The Eagle of the Ninth [book I]

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Some while after moonset on the third night, without any warning, a hand brushed across the skin rug at the entrance, and as Marcus tensed in the close darkness, he heard the faintest ghost of a whistle: the broken, two-note whistle that he had always used to summon Cub. A sudden wave of relief broke over him, and he echoed the whistle. The rug was drawn aside and a black shape slipped through.

  ‘Is it well?’ Esca whispered.

  ‘It is well,’ Marcus returned, striking flint and steel to kindle the lamp. ‘And with you? How went the hunting?’

  ‘The hunting was good,’ Esca said, as the tiny flame sprang up and steadied, and he stooped and set down something closely bundled in the cloak.

  Marcus looked at it. ‘Was there any trouble?’

  ‘None, save that I pulled the bank down a little in landing with the Eagle. It must have been rotten, I suppose—but there is nothing in a bank slip to set anyone thinking.’ He sat down wearily. ‘Is there anything to eat?’

  Marcus had made a habit of saving each meal that he was given, and eating it only when the next one came, so that he always had a meal in hand, packed into the old cooking-pot. He produced it now, and sat with his hand resting on the bundle that meant so much to him, while he watched the other eat, and listened to the story of the last three days, told in low snatches between mouthfuls.

  Esca had cut back across the mountains without much difficulty, but by the time he reached the Loch of Many Islets it had been near to dawn, and he had had to lie up in the dense hazel-woods through the day. Twice during the day parties of warriors had passed close to his hiding-place, carrying coracles, and evidently bound, like himself, for the dun by the short way across the loch. Also they had been carrying war-spears, he said. As soon as it was dark, he had set out once again to swim the loch. It was little more than a mile across at the place he chose, and that, too, had not been difficult. He had worked his way down the far shore until he came to the spit of land that marked the place where they had hidden the Eagle; found it, and landed again, pulling down the bank a little in doing so, and bundled it in the wet cloak that he had carried bound to his shoulder. Then he had returned the way he came as fast as might be, for the dun was thrumming like a disturbed bees’ nest. Of a certainty the tribe was hosting. It had all been very easy—almost too easy.

  Esca’s voice was growing blurred towards the close of the story. He was blind weary, and the instant he had finished eating, he stretched out on the piled bracken and sleep took him like a tired hound after a day’s hunting.

  But before the sun was above the mountains next day they were on their way once more, for though they were now clear of suspicion, it was no time for lingering. The village had shown no signs of surprise at Esca’s sudden recovery; presumably when the devils were no longer in his belly the man was whole again. They had given the travellers more of the eternal smoked meat, and a boy—a wild, dark-faced lad too young for the hosting and sulking in consequence—to guide them on the next stage of their journey, and bidden them good hunting and let them go.

  That day they had gruelling travelling; no level loch-side to follow, but a steep thrust northward into the heart of the mountains, and then east—so far as they could hold to any course—by narrow passes between sheer heather-washed crags of black rock, skirting wide mountain shoulders, traversing bare ridges, across what seemed to be the roof of the world; until at last the lie of the country turned them south again into the long downward sweep that ended afar off in the marshes of the Cluta. Here the boy parted from them, refusing to share their camp for the night, and set off back the way he had come, tireless as a mountain buck among his native glens.

  They watched him go, easily, not hurrying, at the long, springing mountaineer’s stride. He would walk like that through the night and arrive home before dawn, not much tired. Marcus and Esca were both hillmen, but they could never have equalled that, not among these crags and passes. They turned their back on the last glimpse of Cruachan, and set off southward, making for more sheltered country, for once again there was storm in the air, not thunder this time, but wind—wind and rain. Well, that would not matter much; mist was the one thing that would matter, and at least an autumn gale would keep the autumn mists away. Only once before had weather meant as much to Marcus as it did now: on the morning of the attack at Isca Dumnoniorum when mizzle rain had kept the signal smoke from rising.

  In the last flush of the evening they came upon the ruins of a broch, one of those strange, chambered towers built by a forgotten people, perched like a falcon’s eyrie on the very edge of the world. They made camp there, in company with the skeleton of a wolf picked bare by ravens.

  Thinking it best not to light a fire, they simply knee-hobbled the mares, gathered fern for bedding, and after filling the cooking-pot at the mountain stream, which came leaping down through its own narrow gorge nearby, sat down with their backs to the crumbling stones of the entrance, to eat leathery shavings of dried meat.

  Marcus stretched out thankfully. It had been a gruelling march; most of the day they had had to trudge and scramble, leading Vipsania and Minna, and his lame leg was aching horribly, despite the ready help that he had had from Esca. It was good to rest.

  From their feet the land swept away southward over ridge after ridge into the blue distance, where, a thousand feet below and maybe two days’ march away, the old frontier cut Valentia from the wilderness. Far below them, among dark ranks of pine-trees, the northern arm of a great loch reflected back the flame of the sunset; and Marcus greeted it as a familiar friend, for he and Esca had followed its shores on their way north, almost two moons ago. A straight journey now, no more sniping to and fro among sea-lochs and mist-wrapped mountains, he thought; and yet there was a queer superstitious feeling in him that it had all been too easy—a queer foreboding of trouble to come. And the sunset seemed to echo his mood. A most wonderful sunset; the whole western sky on fire, and high overhead, torn off, hurrying wind clouds caught the light and became great wings of gold that changed, even while Marcus watched them, to fiery scarlet. Stronger and stronger grew the light, until the west was a furnace banked with purple cloud, and the whole world seemed to glow, and the upreared shoulder of the mountain far across the loch burned crimson as spilled wine. The whole sunset was one great threat of coming tempest; wind and rain, and maybe something more. Suddenly it seemed to Marcus that the crimson of that distant mountain shoulder was not wine, but blood.

  He shook his shoulders impatiently, calling himself a fool. He was tired, so were Esca and the horses for that matter, and there was a storm on the way. That was all. A good thing that they had found shelter for the night; with any luck it would have blown itself out by morning. It struck him that he had not so much as looked at the Eagle. It had seemed better not to, in the village they had left that morning; but now … It lay beside him, and on a swift impulse he picked up the bundle and began to unroll it. The dark folds of the cloak as he turned them back caught a more brilliant colour from the sunset, warming from violet to Imperial purple. The last fold fell away, and he was holding the Eagle in his hands; cold, heavy, battered, burning red-gold in the sunset. ‘Euge!’ he said softly, using the word he would have used to praise a victory in the arena, and looked up at Esca. ‘It was a good hunting, brother.’

  But Esca’s suddenly widened eyes were fixed on one corner of the cloak, outflung towards him, and he did not answer; and Marcus, following the direction of his gaze, saw the cloth at that corner torn and ragged.

  ‘The ring-brooch!’ Esca said. ‘The ring-brooch!’

  Still holding the Eagle in the curve of his arm, Marcus was hastily flinging the folds this way and that, but he knew that it was useless. The brooch had been in that corner. With sudden sharp-edged vividness, now that it was too late, he remembered that scene by the loch-side, the threatening faces of the tribesmen gathered round, the gear tumbled on the coarse grass, the cloak with its dangling brooch all but torn out of the cloth by their furious handlin
g. Fool that he was, it had gone completely out of his mind; out of Esca’s, too, it seemed.

  ‘It may have fallen at any time—even while you were in the water,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Esca said slowly. ‘It rang on the pebbles when I dropped the cloak before I dived for the Eagle.’ He rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead, thinking back. ‘When I picked up the cloak, it caught for an instant on an alder root; you know how the alders grow right down to the water’s edge. I remember now, but at the time I scarcely noticed.’

  He dropped his hand and they sat quite still, staring at each other. The ring-brooch was a cheap bronze one, but its design was rather unusual, and the tribesmen must often have seen Demetrius of Alexandria wearing it. Also, to judge by the state of that jagged corner, there was probably a wisp of violet cloth caught in it, to help their memories.

  Marcus was first to break the silence. ‘If they find it, they will know that one of us has been back since they searched our gear, and there could be but one reason for that.’ As he spoke, he began methodically to wrap up the Eagle once more.

  ‘When they speak with the warriors from the village we left this morning, they will know that it was I who went back,’ Esca said hurriedly, and checked. ‘No, that will not serve, for they will know that I went with your knowledge… Listen, Marcus. You must push on alone. If you take Vipsania and go now, you may stand a chance. I will put myself in their way. I will tell them that we quarrelled for possession of the Eagle; we fought for it down yonder, and you went into the loch, and the Eagle with you.’

  ‘And Vipsania?’ Marcus said, his hands still busy with the folds of the cloak. ‘And what will they do to you when you have told them this story?’

  Esca said very simply, ‘They will kill me.’

  ‘I am sorry, but I do not think much of that plan,’ Marcus said.

  ‘There is the Eagle to be taken into account,’ Esca urged.

  Marcus made a quick, impatient gesture. ‘The Eagle will serve no useful purpose when we get it home. I know that well enough. So long as it does not fall again into the tribesmen’s hands to be a weapon against Rome, it will lie as worthily in a Caledonian bog as on a Roman scrap-heap. If the worst comes to the worst, we will find means to dispose of the Eagle before they take us.’

  ‘It seems strange that you have not cast a thing of so little worth into the loch before this. Why trouble to carry it south at all?’

  Marcus was already drawing his legs under him; but he checked an instant, his gaze holding Esca’s. ‘For an idea,’ he said. He got up stiffly. ‘We are in this together, and we will win clear together, or not at all. It may be days before that accursed brooch is found, none the less the sooner we get down to Valentia the better.’

  Esca got up also, saying nothing. There was no more to be said, and he knew it.

  Marcus glanced up at the wild clouds; hurrying clouds like wind-driven birds. ‘How long have we before the storm breaks?’

  The other seemed to be smelling the weather. ‘Long enough to get down to the loch-side, anyway; there will be some shelter from the wind down there among the pine-woods. We might make a few more miles tonight.’

  XVII

  THE WILD HUNT

  TWO mornings later, Marcus lay full length in a hollow of the lowland hills and looked down through the parted bracken fronds. Grey and tawny marshes lay below him, rising to the blue heights of Valentia to the south, and through the flatness of them wound the silver Cluta, spreading westward into its firth: with Are-Cluta, once a frontier town, still a meeting-place and market for all the neighbouring tribes, squatting within turf ramparts on its northern bank. There were coracles on the river, looking, from this distance, like tiny water-beetles; one or two larger vessels with blue sails furled, riding at anchor below the dun, from which the smoke of many cooking-fires rose towards a high grey sky; a sky that was gentle with exhaustion after the autumn gale, Marcus thought while he lay looking back over the past two days as it might be over a wild dream.

  The storm had broken over them towards midnight, the wild westerly gale swooping at them down the shoulder of the mountains like a wild thing that wanted to destroy them; whipping the waters of the loch into racing white-caps, bringing with it the bitter, hissing rain to drench them through and through. They had passed the greater part of the night crouching with the two frightened mares under a steep over-hang of rock, wrapped about with a shrieking turmoil of wind and rain and darkness. Towards dawn the storm had abated a little, and they had pushed on again until long past noon, when they had found a sheltered hollow under the bole of an uprooted pine, knee-hobbled the mares, and crawled under the upreared mass of torn roots, and slept. When they awoke it was well into the night, and the rain was falling softly before a dying wind that sobbed and roared through the pines but no longer beat against them like a live thing. They had eaten what was left of the smoked meat, and pushed on again through the dying storm, until, in the spent calm of the day-spring, with the wet oak-woods waking to the song of chaffinch and robin and wren, they had halted at last, here in the low hills above the Cluta.

  As soon as it grew light, Esca had gone on down to Are-Cluta, to sell the mares. The parting was hard for all of them, for they had grown fond of each other, Marcus and Vipsania, Esca and Minna, in the months that they had been together; and the mares had known perfectly well that it was good-bye. A pity they could not have kept the mares, but with the old cavalry brand on their shoulders they were much too easily recognizable, and there was nothing for it but to trade them for others. But at least they would be sure of a good master, for the tribesmen loved their horses and hounds, using them hard but only as they used themselves hard, treating them as members of the family.

  All would be well with Vipsania and Minna, Marcus told himself firmly. He stretched. It was good to lie here on the soft turf of the woodshore, to feel his tunic drying on him, and rest his aching leg, knowing that however fast the hunt came on their trail, they were past the last point where they could be cut off by men pouring down any side glen that linked loch with loch in the misty maze that was behind them. But how was it going with Esca, down there in the dun? Always it was Esca who had the extra task to do, the extra risk to run. It was bound to be so, for Esca, who was British, could pass unnoticed where Marcus, with his olive skin, his darkness that was of quite a different kind from that of the tribesmen, would be suspect at once. He knew that, but it infuriated him, none the less; all his relief began to ebb away, and as the morning dragged on he grew restless and yet more restless. He began to feel sickeningly anxious. What was happening down there? Why was Esca so long? Had word of the Eagle reached Are-Cluta ahead of them?

  It was near to noon when Esca suddenly appeared in the glen below him, riding a shaggy mouse-coloured pony and leading another. Relief flooded over Marcus, and as the other glanced up towards his hiding-place he parted the bracken fronds more widely and flung up a hand. Esca returned the signal, and a few moments later, having joined Marcus in the little hollow, he dropped from the back of the shaggy creature he rode, with an air of duty well and truly done.

  ‘Do you call these mossy-faced objects ponies?’ Marcus inquired with interest, rolling over and sitting up.

  Esca was busy with the bundle he had taken from one of them. For an instant his slow, grave smile lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘The man who sold them to me swore they were sired out of the stables of the High King of Eriu.’

  ‘Did you by any chance believe him?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Esca. He had looped the reins of both ponies over a low branch and sat down beside Marcus with the bundle. ‘I told the man I sold ours to, that they were sired out of the stables of Queen Cartimandua. He did not believe me, either.’

  ‘They were game little brutes, whoever sired them. You found them a good master?’

  ‘Yes, and the same master for both; a little fox of a man, but he had the right hands. I told him my brother and I were taking ship for Eriu. It was a
good enough reason for selling the mares, and if anyone should ever ask him, it may serve to start a false trail. We haggled for a long time, because the mares were near foundering. I had to tell him a long story about wolves, to account for that, and so of course he swore their wind was broken, which was obviously a lie. But I sold them to him at last, for a fine sealskin rug and two enamelled war-spears, and a bronze cooking-pot and a sucking pig. Oh, and three fine amber bracelets.’

  Marcus flung up his head with a croak of laughter. ‘What did you do with the sucking pig?’

  ‘It was a little black pig, very shrill,’ said Esca reflectively. ‘I sold it to a woman, for this.’ He had been busy with the bundle while he spoke, and now shook out a hooded cloak of shaggy cloth that seemed to have once been chequered blue and red, but was now grease-stained and weather-faded to a universal mud-colour. ‘Even a small thing will help to change the look of a whole company—at least from a distance… Also for dried meat. Here it is. Then I went back to the horse market and bought these two, with their head-gear on them, for the war-spears and all the other things. The other man had the best of the bargain; ill luck go with him! But there was no help for that.’

  ‘We are in no case to drive a hard bargain,’ Marcus agreed with his mouth full. They were both eating by that time. ‘I should have liked to have seen you with that piglet,’ he added thoughtfully.

  Neither of them wasted more time on words. They ate quickly, and not over much, since there was no knowing how long the food would have to last them; and by noon they had loaded their few belongings into the yellow pack-cloth, flung the sheepskin saddle-pads across the backs of their shaggy little mounts, tightened the belly-straps, and were on their way once more.

  Marcus wore the cloak for which Esca had traded the black piglet, the hood pulled well over his forehead, for he had laid aside the hand-shaped talisman which was too distinctive to serve him any longer; and under the greasy, evil-smelling folds, he carried the lost Eagle. He had contrived a kind of sling for it, with strips torn from the cloak in which it was closely bundled, so as to have both hands free, but as he rode he cradled it in the crook of his bridle arm.