Dreaming the Hound (29 page)

Left alone, Breaca lowered Graine to the ground where the girl could find her own feet and, catching the whisper of a thought, said, ‘I met an old friend this morning with a fresh bandage on his head. Did you put it there?’

Theophilus’ slow smile grew from the blankness of his stare. ‘I did. If he is a true friend, you are fortunate.’

‘So it would seem. Is he a friend also to your patient who is to die?’ The crucifix jarred the corners of Breaca’s mind. No man, Roman or otherwise, deserved such a death.

‘Ex-centurion Marcellus? Alas, no. That one is a man of few friends and a great many enemies.’

‘Is being friendless enough to sentence him to death?’

‘It is if he has made the mistake of slaughtering an innocent man in front of witnesses. His death will be an example to show that Romans are not above the law. You will be expected to approve.’

Graine was right, then, at least in the first part. They are not for us. A warrior of the tribes will die and one of Rome and both are already held in prison. Breaca let the understanding show on her face.

‘In that case, I am sure we will appear to approve although I would prefer it if the children did not have to bear witness. You, I am sure, will be expected to disapprove and may thus be asked to leave before us. Perhaps if there is time later, we could meet? Or you could visit us in our own lands? I have a friend who would be glad to meet you. She has some skills in childbirth but there is always more to learn.’

‘There is indeed.’ Theophilus’ eyes lit as Airmid’s would have done if the offer had been made to her. He touched a finger to the caduceus that hung from a thong at his neck. ‘I would be honoured. The hospital is in the southwest of the city, two blocks down from the governor’s mansion. Ask anyone for directions and when you get there find Nerus and tell him that you are there by express invitation of Theophilus of Athens and Cos. Remember that, Athens and Cos. If you say those two, he will let you in.’

Dressed in their togas, their bordered tunics, their tribal cloaks visible statements of the wearer’s affiliation to Rome, or its lack - three thousand gossiping, preening citizens of Camulodunum filled the banked benches of the theatre by the time the governor led his officers in to their reserved seats on the lowest row of the tiers. Breaca and her daughters sat at the governor’s left hand, with ‘Tagos on his other side.

The air in the theatre was still, hot and rank. Spring sun reached over the top of the marbled walls to cast direct light onto the sanded semicircle that separated the seats from the wooden stage opposite.

A row of tables to the left of the stage held the delegates’ gifts to the governor. The sun blessed all of them, polishing already over polished metal to blinding brilliance. A vast crater in gold bore Berikos’ Atrebatan mark of the oak tree combined with the eagle of the legions. Beside it, Breaca’s boxed spears seemed small and unremarkable. Further along, a pair of red and yellow enamelled brooches and a hollow gold torc displayed the heavily Romanized style of Cogidubnos’ Belgic smiths. A knife scabbard in dyed leather, a belt, a set of horse harness and a newly woven cloak in moss green completed the gifts of the Belgae. At the end of the table closest to the audience, a chequered board of polished wood in two colours bore a set of blue and yellow counters set out in rows at either edge. It had not been on the table in the forum when the gifts were first presented.

From directly behind Breaca, Corvus said pensively, ‘Someone’s given the governor a game of Warrior’s Dance. Do you suppose he knows how to play it?’

Without turning, she answered, as if to Graine, ‘I expect one of his officers could teach him. It would be a useful skill for a man who would rule the tribes. If he could think with the cunning of Cunobelin, war would be a thing of the past.’

‘I’ll see what can be done.’ Corvus was grinning, she could hear it in his voice. Then, without the humour, ‘There will be some unpleasantness now. It would be wise to appear unperturbed.’

The physician had offered the same warning and in the same spirit. Breaca bent down to adjust Graine’s cloak and whispered, ‘A man is going to be crucified. A Roman. One of those held in the prison. We will do what we can to send his soul home but we will not speak out loud and we will not complain to the governor.’

Graine nodded. From the first moment of sitting, she had stared ahead at the oak platform in front of her. Now she asked, ‘Where are the doors they will bring the prisoners through?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure there are doors.’ Breaca looked where her daughter looked. Finely planed oak planks made a resonant floor to the stage. Curtains in Trinovantian yellow draped the sides, hiding the wings. A multicoloured mural painted across the back wall showed scenes of pipe-playing fauns frolicking by a waterfall with androgynous nymphs, watched over by a god in the form of a grazing bull. If there were doors, the gaudy curves and splashes of the painting obscured their lines. ‘Are you sure there are doors?’

Graine frowned. ‘I think so. I dreamed something like this but it may not be here.’

Alert, Breaca asked, ‘What happened in your dream?’

‘Someone died. We wanted to stop it but couldn’t. Cunomar was unhappy.’

Cunomar had spent the winter ‘unhappy’ and the effect on others had not been good. He sat now beside ‘Tagos on the governor’s right. Breaca looked across and her son looked back and he raised his hand in greeting. She wished for his sake that Eneit could be there to take away the sourness of sitting next to ‘Tagos. She smiled back encouragement and saw it accepted at face value, with good grace.

To Graine, Breaca said, ‘Cunomar hates injustice; it’s his greatest strength. Why don’t you go to him now and tell him what you dreamed and remind him that we are guests here and mustn’t interfere with the governor’s justice. Can you do that?’

Graine frowned. ‘Does the governor speak Eceni?’

‘I don’t think so, but you must assume that he does. Say nothing impolite. We are his guests.’

For a solemn, watchful child, Graine could be playful when it served her own will or that of the gods. Cheerfully, she scampered off and clambered onto her brother’s knee, tugging at his ear and whispering loudly in Latin that she had a secret only for

him. Surprised, he embraced her and tipped his head so that, lowering her voice, she could breathe into his ear. Those who overheard would have caught enough of the subsequent story to know that she had given her chestnut mare that had been a gift from her mother to a nice man who had once known their uncle, but any coherence was lost after that in a welter of excited, incomprehensible child-speak that only one reared on Mona could possibly have understood and only then if standing improperly close to both.

At the end of it, Graine drew back and, grinning, kissed her brother on the nose. Cunomar blushed and ducked his head away, then relented and kissed her back. Two dozen watching adults, almost all of them parents, remembered childhood and its easy freedoms and wished for themselves and their children the same liberation.

Graine scrambled down from her brother’s knee. On the way back to her mother, she patted her stepfather’s leg as she passed and smiled dazzlingly for the strange, grey-haired Roman who ruled her land.

The governor turned to his left. ‘A quite exquisite child. Truly, you are blessed, my lady.’

Breaca said, ‘Thank you. Our gods have not deserted us while the children can laugh.’

A horn sounded from somewhere nearby. Drums answered it. And a sudden change in the stage proved Graine right in at least the first part of her dream. A door opened, cutting in half the largest of the dancing fauns on the stage-wall mural.

A detachment of retired veterans, glorious in their old parade uniforms, marched onto the stage, turned about, drew their weapons in synchrony and, striking up and out, made an avenue of raised short swords. The tips clashed like cymbals as they came together, a counterpoint to the resonance of the stage. Through this avenue of violent brilliance, marching in slow time as if to a funeral, two of the governor’s personal guard escorted a prisoner, marked as different only by the chains on his wrists. In an act of calculated defiance, or of solidarity, the man was dressed in identical parade uniform to the veterans.

The effect was dramatic. Every step forward showed the prisoner as a man of courage who had served his god and his emperor with exceptional valour and who was now prepared to martyr himself for the sake of his governor. Ex-centurion Marcellus may not have had many friends, but there were plenty of men at whose side he had fought who resented his use as a political tool and did not wish to see him abandoned in extremis.

The Trinovantes in the audience had fewer scruples. Whatever their affection for Rome and its institutions, Marcellus had been universally loathed. A slow, low chatter spread around the arc of the theatre, approving the man’s status as prisoner, disapproving the sentiment of the veterans. Someone stamped a foot and the rhythm became, slowly, that of the Trinovante death song, an intricate patter of long and short beats that is learned from the cradle or not at all. Others took it up and the beat spread round the arc, a muted roll so that it might have come from drummers at the river, but that the rock of it rang through the benches as bodies moved to its sway.

The sound rose to a peak and then stopped, suddenly, and no one could have said who had given the order. It was not an act of overt hostility; it could have been argued that they did the man great honour, but it had not felt honourable. Fear rippled belatedly round the theatre as those who had most to lose by the onset of reprisals realized what they had done and began to speak, too loudly and too late, to cover it. Presently, that, too, faded away.

Everything waited. If there had been birds perched on the high walls of the theatre, they would have held their breaths and stilled their flight and waited.

An order was given in Latin. The two junior officers of the guard brought their prisoner forward to the front edge of the stage. All three men saluted.

The governor stood to return their greeting. Nothing overt in his bearing changed but, in the silence that awaited his speech, three thousand men and women of the tribes, the waiting veterans and a dozen visiting officers were reminded that he had led two legions in a summer’s long campaign and that he knew exactly what it was to be a soldier in the field.

His voice had commanded armies in the chaos of war and the acoustics in the theatre were the best that his empire’s engineers could achieve, unmatched on any battlefield. When he spoke, it seemed to those on the furthest tiers as much as the front benches that he barely raised his voice and yet spoke directly to them.

‘Marcellus, veteran of the legions, formerly centurion of the second cohort, the Ninth legion, recipient of three crowns for bravery in combat, you are accused of the murder of Rithicos, harness maker and tenant farmer on your land. Three witnesses have attested to this, two of them citizens, one a trusted tribesman. Your guilt is not in doubt. Sentence has been passed. You will die today, in the sight of those whom you have wronged. It is your right to speak before sentence is carried out. Do you wish to do

so?’

‘No. But I would show you who it is that you sentence so.’

The stage was Marcellus’ alone. For his last performance, his former comrades-in-arms gave him all the space he could need to enact his own drama. The ranks who had made his entrance avenue laid their naked blades in crossed pairs on the stage. From Breaca’s seat low down in the first rank of benches, they made a lake of sun washed iron and it was hard to see beyond the brightness of it. From higher up the tiers they would be more symbolic, an array of battle weapons, made decorative for the purposes of peace.

Marcellus did not wait for silence to settle but simply, and without drama, bent at the waist, placed his palms on the floor and shrugged so that his mail shirt inverted and slid over his head; an armoured skin, shed in shining links.

The chime of iron striking iron rang on the resonant stage as the former centurion knelt and set the shirt straight as he might have done after a day’s campaign. Beneath, he wore a simple woollen tunic belted at the waist. This, too, he removed, folding it and laying it on the floor atop the mail. No-one moved to stop him.

The prisoner stood again and it seemed that he had spent a great deal of his life walking in sun without his tunic. He was no longer fit; his belly hung over his belt half the size of a pregnant woman, but he had not always been so. The scars on his chest were many and varied; through his years of service, he had met, and failed to avoid, sword and spear and arrowhead. The mark of the bull in the centre of his breastbone was old, the brand dulled with age. Its presence explained, perhaps, the leeway he had been given so far in his display.

Raising his arms, Marcellus began to turn a slow circle so that those with experience of battle - the governor, his officers, the warriors amongst the tribes - could see that he bore no scars on his back. He had never retreated or, in retreat, had never encountered those who could catch him. He would have preferred, doubtless, that they believed the former.

His circle was almost complete. The men on the stage with him had seen the long line beneath his left armpit and were remembering the day it was new, recalling the battles they had fought with Marcellus at their head. Only one of the officers of the guard saw the danger and he too late to act. His shout served only to highlight the climax of the prisoner’s drama.

In the closing step of the circle, Marcellus flung himself down and sideways, stretching out flat to reach the line of crossed short

swords lying forgotten on the stage. His open hand connected with the grip of the nearest, swinging it back in a practised move that brought him upright again, slightly breathless but armed in the company of fifteen men, only three of whom had the presence of mind to stoop and pick up their own weapons.

If the silence before had been polite, it was charged now with the slamming power of a lightning strike. Three thousand men and women each held their breath. Tribal warriors who had fought in battle reached for blades they were not permitted to carry and let their hands fall empty and useless at their sides. Breaca heard Corvus stand and begin to work his way between the seats and down the aisle. Two other officers of the legions did the same; these men were chosen for their ability to balance politics with war and to act appropriately. They could be trusted to contain this situation now.