“It doesn’t matter,” said Gratillonius.
Weariness overwhelmed Rufinus. “No, it doesn’t, does it?” he croaked. “Confluentes, your colony, your hopes, they’re gone.”
Gratillonius put a hand on his man’s shoulder and tightened the grip till Rufinus met his eyes. The windows in the atrium came awake with the first wan light of day. “Wrong,” Gratillonius told him. “We have that treasure Apuleius is keeping for us. We have friends who’ll help us again, more willingly this time when they know what we’re worth. We have ourselves.
“Those maggots won’t eat us away. We’re going to build Confluentes over; and we’ll make it too strong for them.”
XVI
1
Springtime dusk. The air was soft, odors of greening and blossoming not yet cooled out of it. A moon close to fullness had cleared Mons Ferruginus. It looked like old silver afloat in an ever deeper blue sea. The earliest stars trembled forth. Sunset’s ghost still lightened the western sky. After the tumult of day—hoofs, boots, wheels, hammer, saw, chisel, trowel, shovel, hod, shout, grunt, oath, banter, the trudging off at day’s end—quietude rested enormous over the land. Through it drifted little save belated bird-cries, ripple of the Odita, occasional tiny splash when a fish leaped, footfalls on the river road.
Gratillonius had been gone half a month, traveling about to make his arrangements. He wanted to see how the work had fared meanwhile. At this hour he could get an overview; tomorrow he would watch it in progress. His wife accompanied him from her parents’ home in Aquilo, where they were living until their new dwelling was ready. The manor house was full of engineers and other directors. Mostly hired from elsewhere, they naturally expected better quarters than the shacks and tents that served common laborers.
Verania’s brother Salomon had asked if he could accompany her and her man. They gave leave, for they had talked about him earlier, when they were alone and after they were; at peace with nature.
He pointed. “See,” he said importantly, “they’ve begun on the new wharf.”
Gratillonius made out pilings planted just above the juncture of the rivers. The ground beyond was trampled, muddied, heaped and littered with lumber, equipment, scraps, trash. In the end this was supposed to become facilities for ships. Then the bridge at Aquilo would be demolished, so they could come here to the actual head of navigation, a better site in every respect.
A new bridge would span the Odita at Confluentes, stone, with towers at either end for its defense “Wait,” requested Verania, halfway over the old wooden one. “The evening is so beautiful.” They lingered a few minutes, watching light shiver and fade on the stream, before they continued.
The same light touched the pike of a guard on the opposite side. A number paced their rounds, for the legionary embankment had been levelled, the ditch filled in. Stakes marked where a real wall of the Gallic sort was to be. It would make a complete circuit, east of the Stegir and north of the Odita. That would give room for proper streets and large buildings, as well as a population growth Gratillonius hoped would prove rapid.
The sentry challenged the newcomers. When he recognized the man among them, he snapped a Roman salute. It was crisp, though his outfit was homemade. Drusus and his veterans had long since stopped counselling the local reservists—that came to be frowned on in Turonum—but they were instructing Osismii who had formed an athletic association.
“How goes it?” Gratillonius asked.
“Right well, my lord,” replied the guard.
“He speaks truth,” said Salomon as the three walked on. “It really does go apace, now when rain and darkness don’t hamper us so much. There’s no trouble to speak of with thieves. Rufinus’s scouts stop any that try to sneak here from outside, and we inspect outbound loads for stolen goods.”
“We?” teased Verania. She had been bubblingly light-hearted since Gratillonius returned; but he sensed that it cost her an effort.
“Aw, well,” muttered Salomon, abashed. He had grown taller than she, close to the height of Gratillonius, but was as yet reed-thin; under a shock of brown hair, his face continued, for days after he had been shaved, as smooth as hers.
Gratillonius took pity. “He worships you, not far short of idolatry,” Verania had told him. “Well he might.”
“You stick by your studies,” Gratillonius said. “That’s your share of the work, making ready for when well call on you.”
Dim in twilight, Salomon nonetheless glowed.
They wandered about. Order had begun to emerge from confusion and ugliness. Scaffolding and cranes loomed where masonry climbed. Elsewhere were only sites marked off or foundations partly dug, but space and ambition prevailed—for a real basilica, for the big church that Corentinus would make his cathedral, for workshops and storehouses and homes, for a town whose bones were not clay and turf but brick and stone—a city.
Northward and eastward, greenwood no longer crowded close. Axes had slain trees across a mile or more in either direction, to make room and timber. Cookfires glimmered yonder, throughout the encampment of the workers. It was a huddle of the rudest shelters, hog-filthy, brawling, drunken, whorish. Dwellers in the neighborhood were too few, and generally bound down by their own occupations. Gratillonius’s agents had ranged from end to end of Armorica during the winter, recruiting muscle where they found it. Many of the hirelings were doubtless runaways, claiming to be laborers with a right to take jobs elsewhere. As word spread, no few barbarians who had wandered into Roman territory joined the force. But stiffened by armed men at their beck, the supervisors kept it disciplined in the workplace, without strength left at day’s end for much riotousness. And … there was life in the camp, a gusty promise as in an equinoctial storm. The new Confluentes would remember.
Not that Gratillonius meant to keep that lot of boors here. For those who proved themselves desirable and wanted to stay, he’d make what arrangements he was able. The rest must go, once the basic task was finished. It might be hard to get rid of some, he might have to bloody heads, but he wasn’t going to allow more rabble than he could help. The immigrants he hoped to attract were steady, civilized men, seeking a chance to build a better life for their families. Gallia must hold many such, who would find ways to reach him. And more were in beleaguered Britannia. If he sent word across the channel—
That was a thing to think seriously about, and maybe do, in years unborn. Tonight he walked in peace with his wife, who carried their child within her, and the boy to whom he was like a second father. Distance dwindled noise from the camp to a bare murmur beneath the hush. A bat swooped by. The last light from the west shone through its wings. “Look,” Verania said. “Like an angel flying,”
“A sign unto us?” marveled Salomon. He gestured at the murky heaps around. “How splendid this will soon be.”
Gratillonius smiled. “Easy, there,” he cautioned. “It’ll take a while.”
“The work goes fast.”
“Because we’re pushing with everything we’ve got. The city has to be habitable and defensible before winter. But afterward things will slow down. It’ll be mostly up to individual people, and they have their livings to make. We’ll have spent every last nummus in our present treasury.”
Verania sighed. “The cost—” She checked her voice. He heard a gulp, and laid his left hand over hers, which rested on his right arm. Gently, he pressed it.
“You know how we’ll meet that,” he said.
Since he revealed his plans to her, secretly, last month, she had been fighting desperation. She did so wordlessly, but he knew, and wished he could find reassurances that wouldn’t sharpen her fears. They burst through for an instant: “You can’t change it?”
He shook his head. “No. That’d break faith with a good many men. With the whole people.”
She tensed her clasp on him. “God watch over you, then.”
They had stopped in their tracks. “With you to pray for me, what have I got to worry about?” he responded, the weak bes
t he could think of.
“What’s this?” asked Salomon.
Gratillonius drew breath. “We’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said. “Here were safe from eavesdroppers. Your father and your sister both believe we can trust you to keep silence, absolute silence.”
The skinny frame quivered and grew taut. “I s-swear. By God and all the saints, I do.”
Verania too was relieved a little by speaking forth. “You’ve heard the talk about Gratillonius going along when Evirion Baltisi makes his first voyage of the season, soon after Easter,” she said.
“Of course. To look for markets. Oh, sir, I’ve asked you before. Take me! Ill earn my keep, I promise I will.”
“I’m sorry,” Gratillonius answered. “An ordinary trading trip would be risky enough these days. This won’t be one.”
“What will it be, sir? What?”
Gratillonius held hands with Verania while he spoke in his most carefully measured tones: “We’re building Confluentes again, and building it right. That’s a huge and expensive job. Doing it in a hurry makes it more expensive yet.” Finish before Glabrio and Bacca hit on some means of forestalling it. Apuleius was already contending with their objections and legalisms. “We’re employing as many Ysans and Osismii as we possibly can, you know. That means farms and other businesses neglected. We’ll have to bring in food, most necessities. By autumn, when we’ve paid off the outside experts, contractors, laborers, we’ll have emptied the treasury of Confluentes, everything we took from the Scoti. How then can we go on with what remains to be done? And the city will have to keep paying the people’s taxes for them, for the next several years, till farms and industries are solidly on their feet. How?”
“I don’t know,” Salomon admitted with a humility rare in him. “I should have thought about it.”
“Well, nobody gave you any figures,” said Gratillonius, smiling at him through the dusk. “We keep such things confidential. I don’t want to discuss why, though I think probably you can guess.”
“He’s bound forth to get what we need.” Pride and dread warred in Verania’s voice. “I’ve begged him—he shouldn’t go himself—but—”
“But without me, it’ll fail,” Gratillonius said flatly. “A matter of leadership.”
“Yours,” breathed Salomon.
Gratillonius turned his gaze back on him and continued: “Evirion and I will rendezvous up the coast with picked men. They’ll fill his ship and those two galleys we capture last year. We’ll make for the Islands of Crows. You’ve heard of them, pirate haunts off the Redonic coast. Barbarians often spend the winters there, so they can start raiding again as soon as weather allows. Scoti, Saxons, renegade Romans, every kind of two-legged animal, in lairs stuffed with loot. Rufinus has had his spies out, he’s heard a great deal on his missions to Hivernia, he knows where the big hoards are likeliest to be. We’ll strike, cut the scum down or scatter them, and bring the treasure back.”
No wisp of a thought of danger was in the cry: “Oh, sir, I’ve got to go!”
“You do not,” said Gratillonius. “You’re far too young.”
Salomon doubled his fists. Did a trembling lower lip stick out? “I’m f-f-fifteen years old.”
“You will be later this year,” said Verania sharply.
Gratillonius let go her hand and laid both his on the youth’s shoulders. He looked into the tearful eyes and said, “You’ll have your test of manhood, I promise. It will be harder than you know, keeping silence.”
“I w-w-will. I’ve sworn. But I can fight too.”
“Carry out your orders, soldier. I told you already, you’ve got your share of duty and then some. I’m afraid you’ll see plenty of fighting later on. Meanwhile, we can’t squander you on a simple raid.”
Salomon gulped. “I don’t understand, sir,” he pleaded.
“I believe you are the future leader of our people—of all Dogwood Land, maybe all Armorica. Your father is beloved; they’ll be ready to follow his son, come the day. You’ve done well in your studies, I hear, and very well in the lessons about soldiering you got me to give you. You have the fire. I won’t let some stupid encounter blow it out.”
“No, you, sir, you’re the King.”
Gratillonius released his hold. “There’s too much of the uncanny—of Ys—about me,” he said. “Those who haven’t known me before, they’d never feel the way they must about their leader, the way I think they will feel about you. But I’ll be at your side as long as I’m on this earth.”
Overwhelmed, Salomon sank down onto a baulk of timber and stared before him at the stars above Mons Ferruginus, beneath the moon that rose and waxed toward Easter.
Verania drew Gratillonius aside. She held him close and whispered in his ear, “Come back to us, beloved.”
“To you,” he replied as low; and, since nobody watched, he kissed her. She returned that with a passion he well knew, and only he.
Like the bat at sunset there flitted through him: She’s not Dahilis. Nobody could ever be. But she is mine, and here are no heathen Gods to break us from each other.
2
The men from the currach reached holy Temir a few days after Beltene. They had heard that King Niall was there yet.
Their captain and spokesman Anmureg maqq Cerballi stood before him to say: “The Romans took us unawares. They must have gotten pilots, islanders who knew those waters and shores even better than we do. Suddenly, there they were, two Saxon galleys out of the fog and onto the beach. Men jumped from them and started hewing. It was butchery. Oh, sure, brave lads rallied and I think must have taken some foes with them, while others among us escaped inland, but most died and we lost everything, all we had won in two years of work.”
Rain roared on the thatch of the King’s House. Wind shrilled. Cold and darkness gnawed against the fires inside. It was wrong weather for this festival time.
Nonetheless Niall sat benched in state, with his warriors well-clad around the walls, their shields catching the flamelight above them. Servants scurried over fresh sweet rushes to keep filled the cups of mead or ale or, for the greatest, outland wine. Smoke thickened the air and stung eyes, but soon it would be full of savory smells, when the tables were set up and the meat brought in from the cookhouse.
Niall leaned forward. The light limned his face athwart shadow, broad brow, straight nose, narrow chin. It showed little of the ashiness in locks and beard that once were primrose yellow, nor of scars and creases or how the blue of the eyes had faded. In richness of fur, brightly dyed wool, gold and amber, his body now verged on guantness; but the thews had not shrunk, the movements remained steady and deft. “Why do you call them Romans?” he asked.
“Some were so outfitted, lord,” Anmureg replied. “Others appeared to be Gauls, though from elsewhere than Redonia. We heard Latin as well as their own language, when their chiefs were egging them on against us. Then when my crew was at sea—we happened to be together near our currach, making a small repair, the only ones, for the which we have promised Manandan sacrifices—the fog thinned and we saw a ship of the Roman sort anchored offshore, and one of the galleys drawing close to her in peaceful wise.”
Another of the men who stood there dripping from the rain said slowly, “She looked much like what I’d seen earlier, King, that galley did.”
Niall held himself unmoving. “How was that?” he inquired. Beneath the crackle in the firepit, stillness deepened around the hall.
“You bought a Saxon galley for yourself, King, shortly before I went off a-roving. Black she was, with a yellow stripe, twenty oars, the sternpost high and spiralled at the top and gilt.”
“Such as you lost at Ys,” declared Cael maqq Eriai. He, an ollam poet, could dare.
“Did you see the other your enemies had?” Niall asked, his voice deadly quiet.
“Not really well, any of us,” Anmureg said. “Yourself will understand what wildness ruled on that beach. We here barely stood off an attack till we had our currach launched. Better
, we thought, come back and tell your honor about this, than leave our bones there unavenged. The Gauls call those islands the Islands of Crows.”
“You did leave two ships behind at Ys,” said Cael.
“Ys-s-s,” hissed from Niall. “Forever Ys.”
“The men who took them may have sold them off,” suggested a brithem judge nearby.
Niall shook his head. “They would not,” he said; a gust of wind keened at the words. “Over the years I have gathered knowledge of the King of Ys, that Grallon. His city is fallen but he will not rest in the grave where he belongs. This latest is his work too.”
“It is that,” the druid Étain told him. “A fate binds you two together, though you have never met and never shall. It has not yet run to its end.” Because of her calling, she was the sole woman there. Save at Brigit’s Imbolc, usage on Temir was that a Queen entertain female guests in her own house. Étain’s long white dress made her a ghostly sight among the shadows.
Cael saw how much heartening everybody needed. He stood up, jingled the metal that hung on his staff, reached for the harp he had tuned beforehand. Rain drummed to the strings. Created as he uttered them, the words rang forth:
“Valiant lord of victories,
Avenge your fallen men!
Heroes rise throughout your hall,
Hailing you their King.
“Goddesses Whose birds you’ve gorged,
Grant that you may fare
Windborne, fireborne, laying waste
Widely, Roman land.
“Sail upon the southbound wind.
Set your foot ashore,
Letting slip from off his leash
The lean white hound named Fear.
“Swords will reap when they have soared
Singing from the sheath
Heavy may your harvest be
Of heads and wealth and fame.”
Shouts drowned out the weather. Men pounded fists on benches and feet on floor. Niall climbed erect, raised his arms for silence, loomed above the company, and cried:
“Thanks be to you, poet, and good reward shall you have. You too, warriors who bore us this tale—first, dry clothes, full bellies, and lodging in brotherhood; later, your share in the revenge we will take. I swear by Lúg and Lir and the threefold Mórrigu, for what you and your comrades have suffered, Rome shall weep!”
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