by Ian Ross
‘Why?’ she cried out in a great rush of anguish and realisation. ‘Why are you here? Why did you come back and not him?’
‘I’m sorry, domina. It was his own wish – I…’
‘Quiet! Don’t talk to me! Don’t come near me!’ The girl was on her feet now, crouching back against the curve of the rock wall, gasping back tears. Castus remained seated. Anything he tried to say now would be wrong.
‘You… stupid-headed liar! You bastard! Why did you come back? Why did you break your vow?’
She bent to snatch up a handful of small stones and threw them at Castus. He swatted them away with his forearms, but now she was grabbing larger stones, pelting them at him, spitting breath.
‘I curse you!’ she cried. ‘The gods curse you!’
Castus rolled his back to her, covering his head, feeling the stones cracking off his shoulders. He was about to get up and restrain her when he heard the last stone fall and the girl drop to her knees, sobbing. He turned and watched her; she looked so small in the moonlight, so weak and broken. Wincing, he clambered to his feet.
Standing up straight, hands clasped behind his back, he addressed the girl. ‘Your father and I were taken captive by the Picts after a battle. Your father was injured, and his status placed him in an impossible position. He chose death as the honourable way, and charged me to return here and find you. To tell you what happened.’ He glanced to his left, and saw the gold ring catching the moonlight; he picked it up and put it back in his pouch. ‘I’ll keep this for you,’ he said.
But the girl was hunched over on the ground and did not look up. Castus unpinned his cloak and draped it over her body.
‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘Try and sleep if you can. I’ll be back soon.’
Moving around the flank of the rocks, Castus peered upwards into the darkness and saw a crevice running towards the summit. Grunting, he pulled himself up, his boots grating against the gritty rocks, until he could raise his head over the top of the stack. The western sky behind him was still luminous blue with the afterglow of sunset, and he did not want to present a silhouette to anyone watching from the slopes below, so he pulled himself up over the lip of the rock and crawled forward on his belly until he could lie flat on the warm stone summit, looking eastwards into the night.
The sight took his breath. The dark land spread away for miles to the flat horizon, and all across it there were fires burning. Some of them were little sparks, flickering, but others were great scars and lines of flame traced across the landscape. The Picts were burning the villages and the crops in the fields. The wind was behind him, but even so Castus thought he could smell the distant conflagration.
He lay still, transfixed, until the last light was gone from the western sky, and then sat upright on the smooth stone. Eboracum was out there somewhere in the darkness, over on the furthest edge of the plain. Was that too burning? Had the enemy destroyed everything?
For a long time he sat still, staring. Then he felt the chill of the wind on his back, and the cold in his bones. He rolled off the rock and began slowly edging his way back down.
At first light, Castus collected kindling and lit a fire in a hollow of the rocks out of sight of the cave. He boiled water in his mess pot, and crumbled half of his hardtack into it with some bacon fat and cheese to make a thin savoury gruel. He was cleaning and sharpening his sword when Marcellina found him.
‘I apologise for being impolite to you last night,’ she said. Castus turned and saw her standing by the rocks with his cloak wrapped tightly around her. The girl’s face was very pale, and there was darkness around her eyes. She looked older in the daylight, no longer a child.
‘Impolite?’ he said, and raised an eyebrow.
‘I was… distressed. Please forgive me.’
He sniffed, and lifted the pot of hot food from the fire. She squatted, took a wooden spoon and started to eat, blowing on each spoonful to cool it. When she had finished eating she stood up again, away from the fire.
‘I want you to take me to Eboracum,’ she said, not looking at him. Castus kept working on his sword, drawing the whetstone along the blade. ‘My brother is there… my younger brother. He’s the only family I have left now…’
‘That’s where I’m going,’ Castus said.
‘I’ll… I’ll see to it that you are rewarded for conveying me safely…’ Her voice caught, and when Castus glanced at her he saw tears on her cheeks.
‘I don’t need a reward,’ he said. ‘It’s my duty to protect you.’
He stood up and slipped the sword back into its scabbard. Then he kicked out the fire.
Braced against the charred and sagging thatch of a barn roof, Castus craned his neck upwards and squinted into the level sunlight. The grey horizon was broken by trees and rising trails of smoke, but he could make out the distant smudge of the city in the distance. The barn had been half burned – one end of it was in blackened ruin and the other barely standing – but it was the highest vantage point he could find, and as close to Eboracum itself as he dared to go in daylight. Beneath him the thatch shifted, and he heard wooden laths splitting.
Sliding down the steeply pitched roof, he dropped from the low eaves and landed heavily.
‘What did you see?’ Marcellina said.
‘Not much. Couldn’t get high enough to see over the trees.’
‘I’m lighter than you – help me up and I’ll look.’
All the way down from the moors, Marcellina had ridden behind Castus, sitting across the rump of the horse and gripping his belt. Her mood had shifted: from being stunned and subdued that morning she seemed determined, assertive and even reckless. Castus had to remind himself that she was still in shock, the wound in her mind still gaping. They had talked little; they had a shared purpose now. But first they had to be sure that the city still held out.
Castus crouched, and the girl climbed up onto his back. The skirts of her tattered blue gown were pulled up around her hips, and as she clambered up onto the thatch Castus saw her slender legs, long and bare and white. He looked away again quickly.
‘What can you see?’ he called. The girl had climbed right up to the ridge poles and was standing, her hair loose in the breeze, gazing east.
‘I can see the city,’ she cried out. ‘There’s smoke… but it’s only from this side of the river, not the fortress. There’s something against the walls – something wooden, and that’s burning… but there’s no smoke from inside.’
‘You’ve got sharp eyes,’ Castus said.
‘Wait, there’s… There are lots of men, barbarians. All over the country between here and the city.’
Castus nodded. They had seen several small parties of Picts and other barbarians on their ride down from the moors, all intent on plundering, and had managed to avoid them all.
‘They’ve encircled the fortress,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they’d be inside it, not out here… They don’t have the strength or equipment to attack the walls, but if they can keep the remains of the legion trapped inside they can plunder all they want.’
The girl was already sliding back down the roof, kicking burnt chaff over the eaves.
‘Let’s go then,’ she said. She jumped from the roof and Castus caught her. ‘We can ride straight through the enemy and into the city if we’re fast enough…’
‘Not in daylight,’ he said. ‘They’ll have pickets on all the roads stopping anyone going in or out…’
The girl pushed herself away from him. ‘I need to get into the city,’ she said. ‘I need to find my brother, and I don’t want to wait any longer.’
‘Domina!’ Castus called to her. ‘I told you we won’t get through them in daylight. We’ll have to cross the river upstream and circle round from the north-west, but we need darkness for that.’
She turned on him, suddenly furious and petulant. ‘I’m not one of your soldiers!’ she said. ‘You can’t give me orders! I demand we go to the city now!’
Castus pulled himself up onto
the horse. He took a drink from the waterskin.
‘I’m not ordering you to do anything,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to protect you. If you want to die, go ahead.’
For a few moments she stood her ground, glaring at him, her shoulders set. Then she exhaled loudly, stepped towards the horse and allowed him to draw her up behind him.
There was thunder that evening, then heavy rain. Castus and Marcellina sat together in a low hut near the river, listening to the water gushing down over the domed reed-thatch of the roof and spattering from the eaves. They had no fire, and the hut had been plundered of whatever poor furniture and utensils it might once have contained. But at least it had not been torched – this damp settlement among the reed beds beside the river was too small and mean to bother burning.
‘How long must we wait here?’ Marcellina asked, squatting against the wall, trembling slightly at the sound of the rain.
‘We’ll cross the river an hour before dawn. The fortress is just over a mile away, so we should try and reach it at first light. Don’t want to try creeping up on a guarded gate in the dark.’
She nodded, preoccupied. They were eating the last of the hardtack and marching rations, although neither felt hungry.
‘Your brother should be in the fortress,’ Castus said. ‘He’ll have been evacuated there with of the rest of the citizens from the town. He’ll be able to look after you, I expect.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Marcellina said bitterly. ‘He’ll look after me. He has to – he’s the head of the family now. Even if he is only thirteen. But now Father’s… gone he’ll have no trouble marrying me off to some cousin or other from the south. He won’t have to give much of a dowry.’
‘Is that what you want?’ Castus asked her.
‘I’m seventeen years old,’ the girl said with a sour irony that startled him. ‘I should have been married years ago. What I want doesn’t matter.’
The rain had eased outside, and Castus got up and crawled towards the low door of the hut. Marcellina grabbed his arm – her touch was unexpected, and shocked him.
‘Where are you going? Don’t leave me!’
‘I need to check on the horse, then do some other things. I’ll be back in an hour or two. Stay here. Don’t go outside.’
‘Take me with you!’
Castus shook his head, tugged his arm away from her and went out into the wet dusk.
It was fully night by the time he returned, and the rain had stopped. He stamped back into the hut and tossed two damp Pictish cloaks down on the floor. One of the cloaks was stained with blood, but he hoped the girl would not notice in the dark.
‘Where did you go?’ she asked quietly.
‘Just along the river. There’s a bend to the north of here where we can cross, but we’ll have to swim with the horse – can you do that? If we wear these cloaks we might pass as Picts till we’re close enough to the walls, then we’ll have to ride hard.’
‘You killed some more of them, didn’t you?’
‘A couple. Hard work – I nearly slipped on the wet ground.’
‘But you’re hurt – you’re bleeding.’
Castus grunted, seating himself against the wall. The second Pictish sentry had gashed his arm with a spear. Marcellina crawled across the hut on her knees and knelt beside him. He could see her face in the shadows, her smooth cheek and the curve of her lips, her large eyes watching him as he tore the ripped sleeve of his tunic from the wound and washed away the blood.
‘I need a strip of your shawl,’ he said, ‘to use as a bandage.’
For a moment she drew back, uncertain, maybe disgusted, but then nodded quickly and ripped at the hem of the shawl. She passed him the torn strip and watched again as he wrapped it around his biceps and tied it, one end gripped in his teeth.
‘Tell me what happened to you, back there at the villa,’ Castus asked her as he flexed his bandaged arm. He saw her flinch at the memory. ‘No – maybe I don’t need to know,’ he added.
Marcellina sat with her knees drawn up and said nothing for a long time, but in the half-dark Castus saw her expression shifting, her lips opening to speak and then closing. He wished he had not asked, but still he wanted to know.
‘They came very suddenly, the Picts…’ the girl said at last. She spoke in a calm, measured voice. ‘We were in the dining room, just lying down to eat, and we heard the shouting from outside. They must have come from the back of the house and surprised the watchman… Mother told me to hide in the large closet.’
Castus saw her eyes closing, her throat tightening. She was gripping her knees in the circle of her arms. ‘I heard… but I didn’t see,’ she said. ‘Mother tried to talk with them. Tried to order them away. Then I heard… I think they killed the slaves first. I was too terrified to think about what was happening. One of them opened the closet door but didn’t see me. It seems impossible – some god protected me…’
Castus touched his brow, and saw the girl do the same.
‘Then I looked out, and saw Mother and Brita the maid dead on the floor. Their clothes were gone, they were… there was a lot of blood. Several others dead, and the roof was burning… I just stayed where I was, hiding. I couldn’t breathe because of the smoke. When I looked again the whole room was on fire, the whole villa… I wrapped myself in a blanket and ran outside…’
‘You were brave,’ he said quietly, and the sound of his voice was harsh and rough compared to hers. She was shaking her head, the pendant earrings swinging.
‘No. Just scared. So scared I didn’t know what I was doing. It was… maybe a day I was hiding in the old bath-house, or two. Then I heard those men outside, talking and laughing. I found the tool, the pickaxe thing… One of them came through the door and I just hit him as hard as I could.’
‘Hard enough to break his spine,’ Castus said. ‘Not bad. And you’d have brained me too if I hadn’t seen the body on the floor and been on my guard.’
‘But there were three of them. If you hadn’t come…’
‘Don’t think about that. Just thank the gods it happened as it did, eh?’
‘How can I thank the gods for anything? My family are dead. My home is destroyed. I have nothing left. Maybe it would have been better if I’d died.’
‘You’re still strong,’ Castus told her. ‘Think about what happens next, not what might have been.’ He felt the same sensation he remembered from their talk in the villa long before, when the girl had made him vow to protect her father. A desire to comfort her somehow, or ease her distress, but no idea how to do it. He felt clumsy, untrained in kindness. Strange, he thought, that he should find killing two men in the darkness quite easy, but talking to a frightened seventeen-year-old girl so hard. Perhaps for other people it would be quite the reverse?
‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I promised your father I’d protect you.’
‘You did?’ In fact Castus could not remember if that was the promise he had made – but it was in the spirit of it, he was sure.
‘Yes. So sleep now, and in a few hours we’ll move.’
He spread his own cloak on the floor for the girl, then took the less bloody of the Pictish capes and, wrapping it around his shoulders, lay down on the other side of the hut. His wounded arm stung, but he could ignore the pain.
For a while he lay still, eyes closed, thinking back over what he had seen on his reconnaissance foray earlier: the bend in the river screened by trees, sixty paces, more or less, to the far bank with trees and then flat meadows on the other side. A mile to the walls of the fortress… His mind clouded, dulled by sleep, and he thought he was back in the Pictish hut, waiting for Cunomagla to come and join him. Warmth spread through his body at the recollection. If I die in the next few hours, he thought, will that be the last sensation I remember?
A slight noise, a shuffle and a step from the darkness, and Castus opened his eyes as Marcellina eased herself down beside him. He felt her body against his, her arm wrapping his chest.
‘Let me stay here,’ she
whispered. ‘I don’t feel so scared now.’
He made a sound, low in his throat, and tried to resist the urge to move and embrace her. She was unmarried, he reminded himself, and a virgin. She was stunned, and not in control of herself. The girl’s head lay against his shoulder; then she was pressing her face into the hollow of his neck, her breath on his skin.
‘Wouldn’t it be good’, she murmured, ‘if we could just stay like this? Not go back to the city… just go away somewhere safe, into the hills…’
‘We both have our duty,’ he said quietly.
In the darkness he saw her raise her head and look at him for a moment.
‘It’s a shame,’ she whispered. Then she lay down beside him again.
Four hours later, they were riding along beside the river. Willows grew close to the banks, trailing foliage into the slow water, the moon was screened by cloud and in the thick darkness Castus could barely see anything. The river was a moving grey shape to his left, the trees a spreading blackness all around. Behind him, Marcellina rode with her legs astride, like a man, clasping his waist. Both of them wore Pictish capes of dark tanned leather, and Castus had removed his boots and breeches.
The horse moved slowly, ears back, nervous in the dark with the sound of the flowing water. Castus knew this stretch of river well – the soldiers used it for swimming practice – but in the darkness it was an alien and uncanny place, almost supernatural. The willows creaked and hissed as they passed beneath them, and the sound of the river was unnervingly like voices. The spirits of the wood and the water felt close, and not comforting.
‘Here’s the place,’ Castus said, and turned the horse towards the water. In fact, he could see almost nothing, but the sound of the river had changed, and he guessed that this was the wide shallow bend where a spit of mud and sand spread from their bank and another lay on the far side. The horse splashed forward into the water, Castus nudging it repeatedly with his knees and heels. The surge of the river was loud at first, and then the water rose around the saddle girths and the knees of the riders.