Cato 03 - When the Eagle Hunts (3 page)

'Stop it!' His mother slapped him. 'Be still.'

The prefect nodded his thanks, and finished tying the boy to the makeshift floats.

'What now?' she asked.

'Wait by the stern. When I tell you, jump. Then kick as hard as you can for the shore.'

The woman paused to look at the two men. 'And you?'

'We'll follow you as soon as we can.' The prefect smiled. 'Now, my lady. If you will?'

She allowed herself to be led to the aft rail, and carefully climbed over, clasping her children to her sides, braving herself to jump.

'Mummy! No!' the boy cried out as he stared wide-eyed at the wild sea beneath his feet. 'Please, Mummy!'

'Aelius, we'll be all right. I swear it!'

'Sir!' the captain yelled. 'There! Look there!'

The prefect turned and through the snow-flecked storm he saw a monstrous wave rushing down on them, white spray whipped off its crest by the terrible wind. He just had time to turn back to the woman and scream out an order to jump. Then the wave crashed over the trireme and rolled it onto the rocks. The crewmen on the maindeck were swept away. As Maxentius threw himself backwards over the stern post, he caught one last glance of the captain gripping the main hatch grating, eyes staring at the doom about to engulf him. Icy darkness closed over the prefect, and before he could shut his mouth salt water filled his nose and throat. He felt himself turned over and over as his lungs burned for want of air. Just when he thought he must surely die, his ears momentarily filled with the din of the storm. Then it was gone for an instant, before his head broke the surface again. The prefect gasped for air, kicking out to stay on the surface. The heaving sea lifted him up, and he saw the beach not far off. There was no sign of the trireme. Nor a single soul of her crew. Not even the woman and her children. The swell swept him a little closer to the rocks, and the prospect of being smashed to pieces caused the prefect to renew his efforts to swim for the shore.

Several times he felt certain that the rocks would claim him. But as he struggled towards the beach with all his failing strength, the headland began to protect him from the wildest waves. At length, exhausted and despairing, he felt his feet brash the shingle bottom. Then the riptide drew him back from the shore and he cried out his rage to the gods that he should be denied salvation at this last moment. Determined that he would not die, not yet, he gritted his teeth and made one last supreme effort to make the shore. Amid the pounding foam of another wave, he swept painfully over the pebbles and braced himself to resist the undertow as the wave receded. Before the next wave could crash down on the shore, Maxentius scrambled up the steeply sloped shingle and then threw himself down, utterly spent and gasping for breath.

Around him the storm raged and fresh flurries of snow swirled through the air. Now that he was safely ashore, the prefect realised just how cold his body had become. He shivered violently as he tried to summon the energy to move. Before he could do so, there was a sudden scattering of stones nearby and someone sat down beside him.

'Valerius Maxentius! Are you all right?'

He was surprised at the strength of the woman as she lifted him up and rolled him over onto his side. He nodded.

'Come on then!' she ordered. 'Before you freeze.'

She drew one of his arms across her shoulder and half supported him up the beach towards a shallow ravine lined with the black forms of stunted trees. There, in the shelter of a fallen trunk, the two children crouched in the sodden mass of the prefect's cloak.

'Underneath. All of you.'

She joined them, and all four huddled as tightly together as they could within the wet folds, shivering violently as the storm raged on and snow settled about them. Looking out towards the headland, Maxentius could see no sign of the trireme. It was as if his flagship had never been, so completely had it been obliterated. No one else seemed to have survived. No one.

A sudden scrabbling of shingle caught his ear above the howling wind. For a moment he thought he must have imagined it. Then the sound came again, and this time he swore he could hear voices as well.

'There's other survivors!' He smiled at the woman, easing himself to his knees. 'Over here! Over here!' he called.

A dark figure appeared round the corner of the ravine opening. Then another.

'Here!' The prefect waved. 'Over here!'

The figures were still for a moment, then one of them called out, but the sense of his words was lost on the wind. He raised a spear and signalled to unseen others.

'Valerius, be quiet!' ordered the woman.

But it was too late. They had been seen, and more men joined the first two. Cautiously they approached the shivering Romans. By the loom of the snow on the ground, their features slowly became visible as they came nearer.

'Mummy,' the girl whispered. 'Who are they?'

'Hush, Julia!'

When the men were only a few paces away, a distant burst of lightning lit up the sky. In its pale glow the men were briefly revealed. Above their crudely cut fur cloaks, wildly spiked hair billowed in the wind. Beneath, fierce eyes blazed out of heavily tattooed faces. For a moment neither they nor the Romans moved or said a word. Then the little boy could take no more and a thin scream of blind terror split the air.

Chapter Two

'I'm sure it was around here,' muttered Centurion Macro, glancing down a dark alley leading up from the Camulodunum quayside. 'Any ideas?'

The other three exchanged a glance as they stamped their feet in the snow. Beside Cato — Macro's young optio — stood two young women, natives from the Iceni tribe, wrapped warmly in splendid winter cloaks with fur trims. They had been raised by fathers who had long anticipated the day when the Caesars would extend the limits of their empire into Britain. The girls had been taught Latin from an early age, by an educated slave imported from Gaul. As a consequence their Latin had a lilting accent, an effect Cato found quite pleasing to the ear.

'Look here,' the oldest girl protested. 'You said you'd take us to a snug little alehouse. I'm not going to spend the night walking up and down freezing streets until you find exactly the one you're looking for. We go in the next one we come across, agreed?' She looked round at her friend and Cato, fierce eyes demanding their assent. Both nodded at once.

'It must be down this one,' Macro responded quickly. 'Yes, I remember now. This is the place.'

'It had better be. Or you're taking us home.'

'Fair enough.' Macro raised a hand to placate her. 'Let's go.'

With the centurion leading the way, the small band softly crunched up the narrow alley, hemmed in on both sides by the dark huts and houses of the Trinovantes townspeople. Snow had been falling all day and had only stopped shortly after dusk. Camulodunum and the surrounding landscape lay under a thick blanket of gleaming white and most people were indoors huddled around smoky fires. Only the more hardy of the town's youngsters joined the Roman soldiers looking for dives where they might enjoy a night's drinking, raucous singing and, with a little luck, a bit of fighting. The soldiers, armed with purses bulging with coins, wandered into town from the vast encampment stretching out just beyond the main gate of Camulodunum. Four legions — over twenty thousand men — were sitting the winter out in crude timber and turf huts, impatiently waiting for spring to arrive so that the campaign to conquer the island could be renewed.

It had been an especially harsh winter and the legionaries, shut up in their camp and made to live on an unrelieved diet of barley and winter vegetable stew, were restless. Particularly since the general had advanced them a portion of the donative paid to the army by Emperor Claudius. This bonus was given to celebrate the defeat of the British commander, Caratacus, and the fall of his capital at Camulodunum. The townspeople, mostly engaged in some form of trade or other, had quickly recovered from the shock of defeat and taken advantage of the opportunity to fleece the legionaries camping on their doorstep. A number of alehouses had opened up to provide the legionaries with a range of local brews, as well as wine shipped in from the continent by those merchants prepared to risk their ships in the winter seas in return for premium prices.

The townsfolk who were not making money out of their new masters looked on in distaste as the drunken foreigners staggered home from the alehouses, singing at the tops of their voices, and spewing noisily in the streets. Eventually, the town's elders had had enough and sent a deputation to General Plautius. They politely requested that, in the interests of the new bonds of alliance that had been forged between the Romans and the Trinovantes, it might be a good thing if the legionaries were no longer allowed into the town. Sympathetic as he was to the need to preserve good relations with the locals, the general also knew that he would be risking a mutiny if he denied his soldiers an outlet for the tensions that always accompanied the long months spent in winter quarters. Accordingly, a compromise was reached, and the numbers of passes issued to soldiers rationed. As a result, the soldiers were even more determined to go on a wild bender each time they were allowed into the town.

'Here we are!' said Macro triumphantly. 'I told you it was here.'

They were standing outside the small studded door of a stone-built store shed. A shuttered window pierced the wall a few paces further up the alley. A warm red glow lined the rim of the shutters and they could hear the cheerful hubbub of loud conversation within.

'At least it should be warm,' the younger girl said quietly. 'What do you think, Boudica?'

'I think it had better be,' her cousin replied, and reached for the door latch. 'Come on then.'

Horrified at the prospect of being preceded into a drinking place by a woman, Macro clumsily thrust himself between the woman and the door.

'Er, please allow me.' He smiled, attempting to affect some manners. He opened the door and ducked under the frame. His small party followed. The warm smoky fug wrapped itself around the new arrivals and the glow from a fire and several tallow lamps seemed quite brilliant after the darkness of the alley. A few heads turned to inspect the new arrivals and Cato saw that many of the customers were off-duty legionaries, dressed in thick red military tunics and cloaks.

'Put the wood in the hole!' someone shouted. 'Before we all fucking freeze.'

'Watch it!' Macro shouted back angrily. 'There are ladies present!'

A chorus of hoots sounded from the other customers.

'We already know!' A legionary nearby laughed as he goosed a passing bar woman carrying an armful of empty pitchers. She yelped, and spun round to deliver a stinging blow before skipping off to the counter at the far end of the alehouse. The legionary rubbed his glowing cheek and laughed again.

'And you recommend this place?' Boudica muttered.

'Give it a chance. I had a great time here the other night. It has atmosphere, wouldn't you say?'

'It certainly has an atmosphere,' said Cato. 'Wonder how long it'll take before a fight breaks out.'

His centurion shot him a dark look before turning to the two women. 'What'll you have, ladies?'

'A seat,' Boudica responded tartly. 'A seat will do nicely, for now.'

Macro shrugged. 'See to it, Cato. Find somewhere quiet. I'll get the drinks in.'

While Macro steered a way through the throng to the bar, Cato looked round and saw that the only place left was a rickety trestle table flanked by two benches, right by the door they had just entered. He pulled back the end of one bench and bowed his head. 'There you are, ladies.'

Boudica curled her lip at the roughly hewn furniture presented to her, and might have refused to sit had her cousin not quickly nudged her forward. The younger woman was called Nessa, a brown-haired Icenian with blue eyes and round cheeks. Cato was well aware that his centurion and Boudica had arranged for her to come along to keep him distracted while the older couple continued their peculiar relationship.

Macro and Boudica had met shortly after the fall of Camulodunum. Since the Iceni were nominally neutral in the war between Rome and the confederation of tribes resisting the invaders, Boudica was more curious than hostile towards the men from the great empire across the sea. The town elders had rushed to ingratiate themselves with their new rulers and invitations to feasts had flooded into the Roman camp. Even junior centurions like Macro had found themselves asked to attend. On the first such night he had met Boudica. Her forthright nature had appalled him at first; the Celts appeared to have a distastefully egalitarian attitude towards the gentler sex. Finding herself standing next to a centurion, who in turn stood next to a barrel of the most powerful beer he had ever encountered, Boudica wasted no time in grilling him for information about Rome. At first her open approach inclined Macro to regard her as just another of the horse-faced women that made up the majority of the higher class of Briton. But as he endured her questioning, he slowly became less and less interested in the beer. Grudgingly at first, then more willingly as she artfully drew him into a more expansive discussion, Macro talked to her in a way he had never before with a woman.

By the end of the evening he knew he wanted to see more of this lively Icenian, and stammered out a request to meet again. She gladly assented, and extended an invitation to a feast being held by her kinsman the following night. Macro had been the first guest to arrive and stood in embarrassed silence by the spread of cold meats and warm beer until Boudica arrived. Then he watched in horror as she matched him drink for drink. Before he knew it, she had slapped an arm round his shoulder and was hugging him tightly to her. Looking round, Macro observed the same forwardness in the other Celtic women and was trying to reconcile himself to the strange ways of this new culture when Boudica planted a boozy kiss on his lips.