by Henry Treece
For many breaths now Marcus listened to the water dripping down the walls of that cave. He thought of his own sister. At last he said, ‘I think that I have become a coward, like poor Poenius Postumus at Glevum. I cannot stand against you. I cannot let Aranrhod die; she has hardly begun to live.’
The queen whispered through the darkness, ‘She will not die, Marcus, if you will allow her to live. I swear on my husband’s bones, I will never lay a hand on her if you will come with me and promise to help lead my armies against Rome. Only give me your promise, I ask no more.’
Marcus prayed silently to his father, asking advice, and it seemed to him that he saw the gentle sad face of Ostorius the Tribune, nodding quietly, as though in agreement. He said, ‘Very well, Lady, I promise to march with you until I might change my mind. I trust that my centurion will march with me, and that Cynwas the Briton will be with his sister and free.’
The deep voice laughed above him, patiently now, even with understanding. She said, ‘You shall have your wishes, Marcus. But do not grow to be proud. Do not think, ever in your life, that I do what I do because of your Roman logic. I save your life now, and the little girl’s, only because of one thing - that once, long ago, when you crossed my path before, I gave you my brooch and said it would keep you safe. I have not gone against a promise in my life, and now is the wrong time to begin, now that I am almost the Queen of Britain.’
Marcus said, ‘Is that all, a bronze brooch? Does great Rome depend on nothing but that, a piece of twisted metal that I have almost thrown away a score of times?’
She said, ‘Not that alone, Tribune. Life is never as silly as that, even for a Roman. But ever since I first met you, a little boy sitting on a horse too big for him, I have wished to have a son such as you were then; a proud boy who would not budge even for a warband with swords and spears. And I never had a son. Two daughters, but not a son. Now do you begin to understand?’
But before he had begun to understand, he felt the wafting of her heavy skirts beside his face and then he was alone in that dark cave.
[16]
The Dark Gods
The march to Camulodunum seemed endless. Marcus went alongside Tigidius through the summer dust, now dressed in the war-gear of a tribal chief. He had allowed them to paint his face and body, and wore a tall wolfskin helmet which made him look like a giant. He even carried a horsehair fly whisk in his right hand, which no Roman had done before him, not even old Claudius who had spent so much time in Africa writing his histories of the campaigns.
He did not know where Cynwas and little Aranrhod had got to. They were somewhere in the rear of the great column, he thought. And the Queen Boudicca was away to the front in her death-cart, but there were so many folk on the move now that it was impossible to see her since they had turned off the Ermine Street on to the narrower road to the veterans’ colony.
Once, when they were not too pressed by the tribesmen, Marcus turned to the centurion and said, ‘Very well, I am sorry, just as sorry as you are. But this ‘had to be done. I had to give my word or we would all have been dead - not only the little one, over the stakes and into the fire. Rome does not matter as much as the agony of the little girl, does it?’
Tigidius said, without looking to left or right, ‘We are not here to talk of little girls, Tribune. I am as much a man as anyone and hate it when the children are hurt. But we are in this dark and savage island on serious matters. We are here to bring light where there was none before, and if some folk suffer pain it is so that all folk shall see the light.’
Marcus felt his nostrils flaring out at this and said sharply. ‘If she were your daughter, man. If you saw that happening to your daughter
Then he could not bring himself to say any more. He marched on in silence, flicking the summer flies from his face’ and pretending to whistle a tune. It was a tune he had made up to fill the silence, and he was not a good musician.
At last Tigidius smiled and touched his arm. ‘You have convinced me, Tribune,’ he said. ‘Now stop whistling. It is worse than this parching dust to me.’
Marcus said as gently, ‘Look, friend, you do not have to come to Camulodunum because I chose to give the woman my word. You did not swear an oath to her. You could run away at any convenient spot along this road. You could be safe. I do not hold you to your army oath.’
Tigidius put on a cold face again and said, ‘Where you go, I go. All army oaths apart, I promised your father. So give your tongue a rest, boy. Let us see how things turn out.’
Marcus forgot that he was a Tribune then. He only remembered that Tigidius had known his father even before he had done. He remembered that Tigidius had taught him all he knew about being a soldier, about being a Roman. The two were the same thing, when you thought about it.
So they went on down the straight road, choking with grey dust, hearing nothing but the dreamlike sound of feet and the low buzzing of the tribes, as though the bees of all the world were swarming at last. It was not a good sound and Marcus did not wish to be in the middle of it; but he could not think of anything else he might have done, and so he went with the tribes, trying to forget all he had known before.
But at the end of the day there were some things he could not forget and would never forget.
Ahead, at a distance of half a mile, lay the veterans’ colony of Camulodunum. Always, up in the grey garrison at Lindum, soldiers had said how much they wished their time was done, so that they could retire to the new city of white houses and fountains and easy living at Camulodunum. There, they said, the Senate saw to it that every man who had served his time under the Eagles would find rest and contentment. In Camulodunum there were theatres and temples and villas, shops and taverns and public baths. A retired soldier on pension would feel that his twenty-five years of marching up and down the world had been worth-while, a good investment of youth and strength. In Camulodunum, that soldier would think he had strayed on to the Elysian Fields.
But what Marcus saw now was not the heaven that had been promised.
Thick columns of black and oily smoke rose towards the late afternoon sky; dark red tongues of flame lay at ground level. Black birds rose crying above the fires, as though they mourned for what they saw beneath them. It was all so strange, because just then a swift shower of summer rain came down without warning, to be followed straightway by a rainbow that seemed to frame the burning city under its coloured arch. It did not seem right that the gods should let this lovely arch lie over such a ruined place.
And when they saw it, the tribesmen all about drew in their breath and let out a long and menacing humming, as though the gods had spoken for them and not for the Romans.
Marcus said shortly, ‘Mithras is not with the veterans today. Let us push to the front and see what is happening. Perhaps there is man’s work for us to do.’
What they saw below them from a small hill halted them. The city lay beside a sluggish river, each of its crisscrossed streets in view, almost every one of its buildings. Some of them had been humble, with their square vegetable gardens and their grazing for a cow or a few sheep; some of them had been tall and noble, fronted with columns of white stone and surrounded by dark cypresses. Now the swarming myriads of tribesmen sat on the earth at every side, watching and waiting and laughing as though they were seated in some theatre while a comedy was played for their amusement. They blackened the earth with their numbers. The city stood out in the midst of them, made as small as a child’s toy by the multitude.
It was not now the city that veterans dreamed about. It was more like a neglected midden heap. The thatch had been burned from the humble houses and their garden walls thrown down. Cows and sheep lay butchered by the doors. The many-columned senate house stood gaunt and blackened now, its tiled roof slipped from the charred rafters, its pillars either broken off short, or leaning against each other as though one of the savage dark gods had brushed them aside with his hand. The painted amphitheatre was now a heap of rubble, its seats flung down, smo
ke pouring from the windows all round its sides. Only one building stood as yet secure. From the statue above its portico Marcus could see that this was the temple dedicated to Claudius, the old emperor. But even here small dark men swarmed over the roof with torches, or ran at the great bronze-studded doors with battering-rams.
Tigidius said in a dull voice, ‘See, the statue of Victory in the square has been toppled. All the fountains have been overturned. They have even burned the cypress trees.’
Marcus felt his eyes fill with tears. He glanced away from the temple and saw a group of red-haired Demetae flinging children into the sluggish river, their hands and feet bound. And when he turned from this, he saw women in a little courtyard, holding their hands up to the sky and screaming, as though this was the only way in which they could speak to the god who looked over them. As he watched, tall men in black wolfskins broke in with lances and began slowly and carefully to silence all prayers.
The centurion came to Marcus and put his arm about the Tribune’s shoulders. ‘We cannot help them, lad,’ he said. ‘If we went forward now, we should not get as far as that red river before they put a lance into us too. Have courage, Marcus; what cannot be cured must be endured.’
Marcus shook the centurion’s arm away and brushed the tears from his eyes. Now his jaw was clenched so hard that it seemed to him he would never open his mouth again. One side of his face twitched so viciously that he almost cried out with the pain of it.
He looked up into the sky, and there, high above Camulodunum, he saw that the clouds of black smoke had seemed to gather in the form of an enormous man with horns starting from his head, and a great axe in his right hand.
He said to his friend, ‘The place is well and truly lost, Tigidius, when the Dark God himself comes to direct the blood-letting. I would have thought he could have left it to his thousands of savages, to slaughter a few women and children and weary old men.’
Then Tigidius took him hard by the wrist and swung him round. ‘Look, Roman,’ he said. ‘If you have never seen a man in your life before, you will see one now. One who was indeed suckled by the she-wolf, our Mother.’
Marcus looked to where the centurion pointed and saw something that he would never forget. Above the river, in one of the square gardens of a ruined house, a grey-haired veteran stood on a heap of straw and turfs with a wooden shovel in his hands. He used it like an axe on all who came at him; and each time a dark-faced enemy fell back, this old man laughed gently and called out a number. They heard his voice clearly from where they stood. ‘Nine,’ he called. ‘Now, come on, little ones, and let me make it ten. What, have I marched all the way from Persia to be denied ten? Why, when I was in my prime, lads, under the main Eagle of the Second, I could manage ten before I went back to the tents for my morning porridge!’
Marcus said shortly, ‘I am going to him.’
But the centurion dragged him back. ‘You fool,’ he said, ‘you would never cross that river. Be still, he has made up his mind what will happen. He would not even thank you to rob him of this last moment. I have felt this many times, under the Eagles in Batavia and Gaul and Africa. It is nothing; it is what a centurion expects at the end. This man was a centurion. Look at the way he sets himself. Boy, only a centurion stands like that.’
Now the dark tribesmen lay back, waiting by the garden wall, some of them grinning up at the old warrior, some of them feeling their arms and legs in pain. The vast crowds about the city, in the trampled fields, sat silent, their eyes wide, their mouths open, many of them weeping without shame.
Then in this strange moment of silence, the voice of Boudicca herself sounded on the heavy air. Marcus could not see where she was, but he heard her words plainly enough. She said, ‘Old man, old man, it is a waste of bravery for such as you to die. We of the Iceni would stand ashamed in the eyes of the Mother if we put an end to you. I beg you, come forward and take my hands in homage, and you shall be among the first of my captains.’
But the old man only glanced towards her and laughed. Then, in a thin calm voice he said for all to hear, ‘Who is prating about the Mother? Is there no Mithras to call on? He is the man’s god, the soldier’s friend. Is there some stray cat among you, yowling down there by the river? Let her come up here and have her tail trimmed!’
Now the tribesmen seated about the city began to smile and then to laugh, at first quietly and then openly, so that their laughter swept across the city like a gust of wind.
And Marcus suddenly heard a thin squeal of the queen’s bone whistle, and then in the middle of the old veteran’s grey linen tunic a short arrow stood out. He heard the little thud it made, though he was so far away, and thought he heard the old man draw in his breath.
For a while the veteran stood on the heap of turf, tottering, still with his hands clenched about his shovel, still trying to laugh. And then even he had to listen to the dark god’s summoning. He swayed and let fall his shovel. Then one of his legs gave way and caused him to totter backwards down the heap. A dark-skinned man started forward, his lance in his hand; but the chieftain beside him struck this man a hard blow that sent him back like a beaten dog.
And so those in the garden and those about the city watched this old Roman go on to his knees, and then on to his face, and then spread out his thin arms as though he new at the last that he could not fight all the world. And all of them saw that he was still laughing when his face plunged suddenly into the straw.
And when this was over, the tribes about the city sighed and beat with their hands upon their hard thighs in admiration. And the sound they sent up stirred the birds from the trees for a mile on every side.
And before these birds had settled again, Marcus suddenly cried out, ‘What he can do, we can, brother! Come, let us try these British jackals.’ He started to run, and so Tigidius followed him.
[17]
Along the River
Their feet drummed on the trampled earth. At first the tribesmen did not seem to see them, for so many were moving here and there with violence. Then a tall chieftain wearing a bunch of eagle’s wing-feathers cried out, ‘Where are you going, brothers?’
Tigidius called back over his shoulder, ‘To the temple. We wish to be there when the gates fall.’
The chieftain laughed and waved them on.
Once they came upon a score of Coritani sitting in a ring and throwing dice. They were too busy with their game to do more than glance up; and then the two Romans had leaped over the bent heads and were away again.
A boy wearing a lynx-skin robe looked up at them for a moment, idly threw a piece of flint towards them, then went on with his occupation of sharpening a long holly shaft into a thrusting-spear.
Then they were down by the river, gasping and bewildered. Tigidius said, ‘Stop, Tribune, stop! The madness is over. We could do nothing if we swam across. Those in the temple are doomed, just as the old man was. Two unarmed men like us could not save one of them. We should have given our lives for nothing.’
Marcus swung round on him suddenly and struck him on the neck, but the centurion took his hands and held them to his sides. ‘Be patient, lad,’ he said. ‘We shall serve them better by staying alive. Now, for once, let me lead the way. Follow me and ask no questions.’
He set off, loping along the course of the river, waving and laughing whenever they came up to a group of tribesmen. They laughed back and shook their spears.
Marcus came up with the centurion and said, ‘What are we doing? Where are we bound for, brother?’
The centurion said briefly without pausing in his stride, ‘We are going to Londinium now, Marcus. We are going to warn the folk there so that this shall not happen again.’ Marcus nodded and slowly went on ahead of the older man, leaping thorn bushes and pushing through the gorse.
Once they passed a line of seven tall crosses of pine with bodies hanging from them. Tigidius said, ‘They are barbarians. They have no respect for women. We have wasted our time trying to make them into human creatures
.’
Marcus ran with his eyes turned away. He said, ‘I pray to Mithras that Suetonius will eat them up. I pray that the legions will leave this place a desert when they come from Wales. It is an island of carrion-crows. It is sodden with innocent blood. It is a haunted place. It can never prosper.’
Then they swung away from the river and went among the first trees of a straggling grove. Now there were fewer tribesmen about, and what there were lay underneath the boughs drinking from skins or dancing to the flute and drum. Many of them wore the blood-sodden togas of dead Romans.
And here they first ran into danger. At the far end of an avenue of oaks, three men stood leaning on their long spears, arguing and stressing their points with movements of their long thin hands. They heard the Romans thudding up the turf and stopped talking to gaze at them.
Tigidius called out to them, ‘Make way! Make way! We carry a message for the queen.’
But the men stood where they were and did not move.
Then Marcus said, ‘These are not Iceni. They are Bibroci. Look at the gold throat-rings they wear. Look at the white horses painted on their shields.’
The biggest of the men called out, ‘What queen? We have no queen. And you are not Iceni. You are Romans. Stand.’
Tigidius gasped as he ran, ‘Keep on, brother. One of us might get through.’
And so they plunged at the men who blocked their way. Marcus did not see what happened for now the sweat ran down into his eyes, blinding him. He was aware that the men had set themselves for the spear-cast, leaning back and swinging up their lances. He began to run zig-zag like a hare, and knew that Tigidius was doing the same. He heard a spear drone past his head and bent low, scarcely avoiding the tree-boles at his left. Then he felt a great blow on his chest and almost fell with the wind knocked out of him. To his right he heard Tigidius crying out, ‘Stand away, you fools! We are going to your chieftain.’