The Dark Island

CHAPTER TWO A.D. 34–A.D. 38-1

CHAPTER TWO

A.D. 34–A.D. 38

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hen

the year wore on, through harvest-time and fruit-gathering to winter, and on again to the next midsummer day under the great stones, and another, and another, as it had always been, and as, the rapidly growing boys felt, it always must be. The years began with the budding of the oak, and ended with the falling of its leaves. The leaves always came and always went, and the great stones on the plains were always there, timeless and unfathomable, enclosing the holy ground on which none but priests might tread. Each year the druids chose a red-haired youth from one of the tribes to take the part of the Sun-god, and, when he had assumed the shining one’s character and attributes, allowed him complete freedom to do anything he chose—to take women, weapons or horses, as he willed—until midsummer morning, when the spirit he had borrowed must be returned to the sun.

One year the youth chosen for this honour escaped as midsummer day drew near. The tribesmen were deeply shocked, especially the red-haired ones, and organised man-hunts with dogs over the southern territory. Caradoc and Gwyndoc were allowed to join the hunt, and their party had the good fortune to find the errant Sun-god. The tribesmen dragged him out of a dense oak tree one wet morning, and his teeth were chattering with cold and terror. He could hardly eat for an hour, until they warmed him with their cloaks. Even then his stomach would not keep anything down for long. When he could speak, he told them that in the week he had been free he had lived in woods, drinking the dew and eating snails and berries and young hares that could not run very fast. He was afraid to light a fire, he said, and so had eaten the creatures raw. He had broken one of his teeth off trying to crack a nut. It made him look very ugly and had given him a great deal of pain, he told them. Some of them felt he deserved it, but nodded sympathetically. The boys were disgusted to find the Sun-god so weak.

Another year a small party of Saxons came in their long-boats, right up to the city wharf, and walked ashore in broad daylight, with their swords drawn. They were all very tall thin men, with pale hair and stupid faces. They had made themselves so drunk with some Greek wine they had captured from a trading-vessel that they hardly knew what they were doing. Cunobelin laughed when he heard about them and ordered the guard not to molest them. Instead he sent a Saxon slave to conduct them to the palace, where he feasted them and made them still more drunk. Over supper they kept the tables rocking with their antics, although none of the Celts could understand a word of what they said.

Everyone enjoyed that night, especially Morag, who was beginning to develop a grim sense of fun, rather like that of his uncle the King. The Saxons lay down in the straw like beasts, wrapped in their cloaks, and spent the night round the fire.

In the morning they were all dead from the poisoned wine they had drunk, except their chief, who had been sitting by the King’s side and so would have noticed if the serving-girls had slipped anything into his glass too.

This chief was even taller than his men, and wore his hair in two long plaits, one on either side of his head. He complained that he felt very sick when the guards dragged him outside, so the King lengthened his life until the late afternoon, when it might be warmer. Some of the court gossips even declared that a young German girl was sent down to the dungeons to him after the midday meal, but no one knew for sure. He was tied to a post at the town gate and shot full of arrows as the sun went down. Then his head was set on a spike, the yellow plaits still dangling foolishly, above the King’s palace. The boys were present at the execution and were filled with hatred for the Saxon pirates as they saw the chief’s long body slump in his ropes.

The King learned, many months later, that this was not a raiding-party, but a trading-mission bound for north Britain, which had got off its course, drunk too much stolen wine, and had only put in to Camulodun to ask where they were.

Odd mistakes like that often happened among peoples who had no common language, and were subjects for amusement when the winter nights grew long, and the tribesmen huddled round the peat blaze away from the wind, telling their long tales to pass the hours away.

There was that other tale of the four Pictish kings, very important personages in their own country, who came down to form an alliance with the Belgae. They had the misfortune to be set upon in the Iceni territory and were left penniless and naked on the moors. Even that would have been all right, but they took to the woods for shelter and were found there later by a Belgic hunting-party that had got well out of its way chasing a stag and taken for wild men. Cunobelin either thought, or pretended, that they were inarticulate savages and had them put into the royal menagerie with the leopards that Rome had sent him from time to time. Only one king came alive out of the cage at the end of the day. When they sat him on a pony and turned him loose, he began to scream so much that one of the guard had to knock him on the head, out of humanity.

But these incidents were, in the main, uncommon. For the most part there was wheat-sowing along the terraced hillsides, ploughing with the great wheeled plough and four oxen, the annual harvest-feast, fishing with trout spears, and hunting—sometimes even as far afield as Anderida Silva, in the country of the resourceful and artistic Cantii.

The boys gradually grew into young men and became eligible to join the secret societies, according to which of the thirteen lunar months they were born in; Caradoc the Badgers, Reged the Owls, Gwyndoc the Otters, Morag and Beddyr the Wolves.

They didn’t see very much of Adminius, since he lived an aloof existence with his mother and her court at Dubra; and, in any case, for nearly three years he had been studying religion and philosophy at Dreux, in Gaul. He had written one letter back to his uncle, saying that the druids there were wonderful people and that before long he was sure that their college would be superior to that on Mona. He was studying law and statecraft as well, he said, and had a Roman tutor named Strabius who was reading the classics with him. He also said that he had been, with other students, to witness a sacrifice at Carnac, in Armorica. He thought the stones there more pleasant to the eye, though smaller, than those at home.

In a postscript he admitted that he was coming to doubt more and more the British systems, religions and politics. He hoped to fit in a trip to Rome with his Latin tutor before his stay in Gaul was ended.

When the court scribe read out this letter to the Council, most of the members became very angry, especially about the postscript. But Cunobelin only laughed louder than ever and said that the young lad knew more about preserving British unity than any of them did, in spite of their grey heads and long beards. Which did nothing to decrease their annoyance. In fact, for three days after that letter was received the Court was, below the surface, a seething mass of anger and unrest. Dead animals and refuse were flung through the windows of the house at Dubra, and the cattle were found dead in their stalls. Then the incident was forgotten. The initiation ceremony for the new druids was performed, a bad crop of grain forced the priests to call for a sacrifice of first-borns, and, what with one thing and another, young Adminius passed out of everyone’s minds. He certainly passed out of Caradoc’s mind whenever there was hunting or feasting to think about.

In a small hollow at the edge of the wood, where the fern grew thickest and lizards darted like flashes of green lightning, the four boys lay through the heat of the summer afternoon. The tall young princes, Caradoc and his brother Reged, leaned on their elbows chewing grass stalks, while at a short distance away from them their cousins, Morag and Beddyr, sat alert, watching them, and never daring to speak unless they were spoken to first.

The tawny Caradoc and his flaming-haired brother made such a violent contrast to Morag and Beddyr, with their black hair and eyes, and their swarthy flushed complexions, that one might not only have guessed they belonged to different families but that they were not even of the same race. Yet the King Cunobelin was their true uncle, and their blood ran as pure and noble as any in the Belgic kingdom, even though at times it did flare up a trifle more quickly than one could have expected from young men of a royal family. Their Uncle Cunobelin often used to tease them on this score. “Lads,” he would say, “it would never do for you to let yourselves be made king. Inside a fortnight you’d have lost your temper fourteen times; and if you used the axe each time, you’d have no subjects left in a month.” But this afternoon, sleepy with sun and fresh air, the brothers were mild as lambs, anxious only to please their more exalted relatives, to remember their self-imposed function of bodyguards.

Suddenly Caradoc yawned and flung a turf at Morag. The boy saw it coming but refused to duck. The turf hit him, quite hard, on the side of the head, but Morag only smiled at his cousin and bowed his head, as though asking to be thrown at again. And Caradoc would have thrown at him again, but the nearest turf was out of his reach and he felt too lazy to stretch. He just smiled back at Morag. “Morag,” he said, “you should not let Beddyr throw turf at your head. It is undignified. You may strike him for doing so.” At first, Morag looked back at the prince with a puzzled expression on his face, then he seemed to understand, and turned sharply and punched his brother on the chest. Beddyr smiled at the blow but did nothing. “Aren’t you going to hit him back?” asked Caradoc. Beddyr looked kindly at his brother, then reached out and found a stick. He struck Morag so hard on the shoulders that the stick broke, then felt for his hand and held it, half-ashamed of himself.

Reged spoke almost angrily. “What are you playing at, Caradoc? You are acting like a fool, not like a prince,” he said. “You are always teasing these two. I am sick of it. I shall go and look for frogs in the wood.” And he got up slowly and walked among the trees. “Wait,” shouted his brother. “I am tired of these two heathen. I will come with you.” But before he could get up, Reged ran quickly into a dark part of the wood and hid. “I don’t want any company,” he called. “I want to be by myself.”

Caradoc sank back among the fern and yawned again. Then he began to throw small pebbles at a ladybird that was trying to cross a patch of bare earth in front of his feet. Morag raised himself. “Shall I kill the ladybird for you, Caradoc?” he said. The prince glanced at him with contempt before he answered, “No, thank you, Morag. I can do my own killing without your help. You make me sick at the sight of you—always wanting to do something for me. I am able to do everything myself. So be quiet!”

Morag’s lip began to tremble, and when Beddyr reached out for his hand, he struck at his brother’s arm. Then Caradoc said, “Morag, I have just thought. Kill the ladybird for me. It would please me.” The boy’s lip stopped quivering and he jumped to his feet and trampled hard on the bare patch of earth.

“Good,” said Caradoc. “You are a good slave, aren’t you?” And Morag nodded his head and knelt to kiss his cousin’s sandal. Then he went back to his place and made Beddyr go to Caradoc and kiss his shoe also. Then they all leaned back into the shadow once more.

At last the prince yawned again. “I am fed up,” he said. “Morag, will you wrestle with me? I have not wrestled for days.” The black-haired lad grinned and began to take off his tunic. “Look after the prince’s clothes,” he said to Beddyr; and then, half-naked, he began to tread the grass down in the little hollow so that they should have a level surface to wrestle on. After they had both rubbed their damp brown bodies with dust, they began to wrestle, but it was easy to see that Morag was anxious for Caradoc to win always. He neglected to take advantages of openings which the prince left, and even when he had his opponent in his power he allowed Caradoc to twist round and throw him to the ground.