The Silver Branch

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Allectus the Traitor was within a few feet of them now, riding up between the swaying crowd; a still, white man, whose eyes and skin seemed all the paler in the sunlight by contrast with the glowing folds of the Imperial Purple that fell from his shoulders over the gilded bronze of his armour. He turned with the old charming smile to speak to the Camp Commandant at his side; he looked about him with interest, acknowledging the acclamation of the crowd with a bend of the head and a gesture of one big white hand, seeming unaware of the hollow ring to the cheering. And after him crowded the Saxons of his bodyguard; big, blue-eyed, yellow-haired tribesmen out of barbarian Germany, sweating under their back-flung wolf-skin cloaks, with gold and coral at their throats and serpents of red gold above the elbows, who laughed and made their guttural talk among themselves as they rode.

  Now they were dismounting before the temple portico, the horses wheeling out in all directions to spread confusion among the close-jammed crowd. Over the Legionary’s shoulder, Justin saw the tall figure in the Purple turn on the flower-strewn steps, with an actor’s gesture to the populace; and was seized with such a blinding rage that he scarcely saw what happened next until the thing was half over.

  An old woman had somehow slipped under the guard of the Legionaries, and ran forward with hands outstretched to cast herself at the Emperor’s feet with some plea, some petition. What it was, nobody ever heard. One of the Saxons stooped and caught her by the hair and hurled her backward. She went over with a scream, and they were all round her. They pricked her to her feet with the tips of their saexes, laughing, for the sport of seeing her scuttle. A stupefied hush had descended on the crowd; and then, as the old woman stumbled and all but fell again, the Centurion strode forward, sword in hand, and stepped between her and her tormentors. Quite clearly in the sudden hush Justin heard him say, ‘Get back quickly, old mother.’ Then he turned to face the Saxons, who seemed momentarily quelled by his air of authority, and said, ‘The game is finished.’

  Allectus, who had turned again on the steps to see what was happening, gestured to one of his staff officers. Somehow the thing was sorted out; the Saxons were whistled off like hounds, and the old woman had gathered herself together and scuttled weeping back into the crowd, the Legionaries parting their crossed pilums to let her through.

  When Justin, who had been watching her, looked round again, the young Centurion was standing on the temple steps before Allectus. Justin was within a spear’s length of them, half shielded by a garland-hung column; and he heard Allectus say very gently, ‘Centurion, no man interferes with my bodyguard.’

  The Centurion’s hands clenched at his sides. He was very white, and breathing rather quickly. He said in a tone as gentle as Allectus’s own. ‘Not even when they turn their dirks on an old woman for amusement, Caesar?’

  ‘No,’ said Allectus, still more gently. ‘Not even then. Go back to your duties, Centurion, and another time remember not to step beyond them.’

  The Centurion drew himself up and saluted, then turned and marched back to his place, with a face that might have been cut from stone. And Allectus, smiling his very charming smile, turned and went, with the senior officers about him, into the temple.

  The whole thing had passed so swiftly that it was over before half the crowd had realized what was happening. But Justin and Flavius were to remember it afterward; to remember—of all unexpected things—the narrow, pointed face of Serapion the Egyptian, starting out of the ranks of those in attendance on the Emperor, his dark, darting gaze fixed on the young Centurion.

  In the great fortress that night, the Commandant’s quarters, made over to the Emperor for his visit, bore a very different aspect from their usual one. Soft Eastern rugs and embroideries of delicate colours from the Emperor’s baggage-train had made the place more like a suite of chambers for a queen; and the air was heavy with the sweetness of the perfumed oil burning in a silver lamp beside the couch on which Allectus reclined. The evening garland of white roses which he had just taken off lay wilting beside him, and he was amusing himself by delicately pulling the flowers to pieces. His rather heavy face was satisfied as a great white cat’s, as he smiled at the Egyptian seated on a stool at his feet.

  ‘Caesar should have a care to that young Centurion,’ Serapion was saying. ‘He looked as though he would have knifed Caesar for a denarius this morning, and this evening he excused himself from attending the banquet in Caesar’s honour.’

  ‘Bah! He was angry at being called to account before the world, no more.’

  ‘Nay, I think that it was more than that. It was a pity that Caesar’s bodyguard thought fit to amuse themselves as they did this morning.’

  Allectus shrugged indifferently. ‘They are barbarians, and they behave as such; but they are loyal, so long as I pay them.’

  ‘Nevertheless, it was a pity.’

  Allectus’s smile faded a little. ‘Since when has Serapion the Egyptian been Caesar’s counsellor?’

  ‘Since Serapion the Egyptian furnished Caesar with enough nightshade to kill a man,’ said the other smoothly.

  ‘Hell and the Furies! Am I never to hear the last of that? Have I not paid you well enough? Have I not made you one of my personal staff?’

  ‘And am I not a good servant?’ Serapion cringed, his dark eyes downcast. ‘Nay, but I did not seek to remind Caesar of—unpleasant things … Yet I served Caesar well in that matter. It would have been better had Caesar used my services again—for a greater occasion.’

  The other laughed softly. ‘Nay, man, you set too much store by secrecy and the dark. In these days no Emperor troubles overmuch to hide the hand that slew the Emperor before him. Besides, it was politic to get the Saxons deeply involved, that I might be sure of a good supply of Saxon Mercenaries thereafter.’

  Serapion cast up his eyes. ‘Caesar thinks of everything! None the less, it is in my mind that while we are here at least, I will have an eye to that young Centurion and his affairs.’

  The big, pale man on the couch turned to look at him more closely. ‘What is in that crooked mind of yours, little poison-toad?’

  ‘One was telling me that of late months on this part of the coast more than one man who had no cause to love Caesar has—disappeared from under the noses of Caesar’s Authorities. And it is in my mind that by watching that young Centurion one might just possibly—find out how.’

  At about the same time next night, Justin was sitting in the shadowy corner at the Dolphin. It was a still, close summer evening, and the old striped awning had been rolled back, so that the narrow, lantern-lit courtyard was roofed with a luminous darkness of night sky above the leafy interlacings of the trellised vine. The wine-shop was not very full tonight, and he had the dark corner to himself and his thoughts.

  He had got the news that he had come for, and when he had finished his cup of wine—not too quickly, lest anyone should be watching—he would be on his way back to Paulinus with word that the latest man to be shipped to Gaul had been safely landed. Flavius would be there, and Phaedrus coming later when he had finished unloading a cargo of wine from the Berenice. They had some plans to discuss for shortening the time that it took to get a man out of the province; plans that needed a good deal of thought. Justin tried to think about them, but for the most part his mind was taken up with that startling glimpse of Serapion the Egyptian among Allectus’s personal attendants yesterday. Why should Allectus take the little perfume-seller into his train? Something in the back of his mind whispered that there was, there always had been, a strong link between such things as Serapion sold, and poison. The Sea Wolf who could have told too much had died of poison … Well, whatever the truth of the matter, there could be no menace for them in the man’s reappearance, for, thank the gods, he had not seen them. And yet Justin could not clear his mind of an odd uneasiness; something that was almost foreboding.

  Someone strolled in from the dark foreshore; and Justin glanced up to see a young man in a shaggy homespun cloak, with ruffled dark hair above
a pock-marked forehead, and a great bony beak of a nose, who hesitated an instant in the doorway, glancing about him. Lacking harness and helmet, he looked very different from the last time Justin had seen him, but with his thoughts already hovering around yesterday’s scene on the temple steps, he knew him instantly.

  The man seemed to make up his mind, and crooking a finger for the keeper of the place, came to sit not far from where Justin was watching. As he did so, a shadow moved in the darkness beyond the doorway; but there was nothing unusual in that, many people came and went along the foreshore. Justin went on watching the young Centurion. The wine came, but he did not drink it, only sat forward, his hands across his knees, playing with something between his fingers. And Justin saw that it was a sprig of rye-grass.

  He picked up his own wine-cup, rose, and crossed over to the newcomer. ‘Why, this is a pleasant and unexpected thing. I greet you, friend,’ he said in the manner of one joining a chance-found acquaintance, and placing his wine-cup on the table, sat down. The other had looked up quickly at his coming, and was watching him guardedly, his face carefully non-committal, as Justin studied it in his turn. There was always a risk about this moment, always the chance that the sprig of rye-grass had found its way into the wrong hands. But he was sure enough of this man, remembering that scene yesterday on the steps of the Temple of Jupiter; besides, his pleasant, craggy face was not the face of an informer, and had in it something strained and a little desperate.

  ‘It is very hot tonight,’ Justin said, and loosed the folds of his light cloak, revealing the sprig of rye-grass thrust through the bronze clasp at the neck of his tunic.

  The other saw it, and there was a kind of flicker in his face, instantly stilled. He leaned a little toward Justin, saying in a quick undertone, ‘It was told me by—someone—that if I came to this wine-shop wearing a certain token, it might be that I should find those who would help me.’

  ‘So? That depends on the help,’ Justin murmured, watching lantern-light and leaf-shadows mingle in his cup.

  ‘The same help as others have found before me,’ said the man, with a quick, strained smile that barely touched his eyes. ‘Let us lay aside the foils. See, I set myself in your hands. I do not wish to serve longer under such an Emperor as Allectus.’

  ‘That is since yesterday?’

  ‘You know about yesterday?’

  ‘I was c-close by, among the crowd before the Temple of Jupiter.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ murmured the young man, ‘was the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. What do we do now?’

  ‘Drink our wine slowly, and try to look a little less like c-conspirators,’ said Justin, with a flicker of laughter.

  They sat on for a while, quietly drinking their wine, and talking of the prospect of fair weather for the harvest, and kindred subjects, until presently Justin crooked a finger for the wine shopkeeper. ‘Now I think that it is time we were moving.’

  The other nodded without a word, pushing away his empty cup. They paid each their own score, and rising together, passed out, Justin leading and the other at his shoulder, into the still summer night.

  None of those who came and went after dark to the little house or the secret chamber in the old theatre ever travelled straight, lest they should be followed; and tonight, because of the uneasiness that the sight of Serapion had left with him, Justin led his companion by ways even more roundabout than usual. Yet when at last they came down the narrow gash of darkness to the courtyard door, a shadow that had been behind them all the way from the Dolphin was still behind them. Justin paused by the courtyard door, listening, as always, for any sound of their being followed. But there was no sound, nothing moving in the crowding gloom of the alley-way. Yet as he lifted the latch and slipped through with the young Centurion, letting the latch fall silently again behind them, one of the shadows shook free of the rest, and darted lizard-swift across the door.

  The little courtyard was in darkness, but the light of a late-rising moon just past the full was whitening the crest of the old theatre wall above them, and the upper branches of the little apple-tree by the well were touched with silver, so that the half-grown apples were like the apples on Cullen’s beloved Silver Branch. Justin paused again, listening with strained intensity born of that odd uneasiness that he could not shake off. But the shadow in the alley-way made no more sound than a shadow makes, and with a murmured ‘This way’ he drew his companion across to the house door.

  It was unbolted as the courtyard door had been, ready for Phaedrus coming later, and he opened it and led the way through.

  The courtyard door opened a crack behind them, then closed again as silently as it had opened. Nothing moved in the courtyard but a silver night-moth among the silver branches of the apple-tree.

  XII

  A SPRIG OF BROOM

  ACRACK of light showed primrose pale under the door ahead of them, and the little room seemed very bright as Justin raised the latch and went in. Flavius was there with Paulinus, and a chess-board set out on the table between them showed how they had been whiling away the time as they waited for Phaedrus of the Berenice.

  ‘Ah, you are back,’ Paulinus greeted him, and then, seeing the figure behind him, ‘And who is this that you bring with you?’

  ‘Another to go by the usual road,’ Justin said.

  ‘So? Well, we must see what can be done.’ Paulinus moved his piece a little absent-mindedly. ‘What news of the last one?’

  ‘Safely landed.’

  Flavius was watching the newcomer. ‘It was you who fell foul of the Divine Allectus outside the temple of Jupiter yesterday,’ he said suddenly, and rose to his feet, rocking the chess-board so that a pained expression flitted for a moment across Paulinus’s face.

  The newcomer smiled, that quick, strained smile. ‘You also were among the crowd?’

  ‘I was,’ Flavius said. ‘I hope I’d have had the courage to do the same, if it had been my Cohort on street-lining duty yesterday.’

  For a moment they stood looking at each other across the lamp on the table; Flavius in his rough workman’s clothes, hairy and none too clean. And yet the newcomer said with only half a question in his tone, ‘You speak, I think, as one of the brotherhood.’

  ‘This time last year I commanded a Cohort on the Wall.’

  Paulinus, who had been watching the newcomer, gave a little grunt of approval. ‘I have heard the story of this falling foul of the Emperor. Unwise, my dear young man; but on the whole—ahem—creditable, very creditable indeed. And so now you feel Gaul to be a fitter place for you than Britain?’

  ‘Can you arrange that for me?’

  ‘I can arrange it,’ said Paulinus tranquilly, ‘if you will have patience for a few days, during which you will be my guest in—ahem—slightly close quarters, I fear.’ And so saying he heaved himself to his feet and began one of his soft, hen-like fusses. ‘But why do I keep you all standing here? Sit down, do sit down. There will be one more of us presently, and when he comes, if you will forgive me, I will show you up to those same close quarters. In this business it is best for no one to know more than they need. No, no, no. Meanwhile, have you supped? A cup of wine, then?—and do pray sit down.’

  The newcomer wanted neither wine nor supper, but he sat down. They all sat down round the table, and after a moment’s pause he said, ‘I feel that the thing to do is to ask no questions, and therefore I will ask none … Will you not go on with your game?’

  Paulinus beamed at him. ‘Well, well, if you are sure you will not think it discourteous. There will be no more time for chess when our—ahem—friend arrives, and I confess I do hate to leave a game unfinished, especially when I am winning. Flavius, I believe that it is your move.’

  It was very hot in the small bright room with the shutters closed, very quiet behind the buzzing of a bluebottle among the rafters, and the faint click of the pieces as they were moved on the board. The young Centurion sat with his arms across his knees, staring soberly before him. Jus
tin, watching the game, began to be very sleepy, so that the pieces danced a little on the blurred black-and-white chequer, and the click as they were moved seemed to be going further and further away …

  But that game of chess was never to be finished, after all.

  Suddenly Justin was broad awake again, to the sound of lumber being thrust aside in the storeroom, and next instant Phaedrus the ship-master burst in upon them, bringing with him a desperate urgency, a smell of deadly danger that had them all on their feet even before he gasped out his warning.

  ‘The Barbarian Guard are all round the house. In the street—and the courtyard is full of them! I all but blundered into them, but by the grace of the gods I saw them in time and cast back for the Sparrow’s Way.’

  The little silence that followed could have lasted no more than a heart-beat, but it seemed to Justin to swell out and out like a gigantic bubble; a bubble of utter stillness. And from the midst of the stillness, Paulinus said quietly, ‘Justin and Flavius, will you oblige me by barring the outer doors?’

  They sprang to do his bidding; only just in time, for even as Justin dropped the bar of the courtyard door—an unusually strong bar for a private house—into place, a crash of blows came against it, making the timbers jar and vibrate under his hand, and a roar of guttural voices arose outside. ‘Open up! Open up, or we break the doors down! Open up; man who harbours traitors, or we fire the roof and smoke you out!’

  Well, the bar would hold for a little while, though the end was sure. He swung back into the living-room, still bright and commonplace, with its half-played game of chess on the table and its painted household gods in their niches on the walls, just in time to hear the Centurion saying, ‘This is my doing. Someone must have followed me. I’ll go out to them, sir.’

  And Paulinus answered, ‘No, no, it was liable to happen at any time, and as for going out to them: my good boy, do you think they would be content with you?’