At last, the boy said, ‘II Legion, the “Augusta”, Isca Dumnoniorum. Your father was a Gaul, though.’
Lucius nearly choked on a grape. ‘Christ’s blood, lad, you’ve got a memory.’
Attila didn’t smile. It was him, definitely. The tall, grey-eyed lieutenant with the ragged scar on his chin, who had arrested him that time in the street after the knife fight. The boy glared, but not at the lieutenant. At an imaginary image.
‘And you’re Attila, right?’
The boy grunted.
‘I’m Lucius.’
‘Sounds like a girl’s name to me.’
‘Yeah, well it isn’t, OK?’
The boy shrugged.
Lucius quelled his rising temper. ‘It’s Lugh in Celtic,’ he said. ‘Or you can call me Ciddwmtarth, if you prefer. That’s my real Celtic name.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Wolf in the Mist.’
‘Hm,’ said the boy thoughtfully, slitting a grass stem with his thumbnail. ‘Sounds better than Lucius, anyhow. S’more like a Hun name.’
‘What does Attila mean?’
‘Not telling you.’
‘What do you mean, you’re not telling me?’
The boy looked up at Lucius, or Ciddwmtarth, or whatever he was called. ‘Among my people, names are sacred. We don’t give our real names away to any old stranger. And we certainly don’t tell them what they mean.’
‘Christ, you’re an awkward bugger. And my wife says I’m awkward.’
The boy started in surprise. ‘You’re married?’
‘Soldiers can marry now, you know,’ said Lucius, with amusement. ‘Although some say it’s when we started getting married that the rot started to set in – sapped our vital and manly juices and suchlike.’
The boy was shredding the grass stem to pieces.
‘You believe, I take it,’ went on Lucius, ‘that only idiots marry? And you hadn’t thought me stupid enough to shackle myself to a woman for all eternity?’
Attila had sort of thought that, yes.
‘Ah,’ said Lucius softly, looking westwards towards the hills. ‘But then you haven’t seen my wife.’
Now the boy was embarrassed, his cheeks flushing red under his coppery skin.
Lucius laughed aloud. ‘You’ll see. Give it a few more years and you’ll be as enslaved as the rest of us.’
Not bloody likely, thought Attila, staring down at his grubby feet. Girls! He thought back to those giggling, half-clothed girls in the Vandal princes’ chambers, and how they had stirred him despite himself. And he feared that what Lucius foresaw was already coming true.
‘I’ve a son your age as well,’ said Lucius. ‘A son and a younger daughter.’
‘Among my people, if a man like you were asked what children he had, he’d say, “One son and one calamity.”
Lucius grunted.
‘What’s his name? Your son?’
‘Cadoc,’ said Lucius. ‘A British name.’
‘Is he like me?’
Lucius saw his son’s dreamy brown eyes, and pictured him creeping through the sunlit meadows of Dumnonia with his little sister Ailsa in tow. Clutching his toy bow and arrow in his grubby hand, trying to hunt for squirrels and voles, or telling his sister the names of the flowers, and which plants were good to eat.
‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
Lucius laughed. ‘He’s gentler than you.’
The boy made a guttural sound in his throat, and tore up another fistful of grass. This Cadoc sounded like a calamity, too.
‘Well,’ said the lieutenant, getting to his feet and standing tall over the boy. He reached inside his cloak and drew out a shorter, broad-bladed sword, the kind you’d use for up-close, short-term work. Then he took the sword by the blade-end, turned it round and offered the handle to the boy.
Attila looked up, his mouth agape.
‘This was taken off you, along with your freedom,’ said the lieutenant. ‘Time you had it back.’
‘It’s, it’s… ’ the boy stammered. ‘Stilicho gave it to me. Only a few nights before…’
‘I know. I knew Stilicho, too.’
‘Did you…? I mean, what did you…?’
‘Stilicho was a good man,’ said the lieutenant. ‘And I made him certain promises once.’
Their eyes met briefly. Then Attila reached out and took the precious sword. The blade was as keen as ever.
‘You’ve looked after it,’ he said.
The lieutenant said nothing. Instead he reached down and unbuckled his scabbard belt. ‘And I expect you to do the same,’ he said, handing it to the boy. ‘I don’t know why Stilicho made you this gift. He made me a gift, too.’ He smiled distantly. ‘Both lighter and heavier than yours. I don’t understand it, any more than you do, but it meant something to him. Which still means something to me.’
The boy struggled with the belt, until Lucius told him to turn and buckled it on for him. But it was too loose, so the lieutenant showed him how to twist the belt a couple of times to shorten it, and then it buckled good and tight. Attila slipped the sword into the scabbard, looked up and nodded.
‘It’s good,’ he said.
The lieutenant smiled. ‘Now mind how you travel,’ he said.
Attila stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
Lucius gestured impatiently towards the hills beyond. ‘Time you were off, lad.’
‘You’re letting me go?’
He sighed. ‘And I thought you were quick-witted. Yes, I’m letting you go.’
‘Why?’
The lieutenant hesitated. ‘You might be safer on your own. Not with the column.’
‘Won’t you… Won’t you get into trouble?’
The question was ignored.
‘Travel by night if you can. The moon’s only crescent now but use it when it comes up full. The country people are all right, but remember that most of the shepherds are part-time bandits as well. Or they might take fancy to you in quite another way, if you get my meaning – something a bit exotic. So steer clear of them, I would. Don’t use the sword unless you have to. Otherwise, keep it hidden under your cloak. Look poor, or even better, mad. No one bothers to rob a madman.’
The boy nodded.
‘Shake,’ said the lieutenant.
The boy held out his hand.
‘Your sword-hand, dummy.’
‘Oh, sorry.’
The boy held out his right hand, and they shook.
‘How do I know you might not stab me in mid-shake? You’re no real friend of Rome, are you?’
Attila grinned.
‘Right,’ said Lucius, ‘now bugger off. I never want to see you again.’
‘Me neither,’ said the boy. He grinned up at the tall lieutenant again, one last time, shielding his eyes against the sun. Then he turned away and started to jog-trot down the rows of vines and into the field beyond. At the last minute he turned and called back, ‘I’d go back to Britain if I were you! Rome’s all done!’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Lucius called back, waving him away. ‘Watch out for yourself.’
