The Boat of Fate (50 page)

Read The Boat of Fate Online

Authors: Keith Roberts

Tags: #Historical Fiction

‘Tell the Roman this was a mighty killing.’

I waited.

‘Ask the Roman, are these the soldiers who will lay waste my land?’

The grass spun suddenly, and flickered.

‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that they are not. Tell him our business here is done; and that if he wills it, we will leave in peace.’ Another interchange. The slitted eyes watched through the helmet. Finally he nodded.

‘Tell the Roman he is free to go; for now he knows I am his master.’

I swallowed. ‘Tell the King,’ I said, ‘the booty of waggons we leave to him. Also this land; all he can hold, from here to the eastern sea.’

The words were translated. He raised his face to the sky, yelled long and high. The shout was answered from the ranks beyond; a sustained, exultant roar. I turned to Riconus, but I didn’t need to speak. Bold fighter though he was, he had already weighed the odds; and slowly, by degrees, the banners dipped, the great boar Standard stooped to touch the earth.

She rode behind me, from the battlefield. The Celts closed round us. Once she paused. She sat her horse silently, looking down. The smoke, dense and evil-smelling, rolled across the grass. Everywhere, round the waggons, between the strakes of their wheels, the bodies lay heaped and still. In the distance a few of the Scoti were already picking over the slain. Nothing else moved across the whole grim field, save one young man, one of the garrison from Corinium. He stood a little way from us, fresh-faced and dark-haired, barely older than Valerius. In his hand he gripped the reddened stub of a sword, and he was crying.

She stared a long time. Then she turned away. She said, ‘Were we worth it? Was anything?’

 

I retired to Corinium.

Riconus came to me in the night. Crearwy lay on my bed, muffled in a cloak, sighing and turning restlessly. I had been keeping vigil by her; I rose at sight of him, and moved away. He spoke so softly his deep voice barely stirred the air. ‘This Tribune, from the north,’ he said. ‘Have you reached a composition with him?’

I said, ‘As yet, no.’

He frowned past me at the woman on the bed. He said, ‘I don’t much like his looks.’

A wait. I said, ‘What would you suggest?’

He stared at me. ‘The men will ride’ We can get new horses.’

I said, ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’

She rose uncomplaining, drew the cloak round her. We walked through silent streets. The Palatini were drawn up in the shadow of the gates. We burst through in sudden thunder, and there was the straight, long road ahead. Whether we were pursued or not I never knew.

 

The sky flared behind the towers of Verulam. The gates were closed, men lining the walls. They left us in no doubt as to their intentions. I saw a catapult discharge; the rock hummed over my head, burst on the road behind. I rode forward alone, calling.

‘Pacatianus . . . Pacatianus . . .’

A stirring on the wall; and a question flung itself down to me. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Praefect of Rome.’

‘Paullus?’

‘Yes . . .’

A wait, and the massive gates squealed back. We swept through, with a clatter and surge.

 

Wine tinkled into a glass. He handed it to me silently. I drank, feeling the warmth move into my veins. He said, ‘The north is in uproar. The Saxon Shore is holding for the Count. His Standards are at Anderita. There’s a price on your head, of course. I expect you’re aware of that.’

I said, ‘You’re well informed.’

He rubbed his face. He said, ‘We have to be.’ His hair, a fringe, was silver, his eyes a bright, direct blue. Now he looked old. He said, ‘There was an all-night session. In the Curia. We won our point. The gates stay shut.’

A silence. I swilled the wine round in the glass. He said, ‘We could use your men. We shall be fighting the entire Province.’

I shook my head. ‘They’ll go to Gaul. They won’t come back. You’ll hold longer than Rome.’

He said, ‘It’s the end, of course. I find it. .. disappointing.’

There was a statuette oh a plinth. A bronze, of Venus. Beyond her the garden was pale with early sunlight. I touched the figure vaguely with one finger. She was coltish and fiat-bellied. Britannic.

He said, ‘Where will you make for?’

‘Rutupiae.’

‘Don’t. Go to Dubris. Ask for my brother. The quinquennale.’

I put the cup down. I said, ‘Will Dubris hold t’

‘For a time. Avoid the other garrisons.’

I said, ‘I trained them.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know.’

 

The port was choked with shipping. Above the town the lighthouse tower thrust gauntly at the sky. A great fire burned on its summit.

There was a merchantman leaving for Gaul in ballast. We embarked the horses. As the last man ran aboard the ropes were cast off, splashed into the harbour. I heard a stir behind me on the quay. Horsemen were coming, moving fast. I saw the swirl of cloaks, the gleam of a sword. Someone hailed us. Nobody bothered to answer.

The night was calm. We edged out through the harbour mouth. As we gathered way a galley, a fighting ship of the British Fleet, came threshing up astern. Riconus said, ‘They’ll have the place sealed off by dawn.’

I stood beside him, leaning on the rail. A lantern had been hoisted to the masthead. It seemed other vessels followed us, shadows against the pale gleam of the sea. The ship rose and dipped, breasting the first of the swell. I stayed silent, feeling the breeze on my face, hearing the long creak of spars and cordage. Astern the land reduced itself, dropping away like a country seen in a dream. In the west the sky glowed furnace-red, pricked by the orange pinpoint of the tower. As night deepened, massive cloud-streaks grew overhead. Between them, as between the fingers of a hand, the glow still burned. In time the cloud banks thickened, scooping Britannia into the dark.

 

Chapter Twenty

 

There’s not much more to tell.

We didn’t stay in Gaul. We rode south, to Hispania. Once over the border we travelled south again. Finally we reached Italica. The place seemed smaller than I remembered it, its streets dusty and narrow. The hooves of the horses echoed from empty house fronts. Signs swung and creaked uneasily, their paint blistered and peeling. There were few people about. Rubbish had collected in the gutters, and there was a smell of drains. I turned into my street, reined outside what had been my home. The shops where Septimius held court, and old Zenobia shouted and pranced, likewise lay deserted. The doors of the house were closed. The man who answered my banging was white-haired and old. It was a moment before I recognised Marcus. The rest of the servants were gone, my father on his death-bed. I was in time to catch his last breath, as he would have wished.

North of the town, the Via Argenta climbs towards the hills. There was a wood, bright with the sounds of birds, a temple crowning a knoll of lush green grass. Within were more birds, many birds, and flowers, painted in gay profusion on the plaster. A spring had been diverted, to feed a fountain. It tinkled and splashed; from it the water flowed in a rivulet down the hill. The tomb I had imagined for Calgaca, my father had built. From here she could see the sky and the hills, the great road lancing to the north. I laid him with her, sat a long time silently after the priest had gone. It seemed for the first time I was beginning to understand him.

Money had been left for me. Not much, but enough for my needs. We moved south again, to Gades. At the port I commandeered a mailboat. She took us to Tingitana; from there we turned east along the coast. Behind us we left winter.

Such a winter, too, as the West had never known. For weeks on end, for months, icy winds scourged down like the very wrath of God. Belgica, Germania, Britannia, the Gauls, all felt that terrible breath. It froze the sodden earth an arm’s span deep, baking it with ice. It piled snow higher than living memory could record. It choked roads, cut off cities, buried entire towns. It froze birds to the branches on which they huddled, so they dropped off in the spring like feathered stones. It stopped the hearts of old folk and the sick. It burst pipes and wells, aqueducts and sewers, the frames of houses and the sap of forest trees. All this it did, and more.

It froze the Rhine.

The pent-up tide of humanity thus released rolled unchecked, driven by its own colossal momentum, through Belgica and Gaul and Hispania, clear to the sea. Behind it it left ruin, desolation and the dark. While Stilicho lived there was a chance it could be stemmed, even turned back; but he is gone, cut down finally like a dog, as he himself foresaw. No one is left, now, to take his place.

The Court of Mediolanum removed itself to Ravenna; and there I’m told, closed behind unscaleable walls, the Emperor and his minions still play their ghostly games of power. They raise phantom Legions, shadowy Standards, fling back once more the boundaries of Empire, spread, to their hearts’ content, the peace and fame of Rome. But there are no Legions, no Standards. The West has fallen.

Roma herself still lives, if a shadow can lay claim to life. It’s been many seasons now since Alaric the Goth burst her gates. Twice they bought him off, with pepper and gold, and I hear they raised a petty King or two; but it was food his nation needed more than glory. They rode in, when they came, under the Labarum, Christians and heretics, sworn to respect the property of brothers who disowned them. They didn’t understand, they couldn’t understand; nobody will ever understand. Neither could they eat stone and bronze. It was a crusade, absurd and holy; and it lasted just four days.

I said Rome lives, but her time can’t now be long delayed. The breath comes and goes in her, gusting and harsh, the roar of the amphitheatre; but already, before the body is still, it is attacked by dissolution. In nooks and crannies, sheltered from the streets, the lime-burners are starting their work, stripping the acres and miles of marble. For generations yet, that vast corpse will feed the kilns. Even the Christians wail, but I can feel no tragedy, no grief. For Roma wasn’t buildings and statues, temples and baths and libraries. She was people; people who grew tired, as I grew tired, put from them a burden they found crushing. The shell remains, but the spirit has already fled. Had fled, I’ve come to realise, generations before I was born.

So waste no tears on mortar and brick; pipe your eye though, if you must, for a silly old man with a limp and a stammer and a scruffy ginger wig. Killed not by the fall of Empires, barbarian fury or a thunderbolt of God, but by his own drunken slaves.

My flight, like that of many others, ended in Africa. After months of journeying with Riconus and his men, I once more stood before a Roman governor. He looked me up and down a while before he spoke. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘what do you want from me? I suppose with your fine comitatus you’ll be looking for a high position in the Army.’

I shook my head. ‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘I want to work on the water supply.’

We have a house here, Crearwy and I; a rambling cavern of a place on the outskirts of what was once Leptis Magna. Houses in Africa tend to be massive and gloomy, their rooms built underground away from the endless heat. In one such room I sit, penning these last few words.

Our life here has been peaceful, and, rich. At first I was troubled by recurrent dreams. Sometimes it seemed the pieces of Ulfilas joined themselves, crying some nonsense about a placed called Angle-land. At others I would hear what seemed an endless sea of voices, all mingled with the ring and clash of swords; and hands would grip me, hating, drawing me from life and light, down to blood and despair. Sometimes in the nightmare I would cry out; and wake, sweating, to find I lay in Crearwy’s arms. In time, the dreams faded; though even now, if I become overtired, it seems I hear a whisper, the last far echo of that din of battle.

From Britannia herself little has been heard. But some information has come through, by this or that devious channel. Tammonius, that fated man, lived just three months beyond his elevation. Censorinus’ second puppet fared no better; for Gratian too, with power once in his hands, refused the dream of Empire. So they elected, finally, a common soldier. His name was Constantine; it was, I suppose, as good a reason as the next to choose an Emperor. Under his leadership the armies of the Province finally crossed to Gaul. There, for a time, they were successful; then the ancient, inevitable pattern swallowed them. Other names, other men, rose for a time, flickered and were extinguished; Gerontius and Constans Caesar, Edobich; and, finally, Maximus. Yet another Maximus; Hispanian, Pretender, last of an unnoble line. Now they are all gone, swept away. In their places, on the thrones and high tribunals, sit Kings with crowns of emerald and iron.

Africa, I think, will hold a few years yet. But for this Province too the end is in sight. Slowly, with the inevitability of Fate itself, the barbarians tighten their grip on the West. They are in Mauretania now. Numidia has fortified her borders; but those walls, like all walls, can be breached. Carthage defies them, but Carthage can be overthrown again. Africa is the lure, and the prize; Africa, once a Granary of Rome. For grain they overthrew the greatest city in the world; and for grain they will come here. Maybe not this year, maybe not the next; but come they must.

Five nights ago, for the first time in many months, I had a dream. It seemed I stood once more within that great house Censorinus owned. The fires still roared, orange-red and dazzling; yet, strangely, the place remained unconsumed. Flowers grew and blossomed despite the heat, birds sang from bright depths of flame. In the dream, figures came walking. I saw Valerius again, with Pelgea at his side. They raised their arms, laughing; and the children too came running, Melinda with her hare-spear, Nessa with her arrows and bow. I would have spoken, certainly I held out my hands; but the vision faded, I woke to a hot, dark room that smelled of spice and sand.

I took it as a portent, and a sign. Perhaps the heart-wounds my pride dealt are healed at last. Later, in my new awareness, I looked at Crearwy. To me she has always remained as I saw her first. Now I saw streaks in her hair that could be silver, lines on her face deeper than those made by Time. This climate will kill her. Last year Marcus died; and we shall stay no longer.

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