The Silver Branch

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Justin was running with the rest; running and stumbling with a bursting heart across a seemingly endless expanse of sunlit cobbles, toward the refuge of the great East door that seemed to draw no nearer. They had a few moments’ start, for in the very wildness of their rush, undisciplined as they were, the Saxons had jammed themselves together in the gate arch, yelling, struggling, trampling over each other in wild confusion, and the band of desperate men were half across the Forum before Allectus’s wolves burst through like a flood released behind them. They were into the shadow of the basilica now, but the barbarians were hard on their heels. The great door was gaping before them, men massed at either side to shield their flanks and draw them in; and on the portico steps the hindmost of the Lost Legion whirled about, buckler to buckler, to do rearguard for the rest.

  Justin, his shoulder against Flavius’s shoulder, had a confused vision of a wave of barbarians sweeping toward them, winged and snarling heads and the evening light on spear and saex-blade and upswung axe. The forerunners of the wave were upon them, and he struck home over the rim of his buckler, and saw a man crumple down the portico steps, even as he felt the top step against his heel, and moved backward and up.

  ‘Sa, sa! We’ll just do it!’ Flavius shouted.

  The doors were three parts closed, leaving only room for their passage, as the two of them dropped their points and sprang back. And next instant, with the power of a score of shoulders behind them, the great carved timber leaves crashed shut, and the heavy bars were thrust into place.

  Outside in the Forum rose a yell of baffled fury, and a crashing of blows against the doors that echoed in the high, empty places of the vast building above the heads of the multitude huddled there. A tall man with an old uniform sword in his hand, who had been with them through the street-fighting, turned a haggard face to Flavius as he leaned a moment panting against the door. ‘In the name of all the gods, who are you?’ And then, ‘Roma Dea! It is young Aquila!’

  Flavius pushed off from the door. ‘Yes, sir. We’ll give you an account of ourselves later. Just now there’s not much time to spare. Help will be here soon, but we’ve got to hold the basilica till it comes.’

  He had stepped, naturally and inevitably, into the Command; and even in that moment of stress, it flashed into Justin’s mind with a glimmer of laughter that if they were not all killed in the next hour or so, Flavius would undoubtedly get his Legion one day.

  Flavius, knowing the basilica and its weak places as well as anyone there, was posting men to hold the main entrance and the small side doors, and in the Municipal offices and treasure-chambers that opened all down the long side of the hall opposite to the entrance; getting the women and children cleared away from the danger points. ‘Back, farther back here. We must have more fighting space.’ Posting guards in the galleries above the aisle of the great hall, to watch the high windows, in case the Saxons should seek to reach them by way of the colonnade roof.

  Justin never forgot that scene. There must have been eighteen hundred souls or more, slave and free, crowded into the basilica. The women and children, the old and the sick, huddled together around the feet of the columns, on the raised floor of the Tribunals at either end where in time of peace the Magistrates sat to deal justice, on the steps of the Council Chamber itself; while the men with their hastily snatched up weapons stood to the barred doors beyond which rose the wolf-pack yelling of the Saxon mercenaries. He saw huddled forms and strained white faces in the shadows; here a mother trying to comfort a frightened child, there an old merchant clutching the bag of jewels he had caught up in flight. There were family pets, too, and small pathetic family treasures. A little dark-eyed girl had a singing-bird in a cage, to which she talked softly all the while, and which hopped unconcernedly about, fluting a few notes from time to time above the yelling and the random thunder of blows against the carved timbers of the entrance.

  But Justin had little leisure to look about him. He was Flavius’s Second-in-Command, but also he was a surgeon; and just now the wounded—there were many wounded—needed him more than Flavius did; and he laid aside sword and buckler to do what he could for them. It was not much; there was no water, no bandage linen, and he must have help. Looking hurriedly round the great hall, his eye picked out a figure huddled in the shadows that he knew for the chief physician of the place. He called to him. ‘Balbus, come and help me, man.’ Then, as the huddled figure paid no heed, thinking that perhaps the man was deaf, he rose from his knee beside one of the wounded, and went quickly across to him. But when he stooped and set a hand on his shoulder, the other shied away from him and looked up with a face shining with sweat and the colour of lard, and began to rock himself to and fro. Justin dropped his hand and turned away with a feeling of mingled disgust and pity. No help to be found there.

  But in the same instant two women rose in his path, and he saw that the foremost was Aunt Honoria and the one just behind her was the enormous Volumnia.

  ‘Tell us what to do and we will do it,’ said Aunt Honoria, and it seemed to him that she was very beautiful.

  ‘Tear up your tunics,’ he said. ‘I want bandage linen; there are men here who will live if the bleeding is stopped and d-die if it isn’t. We must get the wounded together, too. Can’t see what there is to do, with them scattered all up and down the hall.’

  Other helpers were gathering to him before the words were well out; a stout wine-shop woman; a slave from the dyeworks with splashes of old dyes ingrained in skin and garments; a girl like a white flower, who looked as though she had never seen blood before, and many others.

  They got the wounded together before the North Tribunal, and at least there was no lack of stuff for bandages now; bandages of the coarsest homespun and the finest flower-coloured summer linen, as the women stripped off their outer tunics and tore them up to serve the need, and set to work with him in their shifts. Most of them knew how to deal with a sword-cut or a broken head, he found, and that left him free to attend to the more sorely hurt. Thank the gods he had his instrument-case!

  With the fair girl to help him, he had just finished getting a javelin-head out of the shoulder of one of the Otter’s Ford brothers, when the pounding against the main door, which had slackened a little as the barbarians found the money-changers and the wine-shops in the Forum, suddenly returned tenfold. A new yelling arose outside, unearthly in its savagery and insane triumph, and suddenly the smoke-dimmed sky beyond the clerestory windows was shot with fire. The great door shook and shuddered under the new onslaught—not now the mere random thunder of war-axes and light beams torn from the nearby shops, but something infinitely more deadly. The Saxon devils must have got into the timber yard nearby, and found there something to use as a ram.

  There was nothing more at the moment to be done for the wounded that could not be done as well by Aunt Honoria and the other women. Justin said to the pale girl, ‘Stay here with him whatever happens, and if the bleeding starts again, press where I showed you,’ and snatching up sword and buckler, ran for his place among the men at the main entrance. Flavius yelled to him above the rending thunder of the ram, to get up to the gallery and see what was happening. And a few moments later, scarcely aware of the steep stairs behind the Tribunal that he had taken two at a time, he emerged high above the nave of the basilica. The light was beginning to fade, sulphurous behind the rolling smoke; and when he peered out through the beautiful unglazed lattice-work of the nearest window, the whole Forum seemed a pit of fire. The Saxons, mad drunk on the contents of every wine-shop in Calleva, and raging not only for plunder, but for blood, with the savage, wild-beast frenzy of their kind, had dragged bits of timber from the burning buildings to spread the blaze, and were rushing to and fro, their makeshift torches streaming in mares’ tails of smoky flame behind them. They were flinging burning stuff against the basilica, heedless of who among their own kind it scorched. The Forum was full of looted gear, running with wine from broken jars and burst skins, the shops falling into red rui
n. And below, part hidden by the roof of the portico, part plain to see, a score of men were charging again and again at the main doors, swinging between them the great balk of timber—almost a whole tree-trunk—that they had found to serve them as a ram.

  Again the knot of barbarians charged forward, again came the crash of the tree-trunk against the door. The timbers could not stand long against such punishment; but surely any moment now help would come—help drumming up the road toward them, maybe already at the gates …

  ‘It can’t be long now,’ he said to himself as much as to Pandarus who was on guard at that end of the gallery.

  ‘Na, either way, it can’t be long now,’ said Pandarus; and looking quickly round at him, Justin saw that the old gladiator was happy—happy as he had not been since he won his wooden foil.

  For himself, Justin was not at all happy. The fighting over the open downs had been one thing, this was quite another. Somehow the surroundings of polished marble and finely wrought bronze, the whole atmosphere of a place meant for dignity and order and good manners, made what was happening horrible and grotesque, and his old horror of being in any place from which he could not get out at will was jibbering most unpleasantly at his elbow. He made some sort of hurried jest to Pandarus—he was never sure what it was—and turned and plunged down the stairs again.

  There was no need, no opportunity either, to tell Flavius what he had seen. The main door was going as he regained the hall; and above the splintering crash of the timbers and the sudden clash of blade on blade and the savage burst of shouting as attack and defence came together in the jagged and smoking breach, he heard the cry go up that the Saxons were breaking in from the rear into the main Court room.

  And without any clear idea in his head save that Flavius was in command at one danger point, and therefore his place was at the other, he found himself heading at the run for the new menace, with a handful of the Lost Legion at his heels.

  The outer door of the Court room had gone up in flames, and fiery smoke hung in a drifting haze above the heads of the fighters. And it came to his mind, even as he charged to the aid of the townsmen, that the basilica was now well on fire. Then a giant with bright hair streaming like the flames of the torches made for him, long-handled axe upswung for a mighty stroke; somehow he swerved from the path of the blow, and dived on, young Myron behind him and Evicatos at his shoulder with his great spear drinking deep.

  It was a desperate and a bloody business, fought out among the splintered wreckage of the solid Court-room furniture, while ever the smoke thickened overhead and the red glare strengthened on winged helmet and upswung blade. Many of the defenders were down with the first onslaught, while for every Saxon who fell it seemed that two more sprang in through the gaping doorway or down from the torn-out window-holes. And to Justin, struggling desperately for every inch of ground that he was forced to yield, it had begun to seem that they could not hold the barbarians back much longer from the main hall, from the women and the children and the wounded, when above the tumult his ear caught the thin sweet mockery of bells; and Cullen the Fool dived almost under his elbow into the trampling press. And suddenly above them in the rolling murk, blazing red-gold in the light of Calleva burning, was the wingless Eagle.

  The gods alone knew what had prompted little Cullen to bring them the Eagle, but the sense of increase was like wine, like fire, running not only through the band but through the townsmen who had not followed that battered standard before; and they steadied as though they had been reinforced by a Cohort of the Legions.

  But the next thing Justin saw was Cullen struggling breast to breast with a yellow-haired barbarian for possession of the Eagle! And even as he sprang sideways to the little man’s aid, he disappeared completely in the press; and a howl of rage burst from the Saxon, and the white-ash spear-shaft swung aloft, with the cross-piece still intact, but of the Eagle—never a sign.

  Something in Justin’s mind understood quite coolly that the age-corroded talons must have snapped under the strain upon them. And then, even as a roar of fury burst from his own men, there came a jingle of bells above the uproar, and a little figure sprang clear of the press, leaping for an overturned table, then up again—and Cullen was on the main house-beam above them, and in his hands the Eagle! He scrambled out along the beam on his knees, and crouched there, holding it high, the red light of the flames all about him, the Eagle burning in his hands like a bird of fire. And the cry of fury changed to shout on shout of fierce triumph, as the defenders once more closed their thinning ranks and drove forward.

  Next instant a flung spear caught the little Fool in the shoulder. He swayed and seemed to crumple up, like some small gaudy bird hit by a stone, becoming a mere bundle of bright feathers; but by a miracle he clung to his vantage point just long enough to set the Eagle firmly on the flat top of the beam. Then he toppled down into the very midst of the fight.

  Justin, with a fighting power he had not known he possessed until that moment, was crashing forward in one more desperate charge, sweeping the rest with him. ‘Cullen! Save Cullen!’ But it was Evicatos, the swan’s feathers of his great spear crimson now, who reached the spot first, ploughing forward into the very midst of the enemy to bestride the little crumpled body while the rest came battling on in his wake.

  And in that instant, above the tumult of the conflict, far off and infinitely clear and sweet, they caught the sound of Roman trumpets!

  The barbarians heard it too, and swayed back; and with a sound that was almost a sob, Justin drove in his charge; past Evicatos and on.

  When all was over, Evicatos still stood astride the body of the little Fool, beneath the Eagle on the house-beam; a great and terrible figure, red with his wounds from head to heel, like some hero out of one of the wild legends of his own people, like a Conal of the Victories.

  He steadied himself upright, and with one last superb effort, sent his beloved spear hurtling after the flying foe. But already the sure aim was gone from him, and the great spear missed its mark, and crashing into the stone column beyond the reeking doorway, shivered into fragments of iron and wood and blood-stained feathers on the pavement.

  ‘Sa. It is well,’ Evicatos said. He flung up his head, and there was a pealing triumph in his voice. ‘We go together, back to our own people, she and I.’

  And so crashed down headlong among the slain.

  Little Cullen had not a mark on him but the spear-gash in his shoulder and a cut over one eye, and was already whimpering back to life as they drew him out from under Evicatos’s body.

  Justin lifted him—he was so small that he could handle him quite easily—and turned to the inner doorway. Vaguely he heard someone ask about the Eagle, and shook his head. ‘Leave it. It has served its hour and must go back to the dark.’ And he carried Cullen out into the hall.

  The Nave of the basilica was full of smoke, and the rafters at the far end were well alight. Here also the fighting was over, and Flavius, with blood trickling from a gashed cheek, was struggling to call off his fighting men like a hunter calling off his hounds. ‘Leave them to the Cavalry! Leave them, lads; we’ve our work cut out here!’

  Justin carried the little Fool across to the North Tribunal, and laid him down among the rest. Aunt Honoria was beside him as he did so; and just behind her the girl like a white flower still knelt beside the farmer from the Otter’s Ford, with his head in her lap.

  The basilica was emptying swiftly, as the women and children were passed out into the wrecked Forum, but the roar of the fire was increasing every moment, and the tall man who had recognized Flavius was improvising a bucket chain from the well outside to keep the flames back from the Records Office and Treasury while the City’s gods were got out; it was hopeless to think of doing more—the fire had too big a hold. Justin, knotting off the bandage about Cullen’s shoulder, said to the physician, who, now that the fighting was over, had pulled himself together and come to his aid, ‘It is growing a bit warm. Time, I think, that we got this
lot outside.’

  There were many willing hands, and the task was soon accomplished, and Justin, who had remained inside himself until the last man was out, was about to follow, when something fell from the gallery above, from which the guards had by now been withdrawn, and landed with a plop beside him, and, glancing down, he saw that it was the crimson rose which Pandarus had picked in the temple garden only an hour or so ago. Instinctively he stooped to pick it up—and the crimson came off on his fingers.

  Next instant he was pounding up the gallery stairs, calling the gladiator by name.

  He thought he heard a groan, and then he burst out upon the narrow gallery. The western windows across the Nave were filled with a mingled glare of fire and sunset that streamed across, turning the smoke to a billowing, tawny fog. The nearest lattice on this side was broken in, and beneath it lay a dead Saxon, his short sword still in his hand, his hair outflung across the stained floor; and beside him Pandarus, who must have lingered behind the rest, leaned on one arm, while his life drained away from a red hole under his ribs.

  He raised his head with a twisted smile as Justin reached him, and gasped, ‘Habet! It is thumbs down for me at last.’

  One glance told Justin that the wound was mortal and the old gladiator could not last many moments. There was nothing he could do for Pandarus, nothing but stay with him through those few moments, and he crouched down and laid the other back against his knee. ‘Not thumbs down! That is for a beaten fighter,’ he said vehemently; then, as his gaze fell on the dead Saxon, ‘Euge! that was a fine stroke.’

  The rush of the flames was very near, the heat growing every moment more intense. Smoke billowed across Justin’s face, choking, suffocating him; and as he glanced over his shoulder, he saw that the floor of the gallery itself had caught, and the fire was writhing towards him. Below the windows, the roof of the Colonnade was crackling into flame; no going that way if the stairs caught … his heart was racing, and he was sweating with more than the heat. Here with a vengeance was the place from which he could not get out. Not while Pandarus lived.