The Silver Branch

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  They seemed perched between two worlds; and the odd-shaped chamber was as fantastic as its situation, derelict, half ruined, the uneven planks of the floor blotched with livid fungus where the rain had beaten in, the corners grey with cobwebs that hung down, swaying in the wind that rustled the dead creeper leaves to and fro along the floor. Yet with one wall still showing traces of the frescoes it had once worn, faded ghosts of garlands hanging on painted columns that had long since flaked away, even a little Eros hovering on azure wings.

  Justin spent that day in trying to read Euripides, mainly because he felt that if he lent someone a thing that he loved as their plump host loved his Euripides, and they did not use it, he should be hurt. But he made poor progress with it. He had always hated and feared being shut up in any place from which he could not get out at will—that was from the day when the wine-shed door had swung to on him, when he was very small, and held him prisoner in the dark for many hours before anyone heard him. Last night he had been so drugged with weariness that nothing could have come between him and sleep. But now his consciousness of being caged in the narrow secret chamber, as surely as though the piled baskets over the entrance hole were a locked door, came between him and the story of Hippolytus, and took all the power and the beauty out of what he read.

  At evening their host returned, and remarked that as it was now dark and they were not likely to be disturbed, it might be that they would give him the pleasure of their company at supper. And after that, each night save once, when their supper was brought to them early by a boy with a sharply eager face and two front teeth missing, who introduced himself as ‘Myron that saw to everything’, they supped with the tax-gatherer behind closed shutters in the little house that backed on to the wall of the old theatre.

  Those winter evenings in the bright commonplace room, with Paulinus, as they found their host to be called, were completely unreal, but very pleasant. And for Justin they were a respite from the cage.

  For the small secret chamber was increasingly hard to bear. He began to be always listening, listening for voices in the courtyard and blows against the house door; even at night, when Flavius slept quietly with his head on his arm, he lay awake, staring with hot eyes into the darkness, listening, feeling the walls closing in on him like a trap …

  The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that one day quite soon—surely very soon now—Gaul lay at the end of it, like daylight and familiar things at the end of a strange dark tunnel.

  And then at last, on the fifth evening, when they were gathered as usual in the pleasant room behind its closed shutters, Paulinus said, ‘Well now, I am happy to tell you that moon and the tide both serving, everything is settled for your journey.’

  They seemed to have waited for it so long that just at first it did not sink in. Then Flavius said, ‘When do we go?’

  ‘Tonight. When we have eaten we shall walk out of here, and at a certain place we shall take up our friend of the Dolphin. The Berenice, bound for Gaul with a cargo of wool, will be waiting for us two miles westward along the coast, at moonset.’

  ‘So simple as that,’ Flavius said, with a smile. ‘We are very grateful, Paulinus. There doesn’t seem much that we can say beyond that.’

  ‘Hum?’ Paulinus picked up a little loaf from the bowl at the table, looked at it as though he had never seen such a thing before, and put it back again. ‘There is—ahem—a thing that I should very much like to ask you.’

  ‘If there is a thing—anything—that we can do, we will,’ Flavius said.

  ‘Anything? Will you, both of you—for I think that you count as one in this—let the Berenice sail for Gaul with only our friend of the Dolphin on board?’

  For a moment Justin did not believe that he had really heard the words; then he heard Flavius say, ‘You mean—stay behind, here in Britain? But why?’

  ‘To work with me,’ Paulinus said.

  ‘Us? But Roma Dea! what use should we be?’

  ‘I think that you would have your uses,’ Paulinus said. ‘I have taken my time, to be sure, and it is because of that that I can leave you so little time to decide … I need someone who can take command if anything happens to me. There are none of those linked with me in this—ahem—business whom I feel could do that.’ He was smiling into the red glow of the brazier. ‘We are doing really very good business. We have sent more than one hunted man out of Britain in these past few weeks; we can send word out of the enemy camp of such things as Rome needs to know; and when the Caesar Constantius comes, as I believe most assuredly he will, we may have our uses as—ahem—a friend within the gates. It would be sad if all that went down the wind because one man died and there was no one to come after him.’

  To Justin, staring at the flame of the lamp, it seemed bitterly hard. Gaul was so near now, so very near, and the clean daylight and familiar things; and this little fat man was asking him to turn back into the dark. The silence lengthened, began to drag. Far off in the night-time hush he heard the beat of mailed sandals coming up the street, nearer, nearer: the Watch patrol coming by. Every evening at about this time it came; and every evening at its coming, something tightened in his stomach. It tightened now, the whole bright room seemed to tighten, and he was aware, without looking at them, of the same tension in the other two—tightening and tightening and then going out of them like a sigh, as the marching feet passed by without a check. And it would always be like that, always, day and night; the hand that might fall on one’s shoulder at any moment, the footsteps that might come up the street—and stop. And he couldn’t face it.

  He heard Flavius saying, ‘Look for somebody else, sir; somebody better suited to the task. Justin is a surgeon and I am a soldier; we have our worth in our own world. We haven’t the right kind of make-up for this business of yours. We haven’t the right kind of courage, if you like that better.’

  ‘I judge otherwise,’ Paulinus said; and then, after a little pause, ‘It is in my mind that when the Caesar Constantius comes, you may be of greater worth in this business than you would had you gone back to the Legions.’

  ‘Judge? How can you judge?’ Flavius said desperately. ‘You have talked with us a little, on four or five evenings. No more.’

  ‘I have—ahem—something of a knack in such things. I find I am very seldom mistaken in my judgements.’

  Justin shook his head, miserably. ‘I’m sorry.’

  And Flavius’s voice cut across his in the same instant. ‘It’s no good, sir. We—must go.’

  The tax-gatherer made a small gesture with both hands, as one accepting defeat; but his plump pink face lost none of its kindliness. ‘I also am sorry … Nay then, think no more of it; it was unfair to put you to such a choice. Now eat; see now, time passes, and you must eat before you go.’

  But to Justin, at all events, the food which should have had the taste of freedom in it tasted like ashes, and every mouthful stuck in his throat and nearly choked him.

  Some two hours later they were standing, Justin and Flavius, the tax-gatherer and the Marine from the Dolphin, on the edge of a clump of wind-twisted thorn-trees, their faces turned seaward toward the small vessel that was nosing in under oars. The moon was almost down, but the water was still bright beyond the darkness of the sand dunes; and the little bitter wind came soughing across the dark miles of the marshes and low coast-wise grasslands, making a faint Aeolian hum through the bare and twisted branches of the thorn-trees. A gleam of light pricked out low down on the vessel’s hull, marigold light in a world of black and silver and smoky grey; and the tension of waiting snapped in all of them.

  ‘Ah, it is the Berenice, safe enough,’ said Paulinus.

  And the time for going was upon them.

  The Marine, who had been subdued and completely silent since they took him up at the agreed meeting-place, turned for a moment, saying ruefully, ‘I know not why you should have taken so great pains on my account; but I’m grateful. I—I don’t know what to say—’

  �
�Then don’t waste time trying to say it. Get along, man. Now get along, do,’ said Paulinus.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ The other flung up his hand in leave-taking, and, turning, strode away down the shore.

  Flavius said abruptly. ‘May I ask you something, sir?’

  ‘If you ask it quickly.’

  ‘Do you do this for adventure?’

  ‘Adventure?’ Paulinus sounded quite scandalized in the darkness. ‘Oh dear me, no, no, no! I’m not at all the adventurous kind; too—ahem—much too timid, for one thing. Now go quickly; you must not keep your transport waiting, with the tide already on the turn.’

  ‘No. Goodbye, then, sir; and thank you again.’

  Justin, a hand on his instrument-case, as usual, murmured something that sounded completely unintelligible, even in his own ears, and turned in behind Flavius, setting his face down to the shore.

  They overtook the Marine from the Dolphin, and together made their way down between the sand dunes to the smooth, wave-patterned beach below. The boat was waiting, quiet as a sea-bird at rest. At the water’s edge, Justin checked, and looked back. He knew that he was lost if he looked back, yet he could not help himself. In the very last of the moonlight he saw the stout little figure of Paulinus standing solitary among the thorn-trees, with all the emptiness of the marshes behind him.

  ‘Flavius,’ he said desperately, ‘I am not going.’

  There was a little pause, and then Flavius said, ‘No, nor I, of course.’ Then, with a breath of a laugh, ‘Did not Paulinus say that we counted as one in this?’

  The Marine from the Dolphin, already foot-wet, looked back. ‘Best hurry.’

  ‘Look,’ said Flavius. ‘It is all right. We are not coming. Tell them on board that the other two are not coming. I think they’ll understand.’

  ‘Well, it’s your own affair—’ began the other.

  ‘Yes, it’s our own affair. Good luck, and—best hurry.’ Flavius echoed him his own words.

  In the silence the tide made small, stealthy noises around their feet. They watched him take to the water, wading deeper and deeper until he was almost out of his depth as he reached the waiting vessel. They saw by the light of the lantern that he had been pulled on board. Then the lantern was quenched, and in complete silence the sails were set and the little vessel gathered way and slipped seaward, like a ghost.

  Justin was suddenly very much aware of the lap and hush of the ebbing tide, and the wind-haunted, empty darkness of the marshes behind him. He felt very small and defenceless, and rather cold in the pit of his stomach. They could have been slipping out to sea now, he and Flavius; by dawn they could have been at Gesoriacum; back once more to the daylight and the life they knew, and the fellowship of their own kind. And instead …

  Flavius shifted abruptly beside him, and they turned without a word and went trudging back through the soft dune-sand toward the figure waiting by the thorn-trees.

  XI

  THE SHADOW

  THEY handed one of Great-Aunt Honoria’s opal bracelets over to Paulinus for use, as it might be needed. They would have given him both, but he bade them keep the other against a rainy day; and Flavius took off the battered signet ring which was out of keeping with the sort of characters that they would be henceforth, and hung it on a thong round his neck, inside his tunic. And a night or two later, Justin asked Paulinus for leave to write to his father. ‘If I might write, once, to warn him that he will hear no more of me for a while.—I will g-give you the letter to read, that you may be sure I have betrayed nothing.’

  Paulinus considered a moment, and then gave a brisk nod. ‘Yes, there is wisdom in that; it may well save—ahem—awkward inquiries.’

  So Justin wrote his letter, and found it unexpectedly hard to do. He knew that it might quite likely be the last letter that ever he would write to his father, and so there were many things that he wanted to say. But he did not know how to say them. ‘If it should come to your ears that I left my post at Magnis,’ he wrote finally, after the bare warning, ‘and if that, and this letter, should be the last that ever you hear of me, please do not be ashamed of me, father. I have done nothing to be ashamed of, I swear it.’ And that was almost all.

  He gave the open tablet to Paulinus, according to his word, and Paulinus cast one vague glance in its direction and handed it back to him. And in due course it went off by a certain trader making the crossing in the dark; and Justin, feeling as though he had cut the last strand that held him to familiar things, turned himself, with Flavius, full face to this other, stranger life in which they found themselves.

  A strange life it proved to be, and full of strangely assorted company. There was Cerdic the boat-builder, and the boy Myron who had originally been caught by Paulinus trying to steal his purse; and Phaedrus of the Berenice, with his blue faience ear-drop; there was a government clerk in the Corn Office at Regnum, and an old woman who sold flowers outside the temple of Mars Toutate at Clausentium, and many others. They were linked together by nothing more definite than a snatch of tune whistled in the dark, or a sprig of common rye-grass tucked into a brooch or girdle-knot. Many of them, even those who lived in Portus Adurni, did not know the secret of the hole behind the lumber in Paulinus’s store-room, nor that other way—‘the Sparrow’s Way’ Paulinus called it when he showed it to Justin and Flavius—that started behind a low wall near the main entrance to the old theatre, and ended at those loose boards in the wall of the room where the painted Eros was. Yet in their odd way they were a brotherhood, none the less.

  Justin and Flavius lodged with Cerdic the boat-builder, earning their living at any kind of job that they could pick up around the town and the repair yards. That is, they did so when they were at Portus Adurni; but often, that winter, they were at Regnum, at Venta, at Clausentium. Justin, though not Flavius, who would have been too easily recognized even in his present guise, pushed as far north as Calleva more than once. Five great roads met at Calleva, and the Cohorts of the Eagles were forever passing and re-passing through the transit camp outside the walls; and in all the province of Britain there could have been no better place for keeping one’s eyes and ears open.

  Winter wore away, and Paulinus’s apple-tree was in bud. And upward of a score of men had been sent safely overseas; men who came to the Dolphin or to one or other of the meeting-places, wearing a sprig of rye-grass somewhere about themselves, saying, ‘One sent me.’

  Spring turned to summer, and the best apple-tree in the Empire shed its pink-tipped petals into the dark water of the courtyard well. And from his chief city of Londinium, the Emperor Allectus was making his hand felt. Those corn and land taxes, heavy but just in Carausius’s day, which men had expected would be lightened under Allectus, became heavier than ever, and were levied without mercy for the Emperor’s private gain. And before midsummer news was running from end to end of Britain that Allectus was bringing in Saxon and Frankish Mercenaries, bringing in the brothers of the Sea Wolves, to hold his kingdom down for him. Britain was betrayed indeed! Men said little—it was dangerous to say much—but they looked at each other with hot and angry eyes; and the trickle of those who brought their sprig of rye-grass to the Dolphin increased as the weeks went by.

  The first time Portus Adurni saw anything of the hated Mercenaries was on a day in July when Allectus himself came to inspect the troops and defences of the great fortress.

  All the town of Adurni turned out to throng the broad, paved street to the Praetorium Gate, drawn by curiosity and the exciting prospect of seeing an Emperor, even an Emperor they were coming to hate, and by the fear of Imperial displeasure if they did not make enough show of rejoicing.

  Justin and Flavius had found good places for themselves right against the steps of the little temple of Jupiter, where the Emperor was to sacrifice before entering the fortress. In the July sunlight the heat danced like a cloud of midges above the heads of the crowd,—a great crowd, all in their best clothes and brightest colours. The shops had hung out rich stuffs an
d gilded branches for a sign of rejoicing, and the columns of the temple were wreathed with garlands of oak and meadow-sweet, whose foam of blossom, already beginning to wilt, mingled its honey sweetness with the tang of garden marigolds and the sour smell that rose from the close-packed crowd. But over the whole scene, despite the festival garments, the bright colours and the garlands, there was a joylessness that made it all hollow.

  The two cousins were close against the Legionaries on street-lining duty; so close to the young Centurion in charge that when he turned his head they could hear the crimson horsehairs of his helmet-crest rasp against his mailed shoulders. He was a dark, raw-boned lad with a jutting galley-prow of a nose, and a wide, uncompromising mouth; and for some reason, perhaps because he was someone very much of their own kind, Justin took particular note of him.

  But now, far off up the Venta road, a stir arose, and expectancy rippled through the crowd before the temple. Nearer and nearer, a slow, hoarse swell of sound rolled toward them like a wave. All heads were turned one way. Justin, crushed against a particularly craggy Legionary, with a fat woman breathing down his neck, saw the cavalcade in the distance, swelling larger and clearer moment by moment. Saw the tall, gracious figure of the new Emperor riding in the van, with his ministers and staff about him, and the Senior Officers of the fortress garrison; and, behind him, the Saxons of his bodyguard.