The Hadrian Legacy Page 12

  Wickerwork gates creaked open in the stone archway. Guards stood there, more men in mail and helmets carrying spears and oblong shields. Through the open gates Flaminius saw several stone huts. As the riders led them through the archway, their hoof-steps echoed back from the lintel stones.

  They rode out into a cold, windswept open space. Ahead of them stood the stone huts, but a muddy trackway, turned to sludge by many hoofs, snaked up the hillside. This was the way their captors led them.

  ‘We should try to get away,’ Drustica hissed.

  ‘You’re in no fit state to escape,’ Flaminius told her. ‘Besides, I think we’ll find out everything we want to know in this place.’

  As shadows deepened, they rode onwards into the city, into the dark heart of mystery.

  —19—

  They dismounted in a stone walled yard, and were urged along on foot up the hill between walls of drystone.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Drustica asked in an undertone. ‘What will we find out here?’

  Flaminius looked back over his shoulder, his eyes bright with exultation. ‘This must be it,’ he said, ‘the centre of it all. If we can join them…’

  ‘The druids?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. These aren’t any normal robbers. They’re the same kind who ambushed me in Gaul, and on the Via Agricola.’

  ‘They’ve taken us prisoner,’ she objected in a hiss.

  Flaminius was complacent. ‘I think we’ve been recruited, conscripted. How else do they have so many auxiliaries already? This is why those patrols vanished.’

  Drustica wasn’t so certain. ‘How could the druids persuade them to join their cause?’

  ‘I think we’re going to find out soon,’ Flaminius said. ‘What we need to do is to go along with it. Become trusted members of their conspiracy. Find out what they’re planning. As soon as we’re certain, one of us must escape with the information and take it to…’ He paused.

  ‘Even Commissary agents like your centurion have betrayed you,’ she said. ‘The governor himself may be implicated. Who will you notify? The emperor?’

  ‘Ideally Probus,’ he said. ‘But that would take too long, he’s too far away. We need action now. Maybe the procurator would be the one to contact… I don’t know. Depends on what the druids are planning. But as soon as we know what’s happening, we have to make sure that the information gets where it’s most needed…’

  ‘Silence!’ bellowed one of the guards. ‘Get in here, all of you.’ It was the man who had spoken to Flaminius in the mountain pass, the man with the gilded helmet. He indicated a stone walled hut with his lance. Above the lintel stone hung the skull of a sheep or goat.

  ‘What will become of us?’ Drustica asked him. ‘Are you going to rob us?’

  Bellomarus turned to her grinning. ‘Don’t worry about the others, girl,’ he said. She looked at him in surprise. ‘They do what’s right and they’ll find themselves going places. But you—I’ve got a score to settle with you.’

  He led them bent double under the lintel, into a fire-lit room. They sat around a fire in the centre. Acrid smoke drifted upwards through a hole in the reed thatched roof. It wasn’t unlike the hut where Drustica had grown up.

  Flaminius was coughing and spluttering. ‘At least we’re out of the wind,’ Drustica said.

  ‘You’ve made an enemy there,’ he wheezed. ‘Sounds like Bellomarus is in with these people.’

  ‘He’s one of them, remember?’ Drustica said.

  Bellomarus turned and struck her.

  ‘You’re in my world now!’

  Universes exploded in her mind. She heard his words dimly as she sank to her knees, clutching her cheek. Flaminius rushed forwards but Drustica grabbed him with her left hand.

  ‘No!’ she cried. She turned to Bellomarus. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked him, dreading the answer.

  ‘You believed all that out there?’ Bellomarus sneered. ‘You think we just rode into the hills and were ambushed by bagaudae? This was all planned. You’re ours now. And you, bitch, have a lot to answer for.’

  The man in the gilded helmet entered the hut. Drustica could see that he wore a serpent’s egg around his neck on a leather thong.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘Bellomarus, is this the warrior woman you spoke of? Looks like a lad.’

  Bellomarus straightened up. ‘This “lad” caused me a lot of grief along the way,’ he said. ‘Now things are different, I’m evening up our score.’

  ‘You are not,’ said the man. ‘Stand down. You will leave this warrior woman alone. She’s a follower of the old ways like ourselves.’ He gestured to the assembled troopers. ‘Sit, all of you.’

  Drustica squatted down on the packed earth floor, Flaminius next to her. The Roman’s face was calm, but Drustica knew that it must conceal the same excitement she felt. They had entered the city of the druids. All would soon become clear. But would either she or Flaminius live to tell the tale?

  ‘Let me introduce myself,’ said the man. ‘I’m Orgetorix. I will be overseeing your training and initiation into our warband. People like Bellomarus have been here in the past, and they know what you should expect. For the rest of you, it will be like when you joined the Romans. But there’s more. Not only will you learn our military tactics,’—he looked seriously round at them— ‘you will learn secrets known only to the wise.’

  ‘What about people who don’t want to learn?’ Segovesus said. ‘People who didn’t want to be hijacked and led here as prisoners?’

  Orgetorix laughed. ‘Anyone who wants their freedom will do well to listen and learn. That’s the only way out. Join us, and you’ll be free to come and go as you please. Resist—and you’ll never leave alive.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like much of a choice,’ Flaminius commented wryly.

  ‘You’ve had a long hard journey here,’ said Orgetorix. ‘Food will be brought and you can sleep. Tomorrow morning you will begin training. Tomorrow night I will speak with you again.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ Flaminius said.

  Orgetorix departed. In his place came several silent slave women, their eyes downcast, carrying a cauldron that brimmed with stew, mainly oats and peas but including some meat, and large ceramic beakers filled with what proved to be weak beer. After the troopers had eaten and drunk their fill, the slave women returned carrying bracken and heather for them to sleep on. As she shrugged out of her mail coat, Drustica tried to speak to one, but the slave left hastily without replying.

  In the night, Drustica awoke to find furtive, groping paws upon her. Outside the wind howled, reminding her that they were on the top of a high hill. Otherwise all she could hear was a raucous chorus of snores. She lay rigid as the hands crept across her body.

  Was it Flaminius? Long ago he had spurned her, but back then she had been a peregrine, a non-citizen—little better than a barbarian. When the emperor’s people asked her what reward she wanted for her part in rescuing His Imperial Majesty from the assassin’s blade, she had said ‘Citizenship’ with Flaminius in mind.

  But the smell was not that of a Roman citizen, accustomed to frequenting the bathhouse; there was a stink of tallow soap and breath foul with garlic. It was pitch black in the hut, except for the dying embers of the fire, and these did not shed much light.

  She lashed out backhanded and connected with a bony projection that she took to be the man’s nose. The muffled howl from her would-be molester suggested she’d touched on a sensitive area. He blundered off into the darkness, and Drustica heard him stumble—over the bodies of sleeping men she guessed from the noises of complaint.

  She sat up, outraged, her knuckles painful. She’d find her attacker and break his neck for him.

  Something stirred in the bracken beside her and she heard Flaminius’ voice. ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘Go back to dreamland, hero. Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said drowsily. ‘We’d better sleep. Training tomorrow.’ She heard him roll o
ver and within seconds he was snoring again. He’d sounded unusually eager.

  Next morning dawned, with light slanting through the smoke hole in the roof. Dust motes danced in the beams that illuminated the packed earth floor, which was littered with slumbering forms. Propped on one elbow Drustica peered around, recalling a confused dream of being mauled by a wild dog.

  Flaminius’ eyes flicked open, and he grinned. ‘Good morning.’

  ‘What’s good about it?’ she grumbled, and rose.

  Stepping over several men, she bent down and crawled out into the yard. Sunlight flooded down from a blue sky without a hint of cloud, but the air was bitingly cold and she shivered. A smell of mud and sheep dung hung in the air. A wicker gate stood in the drystone wall. An armed guard stood there, glaring at her. She crawled back inside.

  Flaminius was sitting up. When she joined him, his eyes fell on her skinned knuckles.

  ‘Who flattened the optio’s nose for him?’ he asked idly.

  So it had been Bellomarus! She had made an enemy there, just as Flaminius had with Segovesus. They were drawing too much attention to themselves.

  Orgetorix entered and told them to follow him to the training ground. Grumbling, the auxiliaries—or former auxiliaries; they seemed to have joined a different army—shuffled out into the sunlight of the yard.

  Thickets of nettles grew on either side, the ground beneath her feet was muddy. The wickerwork gate stood open now, and two guards watched as Drustica’s force came out into the little cobbled lane beyond the yard, shivering in the wind. The guards fell into line behind them. Bellomarus walked at Orgetorix’s side at the front.

  Flaminius nodded in their direction. ‘Thick as thieves,’ he commented.

  They came out into a steeply sloping field within the second ring of walls. Goats cropping the grass galloped off as the troopers appeared. Also present were several bagaudae, mail clad and helmeted, and a herd of shaggy ponies. Several cloaked and cowled figures stood to one side.

  ‘Druids,’ Flaminius guessed. Somehow it was as if ancient, evil serpents had slithered up from the abyss to confront him.

  ‘But why the cowls?’ Drustica asked. It was impossible to see the men’s faces—if they were men! —since their cowls kept them in shadow.

  ‘The Mithraists covered their faces in the same way,’ Flaminius murmured. ‘That was because they were all important men, and they didn’t want to be recognised.’ He looked at her. ‘I can only assume the same applies here. The Chief said that the druids went underground after their religion was supressed. But he didn’t say what they do as a day job. These men could be anyone.’

  Bellomarus barked at him to stop muttering.

  Pondering Flaminius’ words, Drustica shivered. If these druids needed a disguise they were not Caledonians. For all she knew, they could be Carvettians!

  Orgetorix presided over their training, which lasted most of the day, with occasional breaks when slave women brought them food. The auxiliaries practised charging, fighting—on foot and mounted—and ambush. As far as Drustica could see, they were concentrating on hit and run tactics. Her troopers needed little training in fighting in the open field, but the forces of the empire had no time for such cowardly attacks.

  As the sun set over the waters of the Hibernian Ocean, its last light limning the distant shores of Mona, they were led to a hall over whose entrance hung the skull of a huge stag with magnificent sweeping antlers. Drustica had seen such skulls before, dug out of bogs in Hibernia. Within, however, the walls were lined with niches in which sat a different kind of skull—human. A few of the niches contained freshly severed heads. Some of these looked Roman.

  In these grisly surroundings, they sat beside a roaring fire, plied with horns of mead and cuts of roast boar. Orgetorix, dressed now in a long dark robe, mounted a high seat and urged them to gather round. In his hands, he held a large harp.

  He told them a tale, a story of invasion and betrayal, of heroism and villainy. He told them the saga of the peopling of Britain, but it was not the story of Brutus the Trojan that Drustica had learnt at her father’s knee. It was the tale of Heus the Mighty, he who led the Britons from the summer country to an island inhabited by giants, who seized power and made himself king. Who learnt to speak with a silver tongue from Ogmios, god of eloquence, learnt the secret of power from Taranis, god of the oak, and was taught all the arts and sciences by the goddess Briganta.

  They heard of the circles of existence, of this world and the land of the young; of how the world and the soul was everlasting, although at times life and death, fire, and flood, prevailed. The immortal soul outlived death, dwelling upon islands in the Ocean from which it would be reborn in future times. Death was nothing to fear! They heard also of herbs and their uses, of the mistletoe that grew upon the oak, the stars in the heavens and the beasts of the fields.

  Orgetorix’s fingers ran on across the harp strings and he spoke of ancient times, a golden age before the coming of Rome. Of how the teaching of Heus was heard the world over, until the envy of the Romans stamped it out in Gaul, and it faded to little more than a whisper even in Britain. How it was destined to live again.

  Drustica had never thought much about the Romans and their rule of Britain, she had accepted it as a fact from the cradle. All that mattered to her was that they were her people’s allies against the tribes from the north, the real enemy. It had not occurred to her that they had stolen her country from under her people’s feet.

  ‘What did you think?’ she asked Flaminius as they were marched back to their own enclosure.

  ‘I was trying to place the fellow’s school of rhetoric,’ he said. ‘Rambling, I call it. The philosophy, though, that was easy. Metempsychosis, reincarnation. Pythagoras got there first. Yes, quite a curriculum. And there was the history… Not my subject. But I noticed a few discrepancies with the version you gave me. No Trojans.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said shortly. She hated it when he was pompous. All Romans were pompous. She was a Roman citizen too, of course. But she hadn’t been one long enough to become so pompous. ‘I noticed that.’

  ‘He’s a good rabble rouser, though,’ Flaminius added, nodding at their companions. They were talking angrily amongst themselves, all except for Bellomarus, who looked on smugly.

  ‘I understand how they feel,’ she said. ‘I realise he is trying to turn us against Rome. But… I’m also angry.’

  ‘Yes.’ He didn’t argue with her. ‘If what Orgetorix says is true, Rome has done some terrible things.’

  That night Drustica was plagued by troubling dreams. Antlered figures pursued her across a landscape of primeval forests and hills, and she ran, ran and ran. But what she was running from, she couldn’t say. The horned men? Or herself?

  The dreams seemed never-ending.

  —20—

  City of the Druids, 3 July

  Each day went much the same as the last, training followed by indoctrination from Orgetorix in the evening. It proved to be gruelling, not because of the physical work of weapons practice, which came as second nature to most of them, but due to the teaching that followed.

  After three or four days of the same regime, Drustica found it difficult to quell a burgeoning hatred of the Romans. It was only her own citizenship that kept her in check. She hoped it was the same with Flaminius, but she was concerned about him.

  Each night would begin with stomping of feet on the hard-packed floor, and shouting of hateful slogans. Bellomarus led them, Segovesus and the others joined in with enthusiasm. Drustica did her best to copy them. Flaminius did so with more success, she thought. She felt frightened seeing his face as he shouted his hatred of the Romans. Either he was a consummate actor, or the druidic teaching was affecting him.

  ‘Good news, warriors,’ Orgetorix told them one evening. ‘The Archdruid is sending a representative to us.’

  ‘You’re not the Archdruid?’ Drustica asked.

  Everyone laughed at her naivety. She flushed.

>   ‘I’m nothing so important,’ Orgetorix assured her. ‘We have a rigid hierarchy. Many druids, more important than me, are hidden in positions of importance throughout the province. Even I don’t know where they all are, and I know the identity of but a few. Even when they visit us here, they wear cowled robes so they can’t be recognised. Our leader is the Archdruid. No one knows his name, or where he is. But we receive messages from time to time.’

  He held up a length of wood. ‘This birch twig is carved with a message from the Archdruid,’ he added. ‘It was sent by a messenger not of human origin. When you are initiated, you too will learn how to decode the scratchings that reveal a wealth of information to the elect.’ He brushed his fingertips along its edge. ‘Yes, his envoy will come here to preside over your initiation and that of your comrades elsewhere in the city.’

  So they weren’t the only recruits. Drustica was surprised. She’d got no idea that any troopers or warriors other than the bagaudae were to be found in the city. But the druids had been recruiting for a long time; that was why so many patrols had gone missing. With the Roman forces so heavily concentrated on the Wall, the rest of the province was going to wrack and ruin.

  ‘When will the Archdruid’s envoy get here?’ Flaminius asked.

  ‘Next week, Gaesorix, if the path is not blocked,’ said Orgetorix. ‘She has set out from her dwelling in the south but it will be a long journey.’

  ‘She?’ Drustica echoed.

  ‘Aye, decurion,’ Orgetorix said with a twinkle. ‘You will not be the only woman fighting for us. Not that druids or druidesses fight. They are forbidden from wielding weapons.’

  ‘You wield weapons,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, but I am but a simple bard,’ he said. And he explained the degrees of initiation through which it was possible to progress, from ovate to bard to druid.

  ‘So that’s what we can look forward to?’ Flaminius probed.

  Orgetorix looked surprised. ‘You dream of becoming a druid?’