The Silver Branch Page 6

  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.’

  Justin stepped forward, his hands clenched at his sides.

  ‘That is a foul lie,’ he said, for once without a trace of his stutter. ‘And you know it, Allectus; none better.’

  ‘Will you grant me also a space to speak?’ Carausius said quietly, and silence fell like a blight on the lamplit chamber. He looked round at all three of them, taking his time.

  ‘I remember my doubts, Allectus. I remember also that the dawn-light can be uncertain, and that there are in Rutupiae more tall, fair-haired men than one.—They will all be questioned in due course.—I believe that this has been an honest mistake.’ He turned his attention to the two young men. ‘However, I, Carausius, do not tolerate such mistakes, and I have no further use for the men who make them. Tomorrow you will receive fresh postings; and it may be that life on the Wall will keep you better occupied and save your over-active fancies from leading you into such mistakes again.’ He picked up the scroll that he had been studying when they first entered. ‘You may go now. I have no more to say.’

  For one instant neither of the two made any move. Then Flavius drew himself rigidly to attention, and saluted. ‘It is as Caesar commands,’ he said, and opened the door and walked stiffly out.

  Justin followed him, carefully closing the door at his back. On the far side of it, he heard Allectus’s voice beginning, ‘Caesar is too lenient—’ and the rest was lost.

  ‘Come to my sleeping-cell,’ Flavius demanded, as they crossed the parade-ground under the great pharos.

  ‘I will come by and by,’ Justin said dully. ‘There are men needing me in the hospital. I must see to them first.’

  Tomorrow they would be no affair of his, those men; but tonight he was the surgeon on duty, and it was not until he had made his round of the men in his care, that he went to join Flavius.

  Flavius was sitting on the edge of his cot, staring straight before him; his red hair ruffled like the feathers of a bird with the wind behind it, his face, in the light of the wall lamp overhead, drawn and white and angry. He looked up as Justin entered, and jerked his head towards the clothes-chest.

  Justin sat down, his arms across his knees, and for a while they looked at each other in silence. Then Flavius said, ‘Well, so that is that.’

  Justin nodded, and the silence settled again.

  And again it was Flavius who broke it. ‘I’d have staked all I possess that the Emperor would have given us a fair hearing,’ he said moodily.

  ‘I suppose coming out of a clear sky, it would be hard to believe that someone you trusted could betray you,’ Justin said.

  ‘Not for Carausius,’ Flavius returned with certainty. ‘He is not the blindly trusting kind.’

  Justin said, ‘If the Sea Witch puts in again to pick up that Saxon, maybe our galleys will get her, and the truth will come out that way.’

  The other shook his head. ‘Allectus will find means to warn her not to come.’ He stretched, with an angry and miserable laugh. ‘Well, no good to yelp about it. He did not believe us, and that’s all there is to it. We did our best, and there’s nothing more that we can do;—and if one day, in some stinking little Auxiliary outpost of the Wall, we hear that Allectus has led a Saxon invasion and made himself Emperor, I hope we both find that very comforting.’ He got up, stretching still. ‘The Emperor’s done with us. We’re broke, my lad, broke, and to no purpose. Get off that clothes-chest. I want to start packing.’

  The sleeping-cell was looking as though it had been hit by a whirlwind, when a while later the tramp of feet came up the stair, and there was a rap on the door.

  Justin, who was nearest, opened it, to find one of the Commandant’s messengers standing there. ‘For the Centurion Aquila,’ said the man; and then, recognizing Justin, ‘For you also, sir, if you will take it here.’

  A few moments later he had disappeared into the night, and Flavius and Justin turned to look at each other, each with a sealed tablet in his hand.

  ‘So he could not even wait for tomorrow to give us our marching orders,’ Flavius said bitterly, snapping the crimson thread under the seal.

  Justin broke the thread of his own, and opened out the two leaves of the tablet, hastily scanning the few lines of writing scored on the wax inside. A half-made exclamation from his cousin made him look up in inquiry. Flavius read out slowly, ‘To proceed at once to Magnis on the Wall, to take over command of the Eighth Cohort of the Second Augustan Legion.’

  ‘We are to be posted together, then,’ Justin said. ‘I am to report as Surgeon to the same Cohort.’

  ‘The Eighth,’ Flavius said, and sat down on his cot. ‘I don’t understand—I simply don’t understand.’

  Justin knew what he meant. It scarcely seemed a likely moment to be getting promotion; and yet it was promotion for both of them. Nothing spectacular, just the step up that should have come to them before long, in the normal way of things, but promotion, all the same.

  Outside in the tawny half-light that was all Rutupiae ever knew of darkness, the trumpets sounded for the second watch of the night. Justin gave up the attempt to understand. ‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ he said. ‘We must needs make an early start in the morning.’ In the doorway he turned. ‘C-could it be that Carausius knows he was there, that he was there by his orders, for some purpose best not brought into the daylight?’

  Flavius shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t account for the Saxon’s death.’

  They were silent a moment, looking at each other. The terrible little Emperor would most certainly not allow one man’s life—and he an enemy—to stand between him and his plans, but just as surely, he would have found another way, not poison. Justin would have staked his own life on that without hesitation.

  ‘Maybe he is using Allectus for his own ends, without Allectus knowing,’ he suggested. That would still leave the poisoning where he was convinced that it belonged, at Allectus’s door.

  ‘I simply—don’t know,’ Flavius said: and then suddenly explosive: ‘I don’t know and I don’t care! Go to bed.’

  VI

  EVICATOS OF THE SPEAR

  ‘YOU have come to the world’s end,’ said Centurion Posides. The three of them were in the Commander’s quarters of Magnis on the Wall, where Flavius had just taken over from the man who would now be his Number Two. ‘I hope you like it.’

  ‘I don’t very much,’ Flavius said frankly. ‘But that is beside the point. I also don’t like the way the garrison bears itself on parade, Centurion Posides, and that is very much to the point.’

  Centurion Posides shrugged; he was a big man with a little, crumpled, bitter face. ‘You’ll see no better anywhere else along the Wall. What can you expect from a mob of Auxiliaries, the sweepings of every breed and colour in the Empire?’

  ‘The Eighth happens to be a legionary Cohort,’ Flavius said.

  ‘Aye, and here come you straight from your fine new fortress at Rutupiae, under the Emperor’s eye, and think all legionary Cohorts are the same,’ said Centurion Posides. ‘Well, there was a time
when I thought the like. You’ll mend your ideas in time.’

  ‘Either that, or the garrison of Magnis will mend its ideas,’ Flavius said, standing with his feet apart and his hands behind his back. ‘I rather think that it will be the garrison, Centurion Posides.’

  But at first it seemed that he was mistaken in that. Everything that could be wrong with Magnis, was wrong with Magnis. Fort and garrison alike were dirty and unkempt, the bath-house smelt, the cooks were stealing the rations and selling them outside the walls. Even the catapults and skeins of the battery covering the North Gate were in ill repair.

  ‘How often do you have catapult practice?’ Flavius demanded when he came to the battery on his first inspection.

  ‘Oh, not for a good while past,’ said Posides carelessly.

  ‘So I should judge. If you loosed off Number Three she’d fly to pieces, by the look of her.’

  Posides grinned. ‘So long as they look all right to the little painted devils. We don’t need to use them these days, with the Emperor’s fine treaty holding the Picts down.’

  ‘That is no reason why we should not be able to use them if need arises,’ Flavius said sharply. ‘Look at this thing! The wood is rotten here, and the collar eaten up with rust.—Have Number Three taken down to the workshop for major repairs, Centurion, and let me know when the job is finished.’

  ‘The work could be carried out just as well up here, without dismounting the thing.’

  ‘And have every native hunter who passes Magnis see to what a shameful state our armament has fallen?’ Flavius snapped. ‘No, Centurion, we’ll have her down to the repair shop.’

  Number Three Catapult went down to the repair shop, the bath-house was scrubbed, and the fear of the gods put into the thieving cooks; and after the first three days the men no longer slouched on parade with their tunics dirty and their belts undone. But it was all no more than an unwilling gloss of saluting and heel-clicking under which the spirit of Magnis was not changed at all, and the new Commander said wearily to his Cohort Surgeon at the end of the first week, ‘I can make them stand up straight on parade, but that alone won’t make them into a decent Cohort. If only I could reach them. There must be a way but I can’t find it.’

  Oddly enough, it was Number Three Catapult that was to find the way for him, a few days later.

  Justin saw the whole thing happen. He was clearing up after morning Sick Parade when he heard a creaking and trundling outside, and strolling to the door of the little hospital block, saw that they were bringing the catapult back from the repair shop. From where he stood, he could see the battery by the North Gate, and he lingered a few moments, watching the great weapon being urged that way, trundling and lurching along on its rollers with its sweating team of legionaries hauling in front and pushing behind. He saw Flavius appear from the doorway of the Praetorium and walk forward to join the group about it, as it reached the foot of the temporary ramp that led up to the shoulder-high battery platform; saw the thing lurch like a ship in a gale as it began to climb. Its straining team were all around it, hauling, pushing, handling the rollers from either side. He heard the hollow rumble of it on the ramp, the orders of the Centurion in charge, ‘Heave!—heave!—Once more—he-eave!’

  It was almost at the top when something happened; he never saw quite what, but he heard the creak of slipping timbers and a warning cry. There was a swift movement among the men, an order shouted by the Centurion, and a slithering clatter as one of the ramp-timbers went down. For a split moment of time the whole scene seemed frozen; and then, amid a splurge of shouting, the great catapult heeled over and side-slipped with a splintering crash, bringing down the rest of the ramp with it.

  Justin saw men scattering outward, and heard a sharp, agonized cry. He called back to his orderly behind him, and in the same instant was running toward the scene of the crash. The great engine lay like a dead locust on its side among the fallen ramp-timbers, partly on the ground and partly supported by the stone kerb of the battery platform. The dust of the crash still hung on the air, but already men were heaving at the wreckage beneath which one of their comrades lay trapped; and as Justin, thrusting through the rest, slithered in under the splintered framework to the man’s side, he found someone before him, crouching braced under the weight of the beam which had come down across the legionary’s leg, and saw without really looking that it was Flavius with the crest ripped from his helmet and blood trickling from a cut over one eye.

  The injured man—it was Manlius, one of the hardest cases in all Magnis—was quite conscious, and the young surgeon heard him gasp, ‘It’s my leg, sir, I can’t move—I—’

  ‘Don’t try,’ Flavius said, breathing quickly; and there was an odd gentleness in his tone that Justin had never heard before. ‘Hold still, old lad; we’ll have you clear of this before you can sneeze … Ah, here you are, Justin.’

  Justin was already busy with the injured legionary, as hands appeared out of nowhere to help Flavius with the great beam. He called over his shoulder, ‘Can you get this lot shifted away? I don’t want to drag him out if I can help it.’

  He was scarcely aware of the clatter of beams being dragged aside, and his own voice saying, ‘Easy now, easy; you’re all right,’ and the straining, cursing moments as the framework of the great catapult was urged up and over, and toppled sideways away from them; until Flavius straightened, cherishing a bruised shoulder, and demanded, ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  And looking up from the work of his hands, he realized with surprise that it was all over, and the legionaries who had been straining at the wreckage were now standing round looking on, while his orderly knelt beside him steadying the injured man’s leg. ‘Yes, I think so, but he’s got a bad break and he’s bleeding like a pig, so the sooner we get him into the hospital and deal with it properly, the better.’

  Flavius nodded, and remained squatting beside the man as he lay silent and sweating, until they were ready to move him, then helped to shift him on to the stretcher, and gripped his shoulder for a moment with a quick ‘Good luck’, before he turned away, wiping the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, to see how bad was the damage to the catapult.

  Number Three Catapult was almost past repair. But by evening word of what had happened had gone round the fort and along the Watch-towers and Mile Castles on either side, and the odd thing was that the new Commander of Magnis had very little more trouble with his garrison.

  The weeks passed, and on an evening well into the spring, Justin was packing up after his day’s work, when one of his orderlies appeared in the doorway with the news that a native hunter had come in with a wolf-bite to be dealt with.

  ‘All right, I’ll come,’ Justin said, abandoning his hope of getting a bath before dinner. ‘Where have you put him?’

  ‘He’s out in the parade-ground, sir; he wouldn’t come any further,’ said the orderly, with a grin.

  Justin nodded. By this time he was growing used to the ways of the Painted People, for it was not the first time that wolf-bitten hunters had come up to the fort, wary and distrustful as wild animals, yet demanding that the Cohort Surgeon should make them well. He went out into the evening light, and there, leaning against the sun-washed wall, found a man naked save for a wolf-skin belted about his hips, and with a shoulder swathed in stained and bloody rags; a man much taller than was usual with his kind, with a mane of hair as thick and proudly tawny as a lion’s, and eyes in his head like a pretty girl’s. ‘You are the Healer with a Knife?’ he said, with the simple and direct dignity of wild places. ‘I come to you that you may heal my shoulder.’

  ‘Come you into the Healing-Place, and show it to me,’ said Justin.

  The man looked up at the low range of the hospital block beside him. ‘I like not the smell of this place, but I will come, because you bid me,’ he said, and followed Justin through the doorway, In the surgery, Justin made him sit down on a bench under the window, and began to undo the filthy rags about his arm and shoulder
. When the last of them came away, he saw that the man had been only lightly mauled in the first place, but that with neglect the wounds had become sick, and now his whole shoulder was in a bad way.

  ‘This was not done an hour ago,’ Justin said.

  The man looked up, ‘Na, half a moon since.’

  ‘Why did you not come here when the harm was new?’

  ‘Nay, I would not come for so small a matter as a wolf-bite; but the wolf was old and his teeth bad, and the bite does not heal.’

  ‘That is a true word,’ Justin said.

  He brought fresh linen and salves, and a flask of the native barley spirit that burned like fire in an open wound. ‘Now I am going to hurt you,’ he said.

  ‘I am ready.’

  ‘Hold still, then; your arm like that—so.’ He cleansed the wounds with searching thoroughness, while the hunter sat like a stone under his ruthless surgery; then salved them and bound the man’s shoulder with strips of linen. ‘That is done for today. Only for today, mind; you must come back tomorrow—every day for many days.’

  In the doorway of the hospital block they parted. ‘Come back at the same hour tomorrow, friend,’ Justin said, and watched him go with the long, light step of the hunter across the parade-ground toward the gate, and scarcely expected to see him again. So often they did not come back.

  But next evening at the same hour the man was once again leaning against the wall of the hospital block. And every day after that he appeared, sat like a stone to have his wounds dressed, and then disappeared until the same time next day.

  On the seventh evening Justin had started to change the dressing as usual, when a shadow darkened the door and Flavius appeared on his way to look in, as he often did, on the legionary Manlius, who was still cot-bound with his broken leg. He looked in passing at the two under the window, and then checked, with his eyes on the man’s shoulder, drawing in his breath in a hiss.

  ‘It was looking worse than this a few days since,’ Justin said.