osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2013-09-30 12:08 am
osprey_archer) wrote2013-09-30 12:08 am
Entry tags:
Fic: The Threefold Tie, chapter 2
Title: The Threefold Tie, chapter 2
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Pairings: ALL THE PAIRINGS. Esca/Marcus, Esca/Cottia, Marcus/Cottia.
Rating: PG
Beta: sineala & savvierthanu
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Summary: After an argument with Esca and Cottia, Marcus is left alone on the farm. Can they repair their ties?
Also on AO3: Chapter 2: Memories
All the long lonely winter Marcus had turned his memories over and over in his mind, until they were worn away with much handling. It had begun almost a year ago, soon after Cottia gave birth to their first child. She had gone to Aunt Valaria’s for the birth, and Marcus and Esca had gone to fetch her and her little girl-child back to the farm.
In the abstract, Marcus might have preferred a boy for his first child; but faced with a real baby, he was smitten from the first with his little girl. “Little Flavia,” Marcus said, stroking his finger across the back of the babe’s impossibly tiny hand.
“Guinhumara,” Cottia said.
Marcus, absorbed in the perfection of his firstborn, barely heard and did not answer. Cottia said more loudly, “We should call her Guinhumara.”
Marcus did not understand at first. He thought that she simply did not understand Roman names, that perhaps Aunt Valaria had never explained to her - or, more likely, that Cottia had not listened when she did.
“Roman girls are given the feminine form of their father’s nomen,” he explained. “So as I am Marcus Flavius Aquila, she will be Flavia Aquila.”
“She is not a Roman girl,” Cottia replied.
And to that she clung stubbornly. He had thought she would realize it was impossible - more fool him! Cottia, so stubborn that she clung to that name for all the years that Aunt Valaria called her Camilla. He had thought she would back down and realize that the baby must be Flavia, as generations of girls had been before.
But no. Guinhumara she had picked, and Guinhumara she insisted upon, until even happy occasions like little Flavia’s first tooth became arguments. Guinhumara, Guinhumara, Guinhumara.
Guenhumara had been Cradoc’s wife’s name. He had not thought of her much after he had moved to Calleva, but every time Cottia called the child by that name, it was like a pin pricking Marcus’s memory, reminding him, reminding him, that no good could have come to her from the rebellion Marcus had put down.
He could not say, to Cottia and especially to Esca, The name pains me; for that was the name of the wife of a friend that I killed at Isca Dumnoniorum. We killed the warriors, razed the village and sowed the fields with salt. I do not know what happened to her. How could he ask them to sympathize, when he had only done what other Roman soldiers had done to the Iceni and the Brigantes?
They knew he had been a Roman soldier, of course, and knew that his leg had been injured in fighting the Dumnonii. But Cottia, at least, sometimes seemed to know it without thinking what it meant: she knew he had been a soldier of Rome, but did not quite connect that with the sufferings Roman soldiers had brought on the Iceni.
Thinking of those suffering - thinking of Guenhumara, Cradoc’s wife - he felt guilty. He had never felt guilty about being a Roman soldier before, and he teetered between guilt and anger. Sometimes he thought that perhaps - perhaps when Rome had taken so much, perhaps on this one small thing he should back down.
One small thing! But a name was not a little thing. Cottia would not have gone to war to remain Cottia, if a name was just a little thing. To agree to call the girl Guinhumara seemed to accuse Rome of wrongdoing.
And then the anger came, the exasperation at her stubbornness, and the thought that he should be firmer: he should assert his authority as paterfamilias. Ha! Assert authority on Cottia? Her Aunt Valaria had tried for years and achieved nothing but Cottia’s disdain. Of course she had not been as firm as she could have; she had not beaten Cottia -
And, perhaps he was not fit to be a paterfamilias, but Marcus could not bring himself to beat her either. What worth was obedience that was founded on fear? And, Mithras, she cooked their food. He would not like to bet she did not know poison mushrooms.
But it gnawed at him that he did not run his household well.
He did not believe that she would poison him. The thought of poison mushrooms was only an uneasy jest. No; Cottia would never be so underhand. Far more likely she would stab him face to face, like Agamemnon, murdered by his wife and her lover when he returned from Troy.
Not that Cottia had a lover. At least, Marcus did not think she had a lover. He did not really believe she had a lover.
And yet. Esca sided with her. And if she did have a lover, who would it be but Esca? He was handsome, more handsome than Marcus. The summer sun shot threads of gold through his brown hair, and the farm work broadened his shoulders and strengthened his hands. To Marcus’s eyes he seemed as beautiful as a Greek statue. But not cold and untouchable as statues are: no, it was a warmer sort of beauty. There was something in the brown of his skin and the light of his eyes that asked to be touched.
And he sided with Cottia about the babe’s name.
“Could you not call the girl Guinhumara on the farm, and save Flavia for when she goes to Calleva when she is older - if she goes to Calleva?” Esca asked.
“No!” said Marcus.
“Why not? Aside from stubbornness.”
“Stubborn - I am being stubborn?” Marcus demanded, his voice rising. Esca’s betrayal burned him. “This is the way Roman babies are named, it is the way they have always been named. She is the one who wants to change things for no reason.”
“She has reasons,” Esca said. “You have always known that Cottia has little love for Rome. Is it so strange to you that she should not want to call the child of her body a name that will always remind her of Rome?”
“My name is Roman,” Marcus said. “I am Roman.”
“Yes,” said Esca. He did not say anything else, though it seemed to Marcus that Esca had more to say: that some sadness held him back, as if he knew exactly why Cottia could not love a Roman.
The old consciousness of fault came upon Marcus, and on its heels a fierce wave of spiteful anger. “It will be better for the girl to have a Roman name,” he told Esca. “Because the old days of the Iceni are gone, even if Cottia does not like that. Rome rules now. That is how things are!”
“Yes,” Esca replied, and said no more.
Marcus and Esca did not discuss it again.
It was an uneasy summer, and an uneasy autumn, as if they lived their lives on the lid of a simmering pot that hovered on the edge of boiling over.
It boiled over, finally, near the end of the harvest. Flavia had been fretful for days, and they had all worried about illness: but in the morning Cottia saw that the babe had cut her first tooth. “A tooth!” she cried, bouncing Flavia on her lap, so that Flavia waved her little hands in the air and gurgled, showing the thin sliver of white in her mouth.
“I’ll carve her a teething ring,” said Marcus, swinging Flavia out of Cottia’s arms and up in the air. “And not just a ring, but toys: I’ll carve her a doll, I think. Won’t you like that, Flavia love?”
“Guinhumara,” Cottia said.
And the laughter and noise had died at once. Marcus lowered Flavia to the ground. In the silence, Flavia began to cry. Marcus stomped out of the room.
He felt like a fool almost at once, and stayed in the woods only long enough to gather an armload of wood, so they could at least pretend he had gone out for that reason and not in a fit of temper.
He came to to edge of the wood - still quite close to the house and the garden; they had cleared only as much land as they needed and no more.
Cottia stood in the garden, not far at all from Marcus, but not looking toward him: for she was looking at Esca, who stood on the other side of the rough garden fence, and they looked at each other so intently that it was as if there was nothing in the world but them.
“Shieldbrother,” Cottia said to Esca, her hand tight on the top of the fence. Esca put his hand over hers, and drew it away at once. It was only a brief touch, but they continued to smile at each other, their faces beautiful with sunlight, and their gazes like a cord between them.
Marcus’s stomach twisted back on itself till he thought he would be sick. Cottia had not smiled at Marcus with that lovely openness since Flavia was born. And Esca - had Esca ever smiled at Marcus like that, so entirely unguarded?
Never. Never, never.
Marcus dropped the wood. They looked up at him. Cottia was calm, and that calmed Marcus somewhat. He knew she could never look so calm if she were conscious of any wrongdoing, for Cottia’s face reflected her heart more clearly than any mirror. But Esca -
Esca looked guilty.
“Esca, I need to talk to you,” Marcus said, and he was surprised by the calm in his own voice. It fooled Cottia, at least, who turned back to her gardening.
But Esca was not fooled. He raised his head as he walked over to Marcus and walked with the confidence of the chieftain’s son: the straight soldiers, the rolling walk. Marcus felt suddenly conscious of the hitch in his steps, small though it was, and the consciousness grew on him as they walked away from Cottia until it seemed to beat inside his skull.
It was Esca, finally, who broke the silence. “You know Cottia will always be faithful to you,” said Esca. “Loyalty is one of her greatest virtues: her Aunt Valaria offered her all the fruits of Rome, and Cottia clung to her love of the Iceni.”
“I’ve noticed,” said Marcus shortly. They walked on, and he added, voice biting with sarcasm, “So? Do you think you are as tempting as all the fruits of Rome?”
Esca’s jaw clenched. “I am not such a fool,” he said.
“A fool!” exploded Marcus. Did Esca not realize how tempting he was?
They walked in silence a little more, and then Marcus burst out, “Why do you stand by her, why do you encourage her in this Guinhumara foolishness? If you would stand by me she would give up on it.”
“Do you think so?” Esca asked, his voice quiet and calm. “She clung to the name Cottia for years when she had no one to stand by her.”
Again Marcus fell silent. Esca was right, and it lashed Marcus to more fury. “So - so, so, maybe she would not give it up,” he said. “But at least if you did not encourage her, maybe she would not insist! So she would call the babe Guinhumara in secret, like she called herself Cottia in secret - so what?”
“Do you want to be a second Aunt Valaria to her?” Esca asked.
It stung. Marcus cried, “Esca! That is not what I asked! I asked, why do you encourage her, why do you undermine me; we went to Caledonia together, we saved each others’ lives. You are supposed to be on my side!”
“And I am,” Esca insisted. “In everything except for this, because in this you are wrong, Marcus.”
“It is not your place to decide that,” Marcus snapped back. “Cottia is my wife and Flavia is my child and you - you are supposed to be my - ”
He stopped, fumbling. My freedman? My friend? What was Esca supposed to be? “You are supposed to be loyal to me,” said Marcus. “And if you can’t - then this is my farm, under my authority as paterfamilias, and if you cannot obey that authority than you had better go.”
A heavy silence followed. Marcus was aghast: he had not meant to tell Esca to go. But having said it, he could not back down.
Esca did not look at Marcus, but away in the distance. “Yes,” said Esca. “I should go. There are other clans of the Brigantes, I have heard, that survive. I will look for them. It would be best.”
And before the next sunrise, in the night as Marcus and Cottia slept, Esca left.
And soon after, Cottia left too. Uncle Aquila came to see the farm, and when he went back to Calleva, Cottia and the babe went under his protection to stay with Aunt Valaria for the winter.
“Your Aunt Valaria won’t call the babe Guinhumara either,” Marcus told her spitefully.
“She won’t,” Cottia agreed. She sat straight on her horse with her hair like a flame and the babe strapped to her chest. “But then, she never pretended that she was anything but an enemy.”
Fandom: Rosemary Sutcliff, Eagle of the Ninth
Pairings: ALL THE PAIRINGS. Esca/Marcus, Esca/Cottia, Marcus/Cottia.
Rating: PG
Beta: sineala & savvierthanu
Disclaimer: So not mine. :(
Summary: After an argument with Esca and Cottia, Marcus is left alone on the farm. Can they repair their ties?
Also on AO3: Chapter 2: Memories
All the long lonely winter Marcus had turned his memories over and over in his mind, until they were worn away with much handling. It had begun almost a year ago, soon after Cottia gave birth to their first child. She had gone to Aunt Valaria’s for the birth, and Marcus and Esca had gone to fetch her and her little girl-child back to the farm.
In the abstract, Marcus might have preferred a boy for his first child; but faced with a real baby, he was smitten from the first with his little girl. “Little Flavia,” Marcus said, stroking his finger across the back of the babe’s impossibly tiny hand.
“Guinhumara,” Cottia said.
Marcus, absorbed in the perfection of his firstborn, barely heard and did not answer. Cottia said more loudly, “We should call her Guinhumara.”
Marcus did not understand at first. He thought that she simply did not understand Roman names, that perhaps Aunt Valaria had never explained to her - or, more likely, that Cottia had not listened when she did.
“Roman girls are given the feminine form of their father’s nomen,” he explained. “So as I am Marcus Flavius Aquila, she will be Flavia Aquila.”
“She is not a Roman girl,” Cottia replied.
And to that she clung stubbornly. He had thought she would realize it was impossible - more fool him! Cottia, so stubborn that she clung to that name for all the years that Aunt Valaria called her Camilla. He had thought she would back down and realize that the baby must be Flavia, as generations of girls had been before.
But no. Guinhumara she had picked, and Guinhumara she insisted upon, until even happy occasions like little Flavia’s first tooth became arguments. Guinhumara, Guinhumara, Guinhumara.
Guenhumara had been Cradoc’s wife’s name. He had not thought of her much after he had moved to Calleva, but every time Cottia called the child by that name, it was like a pin pricking Marcus’s memory, reminding him, reminding him, that no good could have come to her from the rebellion Marcus had put down.
He could not say, to Cottia and especially to Esca, The name pains me; for that was the name of the wife of a friend that I killed at Isca Dumnoniorum. We killed the warriors, razed the village and sowed the fields with salt. I do not know what happened to her. How could he ask them to sympathize, when he had only done what other Roman soldiers had done to the Iceni and the Brigantes?
They knew he had been a Roman soldier, of course, and knew that his leg had been injured in fighting the Dumnonii. But Cottia, at least, sometimes seemed to know it without thinking what it meant: she knew he had been a soldier of Rome, but did not quite connect that with the sufferings Roman soldiers had brought on the Iceni.
Thinking of those suffering - thinking of Guenhumara, Cradoc’s wife - he felt guilty. He had never felt guilty about being a Roman soldier before, and he teetered between guilt and anger. Sometimes he thought that perhaps - perhaps when Rome had taken so much, perhaps on this one small thing he should back down.
One small thing! But a name was not a little thing. Cottia would not have gone to war to remain Cottia, if a name was just a little thing. To agree to call the girl Guinhumara seemed to accuse Rome of wrongdoing.
And then the anger came, the exasperation at her stubbornness, and the thought that he should be firmer: he should assert his authority as paterfamilias. Ha! Assert authority on Cottia? Her Aunt Valaria had tried for years and achieved nothing but Cottia’s disdain. Of course she had not been as firm as she could have; she had not beaten Cottia -
And, perhaps he was not fit to be a paterfamilias, but Marcus could not bring himself to beat her either. What worth was obedience that was founded on fear? And, Mithras, she cooked their food. He would not like to bet she did not know poison mushrooms.
But it gnawed at him that he did not run his household well.
He did not believe that she would poison him. The thought of poison mushrooms was only an uneasy jest. No; Cottia would never be so underhand. Far more likely she would stab him face to face, like Agamemnon, murdered by his wife and her lover when he returned from Troy.
Not that Cottia had a lover. At least, Marcus did not think she had a lover. He did not really believe she had a lover.
And yet. Esca sided with her. And if she did have a lover, who would it be but Esca? He was handsome, more handsome than Marcus. The summer sun shot threads of gold through his brown hair, and the farm work broadened his shoulders and strengthened his hands. To Marcus’s eyes he seemed as beautiful as a Greek statue. But not cold and untouchable as statues are: no, it was a warmer sort of beauty. There was something in the brown of his skin and the light of his eyes that asked to be touched.
And he sided with Cottia about the babe’s name.
“Could you not call the girl Guinhumara on the farm, and save Flavia for when she goes to Calleva when she is older - if she goes to Calleva?” Esca asked.
“No!” said Marcus.
“Why not? Aside from stubbornness.”
“Stubborn - I am being stubborn?” Marcus demanded, his voice rising. Esca’s betrayal burned him. “This is the way Roman babies are named, it is the way they have always been named. She is the one who wants to change things for no reason.”
“She has reasons,” Esca said. “You have always known that Cottia has little love for Rome. Is it so strange to you that she should not want to call the child of her body a name that will always remind her of Rome?”
“My name is Roman,” Marcus said. “I am Roman.”
“Yes,” said Esca. He did not say anything else, though it seemed to Marcus that Esca had more to say: that some sadness held him back, as if he knew exactly why Cottia could not love a Roman.
The old consciousness of fault came upon Marcus, and on its heels a fierce wave of spiteful anger. “It will be better for the girl to have a Roman name,” he told Esca. “Because the old days of the Iceni are gone, even if Cottia does not like that. Rome rules now. That is how things are!”
“Yes,” Esca replied, and said no more.
Marcus and Esca did not discuss it again.
It was an uneasy summer, and an uneasy autumn, as if they lived their lives on the lid of a simmering pot that hovered on the edge of boiling over.
It boiled over, finally, near the end of the harvest. Flavia had been fretful for days, and they had all worried about illness: but in the morning Cottia saw that the babe had cut her first tooth. “A tooth!” she cried, bouncing Flavia on her lap, so that Flavia waved her little hands in the air and gurgled, showing the thin sliver of white in her mouth.
“I’ll carve her a teething ring,” said Marcus, swinging Flavia out of Cottia’s arms and up in the air. “And not just a ring, but toys: I’ll carve her a doll, I think. Won’t you like that, Flavia love?”
“Guinhumara,” Cottia said.
And the laughter and noise had died at once. Marcus lowered Flavia to the ground. In the silence, Flavia began to cry. Marcus stomped out of the room.
He felt like a fool almost at once, and stayed in the woods only long enough to gather an armload of wood, so they could at least pretend he had gone out for that reason and not in a fit of temper.
He came to to edge of the wood - still quite close to the house and the garden; they had cleared only as much land as they needed and no more.
Cottia stood in the garden, not far at all from Marcus, but not looking toward him: for she was looking at Esca, who stood on the other side of the rough garden fence, and they looked at each other so intently that it was as if there was nothing in the world but them.
“Shieldbrother,” Cottia said to Esca, her hand tight on the top of the fence. Esca put his hand over hers, and drew it away at once. It was only a brief touch, but they continued to smile at each other, their faces beautiful with sunlight, and their gazes like a cord between them.
Marcus’s stomach twisted back on itself till he thought he would be sick. Cottia had not smiled at Marcus with that lovely openness since Flavia was born. And Esca - had Esca ever smiled at Marcus like that, so entirely unguarded?
Never. Never, never.
Marcus dropped the wood. They looked up at him. Cottia was calm, and that calmed Marcus somewhat. He knew she could never look so calm if she were conscious of any wrongdoing, for Cottia’s face reflected her heart more clearly than any mirror. But Esca -
Esca looked guilty.
“Esca, I need to talk to you,” Marcus said, and he was surprised by the calm in his own voice. It fooled Cottia, at least, who turned back to her gardening.
But Esca was not fooled. He raised his head as he walked over to Marcus and walked with the confidence of the chieftain’s son: the straight soldiers, the rolling walk. Marcus felt suddenly conscious of the hitch in his steps, small though it was, and the consciousness grew on him as they walked away from Cottia until it seemed to beat inside his skull.
It was Esca, finally, who broke the silence. “You know Cottia will always be faithful to you,” said Esca. “Loyalty is one of her greatest virtues: her Aunt Valaria offered her all the fruits of Rome, and Cottia clung to her love of the Iceni.”
“I’ve noticed,” said Marcus shortly. They walked on, and he added, voice biting with sarcasm, “So? Do you think you are as tempting as all the fruits of Rome?”
Esca’s jaw clenched. “I am not such a fool,” he said.
“A fool!” exploded Marcus. Did Esca not realize how tempting he was?
They walked in silence a little more, and then Marcus burst out, “Why do you stand by her, why do you encourage her in this Guinhumara foolishness? If you would stand by me she would give up on it.”
“Do you think so?” Esca asked, his voice quiet and calm. “She clung to the name Cottia for years when she had no one to stand by her.”
Again Marcus fell silent. Esca was right, and it lashed Marcus to more fury. “So - so, so, maybe she would not give it up,” he said. “But at least if you did not encourage her, maybe she would not insist! So she would call the babe Guinhumara in secret, like she called herself Cottia in secret - so what?”
“Do you want to be a second Aunt Valaria to her?” Esca asked.
It stung. Marcus cried, “Esca! That is not what I asked! I asked, why do you encourage her, why do you undermine me; we went to Caledonia together, we saved each others’ lives. You are supposed to be on my side!”
“And I am,” Esca insisted. “In everything except for this, because in this you are wrong, Marcus.”
“It is not your place to decide that,” Marcus snapped back. “Cottia is my wife and Flavia is my child and you - you are supposed to be my - ”
He stopped, fumbling. My freedman? My friend? What was Esca supposed to be? “You are supposed to be loyal to me,” said Marcus. “And if you can’t - then this is my farm, under my authority as paterfamilias, and if you cannot obey that authority than you had better go.”
A heavy silence followed. Marcus was aghast: he had not meant to tell Esca to go. But having said it, he could not back down.
Esca did not look at Marcus, but away in the distance. “Yes,” said Esca. “I should go. There are other clans of the Brigantes, I have heard, that survive. I will look for them. It would be best.”
And before the next sunrise, in the night as Marcus and Cottia slept, Esca left.
And soon after, Cottia left too. Uncle Aquila came to see the farm, and when he went back to Calleva, Cottia and the babe went under his protection to stay with Aunt Valaria for the winter.
“Your Aunt Valaria won’t call the babe Guinhumara either,” Marcus told her spitefully.
“She won’t,” Cottia agreed. She sat straight on her horse with her hair like a flame and the babe strapped to her chest. “But then, she never pretended that she was anything but an enemy.”