The Bronze Sword Read online

  The old veteran drew in his breath and waited until his heart beat a little slower. Then, as though he spoke to a chosen band of his own soldiers, he said calmly, “I am the master of this house. I am Drucus Pollio, centurion of the First Cohort, Ninth Legion of Spain. I hold the Oak Leaf for things the god let me do on the ramparts at Glevum. I have the Bronze Eagle from Deva, awarded by the general, Suetonius himself. These things I mention not from pride but because you force me to declare myself. If this entitles me to a bullock’s death, lady, then I am willing to leave such a world as this has grown into.”

  For a time there was silence. Even the Britons laughing by the fishpond were still and staring back to where this firm voiced soldier dared to speak up to their Queen.

  Then Drucus saw the Queen’s feet coming down the steps towards him. She wore no sandals, and there was nothing to show the difference between this great lady and a slave. He looked up higher and saw her lips now smiling. She said slowly, in camp Latin, “Forgive me, warrior. In cases like this there are always

  mistakes. Get up from your knees and stand before me as the old Greeks used to do, praying to their god. Men like you are not bom to kneel.”

  Drucus rose and looked her in the eye. “I am not fit to be named among Greeks, lady,” he said. “All I ask for is common justice. I am a soldier who has done his service, and I claim no more than the right to live quietly until the god calls me.

  Boudicca looked at him with a long smile, her brown fingers playing with the gold snake about her neck. Then she said, as gaily as a young girl, “Forget the god, and think of the goddess. It is my opinion that you should set a higher value on yourself, soldier. In this world, there are many who carry swords, but there are few men. You are a man, sir.”

  Drucus felt bewildered by this and shrugged his shoulders. “I am a farmer now, lady,” he said. “I have served my time and, by the grace of the Emperor and the Senate, I am given a farmstead , and a pension to run it. I ask for no more. But, I beg you, tell your people to leave my fishpond and statues alone. They have cost me good money and labour. It is the same with my cornfields. These things must be won, must be wrenched from the earth with pain and worry. I am no great nobleman with a host of servants to help him. What I have, I must work for. You see, my lady, I am a simple man who holds to the law, no more and no less/’ Queen Boudicca said quietly, “I see that you should be a captain among men, Roman. With such a general as you, I could bring my own feckless dogs to heel. I could march down to Londinium and set my heel on the vipers’ nest there. And afterwards, I could build ships and cross to Gaul, where I have many kinsfolk who would rise at my call.’

  She paused, then turned on the steps and put her hand to her painted forehead. At last she said, “Beyond Gaul lies Rome, where a smaller man than you, centurion, strums on the lyre and calls himself God. Oh, Roman, what might we not do, together, you and I! It is enough to make even your Jupiter laugh!”

  Drucus was aware of the many eyes turned on him now, from among the bright fires. He said stiffly, “Lady, your business is your business. I am not concerned in it. If my grain from Carthage yields well, that is all I want from life. I do not wish for glory.”

  He was startled when the woman suddenly swung round and almost screamed, “Take him! Bind him! The man is a fool! He shall learn what it is to laugh in the face of a Queen.”

  Then, all about him, he heard the buzzing of excited voices, as though he was the victim in the middle of a swarming hive.

  3. Dawn Visitor

  Two young men in fur caps and stinking horse-hides tied him with thongs and carried him into his own cold dairy. As they flung him on to the hard red tiles, one of them said, “She has commanded that when you have spent the night in suffering, one of us shall come back and give you her justice for your Roman pride. Pray well, centurion, the dawn is not far away.”

  Then they left him, and he soon knew

  what it was like to lie on his own cold tiles. It was almost as bad as the time when he had tried sleeping in the snow-capped Pennines alongside a young Tribune of the Ninth called Petillius Aggravinus. He was a thin-faced youth with long, oiled hair, and a small mole on his right cheek. He had whimpered in his sheepskin bag as the wolves howled along the snowline; but when the time came, outside Eburacum, this Tribune led the charge and overturned three chariots before he ended. Drucus thought of him now as he lay in the dairy and, among the scents of pressed cheeses and butter, came to the conclusion that you couldn’t judge a man by his long hair or his beauty spots.

  Outside, owls called from the trees and the many small beasts of the fields cried out in warning as the white-winged hunters drifted. Drucus thought: there they are, trying to keep their precious little lives, under the hoverer. And here I am, already cold as death, waiting for the Queen’s justice. I who was once the Elephant of the Regiment! Shivering in my own dairy! Why, when I marched across the Square at Lindum, new recruits from Germany and Egypt shook with palsy—and here I am, shaking myself, because the woman who leads these savages has threatened me. I will go to sleep and forget it all! I will not shiver like a frightened dog!

  But he did not go to sleep. He stayed very wide awake, until dawn came down under the door and on to the cold floor. And when this happened, he heard a

  man’s footsteps passing through the courtyard, and a high gay tune being whistled, as though the Queen had sent a meadowlark to put an end to him.

  The door swung open at last, and a young man stood there trying to get his blue eyes used to the dusk of the dairy, and tossing up a leaf-bladed bronze sword from hand to hand.

  Drucus Pollio saw that the youth had tawny reddish hair which curled round at the nape of his thick brown neck. The young man reminded him of someone, but he could not quite think who it was.

  Then the visitor called out, “Are you all right, sir? You do not look too comfortable, lying where you are.”

  Drucus rolled on to his right side and growled, “I am well enough, Briton, How are you?”

  The young man smiled pleasantly and pointed his sword at the centurion, as though taking aim before a run. “Me?” he said, lightly, “I am well enough. It has been a cold march through the briars and the fields, but the larks are rising and the breezes are freshening, and it looks like being a bright day. I am well enough, since you ask.”

  He came down the steps and sat beside Drucus on the floor, running his thumb along the keen blade of his sword and hissing between his teeth, as a groom does when he curries a horse.

  Drucus said, “Well, that is good news, then.”

  The young warrior nodded. “It is always

  good news if one is alive to hear it,” he said. “As for me, I am sent by Queen Boudicca with a message that might not be good news to the one who receives it

  Drucus ignored this and said, “You must be someone of note, to carry a queen’s message, young man.”

  The Celt laughed. “I am her sister’s son. I am Lydd Guletic, the Prince,” he said. “But you would not know it from the way the men treat me. All I have to show for it is my sword. See, it is an heirloom, made of the old bronze from Belgica. The haft and blade are in one piece, not like the new swords of bone and iron. Yet the balance is so perfect that this sharp blade would scarcely stop a man from speaking as it separated his head from his shoulders. I wish you were unbound; then you could test it yourself/*

  Drucus said, “Yes, I wish I were unbound, too.’

  The young man gazed down at him for a while then, pushing the sword into his hide belt, he said, “Come, let us forget such things for the moment. My walk has made me hungry, and no doubt you will feel the same, lying on that cold floor. Why old men like you choose

  to lie on cold floors when there are good beds to be had, I shall never understand.’

  Drucus started to tell him, but Lydd Guletic waved his hand and said, “I will light a fire and we will break our fast together with warm porridge and mulled wine. Would that suit you?”

 
; Drucus nodded his head. “That would suit me very well,” he answered.

  Then, as he watched the young man blowing on the fire and beating up the oat-porridge in a clay bowl, he suddenly called to mind whom the youth resembled —it was a nephew of his from Saguntum, along the coast south from Tarraco. This boy had been called Drucus Gallo, and had died when he was just sixteen outside the gates of Apulum in Dada as a sudden hail of stones came over from the garrison catapults.

  The centurion called out to Lydd, “Don’t hold the porridge-pan in the middle of the flames. It will turn out like burnt oat-cakes that way.”

  The young man nodded and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “I have had little practice at this trade, you understand. All my life they have made me ride horses and swing swords. But I am learning.” When he came back with the porridge-bowls, he set them on the dairy floor and said. “Now here is a difficulty. You are tied up like a pig on the way to market and cannot use your hands. What shall I do, feed you with this horn spoon?” Drucus said, “Your hands are shaking so much with the morning chill that I do

  not think you would get it into my mouth. And I should feel foolish with porridge dripping over my chin, at my age.

  For a long moment the Prince looked

  down at him unsmiling. Then he said quietly, “I see your problem, sir. But I too have a problem; I am sent by my kinswoman the Queen to find a Roman who has offended her and to deal with him.

  Now, I do not know who is who in these parts, but if you are not that Roman, then all I have to do is to cut your bonds and then we can eat our breakfast together, before I go on to hunt down this man. What do you say to that? Are you the Roman?”

  For the space of five breaths Drucus Pollio was silent, then suddenly he looked above the young man’s head and spoke.

  4. Bronze Sword

  “You need search no further, Lydd,” he said. “I am the man you have come to find. I cannot say that I fear either your sword or your Queen. So, carry out your orders now, while the morning sun is shining—and deal with me, as you put it.”

  Lydd Guletic looked down into the old centurion’s eyes with his own cold blue ones, in a long stare. And as he stared he slowly drew the bronze sword. The russet light of morning glimmered along its pale golden edge, and Drucus thought almost idly that if a man must die by the sword then this one was not an unworthy weapon to end on. Silently, without moving his lips, he made a little prayer to Mithras, Lord of Light, Slayer of Bulls. It was this:

  “O Master, in the years you have allowed me, I have marched many miles up and down the world. You have been generous enough to let me see many places and to talk with many men. Though I have committed errors, I can tell you honestly that I have always regretted what I have done wrong, and I have often tried to do right. I can assure you that I have never betrayed a friend. Now that my time is on me, my only plea to you is

  that I make a swift end and go to where I may once more meet the men I marched with.”

  And when he had said this, inside his head, he looked up at the Briton and nodded. Lydd Guletic raised the sword and brought it down with a sudden slash.

  The hide thongs about the soldier’s wrists fell away. Then the Briton bent again, and now the ankle-trusses were cut through.

  He placed the sword beside him on the red tiles and smiled. “Rise, my friend,” he said. “You will catch your death of cold on these tiles.”

  Drucus Pollio stretched his shoulders and then began to rub his wrists, where the thongs had bitten in. He said evenly, “You were commanded to deal with me, young man. Is this how you obey the orders of your Queen?”

  Lydd held a dish of steaming porridge

  towards him. “I have dealt with you in the way she would have wished, Roman,’ he said. “My Queen admires brave men. She would not want such as you to vanish from the earth, since there are so few of you left among men.”

  He rose then and went to where his cloak and leather pouch lay on the steps. From the pouch he took a calf-skin bag and a yellow bone tally on a knotted cord, such as herdsmen hang about the necks of sheep when they have bought them in the market.

  Turning to Drucus he said, “Here is a bag of coin—enough to buy you three farms. The Queen sends if to you, partly to show that she is sorry to have spoiled your house, and partly to show you that she is more generous in her gifts than

  your fat Emperor and miserly Senate in Rome.”

  Drucus set the bag beside him and went on eating his porridge. Lydd Guletic kneeled and placed the cord about the Roman’s neck, so that the bone tally hung upon his chest. “This is the Queen’s sign,” he said. “No one will harm you while you are wearing it, for all will know that she has chosen you as her friend.”

  Drucus finished off the last spoonful of porridge then rose and stretched his arms and stamped his feet to get the warmth back into them. He said, “I may be a foolish old fellow whose wits have been dried up by too much marching under the sun and sleeping under the moon but, to tell you the truth, I do not understand all this.”

  Lydd looked up from his bowl and smiled. “Few of us ever do, centurion,” he said. “All I can tell you is that the Queen thought again about this matter, after she and her army left your farmstead. Now, if you had told me that you were not the Roman, such lying would not have pleased her. No, in my opinion, if you had lied to me you would not be standing here, talking to me now.”

  The Roman said gently, “You speak with a great deal of confidence, young man. Yet you are sitting with your back towards me and all I have to do is to bend and pick up your sword to put you in a very awkward position. Yes, a most awkward position.”

  Lydd Guletic did not look round. All he said was, “This porridge lacks sweetness. Now, among my tribe we mix the oats with the honey of wild bees before we pour milk upon them. It makes a great difference. You should try it, centurion.”

  Drucus bent over and patted him on the shoulder, smiling. “For such a young man,” he said, “you are foil of good advice.”

  Lydd nodded and then wiped his lips. “I have still more advice for you,” he said. “Soon everything will be changed here in Britain. There will be no Legions, no tax-gatherers—no centurions even. All that you have known will disappear. Be ready for this change, old friend; go somewhere else to build your new farm —to some place which the Romans have not mauled with their roads and walls and villas and fortresses. Go among the Demetae, the gentle people of the West. There you will be safe and the good folk will respect you as a hard-working farmer.’

  But Drucus stood by the door now, looking across his fields and the woodland into the sun. He said, “I do not think so, friend. I do not wish to leave this place, where I built the first walls with my own hands and I know every tree. No, thank your Queen—but I shall stay here now. I am too old a dog to change my ways.’

  Lydd pushed his sword back into its sheath, then flung his heavy cloak over his left shoulder. He said, “You must please yourself, centurion. That is your right as a man. But I know what I would do if I stood in your shoes.’

  Then he went up the three stone steps and stood for a moment sniffing the clean air of morning. The sunlight caught his tawny hair and made him look like a young Lion.

  For an instant Drucus almost wept to

  see him standing there in the golden light, as though there was nothing in the wide world that could hurt him and humble him and destroy him. This was how his own nephew had stood, smiling up at the sun, before he fell under the ballistas outside the walls of Apulum in Dacia.

  Bitterly now the Roman wished he had such a son. For one mad moment he almost ran after Lydd and put his arms about him. Then that moment passed and the centurion’s face became a parade-ground mask again. A soldier’s life was all meeting, and then parting.

  “Go with the god, young man,” he said. “And may the luck of Mithras always ride on your sword-point.”

  The young man halted then and turned round smiling. “It seems to me,” he said, “that yo
u have more need of luck than I, centurion. You, an old man living in a wilderness, with no sword to guard you. Here, take my sword, the Queen will see to it that I am given another. With this at your side, a man like you will never lack a friend.”

  Drucus would have loved to accept such a gift from this young man; but he hardened his face and answered, “I cannot take another man’s sword, Lydd. The only weapons such as I may bear must be given by my Emperor.”

  He held his hands tight-clasped behind his back as he said this, in case they betrayed him by reaching out. Lydd laughed again, then said, “As you wish, old man. But never forget that I made the offer.”

  Then he swung round and walked away, vaulting the balustrade and striding down through the Corn as though it was of no account. Drucus watched him for a long while, seeing him throw the sword into the sunlit air and then catch it again and

  again. The sound of his merry whistling came back on the morning breeze, almost until the youth was out of sight beyond the swaying beech-woods.

  And when he had gone, Drucus punched his fist against the hard lintel of the door time or two, then went off to see how he should set about building his stables once more.

  5. New Roof

  Late that afternoon the runaway slaves came back, very sheepish and not daring to look Drucus in the eye. He did not reproach them for deserting him, for it was no part of a slave’s duty to defend his master. Fighting was the task of freemen and trained soldiers.

  All that Drucus said was, “There is much work to be done here now. We must cut roof-timbers from the woods, fetch reeds from the stream-bed, and haul stones from the quarry. There will be no time for singing and games until we have a safe house about us again.”