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Ashes Under Uricon

Chapter 29. Autumn (407-11)

By Mihangel

Illum Christianum putas qui opprimit miserum, qui pauperem gravat, qui res concupiscit alienas, qui ut se divitem faciat plures efficit indigentes, qui lucris gaudet iniustis, qui de alienis lacrymis cibum capit, qui miserorum ditatur interitu, cuius os assidue mendacio violatur, cuius labia nonnisi indigna et obscena et scelesta loquuntur et turpia, qui cum iubeatur distribuere sua invadit aliena?

Do you think yourself Christian if you oppress the humble and burden the needy? If you covet what is not your own? If you make yourself rich by making others poor? If you gloat over unjust wealth? If you wring food from others' tears? If you are enriched by the death of the humble? If constant lies befoul your mouth and the only words on your lips are degrading, filthy, vile and despicable? If, when bidden to distribute your own property, you seize other people's?

Fastidius, On the Christian Life

We are growing old, Bran and I. His hair is now grey, and mine as white as snow. We cannot blink the fact that our summer is past, and we are in our autumn.

The year, like life, does not proceed in a straight line. It moves in a circle that brings the world, and man, back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, from which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men believe in that new beginning; but they experience only the ending. Autumn is a sad season, the farewell of the year, the farewell of the day. If we postpone our own farewell until December when the leaves are skeletal, worn like the skins of old men to cobweb fragility, or until they rot inexorably into brown, have we not outstayed our welcome? But if our life closes in a flourish of red and gold . . . well, no bad setting.

Sixty-two -- sixty-five, for Bran -- is an age which prefers tranquillity to turmoil, although those who have reached it do not always like to be reminded. But if tranquillity was our dream, turmoil remained our lot. Difficult as it is to chronicle these last tumultuous years, I will try to do so briefly and dispassionately.

The central government had no alternative but to recognise Constantine. His general Gerontius, however, revolted against him and persuaded the barbarians in Gaul to turn on his former master. Civil war broke out between the usurpers, but Stilicho did not take advantage. The eastern and western halves of the empire were ever more divided, and his acquisitive eyes were set on the east. He and Alaric, with whom he was now in league, were about to invade it when the British rebellion unfolded. Stilicho called his expedition off, and Alaric demanded huge compensation for what he had spent on preparations. This was paid, but Stilicho fell from imperial grace and was executed. At that, all the pent-up hatred of Roman for barbarian was released. Throughout the empire, Roman soldiers fell on Gothic, Hunnish or Vandal auxiliaries and massacred them by the tens of thousands. The survivors, vowing revenge, fled to Alaric, who invaded Italy again and besieged Rome. Honorius, preoccupied with his poultry in Ravenna, sent no help. The city saved itself only by paying a ransom of five thousand pounds of gold and thirty thousand pounds of silver. Alaric pulled back.

Barely had news of these upheavals reached us -- news travelled ever slower these days -- than the volcano simmering on our own doorstep erupted. The first we heard of it was when a well-dressed but mud-spattered man with an armed escort rode in from London. His name, he said, was Lugumarcus, and he demanded to address the council with urgent tidings. He started by telling us that the Saxons had mounted another large raid on our eastern coast and had captured several towns. Local Britons had taken up arms to defend themselves, their operations coordinated by the Combrogi and commanded by Vitalinus of Glevum; who was now sending representatives, of whom Lugumarcus was one, to every civitas to report that the Saxons had been repulsed and the towns liberated.

If councillors' mouths turned down at the news of the Combrogi's initiative, they gaped in stark incredulity at what followed. Self-help having proved a success, Lugumarcus went on, it was time for Britain to break free not only from its own ineffective usurper but from Rome itself. Vitalinus had therefore proclaimed Britain independent, and himself its supreme ruler.

Lugumarcus ignored the gasps of outrage and ploughed relentlessly on. Vitalinus, having parted company with Rome, styled himself not Emperor but High King, for which the British word is Vortigern; and as Vortigern he wished to be known. He had many changes in mind. Taxes would be lightened. Roman law was to be replaced by British. The top-heavy Roman bureaucracy would be drastically pruned. All officials who hailed from abroad -- those who regarded themselves, or were regarded, as posted to Britain -- were to leave immediately. Instead of a provincial structure, the whole nation would be ruled from London, where Vortigern had requisitioned the Deputy Prefect's palace.

The Town Council would remain in being in an advisory role, but the Town Hall staff would be answerable to Lugumarcus, who was henceforth our local master with the title of Protector. He -- and Vortigern -- hoped, he said dryly, that the new arrangements would meet with general support. If not, he ended with menace, the Combrogi had secretly trained and armed a substantial war band, whose effectiveness had been proved by repelling the Saxons.

It was now clear why Lugumarcus had a bodyguard with him. He knew the council would not receive his message kindly.

Opilio bowed to the inevitable. Next day he left under escort for Abonae to await a ship. He went with our thanks and good wishes, but without Titus. Theirs was a hard farewell. In all likelihood they would never meet again. Titus moved in with us, where for all practical purposes he lived already, and Lugumarcus took over Opilio's house.

Our Protector, while not a bad man, was an aloof and unsophisticated one, and a far cry from Opilio. In his eyes, everything was either black or white; he had no room for those unspectacular shades of grey which colour most mortals. In his eyes, the downtrodden were the most in need of help, in which he was entirely right, and he paraded himself as their saviour, which in a sense he was. In his eyes, the great majority of the council were black, but he took their outward obedience as acceptance and ignored them. In his eyes, Bran and I were white; he knew where our sympathies lay and took our loyalty for granted. But he was lord of Viroconium, and in his eyes there was no scope for elder statesmen left over from a former age. Expecting our undiluted support, he largely ignored us too.

But he did ask me to keep at least some of the mines going. Copper was still needed for making bronze for everyday purposes and especially, he added meaningly, for weapons. Silver might not be in day-to-day currency but still had purchasing power and was desperately needed. As for my lead, whose market in Gaul had collapsed and which had not sold well at Rome, he artlessly suggested advertising it for coffins and church fonts.

He wooed Amminus and the Cohort. So too, Amminus told us, did the council, behind Lugumarcus' back. The answer which both received was the same as Vortigern had had. The Cohort considered itself the servant of the Cornovii and would act as seemed best for the Cornovii. The implication, unspoken but clear, was that it was the servant of neither the council nor the Protector. With that, Lugumarcus had reluctantly to be content. He could not alienate so powerful a force by cutting off its supplies.

Britain under Vortigern felt a sense of maturity, as Pelagius had said of Adam, in defying authority, a sense of growing up out of passive childhood and facing an independent future. But it struggled to find its identity. In no way could it be called a unified nation. Pagan and Pelagian nationalism was vociferously opposed by the loyalist catholic establishment. Their party was led and fostered by a certain Ambrosius, a wealthy landowner from Noviomagus, who kept in close if secret touch with similar grandees elsewhere. By all accounts he was creating his own army in the safe seclusion of the island of Vectis, against the day when he could confront Vortigern openly. For the time being there was an uneasy stand-off.

Vortigern's control was patchy, and a whole multitude of local arrangements evolved. At a few towns -- Isca Dumnoniorum and Moridunum, for instance, where gentry were scarce -- the council willingly toed the new line. At some, like Lindum, the bishop emerged as the natural leader, stronger than the new Protector. At others, like Isurium Brigantium, the Protector turned into a local warlord who built up his own militia to guard his patch. At Noviomagus and Venta Belgarum, backed by Ambrosius' new troops, they simply defied Vortigern, who dared not attack. At most towns, like Viroconium, the councillors grudgingly did what they were told but, whenever they thought the Protector was not looking, continued with their oppression and corruption. The rich grew richer still, the lowly more lowly. Each side being united by a visceral solidarity, there was a constant tension in the air.

Two years after Britain declared its independence, Alaric returned to the warpath. His not unreasonable demands being refused point-blank by Honorius, he was back at the gates of Rome. After a short siege he captured it, and he sacked it. As sacks go, it was modest, even decorous; but a sack is still a sack, and the world reeled. Rome was by now of little practical importance as a city. For many years the imperial capital had been wherever the emperor or emperors happened to be -- Constantinople, Mediolanum, Ravenna, Treveri. But Rome had remained the symbol of the empire, a symbol of immense significance, and the shock to the whole world was incalculable. Even in Britain, no longer under the Roman thumb, it was like the shock of the earthquake. We almost felt the ground rippling under our feet. We almost literally staggered.

Sanctus had used a different analogy, but equally apposite. This thunderstorm had proved too much. The glue of the empire was finally dissolving, and everything was falling apart. The eternal city might live up to its name and survive as a city, but what it symbolised was mortal and dying.

But why had the glue failed? Christians blamed the disaster on the sins of the pagans, pagans on the neglect of the old gods. I myself was inclined to blame it on the very institution which the empire had become. When, rumour said, they told the idiot emperor at Ravenna that the Goths had captured Rome, he was aghast. But on hearing fuller details he mopped his brow in relief. 'Oh,' he said. 'That's all right then.' Rome was also the name of his favourite hen. If the empire had sunk that low, I said to Bran, were we not well rid of it?

"Yes. But why has it sunk so low? Is it simply old age? Every living thing comes to an end. Declines . . . turns senile . . . dies. Plants . . . animals . . . man. Nations too, and empires. Has Rome simply run its course? Has it just grown old and grey, like us?"

Whatever the answer, Alaric, having punished the senile symbol, pulled out of the city and promptly died.

Gaul had by now been looted from end to end, Spain seemed set to suffer the same fate, and another swarm of barbarians had crossed the Rhine. At least Constantine was on his last legs, but it was too late for Britain. Ravenna had no troops to spare for any attempt at reconquest. The loyalists in several civitates wrote secretly to Honorius asking for help, and his reply -- or rather his ministers' -- could not have been clearer. It said, quite bluntly, that we were on our own. Rome had washed its hands of us.

It was in this climate that our British volcano erupted again, and this time at Viroconium itself. Rumblings had begun over the winter and continued through the spring, none of them particularly disturbing by themselves. It was only with hindsight that their combined import could be seen.

The number of Pelagians in the town now warranted their own bishop. If the catholic Felix was a noiseless mouse, his new Pelagian counterpart was a roaring lion. Fastidius was a Briton from Lindum, in every sense a big man, who was not afraid to question our society in a voice of thunder. From his pulpit he tore strips off the councillors and their brand of Christianity, and was wholly unapologetic about it. Emperors in Italy, he argued, no longer dictated our actions. Why should bishops in Italy dictate our beliefs? As soon as he arrived he sought out Bran and me, and we got on famously.

Then Vortigern declared an amnesty for all those who had been imprisoned under Roman law; which was, in most cases, a very welcome move. But there also returned to us from Silina, their hearts full of bitterness and mischief, the two ex-chairmen who had flogged Marotamus.

Then in May we heard that another large Saxon raid had been launched on the south-eastern coasts. It was a long way away, and seemed of little relevance to us.

Next day Bran and I went out to Croucomailum with Cunorix and Eriugenus and Titus, and while they trained their wolfhounds we enjoyed each other's company basking in the sun in the courtyard of Pulcher's hunting lodge with its little kitchen and dining room. It was very pleasant and very peaceful; the lull, it proved, before the storm. Only in the evening when the five of us were coming in through the cemetery did we realise that something was wrong. The road was surprisingly empty. Beside it lay a man we knew by sight, a market gardener from near the Trena bridge, dead drunk, an empty wine jar and a blood-stained billhook by his side. From the town rose a hum interspersed with women's wailing, and smoke was rising from a burning building. Alarmed, we hurried on, and at the north gate we were hailed by a trooper from the Cohort, the senior of the handful whom Amminus now kept permanently in the town.

"Thank the gods you've come!" he cried in relief. "It's been bloody mayhem, and there's nobody left in charge."

He told us his tale. That morning a group of councillors, in a neat and clearly well-planned operation, had assassinated Lugumarcus and his bodyguard. Then they had all assembled in the Town Hall to plot their next move.

Meanwhile, news of the murders sped through the streets and out to the nearer countryside. It proved too much. The worms finally turned. Pagans and Pelagians alike, tradespeople and labourers, small gentry and farmers and peasants, all those who had seen Lugumarcus as their defence against oppression, grabbed the nearest mattock or pitchfork or kitchen knife and stormed the Town Hall.

Fastidius thundered vainly against violence, but Felix was nowhere to be seen. The soldiers were few and, because their sympathies lay with the rioters, did not interfere. The councillors never had a chance. Most were slaughtered on the spot. A few escaped, only to be be cut down as they ran, although two were seen riding hell for leather southwards. Them and us apart, every councillor had perished, some seventy souls in all. The rioters then sacked their houses. As sacks go, it was modest and even decorous, like Alaric's at Rome. At least they respected women and children.

The wretched trooper was worried stiff, hoping that in doing nothing he had done right. "Bishop Fastidius," he ended dejectedly, "is speechifying from the forum steps. He was the only man left with any clout. But I think he wants you to take charge."

We stared at him, beyond shock. No doubt that would come later. And we rode in. Outside the Town Hall lay several bodies, hacked to pieces. On the forum steps was Fastidius, big and black and bristling, holding forth to a very large audience.

"Today," he was saying as we joined the fringes, "many wicked men have come to the end of their sinning. At this very moment they're being judged, and just as they've lost this present life, so they're losing the life to come. It isn't hard to understand. It's no great surprise in these changing times if councillors die who have lived a life of crime. The greater their power, the bolder their sins. They willingly shed the blood of others. Now they've been forced to spill their own. They widowed many a woman and orphaned many a child, and left them naked and beggared. Now it's their own wives who are widows, their own children who are orphans.

"And what of your part in this, my brothers? I cannot approve it. Your deed was brutal and unrestrained. Fighting evil with evil shames the soul. Vengeance is demeaning. Creating widows and orphans is cruelty. Yet your victims had been equally brutal and unrestrained towards our Protector and towards you; and there is a limit to what weak mortals can readily bear. I know it. I too am a mortal, I too am weak. If I cannot approve your deed, neither can I find it in me to condemn it."

Bran and I looked at each other and found we agreed. Maybe reflection would change our view. But at first flush we could not condemn either. Even gentle Bran, who hated killing, could not condemn. And Fastidius had caught sight of us.

"What has happened today, my brothers," he went on, "will no doubt be debated for years to come. But we have more immediate and practical problems. In the days ahead there is much to be done. Who is now to rule us? Not me -- I have no worldly authority. Nor you -- if you have renounced your private virtues, how can you build a public good? This town can be redeemed only by good souls spreading goodness around them. Here are Docco and Bran, the only men left with civic authority. Their goodness over many years is known to all of you. Their hands are clean. They will use power wisely. Until some higher authority takes over, is it your wish that they should guide our footsteps?"

A roar of assent went up. Bran nodded to me. If the immensity of the job hardly sank in, we accepted that the responsibility was ours. To be seen and heard, I climbed on to the rim of a public fountain and shouted.

"Thank you. We will do our best. But the essential thing is that you do your best too, that everyone pulls together. Go home now. Get over the horrors of today. First thing tomorrow morning we'll all get to work. You'll find us in the Town Hall."

That was enough. It was no time for fancy oratory. I stepped down.

"There are things to be done before tomorrow, though," I said to Bran. "But I'll deal with the Town Hall, my love. Don't you come." He was eying the corpses with horror. "Send for the Cohort, would you? And go home with Cunorix and the boys and check that everything's all right there. I'll join you as soon as I can and we'll put our heads together."

He did not argue, and I walked across the street and into the Town Hall. Even in the diminishing light it was a shambles, and it stank. Corpses were sprawled everywhere. Benches were overturned. The mosaic floor was carpeted patchily and stickily in red. Horresco referens, I shudder to recall it. My flesh crawled, and I jerked with fright when a hand clutched my arm. It was Vindocunus.

"You know, Docco," he said sombrely, "I'm not proud of our day's work. We got carried away. Only the gods know what it'll bring down on Viroconium. Yet at the same time I am proud. It had to be done. Or is that very wrong?"

I looked at him, elderly, balding, pot-bellied, his tunic blood-stained, a butcher's cleaver at his belt. A butcher now in two senses, yet a decent citizen, not a bad man by nature.

"Inquests later, Vindocunus, if at all." I pulled myself together and clapped him on the shoulder. "Be a good fellow, would you, and collect a gang of men. And carpenters. Get these bodies decently coffined, and clean the floor. If we're using this for our headquarters, we'd like it ready by tomorrow morning, when we'll have a million things to do."

"That's only fair. We made this mess, and we'll clear it up. But there's something you should know, Docco. I was laughing at one of them as he died. I'm sorry about that, now. 'You won't be laughing long,' he screeched. 'Ambrosius promised help if we needed it. We've sent word to him. He'll come and avenge us.' Did you know that two of them got away?"

Yes, I knew. It was already my paramount worry. Ambrosius had been awaiting his chance, and this was it. Without a shadow of doubt he would be after our blood. Gloomily I turned and went out. At the door Felix was hovering, wringing his hands. That reminded me of another need.

"Felix," I said. "The rights and wrongs of what happened today can be argued later. Your first business must be to look after the widows and orphans. Will you organise your catholics to help?" He nodded silently.

Bran next. But as I headed for our house I met him coming back. There was only one problem at home, he reported. Aesicunia and Brica, when the riot broke out, had very sensibly locked themselves in. But Cintusmus next door, annoyed by the din interrupting his work, had gone out to complain. The sheer mass of people surging along the street had bowled the little man over and broken his leg. The women had set it and put him grumbling to bed.

"He'll be all right," Bran said. "More important, we've sent to Amminus to bring the Cohort here at once. Eriugenus and Titus have taken fresh horses and are going to ride through the night. They'll get remounts at Levobrinta. And once they've found Amminus, they're going on to Maqqos-Colini. Cunorix is sure he'll come to our help. It'll tickle him to defend the town he once attacked. And Cunorix himself has collected some friends and headed for Virocodunum to light a beacon." That was the signal, agreed years before, for the Cohort to drop everything and come home. "They'll see it from the mountains and start getting ready long before the boys arrive with the details."

Good. But before we launched into our new role I needed strength.

"Bran . . ."

"Docco . . ."

We spoke at the same time, and I read the smile he sent me. There was the same need in his soul. As a first step towards reassurance we held hands, and without a word walked to the closest point on the rampart, near the postern gate to the river. The palisade, as we leaned on it side by side, wobbled, just as its predecessor by the north gate had wobbled when Lucius and I leaned on it in the distant past. It sent my mind back . . .

I thought of Lucius with gratitude. I still loved his soul beyond the grave, but not at the expense of love on this side. I squeezed Bran's hand.

Down below us to the left, though it was too dark to see it, was the girls' bathing place; or what had been the girls' bathing place, for public nakedness had now been banned as an invitation to immorality. It sent my mind back . . .

"What are you chuckling at?" Bran demanded.

"I'm revisiting my childhood. A sign of senility. Do you remember showing me how you made seed, my love, all those years ago?"

"How can I forget it?"

"Well, I don't think I ever told you, but on my way home for my bath, that day, I saw Senovara's pussy, close up. Just down there." I pointed. "That was the time my growing up began. It was a long process . . . Amminus . . . Lucius . . . Ireland . . . before you completed it for me. And you didn't just complete it. You started it for me too. You started it that day."

Bran chuckled in his turn. "And little did we think we'd end up here, fifty-odd years on, talking about boys making seed, while behind us the town reeks like a slaughterhouse."

"True. But that was our starting point, Bran. Mine, anyway. Maybe we're near our finishing point now. But if we didn't remember the past, the good times, we'd never be able to face the present. At least I wouldn't. Right now I'm feeling very old and feeble. O mihi praeteritos referat si Iuppiter annos, if only Jupiter would give me back my past years. Oh Bran, thank the gods I've got you!"

I hugged him, hard.

"Thank the gods we've got each other, Docco."

"Thank the gods we've had each other for so long. But we've failed, Bran, haven't we?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm thinking of Sanctus. He saw Viroconium as a shining example of Britons running their own affairs. We tried to keep it that way, and we failed. He said that when there's no Roman future, there'll still be a British one. That the fate of this island will rest in the hands of leaders such as us. Well, look at Viroconium now!"

I jerked my thumb bitterly over my shoulder.

"And it does rest in our hands," said Bran, more resilient than me. "We can still save Viroconium, my love. We've got to. Do you remember, that same time, you asked what we were, British or Roman? There was no doubt then. There's even less doubt now. All right, as long as we have baths, and wine, and Vergil, there's still a bit of the Roman in us. But at root we're British, no argument. And Ambrosius is Roman, no argument. If we send him off with a bloody nose, maybe we'll have saved Britain." He laughed deprecatingly. "I know it sounds melodramatic and grandiose. But this could be the moment that decides between Roman and British. And it's all up to us."

If Bran's strong arms had not been round me, I would have been in tears. It was now fully dark. The merest hint of red silhouetted the western horizon. A pure bright air blew brisk from the hills, shaking the bushes on the further bank and making us shiver. The river slid by below, silent but fast, like a great coiling serpent whose scales caught gleams of starlight and flashed silver before speeding downstream.

I pulled away to look at the pale oval of my lover's face.

"Bran. If the fate of Britain's in the hands of the two current leaders of Viroconium, well . . . the stronger of them is Irish and was born a slave. That's interesting, isn't it?"

"Half of it's irrelevant, my love, and half of it's untrue." He slapped my hand as if I were a naughty child. "Self-doubt's all very well. It makes for a good leader. But don't overdo it. We're equals. Equals. In love . . . in strength . . . as in everything else. Don't you ever forget that."

Hmmm. I was strong only in my public face. Bran's strength was inside. But he was good at lending it to me.

"We can win, Docco," he insisted. "We're plenty strong enough. Love's on our side. Omnia vincit amor, love beats everything . . ." he chuckled again, "et nos cedamus amori, and let us give in to love. Let's go home and give in to it. Now. This very moment. There won't be much chance in the days ahead."

I gave in too. Love-making, for us, was never an ending, but an everlasting beginning. With a new sense of purpose we turned for home, but stopped in our tracks. Ahead of us in the sky there streamed in crimson on the wind a blazing crest of light. Virocodunum's beacon was beckoning the Cohort. In reminding us that we were not alone, it gave us further purpose. In reminding us of history, it gave us more purpose still -- on Virocodunum, all those centuries ago, Romans had subdued Britons, and now it was time for the tables to be turned.

The next week was the most hectic I have ever spent. Vortigern being tied up with the Saxons in the east, no present help could be expected from him. Ambrosius' army had to come from Vectis. The Cohort was nearer, and should reach us first. But there was an infinity of things to be be done. It was heartening how everybody mucked in. From our desks in the Town Hall Bran and I orchestrated the work. Rarely did we have to order or cajole. For the most part we had only to ask or suggest, and people scurried hither and yon. Cunorix was a tireless helper. Two mass graves were dug, and the following day two funerals were held; that for Lugumarcus and his men conducted resoundingly by Fastidius, that for the catholics inaudibly by Felix. In sympathy or in shame, the whole town was present. But, the victims' families apart, it was no time, and there was no time, to dwell on the past.

Before long the able-bodied were streaming in from farms and fields for miles around. The rugged miners poured to war from Onna's sunless caves. Weapons were distributed from the arsenal built up forty-odd years before by Tad and his colleagues. The streets rang with smiths' hammers forging new swords and arrowheads. The doddery palisade, our worst weakness, was patched and propped and buttressed as best we could. Women and children, sick and old, were evacuated from town and country to the old hill-fort of Cordocum on the edge of the mountains, far enough away yet not too far. Provisions went with them. In the town food was stockpiled and cattle driven in, not only to give us milk and meat but for their own safety. The watermills ground day and night to build up supplies of flour. Then the aqueduct was dammed and the culvert under the rampart blocked; our wells and the plunge pools at the baths would have to see us through. Never since the Irish raids had Viroconium worked with such common purpose.

One morning when Bran and I arrived at the Town Hall, we found we had new company; or old. Cernunnos was back in his alcove. Vindocunus was hanging around, looking smug. We smiled, but had a sudden qualm.

"Vindocunus. There aren't any new skulls in Cernunnos' temple, are there?"

"Not yet," he said. "But in a few days' time . . ."

At last the Cohort appeared, in dribs and drabs from its far-flung outposts, and Amminus, already plotting an ambush in the gorge, took charge of our defence. He borrowed Cunorix's services but sent Bran and me home, for we were exhausted. Amminus was as old as us, but fit; he was a soldier, we were not. Maqqos-Colini and the boys, he reported, were following with five hundred Irish. News arrived that Ambrosius' army, numbering some two thousand, had passed through Corinium. The messenger, who had ridden hard, thought it was now two days behind him. The assault would probably fall the day after tomorrow. If the Irish came in time we were as ready as we could be.

But one thing we had forgotten. At home we found Maglocunus and Dumnorix newly arrived and spoiling for the fight. Maglocunus was installing a crude little figurine in the niche with the household gods.

"It's Cocidius," he said, naming our god of war. "I bought him off a Pagensis I met. I think we're going to need him here . . . Docco," he asked very soberly, "what does happen if Ambrosius breaks in?"

"You know the answer. We fight him in the streets. And if we're defeated there, well . . . Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem. The only safe course for the defeated is to expect no safety."

"Then why are my parents still here?" Dumnorix demanded. "And Aesicunia?"

Oh gods! We had clean overlooked them; even Cunorix had overlooked his own wife; even though they had been keeping us going with food for the last week.

"They'll have to go to Cordocum too. The last batch of evacuees is about to leave. They're assembling by the ford any moment now. But we've no horses to spare. Cintusmus will have to be carried."

"And who carries him?"

"You," I said dryly. "You're his son."

"But I'll miss the fun."

"Not if you leave now. You'll easily be back by this time tomorrow."

Dumnorix fingered the sword-scar on his chin, and his mouth turned mulish. I knew the signs. We had been here before, and I suggested our usual solution.

"Let Vergil decide."

It was a matter of opening Sanctus' great book at random and reading the bottom line of the right-hand page. Dumnorix took it down from its cupboard and shut his eyes as he opened it. Then he looked, and blinked, and raised a rueful face.

"So be it. It could hardly be clearer. Or more appropriate. Aeneid Book II, last line. Cessi, et sublato montem genitore petivi. I gave up, and picking up my father I made for the hills."

"I'll come too, Dum," said Maglocunus. "We'll carry Cintusmus by turns. It'll save time."

Brica and Aesicunia were summoned. Cintusmus was lifted on to Dumnorix's back. Farewells were quickly said. It was very thoughtfully that Bran and I watched them go.

Those words which Dumnorix had read . . .

Anyone not steeped in Vergil would take them at face value, but we could look behind them . . .

Those were Aeneas' words as he hoisted his aged father on his shoulders and turned his back on the flames of dying Troy. Troy had fallen, but from her ruin had sprung the seed which grew into Rome; a seed in the shape of a battered soldier leading a handful of refugees out of danger and, after long years, to a new nation in the west.

And now Rome herself was dying in her turn. But from her ruin was springing another seed, another new nation in the west . . .

May it grow strong, we prayed. Oh gods, may it grow strong.

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We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну
We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну