by Jules Watson
Rórdán looked away from the smoke, meeting the flame of his brother’s gaze. Every night of their boyhood the stories had flowed, the telling growing greater as the numbers of their mother’s people grew. There, in the clear mountain air, the pools became mirrors, Mother said; mirrors of the world outside. And in them she had seen this.
‘Go then, but get ready to turn around and come right back,’ Rórdán remarked drily. ‘She’s going to demand to see this for herself.’
Lassar grinned, white teeth flashing. ‘It’s breeding season, and end of harvest. She’ll have a fine time dragging Father away from his fields and his cattle.’
‘And he’ll have a fine time refusing her.’
Lassar cocked a dark brow at his brother. ‘Can I take some of your guards with me? You know all our sisters will plead to come, too – I’ll never hear the end of it.’
Rórdán was staring intently into the smoke, then suddenly he laughed and shook his shoulders free of the weight of years. ‘Since there is nothing more to watch for, brother, it looks as if I can indeed spare warriors to send with you.’
Heads close, they spoke together as they trotted their horses down into the hollow, but there Lassar’s lathered mount would not stand, picking up the tension in his master’s legs. ‘Sa! I must fly right now, or I’ll never bear it!’ Lassar and Rórdán clasped wrists and kissed on both cheeks.
‘And after Mother and Father see the Wall, come to Dunadd on your way home.’ Rórdán’s eyes were now sparkling like his brother’s. ‘We must celebrate, and there are feasts, songs and dances to be had before the snows close in.’
With a smile and a yip, Lassar let the stallion have his head, and raced away northwards to the higher hills. Rórdán trotted up to gaze out at the clearing smoke one more time before gathering his men under his boar standard, and striking out west at a more thoughtful pace.
Behind them, as the weeks and then months passed, the sun crept its way across the Wall, as it always had.
But now it gilded expanses of mossy, tumbled stone and rotting wood, broken gates and fallen roof timbers. It darkened the gaping doorways of the barrack blocks, throwing long shadows of the towers across the hills.
And then a day came when there was no longer even a hint of smoke, and the high plateau of rippling grass bore witness to nothing more than a lonely wind and kestrel cries.
Historical Note
Dalriada and Picts
Mythical and ancient sources say that warriors and kings from the Dalriada kingdom in Ireland settled in the west of Scotland, in Argyll, around AD 500. This brought them into conflict with the native inhabitants, known to the Romans as Picts. Though the tradition is therefore strong that a Dalriadan kingdom was established in western Scotland from Ireland, historians and archaeologists are divided over whether this actually included a movement of people, or merely ideas and language, and whether these spread from Ireland to Scotland or vice versa.
Regardless, Dark Age Christian sources then report that the Dalriadan kings, with their seat at Dunadd in Argyll, warred with the Pictish kings in the east of Scotland for many years, through the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries. In AD 843, the two peoples were joined by the accession of the Dalriadan king Kenneth MacAlpin to the Pictish throne, a man who was possibly descended from the Pictish royal line through his mother (some sources hint that the native peoples of Scotland passed their royal blood through women). After this, the Picts seem to disappear as a separate people from history, and Irish Gaelic became the language of Scotland, and Gaelic kings its rulers.
In this trilogy, I proposed that the ‘Irish invasion’ began centuries earlier, around AD 80, involving the arrival of a few nobles who intermarried with the original tribe in the area (the partnerships of Rhiann and Eremon, and Conaire and Caitlin, in The White Mare and The Dawn Stag). By the time this last novel opens, the Dalriadan Irish in the west and the Picts in the east are entrenched as opposing forces in Scotland, the former tracing their royal lineage through males, the latter through females.
The Great ‘Barbarian Conspiracy’ of AD 367
The major Roman events portrayed in this novel were documented by a late fourth-century Roman writer called Ammianus Marcellinus. He records that in AD 367 Britain was subject to a concerted invasion by a host of barbarian peoples on the northern frontier: the Picts attacked the north; the ‘Scots’ (whom I have named Dalriadans) and the Attacotti, possibly from the Western Isles, attacked the west; and the Saxons from northern Germany the east coast. Though there had been previous raids by combined Alban forces, most notably in 360 AD, nothing like this had been unleashed on Britain before, and was distinguished by the uncharacteristic co-operation of the barbarians involved. There were indeed scouts and spies – the areani – that roamed north of the Wall and were quartered in the outpost forts, and at this juncture they were apparently lured by bribes to turn traitor to the Roman administration, providing information to the enemy which aided their attacks.
Fullofaudes, the Dux Britanniarum, was surprised, cut off and ‘overcome’; Nectaridus, the Count of the Saxon Shore, was slaughtered in battle. The barbarian hordes, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, penetrated deep into the south-east of England and caused havoc, breaking into small bands to plunder the rich villas and undefended towns. At the same time the order of the Roman army had completely disintegrated, with the cohesion of units destroyed and leaderless bands of soldiers roaming at will.
Ammianus is not without his sceptics, as he was writing at a later time and probably seeking to glorify the man who came to put down the rebellion. But though there is little archaeological proof, there are various pieces of circumstantial textual evidence to suggest his report is essentially accurate.
So what happened afterwards? According to Ammianus, a commander called Count Theodosius was despatched by the Emperor Valentinian I from Germany with a field army of crack troops to restore order. Over the next two years he defeated the roaming bands of barbarians with their plunder, fortified towns and regarrisoned many forts on Hadrian’s Wall.
But despite this, the outpost forts north of the Wall were abandoned, the hated areani spies and scouts disbanded, and all Roman control over the borderlands relinquished. The Romans had indeed left Alba.
The End of Rome in Britain
The fortunes of the Roman military in Britain rose and fell in the following forty years, as the Empire on the continent struggled to retain its power in the face of increasing barbarian incursions from all directions. Again and again, British soldiers were withdrawn from the frontier to shore up defences in Gaul, Germany or Italy, and in AD 383 an upstart senior British officer, Magnus Maximus, declared himself western emperor, supported by the British forces and nobility. When he left to fight for his throne in the east he took a large army with him, but after his defeat by the eastern emperor those troops never came back.
By the early fifth century the emperors had their hands full trying to defend themselves against the Goths in the east. The Province of Britannia was denuded of troops, and after 402 there is little trace of coins, so it appears the money dried up, too, with no pay for soldiers or officials. Another would-be British emperor, Constantine III, left Britain in 407 to defeat more barbarian invaders and usurp the western throne. He probably took the last remaining regular troops with him.
According to other historians, Britain came under attack from the Saxons around 410, and, after appeals by the British nobility to the Emperor Honorius for help, they were told to look to their own defences. The British towns and tribes reverted to ruling themselves.
So the withdrawal and disintegration of the organized army and the end to centralized Roman government in Britain was a gradual change, rather than a sudden recall. The evidence at Hadrian’s Wall is of a gradual abandonment at some forts, with continued occupation at others, albeit in a more basic form, with people scratching a living among the ruined stone buildings. Disease and desertion would have taken its toll on the remaining g
arrisons, and eventually the few soldiers that stayed on must have settled down to farm, being absorbed into the local population.
By AD 410 Britain had therefore ceased to be part of the Roman Empire and was left to its own fate. A century later, the first concerted waves of Saxons, Angles and Jutes were to change it for ever.
Miscellany
Tutors to the Roman nobility were often slaves, so Minna’s acceptance as such at Dunadd was not unusual. Furthermore, slaves could attain a high status, and many were freed by their masters, some of their descendants rising to dizzy heights in society.
Eboracum was the Roman name for York; Luguvalium became Carlisle; and Lindum Lincoln. Gede’s Dun of Bright Water was located at Burghead; Dunadd near Kilmartin in Argyll (which, incidentally, means Coast of the Gael).
The north of Britain does have native poppies – Jared’s ‘red flower’ – and even though the local species are not as potent as the more well-known eastern opium poppy, they do contain natural opiates that could be concentrated to effect sedation.
Saor is an invented herbal preparation, derived from the Gaelic word for ‘freedom’.
Some plant poisons were used on blades in the ancient world, and though many come from the Mediterranean they could easily be imported into Britain. A noted one was known as wolf’s-bane, as it was used on the barbs of arrows to kill wolves. Better known as aconite, it is extremely dangerous and damages the heart muscle, causing a fast pulse and shallow breathing, and swift death if ingested.
Table of Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Book Two
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Book Three
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Epilogue
Historical Note