On the fourth day of their journey the tall tribesman in a coat of wolf-skins climbed into the wagon and cut their leg-thongs. He smiled as he did this, his blue-streaked face twisting savagely. When they looked up at him he said, “Out! Walk like the others. Why should you ride?”
Cynwas said, “The queen, where is she? We have not seen her for days.”
The man raised his eyebrows. “Are you so glad to see her?” he asked. “You should be happy not to see her. She has gone riding among other tribes to raise them. When she comes back she will have you dropped from a tree on to pointed stakes set in the ground. I tell you this so that you will look forward to her return.”
Then he jumped from the black wagon and went up the line laughing to other wagons with his bronze knife.
Cynwas said, “He is not jesting. He speaks the truth. It is one of their customs.”
For a mile they did not speak again, but stumbled on along the dusty road among the tribesmen, being jostled and prodded with lance points. Sometimes women and even children pushed up to them and struck them across the face with sticks or thong-whips. But it was all done light-heartedly and with laughter, as though the Iceni now bore them little ill-will. Once a party of young girls brought garlands of white flowers and set them on the heads of the prisoners, singing as they did so. Now the two Romans had lost all their armour and, like Cynwas, shuffled barefooted, dressed only in their ragged shirts.
And once an old woman with a clay pot in her hand reached out and daubed their faces with blue dye as she passed them. Marcus said, “I think they have elected us to their tribe. In this war-paint and wearing this garland, I almost feel like one of them.”
Cynwas said in a hoarse voice, “They put garlands on the necks of their cattle and daub them with paint, before they sacrifice them, Tribune. They think that the gods will only accept those who go happily to their death.”
Tigidius snorted and flung off his garland then; but a warrior ran forward and put it back on the centurion’s head roughly, then thumped him hard in the back with a spear-shaft. Tigidius said, “Well, that is one lesson I have learned. They are a civil folk, these Iceni.”
By midday they passed through a burned out village where the reed huts still smouldered. Cattle lay dead in the compound, their hooves stuck up in the air, swarms of black flies buzzing over them. Near to the roadside was a small house built of stone, but now so toppled and blackened by fire that it was hard to believe a Roman had built it. In the small courtyard three folk lay stretched out—a woman and a small boy with yellow hair, and a few paces from them a dark-haired man still wearing a legionary’s breastplate. Between them lay a smashed keg from which oysters were scattered across the tiles.
Marcus said, “It must have come on them quickly. That is the one consolation.”
Tigidius looked beyond that stark little place and whispered in camp Latin, “At least they had a little time together, the Roman and his British wife. They are beyond our pity now. Think to the future. Look, four hundred paces down the road there is a stretch of woodland that comes right to the road-edge. If we broke away from this column, we might get among the trees and be away, with luck.”
Cynwas heard him and said, “There would be others waiting for us, when the wood ended. And these Iceni can run like stags. We should die within half a mile.”
Marcus frowned. “At least we should know the worst then,” he said. “That would be better than waiting for the other thing we have been promised.”
But Cynwas shook his head. “If I go with you, I shall never find my sister,” he whispered. “At least, if I stay with them I might see her again before I die. I might be able to beg mercy for her. I cannot go with you.”
Marcus looked back up the long road. It was black with folk for as far as the eye could see. The dust that rose from their shuffling feet threw up a haze, and above that haze black birds flew squawking, following the great column. He thought that half Britain must be on the move. It came to him that if, by some jest of the gods, he could get away from this sickening army, he might even be given the luck to press on to Londinium and warn the garrison there. It was a small chance but suddenly he knew that it was his duty to take it. He thought sadly that this was what his father would have done; so he leaned sideways and took the hand of Cynwas and gripped it hard. “Stay, brother,” he said. “This is your place. May Mithras smile down on you and the little sister.”
Then, singing and laughing like the tribesmen about him, he began to push towards the side of the road, slapping shoulders and jostling like anybody else. The warriors slapped in return but did not stop him from edging away. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Tigidius was beside him, shouting out and joking in very poor Celtic. The centurion had never learned more than a few words of the language, but he bawled them out as though he was on the parade ground at Lindum again, training auxiliaries.
Marcus half-turned once and said in a low voice, “Don’t try to do too much, old one. A little is enough with a voice like yours. We do not want them to notice us too much.”
But the tribesmen did not seem to be thinking of their prisoners now. They were singing a strange song in a deep droning tone, about a god who was shut inside an oak tree and called out to be fed with blue-eyed children. The Iceni were a dark-eyed folk in the main and Marcus shuddered to hear this old enmity coming out. He wondered what colour Aranrhod’s eyes were. He had forgotten in all the things that had happened since he last saw the little girl. Then, by some queer shift of the mind he suddenly pictured his own sister, Livia, with her funny light-coloured eyes, and her little baby-girl, Drusilla. Had Drusilla got blue eyes, he wondered?
Then Tigidius tapped him on the arm and said quite stiffly, “Watch out, sir. The wood is coming up. We should get ready to go, within five paces.”
Marcus felt his heart leap up. He felt the old twitching of his fingers and toes. The tribesmen were all in a lost dream with their savage song. On the slope towards the left of the road a score of Icenian boys had run out, swinging bone bull-roarers that buzzed like gigantic bees in time to the song. Before them pranced an old man wearing a stag’s mask, the stiff face grinning, the long antlers nodding, the teeth all yellow, sticking out from the drawn-back leather. Marcus noticed, almost without any disgust, that the old man swung two heads by their brown hair, knocking them together to keep time to the dance.
Then he saw the first of the trees coming beside him and said, “Now!”
He plunged to his right, sensed that the centurion was with him, felt that he had knocked a man down, then a woman, and with the coarse grasses up to his waist, he was free.
He felt a slight thud on his left shoulder but kept running. Dimly behind him he heard Tigidius shout, “Pull it out, you fool. Pull it out.”
He did not look round, but felt with his right hand towards his shoulder and grasped the arrow. It had not gone in far, but it was quite sharp as the barbed flinthead came clear again.
He called out, “That wouldn’t have knocked a hare down, friend. We can still teach them something, old lad!”
Then he began to feel rather sick, but his heart was galloping like a front-line courser now and his legs wouldn’t stop. He saw trees slanting to left and right of him. As though they were being thrown at him. He wondered who was throwing them, and laughed. He was very hungry, he suddenly remembered. He thought that a runner must need good food to keep running.
In a way he wished his father could see him now, running among the oaks with half Britain howling for his blood.
Then all at once he heard a great silence. He heard that the Iceni were not howling at all. Even the bull-roarers had stopped. And at the same time he was aware that the thudding footsteps of Tigidius had stopped also. Marcus wondered if he had died from the arrow. He had listened to many old soldiers, from Germany and Palestine, who had described what it was like to die. Not that they had died; naturally, but they had seen many of their friends in that state and had told how men seemed to go off. Some of them went very quietly, as though they were leaving the feast-board after a good meal; others were still in the middle of their howling when they grew still and let their heads bump on the earth.
Marcus ran through a low thorn-bush just then and the thorns hurt him far more than the arrow did, so he knew that he was alive. Indeed, he almost stopped to rub his shins.
But he didn’t stop then. He went on another ten paces before he stopped. And when he did, there was no doubt about it, he had to stop. No one, not even Hercules, could have gone on.
And a voice that he knew almost better than any voice was calling out to him, “How pretty you look, Tribune, in that white garland. Yes, how comely. They did not tell me you Romans wore such things. And that blue war-paint. What war are you going to, my friend, in such a hurry?”