The Lantern Bearers (book III)

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  He was aware of a sudden odd stillness in the man beside him. ‘Among them, your father,’ Brother Ninnias said.

  ‘Among them my father; betrayed to his death by a little rat-faced bird-catcher.’ Aquila almost choked.

  Brother Ninnias made a small, quickly suppressed sound, and Aquila whipped round to face him. For a long moment they remained looking at each other. Then Aquila said, ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I do not think that I said anything.’

  ‘You cried out—you know something of that bird-catcher. Something that I don’t.’ His eyes widened in the dusk, his lip stuck back a little over the dryness of his teeth. ‘Maybe you know where he is! Tell me—you shall tell me—’

  ‘So that you may be revenged on him?’

  ‘So that I may repay the debt,’ Aquila said in a voice suddenly hard and quiet with the intensity of his hating.

  ‘You are too late. The debt has been repaid.’

  ‘What do you mean? You’re trying to shield him because of your monkish ideas—but you know where he is, and you shall tell me!’

  He flung the willow basket aside, and caught the other man by the shoulders, shaking him, thrusting his own distorted face into the one that looked back at him as quietly as ever. ‘Tell me! By Our Lord, you shall tell me!’

  ‘Let me go,’ Brother Ninnias said. ‘I am as strong as you, possibly stronger. Do not make me put out my strength against one who has eaten my salt.’

  For a few moments Aquila continued to drag him to and fro; then he dropped his hands, panting. ‘Let you tell me where he is!’

  Brother Ninnias stooped and picked up his hoe and the willow basket. ‘Come over here,’ he said, and turned towards the nearest trees.

  Aquila hesitated an instant, staring after him with narrowed eyes. Then he strode forward after the broad, brown back. A wild suspicion of the truth woke in him, even before they halted among the first of the forest shadows, at a gesture from Brother Ninnias, and he found himself looking down at a long, narrow hummock of mossy turf under an oak tree.

  For a long time he remained, staring down at the grave. All the fury, all the hate, all the purpose had gone out of him. After a while he said in a dead-level voice, and still without looking up, ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I told you that sometimes God sends me a guest,’ Brother Ninnias said. ‘Nearly three years ago—aye, only a few nights after Rutupiae Light went out—God sent me one, sore pressed and very near to his end. A man escaped from the hands of Saxon torturers. I took him in and did for him what I could, but there is a limit beyond which the body cannot be hurt and live … For two nights he raved in fever, so that, sitting with him, I learned that he had been one of those who followed Ambrosius, one who had carried messages among the others, passing as a bird-catcher. And again and again he cried out against Vortigern’s torturers, that he could bear no more, and cried out that he had betrayed his fellows. On the third night, he died.’

  ‘Other men have died under torture, without speaking,’ Aquila said after a moment, in a hard, level voice.

  ‘All men’s spirits are not equally strong. Are you sure of the strength of your own?’

  Aquila was silent a long time, still staring down at the long hummock that seemed dissolving into the dusk. The grave of the man who had betrayed his father under torture, a man who had died because flesh and spirit had been torn apart by the Saxon torturers, and also, perhaps, because he did not wish to live. ‘No,’ he said at last. He had lost everything now—all that he had to love, and all that he had to hate—in three days. He looked up at last, and asked as a lost child might ask it, ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Now that you are robbed of an old hate; robbed of the tracking down and the vengeance?’ Brother Ninnias said, with a great gentleness.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think, if it were me, that I should thank God, and look for another service to take.’

  ‘I am not one for the holy life,’ Aquila said, with an ugly bitterness in his voice.

  ‘Nay, I did not think that you were. If you believe, as your father believed, that the hope of Britain lies with Ambrosius of the House of Constantine, let you take your father’s service on you.’

  For a long moment they stood facing each other across the bird-catcher’s grave. Then Aquila said, ‘Is it there to take? Surely the cause of the Roman party was finished nearly three years ago.’

  ‘It is not so easy to kill a cause that men are prepared to die for,’ Brother Ninnias said. ‘Come back to the evening food now, and eat, and sleep again; and in the morning let you go to young Ambrosius in Arfon.’

  Aquila turned his head to look westward, where the afterglow still flushed behind the trees and the first star hovered like a moth above the tree tops.

  ‘To Arfon,’ he said. ‘Yes, I will go to Arfon, and seek out this Ambrosius.’

  10

  The Fortress of the High Powers

  ALITTLE before sunset on an autumn evening, Aquila was leaning against the trunk of a poplar tree beside the gate of the principal inn of Uroconium, idly watching the broad main street, and the life of the city that came and went along it. Inn courtyards were good places; often there were odd jobs to be done for guests and a few coins to be earned. He knew; he had hung about inn courtyards all across Britain in the past few months. A yellow poplar leaf came circling down through the still air past his face, and added itself to the freckled, moon-yellow carpet already spread around his feet. But the evening was as warm as summer, with the still, backward-looking warmth that returns sometimes when summer is long past; and the little group of ladies who came out from the Forum gardens across the way wore only light wraps, pretty and fragile as flower petals, over their indoor tunics. One of them carried a late white rose-bud, and another sniffed at a ball of amber in her hand, and they laughed together, softly, as they went on up the street. A man came out through the Forum gate, with a slave behind him carrying his books. Maybe he was a lawyer. How odd that there were still towns where the Magistrates sat to administer the laws and discuss the water supply, and women walked abroad with balls of amber in their hands for its delicate fragrance. The town was shabby as all towns were, the walls that had gleamed so white against the distant mountains of Cymru, stained and pitted here and there with fallen plaster, the streets inclined to be dirty. But there were things to buy in the shops, and on the citizens’ faces a look of unawareness that made Aquila want to climb on to the mounting-block and cry out to them, ‘Don’t you know what is happening all round the coasts? Haven’t you heard?’

  ‘I suppose this is so far inland that they have never felt the Saxon wind blowing. But what hope can there be for us if only our coastwise fringes understand?’

  He did not realize that he had spoken the thought aloud, until a voice behind him said in heartfelt agreement, ‘The same question occurs to me from time to time,’ and he swung round to find a man standing in the courtyard gateway; a big man, with a plump, pale face spreading in blue, shaven chins over the dark neck-folds of his mantle, and eyes that were soft and slightly bulging like purple grapes.

  ‘You speak, I think, as one who has felt the Saxon wind blow somewhat keenly?’ said the man.

  ‘Aye,’ Aquila agreed.

  The full dark eyes moved in leisurely fashion from the white scar of the thrall-ring on his neck, down to his feet bound in dusty straw and rags, and up again to his face ‘ … And have walked far today.’

  ‘I am on a journey, and since I have no money for horse hire, I walk.’

  The man nodded, and slipped a hand into his girdle, and held out a sesterce. ‘So. This will at least give you a meal and a night’s shelter before your next march. I also have little love for the Saxon kind.’

  Aquila stiffened. He was hungry, and he had been hanging round the inn in the hope of earning the price of a meal; but earning, not begging. He could not afford pride, but it rose in his throat all the same. ‘Tell me what I may do to earn it.’

&nb
sp; The other smiled, raising his brows a little. ‘Some days ago I left a piece of broken mule-harness to be mended at the saddler’s by the West Gate; and since tomorrow I continue my own journey, I am in need of it. Do you go and fetch it for me.’

  ‘What name shall I tell them, so that they will give it to me?’

  ‘Say that Eugenus the Physician sent you to collect his mule-bridle that he left three days ago.’ He fished again in his girdle. ‘Here is some more money to pay for the mending. Now take the other without hurt to your pride.’

  And so, with the price of a meal stowed in the breast of his ragged tunic, Aquila set out for the West Gate.

  The saddler had not finished his work, so he got a meal in a cheap cook-shop while he waited; and it was near to dusk when he came again up the broad main street towards the inn, the mended bridle in his hand chiming with every step he took, for the fine crimson leather was hung with tiny bronze and silver bells. He had expected to hand the thing over to one of the inn slaves and go his way, but when he came into the courtyard, the man he spoke to jerked a thumb towards the outside stair that led to a kind of gallery and said with obvious disapproval: ‘You’re to take it up yourself, he says. It’s the first door at the head of the stair; you can’t miss it.’

  So Aquila went up the stairs, and turned to the first door he came to, and a few moments later, having knocked and been bidden to enter, he stood in a small chamber shadowy with mingled dusk and candlelight, that looked into the inn courtyard. Eugenus, who was standing at the window, looked round as he entered. ‘Ah, you have brought it, then.’

  ‘Did you think that I had run off with it? It must be worth quite a handful, with all those little chiming bells.’ Aquila laid the gay harness across the foot of the sleeping-couch, and a small bronze coin on the table beside the wine-flask that stood there. ‘I would have come back sooner, but it was not finished, and I had to wait. There is a denarius change from the money that you gave me to pay for it.’

  Eugenus took up the coin, looked at Aquila a moment, as though wondering whether to offer it to him, and then returned it to his girdle and reached instead for the wine-flask and a cup of faintly honey-coloured glass. ‘I did not think that you had run off with it, no. I think that you have eaten since I saw you last, and therefore it will do you no harm to drink before you go.’

  Aquila was suddenly on his guard, his reason telling him that Eugenus was not the type of man to be asking every chance, dusty wayfarer he met into his chamber to drink with him. He demanded bluntly, ‘Why did you leave word that I was to bring the harness up to you myself, and why do you seek to keep me here, now that I have brought it?’

  Eugenus poured out the wine before he answered, and pushed the wine-cup across the table. ‘For a very simple and a very innocent reason. I am interested in people—in interesting people, that is to say.’

  Aquila frowned. ‘You find me interesting?’

  ‘I—think so, yes.’ The physician lowered himself on to the couch and leaned back, fingering his stomach as gently and sensitively as though it were somebody else’s, with a pain in it. But his eyes never left Aquila’s face. ‘You have a very bitter face, my young friend, and I think that it was not always so. Also there are about you certain contradictions. You are—forgive me—extremely ragged and dusty, and carry what looks very much like the scar of a Saxon thrall-ring on your neck; you are without the price of a meal; yet when I proffer you a sesterce in charity, you stiffen, and give me to understand that if you may earn it, and not otherwise, you will do me the favour of accepting it. And all the while you wear on your hand a signet ring that would pay for many meals.’

  ‘It was my father’s ring, and it is not for sale,’ Aquila said.

  ‘Your father being dead, I take it? Maybe at the Saxons’ hands?’

  Aquila was silent a moment, facing the questing interest in the full, dark eyes. His mouth was tight and hard. ‘My father was killed by the Saxon kind, three years ago,’ he said at last, ‘and I was carried off into thraldom. My father’s ring came to me again in a way that does not matter to anyone save myself. I escaped from the Saxon camp on Tanatus and now I am on a journey. Does that answer all your questions?’

  Eugenus smiled; a smile that was big and slow like himself; but there was all at once a new alertness in his gaze. ‘What an inquisitive creature I am. This journey—where does it lead you?’

  ‘Westward, into the mountains.’

  ‘So. That is a long journey. It is all of two hundred miles from Venta to the Mountains.’

  Aquila, who had taken up the cup of wine, set it down again with great care, as though he were afraid of spilling it. He felt exactly as though he had been jolted in the stomach, and the memory of the terrace steps at home and the sharp brown face of the bird-catcher sprang out before his inner eye. There was a long silence, and then he looked up. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘To see if the phrase meant anything to you, and it does, doesn’t it?’

  ‘My father was one of Ambrosius’s men; it was so that he died by Vortigern’s order,’ Aquila said harshly. ‘What made you guess that the old password would mean anything to me?’

  Eugenus made a deprecating gesture of one hand—a plump hand, unexpectedly small for such a big man. ‘Oh, it was nothing so definite as a guess. Merely the wildest arrow loosed in the dark, that could do no harm if it missed its target.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Aquila demanded.

  ‘I was personal physician to Constantine when he ruled in Venta Belgarum. Now I serve Ambrosius his son in the same capacity, and occasionally, as at present, as a strictly unofficial envoy.’

  There was another silence, and then Aquila said, ‘Do you believe in blind chance?’

  ‘Meaning, do I believe it was by blind chance that you, on your way, as I take it, to lay your sword—if you had one—at Ambrosius’s feet, should fall in with Ambrosius’s envoy in the gateway of the Golden Grapevine at Uroconium?’

  Aquila nodded.

  Eugenus puckered his lips a little. ‘Blind chance has about it, somehow, the ugly sound of despair; a world without form or meaning. Let us say that if it was chance, it was a kindly one. For me a most fortunate one; for tomorrow, having completed my mission here, or rather, failed to complete it with any success—as you say, this is so far inland that they have not felt the Saxon wind blowing—I return to Ambrosius in the mountains. And since I am by nature a sociable creature, I shall be delighted to have company on the road.’

  The river rushed and sang and dawdled beside the track, and on either side the mountains soared upwards, out of the tawny woodlands into bare, mist-scarfed rock and fading bell heather. The clop of the mule’s hooves and the jingle of little bells that seemed out of place in the great solitude nagged at Aquila’s ears as he trudged beside the beast on which Eugenus rode. Eugenus sat slumped in the saddle, sighing and snorting. He was soft; one of those unfortunates who never seem to get hardened by the things that harden and toughen most people; but his spirit rose above the flabbiness of his big body: Aquila had learned that in the week and more that they had travelled together.

  A week and more that had brought them up from Uroconium among its orchards and water-meadows, into the wild heart of the Arfon Mountains. ‘Eryri, the Home of the Eagles,’ Eugenus had said when first they saw the distant mass of interlocking peaks against the sunset, with Yr Widdfa standing like a king in their midst, and Aquila thought that the name was a fitting one.

  Presently the valley opened before them, and the track dipped to skirt the alder-grown fringes of a lake. Faint mist hung over the water, rising already among the alders, and creeping up the glens and corries of the far mountain-sides that were already blue with the first twilight of the autumn evening. Rising out of the mist, as he looked away southward beyond the foot of the lake, Aquila saw a great, round hill standing boldly out from the mountains behind, as though to close the valley; and caught even at that distance the trace of rampart walls that lay like a co
iled snake about and about and about the huge, up-thrusting mass of it.

  ‘Ah-h-h!’ Eugenus heaved a gusty and heartfelt sigh of relief. ‘Dynas Ffaraon! And never did I see a more welcome sight, for I am saddle-sore from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.’ And then, glancing about him at the mist creeping up over the matted heather and bog myrtle, ‘Also I think that we have arrived just in time, for poor, fat, comfort-loving creature that I am, I have no liking for riding blind in one of our mountain mists.’

  Aquila nodded, his gaze fixed on the fortress hill that seemed to close the valley. ‘And so that is Ambrosius’s stronghold,’ he said, and there was both wonder and a faint distrust in his tone.

  ‘That is Ambrosius’s stronghold from the autumn round again to the spring. It was old before the Legions drove their first road through the mountains to build Segontium on the coast, and has served many princes in its time.’ Eugenus gave him a glance of amused understanding. ‘You find it not to your liking?’

  ‘Maybe it was well enough for some wild mountain princeling of the old time,’ Aquila said.

  ‘But not for Ambrosius the son of Constantine, the last hope of Britain? You must realize that this old hill fortress has always been the ruling-place of the Lords of Arfon, and as such it has a power in men’s minds that Segontium of the Legions could never have; though it is to Segontium that he calls his young men for training in the summer. Not for nothing is it called Dynas Ffaraon, the Fortress of the High Powers … Also let you not forget that it was from this hill fort that Constantine came down in his day, to drive the Saxons into the sea.’