The Silver Branch [book II] Read online

  Justin, still feeling very sick, but with the breath beginning to come back into him, crossed to the Saxon’s sword where it had fallen among the roots of a gorsebush. He picked it up and turned again to the other two. The Saxon had ceased to struggle, and lay glaring at his captor.

  ‘Why do you set on me?’ he demanded at last, speaking in Latin, but with a thick and guttural accent that made it almost unintelligible. ‘I do no harm—I am from the Rhenus Fleet.’

  ‘And you with the gear and weapons of a Saxon pirate on you,’ Flavius said softly. ‘Go tell that tale to the seamews.’

  The man was silent a moment, then he said with sullen pride, ‘Sa; I will tell it to the seamews. What do you want with me?’

  ‘What passed between you and the man you met back yonder by the ruined fisher-huts?’

  ‘That is a thing between the man and me.’

  Justin said quickly, ‘It doesn’t m-matter much for now. Whatever his orders or his message are, he won’t be passing them on, and someone else can get the truth out of him later. Our job is to get him up to the fortress.’

  Flavius nodded, his eyes never leaving the Saxon’s face. ‘Yes, you are in the right of it. The main thing is to get him back; otherwise it is but our word against Allectus’s.’ He lifted his knee from the man’s chest. ‘Up, you.’

  Rather more than an hour later, they stood before the Commandant in his office, their captive between them, his eyes darting and sliding from side to side in search of a way of escape.

  Mutius Urbanus, Commandant of Rutupiae, was a thin, stooping man with a long, grey face a little like a tired old horse’s; but his eyes were shrewdly alert as he leaned back in his chair surveying the three before him. ‘So, one of the Sea Wolves,’ he was saying. ‘How did you come by him?’

  ‘We were out on the marshes by the old fisher-huts, sir,’ Flavius said, ‘lying up among the reeds for the duck, and we saw a meeting between this man and—a man of our own. After they parted we gave chase to this one, and—here he is.’

  The Commandant nodded. ‘And this man of our own. Who was he?’

  There was a silence, and then Flavius said deliberately, ‘We did not know him, sir.’

  ‘How then did you know him for a man of our own?’

  Flavius never blinked an eyelid. ‘He was in uniform, sir.’

  ‘Centurion Aquila,’ said the Commandant, ‘I am not sure that I believe you.’

  ‘I am sorry, sir.’ Flavius looked him straight in the eye, and pressed on to the next thing. ‘Sir, I believe the Emperor is expected this evening? Will you apply for us—Justin and myself—to have speech with him as soon as may be after his arrival, and meanwhile have this man bestowed in the Guard-house to await his coming?’

  Urbanus raised his brows. ‘I scarcely think that this is such a matter as need go to Caesar.’

  Flavius came a step nearer and set a hand on the littered table, desperate urgency in both face and voice. ‘But it is, sir. I swear to you that it is. If it doesn’t go to Caesar, and that quickly, and without anyone else meddling with it first, the gods alone know what the consequences may be!’

  ‘So?’ The Commandant’s gaze turned on Justin. ‘And you also are of that opinion?’

  ‘I also,’ said Justin.

  ‘And you do not know who the other man was. More than ever I am not sure that I believe you, Centurion Aquila.’ The Commandant tapped his nose gently with the butt end of his stylus, a trick of his when thoughtful. Then he said abruptly, ‘So let it be; you shall have your speech with the Emperor. But your reason for this mystery, whatever it may be, had better be a good one, for if it is not, and you make me look a fool, the gods may have mercy on you, but I’ll have none.’ He raised his voice to the Optio of the Guard standing at the door. ‘Optio, take this man down to the cells. You two had best go and see him safely under lock and key. After that I suggest that you change into uniform. I will send for you when you may speak with the Emperor.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. At once, sir.’ Flavius drew himself up and saluted, followed by Justin; and behind the two Legionaries of the Guard who had appeared to take their places on either side of the captive, marched out from the Commandant’s office, across the Praetorium Courtyard into the parade-ground of the fort. They were just crossing the Via Principia when they met a party of horsemen clattering up it from the main gate and the Londinium road; and drawing aside to give them the crown of the way, Justin saw that the tall man in civilian dress riding in their midst was Allectus.

  He glanced down at them as he passed, and his glance lighted on the face of the Saxon captive—and seemed to hang there an instant before it moved on; and to Justin it seemed that his face stiffened for that instant into a mere smiling mask. But he gave no sign, and rode by without a second glance; and the little party moved forward again, hobnailed sandals ringing on the cobbles, down between the workshops where the armourers were busy, and so to the Guard-house by the gate.

  ‘It is a most hideous piece of ill fortune that Allectus saw him,’ Flavius said, as they recrossed the parade ground toward their quarters. ‘I suppose he has come on ahead of Carausius—leastwise it’s meant to look like that.’

  ‘He can’t know for sure that we saw him with the Saxon,’ Justin said. ‘We might have come on the man afterward. And anyway, there can be little enough that he can do about it without b-betraying himself still more completely.’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t think of anything; but then—I’m not Allectus.’ And Justin saw that his kinsman was very white in the thin March sunlight.

  In the pressure of work that waited for him in the hospital that day, Justin had little more leisure to think about Allectus, even when he heard in the distance the clatter of hooves and the sound of trumpets that heralded the Emperor’s arrival. He was measuring a draught for one of his patients when at last the Commandant’s summons reached him, and he finished the task with great care and exactness before he went clattering down the stone stairway after the messenger, hastily making sure that nothing was amiss with his uniform tunic and the clasp of his belt was dead centre.

  Outside he met Flavius hurrying to answer the same summons and they went on together.

  The two young tribunes on duty in the Anteroom of the Emperor’s quarters looked at them with interest. Clearly the story of their having brought in a Saxon captive that morning had gone the rounds. And one of them rose and disappeared into the inner chamber, returning in a few moments to stand aside, leaving the door open. ‘Go in now, the Emperor will see you.’

  Carausius had done no more than lay aside crested helmet and heavy mud-sparked cloak before turning himself to his writing-table, on which various papers awaited his attention. He was standing beside it now, an open scroll in his hands; he looked up as they entered. ‘Ah, you two again. The Commandant tells me that you would speak to me on a matter of urgency. Surely it must be a matter of very great urgency that even at this late hour it cannot wait for the morning.’

  ‘Caesar, it is a matter of very great urgency,’ Flavius said, saluting, as the door closed behind them. His gaze went past the Emperor to the tall figure lounging in the farther shadows. ‘Caesar, we would have speech with you alone.’

  ‘If the matter be indeed as urgent as you appear to think it, speak and have done,’ Carausius said. ‘You can scarcely expect that I shall dismiss the chief among my ministers like a dog to his kennel at your behest.’

  Justin, standing at Flavius’s shoulder, felt him stiffen, felt the resolve take shape and harden in him. ‘Be it as you say, Caesar; I will speak and have done. This morning we two were lying up in the reeds by the old fisher-huts, waiting for the duck. There we saw—though we could make out little of what passed—a meeting between one of the Sea Wolves and a certain man of our own camp.’

  Carausius let the scroll he was holding roll back on itself with a snapping sound. ‘That much I have already gathered from the Commandant Urbanus,’ he said. ‘What was the little that you ma
de out to pass between them?’

  ‘Nothing to much purpose. The Saxon seemed to protest at the other man’s lateness, and the other said, “I know it is dangerous after daylight. I would have come earlier if I could, for my own skin’s sake. I run the chief risk; you have but to lie hid until the Sea Witch puts in for you.” That is as near as I can remember it. And then he said, “Now this is what I have to say to your Lords who sent you,” and after that they turned away together and we could hear no more.’

  ‘And this—certain man of our own camp. You told the Commandant that you did not know who he was. Was that the truth?’

  The split moment of silence seemed to tingle. Then Flavius said, ‘No, Caesar, it was not.’

  ‘Who was he, then?’

  ‘The chief among your ministers, Allectus,’ Flavius said.

  His words seemed to fall into the stillness like a pebble in a pool, and Justin had a vivid awareness of them spreading out and out like ripples across the waiting silence, until they burst and shattered as Allectus sprang up from the couch on which he had been lounging, with an exclamation between rage and sheer amazement.

  ‘Roma Dea! If this be a jest—’

  ‘It is no jest,’ Flavius flung back at him. ‘I give you my word of that.’

  And then Carausius’s voice came like a naked blade between them. ‘Let me be clear about this thing. With what, exactly, do you charge my chief minister Allectus?’

  ‘With holding secret converse with the Sea Wolves, who are our enemies,’ Flavius said.

  ‘So, that is clear at all events.’ Carausius turned a bleak stare upon Justin. ‘You make the same charge?’

  With his mouth uncomfortably dry, Justin said, ‘I saw what Flavius my kinsman saw. I make the same charge.’

  ‘And what defence has Allectus my chief minister to set against that?’

  Allectus seemed to have got over his first astonishment and to be now merely angry. ‘The thing is so—so outrageous that I scarce know what to say. Am I to seriously defend myself from such a preposterous charge?’

  Carausius gave a mirthless bark of laughter. ‘I scarcely think so.’

  Flavius took an impulsive step forward. ‘Caesar, the matter does not rest on our word alone. The Saxon is held captive in the Guard-house at this moment; let him be brought face to face with Allectus, and assuredly the truth may be laid bare!’

  ‘So—it seems that you have plotted this thing with remarkable care!’ Allectus exclaimed; but Carausius’s voice drowned the sentence.

  ‘Centurion Aquila, will you open the door behind you and summon me a tribune?’

  Flavius did as he was bid, and a moment later the tribune stood saluting on the threshold. ‘Excellency?’

  ‘I wish the prisoner in—’ Carausius turned to Flavius, who replied to the unspoken question, ‘Number five cell.’

  ‘Ah, the prisoner in number five cell brought here immediately, Tribune Vipsanius.’

  Tribune Vipsanius saluted again, and withdrew. They heard his clipped footsteps through the Anteroom, and voice as he issued an order outside.

  In the Emperor’s quarters an utter silence settled; a silence that was complete and oppressive, as though they were inside a giant gong. Justin, standing with Flavius near the door, was staring straight before him, seemingly at nothing. Yet he was aware of all kinds of details that he remembered afterwards. The perfect shadow of Carausius’s great helmet—every eagle-feather of the crest sharply distinct—thrown on the lamplit wall; a little muscle twitching in the angle of Flavius’s set jaw; the colour of the evening sky beyond the window, peacock blue, filmed with a kind of murky gold-dust haze by the great pharos beacon. And then a sound grew in the stillness, a small insistent rapping and drumming; and turning his eyes in the direction from which it came, he saw that Allectus, still standing by the couch from which he had risen, had begun to beat a tattoo with long, strong fingers on the wooden couch-head beside him. His face, pale as always in the lamplight, showed nothing but the set mouth and frowning brows of anger with difficulty held in check. Justin wondered what was going on behind the pale, angry mask; was it the fear and fury of the trapped?—or only a cool brain making or changing plans? The tattoo seemed to grow louder and louder in the stillness, and then it was joined by another sound: the urgent beat of footsteps, half marching, half running. The footsteps of two men, Justin thought, not more.

  A few moments later Tribune Vipsanius again stood in the doorway, and with him the Centurion of the prison guard breathing heavily through his nose.

  ‘Excellency,’ said Tribune Vipsanius, ‘the prisoner in number five cell is dead.’

  V

  NIGHTSHADE!

  JUSTIN had a physical sensation as if he had been jolted in the stomach, and yet in an odd way he knew that he was not surprised. Allectus had ceased his drumming. Carausius set down the scroll on the table, very softly and exactly, and demanded, ‘How comes that about?’

  The Tribune shook his head. ‘I do not know, Caesar; he’s just—dead.’

  ‘Centurion?’

  The Centurion stared straight before him. ‘The prisoner was well enough, though dumb sullen, when his evening food went in to him an hour or so since; and now he’s dead, same as the Tribune said. That’s all I know, Caesar.’

  Carausius stood away from the table. ‘It seems that I must come and see for myself.’ Then to Justin and Flavius, ‘You will accompany me.’

  As the little group turned to the doorway, Allectus stepped forward. ‘Caesar, since this is a matter that concerns me somewhat closely, with your leave I also will accompany you.’

  ‘In Typhon’s name come then,’ Carausius said, and strode out with the rest behind him.

  The Guard-house seemed disturbed and excited. In the first cell a drunken legionary was singing.

  Oh why did I join the Eagles

  The Empire for to roam?

  Oh why did I leave me pumpkin patch

  And me little dun cow at home?

  Their footsteps rang hollow down the flagged passageway. The pale blur of a face appeared at the barred squint of a door, and hastily disappeared again as they went by. The voice of the singer fell more faintly behind them.

  They said I’d rise to Emperor

  As sure as sure could be.

  If I left me little pumpkin patch

  And sailed across the sea.

  The door of the farthest cell was ajar, and a sentry who stood before it moved aside to make way for them. The cell was in darkness save for the reflection of the pharos beacon shining down through the high barred window, and the red square of light striped with the shadows of the bars fell full across the figure of the Saxon lying face down on the floor.

  ‘Bring a light, somebody,’ Carausius said, without raising his voice.

  Justin, the surgeon in him suddenly uppermost, had pushed through the rest, and was already kneeling beside the fallen man as the Centurion brought the Guard-room lantern. There was nothing to be done for the Saxon, and one look at him in the lantern light told Justin all he needed to know. ‘Nightshade,’ he said. ‘He’s been poisoned.’

  ‘How?’ Carausius snapped.

  Justin did not answer at once, but picked up the pottery bowl that lay beside the man and sniffed the few thick drops of broth remaining in it. He tasted gingerly, and then spat. ‘Probably in his supper broth. Quite simply.’

  Away down the passage the singer had begun again, in a tone of deep melancholy.

  So I upped and joined the Eagles,

  And I left me little cow,

  And I may be Emperor one of these days,

  But Mother, just look at me now!

  Justin had a sudden insane desire to laugh—to laugh and laugh until he was sick. But the sight of Flavius’s face steadied him.

  It was Allectus who spoke first. ‘Then it must have been one of the prison guard. No one else could have been sure in which bowl to put the poison.’

  ‘No, sir,’ the Centurion contradicte
d respectfully. ‘That isn’t so, sir. There are only three other men in detention at this moment, and they are all on bread and water for their sins. Easy enough, ’twould be, for anyone to find that out and act according.’

  Flavius cut in—Flavius with very bright eyes in a fierce white face. ‘What matter for the moment how the poison came into the man’s bowl? The thing that matters is why, and the answer to that is plain. Alive, he could tell who it was that he met on the marshes this morning, and what passed between them. Therefore he has died. Caesar, does the proof suffice?’

  ‘It is both chilly and depressing in this place,’ said Carausius. ‘Shall we return to my quarters?’

  And not until they were back in the lamplit office, and the door shut behind them, did he speak again, as though Flavius had but that moment asked his question. ‘The Saxon you caught this morning in the marshes did indeed have dealings with someone in Rutupiae. For that, the proof suffices. No more.’ Then as Flavius made a quick gesture of protest, ‘Nay, hear me out. Had I, or the Camp Commandant or the bath-house sweeper had dealings with this Saxon, we should have had but two courses open to us after he was taken: to contrive his escape, or to kill him before he was questioned. And of the two, the second would be the surer and simpler method.’

  Flavius spoke in a dead-level voice that somehow gave all the more desperate earnestness to his words. ‘Caesar, I beg you to listen to us. We were no more than a spear-throw from our men, it was more than half light, and neither of us is blind. We could not have been mistaken. If indeed the other man was not Allectus, then it must be that for some purpose of our own we deliberately bear false witness against him. Do you accuse us of that?’

  Allectus himself answered first, with the quickness of anger. ‘That is assuredly the most likely explanation of your behaviour. What you yourself have to gain by this I cannot imagine—it may be that your cousin has influenced you in some way—but as for our Junior Surgeon,’ he turned to Carausius, ‘I remember that when first he was posted here, you yourself, Caesar, were not too sure of his good faith. This is surely some plot of Maximian’s, to cast doubt and suspicion between the Emperor of Britain and the man who, however unworthily, serves him to the best of his ability as chief minister.’