In the Shadow of Heroes Page 18

  ‘This is the only bridge across for miles,’ Tog said. ‘I wanted to avoid the Roman towns, but we’ll have to pass through to get to my home.’

  ‘Is it much further?’ asked Cadmus, bleary with tiredness. His thighs had been rubbed raw. He wondered if he’d ever walk again.

  ‘No,’ said Tog. ‘Stop complaining.’

  ‘I’m just thinking of the fleece . . .’

  ‘So am I. My family will be able to help you. Give you provisions, directions. Be patient.’

  Across the bridge, the town was in bad shape. It was laid out in a far more orderly way than Rome or Athens, with a simple grid of wide and straight streets, but half of the buildings were still under construction and in places there were piles of burnt wood and rubble. The whole place seemed to rattle when the wind blew through it.

  ‘Who did this?’ Tog asked.

  ‘Your hero. Boudicca. She destroyed the whole town.’

  Tog smiled.

  Inside the walls, they dismounted. They made a strange pair – Tog leading her horse, Cadmus leading his dog – and there were more than a few curious looks from the passers-by.

  Londinium’s forum was busy but looked as decrepit as the rest of the town. In its current state it was little more than a large square of bare earth, with long wooden shelters built along three sides. Most of the stalls were selling wares imported from the rest of the empire, and groups of pinched and cold-looking Romans wandered the marketplace looking to buy a piece of home – jars of wine, sacks of olives and figs, fine and colourful fabrics. A pair of soldiers surveyed the square from the corner, one of them sniffing incessantly.

  ‘So much for the glory of Rome,’ muttered Cadmus.

  Tog didn’t reply. She was staring at one of the legionaries. And he was staring back.

  ‘Come on, Tog,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to make a scene here.’

  The soldier said something to his companion – he of the runny nose – and then came over to Tog.

  He planted his feet in front of her. They looked each other over. Then Tog punched him squarely in the face.

  The Romans doing their shopping gasped and clutched their togas to their chests; a handful of Britons laughed. The man fell to the floor, helmet askew, holding his nose and crying out. Tog was shouting too, but neither of them made sounds that were Greek or Roman. They were both speaking in Britonnic.

  Meanwhile, the other legionary had dashed forward and pointed his sword at Tog’s throat. She knocked it from his hand and pushed him away as though swatting at a bothersome child. Orthus barked and pranced. The horse whinnied and reared, until Tog put a hand on her mane to calm her.

  The legionary with the bloodied nose got to his feet. They continued to talk in that lilting voice that Tog used to speak to her mouse, animated but no longer angry, it seemed. The other soldier looked between the two of them in confusion, and then at Cadmus. The Roman shoppers stared at the two pairs, fright turned to fascination.

  Cadmus was totally bewildered.

  Tog’s mood seemed to change. Her face turned stony. She spoke less and less, until it was the legionary doing all of the talking. She began shaking her head, and then she suddenly jumped up on to her horse. She would have left without Cadmus, he was sure of it, had he not grabbed hold of her calf and thrown himself over the horse’s rump like an empty sack.

  His nostrils were filled with the strong, slightly sweet smell of the animal’s hide, and its body was hot beneath his. He turned to see if the soldiers were in pursuit, but the world was all askew, bouncing and rattling in time with the horse’s hooves. Tog rode as fast as she could right through the centre of the town, Orthus bounding alongside them, men and women shouting and scattering in their path.

  They raced out of a gate in the north wall and took a Roman road that carved through a thick forest. Cadmus gradually righted himself and put his arms around Tog. She was still muttering something in her own tongue, and Cadmus could hear something in her voice that had never been there, not once since he had known her. She was scared.

  ‘Can you slow down?’

  She didn’t reply.

  ‘What did the soldier say?’

  Still nothing.

  At a point on the road that seemed significant only to her, Tog dismounted and ran into the trees. Orthus ran with her excitedly, misjudging the mood of the situation; Cadmus trailed behind, tripped by roots and slapped in the face with wet branches.

  ‘Tog? Where are we going?’

  She didn’t answer. Cadmus had never seen her really stretch her legs, and by the gods she flew, over the earth and over the undergrowth and leaving not a single leaf broken by her footfall. He nearly lost her several times, and was only prompted in the right direction by Orthus’s barking.

  He finally caught up with her in a clearing. There was an earthwork at its centre. It was the perfect site for a settlement. Only there was no settlement.

  On top of the hill the ground was completely charred, and he could see the low circles of ash that had once been roundhouses. There were the blackened remains of a loom sticking out of the mud, and a few pieces of furniture that had not been fully consumed by flames. There was no sign it had ever been lived in. The place had been burnt to the ground.

  Tog walked slowly from one end of the village to the other. Then she turned and came face to face with Cadmus.

  ‘It’s all gone,’ she said. ‘After everything I’ve been through. There’s nothing left.’

  The sun was setting now, a fierce orange globe behind the clouds. The wind had picked up too, and blew Tog’s hair around her. She had a face as grim as the Furies.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Cadmus. It sounded so feeble. ‘It must have happened after your rebellion. After Boudicca. The Romans were . . . uncompromising in their reprisals.’

  ‘Smaller words, Cadmus.’

  He swallowed. ‘They punished your people. Badly.’

  She looked out over the golden treetops and took several deep, steadying breaths.

  ‘My aunt and uncle lived there,’ she said, pointing to a mound of charred wood. ‘My uncle’s forge was on the far side. And this was where I played with my cousin. We used to roll down the hill.’

  ‘Maybe your family got out?’

  ‘No. He said my aunt and uncle were killed.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘The soldier.’

  ‘How did he know?’

  She looked at him squarely, and then spat on the ground. ‘Because he was my cousin.’

  Cadmus didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t a surprise to him. It was common for the Roman army to accept auxiliaries from the peoples they captured. In fact, it was key to keeping order, and minimizing chances of rebellion. But for Tog to see him in the uniform of her oppressors . . .

  ‘We can’t judge him,’ he said. ‘War always gives us difficult choices.’

  ‘I can judge him,’ Tog said bitterly. ‘And I will. We used to talk all the time about fighting off the Romans. He joined Boudicca’s rebellion with me. And now he’s with the enemy.’

  ‘He may have had no choice about joining the army,’ said Cadmus. ‘Remember what you told me on the boat? Sometimes Fate deals you things you cannot avoid.’

  ‘He had a choice.’ She spat again. ‘The pay is good. That was his defence! Money!’

  ‘Maybe we can look around. Go back to Londinium, see if there are any more of your people who survived. Make peace with your cousin.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing to be done here.’ She started walking down the slope again. ‘We should get moving. We should find the fleece.’

  ‘Oh.’ Cadmus hadn’t been expecting that. He found himself lost for words again. He caught up with her at the edge of the trees. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. And when we have found it, I get to keep it.’

  Cadmus frowned. ‘You?’

  ‘If it is as powerful as everyone says, then my people need it more than any Romans.’

  ‘Um. I
’m not sure I can—’

  ‘That’s the deal. I’ll continue to help you, in return for the fleece. Otherwise you’re on your own.’

  Cadmus thought for a moment. He hadn’t fully considered what would happen to the Golden Fleece if they actually found it. No doubt the heroidai would stake their claim to it. Eriopis too, probably. For his own part, he wanted to see the artefact, and he wanted to stop Nero from having it, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep it. If he did he would be running for the rest of his life.

  Perhaps this was the perfect solution. The fleece would be removed to the furthest reaches of the empire, perhaps out of the empire entirely, in the hands of an unknown British girl. There would be no way of tracking it. And maybe, after all she had suffered, Tog really did deserve whatever blessings it bestowed upon the owner.

  Besides, he didn’t really have a choice. He needed her.

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘You swear?’

  ‘I swear. By my gods and yours.’

  He held out his right hand. She shook it so firmly he thought his arm might break.

  XXV

  They rode for a week, sleeping in caves and under fallen trees and in the dens of animals. Tog taught him how to hunt for their food; how to skin, gut and butcher an animal; how to build a camp and make a fire; how to find herbs and plants to help them sleep, to soothe scratches and burns, to settle their stomachs when the water was not as fresh as it should have been. She even let him take control of the horse for some of the way.

  They didn’t follow any of the Roman roads but wound through fens and forests and streams that Tog seemed to navigate by smell. They didn’t see another soul. While they rode those ancient green paths, Cadmus could believe they were the only two human beings left in the world.

  On the seventh day since leaving Londinium, they emerged from among the trees to see a broad estuary, slate-grey and flat, broken here and there by sharp, white wave-peaks. They could smell the sea. A flock of gulls was sitting calmly amidst the pebbles, and Orthus wasted no time in racing down the shore and scaring them all into flight.

  ‘There,’ said Tog, pointing to the other bank. ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Mona?’ said Cadmus.

  She nodded.

  They dismounted from the horse, and Cadmus went to the water’s edge. He wet his finger and tasted it. Sure enough, the water was salty.

  The island – although it didn’t look like an island from where they were standing – was low and thinly wooded, like the terrain they had just passed through. Cadmus had been expecting high cliffs and a mountainous interior, snarled with strange trees and wild animals, but in fact Mona seemed quiet and nondescript. All along that grey shoreline there was evidence of the Roman invasion – remains of cook-fires, broken spears and shields, scraps of cloth and leather and abandoned sandals, weathered by the three intervening winters. The failing sun contributed to the feeling of emptiness and abandonment. Cadmus felt a chill in his marrow, and it was not simply from the cold sea air.

  The tide was low enough for them to ford the inlet with their horse, and Orthus seemed more than happy to swim. As they rode west across the island, they didn’t have to look hard to see more signs of Roman devastation. The whole place seemed frozen in time at the point of the Romans’ departure, now nearly three years ago. Copses and groves had been hewn or burnt to the ground; the remains of settlements, reduced to uneven piles of ash, could be seen on higher ground; a pyre for mass cremation was heaped up in a hollow, but whether it was for Romans or Britons Cadmus didn’t know. The flatness of the island only made it seem more barren. There were no hills to make an obstacle to the wind, and it howled and whispered like the ghosts of those who had lived and died here.

  Tog pulled their horse up and surveyed the land.

  ‘Look at what they did,’ she said. ‘So much death.’

  Cadmus’s heart had sunk too. If all the inhabitants really had been killed, who was going to point them to the tomb? They could hardly scour the entire island. A grove of oak, a crown of stone . . . It could be anywhere.

  ‘There must be somebody here,’ he muttered.

  She squinted at the horizon and pointed suddenly.

  ‘Look. Smoke.’

  That wasn’t necessarily good news, Cadmus thought, but she had already spurred them onwards.

  The horse cantered up a gentle slope, until they found themselves looking down on a grove of oak filling a hollow. A little to one side, arranged into neat rows, was a Roman camp. The smoke was coming from the soldiers’ cook-fires.

  ‘We’re too late,’ said Cadmus. Of course they were too late. Why would he have expected anything different?

  ‘Are you sure they’re the emperor’s men?’

  ‘Who else would they be?’

  They had seen no signs of the Argo or the heroidai on their ride across the island. They were on their own. He wondered if Tullus was down there somewhere. That would at least give him some consolation, knowing that his master was safe.

  Orthus suddenly pricked up his ears, nose quivering. He looked at the camp for a moment, then raced off down the ridge.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ said Tog.

  Cadmus shrugged. The dog hadn’t left his side in weeks. It seemed odd that he would abandon Cadmus now, after all they had been through, in their hour of need. Then he realized: there was only one other person who Orthus showed greater loyalty towards.

  ‘I think I know,’ Cadmus said. ‘Follow him. Quietly.’

  They skirted the oak woods until they reached the fringes of the encampment. It was still under construction – a temporary, marching camp – but it was already surrounded by sharp wooden stakes and watched over by several pairs of legionaries. Cadmus could hear the gruff voices of the soldiers within and the dull, wet thud of axes on new timber.

  Before they came within sight of the sentries, Orthus slipped into the trees, stopping occasionally to let Cadmus and Tog catch up. When they reached the far side of the camp they found a baggage train being unloaded. At the front were a pair of rather more comfortable carpenta, and at the rear was a wagon that was hardly more than a cage on wheels. The dog waited until the slaves and the soldiers had left with their equipment, and then pointed his keen-scented nose towards the mobile prison. Cadmus and Tog kept low and followed, hidden by the long shadows of the evening.

  ‘Hello, old friend,’ said a voice like the wind in the trees. A thin white hand emerged from the cage and stroked Orthus’s head.

  Cadmus put his fingers to the wooden bars of the cage and felt something cold and smooth constrict around his wrist. Every part of him wanted to scream out in terror, but he bit his lip for fear that he would bring the whole camp down on them.

  It was a snake. The same snake that Nero had hurled into the grass beside Cadmus when he was hiding in the ruins of the farmhouse. Somehow it had found its way back to its mistress.

  ‘Thank you for looking after him,’ said the priestess. ‘I knew you would come back. I knew I wasn’t mistaken.’

  Tog was staring at her in disbelief.

  ‘She looks like a druid,’ she said, not half as quietly as Cadmus would have liked.

  ‘Some would say I am different only in name,’ said the priestess. ‘Medea taught the druids their first rites when she fled here. Two streams from the same fountainhead.’

  So it was true. Medea was buried here. And Cadmus’s hunch had been right: there was a connection between her and the druids. His heart thumped uncomfortably, excitement mounting on fear mounting on plain old exhaustion. Things were connecting. Things were making sense. The shadows of myth and history retreated before him.

  ‘Is the grave nearby?’

  ‘Very near.’

  ‘And have they found the fleece?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There is a delay. They are scared to enter the grove. The old man, he has put such fear into the Romans.’

  Another rush of excitement.

  ‘Which old man? Do you mean my
master? Is Tullus here?’

  ‘He has told them of the trials within. Traps. Deadly sorcery.’

  Cadmus laughed. Well done, Tullus. What a good idea, to play upon Nero’s superstitions.

  ‘You will pass through them untouched, though,’ she said. ‘I have seen it.’

  He looked at Tog, then back at the priestess. ‘Wait,’ he said slowly. ‘You mean there really are traps?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, yes.’ Eriopis swayed where she sat, and then flung herself against the bars suddenly. ‘Fearsome trials await you, just as they did Jason. But you know this. Hmmm. That is why you are here, is it not? You heard the Hecate’s words, when we last met.’

  Something vast began to shift in Cadmus’s thoughts. Another retreating shadow. A misunderstanding so huge he could only just begin to discern its edges.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She pressed her blindfolded face through the gap in the lattice. Cadmus could feel the snake tightening itself around his hand even further. ‘The Golden Fleece belongs to you,’ she said.

  ‘But . . . Nero . . . the oracle . . .’

  ‘The oracle was for you, boy, not Nero. The goddess knew you were listening. The pig emperor isn’t even here.’ She pointed a slender finger at him. ‘You were the one who was meant to come here. You are the one who will make his way through the trials of Medea’s tomb. You are the one who will lay eyes upon her body and claim your inheritance.’

  Cadmus stared at her dumbly. She whispered something he couldn’t quite hear, and her snake slithered back into the cage with her.

  ‘These trials . . .’ he began.

  There was the sound of heavy footsteps and raucous laughter from the entrance to the camp. The soldiers were returning to the baggage train.

  ‘I cannot say any more,’ Eriopis said. She grabbed him by his wrist. ‘Go quickly. Go lightly. And go alone.’

  Cadmus made his way into the darkness of the sacred grove, following Tog. He could see why the legionaries were afraid to enter. There was a strange energy about the place. The noises of the camp seemed to have disappeared completely, but he thought he heard voices among the trees, whispering the priestess’s words back to him. Go quickly. Go lightly. Go alone. He turned to Orthus for reassurance, but the dog was nowhere to be seen.