Coalescent

by Stephen Baxter

  So they marched out in a group of about thirty, under the command of one of Artorius's lieutenants. It would be a two-day walk south, and they spent another night in the open.

  About midday on the second day, she found herself approaching the wall of a town. It sparked more memories of her childhood: this must be Durnovaria, the center of local civic society. To her childish eyes it had seemed a magical place, clean and bright, surrounded by mighty walls, and full of tremendous buildings fit for giants. But now the town had been abandoned for more than twenty years. The wall had been stripped of its tiles, exposing a core of mortared rubble and red binding bricks. The gate where the road passed through the wall had once been a complex multiple archway, but now the arches had collapsed.

  Inside the wall everything was covered in a blanket of green. Most of the buildings had vanished into rubble and vegetation. There was much evidence of fire — perhaps the chance result of lightning strikes on long-abandoned buildings choked by dead leaves. Their plots were covered with a layer of dark, weed-choked earth, the residue of collapsed wattle-and-daub walls, now heavily overgrown. A few of the monumental stone structures survived, still immensely strong, but they were ruined giants, burned out, roofless, overrun with creepers and with shrubs and ivy growing out of cracks in the walls. Even the hard road surface was coated by a mulch of weed debris and dead leaves, and trees were sprouting, ash and alder, their roots cracking open the cobbled surface and exposing the earth once more to the sun. She glimpsed creatures from the forest — voles, field mice — and even the animals that lived off those small colonists, like foxes and kestrels. It was as if, after years of abandonment, the original owners of the land were moving back in. But the place was eerily silent — there wasn't even birdsong.

  As they passed through the town some of the younger people in the party averted their eyes from the monumental ruins and muttered prayers to the god of the Christians and other deities. But Regina quietly mourned. These ivy-covered stones spoke to her about the depth of the generation-long holocaust that was assailing Britain more eloquently than any historian, even Tacitus, could ever have. And how strange it was, she thought, that none of this had been inflicted by the Picts or the Saxons — none of the raiders had yet come this far west, in numbers sufficient to do this kind of damage. The town had collapsed all by itself. It was all as Aetius and Carausias had once foreseen, that once people stopped paying their taxes, the towns had no purpose, and had fallen in on themselves. Or perhaps Amator had been right, that the town was simply a relic of a thousand-year-old dream, from which humankind was now coldly waking.

  Their destination proved not to be the town itself but a graveyard that sprawled over a hillside nearby.

  It was vast, so densely packed with tombs it was like a pavement of tile, sandstone, and marble; there must be thousands buried here. People were already working: they were prizing up gravestones, slabs of sandstone or marble, with picks of wood and iron. The work was under the direction of a couple of Artorius's soldiers. They did not hang back from the labor but joined in themselves, stripped to the waist in the summer heat.

  "So this is our 'quarry,' " Regina said. "A graveyard, which we are desecrating for bits of stone."

  Brica shrugged. "What does it matter? The dead are dead. We need the stones."

  Regina felt a sense of shock. If at age seven, or even age seventeen, she could have seen herself now and learned what she must do to stay alive, she would have been horrified. And she felt a pang of sadness that Brica, still so young, saw nothing difficult about it. How we are fallen, she thought.

  Strangely, a small farmstead had been established at the center of the graveyard, complete with a barn and a couple of granary pits. A woman was selling food to the workers in return for nails and other bits of iron. Perhaps the bones of the dead had made the ground rich for vegetables, Regina thought morbidly.

  Neither Regina nor Brica had the muscle for digging up gravestones, so they were put to work fetching pails of water from a stream for the workers to drink and wash off their dust. They moved among the opened graves, stepping over smashed-up stones.

  Regina stopped by one grave whose stone was intact enough for its Latin inscription to be read. "DIS MANIBUS LUCIUS MATELLUS ROMULUS... 'May the underworld spirits take Lucius, born in Spain, served in the Vettones cavalry regiment, became a citizen, and died here aged forty-six.' And here is the grave of his daughter — Simplicia — died aged ten months, 'a most innocent soul.' I wonder what poor Lucius would think if he could see what we are doing today."

  Brica shrugged, hot, dirty, not much caring. "Who are all these people? Were they to do with the town?"

  "Of course they were. These were the citizens — there are the dead of centuries here, perhaps."

  "Why weren't they buried inside the town?"

  "Because it wasn't allowed. Unless you were a very young baby, in which case you didn't count as a person anyhow... That was the law."

  "The Emperor's law. Now we make up our own laws," Brica said.

  "Or some thug like Artorius makes them up for us."

  "He isn't so bad," Brica said.

  Regina read another gravestone. " 'A sweetest child, torn away no less suddenly than the partner of Dis.' "

  "What does that mean?"

  Regina frowned, trying to remember her lessons with Aetius. "I think it's a quotation from Virgil." But the poet's name meant nothing to Brica, and Regina let it pass.

  Some of the graves had evidently once held wooden coffins, now long rotted away, and these graves were filled only with a scatter of bones. But in some of the grander tombs coffins of lead-lined stone had been used. These were prized out of the ground, roughly opened, and the grisly contents dumped back into the yawning ground so that the lead could be salvaged. Occasionally there were grave goods: bits of jewelry, perfume bottles, even tools — and, in one small and pathetic grave, a wooden doll. The workers would snatch these up, inspect them briefly, and pocket them if they looked like they were worth anything. There was no great stench, save for the scent of moist open earth. These bodies were decades old at least, and — except for those corpses tipped out of the more robust lead coffins — the worms had done their work.

  Toward the end of the day the broken gravestones were loaded into carts, or set on people's backs, for the haul back to Artorius's capital.

  • • •

  On their return to the dunon, Artorius again came to seek out Regina. He insisted that she not spend another day at the gruesome cemetery-quarry, but come with him to inspect his developing capital.

  "I value your opinion," he said, his grin confident and disarming. "Intellect and spirit are all too rare these sorry days. You are wasted digging up bones."

  "I am no soldier."

  "I have plenty of soldiers, who are all trained to tell me what I want to hear. But you, as I know very well, have no fear of me. I know, above all, that you are a survivor. And survival is what I am intent on: the first priority."

  So she agreed. After all, she had no real choice.

  They walked around the dunon. The hill was flat-topped, a plug of landscape. To the east was a ridge of high ground, but from the hill's upper slopes there was a long view to be had of the plains to the west.

  The plateau itself rose up to a summit, where a beacon bonfire had been built. Some of the flatter ground had been given over to cultivation, but there would be little farmland up here. Artorius's capital would be fed by farmsteads on the plain outside the fort. Part of the bargain behind this was that the farmers would be able to huddle inside the walls in times of danger. In a lower part of the plateau a wooden hall was being built to house Artorius himself. The burned-out remains of a much older building had been cleared — perhaps the home of some chieftain of pre-Roman times.

  They walked around the edge of the plateau. A perimeter wall was being constructed — or rather reconstructed, she saw, based on the foundations of some ancient predecessor. It would be five paces thick,
a framework of wooden beams filled with stones, most of them coming from the Durnovaria cemetery. Already the framework skirted most of the plateau, and work had begun on a large, complex gate in the southwest corner. Regina was impressed with the scale of all this, and the efficiency of Artorius's organization.

  "You are able to command the work of hundreds."

  Artorius shrugged. "They tell me that the emperors once commanded a hundred million. But one must start somewhere."

  There had been rain, and the grass-coated slopes of the hill were intensely green. The slopes were surrounded by lines of banks and ditches. Men were working their way over the forested banks, cutting down trees with their iron axes and saws and hauling the trunks to the summit of the hill.

  They were making the rings of ditches into a defense system. Artorius pointed. "There are four lines. See how we look down on the earthworks? The Saxons will have to run up that slope, arriving exhausted, and then down this face below us, where they will offer an easy target to our arrows or spears. The banks are overgrown with trees — three or four centuries' growth, I suppose, quite mature — and the slopes need to be cleared to avoid giving cover to any assailants, but we can deal with that."

  "It is a lucky arrangement of ditches and ridges to be so useful."

  He looked at her quizzically. "Luck has nothing to do with it. I thought you understood — Regina, there is nothing natural about those ditches. Everything you see was dug out by hand — by our ancestors, in fact, in the days before the Caesars."

  She could scarcely believe it. "This is a made place?"

  "It certainly is. It looks crude, but is well thought out. The fort is a machine, a killing machine made of earth and rock." He scratched his chin. "The work required to assemble even our paltry new wall is enormous. To have sculpted the hill itself — to have built those banks and ditches — defies the imagination. But, once built, it lasts forever."

  "And yet the Caesars cleared out this place, as mice are cleared from a nest."

  He eyed her. "I have had little opportunity to study history."

  She told him what she remembered of her grandfather's stories: of how the Durotriges had resisted the Roman occupation long after more wealthy kingdoms had fallen or capitulated, and how the general Vespasian, destined to become Emperor himself, had had to fight his way west, dunon to dunon.

  "Dunon to dunon," he mused. "I like that. Although one must admire the achievements of Vespasian, who won a huge victory, far from home, indeed having crossed the ocean itself..."

  "But now the Caesars have gone," she said.

  "Yes. But we endure."

  Only one new structure had been built on the hill in the Roman days, a small temple. It had been a neat rectangular building with a tiled roof, surrounded by a colonnaded walkway. Artorius and Regina stood and inspected what was left.

  "Now the temple is destroyed, the columns mere stumps, the tiles stolen, even the god's statue looted," said Artorius. "But at least that god was here. So in successive ages this was a place of defense, and of worship. Perhaps I have selected an auspicious place for my capital."

  She let her face reflect her scorn.

  He pursed his lips. "You mock me again. Well, you are entitled to. I have little to show, in the present. But I have past and future on my side."

  "Past?"

  "My family were kings, based in Eburacum. When the Romans came, yes, they became clients of the Empire. They were equites." These were the class from whom, in the early days of the Roman occupation, the town council had been elected. "My ancestors ruled their lands well, and contributed to the wealth and order of the province. I myself would have been a soldier — an officer in the cavalry, that was my destiny — but..."

  "But by the time you grew up there was no cavalry."

  He laughed ruefully. "There was only the limitaneus left, the border army. And in some places it was so long since they had been paid they had eaten all their horses!"

  She smiled. "And the future?"

  "I have three goals, Regina. The first is to make this place safe." He waved an arm. "Not just the dunon, but the area it will rule. Safe from the Saxons and Picts and bacaudae and whoever else might wish to harm us. I am confident I can achieve that. Next I must restore order — not for just this generation but the next, and the next. We need a civic structure, invisible, yet as strong as these walls of wood and stone. For example, I will tie the farmsteads to the central authority by renting them cattle. Perhaps other taxes can be levied."

  "The central authority. You mean yourself."

  He shook his head. "As soon as I can I will submit myself for election as a magistrate." He used the Latin word, duumvirs. She guffawed, but he insisted, "I am serious. I tell you I am no warlord, Regina — or if I am it will not be forever.

  "With order will come prosperity. We must make pottery — a decent kiln or two. And coins. I will start a mint. I have already begun the process of establishing an ironworks here. It is under the direction of my good friend Myrddin — you must meet him — a crusty old buffoon, but he knows the ancient wisdom that survived beyond the reach of the Romans, to the west of here. A marvelous man — so knowledgeable is he, some call him a wizard — my aim is to empty his head before he dies."

  "And your third priority—"

  "To return the diocese of Britain, or as much of it as I command, to the Emperor. Only that way can the farthest future be assured. Even if I have to go to Gaul, I will do it."

  "How laudable," she said dryly. "But you have chosen to come here, to reoccupy this centuries-old fort, rather than to go back to Durnovaria, say."

  "The town is dead. Its walls, even if restored, are feeble, its drains and water pipes clogged — and the system on which it relied has vanished. I mean the money, the flow of goods. We cannot buy metalwork from Germany or pottery from Spain anymore, Regina. We must live as our ancestors did."

  "And so we are abandoning the Romans' towns and villas, and are creeping back to the old ways, the earthworks of our ancestors. How strange. How — wistful. You know, ever since I was a little girl, bit by bit, I have fallen away from the light, and into the darkness of this new, bleak time, where I recognize nothing."

  He studied her seriously, his dark eyes grave. "I do understand, you know," he said gently. "I am no illiterate savage. I want what you want. Order, prosperity, peace. But I accept the times as they are; I accept what I must do to achieve those ends. I have told you my dreams, and my ambitions. Now tell me what you are thinking, Regina — tell me what you think of me."

  She considered carefully. If anybody could restore order in this confused, collapsed landscape it was surely Artorius — a man full of dreams, but a man with the power and realism, it seemed, to make those dreams come true. For a moment, there on the busy plateau, it seemed to her that in this man, this Artorius, she had found a rock on which she might at last build a safe future for herself and her family — that there might come a time when she could rest.

  "I am — hopeful." And so she was, tentatively.

  He seemed moved; apparently her good opinion really was of value to him. He grabbed her hand; his palm was dry and warm. "Work with me, Regina. I need your strength."

  But then there was a cry from the bottom of the slope, where the men had been digging out the clogged-up defense ditches. "Riothamus! You might want to see this, sir..."

  Artorius clambered quickly down the zigzag path to the base of the ditch.

  The men had found a jumble of bones. Many were broken, some charred. The men picked through this unwelcome trove carefully. There were many skulls — surely more than a hundred.

  When Artorius clambered out, his face had a hardness she had not seen before. In one hand he cradled the skull of a child, in the other a handful of coins, just slivers of metal, stuck together from their immersion in the soil. "You see, Regina — from the bones it's hard to tell men from women, young from old. But you can always tell if it's a child. And at least this one did not suffer in
the fire. See the crater in the back of the skull — inflicted by a legionary's sword hilt, perhaps..."

  "The fire?"

  "There was some kind of building down there." He pointed. "We've found the stumps of posts. The people were gathered up and crammed inside, and then it was torched."

  "Who would do such a thing?"

  "Who do you imagine?" He held out his handful of coins. One of them bore the name of the Emperor Nero. "Was it not during the reign of Nero that Boudicca led her rebellion against Roman rule? It seems that reprisals were fierce." He hefted the child's skull. "This little warrior must truly have terrified the mighty Roman army."

  "Artorius—"

  "Enough." Holding the skull, he walked back down the hill and began issuing commands.

  For the rest of that day and most of the next, a large proportion of Artorius's scarce resource was devoted to digging out a new mass grave and transporting the broken and burned bones to it. The burial was done in the style of the Celtae. Three pigs were slaughtered and their carcasses thrown on the bones, to provide sustenance for the journey to the Otherworld. For each skull a beaker or cup was placed in the grave, so that the dead could drink from the great cauldrons in the Otherworld's banqueting halls.

  As the grave was filled in, Artorius's iron-making genius Myrddin led prayers. He was a small, wild-eyed man with a mass of gray-black beard, and his arms were covered with puckered smelting scars. His voice was thin, his western accent heavy: "Death comes at last and lays cold hands upon me..."

  • • •

  For the rest of that year the fields around the dunon were to be prepared for sowing the following spring, and provisions like dried and salted meat were laid up for the winter.

  Life continued to be harsh, with hard labor for all but the very smallest children. But Artorius had insisted they make time for such measures as the digging of proper latrines as one of the first priorities — and so they were spared the plague of fever that swept the countryside in late summer. And long before the season turned it was clear to all that they had amassed enough food to see them through the winter, even if some of it had been taken by force by Artorius's soldiers. Regina could not deny the energy Artorius brought to his task, the great sense of loyalty and industry he instilled in others — including herself, she admitted — nor the great strides the new community had made by the autumn.