Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [185]
Nervously fumbling for his words, not very coherently, he began to speak. He tried to say something about the Christian soldier, the man of free will who stood unaided against paganism and fought the good fight for God. Such a man, he reminded them, was not to be despised. He spoke badly, but he spoke with genuine feeling, for this was how he saw himself: was he not just such a Christian soldier fighting against his son and the heathen Germans, and the taurobolium? And though his words were fumbled and confused, they began to draw murmurs of sympathy and approval from others like him around the circle. Here was a man who felt as they did, and who had the courage to speak against these clever bishops from Gaul. When he finished, there was applause, and he smiled with a sense of accomplishment he had not felt in years. Constantius Porteus, decurion of Sorviodunum, has spoken, he told himself.
Lupus eyed him angrily. Here was exactly the kind of landowner, a provincial heretic steeped in pride, that he had come to defeat. Here and now, the last of these doubters must be stamped out.
“Superbus!” he bellowed. “Proud man, who thinks he can do anything without God.” And he launched into his attack.
It was masterly. It was lacerating. Each word of it seemed to embed itself in Constantius’s mind. He felt his face flush red, first with embarrassment, then with humiliation as Lupus tore his arguments apart, poured scorn on his ambitions and told him he was worse than a pagan.
Was everything he stood for wrong? Had he no friends – neither at home where his wife believed nothing and his son was a pagan, nor here where he had come to find honour amongst his fellow landowners and Christians? By the end of his speech, Lupus had converted many of the waverers, and shamed the others into submission. Constantius he had broken.
That night he returned to his lodgings alone and drank until morning. Then he had called for his horse and made his way down the long empty road.
“If I’m no better than a pagan,” he confessed to Placidia, “then I’ve nothing left.”
“You have the estate and your family,” she said gently.
But she saw that he was not listening.
At the turn of the year 432 news came to Sarum that a major invasion was confidently predicted for that summer, and the evidence this time seemed definite.
Petrus faced the prospect with confidence. In the last two years he had not been idle, and nor had many other communities in the south. Settlements like Venta, if they could, had strengthened their defences still further. More mercenaries had been drafted. And in the far west, he had learned of an interesting development when a group of vigorous young men, mostly of his own age, had ridden into Sarum one day from the west and asked for him by name.
“We’re forming a confederation,” they told him, “local landowners like you and your family, each organising a militia on his own estate and pledged to support his fellow landowners if there’s an invasion. Will you join us?”
He had agreed at once and they promised him: “Send to us for help and we will come,” before riding on to the next estate.
There was a new mood of optimism in the air. There was even a rumour that the legions might return from the empire to help the former province; but no sign of them had come as yet.
As for the German mercenaries, Constantius had been proved wrong. Petrus found that by giving them some land on the slopes around the dune, and by allowing them to keep women in their camp, they were willing to stay and gave little trouble. They were paid, mostly in kind now, since the stock of gold solidi was beginning to run low, but it was agreed that they had the right to strip and loot any invaders they killed. He even increased their number to ten.
The families from Sorviodunum had now transferred into the dune, which was resuming its ancient aspect of a defended settlement. They lived uneasily, but peaceably, beside the Germans.
Following the visit from the young men from the west, there was a further important