Sarum (33 page)

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Authors: Edward Rutherfurd

BOOK: Sarum
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“Here come the Celtic warlords with their long swords!”
The swords they wielded were not only long. They were made of a new metal, never before seen in northern Europe, and which had come to them from the east: it was heavy and tough, it had a fearsome cutting edge, and it could be tempered until it rang. It was iron.
Archaeologists have called this development the Hallstatt culture, naming it after an Austrian village where many remains of this warrior folk were found. With their iron swords, the Hallstatt Celts were almost invincible and became the earliest warriors of Celtic legend; few in number, they lived a life apart, rolling across the land in their wagons like gods; and when they died, these men of iron were not cremated, but buried with their chariots, wearing all their finery, as though bound for some further encounter in the after-life.
Fierce and warlike as they were however, these Celts were not destroyers. When they settled in a new land, they would build – depending on the local conditions – their modest thatched farmhouses, or, if times were troubled, well defended earthwork hillforts which were difficult to attack; if they found natives in the area, they usually left them alone, or used them as labourers. And it was in this manner that, between about 900 and 500
B.C.
– the period of their greatest migration – the Celts crossed the narrow English Channel and settled in many parts of Britain.
There is no evidence to suggest that the Celts destroyed the ancient British settlements they found. They seem to have merged with them as time passed. In some parts of the island the Celts never arrived at all; and it is likely, though it cannot be proved, that there are Britons today who are almost entirely of the ancient pre-Celtic stock. But in most places where they came, the Celts settled in peace; and once again, as it had on other settlers, the island exerted its influence upon them. Separated from the rest of the world by the narrow sea, and her high chalk cliffs, the land of mists remained a magical place apart.
Then, from roughly 500
B.C.
to the birth of Christ, came that great flowering of the Celts’ astonishing civilisation which historians call the La Tene culture, after the great Celtic archaeological site of that name in France; it is in these centuries that the Celts of northern Europe and Britain created some of the richest and most fantastic treasures of the prehistoric world.
They made chariots, they made elaborate jewellery of gold, silver and bronze, they made pottery which they covered with swirling patterns, they made figures of animals in clay and metal which, with their extraordinary abstract quality, seem to possess an inner life of their own. They made tunics and cloaks for themselves of dazzling colours and they decked out their chariot horses with gorgeous caparisons. They made verses, endless verses, in their lyrical, mystical language, sung by bards to celebrate their ancient heroes and their gods. And they made gods. The Celtic world was full of gods: full of marvels, superstitions, magical birds and beasts. All men knew of the fierce, illogical and grimly humorous doings of the twilight world that existed, all the time, alongside the world of men; in the unlikely event that any Celt ever forgot the other world, there were always priests to remind them.
“These Celts are mad,” the Romans said. “They eat like senators, they sing, they weep, and then they fight each other for pleasure.”
“They are all poets: drunk with poetry,” a merchant once explained.
“They are drunk with drink,” came the cynical Roman reply. “And their Druid priests are disgusting.”
All these statements were true. The fact was that the Romans could make nothing of the Celts. A good Roman loved systematic government, hierarchy, bureaucracy: the Celts had innumerable petty chiefs and kings, tied to each other by generations of blood vows and clientships so tangled that no logical Roman could ever make sense of them. Even their gods, like the great Dagda, the protector of the tribe, seemed to take pleasure in changing into unlikely shapes and playing tricks on mankind: not to satisfy their lusts and desires – this the Romans could have understood – but for no reason at all.
“We shall teach them to love order,” the Romans said. But it was not easy.
It was Julius Caesar who first tried to tame the Celts, in Gaul. That brilliant opportunist saw the nature of the problem at once:
“We’ll break up the petty kings and their clientships, replace them by magistrates,” he decided. “The bigger ones we must either subdue or win over to our side by flattering them and making them rich. Then we’ll educate their sons – turn them into Roman gentlemen. That always does the trick.”
It was a wise policy, and to an extent it worked. But there were some who refused all blandishments. The group of tribes known as the Belgae, part Celtic, part Germanic, took to Roman culture, but refused Roman rule, and were driven across the sea. But as the years passed, the calculated Roman wooing converted many to the benefits of civilisation, both in the province of Gaul, and in the still unconquered island across the Channel. Though many Celtic tribes scorned Roman domination, their chiefs often knew the Roman merchants of Gaul who brought them the huge amphorae of wine, the gems and other luxuries they enjoyed. Ambitious rulers had heard – even if they could not quite imagine them – of the stupendous palaces of the imperial city; and they were envious. They had seen, too, the convenient written records the Roman merchants kept of their transactions, and though the Celts had no writing of their own, some of the more educated tribal chiefs could speak and even write a little Latin.
“The islanders will fight; but they’ll come over to us,” Claudius remarked. This was the belief of those planning the invasion. “Sooner or later these barbarians always do.”
 
It was spring in the year
A.D
. 44, and the people of Sarum had been expecting the Romans for a month. The weather had been capricious: one day brilliant sunshine would make the chalk ridges shimmer and steam; the next, heavy grey clouds would scud over the entrance to the valley bringing an unexpected flurry of late snow or a sudden shower of hail. But today it was fine, with a warm damp wind blowing up from the south-west in a clear blue sky.
They were well prepared: for the entire population had taken refuge in the dune.
In the two thousand years since the sarsens had been dragged to Stonehenge, the landscape around Sarum had not changed much. Woods of oak and ash, elm and hazel still graced the broad bowl of land where the five rivers met. To the north, the bare chalk ridges extended to the horizon and on the slopes above the valleys, fields of corn rustled in the breeze. But there were changes: sheep now grazed on the sacred precincts where the mellow grey stones of the henge, still standing in their magic circle, were seldom visited and showed many signs of disrepair. The barrows were overgrown with turf, and no new ones had been built for generations. And on the broad slopes where the farmers had sown their wheat, flax and barley for four thousand years, the land had now been more carefully divided than before, into a patchwork of small, neat rectangular fields, clearly demarcated by hedges, lynchets and earth banks. The fields were seldom bigger than two hundred feet long, and they were cross-ploughed.
Only one feature of the landscape had changed completely. The small wooded hill which stood guardian at the entrance to the valley had been completely transformed. It had been a promontory really, a natural hump jutting out from the high ground; but several centuries ago, the old promontory had been scraped bare and round the entire summit of some thirty acres, two massive banks of earth and chalk had been thrown up, with a deep ditch between them. The lightly wooded hill had been transformed into a bold, bare mound, rather unsightly, with a steep slope on every side. For the first, but not the last time in its history, Sarum hill had been turned into a regular fortress. It was a forbidding place to look at now, glaring white in the sun and dominating the landscape for miles around. The people of Sarum, using a Celtic term, called this fortress the dune.
The dune already had a chequered history. It had served as a fortress, a hill settlement, a cattle pound, a market – sometimes all at once; but in recent years it had been allowed to fall into disuse. When news came of the Roman landing, its ramparts were hastily repaired and resurfaced so that their sides, steeply packed with fresh chalk and clay, stared out bravely at the world. A new pair of gates, made of oak, were erected at the main entrance and buttressed by heavy wooden props in order to withstand any battering ram. Inside the dune, now partially restored to its former glory, a motley collection of buildings had appeared: round thatched houses, grainstores, sheep and cattle pens. Near the middle stood a well. The central focus of the dune, however, was a single pole standing near the well, twenty feet high, on the top of which was the carved head of Modron, the Celtic goddess of war, with her three ravens. Her angry face stared out blankly into space, defying all invaders. This was the community’s battle standard and, according to the Druids, it made Sarum invincible.
 
The young man stood alone on the high wall of the dune and stared intently southwards.
“No news from Taradoc,” he muttered. “But I know the Romans are near: I can feel it.”
A few days ago he had sent the riverman down to the harbour with strict orders to return to Sarum and report as soon as the Romans got there. It was known that the Second Legion was moving swiftly along the south coast with instructions to destroy the hill forts of the west. They must have reached the river mouth by now, he thought, and once they did so, he was sure they would strike up river to Sarum. But Taradoc had not appeared.
“Where is the wretch?” the young man said irritably.
His eyes which scanned the country so anxiously, were blue; his figure was slight but well made, with a wispy light brown beard, a moustache, equally wispy, that he was encouraging to droop and curl up at the ends – for this was the fashion for a Celtic warrior – and a mouth that was a little too sensitive for the warrior’s role he felt obliged to assume. He wore a linen tunic that reached to his knees and was gathered in at the waist by a broad leather belt from which hung a heavy iron sword. Over the tunic was a large, four cornered woollen cloak – the brat – dyed a brilliant blue and held in place at the front by a large bronze brooch. On his feet he had strong leather shoes. He had a certain air of authority, but he was young and he carried his authority somewhat anxiously; even so, if he was still uncertain of himself, something in his eyes suggested that he had a mind of his own.
The most striking part of his dress however, was not the bright cloak, nor the brooch, but a huge, heavy strip of gold he wore round his neck: it had been shaped into a ring and the free ends, which met at the front, were each fitted with a magnificent golden boss, carved in the shape of a boar’s head. This was the torc, the most important ornament worn by any Celtic warrior: it was a badge of office and its huge size proclaimed that, despite his youth, this young man was the chief.
His name was Tosutigus. He was brave, but he was obstinate and he was ignorant; the fate of the dune, of Sarum, and of his family, now lay in his hands, and the plan that for many months he had carefully and secretly formed was about to cause the downfall of all three.
Tosutigus let his eyes travel along the parapet. The forces at his disposal consisted of a hundred men, six horses, an ancient chariot – for the war chariots were considered out of date nowadays – and a Druid. Since there was no question of this little garrison giving open battle to the Romans, the chariot would certainly remain unused. His men were armed with spears and arrows, both tipped with iron points, and he could rely on them to fight to the last man. But, like many of the Celts at that time, the defenders of Sarum had a still more effective weapon – which lay in the huge piles of smooth round pebbles that had been stacked every few yards along the parapet. These were the stones that the men, and some of the women, would fit into the long slings that they knew how to use so well. Swung round the head and released with the additional leverage of a fully stretched arm, the slings could hurl one of the pebbles with such force that it could drop a man stone dead at a hundred yards. In this type of fighting, the slingsmen worked so fast that their pebbles fell like a freak hailstorm, mowing their enemies down like grass.
As the people of Sarum waited to fight, and perhaps to die, they knew nothing about the plan that their young chief had pondered secretly for so long. But it was this plan which occupied all his thoughts now as he scanned the horizon for signs of the Romans, and which caused him to murmur:
“I’ll make Sarum greater than it has ever been before; and my family shall be powerful kings again, as they were in ancient times.”
His dynastic pride was well founded: no family on the island had an older claim to their territory. Five hundred years ago, had not his Celtic ancestor, Coolin the warrior, come riding down the great ridgeway from the north with his huge iron sword and his six faithful companions? Had they not halted at the entrance to the sacred temple of Stonehenge and there found Alana, last daughter of the house of Krona, whose noble ancestry stretched back into the mists of time? Heroic as the legend sounded, it was perfectly true; and the descendants of the union between the Celtic warlord and the last heiress of Sarum had continued to rule over a mixed population of Celtic and ancient island stock as the centuries passed. A further legend had also grown up, and had been encouraged by his family, that the first ancestors of Alana were giants who had carried the huge sarsens to the henge on their backs and built the temple in a single night. For the stones were known to be magic and the rulers of Sarum liked to remind their people that their ancestors were something more than ordinary men. Although the temple was seldom used now – for the Druid priests preferred to worship in smaller shrines or in clearings in the woods – the family still styled themselves in the ancient manner of the pre-Celtic house of Krona: lords of Sarum and guardians of the sacred henge.

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