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

  “Also,” continued Dio, “that returning for them doesn’t appeal to me. Madam Wolf is in full possession, and for all I know has summoned all her relatives by now.”

  As if in answer to him they heard a sound floating down from the hillside behind--the long mournful howl of a wolf.

  The three paused and listened, then walked on silently.

  “So now we are in the same boat as Quintus,” observed Dio after a while. “And there’s nothing to show definitely that we’re Romans, except the Fourteen on our jerkins, which can be hidden.”

  “And your swords,” said Quintus a trifle enviously, but not as he would have said it yesterday. He now clasped his spear with confidence.

  “And our swords,” agreed Dio. ‘Though I hope we’ll have no use for them--until the big battle. I find that my adventures of the last fortnight have left me with a--shall we say--disinclination for more excitement right away. I find myself shamefully thinking of a good bed, of sweet Neapolitan sunshine and music, of gentle smiling, girls, and soft living generally.”

  “Go ahead and think,” said Fabian dryly, striding ahead and lacing the top of his jerkin, for a cold wet wind had sprung up.

  But Quintus was startled by something reminiscent in Dio’s chatter. “I had a--a friend, in the Ninth, who used to talk like that,” he said hesitantly, though realizing at once how little Dio and Lucius, really resembled each other. Dio’s rueful complaint had been humorous, un-resentful. For all his light manner, Dio had a tremendous loyalty to his job, and a strong sense of duty. While Lucius--

  “Something queer happen to the friend?” asked Dio, looking up at Quintus. “Your voice was funny.”

  Quintus wished that he could confide the pain and disillusionment that the thought of Lucius gave him. But he couldn’t bring himself to say, “I was awfully fond of him and thought he was a friend, but he let me down once; and far worse than that, when all our men were being slaughtered around us, he ran away.” So he nodded briefly instead and stared ahead at Fabian’s shoulders.

  “That’s too bad,” said Dio gently, thinking that the friend had been killed in the disaster to the Ninth, and he changed the subject. “How long are we going to lug this blasted hunk of wolf meat, Fabian? I’m hungry enough to eat it raw.”

  The elder messenger turned around. “I hope we won’t have to. There’s a native hut there in the valley; perhaps they’ll let us use their fire.”

  They looked down at an isolated little British farm. Behind a paling there was a round wattle-and-mud hut thatched with reeds.

  From the circular vent on top of the roof, smoke was curling upward. They descended the hill and approached the stockade of saplings that enclosed the barnyard. From inside, a dog barked savagely, a goat bleated, and pigs snorted alarm. The three Romans stopped outside the barred gate.

  “I’ll try,” said Quintus. “I speak enough Celtic.” He raised his voice and shouted, “Greeting! Greeting! We are friends, will you talk to us?”

  The dog lunged against the gate snapping and growling, but there was no other answer.

  “Better get that spear ready, Quintus,” said Dio, chuckling. “This dog is as fierce as the wolf.”

  “I’m sure there’s someone in there,” said Fabian. “Isn’t that a baby crying?”

  Quintus nodded and tried again. “Greeting friend! All we want is a bit of your fire. We can pay.”

  At that an old woman stuck her head around the deer hide that served for a door. She had long tangled grey hair, and a fat stupid face. She inspected the three men and spoke to the dog, who stopped his furious barking. “What is it you want?” she quavered.

  Quintus explained again, and the old woman disappeared, but in a moment she waddled out into the yard. “You can pay?”

  As Quintus assented, her pendulous lips parted in a silly gratified grin. She unbarred the gate. “Where do you come from?” she asked, as they threaded their way between sheep, goats, and pigs, while the dog sniffed suspiciously at Dio and jumped toward the wolf meat.

  “From the north,” said Quintus vaguely.

  “Oh,” she said, “that’s why your speech is not much like ours. You’re off to fight the Roman swine too, I suppose!” She walked into her hut as Quintus grunted something that might be agreement.

  “She thinks we’re Britons, be careful,” he whispered hastily to his friends before they stepped into the hut.

  When their eyes got used to the smoky darkness, they saw pallets of animal skins stretched along the walls, and a huge loom at which a young woman was weaving lumpy grey strands of rough wool, while she nursed a naked baby on her lap. She was a handsome girl with the dark hair and greenish-hazel eyes of the western tribes. She turned her head as the three men came in, and giggled, blushing a little “Cook your meat there,” said the old woman, pointing to the fire. “It’s good to see visitors. My daughter and I are lonely since our men all left to join the great Queen of the Icenians.”

  The girl sighed and murmured, “It is so. They’ve gone far away.”

  Quintus, looking at them, realized that they were both simple women without guile, who had probably never travelled three miles from their home. Maybe I can learn something, he thought with sudden hope.

  “When was that?” asked Quintus casually, kneeling beside Dio, who was broiling the meat, while Fabian sat down on a pile of skins and watched Quintus, knowing that something important was afoot but unable to understand what they said. “When did your men go?”

  The old woman shrugged. “Long time. I don’t know. Some days--”

  “It was the day Mog here got his tooth,” said the young mother eagerly, forgetting her shyness. “His father felt it with his thumb before he left. This many days--”

  She held up three fingers.

  Not so long then, Quintus thought, with growing excitement. “And where were they going to find Queen Boadicea?” he asked. “We want to be sure we know the way.”

  But the two women looked blank. “Over there somewhere--” said the old one, pointing toward the east.

  “Past the Great White Horse, then along the ancient road of the little people, and far--far toward the rising sun.” Quintus hid his disappointment at this vagueness by poking an ember under the broiling meat.

  “Why don’t the others speak?” asked the girl suddenly, casting curious looks from Dio’s snub-nosed merry face to Fabian’s grave, thin, freckled one.

  “Well, you see, they come from a far country over the mountains,” said Quintus hastily. “Their tribe has a different language.”

  The women were satisfied by this, and Quintus was astonished at their naiveté until he realized that they had doubtless never seen a Roman, certainly not one without the full panoply of flashing armour. As for him--by now, with a week’s stubble of beard, the spear, and the increasingly dirty tartan tunic he must make a fairly convincing Briton.

  The girl left the loom and put the baby carefully down near Fabian who recoiled from it in dismay. She went to a large pottery jug and poured its contents into a clay cup. “We have goat milk,” she said shyly to Quintus. “Have some.”

  “Not unless they pay,” said the old woman quickly.

  Quintus reassured her again though wondering how much the greedy old woman would demand. He accepted the milk with thanks. When they had all drunk and choked down great hunks of the rank wolf meat, Quintus knew they must be going, but tried once more for information.

  “Have all the Atrebate men left to join the war against the Romans?” he said, putting his cup down and smiling at the girl.

  “The Atrebates?” she repeated, with some surprise. “Perhaps. We don’t know. They live yonder in the country of the Great White Horse. WE are Dobuni,” she said proudly-

  “Oh, I see--” But Quintus was dismayed. So the revolt had spread to still another nation. How many tribes had Boadicea amassed by now? Where WERE her forces? Did these women know anything at all? It seemed unlikely and yet an intuition told him to keep on.

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bsp; Dio was staring at him, obviously wondering why they were delaying but afraid to ask in Latin. Fabian had risen from the skins and was waiting by the door.

  Quintus made them both a quick quelling gesture and shook his head. Both men instantly understood and nodded. They turned their backs and negligently pushed aside the deerhide curtain as though considering the weather outside, thus leaving Quintus a free hand.

  “We have travelled a long way to do battle,” said Quintus with perfect truth, “so far that we’ve become fearful that we may have missed the fighting. Do you think that perhaps there has been a great battle already between the Britons and the Roman governor’s army?”

  The women looked at him intently, willing to answer, but comprehending neither his thought, nor the way he had expressed himself in his halting Celtic.

  He tried again, more carefully. The old woman hunched her shoulders and, losing interest, stirred a mess that bubbled in an iron pot over the fire.

  But the girl, who was pleased with this break in her monotonous life, finally got the gist of his meaning and shook her head. “I think not. The runner who came to call my husband and brothers, he said the great Queen would wait until so many tribes had joined her that the land would be black with warriors as far as eye could see. And women too will fight,” she added wistfully, “but my husband would not let me go. ‘Tis not the custom of the Dobuni.”

  “I should hope not,” Quintus murmured, and was forming another question when the girl picked up her baby and, holding it to her breast, cried, “Andraste, the glorious goddess, will give us victory, yet I grow a little afraid when I think of the many, many Roman monsters, so many--like pebbles in a brook.”

  I wish there were, thought Quintus ruefully.

  “I have never seen a Roman,” continued the girl. “I’ve heard they have tusks like wild boars, and claws like bears, and heads made all of gold that gleams in the sun. The Icenian runner said that when he passed near their camp on his way here, he saw one watching from a mound who had a red horse’s tail growing from his head and who flashed in gold all over.”

  Quintus put on an expression of horrified interest and held his breath as he said, “Where was this camp where the runner saw the Roman in gold? Did he say it was near a river? Near a town?”

  She looked puzzled. “He did not say--except it was a place the Roman beasts had always used, since the first one came.”

  “The first one? Did he say the name? Was it Julius Caesar?”

  “It might be--yes. I think he used some sound like ‘Caesar.’ Why do you care so much?” she said curiously.

  “Simply,” answered Quintus, “that I and my friends would like to look at the Roman monster too, before we meet it in battle. . . . Good wife, you’ve been most kind, you and your mother. We thank you and must go.”

  “The payment--” whined the old woman, looking up from the pot. “For the fire--for the goat milk!”

  “Yes. Yes.” Quintus reached into his pouch. “Shall we say three pennies?” Which was generous recompense. He held out the coins. They were, of course, Roman coins stamped with the head of Nero, but he thought he could invent some story to explain that to these people, if they happened to notice.

  “What are those?” cried the old woman contemptuously. “Little thin bits of metal! You promised to pay.”

  “I am paying,” protested Quintus. “This is good money. It’s used all through the land.’’

  “That’s no payment!” The old woman’s fat face grew suddenly purple. She knocked Quintus’ hand viciously, so that the coins scattered on the trampled clay floor. “You are lying thieves--”

  “Here, wait a minute!” cried Quintus between anger and astonishment, as Dio and Fabian, seeing trouble, came silently to stand beside him. “I don’t understand--”

  “Why, Mother wants an iron bar, of course,” said the girl frowning. “A small one.”

  “A large one!” screamed the old woman, shaking her fist.

  “Small or large, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” snapped Quintus, when he felt a tug at his tunic and saw Fabian make a motion of the eyebrows. “I must speak to my friend a moment.”

  By the door Fabian spoke in low rapid Latin. “These backward tribes use iron bars for currency--that’s the trouble, isn’t it? They’ve never seen coins.”

  “What’ll we do?” breathed Quintus.

  “Talk yourself out of it, somehow.”

  Quintus turned back to the women and tried. The girl soon accepted the fact that the tribe these three came from did not have iron bars and that the coins on the floor were ample payment, but the old woman did not. Her bleary eyes were sparked with fury. “Liars! Thieves!” she kept shouting. “Pay me! Pay me!” And she hopped up and down angrily.

  There was no use arguing. Quintus sent the girl an apologetic look and turned hastily to go with the others, whereupon the old woman, in a frenzy, grabbed the ladle from the iron pot and flung it straight at Quintus. The pot contained some sort of stew and the ladle carried a portion through the air in a boiling spatter. Quintus ran, and the others with him, pelting ignominiously across the barnyard, while the old woman yelled insults after them, and the dog snapped and bit at their heels.

  They vaulted over the gate, thus getting rid of the dog, and ran down the road until they were out of sight, when Dio took a good look at Quintus and burst into a roar of laughter. “Stop! Stop!” he choked. “Let us take count of our wounds after this shameful defeat. Let us at least cleanse Quintus from beans--and yes”--he reached up and removed something from Quintus’ hair--”and pieces of stewed rabbit.”

  Quintus scraped beans off the back of his neck in disgust. “That blasted stew was hot!” he said angrily, then suddenly joined Dio in laughter. “We’re a fine dignified credit to the legions! Routed by a pot ladle!” Even Fabian chuckled as he said, “And a mangy little dog who’s made off with some of my sandal.”

  “As long as he didn’t take part of your ankle too,” said Quintus who spied a brook and sluiced his head and neck in it until all the old woman’s stew was off him. He came back to the others and said, “No, but listen--I did get some information, I’m not sure just how useful. Is there any place that’s called ‘Caesar’s Camp’?”

  “But, of course,” said Fabian and Dio together. And Fabian continued, “It’s a British earthwork fort, which Caesar is said to have used. We camped there with Suetonius on the march down from Wales. It’s this side of the Thames and southwest of London. Why?”

  “Because I think that’s where Suetonius is now,” and he told them what the girl had said.

  Fabian nodded. “That seems very likely. At least we know where to strike for. What else did she say?”

  “I tried to find out where all the tribes were convening with Boadicea, but all they knew was something about ‘beyond the White Horse and then the ancient way of the little people, and far, far toward the rising sun’--doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Yes, it does,” said Fabian thoughtfully. “I know their Vale of the White Horse, in fact we’ll be there ourselves tomorrow, and the ancient road would be the Icknield Way, which leads northeast from there though I’m not sure how far. At any rate Boadicea is apparently somewhere near her own East Anglia.”

  “I wonder what she’s been up to since you last heard of her, Quintus?” said Dio, all the laughter gone from his face.”To no good for us, that’s sure,” answered Quintus. “Boadicea is a terrible woman with the heart of a lion--of a wolf--” he added sombrely, thinking of the wolves that morning, and their fury to protect and avenge their own.

  As they strode along, he thought of Regan and the unspeakable torture she would have suffered from Boadicea if she had not escaped. His hand went of itself to feel the outline of the brooch Regan had given him which he still wore inside his tunic next to his breast. A piece of sentiment he hoped the others hadn’t noticed. Perhaps, if he had shown the brooch to the old woman in the hut, she might not have been so furious at not gettin
g her iron bar; the Druid sign on it seemed to work miracles with the Britons--But wait a minute, he thought, so startled that he stopped dead on the road, how do I know that little red enamel snake is a Druid sign? Did Regan ever say so?

  “What’s the matter, Quintus?” asked Dio. “Something bite you?”

  “A thought,” said Quintus, starting to walk again.

  The little Neapolitan chuckled, and the three of them marched on. But all the rest of that day, as they cautiously skirted the Dobuni capital of Cirencester, which was hardly larger than a mud village, and came down out of the hills to the banks of the infant Thames, Quintus kept mulling over the puzzle. He rehearsed every word that Regan had said to him that night by the campfire in the forest. There had been no mention of the brooch. Yet he was convinced that he had been present when that brooch had been shown to hostile people, and that they had looked on it with respect. When the three young Romans paused to drink from the river, Quintus suddenly said, “Do you believe in spells? I mean do you think something could be done to make one forget a day in one’s life?”

  Dio laughed and said he forgot things all the time, but Fabian answered gravely. “That depends--I have seen magic things in Gaul. I know it’s possible. Why?”

  “Because I think it’s happened to me. But the memory of that day is coming back a little.”

  “Is it important?” asked Fabian. “Does it affect our mission, or Rome?”

  “I don’t think so. It feels”--Quintus’ tanned skin flushed, and he gave a lopsided smile--”like a private matter.... a very strange one.”

  If Regan did not really desert me, he thought, if after all she was with me on that day I think I’ve lost--A feeling of exquisite relief came to him, and a rush of tenderness which was cut short by a cry from Dio. “Look! Dinner--ahead! Just as I was offering up another vow to Fortuna!”

  A hundred yards away on the riverbank a man sat by a roaring fire turning a large pig on a spit

  Quintus sniffed at the intoxicating odour of roast pork, then saw beyond the fire an even more alluring sight.