She had not positively known she was unhappy until one day that spring.
The house in which they lived lay in the city’s southern annexe. It was a pleasant spot. As the wooden bridge reached the gravel spit that protruded from the southern bank, it continued on raised supports for some way, so that when the tide came in and turned the spit into an island, the bridge remained comfortably clear of the water. On reaching the marshy southern bankside beyond, the road was built up on a base of huge logs laid crosswise, with an earth and metalled surface above. It was just as she was walking along this that she had stopped to watch some workmen by the marshy edge of the river.
They were building a revetment along the riverbank. It was a large structure: great hollows made of oak timbers jointed to form a square, and then filled in. It rose well above the high-water mark, almost like a dike or a wharf. As she watched, she realized something else. The revetment had eaten several feet into the river, narrowing it slightly. When she had remarked upon this to one of the workmen, he had smiled.
“That’s right. We’ve taken a little back from it. Maybe another year we’ll take more.” He laughed. “It’s like a woman, you see. We use the river and we tame her. That’s the way of it.”
She had wandered across the bridge, thinking about it. Was that the story of her own life? The mariner was never cruel. But why should he be? He had an obedient young wife to look after him whenever he came to port. Was he kind to her? Fairly. She knew she should not complain. On reaching the other side of the bridge she had turned right and walked eastwards along the waterfront, past wharves and warehouses, until at last, just past the wharves’ end, she had come to the eastern corner where the river was met by the city wall.
It was a quiet spot. By the angle of the wall there was a large bastion, but it was deserted now. Above, the spur of the eastern hill curved round until it reached the wall, making this riverside corner into an empty quarter-bowl, a sort of natural open-air theatre. On the slopes, the ravens walked about as though waiting in the silence for some play to begin.
Alone in that space, she had gazed at the high city wall in front of her. It was certainly admirable. Pale ragstone, brought up the river from Kent, had been neatly squared to make the outer face. The centre, nearly nine feet thick at the base, was packed with stone and mortar infill, and every three feet or so, two or three courses of red tile were laid through the entire thickness of the wall to strengthen it further. The final result was a splendid structure some twenty feet high with thin red stripes running horizontally along its length.
And suddenly, unbidden, it came to her with terrible, absolute clarity that she was not happy and that, after all, her life had become a prison.
Even so, she might have continued indefinitely if it had not been for Sextus.
At first she had been repelled by his advances, but they had made her think. She knew other girls with older husbands who secretly took lovers. As Sextus persisted, something in her began to stir. Perhaps it was excitement, perhaps she just wanted to end her sadness, but gradually she had allowed the thought to form. Might she, too, take a lover?
It was then that Julius had come into her mind.
It was not just his boyish looks, his bright blue eyes and obvious physical prowess. It was the faint briny smell of him, the way his powerful young shoulders bent to his work and the sweat glistened on his arms. Once she allowed the idea to take hold, she found an almost aching desire to have him possess her. I’ll take the bloom off his youth, she smiled to herself. Cunningly she had teased him, first advancing then pretending to withdraw while she flirted mildly with Sextus. She found she was taking a huge pleasure even in the game.
When his letter came, “I have him,” she murmured. Yet now that the moment had arrived, she was also afraid. What if she were caught? The mariner would doubtless be vengeful. Did she really want to risk everything for this boy? For a long time, therefore, she had gazed across the river as the sun went down, wondering what to do, before at last deciding.
The mariner was away. The faint, sensuous melancholy of the evening had worked upon her. I can’t be sad any more, she thought. Tomorrow she would go to the bridge.
“Your turn.”
Julius came back from his reverie with a start. Was his father looking at him strangely? He tried to concentrate on the board in front of him and slowly made his move.
He was safely home. It was a cheerful domestic scene. He could see his mother and sister in the adjoining kitchen, preparing a feast for their neighbours after the games tomorrow. As usual, he and his father were sitting on folding stools in the main room of the family’s modest house, playing their evening game of draughts. Yet all the time he kept wondering whether the soldiers would come?
He glanced towards the kitchen. He had not been able to speak to his sister since he had run for his life. What had the fat girl seen?
On the kitchen wall hung a brace of duck. On the scrubbed table, a side of beef, the favourite British staple, a huge bowl of oysters from the river, and a bucket of snails that had been fed on milk and wheat and would be fried tomorrow in oil and wine. In a broad, shallow bowl a soft cheese was curdling. Beside it were spices for a sauce. The diet the Romans had introduced into Britain was appetizing indeed: pheasant and fallow deer; figs and mulberries; walnuts and chestnuts; parsley, mint and thyme; onions, radishes, turnips, lentils and cabbage. The island Celts had also learned to cook snails, guinea fowl, pigeons, frogs and even, occasionally, spiced dormice.
Mother and daughter worked in silence. The older woman, quiet and humourless, prepared. The fat girl tried to eat, whilst her mother, without changing her expression or pausing in what she was doing, protected the family’s food by slapping her. Julius saw his mother go to the bowl of eels. Slap. Having inspected them, she said a few words to the girl, who moved to the cupboard, and went back to the sauce she was preparing. Slap. Then his mother moved to the window for a moment. The fat girl succeeded in getting a piece of fresh bread into her mouth. Slap. The fat girl munched contentedly.
Had his sister seen the soldiers? Did she know what had happened to Sextus? Had she told his parents? It was impossible to guess. He supposed she must know something. When could he ask her?
The last few hours had been torture. As soon as he had got well away from his pursuers, Julius had tried to take stock of the situation. That it was he, rather than Sextus, who had caused them to be under suspicion never occurred to him. Had his friend been arrested? He did not dare return yet to find out. Had Sextus incriminated him? Carefully he worked his way towards his home. If Sextus had given him away, the soldiers would surely come there.
It seemed to him that the safest plan was to wait until the morning and then encounter Sextus in the street on the way to the games. Until then, he must somehow try to act as though nothing had happened.
But where to hide the bag? That was a problem. Somewhere safe, not connected with himself. Some place where he could easily retrieve it later. He cast about, but found nothing.
Until, skirting the summit of the western of the two hills where the little temple of Diana stood, he glanced at one of the pottery kilns that shared the site. Beside it was a heap of waste, rejected pots and other rubble that had obviously been undisturbed for some time. Waiting until there was no one about, he had sauntered over to the pile, pushed the bag quickly under the rubbish, and moved swiftly away. No one had seen him. He was sure of it. He had gone home.
But he felt little confidence. And as he looked once more from his father’s cheerful face to his mother’s, he knew why.
For if Rufus was merry and red-faced and loved to sing, his wife was none of these things. Her hair, now neither blond nor grey, was pulled in a tight bun. Her eyes were grey and never shone. Her face, unchanged since his childhood, was phlegmatically pale, like pastry before it is cooked. She was kind enough, and he believed that she loved them all, but she spoke little, and when her husband told a joke she never laughed but only stared. I
t often seemed as though, like a boring but habitual duty, she carried about with her the burden of some glum memory.
Celtic memories were long. Only two centuries had passed since Boudicca, the tribal queen, had revolted against the conquering Romans, and her family had been of Queen Boudicca’s tribe. “My grandfather was born in the reign of Emperor Hadrian, who built the wall,” she would state, “and his grandfather was born in the year of the great revolt. He lost both his parents.” She still had distant cousins in the remote countryside who farmed just as their Celtic ancestors had and spoke no word of Latin. Hardly a day went by without her uttering some dismal warning.
“Those Romans are all the same. They get you in the end.” It had been like a litany all his childhood.
Click. A sharp sound from the draughts board interrupted these observations. A series of clicks and a triumphant bang.
“Wiped him off the board.” His father’s red face was grinning at him. “Dreaming about women?” He began to gather up the draughts. “Time to go in a little while,” he added more seriously, before disappearing into his bedroom to get ready.
Julius waited. The meeting with his father’s friends at the temple that evening was important. Very important. He must try to forget about the day’s events and prepare himself. “Just show that you’re businesslike and ready to learn. That’s all you have to do,” his father had counselled him.
He tried to concentrate, but it was difficult. Surely he had taken every precaution he could. And yet there was still one thing that was bothering him.
The bag. All evening, he now realized, the bag had lain there, in the back of his mind, silently haunting him. At first he had been so afraid the soldiers might come that he was glad the bag was hidden where no one could connect him with it. But now he guessed that in the barracks, as everywhere in the city, the soldiers would be preparing for the games, and he became more and more confident that they were not coming. For that night, at least, he was probably safe.
Which left the bag. Of course, it was well hidden. But what if by some fluke they decided to clear up the rubbish? Or some scavenger should discover the coins and steal them? A picture of the precious bag, out there in the night, hovered before his eyes.
And so it was that he suddenly made a decision. Slipping quietly out of the house, he made his way swiftly through the streets to the kilns. It was not far. There were people about, but the pile of rubble was in the shadows. For a moment he could not find the bag, but then he did. Holding it under his cloak, he hurried back home. Carefully he entered and went to his room. The two women in the kitchen did not notice him. He pushed the bag under his bed, where there were already two boxes of his possessions. It would be safe there until morning. Moments later, he was awaiting his father by the door, ready to go out.
The night was clear and full of stars as Julius and his father crossed the city to the meeting. The family’s house was situated near the lower of the two gates in the western wall, and so they took the great thoroughfare which led from that gate, across the side of the western hill and down the incline to the brook that ran between the hills.
It was not often that Julius saw his father nervous, but just for once he sensed that he was. “You’ll be fine,” the older man muttered, more to himself than to his son. “You won’t let me down.” Then, a little later: “Of course, it’s not a closed meeting tonight, or you couldn’t be there.” And finally, squeezing his son’s arm tightly: “Just sit quietly, now. Don’t say anything. Watch.” They had reached the brook. They crossed the bridge. Before them lay the Governor’s Palace. Their destination lay up a street on the left.
At last, ahead of them in the darkness, there it was: a dark building standing alone, its doorway lit on each side by burning torches. Julius heard his father give a little hiss of satisfaction.
Though he was an easy-going man, there were two things of which Julius’s father Rufus was fiercely proud. The first was the fact that he was a Roman citizen.
Civus Romanus sum: I am a Roman citizen. In the early decades of Roman rule, few natives of the island province gained the honour of full citizenship. Gradually, however, the restrictions were eased, and Rufus’s grandfather, though only a provincial Celt, had managed by service in an auxiliary regiment to earn the coveted status. He had married an Italian woman, so Rufus could also claim that there was Roman blood in the family. True, when Rufus was a child the Emperor Caracalla had opened the gates and made citizenship available to nearly all freemen in the empire, so that in truth there was nothing to distinguish Rufus from the modest merchants and shopkeepers amongst whom he lived. But he still took pride in telling his son: “We were citizens before that, you know.”
But the second, and far greater, source of pride lay in the doorway with the flickering lights.
For Rufus was a member of the temple lodge.
Of all the temples in Londinium, though many were larger, none was more powerful than the Temple of Mithras. It was situated between the two hillocks, on the eastern bank of the little brook, about a hundred yards up from the precincts of the Governor’s Palace. Built recently, it was a stout little building, rectangular in shape and only sixty feet long. One entered from the eastern end; at the western end was a small apse containing the sanctuary. In this respect it resembled Christian churches, which at this time also had their altars at the western end.
There had always been many religions in the empire, but in the last two centuries the mystery cults and religions from the East had become increasingly popular, two especially: the religion of Christianity and the cult of Mithras.
Mithras the bull-slayer. The Persian god of heavenly light; the cosmic warrior for purity and honesty. Julius knew all about the cult. Mithras fought for truth and justice in a universe where, in common with many Eastern religions, good and evil were equally matched and locked in an eternal war. The blood of the legendary bull he killed had brought life and abundance to the earth. The birthday of this Eastern god was celebrated on 25 December.
It was mysterious, for the initiation rites were shrouded in secrecy, but it was also staunchly traditional. Its followers made small blood sacrifices in the temple, in the time-honoured Roman manner. They were also bound by the old, Stoic code of honour to keep themselves pure, honest and brave. Nor was membership of the lodge open to everyone. The army officers and merchants with whom the cult was popular kept it exclusive. Only sixty or seventy people could even get into the Londinium temple. Rufus had good reason to be proud of his membership.
By comparison, the Christians, though expanding rapidly, were a very different crowd. Julius knew some down at the docks, but like many Romans, he still thought they were some sort of Jewish sect. And anyway, whatever its precise nature, Christianity, with its emphasis on humility and the hope of a happier afterlife, was clearly a religion for slaves and poor people.
Julius had never been in the temple before; even his presence in the lodge that night, he realized, was some sort of preliminary test. As they reached the door, went down three steps and entered, he hoped he would pass.
The temple consisted of a central nave flanked by pillars, behind which were side-aisles. The nave itself, nearly fifty feet long, was only twelve feet wide, with a wooden floor; wooden benches were fitted in the aisles. They were motioned to one at the back, Julius looking about him curiously.
The burning torches cast an uncertain light; the aisles were in deep shadow. As other men came in and moved forward to their benches, Julius realized that he was being inspected, but he could not always see the faces of those who passed. At the far end, at the front of the little apse between two columns, stood a fine statue of Mithras, his staring face like that of a rather strong-featured Apollo, his eyes upturned towards the heavens, a pointed Phrygian cap upon his head. Before the statue was a modest stone altar upon which the offerings were made. It had a dip in the top, to receive the blood.
Slowly the temple filled. When the last member of the lodge had arrived, the
doors were closed and bolted. Then everyone sat quietly. A minute passed; then another. Julius wondered what came next. At last, a lamp flickered at the far end; he became aware that something was moving, and with a faint rustle, two figures emerged from the shadows of the aisles. They were strange indeed.
Both wore headdresses that entirely hid their faces. The first wore a lion’s head with a mane that hung around his shoulders. The second was altogether more eerie, and as he gazed, Julius felt a tiny shiver go down his spine.
This man was taller. What he wore was more than a headdress, for it reached almost to his knees. Made of hundreds of large feathers that faintly rustled and creaked, it was in the shape of a huge black bird with folded wings and a huge beak. This was the Raven. “Is he a priest?” Julius whispered to his father.
“No. He is one of our number. But he’s leading the ceremony tonight.”
From the far end, the Raven now began to move down the nave between the seats. He walked slowly, his great tail brushing the knees of the men he passed. Every few feet he would pause and address a question to one of the members in what was obviously a ritual of some kind.
“Who is the master of the light?”
“Mithras.”
“Whose blood enriches the earth?”
“That of the bull, slain by Mithras.”
“What is your name?”
“Servant.”
“Are you of our number?”
“Beyond death.”
As the Raven moved slowly down the nave and back again, it seemed to Julius that the eyes looking out of the sockets above the beak were paying particular attention to him. He suddenly became afraid that the Raven might ask him a question, to which, of course, he would have no reply. He was glad when, having given him, it seemed, a parting glance, the Raven returned to the sanctuary again.
So it did nothing to make him feel more comfortable when, leaning over so that he could speak directly into his ear, his father whispered: “That’s one of the men you’re going to meet tonight.”