The Germanicus Mosaic

Chapter Nineteen

I have no access to water-clocks or hour-candles, but it was nothing like the second hour, if I am any judge. It was still early morning. I was sitting back on my folding stool in tunic and bare feet, luxuriating in a homely breakfast of boiled oats which Junio had prepared for me (we have a fire, and I can never come to love the Roman habit of buying everything ready cooked from the street stalls), but I had barely had time to take my first lingering mouthful before a messenger arrived from Marcus. His excellence had decided to send an envoy to Lucius straight away, and invited me to present myself at his apartments as soon as possible.

‘As soon as possible’ in this context meant immediately, of course, if not sooner. I abandoned my breakfast, wound myself into toga and sandal straps and followed the messenger back into the town and down the streets towards the forum, where we found Marcus’ official envoy waiting for us.

He was a patrician-looking youth with a supercilious expression, and though he was dressed as befitted a messenger, he was clearly a very important person, not least in his own estimation. He wore an immaculate, fine woollen tunic with embroidered borders, soft red leather sandals and a wonderful scarlet cloak fixed with a huge golden brooch. He looked at my dilapidated toga with disdain. Better an exclusive servant, his glance said, than an impoverished citizen like me. He strode ahead, leading the way, and giving off a faint aroma of expensive oils.

The carriage was waiting at the West Gate. Not a gig, this time, but a closed imperial carriage, with gilded doors and leather-cushioned bench seats. It was an imposing sight. Marcus was clearly intending to create a stir. He would never normally have sent mere messengers in this. Yet there was obvious method in it. If a man in expensive livery arrives in an imperial carriage to make you an offer for a house, you are unlikely to wait for a better offer — and in any case refusal is likely to prove dangerous to your health. Especially if you are already a member of a questionable religion.

Secretly I had no complaint. I remembered Andretha saying that Lucius lived ‘a long way off’. A closed carriage offered considerably more comfort than a gig, especially since the wind was cold.

There was more than wind to endure, as it happened. It began to rain, heavily at first and then settling into a damp, dismal drizzle which slowed our progress even on the military road. On an ordinary track it would have been a nightmare of mud-bogged wheels, slithering horses and broken axles. Even the envoy was driven into speech — he had been preserving a well-bred silence all the way from Glevum.

He had affected his master’s habits, too, and was beating a little tattoo of impatience on his palm with his baton, as he said irritably, ‘What a dreary little island this is. Water everywhere but in the bathhouse. We shall scarcely make the posting house in two hours, even on this road. Thanks be to Mercury for Roman engineering.’ He turned away and gazed at the passing scenery, in case I should be tempted to an answer.

I was looking at the scenery myself. We were well over the river and out on the Isca road now where it was less frequented. Marcus had obtained directions from the messengers who went to Lucius after his brother’s death. ‘A foul journey’ they had called it, and so it was, out past the cultivated lands and into the forbidding forest.

There were always legends about such places; apart from the obvious risks from bears and brigands, there were hair-curling stories about the road at night. Spectral legions who marched in eerie silence at your side, and when the moon rose, vanished. Eyeless wanderers who approached unwary horsemen begging for a drink, and whose faces, when they raised their heads, were so hideous that all who saw them perished at the sight (though how anyone could live to describe this horror, in that case, it was difficult to explain).

I have never personally met a phantom and do not (on the whole) expect to do so, but, creeping along a strange road through a dim, dark, forbidding forest wraithed with mist, nothing would altogether have surprised me. Brigands, though, were a more tangible possibility. Our driver was armed, of course, but I had nothing except my eating knife. I wished the envoy carried a better weapon than a ceremonial baton, though if it came to a fight he would probably refuse to get his tunic creased. I need not have worried, as it happened. All we saw were a couple of drenched messengers and a man with a depressed donkey lumbering towards Glevum with a little cart full of sheepskins.

But it was dreary. How I wished that I was making my way to Corinium instead, looking for news of Gwellia. For that, I would have fought off brigands barehanded.

We reached the staging post, where Marcus’ imperial warrant immediately produced fresh horses for the carriage and a simple refreshment for ourselves. Then we set off again, and shortly afterwards turned down the side lane as we had been directed.

It was a surprisingly good road, although it was not a Roman one and it twisted and turned fearsomely. The landowner, whoever he was, had learned lessons from the military road-builders and built his track with a raised centre so that the rain and mud drained off it, and up here where the ground was higher and free from the huge overhanging trees, the going was easier than I had feared.

We were looking for a homestead, Marcus had said, belonging to one of the Dubonnai, the local tribe. A shrewd man, clearly, since he appeared to have held onto his land while at the same time avoiding execution, dispossession, relocation or even the ruinously expensive public office which often disposed of wealthy local princes.

We found the place at last. Heard it first — the bark of dogs, the whinny of a horse — and then smoke from the cooking-fire stung our eyes and throats. My companion was beginning to look distinctly uneasy. And when, breasting the fold of a hill, we saw it, he let out an uncomfortable sigh.

To me, it was a sight to make my old heart leap. A proper old-fashioned Celtic farm, its snug little timber-and-daub roundhouses nestling inside their protective circular bank and ditch, the thatched roofs layered and golden like so many neat conical haircuts. And inside the compound the familiar, cheerfully casual noisy chaos — haystacks, grainstores, pigsties, osier-piles, goats, grandmothers, dogs, beehives, farm tools, children and chickens. I had not seen so homely a scene since I lived in a roundhouse myself.

‘At least there are a few stone barns up on the hill. The place is not entirely without civilisation,’ the envoy said disapprovingly. ‘But no sign of a hermit. I suppose he will be somewhere even more disagreeable.’ He banged on the roof for the driver to stop, and dismounted grandly from the carriage. I followed him to the gate. A cacophony of barking dogs and hissing geese greeted us from behind the woven barrier and half a dozen grimy urchins gazed at us in wide-eyed wonder.

The envoy hesitated, and then called, in his most imperious voice, ‘Who is in charge here?’

A youth in a coarse blue woven wool jerkin and britches uncurled himself from the pile of osiers he had been splitting and rose to meet us, smiling, balancing his heavy axe in his hand. With his tousled hair, wild beard, broad shoulders and air of effortless athleticism he looked, I thought, more than a match even for the brutish Aulus.

Beside me, I felt my companion stiffen.

‘Citizens?’ The lad spoke Latin haltingly. He glanced at the attendant on the carriage behind us and then at the envoy’s embroidered tunic, staff and seal. It seemed to tell him something. He ran a tongue around his lips and amended himself hastily, making a swift obeisance. ‘Excellence?’

It was a mistake, of course, but he could not have done better. The envoy was visibly flattered.

‘On his excellence’s business. We are looking for Lucius,’ he said, and then, seeing the boy’s look of bafflement, ‘Lu-ci-us, the Chri-st-i-an. On a matter of ur-gent im-port-ance.’ He spoke unnaturally loudly, as if by shouting he would somehow make the language easier to understand.

I murmured an explanation in Celtic, and the boy looked at me gratefully.

‘There is a cave up in the hills there where he has a retreat. For a long time he did not have even the simplest luxuries, but recently my mother has prevailed on him to accept a few comforts, and gifts of food now and then. Apparently his brother, too, has given him a wealth of things, though he has already sold some of them to give food to the poor.’ His dialect was not quite my own, but it was more comprehensible than his Latin. It must have been a secluded rural life indeed which had screened him so effectively from the official tongue.

I answered in my own tongue. ‘Your mother seems to know a lot about him.’

He grinned, reminding me of Junio. ‘You know what women are when it comes to holy men. Since he cured my brother, she never stops talking about him.’

I have a suspicious mind. ‘He cured your brother, you say. Does he heal with herbs?’

The boy shook his head. ‘With herbs, no. Not that I know. The only herbs I have seen him with are those he gathers to eat. No, my brother fell into the brook, and hit his head. The hermit jumped in, at the risk of his own life, and pulled him out. Elwun was given up for drowned until the hermit stretched out over him, and breathed his own breath into his nostrils. Even after he brought the boy home, he stayed here a day and night praying over him. It was all my family could do to persuade him to accept dry clothing. When Elwun recovered, it almost persuaded my mother to join the Christians.’

I was trying to imagine a relative of Crassus who would risk his life to save another. I failed. ‘A brave man,’ I murmured.

‘He is famous in the district,’ the boy said. ‘Everyone comes to him. But he isn’t one of your “I-am-better-than-you-poor-sinners” types. He lived a sinful youth, he told my mother, and is trying to atone for it.’

‘Forgive me,’ the envoy said acidly, cutting across our words in crystal accents. ‘When you have quite finished your private conversation, perhaps you would favour me with a translation?’

I explained.

‘If you know where this hermit is,’ the envoy said, ignoring me, ‘kindly send for him at once. We have a long journey ahead of us. We shall be lucky to get home before the town gates shut, as it is.’

The boy looked uncomfortable.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’

The boy looked at me, and then stumbled, in poor Latin, ‘He is in mourning, excellence. The death of his brother has affected him sorely. He has not left his cell since, except to pray. He has been fasting, shaved his head and put on sackcloth and ashes. He may not wish to come.’

The envoy looked flabbergasted, rather as Jove might look if someone asked him to put down his thunderbolts. ‘Not wish to come?’

‘I am not sure that the boy has understood,’ I said quickly. ‘Perhaps if I were to speak to Lucius. .?’

He looked at me in surprise (it was the first time I had ventured a word to him, unbidden) and then said sulkily, ‘Perhaps that would be best. Is there anywhere to sit in comfort in this cow byre?’

I translated this, politely, although from the flush on the boy’s face I imagined that he understood more Latin than he spoke. The trappings of power, however, carried their privileges even in this remote spot. One of the small boys was dispatched to alert ‘Mother’, and we were ushered into the biggest roundhouse.

It was such a dear, familiar scene that it quite brought a lump to my throat. There was the central hearth, filling the room with smoke, warmth and the smell of cooking. There were the chickens, pecking at the earth floor, and a great dog lying beside the fire, as my own dog had once used to do. There were the females of the household; the weaving frame, and an old woman working at it, while a child spun thread at her feet. It was a scene from my childhood. Only the faces were different.

When we came in, a young girl in a plaid dress was raking hot stones from the fire and dropping them into a heavy pot where there was already water and a joint of meat. In an hour or two, I knew, the lamb would be gently cooked and deliciously tender. Another woman was lifting hot oatcakes from an iron griddle laid on the hearth, and the sweet smell of baking almost made my mouth water. She wrapped three of the small loaves in a cloth and turned to greet us.

‘If you are to visit the hermit,’ she said, in her own dialect, ‘take him some of these. I am worried about that man. We have hardly seen him since his brother’s death.’

‘Lucius healed your son?’ I said.

It was like unleashing a mudslide. I was instantly regaled with a dozen tales of Lucius’ holiness. How he had prayed over a sick cow. How he had fasted for a whole week when a member of the family had a fever. How for a long time he had not even permitted himself a proper bed or a servant. How he had given his own breakfast to a beggar.

The osier-cutter looked at me apologetically. ‘The citizen may see for himself, Mother.’

She thrust the oatcakes into his hands. ‘My son will show you the way. We speak little Latin here, and Lucius does not know our tongue.’

I explained this to my companion, and one of the children fetched him a low carved wooden stool. He looked uncomfortable and out of place, sitting there beside the hearth in smoky and disapproving state, while the youngsters peered at him around the doorpost, and the old woman nodded and smiled toothlessly. As I left, he was being plied with hot oatcakes and warm ale, both of which he was regarding with undisguised mistrust. I was glad to get outside to hide a smile.

What would he do, I wondered, if Lucius did refuse to come down and see him? From what I heard of Lucius, threats would not sway him, and if he had sworn an oath he would be immovable. Marcus would not be pleased if his messenger went back empty-handed. Perhaps Lucius did not care — Christians are said actively to welcome martyrdom. It was not a fate, however, that I was keen to experience myself. I would have to do something.

The youth led the way up the path at a speed which had me panting. ‘When we get there,’ he said, ‘I will go in and tell him you have come. He has buried himself in his cave since his brother died, and scarcely comes out.’ He looked at the packet of oatcakes. ‘I hope he will accept these, or my mother will blame me. You have seen what she is like about him. She worries that he is not eating, and is shutting himself off too much. I think this loss has grieved him more than you would believe. He hoped to save his brother’s soul, Mother says, and thought he had nearly done it.’

‘Nearly converted Crassus?’ I must have sounded as scornful as I felt.

‘She may have been mistaken. Her Latin is not good.’ He grinned. ‘Even worse than mine. She said his brother had promised to endow a church.’

‘And has done so,’ I said, ‘through his will.’

‘Well, perhaps she was right after all!’ he said. ‘Now, we are almost there. There is the cave, and there the barn. I will go in ahead. He has withdrawn from strangers more or less completely, though people still come to him to ask his prayers.’

I had never met Lucius, but of one thing I could be sure, I thought. If the reactions of these people were anything to go by, he was nothing at all like his brother.