Lady of Avalon
Page 28
On her deck, the fighting had ended. The survivors straightened, and beneath the blood, Carausius recognized them as his own men. Other ships still floated just offshore, and most of them were British as well.
I am alive! He stared around him, gripped by a great wonder. We have the victory…. And on the face of the statue in the shrine he thought he saw a smile.
That night, the larger British vessels anchored in the shallow waters of the cove with their prizes in tow, while the smaller ships were run up on the sandy shore. The men made camp in the meadow above and shared their provisions, and as word spread through the countryside, wagons came lumbering down to the sea bearing food and drink for the celebration.
They had enthroned their commander on a pile of driftwood covered with cloaks taken from their enemies. Carausius told himself he ought to be giving orders, making new plans, but he was lightheaded with blood loss and the wine that someone had found on the enemy flagship. And he was too happy. The evening was beautiful, and the men, his men, were the bravest and best that any commander had ever led. He beamed upon them all like the setting sun, and they returned his warmth with praises that grew ever louder as the wine went round.
“They won’t sneer at us now for provincial clods!” cried an oarsman.
“British ships are the best, and so are her crews!”
“Shouldn’t have to take the orders of some idiot in Rome,” muttered one of the marines.
“These waters belong to Britannia, an’ we’ll defend ’em!”
“Carausius will defend them!” The shoreline echoed with his name.
“Carausius for Emperor!” cried Menecrates, brandishing his blade.
“Imperator, Imperator…” Man by man, all the fleet took up the cry.
Carausius felt himself overwhelmed by their emotion. The Eagle of Jupiter had led him into battle, and the Lady of Britannia had saved him. He could doubt no longer, and when the men of the fleet raised him on their shields to acclaim him Emperor, he lifted his arms, accepting their love, and their land.
Chapter Fourteen
There were times, when the air thickened over the hills and mist rolled down across the moors below the Wall, that Teleri could almost imagine herself back in Avalon. And she was always surprised that the thought should give her such pain. This was not the Summer Country, she told herself as her pony carried her along the road, but the marches of the Brigante lands; and she was no longer a priestess of Avalon, but Empress of Britannia.
The rider ahead of her reined in and looked back inquiringly, as if he had heard her sigh. Teleri managed a smile. In the two years since Carausius had been acclaimed Imperator, Allectus had become a good friend to her. He did not have the stamina for long marches, and he was no sailor, but behind a desk he was a wonder, and an emperor, even more than a commander, needed such men around him in order to survive.
It amazed her, sometimes, that Carausius had maintained his position for so long. When he accepted the Army’s acclamation and proclaimed himself Imperator, she had expected Rome to descend with fire and sword before the end of the year. But it would appear that a lord of Britannia could rebel with more impunity than a general from any other province—at least he could if he ruled the seas, and had the favor of Avalon. Still, it seemed to her that even Carausius had been surprised when Maximian, having lost the sea battle, had responded to his proclamation with a stiffly formal letter welcoming him as a brother emperor.
No doubt the Romans had their reasons: Maximian’s peace with the Franks had not lasted; he was still trying to keep their clans from overrunning Gallia, as well as pacifying the Alamanni on the Rhenus, and Diocletian was fighting Sarmatians and Goths on the Danuvius. There were rumors of trouble in Syria as well. Rome had no men to spare for fighting elsewhere. So long as Britannia did not threaten the rest of the Empire, the emperors must think they could afford to leave her to her own devices—and defenses. And Carausius himself was learning that there was more to ruling Britannia than defending the Saxon Shore.
Teleri cast an anxious glance toward the grey line of masonry that undulated across the hills. On the other side of that line the Picts ran free, and for all that they were as Celtic as the Brigantes on this side of the Wall, the wild tribes of Alba had laid a terror upon the hearts of their Romanized cousins that was as great as the fear the southern British felt of the Saxons, and had lasted far longer.
Teleri pulled the hood of her heavy cloak forward as the fog thickened, contracting the world to a patch of road surrounded by a grey blur. Moisture darkened the sand that surfaced the road, and beaded on the heather. If this kept up they would have to light the torches, even though it was only midafternoon. Their guide stopped, holding up his hand, and she halted her own pony, listening. Sounds were difficult to distinguish in such weather, but something was coming….
Her escort spread out around her, spears ready. They could fight, but it would be madness to flee when even on the road they could scarcely see their way. Straining, she made out a rhythmic tramp and jingle, too regular, surely, for the undisciplined clatter of Pictish horsemen. Closer and louder it came. Allectus reined his horse back to block the road before her. Teleri heard the scrape of steel as he drew his sword. She wondered how well he could use it. She knew he had been practicing with one of the centurions, but he had not begun his training until two years ago. Still, his determination to stand between her and danger pleased her.
For a moment nothing moved. Then shapes seemed to precipitate from the gloom, and a detachment of legionaries strode out of the mist, and came to a precise halt before her.
“Gaius Martinus, optio, from the garrison at Vindolanda, detached for escort duty to the Empress.” He saluted smartly.
“But the Lady Teleri has an escort—” Allectus began.
“We’re here to reinforce you on your way into Corstopitum,” the optio said dourly. “Last night the Picts broke through at Vercovicium. The Emperor has gone after them, but he sent us to make sure you got safely to shelter.” The man looked as if he resented having pulled guard duty when his comrades were out having all the fun.
Carausius had wanted her to stay safely in Eburacum, and now Teleri understood why. She had always thought of the Wall as a barrier as unbreakable as the mists that surrounded Avalon, but that ribbon of stone looked fragile against the expanse of the moors. It was only a work of men, and what one group of men built could be breached by another.
By the time they reached Corstopitum, darkness was falling and the mist had turned to a fine, soaking rain. The town was well sited on the northern bank of the river, where the military road crossed the old trackway into Alba. In earlier years its population had been increased by the numbers of craftsmen brought in to produce military supplies and those who managed the imperial granaries. But to Teleri, riding up the High Street toward the hostel, with moisture seeping down her neck and aching thighs, the place seemed sad. Many of the buildings had been abandoned, and others were badly in need of repair.
But over the years every emperor who came to inspect the Wall had stayed at Corstopitum, and the official hostel was both spacious and comfortable. If it had no mosaics, the planked floors were covered by thick rugs striped in the manner of the local tribes, and there was a crude charm in the hunting scenes some soldier-artist had painted on the wall. Dry clothes and a glowing brazier gradually drove away the chill, and by the time Teleri rejoined Allectus in the big dining chamber, she had recovered enough to listen to his worries with some sympathy.
“The Emperor is a strong man, and our gods protect him,” she responded when for the third time he had wondered if Carausius had found shelter. “A man who is accustomed to balance on a heaving deck in a howling storm will not be troubled by a little rain.”
Allectus shuddered and then grinned at her, the lines of worry that usually made him seem older than his years disappearing.
“He can take care of himself,” she repeated. “I am very glad you are here with me!”
Love? Teleri raised one eyebrow, but kept silent, reluctant to trouble his faith. She had loved Dierna, and Avalon, and they had been taken from her. Carausius came to her bed more often now that he was Emperor and needed an heir, but she had no child. Perhaps a baby would have drawn them closer together; as it was, she had learned to view her husband with respect, and even some affection, but duty was their primary bond.
Did she love Britannia? What did that mean? She was fond of the Durotrige lands where she had been born, but she had seen nothing on these northern moors to make her love them. Perhaps, if she had been allowed to study the Mysteries as long as Dierna, she would have learned how to love an abstraction as well.
But it was Dierna’s ability to care for abstractions that had sent Teleri into exile. Teleri had no more wish to be Empress of Britannia than she did to rule Rome itself. To her, they were equally unreal. She no longer even dreamed of freedom. She wondered suddenly if she was capable of caring deeply for anything anymore.
The next word they had of Carausius came barely an hour before the Emperor himself arrived, lying in a horse litter with a great gash in his thigh where a Pictish horseman had got in under his guard.
“I can fight well enough on shipboard, even when the deck is leaping beneath my feet with the swell,” he told them, wincing as the Army surgeon put a new dressing on his wound, “but to fight from the back of a horse is something else again! But we stopped them, and scarce half a dozen got away to tell their chieftains that the British Emperor will protect his lands as well as ever they were when they belonged to Rome.”
“But you cannot be everywhere, my lord, even if you could stick a horse as well as a Sarmatian. The strength of the Wall is in men, but they must have something to defend. The last Emperor to refortify was Severus, and that was two generations ago. This whole region needs rebuilding, and we don’t have the funds to bring in new wood and stone.”
“True,” said Carausius, “but the population here is less as well, and many buildings have been abandoned. The stones from the structures we demolish will serve to strengthen the rest. They will be smaller, but stronger—” He bit his lip as the surgeon bound a dressing over the wound. “Just like Britannia…” he finished rather quickly, beads of perspiration standing out on his brow.
Allectus shook his head impatiently. “Is it bad?” he asked as the surgeon began to put away his instruments. “Will the wound do any lasting harm?”
The surgeon, an Egyptian who still went wrapped in shawls and mufflers after decades away from his native sun, shrugged and smiled.
“He is a strong man. I have treated many worse wounds from which men recovered to fight another day.”
“I will take charge of your sickroom,” said Teleri. “When an empress orders, even an emperor must obey.”
The surgeon nodded. “If he lies still and lets his body heal he will do well, but there will be a scar.”
“Another scar, you mean…” said Carausius ruefully.
“It is what you deserve for risking yourself in an engagement that any cavalry commander with five years’ service could have led as well!” commented Allectus severely.
“If we had one to spare,” answered the Emperor. “That is the problem. Now that the taxes no longer go to Rome, Britannia is more prosperous, but that only makes her more tempting to the wolves, whether they come by land or by sea. The men of the southern tribes have been forbidden to bear arms for so many generations that they are no use as a militia, and most will not leave their homes to serve in the Army. The same thing happened, I am told, in the early days of the Empire in Rome.”
“And how did they solve the problem?” asked Teleri.
“They recruited soldiers from newly conquered barbarian lands whose sons had not forgotten they were fighting men.”
“Well, I hardly think Diocletian will allow you to raid his recruiting grounds,” said Allectus.
“True…but I will have to find men somewhere….” Carausius fell silent, and did not protest when the surgeon ordered the others out so that he could rest.
He would be a bad patient when the first pain faded away, thought Teleri. He looked oddly helpless, lying there, and she felt an unfamiliar pang of compassion for his pain.
Throughout the winter, while his wound was healing, Carausius brooded on the problem of how to balance his resources of money and manpower. His government had prospered wonderfully under Allectus’ hand, but money was no help laid up in his treasury. He must use it to buy men. The wild tribes of the north were the old enemy, unacceptable to the people of Roman Britannia even if they would have hired out to an emperor. He knew he must look elsewhere.
More and more often Carausius found himself dreaming of the sandy heaths and reed-bordered marshes of his own country across the Channel, and the rich soil of the fields that had been wrested from the sea. The men who made those fields were solid and steady, but good fighters, and there was never enough land for the younger sons. Surely, he told himself, if he sent a message, some would answer his call.
And as for the Saxons: Their coast, east of the land of the Jutes and facing the northern sea, was as hard a place to make a living as the Menapian lands. When they went out raiding it was not for glory only, but because the booty they took would buy food for the hungry mouths at home. If he came to them as a countryman, he might bind them by a treaty, and if he purchased the safety of his own lands with tribute, he would not be the first emperor to use the taxes he collected to buy off his enemies.
When he returned to Londiniun, he would do it. This was the only solution he could see.
On the ides of the month of Maia, three sails appeared off the southeastern coast of Britannia. In the past years, even the lowliest shepherd lad had learned to recognize the patchwork-leather sails of a Saxon keel. Alarms clanged in the villages, then fell silent as the longships sailed by.
The lookouts at Rutupiae, remembering their orders, watched in grim silence as the boats entered the estuary of the Stour and made their way upriver under oars. As the day was ending, they came to Durovernum Cantiacorum, the tribal city of the Cantiaci, with its newly built walls glowing pink in the light of the setting sun.
Carausius watched from the porch of the basilica as the German chieftains marched up the High Street with their warriors, closely escorted by legionaries bearing torches, uneasily aware that they might have to defend these ancient enemies from the hatred of the inhabitants of the town. If the Saxons noticed the tension they gave no sign of it, or perhaps the occasional grins as they looked around them indicated they considered the danger a challenge to be enjoyed.
But Carausius had issued his invitation in terms they could understand, and if he forgot how to speak to them, the young Menapian warriors whom he had brought over from Germaina Inferior to be his bodyguard were there to assist him. To reinforce the message, he had had clothing made for himself in the German fashion: long trousers, gathered at the ankle, of fine wool dyed a rich gold, and a linen tunic of blue much ornamented with bands of Greek brocade, with armrings and a torque of gold. From its belt, glittering with golden medallions, hung a well-worn Roman cavalry sword, to remind them he was a warrior. And over all he had draped a mantle of the imperial purple clasped with a brooch of heavy gold, to remind them that he was an emperor.
Here, said the clothing, was a chieftain of rank and power, no sly Roman who would sell his honor for gold, but a king and ring-giver with whom a free fighter might honorably make alliance. But as he watched his guests march toward him, it was not of the outfit’s symbolism that Carausius was thinking, but of how much more comfortable it was than
Roman gear.
In the basilica they had set up a long table for feasting. Carausius sat at its head with the German chieftains on either side. Their men sat on benches farther down the table, where the slaves kept them well supplied with Gallic wine. The British were accustomed to think of all the pirates as Saxons, but in fact they were from several tribes. The tall man on the Emperor’s right was Hlodovic, a saltwater Frank of the breed who were even now causing such trouble for Maximian. Next to him, a thickset man with a grey beard was one of the last Heruli remaining in the north, who had joined his warriors to those in the following of the Anglian leader, Wulfhere. Last came a dour Frisian called Radbod.
“Your wine is good,” said Wulfhere, draining his cup and holding it out to be refilled.
“I drink to you,” answered Carausius, lifting his own. He had taken the precaution of having the depth of his own cup decreased by filling it partway with wax beforehand. He had learned to drink deep in the Navy, but the capacity of German warriors was legendary, and to win their respect it was essential to keep pace with them.
“We will drink your wine gladly, but we have amphorae that are just as good at home,” put in Hlodovic.
“Paid for in blood,” said Carausius. “Better to receive such wine as a gift, and spill your blood on nobler quarrels.”
“Is it so?” Hlodovic laughed. “Does not your wine come from Gallia? Are not your stocks grown lower since you became unfriends with Maximian?”
“For the past few seasons your cousins have kept him busy in Belgica.” Carausius laughed. “He has neither the ships nor the men to impede trade with Britannia.”
“Wine is good,” agreed Radbod, “but gold is better.”
“I have gold…for my friends. And silver from the Mendip mines.” Carausius signaled, and the slaves began to bring in baskets of bread and platters with eggs and cheese, and oysters, followed by joints of veal and venison.