The Mistletoe and the Sword: A Story of Roman Britain Read online

  The Mistletoe and the Sword

  Anya Seton

  Copyright © 1955 by Anya Seton.

  Published by arrangement with Doubleday and Company, Inc.

  Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 55-7657.

  Anya Seton was born in New York City and grew up on her father's large estate in Cos Cob and Greenwich, Connecticut, where visiting Indians taught her Indian dancing and woodcraft. One Sioux chief called her Anutika, which means ‘cloud grey eyes’, a name which the family shortened to Anya. She was educated by governesses, and then travelled abroad, first to England, then to France where she hoped to become a doctor. She studied for a while at the Hotel Dieu hospital in Paris before marrying at eighteen and having three children.

  She began writing in 1938 with a short story sold to a newspaper syndicate and the first of her ten novels, My Theodosia, was published in 1941. She died in 1990.

  People of a quest:

  Quintus--Young adventure-seeking soldier in a strange land

  Regan--Strange, adopted daughter of the queen

  Boadicea--A warrior queen and instigator of the British tribal revolt against the Romans

  Conn Lear--Leader of all the Druids at Stonehenge

  Catus--Brutal procurator of Nero

  Valerianus--Crazed Roman leader of the West

  Bran--Quintus’ strange quiet guide on his mission to the Druids

  With the exception of actual historical personages identified as such, the characters are entirely the product of the author’s imagination and have no relation to any person in real life.

  This story happened in England in A.D. 60-61. It is entirely based on history and follows in every particular the only contemporary sources that we have, The Annals of Tacitus and the Roman History of Dio Cassius. Dozens of authors have since speculated on the facts offered by these two sources; I have consulted most of these and found that Boadicea: Warrior Queen of the Britons by Lewis Spence (London, 1937) is the most detailed and convincing.

  Boadicea, her daughters, the evil procurator, the governor, Suetonius Paulinus, Seneca, and General Petillius Cerealis are all historical characters, so was Postumus Poenius, prefect of the Second Legion, who actually behaved in the mysterious way I have shown, though I have used my own interpretation of why he did so.

  It may be interesting to know that General Petillius Cerealis of the Ninth Legion himself became governor of Britain ten years after this story ends. A very good governor.

  There is much uncertainty as to the extent of Druidism during this period, but most authorities agree that Stonehenge was used, though not built, by the Druids.

  For the sake of simplicity and ease in locating I have used the modern names for Roman places in Britain. And for the same reasons I have followed one consistent system in the naming of characters because Roman nomenclature is confusing. Also 'Boadicea' is the fairly modern name for what was originally 'Boudicca.'

  A complete list of my source books on Roman Britain and the Celts would be tedious, but the works of R. G. Collingwood, and Jacquetta Hawkes were perhaps the most useful.

  A.S.

  CHAPTER I

  Quintus, standing in the prow of the Roman war galley, was eagerly peering through swirling fog ahead, toward a glimpse of high white cliffs.

  That was Britain at last! The savage misty island that he had dreamed about all his nineteen years, or at least it seemed that long. For Quintus could not remember the time when he had not known the strange story of his great-grandfather Gaius Tullius’ weird and horrible death.

  I’ll find it, he thought with growing excitement. I’ll find that place of the golden tree and the stone circle if I have to search through every inch of this barbarian land!

  He lurched on the heaving deck as a great wave hit the galley. He grabbed at the painted eagle on the prow and lost his footing. Green water sloshed over him, and he collapsed with a clatter of shield, sword, and armour on the wet deck. The galley slaves, though straining at their oars to keep the boat headed for shore in this rising wind, nevertheless snickered.

  Quintus heard them, flushed, and ignored them, while he pulled himself up. It was beneath the dignity of a Roman soldier to act as though galley slaves existed. But he glanced nervously toward the stem where his officer and ten other cavalrymen were huddled. Fortunately his officer, the centurion Flaccus, was seasick, and the others, having, unlike Quintus, no private reason for desiring duty in the wild half-conquered island, were grumpily huddled in their cloaks.

  The wind blew harder, the waves mounted, and Quintus began to wonder if they were to be blown back across the channel to Gaul. Though it was autumn and not sultry,lightning suddenly zigzagged across the sky, and the galley slaves set up a wail. “Neptune! Neptune! Deliver us!”

  Quintus muttered a few prayers himself, but chiefly to Mars, the god of war, for whom he felt affection. He promised Mars a sacrifice if they landed safely, but it was not for his own safety he was so much concerned as for that of the transport which immediately followed them. That vessel contained the horses, including Quintus’ horse, Ferox, of whom he was much fonder than anything in the world except his mother, and his little blind sister back in Rome.

  Ferox was a huge, intelligent, black stallion and as fond of fighting as his name implied, or indeed as Quintus was himself, though Quintus had had little opportunity to fight yet. He had entered the Roman army only last year when he was eighteen, and there hadn’t been anything but dull guard duty in Rome. It was a distant cousin on his mother’s side who had finally wangled Quintus’ transfer to these troops that were being sent to Britain. The cousin had influence. He had even sent a petition to the Emperor Nero about it.

  Thunder crashed over their heads, torrents of rain drenched them. Quintus set his jaw and let the icy trickles stream off his bronze helmet and down his back beneath the leather cuirass. The galley slaves might groan and curse at discomforts, but a Roman soldier must take what came, stoically.

  Fortunately the rain flattened the waves, and in a little while the galley’s keel grated on a pebbly beach, not at all where they had meant to land, but it was land. And the horse transport soon loomed out of the murk and beached near them.

  Quintus ran down the shingle to help the horses. Ferox whinnied and snorted when he saw his master and floundered obediently through the shallows where Quintus received the black stallion with a relieved pat and low word of greeting, “So there, old boy--thanks be to the horse goddess that you’re safe!”

  Two of the other horses were not. They had broken their legs by falling on the heaving deck, and Quintus turned away his head, ashamed of the rush of moisture to his eyes, as a soldier cut the injured beasts’ throats. There was certainly no time for sentiment. Flaccus, the centurion, was ramping up and down the beach, barking orders to his men, and cursing the climate and everything about this miserable island, where he had already served several years, before a trip back to Italy for recruits. It was penetratingly cold and dripping wet, quite unlike anything these southern-born troops had ever felt, but they saddled their horses, mounted, and fell into ranks, with the ease of long discipline. They climbed a steep cliff and made their way inland to a camping place.

  Nobody bothered them. The silent forest seemed as uninhabited as the heaving ocean beneath the white cliffs. There was no sound but the rain, and as they made camp, Quintus was disappointed. He mentioned this to his friend, Lucius Claudius Drusus, who was Roman-born and young like himself but far more aristocratic since he was distantly connected with the late Emperor Claudius.

  “I thought we might see some action when we landed,” said Quintu
s morosely, settling himself on the ground beneath the partial shelter of his shield, and stretching his steaming leather sandals toward the little campfire. “I thought the natives were hostile--that’s why they sent for us to build up the Ninth Legion.”

  Lucius shrugged, thrust his sword into the simmering pot, and speared himself a hunk of mutton. “I wish I was back in Rome,” he said shivering. “The sun’d be shining, there’d be the smell of flowers, we’d be all going to the games in the Circus Maximus, there’d be beautiful girls with gilt curls and sweet smiles. Jupiter! Even Nero’s fat head up in the royal box’d look good to me right now. The gods, of course, preserve our august Emperor-god,” he added hastily.

  Flaccus thrust his long, glum face over the fire and said, “You two elegant young Romans make me sick. This tribe here in Kent is friendly but if you got this action you’ve been wanting, Quintus Tullius Pertinax, I bet you wouldn’t like it so much neither. One of these blue-painted savages come screaming at you in a war chariot, and you’d be bawling for your mama and your cosy little white marble villa, and your rose water baths, that you’d be!”

  Quintus’ temper flared; he thought of a dozen scathing remarks to hurl back at his officer but managed to swallow them. He contented himself with muttering to Lucius, “That dog of a Spaniard, nothing but a colonial himself!” For the Roman army consisted of men drawn from all the conquered countries in the vast empire, and this Ninth or “Hispana” Legion, which they were on their way to join, contained many Spaniards, to whom the young Romans from Rome felt quite superior.

  As Flaccus disappeared to administer some reproof at the other side of the camp, Lucius said to Quintus, “Why you ever moved heaven and earth to get sent out here to Britain, I’ll never understand! Now me, I couldn’t help it. My father thought it’d be good experience and discipline for me. By Mars, I’ll count the days till I get home again!” Quintus was silent. He had told nobody, not even Lucius, of the story that had so fired all his childhood, of the queer feeling that in Britain his fate awaited him, or of the impetuous vow he-had made long ago. Not a practical vow, his mother had said, too dangerous, and virtually impossible to fulfil. And she had added gentle words of warning designed to curb her son’s impulsive tendencies. So he had stopped talking about the quest for the golden tree and the stone circle, but he had not been able to stop thinking about it at times.

  Quintus munched on some mutton and shivered a little in the cold rain as he stared out into the silent pressing forest. Suddenly a thrill went through him. It must have been quite near here, he thought--that long ago battle when Gaius Tullius was captured.

  “What’s the matter with you, Quintus?” asked Lucius, yawning and putting down the jug of wine he had been drinking from. “All you do is gawk at those trees!”

  Quintus started. “I was wondering where that first battle of Julius Caesar’s happened. I had a great-grandfather there too, and--”

  “Oh Jupiter,” interrupted Lucius, yawning again. “Can’t you find something better to wonder about? What’s it matter what happened in this wretched place over a hundred years ago! I wish Caesar’d stayed in Italy where he belonged, then I might be there too.”

  Quintus laughed. “Hardly a patriotic sentiment. Rome wouldn’t be mistress of the earth today if Julius Caesar’d stayed home.”

  “Maybe she wouldn’t,” agreed Lucius without interest. “Here, move over, you’re hogging most of the fire.”

  This was not true, but Quintus was used to Lucius’ grumbles and was fond of him, partly because they were the only two in this company who had actually come from the city of Rome itself.

  Quintus Obligingly moved over and soon both young men were asleep.

  When Quintus awoke the next morning the rain had stopped, and by the time he was astride Ferox and riding next to Lucius on the road through the forest he felt eager for excitement. This was a good road they were marching on, twenty feet wide, and made of paving blocks topped with gravel. Straight as a spear it led toward London through the land of the Cantii, a peaceful Kentish tribe. The Roman legions had built this road and many others like it since the second and successful invasion of Britain seventeen years ago when the Emperor Claudius had actually come here himself and made a triumphal march to Colchester.

  “Imagine!” said Quintus to his friend, “Claudius’ elephants plodding along here--didn’t he have camels too?--miserable natives like those over there must’ve been terrified.” He jerked his chin toward a village he had just discovered to the right of them. There were several round mud houses huddled inside a circular palisade made of sticks. A woman was squatting by the opening in the palisade pounding something in a stone bowl. She wore a shapeless garment that had once been striped and squared with colour, but it was very dirty. A naked little boy stood beside her. He was very dirty too, and as the legionaries passed on the road, both the woman and the boy raised their heads and stared narrowly, unsmiling.

  “What a funny colour their hair is,” said Quintus, gazing back at his first native Britons. “Red like brick dust, and shouldn’t they salute us or something? After all they’re our subjects.” He spoke with the instinctive arrogance of Rome, and the woman’s cool level stare annoyed him.

  Lucius shrugged. “Too stupid,” he said languidly. “I’ve always heard that these redheaded Celtic savages are very stupid. O Roma Dea--how I wish I was back in civilization! It isn’t even as though we’d have anything to do here except police some dismal outpost in one of these everlasting forests. The Britons are perfectly quiet now and glad enough to enjoy Roman comforts, and good government, and the security we bring them. The interesting times of Julius Caesar and Emperor Claudius are all over.”

  Quintus nodded and sighed, “Yes, I guess so, though Flaccus says there might be trouble up north.”

  “Oh, Flaccus,” said Lucius with contempt, glancing ahead at their officer. “He’s jumpy as a chicken; all those Spaniards are.”

  The two young Romans rode on in silence behind Flaccus, but ahead of the rest of their company of eighty-two men, called a “century,” because, in the old days, it had always consisted of one hundred men. Lucius and Quintus both held minor office and had a limited amount of authority. Lucius was an Optio; Quintus a standard-bearer, carrying a tall staff topped with the Ninth Legion’s number and emblems. It rested in a socket fastened to his saddle. Sunlight twinkled on their embossed bronze armour, on their helmets with arching crests of clipped red horsehair, on their oblong shields, and the scabbards of their short deadly swords. Quintus and Lucius rode without stirrups, like all the cavalry, and were both excellent horsemen. When a white figure suddenly appeared from behind a large tree and waved its arms in front of them, the horses shied without disturbing the young men’s balance in the saddles, though Flaccus nearly fell off his horse.'

  “By Hades, what’s the meaning of this!” cried the centurion furiously, recovering himself and glaring at the apparition in the road. “Hey, you old man, get out of the way!” The old man shook his head and said something in a heavy guttural language, while he stood squarely in the middle of the road, his skinny arms outstretched. He wore a long greyish white robe, and he had a grey beard through which gleamed a golden necklace with a dangling mottled stone shaped like an egg. There was a crown of oak leaves around his partly bald head, and Quintus started to laugh. “Here’s the funniest sight I’ve seen since our Saturnalian games,” he chuckled to Lucius.

  “Keep quiet!” shouted Flaccus angrily over his shoulder to Quintus. Then he beckoned for the interpreter, who came up and saluted.

  “Find out what the old goat wants,” said Flaccus, “and be quick about it or I’ll ride him down.”

  The interpreter saluted again and addressed the white-robed man. This interpreter was a British hostage, who had been captured in the Claudian campaign seventeen years before and taken to Rome where he had spent the intervening years and learned excellent Latin. He was tall, rawboned, and sandy-haired; a middle-aged man. His name was
something unpronounceable like Neamhuainn, so the Romans called him Navin.

  “This old man,” said Navin, at last turning back to Flaccus, “is our Arch--” he checked himself, went on quickly, “that is, I mean he’s one of the British priests, sir. A Druid. His name is Conn Lear, he is a very important man.” Navin paused, and Quintus, watching, had a sudden impression that the old man somehow understood the Latin the interpreter was using, and was listening intently. Navin went on after a moment. “Conn Lear wishes to warn you not to go further up country with your troops, sir. He says you must return at once to Gaul while there is still time. That his people want no more Romans in this land.”

  “What!” shouted Flaccus between fury and astonishment “You dare to tell me this impudent drivel Navin, you’re crazy, and most certainly this old man is.”

  “Possibly, sir,” said Navin tonelessly. His light blue eyes gazed up into the officer’s dark ones. “But that is what he said.”

  The priest suddenly put his hand on the interpreter’s arm and murmured something else rapidly and earnestly. Navin listened, then turned to Flaccus. “He says that he means no harm to the Romans, but that all the omens and auguries point to fearful trouble. The sacred hare has run its course through Stonehenge, the great stone circle in the west. The mistletoe has been found on three oaks near the Holy Well of Mabon, and the sea has turned red as blood near Colchester. The British gods have spoken. Turn back!”

  “Phuaw,” Flaccus spat onto the road at the priest’s feet “Seize him!” he cried to Quintus. “Bind him and haul him along with us. We’ll get to the bottom of this nonsense when we get to headquarters.”

  Quintus jumped off his horse, eager to obey. So this was a Druid! he thought with angry excitement. It was white-robed priests like this one that had killed his great-grandfather. All that stuff about stone circles and mistletoe made it certain. “Here, greybeard,” he cried, striding up to the quiet Druid and holding out a leather thong to bind the man’s wrists, “come along now.”