The Cleft (15 page)

Well, eagles still hold the imaginations of us Romans. There is an eagle's nest on a rocky outcrop on my country estate and some of my slaves take food as offerings to the place. There is something in me that applauds this gift, as if it were due.

Our feeling for eagles must have originated somewhere. In saying this, am I claiming kinship with those ancient long-ago ancestors of ours? Are we ‘children of the eagle' more than we know? I do know that when our Roman eagles go past with the legions I have to conceal my tears.

When the girls and children returned to the shore, and Maronna heard about the eagles' feast, she understood that this venture of Horsa's was a more serious thing than she had realised. At once she called to some girls to go with her, because the little boys had heard that Horsa was leaving his forest clearing and there would be nowhere for them to go running to when they wished to leave the women's shore. Besides, it was not fair that Horsa was taking some boys – not all much older than the little boys – who would be left behind. They intended to take up residence in the forest and wait for Horsa to return.

Off the little boys ran, with the girls and Maronna after them. Tough little boys, they were, made strong by swimming, and the girls were strong too. How many boys went off that day? ‘A good many little boys' is all that we have. They hoped they would be in time to join the men, they all had heard about the trees that would be waiting for them.

A great space in the forest full of men and boys and youths was not what they saw when they arrived there. The trees stood, so many, so tall, so powerful, as if watching them. And there was something more. The vacated sheds and shelters had been invaded, some knocked down. Large black beasts were rootling and grunting, tuskers, with teeth like sharpened knives. We know they were pigs, porkers, not unlike the ones we breed, but
enormous, much bigger than any we have, and not soft and well-fed like ours, but lean and fast and dangerous. These little boys had not yet learned to climb, and hardly understood the danger they were in. The girls, horrified, immobile with terror, tried to draw the children to them, but in a moment the herd had charged, and two of the little boys had been carried off, back out of the horrid clearing. The pigs did not follow; they had two items for their feast. What they seemed to be saying, though, was, ‘This is our place, keep out.'

What a surveillance had been kept on the men and boys in their clearing. At night the gleam of yellow and green eyes must have been as familiar to the feasters as were the flare of the bonfires.

There was not only this ferocious type of pig, but a kind of feline, very large, able to defeat a porker, or more, and we know there were many of these in the forest. There were also dogs, a type of dog in packs. All of these had at night, beyond the light of the flames, watched the goings-on in the clearing. Bears? We know there were bears.

Once again I have to intervene and it is because, while telling my tale of forests and beasts and wildness, I have been conscious that it is not possible for us to imagine what it must have been like for them living
always at the edge of vast trees from which at any moment some terrifying animal may pounce or leap. For us late people, our imaginations do not stretch so far back. How long has it been since any Roman strolling in our woods has come on a bear, wolves, anything more threatening than a wild cat? My sons, fighting with the legions in those ferocious German forests, had to fear wild beasts that for us are only in legend. Our dangerous animals are behind bars. Plenty of those, yes. And we go to the games to get the thrill of seeing them. Yes, I do go to the games, usually with my sister Marcella, who will never miss an exciting event. She likes me to go with her, because that proves she is not the sensation lover I tell her she is. My being there, by her side, proves to her she is a sane and civilised person. It is not possible to sit there as the beasts are brought in to fight, or to attack their criminal victims without one's blood beating and the heart pounding. I've tried to sit beside her and remain unmoved. At some point you find yourself shouting, rising to your feet, calling out, and the smell of blood drives you wild. Why do I go? At first I went to try myself but I know now that I can never be any better than that blood-lusting screaming crowd. The thing is, not to go, and these days, when the thrills of scholarship are mine, I do not go unless Marcella persuades me. It is sickening, and how can one not say so? Many people do say so, and that the spectacles are cruel and make every spectator a participant in the most revolting barbarity. And yet, saying it, admitting it, they go.

I have wondered, and ask myself even more, reading
about these ancient people in their forests, if what we say about the games is all that may be said? There is an element of the barbarian in every one of us who enjoys the games in the arena. But when we scream as the blood bursts from the mouth of some lion, or leopard – or any of the endless supply of wild animals that fill our arenas, is there not perhaps something else there? I ask myself, is it revenge? For how long did our kind live in the forests side by side with leopards, boar, wolves, packs of dogs, at any moment their victims? They could not have taken a few steps into the trees without glimpsing some predator, some terrible enemy. How many of our ancestors died to provide meals for their enemies, the wild beasts? We have forgotten all that. Perhaps we have because it was so terrible, the way I think we do the very bad things that happen to us. That she wolf who nurtured our first Romans, that generous and loving creature – did we not invent her to compensate for the long history when wolves harried and hurt us? Just as I think eagles have in the idea of them something else, more than admiration for their pride and beauty – eagles took lambs from the flocks of people who depended on them for their food, eagles may snatch up a child, so I've heard, in the wilder parts of our empire. To propitiate eagles, who belong to Jove, is a precautionary thing, and when we shout as a lion falls dead, are we not compensating for times when lions and big cats might have, often did, feed us to their cubs?

In our arenas we sit in our safe rows, eating and drinking and watching while the great beasts are let in to meet their deaths, but once they meant death to us.
We are proud people, we Romans, and do not find it easy to admit weakness or fallibility, but perhaps our screams, our applause, admit it all for us. We are safe in our seats and the animals that may have been brought from Africa, from the eastern deserts, are at our mercy. None in those cages below and around the arenas will escape, every one will die as we watch – but very few spectators ever think that once we were at their mercy. When I think of how, in that forest where Horsa had his camp, watching over the little boys who learned how to be brave men, under the protection of him and his bands of youths, at night the eyes of man's terrible enemies, the animals, gleamed at them in the light from the great fires that were kept burning always to frighten them away, my blood literally does run cold. Have we forgotten those long ages when at any moment some beast could leap out from the undergrowth or drop from an overhead branch? When we scream in the arena, it is revenge that we are hearing. Or so I think when I put myself in the place of those long-ago people, savages we call them, our own kind, our ancestors – us. Only our legionnaires who have fought in the wildest places of our empire can begin to imagine what our ancestors felt, venturing into those old forests.

Now Maronna, some girls and some little boys ran until they saw the men on a large beach, already lighting fires for the evening.

The women arrived, screaming accusations at the
men who screamed at them. The men shouted that only idiot women would think of letting the little boys go to the forest clearing when there were no men to protect them. This was certainly disingenuous because Horsa and the other men all knew of the ‘tradition' of the boys escaping the women. It could have been easy for Horsa to work out that the little boys would go running to the clearing the moment they knew Horsa was leaving. Why did Horsa not leave some youths behind to protect the boys? The truth was, Horsa was shaken: that animals patrolled and prowled his forest place of course he knew, how could any of them not know how many were there, hunting as they did through the trees, but that the big porkers had taken possession so soon after their departure, that was a shock.

The two little boys had been taken and eaten, and here were more little boys, frightened and clinging to the women.

The confrontation went on, while the fires flared all along the beach and the light went out of the sky.

We have versions of this scene, both from the men's and women's histories. Maronna is described as tall, as strong, with long hair she wore braided and piled on her head. This suggests she wanted to look taller.

We do not know what ‘tall' meant to them. Perhaps Horsa, that great hunter, was a little lean man, not
tall and strong – as we, I think, must be bound to imagine him, perhaps like one of our Praetorian Guards.

This is the only place in all our records where hair is mentioned. They might have red hair, for all we know, like some of the tribes of the Gauls. They might all have been redheads, or blond. Unlikely, I think. Black or dark hair and black or dark eyes – that is most likely.

It is recorded that Horsa was furious because of his own delinquency, which he was hearing about as Maronna screamed at him. He had no idea yet just how lacking in forethought he had been. He was arranging a big feast for her and the women, while the altercation went on.

Maronna was weeping with anger and frustration and humiliation, and she was tired: it was a good long way from the women's shore to this one. Maronna said she was going home now, and taking the girls – who obviously did not want to go but would rather stay here, guests of the men, with whom she was bitterly quarrelling. For one thing it was just coming home to her that Horsa was planning a long expedition. Horsa said none of the women could leave until morning: it would be dangerous, surely Maronna could see that?

She was trying to make him see certain things.

Have you thought that the girls going with you
will be pregnant soon, and if you delay coming back you will have new babes to deal with?

No, it was clear he had not thought of it and was being made to think now, and for the first time.

‘And don't you care about us, Horsa? Don't you think about us?'

Here it was again, this accusation that in fact tormented Horsa. What was he supposed to be thinking? She told him: ‘You know that without us there would be no new babies, you know that. But off you go – and who is going to fill our wombs? There will be no one. So there will be no new babies at all, Horsa.'

The women, listening to Maronna, were forced to take her side, even if they had only just understood it. There they stood, the women, staring at the men, every one of whom was a son, every one born out of their bodies. I often think, when scanning one of our Roman crowds, that each individual present has been born to a female, and if ever there was a common fate or destiny, then this must be it.

The women standing here, beside Maronna, were all mothers, and every male there had been dandled, fussed over, fed, cleaned, slapped, kissed, taught by a female … and this is such a heavy and persuasive history that I am amazed we don't remember it more often.

‘Well, Horsa, what are we going to do? Have you thought of that?'

He had not. So, then, he ‘did not care' – as she
said. But he did not believe he didn't care. He had not thought, that was all. So, then, if he was going off, with every adult male, then there would be no more babes, no more people, yes, she was right.

This confused him, the sheer force of it – the compulsion. A compulsion that he must think, he must accept that he was careless and irresponsible, just as she said he was. Yet these accusations of her always, and always had, made him stubborn and resisting, but he could not today tell her he wasn't listening, and that she always nagged and complained, because he was secretly thinking that she was right.

We have the scene graphically described. The women stood there in the half-dark, probably chilly in their fish-skin garments that glittered and gleamed, but were hardly good for warmth. Near them, all together, were the males, bearded, almost certainly, and wearing their familiar animal pelts. When a sea breeze lifted a layer of fur off a shoulder or a head it was hard to say if this was a pelt, or beard, or the tail of some forest beast.

It is recorded that Maronna and Horsa were ‘reconciled' that night. I wonder what the original word was? How could they have become ‘reconciled' when the issues that made them scream at each other remained?

We know that they all feasted, drank an alcoholic syrup invented by the men, ate forest fruit. Surely it
is hard to stay angry during a feast. Did their reconciliation include sex? We know Horsa admired Maronna, but nothing is said about Maronna's liking, if any, for Horsa.

We Romans must assume sex took place, but is it possible that a time will come when Rome will be criticised for making too much of sex? I think so. But then, this is an old man talking.