by Henry Treece
A man with long black hair put out hands to hold him. For a moment Marcus clearly saw how carefully oiled and plaited the hair was. He even saw the design on the twisted gold about the man’s neck. Then he struck out with a sideways movement and felt the hard edge of his left hand hit against that neck-ring, and heard the man cry out with pain. At his right, he heard another cry, and then the centurion saying, ‘Run, run, Marcus! We are through them. We are away!’
Now his heart was thumping so hard that the Roman thought he would have to stop and fall on to the grass, whatever happened to him. But he kept on, and on, and on - until the trees grew thinner, and ahead of him he saw the dusty grey road that led southwards towards Londinium.
Behind there was no sound of pursuit. In front, the land seemed empty and deserted.
Then he stopped and felt for the wound in his chest. But Tigidius laughed and said, ‘Truly Mithras put his hand over you when that spear came, brother. I saw it turn about in the air and strike you butt-first. All you will have is a bruise. You should give thanks.’
Marcus turned to him and smiled now. ‘It hurts more than the point would have done,’ he said. ‘Am I to give thanks for that?’
They leaned on a stone and laughed together, their dusty painted faces running with sweat, their chests heaving and their limbs trembling.
Behind them, a long way beyond the wood, the black smoke still rose high into the sky; but now it was thinner, as though the upper breezes had carried much of it away, or as though there was little left to burn in Camulodunum.
Marcus said, ‘We must be on our way. These savages will not wait long, when they have put an end to the colony. It is the best part of sixty miles to Londinium, but with the aid of the god we shall get there in time to warn them. These barbarians cannot move on the march as fast as we can run.’
The centurion nodded. ‘They are not real soldiers,’ he said. ‘They will halt here and there to burn the standing corn and to destroy the villages off the main road. With the god’s help we shall be of some use.’
So they set off again, running a hundred paces, then walking a hundred, so as to conserve their strength. Once they even sat down by a little clear stream and drank the water and plucked red berries from a bush. It was the first food they had had all day, and poor enough it was. But they gave thanks for it and then pressed on.
And towards evening they came to a part of the road that suddenly narrowed, as though it was not often used for heavy wagons, to become almost a chariot track. It fell down into a hollow and twisted so that they could not see what lay ahead of them.
To their left the moorland of coarse yellowish grasses fell away, with dark groves standing here and there on it, as far as the horizon. To their right, at the edge of the track, rose a steep bank of earth, overgrown with willow-herb and dock. At its top, stretching above the road, thorn and alder grew rank, and. charred stakes of straight pine stood, leaning haphazardly towards the sky.
The sky itself seemed low and menacing. It was the time of sunset and a thousand floating clouds were tinged with deep red over their heads.
Tigidius shuddered and said, ‘This is a strange place. Not the sort of place to lead a squadron into, unless the scouts had combed it well before.’
Marcus pointed to a rough hut that lay farther up the slope, its hide-roofing now blowing out in the evening winds. ‘I think it is some kind of shrine,’ he said. ‘One of their druid places, perhaps. They are set in such lonely places as this.’
The centurion sniffed. ‘I smell something cooking,’ he said. ‘My mouth waters at such a smell. I think it is a wild pig. I have never cared for this British cooking or the flesh they eat, but at this moment I would not say no to anything. I will run up the bank and see what it is.’
Marcus loped on. ‘You will not like what you find,’ he called back. ‘It will be an offering of some sort, on an altar fire. Do not bring any of it for me, whatever it is. And do not waste our time over it.’
The centurion laughed and answered, ‘You can run on, boy. I will catch up with you, and when you see what I carry in my hand, you will wish that you had some of it too.’
So Marcus set himself against the steep pitch of the road and panted on. He had gone the better part of half a mile before he realized that Tigidius was not coming on behind him. He stopped and looked back down the empty road, into the darkening hollow. At first he was about to call out to the centurion; then he checked himself in case other ears heard him, beyond the overgrown ramparts.
To himself in a low voice he said, ‘You fool, Tigidius. To put Londinium in danger for the sake of burnt pig. I shall have a word to say to you, centurion, when I reach you.’
He turned about and ran down the slope again, and did not stop until he came to the wooden shrine once more. Then he scrambled up the slope and pushed his way through the tangled weeds and brambles. The place was half-rotten with damp, the lintels of its low entrance green with lichen and overgrown with ferns.
‘Tigidius, you stupid old man,’ he called. ‘Come out of there and let us be off.’
But the centurion did not answer, and so Marcus went forward, bending low to get under the door.
Inside, the place was dark and heavy with the smell of burned flesh. Marcus could make out the wood fire that glowed on a flat limestone ledge by the far wall. He moved towards it, groping, and almost fell over the body of Tigidius, who lay sprawled before the stone, face downwards, his arms stretched wide as though he was flying.
Marcus fell to his knees beside him and began to roll him over. Then his right hand came away sticky with blood and he drew back for a moment. His eyes grew used to the dimness then and he saw the deep axe-cut at the base of the Roman’s skull, that had almost severed his head from his body.
For a long time Marcus sat staring, unable to believe that the centurion was dead. He kept saying to himself, ‘No! Oh no! He has faced too many arrows, too many spears.
He cannot die like this. It is impossible for him to die like this, in a stinking hut by the roadside.’
But at last Marcus knew that the centurion was dead, and that no prayers would bring him back to life now.
It was dusk when he came out of the shrine. He could see no one near the place. Once he caught a glimpse of eyes shining brightly from beyond the hedge of briars, but when he went towards them they vanished and he heard an old sheep lumbering away into the tall grasses that led to a dark forest.
So he went wearily down the slope again, hardly caring who waited for him at the bottom, and then turned his face once more towards Londinium and began to walk slowly along the lonely road.
It scarcely seemed to matter now what happened.
[18]
Under the Striped Awnings
It was midday, and the sun above the river Tamesa beat down as though it shone in Africa and not in Britain. Three men sat under blue-striped awnings, fanning themselves and talking with many movements of the shoulders and hands. They were not Romans or Britons.
Behind them stood their stalls, waiting for whoever should come down the long straight dusty road that led from Londinium up into the empty distant places of the Province. Behind the stalls lay many jumbled streets and wooden houses, some of them with the vine leaves before the door that signified they were taverns for weary travellers; some of them with hoists and pulley-blocks over the upper storeys that told they were warehouses for whatever merchandise floated into the wharfs of the river. And before the river stood the tall army supply-base, the square stone-built repository of grain, dried meat and hides that would feed and keep the legions marching on stout footwear. This was the only place that was protected by a palisade. It was a wooden wall and not of stone, as though whoever set up this storehouse had not thought of war - but only of a peace that would last for ever.
Beyond the warehouse lay the river, slow-moving, grey and littered with a thousand small craft passing up and down, or from north to south bank. Though there was little on the south bank to vis
it, but thatched settlements from which the wood-smoke rose lazily in the late summer air.
One of the men under the striped awnings drank from a red clay wine jar and smacked his lips. He was a very big man, red in the face and with hair so fair that it looked almost white. He wore hair on his face and a thick blue robe of wool with a white collar of fox fur from the far north. His eyes were blue, too, but much lighter than his robe. So light that they seemed to have little life in them. His hands and wrists were red and very clumsy and big. He did not seem the sort of man who would touch things lightly, or play the lyre. His voice as he spoke the Roman city-tongue was as clumsy and big. He said, ‘Along the Baltic we trade with the club and the axe, my friends. We do not haggle as you Libyans do. My brother, Swart, and I went out last season and fleeced the villages up towards the Finnish marshes. The folk up there are savages. They root about under the trees for grubs. But they have good furs to trade. Amber is what they like for necklaces. We took them that and shook our axes at them. We came back with four wagon-loads of good furs in return for three sacks of amber and one of jet. Next year, Nerthus willing, we shall go again - and then retire to a snug farmstead in Gotland.’ There was a thin-faced, dry-voiced man beside him, dressed in a dark robe, his deep-brown hair cropped close to the scalp. His eyes were a light grey and he spoke slowly and gravely. He said, ‘Please do not call me a Libyan. I have nothing against those people, but I must insist that you give me my proper designation. My name is Orosius and I am from Spain. My home is in a very pretty town called Gades, and my forefathers came to there from Phoenicia - if you have ever heard of it. I have nothing against Libyans, who may be very fine fellows for all I know, but it is correct to give a man his proper heritage.’
The third man nodded in agreement. He was very small, and wore a white wrapping round his head and a white robe with a broad scarlet sash about his body. His face was the colour of walnut stain and his eyes were as black as the jet the Baltic man had spoken of. He said very gently, ‘In Armenia we do not speak of the Libyans. They may be men, for all I know, but we have a legend that they are all descended from apes, and so we do not speak of them.’
The big northerner laughed and drank from the skin again. ‘And what do you say of us from the Baltic?’ he asked heavily.
The Armenian shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘We do not speak of you either,’ he said. ‘We have a legend that all creatures north of the Caucasus are either bears or wolves or foxes. We cannot go beyond that.’
The Spaniard half-turned his head and smiled down into the dust where a cricket was sending out a great noise. He said, as to himself, ‘Gades, Gades - there one sees true men. There one hears true speech. Here it is all the chatter of idiots.’
The northerner suddenly said, ‘My name is Ochter and I have yet to meet the man I could not lay down with my axe.’ He looked round as though he was challenging someone.
But the other two merchants smiled at one another and did not answer him. Then the Armenian said quietly, ‘My own family take ancient names. My own is Ula Buriash, after some king of Babylon, I understand. But most men find that too much to say, and simply call me Ula. You may call me Ula if you so wish. It matters little to me what men call me, as long as I can sell my silver plates and tin images.’
Orosius said in an off-hand manner, ‘We Spaniards bring heavier cargo. I’d back my olives and wine, and my finely-stitched leather ware against any in the world.’
For a moment Ochter the Balt glared at him, then said, ‘Where I come from we brew good ale, not this thin sour wine. As for your leather stuff, we take the natural furs and latch them together with good deer-hide thongs. That is stitchery good enough for any true man.’
He began to feel under his stool for the iron axe that lay there. Ula the Armenian smiled and nodded at him. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said quickly. ‘We both understand, don’t we, Orosius?’
But the Spaniard was looking away again, as though he had lost all interest in the conversation.
The heavy silence stayed, while the Balt fumbled about in the dust and the Armenian quivered. Then another man came stumping up from the streets towards them. He was short and very fat. His iron pot-helmet hardly fitted his round shaven head; his leather armour was stained with sweat and creaked at every move he made. His bulging legs were covered with dirty linen breeches, strapped round with twisted hide that had once been dyed red, but now had little colour at all about it.
In his hand he carried a very rough-shafted lance with a loose iron head that seemed about to fall off with every shake he gave it. He said, ‘Hey, you three, get inside the palisade.’
The Spaniard looked up at him lazily and said, ‘We do not pack up our stalls until sunset. That is the law here. Are you asking us to break the law?’
The Balt had found his rough axe now and was holding it over his knees, jogging it up and down as though he did not know what to do with it. The Armenian was already on a stool, trying to reach the hooks of the striped awnings and cursing that he had given his slave the afternoon off from work.
Then the man in the pot-helmet put his face close to that of Orosius and said, ‘So, you want to make trouble? You think that merchants have a law to themselves, do you? Well, look at this, fellow.’
He held his poor spear up to the Spaniard’s nose, shaking it. Orosius looked away, then said to the ground before him, ‘In my country a man would be ashamed to look at such a thing. Our boys have better prodders to go out pigsticking with. What is your name, soldier? I would like to have a word with your commander later on.’
The man in the pot-helmet glared at him a while, the sweat running down his upper lip, his face quivering under the iron cheek-pieces. Then he controlled himself and said, ‘I am Geir, decurion of the city militia. Does that satisfy you, Outlander?’
Orosius spat into the grey dust. ‘If you are Geir,’ he said, pronouncing the name in disgust, ‘then you are not a Roman. You are most likely a northman of some sort. But not a Roman. Now, if you came to us wearing correct war-gear and speaking a name like Gaius, or Lucius, or even Tiberius - then we would have listened to you and have uprooted our stalls. Although, as even you must know, our licence, paid to the city treasurer, allows us to stay out here until the last rays of the sun make seeing difficult.’
Then the big Balt spoke. With his axe in his hand he said thickly, ‘I had a dog once called Geir, and a mangy flea-bitten hound he always was. He never caught as much as a hare in his life. Show him a rat and he would run for his miserable life. Did you say your name was Geir, my friend?’
The militia-decurion stepped back and went very red in the face. He did not answer the Balt, but went over instead to Ula the Armenian. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘what have you to say for yourself? Didn’t I tell you to get inside the city stockade? Well, didn’t I? Answer me.’
The slightly-built trader got down from his stool very slowly. Then he arranged his long sleeves and at last he looked up at the militia-man and said, ‘Geir, my friend, I am only a small man, but I have many kinsmen. They have houses in Byzantium, Smyrna, Alexandria and Rome. I have wives in Syracuse, Lutetia and even among the Frisian - and they all have brothers with long swords. Not one of my kinsmen would like it to be known that I, Ula Buriash, who hears the name of a king, was glared at by someone called Geir, who sweats in untanned leather and wears a helmet two sizes too small for his fat pig’s head, They would come in their ships, bring their long swords, as soon as they knew.’
The decurion of militia began to say something, then stopped. He turned away from the small Armenian and said to the Balt, ‘We see eye to eye, brother. We are from the north. Would you kindly tell your friends that I am only doing my duty? I have news that a great army of Britons is coming this way to burn down the city. It is for your own good that my captain asks you to come inside the stockade.’
The Balt flung his heavy axe into the air and then caught it. He said, ‘Who are you to know what is our own good? I had a dog once ca
lled Geir, and he did not know what
It was for his own good. He went after an old wolf that started up from a thicket and got his ears chewed off at one bite. Was that for his own good? That was a very stupid dog, that Geir. Put a pot-helmet on his head and he would have looked exactly like you.’
The militia man turned away then, whistling and trying not to let the head of his spear rattle. Then suddenly his eyes brightened again, because down the long dusty road came a man bent with weariness and weakness. He wore a jacket of roughly-stitched skin and no shoes on his caked feet. He staggered from side to side as he came, hardly able to keep his balance.
And as he came he waved his arms from side to side weakly and croaked, ‘Get inside. Get inside. They are coming. The Iceni are coming.’
He fell face downwards in the shadow of the striped awnings, still muttering. The decurion of militia poked at his blistered back with the spear point for a while, then began to kick him in the side to rouse him. But Orosius the Spaniard stepped forward and pushed the man Geir aside without any fear. ‘Stand away,’ he said. ‘This is a man from my own country, unless I have lost my ear for language.’
He held out his hand for the wine-skin and the Balt gave it to him, without question. Then he rolled Marcus over on to his back and poured some of the liquid down his throat.
The militia-decurion said in fury, ‘Why, this is one of them. Look at the war-paint on his face. Look at the scars on his body. He is a Briton. Have you lost your senses?’
Orosius glanced up at him once, with very cold and steady eyes. He said in a quiet voice, ‘Go back to your icebergs, you dolt. Go back to the howling dogs of the north. But do not presume to tell me that I cannot recognize another Spaniard.’
For a time the merchants looked down on the young man as Orosius cared for him. Then they packed up their stalls and moved down through the houses towards the slow river.
