Moving on again, across the bush-grown turf of the long pasture, towards the warm russet huddle of the steading, Beric was no longer in the least startled; it was as though, after that first blank moment, Justinius’s astonishing suggestion had fallen into the place that was waiting for it, and become a familiar part of himself. Half-way across the long pasture, he asked: ‘How would it seem to you, Justinius?’
‘I should be very content that we work this place together,’ Justinius said quietly. ‘Equally, I have always hankered for a son following in my old service!’
They walked on in silence.
Whole patches of the lichen-gold tiles had been stripped from the roofs of the steading, and twigs and leaves and small branches were lying everywhere, driven into corners until Servius had leisure from more important repairs to get rid of them. But as they reached the end of the terrace, Beric saw that the tamarisk was still there, the feathery dark branches still dusted with pale blossom; and Canog sat in a brief blur of sunshine against the lime-washed wall, with her fat puppy firmly attached to her.
She raised her head at Beric’s nearing, her plumy tail thumping softly, her eyes lustrous in her small, woolly face. She detached herself from the puppy and started to meet him, then swerved back to her son, picked him up by the roll of fat behind his neck, and managing him with some difficulty, for he was already too big for her, came pattering along the terrace and dumped him all a-sprawl on Beric’s feet, with the air of one bestowing her treasure on her best-beloved.
And Beric, stooping to pick up the small, fat creature, had a sudden feeling of coming home from a journey. ‘This is my belonging-place,’ he thought. ‘Whether I stay, or whether I go forth again, it will still be here. It will keep faith with me.’ And swiftly come and gone as the shadow of a wheeling gull that swept along the terrace, the remembrance of Jason’s Island brushed him by, an island scarlet with anemones after the winter rains.
There came a flicker of saffron yellow in the warm shadows beyond the open house-place door, and Cordaella surged calmly into view, the silver filigree pendants swinging in her ears. ‘Your breakfast is ready,’ she said, as though if there had been a storm she had not noticed it. ‘And I have baked new bread; come you and eat it while it is hot.’
OUTCAST
ROMAN BRITAIN The Romney Marsh area
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Celt, Roman, Saxon, Norman and English have all had a hand in winning Romney Marsh from the sea, and making it safe afterwards. But it seems likely that it was the Romans with their genius for engineering who first began draining operations on a big scale. If that was so, then the Rhee Wall, the ancient sea defence which you can still trace here and there, running from Appledore to New Romney, may well have been built in the first place by just such a force of Legionaries working under just such an Engineer Centurion as I have made Beric find there when he comes to the Marsh, in the last part of this book.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Eagle of the Ninth
The Silver Branch
Warrior Scarlet
The Lantern Bearers
Tristan and Iseult
Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection
Flame-Colored Taffeta
The Shining Company
Sword Song
Text copyright © 1955 by Rosemary Sutcliff
Pictures copyright © 1955 by Richard Kennedy
All rights reserved
First published in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, 1955
eISBN 9781429936903
First eBook Edition : May 2011
First American edition published by Henry Z. Walck, 1955
First Sunburst edition, 1995
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sutcliff, Rosemary.
Outcast / Rosemary Sutcliff; pictures by Richard Kennedy.
p. cm.
1. Great Britain—History—Roman period, 55 B,G.—A,D. 449—Juvenile
fiction. [1. Great Britain—History—Roman period, 55 B.C.-A.D. 449—
Fiction. 2. Slavery-Fiction.] I. Kennedy, Richard, 1910— ill.
II. Title.
PZ7.S9560u 1995 [Fic]—dc20 94-46355 CIP AC
Rosemary Sutcliff, Outcast
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