The Silver Branch

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘You mean—you would carry it south yourself?’ Flavius said.

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Why should you be running your head into a wolf-trap on this trail?’

  Evicatos, fondling the ears of the great hound beside him, said: ‘Not for the love of your Emperor, but that it may not be death for my own people.’

  ‘You would do so much—risk so much, for the people that cast you out?’

  ‘I broke the laws of my kind, and I paid the agreed price,’ Evicatos said. ‘There is no more to it than that.’

  Flavius looked at him a moment without speaking. Then he said: ‘So. It is your trail also.’ And then, ‘You know what mercy there will be for you if you fall into the hands of Allectus’s creatures with the writing on you?’

  ‘I can guess,’ said Evicatos with a small, grim smile. ‘Yet since your names must be on the writing, clear for all to read, that will be a risk fairly shared among us, after all.’

  Flavius said, ‘So be it, then,’ and leaned forward to the stir-about pot in his turn. ‘But there is no time to lose. The letter must be on its way tonight.’

  ‘That is a simple matter. Let one of you come down tonight to watch the cock-fighting in the Vallum ditch. One of your Optios has challenged all comers with his red cock; did you know? There will be many there, British and Roman, and if maybe you and I should speak together among the rest, none will think it strange.’

  ‘Pray the gods he believes us this time!’ Flavius said, softly and very soberly.

  Justin swallowed his last mouthful of bannock without tasting it, and got to his feet, tightening his belt which he had slackened for ease when he sat down. His gaze fell again on the rough altar, on the worn figures and the uneven lettering from which they had scraped the moss.

  Flavius, glancing up at him, caught the direction of his gaze, and turned his own the same way. Abruptly he took a silver sestercia from his belt, and pressed it into the turf before the altar. ‘Surely we also have sore need that the Fates be kind,’ he said.

  Behind them, Evicatos was gathering up the remains of the food, tying up the neck of the meal-bag, as he had done after the other hunting meals that they had eaten together. On the fringe of the scrub, downstream, a feathering of vivid colour caught at Justin’s eyes, where a tangle of dogwood had burst into its autumn flame. He walked down the burnside to the thicket, made careful selection, and broke off a long spray on which the leaves were scarlet as a trumpet-call. Something rustled among the deeper shadows as he did so; something that might be only a fox, but as he turned away he had a feeling of watching eyes behind him that were not the eyes of fox or wild cat.

  The other two were waiting for him with the ponies, when he rejoined them twisting the spray into a rough garland; and he stopped on to one knee and laid it on the weather-worn altar. Then they turned away and mounted, whistling the dogs to heel, and rode with Evicatos of the Spear down the burnside, leaving the bare bowl of the hills empty once more, save for the wheeling peregrines and the thing that had rustled in the shadows of the scrub. And behind them Justin’s dogwood garland was bright as blood upon the lichened stone, where an unknown soldier of their Legion had made his own desperate appeal to the Fates, a hundred, two hundred years ago.

  In the Commander’s quarters that evening they wrote the letter between them, their heads bent together in the pool of lamplight, over the tablets open on the table.

  It was just finished and the tablet sealed, when a knock came at the door. Their eyes met for an instant, then Justin swept up the tablet into the flat of his hand, as Flavius bade the visitor enter, and the Quartermaster appeared. ‘Sir,’ said the Quartermaster, saluting, ‘I have brought the new supply lists. If you could spare me an hour, we could get them settled.’

  Justin had risen, also saluting. In public he kept up very carefully the formalities between the Cohort Surgeon and the Cohort Commander. ‘I will not take up any more of your time, sir. Have I your permission to leave camp for an hour or so?’

  Flavius looked up at him under red, fly-away brows. ‘Ah yes, the cocking main. Put something on our man’s bird for me, Justin.’

  The great Vallum that had been the frontier before the Wall was built, had become of late years a vast, unsavoury ditch choked with tattered and stinking hovels, small dirty shops and temples, garbage piles, and the dens of the legionaries’ hunting dogs. The smell of it met Justin like a fog as he crossed the coast-to-coast road and dropped into it by the steps opposite the Praetorian Gate of Magnis. In an open space a spear-throw from the foot of the steps a crowd was already gathered, jostling round the makeshift arena and thronging the steep slopes of the Vallum on either side; shadowy in the autumn dusk save for the glow of a brazier here and there among them, and the splashing yellow light of one big lantern in their midst. Justin made his way towards it, shouldering through the noisy, shifting throng.

  He could see no sign of Evicatos as yet; not that it would be easy to pick out one man from that shifting, shadowy crowd. But on the edge of the lantern light he found Manlius, who had returned to full duty only a few days before, and checked beside him. ‘Well, Manlius, how is the leg?’

  Manlius looked round, grinning in the lantern-light. ‘Good as new, sir.’

  Justin’s heart warmed to him, because it had been a long fight and a hard one to mend that leg, and now it was as good as new. Anyone who had been hurt or ill under his hands always called out that humble and surprised warmth in Justin. It was one of the things, though he did not know it, that made him a good surgeon. ‘So. That makes fine hearing,’ he said, and the warmth was in his voice.

  Manlius said rather gruffly, as though he were ashamed, ‘If it hadn’t been for you, sir, I’m thinking I’d be out of the Eagles now, with one leg to hobble on.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for yourself also,’ Justin said after a moment. ‘It takes two, you know, Manlius.’

  The legionary glanced at him sideways, then straight ahead again. ‘I see what you mean, sir. None the less, I don’t forget all you done for me; nor I don’t forget the Commander with his face all over blood, hauling that cursed great beam off me when I thought I was about done for.’

  They were silent then, among the noisy crowd, neither of them skilled in words, and neither with the least idea what to say next. Finally Justin said, ‘Do you back our man and the red cock?’

  ‘Of course, sir—and you?’ Manlius replied with obvious relief.

  ‘Assuredly. I have a wager with Evicatos of the Spear. Also I want to ask him about the skin of the wolf that the Commander killed today. Have you seen him anywhere in this crowd?’

  ‘No, sir, can’t say I have.’

  ‘Ah well, he’ll be somewhere about.’ Justin nodded, friendly-wise, and side stepped between two legionaries, emerging on the lantern-lit edge of the arena. Somebody provided him with an upturned pail to sit on, and he sat, huddling his cloak around him for warmth. Before him stretched an open space covered with rush matting, in the centre of which a yard-wide ring daubed in chalk shone white in the light of the lantern rigged overhead. Above the lantern, the sky was still barred with the last fading fire-streaks of the sunset, but down here in the Vallum it was already almost dark, save where the light of the lantern fell on eager faces thronged about that shining chalk circle.

  And now two men had pushed out from their fellows in the arena, each carrying a large leather bag which wriggled and bounced with the angry life inside it. And instantly a solid roar went up from the crowd. ‘Come on, Sextus, show ’em what the red can do!—Ya-ah! Call that dunghill rooster a fighting cock?—Two to one on the tawny devil!—Give you three to one on the red!’

  One of the men—it was the Magnis Optio—was undoing the neck of his bag now, bringing out his cock, and there was a redoubled burst of voices as he handed it to a third man who stood by to see fair play. The bird he held up was indeed worth shouting for: red and black without a pale feather anywhere, slim and powerful, very much a warrior strip
ped for battle, with his close-cut comb, clipped wings, and square docked tail. Justin saw the lantern-light play on his quivering wings, the fierce head in which the black, dilating eyes were brilliant as jewels, the deadly iron spurs strapped about his ankles.

  The third man handed him back to his owner, and the other cock was produced in his turn. But Justin took less notice of him, for just as he was held up to view, Evicatos appeared on the far side of the arena, while at the same instant somebody edged through the crowd into the vacant space at his side, and the voice of Centurion Posides said, ‘All the world is here, it seems, even to our Cohort Surgeon. I did not know that you were one for the fighting cocks, my Justin.—Nay, no need to shy like a startled horse, or I shall think you have an unquiet conscience.’ For Justin had indeed jumped slightly at the sound of his voice.

  Centurion Posides was friendly enough, these days, but Justin had never come to like him. He was a man with a grudge against the world—a world that had denied him the promotion he thought it owed him. Justin was sorry for him; it must be hard to go through life bearing it a grudge, but he certainly did not want him at his shoulder just now. However, it would be a while yet before he need do anything about passing on the letter under his cloak. ‘I am n-not, usually,’ he said, ‘but I have heard so much about this red cock that I felt I must c-come and judge his fighting p-powers for myself.’ (Oh, curse that stutter, it would have to betray him now, just when he most needed to seem completely at ease!)

  ‘We must be very healthy just now, up at the fort, that our Surgeon can spend the evening at a cocking main after a whole day’s hunting,’ said Posides in the faintly aggrieved tone that was usual with him.

  ‘We are,’ Justin said quietly, mastering his stutter with a supreme effort, ‘or I should not be here.’ He had meant to add ‘Centurion Posides’, but he knew that the P would be his undoing, so he left it, and turned his attention firmly to what was passing on the matting before him.

  The tawny cock had been returned to its owner, and to the accompaniment of much advice from rival supporters, the two men had taken their places and set their cocks down at opposite sides of the chalk circle. Now, suddenly as their owners loosed them, the birds streaked forward, and the fight was on.

  It did not last long, that first fight, though it was fierce enough while it lasted. It ended with a lightning strike of the red’s spurs, and a few feathers drifting sideways on the matting, and the tawny cock lying a small dead warrior, where he had fallen.

  His owner picked him up, shrugging philosophically, while the other man took up his crowing and triumphant property. Bets were being settled, and quarrels breaking out in a score of places at once, as generally happened at a cock-fight, and under cover of the noise and the shifting of the crowd, Justin murmured something about speaking to Evicatos of the Spear about the Commander’s wolf-skin, and getting up, made his way round to the far side of the ring. Evicatos was waiting for him, and as they came together, close-jammed in the crowd, the sealed tablet passed between them under cover of their cloaks.

  The thing was done so easily that Justin, his ears full of his own voice talking somewhat at random about the wolf-skin, could have laughed aloud in sheer relief.

  The quarrels were sorting themselves out, and another cock had been brought in and set opposite to the red, as he turned back to the Arena. This time the fight was long drawn and uncertain, and before the end of it, both cocks were showing signs of distress: the open beak, the wing dragging on the blood-stained matting. Only one thing seemed quite unquenched in them, their desire to kill one another. That, and their courage. They were very like human gladiators, Justin thought, and suddenly he sickened, and did not want to see any more. The thing that he had come to do was done, and Evicatos of the Spear, when he looked for him, was already gone. He slipped away too, and made his way back to the fort.

  But as he went, Centurion Posides, on the far side of the ring, looked after him with an odd gleam in his eyes. ‘Now I wonder,’ murmured Centurion Posides, ‘I wonder, my very ill-at-ease young friend, if it really was only the wolf-skin? With your previous record, I think that we will take no chances,’ and he rose and slipped off also, but not in the direction of the fort.

  VIII

  THE FEAST OF SAMHAIN

  TWO evenings later, Justin was making ready to leave the hospital block after late rounds, when Manlius appeared in the surgery doorway with a bloody rag twisted round one hand. ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I hoped I might find you here. I’ve chopped my thumb and I can’t stop it bleeding.’

  Justin was about to call the orderly who was cleansing instruments nearby and bid him deal with it, when he caught the urgent message in the Legionary’s eyes, and changed his mind. ‘Come over to the lamp,’ he said. ‘What has happened this time? Another Catapult on top of you?’

  ‘No, sir, I’ve been chopping wood for my woman. I was off duty—and I chopped it.’

  The man moved after him, pulling off the crimson rag; and Justin saw a small but deepish gash in the base of his thumb from which the blood welled up as fast as he wiped it away. ‘Orderly—a bowl of water and some bandage linen.’

  The man dropped what he was doing and brought the water. ‘Shall I take over, sir?’

  ‘No, c-carry on cleaning those tools.’

  And Justin set about bathing and dressing the cut, while Manlius stood staring woodenly into space. In a little, the orderly took the burnished instruments into an inner room, and instantly Manlius’s eyes flew to the door after him, then back to Justin’s face, and he muttered, ‘Where’s the Commander, sir?’

  ‘The Commander? In the P-Praetorium, I imagine. Why?’ Instinctively Justin kept his own voice down.

  ‘Get him. Get all the money you have, anything of value, and go both of you to my woman’s bothie in the town. It is the last bothie in the street of the Golden Grasshopper. Don’t let any see you enter.’

  ‘Why?’ Justin whispered. ‘You must tell me what you mean; I—’

  ‘Don’t ask questions, sir; do as I tell you, and in Mithras’s name do it at once, or I’ve gashed my thumb to no purpose.’

  Justin hesitated an instant longer. Then with the footsteps of the returning orderly already at the door, he nodded. ‘Very well, I’ll trust you.’

  He finished his task, tied off the bandage, and with a casual ‘Goodnight’ to both men, strolled out into the autumn dusk, picking up in passing the slim, tube-shaped case that held his own instruments from the table on which it lay.

  A few moments later he was closing the door of Flavius’s office behind him. Flavius looked up from the table at which he was working late on the week’s duty roster. ‘Justin? You look very solemn.’

  ‘I feel very solemn,’ Justin said, and told him what had happened.

  Flavius gave a soundless whistle when he had finished. ‘One of the bothies of the town, and take all the money we have. What do you suppose lies behind this, brother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Justin said. ‘I’m horribly afraid it has to do with Evicatos. But I’d trust Manlius to the world’s end.’

  ‘Or at the world’s end. Yes, so would I.’ Flavius was on his feet as he spoke. He began to move quickly about the room, clearing the tablets and papyrus rolls from the table and laying them away in orderly fashion in the record chest. He locked the chest with the key which never left its chain about his neck, then turned to the small inner room that was his sleeping-cell.

  Justin was already next door in his own cell, delving under the few garments in his clothes-chest for the leather bag containing most of his last month’s pay. He hadn’t anything else of value except his instrument case. He picked that up again, stowed the small leather bag in his belt, and returned to the office just as Flavius came out from the inner room flinging on his cloak.

  ‘Got your money?’ Flavius said, stabbing home the brooch at his shoulder.

  Justin nodded. ‘In my belt.’

  Flavius cast a look round to see
that all was in order, and caught up his helmet. ‘Come on, then,’ he said.

  They went down through the fort in the darkness and the mist that was creeping in from the high moors; and with a casual word to the sentries at the gate, passed through into the town.

  The town that, though its name changed with every fort along its length—Vindobala, Aesica, Chilurnium—was in truth one town eighty miles long, strung out along the Wall and the coast-to-coast legionary road behind it. One long, teeming, stinking maze of wine-shops and baths and gaming-houses, stables and granaries, women’s huts and small dirty temples to British and Egyptian, Greek and Gaulish gods.

  The last bothie in the narrow, winding alley-way that took its name from the Golden Grasshopper wine-shop at the corner was in darkness as they drew near. A little squat black shape with the autumn mists creeping about the doorway. Almost as they reached it, the door opened silently into deeper blackness within, and the pale blur of a face showed in the opening. ‘Who comes?’ a woman’s voice demanded softly.

  ‘The two you wait for,’ Flavius murmured back.

  ‘Come, then.’ She drew them into the houseplace, where the red embers of a fire shone like a scatter of rubies on the hearth but left the room in wolf darkness, and instantly closed the door behind them. ‘There will be light in a moment. This way. Come.’

  For the one moment it seemed very like a trap, and Justin’s heart did undignified things in his throat. Then, as he moved forward after Flavius, the woman pulled aside a blanket over an inner doorway, and the faint gleam of a tallow dip came to meet them. Then they were in an inner room where the one tiny window-hole under the thatch had been shuttered close against prying eyes; and a man who had been sitting on the piled skins and native rugs of the bed-place against the far wall raised his head as they entered.