is,” said Dido, “she hardly ever gets to collect her winnings. Bunch of crooks out there. She never learns.”
Succula shrugged. “It makes the races more exciting.”
The mimes were now mock-fighting their way out of the arena; the crowd had already lost interest in them. I could feel the collective energy gathering, rising in anticipation of the chariots. Suddenly horns blared from every direction, filling the huge elliptical bowl with sound. There followed an extraordinary moment of hush. Then the thundering of hooves began and the horses and chariots blazed into the arena. The crowd found its deafening voice again, but I could still feel the vibration of the hooves through my seat. No stranger to chariot racing, I leaned forward, curious about the Roman style. From that distance it took me a moment of close scrutiny to realize what I was seeing. Then it hit me. Hard.
“Ow, Red!” protested Dido. “Stop digging your nails into me. The race hasn’t started yet. They’re just parading.”
“Dido,” I said. “The charioteers are Celts, at least two of them are. See that one?” I pointed to a big lion of a man, his bare arms swirling with woad, his chariot built in the graceful style I remembered. At home our warriors fought bare-headed, their hair limed and sculpted into fantastic spikes. Here they wore helmets. That was the only difference.
“Well, of course, Red. Didn’t you know? They use Celts, Scythians, and Thracians for chariot races. Prisoners of war. It could be worse. My people they hunt and capture and use for bestiaries. Wait’ll you see those shows. At least no one is slaughtered or eaten alive in a chariot race.”
I don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me that the Romans would import their athletes; they enslaved anything that moved. At druid college I had heard horror stories of war captives paraded in chains through the Forum. Most Celts killed themselves if they could to avoid that fate. I had never thought about what happened to prisoners after the parade. I’d assumed they were executed—or died of shame.
I looked away from the ring to my own hands clenched in my lap. I did not want to watch my combrogos (the companions, as we called each other) demonstrate their prowess for the entertainment of Romans. Their shame was my shame. It knotted my stomach; it pressed against my heart. And there was something else, hovering at the periphery of my memory, something deeply agitating. I was torn between wanting to push it away and needing to know what it was.
I closed my eyes, and everything around me receded, except for the sound of the horses’ hooves and the cry of a bird. I was back on Mona, the druid isle, in the teaching grove. Warriors galloped towards us from the Menai Straits still covered with dirt and blood from battle.
“Do you come from my father?” cried Branwen, my friend, my foster-sister.
“Branwen, daughter of King Bran the Bold, your father and my king is still living.”
“Anu!” Branwen let out her breath. For an instant her muscles relaxed; then she braced herself.
“King Bran has been taken captive. Unless—may the gods give him strength and cunning—unless he has escaped, he is on his way to Rome.”
I forced myself to open my eyes again. I searched the field and found him, the charioteer with the broad chest and the arms like big oaks. Arms that could lift you as if you weighed nothing, a chest that smelled of the earth and its goodness, that rose and fell like a gentle sea.
“Red, what’s the matter?” asked Succula. “You’re crying.”
I just shook my head. I couldn’t speak yet.
“I…I don’t…I can’t believe,” I stopped, as if saying it might make it so. “I think, I think one of those charioteers might be my foster-father,” I finally managed, my hands shaking as I pointed. “That stupid Roman helmet makes it hard to see his face.”
“The Gaul? He’s the one I’ve got my money on. Did you say he’s your father? I thought your father was dead.”
“No. My foster-father.” I said impatiently. Then I reminded myself: Succula had never had a father at all. I could not expect a Roman street child to understand the meaning of foster kinship to my people, how such ties were as strong as blood and wove a complex web of loyalties among the tribes. “And he’s not a Gaul. He’s from the Pretannic Isles. Succula, you placed bets on him. What’s his name?”
“Sia, Sia something with a B. I’m sorry, Red. Those barbarian names are so hard to pronounce. Everyone just calls him the Big Gaul.”
“Bran?” I pressed. “Could it have been Bran?”
“I don’t think so, Red, but I’m not sure. Look, they’re in place now.”
The huge Celt was positioned second from the inside; there were seven chariots in all. If you have ever looked across a crowd, straining to see someone you thought you’d never see again in this life, you have some idea of how I felt. One minute you think, yes, it’s got to be him, and the next, no, it can’t be. For me it was even more fraught. I longed to run to the first man I had ever known, who had adopted me and treated me with as much tenderness as he did his own daughter. I also wanted desperately to be mistaken. I couldn’t bear to think of King Bran as a captive and slave.
And what if it was my fault, whatever his fate, my fault?
Why my fault, you ask? The fate of a king? It was King Bran’s capture that had prompted the druids to offer the Great Sacrifice, to send a messenger to the gods, on behalf of the combrogos. Could that sacrifice have brought Bran home unharmed? No one would ever know. Because of me. I meddled with the mysteries. I stopped the sacrifice. There. Now you know why I was exiled. I am sure you can also guess who was chosen to be the victim.
“Red, what are you doing?” Dido and Succula grabbed hold of me. “Sit down!”
“I’ve got to get a closer look,” I struggled to shake them off. “Don’t you understand?”
“Sweetie, of course we understand. You’re the one who doesn’t. You can’t go wandering around the stadium in your whore’s toga annoying people by blocking their view. Sit. We’ll find a way to see him afterwards. Trust us.”
Impulse control is not my forte, but that’s what friends are for. And they were my friends; I could feel it in the fierceness of their grip. We sat together on the edge of the stone bleacher, like any people from any time watching a race. You know how it is. Your heart races, too, flying out of your chest to light on one particular contestant. Your vision telescopes. The tension in your limbs, the bearing down of your will merge with the one you have chosen. I became one with my Celt, the roar of the crowd receding till I swear I could hear his breath and the steady pounding of his horses’ hooves. After the first circuit, he was holding third place. The other Celt and a Thracian were neck and neck in the lead. By the end of the fourth round, two chariots began to fall behind, and two began to gain on the leads. One of these was my Celt.
Now Succula and I were both on our feet, Succula shouting instructions in street Latin about what he should do with his podex (that’s right, Latin for ass) while I loosed an authentic Celtic battle cry. So authentic and so Celtic that I swear you could hear it above the trumpets and all the bellowing citizens of Rome. My Celt looked up; I was afraid I had distracted him till I realized that he had seen—or sensed—something
