Run to the Western Shore E-Book

Tim Pears

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 197

Beschreibung

'A beautiful love story with an incredible sense of place' - The Times A powerful novel about destiny, home and surviving in a world in flux Britain, AD 72. Quintus, long exiled from his people, has travelled great odysseys in the retinue of a powerful Roman. Though a citizen of nowhere, is a man of reason, fluent in many languages. Olwen, imperious tribal royalty, is rooted in her native land – a volatile warrior, fiercely attached to the natural world. Given away by her father as part of a peace treaty, Olwen flees during the night, taking Quintus with her. Hunted by an army, the two make their way across the country, living off the land, heading for the western shore...

Leseprobe

also by Tim Pears

In the Place of Fallen LeavesIn a Land of PlentyA Revolution of the SunWake UpBlenheim OrchardLandedDisputed LandIn the Light of MorningThe HorsemanThe WanderersThe RedeemedChemistry and Other Stories

For Rory and Miranda

1

He could hear the barbarians coming from a long way off, a discordant cacophony. Tuneless trumpets blaring, drums thumping all out of rhythm. He could hear them splashing across the river at the horse ford, Hen Domen, and he could hear them coming up from the ford. Then one after another the drums and trumpets stopped. It was as if a signal for them to cease the racket had been given but each drummer and trumpeter only noticed the order at random. A raucous rabble.

He heard the scuff and scumble of the horses’ hooves on the dry turf now, the clinking of harness. Then he saw them coming up from the river, at first only the tips of their spears over the brow of the slope, then the plumes on their helmets, and gradually their forms entire, horses and riders, rising.

A lone figure came cantering past this cohort and trotted into the camp at their head. His helmet hung on one of the rear horns or pommels of his saddle. He wore chequered trousers, leather boots, a red silk tunic beneath a shirt of iron ring mail. He had a gold torc around his neck. His only weapon was a long sword, in a bronze scabbard attached to a belt of metal loops, worn on his left side. The dark horse he rode was abnormally large for these people of the hill country. A mare perhaps fifteen hands high, the horse had well-muscled, compact shoulders. She had a long, arched neck and a beautiful small head, with eyes wide apart and short ears. She had a strong body and powerful hindquarters. Her thick mane and long tail had been plaited and her coat brushed to a high sheen. She had an iron snaffle bit and was caparisoned in a finely stitched harness decorated with ornamental metal discs.

The chieftain – for this surely was Cunicatus – sat upon her in the hot midsummer sun with his back straight, shoulders wide, broad chest forward, head held high and chin jutting out. He was a muscular man. There were grey hairs in his beard and in his plaited hair, yet it came to the boy that here before them was a man in the prime of his vitality. Quintus had never seen so prideful a man as this. His bearing upon the big brown mare was like that of an emperor receiving tribute. An extraordinary performance.

Behind the chieftain came his warriors. They too rode proudly, packed close together, their smaller horses tightly reined, jostling against one another. Leather squeaked; harness jingled. The horses stamped and snorted, breathing heavily under the hot sun. The men all wore helmets and carried spears or javelins. Their tunics and trousers had woven patterns and were brightly coloured: red, blue, yellow. One or two had a scalp, others a skull, hung from a front pommel of their saddles. Provocations.

After these barbarian nobles came infantry, half-naked men. Quintus had heard of the painted people, and here they were, their bodies and faces coloured with swirling circles and intricate patterns, all in blue. Each carried a spear and a shield, scrawled with shapes like those on their bodies. Accounts were given of their ferocious demeanour in battle, but unlike their superiors these men did not seem able to perform the role of fierce combatants or triumphal braggarts, and looked woebegone. They followed their lord and walked between two rows of legionaries, who stood in utter stillness behind their unembellished shields, each in his brown tunic, his helmet and plated armour, betraying no evidence of either complacency or trepidation. A truce had been declared. Quintus did not know whether this chieftain was wise to trust it. ‘A Roman is true to his word’ was a maxim uttered across the empire, but he knew his master and that this was so only when it suited him.

Above a planked stage his master, Sextus Julius Frontinus, Governor of Britannia, sat upon a large wooden throne the carpenters had made for him the day before. It was bare, unadorned, of rough timber, but constructed to an elevation sufficient for him to look straight into the eyes of the man approaching him, even sat high as he was upon his handsome mount.

Cunicatus reined in his horse ten yards from the governor. His nobles came to a jostling stop behind him, and beyond them the foot soldiers likewise. The chieftain pricked his horse and walked on, then pulled violently upon the reins, bringing the horse back up on her hindquarters. He let the mare return four hooves to the hard ground then, with his hands on the reins and his legs snug astride the animal’s belly, turned her round and around on the spot. The horse trembled and snorted. She seemed to be both struggling against the exercise and revelling in it, her hooves churning the dry earth so that flecks of hard mud spun out in all directions and dust rose around them, a vortex of dust that horse and rider turned within. The specks of mud could be heard striking soldiers’ shields, the wooden throne, the governor’s armour. Quintus, behind his master’s left shoulder, wanted to close his eyes for protection but could not take them off the sight before him. He watched mesmerised. He could feel the power of the animal, and of the man driving her.

Then abruptly they came to a halt, once more facing Frontinus, horse and rider each perspiring freely, breathing heavily, brown dust on their habiliments and stuck to their sweated skin. The chieftain advanced some yards, and stopped and addressed the governor, behind whose right shoulder stood his official interpreter, old Appius. He leaned forward and spoke his translation. Quintus stood close enough to hear him.

‘The barbarian says you would surely prefer his horse.’

Quintus reckoned what the chieftain had really said was not that the governor would prefer the horse but that he would benefit more from it. The boy understood the barbarian language better than Appius. Why, even his spoken Latin was superior. But he was a slave. His master would receive his thoughts in private, might ask if things had been missed. Nuances of meaning. He had eavesdropped on many conferences in his master’s retinue, and could only be patient.

Frontinus chuckled and said that perhaps he would prefer the horse but that there was no precedent for peace being brokered through the exchange of even so fine an animal as this. Not that he had ever heard of, anyway. He said he knew that the British were horse breeders and dealers and had seen their beasts throughout his travels across the continent, particularly in Gaul, but none better than this one.

The interpreter translated. The chieftain said, ‘So be it.’ It had to be the way that it was. He would keep the horse then.

The governor said, ‘Unless you wish to add it to your gift. We can call it her dowry.’

When he heard the translation, the chieftain’s eyes narrowed. He stared at the governor. The governor returned his gaze, a sardonic smile upon his lips.

The boy watched the barbarian king, the most powerful ruler in this part of the country, this land of warring tribes: Cunicatus stared at Frontinus, cold fury fixed in that abject ruler’s blue eyes. He did not twitch a muscle. The only life was in those eyes, and it was unwavering hatred.

Abruptly, the chieftain moved, raising his right leg behind him and over the rear pommels of his saddle. He slid off the horse. As he did so he reached across with his right hand and, half-hidden by the horse, stepping back from it, withdrew his sword from its scabbard. Severus and the rest of the bodyguards around the governor shifted forward, ready to protect Frontinus should this warrior approach. He did not. Instead, letting go of the reins of the mare grasped in his left hand, he drew the blade of his sword across the back of her left hind leg, slicing through her hamstring.

Quintus saw in the mare’s eyes a look of bewilderment. Her leg buckled, she sank on that knee, then the knee too gave way. Her rider backed away as she toppled over and lay on her left side, her right flank rising and falling in abbreviated breaths.

Cunicatus looked once more at the governor. ‘Accept this wedding gift from me,’ he said. ‘We hear you Romans enjoy the taste of horsemeat.’

While Appius relayed this message in Latin, the chieftain turned and walked towards his jostling throng of mounted troops. The first he reached dismounted and handed the reins to his lord, who took them and led the small horse back in the direction of the ford. A shabby man came lumbering past him, coming up around the warriors and advancing as far as the fallen horse. He seemed to be pursued, hounded, by a stumbling youth.

The beautiful mare lay mute and dignified in her distress.

The scruffy figure was a squat man of indeterminate age, somewhere perhaps between middle and late years. He was mostly bald, with a straggly grey beard and whiskers. Around his shoulders was a long woollen cloak dyed a blueish purple, but a long time ago, and now its blackberry colour was faded, the cloak frayed and torn. The man wore a necklace of teeth, whether animal or human Quintus was not sure. He shuffled slowly, accompanied by the spindly youth, who wore a similarly ragged cloak and was weighed down by various items he carried in a bundle overflowing some kind of tray. Both lacked sandals and wore rags wrapped around their feet.

One of the Druid’s eyes was open, the other closed; whether voluntarily, temporarily or for good, Quintus could not tell. The young acolyte separated from his jumble of miscellany something shapeless and passed it to the shaman, who raised it and placed it upon his bald skull. It was a headdress made of feathers from falcons and hawks, from swans or geese. In amongst the muddle of feathers were bones which by their differing size appeared to have come from a variety of animals.

The Druid bent to his apprentice’s armful of objects and picked through them, considering one, then another, then the first one again, unable, it seemed, to make up his mind. He had the appearance and the behaviour of a halfwit. Finally, he selected what looked like a clay vessel. He held it by a leather thong upside down, so anything inside would fall out. But nothing did. He took a step or two nearer to the governor sitting impatiently on his throne, and swung the clay cup. It was a bell, which tinkled dully, unimpressively.

The shaman turned away, then stopped. He appeared distracted. Like a man who has just realised he forgot to snuff out the candle when he left his dwelling. He stumbled towards his apprentice, gave back the bell, then grabbed the tray and wrenched it from the grasp of the youth, who did his best to scoop its sundry contents from the air as they dropped to the ground. He was partially successful. The Druid returned to where he had stood, beside the horse, who lay as she had, still, unable to move or unwilling to try, waiting with great dignity to be released from her misery.

Then the Druid nodded to the governor, as if in agreement with something Frontinus had said earlier. He lowered his head, gazing at the ground, perhaps considering what it was he agreed with, then raised his head and nodded again at the governor in apparent confirmation. Then he turned his back and faced the Celtic cavalrymen. He lifted the tray. It was circular, a wide band of wood with some animal skin stretched tight across it. Goat, perhaps. Two pebbles hung on strings on opposite sides. It was not a tray.

Holding the drum with his right hand, the Druid flipped his wrist one way, then the other, making the drum swing. He did so with surprising force and rapidity. The two pebbles swung on their strings and struck the goatskin – one on one side, then the other on the converse – with a loud rhythmic resonance. The Druid made a sort of little dance, which was less a dance than employing his body to help the momentum, and thus the speed and noise, of the drumming.

Ahead of him the mounted warriors and their war ponies grew restless. The ponies were packed so tight, and it became apparent that the riders were urging them ever closer to each other, and they resisted. Their nostrils flared and their eyes widened. They whinnied their frustration.

The Druid lowered the drum. The pebbles hung loose. The sudden absence of noise was like a bang, a thump of silence that was itself a signal. The cavalrymen broke out, each away from the centre, like a flower opening all at once and the petals falling away. They rode out, and one after the other turned from the Roman governor and cantered after their chieftain. They rode on either side past the infantrymen, who then turned and trotted after them.

Where the mounted troops had just scrummed in close congregation, there remained one horse, one rider. Seated on the black pony was a young woman, in a pale blue cloak glittering with countless specks of gold. Its collar was the white winter fur of a stoat or ermine. She had red hair, and a gold torc around her neck, and golden bracelets at her wrists. The horse’s mane and tail were plaited like her father’s mare’s and festooned with red, yellow and blue wildflowers.

Quintus could not breathe. His knees were weak, his footing suddenly unsteady. He felt a strong grip on his arm. ‘Pull yourself together, slave,’ Severus hissed at him.

The tremor passed. Quintus beheld the girl on the horse. Neither she nor her mount, nor any other in the field, seemed to have noticed the ground quake.

Evidently the shaman had given the drum back to his assistant. He now had a skin flask, from which he removed the stopper and drank as he walked over to the young woman. When he reached her it became clear he had not swallowed the liquid but held a mouthful within bulging cheeks. He raised his face and spat the liquid at her. Most landed on her gown. Some on her face. She did not flinch. The Druid shambled past her and followed after the others who had left, his apprentice close behind him.

The girl pricked her horse and walked it slowly towards the governor. She had her father’s arrogant bearing and his angry eyes, though hers were green. She looked from one side to the other, her contemptuous gaze falling upon random Roman soldiers and motley staff in turn. For a second her eyes met those of Quintus and lingered for a moment. He felt again his knees soften.

Olwen, daughter of Cunicatus, chief of the Dilovi tribe, ignored her father’s lacerated horse and walked hers past it, then stopped the pony a few yards from the governor’s throne. Only then did she look up at him.

‘Welcome,’ Frontinus said. The elderly translator spoke it in her language.

Olwen did not at first respond to the greeting. Then she simply said, ‘I am here.’

2

Two soldiers led the girl to a small tent and left her. Inside was a low, slatted wooden couch for a bed, with wool blankets neatly folded upon it. In a corner was a bucket. On a low table were provisions: an amphora of wine, a twisted loaf of bread, a bowl of carrots, a lump of cheese.

Towards nightfall the elderly interpreter came to the tent. He was accompanied by a soldier and stood behind him, a step to one side. Did he think she might bite him? ‘The governor will send for you when he is ready,’ the interpreter informed her.

‘Tell him,’ the girl said, ‘that when he is ready, I may not be.’

The old man frowned. ‘He has important matters on his…’ He paused, and tapped his balding skull. ‘To discuss, with his generals. He will send for you when he is ready.’

‘Tonight?’ Olwen asked.

‘Tonight,’ the old man agreed. ‘Or perhaps another night. When he is ready.’

‘Unless he enjoys a woman’s blood,’ she said, ‘tell him not tonight.’

The interpreter grinned. A sly, malicious grin. ‘Sextus Julius Frontinus had a dream,’ he said. ‘He dreamed of a woman who pleased him, and he sent envoys over all the earth. Here at last they found you: Olwen, daughter of Cunicatus. And so my master became governor of this hideous island at the edge of the world. All because in a dream he met a woman who might please him. All because of you.’

The girl nodded. ‘Is this true?’ she asked.

The old man cackled. ‘Of course not,’ he said. He took a pace back, further behind the soldier. ‘Who do you think you are?’ He turned and left the tent. The soldier followed him.

Quintus lay down to sleep beneath a blanket on the ground, outside the barrack tent he shared with a dozen other men. He had heard enough of their ribald commentary on the events to which they were proximate.

He dreamed of running. On errands, with messages. Across the tented camp. Which was also, somehow, Ephesus, the distant city of his childhood. Then he dreamed he could not breathe. He was being suffocated. Smothered. He woke to find a hand on his mouth, and struggled. But he saw in the moonlight that it was her. ‘Shhh,’ she whispered, and lifted her palm from his lips. ‘Can you run?’

An odd question. Had she peered into his dream? Quintus did not hesitate. He rose and followed her, slipping past the night watch and out of the camp.

At the ford she expected a guard. There had been a truce, but she was not sure her father had ever observed one he did not like. Perhaps the Romans knew he never attacked at night – just as the Dilovi knew the Romans never did either.

She bade Quintus wait, while she herself walked across. On the far bank she raised her white cloak, which was speckled with flakes of gold that sparkled subtly in the moonlight. She lifted it up, over her legs, above her waist, and on, over her shoulders and her head. Beneath it she wore a short tunic not unlike Quintus’s. On her feet were strong sandals, like his. She held the cloak by its neck, lifted her tunic and wiped the white cloth between her legs. When she brought it out, Quintus could see that it was smudged there. Smeared with blood. She dropped it on the ground on the far side of the river and came back across the ford, then turned upstream.

The season was high summer. There had been little rain for weeks and the water level was low, but in the middle of the river the water flowed waist-high and fast. Olwen waded close to the bank. Where the shallowness of water allowed, she ran. Quintus followed close behind, splashing after her. The excitement and terror in his head left no room for any action other than obedience. He was not tired. In time he became calm, and soon saw only the moving form before him and the black water they scurried through.

Occasionally where the river had curved in its tongued passage through soft earth a pool had formed, and this they waded into. The night was warm and they perspired with the exertion, yet the water had come down from the high mountains and was cold, numbing their feet and calves. It was not an unpleasant combination.

Olwen had stopped. Quintus collided with her, and grabbed her shoulders to keep her balance and his own. She turned. ‘How could you understand me?’ she said. ‘When I asked if you could run.’

‘I have an ear for languages,’ he said.

She stared at him as if waiting for him to say something that made more sense. Then she leaned forward. She reached up, turned his head, pulled aside his tightly curled black hair and studied his ear as well as she could in the partial light. ‘It appears to be like any other,’ she said. ‘Is the other one the same?’

‘I believe so. I have not seen them myself.’

‘Is it magic that allows you to speak our tongue?’

‘I know no magic.’

‘There was a woman in our tribe who was spreading skins on her roof and fell from the ladder. She was struck to sleep. When she woke, she spoke a strange language. We thought that was magic. Munatius came and listened. He considered it was probably that of the old forest dwellers, the ones who came before us. Her soul had been rapped back into its earlier form. It was not magic either.’

‘It is not my ears but what lies between them, I suppose.’

‘Why did you not say so?’ Olwen shook her head. ‘We have no time to waste on riddles.’ She turned back, and they ran on.

The river had made its own floodplain across the wide valley. It meandered through the flatland, in curlicues and lazy convolutions. Olwen took no shortcuts. They splashed across pebbles or gravel beds. There were sandbanks, miniature beaches incongruous on this winding river.

Quintus heard a whooshing beat, and without knowing what it was or where it came from, he ducked. Then he realised the sound was the beating of wings as a pair of ducks flew overhead in the darkness. Olwen had not reacted. Nor did she seem to have noticed his panic. He hurried after her.

The water sparkled. Quintus looked up and saw that as well as the moon, the sky was full of stars. He had grown up on the Asian shore of the Aegean, lived in Rome, travelled across the empire with his master. Yet each night the sun set and the same stars looked down. He stumbled, lowered his gaze and ran on. There were silvery fish in the water. Eels swam amongst the stars.

Olwen stopped once more. Without turning around she reached back and touched Quintus on the arm and pointed across to the far side, a little further upriver. At first he did not know why, but he peered and saw the statue of a heron stood upon the high bank, in lonely vigil. ‘Does it approve of us?’ Olwen whispered. ‘It may ask the spirit of the river to keep our passage secret from those bound to set off in pursuit of us.’

They proceeded carefully, but when they were almost level with the heron it leaned forward and let itself fall onto the air and opened its wings. With wide, elegant flaps it sailed away upriver, low above the water.

Light did not enter the sky. Darkness eased from it. The stars vanished discreetly one by one, snuffed out as by some nightwatchman doing his morning round in the far distance of the firmament.