The Silver Branch [book II] (18 page)

With the thunder of blows and the guttural voices in their ears, they made for the crowded darkness of the storeroom. ‘You go first; you know the way best of all of us,’ Flavius whispered to the little seaman. ‘I’ll do rearguard.’

‘Right.’ The whisper came back out of the blackness, and one after another they ducked through into the stairway. Justin heard Flavius draw a couple of store-baskets over the hole behind them—not that that would be much use when the tide of barbarians broke in. In the dark well of the stairway the menacing uproar was muffled, but as they gained the upper chamber it came bursting up to them full force, and Justin saw the red glare of torches reflected up from below mingled with the white light of the moon as he dropped on his stomach and wormed after the young Centurion through the gap in the wall.

There was a halt, while Flavius replaced the loose boards, which were so worked that they could be dealt with from either side; and then they set out in good earnest. The Sparrow’s Way was never pleasant, and to Justin, who had no head for heights, it was very unpleasant indeed, even when it did not have to be negotiated above the heads of a mob of yelling Saxon Mercenaries, along ledges flickering with reflected torch-light, where an unwary handhold or the slip of a foot on a sloping roof might bring the hunt all round them at any moment.

But they made it safely; and a very long while later, as it seemed, swung themselves over the last low ledge, and landed soft in a garbage pile behind the tumbledown entrance of the theatre.

Later still, with Cerdic the boat-builder in their midst, the four of them were gathered in a waiting knot about the doorway of the turf-roofed bothie just outside the town, where Justin and Flavius had lodged all these months.

They were quite silent, stunned by the suddenness of what had happened, their strained gaze going out to a red glow that had sprung up in the sky over Portus Adurni. Justin shivered a little in the cool marsh air. Had the Saxons fired the place? Or was it something to do with Paulinus’ way of escape? How long would it be before Paulinus came?—or—would he ever come? No, he must not think like that; he pushed the thought away in a hurry. Paulinus had sworn that there was another way out …

Flavius, frowning into the moonlight, said abruptly, ‘Phaedrus, have you ever heard of this other way out before? This way that can only be taken alone?’

The seaman shook his head. ‘Nay—but he said that it was one that he had kept for himself. Happen we should none of us have heard of it.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Flavius said. ‘I hope to the gods you’re right.’

Almost as he spoke, something moved in the shadow of the dunes, and Justin’s heart gave a little lurch of relief. ‘Here he comes now!’

And then, as the moving thing swayed out into the moonlight, stumbling in the soft, drifted sand, they saw that it was not Paulinus, but the boy Myron.

Flavius whistled softly, and the boy looked up and saw them and came on at an increased speed; and as he drew nearer they could hear him gasping, half sobbing as he ran.

‘Name of Thunder! What’s happened?’ Flavius said under his breath, starting to meet him.

And somehow they were all down into the soft sand, and in their midst the boy Myron was gasping out in a broken jumble that at first they could scarcely understand. ‘Oh, thank the gods you are here! The whole town’s full of those devils, and I couldn’t do nothing—I—I—’ And he fell to gusty weeping.

Flavius caught him by both shoulders. ‘Time enough for that later, if need be. Tell us what has happened.’

‘Paulinus!’ The boy drew a shuddering breath. ‘They’ve killed Paulinus—I see them do it.’

Justin couldn’t speak; he heard Phaedrus make a harsh sound in his throat, and then Flavius said in a hard, level voice, ‘What have you seen?’

‘I went back early because I’d forgot to fill the lamps, and he hated to have them run dry in the middle of the evening. And I was almost there when I heard the shouting and saw the flames. And I crept closer to look—right up to the courtyard door—and the courtyard was full of those Saxon devils with firebrands, and the roof was on fire and all—and just as I got there, the house door opened and—Paulinus walked out—just walked out into the middle of them, and they killed him—like killing a badger.’

There was a long, long silence. No sound in all the world but the sighing, singing, air-haunted stillness of the marsh under the moon. Not even a bird calling. Then Flavius said, ‘So there wasn’t another way out, after all—or, if there was, something went wrong and he couldn’t use it.’

‘There was another way out—and that was it,’ Justin said slowly.

The young Centurion, who had been completely still throughout, said very softly, as though to himself, ‘Greater love hath no man—’ and Justin thought it sounded as though he were quoting someone else.

The boy Myron was crying desolately, repeating in a snuffling whisper over and over again, ‘I couldn’t do nothing—I couldn’t—’

‘Of course you couldn’t.’ Justin put an arm round his shoulders. And then, ‘It was we who left him.’

Flavius made a harsh gesture of denial. ‘We did not leave him. He ordered us out, that we might carry on the work after him. It was for that that he took us in the first place. So now we carry on the work.’ Then, seeming for the first time to remember the stranger among them, he turned to him saying, ‘I am sorry, but your jaunt to Gaul will have to wait awhile.’

The young Centurion had turned seaward, his head up into the faint breath of night wind. ‘May I change my mind about Gaul?’

‘It is too late to go back,’ Flavius said.

‘I do not ask to go back. I ask to join this team of yours.’

‘Why?’ Flavius demanded bluntly, after a small, startled pause.

‘I—do not speak of paying my debts: there are debts that cannot be paid. I ask to join it because it seems to me worth joining.’

By dawn, Paulinus’s neat little house was a gutted ruin, the secret chamber torn open to the sky, the apple-tree in the courtyard hacked to pieces in the sheer wanton joy of destruction; and Allectus’s barbarians were questing like hounds into every corner of Portus Adurni, in search of they did not quite know what.

And crouching in the lee of Cerdic’s boat-shed, with the faint mist rising about them as the night drew toward dawn, Flavius spoke straightly to those of the band whom they had been able to gather, with an arm over Justin’s shoulder as he spoke, as though to make it clear that the two of them were one in the leadership that had fallen upon them with Paulinus’s death. ‘You all know the thing that has happened; talking won’t mend it. Now we have to make plans for carrying on the work in the future.’

There was a ragged murmur of agreement from the dark, huddled shapes, and the keeper of the Dolphin said, ‘Aye, and the first thing we’ll be wanting is a new headquarters. And I’d suggest that after tonight’s work, Portus Adurni will be no place for it for a while and a while to come.’

‘Somewhere inland a bit,’ said another man briefly.

Flavius glanced over them in the low moonlight. ‘That same thing is in my mind also,’ he said.

‘Anywhere to suggest?’ That was Phaedrus, leaning forward with his arms round his up-drawn knees.

‘Yes,’ Flavius said, and Justin felt the arm across his shoulders tighten a little. ‘As Paulinus used his own home for the purpose, so I have it in mind—unless any among you find reason against the plan—to use mine.’

It was the first Justin had heard of it, but he knew instantly that it was right; the whole feel of the plan was right, and fitting.

‘And whereabouts might your home be?’ Cerdic the boat-builder asked in the deep rumble that seemed always to come from somewhere far down in his barrel chest.

‘Up into the chalk, north-east of here, ten or twelve miles. It’s a good strategic position, as near to Clausentium as we are now, nearer to both Regnum and Venta. Easy of access over the Downs or by the old track from Venta; and the forest for cover in case of trouble.’

There was a certain amount of urgent and low-voiced talk before the thing was settled, but none of the men gathered there had any particular fault to find with the plan, and indeed after some discussion and argument they found it good. The house by the theatre had never really been a meeting-place, rather it had been the spot where the threads were gathered together. And so long as they were gathered together somewhere reasonably near to the centre of the web, it made very little difference exactly where.

‘So: it is a good plan, and we will abide by it,’ Phaedrus said at last. ‘Show us now how we may find this place.’

And so, in the misty moonlight and the first cobweb greyness of the dawn, Flavius made them a relief map in the sand, that they might know how to find it. The great curved ridge of the Downs, rising a handspan high among the marsh grasses, with the soft moon-shadows in its tiny valleys; and the furrow of a finger trailed through the sand for the great roads and the tracks that had been old before the roads were new. And for the farm itself, a sprig of broom with the sand between its leaves, and one spark of blossom.

And when each of them had carefully memorized the map, he smoothed it all away. ‘So. That is all. Justin and I go inland now to make arrangements, but we shall be back in two days at the latest. The newest recruit comes with us, I think. He will be too well known in these parts.’

Justin glanced toward a small desolate figure, huddled against the boat-shed wall, and said quickly, half under his breath, ‘Myron, too. He has nowhere and no one belonging to him in Portus Adurni—and he’s in no fit state to be seen by our enemies.’

Flavius nodded. ‘Yes, you’re right. We can’t leave him here. Myron too, then.’

The light was growing, and it was time to break up, but at the last moment he stayed them. ‘Wait; there’s one thing more. Better after this that we change the token. There may be others now beside ourselves on the look-out for sprigs of rye-grass.’

‘What shall it be, then?’ said Phaedrus.

It was Justin, in the act of turning away to fetch his beloved instrument-case from the bothie, who picked up the sprig of broom that had been used to mark the position of the farm and shook the sand out of it. ‘How about this? It is easily come by, and all men know it.’

‘So: that will serve,’ Flavius said. ‘Pass the word along the coast, Phaedrus.’

At noon, far up on the crest of the downs, Flavius halted them for a few hours, not wishing to walk into the farm, where doubtless he and Justin were thought to be in Gaul, unheralded and in broad daylight.

There were harebells in the tawny downland grass, and the blue butterflies of chalk country dancing in the sunshine, the turf was warm to the touch, and thyme-scented; and it seemed to Justin unbearable that it should be like that after last night—after Paulinus. Paulinus was in all their thoughts, he knew—that timid little man who had made sure of the safety of his followers, and then walked quietly out to his own death—but they did not speak of what had happened. It was as Flavius had said, ‘You all know what has happened. Talking won’t mend it.’ They did not talk of anything. They had not known while they were on the march that they were tired; but now that they were halted, they were suddenly weary to the bone. The boy Myron, who seemed completely dazed, simply pitched down where he stood, and was asleep almost before he touched the ground; and the other three, taking turns to keep watch, followed his example.

Justin had the last watch, and by the time it came the warm noontide was long past, and the sunlight was thickening into an amber glow over the hills. Now that he had slept, the crowding beastliness of last night had drawn back a little, and he could say to something accusing within himself, ‘No, I took all the care that anyone could take, to be sure that none followed me. Whoever it was, was cleverer than I am. That is all.’ And he could know that it was true. But the thing within him went on accusing, all the same, so that he had to go over it all in his mind round and round, until his head ached almost as much as his heart. At last, desperate for something to do with his hands that might stop him thinking, he slipped free the worn shoulder-sling of his instrument-case, ranged the contents on the grass beside him, and with the soft cloth in which they had been muffled, fell to burnishing the tools of his trade. Not that they needed burnishing, for he had kept them bright as glass all these long months, as though by doing so he was keeping faith with something in himself—something that was for healing and creating and making whole again, in a world that seemed to be all destroying.

Presently he became aware that Anthonius the young Centurion was no longer asleep, but had turned his head on his arms to watch him. ‘Is it a rust spot, that you rub—and rub—and rub so desperately?’ the Centurion asked, as their eyes met.

Justin said slowly, ‘I think I try to rub away the knowing that—it was I who led the wolves to P-Paulinus’s door last night.’

‘Far more likely it was I. I found that little Egyptian shadow of Allectus’s watching me more than once, after that business on the temple steps. It should have put me more on my guard.’

The Egyptian shadow, Justin thought; yes, that fitted Serapion perfectly. He had been right to smell danger at the sight of the creature in Allectus’s train. Danger and death; it had come swiftly. ‘Yet, whichever one of us it was they followed, it was still I who led the way,’ he said miserably, unable to slip out so easily from under the blame and leave it on the other’s shoulders.

‘Paulinus blamed neither of us,’ Anthonius said quietly. ‘He knew that it was a thing that might happen any day, through no fault of any man within the team. It was a risk he was prepared to run, just as—you run it, from now on.’

And somehow those last most uncomforting words comforted Justin a little, as nothing else could have done. He laid down the instrument he had been burnishing, and took up another.

The young Centurion watched him in silence for a while, then he said: ‘I wondered what was in that case that you carry with such care.’

‘The tools of my trade.’

‘Ah. So you’re a surgeon?’