Читать книгу The Great Captains - Henry Treece - Страница 8

Table of Contents

At length the two silent men came to the marshland that lay some miles away from the coast. Here, despite the sun’s warmth, which beat down on their shoulders as they went, the countryside was brooding and melancholy. Mile after mile of uneven tussocky grass lay before them, half shrouded in a thin mist, the moisture which the sun’s heat had drawn up from the damp ground as the day wore on. It was an open loveless land, and quite deceptively cruel. It might have seemed an easy matter to set one’s course across it towards the thickly wooded slopes of the hills that fringed the horizon, yet no man with eyes in his head would attempt such a movement. No man, that is, with sense enough to observe the whitened bones of sheep and cattle that strewed the place, the rotting tree-stumps and the half-submerged farmcart that heeled forlornly over, grown round with weeds and the creeping emerald-green lichens.

Medrodus stopped and scratched his chin. The marsh ooze was already up to his ankles.

“Let me take the sword, Count of Britain,” he said. “It would be less for you to carry.”

Ambrosius stopped suddenly and shook his head, reaching down to clasp the weapon more securely. “No, my son,” he said, as gently as he could to offset this tell-tale movement. “It must stay by my side until the destined moment, the ritual day. Then you, or some other, shall carry it as long as there is faith left in you; but not till then. We must obey the law, made by a greater one than ourselves, that the Count of Britain shall have held no other weapon before this. He must come as a virgin comes to the couch of her lord.”

The young man shrugged as though the whole affair were valueless. He turned to the more urgent matter.

“Which way shall we take, Master? If we go further we shall sink into the slime.”

As Ambrosius wondered, trying to remember what the military maps had said about this area, Medrodus’ quick eye caught a movement from behind a high clump of alder-bushes, and almost immediately afterwards a man appeared, a cowherd, driving before him three miserable-looking creatures whose bones came near to breaking through their dung-caked hides. The man was deep in thought, or perhaps so weak that he could not raise his head without a great effort. He moved with the listless dragging steps of a fugitive from a long and arduous battle, his hands dangling at his sides, his chin almost on his breast. From time to time, as the cattle stopped to graze at some small clump of herbage less poisonous than the rest, the man still staggered on, bumping into the beasts and then standing still, staring on the ground, until they moved on again.

Medrodus cupped his mouth with his hands and called, “Greetings, friend! Is there a path through the marsh?”

His voice seemed to echo unnaturally in the still air. The cowherd looked up in terror, then he turned and shambled away, his rags flapping about him, the way he had come. The three beasts stopped, looking up disinterestedly, and then began to graze where they stood. Medrodus flew into a sudden anger and cursed the man for a fool. He looked about him for stones or flints with which he might maim the cattle as a punishment to the idiot.

Ambrosius sensed his anger and said, “You must be patient. These country folk are afraid of all strangers. They would not wish to meet an enemy in a place like this.”

The young man grumbled, saying that if these were the country folk it was his destiny to protect, it seemed a waste of time and life. But Ambrosius spoke to him with patience and with gravity, telling him that Rome recognised no inequalities of status.

“That man is a citizen, as much as you or I,” he said. “At least, he would be so, if there were anyone in Rome now to recognise him.”

Medrodus snorted a little too loudly this time and the old man’s face took on a severe expression.

“This sword will only be carried by the humble, my friend. Have no doubts about that,” he said quietly.

Medrodus sensed that the old man was waiting for a reply, and he held back his anger and was silent. Ambrosius heard that silence and understood it. He knew that he was in the power of this hot-blooded young man. He was too blind to make his way alone across this treacherous country now. He smiled a little and said, “Medrodus, your father gave you to me for training. I had faith then that I could mould you in my own fashion, to become a Roman.”

Medrodus flushed. “I am a Roman, Ambrosius; as much as any man in Britain. My people were citizens. My great-grandfather came from Rome herself—when she was greater than she is today.”

The old man smiled drily and said, “The mixture has been warmed up with a dash or two of Scythian, I suspect. But we can let that pass. There are few of us left now who can lay claim to pure Roman blood. That is the price we pay for throwing open the doors of the Empire.”

Medrodus laughed in his secret heart at the old man’s pride. This old leader looked on himself as the last of the Romans left in Britain; one invested with the power that Julius had taken to himself, or that had been given to stuttering Claudius by the drunken Palace Guard, the legionaries who had found a puppet for themselves, they thought. Yet it was Claudius who at last had conquered Britain....

Ambrosius was clucking, as he did when he was angry with his blindness. He was rubbing his horny knuckles into his eyes, milky with cataracts. “If I had my sight,” he said, “we should not be in this torment. Yet there is something here which rings a chord in my memory.” He stood facing the west and stretched out his left hand. “I recall that there is a broad river in that direction, the Abus. That way would lead us south, if ever we could cross that river again. I think my comitatus took the last ferry boat when we came across three nights ago. Yet what lies south but the brute and ravaged Civil Zone? There is no life there, no trade, no civilisation. The villas are laid waste, the farms are deserted, the towns are peopled only by Saxons and those that love the Saxons. No, there is nothing in the south but treachery and blood. Nothing but our enemies.”

Medrodus nodded. “What is there in the north that is better?” he asked. “What has the old Military Zone to offer? What answer did we get, when we wrote asking them to join with us? They sent back a crow’s skull and a broken knife! Yet there, once, the greatest of the Legions set up their standards in Eburacum.”

Ambrosius nodded gravely and said, “There was more to that message than you knew, Medrodus. By bone and iron, we, the comitatus and myself, knew that the men of Eburacum could spare no man for any venture and that the enemy camped under their very walls. They could not get out to us, nor we in to them. There are five ship’s companies of sea-wolves there, under the walls of Eburacum.”

Medrodus frowned. “Why was the message hidden from me?” he said. “Why should all others know the meaning of bone and iron, and leave me in darkness?”

The old man patted him on the shoulder. “You are still young, Medrodus. Most of the others were nearly twice your age.”

“Yes, and now they have sailed away and left you, despite their age and experience. What use is their knowledge to them now, Ambrosius?” he said.

Ambrosius turned on him then with such an expression of anger that Medrodus almost struck him down and snatched away the sword, feeling that he could not stand much more of this treatment. Yet he controlled himself, for there was something repugnant about striking the Count of Britain, one appointed so many years ago to take the place of the Roman Emperor in this faraway province. Wherever Ambrosius went, men knew him and respected him, even the chieftains and reguli. His position was inviolate. Without being a king, without possessing any territories of his own, he was powerful above all kinglets, was entitled to call on the men and coffers of them all, in the name of Rome.

It was even whispered in many places that this Ambrosius had sent for Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, many years before, and had commanded him to investigate the misconduct of the British Church. Such was his power that even the men of God must obey his orders.... But such rumours spread in the steps of all great captains, especially in Britain now, when darkness had descended over the island again and no man knew truly what was in another’s mind.

As Medrodus looked into the staring grey eyes of the Count, a chill crept into his heart. These were the eyes that had outstared Hengist in the middle of a drunken feast, and had sent the sea-rover muttering out into the darkness, his boasts forgotten. These eyes had caused the confused Vortigern to offer a hundred men, secretly, to harass the Saxon by night—even though, at that time, he was negotiating with them by day. Looking into those eyes, Medrodus understood something of the old man’s power. If they affected one now, when they were helpless and almost blind, how much more must they have put men to fear when the sight shone from them like the glaring rays of the sun!

Medrodus looked away in embarrassment. If he had to kill the old man, it must be when he was not looking, he decided. His mind slid away from the idea of killing Ambrosius, however, unless it became absolutely necessary. It would be almost like killing a god. It would be a crime that always followed him and lay with him in bed at night. Every man he met would ask, “Where is Ambrosius? Where did he die? Where is he buried? Why did you not take better care of him; you were his chosen follower, weren’t you? You were his official son, his disciple, his heir, weren’t you?”

It would be too dangerous to kill Ambrosius, thought Medrodus, unless it became necessary to join with the Saxons later. Then it would be some sort of credential, to have killed the last of the Romans. Medrodus smiled at this new thought. He turned and saw that the old man’s eyes were still on him, but this time he did not drop his head. Instead, he faced the leader and nodded, and smiled back at him, almost into his face.

Then Medrodus moved away, singing a camp song that he knew the old man disliked. It was a rough ballad which told how the King of Babylon came home one night to find his favourite wife making love to the Captain of the Guard. The chorus described the angry king’s revenge on them both. It was the sort of bawdy ditty which was common among the soldiers of Rome, and which had spread from the Legions among the population, with the help of the camp-followers and entertainers who gained their subsistence from the cohorts.

Medrodus paused. “Why don’t you join in the chorus, Master?” he said tauntingly. “It would help your steps along.”

Ambrosius snorted but did not reply. Medrodus smiled at the old man’s narrow-mindedness.

“Caesar would have joined in,” said the young man. “Yes, even Claudius, and no man could have accused him of being a libertine.”

Ambrosius said, “Who are you to say what the great ones would have done? Does the mouse enjoy the confidences of the eagle?”

“No,” muttered Medrodus, “but this mouse does not worry about that. He is at least alive, and even the greatest of the eagles is now only a bundle of rotting feathers!”