‘What happened?’
‘They took us just as we were going into the council hut,’ Marcellinus told him. ‘We heard shouts from across the camp, then we were surrounded by armed warriors – it must have been planned that way in advance. Then we learned that Ulcagnus and Vendognus had been found dead in their huts by their own men. We were treated well at first, Strabo and I – put in a hut by ourselves, with a guard at the door. Later, I suppose once Talorcagus had taken control and they’d started the attack on your position, they dragged us out and beat us, then tied us with sacks over our heads…’
‘Why did they think you’d done it?’
Marcellinus just grimaced, shaking his head against the dirty straw. The gate was dragged open, and another body was thrown into the pen beside them: Strabo, with a purple bruise across the side of his face.
‘My men,’ Castus said. ‘Have they got away yet? Did either of you see them go?’
Both shook their heads. ‘Senomaglus promised me he’d protect them,’ Marcellinus said. ‘I think I believe him. I hope I believe him. But there was nothing else you could do. You fought well, but it was over.’
Several hours passed before the guards returned. Rain fell, and Castus tipped back his head and opened his mouth and tried to drink it from the air. Then the wattle gate was flung open again and the guards were among them, dragging at their aching arms, threatening them with spears.
Heads down, they were led across the encampment, between low huts and shelters and the walls of other animal pens. Castus fixed his mind on the knot of pain between his shoulders; his hands and arms were numb, and he stumbled as he was dragged along. He heard Marcellinus cry out beside him, and then he was forced down to kneel.
‘No, this is barbaric!’ Marcellinus hissed between his teeth. The envoy was struggling against his guards now, trying to break away.
Castus raised his eyes slowly, wincing against the ache in his neck. Before him was a low mound surrounded by open space, and on the mound was a single tree. The bark had been strip shy;ped away to the bare white wood, and the branches lop shy;ped off close to the trunk leaving long spikes sticking up. Marcellinus was shouting in the Pictish tongue, oblivious to the guards around him.
‘It’s a triumph tree,’ he cried out. ‘Cran na buadag… Don’t look at it!’
But Castus continued to stare, dazed. Groups of warriors were gathering around the mound and the stripped tree. With a lurch of horror, Castus recognised what they were carrying. Heads – severed human heads, some carried by the hair, others with a thumb hooked inside the jaw. The heads of Roman soldiers.
Beside him, he heard Strabo muttering prayers to his Christian god. He wanted to pray himself, or shout out in rage, but his throat was locked and he could not make a sound. He watched as the warriors climbed up to the tree, some of them clambering on each other’s backs, and one by one stabbed the severed heads onto the spiked branches. Five heads, then ten, then twenty… Castus watched and counted, sickened and dizzy. He saw the face of Vincentius staring back at him. Then Brigonius and his comrades, the three scouts he had sent to summon help from Bremenium. One of the slaves he had armed and offered freedom. Draucus and Jucundus…
No Timotheus, no Culchianus. The heads had been taken from the fallen soldiers left lying in the compound wrapped in their blankets. All of them decapitated after death.
Marcellinus was shaking his head fiercely. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Now the last of the warriors climbed down from the mound, leaving the tree adorned with thirty human heads budding like terrible bulbous fruit from the bare branches. Around the base of the trunk the Picts had stacked the broken shields and shattered weapons gathered from the battle site. The warriors stood in a massed circle around the mound, raised their own weapons in salute and howled out their chant of victory.
Castus had seen many strange and horrific sights in his life, but the stripped tree with its ghastly trophies left him sick and weak. They were his own men, those pale bobbing heads, men he had trained and led in battle. Men who had trusted him to command them. If they murder me now, I deserve it.
But the warriors were falling back from the mound, joining the vast throng that filled the open space all around. A line of carts drawn by shaggy ponies turned between them and began to circle the tree. In the lead cart, Talorcagus stood up tall and proud, raising his spear to the shouts of victory.
‘Look at him,’ Marcellinus said. ‘He’s sealed his rule in blood already.’
Behind the new king rode his nephew Drustagnus, then the other chiefs of the Picts. Only the woman, Cunomagla, was not among their number. Castus felt glad of that – he could not bear the idea of seeing her gloat over his slain. The carts drew to a halt, the chiefs dismounting. Now a strange figure was moving between them, an ancient woman dressed in grey tatters, carrying a leather bag.
‘The witch,’ Strabo said, with a hissing intake of breath.
The chiefs and their warriors moved behind the witch as she advanced, shambling, towards the bound prisoners. Beside him, Castus saw Marcellinus give a sudden lunge and try to get up. The guards wrestled him back to his knees.
‘That’s my saddlebag,’ Strabo said quietly, in dawning hor shy;ror. ‘She’s got my saddlebag…’
The witch halted, throwing the bag down; Castus recognised it now, a square satchel of tooled Roman leather. He had seen Strabo carrying it on his pony. Throwing up her arms, the old woman let out a long keening wail. She reeled in a circle, and then dropped forward to scrabble at the bag. The chiefs and the warriors drew closer around her.
Castus felt the tip of a spear pressing at the hollow of his throat, another at his back. He could not breathe, could not move.
The witch-woman knelt upright with a cry of satisfaction, holding up a small brass bottle with a stopper. The assembled Picts fell back, gasping and shouting.
‘Cough medicine,’ Strabo said, with a despairing grimace. ‘It’s only cough medicine…’
But now Talorcagus stepped to the front of the group and raised his arm, pointing at Strabo. Guards to either side seized the imperial agent by the elbows and started to drag him forward.
‘No, surely not!’ Marcellinus cried suddenly in pained dis shy;belief. ‘They’re saying it’s poison… they’re saying he murdered the chiefs with it…!’
They don’t care, Castus thought. Everything now had a terrible sense of inevitability. Marcellinus made another sudden lunge, slipped from the grasp of his captors and leaped to his feet. He managed two long strides towards Strabo before one of the guards smashed at his leg with the flat of his sword. Castus heard the sharp snap of bone, and then Marcellinus was sprawled in the dirt, writhing and choking.
Strabo was made to kneel before the assembled chiefs. He looked very calm now, his face pale but clear and his eyes shining. One of the guards gripped his hair and drew back his head, raising a short curved knife to the sky. Castus could hear the chanting and the yells, but could understand nothing. His gaze was fixed on the kneeling man.
‘I am a soldier of Christ!’ Strabo shouted, suddenly and very loud. ‘Oh, Lord God, I commend my soul to you!’
The chanting grew louder, the chiefs stepping away from the pinned captive as the guard lowered his cruel blade.
‘In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,’ Strabo cried through clenched teeth, his face shining with fierce defiance, ‘I offer my soul to God in hope of salvation…’
Then the voices rose to a great shout, and Castus looked away quickly as he saw the knifeman move. When he glanced back, he saw the blood spraying across the bare earth, Strabo’s half-naked body tumbling sideways, the knife raised once more to the sky, shining red.
They freed his wrists, and he snarled in pain as sensation returned to his trapped hands. Before he could struggle, they dragged up his arms and tied them once more to a baulk of wood pinned behind his neck.