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

  Flaccus went off to report, while his two subordinates accompanied their men to the barracks. Quintus saw at once to the stabling and grooming of Ferox and, when he rejoined Lucius, he learned that they were summoned to appear before the governor at once.

  The “imperial” palace was warm and comfortable, the chilled young Romans discovered gratefully. The shivery dankness outside had increased with the incredibly early nightfall of this northern climate. The palace was solidly built of marble and snug brick. The atrium--the great central hall--was roofed over as it would never have been at home, and the mosaic floors were well heated by hot-air flues from below.

  A slave ushered Quintus and Lucius into the frescoed hall, which was lit by six torches and a bevy of little oil lamps. They clearly illumined a portentous group gathered around a parchment littered table.

  “The High Command!” whispered Quintus, staring up the hall at two throne-like chairs. One was occupied by a bull-necked, red-faced man in elaborate gilt armour who could only be Governor Suetonius Paulinus, the military ruler of Britain. The other throne contained a small, fat man with hunched shoulders and the dome head and hooded eyes of a frog. His white toga was embroidered in gold and so banded with purple that it was not hard to identify him either--he was Decianus Catus, the Emperor Nero’s procurator for Britain, in charge of all its civil affairs, and only slightly less powerful than the governor. Or perhaps he did not consider himself less important at all, for he talked continuously in a shrill, insistent voice, which quite drowned out Suetonius’ occasional gruff interjections.

  “I wonder what they wanted us for,” murmured Lucius after twenty minutes of unrecognized waiting by the entrance. Flaccus was there too, halfway down the room, and several other centurions, as well as senior officers--tribunes and prefects.

  Four legionary generals, or legates, were milling around the governor and the procurator, and some other patricians in togas, but it was difficult to hear what was going on, until Catus suddenly stood up, banging his puffy white hand on the table, and shouting, “I tell you, this is the chance I’ve been waiting for! We’ll show these chuckleheaded savages we mean business. We’ll call in the loans and help ourselves to all that ripe juicy treasure the Icenians have been traitorously hoarding. The huge tribute we’ll send back to Nero--the gods keep His Imperial Majesty in health and grace--that'll startle him!” Catus’ pursed pink lips drew back in a smile. “The Emperor will be pleased with all of us,” he added quite softly, staring--as though he dared him to deny it--at the governor who rose also, while his gold-hilted sword clattered against the table.

  “If--Decianus Catus--you will stop talking long enough to listen to me,” cried Suetonius, his heavy jowls quivering, “you might learn that I am in complete agreement with you, and have no intention of interfering with your little plans for the Icenian nation. My interests are elsewhere--in the west. I am going to stamp out this disgusting Druidism once and for all, if I have to chase each one of the scurvy priesthood into the Irish Sea.”

  Ah, thought Quintus, that’s interesting. So we’re to fight the Druids, are we? He had edged unobtrusively along the wall to a nearer viewpoint where he could hear and see much better.

  And the talk went on. There was a tall old man in a toga who was called Seneca and made occasional comments which the others listened to respectfully. This Seneca was a philosopher and author--Quintus had read some of his books at school--and it also appeared from the conversation that he was rather surprisingly a moneylender as well. Then there were the generals who commanded the four legions in Britain--the Second, the Ninth, the Fourteenth and the Twentieth. Quintus recognized the legion each general was in command of by the badges, but he looked hardest at the legate of the Ninth, the “Hispana” Legion from Lincoln. For this was the post to which his company was assigned, and this man, Petillius Cerealis, would be his own commanding officer. He looks all right, Quintus thought, with relief. The general seemed very young for so much rank. He had keen hazel eyes and was slightly built but he gave a pleasant impression of competence and strength.

  After a while Quintus began to understand what it was all about. There was a large country north of here in East Anglia that belonged to a wealthy tribe called the Iceni. They had had a King, Prasutagus, who had died a week before, leaving no heirs but his Queen, Boadicea, and two young daughters. To be sure the Icenians had a peace treaty with Nero and had been cooperative in the matter of paying tribute and giving up all their weapons in observance of a Roman decree. Also the King had named Nero coheir with his wife and children, as a gesture of confidence. But Catus, the frog-like procurator, saw no reason for these facts to bother anyone now the King was dead. Prasutagus had reigned over a prosperous kingdom and was reputed to have amassed a huge fortune in gold. It was idiocy to let a weak woman and a couple of girls stand in the way of acquiring all of it.

  “Well, that’s settled,” said Governor Suetonius at; length to Catus. “Your own guard here should be ample to handle the business. But I’ll give you a special detachment--a vexillation of picked men, besides. After all, the Icenians have no weapons and won’t dispute you anyway. As for me I’m off tomorrow into Wales with the main army.”

  General Petillius of the Ninth suddenly put out his hand. “Your Excellency,” he said to the governor, “I fear that the Icemans may resent this plan more than you think. I’ve heard that the Queen Boadicea is a proud and passionate woman. Besides, this course seems to me hardly--hardly just.”

  The governor, who had been gathering up some parchments, turned and stared. His red face grew more purple, but he had reason to trust Petillius, and he spoke with restraint. “Do you suggest that my administration of Britain is lacking in justice?”

  The young general smiled apologetically. “I suggest that these measures against the Icenians may damage Roman prestige.”

  “What utter bosh!” interrupted Catus in his shrill high voice. “The whole country wants a lesson taught it; there’ve been mutterings and disobedience lately. We must show who’s master!”

  Suetonius glanced at the fat procurator with some distaste, but he spoke with courteous finality to Petillius. “I understand your objections, my friend, but I agree with Catus. Besides, this Icenian matter is unimportant--it’s these slippery Druids who’re causing the trouble--That reminds me--” He looked down the room toward Flaccus. “O Centurion of the Ninth, where is the young standard-bearer who had the encounter with the Druid priest?”

  Flaccus saluted, turned around, and spying Quintus, said, “Go to the governor--and, Your Excellency, my Optio there--Lucius Claudius was also a witness.” Lucius stepped forward eagerly.

  Both young men walked down the room and stood by the table. After a few questions, Lucius, to his mortification, was dismissed before he even had a chance to insinuate his relationship to the Emperor Claudius, but Quintus was kept much longer.

  “Do you think,” asked Suetonius, frowning, “that the Druid cast an evil spell on you, so your hands were paralyzed?”

  “Not exactly, Your Excellency, it was more the power in his eyes. I--I felt like a fool.”

  Suetonius nodded while inspecting the young standard-bearer. A fine specimen of Roman manhood, big, well spoken and well educated. The quality of recruit they’re sending us is improving, he thought. “I don’t know who this straggler was,” he said, reverting to the Druid priest, “I thought we’d got them all combed out and bottled up on their ‘sacred’ island of Anglesey, off Wales, where I’ll finish them off once and for all. But we’ll take care of him. Tertius Julian!”

  An officer of the governor’s own guard stepped forward. “Yes, sir.”“Take a detail of men down into Kent, find this priest, and execute him, then rejoin me in Wales.”

  Again General Petillius intervened. “But, Your Excellency, from the accounts, the Druid said he was friendly to the Romans and came only to warn.”

  “Well, imprison him then,” said the governor impatiently. “Put him in that dungeon below
the guardhouse in London, but be careful he doesn’t work any tricks on you," he said to his officer.

  “Not on me, sir,” said Tertius Julian, throwing Quintus a look of patronizing amusement.

  The governor shrugged dismissal, Quintus stepped back, but the procurator suddenly spoke up in his wheezy whine and demanded the vexillation the governor had promised for disciplining the Icenians. “And I’ll take that one to begin with,” he said, pointing a stumpy finger at Quintus, as though he were a cut of beef to be purchased. “He looks like a good man.”

  Quintus’ heart sank. He had not the slightest desire to find favour in the procurator’s eyes, nor to take part in what sounded like a messy and inglorious bullying of women and children.

  But there was no help for it. Quintus remained in Colchester as a temporary member of Catus’ new guard, while the Ninth was on the march toward Lincoln next morning, including most of the newly landed cohort and Flaccus and Lucius--to the latter’s unbounded annoyance. For he had been given no time to taste the pleasures of Colchester and was frankly jealous of what he considered Quintus’ preferment.

  “Well then,” said Quintus, as the friends said good-by, “we’re neither of us pleased. I’d like serving under General Petillius, and I don’t like that Catus. I’ll be glad when this business in Norfolk is over and I can get to my proper legion. By the Furies though--why didn’t I get sent with the governor to fight the Druids, that’s what I really wanted to do!”

  “Because,” said Lucius, irritably flicking a blob of mud off his elegant bronze breastplate, “the army never by any chance lets you do what you want to do. Quod est demonstrandum."

  Nor, thought Quintus glumly, do I have the slightest chance of finding that huge stone circle in the land of the small dark men to the west, either. Already he had discovered that this country was much larger than he had realized, and he perforce put all thoughts of his quest out of his mind for the present.

  Quintus lived at the Colchester barracks for some days and kept fit when off duty by throwing the discus with fellow soldiers, or galloping Ferox along the hard-frozen tracks outside of town. He flirted mildly with a Gallic wine merchant’s daughter and drank a moderate amount of her father’s wares. And he awaited without enthusiasm Catus’ orders to accompany the procurator into the country of the Iceni.

  These orders actually came on a cold winter’s morning when a sifting of snow fell from the grey sky. And Quintus found himself starting north as one in a company of two hundred of the roughest, most brutalized men he had ever seen--the procurator’s hand-picked mounted guard.

  CHAPTER II

  It took them three days to cover the sixty miles between Colchester and Caistor-by-Norwich in Norfolk, the land of the Iceni, because though the guard were all mounted they must not go faster than Catus’ slave-borne litter. The procurator lolled in a sort of cushioned bed on poles, gilded and ornamented with imperial eagles. It was warmed, too, by a charcoal brazier, while Catus reclined in a nest of foxskin robes from which he called constant orders to the harassed slaves who ran alongside, especially Hector, a beady-eyed Sicilian, who by cunning flattery had become Catus’ steward and confidant.

  The guard was commanded by a gigantic Belgian centurion called Otho, who had the look and temper of a wild boar. He mistreated his horse and bullied his men, but with Catus he had a smooth deferential manner, and the procurator showed him high favour. Though the guard were all technically Romans, most were auxiliaries of different nationalities who came from many parts of the far-flung empire, and were fierce fighting machines, as stupid, most of them, as the gladiators who pummelled each other in the Roman circuses. Quintus found them thoroughly uncongenial and, whenever they struck camp in the dark night forests, hunted out Navin who had come along as interpreter.

  On the third afternoon they emerged from the forest and saw a haze of smoke from a thousand fires, and a huge circular mound of earthworks, high as a tree, that surrounded the city of the Iceni.

  “Ha!” cried Catus, leaning from the litter, his eyes sparkling with greed. “They look prosperous. That’s the finest native town I’ve seen!”

  A good many of the buildings were of stone and in the middle of them rose a large two-story edifice. It had many windows curtained by deer hides and a large bright golden shield fastened to the stone wall above a great portal.

  “Obviously the palace,” said Catus. “And where did they get enough gold to make a thing like that!”

  The cavalcade drew up at the gate in the earthworks, and Otho, the centurion, banged on it with his sword, shouting, “Decianus Catus, imperial procurator of Rome, desires to enter!”

  At once the gate swung back and an old man came forward bowing and crying a Celtic greeting. Navin stepped up. “He says the Queen has been eagerly awaiting you, O--Procurator. Welcome and enter!”

  Catus smiled and winked slowly at Otho. The guard and Catus and his servants moved through the narrow crowded little streets. Shy faces peered at them from doorways, then disappeared. A giggling, nervous little girl ran out from a round stone house, thrust a pottery cup of amber liquid into the procurator’s hand, then ran back again.”They are honouring you, Excellency,” explained the interpreter. “That is their precious heather ale.”

  “Pah,” said Catus, sniffing it, and he dumped it on the ground.

  There were several wooden steps leading up to the palace portal, and on these steps stood four women. The central figure was so astonishing that a gasp came from the advancing Roman guard, and Quintus stared astounded.

  Queen Boadicea was a majestic, full-bosomed woman, as tall as Quintus. She was over forty, but her hair, which cascaded down to her knees, was still the colour of ripe wheat, or of the golden gorget that hung like a half moon on her breast. She wore a plaid robe of red and violet, belted by a golden circlet. Her face was broad, with high cheekbones; above them her eyes glinted a proud ice-blue.

  As the procurator’s litter drew up before her, she inclined her stately head and said in accented but correct Latin, “You are welcome, Romans. I knew that you would come to comfort me for the loss of my beloved husband and help me govern my people in his stead.”

  She smiled and, descending the steps, held out to the procurator a branch of white-berried mistletoe.

  “What’s this?” mumbled Catus, staring at the mistletoe.

  “It is our most sacred totem,” said the Queen solemnly, “I give it to you in token of the friendship between Rome and the Iceni.”

  “You’ll give a lot more than a hunk of vegetable before you’re through,” said Catus below his breath, as he hopped out of the litter and contemptuously waved to a slave to take the mistletoe branch.

  The Queen’s eyes narrowed at this rudeness, but she bowed slightly, and said, pointing to two of the girls on the steps, “These are my daughters.”

  The princesses were large, redheaded girls of about eighteen. They looked as forceful and regal as their mother, but they had not quite the beauty she must have had in her younger days. The buxom, fair-haired princesses produced a chorus of lip-smacking and whistles from the rest of the guard, and several coarse jokes, but Quintus’ eye was caught by the third girl who had been hidden behind the princesses, for she was much shorter than they. Her hair was not flamboyant like the other women’s; it was a soft bright chestnut with gleams of light in the curly tendrils that fell below, her waist. She wore no jewellery except an enamelled bronze brooch that fastened her plaid robe. She had a small delicate face and a pair of very large blue-grey eyes, which were surveying the Romans with curiosity and some distrust.

  The Queen turned with her daughters and ushered Catus through the portal; the other girl turned too and her eyes met Quintus’ frankly approving stare.

  At the moment when their glances crossed, Quintus felt a shock of interest. More than interest, a peculiar sensation of sympathy, and a sudden desire to touch that soft curly hair. His expression must have changed for she gave him a faint startled smile and then tur
ned and ran through the portal after the others.

  Nothing unusual happened that night. Catus remained in the palace with Otho, his captain, and all his slaves, and Queen Boadicea entertained them most hospitably. Quintus and the rest of the guard encamped outside the town, to await orders, which Quintus felt would not come.

  The Icenians had received them graciously and trustingly and surely even Catus would not make too outrageous demands. Romans did not war on women, or without provocation. Tomorrow no doubt they’d all march back to Colchester again with whatever booty the old skinflint had prized out of the poor Queen and that would be that. Except for a slight regret that he would not see the unknown girl again, Quintus was relieved.

  He was also quite wrong in all his expectations.

  The next morning the Roman guard was summoned back to the palace and ordered to come on foot while leaving the horses outside the town. Otho met them in the courtyard. “Fun’s going to begin pretty soon, boys!” he shouted. “Procurator says to have some swigs of the good Roman wine these buzzards had hidden. There it is!” He jerked his chin toward two huge amphorae that had been hauled out to the courtyard. Red wine trickled down their curved sides. It was obvious that Otho had had a head start on the wine, and his men, with roars of appreciation, began at once to catch up. Quintus did not join them. He was not thirsty, and he was disgusted. These wine-bibbing rowdies were totally unlike the disciplined Roman soldiery he had trained with. Of course, he thought with contempt, Catus was not a general, nothing but a civilian.