Beyond the Wall

by Tanya Landman

  But Cassia and Marcus were not. They hadn’t reached their journey’s end. Fate and Fortune had not finished with them. Indeed, their game had barely begun.

  Cassia had one leg over the side when, without warning, the wind balled itself into a mighty fist and thumped the vessel so hard it reared like a horse from the sand. At that selfsame moment Neptune sent a great wave crashing onto the beach, scattering people, hurling them to the ground, washing through the ship, then lifting it, tugging it back out to sea.

  Crew and villagers were too busy saving themselves from the sucking waves to do anything about the ship.

  Marcus and Cassia were carried away on a vessel that neither of them knew how to steer. He crouched in the stern, appalled, so horrified that he could neither think nor act. Cassia was on her feet, struggling to raise the sail. But it whipped and snapped and the rope slid through her hands, burning the flesh. And then there was a loud crack. A scream of timber as the mast split along its length and came crashing down.

  They were helpless. Tossed like a leaf on a mountain stream. Adrift. Marcus prayed. To Neptune. To Jupiter. To the Christian god. To the spirits who spoke to Rufus. To any divine power who would listen.

  Whether Cassia’s gods mocked her, or the gods of Rome were laughing in his face, Marcus didn’t know. The ship didn’t founder on the rocks, and that was, he supposed, some mercy. But through wind and rain he could see that they were being pushed further away from the shore. And then – oh gods, no! – cliff by cliff, bay by bay – they were being driven south along the coast.

  It was not in sight. Not yet. But he knew that with each clap of thunder, with each bolt of lightning, with each howling gust of wind, they were being taken nearer to the wall.

  How long they were tossed on monstrous waves, Marcus didn’t know. The length of that night and the whole of the following day, certainly. Then another. Whether there was a third or a fourth, he couldn’t tell. Time meant nothing. They had entered Hades and could see neither sun, nor moon, nor stars. Marcus stopped fearing that they’d be washed from the deck, or that the vessel would go down. He was numb to the core. As was Cassia. All they could do was cling to each other.

  And then one morning they woke to find they had run aground. Overnight they had been swept into the mouth of a river and carried upstream. The ship had beached itself on mud flats as the tide ebbed.

  They were alive.

  But they were on the wrong side of the river. The wrong side of the wall.

  Occupied territory.

  Marcus and Cassia prised themselves apart. As the horror of their new situation revealed itself to them, they exchanged a look.

  “We got through the wall before,” Cassia said. “We can do it again.”

  “Of course we can,” agreed Marcus.

  They lied to each other with reassuring smiles. But both knew that the last time they made the crossing the soldiers had been bribed to look the other way.

  Fortune’s wheel had spun. The goddess had turned her back on them.

  It was impossible to believe that they would truly escape this time.

  III

  Every soul in every town the entire length of the wall knew that a red-haired Briton and a Roman were being sought. The dye that had concealed Cassia’s colouring had worn off as they’d travelled through Germania. It was a flaming beacon of scarlet to anyone who saw it. Every soul knew there was a price on their heads. And so it didn’t take long for word to reach Titus Cornelius Festus that the soothsayer had been right. Marcus Aurelius Aquila had walked into town. And Cassia was with him.

  They had trudged the length of that day and it had rained without ceasing. They were chilled. Frozen half to death. Sodden, dizzied by hunger. When they reached the outer edges of the small frontier town, they stopped in a tavern with a roaring fire. They had no money, but the innkeeper seemingly took pity on them. They had not even begun to eat the stew his wife put before them when Titus Cornelius Festus arrived.

  Cold, dazed, immensely weary, Marcus and Cassia only realized they were surrounded when the innkeeper suddenly left the room. They turned. Stood.

  Ten men, built like gladiators. Not Red Crests. Not slaves. Hired thugs, whose only loyalty was to the purse they would earn for Cassia’s capture. Ten men against Marcus. And Cassia. And they with only their two knives to defend themselves.

  They heard Titus approach before they saw him. A wheezing, as though each breath might be his last. A rank stench of sickness.

  When the circle of men parted and Titus Cornelius Festus squeezed between them, Marcus could see that Cassia’s former master was close to dying from the disease that his own vices had brought down upon his head. And yet a creature teetering on the brink of death is at its most dangerous.

  “Marcus Aurelius Aquila, I believe!” said Titus. “You have delivered her at last! I’d begun to think you were dead. What took you so long, man?”

  The sight of her former master dizzied Cassia. Revulsion washed over her so strongly she was almost knocked off her feet by it. She found herself clinging to Marcus for support.

  Her gesture wasn’t lost on Titus Cornelius.

  His eyes narrowed. He was angry. Incensed. But there was no shadow of suspicion about Marcus’s treachery to Rome. Not yet.

  “Is that how it is?” Titus Cornelius looked from Marcus to Cassia. “Gods, have you had her? Have you been making free with my property?”

  From the corner of his eye Marcus could see that Cassia’s right hand was creeping up her left arm, fingers slowly inching towards her knife. She was not beaten yet. But if any of them saw what she was doing, it would all be over. He needed to keep their eyes on him and him alone.

  “Cassia is not yours,” he told Titus.

  “You’ve had her!” The man exploded with fury. “You were supposed to bring her back a virgin. You’ve soiled my goods!”

  “What of it? What she did, she did of her own free will.”

  “Free will? What rubbish is this? You think she’s yours now? You will pay a mighty price if you think to buy her.”

  “Cassia belongs to no one.”

  “You swore to return her!”

  “I did.” Marcus nodded solemnly. “On my father’s honour.”

  “Well then.”

  A pause. A grin. “He has none.”

  “What?”

  “The oath is worthless.”

  Marcus held up his arms, showing the newly made marks at his wrists.

  Whether their significance was understood by Cassia’s former master was hard to tell. He made no reply. Because at that moment she spun on her heel. With one flick of her wrist her blade darted across the room, and into the throat of Titus Cornelius Festus.

  IV

  The look of surprise on his face would have been comical if there had not been so much blood in him. It spurted from the wound in his neck, hitting the whitewashed wall, turning the world red.

  Marcus had his knife ready. They could not hope to win, but gods, he would slay as many of Titus’s henchmen as he could!

  But hired thugs do not do the job they are paid for when the man with the money has died. Hired thugs are more inclined to rip the purse from his dead waist, to tug the rings from his hands, strip his body of valuables and disappear into the night before the watch know anything untoward has occurred. The paid henchmen of Titus Cornelius Festus did not lay a finger on Cassia or Marcus.

  Yet a citizen of Rome cannot be killed in a public tavern without consequences. Cassia and Marcus were barely out of the door when the innkeeper looked in and saw the blood dripping down the wall, the knife protruding from a Roman throat. He gave a shout. Just one. But it was taken up, passed from mouth to mouth. Then came the clanging of the alarm bell. In the distance, there was the noise of the garrison being roused to action.

  And if the soldiers had awoken, so had the people of the town. Drawn out of their houses by the commotion, they poured into the streets.

  Cassia and Marcus ran, but each path
they took was blocked. There was a price on their heads, and no one yet knew that the man who would have paid it was dead.

  There was no getting out of the town. Lane by lane, path by path, they were being backed towards the wall. It loomed behind them. The only way through was the gates – a vast pair, as tall as two men – but they were shut and barred. The crowd surged forwards, and there was nothing Cassia and Marcus could do and nowhere for them to go but up the stone steps that led to the top of the wall.

  They stumbled, slipped, clambered, leaped and soon both were standing outlined against the sky.

  Below them, native Britons. Slaves.

  And behind the townspeople, the Red Crests. Soldiers, baying for the rebels’ blood.

  Orders were given. Weapons were drawn. Blades glinting in torchlight. But they could not advance.

  The crowd would not part to let the soldiers through.

  There was a whispering.

  “It’s her!”

  “She’s come!”

  “The Roman’s with her.”

  “Did you see his wrists? He’s changed sides!”

  “He’s one of us!”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Why are they here?”

  “What are they up to?”

  And then Marcus realized that he and Cassia hadn’t been chased through the town by an angry mob. They’d been followed. The crowd below was hushed. Expectant. Waiting for something.

  Cassia was quicker to grasp the situation than he’d been. Her voice rang out. “Britons! Slaves! Cut your bonds. Seize your chance. You are your own masters now.”

  Silence. Then whispering. The whispering became a murmuring. And then some in the crowd started pointing to the hills beyond. The soldiers were looking there too.

  Marcus and Cassia turned.

  A flame had appeared on the crest of the nearest hill.

  A small figure, on horseback, holding a torch high above his head.

  He was a long way away, but even at that distance Cassia knew it was her brother.

  Below her the murmuring changed to shouting. Rufus was moving his torch. Slowly, slowly he swung it in an arc to the left. Another flame flared.

  He raised it again. Moved it to his other side. And at his right a third torch was lit.

  The crowd stood transfixed. Three torches held motionless on the hill. A moment of silence. And then Rufus threw back his head and howled like a wolf.

  The cry was taken up, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen men, baying for blood as the torch-bearers either side of Cassia’s brother swung their flaming sticks through the air, and ignited two more.

  Torch by torch, lights flared, until a line of flames across the hill cut the night in two.

  And then the chanting started. Warriors. Calling Cassia’s name.

  The people of her tribe had heeded her brother’s visions. Their moment had come.

  Native Wolf. Roman Eagle. Together on the wall, exactly as Rufus had foretold. Cassia, with the flames behind her as Marcus had glimpsed in the smoke. Her red hair, cut short, standing in spikes, framing her head like a halo. Or a crown. Torches held aloft, the Wolf People’s warriors began to advance towards the wall.

  “An attack!” called a voice in the crowd.

  “Rebellion!” cried another.

  “War!”

  There was a moment of silence.

  The soldiers began to push their way forward. But the crowd still would not let them pass. Men and women packed together, standing their ground. Protecting Cassia. Protecting Marcus. Holding back the Red Crests’ advance.

  Yet there were other soldiers on the wall. Two, three, more – coming from either side. They would reach Cassia and Marcus long before the warriors of her tribe could save them.

  The two of them stared down into the darkness on the other side.

  They regarded each other. Smiled.

  “We might die.”

  “We might live.”

  “We do it together.”

  Hand in hand, they jumped.

  V

  And so the story ends. With a birth or a death. Sometimes both.

  Sometimes neither.

  I am a singer of songs, a weaver of words, a spinner of stories.

  A dreamer of visions. A shaman.

  When I was a boy, I saw the truth long before it happened. Cassia, on the wall, rousing Britannia from her sleep.

  My sister was the spark that lit the fire. Slaves rose against their masters. Britons joined with Saxons to contest the might of Rome. Some took weapons and fought in the front line of battle. Others worked secretly in the shadows. It was a rebellion that burned for a year and was then extinguished.

  Or so the Romans said.

  In truth, it was never properly doused. The embers smouldered. From time to time they flared and were dampened, only to flare again. On and on it went. It has taken most of the years of my life, but Rome has fallen. The Empire is dead.

  Some said that Cassia was the beginning of the end. She, and the Roman Eagle she had bewitched. I would agree.

  But how did they do it? What was their fate? Did they survive that jump from the wall?

  What of Phoebe? Did she find her way to Cassia’s people? Her children – did they grow up free? Did they, in turn, fight Rome?

  I am an old man now, and weary. My voice grows weak. The fire burns low. I do not choose to answer.

  I will say only this.

  They lived until they died. All of them. And all of them played their part.

  But wars and warriors, blood and brutality: these are subjects that do not interest this particular wordsmith. There is neither beauty nor poetry in battle. To hear that tale, you must find a different teller.

  Or you must dream it for yourself.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  It’s hard to say precisely what triggers the idea for a book or story. With Beyond the Wall it was several different things over a long period of time.

  It started when I first saw Hadrian’s Wall. I was probably around seven or eight and we were on our way to Scotland when we stopped off to look at the ruins. There was something magnificent about that extraordinary feat of engineering. But there was also something haunting about looking over to the other side, knowing that this was where the Roman Empire had ended: that “civilization” had come this far, but no further. We must have been doing the Romans at school because I could picture the soldiers standing along the top of it very clearly. I could imagine them – so far from home – looking out across the bleak, barren lands beyond, fearing an attack.

  I also grew up with the story of Boudica. Every time we went to London, I saw her statue on the Embankment. The image of a woman in a chariot – a warrior queen leading her people in battle against the Romans – caught my imagination.

  I was fascinated by the idea of the Roman Empire. I wouldn’t have been able to put it into words then, but I also felt disturbed by it. I could see there was a splendour to the architecture, a magnificence in the art, but it seemed to me that there was also an arrogance: an absolute conviction in Roman superiority. Maybe the Empire was well and good if you were top of the pile, but suppose you weren’t? Suppose you were one of the oppressed, the colonized, the enslaved? Life would have been very different.

  Years later – whilst researching for Buffalo Soldier – I came across a lot of stories of slave escapes in America’s Deep South. I was reading widely about slavery throughout history and came across a line that said that the difference between the situation for slaves in the USA and in the Roman Empire was that in Roman times slaves had nowhere to run to. I remembered that first sight of Hadrian’s Wall and the land beyond and the idea began to grow in my head.

  I started to read and wonder more about Roman Britannia. And then I came across the Great Conspiracy when, in AD 367, slaves rose against their masters. That year a Roman garrison on Hadrian’s Wall rebelled and allowed “savages” to come pouring through from one side of the wall to the other. Native tribes uni
ted with Saxons from Germania and attacked in different parts of Britannia.

  The rebellion was defeated but never entirely crushed. Trouble continued to flare along the Empire’s borders until, in AD 409, the Romans finally withdrew from Britannia.

  We don’t know the “barbarians’ ” side of the story because they had an oral rather than a written tradition. Frustrating for historians, perhaps, but perfect for a novelist. In this book, I have played fast and loose with strict historical accuracy. Beyond the Wall is simply an imagined evocation of what might have happened and how it might have felt to have been part of something like the Great Conspiracy.

  Books by the same author

  For older readers

  Hell and High Water

  Buffalo Soldier

  The Goldsmith’s Daughter

  Apache

  For younger readers

  Poppy Fields Murder Mysteries series

  Sam Swann’s Movie Mysteries: Zombie Dawn!!!

  Sam Swann’s Movie Mysteries: Tomb of Doom!!!

  Flotsam and Jetsam

  Flotsam and Jetsam and the Stormy Surprise

  Flotsam and Jetsam and the Grooof

  Waking Merlin

  Merlin’s Apprentice

  The World’s Bellybutton

  The Kraken’s Snore

  Mary’s Penny

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published in Great Britain 2017 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2017 Tanya Landman

  The right of Tanya Landman to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988