Hawk

by George Green

  Across the table from Brutus, Serpicus picked several small partly chewed pieces of pheasant off his cheek. ‘I remember Cruptorix loved hunting. When I left the tribe he was the greatest hunter for leagues around, the greatest our tribe had ever seen, that anyone could remember.’

  Galba, sitting beside Brutus, sniffed in a manner not exactly dismissive but one which might be interpreted that way. ‘Shame he isn’t alive, it sounds like we could have used him as a partner in the business.’

  Brutus poked a leg-bone at him again like a long finger. ‘Not that Cruptorix would have lowered himself to do a job like ours, but he’d have been bloody good at it if he had.’

  Galba dabbed deliberately at several glistening spots of grease on his tunic. ‘No doubt he would. However he isn’t here, and nor is the new chief, which suggests that the hunting hasn’t been too good.’

  Brutus swallowed and took another large bite. ‘Or maybe he’s killed so many animals that the pack-horses’ bellies are scraping the ground and they can’t raise a trot between them.’

  Galba looked sorrowfully at the state of his tunic. It was like sitting beside a blizzard, with bits of food taking the place of snow. He did his sniff again, this time louder. ‘We’ll no doubt find out soon enough,’ he said.

  There was a sudden change in the atmosphere in the Hall, as if an exciting piece of news had been passed around to all the occupants simultaneously. Serpicus looked around. He sensed that something was about to happen, without knowing how or what. Most of the men were looking towards the door, and he saw Cato’s face look interested for the first time since they had crossed the border into Germany. Sounds of arrival came from outside.

  ‘Looks like we’ll find out sooner than you thought,’ grinned Brutus. He nudged the man sitting next to him. They’d recently made friends over a large jug of beer, which for Brutus constituted a sacred and eternal bond. Brutus had been telling him stories about Hannibal’s elephants until his eyes looked as though they might drop from his head. ‘Hey, Max,’ he said. ‘Who’s coming?’

  ‘Chief,’ the nudged man said, raising his cup in a toast as he picked himself up off the ground. ‘Been hunting.’ The iron-studded doors at the front of the Hall swung wide open, letting in a breeze which caught the edges of the brightly painted shields hanging on the walls and gave out a low ringing sound as they rolled back and forth against the stone. The wind cleared the wood-smoke that clung to the high rafters, and the cold air woke up all but the insensible.

  The men sitting at the table nearest the door stood up and a path cleared through the crowd. Two men came in, guards lightly armed for escort duty, stained from the hunt. They stood facing each other, one either side of the hall opening. There was a slight pause, during which Serpicus had time to look around and see the expectancy on everyone’s faces, and then five women came in. Four of them stood at each corner of an invisible box of which the fifth was at the centre. The four were all tall, muscular and had the weapons and confidence of warriors. For a few moments Serpicus couldn’t get a good look at the woman in the centre, then someone moved sideways and he saw her clearly.

  She was wearing a light bronze breastplate polished to a deep burnished glow, and the sword at her side almost touched the ground.

  Serpicus blinked, and the curtains of the past parted as if pulled aside by a lover’s hands.

  * * *

  He stretched out on his back and put an arm across his eyes to block the light. The trees around him were higher than the sky. The druids say that the branches at the very top brush against the feet of the gods. Sometimes, they say, when the wind is right, you can hear them murmur their pleasure as the soft fronds sweep back and forth against their toes.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He hadn’t heard her, as usual. He usually pretended that the wind and his concentration prevented him from hearing her approach, but the truth was that he never heard her. She was twelve years old, and she could move casually through the forest, across ground covered with sharp pebbles and dry sticks, and make less noise than the best hunter creeping up on a nervous deer. When she really didn’t want to be heard, she could reach out and touch him on the shoulder before he knew she was there.

  ‘Watching the sky,’ he said.

  She turned her head until it faced upward and narrowed her eyes. The forest was dark; the eyes became accustomed to it. If you turned your face as if you were looking up a smoke-hole the bright light would make you flinch.

  He blinked and turned so that he could see her. Long dark hair fell over her shoulders, so dark sometimes that only the brightest sun could reveal the deep fires that hid within it. Its sleek depths were unusual; her mother was red-haired and her father fair, like most of his tribe.

  She looked down at him and grinned. ‘What do you see?’

  He stared at her. He had promised himself that he would always speak the truth to her. Recently he had started to hide his real feelings from her. He had felt things, wanted to do things that he didn’t understand, and this made him embarrassed and uneasy when he saw her. He knew she was puzzled and even perhaps hurt by the change in him, and he knew that more than he valued his life he didn’t want her to be hurt. He knew she was open with him, so he had resolved to be the same with her. The idea of telling her even a tenth of what boiled in his heart was more frightening than a hundred rabid Romans charging towards him, but he held onto his courage. He felt his cheeks grow warm and somehow forced himself to reply without stammering. ‘Your hair.’

  She took a lock and looked at it critically. ‘Why? It’s just hair.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’ She frowned. He felt the world slow down. His breath seemed to run out. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  She shrugged. ‘Hair is hair.’

  ‘No. No, it isn’t.’ He felt a fist around his throat, and at the same time he knew that he had started something and if he didn’t finish it he would never have the courage to speak again. ‘It’s yours, it’s your hair. That’s what makes it perfect.’

  She looked at him for a long time. Her narrow fingers turned the lock of hair slowly as if she was testing it for texture. Then she let it go and reached out with the same hand until the back of her fingers touched his cheek.

  ‘I’m going to like being married to you,’ she said.

  * * *

  Serpicus stared at her as if she was a ghost. When he had been taken to Rome she was just coming to womanhood and was thin as a spear, with a tangled rope of hair hanging down her back. Now she was almost as tall as he was.

  Her shoulders were broad and supported arms of long and clearly defined muscle. He saw how her waist tapered and then swelled slightly into narrow hips. Her skin was paler than he remembered, but her hair was as lustrous as ever and had grown almost to her waist. It flowed across her shoulders and, shining softly in the firelight, poured down her back like a frozen fall of dark water.

  Serpicus took a step forward and then remembered his manners and stood still, waiting for the Chief. The new arrivals should be introduced as a group first. Then he could speak to Drenthe. And there was pleasure in watching her again. Serpicus had hunted leopards in Syria, and there was a smooth rhythm to her movements that reminded him of them when he watched her. The torch-light struck a silver helmet she carried in her hand and flashed from it around the hall. He watched as she strode across the room to go to stand by the Chief’s chair. Serpicus was impressed. Just to be one of the Chief’s bodyguard was a great honour, to lead it meant she had done well. There could be little doubt that the Chief would have claimed her. He was proud for her. He also felt a soft hand touch his heart. He knew that his memories were of two different people in a very different time, and yet he felt that a part of her was his alone.

  Serpicus smiled to himself at how the memory stirred within him. He watched her walk towards the Chief’s chair, to take the most trusted guard’s position immediately behind it. A high honour indeed.

  But she didn’t go behind the chair. Sh
e sat in it herself.

  A great shout of acclamation went up and she smiled and raised a hand in easy acceptance of it.

  Brutus leant across to Serpicus. ‘Close your mouth before a bird flies into it. They might take it amiss for you to make it so obvious you’ve noticed her.’ He flicked a piece of bread at Galba. ‘You too, pink boy.’

  ‘She’s the Chief?’ Serpicus whispered.

  ‘Indeed she is, and more,’ Max said, waving his chicken bone enthusiastically in her direction. ‘Go on, tell me you wouldn’t follow her to hell and beyond.’ Brutus took a big bite from a pheasant leg. ‘She’s handsome enough,’ he said, ‘but I like a little more flesh on a woman.’

  Galba rested his head on his hand and looked at her with a wistful smile. ‘You’re missing the point. She’s a racehorse, not a brood mare.’

  Max, took a deep swallow from his cup, belched heroically and then nodded vigorously. ‘That’s right. If you’re going to be charging towards the enemy, you don’t want to be following someone who makes you think of your warm bed.’ He slapped the palm of a hand on the table with drunken seriousness. ‘I love my wife and I want no one else, but when you follow her…’ He smiled, and swung round to get another glance at Drenthe, then turned back and said, as if confiding in them, ‘When you follow her you don’t mind the thought of dying, so long as she thinks well of you.’ Serpicus sat and watched Drenthe in silence as the shouting filled the room. She raised a hand again and the cheering died away. Most of the men sat down.

  ‘I have news,’ she said, her voice strong and clear. ‘I could wait and so not risk disturbing your digestion, but a warrior can eat and talk at the same time, no?’

  The men chose to take that as a compliment, as well as being an acknowledgement of the futility of trying to get between a German warrior and his food. Dozens of men with full mouths grunted and banged their approval loudly on the wooden tables with the bone handles of their knives, and then carried on eating as they listened.

  She looked at them with a half-smile and then made a signal towards the back of the Hall. A small muscular man pushed his way past the tables, taking a lot of good-humoured abuse on the way. There was a deep sword-cut on his left shoulder that had been recently cauterized, perhaps even earlier the same day. He had two hessian sacks in his right hand, one small, the other larger and heavier. He raised them both high to avoid a drunken warrior’s flailing hand. A dark fluid dripped steadily from the smaller bag.

  He reached the foot of Drenthe’s chair and held the small bag open in front of her. She reached into it and, with the air of a fairground magician, pulled a man’s head from it by the hair. A helmet came out too, hooked by the chin-strap, then the strap snapped and the helmet fell and rolled across the ground towards Serpicus, glinting in the firelight. Those nearest it, including all those who had arrived that day with Serpicus, could clearly see the silver chasing on the sides and the coarse horse-hair crest on the crown, dyed a distinctive red ochre. An officer’s helmet.

  A Roman helmet.

  A hiss of surprise and excitement went around the room. Serpicus looked down the long table towards Severus and his men. They had stopped eating and were looking uncomfortably down at the helmet. Even those who were not Romans looked wary. Severus caught Serpicus’ eye and shook his head meaningfully.

  Someone picked the helmet up and handed it back to Drenthe. She held it high above her head like a trophy, so that every man in the room could see it. Blood was splashed up one side and had blackened the sweat-stained leather that lined the inside of the rim. For a long moment there was dead silence. Then everyone began to shout at once.

  ‘This isn’t good,’ murmured Brutus, holding a fresh pheasant leg in front of his face but not eating it.

  ‘Most especially not good for that Roman,’ said Galba quietly, without looking up from a close inspection of his knuckles. Serpicus looked down the table again. Severus had risen from his seat to look at the helmet, and then sat down again with a face of stone. Cato was looking around with lowered head as if to see what other men thought. Scipio sat still, and his face left no doubt at all what he thought. Most of the men looked as if they agreed with him.

  All around them was pandemonium. The majority of the Treveri seemed to be acclaiming Drenthe, cheering and applauding as they pointed at the helmet, but there were a significant number who argued with them, who shook their heads and pushed their shouting neighbours away from them angrily. Like most people, Germans don’t like being pushed and nor do they like people who spoil a celebration, and several fights were in different stages of breaking out when Drenthe stood up and raised her arms. The warriors stopped arguing and separated, snarling at each other across the tables. Drenthe waited, still with the same half-smile, like a schoolteacher sure of her class, until there was almost total silence. She held the helmet in front of her and looked at it as a lawyer would hold a final crucial piece of evidence.

  ‘We hunted all morning, and killed well,’ she said. ‘There is enough meat to salt for many winter days when the floods come.’ There were a few half-hearted cheers and then silence. The hunt wasn’t the story any more.

  She continued, looking round, gauging the audience. ‘We were on our way home, riding through the low woodlands near the boundary of our land with that of the Mediomatrici, when we were attacked.’ A low growl came from several points in the room and she nodded gravely. ‘A coward’s arrow came from the trees and struck Lothar in the shoulder.’ A note of passion entered her voice. Serpicus wondered what Lothar was to her. ‘He was riding between myself and the woods, or the arrow would have hit me instead.’ There were shouts of alarm at this. She quieted the sounds with a gesture. ‘Brave Lothar lies in the druid’s house and the arrow is in his shoulder yet. The druid says that he will not fight again this year, but he will live, and he will ride with us in the spring.’

  The knife-drumming came again, a brief but fervent noise. She waited for it to finish. Serpicus saw Decius looking at her as if he’d never seen anything like her. Which, of course, he probably hadn’t.

  ‘More arrows followed the one that struck Lothar, but we were already riding towards them and the arrows missed. Romans came at us from the woods and we fought with them.’ She paused and looked at the short man who still held the larger of the two sacks. He paused dramatically, then turned it upside down with a flourish. There was a loud crash as half a dozen empty Roman helmets landed on the wooden platform in front of her. Blood seeped across the boards and dripped to the floor. There was another cheer and she waited for it to finish. ‘As you can see, one German is worth ten Romans. Even wounded Lothar helped kill a man, fighting left-handed and with no shield.’ The cheers came again, longer this time. ‘We killed these, and the rest of them ran away, many of them wounded.’ She paused. ‘We lost Gallus to a Roman spear. He died bravely, and we will honour him.’ She bowed her head in a movement of respect. As she did so, a tall man in a sleeveless leather jerkin jumped up on top of one of the tables and raised his arms in the same gesture that Drenthe had used earlier. She heard his feet hit the planks and looked up again. She paused a moment and then made an open-palmed gesture to him. ‘Calryx will speak.’

  The man called Calryx looked around the room. His eyes were dark, penetrating. Serpicus had seen the same eyes in a man preaching outside the arena one day. He had spoken of the doom that awaited the Romans if they did not amend their ways and worship the true God. The games had been about to start, and amongst the hurrying crowds no one was waiting to find out who the true God was, but Serpicus remembered the intensity of the man’s eyes and the way he spoke. He had been driven by an absolute certainty, the sort of single-mindedness that goes beyond sense and self-preservation; the eyes of a man who will happily die if only he can get men to listen to him first.

  ‘I say that this is the day that many of us predicted and which many of you denied would ever come. I say we should arm ourselves now and join the revolt against Roman arrogance and tyranny,
the revolt we should have joined when it first began. It is our shame that we have allowed ourselves to be persuaded to hold back for this long. I say we should fight alongside our brothers, the Lingones, the Chatti and the Mediomatrici. I say…’

  Calryx had more to say, but tumultuous cheering drowned him out. He jumped off the table to a pounding on the back from his friends. Serpicus looked around and saw that the men who responded most enthusiastically to Calryx’s speech were all sitting around him. Those who sat silent with glowering expressions and their arms tightly folded were all on the other side of the room. The tribe, it seemed, was divided, to the extent that those on the two different sides sat only with those who agreed with them. This was unusual. Among the Gelbheimers as with all the villages of the Treveri, decisions were always made communally, and if a man failed to persuade his friends of the strength of his argument and position then tradition dictated that he accepted their decision, went with them wholeheartedly and took the consequences whatever they were.

  Serpicus wondered if things had changed. He wondered also if the strains of war were enough to divide the tribe, or if Roman gold had come into some men’s hands.

  Drenthe raised a hand and the noise subsided enough for her to speak. ‘I hear what Calryx says, but we should not jump to action before we have fully understood the situation. If this was an assassination attempt, then the Romans have failed, and many of them paid heavily for their failure. If it was the start to a campaign against us, then we are now fully warned and more than ready for them. If it was a group of deserters, or a lost group of soldiers thinking they saw an opportunity, or even an honest mistake,’ she smiled, and some laughed as she said it, ‘which it might have been, for we know that all Germans look the same to them, as all Romans do to us, and they may have thought we were of the Chatti…’ and at that many of the men laughed for it was well known that the Chatti looked more like pigs than Germans, though they were still of course better-looking than most Romans. She raised her voice over the end of the laughter. ‘Whatever their motives, we will find out soon enough, and if we must fight then we will. The Romans may even come to us and try to explain away what happened. But…’