We kept the Fire-ride till last of all. The three banks of brushwood were laid and lit, and blazed up red in the thin sunlight, bending over where the breeze caught the tips of the flames. We remounted our blindfolded horses, and I rode out in front of the troop, and wheeled about to look at them. We had taken off our cloaks and the great masked and plumed parade helmets – the less we had about us that could catch fire, the better – and so all the faces that looked back at me were bare. Pertinax was there on the left of the line; he caught my eye and grinned. All along the line, I looked, and, suddenly, I knew that the thing had happened. Number Seven Troop was mine! And I was theirs!
‘If you can earn their respect and their trust, they’ll follow you through fire and flood,’ the Cohort Commander had said. Well, there wasn’t any flood. . . .
‘Ready, Sir,’ my Second said.
‘Ready, Number Two!’
I wheeled Ajax, and jabbed my heel into his flank and raised the high Dacian yell as he sprang forward. Behind me I heard the drum of hooves, and the yell taken up by the rest of the troop.
It is a strange and wonderful thing that a horse will charge blindly into the dark if he knows and trusts his rider and the hand on the guiding rein. Ours neither checked nor swerved, but charged down straight and true upon the first of the fire-hedges. The crowd began to roar. I steadied Ajax at the last moment, felt the willing strength of his haunches gather under me. I had my face driven down into his mane. The smell of the herbs on his hide was in my throat, along with the smell of his sweat and the acrid reek of the fire. There was a moment of blasting heat, and then we were through, and racing down upon the second wall of flame. Time to snatch one gulp of clean air before the heat and the choking smoke and the raw, red blast of heat engulfed us a second time. Then that too was behind us; and ahead of us the last and broadest fire-hedge of all. The roar of the crowd rose like a stormy sea, and above it, muffled in our horses’ manes, we raised the wild, savage triumph of the Dacian victory yell. For a moment all the world was smoke and flame and a searing furnace-blast of heat; and then for the third time we were through and sweeping on. We charged at a thundering gallop right up to the edge of the dais of piled turfs where the Legate sat; and brought the horses up all standing.
The Legate sat unmoving, and waited, until we had the horses quieted and in perfect line before him; and then nodded to me. ‘That was worth seeing. Your troop does you credit, Decurian.’
We tossed up our swords to him as we rode off, that great little man with the bow legs.
And we were well pleased with ourselves.
There’s not much more to tell, really. . . . Trooper Pertinax went up before the Commander next day, and got another spell of Confined to Barracks for drawing an unflattering portrait of his Troop Leader on the latrine wall. And I redeemed the family bracelet when I got my next month’s pay, and never played dice with Florianus again.
But it was when the Fire-ride was just over, that I suddenly realized I hadn’t missed it – the bracelet – because I had gained something else that gave me all the confidence I needed. . . .
I’ve been lucky in the troops and later the cohorts, that I’ve led in my time; but I’ve never loved any of them quite as I came to love Number Seven Troop of the Dacian Horse.
4
Traprain Law AD 196
I SPEAK TO you now; I, Struan, brother to Sualtam that is a Clan Chieftain of the Votadini, and foster son to Fergal the Bronzesmith who lives and has his smithy where the old chariot road comes in from the South to the foot of Traprain Law.
When I was a child, I was small and weakly, so that they did not think I had it in me to make a warrior. And it was so that my father the Chieftain gave me to Fergal instead of to one of his Spear-Companions according to the usual custom, in the hope that at least I might have it in me to make a craftsman. But as I grew older, I grew strong – small, still, but tough, like a heather root – and so I became a warrior after all.
Fergal was glad for me; but for himself, he grieved, I think, because after Gault, my foster brother, died of the end-of-winter fever, he had no son to follow him in his trade. And I, I was glad to have my place among the warriors; but whenever I was Traprain way, I went back to the house-place beside the old chariot road, as a son going home.
Traprain Law. . . . Long before the Romans came, the King of the Votadini had his turf-banked stronghold and his timber halls on the crest of the hill. And little by little the swordsmiths and the horsedealers, the workers in gold and enamels, and the weavers of bright chequered cloth, the chariot builders and the makers of songs, all the people who gather to a King’s Court, built their living places on the slopes below. I have seen other towns and cities in the South, where men have said: ‘Now we will build a Basilica or a triumphal arch with a statue of an Emperor on top of it – and then we shall be truly Roman.’ Traprain was never like that. Always it has been British; turf-roofed, stone and wattle walled, with crooked and winding ways that snake about the hillside, and stone hearths where the wandering harpers make their songs in the evening. And never a triumphal arch in sight, nor a statue of an Emperor sitting on a too-fat horse. But for the most part, there has been friendship between the Votadini and the Romans. We have bought and sold from each other, and with the buying and selling, and the making for the Roman market, Traprain has grown to be a town.
In my eighteenth summer (it was the year Clodius Albinus the Governor of Britain took so many troops overseas to make himself Emperor), I followed Sualtam who was by then Chieftain in our father’s place to the great yearly Gathering at Traprain. That is when all the Clan Chieftains and the great men of the Tribe came together in Council to settle disputes and make and remake laws, to speak, each for their own clan, and to listen to the voice of the King.
The Council was held in the forecourt of the King’s House, the King himself sitting on a pile of black bulls’ hides before the doorway of his Hall, and beside him on a pile, just one hide lower, the Government Inspector in his clean white tunic and violet-bordered mantle, to see that the laws of Rome as well as the laws of the Votadini were served. And we young braves of the Chieftain’s following sat on our haunches behind our Spear-Lords, and passed the time as best we might. And along the sunlit side of the Hall, the troopers of Dacian Cavalry who formed the Inspector’s escort kicked their heels, as bored as we.
But when the day’s Council was over, then we were free, to feast in the King’s Hall if we chose, or go about our own affairs.
I took the short cut down through the Potters’ quarter – Traprain makes much pottery (poor stuff, but the Legions don’t call for fine red Samian ware to drink their wine out of), and came to my foster-father’s doorway.
Inside was the glow of the forge fire, and there I saw my foster-father, naked save for his leather apron, his shoulders hunched and strong as he bent over the piece of metal that he was working up on the anvil. The metal glowed red, and so did his hair that was close-curled as a ram’s fleece; the hair on the outsides of his arms was golden, tinged with the same red. Above the ding of hammer on anvil and the hoarse roar of the fire which he had just blown up, he did not hear me come, and I stood in the doorway and called.
‘Fergal, my foster-father!’
He looked up, then; and flung down his hammer, wiping the back of a hand across his sweaty face, and came striding to meet me. ‘Struan! Fosterling! Hi Mi! It is as good as ten hot suppers to see you again!’
‘And you! Oh, it is good to be back!’ We were hugging like a couple of bearcubs, and beating each other about the shoulders. ‘Is there any supper? Where is Murna?’
‘Easy! Easy!’ Fergal said. ‘One question at a time! There is supper – your favourite, boar meat baked with honey; and Murna has gone to the market for some wine. We knew that you would be home before the last sunlight left the doorsill.’
It was a fine reunion, and we had scarcely done beating each other on the shoulders when the doorway darkened, and I looked round, thin
king to see Murna my foster-sister with the wine; I saw instead a trooper of the Inspector’s escort, standing there with the last sunlight jinking on the bronze comb of his helmet.
‘This is the forge of Fergal the Bronzesmith?’ he said.
‘It is so. And I am Fergal. What would you have of me?’
The man pulled off a bracelet that he wore high under the sleeve of his leather tunic. ‘I am told that you are as skilled with silver as with bronze. Can you set this to rights for me?’
Fergal took it from him and looked at it, turning it to the light. ‘Ayee!’ he drew in his breath between his teeth. ‘That is a dunt! A sword cut, I would be thinking?’
‘Aye!’ The man nodded, ‘And would have laid my arm bare to the bone if this had not turned the blade.’
I had come up to look also. The bracelet was scratched and scarred by many marks beside the sword dint, but I could still see quite clearly the device engraved on it; it was a Capricorn, half goat, half fish, and the thing caught my interest. ‘It is a Legionary bracelet, is it not, then? I have seen others of the kind before, but not quite the same – it looks old – and as though it will have seen hard service.’
‘Struan!’ said my foster-father below his breath. He was shamed by my ill manners, for among the Tribes it is ill done to ask questions of a stranger, at least until he has eaten and drunk beneath one’s roof; and though I had not in truth asked, the question was there.
But the man looked round at me with one eyebrow cocked in a way that I was to come to know. He was not so much older than I; maybe two or three and twenty, with a quick face, and the bluest eyes that I have ever seen in any man. ‘Notice things, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Yes, it is old, and it has seen hard service. It belonged to the first of our family to follow the Eagles.’
And at that moment, Murna arrived back from the market.
She was calling before she was in from the road. ‘Struan! Struan!’ And then she checked in the doorway at sight of the stranger.
I put my arms round her, wine jug and all, and hugged her close and close. No blood-sister could have been nearer to me than she was. And she laughed, and tried to push me away. ‘Oh, be careful! Let you be careful of the wine!’
My foster-father had turned his back on us and was attending to his customer. ‘I can beat this out for you cold; it will take but a short time – if you will come back later this evening, I will have it ready for you.’ And then it seemed that an idea came to him out of the rejoicing that was in the air. ‘Or stay, since you are come in a happy hour when my foster-son returns to us for a while, bide and drink a cup of wine while I set all to rights.’
The soldier smiled. ‘It is a kindly offer, and most gladly I accept it.’
So Murna went to fetch out from the inner room the cup of green Roman glass that was always kept for honoured guests; and filled it with wine for the soldier. And I saw how all the time his eyes followed her. But I think that, at that time, he was one whose eyes follow any girl who is not as ugly as the Furies, and Murna – well, it is hard to tell with one’s own kin – she was not ugly; she had a kind, quiet face that lit up when she was happy.
My foster-father had put aside whatever was on the anvil, and begun work already on the dinted bracelet; and Murna brought the cup to the soldier. ‘Drink, stranger, and be welcome.’
And the soldier took it gravely from between her two hands. It seemed he knew his manners, and the manners of Tribes. ‘Good fortune on the house, and on the woman of the house!’ And then he smiled: ‘And my name is Lucian.’
Murna repeated it after him, ‘Lucian’, very quietly and smiled also.
Then she filled one of the household cups of black pottery for me, and we sat on the bench against the wall, drinking and talking, while she went about her task of making ready the supper, and Fergal worked on at the dinted silver bracelet.
And when the repair was finished, Lucian paid for it, and sprang the thing back on to his arm, and went his way.
That was the first time I ever saw Lucianus Calpurnius, who was to change all my life for me. But on the last night of the Gathering, I met him again.
The day had been mostly filled with a dispute between two Clans as to the borders of their hunting runs – dry and dusty stuff, old men’s talk drawn from the memories of their grandfathers – and he was making for one of the wine booths in the fairground that always sprang up below Traprain at Gathering time. I took him instead to the House of Talore, where you can get good beer and barley fire-drink in place of the sour wine they sell in the fairground.
Besides, if you must be having the truth, I was hoping that somebody I knew might be there, for I was proud to be seen with Lucian. So tall, he seemed to me, and noonday splendid. And he had not laughed at me for my small size and midnight colour, saying that my true mother must have been one of the Little Dark People, as my brother and the men of our Clan sometimes did, maybe not knowing how the jest galled me. . . .
The House of Talore was a favourite gathering place for merchant folk, and, even as we ducked through the low doorway into the firelit gloom and the peat reek hanging low under the thatch, I heard a voice I knew well. Flann the Far-Wanderer, who traded in pottery with the far North, and had even been to the Islands of Thule at the world’s end, was as full of traveller’s tales as an egg is full of meat.
‘And I tell you, it is only the bravest of the brave, who may reach to those islands,’ he was saying. ‘For beside the storms and the wild wastes of waters, they are hedged about with walls of freezing fog through which one must sail for days on end. And out of the fog the great tusked sea-beasts rise up to attack any ship that comes that way. And the people of those islands are squat as toads, and slit-eyed, and yellow, and have strange powers to make the hair rise on the back of your neck –’
‘But they are knowing a good pot when they see one,’ somebody put in, and there was a general laugh.
‘And why would they not be knowing a good pot when they see one?’ Flann said. ‘But I see that I am wasting my time talking to you of things that are beyond your understanding.’
We bought heather beer, a jug between us, and settled down in a corner to talk. And so, friendliwise, we both learned something that evening of each other and each other’s worlds.
And all the while, behind me – for he must have decided that he was not wasting his time after all – I could hear Flann the Far-Wanderer, still in full spate. . . . ‘And on those islands there are great jets of boiling water, taller than the topmost branch of the tenth tree, if ten tall trees were set one upon another. And there are mountains plumed with fire. . . .’
But I was more interested in what Lucian was saying.
‘It’s not such a bad life – oh I’m not talking about the Legions, of course, not nowadays, but the Auxiliaries. And the Dacian Horse are the best of them. If you’re a Chief’s son, you’d like enough get command of a troop before long, and a Cohort by and by. And there’s always the chance of seeing other lands – like our friend yonder. Think about it, Struan.’
‘I will be thinking about it,’ I said, staring into the honey-brown depths of my beer. And indeed I was already thinking – hard!
And, then, someone else came through the low doorway, and a kind of breath of stillness ran through the crowded houseplace. Even Flann, finding that nobody was listening to him, let his story fall away. And everyone looked towards the newcomer. But indeed we were the newcomers, not she. Not the small dark-haired woman with the necklace of dried seedpods and berries and blue jay’s feathers strung about her neck! Long, long before the Romans marched north, long, long before we, the Votadini, came to Traprain Law, the Little Dark Ones were the people of this land. Now, they live among the high moors and the waste places, and we see little of them. But sometimes they come down to sell beaver and wildcat skins, to beg for the scraps that we do not want, and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. And sometimes at the great feasts, or at the Gathering, one bolder than the rest – gen
erally a woman – will come to our drinking houses, and make a little of the simpler kind of magic for the customers there, in return for a belly full of food and drink and perhaps an old cloak or a chipped pot. Some people laugh at them for mere tricksters, but there are few that laugh twice.
The woman stood in the doorway, with the dusk spread behind her and the fingers of the firelight just brushing her bare feet, and looked round at us. And when she spoke, her voice was dark also, with a kind of bloom on it, like the bloom on a wild sloe. ‘Peace and plenty be upon the house and all within the house. Would my Lords see a small magic?’
The silence in the ale-shop broke up, as Talore himself bade her enter, and others added their voices to his.
‘Aye, come in and work your magic.’
‘Can you conjure up a smoke-man from the fire?’
‘Cast us a spell to make the beer stronger, Old Mother.’
And there was a scraping of stools and benches on the earthen floor as men turned themselves round to the hearth. And the woman came in and took her stand by the fire, seeming strangely far off from it all.
‘So,’ she said, when something of the quiet had come back again. ‘It shall be as my Lords command. Let one of my Lords give me a thing to hold – a small thing for a small magic.’ Her gaze moved over us all, not hurrying, nor yet lingering, till it rested upon Flann. ‘You, Far-Wanderer, let you lend me the blue ring from your hand.’
Flann pulled off the ring and gave it to her. ‘Take good care of it, then, it is a rare stone of much value.’
The Capricorn Bracelet Page 6