During the long, lonely days while her husband was away, Magdalena would often stand by front gate, gazing wistfully down the green, V-shaped valley towards the blue Mediterranean, one hand on her flat belly. Alonzo was a young man, but serious-minded. Many times she’d suggested they try for a child before they pursue their goal. But he was adamant that any child of his would be born a freeman with prospects, a citizen of New Rome.
She rose with the cockcrow one bright summer morning, ate a breakfast of bread and beans, and went out to feed the chickens and water the vegetable beds. Alonzo only had another year and a half before his military service was complete. That was the offer Emperor Lucius had made to the serfdom of Italy — five years unblemished service in the Imperial militia, and citizenship was guaranteed. Alonzo had never been a soldier before, but Magdalena had no doubt when he’d first suggested it that he’d make a fine one — he was strong, resourceful and tough from years of working the land. Like so many Ligurian men, he was brawny of build with dark, sun-browned skin. He was also handsome, with flashing eyes and thick black hair. Much as she was, if she was honest, though she doubted she looked her best at present; working the farm alone meant short nights and long, hard days. Today would be especially arduous. The autumn crop was already ripening on the branches, but if the winter crop was to be bountiful some of the trees needed pruning. It was necessary but difficult work, and there would be plenty of it, but — as she kept reminding herself — only a year and half remained, and then Alonzo would be discharged from his legion in France, and their life together could truly commence.
It was mid-morning when Magdalena went up to the olive grove carrying a small ladder. She’d bound her lustrous hair with a hessian scarf and fastened a leather girdle around her waist, from which Alonzo’s tools — knives, shears and a small saw — were suspended. She put on her animal-hide shoes, and donned the old skirt she had purposely split to the thigh to allow her to climb among the branches. It was not the kind of attire she hoped Father Pius would see if he passed the plantation on his donkey on the way to say Mass in the village, but work necessitated such things and most of the time she was alone here.
She set about the strenuous task with her usual zeal, clambering lithely, cutting, sawing and snipping away as much dead and excess wood as she could find. In the midday heat, she rested. Under a particularly shady tree at the farthest end of the grove, she took her flask and sipped the clear, fresh water she’d collected from the mountain stream, and then ate salted ham on dry bread and a fresh, green salad which she’d picked in her herb garden. For a brief time, she dozed, lulled by the trilling of the cicadas.
“Magdalena?” came a voice.
She assumed she was dreaming — for it sounded like Alonzo.
“Magdalena, where are you?”
Magdalena’s eyes snapped open.
Her brow glistened with sweat, her simple clothing sticking to her body as it so often did in the heat of noon. Had the temperature made her dizzy?
“Magdalena?” the voice said again.
She leapt to her feet, amazed, and peered down the length of the plantation, seeing a figure in trailing red robes coming through the wicket gate at the rear of the allotment.
“Alonzo?” she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. She had not seen him since a year last Christmas. Excitement took hold of her.
“Alonzo!” she squealed, lifting her skirts and dashing downhill, weaving between the trees, ducking under their low, spiky boughs. He too began to run, waving both his arms in his eagerness to hold her.
She did not stop to think how this was possible. She could only assume that he had been given unexpected leave. Maybe — horror of horrors — he had been wounded in some way. But if so, he looked fit enough: his long, lean stride drove him up the slope, his heavy red vestments dragging behind him. Her beloved husband was home. She did not know how long for, but did that matter? When he’d first enlisted, they’d thought it would be five years before they saw each other again. If he could manage just one period of leave it would be a boon, but two? God was truly with them this day.
And then she realised that it wasn’t Alonzo.
They were ten yards apart, in the heart of the grove, when the glamour was lifted.
The thing Magdalena had thought was her husband was indeed wearing a long red habit with a monk’s cowl, though it had fallen back as he had clumped uphill towards her, revealing his — or rather its — face. It stood eight feet tall. It had brutish, primal features coated in a shaggy down of silver-grey fur. Its feral eyes gleamed yellow under thick bone brows; its ivory fangs were bared like knives. It called her again, only this time it called in its true voice — a guttural, spine-chilling howl.
Magdalena slid to a halt, her mouth locked open. When a scream burst from her, it rose and rose and rose. But it was no good, for the thing already had her, wrapped in its massive arms, pressing her slender form to its barrel chest, crushing the life from her.
It was a mercy that she went unconscious as quickly as she did.
The towering monstrosity tore loose the girdle from which her tools hung, and cast her over its shoulder before turning and striding back through the olive plantation. On the far side of the cottage, a black enamel carriage with a team of eight horses waited patiently.
Nineteen
The silence in the Vale of Sessoine was eerie. Aside from a single fleecy cloud, the sky was pebble-blue. The midday heat possessed oven-like intensity.
The two armies stood facing each other, motionless. The Romans filled some two-thirds of the great valley, rank upon serried rank, their arms and armour shining like mirrors as they diminished backward into a distant haze. So many were they that from King Arthur’s position their farthest end could not be seen. The eagles of each legion, and the flag-poles marking their cohorts, companies and regiments, stood upright in a rigid forest. Arthur’s host did not flinch at this prospect, not even from the sight of the papal gonfalon, the black Crossed Keys, billowing in the very middle. So the Pope had declared for New Rome, Arthur had told his men the night before. It was a blow, but popes came and went. The next one would be different.
Arthur gazed along his own battle-front. The Saxons, that fierce northern people whose ancestors had butchered three Roman legions at the battle of the Teutoberg, were still in the foremost rank, unmoved by the merciless heat. The bright colours and demonic imagery with which they’d painted their circular shields — the green eye of Odin swimming in purple mist, the blue serpent Jormangandr woven amid gouts of orange flame, the white head of the horse Sleipnir rising through black twists of branches — were stark against their ring hauberks and the grey metal of their helms. Behind them, the ranks of chivalry waited; Arthur’s Familiaris infantry and the men-at-arms of his great retainers, their mauls, hammers and pole-axes at the ready. At the rear stood the peasant forces, every improvised weapon one could imagine clutched in their grimy fists. On either flank, Arthur’s archers, masked from the Romans, stood in deep phalanx, their great bow-staves not yet strung. They broiled in their steel-studded harness, but listened intently or peered up from beneath their iron caps and brimmed helmets, eyes shielded as they assessed the angle and trajectory of the goose-shafts they would soon be discharging.
And still the silence lingered. The two who had so far died lay prone on the sun-parched grass betwixt the facing armies. The blood glimmered where they had fallen. There would be more of that; everyone knew.
With a shouted command, and a great creaking of cogs and timbers, the Roman artillery — in the first instance, eight great counterweight catapults, located four to either flank — began to discharge, timber arms smacking upright against crossbars, launching hefty payloads of shot. Cast-iron balls, two to three feet in diameter, hurtled forward, bouncing on the open ground in front of Arthur’s army, kicking up plumes of dust. The first rounds were range-finders, falling short or ricocheting over the heads of the waiting troops, but the second rounds were more accurate. Again they struck the open field, but further back, coming on apace and crashing into the waiting ranks, smashing shields, crushing helmeted skulls, shattering limbs. Arthur’s line held, but from either flank of the Roman army there were echoing thuds as the throwing arms snapped upright again. More projectiles were hurled towards his men. With cataclysmic impacts, fresh alleyways were ripped through them, littering the ground with broken, gore-soaked bodies. The gasps and cries of the wounded were soon audible all over the field.