Fic: Cages

[osprey_archer]

Title: Cages
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Rating: PG
Beta: carmarthen
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Prompt: hc_bingo, hunger, for the wild card square.
Warning: I'm not sure what I should be warning for, but I feel there needs to be a warning for something. Childhood suffering? Forced assimilation?
Summary: When Cottia arrives in Calleva, her Aunt Valaria means to remake her into a Roman maiden. Cottia does not approve of this plan, but she may not be able to resist.

Also over at AO3, here.



Cottia arrived at her aunt’s house in Calleva early one evening on a soft spring day, when the courtyard apple tree’s white flowers seemed to burn in the setting sun.

Cottia eyed the apple tree with disdain. It seemed terrible to her that a tree should grow up within walls, so that it could not feel the wind through its leaves; and she could not see why her mother had sent her to this place.

“It will be wonderful for you,” Cottia’s mother had said, kissing Cottia soundly on the cheek. “A wonderful opportunity; and I’m sure dear Ness will be so kind to you.”

“I’d rather stay!” Cottia said.

Her mother bent over the cooking fire, a lock of hair falling in her face. “Oh, Cottia,” she said, and for a long time nothing else. “Ness has no children of her own, and you’re so lucky she’ll take you.”

Aunt Ness was Cottia’s mother’s older sister, who had made a good marriage – everyone called it that, thought Cottia did not see how marrying a Roman could be good.

But there were worse marriages. Cottia hoped a boar would gore her mother’s hunter.

Now Aunt Ness advanced across the courtyard toward Cottia, her complicated draperies fluttering as she walked, and a silly smile on her plump, pretty face. She looked nothing like Cottia’s mother.

“My sister’s child, welcome,” she said, in Latin – and strange Latin it was, not softened with Iceni vowels.

Cottia curtsied as best she could, stiff from travel as she was. “Aunt Ness – ” she began, keeping to the Iceni.

But Aunt Ness held up a plump hand, gold bracelets clinking. “Call me Aunt Valaria, dearest. And I’ll call you Camilla: isn’t that a lovely name?”

“Aunt – Valaria,” Cottia said, wrapping her tongue around the strange name. “But Aunt Valaria, my name is Cottia, please.”

“Yes, sweet, that’s your Iceni name; but it won’t do for a Roman maiden,” said Aunt Valaria, and her voice was smooth and sweet as honey.

“But – !” cried Cottia.

“Hush, dearest. Camilla’s such a pretty name, just right for a pretty girl like you,” said Aunt Valaria. Her drifting gown swished on the courtyard stones as she came forward to take Cottia’s hands. “You’ll have such a lovely time here, sweet. You’ll wear soft silks in such lovely colors, red and orange like the sunset, and you’ll have honey cakes to eat every day, and your own slave to take care of you so you’ll need never work again. And a beautiful girl like you, you’ll marry a rich Roman magistrate, and he’ll build you a beautiful villa like this and shower you with jewels and gold. Doesn’t that sound lovely, Camilla?”

Cottia looked at the villa’s high walls and the stone-choked ground. “No!” she said.

“Soft, now,” Aunt Valaria said. “It’s hard to be Roman, but it will be worth it, in the end; for you as it was for me.”

“But my name is Cottia,” said Cottia, and stopped, because she could not find the Latin words to explain, Cottia was my father’s mother, a woman of great distinction, for she was the best of midwives, and once saved the chieftain’s prize mare from a breech birth.

But perhaps Aunt Valaria knew the story - she had once been of the Iceni - for she said, “Camilla was the name of a great warrior, did you know?”

At that, Cottia wavered. A warrior’s name might be a worthy thing. “Did Camilla kill lots of Romans?”

“No, dear, she was fighting the Trojans,” Aunt Valaria said.

That was much less interesting. Cottia’s mouth twisted up.

Aunt Valaria said, as if she had not heard, “Come along, Camilla. You must be hungry from the journey, and suppertime is come.” She made to sweep into the atrium, but stopped when Cottia remained rooted as a tree. “Camilla,” she said. “Come; we eat inside, you know, as the Romans do.”

Cottia boiled. As if she did not know such a simple thing as that! “My name is Cottia,” she said, and her voice trembled slightly.

They looked at each other. “We have boar, Camilla dear,” said Aunt Valaria, her voice even gentler than before. “My dear sister told me you like boar. She so wants you to be happy here, you know: to be a good obedient girl and be happy.”

Cottia curled her arms around herself and clenched her jaw tight against the shame of tears.

“And you must be so hungry,” said Aunt Valaria, gently, gently.

Cottia swallowed. She shook her head.

“No?” said Aunt Valaria. “Well, so you are tired, then. Nissa will show you to your room. We’ll have breakfast in the morning, Camilla sweet.”

And Cottia felt that if she let herself be sent away as Camilla, she would leave her name in the courtyard and never get it back. “Cottia,” she said. “My name is Cottia. And it will be Cottia at breakfast too.”

“But dearest, only Camilla can eat at my table,” Aunt Valaria said, and there was a hardness beneath her soft voice.

“Where will Cottia eat, then?” Cottia asked, trying to keep her voice steady. Aunt Valaria could not send her to eat with the servants, surely – not her own niece!

“Ah,” said Aunt Valaria. “I’m sure Camilla will be happy to have breakfast in the morning.” She clapped her hands, and a woman stepped forward: a slave, from her clipped ear. “Nissa. Show Camilla to her sleeping cell.”

***

A true cell it was for Cottia, although the door bore no bar. Nissa sat across the threshold, and she might have been a hundred locks for all Cottia could get out. She talked and talked and talked, like a chattering magpie who spoke Latin, and in her voice the sounds of Latin began to seem less strange.

Cottia had gone to bed hungry before, in lean years, so the first night was not so bad. And neither was the first day, although she had a bad moment when Aunt Valaria swept into the room for breakfast, followed by a slave girl brought a plate of fresh soft bread, still warm, and fragrant as a spring dawn.

“Please eat, Camilla sweet,” Aunt Valaria said.

“Cottia!” said Cottia, and knocked the dish from the slave girl’s hands. It shattered on the tiling. There were no more plates that day, and the great emptiness inside Cottia seemed to fade, so she only felt very tired; and so she fell asleep.

***

On the second day, Cottia lay on her bed and tried to let her mind free of the gnawing cavern of her stomach. She thought herself to the berry bramble near the brook where she and her mother went picking, or the oak tree just beyond the bothy where her father had shown her the stars, and kept her eyes closed against the cold stone cell.

So it was that she did not see Aunt Valaria enter the room; but she smelled the pottage Aunt Valaria brought, good pease pottage rich with boar: a great luxury. She swallowed and swallowed again, and hated herself for her hunger, and opened her eyes to see Aunt Valaria sitting by the bed.

“Camilla, dearest, please eat,” Aunt Valaria said, and poised a spoon of pottage above Cottia’s mouth, like a sparrow planning to feed a baby bird.

Cottia almost opened her mouth to correct her, but saw the dangerous twitch of Aunt Valaria’s hand and raised her arms to cover her face just in time. Aunt Valaria would feed her if Cottia opened her mouth, and then it would all be over: then Cottia would be Camilla and everything would be lost.

A drop of broth fell from the spoon onto Cottia’s cheek. The rich smell seemed to grow, filling her nose, seeping down her throat, swirling in her stomach till she felt almost sick.

She made to roll over, but Aunt Valaria grabbed Cottia’s elbow and would not let her move. Aunt Valaria gripped like a terrier, and Cottia thought with panic that Aunt Valaria meant to force the spoon between her lips.

But she did not, only sat there with that terrible, wonderful scent of food, and held the spoon close to Cottia’s nose, and murmured, “Camilla, Camilla, only take a bite, and then you can have honey cakes; and I have for the softest silk gowns to wear, and Nissa knows how to do beautiful things with your hair. And you can leave this room then, Cottia, and feel the sun on your skin, and …”

Cottia must have startled at that, for Aunt Valaria stroked her arm, and continued, “Think of the breeze on your face, Camilla, and the soft clover beneath your feet, and robins singing about you. All things will be yours again, if you will only eat, Camilla.”

And it seemed to Cottia, peeking out between her arms, that the walls of the room seemed to sink down toward her, so that she was in a tiny box, a Roman stone sepulcher, so strong and hard that even her spirit would be trapped forever in its rigid lines.

She sucked her lips into her mouth and bit on them, hard. Aunt Valaria talked on and on, soothing as a brook, till Cottia’s mind threw up a strange picture of sun dappled on Aunt Valaria’s voice, and a fawn trying to drink of the sound; and Cottia did not eat.

Aunt Valaria left when the guests arrived for dinner. Cottia lowered her arms, and was alarmed at first to see the dark; then realized, that the darkness was only night.

“My mother will summon me,” she told Nissa. “And then I will leave, and never be caged anywhere again.”

“Oh, Ladybird,” said Nissa, with a sigh.

***

On the third day, Cottia’s stomach squeezed in on itself. She felt faint and sick. She marched up and down the room, and sang, old battle charges from Boudicca’s time – and charged Nissa, but could not break the line to win free of the sleeping cell.

“Please, Ladybird,” said Nissa, tears standing in her eyes. “Please, please, just eat. It is not so bad changing your name; it has happened to me twice.”

“You’re a slave,” replied Cottia, and sat down again on the bed to get her breath back for another song.

Finally Aunt Valaria came again, her thin draperies swishing at her ankles.

“No more of that,” she said.

Cottia only looked at her. She was already captive: what else could Aunt Valaria do?

Aunt Valaria took both of Cottia’s hands in her own, gently, but tight enough that Cottia could not escape. “Listen to me, Camilla,” she said, her voice serious and kind. “I am trying to make for you the best future I can, and that future must be Roman, because there is no place for you now among the Iceni. So you must become a good Roman girl, so that you can have all the sweets of the earth and marry a rich Roman man.”

With each word the world seemed to tighten around Cottia, as if she were a kitten in a sack. “I would rather kill myself!” Cottia cried.

“Behold! The bravery of the Iceni!” said Aunt Valaria, and her sweetness suddenly gave way to sarcasm. “The courage of Rome conquered her a great empire; what result the courage of the Iceni? We lost our lands and our cattle and half of our men, and had to marry among the Roman kind, and are nothing anymore to anyone, all because our bravery – ” she bit the word off with scorn – “drove us to fight a war to our own destruction.”

“Romans kill themselves too,” Cottia said, and dredged her mind for the Roman stories she knew. Stories were stories; she had never thought to hate them for being Roman until now. “Cleopatra when she lost her empire, and – and Lucretia when Tarquin took her virtue, and – ”

“Camilla sweet,” said Aunt Valaria, “You know nothing of losing virtue or an empire, or suffering anything.”

“I do know suffering!” Cottia said. “My father died, and - and my mother sent me away, and I - ”

Aunt Valaria’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh Camilla,” she said, and made to hug Cottia. But Cottia slapped her hands away, because if Aunt Valaria touched her, she would cry.

“And now you are taking my name from me!” she cried.

That was the only time that Aunt Valaria slapped her. And she did not return with any more food after that.

***

Two nights after that, Cottia woke with something in her stomach clawing at her insides, so fierce she thought she would die. She lay a long while, breathing, then slowly, slowly levered herself to sit.

Nissa lay across the threshold, asleep.

Cottia had tried before to escape her prison in the night, and before Nissa always woke. But this time Cottia’s feet seemed light as a fawn’s on the floor, and she leaped over Nissa as easily as a fawn hopping a stream.

She felt, indeed, almost weightless, and looked back at her bed in a sudden fear that she might have left her body behind. But no, the bed was empty, and when she dug her nails into her arm, it hurt.

She did not know where the kitchen was.

Ah, well; she would find it, as a horse finds water in the waste. The stone courtyard was cool on her bare feet. The apple blossoms glowed ghost-white in the moon, the branches beginning to show like a black skeleton through the thinning flowers. The sweet-rotten scent of the fallen blossoms swam in Cottia’s stomach, and she felt dizzy and sick and hurried on.

And then she caught the scent – or rather, the scent caught her; and she felt the fierce joy of a baying hound, giving tongue as it chased a boar. The rich smell of meat cooked in wine pulled her across the courtyard and along the colonnade, faster and faster, until she stood just beyond the flickering light of the oil lamps that lit the strange Roman dining room.

In the room, Aunt Valaria laughed softly. Her arm cast a strange long shadow on the wall as she reached for a plate, and the shadow of the honey cake seemed to grow monstrous on the wall as she took it back to her lips. Cottia smelled the thick musky sweetness of buckwheat honey, and swayed on her feet as she stood.

She ought to have moved on to find the kitchen. But the smell of food held her fast as fetters. She felt she would die if she could not eat, and knew, in that moment, that for all her brave words she would not die to remain free, like a true maiden of the Iceni.

Aunt Valaria’s heavy gold bracelets clinked. Cottia began to weep: silently at first, but though she tried to dam it with her hands, soon sobs howled through her like a sudden spring flood breaking the banks of a narrow stream.

And then Aunt Valaria was at her side. “Come, Camilla sweet,” said Aunt Valaria. She draped a plump arm around Cottia’s shaking shoulders and squeezed gently. “Come you, Camilla, and eat.”

Cottia, still shuddering with sobs, let herself be led to table. Aunt Valaria placed before her a plate of honey cakes, and the ravening beast in Cottia’s stomach seemed to seize her hands and snatch up the cakes. Cottia cried till the honey cakes tasted of salt; but still, she ate them all.

***

She threw the honey cakes up later that night.

The next morning, she ate the bread Aunt Valaria brought her, and let Aunt Valaria lead her to the garden to sit in the sun, and admired the flowers that Aunt Valaria bade Nissa pick. And as the days passed, she did not protest when Aunt Valaria dressed her in thin Roman gowns, and taught her to eat leaning on an elbow, and called her “Camilla dear.”

At night, she reminded herself over and over again that her name was Cottia. But sometimes in the daylight she slipped and called herself Camilla, even in her mind. And then it was a great comfort to Cottia that, though she had slipped and eaten them, the honey cakes had not stayed down; and so she might, someday, expel Camilla too.

Comments

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

HA IT'S LIKE WE'RE BRAINTWINS. *eyes WIP about every woman Cottia interacts with*