Chapter 11: Autumn, 52 B.C., to Spring 51 B.C

“Oh, may the fields that hide the hare
Hide well our hunted men,
As scattered rocks conceal the fox,
And smallest trees the wren,
As by the cart-wheel’s crushing track
The skylark knows no fears--
In vain, God grant, may England hunt
The Irish Volunteers.

Oh, may the winter be a spring
About them where they hide,
Oh, may by night the stars be bright
Their silent feet to guide,
May streams with fish and boughs with fruit
Be teeming through the years,
And every field a harvest yield
To the Irish Volunteers.”
_From an Irish Song: Winter, 1920-1921._

It was a marvellous feeling for Meromic, this waking up at dawn among the dripping bushes of that misty hill; it was as if he had been newly made, he had cast off all his past, he would not think of it, it belonged to some one else, he was leaving it behind with every stride up over the dew-soaked grass. What was ahead? He would have liked best to join the army of Vercassivellaun, that gallant young cousin of the General’s, who had so nearly broken the Roman lines on the last day; but he was a prisoner and his army would most likely be scattered. After all he might be best with the Aremorican folk: there might be a friend or two there; perhaps Louaven had come over from Britain. Only it might not be too easy to explain where he had been: better, then, to go to strangers.

He climbed up above the mist and knelt a moment before the risen sun; as he got to his feet again and turned, he found himself facing a Gallic soldier with bloodstains on his armour and a drawn sword in his hand, who demanded to know who he was. Meromic decided, on the spur of the moment and thinking the man looked a Southerner, that he himself would be a Venetan who had lost himself in the battle and did not know where his own army was. “You’d best come with us,” said the other, “it’s not safe to be alone on these hills so near the enemy.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m from the north bank of the Garunn, in Lucter’s army; we’ve arms and food for any true man there. Will you come?”

Meromic made up his mind quickly; he had heard much of Lucter and his Cadurci; he would go. They went together down the other side of the hill into the mist again; the man, whose name was Gell the brown, was not in the least suspicious and very friendly. He was less depressed about the battle than Meromic thought any one could be; the men of the Cadurci had attacked on the whole successfully; he had never even seen Vercingetorix--all his loyalty was for his own general and chief, Lucter--and besides, he had killed four Romans and taken their swords as a trophy, not having had time to take their heads. At this Meromic showed his own Roman pattern sword and invented a story of how he, too, had killed his man. It was all so different from yesterday!

At the camp he was sworn in and told what his duties would be; Gell offered him a corner of his shelter for the night, and they ate their rations together. Meromic did not say he could speak Latin or knew anything of the Roman army--the last thing he wanted was to be sent back as a spy. The second day he saw Lucter riding over to a council, a fine figure of a man, with a great brown beard, a helmet crested with sea-eagles’ feathers, and a very long sword in a scabbard of scarlet leather.

They retreated south-west at once; the chiefs and generals who were left, Lucter and his friend Drappes, Gutuatros, Comm and the others, had all decided to repeat the old plan of Vercingetorix, separate Cæsar’s legions and destroy them, if possible, one by one. But nothing could be done yet, it was no use staying near Alesia any longer, and they went off towards their own places.

Meromic was by now quite used to being on his own, with his name and reputation to be made again, his friends to be found, his old memories to be stored away and not touched too often. At first he caught himself thinking of Titus Barrus a good deal too much for his peace of mind; he had to remind himself that from now on Titus, if he was anything, was an enemy, one of those who were holding Vercingetorix captive, some one he ought to hate: this he could never do, but at least he could forget him and the last three years. Lerrys must be forgotten too, Lerrys who had been his friend when he was most alone and miserable; but Lerrys had Coisha now; and Titus would marry his Æmilia--would it make up to him, though? And would any one else ever make up to Meromic for his lost friends? But there was plenty to do by winter besides all this remembering.

Lucter wanted to wait as long as possible in his own territory; the winter-quarters of the legions were none of them very near, the closest some way further east, a menace, but not at all pressing. But his army had to be fed, and this was not too easy; besides, they were always clamouring to go off and raid the neighbouring countries, and Lucter had not always the power to stop them. So, late in November, he was glad to have the chance of satisfying his men and also putting into practice his old leader’s policy of harassing and ambushing the Romans without ever making an attack himself with all his forces. There was fighting in the north-east: the Carnutes, as usual the first to start a rising; it would be well to help them by diverting the attention of the legions which were quartered among the Ruteni, some fifty miles away, across a couple of ranges of low hills. The first thing to do was to get the Romans into the open, so one of the chiefs was sent out with his men to burn a Rutenian town, carry off their cattle and women, and incidentally murder an Italian trader. The magistrates of the town of course complained to the Legate in command, and a legion was sent off to clear the honour of Rome and protect her subjects. There was only one way they could come, through a gap in the hills with a burn swirling in brown spate down the middle, and pine-woods on each side, all scattered with big boulders and fallen trunks, and brushwood along the sides of the path. There had been a fairly heavy snowfall in the hills, and the last thing the Romans expected was Lucter’s army; but they did not know that further west the fall had been very thin, nothing to stop a small and hardy body of men from marching light, with their meat driven before them on the hoof. And the Ruteni were more friendly to the invaders than the Legate thought; the town was a frontier town and quite used to being burnt from time to time, and Lucter had secretly promised them compensation for their cattle.

Meromic had been waiting, crouched behind his rock, for three or four hours; they had had to come round and down very carefully to get into their ambush without marking the snow, where every footstep showed sharply distinct on the blue-shadowed white; there were a few flakes falling from time to time, but on the whole it was blown smooth or into little crested ridges. He was rather happy; he knew that Titus, if he was not back in Italy, would be three hundred miles further north with his legion, so that was not troubling him; and he had much to revenge. His sword was well-balanced, his lance-head was firm on the haft, he was longing to run with great strides down the clear slope in front of the rock and fling himself on to some one in the path; he stuck his hands into his armpits to keep them warm and supple for the sword play.

It was getting late in the day when they heard the legion marching towards them; Meromic knew their song so well! The head of the column marched past between the innocent snow-banks; sentences floated up, a laugh, a curse, the fag-end of a story; they meant nothing to Gell, but Meromic felt queerly dizzy to listen to them. Then, cutting through it all, the whistle, the leap up and over and at them, a Roman face, large and astonished, hands vainly trying to push the lance away, the jerk as it went through, blood on his arms, and his head clear again. The column had been cut through the centre and disorganized for the moment, but the ends were forming up again, two solid fronts with the legionaries throwing darts from behind their shields; Gell had one in his arm, but shook it out, not much the worse. Meromic was down in the bed of the burn, up to his knees in water, but sheltered by the bank; he called to some of the others, they might as well wait till the Romans had exhausted their weapons, and not be killed needlessly.

This was all very well, but the shower of darts and small spears went on, and the Gauls were attacking madly; Meromic could not very happily keep out of it, besides he was in an extremely cold place. He looked about for a moment, thinking what fools his fellow-countrymen were to try to force these locked ranks instead of clearing off after the first attack, when the path was strewn with Roman bodies and they were practically unhurt, and waiting for another good opportunity. Instead, they were making these futile charges and wasting their strength; Meromic had seen it all from the other side many times. There were obviously some archers in the centre of the squares, but not many; equally obviously they were holding their fire in the square that had been formed by the head of the column, so that it seemed likely that the mules or carts with the fresh supplies of weapons would be behind. Meromic managed to get hold of Gell and a few others, and hastily told them his plan; they hurried down the burn, quite hidden by the high bank and the bushes between it and the path. As Meromic had hoped, the supplies of arrows and javelins were carried by mules, all tied head and tail so that they would follow the first one. The Gauls climbed up out of the burn, and got together on the bank, looking to Meromic for the word; he led them forward with a yell; they were on to the drivers with their swords, but they were only a few against many.

Still, there was a very thorough confusion; the mules squealed and reared and got their legs over the tie-ropes; the driver of the first, wounded on the head and half blind, but still at his post, heard a voice behind him speaking good Latin: “I’ll take charge now; you get back.” The man gave over the bridle thankfully to this new-comer. The mule snapped at the stranger, who dodged him and scrambled on to his back, upsetting the pack of arrows, and kicked him with a hard heel as he plunged; at this the mule gave a buck and started off, wheeling round and lashing out to the side as he felt the bit pressing over. In a minute he was away down the path he had come up, with squeals and kicks and wriggles, but no getting the rider off his back; the others followed him, biting and striking every way with their wicked little hoofs. The drivers tried to cut the ropes that tied them together, but between the mules themselves and the attacking Gauls they had no chance; and none of the darts they threw at the rider had brought him down.

Half a mile off Meromic pulled his mule round and up on to a steep track that twisted through the pines; he flogged the leader on till he got to another path which skirted the hill on a higher level, above the thickest pines, and turned along that and so back to the old place. Here he tied up the sweating mules and shouted to the men below; this new supply of weapons was as welcome to the Gauls as its loss was bad for the Romans. The second square, which was depending entirely on the mules, wavered visibly; the Gauls swept on to it and broke the ranks. Meromic was in the thick of that charge; he heard himself shouting “The North! The North!”; he felt himself a tearing wolf. But as he tugged his sword from a dead man’s throat he saw it was dusk, there were no more enemies, only the Gauls all round him, wiping blood off their faces, helping their own wounded, stripping the Roman dead and dying.

But for that coming of night the whole legion might have been cut to bits; as it was, the Legate escaped with half his men, back down the glen, to send for help and wonder nervously whether the attack would be followed up. It was not, of course; the Gauls were much too much pleased with themselves and what they had done already; they wanted to stop and drink and talk about it. Lucter would have made them go on, but he had not enough authority over the chiefs, and, besides, even he could not quite realize how thoroughly he had disorganized them; the most he hoped was that it might draw down some of the Roman troops from the North, and so help the Carnutes.

Meromic wiped his sword, and sat down, suddenly very tired, and surprised at finding that he had a deep hack on one shoulder that had just missed the vein: the edge of his deer-skin cloak was stuck in it. He was rather sore all over, and looked at himself carefully: the mules accounted for the horse-shoe shaped grazes on his thigh; he had had an arrow in his back, but the arrow was out, so it could not be bad; one arm was a little cut and his face was covered with blood from several big scratches, perhaps made by the pine boughs. However, his shoulder was the only one that worried him at all; it was getting stiff and he couldn’t reach it easily himself. Just then Gell came up with two or three heads, which he carried by a finger hooked into each of their mouths, and a silver belt over his arm.

“You’ve made your name this time!” he said. “They want to see you in the evening; remember we helped you.”

“Were any of you killed?”

“Not one; as soon as you were well away we cleared off into the wood. A bit cut about, that’s all. You don’t seem to have got hold of anything much, though”--he swung his own trophies.

“No.... My shoulder’s hurt. Will you help me?”

“Surely,” said Gell, and they bathed it in snow water by one of the camp-fires, and bandaged it with fresh moss and linen, while the heads gaped at them from the ground.

Later on Meromic was called up before Lucter and the chiefs; he was pleased with himself; he felt that all this blood must nearly have wiped out his old shame, that he was fit to be the Wolf again. He was enjoying it all: the crisp snow underfoot, the sky prickled with hundreds of stars between the pine branches, the clean dressing on his wound, the stiffness of his sword arm, and Gell and the others envying and admiring him. In the fire-lit shelter of hurdles and boughs, Lucter and his companions sat together on logs covered with otter skins, drinking and planning and watching the pile of helmets grow in front of them. Meromic came and held out his sword for Lucter to touch the hilt; he told his story with applause from all; Lucter bade one of his men see to it that Meromic was given a good horse and harness, and pulled off one of his own bracelets and clasped it on Meromic’s arm, saying, “That’s for now; go on as you’ve done, and when Gaul is free you shall have a better reward. You’re a Venetan, they say: who was your father?”

“Kormiac the Wolf; he was one of the Council.”

An oldish man started up from behind Lucter: “Kormiac of the Islands! Why, I remember him as well as if it was yesterday! And you too--a boy you were then, always sailing in your boat, you and that pretty little sister of yours. I thought you were killed in the battle of the ships; let me look at you!” He laid both hands on Meromic’s shoulders: “Yes, yes, you’re the same boy, and a fine young man you’ve grown up to. The Pride of the Islands they called you in those days. What’s been happening to you since that summer? We heard you were dead.”

“I was wounded, but not killed. I had to surrender.... I won’t say any more!” He looked round defiantly at them all.

Lucter shook his head, smiling at them: “No, no, there’s no need to tell. The past is past. We know what it is to be in the hands of the enemy. There’s more than one of us here who’s been a prisoner. There comes the Arvernian; he was taken at Alesia: he understands.”

Meromic turned to see this new chief who had come to join the others; the Arvernian looked at him; they both stayed still and staring.

Caltane spoke first: “What are you doing here?”

“I’m a soldier: ask them what my service is!”

Caltane turned to the chiefs and Lucter himself answered for Meromic.

“Very well,” said Caltane. “I see he may prove himself yet, though it’s a year too late. Meromic, I’ve a message for you.”

“Oh, is it--is it--what did he say?”

“He said you had paid him, that he understood and dismissed you freely, and that you would be welcome back any time, whatever had happened, when there was no other hope.”

“I knew he’d let me go. Oh, Caltane, my thanks for telling me!” He covered his face with his hands, wanting to laugh and cry both at once.

The old man asked suspiciously from whom the message came. Caltane looked hard at Meromic: “You’d better all know. It’s from a Roman officer, his master----” But Lucter stopped him, with “That’s enough, Caltane,” then to Meromic: “Was this what you wanted not to say? Ah well, I should be glad if none of my men had anything worse to look back on.” So Meromic kissed his hand and went out with the bracelet on his arm.

Half-way through the wood he heard steps running after him in the snow; Caltane caught him up, panting, and said, “Shall we be friends, Meromic? You’ve got that three years to make good, but now they all know of it, so it’s no matter. And I’m homeless; they only let me go with the chiefs because I was in Alesia. I’m a stranger among them, they don’t wish well to an Arvernian, any more than you did, but Lucter, who is a good man, was a friend of my King and has me for his sake.”

Meromic took his hand: “It’s because of your King that I’m here; I’ll be glad to be friends again, Caltane.” And they went on together.

* * * * *

Titus Barrus went back to Rome; what ages since his last leave! Then, as now, he had been lonely; but not unhappy, and he had looked forward, instead of always back, back, like an old man. He saw his grandfather first, who was growing fat, and full of Pompey’s return to the fold and the triumph of the conservatives. Titus felt crushed in that house, as if he had been a child again. His grandfather’s friends were terrible; they did nothing but crow over their new laws, which annulled Cæsar’s; they explained to him, elaborately and often, what had been happening in the centre of the world while he had been away; they patted him on the back and condoled with him for having wasted so much time on this unsatisfactory Gallic war, which would never come to an end under that incompetent general. “If Pompey had been in command, now----” “Or my dear old friend Lucullus----” “Pompey would have had the whole place securely annexed by now, bringing in money to the state, instead of taking it out.” Titus found it was quite useless to say anything; these old men could never understand what war with a free nation meant--they thought only in terms of the conquest of crumbling Asiatic kingdoms; so he shrugged his shoulders and let them talk; he did not feel alive enough to do anything else. For a time he saw something of a new group, men of his own age, or younger, poets and philosophers and what not; many of them in the old days had known Catullus, and like him they were adventuring along strange, un-Roman paths. But they found Titus a little too heavy for their taste: war had clipped the wings of his youth, he would never any more be able to fly with them to lyric heights; he could not see, as they did, the vast importance of a new metre or a new Eastern religion; he could not spend hours looking for the _mot juste_. They dropped him quite soon, and he was not altogether sorry.

He turned to Æmilia; he thought of his marriage as peace and quiet and the warm hearth, a soft place to drop into after all this fretting, out of the world at last, the best way to forget. She was young and shy and slender with black hair, coiled and pinned, and drooping eyes; she would hardly speak to him at first. Sometimes he could not help comparing her with the strong, full-breasted Gallic women; this girl, in her straight, clinging silks, could never run beside a horse, nor swim against a foaming current, nor stand in her doorway with a spear, threatening the soldiers. Nor could this little shoulder pillow a tired man’s head, these unskilled fingers and mouth and body set him at rest and make him fit to work again. Æmilia would obey her husband, never take the lead herself, always put the responsibility on him: and he wanted so much to do nothing! Almost Titus could have wished his grandfather had chosen him a wife out of this new set in the Capital, some one who was less of a lady and more of a woman: what did he care if she was unfaithful so long as she could sometimes give him back his old, untroubled soul? But there it was. And he married her with great ceremony; his grandfather’s friends were all there, and one or two of the young Italian group, but Quintus Velanius was still in Gaul, there was no one he really cared for in all the procession--except Lerrys and Dith.

He had been glad to see those two; he had kissed Lerrys and nearly kissed Dith: they were so like they had always been! He told them how Meromic had gone; Lerrys had said very little in answer, and that clearly not what he was thinking; only he had bitten his hand so that it bled, because of his own friend Meromic, gone, too late of course, and alone. And Dith thought, with some little satisfaction, that the Gaul had only showed himself a double fool, first for staying and now for going, but wished him luck all the same, and missed him--how full of strangers Rome was still, for all he had been there months!

Coisha had a tiny red-haired baby: “A little Gaul,” said Titus, touching its soft, wrinkled fist, and let them call it after him. Æmilia interested herself delicately in it, and even made it a little coat, which Coisha admired, without quite approving. Titus always found it rather odd and inappropriate to see Lerrys with the baby.

About a month after his marriage he got orders to go North again: the tribes were up. His first thought was that Meromic was going to fight after all. Caius Barrus would have liked to go to Pompey and arrange matters so that his grandson should stay at home, but Titus wanted to go. Æmilia cried, and he comforted her as he might have a child, and kissed her good-bye; and Lerrys kissed good-bye to Coisha and his little son. Soon they were on the wintry road to Gaul; for the first day or two both husbands felt a little unhappy and uprooted, but after a week they were back to the old ways, with some laughter and much remembering of Meromic. Dith was useful, and he grew happier every mile they went towards war; if he had to be a slave, at least it was better to follow a fighting-man, to be dealing with arms and horses again, and not to have to speak low and behave decently, and wait at table among a lot of Greeks!

Cæsar was angry; he made up his mind that this must be the end; he moved his legions across Gaul as if they had been his own lightning thoughts, not common men. There was no great army to fight against this time, no one general; it was a case of breaking up the armed bands, killing or scattering the chiefs, making prisoners in every village and family, taking every one by surprise, doing it all with extraordinary speed and leaving the Cantons gasping and submissive. But it was a gloomy business crushing out these last sparks of liberty; there was no glory nor excitement in it, and Titus found himself being haunted by hopeless faces of conquered Gauls: nonsense, of course--wasn’t he doing Cæsar’s work?--but there was nothing else to think about now, no one to talk to and drive it all out of his head; he had tried talking to Lerrys, but it wasn’t much use, not when it was anything that really mattered. And there was rain almost all the time, drenching rain and sleet, and his horse slipping on the clay banks; and all the time he was afraid of finding Meromic.

But Meromic was far to the South, with Lucter’s army; he and Caltane went about together now, and he was glad of it; he did not care to be alone much these days, and he was always happiest when there was fighting to do. He liked the longer daylight: it had been winter evenings that made him want his friends most. March came with violets on the banks, and he looked back past those four years to Spring along his own coast when Fiommar and he had gone out together snaring rabbits or scrambling about the cliffs, and had smelt the new air and praised all the Gods for it.

The life was not bad on the whole; they went from one district to another under the old standards of the tribes; where they got no welcome they plundered, and perhaps burnt the chief’s house. At first they had always been welcome, but latterly there had been a change: Rome could protect her friends or suppliants, and often Lucter and his people were put off with fair words till the legion came and they found their way barred. They did not care to fight battles, but whenever possible they would make a surprise attack, ambush a cohort on the march, or revenge themselves on an unfriendly town. And there was drinking and singing, and they had women with them or carried them off after a raid; they had plenty to eat, and good horses, sometimes they hunted and sometimes they had races where a man would lay heavy odds--his life perhaps, or his liberty--on his horse winning; they were always quarrelling, and two of them would fight it out with sword and dagger in front of the chiefs, while the drinkers looked on and cheered; and wherever they went they made the country folk work for them.

But it didn’t do to think too much about it, as Caltane did, or to compare it with old days when the whole of Gaul was up and armed and eager behind Vercingetorix, days when they had followed the white star of freedom and every man was pledged to ride through Cæsar’s lines, when they were all together, one nation, one hope, one goal! Lucter had known it, and many of the army; now they had fallen to this. And there was no hope for the future; they had to be living in the present all the time, and that grows to be a strain. For the first few months Meromic had thought, and Caltane had sometimes thought, that Gaul might yet be free and Vercingetorix might yet be brought back in triumph; so many of the old leaders were alive; so many of the tribes were struggling hard against their bonds. But one after another the risings were put down; the Romans were everywhere. And Lucter’s men grew to think of themselves not as a national army driving out the invader, but as rebels up against a fixed and solid government. And there was much divided counsel; no chief trusted another; Lucter could never be sure whether, just at the last moment, a hundred of his men might not refuse to follow him; he was certain of Drappes, but never of the rest; it was all very disheartening.

Every day they were joined by men on the run, fugitives, often, from the Bellovaci, that Northern people who were too proud to send help to Vercingetorix and now had tried to face Cæsar alone! They had been beaten--how could it be otherwise? Correus, their leader, was dead, caught in a trap he had set himself for the Romans. One of these new-comers had told it all to Meromic: here was the wood and here were the swollen rivers, here was the great water meadow where the legions had broken their attack and turned on them and hunted them up and down. He himself had reached the bank with an arrow in his neck, and dived and swum under water with his armour dragging at him, and from the other side he had seen Correus, who would not yield, swinging his axe and shouting to his men to come back: but they were dead or flying for their lives--“I couldn’t face that river again,” said the teller; “besides, I’d lost my shield. And he--he wounded any man who came near him, he was a wild bull among a pack of dogs; but at last, when they saw he was not to be taken alive, they threw their spears and killed him and took his armour. And I am hoping now that your general will lead me to revenge him.” But Meromic said, “You’ll never get your vengeance. It’s always too late.”

Titus Barrus had been in that fight too; and later, when the conquered Bellovaci sent in their submission with many excuses, his work had been to deal gently with the hostages, young children perhaps, who were brought in white and terrified, thinking they were going to be eaten by ogres. And he or Lerrys or Dith would sometimes ask one of the prisoners if they had heard of a man called Meromic; but they never found out anything. Dith was getting restless; these men of the North were very like Britons, the language and customs were much the same; he talked to Lerrys, but Lerrys was very loyal to Titus Barrus, more than ever now that he had left a wife and child in Rome. Dith wished he could see Meromic again--he’d understand; Dith was rather bad at making up his mind, he liked to find an easy path somewhere between two opposites--a misty sort of mind, but he came from a misty country.

Many of the other tribes had been waiting to see what would happen to the Bellovaci; now they, too, sent their submission and hostages. But some of the chiefs had still to be dealt with, and most of all Ambiorix, the man who had betrayed to death the Roman army at Atuatuca, always the mischief-maker, always the raiser of revolt; there could be no mercy for him. Nor for his people when Cæsar found he was not to be caught. There were only a few of them left after last time; they made no resistance, they were hunted like rats from one hole to another; the villages were burnt, and the corn-stacks that should have fed them in summer. But not many escaped to starve; the luckiest might be taken in as slaves among tribes across the borders, but the soldiers were not in the mood to keep their prisoners. This was not war, but reprisals--the thing most sickening to any decent man. Titus saw more horrors in a month of this than in a year of battles. He got to know just how quickly the blazing thatch pours off the cottage roof into a great bonfire in front of the door, just how the women inside scream and scream above the crackling roar, just how a child bursts through with hair and clothes alight, and then collapses and dies at the soldiers’ feet: all this is bad for the memory.

And day after day they spent hunting Ambiorix through the green woods of spring; Titus had his heart in his mouth every time he saw his men with a prisoner; however much the people ran from them, now and then one would be caught, an old, sick man, perhaps, or some half-crazy woman; sometimes they wouldn’t tell, more often they knew nothing, but usually they were made to speak before they died. Titus had very little authority over his men in these ways; it was not his fault, and they would have followed him to any attack; but discipline didn’t go more than a certain way down, and among them were one or two who had been with Sabinus in that ghastly time when they had trusted twice to an oath of Ambiorix, and almost the whole legion, officers and men, had been cut to pieces, penned into the valley with no mercy given by the Gauls. So Titus would get as far off as he could and try not to hear the cries. There were days when his grandfather would have been perfectly satisfied to know what he thought of Cæsar. But orders must be carried out.

Lerrys tried very hard to help; he knew all the time just what Meromic would have done, how he could have made Titus forget it for a little, but Lerrys was dumb, he couldn’t do it himself. He was so anxious to make up for his lost friend that he paid no attention to Dith; and Dith had found out that the sea was not so far, that there were boats trading to Britain ... and Dith took food in a bundle, and stole some of his master’s money; early in the morning he went off, guiding himself by the sun among the tangled woods. In every little clearing the grass was thick and damp and dark green with its young sap; the birds sang among the hazels, and Dith picked his way in and out of the branches, as wild and quiet as a fox. He came on a path from one burnt-out village to another and trotted along it, swinging his bundle and listening for any noises from behind. And suddenly he heard a horse and crouched back among the brushwood to hide. The horse went by him, blowing and sweating, at a staggering gallop that dropped to a trot when it was not spurred. The man on its back had his eyes fixed in front of him; he spoke aloud in a strained, hoarse voice: “Get on, men, get on,” but there was no one with him; his helmet had fallen off and there were twigs stuck in his hair and beard; his armour was rusting on him, his scabbardless sword was fastened through a twist in his belt, his cloak was a torn, dirty rag round his neck. But Dith knew who it was and followed him to where the path divided and saw him plunge down the right-hand one and disappear; only the shaking boughs far ahead showed where Ambiorix had gone.

There were hoof-marks in either path, some that looked almost as new on the left-hand one. Dith was looking at them when all at once he heard more horses, fresh ones, and then a Roman voice; he began to crawl among the bushes again, but he could tell by the sounds that the pursuers were coming through the wood at each side of the path: better at least not to be caught hiding, he thought, and went back and stood at the fork of the ways and waved his arm when the horsemen came in sight.

“Which way?” cried the first.

“There, not ten minutes ago!” and he pointed up the left-hand track.

They galloped on in wild pursuit and Dith hoped he might be done with them; but then another man came up, on a lame horse; Dith repeated his story.

“Oh, curse my luck!” grumbled the man. “They’ll get him, and I’m out of it with this devil of a mare of mine!” He dismounted, and saw it was the Tribune’s slave he was speaking to: “Why, Dith! What are you doing so far from camp?”

“Oh,” said Dith, “I went out to get wood; I was told not to cut it too near camp because you wanted it all, and I went on and then I got lost.”

“Lost? I thought you islanders never got lost.” The man looked at him suspiciously. “Well, anyhow you can come back to camp with me. Here, carry my pack! The mare’s got too much as it is.” And back to camp he had to go with the pack on his shoulder and black anger in his heart. Fortunately the man was in too bad a temper to ask him what he’d done with the wood till they’d gone too far to go back to where he said it was. It took them nearly four hours with the limping mare; half-way back the soldier who had been muttering to himself about his bad luck, suddenly glared down at Dith with an oath: “And you expect me to believe you, you----!”

Dith didn’t answer and the soldier unfastened the reins from the bit and made him stand against a tree and beat him with the buckle end. Then they went on again, and Dith carried the pack under his arm so that it shouldn’t rub against his sore back.

As they got to the camp the others caught them up with their horses tired out; they were empty-handed and they looked very grim at Dith; he would have liked to get away quietly to his master’s tent, but they made him carry the pack along to their quarters, and stood round him.

“Can I go?” he asked.

“Not till we’ve done with you,” said one. “You told us the wrong path--we’d have got him in another mile! Yes, you Briton, that’s the sort of trick you play us: we’ll teach you to do it again!”

“I didn’t!” cried Dith, but no one believed him; he fell on his knees, still denying, terrified of these angry soldiers; if only he could get safe away he’d stand anything from his master or Lerrys! One of them dragged him off by the iron collar round his neck to the space behind the tents where the flies were buzzing over the cooking pots.

The first one kicked him with his nailed boots: “Did you tell us the wrong way?”

“No!”

Then the second, and the third, and all of them; but he went on saying no because he knew they’d kill him if he said yes. He crouched down, trying to shield his head, but they pulled his arms away; he looked round desperately, he thought he saw--he yelled: “Lerrys!” And Lerrys came and stood over him, demanding explanations from the soldiers.

One of them told and “You’d better leave him to us, Lerrys. He was running away; we’ll save you the trouble of dealing with him!”

Dith caught hold of Lerrys: “I wasn’t! I got lost! You _told_ me to cut wood well away from the camp!”

“Of course I did. Here, let him alone. I tell you, I should know if he was likely to be running away! Dith, get up and come with me.”

Dith scrambled to his feet, but one of the soldiers grabbed him: “Oh no, you don’t!”

“Now, what is the use of that?” protested Lerrys, trying to calm them down. “Do you think his master’s going to be pleased if he’s knocked about till he’s useless? Listen, I’ll find out myself what happened, and if all’s not right I’ll send him back to you. Isn’t that fair?”

The men consulted for a moment: “Well, seeing he belongs to the Tribune----” And Lerrys took Dith off; the Briton picked up the bundle with the stolen money and food in it; Lerrys saw him do it.

They said nothing till they were back at the tent; then Lerrys looked at him sternly: “Dith, you liar, you may thank me for saving your life. What’s in that bundle?” Dith handed it over silently; Lerrys undid it and found the coins, his eyebrows went up: “So. Dith, you might be crucified for this.”

“But you won’t tell him?” Dith looked imploringly at Lerrys, who thought with a start that so might he himself have been five years back.

“I don’t think so. But I’m not sure: your stealing the money. Now of all times. You’ll have to take your punishment.”

“What will it be?”

Lerrys put back the money before he answered. “I’ve got to stop this happening again. About the other thing: did you tell them the wrong road?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because--oh well, I’ve fought against the Romans.”

“I see. So have I.”

“Longer ago. Oh, Lerrys, what are you going to do with me?”

“The soldiers would like you back.”

“Don’t! Lerrys, I’ll swear never to try it again. By the Arrow of the Shining One. You know that’s not an oath one breaks.”

“Very well. I’ll take it. You’d better get on with your work or you won’t have it finished by this evening. I must go and talk to the soldiers.” He went out and Dith started making up the fire, crying and cursing and thinking of green paths through the woods that went north to the coast. But Titus Barrus never knew what had happened and Dith never saw Britain again. And Ambiorix escaped; but his people paid for it.

The fate of the Eburones hung over some of the other tribes; the Camutes were spared on condition that they found and gave up Gutuatros, the man who had started the rising sixteen months ago by the murder of Roman citizens at Cenabum. For a time he hid among friends, but they were so anxious to save themselves and their wives and children, that very soon he was betrayed, caught, and handed over mercilessly to the Roman General. Titus was one of the officers who stood by at the mock trial they held; he knew, and the prisoner knew, and every one knew, what the end must be. He supposed it was necessary, but he hated it all the same: the man must be killed, only why not do it straightforwardly without all these witnesses and accusers and ceremony, this long dragging out of the hours, all to impress the Gauls with the justice and mercy of the conqueror! He doubted whether it was doing that. Gutuatros himself was wearing out visibly under the strain; at first he had stood straight and proudly before the Proconsul, a chained lion; but with the end of the day and the doom approaching, he began to lose his nerve, his shoulders twitched, he looked in agony from one face to another, his hand was at his mouth, at his throat, at his forehead. At last he was led out in front of the prætorium, into the central way through the camp, which ran east and west; he turned his head once towards the setting sun. There was a thin birch-tree growing at the side of the way, though most of the trees had been cut down; every little leaf was gold-touched in the glow; Titus looked up at it, away from the crowd, the space in the middle, the two posts driven into the ground with the collar between them.

They had him stripped, with his neck and wrists in the collar, this man who had commanded thousands; once there he could not flinch from the angry cries of the legions, could not look again at the sun, could not bite his hand to stop himself screaming under the rods. Titus edged away, wanting not to listen to the sounds, wanting to keep his eyes fixed on the tree. Only, now and again, he felt he had to see: the officers round him were flushed or white, Cæsar was speaking to his secretary, and in the middle there was more blood, the posts shook at every blow, the man was moaning like a sick animal. Another ten minutes: the sun was in the top of the birch-tree, there was a little dust blowing. The rods were falling still and the body jerked and twisted under them, but the eyes were shut, the head and hands drooped in the collar, no sound came from the lips. The collar was undone, the blood-streaked thing was taken out and laid with its neck on the block; the axe came over with a clear sweep and there were shouts from the soldiers. Quintus Velanius whispered to Titus, “Well?”

“So long as this is the last. I can’t stand much more. Cæsar should finish with it.”

“I hope so. It saves the rest of the tribe, perhaps.”

“My men were yelling for it last night: they like it better than the Games. It’s hard to say what really decided Cæsar.”

The group of officers broke up and went off their own ways; at the gate of the camp Titus saw two young Gauls standing together, one with his cloak up to his mouth. He would have spoken friendly to them, anything to bring back ordinary life again, but Quintus laid a hand on his arm: “Don’t speak, Titus: they’re his sons.” Then they saw a messenger riding fast, and wondered where he came from: “Perhaps from the south.”

“He might be; they say that siege is a hard business for Caninius.”

“Uxeldun must be a strong town.”

“Yes. Cæsar will have to go there himself, or it’ll drag on till Autumn.”

“Autumn.... I wonder what we shall be doing then. Come out with me as far as the river, Quintus.”

“God, what an evening!”

“Isn’t it? Look, there’s one star----”

It was nearly two months before when Lucter and Drappes, with their own men and a collection of fugitives from all parts, had gone south to raid the Province; Caninius had followed them hard, and they dared not risk a battle. But Lucter was in his own country; he turned towards Uxeldun, clearing the farms as he went, of cattle and corn, and had his army secure there before Caninius could catch him up. Uxeldun was built along the top of a hill; on two sides the rocks went sheer down to the plain, on the other there was a steep slope, leading down past a deep, constant spring to a burn in a narrow glen full of bushes. Here, before these wars, Lucter had been over-lord, and now the townspeople welcomed him back with cheers and flowers, though they knew well that this would mean a siege, and trouble, and perhaps death, to them and their households. And Caninius settled down in three camps, and waited to starve the town.

Lucter had been with Vercingetorix; Lucter knew what starving a town meant. He and Drappes went out by a secret way down the rocks, with all but two thousand of their men; they got in corn from all over the country, and the Romans never knew: none of the country folk would betray their old lord. It had to be brought back to the town by night on little mules that picked their sure-footed way along the cliffs; but the Roman outposts heard them, and told Caninius. Lucter was with the mules; he escaped, dropping from ledge to ledge, hiding in cracks among the fern, watching the Roman soldiers hunting for him with drawn swords; but there was no getting back to the town. The men who were with him were almost all killed; Gell fought till his sword broke off at the hilt, and then he would have surrendered; he knelt to them, pleading, with outstretched hands, but they pushed him over the edge of the cliff with their spears, and he broke his back thirty feet below over a sharp rock. Drappes and his men were attacked too, and taken by surprise; this time the Romans took some prisoners, Drappes among them wounded in a dozen places; Caninius kept him safe and had his wounds seen to, waiting for Cæsar to come.

The news was shouted up to the town by Roman soldiers; the leaders of the two thousand held a council on it; there was amply enough corn and cattle left for them, now they were so few, but they were terribly disheartened, and some were for surrendering at once, on such terms as they could get, before Cæsar himself should come. Caltane spoke urging them to defend the place at all costs; they might yet tire the Romans out, and Lucter, perhaps, could raise another army to relieve them; besides, if they did surrender, what was left to them? He was thinking himself of Curdun in ruins, and many of the others were homeless too. So it was no surrender, and days went by, and weeks, and at last they heard that Cæsar was on the way--at any rate they were not despised! Meromic watched the new legions marching in, one clear evening, and thought: is he there, shall I see him? and wished his old life would leave him alone, and yet somehow hoped, and yet somehow feared....