The Boat of Fate (8 page)
He stopped at that, tight-lipped, and looked down at me. His face in the lamplight was grim and hard. Finally he shook his head. ‘No, lad,’ he said, ‘that’s where you’re wrong. We don’t have to go anywhere. You can take yourself to Rome, if that’s your wish; but I don’t have to trail along after you. I was your father’s man. I served him well enough, to my way of thinking; and precious little thanks I’ve had for it, when you weigh it through. Well, that’s one thing; I suppose I should be used to ingratitude by now. But I’m not thinking of taking service again; least of all with you.’ And he wrenched up the lid of the strong-box, began stowing coins into the pouches of a body belt.
I nodded, realising that God, or the Gods, had not yet done with my punishment. I drew my dagger again, sat looking dumbly at the blade. The old fear of shedding blood was on me strongly, but I think at that moment I could readily have opened my veins. ‘Then I shall join my mother,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Marcus, for speaking stupidly.’
He turned from what he was doing, thoughtfully; then reached across and plucked the weapon from my hand. ‘Go and pack,’ he said gruffly. ‘And let’s have no more talk like that. If you want to please your mother, you can start behaving like a man; it’s not too late.’ He paused, momentarily; then his voice softened. ‘Rome’s as good a place as the next,’ he said. ‘And if we’re travelling the same way we might as well ride together. Your father made me responsible for you years enough ago; I know I’m a bloody fool but I don’t like leaving a job half done. Go on, get on with it. Come back when you’re through.’ And he readdressed himself to the stowing of the coins.
I walked dazedly to my room. But the effort of logical thought was too much for me. When Marcus put his head round the door an hour or more later, I was still sitting on the bed, surrounded by the litter I had pulled arbitrarily from cupboards and chests. He set to without a word, making up essentials into bundles, discarding the rest. When he had finished he dumped the packs on the bed. He had laid out a thick tunic and cloak; I changed into them, hearing his voice in the peristyle.
‘I wish,’ he said quietly, ‘to pay my respects to the Domina ….’
There was silence, lamplit and flickering, till he returned. I followed him then, hefting the packs. Moments later, we were in the street; the door clicked softly behind us.
He roused Victor at the stables. The groom yawned and grumbled, demanding my father’s authority. Marcus ignored him, picking out the two best horses and saddling them silently. He slung the packs across the back of a third animal. ‘That’s a bonus for good service,’ he said grimly. ‘I’m paying it to myself.’ Half an hour later we were riding through the quiet streets of Italica.
The moon was high, sailing a serene sky. The air struck chill; I muffled myself in my cloak, shivering, following Marcus dumbly and automatically. We passed streets and buildings I had known from earliest childhood; the town baths, the little library, the desyhop above which Gellius still presided sourly over his classes. The moonlight lay bright in the streets, but nothing stirred. Houses jerked past, their windows blind and dark as the eyes of skulls; it seemed to my fevered imagination the place was already a town of the dead. We passed through the east gate unchallenged, emerged from shadows on to the white, paved road. There we both reined, looking back. Behind us lay my mother and everything I had known; in front the road stretched between tall cypresses, a dim, straight ribbon vanishing into the dark. Somewhere an owl called, haunting and shrill; I shivered again, involuntarily, at the omen.
Marcus clicked to his horse, urging it gently forward. I followed him at a walk, passed into the shadows of the first trees. The hooves rang hollowly on the metalling. Ahead was the Way of Hercules; at its end, seventeen hundred miles away, was Rome.
Dawn found us still on the road. The sun rose directly ahead, flinging mile-long shadows down the paving at our backs. Away to our left loomed the mountains that ring Baetica; nearer at hand stretched the river that gave the district its name. It flowed silently, its broad surface washed with pink. Its banks were lined with clumps of reeds; flocks of duck and bustard erupted from them as we approached, with a clamour of wings. As the sky brightened the flanks and high slopes of the hills seemed to glitter; they hung stark and detailed in the clear air, looking almost close enough to touch.
The sun had lifted clear of the horizon when we came in sight of a cluster of low huts. Marcus rode to the nearest, leaned from his horse to rap at the crudely fashioned door. There was a long wait; he hammered again before the door was opened a grudging few inches. A halting exchange ensued with whoever was inside; then he swung from the horse, gesturing to me to join him. I stooped on hands and knees, crawled after him through the low portal.
Inside, the place was almost pitch dark; the air seemed chokingly thick after the cool freshness of dawn. A fire burned in the centre of the hut; smoke from it swirled in the confined space, stinging my eyes. Some light filtered through the outlet in the conical roof; by its aid I made out rough beds, mere bracken-filled niches in the thick mud walls, a crude table built of slabs of stone. In one of the beds sprawled three or four naked children. Their bodies showed dimly, pale and smooth as the undersides of slugs.
Suspended above the fire was a smoke-blackened pot, from which the peasant ladled soup into two platters. Marcus passed one to me. I had no desire to eat; I took it from him anyway, not wanting to anger him again. The stuff was hot and thick. Marcus flung down some small coin, and helped himself to another cup.
I had never been inside such a place before. I sat uneasily till he had finished, crawled ahead of him back to the open air. As I straightened up a sharp irritation made me slap at my wrist. I looked down. We had only been inside the hut a matter of minutes, but already I was alive with fleas.
We rested through the heat of the day, pushed on again in the evening, still with the mountains marching to our left. We slept in the open that night; or rather Marcus slept. I lay huddled in my cloak, staring up hour by hour into the vault of sky. I was glad when dawn came and I could rise and saddle my horse. In this way we reached Corduba, two days’ travel to the east. Marcus bought a tent there and certain essential stores. In the morning we moved on, following the road as it plunged down to Carthago Nova and the coast.
I was a poor enough companion without a doubt. I rode always a pace or so behind, wrapped in a sad cloud of thought. I relived the events of that terrible day, time after time; my mind, circling uselessly, balked over and again at the monstrous fact of Calgaca’s death. I felt her weight against my arms, saw her head loll, smelled the stench of fear and blood that had thickened the air of the room. I heard my father’s clipped voice repeat that speech he must have planned a score of times, felt the shame and terror that had filled me. Sometimes I would indulge in fantastic dreams. I would make my fortune in Rome, return rich and powerful, dispossess my father as he had dispossessed me, build for Calgaca the most splendid tomb in the world. At others I saw more clearly how my callowness and stupidity had cost me everything I thought I owned; then I would writhe in futile self-contempt.
Some nights we camped, pitching the tent a little way from the road; others we spent in the inns that bordered it, ramshackle and dirty for the most part and full of itinerant tradesmen, tinkers and the like. The beds, when they existed, were invariably thick with fleas and bugs. I had never been used to such conditions. I was soon covered from head to feet in bites; my face swelled, puffing my eyes half shut, while the tender parts round my crotch became so inflamed that it was agony merely to sit my horse. Even tying my tunic caused me pain; when I stripped at night the skin round my waist, where the cloth had chafed me, was crusted with dried blood. I bore the discomfort indifferently, as I bore the heat and dust, the glare of sunlight from the endless white road. For me, the world had almost ceased to exist. All that was real lay behind me in Italica; I moved sightlessly, like an automaton, towards whatever fate the amused Gods had next in store.
In Barcino, Marcus managed to find a tavern a little better than those to which we had grown accustomed. We sat there, in the cool of the evening, in a little room open to the street where the owner brought us wine.
I had drunk with Marcus often enough before, but always in strict moderation. That night he plied me with a heavy, un-watered local brew, filling my cup over and again till the fumes rose in my brain and the room seemed to spin and tilt. With intoxication came the first lessening of the pain that had filled me. I drained the cup greedily, eager for oblivion; by nightfall, when the landlord set lighted lamps on the table and a basket of bread, cheese and olives, I was hopelessly drunk for the first time in my life.
The jug was empty. Marcus called for it to be refilled. We drained it again between us; by then it had become obvious that I at least couldn’t take any more. I rose, or tried to, clung to the door-frame, shaking my head and trying to focus my eyes. Marcus supported me, gripping my arm. I shook him off angrily, took three tottering steps into the street. I had intended to relieve myself; instead I fell to my knees and started to vomit. The spasms became more violent; when I had finished I lay full length, cheek against the coolness of the pavement, wishing I could die. Marcus hoisted me unceremoniously, propelled me towards our room. We negotiated the stairs, by some means or another, and I was dumped across the bed. The sense of well-being had departed as rapidly as it had come, leaving behind an ache that seemed about to split my skull. I closed my eyes, drifted half to sleep; when I opened them again Marcus was leaning over me, lighting a wall lamp from a taper. In my confused state it seemed I was back in my old room in Italica. I smiled up at him blearily before memory returned with a rush. All the ills that had beset me seemed condensed into one appalling truth. ‘Marcus,’ I said, gripping his wrist, ‘my mother is dead ...’
He looked down expressionlessly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’
I was still drunk. For days I had ridden dry-eyed with shock; now the tears began to well. I cried as I think I had never cried before, not even as a tiny child; it was as if a dam had burst, letting through a river of grief.
My recollections of the rest of the night are vague, but one persistent memory remains. It seems Marcus sat by me, wiping my face and throat with some cooling salve as tenderly as ever Calgaca could have done, till the fit had spent itself and I dropped into an exhausted sleep. Though maybe that was an hallucination, brought on by the wine; for in the morning he was his old brusque self, and neither of us ever mentioned the affair again.
We were on the road early next day, cantering north. I still felt giddy from the effects of the drinking bout; but as the sun rose, lighting the rolling hills to either side, my head cleared. I breathed great draughts of the cool air; and it seemed the crushing weight of grief that I had felt lifted fractionally, so that for the first time in days and weeks I could look round me with something approaching interest. I urged my horse alongside Marcus, glancing across to catch his quick smile. His cure, rough and ready as it had been, had worked. The memory of Calgaca was a steady, deep pain; but the formless burden of guilt, that had so nearly destroyed me, was gone.
We had traversed almost the whole length of Hispania. In front of us rose the mountains that separate Tarraconensis from Gaul. We climbed steadily, passing through pleasant upland country set with stands of sweet-smelling pines. Traffic was denser now, much of it moving north; for road after road had joined our route, like the tributaries of a great river. We passed lines of carts, piled high with produce of all kinds, drawn by plodding oxen. In the first part of our journey we had seen no soldiers; now we met a detachment of two hundred or more men. They tramped stolidly, their shuffling ranks taking up half the road. White dust trailed behind them; at their head rode a Tribune, a grizzled, bare-headed man in trews and tunic who acknowledged Marcus’ salute with a preoccupied smile. His men were scarcely what I would have imagined for guardians of the Empire. They were bearded and dishevelled; they kept no particular order, and called and joked to each other in a guttural tongue as they marched. Marcus said they were Franks, and wondered what they were doing this far south of Gaul.
We rested for the night before tackling the final climb. The road wound steeply, clinging to the bare shoulders of the hills. We finally reached the pass through which Hannibal brought his armies in his great march on Rome. As its far end the way dipped steeply once more, and a milepost announced that ahead was the Juncarian Plain. We were in Gaul.
Now Marcus pushed on more swiftly, taking advantage of every hour of daylight. Summer was ending; and ahead, still many days’ journey away, loomed the great barrier of the Cottian Hills. We were treading the Via Domitia; we rode steadily, seeing for the first time what war had really meant to the great Province it traversed. We passed plodding lines of refugees, men, women and children; some hauled rough carts piled with their belongings, others sat hopelessly at the roadside, hands extended for charities that never came. Village after village stood gaunt and ruined. Theodosius had left peace behind him, certainly; but it was the peace of a desert.
As we passed through Massilia the traffic, already heavy, intensified. Road after road still joined our route, sweeping in from the vast hinterland of Gaul; each brought its jostling contribution of carts, animals and men. At Segusio, set high among snow-capped peaks, we made a final check of our equipment. The sultry warmth of Baetica was almost forgotten now. I wore three tunics, and the thickest cloak I owned. Marcus was similarly swathed; our breath and the breath of the horses steamed in the thin, bright air.
Surely, I thought, we must soon reach the highest point; but always the road snaked away from us, up and up, losing itself finally in the very clouds. As we climbed, even the normal sounds of the world were stilled. Other travellers tended to bunch together, for mutual protection and aid; so that often enough we camped and moved on alone. Always there was birdsong. The notes fell sweet and limpid, echoing for miles; while the highest passes were filled with a nameless rushing and sighing that was not wind but seemed the movement of the clouds themselves, by some strange magic rendered audible. It was a place apart, laid under enchantment at the start of Time itself.