The Silver Branch

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  The odd creature served his master with a kind of proud and prancing willingness, a slightly fantastic flourish that was very different from the well-trained impersonal bearing of the other slaves. And when the third course of dried fruits and little hot cakes had been set on the table, and Carausius dismissed the serving slaves, the creature did not go with them, but laid himself down, hound-wise, before the fire. ‘When the Lord of the House is away, Cullen sleeps in the warm cook-place. When the Lord of the House comes home, Cullen sleeps beside his lord’s fire,’ he said composedly, stretching himself out on one elbow.

  The Emperor glanced down at him. ‘Good Hound, Cullen,’ he said, and taking a cluster of raisins from the red samian dish, tossed it down to him.

  Cullen caught it with a swift and oddly beautiful gesture of one hand, his strange face splitting into a grin which reached from ear to ear. ‘So! I am my Lord’s hound, and my Lord feeds me from his own table.’

  The Emperor, turning again in his chair, one hand out to the wine-flask, caught Justin’s fascinated and puzzled gaze on the little man, and said with that straight, wide-lipped smile of his, ‘The High King of Erin has his Druth, his Household Fool, and should the third-part Emperor of Rome lack what the High King of Erin has?’

  Cullen nodded, eating raisins and spitting the pips into the fire. ‘Wherefore my Lord Curoi bought me from the slavers up yonder on the coast of the Western Sea, that he might not lack what the High King of Erin has in his Halls at Tara;—and also, it is in my mind, because I was from Laighin, even as my Lord. And I have been my Lord’s hound these seven summers and winters past.’ Then, spinning over and coming to his knee in a single kingfisher flash of movement, he took from his belt the instrument that Justin had noticed before.

  Sitting cross-legged now beside the fire, while above him the talk drifted on to other matters, he tipped the thing with a curious flick of the wrist, and a kind of ripple of bell-notes ran from the smallest apple at the tip to the greatest just above the thick enamelled handle and up again, in a minor key. Then, very quietly, and clearly for his own pleasure, he began to play—if playing it could be called, for there was no tune, only single notes, falling now soft, now clear, as he flicked each silver apple with knuckle or nail; single notes that seemed to fall from a great height like shining drops distilled out of the emptiness, each perfect in itself.

  It was a strange evening; an evening that Justin never forgot. Outside, the beat of the wind and the far-down boom of the sea, and within, the scent of burning logs, the steady radiance of the lamps, and the stains of quivering coloured light cast upon the table by the wine in its iridescent flasks. He held his hand in one such pool, to see it splashed with crimson and emerald and living peacock-blue; and wondered suddenly whether these wonderful flasks, whether Carausius’s great gold cup and the hangings of thick Eastern embroideries that shut off the end of the room, and the coral-studded bridle-bit on the wall behind him, had all known the hold of a black-winged Saxon longship. Outside, the wild wings and the voices of the storm; and within, the little flames flickering among the logs, and facing each other around the table, Flavius and himself and the little thick-set seaman who was Emperor of Britain; while the strange slave Cullen sprawled hound-wise beside the fire, idly touching the apples of his Silver Branch.

  It had been for little more than a despot’s whim, Justin knew, that Carausius had dismissed his escort and ordered the two of them to ride with him instead; but far down within him he knew also that after this evening, though they never met again like this, there would be something between them that was not usually between an Emperor and two of his most junior officers.

  Yes, a most strange evening.

  Carausius had most of the talk, as was fitting, while the two young men sat with their cups of watered wine before them, and listened. And indeed it was talk worth listening to, for Carausius was not merely an Emperor, he had been a Scaldis river pilot, and the commander of a Roman Fleet, a Centurion under Carus in the Persian War, and a boy growing up in Laighin, three days south from Tara of the Kings. He had known strange places, and done strange things, and he could talk of them so that they came to life for his hearers.

  And then, as though suddenly tired of his own talk, he rose and turned to the curtained end of the room. ‘Ah, but I have talked enough of yesterday. I will show you a thing that is for today. Come here, both of you.’

  Chairs rasped on the tesserai, and Justin and Flavius were close at his shoulder as he flung back the hangings glimmering with peacock and pomegranate colours, and passed through. Justin, the last to follow, was aware of a grey, storm-lashed window and a sense of the wild night leaping in on them with a shout, and stood an instant holding the rich folds back, uncertain whether they might need the light of the room behind them for whatever it was that they were going to see. But Carausius said, ‘Let the curtains fall. Can’t see with the lamplight dancing in the panes.’ And he let the dark hangings swing across behind him.

  As he did so, and the lamplight was cut off, the world outside sprang out of the darkness into a hurrying, moonshot clarity. They were standing in the bay of a great window such as Justin had never seen before, that swole out with the curve of a drawn bow; a window that was a veritable watch-tower, a falcon’s eyrie, clinging as it seemed to the very edge of the cliff.

  A ragged sky of grey and silver went racing by, the moon swinging in and out of the storm-scuds, so that one moment the whole sweep of the coast was flooded with swift silver radiance, and the next, all would be blotted out by a curtain of driving sleet. Far below them the white-capped waves charged by, rank on rank, like wild white cavalry. And far away to the eastward, as Justin looked along the coast, a red petal of fire hung on the dark headland.

  ‘This is my look-out,’ Carausius said. ‘A good place to watch my shipping come and go, with Dubris light and Limanis and Rutupiae lights to guide them safely in their coming and their going.’ He seemed to sense the direction of Justin’s gaze. ‘That is the pharos at Dubris on the headland. Limanis light one can see from the hill behind the house. Now look out to sea—yonder on the edge of the world south-eastward.’

  Justin looked, and as a sleet-squall passed away from the sea, leaving the distance clear, saw, very far off, another spark of light on the skyline.

  ‘That is Gesoriacum,’ said Carausius.

  They were silent a moment, remembering that last winter Gesoriacum had been within the territory of the man beside them. And in that silence, above the mingled voices of wind and sea, the ripple of Cullen’s Silver Branch sounded in the room behind them, faint and sweet and somehow mocking.

  Flavius said quickly, as though in answer to that silver mocking of bells, ‘Maybe we are the better off without Gesoriacum. An outlying post is always something of a liability.’

  Carausius gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘It is a bold man who seeks to console his Emperor for past defeat!’

  ‘I did not mean it as consolation,’ Flavius said levelly. ‘I spoke what I believe to be true.’

  ‘So? And you believe rightly.’ Justin could hear that straight, wide-lipped smile of Carausius’ in his voice. ‘Yet it is truth that wears one face for him who seeks to make a single province strong, and quite another for him who would strengthen and enlarge his own hold on the Purple.’

  He fell silent, his face turned towards that spark of light, dimming already as another sleet-squall came trailing across the sea. And when he spoke again, it was broodingly, more than half to himself. ‘Nay, but whichever it be, either or—both, the true secret is in sea-power, which is a thing that Rome has never understood … In greater fleets, manned by better seamen. Legions we must have, but above all, sea-power, here with the sea all about us.’

  ‘Some sea-power we have already, as Maximian found to his cost,’ Flavius said, leaning a shoulder against the window frame and looking down. ‘Aye, and the black-sailed fleets of the Sea Wolves also.’

  ‘Yet the Wolves gather,’ Carausius sa
id. ‘Young Constantius would be hard put to it to take his troops from the German Frontier this spring to drive me from Gesoriacum … Always, everywhere, the Wolves gather on the frontiers, waiting. It needs only that a man should lower his eye for a moment, and they will be in to strip the bones. Rome is failing, my children.’

  Justin looked at him quickly, but Flavius never moved; it was as though he had known what Carausius would say.

  ‘Oh, she is not finished yet. I shall not see her fall—my Purple will last my life-time—and nor, I think, will you. Nevertheless, Rome is hollow rotten at the heart, and one day she will come crashing down. A hundred years ago, it must have seemed that all this was for ever; a hundred years hence—only the gods know … If I can make this one province strong—strong enough to stand alone when Rome goes down, then something may be saved from the darkness. If not, then Dubris light and Limanis light and Rutupiae light will go out. The lights will go out everywhere.’ He stepped back, dragging aside the hanging folds of the curtains, and stood framed in their darkness against the firelight and the lamplight behind him, his head yet turned to the scudding grey and silver of the stormy night. ‘If I can steer clear of a knife in my back until the work is done, I will make Britain strong enough to stand alone,’ he said. ‘It is as simple as that.’

  As they turned back to the lamplit room, Flavius said swiftly and urgently, ‘Caesar knows that for all the worth that there is in us, we are Caesar’s men for life or death, Justin and I.’

  Carausius stood for an instant, the curtain still in his hand, and looked at them. ‘Caesar knows,’ he said at last. ‘Aye, Caesar knows that, my children,’ and let the dark folds fall between the lamplight and the scudding moon.

  IV

  THE SEA WOLF

  SEVERAL times as that winter drew on to spring, Justin and Flavius went out together after wild fowl in the marshes: the strange border country between land and sea, that had for Justin the magic of all half-way things.

  Their usual hunting ground was Tanatus, the great marsh island across the shipping lane from Rutupiae, but about mid March there were reports of a Saxon ship hovering in the seaways that had somehow eluded the patrol galleys, and Tanatus was put out of bounds to the fortress because of the ease with which stray, wild-fowling Legionaries might be cut off there by the Sea Wolves. And so, in the dark of a certain March morning, Justin and Flavius made their way out to the forsaken fisher village at the southernmost tip of the mainland marshes.

  And now they were crouching among the reeds in the lea of the old dyke that had once served to keep back the sea from the village, their bows ready strung, and the small birding bolts stuck barb-down in the turf before them.

  The dawn was coming. It was in the smell of the little knife-edged wind that shivered and sang through the hairy grasses and about the crumbling turf walls of the abandoned village; in the calling of curlew and sandpiper; in the faint, sheeny paleness creeping up the eastern sky and the fading of the red iris-bud of flame that was Rutupiae light. Slowly the light gathered and grew; any moment now they would hear the wing-beats of the wild duck rising into the wind; the steady throb of wings that was the beginning of the dawn flight.

  But before it came, another sound caught their straining ears; a sound so faint and so swiftly stilled that it might have been almost anything, or nothing at all. Yet there was about it a suggestion of being human and a suggestion of stealth that made it alien among the other sounds of the marsh.

  Flavius stiffened, staring away to his left through the thin curtain of reeds that they had left between themselves and the outer world.

  ‘What is it?’ Justin whispered. And the other made a quick gesture for silence; then, timing the movement of his hand with a gust of wind, swayed back a few of the tall reeds. And Justin saw.

  A man was standing not more than a spear-throw from them, his head turned to watch another who had that moment emerged from the willow-break farther inland. The water-cool light, growing every moment stronger, showed them the round buckler between his shoulders, and the wiry yellow gold of his hair and beard; and his sword-side being towards them, they could see the saex, the short Saxon thrusting-sword, in its wolf-skin sheath at his belt. And as the second man drew nearer, Flavius gave a long, soundless whistle. ‘Name of Thunder!’ he whispered. ‘It is Allectus!’

  Justin, crouching frozen beside him, was without any surprise. It was as though he had known.

  Allectus had come up with the other man now. The Saxon said something in a low, angry growl, and he replied more loudly, ‘Aye, I know it is dangerous after cock-light. If I could have come sooner I would have done so—for my own skin’s sake. After all, it is I who run the chief risk. You have but to lie hid until the Sea Witch puts in for you … Now this is what I have to say to your lords who sent you.’ But even as he spoke, the two men had turned away together, and their voices sank to a formless murmuring.

  Justin strained every sense to catch what they were saying, but could make nothing of the low mutter. Indeed he had a feeling that they had abandoned Latin and were speaking in a tongue that he did not know. He scanned the ground ahead of him, searching desperately for some means of getting closer without being seen, but once out of the reeds there was no cover for a curlew, let alone a man.

  And then suddenly it seemed that the two men had reached the end of whatever it was that they had to say to each other. The Saxon nodded, as though in answer to some order; and Allectus turned away in the direction from which he had come. The Saxon stood a few moments looking after him, then, with a shrug, turned himself about and bending low so as not to break the skyline, set off along the old thorn windbreak, heading westward for the wildest and most solitary part of the marsh.

  Among the reeds Justin and Flavius took one look into each other’s faces. There was no time to think, no time to weigh one thing against another and decide what was best to do. They must make an instant decision, and abide by it wherever it led them.

  ‘Wait till he rounds the end of the windbreak,’ Flavius muttered, his eyes narrowed as he stared out through the parted reeds. ‘If we go after him now, and he cries out, it will warn friend Allectus.’

  Justin nodded. From where he was he could no longer see the retreating Saxon, and so he watched Flavius crouching with a knee drawn under him like a runner poised for the start of a race, watched him grow tense on the edge of movement …

  ‘Now,’ Flavius breathed.

  They were out from the reeds like an arrow from a bow, running low for the end of the windbreak. By the time they reached it the man had disappeared from sight, but a few moments later, as they checked uncertain, he came into view again at the curve of a dry dyke, and glancing once behind him, struck out into the open over the tawny levels.

  ‘He’s probably got a hideout somewhere among the dunes,’ Flavius said. ‘Come on!’

  And again they were out after him. There was no possibility now of keeping under cover—when he looked back he was bound to see them, and it would be a matter of speed against speed, and nothing else. At least they must be well out of earshot of Allectus by this time.

  They had almost halved the distance between them when, on the edge of a clump of wind-twisted thorn trees the Saxon checked and glanced back, as they had known he must before long. Justin saw him freeze for one instant into intense stillness, like an animal that scents the hunter; then his hand flew to his sword-hilt, and next instant he had sprung away, running like a hare with the two young Romans on his trail.

  As though realizing the danger of such country, lacking all shelter, and veined by wandering arms of the sea that might cut him off at any moment, the Saxon changed course almost at once, and began to swing away from the coast, heading inland for the forest fringe; and knowing that once he gained the trees they would almost certainly lose him, Justin and Flavius lengthened their stride, straining every nerve to come up with him before he reached shelter. Flavius was drawing slowly away from his kinsman, slowly nearer to the des
perate quarry, while Justin, who was not much of a runner, came pounding doggedly along in the rear. The smoke-grey shoreline of the bare woods was very near now, and Justin was far behind, snatching at his breath in great gasps. He felt horribly sick, and he was deaf with the drubbing of his own heart; but the only thing in his mind was that away ahead of him, Flavius with only a little dagger was alone on the heels of a desperate man running with a naked sword in his hand.

  On and on, the two figures in front were running almost as one now. They were into the furze and blackthorn scrub, when suddenly—he could not see quite what happened, he was too blind with his own running—the foremost figure seemed to stumble, and instantly the other was upon him. Justin saw them go down together, and put on one last heart-tearing burst of speed. Flavius and the Saxon were locked together in a struggling mass as he reached them; and through the buzzing haze before his eyes he caught the gleam of the naked blade upon the tawny grass, and Flavius’s hand gripping white-knuckled about the Saxon’s sword-wrist. He dropped upon it, twisted the sword out of the man’s grasp and sent it spinning sideways. Flavius, with a hand now to spare, drew it back and hit the Saxon cleanly under the ear, and the fight went out of him in one gasp.

  ‘So—that is better,’ Flavius panted. ‘Now help me bind his hands. The spare bow-strings will serve.’

  They got his arms behind him and lashed his wrists together with the thin, strong bow-string which Justin, still sobbing for breath, dragged out from his belt; and rolled him over on his back. Flavius had struck only hard enough to quieten the man for the moment, and he was coming to himself already. His eyes opened, and he lay staring up at them stupidly, then his lips parted in a snarl, his teeth showing little and pointed in the gold of his beard, and he began to fight like a wild beast at his bonds.