Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [139]
The next morning Porteus inspected the place thoroughly. He saw the sweeping ridges where the small brown sheep grazed, noted the many little farmsteads and their patchwork of fields. He saw that the imperial estate was immense and valuable, and that little care had been taken to keep its huge tracts of land in good order. At the gates of the dune he met the squat figure of Balba and could not help drawing back at the pungent smell that emanated from him.
When he had seen everything he drew his own grim conclusion.
“It’s a backwater. If I stay here long I shall go mad.”
When he returned to Sorviodunum, the legionaries told him he had a visitor.
“The local chief,” they said.
Tosutigus had taken off the paenula – the hooded cloak which was the everyday costume of most Celts – and had put on a toga, which had unfortunately become splashed with mud on the journey from his farm. He had shaved his beard, but not his flowing moustaches, now turning grey; and on his feet he wore stout boots. He presented a curious, but not undignified figure.
But it was the figure beside him that Porteus was staring at: a radiant girl, dressed in a Celtic costume of green and blue, with the finest tresses of bright red hair that he had ever seen, falling almost to her waist, a pale skin that was lightly freckled, and sparkling blue eyes. She was, he guessed, about the same age as Lydia.
“I am Tosutigus, chief of Sarum,” the old man greeted him solemnly. “And this is my daughter Maeve.”
And to Porteus’s surprise, instead of modestly lowering her gaze as any Roman girl would do, the chief’s daughter stared brilliantly, straight into his eyes.
When Tosutigus heard that a new Roman official was to be stationed at Sorviodunum, he had hurried down the valley to make a good impression; and within minutes he let the pleasant-looking young Roman understand that it was he who had given the estate to the Emperor Claudius, and reminded him that he was exempt from taxes on the lands that he still held.
“And where have you come from? What position?” he asked.
“From the governor’s staff,” Porteus replied. It was true, after all, and he had no wish to explain the circumstances that had brought him to Sorviodunum. Tosutigus was impressed. Could it be, at last, that he had been given a way to get the governor’s ear? Porteus, though he was aware of the effect of his words, was even more conscious of the fact that the girl, for reasons he could not guess at, was still staring fixedly into his eyes.
Maeve was fifteen; and she had indeed good reason to stare at the young Roman with his curly black hair and gentle brown eyes: for she knew something about him that no one else did.
Despite her father’s desire to be a Roman, Maeve had been brought up as a Celtic child, and after her mother’s death she had been allowed to run wild. The local women, the wives of Numex, Balba and others like them had taken care of her and whatever she knew about the adult world and her duties as a woman, she had learned from them. It was Maeve who carefully polished the sacred sword of Coolin and the heavy helmet in the family shrine; it was she who planted the little hedge of hawthorn near the house to ward off evil spirits. It was she who knew the story about the locality and her family: the talking head that prophesied to Coolin the Warrior, the raven that would circle the house three times when it was time for the head of the family to join the gods; and the branch of the nearby oak tree that would fall at the moment when he died – folk lore and legends that even Tosutigus often forgot. No one knew the woods and valleys better. She knew which clearings were sacred to the wood goddess Nemetona, which springs and streams were most favoured by Sulis the healing goddess; she knew that the swan flying low over the river might be the sun god in disguise, and must never be shot.
“Wound a swan, and the sun will make you bleed for hurting him,” the women had told the child.
She