Roma Mater (31 page)

‘With luck,’ said Adminius, ‘we won’t get any custom.’

Eppillus laughed. ‘Oh, I’d like some, not too big for us to handle by ourselves, but enough to look good when the centurion writes his report. Bonuses, promotions, and such, you know. I expect Maximus will be generous to them as deserve it. New-made Emperors always have been, I hear.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Maybe extra acres for my bit of a farm when I retire?’

Straightening: ‘All right! If there are no more questions, let’s get cracking.’

4

No barge of state took the Gallicenae out to Sena. That would have been too dangerous – after dark, when few sailors dared come near the rocks around the island, and on a mission as dread as was theirs. None would do to navigate but Ferriers of the Dead.

Just past the full, the moon stood low above the cliffs. It threw a shuddery bridge over waters otherwise dark as heaven, closer to hand flecked by foam-gleams that were like fugitive stars. Quiet though air and sea were, whiteness snapped its teeth across the reefs strewn everywhere about. The stillness seemed to deepen the chill that always followed sunset, out away from land.

A pair of boats could carry eight women with sufficient rude dignity. Oars creaked, not loudly, almost the sole human sound. The smack
Osprey
went first. Two of her passengers sat silent in the bows near the lookout, two in the stern, where Captain Maeloch had the helm. He knew this passage so well that in fair weather he would merely need warning of something unexpected, a driftwood log or a piece of wreck.

Dahilis had settled closest to him, legs curled beneath her on a cushion, at the larboard rail. She could not have been altogether lost in meditations, for from time to time she glanced up to where his beard jutted athwart the Bears. For his part, he stole some looks at her. Very fair she was with her cowl thrown back, hair aglow in the dimness. Above her reached those stars called the Maiden. Finally their glances chanced to meet, and turned aside in confusion, and she smiled at herself while he scowled at himself.

Low and flat, the island drew nigh in sight. A small stone building with a squat tower made blackness behind a dock where a lantern glimmered red. The lookout finally did call soft words as he gestured, and Maeloch gave orders and put his helm accordingly. The boat thudded against rope bumpers. The lookout sprang off with a line which he made fast to a bollard. Maeloch tossed him another line for the stern and lifted and secured the steering oar. Flame-light showed that it was old Quinipilis who had had today’s Vigil and now stood waiting.

Dahilis rose. Maeloch offered his arm. ‘Let me help you, my Queen,’ he said softly.

‘Thank you,’ she answered, which many of the wellborn would not have troubled to do.

He guided her over the deck, jumped to the wharf, and gave her support as she followed. No matter the unknown deed in which she was about to take part, impishness broke forth and she whispered, ‘That was needless. I’m no cripple. But I enjoyed it. I hope you did.’

‘My Queen –’ For one of the few times in his life, he was taken aback. Hastily: ‘Um, ’tis not for me to do aught but obey here. However, best will be if ye ha’ done ere moonset. The tide will’ve got tricky – nasty rips. But we’ll abide your pleasure.’

‘I think not ’twill take very long, that which we go to,’ she replied, serious again. ‘Remember, you and every fisherman, sail not out tomorrow, nor till the King gives you leave.’

‘We’d no thought of that,’ he said, ‘after being told how all ye Nine will come back with us tonight.’

Quinipilis beckoned. Dahilis went to join her Sisters. Slowly, in single file, they walked off. Harsh grass, grey under the moon, wet kelp, pools where strange small creatures scuttled, were the other signs of life upon Sena. But three seals followed along the shore till the trail went inland, then lay afloat as if awaiting the high priestesses’ return.

At the Stones Quinipilis set her lantern down and lifted her arms. She led the women in their prayer to the Three and in the sacraments of salt and blood. They kindled no wood this time, for their doings were apart from the element Earth. Rather, they sacrificed Fire to Air by raising the lantern hood and blowing on the flame till it burned furiously, then to Water by quenching the candle
in a bowlful of brine. Hands joined, they danced solemnly around the menhirs while they chanted:

‘Wind of the West, awaken! The wolf is again a-prowl. The ravening reaver of sheepfolds has lifted his head to howl, And the watchmen shudder in summer to hear those wintry sounds. Wind of the West, awaken! Unleash now on him your hounds.

‘Calling on Lir, we loose you to harry our enemy That dared to depart from the heathlands and hunt upon His sea, And His waves shall answer your whistle, and come to course the beast Wildly through brakes of spindrift, relentlessly to the East.

‘Calling on Lord Taranis, the Guard of the city wall, We order up horror and havoc, lest what is worse befall, And we lend your hand His hammer where storm-flung squadrons go On to the waiting skerries, that heavy may be the blow.

‘Calling on Belisama, Our Lady of Life and Death, Whose kisses put warmth in the newborn and stop the old man’s breath, And Whose stars betoken Her peace in the dawn and the sunset skies, Doom will we deal to sea wolves. O Wind of the West, arise!’

1

On his second and third nights at sea, Niall again glimpsed the owl. It came out of the eastern darkness, swung silently above the Roman skull, turned back and vanished in empty distances. Other men saw it too, and muttered of it to comrades who had not. Before fear could spread through his fleet, the King commandeered a currach and had himself rowed to the nearer vessels. ‘It is nothing to frighten us at all, at all,’ he declared to them. ‘No natural bird, surely; but it’s done us no harm, has it, now? Maybe a poor wandering ghost, such as we’ve charms against. Maybe a scout for the witches of Ys, but if so, it’s telling them we mean no harm to their country. You’d not be letting a single fowl scare you, would you, my darlings?’

The bold beauty of him, as he stood spear in hand and seven-coloured cloak about his wide shoulders, breathed courage into everyone. What further thoughts he had, he kept to himself.

It had been easy to get about thus on the water, for the airs had turned crank, foul when any whatsoever blew, and craft crawled forward on oars. Everywhere stretched Ocean, barely rocking beneath a cloudless sky, and sun-blaze blistered fair skins. Niall could only guess where he was. However, he said, one more day must certainly put them well south of the peninsula, after which they could seek land. There they would get their bearings and, hugging the shore, proceed to the Liger mouth.

But on the night before this change of course – the
third night, some hours after the owl had passed by –clouds began piling up in the west. Like black mountains they were, and ever more tall they grew, while stronger and stronger became the wind that skirled from them. By dawn it was a full storm.

No man saw that sunrise. There was naught but a faint lightening of what had been utter murk. Heaven was hidden. Wrack flew beneath like the smoke of burning houses. Monstrous were the waves, towering over hulls as they rushed and rumbled by, their backs white with foam, the hollows of them shading from green on top to abyssal black in the troughs. Their crests blew away in blinding froth. Wind filled the world. It struck fangs of cold into the bones of men, it lashed them with bitter scud, it grabbed their garments and sought to drag them leeward to their drowning. Often a burst of rain and great hailstones flew down upon it and streaked across the fury round about.

Niall’s folk could do naught save hold their galley head on to the seas. Those who were not at the oars were bailing – buckets, cups, helmets, boots, whatever might keep the water a-slosh no higher than their ankles. The ship pitched, bow down till the stempost flailed amidst spume, bow up and a flood of tears from the eye sockets of the skull. Timbers groaned in anguish. Otherwise the warriors were helpless, driven before the tempest towards wherever it would have them.

Niall went back and forth, balancing himself against the surging as a lynx would. Labour was gess for him, the King; his part was harder, to keep heart in his followers. ‘Good lads, brave lads, it’s fine you are doing. Sure and Manandan is proud of you. And what a tale you’ll have to tell by your hearthfires!’

But once when he was aft, he let himself falter. Nobody was in earshot, in this tumult, besides Uail maqq Carbri
at the helm, and he a close friend and indomitable. His back to the blast, Niall peered right and left. He made out a few currachs, riding better than the galley but no more able to hold a course. The rest of the fleet was lost to sight in grey chaos, scattered, perhaps much of it already broken and the crews sunk. His shoulders slumped. ‘I wonder if we should give Manandan a man, that He soften his anger at us,’ he croaked.

Uail, the old mariner, shook his head. ‘We should not,’ he answered through the racket, ‘for I am thinking this is no work of His, but of Lir, His father. And Lir is the truly terrible – no handsome charioteer but a Force that will not be swerved by anything in human gift.’

Niall shuddered. ‘Who raised Him?’

Uail shrugged, squinted into the storm, devoted himself to his tiller.

Niall started forward again, bench to bench. His son Breccan was among those bailing. Without the brawn to row, bare-legged under a kilt, the prince kept on somehow when grown men had crumpled up, worn out and numbed by the cold. He looked aloft at the King. His golden hair was plastered to his cheeks, as sodden as the shirt that clung to his lanky frame, and his eyes seemed enormous, dark-shadowed by weariness, in the face that was his mother’s. The rhythm of his pail checked. He flashed a grin and a thumb-sign of defiance at his father, before he bent back to his task and sent another load of water over the side.

‘Medb with us!’ Niall shouted. ‘I did well to bring you!’ After that he was cheerful –

– until the first white spurtings and bestial growls told how the fleet had drifted in among reefs.

Uail bawled orders which the roars of Niall passed onwards against the wind. Regardless of the danger of getting swamped, the danger of tossing about was worse.
Oars churned. Many a wave dropped away from a blade, hissing in mockery, and the stroke smote air. Yet the ship did get turned around. She could not fight her way west, but she could wallow along under some measure of control, claw off the rocks that surrounded her, seek to keep alive.

Save when rainsqualls whooped by, the skies had paled somewhat and Niall could see farther than erstwhile, through a weird brass-yellow light. The gale had slackened just a bit too, so that there was less spindrift to whip his eyes. Yet whistling and bellowing and deep sucking noises filled his ears, while the seas ran even heavier. He witnessed currach after currach dashed against a skerry and its ribs smashed to splinters. Men would tumble out of the wreckage, flop for a ghastly moment, and go under, unless the surf rolled their bodies on to a ridge. Flotsam from a second galley, sundered, her crew and cargo spilled, went swinging past At the edge of vision he spied a low-lying duskiness which he knew from mariners’ accounts was the island Sena.

More craft were getting through than lost. Let them understand the King was too, and rally after they had passed these shoals! Niall fetched men from the bailers, Breccan among them, and had them step and secure the mast. That was long and perilous toil. Once the pole fell, caught a man’s arm against the rail, made mush and shards of it. He swooned from the pain. Coolly, Breccan cut a strip of clothing and bound the hurt lest he bleed to death. Meanwhile his fellows got the mast in place. Raising sail would have been madness, but the King’s banner fluttered aloft, colour streamed in the spray, a hoarse cheer lifted through the hull.

Though the sun remained withdrawn, Niall reckoned the time as late afternoon.

Standing lookout in the bows, he was the first to make
out the shadow ahead. It grew as the storm-clouds had done, rising, solidifying, until ruddy cliffs and the turmoil at their feet were unmistakable. The mainland.

Chill struck Niall in the breast. Then wrath leapt on high. He raised a fist. ‘I see. It is you yonder who have done this to us,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Why, why, why?

‘Well, you shall mourn for it.’

Wind continued to slacken, clouds to thin, the range of eyesight to stretch. The seas were still enormous, impossible to go against, but at least men could work partly across them, could pick the general direction in which a vessel was to be forced landward. Niall saw what he supposed were all the survivors of his fleet, or most of them – less than half the grand host which had sailed from Ériu, battered, awash, the strength wrung out of their crews, but alive, alive.

He saw which way they were setting. If only he could yell across the waters! His flag was a forlorn signal which few would likely fathom.

He could merely do what seemed best, or least bad. Niall moved aft. Amidships, he squatted, tapped Breccan on the shoulder, and said to the dear face: ‘Lay off that. Tell everybody to stop, take a rest, try to get warm. I think soon we’ll be fighting.’

‘Oh, father!’ It was a joy to see the joy that flamed in the youth. Breccan caught Niall’s hand between both his. Niall rumpled the wet hair and went on to Uail astern.

‘You’ve a plan, master,’ said the steersman.

Niall nodded. ‘I wish I had a better one. It seems the witches of Ys have been working for our destruction. How likely would it else be that we were blown straight on to this deadly ground? Medb, come help us get revenge.’

He swept a finger around. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We cannot
beat back west. Seamanship would have us bear as much north as we may, try to round Armorica and win the Alban Channel. With her weight and draught, this ship is able. But wind and waves are opposed, and overwhelming to the currachs … Have we any more galleys left us? I see just the poor currachs, riding on top of the sea and thereby debarred from making more than a little way across it … One by one, they are bound for yonder headland.’