Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (61 page)

First, of course, we burned incense to His Sacred Majesty.
Then, still in silence, we were served with the traditional bowls of wheat porridge, and each of us took his ritual three spoonfuls and his three sips of ration red, that horrid bitter wine. And that one dish, in theory,
was
the meal. Then we were free to talk, and to eat a real civilised meal all cooked in oil, and drink good Grecian wine, with resin in it. After a few glasses, I asked Africanus:

‘I know that every legion has its own feast. Why does the Second have a feast on the Kalends of February? Do you celebrate a victory?’

I asked that partly because I wanted to know, and partly because I knew that a stranger, if present, must ask such a question, otherwise one of those present must lay aside his military cloak and pretend to be a stranger asking. Prompt to his cue, the most junior Centurion stood and began to recite a lesson learned by heart.

‘Think, brethren, why we are here. Tonight is the night of Imbolc. Tomorrow night, and for weeks to come, the Brits will watch every night beside their flocks as the lambs are born. Therefore they feast to cheer themselves for the long vigils ahead, waking in the cold lambing shed. Now on this last night of freedom from care they drink and sing in every village throughout the land. If ever we are to expect rebellion, it is on such a night, when men are drunk and tempers are hot. Therefore, it being a feast of the Brits, the Legion stands at its post, every centurion watching throughout the night, neither any soldier venturing out where he might cause offence and begin a riot. For from a riot may begin a war. On this night, brothers, let us watch, being armed, all through the night, knowing that our comrades of the Sixth and Twentieth watch also. Therefore we sit here together, ready to take our places on the parade ground, with the Standard-bearers and the trumpeters at the door.’

He sat down, sweating with the anxiety of remembering the whole thing. It was quite obvious that with what he had already drunk, it would not have been much use sending him on to the parade ground, nor any of the other officers either. I was glad the Standard-bearers were sober, being the senior under-officers. At that moment, the Night Duty Centurion appeared. He stamped up and saluted the Primus Pilus in a stilted tone:

‘All quiet in the town –
sir
!’

‘Take a glass of wine after your labours,’ answered Africanus, this obviously being part of the ceremonial. The Duty Centurion drained it at one ceremonial gulp, and then less formally held it out for more. I asked:

‘Is it really all quiet in the town?’ I thought I could hear something far away.

‘Quiet at Imbolc? There’s never been such a thing.’ The Duty Centurion took a third glass. ‘I need this. I’ve never heard so much uproar. Half the hills seem to have come down for the feast, and they’ve burnt a couple of houses. And do you know what they’ve been shouting? They’re shouting for Pryderi!’

Some of the drunker centurions laughed, but the soberer ones sat up and asked for the words to be repeated. I asked, as innocently as I could:

‘Who is Pryderi?’

‘Pryderi?’ said Africanus. ‘Why, he’s a thorn in our flesh and no mistake. Down in the far West, there’s the Demetae, and they’ve never submitted to Rome, they haven’t, though nobody would mind if only they kept quiet, as most of them do. But the King there is called Pwyll, and it’s his son Pryderi who does a lot of damage, cutting up wagon-trains and burning small posts. Then the nation here are the Silures, and they submitted all right, and we built them a city a few miles east, at Venta. But now some of them have quarrelled with the ones who submitted, and they follow another branch of their Royal House, and there has been a rumour that Pryderi has married into that family. If that’s so, then there’ll be trouble around here next. He has done us a lot of harm already; I swear, if ever I have him inside this post, then Pryderi will take a long time to die.’

‘Do you think it’s true?’ asked one of the younger officers, who was itching for promotion as was clear from the way he had been flattering Africanus – he thought Africanus couldn’t see what was going on, but the Primus Pilus was an old hand. ‘I could take a century down there and find out.’

‘True or not, they’re shouting so loud you can make out the words, “Pryderi, kindle the fire,” ’ said the Duty Centurion, and one of the Gaulish Centurions opened his eyes wide and told us:

‘Sounds like the old man is dead. It’s the head of the family kindles the fire on Imbolc night.’

The ambitious young man still pressed:

‘I could go down there at the run, and we’d have him in half an hour.’

‘No, stay here,’ said Africanus. ‘If you did go out now, you’d want half a cohort at least, and all you’d do would be start a riot, if not a revolt. This is how it usually begins, and we’re not here to start risings, we’re here to prevent them. If that means staying in here and not giving offence even if the Brits call us cowards, then that’s what we’ll do. If it’s fighting you want, there’ll be enough of that by the summer’s end.’

I thought it better to change the subject. I asked:

‘Is it your custom not to ask the Legate to your feast?’

Everyone laughed. The Centurion from the borders of Armenia explained:

‘We never ask tribunes, not since Carantorius insisted on billeting half a cohort in a village for Imbolc, about forty miles west of here, where the Via Julia meets the sea, and they were slaughtered in their beds. “Making them realise the Army are their friends,” was what he used to say, but they weren’t friends of the Army. We gave him a good tombstone, but there were two hundred and odd other good men dead as well. Forty years ago that was, but still … And we would normally ask the Legate, but this one …’

‘Useless,’ put in Africanus shortly. ‘Perfectly useless. What does he, or any of the Tribunes either, know about this legion, or how to handle men? Look at old sourpuss up there. Fifteen years ago he did a year as tribune with … the Seventeenth, wasn’t it, and everybody knows the Seventeenth. Since then he’s been wearing out his toga in one office after another in Rome, counting the obols for cleaning the drains. Now, here he is, just because he’s from a Senatorial family he finds himself a Legate, with a legion, and four regiments of cavalry, and the government of a quarter of the Province. That’s all he’s interested in, feathering his nest to pay his debts so that he can go back to Rome and have his year as Consul.’

‘It’s not as if he even
tries
to be a good general,’ added the
Duty Centurion. ‘We’ve only had him out on an exercise once since he came to us. We took two cohorts on a long march up the valley. End of the first day, what happens? We halt, and I’m Senior Centurion, and I get on with my job, digging in, and you want to, up there, with Pryderi about. Then I look round. Where’s his nibs, and the young Tribune he had with him, you know, little Peach-bottom? Are they placing pickets, noting routes of attack? Not a bit of it. They’re finding a pretty place by the stream to pitch their mutual tent, where the rude dirty soldiery won’t disturb their idyllic night out. Sets the troops a bad example, too. I hope he’s not with us if ever we have to go into action.’

‘If ever we go.’ Africanus stood up. The rest of us who had been wandering about and chattering now the serious eating was over, resumed our places, and lay down properly. The Standard-bearers and their escort had returned to the chapel, and the slaves left the room. The most junior Centurion shut the doors. Africanus went on:

‘My comrades, honoured guest, it is time for the toast. Remember, as you drink it, that our brothers of the Twentieth at Deva, a hundred miles away, are drinking it with us. A hundred years ago, we two legions came into this savage land. For forty years we fought against the savages, till at last we made peace and brought all this fertile quarter of the island into the Empire, and the great northern desert we left to the Picts. The Sixth at Eboracum can hold the Wall.

‘All this time, we two legions have waited for the word to move forward to add the next province to the Empire. Here on the shore of the Ocean we have built our fortresses and amassed our stores, ready for the last great invasion to carry us to the edge of the Ocean. We have waited long for the word to march. It has always been our pride that whenever the word would come, we would be ready, if need be, to
march
into the very sea itself. If this winter we are cold, we must cheer ourselves that we need not march into the water, and we may warm ourselves by going into the saw mills to work and turn the wood that should have been our fuel into ships that will keep us dry. For I can tell you now, the word has come at last. Soon we
will
march. Gentle
men, I give you, in greater hope than formerly, the annual toast. I hope that I now give it for the last time, and with it I couple the name of our guest, Photinus the son of Protagoras. Gentlemen, I give you – Next Year in Tara!’

I felt a tear in my one eye as I looked around. There they were, thirty-five centurions, from rear rank to front, of all ages, of all levels, and all men of action, hard and ready to fight. The lamps flickered on the brackets on the walls, and showed off the splendour of the plate. The officers were in their dress uniforms, each man in a cuirass made not of iron and boiled leather, but of scarlet velvet, padded to look like armour and trimmed and faced with Gold thread. Because it was Imbolc, and they were ready, each man reclined on his scarlet military cloak, and on the floor behind him each had laid his dress sword, and his parade helmet, and these last were gorgeous things, with face masks like you see gladiators wearing in the parade before the Games, gilded all over and each waving its plume of scarlet horse-hair. Several of them wore Phalerae, those medals of silver and Gold given only for bravery in the field, fighting against savage Britons, or the more savage weather.

They all stood, and I sat. All these brave men, to whom honour and the eagles meant more than Gold or power, men who knew what it was to endure, they all stood, and they drank to me, to Photinus, who was granting to them the prize they had always sought. They lifted their wine cups and they shouted:

‘Next Year in Tara! Long live Photinus!’

And then they cheered and called for a speech. When there was some kind of order, I stood and said:

‘Gentlemen, I am making you a bridge across the Sea. I have made the way clear for you, and I have done that without going there. But I want to come to Ireland in the end. You have invited me to one feast, gentlemen. May I now invite myself to another? Next Imbolc, I will feast with you in Tara!’

‘Never, with old Pig’s Bladder in command,’ hissed the Duty Centurion, who was rather coarse-mouthed, being an Illyrian.

I turned on him.

‘When you go, you shall have a real general.’

I saw to that next morning. I went back to the Praetorium,
and wrote a letter to Uncle Phaedo, sending it off with the military mail, partly for safety, partly for speed. It was short. I said:
Rejoice. Foreclose
.

I had sent him the contents of Gwawl’s wallet. Already my uncle would have bought up all the Legate’s debts. Within two weeks, now, the Legate would be broken.

While I was about that, Africanus suddenly came into the Registry saying:

‘I’m very sorry, I quite forgot this. Aristarchos left this letter for you when he came through.’

‘What was Aristarchos doing here?’ I asked.

‘What does Aristarchos ever do? He just passed by. It is my belief he was going native again. He’s done it before. All I know is, he borrowed a Standard-bearer and five other good men – all Gauls, and, come to that, all from the same nation. All Setantii. After Pryderi, perhaps? With Aristarchos, you never know, and you don’t ask. Here it is.’

I took the letter, and I went aside a little where no one could hear me read it. It was from my father. He had sent it to Uncle Euthyphro, and he to Leo Rufus, and he sent it on through Aristarchos, as he had no idea where I had gone, only a suspicion, and Aristarchos knew. It was quite short. I read it through twice. Then I threw the end of my toga over my face and stood silent for a while.

Africanus watched me, also silent. When I uncovered my face again, he asked:

‘Is there anything I can do?’

I stood there, mechanically cleaning the vellum with a piece of pumice, to use again. When I could speak, I answered him:

‘I have a son. My wife died in August.’

I went from the fortress gate alone. As Africanus said, it was better that he should not know where I went or to whom. I walked out of sight of the sentries among the houses of the British village. True it was that some had been burnt the night before, but not the one where I had changed and left my British clothes.

Pryderi was waiting for me. We went in silence, as soon as I had changed, down to the riverside. There were a number of men to see us off. I had not met them before, but I could tell their rank. After a winter in the Mere I knew the subtle differences of dress, and I would no longer confuse a noble in his hunting clothes with a peasant in his market-day best. Not since I had seven kings at my marriage have I had such august helpers to steady me into a boat. Nor did they speak to us. Anything they had to say to Pryderi, any agreements, any plans and policies, they were the work of the night before. They were committed.

We paddled all that day in silence, and in silence we spent the night on a beach as before. We had no breath to spare, trying to make the most of tide and current as we crossed to the south side of the water. Besides, I mourned a wife: Pryderi had taken possession of … a patrimony? … a dowry? … both?

On the morning of the second day, however, we felt less numb. We paddled with the shore close on our left hand, and we were caught by the current of a great river, wider and stronger than any river of Italy or Spain, wide almost as Nile itself, and I was glad we had cider enough to pour a libation to Sabrina. And then, as we paddled, Pryderi began to sing, a sad and lovely melody, and the words were old, but there was little doubt that he had chosen them carefully: