Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (60 page)

The tide now set strongly and carried us to the northeast, so that we had to paddle very little to keep way on her, but only to hold her head the way Pryderi wanted it.
He
seemed happy. He sang to himself in a tuneless, wordless song. I just paddled.

I looked into the grey mist. It swirled round us in curtains, our clothes were soaked with it, there was nothing to see except each other. Pryderi insisted that it was northeast we
were
heading, taking his bearings, I thought, from the colour of the water and the smell of the fog. I was completely in his hands, more at his mercy than at any time before.

Suddenly I saw something in the mist.

‘Look!’ I called. ‘Dead ahead – it’s land.’

‘Too far left,’ Pryderi grunted. ‘Bring her round a bit. There’s still enough wind to throw us off.’

Oddly enough, it was a comfort to find that he did not know
exactly
where he was. We came round a little, to the north I supposed, and passed under an island. It was long and flat and very low-lying. We came further right, and suddenly we were under the savage cliffs of another island, towering steep out of the water. The cliffs were covered with sea-gulls, which rose screaming when I shouted. But even so, my shout sounded so feeble in the empty mist that I was frightened then in case I might have offended some sea god.

Then I gained my courage. I had not been afraid in the fog, with the Berts, who were more dangerous than Pryderi, and that other silent ship going by. I need not be afraid here. I need not even paddle.

‘What way are we heading?’ I asked.

‘North today: north of east tomorrow,’ Pryderi answered.

I knew a king of wizards once: he taught me to whistle; and I whistled. We must have been a long way from the cradle of the winds, but at last the mist began to thin, and the breeze was on our backs, even though the tide was now against us. The early night fell, but at least now we could see the stars, and head towards the Dog Star, and hold it till we were suddenly unable to see it for the great cliffs that towered over us.

We landed on a shingle beach, and carried the boat up beyond the line of seaweed which Pryderi told me marked the limit of the tide. I was rather uneasy, because there is no knowing that the sea will stop today where it stopped yesterday, but I could not overrule him without appearing discourteous. I groped along the water’s edge in the starlight, and picked up enough scraps of wood to light a fire, and keep it going through the night. We took it in turns to watch the fire and to sleep under the upturned boat.

At dawn we ate our morsel of cold mutton and drank a little cider, and set off again, with the tide. I was in a better mood for whistling that morning, and we had a wind to help us too, moving east of north along a coastline where the cliffs abruptly stopped and we had on our left hand a low shore and flats of mud. We passed the mouths of one big river, big for that island, though anywhere else in the world it would have been a trickle, and a narrower creek, and a long way after that the mouth of another wide river.

We turned into this mouth, trusting to the tide – we had sat out an hour of the turn staked on the mudflats and then paddled against the ebb and through to the flow again – to carry us up between the high banks of mud, mud, always mud, north to where we could see a long line of flat topped hills.

But it was some time before dusk, and much nearer to the sea than to the hills, that we came under the walls of Isca Silurum. We could see the walls, and the sentries at the gates, all wrapped up in winter order, which is nothing like any uniform the legions wear farther south. We came in to the wood frames of the quay, and someone threw us a line and helped us to scramble on to the bank.

There were the usual crowd of idle hangers-on by the water’s edge, and Pryderi stood there in his black-and-yellow-checked cloak and looked at them. The front of his cloak fell open a little to show his belt of Gold chain. The loiterers all stood up from where they were lounging on stones and walls and bales, and I realised that those of them who weren’t showing somewhere a trace of black and yellow were wearing the red with a thin white stripe that Cicva was so proud of. Pryderi didn’t say anything, he just motioned with his left hand, and there was a rush to carry our bags and lift the boat out and stow it dry.

There were a number of more or less clean-looking houses between the gates of the fort and the river – not a city or anything like it, just an unplanned village. Pryderi walked up the street, and stopped at the largest house. I followed him. One of the men from the river bank went inside, and in a moment a whole family, men and women, young and old, children of all ages and hens and the pig all came tumbling out into the street.

Pryderi led me inside. There was a rush of people to bring us hot water to wash after our long journey, and also soap which the Gauls and Britons make out of fat and wood ash. It is very good for cleaning yourself, and I have often thought it would sell very well in Rome if only scented oils didn’t have such a hold on men’s habits. Someone gave me a razor – really gave, I kept it – and I sacrificed my fine moustache, consoling myself that I could grow it in a few months as long as ever. When we were clean, I changed. Pryderi handed over his belt to one of his new friends, which surprised me, and I threw on my sealskin cloak again.

Pryderi carried my bag after me up to the walls of the fort. The sentry seemed at first a little doubtful about letting me pass. I told him I was going to see the Legate – not wanted to, was
going
to. He called the Sergeant of the Guard, who turned out to be a Standard-bearer and so senior enough to take decisions. This man could read, not very well, but he knew the seal of the Office of the Procurator in Londinium and he let us through with a legionary to lead us.

The main street of the fortress was in the usual confusion of builder’s rubble. I don’t know what it is about soldiers. They spend years building a fortress and making it a safe and comfortable
place to live and work in. Then as soon as it’s finished, they think up some new regulation which will allow them to tear it down and live in squalor again. They now seemed doing nothing more drastic than turning the whole fort round to face the other way. At least, they had left the Headquarters in the usual place, and we picked our way towards it, Pryderi looking round him like a provincial in the Forum.

At the door of the Praetorium, I slipped off my cloak and let Pryderi carry it with my bag, and when the Tribunes of the Staff saw me in my toga, all gleaming white, as if I were in Rome itself nobody thought of challenging my right to be there or to see whom I wanted. At that time, Citizens were scarce enough in Britain outside the Army, and here in the far West they were completely unknown. So I went straight in past the sentry and turned along the corridor – all these Praetorium buildings are exactly alike inside – and I walked into the office of the Junior Tribune without knocking or any other warning. I tossed the Procurator’s letter on his desk and said firmly:

‘I am ready to see the Legate. Now. Announce me.’

And of course the young fop was too impressed to do anything else but usher me at once into the Legate’s office, where the great man was having a nap and wishing it were late enough for him to leave decently and go home without setting a bad example to his junior officers.

The Legate, however, refused to be impressed. He refused very hard. He told me, quite curtly, that he had received orders from Rome itself to offer me every assistance, and he had heard from the Office of the Procurator what assistance I was likely to require. He did not think it at all proper for the Civil Department to presume to tell him how to dispose of the Army’s property and resources, and he himself was in fundamental disagreement with the policy, but there was nothing now he could do. Therefore, would I go along to the Primus Pilus and get what I wanted. And he hoped that I would not make any special effort to come and bid him farewell if I were in a hurry to leave, as he knew that I must be.

I went along to the office of the Senior Centurion, the Primus Pilus. I was furious. You keep on meeting this kind of treatment
from Latins. Just because they’re born in Italy, and Patricians, they think they own the world, and they are a close little clique of the ‘right people’ who keep all these ornate and profitable offices among themselves. It’s people like our family, Greeks and Syrians and Africans, who really have the money and control all the trade and the real business of the Empire.
They
control the details of government. So they take no notice of us. They treat us like dirt.

But their days are numbered. Who do they think they are? Who do they imagine really runs the Empire now? It’s the long-service soldiers, the centurions, who know what the legions think, and what the legionary thinks about is who’s going to be Emperor and how much he’s going to pay for it. And who looks round and takes the opinion of the meeting? The centurions, not the legates and the tribunes. These Patricians, once they
were
rulers, and they can’t forget it now. They have not yet woken up to the fact that we have an Empire, not their cosy old Republic, and they’re only officials now and not very well-paid ones either.

After that treatment I was steaming with anger. I don’t like being treated as if I were a slave, by a man I can buy up twenty times over and out of my own money too, without calling on the family’s funds. I went into the Senior Centurion ready for a quarrel if he offered it. But, of course, he was quite different, a man from just outside Carthage named, or perhaps called is a more precise term, Caius Julius Africanus. He was much more inclined to treat a Citizen with respect, being a Citizen born himself, even though he was a provincial too. He did not trust Italians any more than I did. Oh, yes, Africanus knew all about my business, and all about me, which was more than the Legate did.

‘Just look at this,’ he said, as one harassed man to another. ‘Here’s the letter from the Procurator. The Legate just passed it over to me with “see to it” scrawled in the corner. That’s what he always does.’

‘At least it shows he trusts you,’ I offered. The Senior Centurion looked at me. Then he described the Legate in detail, in a small vehement voice. I was impressed. I’ve heard many a sea
captain do worse, and the delicate conjunction of epithets brought joy to my poet’s heart. At the end I asked:

‘But you
have
done it?’

‘It’s all ready when you want it. Tell me where you want it sent, and exactly when, and I’ll do it. There’ll be no questions asked about the ship. Don’t tell me anything about it, either, I don’t want to know.’

‘There’s another party supplying her.’

‘I don’t think we dare have you bring it up here. There are too many eyes to see. I tell you what, we have a signal station at the mouth of the next river, but there’s a creek a couple of miles nearer here. We’ll set off in a wagon train as if we were going to the signal station, and meet you in the creek.’

‘No escort,’ I warned him. ‘Just hire wagon-drivers around here. You’ll find a few ready and waiting.’

‘Don’t tempt me – I won’t ask. But when?’

‘I will set sail on the day the first shooting stars fall from the Lyre. It will take two days to get to the creek. Can you meet us then?’

‘By the Calendar, that will be the end of April. I will watch for the stars.’

‘I will expect you.’

‘I will be there.’ He looked at me. ‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’

‘I think my man has found somewhere in the village.’ Pryderi was, I supposed, sitting where I had left him, on the step of the Praetorium, looking around him curiously.

‘Nonsense. Aristarchos said I was to look out for you, Photinus. You won’t be safe in the village tonight, it’s Imbolc. Would you like to come and dine tonight with the centurions? It’s regimental feast. You can sleep in my house.’

It was wonderful to be addressed by my own name again. I accepted.

‘But your man will have to sleep in the village,’ Africanus continued. ‘We can’t have any Brits in here tonight. It’s not etiquette, not in the Second. I’ll send an orderly to take you down to the baths. He can have your man take your bag down there for you, and he’ll carry it back for you himself.’

That was what I did. I went to the baths, outside the fortress, and I went through the hot rooms and the cold rooms, and I lay and luxuriated while they scraped me down and oiled me well till I smelt like a civilised man again. Then I put on a clean tunic and it took nearly half an hour to get shaved, the barber was so good and careful. Then back into my toga, and into the fortress again.

The Primus Pilus has a house of his own, while the junior officers live in little apartments at the ends of the huts where their men sleep. Thus it is very seldom that all the centurions of a legion meet together except on the parade ground. This was one of the occasions, and the feast was held in the Regimental Burial Club House, which alone in the fortress had a room big enough to hold us all with a kitchen near by. The room was warm, with real under-the-floor heating. I remarked on this to Africanus, as I stood at his right hand, receiving his Centurions as they saluted him, and introducing me.

‘Yes, that’s what makes these big forts almost untenable here in the North. We can never get enough fuel. I have something like three hundred men permanently at work all the summer cutting wood and piling it for the winter, and it takes over a hundred wagons because we are cutting it so far away.’

‘Why don’t you use earth coal like they do at the mines?’

‘Impossible. It’s too heavy. It would cost too much to bring all the way, on packhorse.’

Africanus greeted his Centurions as they arrived, one by one. This one, he said, was from Byblos, this one from Lutetia, one from Carnuntum, one from Bordigala, this one from Bonnonia even – all Citizens born, from all over the Empire except Britain, and except Italy. I was glad to see that, no Italians. More than half of them, though, were from Gaul and not so different from the Britons. It would be legions down in Egypt that would have British officers. It was the usual kind of regimental dinner, but notable for the absence of the Tribunes and the Legate, and for the presence of every Centurion in the fortress. That did not, of course, mean every officer in the legion, because about twenty of them were away on duty, on detachment at smaller stations. Still, we made four tables when we lay down to eat.