors were to be fed, offered drink and warm blankets, and places to sleep comfortably. The fires must be carefully controlled, never too cold nor too hot. A chief’s home, in particular, needed to excel in comfort.
The salty-sour stench of hardworking bodies mingled with that of wine and food. I was glad to have dined so lightly; far less to lose later.
Cherusci imbibed in the unwatered wine with gleeful abandon. Segestes reveled in the opportunity to show the Germani how wonderful civilization was, even while their backs ached from the extra labor required to pay Roman taxes, while their sons and daughters disappeared into slavery, while their most prized son dressed, spoke, and ate as a Roman.
The man in question sidled his way to where I stood, observing the crowd, checking for any deficiencies to meet before anyone accused the chief of the Cherusci of lackluster hospitality.
Naturally, Arminius didn’t smell like a filthy man fresh from the fields. He smelled of leather and forest, like he belonged here. I only barely made out the scented oil Romans used after a bath. I found it uncomfortably pleasant. My skin crawled.
He took a sip of ale, one of few in the expansive room who didn’t choose the wine.
“Panem et circenses.”
I hardly heard him over the general din of voices, laughter, and clattering dishes. A piper whistled a merry tune and those nearest clapped along.
“What?” I understood the words—bread and circuses—but not why he would seek me out to say random things. Why seek me out for anything? His focus on me turned quickly from odd and welcome to vexing and infuriating.
“All this,” Arminius nodded at the room, “it’s what Romans do to smooth things over. You give people good wine, food, some entertainment, suddenly they’re not so worried about their taxes, crime, and poverty.”
Despite my deepest desire to ignore him until he ceased to exist, I responded to his little verbal thrust. “And what is the entertainment here?”
My father laughed too loudly at something Varus said. A chorus of Germani joined him.
“They get to spend an evening pretending Varus is their peer, that he is a man of the people who cares about each of them personally. When legionaries and that ghoul Vala come for their taxes, these men will remember this night and think more kindly of their Roman benefactors.”
I crossed my arms and squared myself to him. “Is that how you see yourselves? As our benefactors?”
Something dark flashed behind his cool gaze. “I am Cherusci.”
“So you say.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Believe whatever you want.”
His back retreated into the crush and to my great consternation, I found myself catching him in the corner of my eye as I went about my duties. Tall even for one of us, but bedecked in a Roman tunic, he didn’t belong to either group. He dwarfed the pitifully small and wiry Varus and the relatively larger tribune and legatus. Cherusci and Chatti folk watched him openly, uncaring if he caught their curious stares.
Determined to get him out of my sight and, hopefully, remove him from my thoughts, I turned on my heel and left by the main doors. The cool night air cleansed my tired nostrils. I breathed in the trees and moisture. Even the hay and animal scents from the barn, where we kept our stock through spring and summer, soothed my frayed nerves. My dogs loped to my side, a pair of wolf half-breeds I had found starving in the woods. I slipped them each a crust of bread, and they stuck by my heels on my slow meandering toward the wooden corral where our stout, thickly furred horses munched lazily at patches of wild grass. Segestes hated how I treated the dogs. He wanted them at least half feral, ready to rip apart any who dared to trespass on our territory. I preferred them like this—loyal and infinitely biddable. When they joined me on hunts, they followed my commands with a discipline to rival any Roman legion. Donar, my biggest dog, leaned his body against my leg, so I lazily scratched his head and rubbed his ears. My quiet friends soothed me out of my worst moods. When they howled, they spoke to the gods.
Donar’s ears perked, and he turned to look behind me. Sunna’s low growl rumbled through the night. I followed the direction of their attention and saw the shape of a large man striding our direction. When I recognized him as Reimar, I ordered the dogs, “Plotz.” They both dropped instantly to their bellies.
Reimar smiled down at me with glassy eyes and wine on his breath.
His meaty hand gripped my arm. “‘Elda, there you are.” He gave my thick braid a light tug, rubbing the loose ends between his thumb and forefinger. “Are you sure you are well?”
“I’m fine.” I took a casual step back and returned my attention to the horses. “I needed fresh air, is all. Thank you for your concern.”
Reimar joined me, leaning on the fence a respectful distance away. Drink loosened his tongue and his posture. “I know you don’t want this marriage. That’s fine. I don’t want it, either.”
Too stunned to speak, I watched him in the moonlight. Our people weren’t prone to dissembling, not the way Romans were, but matters of courtship and marriage generally required at least a feigned attempt at liking each other.
“I already had a wife,” he continued. “I swore she was the only wife I’d ever take, but the Chatti will need a queen. Does this upset you?”
His age indicated that he’d already been married at least once, so I wasn’t surprised and certainly not angry about that. Part of me wanted to be upset that he wanted to marry me about as much as I wanted to marry him, but I didn’t like to consider myself a hypocrite.
“No,” I said. “Does it upset you that I’d rather not marry at all?”
He shook his head. “I know you’ll do your duty, as I will do mine. I need a queen, and a son. I’ve no need or want for a wife, you understand?”
I caught myself smiling. Reimar offered everything I wanted: a tribe of my own to manage, a little queendom Wout’s chosen bride could never usurp, children, and no expectations of love. Love was out of the question for me, a gift I wasn’t sure I could even give, not when I gave so much of myself back to my people every day, and would do so with the Chatti.
“Yes,” I said. “I understand, and I agree. I don’t want to be your wife.”
* * *
The next morning, I sat near the main fire in our dining hall, stitching a tear in one of Wout’s tunics. I listened to the quiet chatter of the scalcs as they cleaned up from the evening’s festivities. Two younger girls blushed and giggled over the attentions of the Chatti men. It brought a small smile to my lips and a twinge of grossly misplaced jealousy. They were slaves by another name and I was to be a queen, yet they had certain freedoms I lacked. I couldn’t afford dalliances with handsome strangers, nor even the friendships they shared. The sole exception happened years earlier, with my own little rebellion. One night with a Marsi warrior was all I thought it would take to deter my father’s marriage ambitions. I thought I’d wed the handsome nobody and go on about my life miles and miles from Segestes. It was not to be. Unless I got with child, it didn’t matter who I fucked. Cherusci, and most Germani, didn’t concern themselves overly much with chastity, so long as a child’s father could be identified. Not like the Romans who apparently guarded their women like sentries of cunt.
Footsteps pounded from the rear of the house. I didn’t look up from my work, but Segestes hovered over me with palpable intent.
“Arminius isn’t welcome in our home. See to it.”
For that, I paused and set my needlework aside. “I don’t see how that will be possible, given his position. Besides, I’m not sure why you hate him so much. He is exactly what you hope for all of us.”
He wanted to strike me. The desire quivered from his hair to his toes. I held his challenging stare. Let him try. He had struck all of us throughout our childhoods until we grew strong enough to fight back. It had taken longer for me to catch up with even the twins, but in my twentieth summer, when muscles thickened with hard work to fill my long limbs, when they grew fast and lethal with hunting and training, I hit him back. He had been simultaneously proud and furious, and his blows came less and less often.
Instead of slapping me, he pointed a dirty, calloused finger in my face. “You know damn well why.”
“I really don’t.”
The veins bulged in his neck, and he swept his hand out to knock everything he could reach off the table. “This is his fucking house, Thusnelda! Don’t you understand how precarious our situation is? Everything I’ve worked for, all the sacrifices, the safety I built for us, all gone with a few words from his lips.”
I wanted to roll my eyes and finish my work, but that would provoke him further. “Is he not one of their horse lords? What would he want with being chief of the Cherusci?”
The concept of strict ranks beyond chiefs eluded Germani, myself included. I understood they had awarded him citizenship and they called him an equestrian, but what that meant was beyond me.
The anger drained from his body. He ran his hand through his scraggly hair. “I’ve shielded you from too much. I can’t expect you to understand this, but hear me now, daughter: You don’t know what he really wants. We may not be able to keep him out of this house, but if I hear of you conversing with him again, I will put you out. You will no longer be my daughter. Reimar will not have you. No man worth having will take you.”
He left me alone in the hall to stew on his proclamation. He’d taken a hard line, even for him.
What did he think I had to do with Arminius reclaiming his seat?
* * *
I took to the woods again, though I should have been making my rounds in the village. At least two women were due to give birth soon, one family was refusing to take their share of the planting duties, and a few of our elders hadn’t made it out of the winter without ailments. These were problems I could, if not fix, soothe. That was my role in life, and I was damn good at it. But in the days since that dinner, I had lost focus. Tasks that had once seemed clear—did Ulfhir and her husband have sufficient swaddling clothes? Which children were responsible and quiet enough to look in on the grouchy Adelfried every day?—turned hazy, things just out of reach.
My impulse to fetch Konrada and bring her along died as quickly as it rose. The last time I was supposed to protect and guide her, my foolishness nearly got both of us raped. I’d been mentoring would-be warrior girls since I turned sixteen and never, not once, had I put one of my charges in such danger. Thoughts of what might have happened haunted my dreams and waking nightmares. I had failed, and I sensed my role as head woman of the Cherusci slipping through my fingers.
Something nebulous had shifted the day Ermin—no, Arminius—returned. Instinct said my life would now take a different course, and I was powerless to stop it.
My mother often said I was more landvættir than girl, an earthen spirit tragically confined to a house when my true home lay in the wilds. While my brothers played in the village, I wandered among the trees. The darkness, the mist, the crush of towering alders, beeches, and oaks never frightened me the way they did most children. My fingers traced the vines climbing the trunks and my skin cooled with dew brushed from buckthorn leaves. Where others saw evil spirits, I saw a multitude of life and opportunity. All manner of plants and animals thrived here. At every glance, well hidden clutches of flowers reached for the sun. After all my years, I still sighted new birds almost every time I entered these woods. A babbling brook was my music, its watery scent blending with soil, leaves, grasses, tree bark. Petrichor was my perfume of choice.
Sunna and Donar trotted along, the three of us nimble over the tangle of branches, mud, and dense understory. Moss and bark and moisture mingled in the air, their smell heightened in the rolling wet mist. One mistake I would not make again was wandering from the village without my dogs.
I snaked my hand out to a clutch of plump blackberries on my path. Each dog got one, though they never actually ate the berries. I chewed them slowly, one at a time, savoring their sweetness.
When I married Reimar, would he permit me this kind of freedom? I liked to think so, but I didn’t know him well enough to be confident. In truth, I took my situation for granted. For all Segestes’ faults, he allowed me this whenever I needed it. I never quite gathered why, though I liked to imagine that somewhere inside him was a father who loved his daughter. He let me dictate the course of my own days, as long as most of my days were spent in service to the Cherusci, which suited me fine. Many men kept their women on much tighter leads. Would Reimar be among them? He hadn’t scolded me, nor looked affronted by my interruption at dinner. He’d followed me outside and respected my need for space. Yes, I believed he wouldn’t keep me as though I were his personal dog.
A gap in the trees filtered sunlight to the forest floor. At least two hours had passed since I first set off, making me a healthy distance from our village. I should be close to another Cherusci village, but sticking to the wald meant I was unlikely to encounter anyone else.
Faint voices drifted through the trees and I cursed myself twice a fool. I must have wandered closer to the roads between our villages than I thought.
“It’s never going to happen,” a male voice said. He spoke our language, but his accent was unfamiliar. A Germani auxiliary?
“You are absolutely correct, Ermin,” a familiar voice answered. I’d recognize Arminius’s strange blending of our language and accent with the lilting notes of Latin anywhere. How strange to hear him calling another man by his own name. But then, Ermin wasn’t his name anymore.
With a hiss and a sharp hand gesture, both dogs dropped to their bellies. I followed the voices on light feet, careful to minimize the noise of my body traveling through brush. Sunna and Donar would remain just as I left them until I called, or if they heard me in distress.
“Watch how Varus works,” Arminius continued. The understory blocked my view, but I was close enough to hear the steady clopping of several horses. “He sets an impossible standard he knows damn well the people can’t meet. They’ll be harried and desperate by the time we come to collect. Then, in his magnanimity, we will graciously accept alternative payments; grain, livestock, men for the auxiliary, slaves.”
“But that’s what they’re already paying,” another voice answered.
Mail armor and saddles creaked with the rocking gait of their horses.
Arminius said, “Precisely, but the people will view it as a gift from a forgiving governor. He will soften them, convince them that Rome’s taxation is fair and just. Overnight, they won’t mind so much anymore.”
A chill shivered up my spine. He was right. It was Roman dissembling, manipulation. As our people softened tooward the Empire’s demands, so, too, would they soften toward Rome.
The trees thinned, so I ducked behind a clump of thick, thorny holly bushes. Arminius rode ahead of six auxiliary soldiers in their chainmail shirts and mismatched tunics. His size made the massive Roman war horse he rode looked like one of our stout nags.
“You all need to pay attention, study their methods, how they think. What we are about to undertake requires all of you to be observant.” Arminius pulled his horse to a halt. “Everyone go on. I’ll catch up. I think that Greek cook is trying to kill me.”
Ermin laughed and took the lead. “C’mon lads, let’s give the man some privacy to shit his brains out.”
The others followed, laughing and tossing ribald comments to Arminius as they rode away. Once out of sight, he dismounted. First, he removed his helmet and then his scarlet cloak with the methodical precision of a man not remotely ill. He strode into the tree line a few yards ahead of me, and I tracked him until he disappeared.
He’d seen me; I knew it. I gauged his distance and direction, then pushed forward on silent, well-trained feet where he entered the woods. He wouldn’t expect this. He’d make a wide berth to circle where he thought I was and sneak up from behind. I could do the same.
The wald, what Romans called forests, fell silent. No birds called, no small animals scampered, and the distinct sounds of a food-sick man never materialized. I predicted his intent correctly. More silent steps brought me closer. He did a good enough job concealing his path, but his size and armor glinting in the dappled sunlight betrayed him. I drew my sword at the precise moment he spun and drew his own. Mine remained aloft, but he immediately dropped his weapon and his shoulders sagged.
He held his hands up in supplication. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure it was you at first, then I didn’t want you screaming and calling the men back.”
“What do you want?” I kept my body angled to his, ready to flee or fight.
“What do I want?” His eyes widened in surprise. “I’m not the one lurking about in the woods, listening in on people’s conversations.”
“I was not lurking, you—” I bit back a useless insult. “I was out for a walk. I didn’t think it wise to announce my presence to seven soldiers, particularly after how the last lot treated me.”
“Fair enough.” His blue eyes softened. “You still wander the woods?”
I didn’t answer him. I stayed on my feet while he found a seat on a felled log, as casually as if we were two friends sharing a pleasant afternoon. He reached into a pouch on his belt and produced two shiny red apples, tossing me one and keeping the other for himself. I caught it reflexively, then sneered and dropped it. He frowned and hummed in disappointment.
“Do you have any idea,” he crunched into his fruit, “how many times over the years I followed you through these woods? It drove me mad. I’d beg my father to tell Segestes to make you stop and he just laughed at me.”
I turned away, unwilling to associate this man with the boy of my childhood. “Why?”
If my vague question confused him, he didn’t show it. “A man has a responsibility to his future bride, even if she is a reckless and annoying child. No matter how badly I wanted to take you by your little arm and march you back to your father for the punishment I was certain you needed, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. You looked happy out here.”
A fresh shiver danced across my skin. I never knew I’d had a silent guardian on my childhood adventures. When I glanced over my shoulder, Arminius the Roman officer stared back.
“Don’t tell anyone about this,” I snapped.
The pleasant haze of childhood memories dropped from his expression, replaced by the granite countenance of a hard man.
Arminius stood. He adjusted the leather bracers on his forearms and straightened his armor. “That you shared two minutes of friendly chatting with the most hated man in Germania Magna will remain a secret. I’ll go.”
Friendly chatting was hardly how I’d describe it. I knew his game. He wanted to soften me, the way he described Varus softening my people. He wanted me to see him as Ermin the Cherusci prince, though I didn’t know why.
“Wait.” I reached for one of those bracers to stop him. As soon as my fingers made contact, I jerked back as if scalded. “I mean it. Segestes has forbidden me from speaking to you. He says he will disown me if he finds out we’ve... socialized.”
I don’t know why I felt the need to justify myself to him. It’s not as though a traitor deserves an explanation.
“Why?” he asked with a smirk. “Afraid you won’t be able to resist tumbling into my arms after all these years?”
The gall of him. We stood too close to each other, but neither of us backed away. Ensconced in the tall trees, it was easy to believe we were the only two in the world.
I had to tilt my head to look him in the eye. “Hardly. He knows I don’t lie with animals. He thinks you will challenge him for the chieftainship. He thinks you’ve come back to reclaim your seat, and I’m not sure he’s wrong.”
He huffed a dry laugh. “I don’t want to be chief of the Cherusci.”
“Then what do you want?”
My stomach flipped within my belly when he only gazed at me. Heat radiated from him like a warm embrace. His eyes flickered to my lips, and he leaned as if to close the distance between us. Baduhenna help me, I couldn’t bring myself to back away. I didn’t want to back away. I wanted to taste the fire he offered, the only clear sensation I’d experienced since his return.
He abruptly stepped back and cleared his throat. I froze, mentally scrambling for all the reasons I should be outraged instead of bereft. Outrage was easier than reconciling the confused tumult of my racing heart and pulsing lips.
“We should go.” He spoke gruffly.
Again at a loss for words, I whistled for my dogs. They bounded through the brush with all the subtlety of a pack of wrestling bears.
Arminius turned to leave, but then stopped. “Thusnelda?”
“Yes?” There was no reason to whisper, yet I did.
A muscle in his jaw flexed, and the corners of his eyes wrinkled.
“I know what you think of me, what everyone thinks. I want you to know it’s not true. I was a hostage. This.” He gestured to his uniform. “It’s not what you think.”
He didn’t wait for me to reply. He left to rejoin his men and I returned to the village, telling myself over and over that our paths were unlikely to cross again.