The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff
Justin turned his head quickly to look at Flavius, and found that Flavius had done the same. He realized suddenly how far Flavius had grown—himself too, he supposed,—from the boys that they had been when first they found each other before the great pharos at Rutupiae. All that way they had come shoulder to shoulder, and the old bond between them was strengthened accordingly.
‘Caesar is very good,’ Flavius said.
‘It is in my mind that Rome owes you that, at all events,’ Constantius said, with that shadow of a smile again in his eyes. He took up some papers from the table. ‘I think that there is nothing more that we need to speak of tonight?’
‘One thing more, Caesar,’ Flavius said urgently.
Constantius lowered the papers again. ‘Well, Centurion?’
‘Caesar, we have four legionaries and another Cohort Centurion yet with us. They are as much Caesar’s men as those that escaped to Gaul.’
‘Send them to my Staff Centurion in the morning.’ The smile that had been hovering flashed up in Caesar’s face, lighting the thin whiteness of it so that he seemed suddenly much younger and less tired. ‘And meanwhile, you can bid them—unofficially—also to be ready to march North in two days’ time … So! It is settled. Go now and draw your equipment and set about disbanding these cut-throats of yours. We shall both be busy in the next hours. I salute you and bid you goodnight.’
Outside, by common consent Justin and Flavius turned aside from the head of the open stairway on to the high rampart walk, the tablets containing their postings still unopened in their hands, and lingered there a few moments, needing as it were a breathing-space between one world and another. Justin thought, ‘We ought to be going back to the band. Only it isn’t a band any more, or it won’t be after tonight. Just men—free to go their own way.’
Save for the sentry pacing his beat, they were alone on the rampart walk. Below them the darkening City was strung with lights—dim amber window squares, and the golden drops of light that were lamps and lanterns in the garlanded streets. Lights and lights and lights away to the misty river. ‘Londinium rejoices,’ Flavius said. ‘Surely there’s not a dark house within the City walls tonight.’
Justin nodded, not wanting to talk, his mind turning back to the start of it all: to that interview with Licinius, more than three years ago; the sand-wreaths in the corners of the mud walled office, and the jackals crying. That had been the night that it began. Tonight was the night that it was over.
Over, like Carausius’s brief Empire in the North that had been brought to nothing by the murdering hand of Allectus. Britain was once again part of Rome, safe so long as Rome was strong to hold her safe—and no longer … Well, better for Britain to take her chance with Rome than fall to ruin under Allectus and his kind. And tonight, with the lights of rejoicing Londinium spread below them, and the Legions encamped beyond the walls, and the man with the thin white conqueror’s face seated at his writing-table in the lamp-lit Praetorium, the idea of a time coming when Rome would not be strong seemed, after all, thin and remote.
And for themselves—they had kept faith with their own little Emperor; and the world of familiar things that they had laid down, walking South from the Wall into that autumn mist of almost two years ago, was waiting for them to take it up again; and life was good.
He was just about to push off from the wall on which he leaned, when something that had been squatting unseen in the shadows uncurled and stood up with a faint chime of bells into the light of a gate tower doorway.
‘Cullen!’ Flavius said. ‘What do you here?’
‘I followed my Lords in case, as a good hound should,’ Cullen said.
‘In case of what?’
‘Just in case,’ said Cullen, and touched the little dagger beside the Silver Branch in his belt. ‘What do we do now?’
‘Those of us who are of the Legions march North in the morn’s morning,’ Flavius said. ‘For the rest—the Lost Legion is finished—broke up—free to go its own way.’
‘So. I go my Lords’ way; I am my Lords’ hound,’ Cullen said contentedly.
‘But you are free now,’ Flavius said.
Cullen shook his head vehemently. ‘Curoi said that if he died, I was my Lords’ hound.’
There was a small silence, and then Flavius said helplessly, ‘Cullen, we are not Emperors, nor High Kings of Erin, that we should need a Household Fool.’
‘I can be much, besides a Fool; I can keep your armour bright; I can serve you at table, and carry messages, and keep secrets.’
‘Would it not be better to be free?’
‘Free? I was born a slave, the son of a slave. What is “Free” to me, but being masterless—and maybe hungry?’
They could not see his strange narrow face save as a pale blur in the reflected light of the doorway; but there was something in his voice that could not be denied.
Justin spoke for the first time, across the little man’s head to Flavius. ‘We have never been masterless and hungry, you and I.’
‘Never masterless, at all events,’ Flavius said, and Justin knew that the thoughts of both of them had gone for an instant to the man they had left in the Praetorium. There was no disloyalty to Carausius in that, for they knew, both of them, that a man may give his service more than once without breaking faith, but only once for the first time.
Suddenly Flavius flung up his head and laughed. ‘Well, it’s a good thing we are posted together, or we should have to slice our hound in half!’
‘I come with my Lords?’ Cullen said. ‘Sa, it is good!’
‘It is good,’ Justin said.
Flavius laid a heavy arm across his cousin’s shoulders. ‘Come on, old lad. We must tell Anthonius and the rest how the wind blows, and get some sleep while we can. We shall have our work cut out in the time before we march North.’
They turned back to the rampart stair, and clattering down it, headed for the gate which stood open tonight between the fort and the great marching camp; little Cullen strutting behind them with his hound’s tail a-swing at every step, sounding the apples of his Silver Branch triumphantly as he went.
Place Names in Roman Britain
MANOPEA—An Island in Mouth of Scheldt
GESORIACUM—Boulogne
SCALDIS—Scheldt
RUTUPIAE—Richborough
TANATUS—Thanet
AQUA SULIS—Bath
VENTA—Winchester
LIMANIS—Lymne
LAIGHIN—Leinster
DUBRIS—Dover
MAGNIS—Station on the Wall
EBURACUM—York
CALLEVA—Silchester
PORTUS ADURNI—Portchester
RHENUS—Rhine
REGNUM—Chichester
CLAUSENTIUM—Bitterne
VECTIS—Isle of Wight
SEQUANA—Seine
LONDINIUM—London
THAMESIS—Thames
ANDERIDA—Pevensey
DUROVERNUM—Canterbury
Rosemary Sutcliff was born in Surrey, the daughter of a naval officer. At the age of two she contracted the progessively wasting Still’s disease and spent most of her life in a wheelchair. During her early years she had to lie on her back and was read to by her mother: such authors as Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope, as well as Greek and Roman legends. Apart from reading, she made little progress at school and left at fourteen to attend art school, specializing in miniature painting. In the 1940s she exhibited her first miniature in the Royal Academy and was elected a member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters just after the war.
In 1950 her first children’s book, The Queen’s Story, was published and from then on she devoted her time to writing the children’s historical novels which have made her such an esteemed and highly respected name in the field of children’s literature.
She received an OBE in the 1975 Birthday Honours List and a CBE in 1992.
Rosemary Sutcliff died at the age of 72 in 1992.
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