Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  “We’re forming a confederation,” they told him, “local landowners like you and your family, each organising a militia on his own estate and pledged to support his fellow landowners if there’s an invasion. Will you join us?”

  He had agreed at once and they promised him: “Send to us for help and we will come,” before riding on to the next estate.

  There was a new mood of optimism in the air. There was even a rumour that the legions might return from the empire to help the former province; but no sign of them had come as yet.

  As for the German mercenaries, Constantius had been proved wrong. Petrus found that by giving them some land on the slopes around the dune, and by allowing them to keep women in their camp, they were willing to stay and gave little trouble. They were paid, mostly in kind now, since the stock of gold solidi was beginning to run low, but it was agreed that they had the right to strip and loot any invaders they killed. He even increased their number to ten.

  The families from Sorviodunum had now transferred into the dune, which was resuming its ancient aspect of a defended settlement. They lived uneasily, but peaceably, beside the Germans.

  Following the visit from the young men from the west, there was a further important development. Under the organising genius of Numincus, a local militia was started. Petrus and the steward went one day to Venta where they purchased a quantity of swords and assorted armour, which they stored safely at the villa. Numincus also saw to it that every able-bodied man had a short bow and two hundred arrows – they were not impressive weapons, but useful at short range. Each morning now the stocky, grey-eyed steward would drill his twenty men as he had seen his own father do when he was a child. This militia did not look impressive beside the Germans, but they at least provided numbers of troops to man the walls of the dune if necessary.

  “We’ll be ready when they come,” Petrus assured his mother. And to himself he promised: “We’ll not only smash the Saxons; we’ll restore Britannia to grandeur, given time.”

  Placidia watched these developments calmly; but she was worried.

  Constantius had not changed. He took a nominal interest in the running of the estate and none at all in its defence – both of which in reality were in the hands of the loyal steward. For Placidia now knew only too well that Petrus, apart from his spasmodic bursts of enthusiasm, did little that was practical either. He rode his horses, supervised the work on the dune and occasionally, with obvious impatience, joined her when she went through the estate accounts with Numincus. When I am gone, she had to confess to herself sadly, he’ll be little better than Constantius. His only hope was if she could find him a wife to strengthen him.

  And here there was another problem. For ever since the skirmish with the Saxons, Petrus had been keeping a concubine: Sulicena, the cowherd’s niece. It was a relationship which worried her.

  It was not that the girl was a nuisance at the villa, since Petrus kept her in a small house two miles away; nor did Sulicena do anything she could complain about. On the few occasions when they had met the girl had been polite and respectful. It was more something that Placidia sensed, a hidden scorn and contempt behind the pale girl’s deference that concerned her and she felt instinctively that she was an evil influence on her son. Worse, the girl distracted him from the more important business of finding a suitable wife. Each time Placidia raised this vital subject, Petrus brushed the matter aside, and on one occasion said to her bluntly:

  “If I do take a wife, I shall still keep Sulicena as my concubine.”

  Placidia shrugged wearily.

  “It is not necessary to tell me that, Petrus.” She supposed some compromise would be reached in time, but his attitude was discouraging.

  Petrus was content with things as they were. His relationship with the girl was entirely physical – her lithe, hard body and her eager sexual demands exactly satisfied his needs. Frequently he visited her and they would make love until they were spent. It made him feel a man and since he made it clear to the girl that the affair would have to end one day, it left him free.

  And yet, he was conscious of a sense of dissatisfaction with his life. The worship of the pagan gods began to seem flat, when he had no one to share his belief with, except the grim old peasant Tarquinus. True, he would spend hours studying Roman history for heroes to his taste; he even read the works of the great pagan philosophers. But on the windswept ridges around Sarum, the classical world he admired seemed too far away. He felt a growing sense of emptiness. There was no outlet here for his need to dramatise himself.

  Perhaps he would enter the taurobolium again.

  “What you need,” Placidia told him again, “is an intelligent woman to keep you company as a wife.”

  It was not until the spring of 432 that Placidia had at last persuaded him to take some positive action.

  A kinswoman – recently widowed – had written to say that she had a daughter of marriageable age: that the girl would inherit a large estate to the west, near the Severn estuary: and that, though only nineteen, she ran the place with the steward as if it were her own already.

  Even Petrus had to agree with his mother that it would be both foolish and insulting to a kinswoman if he did not at least visit this girl called Flavia.

  “After all,” Placidia said, “you don’t have to do anything about her if you don’t like each other.”

  The visit became more attractive to Petrus when he remembered something else.

  “I have always meant to visit the shrine to the god Nodens across the Severn,” he said. “It’s supposed to be magnificent. I can see that and then visit the girl.” And as he considered this he became almost keen to make the journey.

  Placidia could only pray it might come to something.

  From all the reports received at Sarum it seemed unlikely that the Saxons would come before midsummer that year, and so in early spring having said goodbye to his parents, given Sulicena a gold solidus, and taking one spare horse, he set out on the road west. His way lay through Aquae Sulis.

  The roads, though overgrown with weeds in places, were still good, and he reached Aquae Sulis early the next day. It was a sad sight.

  For though the town was still inhabited, it was only a ghost of its former self. The spa’s problem had not been raiders, but a change in the water level in the previous century that had caused the ducts leading to the baths to silt up; and although they had been cleaned out, they soon clogged up again. As the years went by the costs of repair had grown too high. The resort had almost closed down long before Petrus was born.

  As he rode through the deserted streets, gazing at the splendid but empty buildings, Petrus felt a sense of melancholy. When he inspected the shrine of Sulis Minerva, and looked at the fine gorgon’s head that now gazed over the dry and empty pool, he shook his head and murmured:

  “Aquae Sulis, too, must one day be restored to glory.”

  But how he did not know.

  That afternoon, when he rode on to the town of Corinium, he found it in a better state. Its defences were strong, like the ones at Venta, and as a further precaution, the amphitheatre whose round walls stood proudly in the centre of the town had been fortified as a last place of defence. Its high, strong walls would be impossible for anyone to breach without large siege engines. He found a small inn near the town gates and spent the night there.

  Soon after dawn, he rode on. As he left the town, he noticed a small building outside the walls. It was an ecclesia, a Christian church: a small, poor building made of wood, obviously badly attended. Some useless attempts had been made to fortify the little structure too, and Petrus could not help smiling. These poor Christians, he thought: it’s the pagan gods who will save this place.

  Later that day he reached the broad estuary of the Severn and took the ferryboat across to the western side. From there he rode south towards the shrine. It was a remarkable region. Ever since the conquest, coal and iron had been mined and worked in the area, and several times he passed small sett
lements where slag heaps rose darkly out of the thick forest on his right. On his left he could see the sparkling waters of the great river. And then, as the sun was sinking, he saw his objective ahead.

  The shrine of the god Nodens the Cloudmaker was a fine sight – a cluster of temple buildings with handsome, heavy-pillared porticoes set on a promontory overlooking the broadening estuary. Smoke was rising gently from two altars in the clear spring sky. There was a pleasant scent from the surrounding woods and the wind just disturbed the sparkling surface of the river and rustled the trees below the little acropolis.

  Petrus smiled. It was everything a temple should be.

  Indeed, the entire place was in perfect order. By the entrance was a long wooden building that served as a lodging house, simple but comfortable, and there he found a dozen pilgrims like himself. There were eight temple priests and numerous acolytes, and they lived in handsome houses built, he learned, with money from two large bequests that had been made recently.

  Since Nodens had been the traditional patron god of his family, he went at once to the two altars and left one of the dwindling stock of gold solidi on each.

  “If I choose the girl Flavia as my bride,” he promised, “she shall come here to be married by the priests and acknowledge Nodens as her god.”

  It was a plesasant visit. That evening he spent long hours talking with the temple priests and found them to be learned and scholarly men who reminded him of the pagan professor of his youth. In their peaceful and civilised presence, he found his faith in the pagan calling was renewed.

  He was glad. He had not liked to admit even to himself his recent dissatisfaction with his chosen religion. He had gone through the taurobolium again the year before, this time alone, and had emerged disappointed. The mystical experience, the sense of purification, had eluded him: he had been conscious only of the sticky blood and the occasional coughing of Tarquinus above, who now seemed old and rather disreputable. In the quiet precincts of the shrine however, everything seemed different, and on the second day, as he prayed before the smoking altar, feeling the sun on his back, smelling the scented wood that the priests laid on the fire and hearing the gentle murmur of their chants, he felt a sense of peace that he had not known for many months. The shrine of Nodens was a place of healing, and he felt bathed in its benign influence.

  A whole further day passed. Once again he slept at the shrine, and then the next morning, refreshed, he made his way slowly back to the ferry.

  The estate of Flavia’s family lay south, a day’s ride away, near the old lead mines in the Mendip hills whose ore had so often passed in former centuries along the road through Sorviodunum. It was rich, rolling country; his spirits were high, and almost forgetting the cowherd’s niece he told himself: perhaps, after all, I shall like her.

  It was late afternoon and he was only an hour’s ride away from the estate when he came upon the small port. The sun had still some way to sink, but the air was beginning to grow chilly; on a sudden impulse he decided to halt there for the night and complete his journey the next morning.

  If she’s a possible bride, I may as well arrive there fresh, he decided, and thought no more about it.

  The little port consisted of half a dozen store houses, a small jetty and a cluster of buildings including a mansio for travellers to stay and change their horses. It was surrounded by a recently erected wooden stockade, the previous one having been burned down a few years earlier by a party of Irish raiders. Several small coracles of skin stretched over a wooden framework were moored by the jetty; but there was also a stout wooden vessel with a single mast, which was obviously ready to put out to sea.

  He saw that his horses were stabled at the mansio, and the innkeeper ushered him into a long room with a fire at each end, where the evening meal was soon to be served.

  His companions were half a dozen sailors and an older, weather-beaten man with a mass of reddish hair who, he learned, was master of the stout ship he had seen. It was the master who presided at the long table down the centre of the room which he now approached, and where he was quickly made welcome.

  Soon they were served a huge bowl of stew, accompanied by pitchers of ale. The company chatted happily and the master mariner, at frequent intervals, made his opinions clear in a bluff way that the other sailors immediately agreed with.

  After a little time, however, he began to take notice of one other traveller at the table. He sat alone at the far end, eating quietly, and seemed to be oblivious of the rest of the company. He wore a birrhus – the heavy cloak of brown wool for which the island had become famous – and a hood over his head. Petrus at first paid this man little attention, but in the middle of the meal, seeing his gaze shift towards him, the master mariner nudged him and said in a lower voice:

  “See that fellow over there? Well, he’ll be dead in a month.” And he gave a decisive nod, and passed the back of his hand across his throat. “They’ll slit him from ear to ear.”

  Petrus stared at the silent figure in surprise. Though the hood covered his head, he could see enough of the man’s face to judge that the stranger was only a few years older than himself.

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  “He sails with us tomorrow,” the mariner explained, “to Ireland. He’s going to join this fellow they call Patricius and his friends. And they’ll all be killed.”

  Petrus had never heard of Patricius and asked the mariner who these people were. The man grunted impatiently. “Missionaries,” he said with scorn. “They’re going to convert the heathen Irish, who are mostly cut-throats and pirates, as anyone on this coastline can tell you.” It was true that in recent times, the raids of the Irish pirates on the west coast had been a constant source of trouble. “They’ll be butchered.” He paused before glancing at the traveller and adding: “Pity. He’s a nice young fellow.”

  After the meal, the sailors gathered round the fire at one end of the room while the stranger quietly moved to the other fire where, drawing out a small roll of parchment, he began to read. Petrus sat with the sailors.

  The evening passed pleasantly, with the sailors getting steadily but peaceably drunk while they chatted or sang an occasional chorus. As darkness fell, four of them retired to the sleeping quarters while two more dozed where they were by the fire. The stranger, who took no notice of them at all, was still reading quietly.

  Petrus had drunk only a little and was still wide awake. Having nothing else to do, he found himself watching the stranger curiously. There was something in his manner that seemed modest, even retiring, yet self-possessed. After some time the other became aware of his gaze and turned towards him.

  His face was indeed young, Petrus now saw: hardly older than himself; it was broad and square, with widely spaced brown eyes. His hands too, were large and strong. He might have been a pleasant young country farmer. The eyes flickered with amusement and then, to Petrus’s surprise, he gave him a boyish grin.

  “Not asleep yet? Seems you didn’t drink enough.”

  As he spoke the young man pulled back his hood and Petrus saw that the whole of the top of his head was shaved, leaving a circular fringe of hair around the edge; and although at this time monasteries were still almost unknown in Britain, Petrus was aware that this tonsure meant that his companion was a monk.

  It seemed that he had finished his reading, for he motioned Petrus to join him.

  “My name is Martinus,” he explained.

  He had come, he said, from Gaul, to visit his family in Britain before making the voyage to Ireland. He asked Petrus about his own journey, and listened with interest as Petrus told him about his trip to Lydney and the visit he was planning to Flavia’s family the following day.

  To his surprise the young monk showed no shock that he had been to the shrine of Nodens, and when he heard about Flavia he grinned and said:

  “Let’s hope she’s pretty, then you can marry her with a good conscience!”

  When Petrus had told his own story, he fel
t less embarrassment at asking Martinus about himself. Was the mariner’s report true? Was he going to Ireland to convert the heathen? Martinus nodded.

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  The young man nodded again.

  “Sometimes. But it soon passes. If you’re serving God, there’s nothing to be afraid of really.”

  “But they may kill you.”

  Martinus gave him a gentle but unaffected smile.

  “Perhaps.”

  Petrus was familiar with the blustering Christianity of his own father, but the young monk’s quiet confidence seemed very different.

  “What made you choose to serve the Christian God?” he asked.

  To him it seemed a natural question, but a look of genuine puzzlement crossed Martinus’s broad face.

  “Oh, I didn’t,” he corrected. “It’s God who chooses.”

  Petrus shrugged.

  “Well, you want to go to Ireland anyway,” he remarked.

  Now Martinus grimaced, a little ruefully.

  “Actually, I don’t want to go at all.”

  Petrus stared at him. Was the monk playing some kind of verbal game with him, like his old professor? He did not think so.

  “You don’t want to go?”

  Martinus shook his head.

  “No, to tell you the truth, if I followed my own will, I’d stay on my family’s farm. It’s only two days’ ride north of here you know. But God gave me a commandment and I joined a monastery, and now God’s will is that I go to Ireland, so . . .” He made a gentle, self-deprecating movement with his big hands; and then, seeing that Petrus still looked surprised, he asked: “Do you know the story of Patricius, the man I’m going to join?”

  Petrus did not, and so Martinus explained.