Every Never After

  And she couldn’t even imagine how that had come about in the first place.

  “Hey,” she said, lengthening her stride a bit to catch up. “How did all this happen to you? I mean—the army thing. Not the time-travelling thing. I’ve already got a handle on that part.”

  He walked in silence for another minute or so and Allie thought he might not even deign to answer. But then he said, “When they found me I’d been here, hiding in the forest beneath the Tor, for about three weeks. Lost. Alone. I managed to convince them that I’d served with the Twentieth—the Valeria Victrix, one of the Legions stationed in the north. And that I’d been captured by the enemy, had managed to escape, and had been running ever since. I’m pretty sure Postumus didn’t entirely believe it. But he did take pity on me.”

  “That was, uh, good of him,” Allie said, panting a bit to keep up. “I guess.”

  Marcus shrugged a shoulder. “Over time, I proved myself useful. I could communicate with the locals, and so he used me as a kind of emissary in dealing with the friendlier tribes south of here, closer to our permanent camp.”

  “Right!” Allie said. “That happened to my friend Clare. Once she came into physical contact with Comorra, she found that she could understand the Iceni language—and they could understand her. It’s part of the functioning of the magic. I guess that’s what happened to you, right?”

  Marcus barely glanced at Allie and didn’t slow his pace. “No. In fact, I didn’t discover that until I’d been here for some time. The Legions aren’t known as being a particularly touchy-feely bunch and I certainly wasn’t going around pawing at the locals just so I could communicate with them.”

  So the way the magic worked had been different for him, too, Allie realized.

  “Oh. Right,” she said. “I mean … everyone could see you right off the bat, I’m guessing … like you could all see me. Maybe it’s only Clare who’s invisible when she shimmers. Because it’s her going back into the past, and not the past swallowing her whole. Like it did us.”

  For her and Mark, it was just ZOT! and they were there. Fully corporeal in that world and time. It must have been specific to Glastonbury. But it didn’t explain how Marcus could understand the Celts—or be understood by them. Allie frowned, puzzled.

  “But then how—”

  “Linguistics prodigy,” he said. “Seven years of intensive study before I … found myself here. When I was eight my parents realized that I was watching foreign-language programs on the telly and understanding them. I can pick up the basics of almost any language usually within a few hours of listening to someone speak it. Brilliant for winning scholarships, not so great for developing anything even remotely resembling a social life. Still … I suppose it’s what’s kept me alive here. That, and the praefect.”

  “Right. Because he thought you were a Roman.” Allie snorted. “I’m guessing it would have turned out a little differently if he’d thought you were just some random Celt. Like your Legion buddies seem to think I am.”

  “Some of the men have cause to be wary—even hostile—toward the tribes, you know. They’ve lost friends to the scathach. Then again … some of them are just maladjusted jerks,” he conceded with a tilt of his head. “Postumus isn’t one of those. He saved my life. He’s a good man. A decent one—even though it’s cost him.”

  “Cost him how?” Allie asked, curious.

  “He was left in charge of the Second Augusta when our legate was killed during the raids on Mona. When Suetonius Paulinus was setting out to exterminate Boudicca, he ordered Postumus to send the Second to help him rout the Iceni. Postumus basically told him to go to hell. He thought it was the wrong way to deal with the uprising. Said it would end badly … and it did.”

  “Boy, did it ever.” Allie thought about the hundreds of thousands of lives lost.

  Marcus nodded. “Mostly for the Iceni, but still. It’ll prove to be career suicide for Postumus, though, once Governor Paulinus gets around to dealing with him.”

  “Suicide …” Allie murmured, frowning at a niggling memory. “Wait. The name Postumus …” It was familiar. “Oh! I remember that guy. I read about him. And it wasn’t just career suicide— he actually killed himself!” She blurted out the words before she could stop herself.

  “What?” Marcus rounded on her. “No … it can’t be. You’re wrong!”

  “Um …” Allie felt immediately terrible for having said so. She had the distinct feeling that, whoever this Postumus guy was, he’d been more than a commander to the young, lost linguist trapped in the past and utterly alone. He’d been a mentor. A father figure. A friend. “Um. M-maybe. I mean … That’s just what I read, at least.”

  Marcus had turned positively ashen. “Read where?”

  At the gutted expression on his face, sympathy twinged in Allie’s chest. But then she also remembered that they were talking about a commander in the Roman army here. The same Roman army that had been cheerfully responsible for the death of Queen Boudicca. And her husband and her offspring and most of her people. And they’d almost (accidentally, but still) killed her best friend.

  So this Quintus Postumus guy decided not to join in the fun. So what? Big deal, Allie thought.

  It didn’t mean he was any better than a guy like Suetonius Paulinus. In fact, from what she’d read, it just made him a coward. Why should she feel sorry for him? Or for Marcus Donatus, who so far hadn’t directed very much sympathy her way?

  “Where did you read such a thing?” he demanded again.

  “Um. Tacitus the historian. Actually, Tacitus via Wikipedia, but since you won’t have the faintest idea what that is, let’s just leave it at Tacitus.” She frowned again. “Wait. You’re a Latin super-geek and you don’t know your Tacitus? I thought you’d have read his stuff for fun.”

  “Actually I read Pliny the Elder for fun,” he murmured. “I read Tacitus when I was nine and he bored me. I don’t remember him mentioning the praefect. I … I can’t believe Postumus would have done such a thing. Why?”

  “Tacitus said it was because, once he saw what a success the Boudicca smackdown was for the Legions, Postumus couldn’t live with the shame of having denied his troops all that glory. So he offed himself. Real noble.”

  “It’s not true!” Marcus exclaimed. “He doesn’t think that way. He thinks the whole mess was a tragedy. A bloody, unnecessary slaughter. Postumus thinks Suetonius Paulinus is a monster. And I agree with him. We all do!”

  “Junius doesn’t.”

  “Most of us agree with him.” Marcus squeezed his eyes shut. “Men like Junius … they think with their swords. Like I said: maladjusted jerks. They’re little better than mercenaries. Governor Paulinus lauds them but Postumus has weeded most of that brand of soldier from the Secunda. He believes in the Legions as a force of peace and progress. That’s why I just don’t believe what you’re telling me.”

  “All I know is that’s what I’ve read.” Allie crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Do you believe everything you read?”

  “Ye— Um. No. Of course not.”

  “The man you’re talking about is not the man I know.” Marcus shook his head. “He saved my life … and then he taught me how to survive on my own. I used to conjugate verbs for fun.” He laughed a little. Ruefully. “Look at me now.”

  She was. Looking at him. She did that a lot, it seemed.

  He turned to her and the habitual hardness of his expression softened. “Allie … I know what you think of this situation. I know what you’ve read. But look around you.”

  That meant looking away from Marcus. As infuriating as he was, as conflicted as her feelings about him were, she wasn’t sure she wanted to do that. Or, really, that she was entirely capable. But okay …

  “Go on,” he urged.

  She dragged her gaze away from his face and looked out over the rolling landscape. In the distance, sunlight reflected off the multitude of lakes that dotted the marshy moors, lying still and serene like pools of spill
ed ink. To the north were the rolling purple contours of the Mendip Hills. The view was breathtaking on all sides. And this was the first she’d stopped to notice it—at Marcus’s insistence.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” Allie asked quietly.

  “The future,” Marcus said. “Right now this land is a wilderness. Beautiful, yes, but treacherous. Untamed. One day there’ll be vineyards here. Villas. Peacocks. Peace …”

  “Sure. But at what cost?”

  Marcus sighed gustily. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

  She was trying to. She really was … “No. I guess I don’t.”

  He mustered up his stern face again. It was remarkably effective in shutting down conversation. Without another word, he turned and started walking.

  Soon they were approaching the main gates of the camp, Marcus’s stoic demeanour firmly in place for all his stoic Roman soldier buddies to see. So stoic was he, in fact, so purposeful and unhesitating as he marched her through the gates back toward the centre of the camp, that not one of the other soldiers questioned what Legionnaire Donatus had been doing taking his captive little Druidess out onto the moors.

  When Junius found them, he told Marcus that Postumus was waiting for him—not in his own tent where Allie had been chained to the post, but in the camp legate’s quarters. Those were, after all, his now. What with the legate being dead and all, and Praefect Quintus Phoenius Postumus, Interim Commander of the Legio Secunda Augusta, freshly revived from his long deathlike sleep. Marcus seemed pleased. Junius, on the other hand, seemed to think the praefect was taking on airs with the accommodations upgrade. But then Junius, apparently, had very little respect for authority. Particularly Postumus’s authority.

  Marcus and Allie ducked their heads and entered the spacious but dimly lit confines of the tent. The praefect was slumped wearily at his desk, dressed in a voluminous toga, a fold of which he’d draped over his head and around his neck and shoulders like a hooded cloak. A single oil lamp burned on the desk, casting deep shadows.

  He glanced up as Marcus saluted sharply enough to make his gear rattle.

  “So this is Junius’s little Druidess,” Postumus said in a gruff voice.

  Allie did her best to play dumb and pretend she didn’t understand a thing he said. She couldn’t make out the man’s features under his hood and in the gloom, but as his gaze took in her bedraggled appearance she saw his eyes glitter in the lamp flame. Then he turned to Marcus, who—Allie was surprised to see—had taken up an almost protective stance beside and just slightly in front of her.

  A hint of a smile might have tugged at one corner of the praefect’s mouth. “Or … is she yours?”

  “We’re not exactly sure what she is, sir,” Marcus said.

  The older man nodded contemplatively. “Junius tells me she appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a fight with the scathach.”

  “That’s what he says, sir. I didn’t see that.” Marcus’s voice was neutral, stripped of emotion. A simple reporting of the facts. “All I saw was the girl running from the berserkers—who I suspect would have killed her if they could have. They didn’t seem to think she was one of them. To that end, I deemed it prudent to remove her from harm’s way.”

  “A Druid trick?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, sir. Better, no doubt.”

  The praefect turned to Allie, the glittering gaze narrowing as he contemplated her. “She doesn’t look like much of a threat. And not much of a power, either. But she might be the only hope we have,” he muttered darkly. “The only hope I have …”

  Allie saw Marcus frown in confusion as his commanding officer glanced at the open tent flap. The praefect got up and released the tieback, letting the flap fall closed and shutting out the bustle of the camp outside. Then he stood before Allie and threw back the fold of the toga, exposing his face. The blood froze in Allie’s veins as she looked up into the eyes of Professor Nicholas Ashbourne.

  What. The. Hell …

  Astonished, she stared at a much younger, non-moustachioed version of the slightly pompous archaeologist. In her mind’s eye, she tried to overlay a pith helmet and a grey walrus moustache and goofy grin, but it was almost impossible to reconcile that genial professor with this stern, world-weary commander of men. She blinked and lowered her gaze, hoping that her confusion registered on her face as fear. Around the praefect’s neck was a bright crimson scarf—the only splash of colour in the tent—and she watched as he raised a hand and untied its knot.

  Then he pulled the scarf away. “Tell me,” he said. “What is this?”

  Allie heard herself gasp and she took an involuntary step back.

  Gleaming in the lamplight, the Great Snettisham Torc sat circling the praefect’s neck. The golden symbol of Celtic tribal rule rested there as if he were the king of the Iceni. Just as it had once sat around Boudicca’s neck.

  Right before she’d cursed it with her own blood. And Clare’s …

  “She recognizes this,” Postumus said to Marcus. “It means something to her, I can tell.”

  “Sir …” Marcus was staring at the torc. Clearly it wasn’t one of his praefect’s usual accessories. “What is that?”

  “The physician tells me that it was around my neck when the men found me after my capture. He discovered it when he attended me here in the camp and removed my cloak and kerchief.” Postumus’s eye never left Allie’s face as he spoke. “For my part, I do not know how it got there. All I remember from my time in captivity is a woman, fierce and angry, cloaked in feathers, chanting in front of a fire. Telling me—and her Celt accent was so thick I could barely understand her Latin—telling me that my men would die here on this hill. That our blood would soak the soil and change the world. And that it would be my fault.”

  “Sir—”

  “Ask her,” he snapped, cutting Marcus short. “Ask her why it is around my neck! Tell me this, little Druidess—is this thing the engine of the curse that plagues my men? Is that why I can’t take it off? Is that why we cannot leave this place?”

  Marcus turned to Allie and repeated the question in English, keeping up the pretense that he was translating into her Celtic tongue.

  It was just as well he did. Allie was almost too dazed to follow what the praefect had said. Dazed and terrified. She’d seen what wearing that particular torc had done to Dr. Jenkins. But nothing in the tent was on fire yet and the praefect didn’t seem demonically possessed—at least, not in the way Dr. Jenkins had been. Maybe there was still time. So to speak.

  “You should really tell him to take that off,” Allie said in a panicshaky voice to Marcus.

  “He just told you he can’t.”

  “Tell him to try again. Now!”

  Marcus relayed the sentiment to Postumus, who said simply, “I cannot.”

  To illustrate the point, he tugged on the ends of the torc. Allie saw that he wasn’t kidding. Postumus strained against the metal, his muscles bulging, the tendons in his neck standing out like taut ropes. The thing might as well have been made of adamantium— the super-strong metal that made up the Wolverine’s claws in the X-Men comic books—for all it budged. What should have been soft, malleable gold didn’t give so much as an inch.

  “As you see …”

  The torc dropped back down onto his collarbone and he let go of the ends. The two men stared at her expectantly, waiting for some kind of answer she didn’t have. She had to stall. She had to figure out how in the world the Snettisham Torc had found its nefarious way out of Stuart Morholt’s grubby paws and onto the neck of Quintus Phoenius Postumus … and how and why Postumus and Nicholas Ashbourne were the same person. She was pretty damn sure that—yeah—he was cursed somehow. But she didn’t know how, exactly, and anything she said then would probably just dig her a deeper hole than the one she was already in. There was something going on here that she didn’t quite understand. Not yet. But she had an idea of how she’d find out. Unfortunately, that meant … horror of horrors … she’d
have to talk to Stuart Morholt again.

  “I don’t have any answers for you,” she said to the praefect, listening while Marcus translated. He spoke haltingly, as if he didn’t believe her. She couldn’t help that. “I’d like to go back with the other prisoners now,” she added, and watched as the praefect contemplated her response.

  “No,” he said eventually. “If that is what she wants, then we will keep her apart from them for the time being. You may be right, Marcus. She may have no connection with the others whatsoever. She is … different. But until we know who—and what—she is, I do not want her conspiring. Keep her where she was. In my old quarters. See that she is taken care of. And bring her to me again if she decides she has anything useful to tell us.”

  “Aye, sir,” Marcus said and led Allie from the tent.

  She could feel his cold disapproval coming in waves as he walked her back. “I don’t know what you wanted me to say,” she muttered as she walked. “I’m not a Druid. I don’t know how to remove the torc.”

  “Perhaps. But you know more about all this than you’re saying.”

  Allie stubbornly kept her mouth shut. Knowledge was power, and anything she knew might become the only bargaining chip she had. But she didn’t trust Marcus enough to tell him that.

  He glanced at her and shook his head. “He was kind to you. He could have had you whipped.”

  “Oh, well. How disappointing. No whipping!” She glared at him mutinously, not wanting to believe he’d let such a thing happen. “Because, you know, I’m all about the whipping. Yup, Allie McAllister, masochist at large. Must be why I get such a grand old kick out of hanging around you!”

  Marcus blinked at her.

  “What? What d’you expect from me?” she shouted. “You might be having the time of your life here, but I have a life there. Then. And all I want is to get back to it. I understand if you don’t get that. From the sound of things, maybe there’s a reason no one ever tried to bring you home!”

  He drew back slowly, not quite able to hide the raw hurt that flashed in his eyes, and Allie felt suddenly, scorchingly, like the biggest bitch in the world. She remembered the boy’s look of eager glee in Maggie’s old photograph. The awkward fashion sense, the blatant attempt to fit in. To be a part of the cool crowd. She knew what that felt like. Before Clare, Allie had had no one. How dare she throw the same thing in someone else’s face? Mark O’Donnell had found a place where he did fit in. So it happened to be as a soldier in an invading army at the beginning end of British history. What right did she have to tell him that that made him an undesirable? Especially when the experience seemed to have made him anything but. She wanted to say she was sorry. But he’d already turned away. And she just couldn’t find the words that would take back what she’d said.