The Silver Branch [book II] (16 page)

‘Flavius,’ he said desperately, ‘I am not going.’

There was a little pause, and then Flavius said, ‘No, nor I, of course.’ Then, with a breath of a laugh, ‘Did not Paulinus say that we counted as one in this?’

The Marine from the Dolphin, already foot-wet, looked back. ‘Best hurry.’

‘Look,’ said Flavius. ‘It is all right. We are not coming. Tell them on board that the other two are not coming. I think they’ll understand.’

‘Well, it’s your own affair—’ began the other.

‘Yes, it’s our own affair. Good luck, and—best hurry.’ Flavius echoed him his own words.

In the silence the tide made small, stealthy noises around their feet. They watched him take to the water, wading deeper and deeper until he was almost out of his depth as he reached the waiting vessel. They saw by the light of the lantern that he had been pulled on board. Then the lantern was quenched, and in complete silence the sails were set and the little vessel gathered way and slipped seaward, like a ghost.

Justin was suddenly very much aware of the lap and hush of the ebbing tide, and the wind-haunted, empty darkness of the marshes behind him. He felt very small and defenceless, and rather cold in the pit of his stomach. They could have been slipping out to sea now, he and Flavius; by dawn they could have been at Gesoriacum; back once more to the daylight and the life they knew, and the fellowship of their own kind. And instead …

Flavius shifted abruptly beside him, and they turned without a word and went trudging back through the soft dune-sand toward the figure waiting by the thorn-trees.

T
HEY handed one of Great-Aunt Honoria’s opal bracelets over to Paulinus for use, as it might be needed. They would have given him both, but he bade them keep the other against a rainy day; and Flavius took off the battered signet ring which was out of keeping with the sort of characters that they would be henceforth, and hung it on a thong round his neck, inside his tunic. And a night or two later, Justin asked Paulinus for leave to write to his father. ‘If I might write, once, to warn him that he will hear no more of me for a while.—I will g-give you the letter to read, that you may be sure I have betrayed nothing.’

Paulinus considered a moment, and then gave a brisk nod. ‘Yes, there is wisdom in that; it may well save—ahem—awkward inquiries.’

So Justin wrote his letter, and found it unexpectedly hard to do. He knew that it might quite likely be the last letter that ever he would write to his father, and so there were many things that he wanted to say. But he did not know how to say them. ‘If it should come to your ears that I left my post at Magnis,’ he wrote finally, after the bare warning, ‘and if that, and this letter, should be the last that ever you hear of me, please do not be ashamed of me, father. I have done nothing to be ashamed of, I swear it.’ And that was almost all.

He gave the open tablet to Paulinus, according to his word, and Paulinus cast one vague glance in its direction and handed it back to him. And in due course it went off by a certain trader making the crossing in the dark; and Justin, feeling as though he had cut the last strand that held him to familiar things, turned himself, with Flavius, full face to this other, stranger life in which they found themselves.

A strange life it proved to be, and full of strangely assorted company. There was Cerdic the boat-builder, and the boy Myron who had originally been caught by Paulinus trying to steal his purse; and Phaedrus of the
Berenice
, with his blue faience ear-drop; there was a government clerk in the Corn Office at Regnum, and an old woman who sold flowers outside the temple of Mars Toutate at Clausentium, and many others. They were linked together by nothing more definite than a snatch of tune whistled in the dark, or a sprig of common rye-grass tucked into a brooch or girdle-knot. Many of them, even those who lived in Portus Adurni, did not know the secret of the hole behind the lumber in Paulinus’s store-room, nor that other way—‘the Sparrow’s Way’ Paulinus called it when he showed it to Justin and Flavius—that started behind a low wall near the main entrance to the old theatre, and ended at those loose boards in the wall of the room where the painted Eros was. Yet in their odd way they were a brotherhood, none the less.

Justin and Flavius lodged with Cerdic the boat-builder, earning their living at any kind of job that they could pick up around the town and the repair yards. That is, they did so when they were at Portus Adurni; but often, that winter, they were at Regnum, at Venta, at Clausentium. Justin, though not Flavius, who would have been too easily recognized even in his present guise, pushed as far north as Calleva more than once. Five great roads met at Calleva, and the Cohorts of the Eagles were forever passing and re-passing through the transit camp outside the walls; and in all the province of Britain there could have been no better place for keeping one’s eyes and ears open.

Winter wore away, and Paulinus’s apple-tree was in bud. And upward of a score of men had been sent safely overseas; men who came to the Dolphin or to one or other of the meeting-places, wearing a sprig of rye-grass somewhere about themselves, saying, ‘One sent me.’

Spring turned to summer, and the best apple-tree in the Empire shed its pink-tipped petals into the dark water of the courtyard well. And from his chief city of Londinium, the Emperor Allectus was making his hand felt. Those corn and land taxes, heavy but just in Carausius’s day, which men had expected would be lightened under Allectus, became heavier than ever, and were levied without mercy for the Emperor’s private gain. And before midsummer news was running from end to end of Britain that Allectus was bringing in Saxon and Frankish Mercenaries, bringing in the brothers of the Sea Wolves, to hold his kingdom down for him. Britain was betrayed indeed! Men said little—it was dangerous to say much—but they looked at each other with hot and angry eyes; and the trickle of those who brought their sprig of rye-grass to the Dolphin increased as the weeks went by.

The first time Portus Adurni saw anything of the hated Mercenaries was on a day in July when Allectus himself came to inspect the troops and defences of the great fortress.

All the town of Adurni turned out to throng the broad, paved street to the Praetorium Gate, drawn by curiosity and the exciting prospect of seeing an Emperor, even an Emperor they were coming to hate, and by the fear of Imperial displeasure if they did not make enough show of rejoicing.

Justin and Flavius had found good places for themselves right against the steps of the little temple of Jupiter, where the Emperor was to sacrifice before entering the fortress. In the July sunlight the heat danced like a cloud of midges above the heads of the crowd,—a great crowd, all in their best clothes and brightest colours. The shops had hung out rich stuffs and gilded branches for a sign of rejoicing, and the columns of the temple were wreathed with garlands of oak and meadow-sweet, whose foam of blossom, already beginning to wilt, mingled its honey sweetness with the tang of garden marigolds and the sour smell that rose from the close-packed crowd. But over the whole scene, despite the festival garments, the bright colours and the garlands, there was a joylessness that made it all hollow.

The two cousins were close against the Legionaries on street-lining duty; so close to the young Centurion in charge that when he turned his head they could hear the crimson horsehairs of his helmet-crest rasp against his mailed shoulders. He was a dark, raw-boned lad with a jutting galley-prow of a nose, and a wide, uncompromising mouth; and for some reason, perhaps because he was someone very much of their own kind, Justin took particular note of him.

But now, far off up the Venta road, a stir arose, and expectancy rippled through the crowd before the temple. Nearer and nearer, a slow, hoarse swell of sound rolled toward them like a wave. All heads were turned one way. Justin, crushed against a particularly craggy Legionary, with a fat woman breathing down his neck, saw the cavalcade in the distance, swelling larger and clearer moment by moment. Saw the tall, gracious figure of the new Emperor riding in the van, with his ministers and staff about him, and the Senior Officers of the fortress garrison; and, behind him, the Saxons of his bodyguard.

Allectus the Traitor was within a few feet of them now, riding up between the swaying crowd; a still, white man, whose eyes and skin seemed all the paler in the sunlight by contrast with the glowing folds of the Imperial Purple that fell from his shoulders over the gilded bronze of his armour. He turned with the old charming smile to speak to the Camp Commandant at his side; he looked about him with interest, acknowledging the acclamation of the crowd with a bend of the head and a gesture of one big white hand, seeming unaware of the hollow ring to the cheering. And after him crowded the Saxons of his bodyguard; big, blue-eyed, yellow-haired tribesmen out of barbarian Germany, sweating under their back-flung wolf-skin cloaks, with gold and coral at their throats and serpents of red gold above the elbows, who laughed and made their guttural talk among themselves as they rode.

Now they were dismounting before the temple portico, the horses wheeling out in all directions to spread confusion among the close-jammed crowd. Over the Legionary’s shoulder, Justin saw the tall figure in the Purple turn on the flower-strewn steps, with an actor’s gesture to the populace; and was seized with such a blinding rage that he scarcely saw what happened next until the thing was half over.

An old woman had somehow slipped under the guard of the Legionaries, and ran forward with hands outstretched to cast herself at the Emperor’s feet with some plea, some petition. What it was, nobody ever heard. One of the Saxons stooped and caught her by the hair and hurled her backward. She went over with a scream, and they were all round her. They pricked her to her feet with the tips of their saexes, laughing, for the sport of seeing her scuttle. A stupefied hush had descended on the crowd; and then, as the old woman stumbled and all but fell again, the Centurion strode forward, sword in hand, and stepped between her and her tormentors. Quite clearly in the sudden hush Justin heard him say, ‘Get back quickly, old mother.’ Then he turned to face the Saxons, who seemed momentarily quelled by his air of authority, and said, ‘The game is finished.’

Allectus, who had turned again on the steps to see what was happening, gestured to one of his staff officers. Somehow the thing was sorted out; the Saxons were whistled off like hounds, and the old woman had gathered herself together and scuttled weeping back into the crowd, the Legionaries parting their crossed pilums to let her through.

When Justin, who had been watching her, looked round again, the young Centurion was standing on the temple steps before Allectus. Justin was within a spear’s length of them, half shielded by a garland-hung column; and he heard Allectus say very gently, ‘Centurion, no man interferes with my bodyguard.’

The Centurion’s hands clenched at his sides. He was very white, and breathing rather quickly. He said in a tone as gentle as Allectus’s own. ‘Not even when they turn their dirks on an old woman for amusement, Caesar?’

‘No,’ said Allectus, still more gently. ‘Not even then. Go back to your duties, Centurion, and another time remember not to step beyond them.’

The Centurion drew himself up and saluted, then turned and marched back to his place, with a face that might have been cut from stone. And Allectus, smiling his very charming smile, turned and went, with the senior officers about him, into the temple.

The whole thing had passed so swiftly that it was over before half the crowd had realized what was happening. But Justin and Flavius were to remember it afterward; to remember—of all unexpected things—the narrow, pointed face of Serapion the Egyptian, starting out of the ranks of those in attendance on the Emperor, his dark, darting gaze fixed on the young Centurion.

In the great fortress that night, the Commandant’s quarters, made over to the Emperor for his visit, bore a very different aspect from their usual one. Soft Eastern rugs and embroideries of delicate colours from the Emperor’s baggage-train had made the place more like a suite of chambers for a queen; and the air was heavy with the sweetness of the perfumed oil burning in a silver lamp beside the couch on which Allectus reclined. The evening garland of white roses which he had just taken off lay wilting beside him, and he was amusing himself by delicately pulling the flowers to pieces. His rather heavy face was satisfied as a great white cat’s, as he smiled at the Egyptian seated on a stool at his feet.

‘Caesar should have a care to that young Centurion,’ Serapion was saying. ‘He looked as though he would have knifed Caesar for a denarius this morning, and this evening he excused himself from attending the banquet in Caesar’s honour.’

‘Bah! He was angry at being called to account before the world, no more.’

‘Nay, I think that it was more than that. It was a pity that Caesar’s bodyguard thought fit to amuse themselves as they did this morning.’

Allectus shrugged indifferently. ‘They are barbarians, and they behave as such; but they are loyal, so long as I pay them.’

‘Nevertheless, it was a pity.’

Allectus’s smile faded a little. ‘Since when has Serapion the Egyptian been Caesar’s counsellor?’

‘Since Serapion the Egyptian furnished Caesar with enough nightshade to kill a man,’ said the other smoothly.

‘Hell and the Furies! Am I never to hear the last of that? Have I not paid you well enough? Have I not made you one of my personal staff?’

‘And am I not a good servant?’ Serapion cringed, his dark eyes downcast. ‘Nay, but I did not seek to remind Caesar of—unpleasant things … Yet I served Caesar well in that matter. It would have been better had Caesar used my services again—for a greater occasion.’

The other laughed softly. ‘Nay, man, you set too much store by secrecy and the dark. In these days no Emperor troubles overmuch to hide the hand that slew the Emperor before him. Besides, it was politic to get the Saxons deeply involved, that I might be sure of a good supply of Saxon Mercenaries thereafter.’