Conscience of the King

by Alfred Duggan

  After dinner I felt very brave, and decided that my best plan was to walk boldly up to the King’s house in Durovernum and tell him that I was a Roman exile come to join his war-band; though perhaps it would be wiser not to tell him the reason for my flight. That evening I came to the first cultivated fields, where the barbarians dwelt in security. I saw a little hut standing by itself; for these savages are exceedingly morose, and dislike the company of their fellows. I made plenty of noise, to show that I came in peace, and a man with a spear came out to see what I wanted. I had a few silver coins, and I offered to pay for a hot supper and a place by the fire; he gave me food willingly, but refused to let me come inside. However, the night was fine and warm.

  I set off cheerfully next morning. The way led through fields and farms that looked very strange to Roman eyes; for the Germans use a big plough with two wheels and a deep share, drawn by a great number of oxen; as this unwieldy contraption is very difficult to turn, their ploughlands are made long and narrow. They are also great axemen, and think nothing of clearing the densest bush, so that the whole appearance of any land where they have settled down to farm is quite unlike a Roman province. The land appeared to be thickly populated; but though I saw many people no one spoke to me or inquired where I was going, and this I found later was a foible of all the Saxons. They think it dignified to ignore strangers, and not even to be interested in the news; this they call minding their own business, and it makes it very easy for outlaws to wander through their land.

  By evening I had come to the hill-side that overlooks Durovernum in its marshy valley. The Roman walls had not been very strong, for the citizens had relied on their water defences; of course the town had been burnt when it changed hands, but a certain amount of stonework remained, and this had been patched with plaster and timber; judging by the smoke from the hearths there seemed to be few people living in it at present, but even so the stench from its dung-heaps could be smelt on the hilltop. It did not look a pleasant city to dwell in while I rose to wealth and independence, but I had no choice in the matter; I straightened my back and walked steadily downhill to the gap in the wall that served for a gate.

  A spearman was scratching himself by the entry, and he asked me who I was and what was my business. I told him politely, in my best German, that I was an independent warrior who was tired of raiding alone, and that I had come to Durovernum to join the ever-victorious war-band of the mighty Hengist.

  ‘We don’t take every robber who applies to join us,’ the sentry answered in a grudging tone. ‘In any case you are late for the fair, comrade. King Hengist died last night, and we haven’t yet decided who is to be the next King of the Kent-folk. But you look tired and travel worn; you may come into the city, if you feel brave enough. Only remember the King’s peace dies with the King, so be watchful of strangers.’

  ‘Thank you, noble warrior,’ I replied, still being very humble and polite. ‘But there must be some sort of authority in the city at the present moment, or why are you on guard at the gate?’

  He looked at me with more respect, and answered in a friendly tone: ‘As a matter of fact, there is more law and order than you might expect. We Jutes are a civilized people, not like those Anglian savages, and really the succession to the throne is arranged. To-morrow we shall elect Oisc, the noble son of the mighty Hengist, and I am here to keep out any other candidate who might prove troublesome on election day. You don’t look like a dangerous competitor, and you may come in and welcome. But if anyone murders you to-night your family would not be able to bring suit for compensation. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  I thanked him and entered the city. There was still an hour of summer daylight, and I thought I would walk round the town and choose a quiet place to spend the night. Inside the flimsy and battered wall the place was not so deserted as it had appeared from the hill-top, and nearly all the men in the streets were fully armed warriors. I saw some shabby and depressed Romans of the lowest class; of course barbarians could not hope to keep a town habitable at all without the help of civilized craftsmen, and we had heard in Anderida that Hengist had enslaved a few masons and carpenters, to patch up the ruined houses and make the sort of furniture that Germans admire; I suppose it was better than having your throat cut, but they did not seem to be leading a happy life. It would be extremely awkward if the new King decided to add me to their number, and I made up my mind to say nothing about my Roman citizenship.

  I walked humbly in the gutter that ran along the middle of the street, and gaped at the houses like any newly-landed German; it was most important that I should not get involved in a quarrel before I had hidden my treasure in a safe place. But as I walked along I was challenged by a burly warrior with a most ferocious beard.

  ‘Now then, young man,’ he shouted. ‘Who are you, and where do you come from? More important still, have you paid your entry-tax at the wall? I am pretty sure you haven’t, from the look of you. Never mind, just hand over your purse to me, and I will fix it with the guard. Look sharp now, and don’t argue,’ and he put his hand to his sword.

  This was very unfortunate. I turned and ran as fast as I could, and several bystanders joined in chasing me. I thought this was the end, for I must soon be cornered in a strange town; but in the distance I saw a little group of men, with one well-dressed warrior walking in front. It has always been my experience that good leaders in war dislike unnecessary killing, while a supreme ruler is usually more merciful than his underlings. On the spur of the moment I ran straight up to him, and threw myself at his feet.

  My pursuers halted a few yards away, evidently in awe of this personage. They began to explain that I was a notorious bandit and outlaw, who had refused to pay the just and necessary taxation of their glorious town; but he shouted to them to keep quiet, and ordered me to give an account of myself. However, he did not listen attentively, and some of his comrades suggested that it would be amusing to watch me being killed in the street. I could see that he had not made up his mind, and I realized that my only chance was to win his favour at once. I opened the bag that hung from my shield, and held out to him the golden Chalice. At the same time I called out in a loud voice:

  ‘This is one of the great treasures of the Welsh. I took it from their principal town, and escaped after killing many of its guardians. I thought it would make a fitting gift for the ever-victorious Hengist, and now that he is dead there is no one more worthy to receive it than yourself, his rightful successor.’ I had guessed that this must be Oisc, son of the late King.

  Everyone exclaimed at the cup, and though of course Oisc could have taken it and had me slain into the bargain, he preferred to give me a present in return. He unpinned a golden brooch from his cloak, and placed it on my shoulder. I joined his comrades without another word, for now we were bound by mutual gifts, and by German ideas that made us friends for life; or at least until we quarrelled.

  That was how I entered the comitatus of the King of the Kent-folk, and the fact that I joined it before he was made King gave me a status superior to the hundreds of others who made obeisance to the new sun after it had safely risen.

  We lived a rather nerve-racking communal life among several of the least damaged buildings of Durovernum, which they called Cantwaraburh – the town of the Kent-folk; it was probably the only city in the world whose inhabitants were German. The Kent-folk themselves were of many different races; in oratory, which these barbarians will spin by the mile, they called themselves Jutes, but when they were not being pompous Kentish was a handy collective name for all the assorted mongrels who had come to seek their fortunes in the new land. About the only thing they had in common was that they all spoke various dialects of German, so my accent was not noticed. My position as a newcomer, but one who had exchanged unusually splendid gifts with his lord, was somewhere among the middle ranks of the comitatus, and if I did well in battle I might easily become one of the leaders. There was another thing in my favour; the day after Oisc was elected King I wen
t to the chief poet of the court, to explain to him my pedigree. I told him that my family had lived in Britain for several generations, but my story was that we had never become Romanized, and that as soon as I was old enough to go to war I had sought out the greatest German King in Britain; actually I was twenty-three, but my newly-sprouting beard (no one in Kent shaved) made me look younger, and he accepted my tale. Furthermore, he did not doubt the account I gave him of my ancestors; he was able to check the earlier names, before King Fraomar of the Buccinobantes had come to Britain. The whole thing was in a kind of metrical chant, in very antiquated German full of obsolete words, and in short not the kind of story a liar would make up. In the end he said:

  ‘Young man, I believe you are truly Woden-born, as you say. But we must do something about your name; the comrades will never get their tongues round Coroticus, son of Eleutherus, and it doesn’t sound right for a Woden-born warrior. I shall call you Cerdic Elesing, which is near enough, and might be good German.’ I have been Cerdic Elesing, which means son of Elesa, ever since.

  I have said that our communal life was rather nerve-racking. This was because the comrades were always quarrelling among themselves, principally to show how brave they were. The penalty for drawing a weapon at the King’s court was death; so nobody ever was killed in these quarrels, but men used to wrestle and strike one another with their fists all day long. I did my best to keep out of these fights, for I have never seen the point of getting hurt merely to win glory; though once I was compelled to bite off a man’s ear to make them leave me alone. In the end they accepted me as a quiet sort of chap, without ambition to make a name in the world, and if I did not make any close friends, I had no particular enemies.

  I have never been a heavy drinker, not because I think it isn’t fun, but because a man with bleary eyes and a shaking hand does not live very long in a comitatus; my comrades had no other amusement, so I spent a great deal of my time wandering about by myself. I found the enslaved Roman craftsmen more amusing to talk to than Germans; they had to be quick-witted, or they would have died long ago, and they were surprisingly well informed about what the King and his counsellors were planning. I had made up my mind at the beginning that it would be an impossible strain to pretend ignorance of Celtic, but I did not speak it perfectly, as I have explained, and they never took me for a native Roman. King Oisc soon found out that I knew the language, for he knew everything about the private lives of his followers, as a leader should; he sometimes used me as an interpreter. So that during the winter I gradually drifted into the same position that my grandfather had held at his father’s court, in the far-off days of peace.

  The King was very proud of his ramshackle city, and did his best to keep it in good repair; this brought me into closer contact with him than would have been normal in one of my rank. As a chief Oisc was rather better than middling, though he was not an outstanding leader like his father; he had done well in his raids on some islands that lie to the north of Caledonia, and I always understood that he was a very skilful sailor, though that is a thing I am not competent to judge. But he had no ambition to conquer the whole island, as his father had always meant to do one day, and I think that at the back of his mind was a hankering to rule a peaceful and prosperous state; though this was such a disgraceful ambition for a Woden-born warrior to harbour that he tried to conceal it from the comrades. If he had taken service as an auxiliary under a Roman Empire that was still a going concern, he might have ended up as another Stilicho or Fullofaudes, for all his instincts were in favour of law and civilization. But in Britain things had gone too far already; every year there was less and less civilization for him to defend. All he could do was to run his own little Kingdom according to the traditions of the best German rulers.

  Unfortunately it was not a good tradition. These Germans are much too keen on assigning a rank, with appropriate rights and duties, to all their subjects. We Romans have the broad division between slave and free, and in the days when our law-courts still functioned there was also the legal distinction between honestiores and humiliores, that is roughly between rich and poor; but in a great many things all citizens were equal before the law, and certainly we didn’t think of these differences every minute of our lives. In the German system there are endless grades between the first-class free man and the out-and-out slave, and everybody is conscious of them all the time. To King Oisc it seemed very wrong that his Roman subjects should be ignorant of these important matters, and he was always trying to fit them into their appropriate ranks; he used to get very angry when he discovered that the slaves took no interest in the matter at all, and he blamed me for not explaining properly. Of course, the Roman craftsmen were slaves all right, but they had no wish to improve their position. They had in practice a great deal of liberty, for none of the Germans were skilful enough to tell them how to do their jobs, and they dreaded being given arms and told to join the levy of the Kingdom. However, King Oisc chose to be angry with me because he couldn’t turn rather cowardly citizens into good spearmen, and by mid-winter I had lost my influential and promising position as his interpreter.

  I was thrown very much on my own resources for amusement. As I have said, the comrades bored me dreadfully, and I thought it wiser not to go about with the Roman slaves in public. In the spring I was at a loose end. It was widely known that the new King was too busy playing at being a civilized ruler to lead us out on campaign unless Kent was invaded. Without even fighting in prospect to keep me occupied (though I have never enjoyed warfare for its own sake as a son of Woden should), I cast round for some hobby to fill my leisure. The obvious thing to do was to start a love-affair, taking care to choose some girl I could not possibly marry, or I might find myself trapped.

  It had struck me when I first came to live with the comrades that in matters of sex they were neglecting their opportunities. The men of a comitatus in any Kingdom are expected to live together; but they need not be celibate, and the comitatus of the Regni always had a squad of girlfriends in attendance except when they were on campaign. Considering that these Germans had conquered a substantial part of the most civilized district in Britain, and had raided a great deal more, they must have had many chances of carrying off pretty girls, but I have already explained that the Saxons have no organized slave-market, and they raid very wastefully, killing every human being they meet. On the whole, the comitatus was not interested in female Romans.

  Some of the more elderly were married, and they all hoped to marry some day, so that the high descent in which they took such pride should continue to posterity; but naturally, considering the importance they attached to pedigree, their wives were all German. These were mostly a plain lot, pompous and stupid, and their husbands did not seem to have a very enjoyable time.

  The position of these women was curious, and not at all what I had been accustomed to in Anderida. Once a German girl was married she was trusted utterly, and it was assumed that she would be just as shocked at the bare idea of adultery as her lawful master would be if she betrayed him; consequently these large, plain, hardworking women were allowed an astonishing amount of freedom, and could wander about alone, and talk to strange men, in a way that would have blasted the reputation of a respectable Roman matron. They were quite genuinely too proud to take lovers; it is wonderful what early education can do to the human character, particularly when it appeals to the sense of honour.

  There were not a great many unmarried barbarian girls in Kent, for most of the men sent back to Germany when they wanted a wife, and the settlement was too recent for large families to have grown up; but there were a few, and they were not at all like the matrons in their behaviour. Among these queer people the maidens have a great deal of choice as to which man they will marry, or at least they can refuse the man of their parents’ choosing; so naturally they spend much of their time dreaming about the wonders and delights of love. Even a pompous German father realizes that it is not safe to let them run about loose in this condition. T
he unmarried girls are carefully watched, lest they should form an attachment to a hopelessly unsuitable young man. I fell into that category, as a second-rank warrior of the comitatus, and the fathers of marriageable daughters were not eager to introduce me into their families.

  But there was in Cantwaraburh one exception to all the rules of good German behaviour, and that was the King’s own sister, the lady Gertrude. She was about twenty years old, and should have married long ago, but her father, the late King, had been absurdly fond of her, and let her have her way in everything; she had been able to reject each of the eligible young men he had suggested. King Oisc had been jealous of her all his life, and took no trouble to get her suitably married; it looked as though she would live and die a virgin. She was not at all an amorous young woman, as far as I could see, and like many of these big German girls preferred hunting with the young warriors to the normal womanly amusements. But she had this much in common with the brother who disliked her, that she yearned after the refinements of civilization; in her undisciplined barbarian way she was eager to be taught, and one day in the early summer she found out that I had something of a Roman education. She sought me out, and commanded me to tell her all about the strange peoples of the distant parts of the world, the subject in which her quick but untrained mind took most interest at that time. Neither she nor any other of the Saxons thought it odd or unseemly that she should go for long walks alone with a young man; she had been nubile for six years, and during that time she had never felt any inclination to the opposite sex, and I suppose she imagined she never would. Germans are great people for precedent, and her relatives, including the King, felt the same.