After Rome

by Morgan Llywelyn

  I once told Meradoc I wouldn’t lie to him, but failing to answer a question isn’t a lie. Besides, what I know of inspiration defies explanation. A few minutes spent in a Christian shrine, pretending a piety I did not feel—did the martyred saints inspire me that day in Deva?

  Are there such things as saints? Or angels, or sorcerers, or gods. Or God.

  Do I care?

  * * *

  Equipping and training a company of inexperienced warriors—and it was warriors Dinas wanted, not merely followers—presented some large problems. Finding twenty-one suitable horses was not going to be easy. They had to be sound in wind and limb and less than ten years old. Every man should have two, one to ride and one to lead, and Dinas was including a backup for the dark horse in that number. He preferred to have geldings, which were less trouble, but he would accept a good mare if he found one.

  The dark horse would be the only stallion.

  When they entered the territory of the Cornovii Dinas sought out horse breeders his father had known. To his chagrin, only two out of fifteen still had any animals. The other farms had been sold or abandoned. After five days of hard negotiation Dinas succeeded in buying only half a dozen horses. The best of the lot was a lop-eared, big-headed gelding whom the seller swore was descended from Sarmatian stock.

  “The Romans recruited the Sarmatians as mercenaries,” Dinas told Meradoc. “Their cavalry horses were famous for their speed and agility. But I’m afraid you and Pelemos will ride ponies for a while longer.”

  “I don’t mind. I like my little mare.”

  Dinas, who could be stingy with compliments, gave him an appraising look. “You’ve developed a good seat. And soft hands. You deserve a good horse.”

  “I suppose good horses are very expensive.”

  Dinas smiled. “You learned that from Saba.”

  “Learned what?”

  “To ask a question without asking a question.”

  It was Meradoc’s turn to smile.

  “Just so you know,” Dinas said, “when I find the right animal for you I’ll buy him. I have enough money; trust me.”

  “I do,” said Meradoc.

  Cadel pleaded to be given the Sarmatian horse. He claimed he had had some riding experience and therefore deserved the best mount.

  “What riding experience?” Dinas challenged. “Your background is the stone quarries.”

  “We used donkeys in the quarries,” Cadel replied, bristling. “And I rode them.”

  Since there were more men than horses, Dinas devised a plan he called “ride and tie.” Each recruit was given a number. One through six mounted the available horses and the rest followed them on foot. When the person with number one reached a certain point he dismounted and tied his animal, leaving it for a walker. Number two repeated the maneuver, then number three, and so on. The exchanges continued throughout the day. By sunset every man had spent considerable time on horseback.

  Dinas asked Meradoc to keep an eye on them and help where necessary. “As my captain of the horse, when we make camp it will be your job to set up picket lines for the horses. They need to be able to reach enough grass to feed.”

  “You never tie up your horse at night,” Meradoc remarked.

  Dinas smiled. “I don’t need to.”

  The following day Dinas decided to proceed directly to Cadogan’s fort. His cousin might know where to buy some good horses, though he would be unlikely to suggest a good armorer. He also possessed the one animal Dinas wanted as backup to the dark horse. Cadogan would need persuading to part with the mare, of course.

  Dinas trusted his skills of persuasion.

  As they went deeper into the territory of the Cornovii they saw increasing evidence of the barbarian invasion. Not just an occasional burned-out homestead, but little bands of refugees carrying everything they still possessed on their backs, and telling frightful tales of plunder and pillage and rape.

  Rape. Two or three of Dinas’s recruits began to speak nervously of returning to the mountains to protect their womenfolk.

  “There’s no need for that,” Dinas assured them, “the barbarians won’t go as far as Eryri. One look at those peaks will turn them back.”

  That night while Meradoc was rubbing down the dark horse with bunches of dead grass—paying particular attention to the itchy, sweaty spots where the saddle had been—Pelemos approached him. “What about Saba?” he asked in a worried voice. “She’s alone up there in the mountains. She doesn’t even have a small boy with a sling and some stones to defend her.”

  “You heard Dinas,” Meradoc replied without missing a stroke. The stallion was already shedding his winter coat. A cloud of dark hair lay on the ground around his hooves. “He said the barbarians wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I didn’t expect them to come to our village, either,” said Pelemos. “One day we were preparing for winter as we did every year, and the next … Meradoc, could you find our way back to Saba?”

  Meradoc stopped grooming the horse. “I couldn’t,” he said flatly. “And if I could, I wouldn’t. We can’t desert Dinas.”

  “He deserted her.”

  Meradoc gave Pelemos a pitying look. “She’s his woman, not yours. And we don’t know what passed between them. I do know Dinas, though; if he thought Saba was in danger he never would have left her.”

  Pelemos folded his arms and stood watching while Meradoc finished rubbing down the stallion, then raked up the loose cloud of dark hair with his fingers and folded it over and over again until he had a thick soft mat.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Pelemos asked.

  “Make a pillow for my head.”

  “Meradoc,” Pelemos said gently, “the horse is his, not yours.”

  Saba had been on Dinas’s mind too, but a woman who wanted no part of his plans could not be allowed to interfere with them. To keep from thinking about her as he rode, he thought about the stronghold he would build. There were several possible locations along the coast that would serve his purpose. Yet one by one he had dismissed them. This was too near a town, that was too far from the sea-lanes.

  He knew all along there was only one place for him.

  The far southwest corner of Britannia Superior was the kingdom of the Dumnonii. A peninsula shaped like a clenched fist, pointing a long finger out into the cold abyss that was the western ocean. The name of World’s End was well deserved.

  Like most tribal leaders, the Dumnonian kings had no permanent residence. Instead they held a series of courts, moving from one to the next whenever they exhausted the local hospitality. One of their feasting halls had occupied a rugged coastal promontory overlooking the ocean. The location, midway down the western side of Dumnonii territory, was convenient, the aspect majestic. Earlier kings had made it a principal site for tribal assembly. More recent leaders had abandoned the place, leaving only tumbled ruins atop a pinnacle rising from the sea.

  Wind and weather had sculpted the site into a natural fortress, uniquely defensible. The only connection to the adjacent cliffs was a narrow neck of land. The bay below the promontory had a shingle beach and was sheltered from the ocean breakers, but the coastline on either side was too rugged to permit landing from the sea.

  Dinas had discovered the deserted peak on a day of lowering skies and howling wind. No sane man would have ridden a horse close to the edge of the cliffs on such a day. No sane horse would have permitted it. Dinas and the dark horse had gone to the very brink. There they halted.

  To gaze at the lonely, storm-wracked majesty of Tintagel.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “The trick,” Cadogan explained to Nassos, “is to fell the trees before the sap rises. If we wait too long the sap will keep the wood from drying out enough to use, and sap rises early in birches. You can tell because they get their leaves early.”

  “I thought we were going to build with oak,” said Nassos, who was carrying a large axe on his shoulder. He had spent part of the morning sharpening the axe head. R
unning his thumb along the edge until at last blood spurted, and he was satisfied.

  “The walls and beams will be oak, but birch is soft wood, and we’ll use a lot of soft wood in the interiors,” Cadogan told him. “Birch has sprung up wherever the Romans cleared the land. There are stands of ash and hazel, too, that we can coppice and use for making charcoal.”

  “You know how to make charcoal?” Nassos asked in surprise.

  “Not yet, but I know where there is a family of charcoal makers who can teach me. Regina says that none of our women know how to cook on an open fire.”

  “Not many city women know how to cook at all,” Nassos said. “They always relied on their servants. My mother now, she could cook the best food you ever tasted over a roaring blaze or on a flat rock. She made me the man I am today.”

  Cadogan gave a wry smile.

  Nassos, the youngest member of the ironmaster’s crew, was a bony, round-shouldered man who looked as if a breeze would blow him away. His looks were deceiving. He could wield a heavy hammer all day long, beating red-hot iron into any shape required. Like Karantec and Trebellos, Nassos possessed impressive strength.

  It would be needed.

  Six weeks earlier, the surviving heads of the leading families of Viroconium had gathered in the ruins of their forum to take a vote. At Cadogan’s suggestion they were following the democratic pattern of the Athenians. He could think of no other way to resolve the argument between the majority who wanted to stay in the city, at least for the time being, and the few who claimed they never wanted to see it again. Until the issue was settled they seemed determined to waste their time and energy on quarreling.

  Cadogan did not want to be in charge; it was a position they kept forcing upon him as the chief magistrate’s deputy. But his protests were too polite. No one listened. His problem was the fact that he had sympathy with both sides. He could understand people who had spent their lives in the city and could not, or would not, accept anything else. He could also understand those like his father, who felt trapped in a nightmare and longed for escape.

  The stroke that felled the chief magistrate had paralyzed his left side and damaged his speech. Vintrex still managed to convey his feelings, though the only one who could understand him was, amazingly, Quartilla. She had nursed him untiringly. The medicaments taken from the hospital were mostly unfamiliar to her, but she knew how to concoct any number of potions and poultices out of such diverse elements as dogs’ urine and balsam. By the time the vote was taken and seventy-two men, women and children were planning to leave Viroconium, Vintrex was able to sit up with support from Esoros, and was aware of what was going on around him. There was only one word he could say clearly but it was unmistakable. “Go! Go! Go!”

  The Saxons had not left a living horse, pony, or donkey in Viroconium. Godubnus had found his big wagon where he left it, but the traces had been cut and the mules were gone. Under his instruction the component parts of the furnace were removed and carried into the public bathhouse for storage. Then the damage inflicted on the wagon was repaired by Cadogan, while Godubnus and his men made a hasty trip to their workshop to stock up on weaponry.

  Cadogan had examined the timber vehicle thoroughly, measuring the interior dimensions. He concluded that the wagon was large enough to contain Vintrex on a pallet, plus the oldest refugees and the smallest children. Any remaining space would be filled with foodstuffs and cooking pots, and a clanking hoard of knives and axes from the ironmonger. Cadogan was not happy to carry so many dangerous weapons; they spoke of terrors to come. But he understood their necessity.

  He had repeatedly issued stern edicts against transporting the luxuries people thought of as necessities. No charcoal braziers: “There isn’t any charcoal where we’re going.” No cedar chests specially fitted with dowels for storing Egyptian bed linen without creasing it: “Forget about fine linen. What we need is enough blankets to keep everyone warm.”

  He had relented in the matter of toys, allowing one favorite to every child.

  When all was ready the eight strongest men had been strapped into the mule harness Cadogan had reconstructed to fit them, and the procession left Viroconium by the eastern gateway.

  Those who had chosen to remain in the city closed and barred the gates behind them.

  Not knowing what else to do, Cadogan planned to take the refugees to his fort temporarily. He could house the most vulnerable inside for a night or two and help the others set up shelters nearby, until they decided what to do next.

  At the back of his mind he was aware they might want him to make that decision, might even expect it.

  Oh no. No no God no.

  One thing at a time. Let’s get there first and then they can nominate a leader. British tribes have always elected their chieftains.

  But just not me.

  When the refugees set out on a bitterly cold morning, several of the women could not stop crying. Some of the men were stony faced with anger—or grief—but the overall atmosphere was one of stunned silence. They followed the Roman road for only a short distance before turning off and heading northeast. Across ice-spangled grassland. Toward dark forests and unfamiliar hills.

  As he jolted along in the wagon Vintrex had lain with his eyes open, staring up at the bleached winter sky. He was so quiet he might have been dead. Quartilla had insisted on riding with Vintrex to take care of him—which meant that someone who really needed to ride was forced to walk—but she had cushioned his head on her lap. She frequently assured an anxious Esoros that his master was still breathing.

  The first time they stopped for the night there had been little conversation. A fire was built and food portioned out. People ate because they knew they would need to, not because they were hungry. Afterward, Regina and the other women had put the children to bed beneath the shelter of the wagon and surrounded them with blankets. The adults made themselves as comfortable as possible and lay fighting the cold; fighting their memories. Fighting their fear of a barbarian attack at any moment.

  Cadogan had posted guards around the camp. He took double turns standing watch himself.

  In the dark, the dark.

  When the sun rose, the refugees had been astonished to find themselves still alive. Cold, stiff and hungry, they began to grapple with the reality of their situation. One of the men had asked Cadogan the question that was on everyone’s mind: “Where we’re going … will the Saxons attack us again?”

  Cadogan decided it was best to be honest. “I’m taking you to my place for now. Since I left Viroconium I’ve been visited only once by foreigners and they weren’t Saxons. They took my horse but they didn’t steal my chickens. The Saxons are after valuable plunder, they won’t bother with sparsely furnished forts in the wilderness.”

  Several women went pale at that word. After countless centuries, “wilderness” was still the terrifying heart of darkness. Since the first man lit the first fire and pushed back the shadows by a critical fraction, humanity had been struggling to escape from the wilderness. The thought of returning voluntarily chilled them to the bone.

  A young mother clasped her husband by the arm. “I can’t do that!” she cried. “Oh please, let’s go back to the city. I don’t want my children to be raised like wild animals. Or eaten by wild animals!” The terror on her face was heart-wrenching. And contagious.

  That day the number of refugees had been reduced to fifty-three, plus Cadogan’s group and the men from the ironmonger. Nineteen had headed back toward Viroconium, carrying a generous portion of the supplies. It would be a long, cold walk for them.

  As they disappeared from view Regina had uttered a heartfelt, “God help them.”

  The second day of the journey to Cadogan’s fort had been harder than the first. The third day had been almost unbearable. When the refugees emerged from the forest on the fourth afternoon and saw the lonely cabin on the hillside, several women began to cry again.

  Kikero had greeted the return of humans to his home by standing as t
all as he could, stretching his gorgeous wings and crowing with delight.

  Cadogan had ushered the refugees into his cabin and tried to make space for all of them. “You’ll be warm soon, just sit here … stand over there … don’t worry, we’ll have heat, I’m going to bring wood in and light a fire … yes, there will be fresh water, I promise … put those children on the bed and don’t worry…”

  He felt as if he had been saying “Don’t worry” nonstop since Viroconium.

  I wish someone would say that to me. And make it sound convincing.

  Once the fire blazed into life, its warmth combined with the body heat of sixty people crammed into a small space soon made the atmosphere intolerable. “Take down the planks over the windows and prop the door open,” Cadogan had said to Esoros.

  Esoros looked offended. “I am not your steward. This is not my lord’s house and I take no orders here.”

  “But you’ve been helping me ever since…”

  “Whatever I do,” Esoros said loftily, “I do for my lord Vintrex.”

  Cadogan was dumbfounded.

  He had noticed Quartilla watching him and pushed his way toward her. “Did you know Esoros would let me down like that?”

  “I could have predicted it.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Whatever I do, I do for my lord Vintrex,’” she mimicked, sniggering. Then her expression turned serious. “That’s who Esoros is, Cadogan,” she said earnestly. “Don’t you understand?”

  In reducing Esoros to his essential core Quartilla had, for one fleeting moment, left herself open. Cadogan sensed it and seized his opportunity. “And who are you?” he asked her.

  She opened her mouth to answer—just as a fight broke out and a man fell into the firepit on the hearth.

  There was a frantic scramble to pull him clear, slap the flames from his clothing and assign blame. A new fight began at once. Cadogan was drawn into the vortex of the conflict and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to restore order among people who had been through too much, and could not control themselves any longer.