by John James
So what was I to do? I could hardly leave Vindabonum; I was, however you looked at it, under arrest. Anywhere else I could just have got out of town, just like I did at Ostia, when the husband came back, and after that unfortunate affair with the pimp in Alexandria, and as for Tyre, I never thought I’d find a Levantine who’d play with my dice. But in each of those places I had a ship to get back to and comrades who were at least as deep in it as I was. But there was no travelling about the Empire for me, with a pack of vengeful husbands all eager to put me under arrest. I was trapped, with the river at my back. Then it struck me. A river is a road, water is a way. I slipped through the internal gate into Otho’s courtyard and went into his office. Otho and Donar looked at me curiously. Occa was greasing his boots.
‘Don’t go for an hour or so,’ I told them. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Germany
1
I went straight back to my own room and called Ursa.
‘Quick,’ I told her, in German. ‘Get me some German clothes. Shirt, trews, short cloak, sandals. Quick.’
Out of the cupboard I heaved a leather bag with a shoulder strap, made for a pack mule once but better this way. In it I put my best sky-blue silk tunic and a spare pair of sandals. I had a few pieces of silver handy, but after what I’d heard I didn’t think it worth taking gold. I looked round and found one or two pieces of silver plate, old-fashioned embossed stuff. Then I took a leather water bottle with a strap, one I used to use out hunting.
If I were going north to meet the Amber Kings, I thought, I needed a king’s clothes. I had a helmet, no, not a helmet, a cap of boiled leather, all covered and patterned with gold leaf, and this I put in, and a cuirass to match, for show not for war, soft leather and gold wire. These had come from the east somewhere, long ago, and had caught my fancy. I took a sword, the first I learnt to use, a Kopis, pointed, curved, one edge razor-sharp, the other finger-thick, blunt, the bone breaker, a fine hilt, but a plain scabbard. The general effect was of something meant for real use, but I knew well the metal wasn’t of the best.
I was writing a letter to my father when Ursa came back with the clothes. She had a complete German suit, red woollen shirt, and red and yellow checked trousers. It was unworn, and a perfect fit; she must have started making it for me weeks before. Trousers are funny things to wear. You can always feel them on your legs. It takes you a long time to get used to riding a horse in them, the cloth spoils the contact with the beast’s side.
She didn’t bring me a German cloak. They are short. She brought me my own long grey horseman’s cloak, down to my heels.
‘This is good for blanket, sleep in it,’ she told me. I finished the letter to my father. I stood up to go. Ursa threw her arms around my neck.
‘Rejoice,’ she said; she said it in Greek, it was one of the few words she knew, then in German:
‘Rejoice. Joy goes with you. Joy awaits you. Joy sends you on. Rejoice.’
I went down into our courtyard on the soft German sandals. Hobnails are no use out there beyond the Frontier, there are no paved roads. I went through the postern into Otho’s courtyard, right under the town wall. The others were there, and a crowd of slaves, all talking at once.
‘When do we start?’ I asked Occa.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Somebody’s gone to get the ladder.’
This shows what a state the river frontier was like then, you could build houses right up against city walls, inside anyway. One of Otho’s slaves brought a ladder and set it against the wall. There was a sentry on top, walking about.
‘What about him?’ I asked.
‘He won’t see anything,’ said Otho. I wondered how much that had cost. It wasn’t only paying the sentry, the firm had probably had to pay the Guard Commander as well, and almost certainly somebody in the Legion Headquarters had a hand in the purse.
‘How many has he been paid not to see?’ I asked. I didn’t want Scapellus over the river after us first thing.
‘Any number,’ said Otho. ‘Up you go.’
I hate ladders on land. It’s one thing climbing on a ship, but quite another when you only have the hard ground to fall on. I followed Donar up the ladder clinging on as tight as I could. Occa kept on pushing me. We got on to the top. The sentry turned his back on us. Otho shouted up,
‘Have you got the rope?’
Donar threw one end of a rope down, and half a dozen of Otho’s slaves tailed on to the end of it. Then one by one we slid down the other side of the wall. We made enough noise to wake Morpheus, especially as each of us was carrying two fourteen-pound bags of silver coin.
We walked down a path to the river side.
‘How do we cross it?’ I asked. ‘The ferry stopped hours ago.’
‘You’ve been at sea,’ Occa told me. ‘You’re going to row.’
If I had, I’d not rowed, I’d sailed like a gentleman. Out to Tyre in furs and honey, Tyre to Alexandria in cedarwood, Alexandria to Ostia in wheat, and a trooping run home. One year at sea, it showed me the world. I didn’t want to sink to rowing.
It wasn’t as bad as that. There was a small, illegal boat hidden in the reeds just where any legionary would have looked for it – more expense, I thought, and all for sentiment’s sake. I was able to let her go down with the current and land up on the other side of a bend, where a man had been showing a lantern at intervals. I suppose it was another of Otho’s contacts. He had three horses for us. those small scrubby things, and a great luxury, saddles, which were just coming in in those days. Most people out in the north just rode on blankets thrown over the horses’ backs. We mounted and off we went. I was in the middle. The others seemed to know where we were going.
We rode for days. Some people talk as if the lands outside the Empire are quite different. In fact, it’s just the same at first. For a couple of days we went along stretches of agger, roads laid by the army in Domitian’s campaign ten years before, unused since and now breaking up under weather and time, not wear. All the country was like that. The people were the same as on our side of the river, the clothes were the same, the language, the houses, the food. But it was all a bit shabbier and second-rate. The houses weren’t as clean as the German houses around the walls of Vindabonum, and that means they were foul.
After the first few days we didn’t pass many houses. When I came back that way I began to realise how skilfully Occa had planned his march to take us out of people’s sight and earshot. Usually we rose at dawn and rode off at once. We would stop at noon and rest the horses and eat, and after an hour or two set off again till sunset. We had dried meat and twice-baked bread with us. Once or twice Occa went off with his bow and got a deer, though it was really out of the season, and we called at farms and bartered the meat and hide for carrots and cabbages that had been stored through the winter.
We followed the Marcomen’s river, a little east of north through the empty hills. One day, a little before sunset, we came out of the wood, the scrubby patchy stuff you get near a river, into an open space. In the middle there was an oak, a very old oak, dead, blasted and scarred by lightning. Occa stopped and held up his hand.
‘The God has been here,’ he said.
‘That was a long time ago,’ I told him.
‘Yes, seven years ago, in July,’ he replied. I had not realised that his knowledge of the way was so exact or so recent. He went on, ‘There is something new. Can a dead tree put forth a new shoot, or the dry rock a living branch? It is new that the oak should send out ash, or the dull rock smite as a smith. From here it looks like a splinter, hanging vertical from the trunk, but it is new. Do as I do.’
As I watched Occa took out his water bottle and poured a few drops out on the ground, as a libation. This was mere politeness, a greeting to the sky-god. As we rode forward behind him we saw that the ground was scattered with horse skulls and bits of faded cloth held down by stones. Beneath the tree was the skeleton of a horse, whole, only a few months dead.
Donar stopped me a dozen yards
from the tree. Occa kicked his heels into his horse and rode forward, hard, and as he passed the tree he grasped the spear shaft and pulled it. He let it go just in time to avoid sliding off the horse’s back. The spear did not move.
Then Donar rode forward. From where I sat I could see the muscles of his arm and back strain as he pulled, but again the spear did not move. I thought of riding sedately past, uncertain of whether they would appreciate my meddling with their German rites, but Donar shouted to me to come on and have a pull.
I clapped my heels into the horse’s ribs and went full tilt at the tree. I grabbed at the shaft, calling on Apollo to let me grasp it, even if I never moved it. My hands felt the smooth shaft, jerked it, slipped a little. I had the spear.
The two Germans shouted, a paean, a warcry, a great ululation. Without looking back we rode away, miles away up the river, none of us speaking till we reached what looked like a good camping place for the night. I sat on my saddle, while the others hobbled the horses and turned them to graze, and I looked at the spear. It was the usual long iron head on a six foot ash shaft. It had not been in the weather very long, perhaps six months at the most, and there was only a very thin coating of rust. I’m not sure it hadn’t been greased before it was left. I got some ash and some sand and I began to clean the metal.
Donar and Occa came and sat by me and told me how it must have happened.
‘It is our custom, all over Germany,’ said Donar, ‘that when a man is going out on some desperate journey from which there is no returning, if he goes to join the cavalry, or to do a murder, or to his death …’
‘Or to his marriage.’ Occa, in middle age, was a bachelor.
‘… he will take a weapon, a knife or an axe, or a spear, and he will thrust it into a tree …’
‘And he will make an offering to the God, don’t forget the offering. This one made the horse sacrifice.’
That was the most magnificent and most expensive sacrifice of all, and this had been the most costly: a mare.
‘Then every man who passes must try to draw the weapon out of the tree, and only the man for whom the God intends it will be able to take it. That spear was meant for you, Photinus.’
The rust was almost all gone. I showed the ferrule just below the head to Donar.
‘What are these marks below the crosspiece?’ For it had a crosspiece like a boar spear, and that was not usual.
They both looked at it closely. I know that many people think that the Germans have no writing, but I have the best of reasons for knowing better. Certainly you cannot write German words in Greek or Latin letters, that would be against all reason, but there is a way of writing German in German letters, which are called Runes. This was the first time I had seen Runes, and in my innocence I thought that any German could read them. This time I heard nothing to disturb my delusion, for Occa took one glance and said,
‘That means Joy. Joy left that spear. Joy left you his spear. That is why he sought you at the ferry.’
A few days later I asked Donar to take his punches and strike my name into the iron on the other side of the socket. So now Votan lies for ever in the iron with Joy. But only Donar could read it, for in those days in the North every man made his own runes.
2
A few days later we were coming out of the land of no people, the bare mountains, into a land of scattered farms and shepherds. And then, in a few more days, the farms were more frequent, the population thickened, concentrated, condensed almost, out of a cloud of precarious settlers into a vortex, a constellation of permanent farms, hamlets, villages almost, little clusters of houses and barns.
We came to the farm of one of Occa’s clansmen, Haro, a man of power and influence in the region. He was, I had been told, Otho’s agent among the Marcomen, but he said that Otho was his agent among the Romans. He came himself and unbarred the gates of his stockade – they had been shut specially for the purpose – to let us in. The farmyard was built up feet above the plain on the dung and rubbish of generations. Inside the stockade, the main farmhouse was a great hall, the frame of whole trees, the walls filled in with wattle and daub, the roof thatched with wheat straw. It was twenty paces long, inside, and ten wide. The door was in the middle of the long side, and the hearth at one end, sure sign that Haro had only lately dispensed with the company of his cows at night. They now slept, in winter, in the huts scattered around the yard. At least in some of the huts; we three were put into one, and bidden be ready for a feast that night.
There was a group of women around a fire outside one hut, and I went over and asked for some hot water. They sent the youngest to bring it over, and she set down the pot by the door, and walked away with serious face, steady and erect like a grown-up, she hoped, though it was obvious that one word would have set her giggling, and scurrying back.
We washed the dust away, and I put on my best tunic. Then we sat outside the door and watched the other guests arrive, big proud men, chiefs with their war bands, or at least the pick of their war bands. They all went into the hall. At last, Occa decided dignity would let us appear, and in we went. This was the first time I had been the guest of a German, other than Otho with his Spanish butler and his Syrian cook, and his nearly Roman dining-room with its three tables and couches. This room had three tables, too, one across the width of the hall farthest from the door, and the others at right angles down the sides. Haro met us and offered us that sweet Spanish wine, which those Germans are so keen on as an appetiser. It was very precious there, so no more than one glass was offered, and that a very small one. There was not so much as an eggspoonful of sea water or resin there to blend in it, so I was not sorry that the main drink of the evening was to be beer.
When the wine was drunk with the usual exchange of healths, we guests of honour went to sit on the long benches behind the top table, our backs to the hearth, our faces to a brazier. I moved to the seat to which Haro waved me, and as I sat down, he bellowed, as if introducing the only stranger:
‘Photinus the Greek, from the sea and the islands. Far has he travelled, to the lands of the spices. He left behind comfort to sleep in the forest, left behind women, silks, sauces and silver. He overcame Joy to come on this journey, Greek vowed to his God he goes to the Northlands. Spear on shoulder he rides through the mountains, over the plains to the Kings of the Amber.’
I thought this a bit unwise if we were supposed to be going in secret, but Occa assured me that we had only the Cat King to fear, and that all present were Marcomen and Quadi, enemies of the Cat people. So I sat down, and watched what we would have for supper. I must say there was more order and ceremony at this banquet than at any other barbarian feast I ever went to. Each of us was given a pair of silver mounted drinking horns – on the top table, that is; farther down they brought their own. The retainers were crammed together; at least we had room to move our elbows.
First the servants brought salt fish, to give us a thirst, and then filled the horns, one with barley beer, the other with mead. After the fish, gross hunks of roast meat were placed on the table, with loaves of rye bread. My neighbour, with a great effort at courtesy, cut me thick slabs of pig and deer mixed together. He wore a cloak of wolf pelts, with a wolf’s head hanging down behind. On a golden chain round his neck were wolf’s teeth, dozens of them. He made a sport, he told me, a trade, a livelihood, of wolf hunting, with spear, with bow, with trap, even with poison, winter and summer. His own name he himself had almost forgotten. Everyone now called him Wolf. I could no more applaud his pursuit of wolves than I could approve of Occa’s attack on the bear, but in his name I found an omen. He had a healthy respect for his wolves, in spite of the fifty tails sewn on the hem of his cloak.
‘Only two good things about wolves. They make good cloaks and they can’t climb trees. Bear climbs trees, but not wolf. If you ever want to cheat them, get up a tree. Stay there. Stay there till they go. Hours, days, maybe, but stay there.’
His main topic, that night, was the indignity of having to co
me, at Haro’s insistence, unarmed into the hall. He proudly showed a scar across his scalp, from front to back.
‘I got that at a feast, up with the Thuringians, big man he was, good fellow, know him well. Got some of the best wolf hunting this side of the great forest. I’ll take you up there one day, great sport. What? The scar? Yes, well, that was after the dinner, we can’t remember why, but he hit me with a bench. No swords, but it didn’t stop us fighting.’
‘If it had been a sword,’ my other neighbour observed – his name was Lothar, and, he was delighted to tell me, he had been across the border twice, once on a cattle raid and once into Carnuntum to market – ‘if it had been a sword, where would you be now?’
He rolled up his shirt to show a fine scar across his stomach.
‘That was a sword. It was my wedding feast and my brand new brother-in-law did it. It kept me in bed three weeks – quiet, Wolf, we haven’t all got minds like yours. But there, if we’d all been hit on the heads with benches … Here, our guest’s plate is empty. Pass the beef – no, try this, a real local delicacy. What? Oh, bulls’ testicles, raw.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t eat them,’ said Wolf in an interested way. ‘Oh, yes, he does, though. All right, they always taste like that at first, really. Try some more mead. Go on, drain it! Boy! More mead!’
The mead finished me. The next thing I knew I was struggling out into the courtyard. I don’t know how I managed to reach fresh air without disgracing myself. Wolf was at my elbow, not jeering as I feared but bitterly regretting his own lack of capacity.