Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [178]
“You disobeyed.”
“No, Constantius.” Placidia began. “I told him to bring them. I urge you to reconsider.”
Had she really, or was she just defending the boy?
“And how will you pay your mercenaries?” he demanded coldly.
“With gold solidi,” the boy answered simply. “Numincus will see they are fed. We have plenty of grain.”
Constantius’s eyebrows rose.
“What gold solidi?”
“Mine.” Placidia.
He started. Truly, it was like a knife stabbing him. His voice became a little husky, but still he kept his control.
“Since you and your mother wish to pay these mercenaries against my wishes,” he went on, “do you also intend to let them camp on my land?”
There was no answer.
“I can send them away,” he continued.
Now his son shrugged.
“You’ll find them difficult to dislodge. They’re armed.”
The insolence of the boy! Still Constantius held on to his control.
“Numincus,” he said quietly, “you will collect twenty men and bring them here. Then we will go to the dune, pay off the Germans and tell them to leave. Go now.”
He paused, waiting for something to happen. But Numincus only bowed his round, balding head and stared at the floor. He did not move.
The silence continued.
Then Constantius realised that he was going to cry.
The humiliation was complete. There, in the family chapel, they had left him nothing, not even the last shred of his dignity. He looked at his wife: surely she would not do this to him? He found that he could not see properly because his own eyes were clouding over. With a desperate gesture he waved them away, and saw them turn.
Constantius waited as he heard their departing footsteps echoing in the empty rooms; he waited until they had died away into silence. Then, when he was sure he was alone, he finally sank to his knees on the floor and gave in to the sobs that shook his body. He doubled up. His head touched the cool mosaic floor, as the tears fell.
But even as he wept, a thought formed itself in his mind, a warning that he must give the family even though they had decided to despise him. It was a perceptive thought that saw clearly into Sarum’s future. For if the Germans could not be dislodged by him, would Petrus and Placidia be able to control them either?
It was midnight and there was a full moon. On the hill, the silent dune was bathed in light.
Petrus had already passed the dune, however, and was walking with determined steps through the woods below. A light frost encrusted the fallen leaves that covered the ground.
He could feel his heart beating with excitement.
The clearing lay in the curve of the river, twenty yards from the water; it was a small space, less than thirty feet across, and at first glance there seemed to be nothing unusual about it.
But as Petrus reached it, a curious activity was taking place. Two men were pulling up long planks from the ground and as he watched the surface of leaves began to disappear, revealing in the centre of the clearing a circular pit. It was about eight feet across and covered with a heavy grid of wooden beams over which the planks had been laid and then concealed with leaves. At one side of the pit a wooden ladder descended into it. The pit was twelve feet deep.
As the last plank was removed, the stooped form of Tarquinus the cowherd emerged from the shadows. By his side walked demurely a young girl of sixteen. She had a pale face, narrow like the cowherd’s, but not without beauty; on her feet she wore only sandals, and she was wrapped in a heavy cape made of furs. She was his niece. All three bowed to each other solemnly. The girl was to go through the important rite of initiation at the same time as Petrus.
At a nod from Tarquinus, both Petrus and the girl took off their sandals and stripped naked, the girl with a single delicate gesture slipping out of the heavy furs that had been her only covering. She did not seem in the least self-conscious; her slim, hard body seemed almost ghostly in the moonlight; but Petrus noticed that, despite herself, she shivered slightly in the cold night air as they