Beyond the Wall

  Her unexpected passenger smelled strongly of wine. His head would no doubt ache in the morning, but for now he was at the stage of loving the whole of mankind. Rome was the best, the greatest, the most powerful city in the world, and its inhabitants were more like gods than men. He spent a long time praising the people he’d been drinking with that evening. It was a long litany of names and histories that meant nothing to Cassia. She gave no answer because none seemed required. As they plodded on through the streets, he finally turned his attention to her.

  “You’re a good lad,” he told Cassia. “The best. Quiet. Respectful. I like that. Lucky to have you, they are,” he said, jerking his thumb towards the carriage’s other occupants. “Are they kind to you? Do they treat you right?”

  Cassia assured him the occupants of the carriage were good and generous masters. “That’s good,” he said. “You’ve got to treat your slaves right. Got to be kind. Fair. They need discipline, mind. Got to know their place. They’re not happy unless they know the rules. But once you’ve got those laid down, you can rub along together very nicely.”

  Her companion rambled on, talking of slave management, and then his sons and his family. Each revelation was punctuated by a series of loud belches. By the time they reached the city gate – and were stopped by the guard – there was little Cassia didn’t know about him.

  “Where are you heading?” demanded the man on duty.

  Cassia’s passenger answered for her. “Home.”

  “Lucius!” A second guard greeted the man sitting next to Cassia by name. “What are you doing up there? This isn’t your carpentum.”

  “I’m hitching a lift with my friends here.”

  The guard glanced briefly inside and clearly took the occupants to be his fellow drinking companions.

  “Been making a night of it, eh?”

  “The whole city’s been doing that. Fortune be blessed!”

  “Except for us poor sods on duty.”

  “I’m sure you’ll make up for it.”

  The guard laughed. Bidding them goodnight, slapping the rump of the nearest horse, he waved Cassia on through.

  And that was it. Before too long, the city of Rome was behind them.

  Her passenger was truly a man sent by Fortune, Cassia thought. And a man who was completely unaware of his own part in this drama. He began to doze intermittently, waking himself up with the loudness of his own snores. When they reached his home, he ordered her to stop. Telling her once more that she was a good lad, the best, he climbed down and staggered off. Cassia addressed silent thanks to his departing back.

  She clicked her tongue and the horses obligingly carried on along the coast road that led towards Gallia.

  The cover of drunkenness could not last beyond the end of that day. By the evening – on a quiet stretch of road when no one was in sight – they changed their story along with their appearance.

  A wig for Phoebe. A fine linen dress. A cloak. A veil. Jewellery – of paste and brass, admittedly, but enough to convince a casual observer that she was a wealthy woman. A richly embroidered tunic for Julia – who now looked like a young boy. A shawl for the baby.

  As for Marcus? A shave. A haircut. Cassia took her knife to it and Marcus saw on her face the same regret he’d felt when cutting hers. A change of clothes and he was transformed from grieving widower to Phoebe’s husband.

  If anyone was hoping to win the bounty on her head, they’d be searching for a fugitive: a desperate runaway. Not a family of affluent Roman nobles.

  They went onward, skirting the coast of Italia, crossing the mountains into Gallia.

  Each night, when they were compelled to stop and rest, Marcus and Phoebe took the best rooms in the inn. Cassia stayed in the yard with the horses.

  There is little more to be said about that journey. It was long, tiring and tedious. With Phoebe’s health being so poor, they travelled agonizingly slowly. The baby – no longer drugged into silence – made full use of its lungs. Its cries shredded their nerves.

  They moved under the shadow of a constant dread. Like actors on a stage they felt as though every eye was on them, that every move was watched and that every word was scrutinized. The terror of putting a foot wrong – the prospect of what would follow if they were found out – was a burden that was almost unbearable. It filled their sleep with nightmares, it turned food to ash in their mouths.

  But, in truth, they had no need to fear quite so much. As they journeyed through Gallia, their passing was hardly noticed.

  The inhabitants had more important things on their minds.

  Stories of unrest among the barbarian hordes on the eastern fringes of the Empire had begun to spread like a fire through straw. Absorbed by their own concerns, at first Marcus and Cassia paid them little heed. But soon they saw for themselves that the rumours of trouble were true.

  One morning they were forced to leave the road to make way for a legion of soldiers. Men in bright armour. Helmets crested with red. Marching. It was said that they were being sent to suppress the savage tribes. That troops all over the Empire were on the move.

  After twenty days they reached the frontier. The border town was far busier than it had been when Cassia and Marcus had come into it from Germania. Word of the rising was being passed from mouth to mouth. There was talk of reinforcements being sent to fortify the Empire’s defences.

  Several wine-traders were in town who, having sold their goods to the army, were heading back to the vineyards. Amid all the commotion it was easy enough to buy passage with one of them. The guards were more concerned about preventing hostile strangers coming into the Empire than letting fugitive slaves out. The cart they were concealed in was not searched.

  Once in Germania they had no guide to steer them, but it seemed that word of a Briton woman and her Roman companion had spread among the tribes. The pair who had travelled to the heart of the Empire to free a slave had become creatures of legend. As had the slave woman who had inspired them to make the journey.

  In the first village they reached, they were greeted as heroes, welcomed as friends and honoured guests. Phoebe – who had lived her life in the shadows and in shame – found herself looked upon with respect. Admiration, even. It was a novel experience, but not an unpleasant one.

  They were fed and feasted and sent on their way with oaths and promises of friendship. It was the same in the next village. And the next. Until, some fifty or more days after leaving Rome, they were back with Flavia’s people.

  It was exhilarating to be so lauded. Extraordinary. But besides their own personal triumph their actions seemed to have greater significance. These two people had dared to strike at the very heart of the Empire and they had succeeded. It had set people thinking: what might others do if they put their minds to it? Whispers of rebellion turned into shouts. The tribes were itching to rise.

  Marcus had once thought that the Roman forts were strung along the walls and ditches like beads on a necklace. Now he wondered if those fortifications were not more like a rope around the Empire’s neck. A noose, that was within a heartbeat of being tightened.

  PART III: EAGLE AND WOLF

  I

  Did I say there were only two players in this tale?

  I lied.

  There is, of course, a third. The villain who began it. Without him there would be no story to tell.

  Titus Cornelius Festus.

  What was he doing all this time?

  He was a man who prided himself on his patience. In matters of business he would sit, like a spider in its web, waiting for the right moment to suck the blood from his rivals.

  But the girl had tried him beyond the limits of his sanity.

  He’d been informed by Constantius Scipio that Marcus Aurelius Aquila had sworn to return her. He’d made no objection. He could hardly go after the girl himself. Marcus had caused the problem: it seemed only right and fair that he should be the one to solve it. But, by all the gods of Mount Olympus, when that young man brought her b
ack, he’d pay the price for his mistake! Titus would have his head on a platter by sundown.

  He had waited in Londinium for news of Cassia’s return all that winter – irritable, ill-tempered and seeking relief in the delights that various brothels had to offer.

  Seeking relief, but finding none. The illness that afflicted him had worsened and spread and the healers seemed to have run out of remedies that might cure him. There were days he felt himself rotting from the inside.

  Sickness made him superstitious. When spring came, he consulted a soothsayer, who advised him to travel to the wall himself.

  He was a wealthy man. It would not do to ride. Slowly, and in splendour, he was carried from town to town. If he’d been younger, if he’d been well, he’d have sampled every whore in every brothel along the way before moving on.

  But he could not. And the knowledge of that didn’t improve his temper.

  All that way! The further north they’d gone, the worse he’d got. By the end he experienced such extremes of discomfort he’d hardly known what to do with himself. It wasn’t the illness alone that plagued him. He’d been eaten alive by insects. Drained by bedbugs, sucked dry by fleas.

  He had hoped she’d be captive by the time he arrived. In his dreams he was stiff as a battering ram with the anticipation. His waking state was disappointing. But if he could not actually take her, if his condition prevented it – well, he would think of something. She would suffer. She would be punished.

  When his carriage was finally driven into the frontier town where Marcus had been holed up during the snows of winter, there was nothing.

  No sign of him.

  No word.

  Not even a whisper.

  Nothing.

  Had she killed the man who’d gone after her, Titus wondered. These pagans were well known for their savagery. Had Marcus Aurelius Aquila been beheaded? Mutilated? His privates cut off and put in his mouth? He’d heard rumours that savage women did such things. But if that was the case, they’d have heard of it, surely? Savages loved to boast of their brutalities. It was part of the game.

  Had he been attacked by wild animals then? There were wolves and bears in those wild hills and he’d travelled alone. It was possible. How else could a man vanish so completely from the face of the earth?

  The arrival of Titus Cornelius Festus and the questions he was asking began to spark rumours among the natives and the slaves in the town.

  This girl who’d escaped from the south. She’d fled all the way from the other side of Londinium! Gone back to steal away her brother from right under her master’s nose. She’d taken two others to freedom too. And now she’d surely bewitched the Roman who’d been sent to capture her. Slaughtered him, maybe – put his head on a spike. The red-headed girl was a warrior queen. A second Boudica!

  It was not long before Titus Cornelius Festus saw the same glimmer of hope in the eyes of the slaves who walked the streets of that sodden northern town. It was all nonsense! How these fools gossiped. And yet – that bitch be cursed! – those stories had the power to inspire the downtrodden. To make them restless. Discontented.

  Something must be done.

  Daily he harassed army generals, centurions, common soldiers.

  “She is my property! Mine! Go after her.”

  They should annihilate the entire savage tribe that harboured her, he told them. They could not – would not – be beaten by a slave! It was not just him the woman was laughing at – she was spitting in the face of the Emperor.

  A slave, roused to rebellion? It would not do. She would encourage others. They were all facing a loaded ballista. Couldn’t they see that? It would only take one hand on the lever to send the load hurtling against the walls of the Empire. Before they knew it, the whole edifice would start to crumble. If slaves rose up against their masters, civilization would collapse – and then where would they all be?

  Day after day, Titus Cornelius Festus harangued whoever would listen to him. They paid him little heed. They could not go into enemy territory without provoking a war. Cassia was not the army’s problem.

  But Titus was a man of money. He could pay whatever was necessary. He had almost persuaded himself to hire a party of mercenaries when he decided instead to consult another soothsayer.

  And – praise the gods! – the old crone said that if he would only sit tight and wait, one day soon Cassia would come to him.

  II

  They left the shores of Germania in fair weather, the wind strong at their backs, the skies clear.

  Marcus stood looking out across the waves, thinking about their melancholy parting from Flavia. He knew Cassia doubted they would see the old woman again and this last farewell had pained her.

  It was no surprise that Cassia would feel sorrow. What was unexpected was how greatly Phoebe had been affected by it. She had known the old woman only a few short days. Yet they had spent most of that time conversing in whispers. He supposed that Flavia could understand better than either he or Cassia all that Phoebe had suffered. Whatever had passed between them, his sister’s load seemed lighter. She was more content. He had begun to catch glimpses of the girl she’d been and hoped, in time, that some of her wounds would heal.

  She was not the only one who had changed in the space of a few short days. Julia had not spoken a word – not in the villa, not in all the time they had been travelling. Yet there in Flavia’s village Marcus had woken one morning to see her playing with the other children. She had laughed. And with that one sudden sound it was as though a dam had burst. After that she could not stop chattering.

  The stinging of his wrists interrupted Marcus’s line of thought. He rubbed them to ease the soreness and then stood staring at the pattern of whirls and dots that were freshly pierced into his skin. The night they’d been made ran through his mind.

  As they had sat around the fire that first evening in the Saxon village, Cassia had told him, “You are truly one of us now.”

  “I know it.”

  Cassia had looked at Flavia. Some secret signal seemed to pass between them. The old woman had slipped away and returned carrying something which she handed to Cassia.

  A small pot of pigment. A bone needle.

  “Rufus gave them to me before we went,” Cassia said. “I left them in Flavia’s safekeeping. My brother told me that if we were successful, I was to mark you as our own. You will be one of the Wolf People. If you are willing?”

  “There could be no greater honour.”

  Later that night, when there’d been talk that the risings in the east would ignite flames of rebellion in the west, Marcus listened with no feeling of disloyalty to Rome. If the Empire was to crumble? Why then, it was long overdue.

  He smiled into the sea. Cassia’s gods had shaped him into something he could never have imagined. He hadn’t escaped from the Cyclops under the belly of a sheep. He hadn’t chopped the head from the gorgon Medusa. But in his mind and heart he’d slaughtered the monster who’d held him in thrall. In freeing Phoebe, he had also freed himself. He was his own man now. He could be the hero of his own life. And with all this talk of uprising… Who knew what Fortune had in store for them next?

  They were within sight of Britannia when their luck at last began to run out.

  There was a change in the wind. Bitter cold. As if it had been hatched in fields of ice. No longer at their backs, but in their faces. It was enough to furrow the brow of the man who steered the ship. He tasted danger in the air. The vessel had to tack back and forth in zigzags across the water, sailing twice the distance to make half the headway.

  The waves that until now had been nudging them homewards were a barrier that slapped the ship’s bows and cascaded salt spray over the deck.

  Little by little, however, they continued towards the coast.

  Next dawn, clouds were gathering on the horizon. White. Small still, but growing a little larger with each heartbeat. By mid-morning they were the size of trees. By noon they had billowed to gigantic proportio
ns. With every passing moment they darkened. From oyster. To slate. To pitch.

  They had hoped to make land in the village of the Fisher People before nightfall. Marcus and Cassia strained their eyes scanning the horizon for it. Just as it came into view there was a crack of thunder. A bolt of lightning tore the clouds apart. They spilled their load, and sky and sea erupted into a violent storm.

  To have come so far, to be so close to the homeland that Marcus had spoken of and now to be in such danger was more than Phoebe could bear. Hunched in the stern of the boat, she wept, clutching her baby to her chest. He in turn began to howl as though his lungs would burst. Julia whimpered and there was nothing Cassia or Marcus could do to soothe any of them.

  They edged closer to the shore. With great difficulty the master of the tiny vessel steered them through the jagged rocks and into the bay. In the lee of the cliffs his task became a little easier. Closer. Closer.

  And the Fisher People had seen them. Through wind and rain their shouts came from the shore. Yells of encouragement. Prayers.

  The ship was driven forward on the crest of one wave. Sucked back out on another. The sea was playing with them. A cat with a mouse.

  The hull scraped against rock, sending a shudder along the length of the timbers. It was then knocked sideways, dipping so low in the water that Marcus feared it would overturn. The crew fought to right it.

  They were closer. Closer.

  They could see the Fisher People’s faces now: anxious. Desperate. On the beach, ready to do what they could to help.

  When at last the hull hit the shingle, the crew dropped the sail and jumped from the ship to haul it onto land. The villagers waded out to help. Strong hands reached in to take the crying children: the baby. Julia. Phoebe. They were safe. Safe!