greatest surprise was Lugunda, who during the winter had grown from a child to a young woman. I met her at her hare farm, dressed in her white hare-priestess cloak with a silver band in her hair. Her eyes were shining like those of a goddess. When we had embraced in greeting, we both drew back in astonishment and no longer dared touch each other. Her tribe did not allow her to accompany me on my journeys that summer. In fact it was to flee from her that I left the Iceni country. But as I journeyed on, a living image of her followed me. I thought of her the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, whether I wished to or not.
I returned from my journeys more quickly than I had meant to, back to her, but I had no joy from it. On the contrary, after the first delight of seeing each other again we soon started quarreling, with or without cause, and we hurt each other so bitterly that I could go to bed hating her with all my heart and convinced that I never wanted to see her again. But when she smiled at me again later and came with her favorite hare and let me hold it, I relented and became as weak as water. It was difficult to remember that I was a Roman knight and my father was a senator and that I had the right to wear the red cloak of a tribune. Rome seemed distant and dreamlike to me as I sat on the grass in the warm British summer with her wriggling hare in my arms.
But suddenly she pressed her cheek to mine, snatched the hare into her arms and with glittering eyes, accused me of deliberately tormenting her. With the hare in her arms, her cheeks flushed, she looked at me so provokingly that I regretted not having given her a good spanking in the days when I had had her in my power in the camp.
On her friendly days, she took me around her parents’ vast grazing lands and showed me the cattle, the fields and villages. She also took me to the storehouse and showed me the cloths, ornaments and sacred objects which were passed down from mother to daughter in her family.
“Don’t you like the Iceni country?” she teased. “Isn’t it easy to breathe here? Doesn’t our corn bread and our thick beer taste good to you? My father could give you many teams of small horses and chariots decorated with silver. You could have for the asking as much land as you could get around in a day.”
But another day she would say, “Tell me about Rome. I’d like to walk on paved streets, see big temples with columned halls and war trophies from every country, and get to know women who are different from me, to learn their customs, for in your eyes I am evidently only an uneducated Iceni girl.”
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In honest moments she said, “Do you remember how you held me in your arms one cold winter night in your wooden hut and warmed me with your own body when I was homesick? Now I am home and the Druids have made me a hare-priestess. You’ve no idea what a tremendous honor that is, but at the moment I’d rather be in your wooden hut, holding your hand and listening to you teaching me to read and write.”
I was still so inexperienced, manhood or no, that I did not understand my own feelings or what had happened between us. I was informed by the Druid Petro, whom Vespasian had freed and who had in the autumn returned from a secret island where he had been initiated into an even higher grade of priesthood. He had watched our games without my being aware of it and then he had sat down on the ground, covering his eyes with his hands and leaning forward in a holy trance. We did not dare wake him, for we both knew that in his dreams he was wandering in the underworld. But we forgot our bickering and sat down on a hummock in front of him, waiting for him to awaken.
When he had collected himself, he looked at us as if from another world.
“You, Minutus,” he said, “have beside you a large animal, like a dog with a man. Lugunda has only her hare to protect her.”
“That’s no dog,” I said indignantly. “That’s a real lion. But of course you’ve never seen such a noble animal yourself, so I’ll forgive your mistake.”
‘Tour dog,” went on Petro, unmoved, “will hunt the hare to death. Then Lugunda’s heart will break and she will die if you have not parted in time.”
“I wish no harm at all to Lugunda,” I said in surprise. “We’re just playing like brother and sister.”
“As if a Roman such as he could break my heart,” snorted Lugunda. “His dog can run himself out of breath. I don’t like nasty dreams, Petro. And Ituna is not my brother.”
“I had better talk to you both on this matter,” said Petro. “First with you, Minutus, and then with Lugunda. Lugunda can go and see to her hares in the meantime.”
Lugunda looked at us, her eyes yellow with anger, but she did not dare oppose the Druid’s order. Petro remained seated cross-legged, picked up a stick and absentmindedly began to draw with it on the ground.
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