The Lantern Bearers (book III)

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  They were dropping down towards the trackway, the ancient track under the North Chalk, on which, four years ago and forty miles towards the sunrise, Vortimer had held the river line against the host of Hengest. They were out of the straight green aisles of the ash wood now, into the thickets of hazel and alder and crack willow that bordered the track, brushing through the undergrowth with the warm smell of sunshine and open country in their nostrils. Then Artos’s head went up again. ‘Listen.’

  Aquila heard it too; the rumble of wheels and the pelting hooves of cattle on the track; and a few moments later they glimpsed through the twig-tangle of the scrub about them a pathetic little convoy coming into sight: a few lean cattle herded by boys ahead of the rest, a couple of ox carts loaded with gear and women and children, several men on ponies, or on foot, two herd dogs. Aquila had seen many such little bands of refugees in the past year, as the Saxons with their new land grants spread farther over the south-east of Britain.

  ‘More of the poor devils,’ he said over his shoulder to the men behind him, reining Inganiad to a halt. ‘Let them go by before we cross.’

  Among the scrub of the wood-shore they sat their horses, waiting. The cattle went by, white to the belly with dust, hot and weary, with low heads and the strings of slime hanging from their soft muzzles; the first ox cart drawn by its patient, wide-horned oxen, its load of sad women and children and kitchen pots and poultry.

  ‘Those poor people! And Vortigern sitting safe and full fed in his stronghold of Geronwy!’ Artos said fiercely.

  Aquila looked at him again, and saw his face white and pinched, and his fists clenched on the reins. Artos was very angry; but it wasn’t anger alone in his face, it was misery. That was always the way with young Artos; a horse or a hound or a man in pain or trouble, and Artos seemed to feel the ache of it in his own belly. It would make life hard for him, harder than it would otherwise have been; but it would also, Aquila thought, make him very much beloved. He turned his attention back to the fugitives on the track. The men on their ponies were spread out on either side, brushing through the meadowsweet that grew thick along the open verge. In the second cart, surrounded by all her household gear, an old woman sat dozing under a great hat of dock leaves, on a rough wicker crate of poultry. In the back of that cart was a heather-thatched bee-skep, carefully wedged in position. And behind the cart, the last of the convoy save for a footsore dog with a frilled wet ribbon of tongue drooling from its open jaws, trudged a man with a bundle on his shoulder; a small, strong man, clearly as footsore as the dog, in a rough, brown tunic powdered white with dust.

  Something about him tugged at Aquila’s memory with a kind of half recognition such as one may feel for a figure seen afar off, that begins, as it draws nearer, to take on the look of a friend.

  He turned abruptly to Artos. ‘Take the troop back to camp—and see the horses fed and picketed if I have not come by then.’

  ‘Why—what—?’ Artos began.

  ‘I go to speak with one of the men down there—an old friend. Take over command, Artos.’

  He saw the anger that had been in the boy’s face lost in the sudden pride of his first command, and cast a quick glance over his head to the grim little weather-beaten man behind him; Owain would see that all went well. Then he lifted the reins, sending Inganiad down slantwise towards the track, out of the scrub, parting the creamy surf of meadowsweet that swayed together again behind him, sending up its thick sweetness of scent to mingle with the rising dust. The folk at the rear of the convoy had seen him coming now; they were startled, beginning to huddle as sheep huddle, having seen maybe too many armed men lately. He shouted to them reassuringly; there was nothing to make them afraid; he would speak with the Holy Man, that was all; and he brought Inganiad out on to the track beside the small man with the bundle on his shoulder.

  ‘Brother Ninnias, is that your bee-skep?’

  The man, who had not looked round with the rest to watch him coming, turned to him now with no more show of surprise than he had made at their first meeting; and with the same serene courtesy. Clearly at first he did not recognize him.

  ‘God’s greeting to you, friend. You know my name, and my bees. Forgive me, and grant me but a moment to remember you.’

  His quiet gaze was on Aquila’s face, and Aquila, bending in the saddle to receive the scrutiny, smiled a little, seeing the recognition wake slowly in the small man’s eyes.

  ‘Ah—’ His gaze took in the tall, flame-red mare and the iron-bound helmet swinging at the saddle-bow, the stained and greasy leather tunic which Aquila wore, and the long cavalry sword at his hip; and returned to his face. ‘You are somewhat changed, my friend, at any rate in your outward seeming. It must be five or six years since you helped me gather the raked weeds from my bean rows.’

  ‘It is seven,’ Aquila said, and slid from Inganiad’s back. ‘You are footsore and I am fresh. Let you ride awhile.’

  Ninnias cast an eye at the tall mare beginning already to dance a little with impatience at the slow pace. ‘I thank you, no. It is in my mind that I shall travel more safely on my own sore feet.’

  There was truth in that, for Ninnias had not the look of a horseman. Aquila laughed, and they walked on at the tail of the little convoy in companionable silence, save when from time to time Aquila spoke quietingly to the mare. One or two of the men glanced back at them now and then, but without curiosity; they were too dazed for curiosity.

  After a while Aquila said, ‘You follow the westward drift with the rest, I suppose?’

  ‘Aye,’ Ninnias sighed. ‘If it had been Brother Drusus that the Lord saw fit to save, instead of me, when the Sea Wolves burned out our little Community, he would have stayed in the face of this new Saxon flood, to die a martyr’s death … If any Christian among the iron folk that I used to serve had been left in the old village, I would have stayed with them—I hope and believe that I would have stayed with them. Brother Drusus would have stayed, anyway, and maybe carried Christ’s word to one Saxon before they killed him. Of such are the Kingdom of Heaven. I have not the missionary fire; I should not be able to carry Christ’s word to even one Saxon. If it were bees it would be another matter. I can be of more use among the poor folk who have lost their homes to the Saxons. So I packed some roots from my physic garden and gave my bees their freedom, save for this one hive that Cunefa most kindly found space for in his cart; and took the Abbot’s bell again—I have it here in my bundle—and came away.’ He glanced again at the sword Aquila wore. ‘And you? It seems that you found your service to take.’

  ‘I found my service to take,’ Aquila said.

  ‘It is, I think, not greatly to be wondered at that I did not know you again,’ Brother Ninnias said reflectively.

  ‘Seven years is apt to change a man.’

  ‘There are things that change a man even more than seven years.’ The other looked fully round at him. ‘When you came to my hut you were lost in a great bitterness, empty of everything save your thirst for vengeance, and when you left me, even that was lost to you.’

  ‘And now?’ Aquila said.

  ‘I think that at least you are not empty any more.’

  There was a cuckoo calling somewhere among the trees; a rich and sleepy sound, the very voice of summer. Aquila said, ‘I have a cause to serve, and a horse and a sword to serve it with. I have a woman and a child down in Venta.’

  ‘You are rich, my friend,’ Ninnias said quietly. And then, as though in answer to something in Aquila’s tone, ‘And yet even now the wound is not healed?’

  Aquila was silent a moment, staring ahead into the dust-cloud of the little convoy. No, he thought, it wasn’t quite that; the thing had healed all right. The old black bitterness that he had known because of Flavia had gone—Ness had taken it away when she chose to stay with him. But he had lost something—lost it so completely that he did not even really know what it was, so completely that it was only now, with Ninnias, that he knew he had lost it. He knew that he was a di
fferent man from the one he would have been if Flavia—if it hadn’t been for Flavia.

  ‘Nay, it is healed well enough. Maybe the scar still aches before rain,’ he said lightly; and his tone warned the other from any question.

  They walked on in silence until they came in sight of the place where a bridle-path branched from the main track, running upward through the gently rolling woods. They had fallen some way behind the rest, so that when they came in sight of the path, the foremost of the cattle were already past it and going on down the main track. Aquila realized that when they came to the branch he would go one way and Ninnias another, and their meeting would be over.

  ‘My way lies up yonder,’ he said suddenly. ‘I have my summer camp below the village up there. Come my way and preach Christ’s Word to us in the war hosts of Britain.’

  Brother Ninnias shook his head. ‘Nay, I shall be of more use to the poor homeless folk than I should be in a war camp.’

  ‘How much farther do you mean to go? Is there any place in your mind?’

  ‘I do not know how much farther; there is no place in my mind,’ Ninnias said. ‘It may be that I shall stop when Cunefa and his people stop; it may be that I shall stop before, or go farther. God will tell me when I come to the right place.’

  ‘But I shall not know where that place is,’ Aquila said, suddenly saddened by the quickness with which things passed. Things, and people.

  ‘Does that matter so much?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aquila said simply.

  They had reached the parting of the ways now, and checked. The cuckoo was still calling in a distance that was blue as wood-smoke, and in the marshy ground beside the track the dense mat of iris leaves still showed a few yellow flowers, proudly upheld like lamps among the cool green sword-blades of the leaves. Brother Ninnias stooped and touched one of the flowers without picking it. ‘Three petals has the iris, see—a wise flower that carries the number of the Trinity in its head. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; man, woman, and child; yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Three is the number of perfection and the perfected pattern. Do you know, my friend, I have the strongest feeling that for us two the pattern waits for a third meeting, to attain perfection. But how and when it comes about must lie in God’s hands.’ He hitched at his bundle. ‘Until then—God keep you, Aquila.’ He turned and trudged away in the wake of the others, hurrying now to catch up with the cart that had his bee skep in it.

  Aquila stood looking after him, where the two ways branched, his arm through Inganiad’s bridle, until the bend of the track hid him from view. Then he mounted, and set off at a canter up the path through the woods. But after a time he slackened rein and walked the mare, to give young Artos time to have finished seeing the horses picketed before he came.

  17

  ‘Minnow, Dolphin’s Son’

  NEWS of Vortigern’s death reached Venta in the spring; and with it news that Guitolinus the trouble-maker had taken his place as leader of the Celtic party. Bad news for the British cause, for Vortigern had been a shamed and broken man, but Guitolinus was young and fiery and something of a fanatic, one maybe to light the Celtic fires again. And in the years that followed, Ambrosius was to have his hands full enough with the Saxon kind, without having to guard against a Celtic knife in the back. For the hordes of Hengest were on the move, not as a swift, forward thrust this time, but as a slow, inflowing tide. They were moving down from the fens of the old Iceni territory, and up from the bride-gift lands of the south-east towards the upper Tamesis Valley, while others from the lands that had already taken their names of North folk and South folk were pushing westward to cut Cymru and the north completely off from the rest of Britain.

  Ambrosius and the British host hung on their southern flanks like mastiffs to the flank of a bull, thrusting in on them wherever chance offered, harrying them by every means in their power; but still, year by year, the Saxon wedge drove westward splitting Britain in two. And so six summers went by and a seventh winter came.

  Aquila had become one of Ambrosius’s captains now; captain of an Aela, a great cavalry wing; for cavalry was beginning to form a larger and larger part of the war hosts of Britain. That was young Artos’s doing; Artos, who had begun to gather to him all the best and most gallant of the young warriors; Artos, who rode like a flame in battle, a superb leader of mounted men and a rebel against the old-established order. ‘Aye, I know that the Legions depended on their Foot and not their Horse; is that any reason why we must do the same?’ he had countered Valarius’s protests and head-wagging. ‘The Saxon kind pour in, numberless as the wild geese in October, numberless as the sands of the sea, but we who are of the mountains, we who have been Roman Cavalry, we know how to use the horse in battle, and by God’s Grace that shall give us the victory.’

  And so, as that seventh winter drew towards spring, Aquila’s hands were even more full than usual, his time divided between the council table and the water-meadows where the cavalry were in training. But he found time to keep an eye on young Flavian’s breaking-in, all the same. The Minnow was nine years old now, and went to the school which a Christian priest had started in the colonnaded court of one of the big houses.

  Ness had no patience with such schooling. ‘So long as he learns to speak the truth and use a sword and ride a horse, what else is there he needs to learn?’

  ‘Among other things, he needs to learn to read,’ Aquila had said.

  She had laughed on the old scornful note. ‘Read? What use shall reading be to him? This is a world in which only the sword matters, not books any more.’

  That had seemed to Aquila a terrible thing to say, and all Demetrius’s teaching cried out against it. He had used the only argument he could think of that would seem good to Ness. ‘It was because I could read that Thormod my lord brought me with him to Hengest’s camp. If I had not been able to read, I should have died a thrall in Juteland.’ He did not think that she had been convinced, but she did not say any more. And Flavian went to school. That is to say, he went when he could not help it, for Flavian also had little use for books.

  A day came that was not spring as yet, but poised on the edge of spring; and the water-meadows around Venta were becoming already one vast camp. Aquila and his kind had been working all that day on some raw levies from the Cymric border, trying to teach them something of ordered movement, at least to recognize the trumpet calls that they must obey in battle. In some ways it was like the cavalry manœuvres that they had used to put on at Rutupiae, Aquila thought, walking Inganiad back from the far end of the practice ground, with the shadows lying long on the turf and the bloom thick on the distant hills as the bloom on a bilberry. His inner eye was still full of the beautiful, constantly changing patterns of the day, the wings and squadrons of cavalry sweeping this way and that, obedient to the voice of the trumpets; the jewel brilliance of the long, lance-head serpents that the squadron leaders carried, streaming like flames in the wind of their going, beautiful and gallant against the pollen-dusted sallows and the meadows shaking off their winter greyness. And as though she, too, were remembering the day, Inganiad whinnied softly. Aquila patted her warm, moist neck. The mare was fifteen now; after this year, he thought, he would not use her in battle any more. He wondered which of them would hate that the most.

  Artos, with several of the Companions, had just ridden off the field after the last sweeping charge, and turned beside a knot of sallows to watch the horsemen gathering into their own squadrons again and trailing off towards the horse lines and the evening cooking-fires; and Aquila caught through the fuzzy golden green of the budding branches the crimson gleam of a cloak and the wave-break curve of a white stallion’s neck, and heard the stir and stamp of a great round hoof, and the jink of a bridle bit, a burst of laughter—and then Flavian’s voice.

  When he rounded the low, whippy, pollen-dusted mass of branches, there was his son, who should have been at his evening lessons, standing at Artos’s stirrup, feet apart and hands behind his back, gazing up at him,
while the young man leaned forward in the saddle to return the look. The first thing Aquila felt was a half-amused exasperation, for it was not the first time that Flavian had run from his lessons to the cavalry training. But something in the boy’s look, a kind of joyful and eager worship that showed even in his back view, and sounded in his small gruff voice, ‘Well, then, when I’m fourteen will you let me? I can ride very well already—when I’m fourteen will you let me ride with you?’ hurt Aquila sharply. It was he who had taught Flavian to ride, making time when there was so little time to spare; but the boy had never spoken to him like that.

  Right at the beginning, nine years ago, he had hoped that he and the Minnow might be friends; the sort of friends that he and his father had been to each other. But somehow it had not worked out like that. He didn’t know what had gone wrong; it was not often that he noticed that something had gone wrong at all, but when he did notice, it hurt him. Maybe it was something to do with the thing that he had lost …

  Flavian was so taken up with his eager desire to be one of Artos’s followers that he was deaf to the soft fall of Inganiad’s hooves on the turf behind him. Aquila brought the mare up, saying with cold lightness, ‘Ah, Flavian. I had assumed that you would serve in my wing when you reach the age to carry your shield. Am I, then, deserted?’

  Flavian jumped at the sound of his voice, and spun round, and the shining eagerness in him went out like a light. ‘Father—I—I didn’t know you were there.’