Cast Not the Day (12 page)

I would not let this brute trample on my pride, whatever it cost me.

I took a step forward. Immediately his hand sprang out, barring my way. With the other he seized my bare shoulder and hauled me round to face him.

I shoved back, resisting; but I might as well have tried to shift the tree-trunk behind me. I watched him, searching his body with my eyes, waiting for the telltale pull of his muscles that would show he was about to strike.

He was strong, and could hurt me badly; I had not doubted it. But now it came to me that, though he was built like a plough-ox, he was as slow as one too.

With a wrestler’s move he flicked me round, trapping my head in an elbow-grip. I could feel his other hand snatching at my waist, trying to gain a hold around my midriff. I struggled and fought, and as I twisted, his seeking hand caught on the strap of my loincloth. He heaved, trying to lift me, but instead there was a tearing sound and my loincloth came away.

He hesitated, confused, staring at the piece of fabric as if some part of my body had been ripped off. Seeing my chance I squirmed and twisted, freed myself from his grip, and landed a heavy kick behind his knee. He yelled out and stumbled. Then, before he could regain his balance, I charged at him. He staggered, paused, tripped over his own thick calves, and with a cry of anger fell heavily backwards into a puddle of rainwater.

Once more his friends were whooping and laughing. But my eyes were on the Spaniard. He lay on the ground, propped on his elbows, glaring up at me. Fear had cleared my head. I thought to myself, ‘Time to run, before he breaks my back.’ But then he relaxed and fell back with a splash; and lying in the puddle like a vast hairy she-pig he let out a great hoarse laugh.

By now the others were around me, prancing about, slapping me on the back and shoulders, taking my hand and shaking it.

One of them, a sturdy youth with close-cropped hair and blue eyes, called through his laughter to the Spaniard, ‘Looks like you’ve met your match, Tascus. Now leave him be, you great oaf, and pick on men your own size.’ He turned to me with a smile and handed me my loincloth. ‘Take no notice of Tascus: he means no harm; he’s been cooped up too long in winter quarters.’

I took the cloth from him. It was rain-sodden and the strap was broken. I wrung it out and began trying to untwist it; then, feeling foolish, I shrugged and left it. ‘Are you soldiers?’ I asked.

‘Is it so obvious?’ Then, seeing me look uncertain, he said, ‘Yes, we are; my name’s Durano.’ He extended his hand, and after a moment I took it. His grip was strong and confident.

The others began walking off towards the portico. He gestured and said, ‘Are you coming to clean off?’

I glanced dubiously at the Spaniard. He was strutting up and down, fooling around and shadow-boxing.

‘Oh, don’t mind him. He wouldn’t have hurt you.’ He grinned, showing fine white teeth. ‘Anyway, you floored him, so I reckon you can look after yourself.’

‘I can,’ I said, giving him a serious nod. But then he caught my eye and smiled, and I could not help smiling back.

Later, sitting on the stone bench in the hot-room, he asked where my friends were. I told him that, in truth, I had come alone, adding, ‘I prefer it that way.’

‘Is that so?’

He nodded and frowned into the steam.

Across the room, opaque to my vision, the others were splashing water at one another. With a laugh Durano said, ‘They’re always like that – games and dares and playing the fool.’

‘But not you?’

‘Sometimes. I have my moments.’

He dabbed the water with his foot and lapsed into silence. I could almost have supposed he was shy.

After a pause, for something to say, I asked when he had arrived in London, and he told me they had sailed with Constans from Gaul, having been called against all expectation from winter quarters. He had joined the army as a common soldier, he said, but his centurion had thought well of him, and now he had a company of his own.

Once again he fell silent; yet he kept taking glances at me and seemed eager to talk, so gesturing across the steam-haze I asked, ‘Are they your men?’

‘Them?’ He shook his head. ‘I know them from before, from my time as an infantryman. But now I head a band of raw recruits. It is better so: this lot know me too well. It’s not good to lead the same men you have served with in the ranks, especially when there’s discipline to be done.’

I nodded, as if I understood such things.

Later, when we were dressing, Tascus came up and slapped me hard on the back, and asked who it was had taught me how to fight.

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I learned it in the street.’ I said the trick I had used to trip him was the only one I knew. This amused him, and he shouted it out to the others, word for word, like the details of some comic story.

From across the room Durano, who was towelling his fuzz of hair, said, ‘Then come back tomorrow, and I’ll show you a few more tricks.’ He finished with the towel, screwed it into a ball, and tossed it into the wicker basket by the door.

‘Save your breath, Durano,’ said Tascus. ‘He’s too young for the likes of you. He’s afraid. He won’t come back.’

‘Afraid of what?’ I cried. I screwed up my own towel into a ball, and, taking careful aim, threw it into the basket on top of Durano’s. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow; be sure of it. And then I can throw you again.’

There was an open-mouthed pause. And then, as I had hoped, they all burst out laughing.

‘The bishop promises I shall soon be made a subdeacon.’

Albinus had found me at the table in the servants’ kitchen, chewing on some bread.

‘That’s good,’ I said, uninterested.

‘Mother will be pleased.’

I carried on eating.

‘Anyway,’ he said crossly, ‘where were you today? I was looking for you.’

‘Here and there,’ I said, regarding him with suspicious eyes as I chewed.

‘At the baths again, I suppose. Your hair’s all wet.’

‘It’s raining.’

‘You know what the bishop says about the baths?’

‘I know. You’ve already told me.’

‘Baths promote lust.’

I sighed and rolled my eyes. I had heard this many times from him. It was true that the baths, as well as being a meeting place for civilized men, are a market for every kind of vice. The Christian way was to avoid them; and I believe they would have closed them down altogether if they could.

How they felt they honoured their god by staying unwashed I could not understand. As for the rest, that was a man’s own choice, and he could not blame the baths for what he chose.

Fixing his eye to make sure he got my meaning, I said, ‘Best keep away then, if you cannot trust yourself.’

He huffed, and told me not to be disgusting, and went strutting off.

I had taken my time coming back from the gymnasium. The violence with Tascus, for all it had ended harmlessly, had drained me. But though my muscles hurt, I felt, too, an undertow of excitement and promise. I had already decided I liked Durano, with his fine looks, honest smile, and shining blue eyes; and as I wandered home through the rain I knew I should go back, come what may.

I asked myself what Sericus would have said, or my father. Sericus, no doubt, would have warned me off. As for my father, I had never known him well enough and could not tell. But now, I reflected, kicking my way slowly through the wet streets, both were gone, and my choices were my own.

So next afternoon I returned to the old bathhouse and gymnasium, and found Durano and the others in the sand-court under the plane trees. When they saw me they called out as if I were some long-missed friend, and the old men under the portico shook their heads and shrugged, and returned grumbling to their dice game.

‘I thought you would not come,’ said Durano.

‘Well I am here,’ I answered, standing tall.

Tascus came lumbering up beside him. ‘Ready for more, young one?’ He grinned and caught at my neck.

Durano gave him a good-natured cuff saying, ‘Leave him be.’ And then, turning to me, ‘Come on, I’ll show you some moves. It’s easy to outwit a brute like Tascus, once you know how. And later, if you want, I’ll teach you how to fight off a man with a dagger, and maybe show you some swordwork too.’

And thus it was, in that run-down back-street bathhouse, that my training began.

He taught me headlocks and bodylocks, blocks and feints and avoiding moves. I learned throws that could floor a man by using his own strength against him; and ways out of holds that seemed impossible to escape. It was rough work, and though Durano took care not to cause me any serious harm, he was never soft. During those first days I was constantly spitting sand from my mouth, and went home bruised and scratched and aching.

There were days when he had to show me the same thing again and again, and it seemed I should never learn. But then, just as I was beginning to think I had reached my limit and could go no further, I perceived with surprise that I had become stronger and quicker and better, and I was once more fired with the will to press on. If I became angry, or fell hard and cried out in pain or frustration, he would tell me we were not a pair of girls at some harvest-time dance, and if I was serious in wanting to be a soldier – as I had confided to him – I had better attend, for my life might hang on it.

And so, seeing the truth of his words, I would swallow my anger and climb to my feet, ready for another beating.

I was reaching the age where it was clear to me I should never be tall. Albinus, who was taller, goaded me with it, and though I told him I did not care, privately I determined that what I lacked in height I should make up for in strength and wit and sheer ferocity.

By the time the planes in the gymnasium court were thick with summer leaves and we were glad of their shade, I was holding my own in my contests with Durano. Then, one day, he arrived with two wooden practice-swords and a pair of wicker shields. He used them to train his new recruits: and now, he said with a grin, it was my turn.

I laughed and took up the toy weapon, and swung it about. I had long been eager for sword-training, which seemed to me the real skill of a fighting man. Always up to now he had held back, saying a man must know how to fight with his hands, and how to move, before he began to hide behind a sword. Good swordsmanship, he said, was not just hacking and thrusting, as many men thought; indeed the real skill lay not in the weapon but in the movements, which is why he had taught me those first.

In Durano’s circle there was Tascus the Spaniard, and two others: Romulus, from the remote hills of southern Gaul, and Equitius, tall, fair-skinned, and placid, whose family lived in the wild mountain country that divides Gaul from Raetia.

I soon came to understand that Durano, though he was the youngest, was the quickest-witted, and they deferred to him in most things, trusting his judgement, which seemed sure. Though they were much given to loud horse-play and practical joking, they were straightforward and honest with it, and accepted me with open, artless warmth. They were always shoving and hugging one another, and I, never having known it, at first found their physicality off-putting.

But, like a creature that is made tame by kindness, as the weeks passed I grew used to their touching and feeling and hair-ruffling, and allowed myself, slowly and by careful degrees, to be drawn into their rough male closeness.

Even Tascus, whom for a long time I was wary of, I grew to like, and realized that Durano had been right: he would never have harmed me, for under his harsh exterior he was like a child eager to please.

My new friends took me for what I was. In doing so, they allowed me to become a man I had not been. For the first time since I had come to London, I began to feel happy.

With the daily exercise my muscles filled out and my body grew lean and hard. But the changes were not only outward ones. I grew in confidence, and began to be guided by my own true lights. Nor was it only fighting skill I learned from them. I left Albinus shocked and staring when, after one of his sly digs, I threw out some barrack-room crudity in reply. He broke off from what he was saying and gaped.

‘You’d better not let Mother hear you speak like that,’ he haughtily declared.

I shrugged. ‘Let her hear what she likes.’

But that, I knew, was empty bravado, for all I felt better for saying it. My way of escape was not yet open: I was sixteen; still too young to enlist in the army.

Meanwhile, an uneasy truce had settled between me and Lucretia. She complained to her friends that I was a violent, wicked heathen; but, whatever she had said to Balbus, she had not succeeded in having me cast into the street. I had refused to let her co-opt me into her schemes; but in spite of this Albinus’s career in the Church was progressing. So she kept her distance, and was content to let me know I was despised.

Summer came on. When the weather grew hot we broke from training and, taking me to a spot he knew upstream, Durano taught me how to swim.

This I hated more than anything, and told him so, saying men were no more intended to swim than fly. But he just laughed and said most soldiers never troubled to teach themselves, and when their troopships foundered, or they fell off a pontoon, or slipped fording a river, they drowned for want of a skill easily learned.