After Rome (27 page)

Cadogan was dumbfounded.

He had noticed Quartilla watching him and pushed his way toward her. “Did you know Esoros would let me down like that?”

“I could have predicted it.”

“Why?”

“‘Whatever I do, I do for my lord Vintrex,'” she mimicked, sniggering. Then her expression turned serious. “That's who Esoros
is,
Cadogan,” she said earnestly. “Don't you understand?”

In reducing Esoros to his essential core Quartilla had, for one fleeting moment, left herself open. Cadogan sensed it and seized his opportunity. “And who are
you
?” he asked her.

She opened her mouth to answer—just as a fight broke out and a man fell into the firepit on the hearth.

There was a frantic scramble to pull him clear, slap the flames from his clothing and assign blame. A new fight began at once. Cadogan was drawn into the vortex of the conflict and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to restore order among people who had been through too much, and could not control themselves any longer.

Afterward, Cadogan would remember that night as one of the worst in his experience. Barely contained grief and fear and anger finally had boiled over. Men fought men, husbands fought wives, women fought everyone. Shouting and cursing, pots thrown, pottery breaking, people knocking each other down, children screaming in terror.

Lucius Plautius would call it hysteria.

In total frustration, Cadogan had fled outside to fill his lungs with clean air and gather himself before returning for one more futile attempt to establish peace. He was sickened by the actions of the very people he had been trying to help.

Just walk away, he had counseled himself. Not for the first time. But he knew he could not do it.

As he headed back toward the open door, Godubnus emerged. “There you are!” the ironmaster had called cheerily. “You left just when the fight was getting good.”

Cadogan shook his head. “There's nothing good about it, they've gone mad and I can't stop them.”

“When there's an uncontrolled explosion in the smelter I can't stop it, either,” Godubnus said. “Let it burn itself out; it will. Then we'll pitch in and clean up.”

“Are you serious?”

Godubnus chuckled. “That's what Morag used to say to me.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not that; what Morag always said was, we have to pitch in and clean up.” He let out a great sigh. “By all the blood in me, I miss that woman.”

Cadogan appreciated a tiny respite from what was waiting in the cabin. “Was Morag your wife?”

“My fourth,” Godubnus had replied. “I like delicate women—a great big man like me—so I married three delicate flowers, one after another, and every one of them died in childbed. Then I found Morag, a strapping big girl though as bony as a Roman. Morag was made for me. Best year of my life was spent with that woman. She even worked the bellows at my forge.”

“Where is she now?” Cadogan had asked, fearing the answer. “Surely you didn't leave her back in…”

“Och no, she's buried in the highlands of Caledonia. A wild bull gored her,” he said matter-of-factly. “I came south over Hadrian's Wall to start over. Now it looks like I'm going to be starting over again.”

As Godubnus had anticipated, the emotional explosion burned itself out. By the following day the chastened refugees had been willing to consider their future in more reasonable fashion.

First Cadogan had insisted they repair the damage done to his fort. He put the ironmaster and his crew to work rehanging the door—which somehow had been wrenched off its hinges—while Regina assigned cleaning and tidying chores to the women. Perched on a stool near the center of the room, she had issued her orders in a voice accustomed to being obeyed.

“You there!” she called to Quartilla, who quickly looked around to see who else she meant. “Yes, you with the rusted hair and the big nose; why are you standing around doing nothing? Find a broom and sweep the breakage off the floor. Anything that is not broken, put to one side.”

Quartilla had goggled at her. “But I … I have no…”

“If there is no broom, make one!” Regina snapped. Swiveling on her stool, she addressed her next command to the next woman she saw, who happened to be her daughter-in-law. Pamilia was given her orders in the same peremptory fashion as Quartilla. Pamilia responded languidly, casting a shy, sidelong glance at Regina, but Quartilla jumped to obey.

Cadogan could hardly believe his eyes.

Karantec and Trebellos were equally prompt to respond when Regina sent them for more water. They were halfway out the door when she called them back. “Have either of you any experience with hunting?”

The two Silurians nodded in unison.

“Cadogan, are those hunting spears over there against the wall?”

This time Cadogan nodded.

“Then you two take those spears and bring back all the game you can kill. Do not dare to return here with empty hands. I do not care what you bring us as long as it is meat. We have a lot of mouths to fill.”

Within a week, Cadogan and Regina between them had turned the urbanites of Viroconium into several reasonably competent work parties. All but Vintrex and the infants were given jobs within their capabilities. Even Esoros, albeit with bad grace, was doing the sort of menial labor he had long considered beneath him.

Their first imperative had been shelter. The entire group could not remain in the little fort, even for a short time, but the hasty lean-tos they threw together from branches with blankets draped over them were not sufficient in wintry weather. The skills that Cadogan had developed in building his own house he began to teach to others. Soon he was envisioning half a dozen similar structures rising on the hillside.

Some were unwilling to share his vision. Viroconium as it used to be was still home for them. Nothing else could be good enough.

“We can't create another Viroconium,” Cadogan had tried to explain, “because it took centuries to develop that city. But it must have begun with a tiny village; a small cluster of houses like those we're going to build here. Your ancestors made that beginning and we can make another.”

He could feel the resistance in them, the still smoldering anger in them, but the only way he knew to deal with it was to ignore it. As the first oaks in the forest were selected for felling, the thaw set in. Men who had hung back stepped forward to drag the logs back to the site. Women whose eyes were still red with crying discussed where they wanted their hearthstones set.

And as Cadogan said to Nassos, “The trick is to fell the trees before the sap rises.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Above the headwaters of the Dee they came upon a filthy, bloodstained man staggering through the dead bracken. When he saw Dinas and his band he broke into a shambling run. After a few steps he gave up the struggle and turned, like a stag exhausted by harrying wolves, to meet his doom. His swollen face was a patchwork of bruises.

In spite of them Dinas thought he recognized a former neighbor and leading citizen of Viroconium. “Tarates, is that you?”

The man gaped at Dinas and rubbed his reddened eyes. “Dinas, son of Ocellus?”

“The very same. But what happened to you? You look half dead.”

Tarates collapsed as if the air had gone out of him. He sank onto the ground and held up a pleading hand. “Save us, in the name of God!”

Dinas hastily slid off the dark horse and took the proffered hand in his own. “Save you from what, man?”

“The Saxons.” His voice faltered. “The Saxons,” he repeated in a gravelly whisper. And began to sob, the helpless sobs of a grown man at the very end of his strength.

Embarrassed and confused by such naked anguish, the recruits could only stare at him.

Pelemos shouldered past Dinas and gathered Tarates into his arms. “You're safe now,” he said gently. “Don't be afraid, you're safe with us.”

Dinas took a step back and watched. Watched Pelemos cradle the broken man as a mother cradles her child. Observed the tension leaving the exhausted body; saw peace stealing over the ravaged face. There was no doubt of it; Pelemos had a gift. “Everything will be all right,” he murmured over and over. “We can protect you, no harm will come to you. Rest easy, you're safe with us.” It hardly mattered what Pelemos said. The reassurance was in the sound of his voice.

When Tarates was calmer, Meradoc brought water for him to drink. Cynan offered bread and cheese. Tarates crammed the food into his mouth with both hands, gulping frantically, only to spew it up again. “Take a small bite or two and then wait for a while before you try to eat any more,” Pelemos advised.

Tarates made a visible effort to get control of himself. Shrugging Pelemos away, he propped himself up on one elbow. His eyes were glassy.

“You said ‘save
us,
'” Dinas pointed out. “Are there more of you around here?”

Tarates said eagerly, “Did you see them?”

“No. Only you.”

“There were more. I know there were. A score of us at one time. You did not see them?”

“No, I'm afraid not,” Dinas repeated. With a crisp gesture he ordered his band to search the area, just in case. “What happened to you, Tarates? How were you injured?”

“Am I?”

“There's blood on your clothing.”

“Oh.” The man looked down at himself. He ran his tongue over his cracked lips. “Strangers,” he said. “Strangers attacked us. At the full moon.”

“Saxons?”

Tarates licked his lips again. “No, Britons. Like us. Not our tribe though. Not Cornovii. I do not know … what was I saying?”

“You were attacked by some Britons,” Meradoc prompted.

“Ah. Yes. They beat us senseless. They stole our supplies.”

“What about the Saxons?”

Tarates shuddered. “That was
before.
”

“I think he's had enough questioning for now,” Pelemos told Dinas.

Now that Tarates was talking he was reluctant to stop. He struggled to capture the random fragments of memory flickering through his head. “The Saxons were
first,
” he said carefully. Pinning it down. “The Britons attacked us
later
. When we were trying to go somewhere … but we became separated … When was that?”

“Tonight's the last night of the full moon,” Dinas told him, “so either it happened recently, or a month ago. By the look of you it might have been a month ago.”

Tarates reached up to touch the back of his head with tentative fingers, and winced. Pelemos was staring, appalled, at that part of his anatomy. Meradoc moved around behind him to have a look.

“We walked and walked,” Tarates was saying. “We were so lost. When we saw strangers we hid. I do not really remember what happened, or when.”

Dinas said firmly, “Begin at the beginning. You know that much, don't you?”

Tarates could not make his eyes focus. “Viroconium? It started with Viroconium?”

“You don't sound certain.”

“I am certain. I was there when the Saxons came. Both times.”

Dinas tensed. “What do you mean, ‘both times'?”

“The second time, they burned the city. I remember that. Flames as tall as trees. Afterward…”

“Afterward?”

“It's all a blur. No … wait. Cadogan said…”

Dinas leaned forward to put a hand on his knee. “My cousin Cadogan? Was he with you?”

“He was with his father.”

“The chief magistrate?”

Tarates groaned. “My head hurts.”

Meradoc said in an awed voice, “His skull's been bashed in. I don't know how he walked at all. Let him rest.”

“In a moment.” Dinas skewered Tarates with his eyes. “What happened to Cadogan and Vintrex?”

Tarates began to weep again. “They are dead. The Saxons burned the city and killed the people and they are dead. We were the last of them. We are dead too.”

*   *   *

That night the full moon rose. Swimming up out of a sea of dark trees. The trusted guide of travelers, inspiration of poets and stimulus of lovers stared down at the earth with a celestial indifference that unhinged human minds and set the wolves in the hills to howling. Urbanus and rusticus alike cowered beneath that cold blue light. Men asleep in their beds were tumbled into nightmare. They awoke disoriented and made dreadful decisions. Some murdered their wives. Some went to war on their neighbors. It had always been so.

Dinas sat late by the campfire, thinking about the citizens of Viroconium, slaughtered by barbarians. And about Tarates and his party, attacked by Britons.

Barbarians. From the Latin “barbarus,” meaning foreign; strange; not speaking our language. But what is our language? Not the formal Latin that Cicero spoke in the forum. We took the Latin we learned from our conquerors—a mixture of the coarse speech of the legions and the stilted phrases of officialdom—and blended it with the dialects of many British tribes. To this we added borrowings from Caledonian and Pict, Cymri and Erse. And now Angle and Jute and Saxon, making a strange brew indeed.

Strange. Are we barbarians now, we Britons?

So be it.

*   *   *

The following morning, leaving his band in camp and charging Pelemos to care for Tarates, Dinas and the dark horse crisscrossed the surrounding area in search of a healer. He approached every farm and smallholding with a friendly smile on his face. In spite of this, he could hear bars being conspicuously slammed across doors. When he tried shouting a request for help it was ignored. Two or three men even threatened to turn their dogs on him.

At last his nose led him to a tanner at work over his pits. The acrid smell was unmistakable. With no door to hide behind, the solitary tanner was forced to confront his uninvited visitor. A grudging conversation followed. “Country people used to offer help when asked,” Dinas remarked rather bitterly.