The Boat of Fate (48 page)

He was standing by the inner gate. Behind him were flames. He limped forward. He leaned his weight, heavily, on the broken shaft of a spear. How he moved at all I shall never know, for one ankle had been hacked to a wet stick. He said, ‘I waited for you.’

He stared up blindly. His face was striped with blood. ‘We held them here,’ he said. ‘The second attack was from the south. They came over the roofs. You killed us. You killed us all.’ He staggered. ‘I left Pelgea,’ he said. ‘Will you take me back to her?’ His hand gripped the doorpost, convulsively. The wood crumpled under his fingers, disclosed a living heart of fire. Sparks whirled in a column as he fell. I heard my own voice shout,
‘Valerius!’

I leaped the horse across him. Heat and brilliance burst on me. The lawns, trampled now and bloody, were lit brighter than day. I fell from the saddle and ran, shielding my face and yelling.
‘Crearwy . . .! Crearwy ...!’

I found Pelgea. She lay face down across the triclinium steps. She was naked to the waist. The blood she had voided had spread round her in a pool. A dagger had been driven into her neck at the base of the skull. Near her, contorted, was the body of a man, hands gripped across the face. Between the fingers stood the shaft of a hare-spear. The prongs had been driven through the eyes, into the brain.

I ran again. It seemed the pavement flowed beneath me of its own volition.

‘CREARWY...!’

She was seated by the nymphaeum. Beside her, a little distance away, lay two small bundles of sodden cloth. She looked up at me. Her hair was unbound, one shoulder bare. A bruise showed on the flesh.

‘He left me for you,’ she said. ‘It was his will. He wanted you to know his name. Ulfilas, the Goth.’ She turned, vaguely, to stare. ‘Nessa distrusted me,’ she said, ‘because her arm was gone. I called her, but she wouldn’t come. Melinda was thirsty. She came to the pool; but the blood came from her nose, and spoiled her drink.’

I reached, slowly, to raise her, and for the first time she twitched away. ‘Now I should curse you,’ she said, ‘after the manner of my people. By the Hand, and the Branch, and the Hounds of Bran.’ She flung herself down then, silently, lay cramming dirt and ashes at her mouth.

There were hands on my arm. It was Riconus. He led me to the steps, walked back to where the children lay. I put my face in my hands. Through my fingers I could still see the glare of the flames. Their roaring seemed to fill my brain.

The dawn came slow and grey. Light stole across the waste of ash. What flames still burned were paler now. Smoke drifted from the ruins; through it gable ends showed stark, like bones.

The lead had run from the bath-house tanks, lay congealed in puddles and streams.

There was a burial. The Celts dug the shallow pit, in the lawn by the smashed roses. Riconus lowered the children’s bodies into the soil, making an offering of coins and birds. Later he came and squatted by me, speaking to the grass at his feet. He said, ‘The reinforcements are here.’

‘What reinforcements?’

‘The men I summoned for you.’

I rose slowly, and followed him.

Some sat their horses, waiting. Others squatted round fires and hastily pitched tents. They were from Cunetio, Duroconovium, Verlucio. I rubbed my mouth. The ash-taste was thick in my throat. I said, ‘Give me some wine.’

A skin was passed to me. When I had drunk I said, ‘There is an Emperor in the north. Which of these men would least gladly follow him to Gaul?’

He nodded at a group of some twenty or thirty, sitting silently by their horses. He said, ‘They are foederati, from beyond the Wall.’

I said, ‘Then they know her father for a King. Where is she?’ They had saddled a horse for her, hung a cloak round her shoulders. She sat the creature rigidly, staring in front of her. Her face was marble.

‘Riconus,’ I said. ‘Give them some gold. It will be repaid you.’

It was done, silently. Then I walked forward. I said, ‘The King will also reward you. Take the Domina to her home.’ Someone, I saw, reached to grasp her reins. Once she put the hair back from her face, but she didn’t turn. The column moved away, down the long hill of grass. As it receded there came from it the squeal of pipes. No dirge they played but a marching tune, wild and defiant and gay. The sound reached me, borne on the wind, long after the last of the riders had dipped into the fold of ground and was out of sight. I stayed where I was, staring. In time I saw, or thought I saw, climbing the opposite slope, a moving patch of greater darkness. The wind blew again, gusting fitfully. It seemed it carried with it a ghost-thin shred of melody. Then that too was gone.

I thought the shadows were in my eyes. But it was the night.

The hooves of the horses rang dully, now close, now far-off in my brain. Grass jerked by half-seen and bushes, the metalling of the road. Behind me poured the column. As it moved so its numbers increased; for my messengers had gone out to every town and hamlet within a day’s ride, stripping them of men.

There were towers and walls. I understood that I had reached Corinium. The army rested overnight. I sat in what had been my office. The room now was haunted. I dozed and woke, each time with a lurch like the falling nightmare; and somehow between the eyes and hands and hair, the temple and flowers and the noise of flames, the dawn came.

The Wall contingents had arrived. I turned them west along the Glevum road. Round me the world spun and hummed; but my brain and will remained clear. Loyalty and honour, dignity, right and wrong, all shadow-things that had bedevilled me, seemed swept away. I was lightened by their going. My life, I saw, had acquired a purpose. The path, the time remaining, stretched straight and terrible. My enemy fled before me; my sole charge was to follow, if necessary to the edge of the earth.

‘Riconus,’ I said. ‘Add to your requisitions, a waggon of salt.’

‘Salt,’ he said. ‘What for?’

‘This Province will remember Rome. And Riconus ....‘

‘Sir?’

‘Where is the Standard you found at Deva?’

He said, ‘In my pack.’

‘Then raise it. One is as good as the next.’

In the void in which I moved, strange fancies came to me. My army, I realised, was a sentient thing. The scouts I flung out to either side of the road might be likened to the antennae of an insect, touching and delicately probing. The Palatini represented the head and brain. Behind, inching and glittering, moved the great scaled body. My will sustained its progress; its weight bore down on me, carried on my shoulders alone. The din, the tramp of feet and shouting, endless crash and rattle of waggons, added to the burden. The faces mouthed, but it was difficult to bring my brain to bear.

There were riders; Germans, surely, and farmers to boot. But each man carried the seax-knife, the sacred dagger from which their nation took its name; and each rested a heavy battleaxe across the neck of his horse. They checked at sight of the column, and their leader rode forward alone. ‘Once I listened to you, Roman,’ he said. ‘I and all my people. Now my sons and wife are with the Shades. There is death between us.’

I dragged my mind from distance. The Celts, I saw, had swung outward in a threatening half-moon. A sword rasped clear of its sheath. I said, ‘How are you called?’

He stared round him, slowly. The lank hair blew across his face. He said, ‘Gundebad, son of Gontran.’

‘Death I can bring you quickly, Gundebad, with either hand,’ I said. ‘Death, or vengeance. Which is it to be? The choice is yours.’

He waited. Finally he said, ‘Vengeance.’

‘Then by all the Gods you shall have it. Get your men into line....’

The weather broke, in flooding rain. The water streamed across the rutted surface of the road, gleaming on the high shoulders to either side. I lived with the stink of wet cloaks and leather, the creak and rumble of wheels. The column, butting into the deluge, seemed haloed with dull silver. Prisoners were brought to me, stragglers from the Bacaudae. I gave them to the Germans. Some they bound, and sat on sharpened stakes. They were left behind, dark things that moved and begged. Later the memories returned once more to trouble me. I drove them away with wine. I needed Ulfilas now, the sight of him, with the urgency of a lover. At night I needed him, in my tent when the wine had gone.

The column passed through Glevum. The western gate had been fortified with a breastwork of dressed stone. I ordered it torn aside. Camp was pitched where a tributary of the Sabrina flowed from the hills, spreading into a series of shallow, reedy pools that enclosed a narrow spit of firmer ground. The tents--good military tents, of stitched leather--went up anyhow, guy lines crossing and recrossing. The baggage waggons I had drawn into a line across the neck of the spit; on its other flanks the camp was protected by the marsh, through which no attacking force could splash without giving itself away. Sentries were posted; and in time the last password was exchanged, the last man fell over a half-buried tent peg and the camp settled to an uneasy sleep.

In the nightmare in which I lived, days and nights had blended into a grey uniformity. I wondered, with a part of my spinning brain, how long it had been since I had eaten or removed my clothes. Yesterday, or the day before, somebody had offered me a plate of gruel that I refused; since then they had let me be.

Spatters of rain drove like slingshots against the tent. Above, the sky was clearing. Stars glinted in the gaps between the clouds, but the air roared like a forest.

The voice was in the wind, sweet and wild. I started up. Hands plucked the tent fastenings. I shouted, reeling across the little lighted space. The lashing of the tent flap, swollen with damp, defied my fingers. I plucked and tore, desperately. The voice keened again; there were other hands, yanking the stiff fabric. I panted, fighting with the leather and cords.

The winds raged, in and across the tent. The lamp flame surged, was extinguished. I fell forward in darkness, landed on wet grass; and she was gone, slipped through my fingers like a wraith, back up into the bawling sky. I lay tangled among ropes, hearing her echo and my own hard sobs.

There were lanterns, and a torch. The torch streamed in the wind, a bright beard of flame. More hands gripped, trying to raise me. I called, ‘Valerius . . .’ and heard Riconus swear.

They lit the lamp again, flung a cover across my legs, put the wine out of my reach. They stood to till dawn, turn and turn about, before the tent where I fought, I suppose, with Devils.

At first light the pickets came in, stood swearing and shivering in their damp cloaks, chafing hands and arms, kicking smouldering logs into a blaze. Clattering rose from where women--two contingents from the north had arrived with their entire families--stirred vats of soup and porridge, ladled the scalding mess into the pannikins held out to them. Fatigue parties scurried round the horse lines and crudely dug latrines; others, armed against surprise attack and well muffled in the chill air, set out to forage brushwood for the fires.

Dawn brought a contingent of black-robed Priests of Nodens. They had news for me; the enemy, sluggishly alarmed, had turned once more for the north. Weighed down by booty and harried by the half-wild tribesmen of the hills, they were making slow progress.

The tents were struck, with more haste than efficiency, the mule teams harnessed to the carts. The column formed into its line of march, with much shouting and bullying of laggards; and the Palatini moved away, stepping in single file along a rough track that wound through scrub and woodland to the north. They rode carefully, on the watch for ambushes; ahead the scouts were active again, beating the ground to either side of the path.

By midday the leading cavalry were clear of the belt of woodland. The sun, breaking through the clouds, struck gleams from lance-tips and the bosses of shields. No opposition had been encountered, but signs of the enemy were more frequent now. A cluster of huts, set prominently on a wooded spur, smoked sullenly; farther on were the bodies of a dozen women and men. They lay tumbled where they had fallen, the trampled grass around them stained with red. The cavalry passed with an indifferent glance or two; professionals all, death held no fascination.

Time after time the column, pushing on dourly, was forced to cross streams. This whole area was laced with watercourses, tributaries of the Sabrina; the brooks raced and gurgled, swollen by a day and night of rain. Time after time the waggons bogged at fords; the limitanei, sweating now under the warm September sun, cursed as they heaved at the axles, waist-deep in swirling water. One plaustrum overturned, spilling its cargo with a great splashing. I ordered its trace animals cut free; they could be put to better use elsewhere.

The sun was sinking below the western rim of hills before Riconus wheeled, thrusting the Standard into the turf to mark the resting place of the praetorium.

I rode forward alone, leaving the plateau selected for the night’s halt bustling with activity. Ahead, the ground swept up gently to a wooded ridge. I climbed it, sitting my horse slackly, letting the animal pick its own way to the crest.

On the skyline the trees stood dark against the sunset. I rode between them, passed from gathering dusk back into light.

Before me stretched a shallow valley, five miles or more across and carpeted with woods. To my left, the levelling sun struck between two low humped hills; the eastern slope, bright already with the colourings of autumn, seemed to flame in the pouring orange light. The wind had dropped, through the day; now no breath of air was stirring. The valley lay still, and totally quiet. Nothing moved, either human or animal; the leaves of the nearer trees hung like translucent golden coins.

There was a smell of burning; faint yet pervasive, as if the land was indeed ablaze, smouldering with all the fires of autumn.

Beyond the far rim of the valley, barely discernible against the distant outlines of hills, blue-grey threads wavered upwards. There were many fires; over the ridge, hidden beyond a further belt of woods, an army had come to rest.

I watched for a long time, then wheeled my horse and rode at the gallop back down the slope to the camp.