He had passed two farms burnt out and deserted, that day. That should have warned him. But he had refused to understand what their blackened ruins meant; he had said to himself, ‘It was a chance raid, no more,’ and pushed on, with the dread that he would not look at thrust into the back of his mind.
There were no bodies piled within the Gate, no signs of a struggle that he could see. The townsfolk must have known that the Saxons were coming, and lacking their fighting men, fled in time. And the Barbarians, flooding into an empty town, had looted and burned to their fierce hearts’ delight. Owain wandered on down the straight street towards the Forum, aimlessly, because he had got to the place he was making for and found it dead, and there was nowhere else to go. And as he drifted along, he looked about him.
Viroconium had been half empty when he came that way before. It had been falling into decay for a hundred years, becoming slowly sleepier and more unkempt, the grass and the little dusty shepherd’s purse creeping further out from the sides of the streets. But there had still been life in Viroconium when Kyndylan’s war-host had gathered in the spring; voices and footsteps in the streets, and children playing on doorsteps, and smells of cooking towards evening. Now, the city was dead. The streets were silent, and the houses stood up gaunt and gutted, with blind eyes and blackened roof-beams fallen in.
Owain found himself at the Forum Gate, with its proud inscription to the Emperor Hadrian, and halted there, staring dazedly about him, while Dog stood watching him expectantly and wagging his tail. It was growing dusk, and he thought suddenly—it was a thought that made the sick laughter rise in his throat—that he could sleep in the Basilica tonight, he could sleep in the Palace of Kyndylan the Fair, if he chose; he was free of all Viroconium. But the little low-browed shops in the Forum colonnade seemed to offer a deeper and darker refuge to crawl into. One or two near the Gate still had their roofs on them, and he turned to the nearest of these. It looked to have been a basket-maker’s shop; everything that could be of use to the marauders had been stripped from it, but a broken pigeon basket and a bundle of withies still lay in one corner. The light was going fast, and the back of the shop was already lost in the shadows of the rainy twilight.
Dog, who was tired of being wet, padded in and shook himself, scattering a shower of drops from his thick brindled hide. Owain followed, dragging himself like a sorely hurt animal into the darkest corner, and lay down with his sodden cloak still about him. He lay curled in on himself and pressed against the wall behind him, his knees drawn up and his head in his arms, as though he would have shrunk away into the shadows and ceased to exist altogether if he could. He had thought that he knew it was the end of all things, in the night after the battle, but he knew now he had never quite believed it; always, all the long road north and while he lay sick of his wound, he had clung to some desperate hope that he had not really looked at; the hope that if he could only get back to Viroconium where they had hosted in the spring, there would be something … somehow life would go on again. But there was nothing. Viroconium was dead. All the world he knew was dead and cold, and he understood for the first time—he had never quite believed that either, even though he had found their bodies—that he would never see his father and Ossian again.
Dog sat beside him, watching with ears pricked and head a little on one side, as though he wondered why his Lord made these distressful muffled noises, and why his shoulders jerked.
Later, when Owain had cried himself into stillness, Dog lay down beside him and licked his face; and the boy put his arm round the hound’s neck, feeling some kind of dim comfort in the warmth and living strength of it under the harsh hide. And sleep came for them both together.
Once in the night Dog roused, and Owain, woken by his movement, felt the hair lift on the hound’s neck as he raised his head growling softly, and looked towards the entrance of the shop. For a moment his own hair prickled on his nape, and his heart began to race. But nothing happened, and there was no sound save the rain on the roof.
Next time he woke it was full daylight; the rain had stopped and there were smeared gleams of light on the wet herring-bone bricks of the pavement. Dog was afoot already, and sniffing about the doorway and the Forum Gate, as though after whatever had been there in the night. Owain sat up, and drew his legs under him, and got slowly to his feet. He was so stiff and weary, that he felt as though he had been beaten, and for the first few moments he could hardly stand. He lurched across to the shop entrance, and stood propped weakly against the fire-scorched doorpost, looking out across the Forum. He did not know what he was going to do now, he had not thought beyond getting back to Viroconium. But meanwhile, his body knew that it must have food, and even before food, water. Dog was lapping the puddles that last night’s rain had left in the roadway, but it wasn’t easy for a human to do that, Owain knew, for he had tried. There was a fountain in the centre of the Forum; it was dead like everything else, but when he went to look, the drain was choked with leaves, and there was a little rain water in the green-stained bowl. He managed to scoop some up in his cupped hands and drink before it all ran back between his fingers. ‘Food now,’ said his body, and he felt inside the breast of his tunic for the snares of springy plaited horsehair that Priscus had given him. Evening was the time to set a snare, but if he waited until then he could get nothing until tomorrow; if he set the snares now, there was a chance, though only a slim one, that there might be something in one of them by night, and if not, he had lost nothing. Anyway, he had nothing else to do.
It seemed a long way back to the South Gate, and he had not realized until now how footsore he was. Once he thought he heard footsteps behind him, very light and pattering, but when he looked round, there was no one there. The burial ground outside the walls had fallen into decay like the rest of Viroconium, long ago; saplings had sprung up between the graves, and here and there arched sprays of bramble and grey-bearded traveller’s-joy laced the tombstones together, and looking about him, Owain thought that it would be as good a place as any for his snares. It was not long before he found what he wanted, the hollow line of a hare’s run among the grass and brambles. While Dog stood by watching, he set his first snare at the foot of a stone to one Marcus Petronius of Vicenza, Standard Bearer to the 14th Legion, aged 39 years; and wondered, as he drew the crimson-leaved bramble sprays down to conceal his handiwork, if Marcus Petronius would have been angry or pleased, or cared at all, to know that one day somebody was going to set a snare for Lord Longears on his grave.
He set the two remaining snares in different runs, ate a couple of handfuls of blackberries, not more, hungry though he was, because he had learned by now the unwisdom of too many blackberries on an empty belly, and then turned drearily back to the town.
All that day, with Dog padding at his heels or turning off to investigate odd corners, he wandered about Viroconium, up and down the silent streets and in and out of the shops and houses, like an unquiet ghost.
He had not seen or heard anything more since that odd fancy of steps pattering behind him on the road to the South Gate, and yet all the time he had the feeling that he was being watched. It was just the loneliness, of course—though once or twice Dog had looked round quickly, or raised his muzzle to sniff the wind …
By and by they found a breach in a high wall and scrambled over into some gardens, which he judged were those of Kyndylan’s Palace. There were apple trees close to the wall; some of their branches had been scorched, but not badly, and the apples lay in the grass around their feet. Owain picked one up and bit into it, but the sourness of it dried his mouth like a quince, and he threw it away, saying to Dog who was nosing at another, ‘No, you fool, come away. It is better to have an empty belly than the bellyache.’
He was not much in the habit of talking to Dog; for the most part they lived together in companionable silence; and the sound of his own voice, which he had not heard for days, made him jump. It was like a pebble dropped into a pool, the ripples of it spreading out and out thr
ough the silence, and without knowing why, he glanced behind him.
As he did so, there was a small fluttering in the heart of some overgrown bushes beside the gap in the wall. His heart lurched unpleasantly, and then steadied as a chiff-chaff darted out, and the fluttering was explained. He hunched his shoulders and turned away. ‘Stop jumping at shadows,’ he told himself. ‘It is because you want food, that is all.’ But before he was out of sight of the bushes, he glanced back once more. Nothing stirred among them now; the chiff-chaff was darting and hovering after flies under the apple trees.
Owain prowled on, his feet carrying him now towards the fire-stained walls and colonnades of Kyndylan’s Palace. On the way, he came on a little grotto down three steps, with a grey stone roof under an overarching tangle of hazel bushes; and below the eaves, water still trickling from the mouth of a bronze lion’s mask. He had found water in other places in Viroconium, but it was mostly foul and stagnant; this was fresh and sweet, and he and Dog drank their fill from the ferny basin, and remembered it for the next time they were thirsty.
Kyndylan’s Palace was a shell; the walls stood up, empty and fire-stained, roofed with the drifting blue and grey of the autumn sky, the great chambers choked up with charred beams and all the debris of the fallen roof. But at the end of the slaves’ wing he came on a small store-room two steps below ground level, which still had most of its roof, though the tiles were broken and he could see the sky through a jagged gap in one corner. And the part of himself that was concerned with such things recognized it for a good place to camp. He could even have a fire here to cook his hare if he caught one. That was as well, for the shop where he had slept last night was darkened in his mind as though the misery that had overwhelmed him there had filled it with a black cloud, and he knew that whether or not he found other shelter, he could not go back to it.
There was plenty of wood lying about in the ruins, and not all of it wet. He collected a good supply, and made ready his fire in the middle of the beaten earth floor; he even brought in a few armfuls of long grass and weeds from the nearest part of the garden, and flung them down in the corner furthest from the hole in the roof, to make a bed. Then he sat on it, and scratched the scar on his arm, and waited for dusk to come. It seemed the longest day that he had ever known.
Evening came at last, and he set out on the long journey back to his snares. Two of them he found empty, but in the third, the one set on the standard bearer’s grave, there was a fat buck hare. He took it out, with a salute to the shade of Marcus Petronius, paunched it and let Dog eat the offal; and resetting the snare, set out for Kyndylan’s Palace, his kill swinging in his hand.
He felt a vague unwillingness, now that he was outside it, to go back into the empty town in the dark—though to be sure the moon was rising—and as he trudged wearily in once more through the dark gate-arch into the brightening moonlight of the street beyond, the sense of being watched was stronger on him than ever. He stopped to listen, as he had stopped so often that day, and a small sound that he had been hearing stopped with him; splat-splat-splat—but it was only a little blood dripping from the hare where he had paunched it.
The half-fallen rafters made queer shadows on the pavement of Kyndylan’s colonnades, and he found himself avoiding them with care, or else deliberately wading through them to show himself that there was nothing there; a trail of ivy swinging in the little wind made him whirl round in his tracks, and the kee wick-wick-wick of a hunting owl set his heart racing and damped the palms of his hands. But he reached his corner of the slaves’ wing at last, and squatting down, set to work to get a spark from his strike-a-light. It took a long time, and he tore one finger with the flint, but it came at last, and he got the fire going. He felt better after that, and while the fire burned up he set to work to skin the hare. He gave the skin with the head and paws still inside it to Dog, who leapt on it, tearing and worrying as though it were a full-grown buck, and choking himself with the fur. Then he poked the skinned hare into the hot edge of the fire with his knife, and began the difficult business of getting it cooked a little without burning it.
Presently there was a strong smell of scorching flesh, and when he managed to rake the thing out and get it turned over, there was a blackened patch on its shoulder. He must be more careful. He scraped off the charred surface, and put more wood on the fire, trying to build it a little round the hare without getting it too close.
It burned with small bright flames over a glowing heart, for the firewood was seasoned timber; the smoke curled upward to find its way out through the hole in the roof, and warmth stole out into the little store-room with the tawny light that fluttered over the intent faces of the boy and the hound.
At last, probing with his knife, Owain decided that the meat was cooked as well as it was ever likely to be; at any rate he could wait no longer. He had been beyond feeling hungry when he brought back his kill, only a little sick, but now with the smell of the baking meat curling up into his nostrils, the warm water was running into his mouth so that he had to keep swallowing. He raked it out from the hot ash with his knife and a bit of wood, and rolled it over on to the floor to get cool enough to handle. And as he did so, Dog, who had long since finished his share and was lying nose on paws watching the cooking, raised his head and looked towards the doorway, his eyes like green lamps in the firelight, and growled softly in his throat, as he had done the night before.
Owain also looked towards the doorway.
The moonlight made a bar of silver on the edge of each of the steps, and shone full on the wall just inside the door. The last time he looked that way, the moonlight had been empty save for the cracks in the plaster; now, on the milky light, he saw a shadow, angular and delicate as that of a grasshopper, but seemingly human.
5
Regina
OWAIN grabbed Dog’s collar as the great hound sprang up, and scrambled to his feet, shouting something, he did not know what. The shadow started back as though to run, hung for an instant on the edge of the dark, then slipped forward across the moon-whitened wall. A figure with the same sharp-edged delicacy as the shadow appeared in the doorway, and a husky voice edged with fear, begged, ‘Don’t let the dog hurt me.’
‘I’ll set the dog on you this instant, if you don’t come into the firelight and show me what you are,’ Owain panted, strangling at Dog’s collar with both hands. ‘Peace, Dog! Be quiet! Quiet, I say!’
The figure came slowly down the steps and into the firelight.
Owain found himself looking at a girl of maybe twelve years old, a dark creature with arms and legs as thin as bare bone sticking out of the tattered remains of a filthy tunic. She had come close in to the fire, and they surveyed each other, while Dog, ceasing to growl, stood watchful at his Lord’s side. The girl stood poised, flinching and wary, as though ready to run at any moment, yet at the same time defiant, staring back at Owain with the most extraordinary eyes, grey as rain and fringed all round with black lashes. He did not notice that she smelt, for he had grown used to smells since Kyndylan’s war-host marched from Viroconium, but he did notice that there were dark sores round her mouth, and something crawled out of her matted hair and disappeared into it again.
‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Is it you who have been spying on me all day?’
She answered the second of his three questions, which was the one most to the point as far as she was concerned. ‘I smelled the meat cooking.’
There was a faint whine in her voice that he did not like. He stooped and picked up the hare, which was cool enough to handle now, tore off one of its back legs, and tossed it to her as though she were a dog. ‘There, take it.’
She snatched it up and crammed it against her mouth with both hands, tearing and worrying at it; but all the while her eyes never left his face. In an unbelievably short time the bones were bare. She pulled them apart, licking the last threads of meat from between them, then dropped them and held out her cupped hands in the g
esture of the trained beggar. ‘I am very hungry. Let my Lord give me the other leg.’
So that was what she was: a beggar. Savagely, Owain tore off the other leg and dropped it into her pleading hands; then he began hurriedly to eat as well, lest she should ask for more and more until there was none of his kill left for him at all.
So they ate standing, staring at each other beside the fire. The girl finished first and stood sucking the bones, her eyes fixed on the remains of the hare which he still held; but Owain refused her silent pleading—fair was fair, it was his kill and he had given her nearly half of it anyway—and ate on to the end, stripping the nutty white flesh along the backbone; then he gave the carcass with a few rags of meat still on it to Dog. He was angry at having been frightened, even more than at having lost so much of his supper, but against his will he was a little glad to find that he was not the only human being alive in the dead city; and after he had licked his fingers, he demanded, ‘What is your name?’
‘Regina,’ she said, licking her fingers also, and the greasiness round her mouth.
Owain had enough Latin, though people did not use it much in everyday speech nowadays, to know what that meant. He laughed. ‘Queen! That’s a likely name for you, isn’t it? Were your father and mother of royal blood, then?’
‘I never had a father nor a mother,’ Regina said, as one stating a simple fact. ‘I lived with an old woman, but she died last winter. She made me beg for her, and when I did not bring home enough, she used to beat me. Once I tried to kill her, but she tasted the killing-herbs in the broth, and beat me until I could not stand.’