have a point, at any point?’
‘Ah, yes, well. You see. Now. So there’s Metrocles, covered in shame at having – emitted such a stercoraceous effluvium in this unfortunate manner. Fundamentally embarrassed, you might say!’ Again, Gamaliel chuckled. ‘So Crates, to show how ridiculous it is for any man to be ashamed of what is, after all, a perfectly natural bodily function, promptly devoured five pounds of lupins – which, as you know, are powerfully flatulofacient, if not downright poisonous – and went about eructating at all the greatest men of Athens for the next week. Metrocles saw the point, and ceased to feel any shame.’
‘Hm.’ Lucius still wasn’t quite sure that he saw the point.
‘Anyway,’ resumed Gamaliel. ‘Philosophy aside, you were wondering
… what?’
‘I was thinking about what you said about hell: that a man may still be redeemed by good deeds, even a man such as that murderous Saxon there.’
Gamaliel too grew serious. ‘How could eternal punishment treat with justice?’ he said gently. ‘I knew one of those theologians you speak of once – a man better than most, in fact. A neat little Egyptian; Origen, he was called. He is principally remembered now for having emasculated himself with a knife, the better to serve Christ.’
‘Idiot,’ said Lucius.
Gamaliel ignored this untheological interjection. ‘He took the teachings of the Son of Man a little too literally, perhaps. But far more interesting was his own teaching on hell. He said that eventually, all would be forgiven. He said that even the Devil himself would one day repent, and his shriven soul be admitted to the mansions of heaven.’
‘Well.’ Lucius gouged his knife into the wooden bulwark of the boat. ‘I learn something new every day.’
‘Keep your eyes open and your heart humble,’ said Gamaliel, ‘and you will learn a thousand new things every day.’
One morning, as they passed Augusta Vindelicorum on the southern shore, Gamaliel found Lucius staring down into the brown and turbid waters of the great river. When he raised his eyes, Gamaliel saw that they were bright with tears. The old man laid a hand on his shoulder to comfort him, but Lucius only shook his head and smiled and said he was not sure if he had dreamt it or not, but he thought he had heard a boy on the farther bank of the river whistling a certain tune. It was the same tune that Cadoc used to whistle every morning, as he pottered around in the yard at home, scattering meal for the chickens, or as he sauntered through the woods and fields of Dumnonia, hand in hand with his sister.
Lucius looked up at Gamaliel. ‘Is it possible?’ he said. ‘That we are following even the trail of a song?’
‘Anything is possible,’ said Gamaliel, ‘except for a one-armed man to touch his elbow.’ He slapped Lucius jovially on the back. ‘Perhaps it has been laid down for us, even to follow a boy’s whistle.’
Led thus by strange and unexpected clues, they followed the river east. To starboard lay the empire, and to port stretched the tribal lands of the north: the contested and warlike lands of the Hermunduri and Marcommanni, the Langobardi and Cattameni, and still other tribes whose names were yet unknown. They passed through the frontier towns of Lauriacum, Vindobona and Carnuntum, their mighty legionary fortresses rising sheer from the banks of the southern side, and they came to the great bend in the river where it turns south into Illyria, with the wild lands of Sarmatian Jazyges and then vast and unmapped Scythia beyond. There they disembarked, having heard another clue which seemed to Lucius both tantalising and terrible but barely seemed to surprise Gamaliel at all.
‘These things happen,’ he said equably.
In a smoky wine-shop full of drunken frontier soldiery, they had heard a blind Scythian beggar singing a haunting tune. They questioned him, and found out his name, and heard that he had been blinded by his own people for spying on the king’s concubines when they were bathing. He had been driven out into the wilderness to die like an animal, but had found a refuge of sorts here in the borderland between Scythia and Rome, singing cracked tunes in taverns and brothels for coppers.
Gamaliel and Lucius looked at each other over their cups of foul wine, and Lucius said he had had dealings with some of that tribe before.
Gamaliel nodded. ‘So have I.’
They tightened their belts, hitched up their packs, and set off across the grassy plains of Scythia, for the famed black tents of the most dreaded tribe of all.
16
Throughout the heart of the bitter winter, Attila and Orestes struggled on through the towering white mountains of Noricum, lips chapped and bleeding, snowflakes on their eyelashes, their hands and feet bound with no more than rags. Whenever they found wild berries or trapped game, they divided every mouthful precisely between them, so that even if they were both slowly starving, they would at least starve at an equal rate. Every night, crawling into whatever shelter they could find or improvise – usually no more than a rough bivouac of silver fir branches – they unwrapped the sodden cloths from each other’s feet, and rubbed life back into them. Then they slept side by side, shivering through the night. In the freezing dawn, their bodies were as stiff and unbiddable as old men’s. They said nothing, but each dreaded waking one morning to find the other dead. They both prayed that if one should die, the gods would take the other, too, in the same instant, to the sunlit lands beyond the dark river.
One morning, as they brushed past under the low branches of a firwood, there came a soft, slithering sound from above, and an entire shelf of snow was dumped on Orestes’ head and shoulders. When he had pushed back his hood, and wiped the stinging snow from his eyes, Attila was grinning at him.
‘What are you grinning at, you idiot?’ he gasped.
‘It’s melting,’ said Attila, still grinning. ‘It’s thawing.’
When Orestes understood what he was saying – that they had made it – they threw their arms round each other, and howled in triumph at the bare blue sky above, while more snow slithered from the branches of the silver fir above and fell upon them both. A cloak of soft white snow over their heads and about their shoulders, equally and without distinction.
Soon they came down into the thinner snow-covering of the lower slopes, which in the summer would be the higher pastures for the sleek brown cows of that country. They even found the first raw shoots of greenery, and chewed the sprigs of yarrow and salad burnet that peeped from the long-hidden grasses. But though they no longer had to fight the bitter cold at every step, there were more villages now, more people to be avoided, more dogs set barking as they passed by in silence and darkness.
After some days they passed along the ridge of hills to the north of the great lake of Balaton, and that evening they came down to its tranquil shores. Attila fixed up a wooden pole with some barbs cut from bone, and went gaffing for trout in the shallows. They baked the trout on hot stones and gorged until they could eat no more.
Later that night, as he did every night, Orestes went a little way away among the trees, knelt down, leant his forehead against a cold, mossy trunk, and prayed for the soul of his departed sister. Then he returned to the campfire, his face alight and glowing, both radiant and calm, as if he had received comfort and solace even from the cold and glittering silence of the sky.
They came to the gates of the city of Aquincum, and the bored vigiles, the nightwatchmen, allowed them entry without a word. Two ragamuffins from the country come to sell their paltry, stolen wares, or maybe themselves, who knew?
The boys, of course, had come to Aquincum not to sell but to steal. They were nearly free, but still they had the great barrier of the Danube to cross. For that they hoped they could steal a boat or a raft, or perhaps stow away aboard a merchantman bound for one of the logwood trading-stations on the other side. And for that they needed to get down to the quayside.
Aquincum was a grim little frontier town of timber and mud, with the stone frontier fort of the legion rising at
