The Abbot protested once again, more vehemently than before, then fell silent, while his monks and my own Companions, silent also, stood looking on. But I do not think that either of us heard what the old man cried out.
I said, ‘So, that is good, for I think there is in you that which we need among the Companions,’ and turned in the saddle to bid a couple of the drivers to bit and bridle one of the monastery horses and fling a rug across his back.
While they did so, Gwalchmai, as composedly as though his leaving with me had been arranged for many weeks beforehand, set to tightening his rawhide belt and girding up the hampering skirts of his habit.
‘Have you nothing that you wish to fetch? No bundle?’ I asked.
‘Nothing but what I stand up in. It makes for light traveling.’ He never looked at the Abbot, nor at any of the Brothers again. Someone gave him a leg up, and he settled himself on the riding rug, and gathering up the reins, wheeled his horse among the rest of us. Man after man swung into the saddle, and we clattered and jingled out and down toward the fenland fringes and the old legionary road that runs due north from the Glein crossing toward Lindum.
chapter seven
Frontiers
NOT UNNATURALLY, THE ABBOT COMPLAINED OF ME TO THE Bishop of Lindum; but the Bishop, though zealous, was a small man, shrill but ineffectual, like a shrewmouse, and not hard to quell. Nevertheless, that was the start of the ill blood between myself and the Church, which has lasted almost ever since ...
Six years went by, and all their summers were spent in arms against Octa Hengestson and his son Oisc who was now of an age to lead men. Lindum, with its ill-kept roads radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel, was the perfect base for the campaigning of those years, and there, in the old fortress of the Ninth Legion, made over to us by Prince Guidarius, we set up our winter quarters, from which to strike out southward toward the Glein and the shores of the Metaris Estuary westward along the open sea coast, northward to drive the Sea Wolves back into the Abus River.
Meanwhile, I knew that Ambrosius had made his stronghold against the Dark and was taking his stand there against old and mighty Hengest and against a new enemy, one Aelle, who had landed with his war fleet south of Regnum and made himself a sore menace to the British eastern flank. All that had nothing to do with me now; but nevertheless, I think that I would have abandoned Guidarius for the time being, and left the work half done and doubtless all to do again, and ridden south to Ambrosius if he had sent for me. But he did not send, and so I went on with the work at hand.
They were hard years, and we did not always carry home the victor’s laurels but sometimes only our wounds to lick. But by the seventh autumn, Lindum Territory and the northern part of the Icenian coast was almost clear, and so unhealthy for the Saxon kind that for a while their crazy war boats no longer descended on the coast with every east wind that blew. (We used to call the east wind ‘the Saxon Wind’ in those days.) And we knew that when spring opened the country, and the time for the war trail came again, it would be time to strike north across the Abus against Eburacum, where Octa and his hordes had made their new war camp in the old Brigantian country.
That autumn, Cabal died. I had never gone into battle without him running at my stirrup since he was three parts grown, and all that last summer he went with me as he had always done. But he was old, very old, gray-muzzled and scarred by wounds, and in the end his valiant heart wore out. One evening he lay as usual at my feet beside the fire in the hall, and suddenly he raised his head to look up at me, as though he were puzzled by something that he did not understand. I stooped and began to fondle the soft hollow under his chin, and he gave a small sigh and laid his head in my hand. I did not realize what was happening, even then; only his head grew heavier and heavier in my hand, until I knew that the time had come to lay it down.
I went out then, and stood leaning on the colonnade wall for a long time in the darkness.
But there was little time, after all, to spare for grieving over a dead hound that autumn.
Not many evenings later, we were once again in the hall, the mess hall of the old legionary fortress, where the badges and titles of the ill-fated Ninth Legion were painted on the peeling plaster over the door. There were hounds sprawled about the central fire, hounds belonging to one or other of the Companions. I watched Fulvius’s red bitch suckling her puppies, and thought how perfectly easily I could come by another hound to fill with his padding and the rattle of his long nails, the silence that walked at my heels. But he would not be Cabal. Only fate could send me another Cabal ... Supper was over, and the lads were about their evening’s amusements. Beyond the fire, two of them, stripped to their breeks, were wrestling, while a knot of others gathered about them to watch and cheer them on. I could hear their panting breaths and the laughter and advice of the onlookers. In a corner somewhat withdrawn from the rest, Gwalchmai leaned over a draughtboard, confronting Flavian, my onetime armor-bearer. They had long since formed a liking for playing draughts together, those two, maybe because they played almost equally badly. We had sweated the fat of Gwalchmai in the past six years, and he no longer bore the least resemblance to a partridge; a lean wiry young man with a quiet face. I had done well, I thought, when I whistled Gwalchmai from his fenland monastery; his father had been wrong, for he had proved himself a formidable fighter on horseback, though on foot his lameness made him slow; but above all he had proved himself the surgeon that I had taken him for. More than one of us owed our lives to him by now. Whatever mistakes I might make in the men I took for my Companions, I had certainly made none there, nor in Bedwyr’s case, nor in Cei’s. Those three, above all others, had become, as it were, an inner core of the Brotherhood, in the years since we first rode together.
Cei slept with his back against one of the benches, his legs in their black and crimson trews stretched wide to the fire. Presently he would get up, shake himself like a dog, so that his bright glass arm ring and necklaces jingled, and stroll off to the Street of Women at the lower end of the town. When Cei slept in the evening it generally meant that he had plans for a night with more amusing things in it than sleep. Some of us mended harness or cast the dice, talked idly by fits and starts, or simply stared into the fire, waiting for Bedwyr sitting on a white bullskin at my feet to sing again. It was never any use to clamor for song or saga from Bedwyr; when he chose, he would give it of his own free will, harping the bird off the tree, and when he did not choose, nothing on the earth would force him.
A movement in the shadows caught at the tail of my eye, and glancing that way, I saw where on one of the side benches, withdrawn as though into a world of their own, Gault and Levin leaned on each other’s shoulders and shared the same ale cup, talking together in low voices and with quiet laughter. It is a thing that happens on campaign, where women are scarce, every commander knows that; but sometimes, as with those two, it becomes a part of life.
Bedwyr saw where I was looking, and said with a breath of laughter, ‘It is as well, perhaps, that our good Bishop Felicus is not here to see that. The Church would hold up its hands in horror and talk of mortal sin.’
‘Mortal sin ... But then the Church and I have seldom seen eye to eye, these six years or so. If it keeps the lads happy and in fighting trim ... ’ For it did keep them in fighting trim, each of them striving to be worthy of his friend, each to make the other proud of him; and I have known the love of a yellow-haired girl to make life too sweet and unnerve a man’s sword hand, before now.
‘Give me a whole squadron of such sinners – so that they be young – and I’ll not complain.’
‘What when they grow old?’
‘They will not grow old,’ I said. ‘The flame is too bright.’ And I knew the grief that I suppose all commanders know from time to time, when they look about them at the men who answer to their trumpets; grief for the young men who will never grow old ...
A hurried step came along the colonnade, and Owain who was on guard duty appeared in the do
orway (we always mounted a light guard whether in camp or winter quarters, especially since Ambrosius had sent me word that Hengest was gathering a war fleet in the Tamesis mouth). ‘Artos, one of the scouts has come in, and another man with him. They say they must have word with you at once.’
‘I’ll come,’ I said. ‘Keep the next song until I get back, Bedwyr,’ and got up and went out with Owain into the autumn darkness of the colonnade.
The two men were waiting for me in the Sacculum where the Legion had kept its Eagle, its altars and its pay chest. We kept our own pay chest there now, and the muster roll, and the Red Dragon on its painted spear shaft propped in one corner; and it was the place where I usually saw any scouts or messengers that came in. This man I knew of old; he was one of Guidarius’s hunters, who knew the northern marshes as a man knows his own bean patch; a little ferret of a man, but completely reliable. The other was a stranger to me, a tall youngster carrying the woad-stained war buckle that proclaimed him for one of the Brigantes, and wearing the gold tore of a chieftain about his throat – like my own mountain people, the folk of the Northern Moors had gone back to their old ways in dress as in most other things, since the Legions left. I listened to what they had to tell me, and when they were finished, dispatched them to get a meal and a night’s rest, for clearly they were too spent for our company that night. Then I went back to the mess hall, and called Cei and Bedwyr out to me.
We went back to the Sacculum, and Cei, still yawning his way out of his interrupted sleep, kicked the door shut behind us. ‘Well?’ he grumbled. ‘What’s the word? I was just going down into the town.’ Cei generally woke from sleep in a grumbling mood.
‘I’ll not keep you long,’ I said. ‘There’ll still be plenty of the night left. And while you’re with her you can bid good-bye to Cordaella or Lalage or whoever it is this time.’
His eyes opened fully, and his temper sweetened in the moment while I looked at him. ‘Sa sa! It is like that, is it?’
And Bedwyr, who had come out still carrying his harp, and was leaning against the wall watching us, struck a little spurt of notes that was like an exclamation.
‘It is like that. It seems that we have wrought too well, hereabouts, for Earl Hengest’s peace of mind. He has come up to the aid of his son – landed on the coast north of the Abus and heading for Eburacum.’
‘So that was what he was gathering his war boats for,’ Bedwyr said. And I nodded.
Cei hitched at his sword belt. ‘And so now we march north to meet them.’
‘Yes.’
Bedwyr said, ‘It is something late in the year to be riding out on a new campaign.’
‘I know. It is in my mind that Hengest knows it also, and is banking on the knowledge.’ I began to walk up and down the small room; four paces from the window to the door, four paces back again – I have always found it easier to think walking. ‘If we leave him to himself now, with the whole winter to strengthen his position, he will be all the tougher nut to crack open in the spring; and there is always the risk that he may make the first move, and come down on us. We have a month of possible campaigning weather left – if we’re lucky. We must risk the weather breaking early.’
‘Aye well, there’ll be girls in Eburacum, I dare say,’ Cei remarked philosophically.
Bedwyr quirked up that flaring eyebrow, and the laughter flickered in his voice. ‘Is it any girl for you, Brother Cei? Any girl in any city?’
‘Any girl that is warm and willing.’ The golden man turned to me. ‘What is the word, Artos?’
‘How soon can we march?’
‘In three days,’ they both said together; and Cei added, ‘That is for the Companions; for Guidarius’s men – who can say?’
I was looking at Bedwyr. His fingers were still on the harp strings, but he made no sound. He lifted his eyes to meet mine, gravely considering, under their odd brows. ‘Who can say? – Guidarius, I suppose. But it is in my heart to wonder if we can count on the Lindum men at all.’
I had been wondering that also. We had fought through all those last coast summers together, Guidarius’s ragged war host acting as spearmen and mounted archers – their sturdy dependable little horses were well suited to that work, and for scouting, though they had not the weight for a charge; and we knew each other as well as men can who have fought together for more than seven years. It was not them that I doubted, but Guidarius himself. ‘That’s as may be,’ I said. ‘Let the others know, and get things moving, Bedwyr. I must go and speak with Guidarius now, but I’ll be back in an hour.’
‘And myself?’ said Cei, his thumbs, as they most often were, in his sword belt.
‘Go and bid good-bye to Lalage. You can take over double your share of work in the morning, to even the count.’
I went out through the main gate of the camp, hearing it already beginning to stir and thrum behind me, and across the street to the old Governor’s Palace, close to the Forum. The bitter-smelling mist of early autumn was creeping up from the river marshes, over the lower town, and the lantern that hung in the entrance to Guidarius’s forecourt shed a yellow pool of light on to a drift of yellow poplar leaves across the threshold. It was indeed perilously late in the year to be riding out on a new campaign.
I roused the doorkeeper who was sleeping peacefully with his empty beer jar beside him, and told him that I must speak with the Prince Guidarius.
Guidarius was in his private apartments, spending a domestic evening with his wife and daughters. The room seemed, when I was shown into it after a maddening delay, to be very bright with candlelight, very hot from the brazier which glowed clear red in the midst of it, and very full of girls.
Guidarius, reclining on a wolf-headed couch with his wife sitting dutifully at his feet, was very Roman as to outward seeming, his pouchy face carefully shaved, the few remaining hairs of his head trimmed short, his paunchy little body clad in a Roman tunic of fine white wool, and his wife’s gown cross-girdled in the classic manner, as few women still wore it, even when I was young. I never saw him without a feeling of surprise that he should have turned back, after the generations that his fathers had been magistrates and even provincial governors, to the title of Prince, that had been theirs before the Eagles came. Other men, yes, it had happened up and down Britain, as our old native states woke out of the Roman years, but not men who still wore Roman tunics and swore by Roma Dea and supped, as Guidarius had clearly done (for the remains were still hanging around his ears), with wreaths of rosemary and autumn violets on their bald heads.
He looked up when I entered, and nodded affably. ‘Ah, my Lord Artorius. I grieve that you were kept waiting, but you know how it is, we must all ease our shoulders from the cares of state sometimes; I am never easy to gain access to when I am spending a quiet hour with my family.’
‘I know how it is,’ I agreed. ‘But my business is urgent. I would not have broken in on you else.’
He stared at me a moment, then made shooing gestures to his women folk who had already risen uncertainly to their feet; and they fluttered out, leaving behind them a half-played game of draughts, a wisp of some soft embroidered stuff with the needle shining in it; all the pretty clutter that collects where women have been.
When they had gone, and the heavy curtain had fallen across the doorway behind them, he swung his feet to the floor and sat up. ‘Well? Well well? What is it?’
I walked over to him. ‘Prince Guidarius, I received word not an hour since, that Earl Hengest is come north to the aid of his kinsmen; he has landed beyond the Abus and is heading for Eburacum.’
He looked at me, startled, and then the blood rose into his mottled cheeks. ‘You received? Why was the word not brought in the first place to me?’
‘The thing is beyond your frontiers,’ I told him. ‘But I am the Count of Britain, and therefore my frontiers are wider than yours.’
It was foolish, when I should have been trying to conciliate him, but something about the man had always raised my hackles, since t
he first day that I entered Lindum, and the years that I had tried to work with him had not altered that. But truly, I think it would have made no difference if I had crawled on my belly at his feet.
He made sounds in his throat, then evidently decided to let it pass; only he said testily, ‘Well, well, young dogs bark loudest, so they say. Though you be Alexander himself, pull out that stool and sit down. It gives me a crick in the neck to be trying to talk to you while you stand over me like a pine tree.’
I did as he bade me, and then went on with what I had it in me to say. ‘I am come to bring you the word now, and to tell you that I am marching north in three days.’
He stared at me in good earnest then, with a frown puckering his forehead. ‘It is too late in the year to start a new campaign,’ he said at last, much as Bedwyr had done.
‘Almost, but not quite.’
He shrugged. ‘You should know best; you are, as you have pointed out, the Count of Britain. Well, I suppose if you can finish the thing in one good sharp encounter, you may be back here and snug in winter quarters before the bad weather sets in.’
‘Prince Guidarius, we shall not be coming back, neither before the winter sets in, nor after,’ I said.
He looked at me with his chin dropped. ‘Not – coming back?’
‘Not coming back.’
He seemed suddenly older, and as though there was less bulk inside his skin. I leaned toward him, making myself sound reasonable. ‘We should have gone in the spring, in any case, that you know; and you will have no more trouble with the Sea Wolves through the winter. How then is it a worse thing that we go now?’
‘Next spring is half a year away.’ He made a small helpless gesture. ‘I suppose I hoped that you would change your mind before the time ran out.’
I shook my head. ‘You have two good leaders in Cradock and Geranicus, and I have broken in your men for you. They were brave men when I came, but a brave rabble; now they are trained troops – even disciplined after a fashion – and will rally to you swiftly at need. You should be able to hold off the Barbarians for yourselves now; and the most crying need for me is elsewhere.’