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

  He glanced toward the portal of the palace as a ringing, angry woman’s voice inside cried out in Latin, “Never! Never shall these things be done. It is not possible that the Emperor Nero would so abuse his faithful allies!”

  Quintus glanced at Otho and the guard who were milling around the wine jars, and he pushed open the heavy wooden door.

  It was dark in the low long hall, and smoky from a great central fire, but in a moment he could see the tense group around Catus and Queen Boadicea. They were both standing near the fire; Boadicea towered over the procurator, who was surrounded by his crouching slaves. Behind the Queen stood a dozen of her Icenian nobles and kinsmen. They were tall, gold-bearded men in horned helmets and they were unarmed, as Roman law had decreed. They looked uncertain, anxious, straining to follow the Latin language, which their Queen had learned so well.

  There were women too, huddled in the corner by a great loom filled with half-woven cloth. Quintus saw amongst them the two princesses, and the small girl with chestnut hair.

  “Am I to understand,” said Catus softly, darting his bald head toward the Queen, “that you refuse our glorious Emperor’s commands...?”

  Boadicea quivered, her face grew pale, her eyes flashed, and she cried with furious scorn, “Commands that I abdicate . . . ? That I turn my kingdom and people over to you, that I give you my children’s inheritance . . . and bow down as abject slave to Rome . . . ? Yes, O Procurator. I refuse!”

  “Ah . . .” said Catus, smiling on a long, satisfied note. He turned and barked a command to his chief slave, Hector, the Sicilian, who jumped up and darted for the door where he saw Quintus. “Back to your post,” Hector hissed, “the time has come.”

  Quintus frowned but he went to the courtyard where the slave was relaying Catus’ order to Otho. The Belgian centurion’s little pig eyes gleamed, he shook his head to clear it of the wine fumes. “Form ranks,” he shouted. “Into the palace! Let no Icenian escape, but do not kill unless you must!”

  The two hundred men drew their swords and rushed forward, Quintus with them obeying automatically. They stormed into the hall and so quickly had it happened that the Icenians were motionless at first. Then they fought with fists and teeth and stools and flagons, whatever they could lay their hands on, but the Romans thwacked fierce blows with the flat of the sword. They jabbed and slashed too, while Catus’ slaves joined in. The procurator himself, safe on a table out of the brawl, capered with glee.

  The Icenians were soon tied up and stacked like wood in the corner of the hall, while Otho seized and bound the Queen herself and threw her to the ground.

  “Stand her up,” shrilled Catus, “Boadicea shall feel how Rome punishes those who defy her might!” He gestured to Hector who ran up with a huge black three-tailed whip. Otho jerked the Queen to her feet and held her at arm’s length while the slave, giggling, plied the great whip. It hissed and snapped through the air, the long snake-like scourges wrapped again and again around Boadicea’s body. Her plaid robe tore to ribbons; blood trickled down her shoulders and matted the golden hair. She uttered no sound, but stood stone quiet under the lash, her face grey as ashes, her eyes sunken and terrible as those of a corpse.

  It was her daughters who screamed, and Quintus, angry and sickened at these sights, whirled to see that two of the burliest soldiers had grabbed up the red-haired princesses and were carrying them from the hall.

  Catus turned too and laughed. “Let them go,” he said. “My soldiers have led a dull life of late; they deserve a little fun. . . . Cease,” he said impatiently to the slave, who dropped the whip. “No doubt the Queen has learned her lesson. Put her over there out of the way and ransack the palace--here, we’ll start with that chest!”

  While Catus spoke, Quintus had suddenly caught sight of the girl who interested him. She had tried to hide behind the loom and a squat Frankish soldier was lunging for her.

  Quintus reached the Frank with one bound and knocked him spinning on the floor. “Here, quick!” he said to the girl, and as she only stared at him with dumb horror, he picked her up and rushed with her through the door which led onto a side court. As the chill air hit her, she gasped and began to struggle frantically, hitting him in the face, trying to scratch his eyes.

  “No, no--don’t!” cried Quintus. “I won’t hurt you.” He dared not put her down because the Frank was clattering through the door after him. “You little idiot,” he said angrily, as he ran with her across the court, “I’m trying to help you!”

  She understood little of his actual words, but the sense of them reached her. She quietened and suddenly whispered something and pointed to a round building raised on high piles. It was a granary and Quintus saw what she meant. He flung her up through the open door, climbed up himself, and pulled the six-foot ladder after him, as the Frank arrived shouting furiously.

  “It’s no use, my friend,” said Quintus, peering sardonically down at him. “You can’t get up here. Go find yourself another girl.”

  The Frank looked up at Quintus’ drawn sword poised for action, at the young Roman’s cold watchful eyes, then he shrugged and walked away.

  Quintus sheathed his sword and turned into the granary. The girl lay crumpled, sobbing, on a heap of grain. He sat down beside her and awkwardly patted her shoulder. “I think you’d better stay here a while until I figure out some way to get you far off from--from what’s going on in that palace.”

  She spoke some Latin and understood most of what he said this time. She shuddered, covering her face with her hands, and whispered something in her own language. Then she translated it slowly. “I hate you, Roman,” she said through her teeth. “I will hate you till I die.”

  “I know,” said Quintus. “I don’t blame you. That was a rotten business in there. You mustn’t believe all Romans are like that.”

  She raised her head and gazed at him with the huge grey eyes. “Romans are beasts--like wolves--they betray, devour--you too.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Quintus gently, “but never mind that. What’s your name, by the way?”

  She had ceased crying and looked at him steadily in the darkness of the granary. He saw that for all her fear and smallness, she had a thoroughbred control. After a moment she pronounced a Celtic name.

  “Regan?” he tried to repeat the difficult sound. “Is that your name?”

  “Near enough,” she answered. “I am Queen Boadicea’s foster child. My parents are dead. She has been a mother to me. Never shall I forget what has been done to her this day--and to my foster sisters, the princesses.”

  Quintus said nothing. On impulse he put out his hand and touched the soft dishevelled hair that rippled down her back. She jumped as though he’d struck her, throwing her hands out to ward him off.

  “Listen, Regan,” said Quintus stiffly, folding his arms across his breastplate, “I like you, and mean you no harm. You mustn’t be scared of me. Now where can I take you that you’ll be safe? Think!”

  She relaxed gradually, sitting up straight on the pile of grain and examining him through the thick lashes of her half-closed eyes. His helmet with its arching crest of red and its engraved eagle gleamed in the half-darkness--the odious panoply of Rome. But above the leather chin strap, the lean weather-tanned face and the steady dark eyes were attractive.

  Her look softened, she started to speak, when from somewhere outside there came a long sobbing wail, anguished cries to Celtic gods for help, and a shout of drunken laughter.

  She whitened, fear came back into her face. She started to tremble though she tried to control it. “I must go to Boadicea--I must help--”

  “No, you don’t,” said Quintus. “If you go back in there, I certainly couldn’t protect you against all Catus’ rabble. But we can’t stay here either. You must know some house in town where you can hide. A poor one,” he added grimly, “that Catus won’t bother with.”

  Her breathing slowed and she bowed her head, knowing that he was right. “Pendoc,” she whispered after a mome
nt. “The potter. He has always protected me. His hut is down there by the river.”

  Quintus nodded and, going to the granary door, peered out cautiously. Nobody was in sight except three of Catus’ slaves squatting by a wall and squabbling over a pouch full of Icenian coins they had found. Quintus did not bother with the little ladder. He jumped down and held up his arms for Regan. “I’ll carry you,” he said, speaking very distinctly so she would understand. “You must he across my shoulder and pretend you have fainted.”

  She nodded with a frightened little smile. While he pulled her down from the granary and adjusted her light body over his left shoulder, he thought with sudden warmth, she trusts me now, poor child. Though she was about sixteen and he not quite twenty, the protection he was giving her made him feel infinitely older. In some ways she reminded him of his little sister, Livia; in some ways only, for as he carried her according to her whispered directions, through a maze of littered alleys down a slope toward a thatched hut, he felt a new strange tenderness that even his sister had never aroused.

  They were challenged once. Three of the Roman guard were busy ransacking a stone house that belonged to one of the wealthier Icenians. They were piling up shields, bracelets, household goods on the doorstep for the later inspection of Catus. “Halt, Quintus Tullius!” cried the soldier in charge. “Centurion’s been looking for you. Get up to the palace!”

  “That’s where I’m going,” called Quintus gaily, trusting that the maze of alleys had confused the man’s direction.

  “With that?” cried the soldier, pointing to Regan’s limp body.

  “I thought Otho might be interested,” answered Quintus, and added a rough bit of army slang.

  The man guffawed and started walking toward Quintus, who moved fast, turned a corner, and started to run.

  “Here,” whispered Regan. “Here!” She slid down from his shoulder and pulled him after her through a door that was curtained by a cowhide.

  Inside the small round hut it smelled of wet clay and pigs, who were snuffling after garbage on the packed earthen floor. The potter was a big scarfaced man with long sandy-red hair. He jumped back from his wheel with an astonished grunt as Regan and the tall Roman legionary burst in.

  The girl explained in a string of urgent Celtic. The potter answered, drawing himself up and staring at Quintus with narrowed hostile eyes.

  “It’s all right,” said Regan, “Pendoc says he’ll take care of me. But he knew nothing of what’s been going on. He’s--he’s very angry.”

  Quintus sighed. The potter, indeed any Briton, had a right to be angry, but Pendoc’s continuing harsh excited speech to Regan was destroying the girl’s fleeting trust. Quintus could see it. She turned and would not look at Quintus. Her small pretty face hardened to a stony mask. Quintus caught the word “trap”--one that Navin had taught him--and understood. There was no use protesting that he had no sinister purpose in rescuing Regan, that he deplored this whole shocking treatment of the Iceni. It was obvious Pendoc would not believe him, and that Regan no longer did.

  “Farewell,” he said to the girl. “May Jupiter and Fortuna both have you in their keeping, Regan.”

  She looked at him then. “ROMAN gods--” she said with blistering contempt; and turned her back.

  Regan’s contempt bolstered Quintus during the following three days that he spent in' the Icenian city. After all he was a legionary under oath to the Emperor to obey orders without question. And it was not fitting for a Roman to go sentimental and soft or fraternize with natives who were, on the whole, being civilized for their own good. He almost managed to forget Regan and the peculiar new feelings she had roused in him.

  And after all, thought Quintus sardonically, as they started on the march back to Colchester, the Icenian incident was finished to the satisfaction of Catus, anyway.

  The procurator was extremely pleased with himself. Quintus, who rode near the slave-borne litter, could hear his jubilant comments. Accompanying their cavalcade were twelve carts full of booty--bronzes and beautiful British enamels, gold gorgets, torques and brooches, coffers full of Icenian coinage, and the huge golden shield that had hung over the palace door. There were six new slaves too, or hostages, as Catus with unusual delicacy preferred to call them. These were some of the Icenian noblemen who had been surprised in the palace. Around their necks they now wore heavy iron collars attached to chains which bound them to each other between two Roman soldiers who held the ends.

  “It’ll do the Trinovantes good to see these,” said Catus repeatedly to Hector. “Object lesson. I’ve noticed them in Colchester lately--very lax in worshiping our divine Claudius in the temple.”

  “Shockingly lax, O Beloved Master,” agreed Hector, bowing as he trotted along beside the litter. “Yes, it will do the Trinovantes good to hear how you have broken the spirit of the Iceni.”

  Catus tugged at his ear lobe. “That Boadicea--she never uttered a sound when we flogged her, or afterward when I so considerately allowed her to retire to her own apartments with those stupid screaming girls of hers. You’d think they’d all been seriously injured.”

  Quintus jerked Ferox’s bridle and to his own amazement heard himself saying to the procurator, “Would you not consider it serious injury, Your Excellency, if your home were sacked and your kinsmen enslaved, if you were publicly whipped, and your daughters dishonoured?” Catus jerked around, staring up at the young man on the big black horse. “You speak like a fool! These barbarians don’t have feelings like Romans do.” His eyes narrowed and he said, “You’ve been a disappointment to me, Quintus Tullius Pertinax. I’ve been watching you. Half-hearted soldiering, lazy--now insolent. I had thought to get you promoted, maybe command my personal guard. As it is, I shall see that you return at once to your legion, where I trust your General Petillius Cerealis will beat you into shape.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Quintus, respectfully, reining in Ferox and dropping back to the rear, where he had trouble hiding his satisfaction from the other soldiers, who were pleased by the Roman newcomer’s fall from favour.

  They camped that night at a ford on the river Stour which was the boundary between the Icenians and the Trinovantes. Here there was a rough Roman fort containing a cabin where Catus decided to spend the night rather than endure the few remaining miles to Colchester. His slaves at once set about the usual routine. They heated water and scented oils for the procurator’s bath. They arranged his cushioned couch for him to recline on while he ate the delicacies he demanded even in the wilderness--jellied eels, larks stewed in honey, poppy-seed cakes, all washed down with a flagon of imported Gaulish wine.

  Quintus observed the dishes being rushed into the procurator’s cabin. May Hygeia send him indigestion, thought Quintus maliciously, invoking the goddess of health. The guard had to be satisfied with the usual marching ration of hard wheat cake and dried fish, supplemented tonight by boiled mutton from an Icenian sheep. Quintus made a tour of the fort and glanced at the six prisoners, who had collapsed in a heap on the ground, hollow-eyed, silent. Their big blond heads slumped forward on their chests. Blood trickled from sores in their necks made by the iron collars. “What’ve THEY had to eat?” asked Quintus of the captives’ guard.

  “Nothing,” said the guard, gnawing on a chop. “Procurator gave no orders to feed ’em.”

  “Well, I do,” said Quintus. “Give them some of our rations, and if I weren’t still serving under Decianus Catus I’d say the man is an utter imbecile. If he wants his captives dead, he should kill them. If he wants them to be useful slaves, he’s got to keep ’em alive.”

  “True enough,” said the guard, shrugging. He gathered up a handful of wheat cakes and took them to the Icenians. Otho had been left behind in the Icenian city with a dozen men to maintain order and also to hunt around in case any valuable booty had been overlooked. In his absence another officer and Quintus had been given temporary command.

  It had been one of those promising late-winter days, when the sun was warm and
the air smelled of spring. There were patches of snow still, beneath the holly bushes and towering oaks in the forests, but through the brown earth pushed green spikes of cuckoopint. Thrushes and blackbirds sang at their nestings, while deep in the wilderness on each side of the Roman road the wild things were mating; the foxes, the red deer, and the wolves.

  Quintus too felt the restlessness and yearning of spring. In the twilight he wandered outside the fort and quite a way along the riverbank, which was marged with reeds where moor hens and coots were paddling. He thought how different spring was here from the sudden lush flowering back home. He pictured his mother and Livia sitting in their frescoed atrium, listening to the splash of their fountain. The sun would be hot, his mother’s Persian lilies would be in full scented bloom. He sent them both a homesick greeting, and then suddenly he thought of Regan.

  On the eve of their departure from the Icenian city he had gone back to Pendoc the potter’s little hut to say good-by to her, to try--though he did not quite admit it--to wipe that last contemptuous look she had given him from his memory. The hut was completely deserted. The potter’s wheel and the pigs, too, were gone.

  It was reasonable that Pendoc should take the girl away--doubtless to one of the many caves and hiding places in the forest where the other Icenians had fled. For the Roman destruction had continued. Wanton fires had been lit, many of the buildings destroyed. In a short time the Icenian capital had become a city of the dead, hushed, empty, except for the Queen and her daughters, who were barricaded in a wing of the ruined palace.

  But I’d like to see Regan again, Quintus thought. To tell her--to make her understand--what? He was a Roman and she was a Briton. The Romans were conquering and subduing the Britons. What more was there to explain?

  Impatient with himself, he shied a pebble amongst the waterfowl and idly watched them scolding and fluttering off.

  A twig cracked behind him and he jumped around, his hand on his sword.

  It was Navin who stood behind him in the shadows, watching with a sardonic lift to his bushy red eyebrows. “You’re far from camp alone, Quintus Tullius,” Navin said quietly. ‘There are wild boar and wolves in the forest. And there may be other enemies too--for a Roman.”