CHAPTER 16

Between one night and the next, the blackthorn flowered.

White blossom scattered the landscape, sporadic as old snow in the brown melt of spring. Heather lay dormant, bracken not yet unfurled; the mountains of the west were barriers of mud and towering rock, left by a capricious child-god to keep the legions from Mona and all who took refuge there.

That was the easy way to see it, the way that did not feed into crippling nightmares and waking visions that were decimating the troops as effectively as had the zealots of the Republic, leaving one in ten men as useless as if they were dead.

In truth, more than one in ten was incapacitated. Quintus Valerius Corvus, prefect of the Fifth Gaulish cavalry wing, sat at his desk in the relative calm of his tent and listened to the wind hiss through the guy lines wishing he could hear in it words of comfort that would erase the detailed personnel listenings being read to him by Ursus, the decurion of the second troop.

“…and Flavius has the runs so badly he can barely get up from the latrines to drink water before he has to sit back down and let it flood straight out again from the other end. Sabinius says it’s all in their minds; there’s nothing wrong with the food or the water or the weather, they’re just shit scared of the dreamers and what they do to men they capture alive. Sabinius is fine.”

“He would be. He’s lived in Britannia long enough to know the dreamers do nothing we don’t do. And they’ve never yet crucified anyone, or even attempted to.”

Corvus spun a knife end-on between his hands. The tip scored a small reddening dent in his left index finger. A falcon’s head in hollow bronze made the hilt. It rolled cool and smooth against his palm, a talisman against the jagged ache of the wind.

“What matters is how many are fit to fight. Out of five hundred men, we have at most three hundred and forty who could sit on a horse and at least thirty of those would be more of a danger to themselves than to the enemy in combat. It isn’t enough.”

“It’s enough if all we’re going to do is sit here and watch the heather come into bloom on the mountainside while the governor counts his stocks of javelins and tries to tell the Batavians that their great-great-grandfathers once swam the Rhine in full armour so they’ll have no problems at all with the straits.”

Ursus jutted his chin, aiming for defiance and falling, as ever, halfway short. The scabs of old flea bites showed in a crop where his helmet strap rested. He needed to shave, but then almost all of the men needed to shave and the only ones without fleas were those already dead. Ursus was simply more solidly earthen than the rest of his peers, less taken with the pretensions of office. On most days, that was a good thing.

Corvus sighed and placed his knife edgeways onto the writing tablet on which he had made his notes, then placed his stylus as a wedge beneath to stop it rolling off the table. Nothing here was on the flat except the governor’s tent. One of the few advantages of rank was that his table was at least level enough to balance a half-full beaker on without slopping wine into the mud.

Ursus was still waiting for him, doing his best to appear at ease. Mildly, Corvus said, “That’s treason. I should have you flogged in front of the entire wing and you know it. Just because you’ve escaped the nightmares of the dreamers, there’s no need to bring on a dose of those unique to Rome. What do you imagine—”

“It is the dreamers, then? You believe Sabinius that they’re making it all happen?”

“Of course it is. I can feel them doing it. The only question is what else they have waiting for us when we begin to advance. Don’t stare like that, man, it’s unhealthy. Think; if you’re dreaming peacefully of the olive groves you remember from childhood and suddenly the trees begin to walk and the bark shows human faces and they all speak with one voice of the doom that awaits the moment you wake up, and this happens four nights without a break, then you can be fairly sure it’s coming from the outside. The trick is to learn to make friends with the speaking trees. Which is what we should have done with the dreamers and we wouldn’t have half of our men out of action. Come on, we should be with the governor. Don’t ask him when we’re going to attack; he won’t thank you for it.”

Corvus held open the tent flap. Outside, rain had begun to fall, turning almost to sleet. He reached his cloak from the bench and pulled it tight round his shoulders. Beside him, Ursus pulled on a balding, poorly cured wolfskin, bought for a silver coin ten years before from a Dacian trader. The thing stank and earned him no friends, but it had been his luck-charm for three years until a good day’s battle had persuaded him that it was not necessary. The fact that he had unearthed it now did not bode well.

They walked together through mud and driving rain towards the governor’s three-roomed pavilion. Halfway there, when they were as far from all tents as possible and least likely to be overheard, Corvus said, “Is Flavius still sore about what happened with the procurator?”

To his credit, Ursus did not break stride. He sucked a breath in through tight teeth, shaking his head. “I don’t know why any of us tries to keep a secret from you. Yes, ‘sore’ would be a small measure of what Flavius is feeling. And if he thought I’d told you, he’d see to it that I got a blade in the back at the next dusk skirmish when no-one could prove it wasn’t the enemy. And if he thought I hadn’t told you, but you’d guessed, he’d have you crucified for being a soothsayer, if he could find a way to make it happen. I don’t plan to give him a chance to knife me. I suggest you don’t give him an opening to talk to the governor about you.”

“He hasn’t looked me in the eye or spoken a civil word since we rode out of the Eceni compound,” Corvus said. “Before that, he was as unctuous as any man who thinks he can gain promotion by making himself indispensable. If I’m a soothsayer for noticing that, then we have an army of magicians and most of them are holding rank. Just at the moment, I think that would be rather useful. Sadly, it’s not true. Shall we go in and see how many braziers the governor has lit for our comfort, and if his hounds are taking the heat from all of them?”

Seven braziers warmed the outermost of the governor’s three tent-rooms, eating the air so that it was hard to breathe. A dozen tallow torches stood about, blazing thick, indulgent light.

Eighty officers of varying ranks from the governor himself, through the legates, the senior and junior tribunes of two legions, the prefects of four cavalry wings and their subordinate centurions, decurions and aides, stepped diligently around a pair of smooth-pelted slate-blue running hounds, which lay stretched across the floor where the heat was best and the rushes driest.

A native youth with, for those who could read such things, the clan marks of the Atrebates, longest loyal to Rome, on his forearms, sat on his own couch by the wall. Even those who knew nothing of the tribes and their affiliations were struck by his looks. Word had passed that the hound-boy and his two beasts were a gift from grateful tribal leaders to their governor, known the world over for his love of hare coursing. Paulinus’ other loves, clearly, had become known among the tribes, if not yet to his wife.

A map moulded of mud and stone ruled the centre of the tent’s floor, taking up a quarter of the remaining standing room. Laid out inside pale oak borders in the likeness of the mountains and the sea, fragments of heather stood for forests, moss for turf, while a gravel of broken pottery made the straits across to Mona, with white chalk grit marking the sweep and curl of currents that were known to have killed.

The island itself was a single unbroken rock, chiselled flat and marked with scratches at the inlets along the coast. The whole edifice had dried long since in the heat of the room; the mud had cracked and stones that made mountains no longer stood vertical. The smell of moss and earth was less than it had been, which was unfortunate; there had been a time when it had fought a winning battle against the strains of sweat and wine and old diarrhoea reeking from the officers who gathered, and the unique stench of Ursus’ Dacian wolfskin.

The mountains were currently the focus of attention. A huddle of small tents lovingly constructed of scrap hide and stick had been recently placed in position on the lower slopes of the tallest mountain. The emblems of two legions and four wings of cavalry were laid out in rows together with counters marking the numbers of men.

Corvus and Ursus were last to enter. The governor’s secretary was a balding, broken-nosed former legionary who had lost his right leg in battle and learned to write when he could no longer ride. He looked up at the draught from the tent flaps. “How many?” he asked.

Corvus said, “Three hundred and forty who can ride. Three hundred of them whom I would trust to be effective.”

“Officers?”

“All of them are fit to serve barring one standard-bearer and I could probably get him to move.”

“Really?” The word fell into the space and caused quiet. It came from a lone man on the far side of the mountain map. Suetonius Paulinus, by Nero’s pleasure fifth governor of the emperor’s province of Britannia, was so purely Roman that he could trace ancestors in the senate back to the time when there was no senate. Accordingly, he was a small man, neat and freshly barbered and fastidious in his cleanliness. His hair was oak-dark, peppered with a flinty grey at the temples and thinning a little on top. His eyes were brown and newly bloodshot and his nose complained of the cold winters and damp of Britannia.

He sat on a carved oak chair draped with scarlet and wore his parade breastplate in a tent where the air was thick as soup with men’s breath and men’s wind and the muggy heat of the braziers. Without rising, he raised a finger to Corvus, who stepped forward.

“Every other wing has at least half of its officers unfit to ride. The men say, although not in my hearing, that the ghosts of the dead are feasting on the souls of those who have been in the land longest, and those are always the centurions and decurions, the standard-bearers and the masters of horse. You don’t believe it?”

“Your excellency, I don’t. I’ve been in this province longer than anyone else in this army. If what they say were true, I would be languishing in my tent with my bowels running out of my backside. Which evidently I’m not.” Corvus smiled, neutrally. “I am, as ever, ready to serve where I may best be of use.”

“Evidently.”

The governor’s gaze passed in succession from Corvus to his secretary, to both of his senior legates and one of the juniors, to the Atrebatan hound-boy and, lovingly, to the hounds, and back to his secretary, who nodded. The man made a small addition to the mountain map on the floor; a small model of a horse was transferred from the site of the governor’s gathering camp to the shores of the straits.

“I wish an advance party to seal off the landing grounds of the ferry; according to local spies and to three of the enemy questioned recently, the ferries from the god-cursed island only land in one of two places and both are close by. I wish you to go there and make secure the jetties at both sites: no-one is to reach the island, or leave it, without my express permission. When you have done that, report back to me and I will send you the men and the means to make the barges that will take us across. The Batavians will come to you soon after, to watch the water and see how the horses may be swum across; we cannot risk them in the small-craft we will build for the legionaries. We will join you soon after that, when the barges are built and the legions are back up to strength.”

“Did we want to be doing this?”

Ursus asked it, sitting on horseback at Corvus’ left hand. Ahead of them, the savage sea swirled between the shore on which they stood and the mist-hung one, not so far distant, that marked the only part they could see of the gods’ island of Mona. At the feet of their mounts, two jetties were manned by armed auxiliaries who already cursed the cold and the salt sea wind and the cries of the gulls that became, all too easily, the howling wails of the dead.

“Flavius is going to hate you as much for leaving him behind as anything else,” said Ursus, because he had got no answer.

“Flavius hates what he cannot own. It doesn’t necessarily stop him being a good officer, only makes it unwise to trust him with anything important.”

Corvus’ face was already reamed white with cold and blown salt. His mare was shuddering under him, having been ridden too hard and then made to stand still too long with the sweat still wet on its hide. It was bay and long-legged and had been the gift of the Eceni child the procurator had been going to crucify at the steading before Corvus had halted the proceedings with a lie. These things made sense to Ursus only in retrospect and then only vaguely.

Corvus turned his mount away from the sea and the island beyond, careful of the rocks beneath its feet. Ursus stayed where he was, watching the waves break grey on the black rock, studying barnacles and shreds of seaweed, because both calmed his mind.

He did not hear the horse stop, only felt a hand on his shoulder. His flesh jumped, and his soul with it and he heard Corvus’ calm, quiet, heart-breaking voice say, “I do know what it feels like, for both you and him. I can’t change the way of the world, or offer more than I am able; all I can do is promise honesty and my best efforts to keep us all alive. For what it’s worth, I don’t despise either of you. But I trust you, which is more than I do him.”

The hand left his shoulder. Ursus’ flesh ached. Dryly, Corvus said, “Don’t stay at the sea’s edge long if you want a quiet night; the dreamers know we’re here. The closer we are, the easier it is for them to taste the fears we harbour.”

The bay mare walked on over rock to shingle and then to turf. Ursus stayed longer than cold or sanity said that he should. When he left, the patterns of the sea breaking on the rocks were no different from when he arrived, but he felt calmer than he had, and more at peace with his own world.

When he finally turned his own mount and walked it back to the noise and false bravado of the shore camp, it was to find that Flavius had risen from his sickbed in the tent beneath the mountains and ridden alone along poorly guarded paths to reach the men who had left him behind.

Ursus and he greeted each other as a decurion and his standard-bearer might be expected to do, but a balance had shifted between them, and both of them felt it. Ursus grinned and found that he went on grinning through a day of cold and sleet and vague shifting shadows that rose out of the sea and left men white and shaking. Adding to the miracle, he slept that night without nightmares for the first time since reaching the west. Flavius came late to the tent and was drunk.

Sometime in the following dawn, lying awake, listening to the unstable sleep of all those around him, Ursus came to realize how far he had gone towards making of his standard-bearer a lifelong enemy and how hard it would be to claw some sense of safety back. He should have been afraid. Staring at the roof hides of his tent, watching the certain place where the drips grew fat before they fell to join the puddle on the ground, he found that he would rather have the known enmity of Flavius than the unknown terrors of the dreamers and that if he put all his attention on the one, he could forget the other, and thus fall back into a quiet sleep.