I stared at him. "What are you hinting at, Luke?"
"I'm not hinting, I'm simply restating the fact you brought home to me the other day. It has been twenty years since the last Romans left. Londinium will no longer be the Londinium I knew. You've never been there, and I haven't seen it since the armies left, but twenty years can bring a lot of changes.
"The engineers are all gone, long ago, as are the magistrates and governors. Now, as a physician, I have had to ask myself who has been running the water and sewage systems for the past two decades? Who's been collecting taxes to maintain the public works? If I allowed my imagination free rein, I could frighten both of us with thoughts of plague and pestilence." He paused, and when he resumed, his voice was lower, more introspective. "I think both of us may have been expecting great things of Londinium, Caius, in different ways, and I think we are both due for a grievous disappointment."
I heard hoofbeats approaching quickly from the rear. It was a messenger from the First Squadron to remind me that the men had not dismounted in almost four hours. I grunted acknowledgement and sent him back to his commander with word to rest, feed the troops and water the horses.
As the column halted and began to dismount, I nodded to Lucanus to accompany me and rode off the road. The fields surrounding Pontes had been few in number, small and ill maintained, and had petered out within a mile of the town. Since then, we had been riding through dense forest that hemmed us in tightly on both sides. The broad, cleared ditches that had originally protected the roadsides had long since disappeared without trace. Now the space they had occupied was choked with thick shrubs, bushes and mature trees. For the past half-mile, however, the trees had begun to thin out, and now we were flanked on both sides by a large, grassy clearing, strewn with the charred remnants of an old forest fire. I aimed my horse towards a pile of boulders about fifty paces from the roadside, and there we dismounted and climbed up to sit on the rocks.
When Lucanus had made himself comfortable beside me, we shared a drink from my water bottle. I watched him as he drank. "Were you serious about plague?"
He grunted and shook his head, lowering the flask. "No, of course not. I was simply being an alarmist. It's a pessimism born of my profession. We have absolutely no reason to suspect any such thing."
I was disconcerted, nonetheless, and his denial did not reassure me. I cleared my throat, hoping to clear my mind with it, and continued. "Well, let's suppose you're right and Londinium's a mess. What can we do?"
He replaced the stopper in the flask and handed it back to me. "About what? Provisions? Nothing we can do, except try to forage elsewhere. There's still game in the forests and fish in the streams, and the horses can still graze."
"And what about the remainder of our journey? If there's no food available in Londinium, then things might well be the same in Verulamium, too. This whole adventure could be a fiasco. Our objective is to demonstrate our strength and presence. If all the towns are abandoned, or closed to us, our time and effort will be wasted. Should we abort now? Turn around and go home?"
He thought about that for some time, mulling over the pros and cons as I was doing. Finally he shook his head. "I would say no. Bear in mind the word was sent out that the debate would be held in Verulamium. It would seem reasonable that arrangements have been made there to house the people coming from all over to attend." He paused. "In the final analysis, we will know nothing about Londinium until we arrive there."
He dug a small pouch out of the scrip by his side and tipped some shelled hazelnuts into his palm before offering the pouch to me. I shook a few into my hand and began popping them into my mouth, one at a time. The silence between us stretched, each of us engrossed in his own thoughts. I looked at the troopers who had dismounted all around us. They had filled every inch of space in the clearing, it seemed, and were sitting, lying or walking around, according to preference, all trying to rid themselves of saddle soreness. Most of them were very young. If I were leading them into a wasteland...if Lucanus were correct and Londinium lay empty or, God forbid, filled with pestilence, many of them might not return home, and the responsibility would be mine. Luke had dropped the thought of plague into my head, and now I could not ignore it. I had recognized his reference to public works and the difficulty of maintaining them; stagnant waters, particularly in congested urban areas, bred plague and pestilence. My mind conjured a vision of bleak, lightless streets littered with swollen corpses. Committing my men to die in battle, should the need arise, would cost me not a moment's discomfort. But the thought of leading them like sheep into a filthy, plague- ridden town, to die in agony and filth and squalor, with no more dignity than rabid rats, appalled me. And suddenly my mind was made up.
"Can we bypass Londinium and go directly to Verulamium?"
Lucanus shook his head briefly. "No. Not easily."
"Why not?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Our horses, and the river, the Thamis. We crossed it two days ago, when it was narrow. Now we're on the wrong side of it and it's too broad to swim and too deep to ford. We have to bridge it and the only bridge is at Londinium."
"What about a ferry?"
He shook his head again. "I doubt we'd find one big enough. We have two hundred men and two hundred horses, and wagons. That's a big river, Caius, probably bigger than you've ever seen."
"Damnation!" I rose to my feet. "Very well, here's my decision." I looked around me again, at the trees that hemmed us in. "As soon as we get out of this forest, if we ever do, I want to get off the road. We'll travel overland. That will allow us to hunt as we travel, so we can feed the men. If we come across any farms that look even remotely prosperous, we'll buy grain for the horses, otherwise they can graze as we move.
"When we approach Londinium, we will stop and make camp. Then I myself will go into the town—"
"With a suitably armed escort."
"Right, with a small party, to check conditions for myself before we lead the men in. I'll try to find out what's happening in Verulamium—somebody should know—and when I think the way is clear, I'll send word back for you to bring in the remainder of the party. We'll get to the other side of the river as quickly as possible, and strike north immediately for Verulamium."
He stared at me for several moments and then nodded agreement save for one minor proviso: he would ride with me into Londinium. He would not trust me, he said, to recognize a rampant plague even if the stench of it overpowered me.
About ten miles further on, we emerged from the forest. We had been on a gradual but definite gradient for five miles by that point, and the trees petered out quite abruptly, giving way to high, rolling moorland. We had not seen another living soul since leaving Pontes. I gave the signal to leave the road, and we swung north-east, making good time over hard, grassy ground for the rest of the day.
We stopped late in the afternoon and made camp in a lush, grass-filled meadow by the side of a clear, fast-flowing brook. I had sent out a hunting party earlier to range ahead of us, and they had fared well, bringing back three fair-sized deer and a huge wild pig. The commissary people set about their business immediately, and soon the smells of roasting meat filled the air and set everyone's stomach juices churning in anticipation of the feast.
The following morning, the weather held fine, sunny with only occasional showers, and again we made good progress. Donuil was a huddled clump of misery as he was each morning, his long body still unused to riding great distances every day. He swayed wordlessly on his horse's back as he followed close behind me, and I took care to require no errands of him before noon, knowing that as the day progressed, he would regain control of his loosening muscles and begin to improve visibly. It happened every day, and each day the recuperative process took up slightly less time.