The King's Cavalry (7 page)

Candless viewed the splendid structures on the hill to his right, in the west. “Capitoline Hill,” said the guide briefly. “The
temples of Jupiter and Juno are on it, just beyond the forum. In the old days, that cliff over there, the Tarpeian, is where they used to throw off the mad and the bad. It’s still haunted. Next to it’s the Palatine Hill, with the Temple of Apollo, and those of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian. Just beyond is the Circus Maximus where the chariot racing goes on, a good day out, sometimes a good week out, too. The ground was boggy in the old days, softer for the riders who fell off, they say, and the spectators clung onto the hillsides where they could to watch the races. It’s all improved now, proper track, proper seating. Rome’s come a long way.

“There’s a few temples on that hill there, too, the Aventine. Diana’s and Ceres’ are the biggest. Pollio’s Library is there, too and so’s the Armilustrium where you go to get your weapons purified at the end of the military campaign season.”

Potius tugged at Candless’ sleeve. “I’m getting a bit dizzy with talk about all these buildings,” he muttered. “Can’t you shut him up?”

“Ignore him, look at the women,” the bishop hissed.

As the group approached the great baths and library built by Caracalla, the tyrant they called The Enemy of Mankind, the streets were bright with fashionable, elegant matrons, their lips rouged, their hair piled in elaborate coiffures, tinted gold with saffron or red with beechwood ash, hints of it peeking out discreetly from under hooded
pallae
. Their slaves stood attentive as the ladies lingered and chatted, holding bright green parasols to protect their mistresses from the sun that could spoil their lily-white complexions. Many women fanned themselves with peacock feathers and carried a
mappa
dangling from the wrist to mop away dust or perspiration. A few even affected the new fashion of having a cloth just to wipe the nose.

They all seemed conscious of their appearance, noted Candless, who wondered at how long their morning toilet took them, to fix their hair, and don their jewels, bracelets, pendants and collars, but they seemed not to be busy, just ladies with leisure, passing away the easy days in a pleasant place.

It was a popular place to linger, for the baths was a natatorium where as many as 1,600 bathers at one time could enjoy the temperature-controlled pools, emerging refreshed and cleansed to browse an array of displays of all the goods of the empire. They could wander into the vast library, open from the first to the sixth hour, where scholars pored over scrolls from all over the known world. Two whores, recognisable by their blonde wigs and gilded nipples, which were visible through their filmy kirtles, chatted in the shade. Above them were their tariff boards and the guide squinted to see the prices.

“This way,
Lord,” he said, recovering and openly proud of his city, “we are almost at the bishop’s house.”

“Wait a moment,” said Candless. “What about the Christians?” In the euphoria of seeing how well the true gods were regarded in this welter of statues, marble and gold, the pagan masquerading as a Christian bishop had quite forgotten to ask about his fellow congregants.

“Oh, they’ve surfaced, come out of the catacombs now,” said the guide, shrugging. “They’ve taken over one or two minor temples since the emperor gave them an unofficial nod. They’re back to being tolerated again. They had a hard time of it for a while there, with the crucifixions and the arena fodder they made. It was good spectacle though for the rest of us, but that’s over and they seem to be decent enough people, very helpful if they live near you. They’re not exactly lying low, they offer to help if you have sick people in the house, that kind of thing, but they’re not flaunting their beliefs much, either. The last couple of their bishops got exiled, you know.”

“I know,” said Candless grimly. It had been a major setback for his plans to acquire sacred relics. “Don’t stop. Take me on to Bishop Militades’ house.”

X
- Escape

My small craft skittered down the Rhine like a lively horse. The sail was straining, driven well by Vulturnus, god of the east wind, and Sol smiled down from the morning sky. I was making good time, putting distance between myself and Mainz, where hopefully my former jailers had not yet learned of the boat stolen from the local customs post.

It would have been simple to sail all the way to the coast, but I reluctantly acknowledged that I should abandon the little vessel. Its official status was plain from its blue sail and I certainly did not look the part of a Roman tax inspector, so, although the locals might shy away from me, no military patrol would hesitate to stop and question me.

The river narrowed and took a sharp turn north as I sailed opposite a sizeable settlement with the walls of an obvious castrum and I guessed I was close to the Via Ausonium, a military road that ran up the west side of the Rhine. I recalled it from my days as a soldier in Mainz and knew I’d be courting inspection if I continued much longer. Soon enough, a suitable stretch of willow-lined river appeared. I dropped the telltale sail, bundled and pushed it over the side, then rowed my craft to the shore and under the concealment of a big willow’s overhanging foliage, where I tied up and stepped onto the bank.

The boat had a couple of official markings burned into the gunwale at the bow, but any halfway-larcenous local would plane them out and use the boat for his own purposes. With luck, Maxentius’ men might not come across it for weeks, if ever.

Ashore, I took stock. Judging by the time I had been sailing, I was probably 20 miles north of Mainz. I’d been captured southwest of there at Vallis, where my cavalry troop under Grabelius would have returned to find me missing. They would deduce from witnesses to the attack that Maxentian’s Romans would have taken me either to Mainz or to Colonia, which was still a distance north of where I stood. It was reasonable to assume that Grabelius would send patrols cautiously towards each place, in hope of finding where I was held, so I resolved to head back south and west, to intersect the line between Vallis and Mainz. At best, I could meet a patrol of my men, second best was that I could return the entire way to Vallis. I did not contemplate the worst case, I had no intention of being recaptured.

For equipment, I had the drayman’s cloak and straw hat, his boots, which fitted passably well, his knife and a hammer, plus the man’s purse with its few small coins. I’d been worse equipped, I’d been better equipped, it would have to do. At least the hat and cloak provided some disguise, although my size, scarred face and bad limp would make me
recognisable to any official, should word go out in the coming days. Maybe by that time, I would be safe somewhere. I shrugged, glanced at Sol to take a bearing and set off southwest. Within a few hundred paces, I came across the military road, checked for sight or sound of patrols or traffic, crossed it cautiously and stepped into the woods.

The going was conveniently good. The land was wooded, interspersed with agricultural and grazing lands, so it was easy enough to move across in fair concealment. At dusk, I came across a small settlement, slipped into a chicken coop, lifted a drowsy bird without too much clucking and was quietly out and away into the woods without even a single dog barking. I kept my fire concealed, roasted the fowl and slept well in my cloak, fed and warm. I was under way again before dawn.

On the third day, I felt confident enough to make contact with a villager who gave me a supply of dried, smoked pork in exchange for the hammer. He was a rat-faced, gotch-eyed villain and he eyed my dagger with cupidity, though it was a poor weapon, but we concluded the transaction peaceably and I moved on. Something alerted my instincts and I looked back once or twice, sensing that someone was following me, but saw nothing. A half hour later, as I was sitting with my back to a tree, eating some of the pork, the fellow tried to kill me with his axe. I heard something creak behind me and moved just in time to avoid the swing of it, then I was on my feet, dagger out and punching an upthrust under the axeman’s ribs.

It was the gotch-eyed villager. The blow lifted him off his feet and I was close enough, face
-to-face, to smell his onion-scented breath. I was holding him impaled. I lowered him to his toes, and he gasped in pain. “What?” I said.

“The knife,” he said, a bubble of blood on his lips. “I wanted the knife.”

It seems harsh to tell it now, the way it happened, but I have been a soldier all my life. I saw my father slaughtered by sea raiders, my comrades have died around me, in ambush and battle, and some were executed in cold blood. My twin brothers vanished and are dead or slaves not so far from that place where I had the robber on my blade. Life is hard and can be cheap, so when he said he was willing to kill me for a poor blade like that, I had no mercy. “You want the knife?” I repeated. “Well, have it now.”

I twisted and thrust up deeply, giving the killing stroke that bursts the heart. I felt the warmth of the blood gush on my wrist and pushed the thief away. He was dying as he slumped into the leaf
mould. I spat the remains of the pork from my mouth, onto his body, wiped my knife and hands on his tunic, checked to see if he had a purse at his belt – he had none – tossed the axe into the undergrowth and moved away, going again to the south and west.

Within an hour, I saw horsemen, and knew from the size and stepping gait of their steeds they were my own troops. Frisian mounts are not common, and to see four of them in one group is doubly rare. I stepped out of the woodland and whistled.

The decurion who headed the group was known to me by sight, a burly, red-haired old sweat whose name I learned was Bradlio. He ordered two of the smaller men to share a horse and I mounted up, relieved to be astride a horse again. Bradlio quickly told me what had happened.

The cavalry had come back to Vallis from their training exercise to hear of my capture, and their commanders had sent out more than a dozen patrols across the country with orders to ride out for three days, then to circle back. This they had done, without success until one patrol had heard of a new prisoner in the gatehouse at Mainz. The description was mine.

The tribunes had moved the entire cohort close to Mainz and had sent out patrols by night to avoid detection, and had inserted several spies into the castrum. They had returned a couple of days previously with news of my escape, although the Romans still had no knowledge of who their prisoner had been. My tribune Quirinus had put a strong force up close to monitor the castrum and any countermeasures, then ordered a daylight sweep of the country, and Bradlio’s small troop had found me.

That night, I slept in my own tent after enduring all the jokes about my inability to handle a couple of soldiers when digging a latrine trench, feebleness at being captured, sarcastic comments on my weight loss since taking my ‘prison diet cure,’ and a roar of approval when Quirinus said “He’s been in more tight places than a shepherd’s arm, but he still keeps coming home.” I found the remarks hilarious, we were all drinking wine, I was back with my horse soldiers and I was happy.

XI
- Spectres

Myrddin was unhappy, even distressed. The necromancer had been communing with the dead and he had received several doom-loaded warnings. Britain’s ancient gods, he heard, were disturbed that the emperor they had led to his throne had turned his back on them. Arthur of Britain was a Christian ruler and that, the shades of Boadicea and Caratacus, of Albanac of Pictland and Brutus Greenshield all warned him, could mean the gods would withdraw their support from the island. The sorcerer had begged for the ghosts’ help. What, he asked them, could he do?

It was the shade of Caratacus, a British king who had fought the Romans and lost that gave an answer. The warrior king had lost his last battle and was taken in chains to the emperor in Rome for execution. But he fought on with words, not swords, and was reprieved, although he had to live out his exile away from his conquered
, native island. His wistful ghost supplied a partial solution to Myrddin’s question. “It is in your mind, and a woman must answer it,” he said. Myrddin could get nothing clearer than that from the spirit and finally, exhausted, gave up. But the sorcerer’s message went out to his protégé, Guinevia.

*

The Druidess was sending her mind afield, viewing her mentor Myrddin’s square stone house on the slopes of the sacred Welsh mountain, Yr Wyddfa. She was sitting in a throne-like, high-backed chair, in a darkened chamber above the harbour at Bononia. Guinevia was quite relaxed, hands along the armrests of the chair, fingers curled, eyes now closed. Beside her a scared slave crouched, ready to scratch on a wax tablet the words her mistress would mutter as she psychically viewed the distant hillside.

It was a sorcerer’s potent magic, this ability to send out a mental eye, but Guinevia was a powerful Druid in her own right, and had been endowed by Myrddin as well as by her own sufferings and studies. She used a smooth block of glassy obsidian as a device to focus her mind, gazing into it until images swam into view, and she would send out her powers to see her target, however distant. The caveat she had learned was not to interpret her visions while they were happening, but to speak aloud her impressions and only later attempt to understand what she had viewed.

This day she had been moved by her instincts to send her mind to meet Myrddin’s, and had composed herself into the familiar distraction-free mode, gazed into the obsidian and emptied her brain. Now the images flowed.

She was aware of the brisk wind that moved the grasses and heather of the hillside and she had a hawk’s view of Myrddin’s house and high-walled courtyard as she seemed to swoop down towards it. There was the sorcerer himself, in
a scholar’s grey gown, his dark hair neatly braided, walking across the courtyard. He seemed fretful, as worried as the Druid had ever seen her usually-composed mentor. Guinevia could see this as clearly as she could see his gardener, a freed slave she knew was named Pattia, grubbing up weeds from the sun-warmed soil. It was a domestic scene, tranquil and routine, but instinct told her she urgently needed to view what she would see.

Myrddin seemed to sense her presence. He raised his head sharply, snuffling at the air like a scenting hound. In that moment, Guinevia felt the magnetic force of his mind seeking, projecting to her and his voice sounded in her brain. Tonelessly, she repeated aloud what she heard, and the nervous slave’s stylus skittered across the wax, recording it. The
Druidess uttered the phrases she heard, sensing their importance, then the vision was fading, Myrddin’s voice was fading away and her mind and physical body seemed to meld in a gentle fusion, and she was seated in the stone chamber with the harbour sounds murmuring in through the window and the squalling, raucous gulls’ harsh calls echoing.

She took several deep breaths, aware of a dim sense and shape of what she had witnessed but reluctant to consciously call it up until she heard the thoughts she had been given. “Read it to me,” she told the slave, leaning back to rest her head.

From behind the sanctuary of her closed eyelids she heard: “The son of no father and a king who is false to his god will recover a Druid’s treasure to mollify Britain’s deities. Seek a farmer’s bull in his floor.”

The slave repeated the words several times until Guinevia was sure she had them secure in her mind. “Smooth them from the wax,” she commanded. “And never, ever repeat them, on your life.” The slave bowed her head. She knew that her mistress was an adept of Ogmia, god of the power of words as well as a follower of Nicevenn, the terrible witch goddess of the
wild hunt. She would not, from terror, consider spilling this secret…

Her mistress viewed the slave thoughtfully. What, if anything, did this riddle mean? She went to her library of scrolls to seek some answers.