Cast Not the Day (41 page)

‘Hush!’ said the man next to him, ‘or they’ll come and beat us.’ And another said, ‘What does it matter if you cannot swim? One way or another you are going to die.’

‘But the notary Paulus said we were being sent for trial!’

‘You believe that?’ responded his neighbour. ‘Then you’re more of a fool than you look.’

‘But they cannot just kill us! We have rights.’

‘Wake up, you fool! They can, and they will. If you ask me, I doubt they’ll even take us to Gaul. They will kill us here, and return for another load.’

The barge lurched. The man beside me looked wretchedly about him. He sneezed, and rubbed his nose. ‘Wait!’ I cried, ‘why isn’t your wrist bound?’

He gave a shrug. ‘They forgot. They were too busy kicking me.’

‘By God, then untie me!’

‘Oh, no! It’ll only make it worse for all of us.’

‘Worse than what?’ said Marcellus.

The man looked down and said nothing.

It took a lot of coaxing, but eventually he consented to use his free hand to unpick the knot that bound my arms. Once it was done the rest was easy, and I untied Marcellus and the others. Some even objected. I untied them anyway, calling them cowards and putting them to shame. I could almost have slapped them; but there had been enough violence, and soon there would be more.

Then we waited.

On deck, I could hear the voice of the master barking an order, and the feet of the crew pattering on the deck, and the creaking of lines.

‘What now?’ said the man next to me.

‘We’re turning towards the shore.’

I thought of what the other prisoner had said, that it was not worth our captors’ while to take us to Gaul. That would explain the unseaworthy ship. The man was right: they intended to put in somewhere in the estuary and kill us. It would be easily done, and the tide would carry off the bodies.

I kept these thoughts to myself; already some of the men there were shivering with terror.

Presently the hatch opened and one of the bargemen came climbing down the ladder, feet first. Marcellus caught my eye and inclined his head at the man’s belt. A knife was wedged into it. It had not been there before.

I nodded back. We understood each other. This was our only chance. I had told the men to conceal the strands of untied lanyard under the folds of their clothing; but it was not beyond some of them to speak out and betray us, in the hope of buying their lives at the cost of ours.

The bargeman reached the foot of the ladder and turned. Marcellus, taking my cue, twisted up his face and said, ‘You stink! With so much water around you, a man would think you’d find the time to wash.’

The man’s eyes widened and he swung round. He was buck-toothed, with a deeply stupid face. He began to say something. Suddenly one of the prisoners cried out – he denied afterwards it was a warning to the guard – and at the same time I sprang up, snatched the knife from the man’s belt, and cut his throat, silencing his death-cry with my hand over his mouth, then easing him down silently to the floor in a pool of blood.

‘You killed him,’ cried the prisoner who untied me, staring.

‘What did you expect?’ said another. ‘A debate?’

‘Now what?’ asked a third.

I said, ‘We wait.’

Soon another bargeman came, looking for the first, and I took him while he was still on the ladder. Then, armed with a second knife, Marcellus and I burst out onto the deck, and killed or overpowered the others. As I had already guessed, they were not brave, once it came to a fair fight.

When it was over the barge-master, a squat Sicilian with crimped hair and a gold neck-chain, grovelled on his belly, pleading for his life. We let him keep it, and ordered him to the helm.

I stood at the rail and looked inland. I knew the territory – it was all tall marsh-grass and muddy inlets, not far from where my father’s farm had been.

We beached the craft on an expanse of tidal mud-flat and waded ashore.

‘Where is this place?’ someone asked.

‘Who cares?’ said another. ‘Would you rather wait on the ship?’

There were one or two muted laughs; it was a good sign. I told them I knew the place, saying there was a hamlet not far off where they could find help and food.

‘And you, sirs? Will you not escape with us?’

‘We are going back,’ I replied. ‘We have a job to do.’

O
N THE RIDGE WE PAUSED
. Ahead in the valley, behind its screen of poplars, the villa appeared as I remembered it, golden and rust-red against the winter sunset.

But Marcellus frowned and said, ‘It is too quiet. Why has no one kindled the lights, and where is the smoke from the kitchen fires?’

We urged our horses on. As we drew near, a head appeared over the enclosure wall and a young voice called out a challenge.

‘Open the gates, Tertius, it’s me.’

The boy – one of the farm-hands – let out a cry of joy: he ducked down, there was the sound of heavy bolts shifting, and the great oak-and-iron gate swung open on its massive hinges.

‘Is my grandfather here?’

‘At the house, Marcellus sir. He has been waiting.’

We cantered our horses past the leafless orchard and the lawns and fish-ponds, on through the second enclosure wall to where the great dolphin-fountain towered on its sculpted sandstone base in front of the house.

Someone had called Aquinus. He was waiting on the steps, a sombre, upright figure against the darkening sky, flanked by the vast Corinthian columns of the portico. Clemens stood beside him, and old Tyronius the bailiff.

‘You are safe,’ said Aquinus. His voice was flat and tired.

Briefly, quickly, Marcellus explained what had happened.

Aquinus listened grimly. When Marcellus had finished he said, ‘You are here, at least. I was going to send a man to the city. I thought . . . well, no matter what I thought. Whose horses are those?’

‘We took them from a horse-farm. We could not find the owner.’

By now the sun was no more than a blood-red afterglow in the west. A sharp, still coldness descended with the night. Clemens eased a cloak around Aquinus’s shoulders. It was the kind of thing that, once, Aquinus would have told him not to fuss about; now he merely accepted it.

One of the servants emerged with a lamp, and by its flame, as I moved towards the door, I saw what up to now the failing day had hidden. I turned and stared. Aquinus glanced round.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I was going to tell you.’ He frowned deeply at the crude ochre-painted Christian symbol daubed across the stonework. ‘We have had visitors, and they have left their mark, as you can see.’

‘You were not hurt?’

‘I was not here. Tyronius and the hands took your mother to safety, concealing themselves below the house, in the hypocaust. Our visitors did not stay long.’ He gave a slight smile, adding, ‘The country makes them uneasy.’

Marcellus glared out into the darkness. ‘Did they take anything?’ he asked.

‘Oh, a few items they could carry off, the kind that seemed to them of value. But mostly they just broke things for the pleasure of it, and daubed their foolish symbols.’

Within, in the atrium, the great floor of green serpentine still bore the marks of spilled paint. Against the wall, at the base of one of the rose-pink columns, an olive-wood table lay on its side, two of its delicate legs torn off, the others protruding into the air like some felled animal. Shards of glass lay among the ruin. I remembered there had been a crystal vase upon it, engraved with a chariot and horses.

‘You should go to your mother,’ said Aquinus.

‘Yes,’ said Marcellus, frowning at the signs of violence that lay about. Something on the floor caught his eye. He picked it up. At first I thought it was a fragment of a painting; but then I saw it was an illuminated page, torn from its binding.

‘Your library?’ Marcellus said, looking round at his grandfather.

Aquinus gave a brief nod. ‘They knew where to strike. The rest – the broken furniture, the slashed tapestries – was just done in passing.’

And so, with the heavy air of a man who returns to the scene of great pain, he led us through the rooms to his library.

The shelves had been smashed with some blunt instrument. The stacks of books lay strewn across the floor. One by one, with systematic care, they had been trampled and torn apart; and in one corner charred remains lay on the ground.

We moved through the wreckage. After a short while Marcellus turned to where Aquinus was standing with Clemens at the threshold. ‘I am sorry, Grandfather. What kind of man hates knowledge so much that he would do this?’

‘The man who fears it. And there are many such men; do not deceive yourself. They lie in wait, until they sense their time is come. It is a mark of civilization that such men are kept in check – by what is higher, by what is better, by what is noble.’

He took the lamp from Clemens and advanced, pausing now and then to look around.

‘I was too attached to it,’ he said eventually, speaking in a low, remote voice. He shook his head. ‘There were books here that will be lost forever. Is this what the bishop and his new world holds out for us; is this his promise for the future? Nothing good has ever come from ignorance.’ And then he muttered once more, ‘I was too attached to it.’

Under the high mullioned window, where the remains of his desk lay strewn about, he seemed to gather himself up. Turning to me he said, ‘But enough of my own concerns; the questions we face are more pressing, and I have news.’ The remnants of the garrison, he said, which had been sent north, had finally mutinied. They had found the man who had murdered Trebius. ‘He was in the pay of the notary, and they will have no more of it. They are marching on London.’

‘Then we must join them,’ I cried.

‘Yes, I supposed you would.’

In the flickering light of the single lamp I could not see his face across the room. But something in his tone made me ask, ‘Do you disapprove, sir?’

For a few moments he remained still and did not answer. Then he said, ‘Of course you must go. What else now is possible? But let us beware of what we break, and what we awaken. We have built something that was long in the making, and is not easily remade when it is gone.’

‘We must trust in the gods, sir, who see further than men.’

He made a slight motion with his hand, I could not tell its meaning. Then, turning, he gazed out in silence at his darkened courtyard garden.

‘And thus the young teach the old,’ he said. ‘Well, our fate lies in your hands now. Too many men have stood apart, hoping that some other would bear the burden.’

The garrison army had made camp three days’ march north-west of London, on high defensive ground overlooking the road.

My men greeted me with all the warmth of old comrades, and the enthusiasm of rebels. They recounted to Marcellus and me, with outrage and anger, the tale of the murder of Trebius.

The killer, it turned out, had been one of the garrison troops. ‘One of our own,’ they said in disgust – though not, they pointed out emphatically, a member of my old company. He was a sentry. He had bided his time, but eventually he had been posted to the night-time watch he wanted; and when all was quiet he had slipped round to Trebius’s tent and entered unseen.

At first no one had suspected him. But he was a gambler, and a bad one at that – always broke – and it was not long before his new-found gold appeared at the dice-table. Someone had teased him about it, and meeting with an aggressive reply had grown suspicious enough to mention it to his superior. After that, the man’s pack was searched. Hidden at the bottom were Trebius’s signet-ring and his ceremonial dagger with its silver pommel.

The men, when the truth was known, had been in no mood for imperial justice. The killer was beheaded, and his body cast into a latrine-pit.

With Trebius gone, the other officers had chosen from among their number a new commander: a tall half-Greek from Phoenician Africa called Gauron. There had indeed been a minor disturbance in the north, Gauron explained, but it was nothing that called for the removal of the whole garrison from London. Perceiving this, and discovering too the truth of Trebius’s death, the men realized they had been deceived. They put down the disturbance on the frontier, and afterwards, at about the time Mar-tinus had died, they turned south, determined to rid the city and the province of the hated notary.