After Rome (10 page)

“But surely you don't need me to go with you.”

“I need you to help carry supplies,” he said bluntly. “If you don't carry you don't eat. Of course I could leave you in the village, but I don't think they would feed you. Not unless I paid. Which I wouldn't. So make up your mind now.” He started for the door.

She scurried after him. “You're a brutal selfish man and I hate you, Cadogan.”

“We've already settled that,” he replied.

There was no road to the nearest village. Cadogan's infrequent visits over the past two years had left no discernible trail to follow. He made his way through the forest by memory while Quartilla stayed close beside him, treading on his heels. She expected another horde of barbarians to spring out at any moment. If Cadogan shared her fear he did not show it. The ongoing pain of a broken nose and the lingering discomfort in his groin distracted him from larger worries.

They emerged from the forest into a ravaged landscape: an unfolding succession of barren hills scarred by extensive woodcutting during the Roman years. A few mighty oaks still lay where they had fallen when the last axes were laid down. Surrounded now by seedlings and saplings, the dead giants were both parent and nursery to the young trees.

The denuded hills offered no opportunity for an ambush. Quartilla relaxed a little, though she continued to complain about walking. To her relief, the hills gave way to moorland studded with sheep. “Why don't we take one of those, Cadogan? I'm fond of roast mutton.”

“They aren't mine. They belong to the local smallholders.”

“Surely they wouldn't miss one sheep.”

He said in exasperation, “Is that how you propose to go through life, taking things that don't belong to you?”

“I have to survive!”

“That,” he retorted, “is increasingly debatable.”

His remark stung her into silence. For a while.

“Cadogan?”

“Yes?”

“Is it much farther?”

“We're about halfway there, why? Are you getting tired?”

“Are you?”

In truth he was. Not tired, but eager to give his nether parts a rest from the concussion of walking. “We can stop here for a while,” he said, “but not for long, or we'll be going home again in the dark.”

“Can't we spend the night in the village?” she asked hopefully.

“No.”

While Quartilla reclined on the grass, Cadogan remained standing. Sitting down would hurt too much. But in spite of his discomfort he could think. Was cursed with a compulsion to think.

The words were blazoned across his brain.
Nothing will ever be the same again.

Cadogan still could not fully comprehend, let alone accept, the changes that had come to Britannia. There had been warnings, of course, for years and years. At first they had consisted of subtle alterations, each no more than a slight annoyance. The quality of imported fabrics such as silk had declined. Exotic fruits no longer appeared in the markets. Other luxury goods to which the middle and upper classes had been accustomed became scarce and prohibitively expensive. Then one by one, they ceased to be available at all.

The women had been the first to complain. When the roads were no longer maintained to the usual standard the men began to take notice. Britons grew vociferous in their condemnation of the authorities. Senior officials offered complicated explanations. Gave elaborate excuses. Made empty promises. Then one by one, unnoticed at first but in increasing numbers, the Roman officials and their families began to slip away, taking with them as much of the island's resources as they could carry.

Why wasn't something done while there was still time? Cadogan wondered, as he had many times before. Men like my father must have realized what was happening. They should have demanded more legions, or at least kept the Twentieth. They should have made adequate preparations against the coming calamity. But no one expected calamity, not then. The inevitable was always in the future.

Then the future became now.

And here we are.

 

CHAPTER SIX

The morning found Dinas and Meradoc on their way again.

Inspiration had come to Dinas as he knelt in the Martyrium. One minute he had been bitter and confused; searching without a real sense of purpose. In the next minute he had the answer. Not in detail, that would come later. It was enough to have an idea so breathtaking in its audacity.

When he made camp with Meradoc that first night he had gone to sleep unsure of how to proceed. He awoke in the morning with the next step clear in his mind. He did not move, but continued to lie with his head pillowed on the stallion's neck while he thought. The dark horse knew Dinas was awake; had known even before he opened his eyes, but remained immobile, waiting for his master to make the first move.

Perhaps Meradoc is good luck, Dinas had thought to himself. A nice acquisition, that. I'll need more than luck, though. First, a company of strong, able men—clever but not too clever, so none of them will challenge me—who are willing to accept my authority without question. To lead other men I suppose I shall have to give up being a lone wolf. That could well be the hardest part. And then, there's the matter of organization—not my strongest point. No. I have the bones of the scheme but I'll have to have someone who can pull it together and work out the details.

I need a specific man with a certain kind of mind.

As they broke camp Dinas said to Meradoc, “You and I may do some interesting work together.”

“Right now?” the little man asked eagerly.

“Not yet. I'll tell you when.”

With no further explanation Dinas began saddling the dark horse. Seeing Meradoc watching him with an expectant look on his face, he said, “I have a cousin called Cadogan.” He vaulted onto the stallion and gathered up the reins. As he rode away from the campsite he called over his shoulder, “Are you coming?”

Meradoc trotted after him.

They had been traveling for quite a while before Meradoc broke the silence. “You have a cousin called Cadogan?”

“I do.”

“Are you and your cousin close?”

“We used to be the best of friends.”

Meradoc waited again. Talking with Dinas could be hard work. “Used to be?”

“I don't know what he thinks of me now.”

“Is he anything like you?”

“Hardly; we're chalk and cheese. You can judge for yourself when you meet him. That's where we're going now.”

“I thought you didn't know where you were going.”

“I didn't,” said Dinas. “I do now.”

Later in the day it was Dinas who began a conversation. “Do you know why you were left outside the gates, Meradoc?”

The little man ducked his chin. “Because I'm so ugly.”

Dinas turned in the saddle to look down at him. “But you're not ugly; who told you that?”

“Everyone. My head's too big. As I grew it became less noticeable, but I'm still ugly.”

“Meradoc, did you ever hear of Alexander the Great?”

He frowned. “I don't think so.”

“You need an education,” said Dinas. “To begin with, can you speak any language other than that imitation Latin?”

Another frown. “I don't think so.” A pause. “A few words, perhaps. The language of the poor.”

“The
poor.
” Dinas poured scorn on the word. “You mean the Britons who weren't fortunate enough to be subsumed into another race. Listen to me, Meradoc. Tyrants love simple language. Yes, no, stand here, run there, pay taxes, die. Latin is easily adapted to this purpose, but we Britons have another language. The tongue of our Celtic ancestors; subtle, complex, filled with shades of meaning comprehensible only to ourselves. The perfect weapon for resistance and subversion. As long as we retain it we can never be conquered. Overrun, perhaps, but not conquered. Bear that in mind.”

Meradoc nodded obediently.

Dinas continued, “Now I shall tell you about Alexander. He was a prince of Macedon who conquered the world before he was thirty years old. During his campaigns he rode a horse called Bucephalus, which had the heart of a lion and was utterly loyal. Alexander gave the horse a lot of the credit for his success. Do you know what ‘Bucephalus' means?”

Another frown. “I don't think so.”

“In the Greek language ‘Bucephalus' means ‘big head.'”

“Oh,” said Meradoc. And lifted his chin.

For a while they followed a Roman road that, Dinas explained, eventually connected with the highway linking Hadrian's Wall in the north to Isca Dumnoniorum in the south. Meradoc had never heard of Hadrian's Wall or Isca Dumnoniorum, but he stored the names in his mind. He was consciously storing a lot of things in his mind now.

The Roman road was beginning to show signs of neglect. Where it had been constructed on a causeway, there was occasional subsidence. Some of the paving stones had been taken away by locals to use for patching field walls. Stagnant water and dead leaves were pooling in blocked drains.

The road led past several villages that consisted of small groups of dwellings enclosed by an earthen bank or timber palisade. Apart from the villas of the Romano-British aristocracy, the houses of rural Britannia were constructed as they had been before the Iron Age. The majority were round, with mud-and-wattle walls supporting a thatched roof. In larger houses the interior might be subdivided into compartments around its circumference. Where surface stone was common the walls were built of this material, which allowed for structures of varying shapes and sizes. But the basic concept remained unchanged. It grew out of the land. It suited the tribes.

In the countryside the harvest season was over. Beneath gray skies, people were hurrying to get the last crops in before the cold weather destroyed them. On either side of the road men in homespun tunics and breeks were swinging their scythes with tireless, repetitive grace. Their families were gathering up the sheaves amid pools of fragrant golden chaff. When the wind shifted, Dinas and Meradoc could hear the women singing a work song.

At one of the villages Dinas purchased goat's meat and cheese, which he divided with Meradoc. The little man refilled their leather water bags from the local well while Dinas admired a young woman who was sunning herself in an open doorway. He smiled, she smiled. He tightened his legs on the dark horse's sides to make the stallion prance. The girl's smile widened. An older man appeared in the doorway behind her and Dinas rode on.

The clouds parted; a golden sun peeped through for one last glance at the earth so soon to fall asleep. Birds responded by singing in a thicket; the hum of insects provided a counterpoint. Meradoc was in danger of dozing off as he trudged along, one foot after the other. One foot after …

“We turn here,” said Dinas. They had come to a muddy trackway branching off to the east, toward a rise of hills.

The two men had not gone far along the trackway when the atmosphere changed. The light was still golden but a stillness came into the air; a weight. The stallion felt it too. His ears pointed rigidly forward, then swivelled back toward Dinas. A quiver of tension ran through his body.

Dinas dropped one hand to the hilt of his knife.

He could smell it before he saw it. Another village lay ahead, or what had been a village. With an exclamation of surprise, Meradoc pressed close to the horse.

No building was left standing, though there had not been many to begin with; only a few houses and a communal barn. Blackened timbers and scattered debris were all that remained. A pall of ash lay over the ruins, stirred by a rising wind. The bitter odor was compounded of burned wood and burned cloth and burned grain. Dinas flared his nostrils, trying to detect the smell of burned flesh, but mercifully there was none.

He noticed something unusual among the pitiful remnants of domesticity trampled into the mud. A small wooden cart and horse; a child's pull toy.

Dinas halted the nervous stallion and slid to the ground. After he pulled the toy out of the sticky mud he looked around for the child to whom it might belong. The only living things he saw were the crows picking through the wreckage.

With the sleeve of his tunic Dinas wiped mud off the toy, revealing faded paint beneath. Once the cart had been painted bright red. The horse had been dappled gray with a blue harness. When Dinas tried to spin one of the wheels with his thumb it would not turn. “Here, Meradoc, take a look at this. I had one like it when I was a boy.”

The little man reluctantly left the stallion's side and examined the toy. “Good workmanship,” he commented.

“Can you fix it?”

“Something's jamming the axle. Probably just mud, or a stone. Lend me your knife, Dinas.”

“My knife!”

“Mine's at the bottom of my pack but yours is in your belt,” Meradoc said reasonably.

“Very well, but be careful. The blade is Noric iron, it was expensive.”

Meradoc began working the tip of the knife into the space behind the little wheel. “So you're not as poor as you say?” he asked innocently.

“I never said I was poor.”

Meradoc gave the knife a minute twist. Nothing happened. He cocked his head and caught his bottom lip between his teeth. Twisted a fraction more firmly. Still nothing. Held the toy above his head to get a good look at the underside.

“What are you doing with that!” someone shouted.

Meradoc froze.

Dinas whirled around to see a man running toward them from the trees on the other side of the trackway. “Put it down!” the man cried.

Without taking his eyes off him, Meradoc crouched and set the toy on the ground.

“We meant no harm,” Dinas tried to explain.

The man picked up cart and horse and cradled them to his breast as a mother would her child. He was tall and well proportioned, with thick hair turning silver. In his youth he must have been beautiful. His features still possessed a Grecian symmetry.