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

  “NEGO!” said the old man sternly in Latin, and added Celtic words which Navin, who stood by impassively, interpreted. “He says you have no right to bind or coerce him. He came only to warn.”

  Quintus hesitated in spite of himself. There was power in the old man’s steady glittering eyes.

  “Hurry up, Quintus Tullius!” shouted Flaccus, snapping the bridle. “Haul him off to the rear, you’re delaying our march.”

  Quintus thrust out his hands with the thong, and at once something happened. It was as though his hands hit an invisible wall. Quintus’ vision blurred for a moment too; all he could see was the Druid’s fierce eyes. Then there was a whirl of white, and he heard Flaccus’ furious voice. “By all the gods, you fool--you’ve let him go! Run after him!”

  “ ‘Twould be no use, sir,” said Navin calmly. ‘These Druids have magic tricks and many hiding places in the forest.”

  Quintus blinked and reddened. “I’m s-sorry, sir. I don’t know what happened--it was his eyes--”

  Flaccus, most surprisingly, did not burst into the torrent of abuse with which he usually disciplined his subordinates, instead he bit his lips and cast an uneasy glance toward the thick grove where the Druid had vanished. ‘This infernal country,” he said beneath his breath, “there’s many strange things . . . Well, no matter. The old man was crazy.” He kicked his horse while raising his sword high as marching signal to the ranks behind.

  All that day and part of the next, until they reached London, Quintus continued to feel perplexed and embarrassed at the way the old Druid had somehow made a fool of him. He tried to talk about it to Lucius, but that young man soon grew bored and took to humming Roman love songs to himself, especially one that the Emperor Nero had written which celebrated the charms of a lady called Acte. Lucius substituted the name of a pretty Greek dancer he had yearned for back home and managed to forget the rain, which had started up again.

  But Quintus still thought about the meeting with the Druid which had made the old story come even more vivid than it ever had in Rome, and as they plodded on, he went over again all that he had heard from his father and tried to remember new details.

  The tragedy to Quintus’ great-grandfather, Gaius Tullius, had happened a hundred and fourteen years ago when Julius Caesar had tried to conquer Britain.

  Gaius was an officer in the Roman army of those days, a centurion, or captain, of the Seventh Legion. And in 54 B.C. his legion was ordered to Gaul where Caesar was making preparations for invading Britain.

  Caesar had made a quick reconnoitring trip into Britain the year before, but the great general had had bad luck, or even, it was whispered in Rome, had shown poor strategy. The Romans had never seen tides like those of the northern seas, nor such quick violent storms, and several disasters overtook their fleet. Moreover the Britons turned out to be fierce strange fighters, who hotly resisted the Roman invasion. Caesar tamely returned to Gaul and decided to try again the following year. This time Caesar took with him eight hundred vessels of all classes and five legions and cavalry, some thirty-two thousand men in all, so that the British lookouts who guarded the great white cliffs by Dover were dismayed at sight of the huge force and withdrew into their secret forests while they decided on the best resistance.

  Gaius Tullius was a tough, brave soldier, and his Seventh Legion was a crack one. He was delighted when Caesar ordered it forward to take a stockaded hill fort that the barbarians had built a few miles inland. The Seventh Legion took the fort easily, but no sooner did they plant their flaunting eagle standards along the stockade than a panting runner brought word of new disaster back on the landing beach.

  Again, like the year before, Caesar had underestimated the force of wind and water. The tides had risen, a fearful storm had blown up, and the entire fleet had been smashed to bits.

  Gaius had been standing near the general when this news came. He had seen the bald head redden, the flash of the eyes, and the sharp thinning of the lips, as Caesar grimly gave the order to retreat--back to the beachhead. It was very humiliating, especially as there were jeers and taunts from the British captives they had taken--big, fair-haired men with blue tattooings on their faces, who wore helmets homed like bulls and long gaudy plaid trousers that the Romans thought ridiculous. But there was nothing ridiculous about British fighting. This Gaius discovered for himself ten days later when new boats had been built and Caesar marched forward again into the interior. The British had profited by the interval. They had summoned a great force from all their nearby tribes, not only the Cantii of Kent, in whose territory Caesar now was, but the Atrebates from further west, the Trinovantes from Essex, even the Iceni who lived way up in Norfolk. And the British had chosen a general of their own, Cassivellaunus, King of the Catuvellauni tribe, who had a capital north of the little village of London, at a place called St. Albans.

  This British army encountered Caesar’s in Kent about twenty miles from the coast, and the Romans did very badly and lost many men. A temporary setback which Caesar barely mentioned in the account he later wrote of this campaign. The heavily armed Romans were confused by the darting agility of the Britons and particularly by their extraordinary methods of fighting in low war chariots, which were furnished with whirling scythes on the wheel hubs, and which could be maneuvered as deftly as the shaggy little ponies that pulled them.

  Caesar soon worked out a better defence and tactics. He crossed the Thames River and eventually made his way to King Cassivellaunus’ capital, which he subdued, but for Gaius the war was finished in that first defeat.

  He and a friend of his called Titus, another centurion of the legion, somehow got cut off from the main body of their cohort, and were captured by some little dark warriors from the mountains in the west of Britain. These little men, delighted to exhibit as prizes two Roman officers, thereupon carried the bound Gaius and Titus in a wagon back toward the west.

  Titus survived to tell the grim story and its sequel to Gaius’ son in Rome--the same story that Quintus had heard so many times from his father as it was handed down the years. Now, remembering it in the very land where it had happened, Quintus felt the shiver that had always chilled his back as his father had gone on with the tale.

  As Titus told it, he and Gaius had suffered much from shame at their capture and from hidden fear of what would be done to them. The wagon bumped day after day through the wild black forests. Their captors did not harm them, in fact they fed and treated them too well, and Titus, who understood some Celtic, told his friend that amongst the fierce, little blue-faced men there was constant talk about “the place of the great stones, the place of sacrifice,” and that they talked of the sun-god, of sacred oaks and mistletoe, of Druid priests. And when they mentioned these, the British warriors cast uneasy glances about them and seemed afraid.

  At last one day their captors came to a giant oak on the edge of a great open plain. On this plain there were circles of strangely formed stones, standing as tall as houses. The Britons stopped near the giant oak and threw their captives on the ground so roughly that one of Gaius’ rawhide bonds loosened, but this he did not notice at first because of his amazement.

  The oak tree sparkled with gold. Its branches were hung with golden bracelets thick as a finger, and a sharp golden sickle rested in a low crotch of a branch beneath a great ball of mistletoe.

  The British tribesmen threw themselves on hands and knees and seemed to be worshiping the oak tree. Then they pointed to the distant circle of great stones standing on the plain, and they ran off toward it, leaving only one man on guard. This guard took several long pulls of the honeyed mead he carried in a drinking horn and squatted down quite near Gaius and drowsed.

  “May the gods of our fathers be merciful,” Titus had whispered to Gaius. “I heard what they said--they mean to sacrifice us over there in that circle of stones, to cut us into bits for an offering to their god. They’ve gone to fetch their priests.”

  “No,” Gaius whispered, while he worked one hand loos
e from the bond. “We’ll not be minced up yet.” Suddenly with his freed hand he hit the unsuspecting guard so mighty a blow on the head that the man crumpled silently on the ground.

  Gaius seized the Briton’s knife, cut his own bonds, and Titus’, but there was no time to escape, for the tribesmen came running back, and with them a dozen white-robed, long-bearded Druids, shouting and waving golden spears.

  Titus did not remember exactly what happened then, except that as they were surrounded, Gaius reached back up into the tree for a better weapon than the knife and pulled down the golden sickle, which caught on a trailing frond of the mistletoe ball, dislodging the plant which fell to the ground.

  At this the Druids and tribesmen let out a wail of horror. They stared at Gaius with glittering snake eyes and began to move forward slowly in an ever narrowing circle around their sacred tree and the Roman who stood backed against it.

  “Run, Titus,” said Gaius in swift Latin, “they’ve forgotten you!” He brandished the golden sickle. Again the gasp came from the advancing Britons, and then, at a sharp command, the Druid priests drew their arms back as one man and hurled their golden spears. Gaius fell, quivered once and was still, while the Britons crowded around murmuring, staring with shuddering awe at the trampled mistletoe and the sickle in the Roman’s hand. Titus did escape then, running back into the forest. Nobody noticed him, but as he went he heard a Druid cry in a great voice, “Do not touch the dead Roman. He must never be touched. He has profaned our gods. He shall lie here as he is, forevermore, in sacrifice!”

  This was the end of the story Titus told when, after incredible luck and difficulties, he got back to Rome. But little Quintus had always asked one earnest fearing question. Would, then, his great-grandfather’s bones still be lying there in the heart of Britain under an oak tree? And Quintus’ father had solemnly answered that perhaps it was so. Here Julia, his mother, would weep and say that it was because of this that bad luck had come to the Tullius family, that it offended all the spirits of their ancestors to have one of them lie unavenged, and that this had brought a curse on them all.

  In truth, matters had gone badly with the family since Gams’ death. It had lost favour with the emperors and become impoverished. There was much ill health and many early deaths. Quintus’ father died young of fever, the four brothers before Quintus died one by one, his little sister, Livia, was born blind.

  “Someday when I am big I shall go to the dark island of mists,” Quintus, as a child, had boasted to his mother, “and find the golden tree and poor Gaius Tullius beneath it. I will see that he has the proper burial rites at last, and I’ll take some of that gold and bring it back to you.”

  Julia always smiled sadly, reminding him of how much time had passed since those days, that the tree might be no longer, standing, and that it was cruel to trouble her heavy heart with foolish talk about the impossible. And yet, mused Quintus, riding along the Roman road toward London, I always had a feeling that I’d get here someday, and I still have a feeling that the quest will succeed, but how? and where? and when?

  This he could not guess, but his curiosity about this strange new land was keen and some miles before they reached London, he summoned Navin, the British interpreter, to come and ride beside him.

  “It must feel queer to be coming home after all these years in Italy,” said Quintus thoughtfully. “Where did you live here?”

  A faint grim twinkle appeared in Navin’s blue gaze. This was the first Roman soldier who had spoken to him as a human being, instead of as a barbarian captive or a useful piece of machinery. “I was once a chief--the nephew of King Cymbeline,” he said quietly. “I am a Trinovante, from the country north of the Thames, where Colchester, your capital, is.” He paused a moment, then added, “It is strange to be coming home. To be here”--he glanced at the dull dripping skies, at some rough mud huts glimpsed through a grove of birches--“after Rome.”

  Lucius suddenly stopped humming and leaned over. “By Venus, I should think so indeed! I vow you’ll be in as great a hurry to get back as the rest of us. When I think of the glorious warm sunlight, and the delicious joys of the baths, and our food, our wine and music--yes, even our orators! The beautiful bustle of the Forum, the splashing of our fountains--O Roma Dea, Roma Dea,” groaned Lucius invoking the spirit of his beloved city.

  “Rome for me was not quite like that,” said Navin, while a shut look came over his big-boned face. “This,” he added with a peculiar emphasis, “is MY country.”

  Lucius shrugged and went on humming to himself, but Quintus noted the Briton’s intonation, and for the first time a prick of doubt pierced his Roman superiority. Good old Navin had been traveling with this company ever since he was assigned to it in Rome. A quiet, courteous man, thoroughly Romanized in clothes and speech, and grateful, one naturally assumed, for the fine treatment he had received. Indeed all the British captives had been positively pampered; everyone knew that. And look at the royal reception the captured British King Caractacus had got from the Emperor in Rome too. It was no wonder the British had settled down so peacefully under the enlightened Roman rule.

  As for that Druid’s--Conn Lear’s--warning yesterday--well that was surely superstitious nonsense. But I wish I’d understood exactly what he was saying, Quintus thought.

  He turned around and called back Navin, who had dropped behind. The interpreter brought his horse up level with Ferox again.

  “I’d like to learn some British words,” said Quintus. “Teach me.”

  Navin looked startled, again the twinkle appeared, and he gave the attractive eagle-nosed young face a quizzical glance. “It is seldom indeed that a Roman concerns himself with the language of his subjects, O Quintus Tullius.”

  “Well, I think it might be useful. I like to know what’s going on. For instance, what’s ‘horse’?” He patted Ferox’s sleek neck.

  “We have several dialects,” said Navin, “but I will give you words that can be understood by most Britons.”

  By the time they had crossed the long wooden bridge over the Thames and entered the straggling little town of London, Quintus had memorized about twenty common Celtic words and was quite ready for some other distraction. But he did not find it in London, which was a dull place, except for the water traffic. The river was full of round woven fishing coracles and some trading vessels from Gaul, and there was a hubbub of sailors on the waterfront. The town itself was mean and ugly. The houses were one-storied and mostly made of wattle and daub thatched with reeds; even the military and government buildings were of unadorned wood. Here and there on the outskirts one of the retired Roman soldiers had built himself a villa, but though many thousands of people lived and did business here it seemed to be only an overgrown village.

  “No decent forum,” moaned Lucius, as they passed the open market place of trampled earth, “no public baths, no circus--not even a temple.”

  They drew up before the military headquarters and Flaccus went inside to report the arrival of his company. He came out again almost at once.

  “We’re to proceed immediately to Colchester,” he said. “Seems the governor’s there.”

  “I thought, sir,” said Quintus, “we were to stop in London, then go north to Lincoln to reinforce the Ninth?”

  “Since when do you question orders!” snapped Flaccus. “They’ve changed. That’s all. Some one of these native kings has died, and there’s a commotion about it.”

  He turned his back, flicked his horse, and gave the signal to march.

  “So much for London,” said Lucius, shrugging and easing himself in the saddle. “Not that I’m tempted to linger. . . . Ah, more forest ahead, I see,” he added, as they headed east. “The charming variety of the scenery here intoxicates me, and the climate--” for it began to rain

  harder.

  “Oh, quit grumbling,” said Quintus good-humouredly. “After all they’re sending us to the capital, and they say it’s really quite a place. Maybe there’ll be lovely British maide
ns, and even some fun.”

  “Ha!” said Lucius morosely, expressing profound disbelief.

  But actually Colchester was a fair provincial city. It had been the capital of that part of Britain under King Cymbeline, and the Emperor Claudius, on his visit, had given orders to turn it into a Roman capital.

  The young men’s spirits rose as they saw paved streets, stone villas, corner wine-shops like those at home. The government buildings and basilica and palace stood on the edges of the forum, which was properly furnished with a rostrum for orators to stand on, a mammoth statue of a winged Victory, and little altars to Jupiter, Mars, Minerva, and other gods. But one scarcely noticed those because the centre of the forum was occupied by an enormous building, big enough to shelter a thousand people, and obviously a temple with its dozens of white and gold columns, its elaborate carved cornices.

  “Now WHAT is that?” cried Quintus, amazed at this unexpected magnificence, and Navin who had remained near him and taught him more Celtic words during the boring three days’ march from London, answered dryly, “That is the Temple of Claudius, dedicated to our divine and late lamented Emperor who is now, of course, a god.”

  “Not bad,” said Lucius grudgingly, preening himself a little, for he was proud of his relationship to Claudius and hoped that it could be used toward future promotion, and eventually toward speedy return home.

  Quintus had a less personal reaction to the gorgeous temple. “And do the British really worship here the spirit of their conqueror?” he asked slowly of Navin.

  A muscle flickered in the corner of the Briton’s mouth. “Undoubtedly,” he said, in an odd tone, “but you forget, sir, that I have not been home in a long time.”

  This man knows something we don’t know, Quintus thought, or am I imagining it?

  As they continued to march along the edge of the forum toward headquarters, Quintus cast curious looks at the townfolks. There were Roman citizens in thick white wool togas, slaves in short tunics, well-to-do Britons in gaudy tartan trousers and capes held with bronze brooches, and poor Britons huddled in mangy goatskins. But all of them, even the Romans, shrank to the wall as the legionaries marched by and gave the proper arm’s length salute crying, “Welcome, Eagles of Rome, welcome!” Evidently the populace was well trained.