Cast Not the Day (26 page)

I was halfway through the door to the street when he caught me. He grabbed me roughly by the shoulder, swinging me round.

‘What now!’ I shouted, rounding on him.

Heads turned; voices fell silent.

‘Why so angry?’ he mocked. ‘There are plenty of others like Lollia, just take your pick.’ He paused, pretending to think, then added slowly, ‘Or perhaps it is not him you envy, but
her
?’

He said no more, because my fist had closed his mouth for him. He stumbled; his foot caught on an upturned tile beside the path; his arms went up; and he fell crashing backwards into a privet bush.

Two days later, at first light, I rode from the barracks with a troop of my comrades. We crossed the bridge over the Thames and took the road south, which leads through the Downs to the coast. Gratian had called for a snap inspection of the shore-forts before the winter set in. I was the first to volunteer.

We passed through remote hamlets. Children came running from simple earth-built huts to see the horses and the fine soldiers. On high ground, or beside water, or in the midst of ancient groves, we saw old country shrines, simple crude work of wood and thatch. Anywhere near the city such places would have been desecrated and smashed; but here they were swept clean, and planted with flowers, and adorned with harvest offerings.

One or two of my comrades sneered, and made jokes about rustic peasants, for there were Christians even in the Protectors. But they soon fell silent. We were far from the city: the Church counted for nothing here, and their clever words sounded empty and foolish.

On the afternoon of the third day the blue-grey sea showed on the horizon and we saw our destination, the towering walls of Pevensey fort, with its new stonework rising sheer and white, dwarfing the fishing settlement beside it.

Gratian had been wise to send out a chance inspection. The garrison, which according to the reports was at full complement and ready to ward off any invasion, turned out to be half empty. There were no lookouts posted, so that we were able to ride through the open gates and into the inner court unchallenged. Even then it was only a sleepy guard who stuck his head out of an upper window and called down, asking what we wanted.

The garrison captain was summoned. Leontius was severe; but, standing in the corner, I had my eye on the captain’s face when he thought no one was looking. He was a burly black-bearded man from Gaul, and he scarcely troubled to hide his sneer of contempt. He was not going to be told his job by some over-promoted upstart come swanning down from London. The barbarians could be forgotten; Constans had driven them out, and the forts would keep it that way. Besides, his men had not gone far, only to their mothers and wives and children, and what was the harm in that? They would drift back in time.

Next day we took the coast road to Lympne. The navy had once been stationed here, till the imperial authorities diverted the funds elsewhere to meet some crisis or other. Now the town was faded and half-empty. We saw to the fort, then rode on to Dover, with its twin lighthouses beckoning from the hilltop.

There is always chatter among soldiers on the road. But on this mission I was quiet. At one point, on the Dover road, Leontius pulled his horse up beside me and asked if I was ailing for something.

‘No, nothing,’ I answered, and said no more. He looked at me, then gave a shrug and urged his horse away, leaving me to brood in peace.

I was angry with myself for having let Scapula bait me. I had known what he was about; I told myself I should have steeled myself against his taunting. It had been a brief moment of pleasure to hit him and see him sprawling among the bushes, humiliated in front of his fashionable friends. But that pleasure had passed with the night. Now I felt foolish, and wretched. He had wanted to drive a wedge between me and Marcellus; and I had let him succeed.

Yet the voice of my injured pride spoke too, telling me to start anew and make the best of my soldier’s life, relying on no one but myself, where no hurt could touch me but the sword of the enemy, which was as nothing.

That night, at Dover, in a tavern on the waterfront, we fell in with a group of Gallic sailors. They were rough men who, like all sailors, took the uncertain world as they found it, and snatched pleasure where they could. I envied them their unreflecting simplicity; there seemed sense in such a life.

When, later, the girls appeared from the back, I overcame my reluctance and beckoned one to sit with me, a pretty dark-skinned Italian with a bright smile and laughing eyes. Next morning she sang my compliments and waited for her money. I paid her, wanting her gone; and when I was alone I buried my head beneath the pillow.

But my troubled thoughts would not leave me. Soon I threw the pillow aside and got up. It was early still. Outside, the traders’ wagons were rattling over the cobbles on their way to market. Through the thin wall I could hear a man snoring, and somewhere downstairs a woman’s laughter. My body smelled of the girl’s scented hair, and of sex. I splashed my face with water, pulled on my clothes, and went out.

Overnight the wind had strengthened. Flecks of spindrift gusted over the breakwater, and in the harbour the painted fishing boats, moored up one to another, bobbed and swayed, their rigging whistling and clattering in the gale. I stood for a while and watched the sea; then headed off to the bath-house.

The baths were closed. I walked on, coming presently to the steps that led up to the cliffs. I climbed. At the top a chalk path led across the green slopes towards the lighthouse. Up here, beyond the shelter of the town, the wind blew in strong sudden gusts, buffeting me and snapping at my tunic.

I noticed, as I drew close, that built up beside the lighthouse tower there was a small rectangular temple, half in ruins. I paused to look. The Christians had carved their crude defacing symbols on the walls under the porch. Within, a colony of pigeons had taken up residence; they cooed and fluttered in the rafters. The place was damp and lifeless, a corpse from which the soul had gone. I left and walked on, following the path along the curve of the cliff top.

I halted where the track jutted out in a grassy headland. The wind surged and eddied, buffeting in my ears and snatching at my hair and clothes, urging me forward into the empty air two paces ahead. And a voice within me spoke, saying, ‘Step forward now, what could be easier? Or do you lack the courage even for this? Your name will be forgotten, and so will your father’s, and your bloodline with it. What of it? All else is lost.’

I knew the voice: it bore the insinuating tones of Scapula. With whatever bleak skill he possessed, he had managed to prise open the dark place in my soul and lay it bare, and all I saw was ugliness, terror, jealousy and anger; and beyond that nothing. Virtue and goodness were vanity; only this was my true self: a naked, fear-filled, solitary creature, always alone, always afraid. It filled my being, and my instinct recoiled.

Yet still I stared, lashed by the wind, suspended between the sea and sky, transfixed by the lure of the vision. The scudding clouds fissured and parted; far above, in a gully of clear blue sky, the daytime moon appeared like a disc of silver. ‘Still I am here,’ she seemed to say. ‘I too was real. But the choice is yours. Nothing is had for nothing.’

And suddenly my mind was clear, and I knew my pride and anger for what it was, and what the god required. I watched with my mind’s eye as the child in me bled away, and in its place stood the man. And then I thought of Marcellus, with whom I had not spoken since the night at Scapula’s. It was in my power to give him something, if I chose it.

It seemed I stood a long time still. I bled. Yet now, at last, I knew I should heal.

I was shaken from my thoughts by the sound of distant cries carried on the wind. I looked round. From the lighthouse tower a man was waving his arms and pointing out to sea. The westward-driven clouds coiled across the sky; the sun broke suddenly through, slanting across the water; and in the midst of this path of light, far out beyond the sea wall, I saw movement, a sail taut in the wind, black on ochre, and beneath it a sleek ship, its prow rising and falling in the swell.

I ran back along the path. When I was close enough I cupped my hands and called up to the watchman.

‘It’s an imperial cutter,’ he shouted back. ‘Are they mad?’

The ship was closer now, and on the sail I could make out the insignia, the black rampant eagle of the imperial fleet, and, behind the mast, two men clutching at the great stern-oar, fighting to hold their course.

By the time I had descended to the port a crowd was waiting on the quay. I saw Leontius and the others, standing at the front. I pushed through.

‘Where were you?’ he said. ‘I came to wake you, but when no one answered I thought you were still busy.’ He nudged me and winked, adding, ‘And there was I thinking you weren’t one for the girls.’

‘I was out,’ I said. I turned and looked across the harbour to the breakwater. ‘I was up at the lighthouse. It’s a naval cutter; I saw it.’

He whistled slowly through his broad farm-boy teeth. ‘In such a blow? Then it won’t be a pleasure cruise, that’s for sure. Did you see the mark?’

‘An eagle; black on red on gold.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘it’s from the emperor.’

Someone cried, ‘Look there!’ All along the front, heads turned as the vessel rounded the sea-wall. On the deck the master was running to and fro, seizing ropes and barking orders as the sail came down. And in the bow, rigid and ashen-faced, stood an imperial legate, his eyes fixed ahead of him at the point where they were to make landfall.

‘Come on,’ cried Leontius, tugging me. ‘We had better find the captain of the fort.’

Gratian swept into the hall of the governor’s palace. He mounted the step beneath the window, surveyed our faces, then paused. I could see a new calculation in his sharp hawk eyes.

‘Protectors,’ he began, ‘you do not share the lot of the common soldier. You have been singled out for preferment, and so it is fitting that you should hear first what will soon be in everyone’s mouths. You will understand, when you have heard, the dangers that we face. I trust we shall be able to face them together.’

He paused. There were murmurs of assent. Outside in the yard I could hear a groom calling and laughing, oblivious of the tension within. Gratian frowned at the sound, then continued.

‘Yesterday an imperial legate arrived at Dover. Leontius and others of your comrades have ridden through the night to bring his news to me. I must tell you that the divine emperor Constans has been murdered, treacherously killed by an officer of his own household. That officer – that
traitor
– is called Magnentius – a name that will surely remain forever cursed. He has seized the purple, and already he is illegally styling himself emperor of the West.’

There were cries of anger and outrage. Someone, one of the Pannonians who was standing beside Leontius, called out that surely Constantius would march from the East and depose the traitor. Others assented to this, adding their own calls of warlike bravado. But Bretius, who was one of the three who shared my quarters, turned and answered that Constantius already had his hands full with the war against the Persians, and was many months’ march away.

He had spoken no more than the truth, articulating the kind of lesson in strategy we had all been taught. But heads snapped round and glared at him as if he himself were part of the rebellion. He had been about to speak again; but seeing what he was confronted with he pressed his lips closed and said no more. I think it was then that I began to realize what was coming in the weeks ahead.

I had heard the news already, during the headlong ride from Dover. I knew what my own first thought had been: that my father’s death had been avenged and at last his murderer had come to justice. I remembered what Marcellus’s grandfather had said about Constans, that he was a drunkard and a fool, and it seemed to me no great loss that he was gone. I hoped, if the dead know anything, that my father’s shade would know he was avenged, and would be glad.

For the rest of the day the barracks was like an upturned hive, all vaunting talk and pointless tense activity. But I had another task which pressed on my mind, and that evening, as soon as I could get away, I walked out through the palace gate and took the street that led up beside the Walbrook, to the suburb where Aquinus’s town-house lay.

The doorman admitted me, and I stood waiting in the entrance hall. The first cold of autumn had come on. In the corner a brazier embossed with prancing horses glowed. Soon Clemens the steward appeared from within; he greeted me kindly, for he liked me, but when I asked for Marcellus he said that he was sorry, the young master was away in the country.

I nodded and frowned. I was about to take my leave when he coughed and went on, ‘But Quintus Aquinus is at home. He asks if you can spare a moment with him.’

‘I suppose,’ said Aquinus, when I was admitted to his study, ‘you have heard the news?’

I answered that I had been in Dover when it came, and had been among the first.

‘Magnentius has a British mother; did you know? It would be better for Gratian if it were not so.’

Not having slept, my mind was slow. I asked him why.

‘The people did not care for Constans, and they do not care for his Eastern brother either; there has been too much rotten fruit from that tree. But Magnentius is from the West; his home is here; people believe he will fight off the barbarians, instead of carrying the legions away to distant wars that mean nothing to them.’