The landsmen were ravenous and disembarked under Otto’s guidance to find an inn, preferably with fresh bread, bacon and cheese. They succeeded and ate until they were forced to let their belts out a notch. Stuffed full, they made their way back to the quayside followed by a boy carrying a basket of provisions to repay the crew for their smoked fish. The mules and Otto’s horse were heaved out of the hold. He enquired and found a stable quite near where they were fed and rubbed down; exhausted but otherwise none the worse for their night at sea. The legionaries hauled their kit on deck and began to dry and lightly oil it against the saltwater.
Late on in the morning, a sailor hallooed the skipper and pointed out to sea. A vessel was skimming over the sparkling blue water towards them.
“My brother,” he exclaimed with a broad smile in which relief could be detected.
Quintus Mucius bounced onto dryland with his pale and green-tinged staff behind him.
“What a storm!” he exclaimed. “The lightning! Our vessel flew across the wild ocean like a champion racehorse at the circus. Did you see it, Otto?”
“I was in the hold.”
“Were you? I had myself tied to the mast and missed nothing. The waves were like snow-capped mountains just about to fall and crush us when our gallant craft rose up and defied them to do their worse as we clawed up their slopes! It was a wonder.”
The master of his boat had found a sheltered bay under the lee of the Isle of Vectis and ridden out part of the storm there before crossing over to the mainland that morning.
Quintus and Otto entertained the two skippers to dinner that night; partly to celebrate a safe landfall but also to discuss what they would do next. Otto had to translate for Quintus which slowed up the discussions. There were two possibilities. The first was to wait for a favourable wind and sail up to Dubrae. It was a deep- water port like the one in which they were moored, accessible at low tide. If they left at dawn the voyage could be made in one long day, perhaps a day and a half. Otto asked when the wind would be in the right quarter but received only shrugs in reply. The alternative was to go overland. One of the brothers drew a map in gravy on the table. They were deep in the arms of a long bay divided by a river a little to the north. Beyond the river, the land bulged outwards. They would have to find a reliable guide to lead them to a river crossing and then on through the hinterland unknown to either of the brothers. They estimated it would take at least two weeks if all went well; probably double that time. Quintus was not convinced.
“Of course they want us to hang about and go by sea. It’s in their interest. Otherwise, I would end their charter and pay them off, hiring another vessel in Dubrae to carry us back to Gesoriacum.”
The brothers could not understand Quintus but it was clear he was expressing doubt.
“There is a Roman trading post here, ask them if you aren’t happy with what we’ve told you,” one of them said.
“Where is it?” Otto asked.
“Up past the stables. You can’t miss it; there’s a damn great wooden eagle nailed to the gable-end.”
Wearing his best tunic and toga, accompanied by one of his servants, the Noble Quaestor Quintus Mucius made his way through the town. He had dressed to make sure any Roman in the trading post would instantly understand the status of this visitor. The locals gazed after him. It was not every day a Roman nobleman walked the streets of their port in his formal clothes. Some had never seen such a sight before; they nudged their mates and pointed. Others followed after him, commenting in their own language. Otto had gone with him as far as the stables. He wanted to check on the horses to make sure they were being fed properly; he was paying for grain and did not want to find out it was being adulterated with chaff.
“I’ll see you there in ten minutes,” he said and watched Quintus striding uphill along the cluttered street before he ducked into the dim interior of the stables.
The horses were in good condition; well recovered from their ordeal. The mules were their usual phlegmatic selves; placidly eating and content that no-one was whipping them on, for the moment. Otto went back into the open air. He walked up the hill towards the weather-beaten wooden building with the carved head of a nondescript hook-beaked bird nailed high up on the end wall. He passed the mouth of an alley at the end of which two dogs growled and snarled at each other over a pile of refuse. He reached the trading post and went in. The ground floor was one large room. Bales and sacks were stacked around the floor and on wide shelves. It smelled musty with an underlying odour of fish. A solitary clerk sat behind a counter.
“How may I help you sir?” he asked. “Oysters perhaps, finest native British oysters, salted herrings….”
“I’m looking for my friend who came in a few minutes ago,” Otto told him.
“No-one has called during the last hour…”
“A Roman nobleman, Quaestor Mucius, he was wearing his toga. You can’t have missed him. Where’s your master?”
“Sir, nobody at all has been here in the last hour. I have not left this room and my master is down in the port…”
Otto felt the onrushing nausea of shock then took a deep breath and collected himself. He turned on his feel and hurried away. The two dogs in the alley were still contesting their prize. He saw what it was now that they had dragged it half-free of the rubbish. A human foot, gnawed and torn but still attached to its leg lay draggled in the muck. He kicked the dogs aside, ignoring their raised hackles and dripping jaws. He pulled the body free. The sightless eyes of Quintus’ servant stared up at him. The man’s throat had been cut.
Otto ran for the boat. He struggled into his chain mail and buckled his cavalry sword around his waist as he shouted orders. The boat skippers were to search around the town asking for a Roman nobleman taking with them an escort of legionaries armoured and helmeted but carrying swords only, no shields or javelins.
“Worst you’ll face is a couple of bully boys with knives, nothing you can’t handle,” he told them.
With the help of a sailor the servants were to sent to fetch the dead man’s body back.
“Watch out for the dogs and take a scrap of canvas to wrap him in. Don’t being him onboard; the crew might think that’s bad luck. I’m going to ride out and see if I can spot anything on the road. Quintus Mucius can’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.”
Otto cantered his gelding through the streets yelling for everyone to get out of his way and receiving shouted curses and shaken fists as he went. Beyond the last house there was a single dirt track leading up to the headland. The slopes were lightly wooded with low trees sculpted into fantastical shapes by the salt-laden sea breezes. The summit was bare of trees but thickly blanketed in gorse bushes, brambles and heather in a dense tangle. He pulled up his blowing mount, high above the roofs of the port with a view over the ocean to Vectis with its white cliffs topped with green and the waters around and between dotted with mustard-coloured and faded-red sails.
Chapter 18
Otto examined the track. It was dry and dusty, rutted by wheels, scuffed with foot marks and hoofprints both coming from and heading towards the port. There was nothing to indicate that Quintus had recently passed this way. He could see far ahead from his elevated position on the gelding’s back. Nothing was moving; not a horse, not a human figure. But the gorse bushes on either side were taller than they first appeared. It could be that they were high enough to conceal a man on foot. He rode on for a mile until the road forked. One branch led north towards the river of which he had been told, the other inland down a gentle incline to sparse woods three or four miles away. He took the northern fork since there was nothing to choose between them. After half a mile, it broke into narrow, sandy paths not wide enough for two horses to pass each other that divided again and again into a maze between the clumps of spiny gorse. The mass of bushes blocked the breeze, intensifying the heat of the day. There was no sound other than the shuffling of his horse’s hooves in the sand and the droning of insects. He began to sweat. Th
e flies settled on his face and the corners of the gelding’s eyes. At the point when he had decided he was wasting his time, two men stepped out in front of him.
They stood side by side to block his path. Wild-haired and bearded, they were dressed in a motley assortment of rags and skins. They grinned up at him exposing a few brown, rotting stumps of teeth. One carried a hatchet and the other a cudgel which he repeatedly slapped against the palm of his free hand. They had come across a lone horseman in a place where he had no room to manoeuvre and the pickings were going to be good. Otto kept his eyes fixed on the pair of them wishing he had been riding Djinn. His charger would have reared on command, snapping at them with his teeth and battering them to the ground with his front hooves. But he was on his riding horse which was not trained for combat. One of the men’s eyes flicked past his mount’s right side. Otto instantly understood the significance of the glance. He jabbed his knee into the horse’s flank; it stepped to the left. Simultaneously, he drew his long sword, twisted from the waist and leaned backwards in the saddle, sweeping it down. The blade caught the sun and then the flat of it smashed onto the head of the third man who had been stealing up behind him.
The man stood stock still for an instant as if made of stone. Then he raised both hands to his head feeling around in his matted hair. His mouth formed a perfect circle. “Oh,” he said softly, then “Oh,” again. His hands dropped to his sides and he began to shake and spasm, hopping from one foot to the other, spinning and spinning on his heel until he fell backwards, thrashed awhile and lay quiet. “Oh,” he whispered once more and died. The sword blow on the crown of his head had driven a piece of bone deep into his brain without breaking the skin of his scalp. His nervous system had short-circuited leaving his body uncontrollable until it received no more scrambled signals and shut itself down, permanently. Otto turned to face the two men in front of him. They looked from him to their dead comrade in horror. Yelling and screaming spells against witchcraft, they ran off.
Otto worked his way through the tangle of sandy paths among the islands of scrub and back to the road. He made his way down to the port. At the quayside, he learned that enquiries and a search of alleyways and outbuildings had revealed nothing. Quintus Mucius had vanished off the face of the earth. The dead body of his servant witnessed to the fact that a crime had been committed but what crime; abduction or another murder?
“What are we going to do now, sir?” Mucius’ secretary asked.
“Arrange the funeral rites for your unfortunate companion and then think,” Otto replied.
He withdrew to the stern of the boat making it obvious he did not want to be disturbed while he considered the possibilities thrown up by the disappearance of the quaestor. Otto was in a quandary. He did not want to abandon Quintus but he could not stay in this port forever. He knew the objective of their mission and he could present the Emperor’s gift to the King of the Cantiari himself, if necessary. How long should he search for his new friend? Where should he search? He slept badly that night, dozing and waking again as his thoughts ran on. Dawn brought relief and a stranger. A dark-headed man stood on the quayside looking silently at their boat. He was short and muscular with powerful, bandy legs. He wore a plain, light-brown tunic over doeskin breeches and soft shoes, like those Otto had worn as a child; not much use for hard roads but ideal for fields and forests.
“What’re you after, man?” one of the crew called over to him.
“I am looking for the big Roman with the grey horse,” he replied.
The sailor pointed at Otto who saw the gesture and walked along the deck until he was level with the newcomer. The unexplained disappearance of Quintus had made him extra cautious.
“What do you want with me?” he asked in Latin.
“My master says you if come to him you will find your lost sheep,” the man told him in the same language but stumbling to express himself, unfamiliar with that tongue.
“What is this nonsense?”
“My master’s words,” he told Otto and closed his lips firmly as if to indicate there would be no explanation.
“What is your master’s name?” There was no reply. “What is your name?” Again, silence. Otto sighed. “I am the Imperial Military Prefect called Otto Longius.”
“My name is Tud,” the messenger told him and bowed.
“Greetings Tud, is your master in this town?”
“No. You ride.
“And how long will the journey take?
“Days, weeks, cannot say.”
“Won’t say you mean.,” Otto remarked. “Wait there.”
He called the skippers, his soldiers and the secretary to him. They huddled around him and he spoke quietly so as not to be overheard. He translated what Tud had said for the legionaries then asked everyone what they thought. The consensus was that it was a trap of some kind but no-one could say why it was being set. Otto walked once around the deck and came back to them all.
“How long is your charter?” he asked the brothers.
“Open-ended but we haven’t seen any money yet, just a promise on parchment. Can’t pay our way with that.” one of them told him.
Otto unstrung his purse and counted out one hundred denarii to each of them.
“This is good-faith money. If I don’t come back by the end of next month, take my people to Gesoriacum. The Roman authorities will settle with you there.”
All three spat on the palm of their hands and shook on the bargain.
“Right lads”, he said to his men, “which one of you is going to be temporary acting decanus?” they shuffled about and mumbled then one came to the front. “Right decanus, guard these boats and the quaestor’s servants. I don’t expect you to stay on board every hour of every day but employ proper military discipline. Here’s ten denarii each for the lads and twenty for you. Don’t get pissed and start any fights.” He fished the little marble finger on a chain out of the front of his tunic. He had worn it as a souvenir ever since it had been given to him by a sculptor on his first visit to Rome. “If any man arrives and says he has come with a message from me but cannot show you this, he is a liar. Kill him and set sail.” He repeated these instructions in Belgic for the skippers. Finally he spoke to the secretary. “Fetch writing materials,” he said and dictated an account of events to date. “This will exonerate you if it all ends badly.”
“Thank you, sir, oh thank, you,” the secretary told him with tears glinting in his eyes. A missing presumed-dead master would mean certain torture and probable execution for him and all the other servants without proof of their innocence.
In chain mail, helmeted, carrying his oval shield and a lance, Otto rode steadily along the same route he had followed the previous morning. Tud scurried by his side. When they came to the fork in the road, they carried on inland to the woods that Otto had seen in the distance. They travelled in silence, the sun shone on them, larks hung in the sky overhead and piped their songs. Butterflies were everywhere. More than once they flushed a covey of partridges out of the undergrowth which made the gelding start and snort. After three-quarters of an hour, Otto dismounted and walked for quarter of an hour before getting back into the saddle. He always adopted this method of saving a horse’s strength on a long journey. After three hours, they were deep under the canopy of the woodland. Otto stopped, unsaddled his gelding and let it roll in the soft grass. He had not spoken to Tud nor asked him a single question all the time they had been on the road. Tud broke the silence.
“You take great care horse,” he remarked.
“Yes,” Otto replied but said no more.
Shortly after he was back in the saddle with Tud trotting beside him on his strong, untiring legs. They turned onto a narrow path under the trees and enjoyed the cool, dappled shade before crossing a brook where Otto let his mount drink. Onwards they went, Tud leading him through the woods without hesitation. At last he stopped and pointed ahead to where the trees grew closer together.
“We are close,” he said and walk
ed briskly forwards.
Otto was forced to duck his head and sway in the saddle to avoid over-hanging branches for a few minutes and then they were out, into brilliant afternoon sunshine. Ahead was a small lake, perhaps, two hundred yards across. There was an island in the middle, reached by a wooden causeway. Otto followed Tud across. The centre of the island was hidden by a hedge of holly and yew. The hairs on Otto’s neck prickled. He knew he was entering a sacred place and felt the power emanating from it.
“Lead your horse,” Tud instructed.
They walked together through an archway into the centre of the grove. There was a well between two wooden huts with thatched roofs. A stable stood at the far side. There was no sound, no sign of life, even the noise of his horse’s hooves was muffled as they fell on springy turf underfoot. Tud took the reins out of Otto’s hand. He smiled reassuringly for him to go on. Otto approached the huts. A figure stepped through the entrance of the larger one into the golden sunlight. A slender man of above average height, his long, unplaited hair and his beard were snow white. He wore a long white robe falling to his feet tied about his waist with a cord decorated with silver acorns at each end. Around his neck was a silver torque. In spite of the warmth of the day, he had a cloak over his shoulders. Otto stopped dead. His senses began to swim. He blinked rapidly and looked again. The cloak reflected iridescent glimmers of purple and metallic light as the sun caught it but it was black; made of ravens’ feathers sewn onto fine cloth.
Knight of Rome Part II Page 28