“There’s nothing I understand better,” she averred. “Tell me.”
By now he knew how stubborn she was. It would be simpler to tell her than to try to fend her off. “Our fathers were brothers,” Cadogan began. “My uncle Ocellus was a lion in the house but a fox in the streets, and he made a lot of money early on. My father did well enough as a civil servant but there was always rivalry between them. However, they built new houses on adjacent sites in Viroconium; Dinas and I were raised shoulder to shoulder. At some time in the past my father Vintrex and Dinas’s mother Gwladys became lovers. They managed to keep the affair a secret from both their families; I suppose only the servants knew about it. They know everything.
“Five years ago Dinas’s father Ocellus gave him a yearling colt, large for its age and nearly black, the last and best animal he ever bred. Dinas was overjoyed. He threw his heart and soul into training that young stallion. When the training was completed Gwladys unexpectedly demanded that Dinas give the horse to me—to please her lover, I suspect. Dinas was furious, he has a hot temper at the best of times. He complained to Ocellus, who took his side. There was a terrible fight between his parents. Gwladys attacked Ocellus with a knife, and he broke her jaw with his fist.”
Quartilla could not surpress a squeal of excitement.
“Gwladys came running to my father for protection. That was the first my mother—Domitia was her name—knew of their affair. Mother had never been strong; she took to her bed that same day and wouldn’t see anyone but the servants. She wouldn’t even see me, her only son. My married sisters came to the house and tried to advise her by shouting through the door. She insisted they leave her alone, so finally they did.”
“What about Vintrex and Gwladys?” Quartilla asked breathlessly. “Did they run away together?”
“Of course not! Don’t you understand? They were married to other people. My father sent Gwladys back to her husband and forbade any member of our family to mention the matter again. A few weeks later Ocellus moved his entire household to one of his country estates, some fifteen miles from Viroconium. Dinas didn’t go with them, however. While the porters were loading the baggage train he took the dark horse and disappeared. It was as if the earth opened up and swallowed them.
“In a misguided attempt to patch up things with my father, or perhaps just to placate his own conscience, Ocellus sent the bay mare to me. But it was too late, the damage had been done. The atmosphere was permanently poisoned.
“To make matters worse, Dinas and I had been spending time with two sisters, Viola and Aldina. When Dinas left he didn’t say good-bye to Aldina. She decided, probably with some justification, that he loved the horse more than he loved her. She had to blame someone for what had happened, so she blamed my family. Viola sided with her sister and refused to see me anymore.”
“Of course she did!” said Quartilla. “Any man who would choose a horse over a woman…”
“It wasn’t me who did that, it was Dinas. I was innocent in the matter.”
“No man is ever innocent,” Quartilla stated with conviction.
Cadogan regretted having told her anything. He stood up and brushed himself off. In the excitement of the chase he had forgotten his weariness and the sleepless night, but now he felt exhaustion waiting for him like a lead cap on top of his head. “I’m going back to the fort,” he said. “Are you coming?”
“Do I have a choice?”
I had a choice, Cadogan reminded himself sourly. I could have tried to save my mare and allowed this wretched woman to be stolen by barbarians or eaten by wolves. Leave it to me to make the wrong decision. “No, Quartilla,” he said, “you don’t have a choice. Come on.”
As they walked back toward the fort, with dead leaves crunching under their feet, he contemplated events he wished he could forget. The argument that had begun over a horse—so simple a matter as that!—had grown until, like a whirlpool, it had sucked into its vortex most of Viroconium society.
Viroconium, Cadogan thought with a wince of nostalgia. Sometimes his birthplace was still more real to him than the place he currently inhabited. If some unimaginable catastrophe wiped the city from the face of the earth he was confident he could reconstruct it stone by stone and street by street. In his dreams he often found himself there again; a living part of the Britannia that Rome had constructed. Part of a way of life that surely would last forever.
As chief magistrate of Viroconium and a large surrounding area, Cadogan’s father Vintrex represented the law in the region. The peace and prosperity of an extensive municipality depended on his ability to maintain order. The magistrate’s brother Ocellus was the largest landowner, a man who relied on the law in his frequent disputes over property. When the vicious quarrel broke out between them the brothers had been like two cats fighting with their tails tied together. No holds barred and nothing forgiven.
The inhabitants of Viroconium had enjoyed the feud between their leading families. No matter how Romanized the townspeople became, they were descended from Celtic warriors with the love of battle in their blood. Sides were taken and factions formed—even among the servants. Opinion was evenly divided. While women gossiped over garden walls, in the taverns and alehouses their menfolk laid bets on the outcome of the argument. They were distracted, for a while, from the larger problem looming on the horizon.
In the fourth century Jutes and silver-haired Angles had begun migrating to the temperate climate of Britannia from the colder region identified by the Alexandrian geographer Ptolemaeus as Germania Magna. Their numbers were swelled by Franks from Gaul, whose ancestors had been displaced by the Roman conquest. At first the authorities had tolerated the foreigners, seeing them as a possible addition to the labor force. But when hostile Picts and their allies, the Scoti from the north of Eire, began marauding in the territory of the Brigantes, the Roman governor of Britannia grew alarmed. He could not afford to lose the goodwill of the Brigantes. Theirs was a very large tribe, and collecting taxes from them required their willing compliance.
When the legions failed to defeat the invaders the governor had sent a request to Aëtius, commander of the Roman forces in Gaul, for additional military help. Aëtius had failed to respond. Fortunately the Brigantes had proved up to the task themselves, driving their enemies back into the vast wilderness of Caledonia. A thankful Hadrian had built his wall to contain the problem and the matter seemed to be settled. For a while.
No sooner had the legions begun to pull out than more northern foreigners arrived. Many brought their families. They walked along the roads like stray cattle looking for pasture, or followed the rivers in boats piled high with household goods. The women had clenched faces; the children had huge eyes and bloated bellies.
If they occupied land the Britons deemed unfit for farming the immigrants were tolerated—at first. Alien settlements sprouted like mushrooms in impenetrable forests or sodden marshland. Gradually the newcomers established trade with their British neighbors, and their customs and languages filtered into common usage.
The aggressive Saxons who plagued the eastern coast were a different matter. Seaborne marauders, they terrorized and disrupted shipping in the Oceanus Britannicus. A Roman official was given the title “Count of the Saxon Shore” and empowered to deal with the problem, but the office was vacated when the holder was slaughtered by the Saxons.
Many critical posts were abandoned by 410, when the last legion, the famous Twentieth, departed.
In the decade that followed, civic government had continued to function for a while, thanks to its elite cadre of Romanized Britons. But inevitably, social discipline disintegrated. Episodes of domestic violence became common. Young men from good families grew increasingly unmanageable. The rate of robberies and burglaries rose alarmingly.
Native Picts and their allies, the Scoti from the north of Eire, came over Hadrian’s Wall and began attacking isolated settlements. Worst of all, the Saxons had come ashore, seeking both land and plunder. Establishing sett
lements of their own. As their numbers expanded in the east the native Britons began to retreat westward. So did the Jutes and Franks and Angles. The old Roman roads offered easy mobility for native and foreigner alike. A perfect storm was bearing down on Viroconium.
Viroconium Cornoviarum was an administrative center, one of the civitates, or tribal capitals. The majority of its resident population comprised a middle class known as the curiales, members of the city council, their sons and relatives. Initially a rough frontier town during the Roman advance westward, Viroconium had served as a supply depot for Deva Victrix and Isca Silurum, then grown into a cosmopolitan city with a broad central avenue, the via principalis, lined with sweet chestnut trees imported from Iberia by the Romans. The avenue bisected a grid of paved residential streets that divided the city into sections of ascending prosperity. The amenities of urban life included a large civic complex with a marble courthouse in the Doric style adjoining a colonnaded forum; a lavish public bathhouse equipped for both men and women; a famous and well-subscribed theater; a hospital fully equipped with Athenian medical instruments; an assortment of taverns and alehouses; numerous shops and markets, and the customary brothels, all to a high standard. Viroconium’s citizens were accustomed to luxury.
They lived in snug town houses, most of which were constructed of timber. To give a Roman appearance the exterior walls were often clad in brick, then plastered and painted in Mediterranean colors or made snowy with lime wash. Roofs were covered in red tile, which like the brick was manufactured locally. Clay pits were as profitable as stone quarries and just as hard on the slaves who worked in them.
At the higher end of the social scale residences sometimes were built of stone and mortar, and were exceedingly spacious. Each stood in regal isolation in its own walled garden. The formal hall was the primary area for entertaining, but usually a smaller lounge was available for more intimate gatherings. In addition there would be a dining room, from five to ten bedrooms, several multipurpose anterooms, a separate kitchen and a servants’ wing. The latrine might be an earth closet in a corner of the garden, but an indoor urinal was provided for the master of the house and his male guests.
Some prosperous Romano-British families also owned sprawling country villas several miles beyond the city walls to allow them to escape from the stresses of urban life. The term “villa” was understood to include both a magnificent residence and the vast acreage on which it stood.
All under threat now from an invasion of foreigners. Barbarians.
Vintrex had planned to enlarge the fortifications of Viroconium and establish a local militia. But before he could put his plans into action his family had been shattered by the revelation of his affair with his brother’s wife. Domitia’s death had followed within weeks. The emotional upheaval seemed to paralyze Vintrex. Half-finished sketches for raising the city walls and building watchtowers lay forgotten on his drawing table. Incomplete lists of potential recruits littered the floor.
Cadogan recalled the exact moment he had decided to leave Viroconium. Several days earlier, Vintrex had sent him to a stonecutter south of the city with instructions to order the marble for Domitia’s tomb. “I cannot bear to do it myself,” Vintrex had said.
When he arrived at the stonecutter’s workshop Cadogan was told there were no samples to inspect. “Pure white marbles like Parian and Carrara are no longer available at any price,” the young man was informed. “They were imported from the Roman colonies and that trade is gone now. I can provide a fine-grained limestone, if you want, though most of my customers say it’s too expensive for the quality. Still, the only alternatives are…”
Cadogan had only half listened, standing under an awning while the autumn rain drummed above him and the stonecutter droned on and on, moving from a litany of complaints about the business climate to a recital of his mother-in-law’s health problems. At last Cadogan said he must discuss the matter with his father before making a decision, then mounted his horse and rode back to the city.
He had made straight for the nearest tavern, where he was offered an inferior wine that had never known the advantages of a sunny Mediterranean hillside. He had drunk the sour liquid without really tasting it, while trying to block out the banal babble of the men around him. No one was saying anything important. No one ever said anything important.
Tied to a weathered stone hitching post outside, the mare had waited patiently in the rain.
At last Cadogan could no longer put off the moment. He had ridden through the streets at a walk, but even so, reached home sooner than he wanted.
Like a jewel set in its setting, the house where he was born stood against a backdrop of dark cedars. They provided a dramatic contrast to red-tile roofs and gleaming white walls. In a style introduced by the Romans, the main body of the house was composed of rectangular blocks enclosing a hollow square. The principal rooms opened onto the central court, known as an atrium, which was open to the sky and provided light and air to the interior. The exterior walls of the house had few windows and none at the front, thus eliminating street noise.
The private residence of the chief magistrate presented a deliberately blank face to visitors.
Bypassing the formal entrance at the side, Cadogan rode around to the servants’ wing and the stables beyond. Whatever normal life remained in his father’s house was to be found in the stables. Spirited horses and fragrant hay and rowdy stableboys laughing at bawdy jokes. Kikero, a splendid rooster with russet head and iridescent blue-green plumage on his back and wings, strutting around the place lording it over his harem of hens.
Vintrex was standing at the gate of the stable yard. He and his steward were discussing the proposed placement of Domitia’s tomb. They looked up as Cadogan rode toward them. The two men were a study in contrasts. Vintrex, the carefully fed and highly educated product of ten generations of selective Romanization, had a noble forehead and refined features. But the years were not being kind to him. His gums were drawing back from his teeth; his flesh was sagging on his bones.
Esoros, on the other hand, possessed the wedge-shaped nose and deep eyes of a true Celt. His was a face that knew how to endure. Vintrex had once said of him, “My steward remembers everything and forgives nothing,” but held him in the highest regard—a compliment Esoros returned by trying to speak like his master. The precise diction of the court and the forum sounded strange from his lips.
As Cadogan approached them, Vintrex had glowered at his son. “Who gave you permission to ride that ancient beast? She’s an embarrassment.”
“She’s mine, Father, I don’t need anyone’s permission to ride her. She may not be young anymore, but she’s still the best horse in the stable.”
“Dispose of her!” Vintrex demanded. “I don’t want to see her on my property again!” A vein throbbed visibly in his temple.
Cadogan had dismounted and handed the reins to a stableboy. “Take good care of her,” he said under his breath, then turned to face his father.
The conversation that followed was not pleasant.
When Vintrex was told there was no white marble for the tomb, he was furious. He had berated his son in front of Esoros. “Did you even go to the right stonecutters? I seriously doubt it, I know a lie when I hear one. If you had any initiative you would have found the marble I sent you for, and at a decent price, too. But no; you prefer to drift through life with your nose in books. Wasting your time rereading dead words. How can I be proud of a feckless overgrown boy? What good are you to me at all?”
Stung by injustice, Cadogan had lost his own temper. Old wounds, the natural detritus of the relationship between father and son, were opened afresh. In the rising heat of their quarrel Cadogan eventually blamed his father for his mother’s death. Vintrex countered by claiming Domitia’s poor health dated from Cadogan’s birth. The quarrel had come to an abrupt end when Vintrex shouted at his son, “While you are under my roof you will do what I say, when I say, exactly as I say, and nothing else! You are my so
n!”
“I am not your property!” Cadogan had shouted back at him. “Not anymore!”
After giving the matter deep thought for several days, one night Cadogan waited until everyone was asleep, then padded silently through the house. Collecting his personal belongings, including the things he had inherited from his mother and a list of household items he thought he might need. Before dawn he had loaded everything onto two packhorses and commandeered a porter to take charge of them. Before he rode out of the stable yard he had snatched up Kikero, bound his legs together and carried the surprised rooster with him on the bay mare.
Cadogan was drunk with a sense of freedom.
He had wandered the forested hills northeast of Viroconium until he came upon a sloping meadow skirted by oak and ash and alder. The land was unoccupied. There was adequate grass for his mare and a sparkling stream at the foot of the hill, and it was only a few miles to a small village. The first time he visited the village for supplies he could purchase some hens for Kikero.
Cadogan knew at once that he had found his sanctuary. A place where he could read, and dream, and commune with God, without being criticized.
When the packhorses were unloaded he had sent them back to his father with the porter. His final instruction to the weary servant was, “Tell Vintrex he will never see my mare on his property again. Nor me either.”
Then he set to work.
Creating a home for himself proved harder than he anticipated.
At first he had envisioned a country estate in the Roman style. Like his parents’ property in Viroconium, his house would be built around a courtyard open to the sky. The floors would be decorated with mosaic tiles. Cadogan planned to outfit a separate room for every household function, including a chamber for Christian worship, following the custom introduced under Emperor Constantine. In 313 Constantine had made Christianity the official religion and its Roman version the official version throughout the empire.
After Rome Page 5