Red Queen, White Queen Page 2

  Boudicca, still hanging from the post outside her own door, turned in agony to the old man in the white gown who stood by her, wringing his thin hands.

  ‘Druid,’ she said, ‘get a knife and cut me down. They have gone now, the Romans. You will be in no danger.’

  And as he cut the thongs she said gently, ‘So Nero has replied to my letter! Well, he shall have another one soon—but it will not be written in words.’

  The old priest bowed his head as he said, ‘I sometimes think that the old ways have finished. We must change our ideas, Boudicca.’

  The Queen stretched her arms and said, ‘You have the oak groves to think your thoughts in. Do not bother me with them, old one. I have things to do.’

  Then she went to the room where her daughters lay moaning and tom.

  ‘So,’ she said gently, as a mother should, ‘now what to the big bulls of Crete?’

  2: Gay Rider

  The parade ground of the Second Legion at Glevum stood above the broad river Sabrina, clenched tight within the grip of a high oaken palisade, baking in the sun of summer. A hawk, poised in the upper air, must have wondered at the thick clouds of grey dust that almost shrouded the broad, square place; a man on the ground level would not need to speculate. Three maniples of the Second were at sword drill—six hundred battle-scarred fighting-men, who had already marched the length of Europe, were at their daily exercise, though the weapon which they wielded was a short cudgel, and not the leaf-bladed gladius that could sever a horse’s leg at a blow; and the shield they carried was not the long rectangular thing that bowed the new recruit down under its weight, but a light wicker frame, just enough to deflect a blow without making its arrival pleasant.

  But the air was thick with other sounds than those of the sweating legionaries, as they shuffled a pace forward, a pace back, and the encouraging yells of the Centurions who watched this mock combat critically, having laid their bets on their own Companies in the mess tents earlier. Each day there were other voices to add to the confusion—the voices of men and women, children and animals. When the Legions practised, the tribes turned out to watch them; the Dobuni, who wore the eagle’s feathers in their hair still, in spite of twenty years of Roman education, who despised the tunic and toga in favour of their own sheepskin jackets and brightly-coloured breeches, who publicly professed the official belief in the god Mithras—but who kept clay images of Mabon and Belatucader under the thatch of their wattle huts, down by the river—just in case….. Just in case that one day the Roman god lost his power. Then things would be well again and the fires would be lit on the hilltops and the tree-men would cut the mistletoe in the oak groves once more.

  One tall tribesman, his yellow hair hanging in small plaits beside each ear, flung back his red-and-green cloak and pointed, his blue-stained arm jangling with ornaments of beaten gold.

  ‘Look, man,’he said excitedly to his companion, a short dark fellow, wearing his hair in a bun at the crown of his head, secured by bone pins after the manner of the Silurians; ‘look, man, but I would take on any three of that lot, with sword, lance or dagger. They fight like cows—pregnant cows!’

  The short dark one smiled, the slow smile of the south, not too openly, and answered gently, ‘Yet they beat us, friend.’

  The other snorted and made an obscene gesture.

  ‘Ach,’ he said, ‘but that is what all the old women say: “But they beat us! ” It makes my stomach turn inside me! Do you ever stop to ask yourself why they beat us? Do you do that, hey?’

  The dark man shook his head and gazed across the dusty parade-ground.

  ‘All I know,’ he said, ‘is that my son and my daughter are slaves for bearing arms against Rome, that my wife scrubs the floors and skins the deer for the Camp Prefect, and that I groom his horses. That is all I know, friend; and that is enough. At least, we are alive, and that is more than I can say of my three brothers who followed Caratacus to Uriconium.’

  The tall man began to wave his head wildly, in the manner of the Dobuni when they became angry.

  ‘There! There! There!’ he said. ‘Always defeat—never victory! Such as you deserve to die, to be made to clean out the latrines of these butchers! But if we had kept together at the right time —if the chiefs had forgotten their old feuds—we could have stopped them. We could have held them at Mai Dun, ambushed them at Isca, wiped them out at Caerwent…. We could have…’ Below the palisade an elderly man sat on a stone, slowly burnishing an old short-sword that carried many notches along its blade. His hair was grizzled and thin, but cut in the Roman fashion, high above the ears so as not to blow about in battle. Though he wore little but a short tunic and linen half-breeches, the bronze medallion on his breast proclaimed him to be a retired Decurion of the Second Legion.

  He rose, half-thoughtfully, and strolled towards the Celts, swinging his short sword lightly in his right hand.

  ‘You could have done nothing, friend,’ he said to the tall man, staring him straight in the eye. ‘You could have done nothing because it has been decreed by the gods that we are a race of masters, who shall inherit the earth.’

  The Celt stared back at him for a moment, a white froth of spittle gathering at his excited mouth. Then he looked away from those steel-grey eyes, the eyes of an old Roman soldier, so old now that any lad of fifteen might have thrown him to the ground with ease. But an old man who moved and stood and spoke like a man of authority, like a man who had sniffed the hot African air and had slept deep in the snows of Germany.

  The Celt began to grumble, swaying from one foot to the other, his long sensitive hand feeling for the dagger that was not there.

  ‘Go your ways, Gretorix,’ said the old soldier. ‘I know you, my friend. Go in peace and take your friend with you. He seems a decent fellow and I would not like him to come to harm from listening to your nonsense. Go now, before I report you to that big Centurion over there, the one with the red ribbons on his shoulder. You know what that means? Thirty years in the Legions, and over two hundred battles to his credit. You know what that man would do to you, don’t you, Gretorix Big-mouth? Shall I tell you?’

  The Celt swore at the ground and turned abruptly. Then he strode away, down the hill, towards the river, his coloured cloak swinging heavily behind him. The old Decurion watched him go, his eyes glinting with amusement. Then he sat down on his stone again, and began to burnish the old sword, hissing gently with each movement of his polishing-cloth.

  A young man was standing beside him, smiling; a brown haired man with the set jaw and aquiline nose of the true Roman. He Was dressed in the light deerskin tunic and woollen breeches of a legionary in travelling-kit.

  ‘Do you tell them all off like that, veteran?’he asked, nodding in the direction of the palisade.

  The old soldier shook his head. ‘They are usually a quiet folk, now,’ he said. ‘They have mostly learned reason. But there are a few, here and there, who need bringing to order, like surly dogs that will not own their master.’

  The young man nodded. ‘In Germany it is different now,’ he said. ‘They have finished with all that. Why, a man could walk the length and breadth of the forests and hardly hear a word that was not Latin. And good men, too; not cowards, real fighters!’

  The old Decurion looked up at him with a wrinkled smile.

  ‘Make no mistake, friend,’ he said, ‘but these are real fighters, too. The Second could tell you a tale or two about that, I promise you. But we have got them pacified now, and that is all over.’

  The young man grinned down at him and said, ‘Aye, all but the odd fellow like that one, and his sort can cause trouble enough when once they get out of hand. ‘

  The old man said slowly, ‘They will not get out of hand, that is the whole point. We watch them, like hawks, to see that they do not get out of hand. ‘

  Then, putting his sword down beside him, he said in a changed tone of voice ‘Tell me, friend, what do you know about the Legions?’

  The young man smiled
and said, ‘You will not catch me that way, General! I’m not going to boast to you and have my leg pulled for the next ten years! No! I am Gemellus Ennius, posted from Germany after five years’ service, as a Decurion to the Second, That is all.’

  The old man stood up, shading his eyes against the strength of the sun. ‘Gemellus Ennius!’ he said, in a tone of incredulity almost. ‘I was your father’s first Decurion when he had a Century of the Second, I fought with him here for ten years and more—the best Centurion we ever had in my maniple! A great bear of a man, but as kind as my mother.’

  He stared away, over the laken palisade, towards the blue-grey hills of the West. A tear stood in his pale eye for a moment, until he shook his grizzled head and turned once more to the young Decurion.

  ‘Greetings, Gemellus Ennius,’ he said lightly, holding up his right hand. ‘May the Lord of Light always be with you when the swords flash and the arrows fall, and may you come to march before a century of men, as your father did.

  Then, as the two made their way back into the shadow of the stockade, the old man asked half-shyly, ‘What of Rome, young friend? I have not seen the old wolf-bitch for thirty years. What of the taverns, the theatre, the Games? What of the avenues, the markets, the baths? Tell me all; tell me of the women, the young ones and the others. Tell me of Rome!’

  Gemellus Ennius shrugged his broad shoulders and grinned. ‘No doubt you know as much about those things as I do. Decurion,’ he said. ‘I spent no more than a six-month there, in the Imperial Guard, as a foot-slogger, before they posted me to Germany. I hardly got outside the Imperial precincts in that time, what with parade-ground drill, weapon training, athletics and mounting the guard every other night, to see that some half-crazed Gaul didn’t run a dagger through the Emperor’s belly.’

  The old soldier looked at him with half-closed eyes.

  ‘The Emperor?’ he said softly. ‘Is it true what they say of him?’

  Gemellus stared back at the veteran, a sly smile on his lips.

  ‘And what do they say about Nero, my friend?’ he asked.

  ‘ The old soldier looked away and grinned.

  ‘Very well.’ he said resignedly. ‘I can tell you are a shrewd one. Perhaps that is the way one has to be in these times, with spies at every keyhole, at every gap in the fence.’

  Gemellus nodded. ‘Have no fear, veteran,’ he said. ‘I am no spy; I am a soldier. My trade is the sword, not the whispered secret. I can tell you that the worst they say of Nero is likely to be the truth. I was never more pleased than when I got myself posted to Germany. At least, there one lives among men, and not half-creatures; one works like a slave all day and sleeps well at night, not like the gilded milksops of the Palace, who pass their days lolling on velvet and their nights in anxiety lest the Emperor has forgotten them.

  The old man slapped his horny hand hard on the Decurion’s shoulder and said, ‘Spoken like the true son of the Centurion Gemellus! Tell me, friend, where did you come from to join the Guard?’

  Gemellus Ennius almost whispered, ‘From our little farm, a hundred miles from Rome, set in the hills above Asculum. It was the place ray father bought with his release money, when he had served his time. My mother got it ready for him to come back to, but he never came. He signed on for life, as you will know, and that was the end of him.’

  Then, in a low voice, he added, ‘And the end of my mother, too. She seemed to fade away after that. That white farmhouse with the cypresses along the wall meant nothing to her when she knew he would not share it with us. And after she had gone, I joined the Legions and took my chance. I did not relish the life of a farmer, with the memory of my father forever gnawing at the back of my head.’

  The old man said quietly, ‘You are like most of us, Gemellus, you are a soldier because there is a wound in your heart that will not heal, and not because you wish to be a conqueror, a master of the world. And though you are a Roman, you are first -, a man, who would be the same man if he were born in Scythia or Germany or Gaul—or even Britain.’

  Gemellus looked about him, at the crowded tribesmen, leaning on the stockade. His mouth relaxed to a cynical smile.

  ‘Hm, perhaps,’ he mused. ‘Perhaps, even a Briton—though I don’t know.’

  Yet, even as he spoke, the trumpets blared across the parade square and the tall gates swung open with a dash. The guards sprang to attention, as a troop of thirty horse cantered into the enclosure.

  At their head, mounted on a shaggy Celtic pony, was a golden-haired young man, perhaps a year or two younger than Gemellus himself. He wore the light leather Phrygian cap of the Auxiliary, the leather tunic and kilt, and the deep blue cavalry cloak that swung behind him as his beast moved forward.

  Gemellus, with an eye for military detail, observed that a long Celtic sword swung at the man’s hip, its pommel, of red coral, carved into the shape of an acorn and set with a brightly-flashing stone at the tip. He noted the young leader’s high-bridged nose, the proud tilt of the chin, the straight carriage of the back.

  ‘Who is that one?’ he asked the old man. ‘He seems to be a man of some note.’

  The veteran nodded, his mouth twisted in the way men assume when they know more than they care to tell.

  ‘That is Duatha, who calls himself Ambrosius to those who do not know that he is a Celt. He likes to be thought of as a Roman, among Britons—and as a British warlord among Romans!’

  Gemellus gazed at the young horseman, half in sarcasm, half in admiration. And certainly, there was enough to admire in him; he was obviously a bom soldier, a leader, proud and even arrogant, the sort to inspire courage in his followers, who kept at a respectful distance behind him as he rode.

  Gemellus spared a glance for those followers, all riding shaggy ponies like their leader; men of all the countries on whose soil the sandal of Rome trod heavily—brown men, swarthy-skinned men, even men whose yellow skins and slant eyes proclaimed their home to be the distant howling steppe-lands of Asia.

  Then, as the cavalcade swept past the two watchers, a curious thing happened: the young leader half-reined in his horse and sat for a second, looking down on Gemellus, almost as though he had expected the Roman to be there, watching him. A light breeze blew across the parade ground, sweeping the Celt’s golden hair across his blue eyes, causing him to give a slight curl to lips which already carried as much disdain as they should.

  Gemellus started, the quick blood flushing his face and neck, for to him that smile was a careful insult. Half-instinctively, his -right hand fell to the short sword hanging, according to regulations, at his side.

  The horseman saw the movement, with eyes that missed nothing. With a surprising irony, he bowed slightly in the saddle towards the young Roman, and then rode on, towards the gaily-striped Mess Tents at the further side of the great square.

  Gemellus, tired and sensitive, heard him call out to the rider who followed him, ‘That is what keeps Rome from being truly great. She is unsure of herself. The Greeks were never that, friend.’

  The Roman felt like running after the horseman and tipping him out of his sheepskin saddle on to the dusty ground. But the old soldier laid a hand on his arm and said gently. ‘Patience, Decurion! You would only make a fool of yourself; the young man is well thought of by the Prefect of this garrison—and by his daughter, and that’s a more dangerous situation! Besides, if you knocked him down, he would probably get up and slit your throat without too much trouble! He is a triple-crowned Victor of sword and lance!’

  Gemellus shrugged his shoulders and smiled wryly.

  ‘What must be, must,’ he said. ‘But tell me, friend, here in Britain, who ranks the higher, a Decurion of foot or a leader of a troop of horse?’

  The old man said, ‘For right or wrong, we real Romans count ten men superior in battle to thirty horse. These Auxiliaries sweep in and scream like devils, waving their lances and long-swords. They make a great noise and pother, and even frighten away the barbarians we let them loose against…. But
when it comes to real fighting, the stuff that builds the Empire, the tedious stuff, the marching and the slow attacks against the chariots, the prepared retreats and the grinding, blistering counter-attacks—then it’s the Legions who count, every time! These horsemen are all froth and bubble—but once let their line get broken and they’re finished.’

  Gemellus smiled and said, ‘That is what I thought, but I did not dare say it. Very well, Duatha, or Ambrosius, or whatever your name is—we shall see, we shall see!’

  The old man smiled and said, ‘But do not be hasty, friend. Better to have that one your comrade than your enemy. I am not often wrong when it comes to judging a soldier—and I rate that one very high. Very high indeed. He is such another man as would have fought beside your father in the great days. Yes, just such another, and I have no higher praise for a man.’

  The maniples were still holding the centre of the parade ground, shuffling backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, in the dust; and all the time the Decurions were shouting, ‘Right arm! Left arm! Right arm! Left arm!’ as sword or shield was brought into play. They moved like men whose hearts and minds were dedicated only to that one action, of meeting an enemy in battle. That was their life, nothing more, for twenty years…. And at the end of it all, if they still lived, a farm and a herd of cattle, as a gracious present from the Empire they had built and preserved.

  The old man coughed. ‘The dust is thick, Gemellus,’ he said. ‘Let us make our way to the Mess Tents. I am allowed in there as a veteran, and the wine is at least drinkable, though not like the stuff we used to get from home in your father’s day. This is Gaulish rubbish - made from sour apples, if the truth be known.

  They haven’t the trick of culturing the vine as we have in Rome.’

  3: Duatha

  The mess tent, of the Second Company of the Second Legion was thick with the smell of wine and of cooking, and heavy with the sounds of men’s voices. At one fire was cooking the mutton beloved of those Auxiliaries whose beliefs would not allow them the pork which frizzled at the next fire, while over yet another brazier of charcoal a haunch of venison grilled, tended by a black-faced cook whose father had run away from his African mud-hut to gain his fortune among the men who wore the bright breastplate and the red horse-hair plume in the helmet. The father had never worn these things, being an Outlander, and had had to content himself with a rough jerkin of leather and a spear that was like a log of wood compared with the delicate instrument of death which he had flung, hunting the lion outside his native kraal. Yet he had been satisfied with the exchange—satisfied though a Silurian arrow took him off in the middle of his war-cry, in the dripping beech-woods above Uriconium…. And now his son cooked for the Second Company, and spoke Latin as well and as badly as any other man of the red plume.