by Henry Treece
Tigidius spoke first. ‘I do not see the girl,’ he said. And then the spell was broken. Marcus and the chieftain rose and stumbled about among the bodies, speechlessly, but now without anger. What had happened to the runaways and their leader drove all fury from the searchers.
Cynwas stood then like a man bewitched, his hand on his head, his blue eyes staring blankly. Marcus came to him and putting his own hand on the Celt’s shoulder, said, ‘Someone got to them before we did, brother. Now we must look for Aranrhod.’
Cynwas turned and struck out at the Tribune, catching him at the side of the face with the clenched fist. Marcus hardly moved at the blow, but took the Celt’s hand kindly and held it by his chest. He said, ‘I would have done the same, brother. But now that it has been done, let us forget our fury. Much blood has been shed already. Let us not wait until more runs to waste.’
As he said this a brown-faced tribesman ran up with an arrow in his hand. To Cynwas he said, ‘Master, they were ambushed by Iceni. These arrow-flights are streaked with blue and red. It is their sign.’
Cynwas pushed the man away then turned to Marcus and said, ‘Do you know what you have done? You have killed my sister, as truly as though you had put the spear to her yourself.’
Marcus gazed at him in amazement. ‘I?’ he said. ‘I killed her?’
Cynwas laughed drily, like a stream dying, and said, ‘She wore your medallion, did she not? They will think she is a Roman brat. At the least she will be a slave for the rest of her poor days.’
[10]
The Long Road
They mounted the shuddering ponies once again and quested round, like wolves, for a scent. Tigidius said to Marcus, ‘This is a bad business, lad. But no one can be held to account for it. There are four Romans here to bear witness; you and I will make a formal report when we are able.’
Marcus flared out at him. ‘Witnesses! Reports!’ he shouted. ‘Can you not bring your wooden brain to think of anything else? Do you think that all the world is ruled by witnesses and reports? Do you think all folk are Romans? Is there not room for a little pity in that barrack-block of a world you live in?’
The centurion sat rigid in the saddle while this was said. Then he bowed his head stiffly between his shoulders and said quietly, ‘The fault is mine, Tribune. I spoke as the Legion trained me. I ask your pardon. I can say no more.’
He said this simply and with no expression in his voice. Marcus looked at him in astonishment, then suddenly realized that this man was old enough to be his father, though they had always gone side by side, like youths in friendship. He realized that Tigidius had been his own father’s most trusted officer. He turned his pony towards the man and put out his hand. ‘It is I who should ask pardon,’ he said. ‘I spoke ahead of my reason, friend. I am sorry.’
The centurion looked him in the eye steadily and without feeling. ‘The fault is mine, Tribune,’ he repeated. ‘When we get back to the Colonia, please put on record that I have said those words, sir.’
He glanced sideways at the two legionaries as he spoke and they smiled in understanding. Marcus began to pull his pony round and wave his hand to explain himself, but just then Cynwas came beside him and said, ‘My best tracker has scented the way the killers took. He has a fine nose and these Iceni go in bare feet. Come, it is to the east. They must be gathering on the Long Road. Come.’
They all turned and, gaining the lip of the slope swung their mounts away to the right, towards the wolds that wallowed like gentle green dolphins with the tall sky over them, blue and empty.
Cynwas spoke only once as they galloped. He said, ‘When we come up with the Iceni I shall teach them a stem lesson, Tribune. If my sister is unharmed, I shall take off their right hands - no more. If she has been misused, then I shall turn them on spits over a charcoal fire. And you, Tribune, shall have the honour of lighting that fire.’ Marcus answered, ‘I have a sister of my own. If this happened to her I should go to law and have the magistrates put the appropriate sentence on the ill-doers. But I should not make myself a worse man than they are by going back a hundred years to gain my vengeance. We Romans did not march half-way across the world to teach you hand-chopping and charcoal fires, Cynwas.’
The young chieftain laughed with scorn into the blue air. ‘Before you came we did well enough, invader. In those days a child could wander in the woods unmolested. All she had to watch for were four-footed wild beasts and little snakes. Now, since you have civilized us, as you say, the beasts have two legs and wear helmets and ride on horses. Rome has given us a great benefit, a great education. I tell you, when we come up with them…’
He did not finish the sentence. Instead, as they topped a green rise, they saw below them and almost half a mile away a strange thing happening along the straight military road, and in the green meadows on either side of it. There was a great confusion of horsemen and footmen, all milling round like fallen leaves in a whirlpool - and many of them, both men and horse, had fallen and were littering the road and fields.
Tigidius cried out, ‘Tribune, it is the Ninth. I can see the Eagle and the Cohort flags. It is my own Cohort, but most of them mounted. There are three Tribunes with them on white horses, men you know.’
Marcus said drily, ‘Petillius Cerialis is at their head. I can see as far as you can, friend. I can see his gold helmet with the red plume from here. The Legate is laying about him.’
As he spoke, the two legionaries who rode behind the party suddenly yelled out, ‘The Ninth! The Ninth! Up the Ninth!’ and galloped forward, kicking their horses’ flanks like madmen. Cynwas watched them go, thudding the turf and scattering sheep on either side of them. And when they had gone twenty yards, he turned and nodded to a long-faced man who sat hunched behind him. ‘Now, Glappi,’ he said. The man nodded and almost lazily swung his yew-bow from his back and fitted arrows to it. All at once the Romans lay sprawling among the sheep while their puzzled ponies cantered on, then turned and came back to the main party.
Marcus stared at the Celt in fury. ‘Who gave you orders to do that?’ he said. ‘You have broken the law, you savage. They are my men. Not yours to do with as you please.’
Cynwas looked back at him with a hard face. He said, ‘No one gives me orders in my country,’ he said. ‘It is they who broke the law - my law. And as for being your men, they were no one’s men, being traitors. If you now want to speak the Roman law to them, you are welcome.’
Tigidius rode over to the legionaries and dismounting, turned them over. Then he rose and shook his head before returning.
Glappi the long-faced bowman got off his pony smiling, then ran over to the fallen soldiers and carefully withdrew his arrows from them so as not to bend the slender shafts. Cynwas leaned down to him as he came back and said, ‘Not bad, not bad, old one. They were more difficult tar-gets than a roe-deer, but you brought them down within a count of five fingers. Remind me to reward you when we get back with my sister.’
Marcus was so angry he could not speak; but the centurion edged his horse beside him and said, ‘I have made a note of their names, for the records, sir. Both of them come from Heracles so you will not have letters to write home to their families. They were runaway slaves and have none.’
Marcus had regained his breath now and turned towards Cynwas, but the Celt put up his hand and silenced him. ‘Pay attention to what goes on below you, soldier,’ he said. ‘What has happened to these two is happening to all your Cohort. See, they are falling everywhere; and now their leader, the little man in the gold helmet, is turning and leading them away northwards, back up your fine road! I must say, you Romans make fine riders - when the enemy is at your tail.’
The centurion gasped, ‘Oh no, oh no! Look, sir, they have given ground. My Cohort is retreating.’
Cynwas said calmly, ‘Soon you will have no Cohort, friend. Those Iceni down there run like the wind and cast their spears as truly as Marru, the God of death. If five of them get to your Lindum, to shriek at the gates for them to op
en, then they will be lucky men and should go home and turn their hands to farming straightway - before an arrow takes them.’
Tigidius rode forward, his hard face set in an expression of quiet anger. He said, ‘Do not jeer too quickly, Briton. The Ninth never leaves a setback unavenged. There are other Cohorts, almost as good as my own. They will come out of the gates you scoff at, and then these Iceni will mourn for their dead, mourn for their tribe, and mourn for their lost past, the rest of their lives - those who are left to mourn.’
Cynwas did not even look at him, but whistled ironically into the morning air like a gay lark.
This angered Marcus more than anything. He said quite loudly, ‘You seem to have forgotten one thing, horse-thief. Your sister whom you profess to love is down there, among the savages. No doubt they will be doing to her what they are doing to my fellow-Romans since, as you have said, they will think she is of my people.’
Now Cynwas stopped whistling and gazed down, his face changed as though a cold hand had passed over it. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘there are wagons among them. She will surely be there, among the women of the tribe.’
He galloped off without any more words and the others had hard business to keep up with him.
Here and there the moorland had been broken into by the ploughshare, and the upturned clods of earth flew back under the horses’ hooves into the faces of the riders behind. Then, in other places, stones and even boulders had been dragged out of the ground to make square sheep-pens, sometimes with walls running beside them to keep out wolves. The Celts were lazy builders but even so they had set up waist-high barriers of dry-stone, and most riders would have reined their horses round these walls. But not Cynwas; he galloped over them or crashed through them, sometimes coming close to bringing his pony down. It was like riding behind a madman. Once Marcus called out to him, ‘Pull in, you fool, or you’ll have us all down.’
But Cynwas went on silently, like a grey ghost riding through a black dream. He did not ride in the world of men now, but in the world of vengeance. His eyes were blind to walls and his ears deaf to words. He went like an earth-skimming hawk after its quarry, daft to all reason.
Then at last they went into a low green valley, where sheep were grazing and a narrow stream wound about among the stones. The far side was a steep one and even Cynwas had to give his mount a breathing-space now.
So they were long enough in topping the rise, and when they could see the road again, most of the armies had gone, leaving only the wagons and the folk who looked after them. And the dead.
[11]
Among the Wagons
Marcus drew in his breath with fury. Legionaries lay everywhere among the coarse grass, most of them stripped of their war-gear and even their rough. leather undershirts. The wounds they bore were not pleasant to look at. Even Tigidius, who had seen most things that sword or spear could do, in his long service under the Eagles, turned his head away from the piled bodies.
To Marcus he said, ‘This is not war. This is butchery. There is no honour here.’
Cynwas turned on him and said, ‘No, Roman - it is only honourable when you wolves do it. If the hounds bite back at you, you howl.’
They came then among the wagons, long carts of clumsy oak, piled high with war-stuff and Roman armour. In a little square, with these carts about them like a stockade, a group of women danced in a circle, chanting, their faces streaked with warpaint, some of them even wearing Roman helmets or carrying Roman shields in mockery. They were singing in their own language, an ancient and monotonous song that rose and fell only a few notes, and terrible to listen to. It was more like the vicious buzzing of hornets than a sound that could come from human throats.
Cynwas said in a chill voice, ‘You are hearing their victory chant, Tribune. It was ancient before the wolf suckled your ancestors, Romulus and Remus. It was ancient before those Greek fools fought at Troy. Do you like the sounds you hear, my friend?’
Marcus set his jaw and sat upright on his borrowed pony. He said coldly, ‘Can you see your sister?’
Then Cynwas rode among the Icenian women and said to the eldest, who wore a wreath of holly round her head, ‘I am the Chief here. I am Cynwas and my heart is set against Rome. These Romans who ride with me are my hostages. I seek my sister, Aranrhod. Where shall I find her?’
The woman in the laurel wreath stared up at him blankly as though he came from another dream and said, ‘You are of the Coritani. You are not of our folk. You are like Romans to us, man. We only know you as horse-thieves, man. We have our dancing to do, seek your sister in some other place. Turn the dead over for her. If she is small, she may lie under her Roman friends. Do not trouble us, we have our dance to do. Such victory does not come to us often.’
Then she turned away from him and the women began to take up the step again, on the wide and dusty road, with the dead soldiers all about them.
Cynwas glared in such fury that his eyes almost started out. He leaned from his shaggy pony and took hold of the woman’s shift at the shoulder, drawing her towards him.
‘What are you?’ he shouted. ‘Are you savages? I ask for my kinswoman and you treat me like a stranger, like a Roman. Is there no pride among the Iceni how that their master, Prasutagus, has gone?’
It was a terrible moment. The woman glared up at him and raised her right forefinger towards his forehead. Marcus saw Cynwas stiffen on his pony and seem to draw himself in and become small, as though awaiting a blow. The women in the dancing-ring all stood stiff and silent, leaning forward, their white-painted faces with the deep blue streaks across cheek and forehead like the faces of witches, half-smiling, half-grim.
Then from the tallest wagon, the one painted in black, a voice came out over their heads, hoarse and commanding. It said: ‘Leave them be, priestess. They are not for your hand but for mine. Have no fear, they will be seen to, they will come to learn.’
Marcus swung round and saw who spoke. It was a woman he had seen once before, riding down a narrow lane towards the great stones. Then she had been like a warrior, lithe in her shirt and as glorious as a battle-youth. Now, she was heavier in build, and her hair carried streaks of badger-grey in it. Her face had lost its fineness. Over the white ochre the blue streaks gave it the look of painted stone. There was no mercy in that face.
Marcus leaned towards the centurion and whispered, ‘It is the queen. It is their Boudicca, the Victory-Queen. For the love of Mithras stay silent now. Keep your tongue on the rein, Tigidius.’
The centurion nodded and looked down at his horse’s neck.
Cynwas was the first to speak. With some pride he said, ‘Lady, I ask no favours. I am a Celt, like you. I seek only my sister.’
There was another terrible silence. Then the voice from the cart said stiffly, ‘You ask no favours? Yet you ask for your sister. What sort of talk is that, O Brother to Romans? Have you already learned to reason like them - to push favours aside with the right hand, then to take them with the left?’
As the queen spoke, she switched about her fur-clad shoulders with a horse-tail fly whisk. Her shaggy russet hair streaked with grey flared about her as the whisk caught it at times, half-covering her lined face. The robes she now wore were stained with mud and dust, and tattered at the hem. She wore no shoes upon her feet and Marcus saw that her toes and ankles were scarred and begrimed, as though she had marched with her warriors along the road towards Lindum until the battle had started.
He said, bowing his head in a movement of respect, ‘Lady, it is the duty of the conqueror to show mercy and humility. My people lie about among the grasses, having felt the power of your arm. My commander has been put to flight with such dishonour that it will need many victories to let him hold up his head again. What has been done is over and finished. You have humbled us, lady. You have given us a wound that it will take years to recover from. But this man beside me is another matter. He is not a Roman. He does not deserve your anger. He seeks only a harmless child, who is his sister. Show yo
urself great in victory, lady, and whatever you do to us Romans, help him in his search. You have daughters of your own and must know the love and tenderness that folk in a family bear to one another.’
He had hardly finished speaking when the horse-tail slashed across his face, half-blinding him. Tears ran down his cheeks but he did not raise his hand to wipe them away. Instead, he forced his lips to form themselves into a smile, as though the queen had greeted him like an old friend. Then the horse-tail struck savagely again, and this time the force of the blow was so great that Marcus had to lower his head and blink his eyes.
Boudicca stared hard at him, her own lips now smiling terribly. As he looked up at last, she said in a deep whisper, ‘In all these years you have learned little, ‘ Roman, although you have grown tall on our British food and drink. You are still that headstrong boy who sat on the horse before me, blocking my way along the road. Only now you have more words rolling about on your tongue.’
Marcus felt a shudder go down his back, and the hairs on his neck stiffen, that this woman should have remembered him so clearly after such a long while. ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘when we met before, you gave me a brooch and promised that if our paths crossed again I should have the right to use your road. I do not ask for that privilege on my own account, but for Cynwas of the Coritani. Give him leave to pass among your people and to find his sister.’
Then Boudicca looked over his head, far away towards Lindum, as though she was seeing into the distant past, and for a moment her stiff painted face seemed to soften a little. Quietly she said, ‘Do you still carry the brooch I gave you, Roman? Do you still treasure it?’
Marcus smiled up at her and nodded. ‘I still carry it, lady,’ he answered. ‘It is in my pouch now. Would you care to see it?’
She did not answer him for a time, but seemed to go off into a dream. Flies buzzed about the horses’ tails, hooves stamped impatiently in the dust of the road, the women dancers began to sway slowly, like reeds in the wind, as though they were tired of it all and wished to start their low-pitched chanting again.