by Henry Treece
Table of Contents
About this Story
PART ONE 1. The Homecoming of Festus
2. The Fight by the City Gate
3. The Bear of the British
4. Wulf
5. The Road to the North
6. The Blood Eagle
7. The Horsemen under the Trees
8. Medrawt the Black
PART TWO 1. The Village of Death
2. Merddin’s Cave
3. The Dream of Artos
4. ‘Goodbye, my friend!’
5. The Moonlit Glade
6. The Fiery Horseman
7. The Western Kings
8. The Long Pavilion
9. The Feast
10. Strange Meeting
PART THREE 1. The Roads of Destiny
3. The Four Days of Dubglas
4. The Place of the Tumulus
5. The Flight to the Coast
EPILOGUE
About this Story
This book tells the story of two boys in Britain, sixty years or more after the Romans had sailed away to fight the barbarians who were attacking Rome.
But the Romans had lived in Britain - which was a Roman province - for four hundred years and had left their mark on the island. So, even though the roads and towns decayed, and Britain became cut off from contact with the rest of Europe, many Britons still thought of themselves as ‘Romans’, not only in blood but also in their way of life.
However, certain Britons from outlying parts not easily reached by the roads had never been greatly affected by Roman customs, and although they had once agreed to help the Legions in battle - as foederati - they did not hesitate to plunder where-ever they could once Roman control had gone. It was the chieftain of such a tribe, Vortigern, who called in certain Saxons to help him against other raiders of the British coasts. And when they had served his turn he massacred them - very unwisely, for there were other Saxons (and Angles and Jutes) waiting to replace them!
The Romans had foreseen such a muddled situation and had appointed one Ambrosius to act on their behalf when they had gone, probably giving him the old title Count of Britain.
But at this point history becomes very confused, because no one is really certain whether Ambrosius - and his descendants for at least two generations, all bearing the same name - was the great hero who fought twelve great battles against the Saxons, or whether he handed over his authority and title to another who followed in his footsteps and who became known later as ‘Arthur’,
There is good reason for believing that there was such a man as Arthur; though he would have been called Artorius among his Romanised friends, and perhaps Artos, which is the Celtic for ‘Bear’, among his more barbaric friends - and since he is thought to have come from a northern, purely Celtic, part of Britain, he would have had many of the latter. The same sort of thing applies to Medrawt, who is also called Medrodus. But we do the same thing ourselves today, when we call a friend either Henry or Harry, John or Jack.
Such writers as Sir Thomas Malory or Lord Tennyson give us a picture of ‘King’ Arthur as he might have been had he lived in their own times. In Le Morte d’ Arthur he is shown as a medieval knight: in Idylls of the King he becomes a benevolent and Christian Victorian gentleman.
This story tries to show the sort of man he must have been; a ruthless and possibly half-barbaric Celt, who had adopted Roman manners and military methods. He could not have succeeded against his many savage foes unless he himself had been as savage; for they were heathens and were not to be won over by gentle Christian reasoning.
And, incidentally, most of the other people in this book are real too; Kei and Bedwyr, Constantine, Votiporix, Cuneglassus and Aurelius ‘the Dog’.
So this is a story about two boys, Festus and Wulf, and Artos ‘the Bear’; but if we had followed all of the Twelve Great Battles, the two boys would have been campaigning from Chichester to Edinburgh, and back again, over a period of twenty years! They would have grown long beards and the book would have needed Arthur’s strength to lift its bulk!
All the same, as this is a fascinating and rather complicated period, there are some comments on pp. 173-6, which might straighten out a few points.
But please don’t read this as a ‘history’ book! It is an adventure story, about people rather like ourselves - all except those who were more like Apache Indians and gangsters! - and, of course, it is about the ‘growing pains’ of our own country.
Henry Treece
PART ONE
About AD 490
1. The Homecoming of Festus
It was a morning in early summer and the sun already shone on upland and meadow, woodland and stream. The brackened slopes of southern Britain seemed to bask contentedly in the new warmth, as though nothing could happen on such a bright morning to disturb their peace, their sleep, their ancient dreams.
Then suddenly a lark rose from the tussocky grass, startled and crying out in alarm, and over the brow of the hill a boy came running. The sun caught his close-cropped dark hair, the flushed olive of his skin, and glinted on the round topaz, set in a circle of silver, that acted as a shoulder brooch, fastening the short red cloak that floated out behind him in the breeze.
On one side of the broad bronze-studded belt that held in his red woollen tunic swung a well-filled sheepskin pouch; on the other a leather-hafted dagger in an enamelled scabbard. His bare brown arms and sturdy legs cased in trousers of a red and blue squared pattern gave promise of considerable strength and agility; which was as it should be in a boy whose great-grandfather had marched half over the world as a centurion with the Eagles, and whose mother was still thought of by their neighbours not as a Roman lady by marriage, but as the grand-daughter of Festydd, the chieftain; he who could bend a sword over his neck and had once held a golden eagle by the legs until the creature had ceased struggling. It was of such stock that the boy had come, and it was from that very chieftain that he had his name, though now it took the form of Festus, having changed like many of the older British words.
So Festus ran on down the hill, steadying the bouncing pouch at his side, thinking of the presents it contained - a necklace of true Whitby jet for his mother, a narrow coral belt for his little sister, Julia, and a pair of ivory dice for his
father. He was impatient to be back home, to stride into the villa like a full-grown man and toss the gifts on to the table as though they were just ordinary things. Above all, he was anxious to tell them all that he had made a good bargain with the woollen cloth which he had been entrusted to take to the far-off dyeing sheds outside the city - a bargain which not even his father himself could have bettered, for prices had suddenly risen as though men were anxious to buy what they could without delay, and as though money, especially the tiny coins called minims, had become less and less in value overnight.
But Festus knew that he had more than half a mile to go, to the valley bottom, and that before he caught the first glimpse of their red-tiled villa and the long weaving shed behind it he must pass through the wood and make his way along the ditch that separated his father’s land from the municipal fields that adjoined it.
As he thrust his way through the furze and between the sharp prickles of the holly trees, avoiding overhanging boughs above and adder-infested clumps below, Festus could not resist a glow of pleasure in his achievements. He saw his mother’s grave smile, his sister’s wide-eyed admiration, his father’s approving nod! He ran on until he had reached the further edge of the wood, and then, putting his fingers to his lips, blew a long piercing whistle, repeated twice, so that they would know that he was coming, that their son was returning home after an absence of almost a week.
Now he could see the tall trees that surrounded the hou
se, sheltering it from the winds that blew down the valley, and even thought he caught a glimpse of a rising wisp of blue woodsmoke, He would soon be there, accepting a cup of wine from his sister, who would be so grateful for her belt, or nibbling one of his mother’s honey cakes, while she stood before the silver mirror, admiring herself in her new necklace of jet. And then he stopped suddenly.
At the foot of the slope, not much more than a hundred paces away from him, a man lay by the ditch, his knees doubled up beneath him and his hands held round his head, as though he was praying earnestly and had fallen asleep. Festus shielded his eyes with his hand and stared. It was Arfon, surely, his father’s shepherd; no one else would wear that old sacking tunic, pulled in at the waist with rope. Festus felt that something must be wrong with the old man and ran on now, faster than ever, towards him, calling his name as he went.
At the side of the ditch he stopped, wondering, for the man was so still. Then, mastering his sudden fear, he bent and rolled
Arfon over as gently as he could. Even as he touched him, he knew that there was something different about him. His body was so stiff, and the legs remained bent even when the man lay on his side. Then Festus saw the horrible gash that encircled the man’s throat, and the sword slashes that ran along his bare arms, where he had put them up to shield his face. He stepped away from the old man in horror, and as he turned his head saw that Gwyn, the white-headed sheepdog, lay in the ditch-bottom, his legs stretched out and his jaws still wide in a last yell of agony. Three arrow flights stuck out from the old dog’s broad chest, their points buried deep in the clay wall of the dyke.
Now Festus waited no longer, but ran along the side of the field as though his life depended on his speed. With the blood thumping in his head, he rounded the clump of tall poplars and cypresses that sheltered the villa, and there he saw what he had feared since he was a small child and had dreamed about, despite all coaxing and comforting. The house was a tumbled pile of ash and broken tiles. Charred beams stuck upwards like gaunt fingers, and the pieces of mosaic that had once formed the floor of the dining room, and of which his mother had been so proud, lay scattered here and there among the grass like pieces of coloured paper that a destructive child has torn up and flung away.
The boy stopped at the edge of the ruined dwelling and putting his hands to his mouth called out: ‘Mother! Are you there? Mother? Julia? Where’s Mother?’
But all he heard in reply was a mocking echo from the hillside, that and the sharp bark of a fox that foraged among the trees in the wood on the uplands.
Festus bent and touched the ashes. They were quite cold, as cold as poor Arfon. It must have happened many days ago, soon after he had left, perhaps. He turned away to go to the gutted weaving shed, when his foot kicked against something hard. It was his little sister’s wax tablets, which she used when she practised her letters, for their father was strict in his desire that they should both write like educated Romans, and not scratch on stones like the barbarian Irish.
Festus stooped and picked up the wax tablets. Across one of them, in her wavering childish scrawl, Julia had written in Latin: ‘Let who will live in the town; the man who loves peace and gentleness will always live in the country.’
Festus read these words with a sob. Then suddenly he turned the tablet over and looked at it in disgust. He dropped it back into the grass and wiped his hand upon his tunic, backing away from the spot where the tablet had fallen.
When at last the boy’s mind cleared, the sun had risen in the sky and was beating down harshly upon the desolate scene. Festus wandered here and there, poking with a stick among the rubble, but the fire had been a fierce one, and little was left of anything.
True, some of the looms were intact still in the roofless weaving shed, but the lengths of cloth on them had been slashed from side to side, as though by a malicious child that runs amok with a sharp knife or an axe.
Bewildered and dumb, Festus went round to the stables at the back of the house. As he had expected, the horses had gone, all but one old mare, too fat to pull a wagon, who had enjoyed a privileged position in the villa, her only task having been to eat the oats that were put out for her. She lay in the far corner of the stables, deep in the straw. Her head and tail were missing. The hot tears spurted from the boy’s eyes as he looked down at her.
‘Saxons!’ he cried, clenching his fists and gripping them tightly before him. ‘Carrion dogs of the seas! Saxon vermin! May the gods strike you as you have struck us! May you know the agony we know! May you…’
Then suddenly he halted, as though ashamed of his outburst.
He passed his hand over his eyes and spoke more evenly. “I am a Roman,’ he said. ‘The law still stands here while we have Ambrosius to administer it. Ambrosius shall know of this, if I can make him listen.’
Then, flinging his sheepskin pouch down on the stable floor, Festus turned towards the north and began to run again, making a wide detour, however, so as not to pass the body of old Arfon again.
2. The Fight by the City Gate
It was early evening when the boy stood under the crumbling walls of Magiovinium. The setting sun lay behind the town, throwing everything into a dark and melancholy shadow. By now Festus was tired almost to the point of exhaustion but he shouted as loudly as he could, yet again, and waited, swaying on his feet.
At last a man’s head appeared above the moss and tufted grass that topped the decaying wall. To right and to left other heads appeared and looked down on the boy. He tried to smile up at them; then he saw that each man trained a bow in his direction.
‘Go away!’ one of them shouted, though he was so far away that Festus could hardly make out his words.
‘I am a Roman, come for succour! Let me in!’ called back the boy.
An arrow whistled past him and stuck, quivering, in the grass verge of the roadside, a few feet away.
‘Go away before we shoot in earnest!’ shouted the guard. ‘The gates are barred. They will not be opened till the morning. Go away!’
Festus stepped back, his heart sinking now, and he made a last despairing effort to tell them of his errand. This time an arrow tore through the hanging fold of his cloak, almost pulling it from his shoulders. The boy ran back away from the wall and stood with his hands open, palms upwards, so that the militia-men might see that he carried no weapons. But they only laughed down at him, and then went on in their parade round the walls.
Festus sat down by the roadside, his legs shaking with tiredness, his stomach empty and aching with hunger, his eyes full of tears. ‘Shopkeepers!’ he shouted towards the walls. ‘You are no true soldiers! The soldiers went from this land when the legions sailed!’
A night-bird skimmed down low, just above his head, crying discordantly. It seemed to be mocking him in its derisive calls. Festus picked up a stone in his anger and was about to fling it at the bird when it circled again; then, overcome by the uselessness of such an action, by the sudden overwhelming wave of grief as he remembered once more that his family had been taken from him, he sank his head in his hands and wept unashamedly. The stone fell at his feet, forgotten.
How long he would have stayed there, sunk in his great sadness, no one can tell; but suddenly something happened which changed the whole course of his mood. Round the bend of the road, shielded from the eye by a thick clump of straggling willows that flourished in the damp soil thereabouts, a dark group of horsemen broke into view, shouting and talking excitedly. By their broken javelin shafts and battered armour, Festus could see immediately that they had been engaged in some bitter foray; and by the fact that none of them carried trophies at the saddle-bow, the boy knew with an equal surety that they had been defeated by whatever foe they had encountered. Now that the control of Rome had slipped from Britain, many of the warriors who still defended the mouldering fortresses up and down the country, even in that southern Civil Zone, had reverted to savagery against their enemies. It was nothing to see a returning forager cantering along the overg
rown and neglected lanes with a pair of flaxen heads dangling at his horse’s side by the hair. Yet they were as cowardly as they were savage, these half-foreign Britons, many of whom were descendants of Roman legionaries who had come from as far afield as Heraclea, or even distant Scythia. Festus reflected grimly that the man who would cut off his defeated enemy’s head with glee would just as readily scream out for mercy, without thought of honour, when the tables were turned against him.
But now the little cavalcade was upon him and he had no time for such contemptuous thoughts. He saw that the great gates of the citadel were opening to admit the returning horsemen, and he acted swiftly. As the posse drew alongside him he joined on to it, clutching at the stirrup-leather of the horseman nearest to him, and, though the tired man cursed him and even struck at him with his dangling reins, the boy held on resolutely, and, in the general hurly-burly, passed through the gates and into the town, hoping as he ran that he would not be crushed against the big stone gateposts by the horse. In this respect he was lucky, for although as he let go of the stirrup-leather he fell face downwards on the cobblestones of the entrance way, he suffered no more hurt than a grazed knee and a cut elbow. Then the cavalcade had passed on and left him. He heard the great gates close behind him and breathed a relieved sigh.
But his relief did not last long. A rough hand clutched him by the shoulder and a stern face looked down on him. A militia-man, dressed in the greasy leathern corselet studded with iron nails which served these soldiers as armour, glared into his eyes.
‘You Saxon brat!’ the man snarled, pulling back his hand to strike the boy as he lay. His words set beating an enraged pulse in the boy’s temples. Festus yelled, ‘I am a better Roman than you will ever be!’
Then, almost before he realised what he was doing, he had kicked sideways at the man’s legs, and, as the soldier doubled over him with the impact, had grasped him by the hair and pulled him downwards. The soldier plunged forwards and fell half on the boy, his dagger flying from his hand. Festus was an experienced wrestler for his age, and knew most of the tricks of the sport from his encounters with older boys than himself. He squirmed round and with one movement wrapped his cloak tightly about the man’s head, and almost with the same motion struck him hard at the base of the skull.