The Eagle of the Ninth [book I] (26 page)

But Esca’s suddenly widened eyes were fixed on one corner of the cloak, outflung towards him, and he did not answer; and Marcus, following the direction of his gaze, saw the cloth at that corner torn and ragged.

‘The ring-brooch!’ Esca said. ‘The ring-brooch!’

Still holding the Eagle in the curve of his arm, Marcus was hastily flinging the folds this way and that, but he knew that it was useless. The brooch had been in that corner. With sudden sharp-edged vividness, now that it was too late, he remembered that scene by the loch-side, the threatening faces of the tribesmen gathered round, the gear tumbled on the coarse grass, the cloak with its dangling brooch all but torn out of the cloth by their furious handling. Fool that he was, it had gone completely out of his mind; out of Esca’s, too, it seemed.

‘It may have fallen at any time—even while you were in the water,’ he said.

‘No,’ Esca said slowly. ‘It rang on the pebbles when I dropped the cloak before I dived for the Eagle.’ He rubbed the back of one hand across his forehead, thinking back. ‘When I picked up the cloak, it caught for an instant on an alder root; you know how the alders grow right down to the water’s edge. I remember now, but at the time I scarcely noticed.’

He dropped his hand and they sat quite still, staring at each other. The ring-brooch was a cheap bronze one, but its design was rather unusual, and the tribesmen must often have seen Demetrius of Alexandria wearing it. Also, to judge by the state of that jagged corner, there was probably a wisp of violet cloth caught in it, to help their memories.

Marcus was first to break the silence. ‘If they find it, they will know that one of us has been back since they searched our gear, and there could be but one reason for that.’ As he spoke, he began methodically to wrap up the Eagle once more.

‘When they speak with the warriors from the village we left this morning, they will know that it was I who went back,’ Esca said hurriedly, and checked. ‘No, that will not serve, for they will know that I went with your knowledge… Listen, Marcus. You must push on alone. If you take Vipsania and go now, you may stand a chance. I will put myself in their way. I will tell them that we quarrelled for possession of the Eagle; we fought for it down yonder, and you went into the loch, and the Eagle with you.’

‘And Vipsania?’ Marcus said, his hands still busy with the folds of the cloak. ‘And what will they do to you when you have told them this story?’

Esca said very simply, ‘They will kill me.’

‘I am sorry, but I do not think much of that plan,’ Marcus said.

‘There is the Eagle to be taken into account,’ Esca urged.

Marcus made a quick, impatient gesture. ‘The Eagle will serve no useful purpose when we get it home. I know that well enough. So long as it does not fall again into the tribesmen’s hands to be a weapon against Rome, it will lie as worthily in a Caledonian bog as on a Roman scrap-heap. If the worst comes to the worst, we will find means to dispose of the Eagle before they take us.’

‘It seems strange that you have not cast a thing of so little worth into the loch before this. Why trouble to carry it south at all?’

Marcus was already drawing his legs under him; but he checked an instant, his gaze holding Esca’s. ‘For an idea,’ he said. He got up stiffly. ‘We are in this together, and we will win clear together, or not at all. It may be days before that accursed brooch is found, none the less the sooner we get down to Valentia the better.’

Esca got up also, saying nothing. There was no more to be said, and he knew it.

Marcus glanced up at the wild clouds; hurrying clouds like wind-driven birds. ‘How long have we before the storm breaks?’

The other seemed to be smelling the weather. ‘Long enough to get down to the loch-side, anyway; there will be some shelter from the wind down there among the pine-woods. We might make a few more miles tonight.’

T
WO
mornings later, Marcus lay full length in a hollow of the lowland hills and looked down through the parted bracken fronds. Grey and tawny marshes lay below him, rising to the blue heights of Valentia to the south, and through the flatness of them wound the silver Cluta, spreading westward into its firth: with Are-Cluta, once a frontier town, still a meeting-place and market for all the neighbouring tribes, squatting within turf ramparts on its northern bank. There were coracles on the river, looking, from this distance, like tiny water-beetles; one or two larger vessels with blue sails furled, riding at anchor below the dun, from which the smoke of many cooking-fires rose towards a high grey sky; a sky that was gentle with exhaustion after the autumn gale, Marcus thought while he lay looking back over the past two days as it might be over a wild dream.

The storm had broken over them towards midnight, the wild westerly gale swooping at them down the shoulder of the mountains like a wild thing that wanted to destroy them; whipping the waters of the loch into racing white-caps, bringing with it the bitter, hissing rain to drench them through and through. They had passed the greater part of the night crouching with the two frightened mares under a steep over-hang of rock, wrapped about with a shrieking turmoil of wind and rain and darkness. Towards dawn the storm had abated a little, and they had pushed on again until long past noon, when they had found a sheltered hollow under the bole of an uprooted pine, knee-hobbled the mares, and crawled under the upreared mass of torn roots, and slept. When they awoke it was well into the night, and the rain was falling softly before a dying wind that sobbed and roared through the pines but no longer beat against them like a live thing. They had eaten what was left of the smoked meat, and pushed on again through the dying storm, until, in the spent calm of the day-spring, with the wet oak-woods waking to the song of chaffinch and robin and wren, they had halted at last, here in the low hills above the Cluta.

As soon as it grew light, Esca had gone on down to Are-Cluta, to sell the mares. The parting was hard for all of them, for they had grown fond of each other, Marcus and Vipsania, Esca and Minna, in the months that they had been together; and the mares had known perfectly well that it was good-bye. A pity they could not have kept the mares, but with the old cavalry brand on their shoulders they were much too easily recognizable, and there was nothing for it but to trade them for others. But at least they would be sure of a good master, for the tribesmen loved their horses and hounds, using them hard but only as they used themselves hard, treating them as members of the family.

All would be well with Vipsania and Minna, Marcus told himself firmly. He stretched. It was good to lie here on the soft turf of the woodshore, to feel his tunic drying on him, and rest his aching leg, knowing that however fast the hunt came on their trail, they were past the last point where they could be cut off by men pouring down any side glen that linked loch with loch in the misty maze that was behind them. But how was it going with Esca, down there in the dun? Always it was Esca who had the extra task to do, the extra risk to run. It was bound to be so, for Esca, who was British, could pass unnoticed where Marcus, with his olive skin, his darkness that was of quite a different kind from that of the tribesmen, would be suspect at once. He knew that, but it infuriated him, none the less; all his relief began to ebb away, and as the morning dragged on he grew restless and yet more restless. He began to feel sickeningly anxious. What was happening down there? Why was Esca so long? Had word of the Eagle reached Are-Cluta ahead of them?

It was near to noon when Esca suddenly appeared in the glen below him, riding a shaggy mouse-coloured pony and leading another. Relief flooded over Marcus, and as the other glanced up towards his hiding-place he parted the bracken fronds more widely and flung up a hand. Esca returned the signal, and a few moments later, having joined Marcus in the little hollow, he dropped from the back of the shaggy creature he rode, with an air of duty well and truly done.

‘Do you call these mossy-faced objects ponies?’ Marcus inquired with interest, rolling over and sitting up.

Esca was busy with the bundle he had taken from one of them. For an instant his slow, grave smile lifted the corners of his mouth. ‘The man who sold them to me swore they were sired out of the stables of the High King of Eriu.’

‘Did you by any chance believe him?’

‘Oh no,’ said Esca. He had looped the reins of both ponies over a low branch and sat down beside Marcus with the bundle. ‘I told the man I sold ours to, that they were sired out of the stables of Queen Cartimandua. He did not believe me, either.’

‘They were game little brutes, whoever sired them. You found them a good master?’

‘Yes, and the same master for both; a little fox of a man, but he had the right hands. I told him my brother and I were taking ship for Eriu. It was a good enough reason for selling the mares, and if anyone should ever ask him, it may serve to start a false trail. We haggled for a long time, because the mares were near foundering. I had to tell him a long story about wolves, to account for that, and so of course he swore their wind was broken, which was obviously a lie. But I sold them to him at last, for a fine sealskin rug and two enamelled war-spears, and a bronze cooking-pot and a sucking pig. Oh, and three fine amber bracelets.’

Marcus flung up his head with a croak of laughter. ‘What did you do with the sucking pig?’

‘It was a little black pig, very shrill,’ said Esca reflectively. ‘I sold it to a woman, for this.’ He had been busy with the bundle while he spoke, and now shook out a hooded cloak of shaggy cloth that seemed to have once been chequered blue and red, but was now grease-stained and weather-faded to a universal mud-colour. ‘Even a small thing will help to change the look of a whole company—at least from a distance… Also for dried meat. Here it is. Then I went back to the horse market and bought these two, with their head-gear on them, for the war-spears and all the other things. The other man had the best of the bargain; ill luck go with him! But there was no help for that.’

‘We are in no case to drive a hard bargain,’ Marcus agreed with his mouth full. They were both eating by that time. ‘I should have liked to have seen you with that piglet,’ he added thoughtfully.

Neither of them wasted more time on words. They ate quickly, and not over much, since there was no knowing how long the food would have to last them; and by noon they had loaded their few belongings into the yellow pack-cloth, flung the sheepskin saddle-pads across the backs of their shaggy little mounts, tightened the belly-straps, and were on their way once more.

Marcus wore the cloak for which Esca had traded the black piglet, the hood pulled well over his forehead, for he had laid aside the hand-shaped talisman which was too distinctive to serve him any longer; and under the greasy, evil-smelling folds, he carried the lost Eagle. He had contrived a kind of sling for it, with strips torn from the cloak in which it was closely bundled, so as to have both hands free, but as he rode he cradled it in the crook of his bridle arm.

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They fetched a wide half-circle round Are-Cluta, and reached the river again where it swung south-eastward into the heart of Valentia. Their return journey was very different from the outward one. Then, they had wandered openly from village to village, with a meal and a place by somebody’s fire at the day’s end. Now they were fugitives, lying up in some remote glen through the day, making southward through the night, and somewhere behind them, the hunt was up. For three days they had no sign that it was so, but they knew it in their hearts, and they pushed on grimly, listening always for sounds behind them. They made good speed, for the ponies, though not beautiful, were game little brutes, bred in the mountains, tough as whipcord and sure-footed as goats, and they were able to ride much of the time. Presently, they knew, they might have to let the ponies go, and take to the heather on foot. Meanwhile they pushed on in desperate haste, that they might be as far south as possible before that time came.

The fourth evening found them on their way again, after a day spent lying-up in a thicket of thorn-trees. A murky evening, closing in under a low grey sky. In the low country at their backs it was dusk already, but up here on the high moors the daylight still lingered, reflected back by many little silver tarns among the brown heather.

‘Three more days,’ Marcus said suddenly. ‘Three more days by my reckoning, and we should reach the Wall!’

Esca looked round to answer, and then suddenly his head went up with a jerk, as though he heard something. An instant later, Marcus heard it too, very faint and far behind: a hound giving tongue.

They had reached the crest of a long ridge of moorland, and looking back, they saw a cluster of dark specks cresting a lesser ridge behind them; a long way behind, but not too far to be recognized for what they were: men on horseback and many hounds. And in that instant another hound took up the cry.

‘I spoke too soon,’ Marcus said, and his voice jumped oddly in his own ears.

‘They have sighted us.’ Esca laughed sharply in his throat. ‘The hunt is up with a vengeance. Ride, brother quarry!’ And even as he spoke, his little mount leapt forward, snorting, from the jab of his heel.

Marcus urged his own pony into a tearing gallop at the same instant. The ponies were fairly fresh, but both fugitives knew that in the open it was only a matter of time before they were ridden down by the better-mounted tribesmen—pulled down by the yelling hounds as by a pack of wolves. And with one accord they swung a little in their course, heading for the higher ground ahead; broken country by the look of it, in which they might be able to shake off their pursuers.