Cast Not the Day (9 page)

Uncle Balbus was still away in the north, and so heard none of it. Each morning I attended his office, and most afternoons I went walking with Sericus, out across the bridge, to the open smallholdings and plantations to the south and east.

Now that our past lives were lost to us, we both missed the open spaces – the silent paths, and woodlands, and towering skies. Although, in London, I was surrounded by noise and people and activity, yet I perceived for the first time that there is no worse solitude than the company of strangers.

Whatever Sericus felt, he did not speak of it. Since the news of my father’s death he no longer talked of the past; and when we walked together he spoke only of small, seemingly insignificant things – the birds and animals, the farmsteads and hamlets along the way – like a man who treads carefully on the surface of a frozen lake, lest the ice should crack and the chill waters engulf him.

But one day soon after, in the midst of winter, our minds were wrenched from these concerns.

We were making our way back to the city, following a farm track, when up ahead, where the track joined the high road, we saw a crowd gathering – carters, men with mules, foot-travellers.

‘Run ahead and see what it is,’ said Sericus. ‘If there is trouble, we will go by another way.’

I sprinted off. The men had gathered at the crossroads, beside an old shrine. There was a stone watering trough, and leaning beside it a lone soldier, holding forth to the rest. His body and scarlet cloak were mud-spattered; clearly he had travelled far, through bad terrain.

He stooped to splash his face and neck at the trough. A young farm-lad stood beside him, holding his helmet for him while he washed, looking grave and full of moment. I knew the boy by sight – he belonged to the nearby villa – and seeing me he gave a grim nod of acknowledgement.

‘What news?’ I asked, stepping up.

He answered in British, the language of the land.

‘The Saxons is what. They have landed at Richbor-ough. The man here says the fort has fallen.’

Others were pressing round, coming along the path from the hamlet beside the villa. A red-faced man in a farrier’s apron cried, ‘That cannot be! Who ever heard of Saxons coming in winter, or taking fortresses? They are no more than raiders and cattle-thieves.’

‘Believe what you want, friend,’ said the soldier. ‘I know only what I saw, and what I got from the men on the road, retreating from Richborough. I was on my way there myself, for a tour of duty.’ He gave a bleak laugh, adding, ‘No need for that now.’

The farrier laughed, and with a mocking look asked, ‘Did they bring siege-engines in their longboats then?’

‘You think I am here to joke with you? If you want to find out how the fortress was taken, go and ask the men who should have been guarding it – the ones who decided to spend the day fishing in the river instead. Even fortresses fall, when no one is minded to defend them. It seems our men caught a bigger fish than they expected.’

Sericus, who had come up beside me, asked if word had reached the city yet. The soldier said the others of his troop had gone ahead to inform the Council. ‘As for me, I’m going the other way . . . My father has a farm on the Medway, and no one else will think to warn him. Word is that raiders have landed all along the coast, even as far as Dover.’

‘It is no more than hearsay,’ shouted the farrier, who all this time had been grumbling and murmuring at the back. ‘There have been rumours of Saxons all year. This will come to nothing, like all the others.’

The soldier looked at him. ‘You know a lot, for a stay-at-home. Well I hope you’re right, because if you’re not, then there is nothing between the coast and here to stop them.’

Men started to glance around, thinking, no doubt, of their private concerns: their families, their farms, their savings stashed at home under some kitchen pot. Already, across the flat land in the middle distance, where the roads meet at the southern approaches to the bridge, the traffic was building – and it was heading only one way: northwards, to the safety of the city walls.

The crowd began to fragment and scatter.

‘Let us go back,’ I said to Sericus, ‘here, rest your weight on me.’

He had grown less easy on his feet of late.

In the days that followed, a stream of citizens arrived, each carrying what he could in wagons, or on his back. The Saxons had descended on the coast at a time when the seas were normally quiet. Richborough fort had fallen; Dover was cut off, and the raiders were swarming over all the land between, torching farmsteads and putting to the sword, or carrying off into servitude, those too foolish or too slow to flee inland.

Just as the soldier had said, the roads to the coast were unguarded. No one knew how far the barbarians had advanced, or how many there were.

But there was worse to come; and it was my uncle Balbus, returning at last from York, who brought the news. The great northern frontier wall had been breached all along its length, and the fearsome painted Picts had come sweeping south. The troops at the undermanned border forts, seeing themselves about to be surrounded, had lost their nerve and fled. The enemy had been left to plunder at will.

Balbus, abandoning his own slow carriage, had been forced to part with a fortune to secure a swift light gig from a York merchant with an eye to the main chance, who knew a terrified rich man when he saw one. He arrived filthy from the road, to a house that was already like an upturned ant-nest. Lucretia sobbed, and went to the cellar to bury her jewels. Balbus retired to his study, and sat with his head in his hands, staring at the wall. Amid the chaos and panic, only the slaves seemed to retain any composure.

Terror did more damage even than the Saxons. The country-folk flocked to the city, abandoning their homes and crops. A few brave souls stood fast, intent on staying until there was sure news of the enemy’s approach. Of these, some managed to bring in the harvest and turn a good profit on it, if their slaves and farm-hands had not fled to the hills. Nor did we begrudge them what they made, for if they were caught, the Saxons showed no mercy.

They killed, it seemed, for the very joy of killing. They burned what they could have possessed for themselves. It was as if they hated the very idea of civilization.

In London, the Council convened. The magistrates voted to send a fast messenger by the long western route where the barbarians had not yet penetrated, to beg Constans for help. We went about our business out of habit, and because there was nothing else to do. Then, one blustery dawn near midwinter, they arrived.

I had just walked into my uncle’s offices and was talking to Ambitus when shouts of alarm echoed along the street. We broke off and looked at each other, knowing what it meant, then ran out and joined the rush to the walls, and gazed out from the ragstone crenels with all the rest.

The Saxons had penetrated as far as London: never in men’s memories had such a thing happened. They came not as a fearsome army, as I had imagined in my mind’s eye; but as scattered bands of dishevelled men, wandering without order, tall and flaxen-haired under their pillaged Roman helmets, clad in damp half-cured fur, unwashed from the day they were born.

A great silence fell over the city. The gates were closed; the ramparts, though old and crumbled and neglected, would keep the Saxons out. But we were hemmed within, unarmed citizens without an army, like men stranded on an island in the midst of a dangerous sea. We watched smoke pluming from the outlying farmhouses; then, when they were done with that, they burned the fine suburban villas on the south side of the river, which lay beyond the walls.

Next day, one of their black longships appeared on the river. We watched as it put in at the deep-water dock and carried off from the warehouses what they could bear away, setting fire to the rest. The flames were fuelled by oil from the jars they smashed; there must have been a few sacks of spices among them. All that day, wafting over the city with the smoke, came the exotic scent of coriander and roasted cinnamon.

One of the Roman ships, a large merchantman, had not managed to get away, its captain being too fearful to run the Saxon gauntlet to the open sea. Nor could he move upriver to the safer waters of the city dock, where the walls would protect him, for the keel of his vessel was too deep. He stood with the rest of us and watched grim-faced as the barbarians, their sport at the warehouses done, turned their attention to his ship. It was, he said, his own property, a lifetime’s investment. Now he waited to see the first flames lick the rigging.

But no flames came. Then someone, one of his deckhands, cried, ‘Look, she’s casting off!’

We stared out. A band of Saxons had swarmed on deck. They cut the ship’s moorings, and slowly the vessel parted from the quayside, drawn by the tidal current.

The Saxons began jumping about, waving their swords in the air, howling and barking out threats in their uncouth tongue. (There had been a large store of wine in the warehouses.) The captain of the merchantman cried, ‘What fools are they? They are bringing her up to the city. Can they not see there is not the depth?’

At this, a shiver of fear spread along the crowd on the wall. The city was weakest from its river side.

But the Saxons had put out before they had mastered the rigging or the steering oar. As the distance from the quayside grew, the current strengthened. Their wild cries died in their mouths. They ran to the starboard rail, scrambled around, then cast out the lanyard to their friends on the shore.

Yet already they were too far out. The lanyard fell short, dropping limply into the water. Slowly the ship yawed out into midstream, gathering way as it was seized by the full force of the current. For a moment they gaped – at the water, at one another, at their barbarian friends gesturing wildly from the shore. Then one leapt, and in quick succession the others followed, dropping into the swirling water like stones, still clad in their heavy furs and sword belts.

Some made it to the far bank; but most we did not see again. Like many seafarers, Saxons are poor swimmers. And then it was our turn to howl and whoop and cheer.

The Council took charge, distributing food from the municipal granaries, organizing work-gangs to pull down derelict buildings for their bricks, which were used to patch up the neglected city wall.

Word was that an old aristocrat by the name of Quintus Aquinus had been recalled from retirement, and Balbus told me it was owing to this one man that the city continued to function at all, for the rest of the Council, the ruling magistrates and the decurions were, he said, incompetent.

I listened to all this with half an ear, not knowing that this man Aquinus would later bring so many changes to my life. At the time I merely reflected that, although Balbus had no good word for the city government, yet he himself had contrived not to serve; and Lucretia had plotted that Albinus, when he came of age and was made a priest, would not have to serve either – Christian priests being exempt from public service by order of the emperor. Little wonder the government was incompetent, I thought, if all men did as he.

Balbus was not a man who was able to cope with leisure. There was no trade, there were no ships, the market was empty, and the gates were closed. He went from the house to the office, and from the office to the house, like a man trying to escape his own shadow.

Lucretia snapped at him, or squabbled with the servants, or went off to pray; and I, to get away from them both, took to spending my time at the baths and the gymnasium.

On one such day, returning by way of the forum, I saw a crowd gathered on the steps of the basilica, waiting under the columns by the high bronze double-doors of the Council chamber. As I approached someone called my name. It was Ambitus.

‘What news?’ I asked, crossing to him.

‘They’re talking still. They’re going to send another envoy to plead with the emperor.’

‘Another? But what of the first? Did the Saxons get him then?’

‘Oh, he reached the court safe enough,’ he said, giving me a dry look, ‘but Constans told him he could spare no men.’

I stared at him. ‘Then what does the emperor expect us to do?’

‘He says the cities must look to their own defence.’

I cast my eyes over the crowd of frightened citizens – urban poor, merchants, artisans, bureaucrats – and shook my head. These people were no match for the blind, unreasoning violence that the Saxons brought.

We were standing beside one of the great columns. A man near us who had overheard – an old country farmer in a homespun smock – cried, ‘Then why are we bled white for taxes, if the emperor will not protect us?’

There were shouts of agreement, and he went on, ‘Better to keep our money and raise an army of our own, one that the emperor can’t call away whenever it suits him. That’s what I say.’

‘And who’s going to fight in your army, old man?’ cried a youth dressed in the drab garment of a minor official. ‘Will you?’

‘Go on and laugh!’ the farmer shouted back, waving his stick. ‘I lost everything – my house, my slaves, and all my livestock. You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face when you go hungry.’

At this, everyone began arguing.

‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Ambitus.

We descended the steps, and drew away across the great rectangular open space of the forum, with its surrounding colonnade of shops and offices. In the street we paused at a wine-stall. Ambitus ordered two cups of watered wine.