After Rome (11 page)

“We meant no harm,” Dinas reiterated.

The stranger looked distraught. “I … you … I was afraid that…”

Meradoc put a hand on his arm. “It's all right,” he said softly. “I am called Meradoc and this is Dinas. We were passing by and noticed your trouble. Can we help?”

“Yesterday you might have helped. It's too late now. This…” The man looked down at the toy held against his heart. “My…” He choked on the word.

“Did it belong to one of your children?”

“It belonged to me. My mother kept it all these years.”

“Where is she now?” Dinas asked.

“She died. During the winter. It was a hard winter.”

“Do you have a family?”

“One wife, three daughters. They died last winter, too. An illness came on the east wind. But I was too strong. Unfortunately.” The man's eyes were tragic. Meradoc could not bear to look at them.

Dinas said, “What about the rest of your village? Where are they?”

“They … I don't know. Ran away, I suppose. We held out as long as we could.” Abruptly the strength went out of him. His knees buckled and he slumped to the ground. His face was bloodless.

While Meradoc tended the stricken man Dinas searched the ruined village. Even where the ashes were deepest they were cold; the fire had burned itself out days earlier. The shocked survivor must have been wandering in confusion ever since.

Meradoc looked up as Dinas returned. “He says his name's Pelemos. He has several nasty wounds, including one to the head. What shall we do with him?”

“Why should we do anything with him?”

“Because he's alone and in trouble, Dinas. You don't intend to leave him like this, do you?”

“What can he do for me?”

“That's the wrong question,” Meradoc said. “You should be asking what you can do for him.”

“Why?”

“Because he's a man like yourself. Like me!”

Pelemos opened his eyes. They were the wondering, innocent eyes of a child. “Hello,” he said, as if he had never seen either of them before.

Dinas snorted. “Listen to that, Meradoc. The man's simple, a liability if ever I saw one. We'd be better off with a milk cow.”

Meradoc looked stricken. “Please, Dinas. Take another look at him.”

“He won't have improved any,” he said, but to humor Meradoc Dinas took a second glance. The injured man lay supine on the ground with Meradoc's cloak spread over the lower half of his body. A long tall body, Dinas observed, lifting one eyebrow. He bent over and examined the man more closely. The exposed shoulders were very broad; the tanned arms were corded with muscle. The hands were large but well shaped, with sturdy fingers. The injured man was not young but obviously he was very strong. A body shaped by a lifetime of hard work.

Aha.

“No,” Dinas said slowly, “I don't think we'll leave him.”

They stayed with him for two days and nights; difficult days and nights during which Pelemos did not know who they were, or who he was, and called despairingly for someone named Ithill.

The two men consulted about the best way to care for him. “I never carry medicaments with me,” Dinas said. “I'm so healthy you couldn't kill me with an axe, but my mother had some useful nostrums.” Closing his eyes, he recited, “A dish of snails boiled with onions will improve general health. Eating goose tongue stimulates female desire. Pomegranate rind mixed with pine sap boiled in vinegar relieves constipation.”

“None of that's any good here,” Meradoc pointed out.

“No. All we can do is get some food into him and hope for the best. And pray, of course,” Dinas added piously. Mindful of the circumstances in which he had met Meradoc.

“Do you think he's a Christian, Dinas?”

“How would I know? He's not wearing a cross.”

When they tried to feed Pelemos he refused, insisting the food be given “to the others.” His thirst was excessive. Meradoc found a well and an unburned bucket, and kept busy trotting back and forth with water. Dinas began to suspect Pelemos was suffering from the same illness that had taken his wife and children. There was a burial ground close to the village with several fresh graves. They were marked with little piles of stones.

Taking a blanket from his saddlebag, Dinas cut it into strips and soaked them in cool water. With Meradoc's help he wrapped the man's entire body in them. The wet wool dried out in a matter of minutes. They repeated the procedure. And again. And again.

On the third morning Pelemos awoke clear-eyed and hungry. He devoured everything they gave him to eat and would have taken more if it were offered. Afterward he listened in frowning concentration while Dinas identified himself and Meradoc. “We are friends and travelers who came upon you in your distress and tried to help,” he said. He did not go into any more detail, nor did Pelemos request it.

The unfortunate man still appeared to be dazed, but when Dinas asked him direct questions he was able to respond. With frequent prompting, he related a picture of rural life in Britannia that might have applied to thousands of people.

Five families had lived in his village; five interdependent households related in varying degrees by blood. They had farmed their land together, they had grazed their livestock on communal pastures. The life they lived was the life generations before them had lived. Roman eagles did not dominate their sky. Their allegiance was, as it always had been, to their tribal chieftain. Their education came at their grandmothers' knees. Their geographical knowledge did not extend beyond the market where they sold their surplus produce.

They were nominally Christian, but the Celtic version of Christianity that had been introduced by missionaries from Eire was not radically different from the pantheism of pagan Albion. In spite of the edict of Constantine, which had made the Church of Rome an official religion, Pelemos and countless other Britons continued to pray to the gods of nature as well as to Christ.

Their prayers had failed when the fever struck. They would never know its cause, any more than they knew how to fight it. The ancient remedies were useless. The men buried their old people and children first. Then their wives. When the few surviving men thought they could not suffer more, the raiders came.

“Who were they?” Pelemos asked his rescuers. “We never did them any harm, so why did they destroy the village?”

“I can tell you who they were,” said Dinas, “but I can't answer your other question. Barbarians, that's what the Romans call them. Nomadic warriors who only love battle and booty. Angles and Jutes and Saxons from Germania, Franks from Gaul and Vandals and Goths and Ostrogoths from farther east. Visigoths from everywhere; some even gained official positions within the empire. For a while the Romans tried to negotiate with them, but they didn't realize the sort of people they were dealing with. Now the barbarians are running riot from the Rhine to Byzantium and everywhere in between.”

“Can't they be stopped?”

When Dinas replied his voice was harsh with anger. “The first of them should have been turned back as soon as they reached this island—or slaughtered on the shore and left for the carrion birds, which would have been the better solution. When they started coming in large numbers, at first the authorities didn't realize what a threat they were to our way of life. By the time it became obvious, the legions that could have protected us were gone.”

“What do you mean by ‘our way of life'?” wondered Meradoc.

Dinas was anxious to be on his way again. No great effort was needed to persuade Pelemos to go with them. The man seemed almost relieved to turn his back on the ruins of a lifetime. His reaction was not unique. Throughout Britannia Superior people were struggling to find ways to deal with drastically changed circumstances. Some would flee, some would fight.

Some would try to pretend nothing had changed.

Dinas allowed Pelemos another day to rest and gather his strength, then the three men set out together. Dinas appeared to be more cheerful than he had been. Responding to him, the dark horse pranced and jingled his bit. Pelemos was quiet but that was to be expected. For him it was a victory to be able to keep going. Meradoc kept a watchful eye on him, prepared to help if necessary.

It was not necessary. The man was as strong as he looked.

Things are falling into place, Dinas told himself. First Meradoc, now Pelemos. What about Cadogan?

 

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cadogan and Quartilla had returned to the fort laden with food and necessities such as lamp oil. Cadogan carried the bulk of the supplies on his back, but Quartilla, to his surprise, willingly carried her share. He never knew what to expect of the woman. Nor what to do about her either. Foolishly, perhaps, he had hoped she might want to remain in the village, but from the moment they arrived she had been openly contemptuous of the simple thatched houses and the ordinary country people who occupied them. She clung to Cadogan like a burr to ensure he would not leave without her. When they arrived back at the fort she declared herself “delighted to be home.”

Among Cadogan's purchases had been a thick pallet stuffed with goose down. A useful article in any case, but particularly useful for a man who was going to sleep on the floor. He knew he needed to sleep well; he would have to chop a lot of firewood.

The pair had settled into an uneasy domesticity. Uneasy on Cadogan's part, apparently satisfactory to Quartilla. The evening they returned from the village she had bustled about the place by lamplight, putting away their supplies and rearranging Cadogan's possessions. Neither wife nor servant, she was defining her position as co-occupier with equal rights.

It was not in Cadogan's nature to throw a woman out by the scruff of the neck, but he was not fooled by her clumsy attempts to ingratiate herself. He did not want her, nor did he want her in his house. Her presence only served to remind him how much he still wanted Viola. During all the long hard days he had spent constructing the fort, it was Viola he imagined waiting for him in the doorway. He refused to believe she was lost to him. The misunderstanding between Dinas and Aldina had caused her to take a stand that did not reflect her true feelings. When enough time had passed Viola would regret her decision, he was certain of it.

Almost certain.

For five nights Cadogan slept on the floor. On the sixth morning he awoke with such a pain in his back he had to get to his feet in stages. His stiff back helped to stiffen his resolve.

The woman was still sleeping soundly in his bed—most of the sound being her explosive snoring. He shook her, not too gently, by the shoulder. “You'll have to get up now, Quartilla, it's time for you to go.”

She opened her eyes and stared blearily up at him. “Go where?”

“Back to wherever you came from.”

She sat up, keeping a blanket across her naked upper body. “You don't know where I came from.”

Cadogan was in no mood to play games with her. “Then you'd better tell me so I can send you home.”

“I'm not a piece of baggage you can pack off on a mule!” she spat at him. “I'll have you know I am the daughter of a chieftain.” Raising her chin, she pulled the blanket around her shoulders like a royal robe—as if indifferent to the fact that the movement uncovered her breasts. Two scrawny sacks hanging on a bony rib cage. “I was born and raised in a real fortress on a mountaintop, nothing like this pathetic hovel of yours.”

“You said your father was a centurion,” Cadogan reminded her.

“I never! I may have mentioned that my grandfather was a centurion, but you misunderstood.” Her hauteur changed to belligerence. “That's so like you, Cadogan! If you'd been paying the attention I deserve, you'd know I said my father married a centurion's daughter.”

Cadogan noticed beads of sweat on her forehead. She was not a good liar, so why did she keep trying? “British chieftains marry women of their own rank, Quartilla, so I'm surprised that one would marry a foreigner's daughter. Which tribe does your father belong to?”

She rolled her eyes. “He is … he was … a chief of the Iceni.”

“The tribe of the warrior queen called Boudicca?”

“The same.” Her confidence was coming back. She tossed her head and smiled at him. “I inherited my red hair from Boudicca.”

If Cadogan had not been thoroughly sick of Quartilla by now he would have felt sorry for her, but this was a matter of survival. “Your red hair,” he echoed blandly. Then he pounced. “Your
dyed
red hair.”

Her face flamed. “It isn't dyed! Besides, Roman matrons dye their hair red to make them look like Helen or Cleopatra, and why shouldn't they?”

Cadogan had decided she was a pretentious peasant, yet she knew something about Helen of Troy and Cleopatra. That demonstrated a degree of education. But how? Where? Suddenly he was interested.

When he tried to question her she drew into herself like a snail into its shell.

“I hate you,” she said.

Cadogan was halfway down the hill before he paused to wonder how she had driven him from his own home. She had not asked him to go yet here he was. Failing to communicate with her on any useful level, he had left the fort, calling back, “I'm going to the well for more water.” But he had not brought any buckets. Had not brought anything except his own frustration.

The first spatters of an icy rain struck his face.

Perhaps I should do what Dinas did—wisely, in retrospect—and simply abandon the woman. Walk away without looking back, and start over in a different place. I've started over before, I can do it again, only better, with the knowledge born of experience. This time I'll find land near a quarry so I can build with stone. But first I must dig a real basement and put in a foundation. I'll need …

Concrete! The Romans often used concrete in place of stone because it could take any form. They mixed it themselves using … using what? Who still remembers? Someone must, I'll have to ask …