Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [168]
A few days later, Porteus returned to Sorviodunum. He was greeted warmly by his wife; he was relieved also that early that evening chief Tosutigus paid a visit to the villa to welcome his son-in-law home. The following morning, as he stood on the high wall of the dune beside the chief and gazed over the familiar rolling landscape where he had accomplished so much, Porteus realised somewhat to his own surprise that he had almost forgotten Marcus and Lydia, that he would soon forget the Hebrew girl and her demanding God, and that he was glad to be back at Sarum.
TWILIGHT
A.D. 427
Placidia said nothing. She felt tired and sad, but she knew she must not show it as she gazed at the angry scene before her. With such dangers on every side, must her little family still tear itself apart?
Her son Petrus had turned and was looking into her eyes for a sign of approval. She gave him none.
Her eyes: they at least were still beautiful: age did not change that. Fine, dark, they had been full of humour once; but now they were thoughtful, a little ironic, and resigned.
She was getting old – her husband often told her so; but still she moved with a stately grace, and the lines on her finely drawn face only added to its look of nobility. She wondered if they knew what strength was needed to keep up that graceful façade – of course not. It was the strength of a woman who knows her worth and who knows, also, that she is not appreciated by the only people she might have hoped would love her.
Yet she loved them. Petrus, her intense son, with her wonderful dark eyes but too little of her commonsense; Petrus, who thought that his quarrels with his father were for her sake, and who truly believed, in his self-centred way, that he loved her. Poor Constantius, her husband. He had already been waxing and polishing his horse’s leather harness for hours, just as he did nearly every day – as if it were important. He respected her – and hated her, because he could not respect himself. And faithful Numincus. The stocky steward with his big head and short fingered hands – he loved her, admired her; he would probably have laid down his life for her. She sighed. But what was the use of that?
These three were all she had. And now they were quarrelling again . . .
It was mid-afternoon and Constantius Porteus was drunk: not very drunk, but as drunk as he usually was by that time of the day.
He was also roaring: not because he was drunk – that usually made him subside into silence – but because he was angry. And did he not have reason to be?
In his hand he still held the leather harness he had been cleaning.
Through the mists caused by alcohol and rage that obscured his vision, he could still see the group in front of him well enough: Placidia, his stately, grey-haired wife who despised him; the squat, square form of Numincus his steward, who was now standing respectfully but protectively in front of her: the fool! And lastly his twenty-year-old brat of a son, who had just finished speaking.
It was on his son that his angry eyes were trying to focus. He would teach the boy a lesson.
“You whelp!” he bellowed.
The young man was looking at him steadily: Constantius was not certain what the expression was in his son’s large brown eyes – was it anger, contempt, fear? It did not matter.
“I’m master in this house,” he roared. “Paterfamilias. Not you.” Defiance. That was it. The short, intense young man with his dark curly hair and shining eyes was defying him. “I’ll have no Germans here,” he shouted. “This is a Christian house.”
“Then what will you do?” the young man hurled back at him instantly: “Nothing, as usual, I suppose – except get drunk and watch my mother being killed?”
Contempt was in every word.