The Silver Branch [book II] (20 page)

‘Round here,’ Flavius panted, and they swung left into a gash of darkness that opened between the houses. Up one narrow way and down another they dived, bursting through the hedges of quiet gardens, doubling and turning in their tracks, with always the clamour of pursuit swelling behind them. Flavius was trying to make for the northern part of the town, in the hope of shaking off their pursuers and being able to get down to the mules and the precious oil-jars again from the other side. But when they came upon a street leading in the right direction, there were more Saxons with torches a little way up it, and as they swerved back into the dark gap between the two shops, a redoubled yelling told them that they had been seen.

It was not so much that they were being chased now, as hunted. From all quarters of Calleva, it seemed, the Saxons were up and hunting, part in deadly earnest, part in sport that would be just as deadly, closing in on them, driving them farther and farther into the south-east angle of the old ramparts. And, to make matters worse, poor little Cullen, who had been hard hunted before they came upon him, was almost done. The dark shape of a temple loomed ahead of them, and they rounded it and dived into the thick shadows under the colonnade, crouching frozen for a few tingling moments, as the hunt came yowling by; then they were up again, and running, almost carrying Cullen between them, heading for the dark mass of evergreens and neglected roses behind the place. Into it they dived, worming their way forward into the deepest heart of the tangle, and lay still.

At any moment the hunt would be back on its tracks, but now, for this little space of time, there was respite; the clamour of the hunt dying into the distance, only the hushing of the wind through the evergreen branches all around them, and the dark brown smell of old dry leaves and exposed roots, even the mizzle rain shut out. Little Cullen lay flat on his belly, his flanks heaving like the flanks of some small hunted animal. Justin lay straining his ears to catch any sound of the hunt returning, above the sickening drub of his own heart. Any moment now … Well, the cover was dense enough, anyway; they might stand a chance.

And then suddenly the hounds were giving tongue again, ahead of them now as well as behind, from a score of places at once; and Justin, tensing under the holly tangle, caught the red flare of a torch, and then another; and heard Flavius draw a harsh breath. ‘Fiends and Furies! They’ve called in all their friends to beat us out!’

So that was that. Justin thought quite calmly, ‘I suppose this is the end. It will be for us as it was for Paulinus—as it was for the Emperor himself; the torch-light and the naked saex blades, I wonder what it will really be like.’

But Flavius was crouching over them, whispering urgently, ‘Come—we’ve one more chance. Up, Cullen; it’s the last lap—you can do it, you’ve got to!’ And beside him Cullen was drawing his legs under him again, with a hoarse sob of sheer exhaustion. And somehow they were on the move once more, belly-snaking down through the bushes toward the old ramparts.

‘Where?’ whispered Justin urgently.

‘Our house—empty—’ he caught, and the rest was lost in the wind through the holly branches and the cries of the hunt behind.

Torches were flaring in the street beyond the houses, and the hunt was closing in through the gardens of the temple of Sul Minerva, as they gained the shelter of the thick-growing things at the foot of the Aquila garden and headed for the house.

A few moments later they were into the colonnade, and the wing of the dark and silent house was between them and the distant torches, reaching out like a protecting arm to hold back the danger and gain them a little time. ‘There’s a way in—through the bath-house if they haven’t—had the shutter mended,’ Flavius panted, starting along the colonnade.

‘If they’re beating—this cover for us—they’ll beat the house too,’ Justin objected swiftly.

‘The odds are they’ll miss the hypocaust—they don’t warm their houses in that way beyond the Rhenus. Come on.’

And then the Atrium door opened, letting out into the courtyard a soft flood of lamplight, to set the white roses of the colonnade shining, and Aunt Honoria appeared, evidently drawn by the nearing uproar, and prepared if need be to do something about it, for she held in one hand a small flower-shaped lamp, and in the other an old uniform dagger.

Her gaze fell with the lamplight on the three tattered and panting fugitives, and she stiffened, her eyes widening a little. But Justin had been right in his judgement of her at their first meeting. She would never waste time in surprise or useless questions. She said in that husky, jewel-cut voice of hers, ‘So, my Great-Nephews—and another.’ Then, with a flick of her dagger-hand toward the clamour that rose with the unmistakable note of a hunt giving tongue, ‘Is that for you?’

Justin nodded dumbly, his breath too thick in his throat for speech. Flavius said, ‘Yes, Saxons.’

‘Inside with you.’ She stepped back, and next instant they were in the Atrium, and the door shut and barred behind them. ‘The hypocaust,’ said Aunt Honoria. ‘Thank the gods it is summer and there’s no fire.’

‘You and I always thought alike,’ said Flavius, with a breathless croak of laughter, his back against the door, ‘but we thought the house was empty. Better put us out again through the slaves’ quarters and let us run for it. We shall bring danger on you if we stay.’

‘Flavius dear, there isn’t time to be noble,’ said Aunt Honoria, and her bright glance flicked to the little Fool drooping between the other two. ‘Besides, one of you at least is past running. Quick now.’ And somehow while she was yet speaking, without any of them but herself quite knowing how it happened, she had swept them after her through the door at the end of the Atrium into a passageway beyond, then by an outer door, down three steps into the narrow, windowless stoke-house. The light of the little lamp showed logs and charcoal stacked against the lime-washed wall, and the square iron door of the stoke-hole. The clamour of the hunt sounded no nearer; probably they were still beating the temple gardens or had turned to one of the other houses. Flavius stooped and pulled open the little iron doors.

‘You first, Justin.’

And suddenly Justin’s old horror of enclosed places, places from which he could not get out again at will, had him by the throat, and it was all he could do to force himself down on hands and knees and through that square of darkness that was like the mouth of a trap, the mouth of a tomb.

‘You next,’ Flavius said, and he heard little Cullen coming after him, and then Flavius’s voice again, in a hurried undertone, ‘Aunt Honoria, I’ll stay outside where I can come to your help if need be—and take my chance.’

‘Do you really want to kill us all?’ said Aunt Honoria crisply. ‘Get in after the others, and don’t any of you try to get out again until I come for you.’

And then the three of them were together in the enclosed space. The iron door shut behind them, and they were in darkness such as Justin had never known existed. Black darkness that pressed against one’s eyeballs like a pad. Faintly they heard Aunt Honoria piling logs against the door. ‘Get forward a bit,’ Flavius whispered.

Justin could sense that they had come out into a wider space. They must be right under the floor of the Atrium, here. He put out a hand and felt one of the fire-brick pillars on which the floor rested, strong pillars so short that if one tried to sit up, the floor would be against one’s shoulders. Justin tried not to think of that. He tried listening instead. He heard Aunt Honoria’s footsteps overhead, and women’s voices somewhere. He could hear the hunt too, very close now. It was odd to hear so much, when one seemed to be miles down below the world of living men. The sounds must come down the wall-flues, he supposed, like the air. Plenty of air coming down the wall-flues; no need to feel as though one couldn’t breathe. ‘Don’t be such a fool,’ he told himself angrily. ‘You can breathe perfectly well; you’re just a bit winded with the running, that’s all; and the Atrium floor isn’t sinking down on top of you either. Breathe slowly—
slowly
. You can’t panic in here, Justin, you miserable coward; it’s bad enough for the other two without that.’

How long he lay sweating, with the darkness turned soft and loathsome and suffocating about him, he had no idea; but it could not have been long, because little Cullen’s exhausted panting had scarcely quieted away when there was a furious pounding on one or other of the Atrium doors, and a crash, and then the tramp of feet almost overhead and a ragged splurge of voices, so many and so guttural that it came down to the three in hiding only as a confused roar. Then Aunt Honoria’s voice, raised a little from its usual quietness, clear-cut and imperious. ‘Will someone among you tell me what is the meaning of this?’

A deep voice, almost unintelligible in its thickness, answered her. ‘Ja, we seek three men that ran this way. Maybe you hide them here?’

‘Three men?’ said Aunt Honoria coolly. ‘There are none here but myself and these my slaves, four old women, as you see.’

‘So you say, old woman—old thin cow! Now we look.’

It was at that moment Justin realized that Cullen was no longer beside him. Well, there was nothing to be done about that now save pray that the little man was not doing anything foolish.

Aunt Honoria’s voice sounded again, cool as ever. ‘Look then, but I tell you beforehand that if you would find these men, whoever they be, then you must search elsewhere.’

There was a growl of voices and rough laughter, and the swift tramp of feet overhead again. And in the same instant, from somewhere before him in the darkness of the hypocaust itself, came a faint grating sound, a sound that Justin could give no name to save that it was like something shifting. What in the name of Esculapius was Cullen doing? He tensed, waiting for the next thing, but no other sound came out of the darkness. A woman squealed shrilly; and then suddenly the footsteps were everywhere, and a guttural snarl of voices calling to each other, laughing, savage. And after a while Justin felt little Cullen slipping back to his side.

The steps went to and fro across the Atrium floor, dulled and muffled into a kind of thunderous padding in the enclosed space underneath, dying away and pounding back again as the Saxons scattered questing through the house, like hounds drawing a dense cover. There was a crash somewhere, and a roar of laughter; and a rising babble of other voices, shrill and scared, that must be the household slaves. Once again Aunt Honoria’s voice sounded. But the three listening with straining ears in the dark could make out little of what was passing.

And then, quite suddenly, it seemed that it was over.

The distant distressful babble of women’s voices still reached them faintly, but the guttural tones of the Saxons had blurred into the night, and the padding footsteps sounded no more overhead. The scared voices of the slaves sank away little by little into quiet; and again they waited.

And then, faintly through the iron door, they heard the logs being shifted. The iron door opened; lamplight burst in upon them in a dazzling beam, and Aunt Honoria’s voice said, ‘I’m sorry to have left you here so long. It has taken me all this while to soothe my silly women and get them safely back to their own quarters.’

A few moments later the three of them, covered with ash and charred brick-dust, were standing in the stoke-house; and in the blessed sense of space above his head and air to breathe, Justin stood drawing in great gasps of breath as though he had been running. Flavius said quickly, ‘You are not scathed, Aunt Honoria?’

‘I am not scathed. I have had a somewhat anxious time; no more.’

The Atrium, when they were back in it a few moments later, bore testimony to the Saxon’s passing, in broken furniture and hangings torn down, mud trampled across the tesserae, and the painted plaster of one wall scored across and across as with a dagger, in the sheer wanton pleasure of breaking and marring. Aunt Honoria wasted no look on the damage, as she crossed to the shrine of the household gods and set the flower-shaped lamp on the altar.

‘What a good thing our household gods are only bronze,’ she said. ‘The altar lamp was silver.’ Then she turned to the tattered and grimy figures behind her. ‘When did you return from Gaul?’

‘We have not been in Gaul,’ Flavius said. ‘We put your bracelets to a better use this side of the water, Aunt Honoria.’

She searched his face with those beautiful eyes, so bright under the wrinkled lids and the eye-paint. ‘So you have been in Britain all this while? A year and the half of a year? and could you not have found means to send me word, just once, or twice, in all that time?’

Flavius shook his head. ‘We have been busy, Justin and I and some others; busy on the sort of work you do not risk dragging your family into.’

‘So.’ Aunt Honoria said, and her gaze went to little Cullen in his tattered motley on the edge of the lamplight. ‘And here is one of those others?’

Justin and Flavius turned to look at the little Fool as though becoming truly aware of him for the first time. Somehow, after that first startled moment of unbelief when the lantern-light showed them his face as he struggled with his captors, there had been nothing to spare for surprise. But now all at once they realized the astonishing thing that had happened. That this was Cullen the Fool of Carausius, whom they had never once thought of as amongst the living, since his lord was dead.

It was Cullen himself who answered first. ‘
Na
, Lady, I am Cullen that was hound to Curoi the Emperor. And though for long and long I have been seeking these two, it was not until tonight, by all the wheeling stars of the sky, that I found them again in my need.’

‘You have been seeking us?’ Flavius said.

The little man nodded vehemently. ‘Seeking and seeking, because my Lord Curoi bade me.’

‘The Emperor bade you? When—what is it that you mean?’

‘Two years ago last seed-time he wrote a letter, and when it was written, he gave it to me, and bade me take it to you if he should—die. He gave it to me because he knew that he could trust me; he said I was the most faithful of hunting dogs. But when he was slain’—Cullen showed his teeth as a hound shows them—‘they caught and held me captive a while and a long while to make them laugh. And when at last I broke free, I went North—my Lord said I should find you on the Wall.’ He sounded reproachful. ‘But you were gone, and I could get no word of you for another long while, until a woman in the street of the Golden Grasshopper at Magnis told me you were gone South on the road to Gaul. Then South I came—and this evening, those who held me captive aforetime knew me again in the streets of Calleva.’