When he woke up, the ship was rocking Cadmus slowly from side to side, like a mother with her child. Water was still dribbling through the seams between the old and new timbers, the crew were endlessly bailing, but it remained afloat. Just.
Tog was standing next to him, shaking his shoulder.
‘Cadmus! Wake up! Come and see!’
She didn’t wait for him, but ran back up the steps into the daylight. He rolled off his bench and followed her up on to the deck.
The sail was in tatters overhead, and the boat was strewn with debris. It was a floating shipwreck. Tog was leaning over the rail around the ship. Her mass of blonde hair blew crazily around her ears, and the waves threw spray into her closed eyes.
In front of them were miles of colossal white cliffs, topped with green so vivid it made Cadmus’s eyes hurt. The weather had cleared, and the sky was not one he had seen before. Tufts and whorls of cloud broke and merged and broke again, giving glimpses of pale blue beyond. The spring sun came and went, and the cliffs shimmered in its cold light, higher than any he had seen in Italy or Greece.
‘Britannia,’ he said.
She turned and gave a wide smile.
‘I know these cliffs,’ she said. ‘My grandfather conquered some of these lands. If we continue around this headland we’ll enter the mouth of the river, and that’ll take us into Catuvellauni territory. I know where to go from there.’
The Argo drifted towards the beaches, its crew staring open-mouthed at this new and strange land. As the cliffs rose and fell and crumbled in places, they were given tantalizing glimpses of the mysterious world beyond, lush and green and swollen with rainfall. Then, as suddenly as it had been revealed, the clouds massed ranks and the sun began to sink and the island was lost in shadow.
‘What’s he doing?’ said Tog, pointing to the front of the ship. The priest, Thestor, wasn’t looking at the land but into the air high above him.
‘He’s reading the skies,’ Cadmus explained. ‘Looking for omens in the flight of birds.’
Just as he said this a pair of white gulls flew west of the mast, and Thestor gave a shout. He went and spoke to Thoas at the helm, and Thoas bellowed his orders.
‘To the oars, men!’
The heroidai went noisily below decks and the oars appeared from the sides of the Argo like the legs of a spider. As they swept the sea, Thoas pulled hard on the new steering paddle, and the ship began to crawl slowly in the opposite direction. Tog frowned and ran to the back, followed by Cadmus and Orthus.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘We have drifted too far to the east. But Apollo has shown us the way. The fleece lies to the west and the north.’
‘But my home is east.’
Thoas just looked at her with disinterest and strained on the tiller again.
‘We are not here to take you home.’
‘Then I’m going,’ said Tog defiantly.
‘If you wish,’ said Thoas. ‘I will not stop you. We have no need of you.’
‘Is that so? Well, good luck talking to the druids without me. Good luck with the local tribes. Good luck finding your way through the forests and the marshes.’ She brought herself closer to him. ‘You are far from home,’ she said, in a voice that made Cadmus’s hairs stand on end. ‘Your gods hold no power here.’
Thoas ignored her and set his eyes on the horizon. Tog turned to Cadmus.
‘Are you coming?’ she said.
‘Coming?’
‘If you really want to find your special blanket, you need to be with me, not them.’
‘But . . . how . . .’
‘Don’t listen to her, boy.You are surrounded by the blood of the heroes. We are the only ones who can rightfully claim the Golden Fleece. Stay with us and you will be honoured to the heavens.’
Tog already had a foot on the balustrade of the ship. Cadmus looked around. The few heroidai who weren’t rowing were watching the scene unfold.
‘I can’t . . .’ he began.
Tog looked a little disappointed, but no less determined. He watched her tucking her mouse into the inside of her tunic.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I understand.’
Before Cadmus could say another word, she dived from the side of the boat into the white water churned by the oars.
Cadmus watched her blonde head disappear beneath the waves and reappear, darker, in the ship’s wake. The cliffs were perhaps two hundred feet away. He had no doubt she could make the distance easily.
He needed more time to think. Always thinking, never just doing. Same old Cadmus.
‘We are better without her,’ said Thoas. ‘Athena has guided your decision well.’
Cadmus looked at Tog, paddling to shore so steadily she looked almost lazy. She seemed to draw him with her on an invisible thread. No more thinking, then.
‘Sorry,’ he said to Thoas. ‘I’m going to take my chances with her.’ Then he turned to Orthus. ‘I hope you’re a better swimmer than me.’
He went to the edge of the boat, held his nose, and jumped.
A calm, yellow light. The ground cold, gritty, but not uncomfortable after so long sitting and sleeping on a wooden bench. A fine rain, like a mist, tickling the skin.
Cadmus propped himself up on one elbow, took a deep breath, choked, gagged, and was violently sick on the sand. He collapsed again into the shallow pool of water beneath him, which was slightly warm from the heat of his body.
He took a few more tentative breaths, keeping his eyes tightly shut. There was a tang of salt and seaweed that made his nose sting.
He sat up again. His head spun for a moment, and then stopped. He opened his eyes.
‘You might not be able to swim,’ said a voice, ‘but at least you float.’
Tog cast a long shadow over him. He shielded his eyes against the low sun and saw her standing a little to one side, a bedraggled-looking Orthus at her feet. Cadmus coughed again and spat a mouthful of seawater on to the sand.
‘What happened?’
‘I wish you’d said you were coming. I had to swim back and fish you out.’
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘No. You made the right choice.’
The top of her hair twitched, and her mouse peered out of a thick blonde nest.
‘He made it!’ Cadmus exclaimed.
Tog nodded. ‘He got a bit wet,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to dry him out.’
He looked out to sea. ‘Where’s the Argo?’
‘Gone.’
That made Cadmus feel strangely tense. If the heroidai found the fleece first, it wouldn’t matter. Keeping it out of Nero’s hands was the important thing . . .
Only it did matter. After all he had been through, he thought that he deserved to find it first. He wanted to see it, to hold it, to know the truth of it. Not just wanted to. Needed to.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I know where we are. If we can get ourselves some horses we can be at my village tomorrow.’
Cadmus wondered where Tullus was at this exact moment. They had been at sea for thirty-five days, unless he had miscounted – which was, in fact, highly likely. But for all their misfortune, they had been faster than he had predicted. If Tullus’s group had suffered any setbacks of their own, there was a good chance Cadmus and Tog were ahead of them. For the heroidai, sailing around the west of Britannia would be hard work, especially given the state of the Argo.
He had already come further than he ever expected. Britannia was beneath his feet. He had a guide. He might just make it, with Tog’s help. The glimmer of hope was a new and unusual feeling.
At the top of the cliffs the air was fresher and greener. Tog set off across the grass towards some thick woodland, looking taller and more upright than ever now she was in her own territory. Cadmus still felt weak and nauseous from his time at sea, but she never let up the pace. She reached the woods and disappeared into the sodden darkness, but Cadmus and Orthus loitered for a moment on the edges, peering among the dripping branches.
‘What’s wrong?’ Tog called back to him. ‘They’re just trees.’
But they weren’t just trees. These were larger and older than any Cadmus had ever seen, their cracked and moss-covered bark knotted into faces that seemed to watch them as they passed. Things moved in the undergrowth and the canopy that he had no names for. He could well understand why the first Romans to land here believed Britannia was an island of monsters.
They walked on, taking deep lungfuls of peaty air. It couldn’t have been further from the atmosphere of Athens and Corinth, which scoured the throat with dust and heat. Cadmus began to understand what Tog had been talking about, all those weeks ago, when they walked among the tombs of the Via Appia. The woods were alive.
Every now and again Tog would stop, prod the ground, inspect the undergrowth. Sometimes she put a finger to her mouth and tasted the soil. Then she would point and set off in a new direction.
When they emerged from the trees they were faced with a rolling meadow. Perhaps a dozen horses were cropping the long grass.
‘There you are,’ said Tog, apparently to the horses.
She turned to Cadmus. ‘Wait here.’
Even after all her feats of strength and endurance, watching Tog approach and tame one of the horses was a wonder to behold. She selected a shaggy-looking brown mare and followed it at a respectful distance. She spoke to it softly, making several laps of the meadow, stepping gradually closer each time. By the time she was finished, the horse let her place a hand on its long nose, and she effortlessly leapt up on to its back.
She trotted back to Cadmus and extended a hand.
‘Is it . . . safe?’ he said.
‘She’s not wild. Some tribes let their horses go when they get old. But she’s got good spirit. She’ll see us through.’
Tog pulled Cadmus up and sat him behind her. He held on to her waist, his mouth and nose full of the smell of her hair and her sweat. He was nervous in a way he couldn’t explain. Pleasantly nervous.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘North,’ she said. ‘Londinion.’