Helena Read online

  “Yes?”

  “I have reasons for remaining inconspicuous.”

  “Yes?”

  “I can assure you that you need have no fear that the alliance I suggest is, in that respect, at all unworthy.”

  Coel waited for further information but none was forthcoming. At length he said: “I daresay we seem old-fashioned in Britain, but we still care a great deal for such things.”

  “Yes?”

  Constantius turned in his mind the question that had been vexing him for some days, which he thought was decided. He had meant to keep his secret until he was clear of Britain, until he was across the Rhine, but the King was plainly not to be put off; according to Coel’s simple tradition if a man had a genealogy to be proud of, he hired an orchestra and set the thing to music.

  At last Constantius spoke. “You have a right to the information you seek, but I must beg you to respect my confidence. When I tell you, you will understand my hesitation. I would have preferred you to accept my word, but since you insist”—he paused to give full weight to his declaration—“I am of the Imperial Family.”

  It fell flat. “You are, are you?” said Coel. “It’s the first I’ve ever heard of there being such a thing.”

  “I am the great-nephew of the Divine Claudius… Also,” he added, “of the Divine Quintilius, whose reign though brief was entirely constitutional.”

  “Yes,” said Coel, “and apart from their divinity, who were they? Some of the emperors we’ve had lately, you know, have been—very literally—nothing to make a song about. It’s one thing burning incense to them and quite another having them in the family. You must see that.”

  “On my father’s side,” said Constantius, “I am of the old Danubian nobility.”

  “Yes,” said Coel without interest, “all Danubians are, whom I’ve ever met. Where’s your place?”

  “The family estates are enormous but they are in the hands of another branch. I myself have no property to speak of.”

  “No.” Coel nodded and fell silent.

  “I am a soldier. I live where I am sent.”

  “Yes,” said Coel; another pause, then: “Well, I will speak to the girl. We don’t arrange marriages over here quite as you do, I daresay, on the Danube. Helena shall decide.”

  And when Constantius heard this he smiled thinly but confidently, and so took leave of the King.

  “Mead,” roared Coel, “and music. No not you”—as all the bards came bundling in—“only the three strings and the pipe. I have to think.”

  Presently, in a softened mood, he sent for Helena.

  “I am sorry to interrupt your lessons.”

  “It was ‘break,’ Papa. I had just gone to the stables to look at Pylades’s over-reach. He’ll be all right for Tuesday.”

  “Helena, I have had a most impudent request from that sickly looking young staff-officer. He wants to marry you.”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “A relation of the Divine What-d’you-call-him—awful fellow who was emperor not long ago. Says he comes from the Balkans somewhere. You don’t really want to marry him, do you?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Stop. Go away,” said Coel suddenly to his band. “Take the bowl; be off,” he said to the slave. The music died among the rafters; slippers shuffled among the rushes and the room was silent. “Stop fiddling with that thing,” he said to Helena.

  “It is only a curb chain. The hook’s got bent.”

  “Put it away. Not there”—as Helena tucked it down the front of her tunic.

  “Gone now,” she said, wriggled her shoulders to dispose the steel more comfortably between her breasts, and stood erect; only her fingers behind her back twiddled. “I had to marry someone, sometime, you know,” she said.

  “I can’t for the life of me think why. I have never regarded you as a girl.”

  “Oh, Papa.”

  “It’s different with your sisters, fine, plump girls, who know all about cooking and sewing. I get offers for them every week. But you, Helena; well I never expected this. You look like a boy, you ride like a boy. Your tutor tells me you have a masculine mind, whatever he means by that. I did think you at least might stay at home with your old father. And if you must marry, why choose a foreigner? Oh yes, I know we’re all Roman citizens and all that; so are a lot of Jews and Egyptians and disgusting Germans. They’re just foreigners to me. You won’t like living abroad, you know.”

  “I must go with Constantius, Papa, wherever he goes. Besides, he’s promised to take me to the City.”

  “The City indeed! Ask the District Commander. He met a fellow who’d been there. Told him all about it. Awful place.”

  “I must see for myself, Papa.”

  “You’ll never get there. No one goes there nowadays who can possibly help it—even the Divine Emperors. You’ll be stuck all your life in some Balkan barracks, you see.”

  “I must go with Constantius. After all, Papa, we Trojans are always in exile, aren’t we—poor banished children of Teucer?”

  Then King Coel suffered a change of mind which in a less sanguine man might be called despair, and turned his attention to the wedding celebrations.

  *

  Constantius was eager to be off, overseas, to his work; there was no time for the sewing-maids to prepare the robes of a King’s daughter, no time for the heralds to assemble the kin; time only for the augurs to fix a lucky day, a day of high, salt wind and momentary sunshine. The ox was duly felled and the spring-flowers of his garland lay with him on the temple courtyard, crushed and bloody on the sanded floor; in the porch bride and groom broke the wheaten cake and, as they entered the sanctuary to burn incense to the Gods and the Divine Aurelian, the royal bards sang the epithalamium which had been taught and learned, father to son, before the Gods of Rome were known in the island.

  In the hall bride and bridegroom sat enthroned until sunset while the court and the garrison feasted round them. In twilight they were led to Constantius’s lodging; he took her in his arms and carried her across the threshold of the home that was neither his nor hers; a soldier’s camping-place. His baggage was already in order for the journey and stood stacked by the bed.

  The music and voices of the banquet came clearly to them through the mist.

  “I have given the guard leave till reveille,” said Constantius. “I hope they make the best of it. They’ve some hard traveling ahead.”

  Presently the revelers came out with torches and sang round the house. Helena picked her way to the window, barefoot through the baggage. Standing there, she could see only the golden globes of flame moving below in the mist.

  “The minstrels, Chlorus. Come and look.”

  But Constantius lay still, invisible in the lampless room behind her.

  The song came to its end; Helena watched the torches dwindle in the darkness, glimmer and expire, heard the voices die to a murmur and fall at last quite silent. The marriage-house seemed to stand solitary in the night and fog.

  “It is like being alone on an island, isn’t it? Like ‘sea-girt Kranae.’ ”

  “Kranae?” said Chlorus. “Kranae? I don’t think I know the place. Is it one of the islands of Britain?”

  And Helena turned back to her husband.

  Next day, while Constantius dispatched the advanced-party and distributed the pack-loads, Helena went hunting once more for the last time over the familiar country. The timber round Colchester had been cut, first for reasons of defense, later for fuel; coverts of scrub and second-growth extended from below the walls, growing sparse and bare in successive belts as they approached the forests; the roads too had been cleared against ambush; there were large estates of tilled land and stretches of marsh towards the sea which gave free passage to the nimble game but engulfed horse and rider; there the hounds had to be whipped off the scent. It was a difficult country requiring cleverness and long experience in huntsmen and hounds; sometimes the game fell to the spears at the covertside; sometimes the hounds got a
way and pulled him down in the forest; the huntsman’s skill lay in driving him up the lanes into the open inland.

  It was a day of promise, the mist rose early leaving a wet and windless country and a strong scent. “Just the day we’ve been asking for, miss—I should say, madam,” said the head huntsman. Helena rode Pylades; she sat astride and the saddle-tree solaced her man-made hurt; whip in hand, rein in hand, the air of her home sweet in her nostrils. The smell of the hunt, compact of horse-sweat and warm harness, new leaf and old leaf trodden together; the call of the horn; the horselife under her, between her thighs, at her fingers’ ends; everything of that tangy, British morning contended with the memories of the night and seemed in those last few free hours to heal her maidenhead.

  It was a mixed bag—two gray old boars that bolted, wheeled, charged and fell to the javelin throwers, a fallow hind whom the hounds followed slowly, with many checks, who at last led them a clear run to her death in the bare cornlands and, after noon, a red deer, rare in those parts, a beast in his splendid prime, four-atop and all his rights, who ran to the sea in a great half-circle and fell to the hounds on the shingle at the water’s edge.

  Only Helena was with the huntsmen at the kill. The Roman followers were lost and forgotten. The little cavalcade turned towards home into the setting sun; two of the hounds were lame but Pylades trotted bravely towards his stable; as she jogged back through the dear, darkling country the exhilaration of the morning was all spent. It was night when they reached the town.

  That evening Helena said to her father: “I suppose my education is finished now?”

  “Yes,” said Coel, “finished.”

  “What’s going to happen to Marcias?”

  A remote and rather kindly look came over the King’s face. “Marcias?” he said. “Marcias. I’ve always been very fond of Marcias. Clever fellow. Wasted as a girl’s tutor.”

  “You used sometimes to say, Papa, that you’d free him when my education was finished.”

  “Did I? Did I say that? I don’t think I ever said anything quite as definite as that. Besides, how was I to know your education would be over so soon? There’s plenty of good work in Marcias yet.”

  “I think he wants to go to Alexandria, Papa.”

  “I’m sure he does. And think how bad it would be for him. I’ve heard all about Alexandria—beastly place; nothing but sophists and aesthetes. I like Marcias. We have obligations towards him. I’d keep him myself but he’s not exactly in my line.”

  “Will you give him to me, Papa?”

  “My dear child, he’d be completely out of place in a garrison town. He’ll fetch a good price in Gaul; you see if he doesn’t.”

  Three

  None But My Foe to Be My Guide

  Constantius Chlorus was a bad sailor; he lay below muffled in his military cloak while Helena nightlong strode the deck, saw the stars swing into view above the dipping sails, blaze and darken and appear anew; saw at length the whole sky lighten, the line of fire arch and rise until the whole sun stood clear over the water and it was full day; watched the sailors busy with the sheets, got into talk with them, lent them a hand, squatted with them round the forecastle brazier and shared their broiled fish. “Was it thus,” she wondered, rinsing her scaly fingers in a bucket of sea-water and drying them in her lap, “was it thus, perhaps, that Paris brought his stolen queen to Ilium?”

  Land came to sight at noon; soon she could descry the glittering citadel of the foreign port and the haze of wood-smoke along the waterfront; soon they were abreast of the beacon and the ship, suddenly quiet in all her creaking rigging, slipped into the still water of the harbor; a single authoritative voice from the mole directed them to their mooring; they struck sail, dropped anchor and a host of bum-boats clustered alongside; their masts made part of a grove of shipping silently riding at anchor in the afternoon sun.

  Constantius Chlorus came on deck and looked knowingly at the sun. “Boulogne at last. We’ve made a good passage. Those must be part of Carausius’s fleet; the fastest ships in the Channel. Not a pirate can touch them. I must look Carausius up this evening if he’s in the town.”

  “We’ve been talking about him; Ben says he could take over the whole of Britain anytime he wanted to.”

  “And who, pray, is the astute Ben?”

  “Ben’s the bosun. He says whoever rules the Channel, rules Britain. He’s got three sons, all at sea.”

  “Helena, I don’t want you to start picking up stray friends and gossiping.”

  “Why not? I always do.”

  “Well, for one thing, I don’t want people to know where I’ve been or where you’ve come from.”

  “Everyone knows where I come from.”

  “No, Helena, not here; still less across the Rhine. I’ve been meaning to tell you. As soon as we cross the Rhine into Swabia, there must be no talk of Gaul or Britain. No one must know about this journey of mine. Do you understand?”

  “But aren’t we going to Rome?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you said…”

  “Not yet. A time will come. You shall go to Rome, but not yet.”

  “But where are we going now?”

  “You are going to Nish.”

  The word fell between them, inert, ponderous, amorphous.

  “Nish?”

  “Surely you’ve heard of Nish?”

  “No, Constantius, never.”

  “It is where Uncle Claudius fought his great battle with the Goths.”

  “Yes.”

  “One of the most glorious victories—not five years ago.”

  “You say I am going to this place. Are you not coming?”

  “Soon. I have business first elsewhere. You’ll be better at Nish.”

  “Is it far?”

  “A month or six weeks. The couriers used to do it in a fortnight. That was in the old days when the post-stages were properly organized with the best horses in the Empire waiting fresh every twenty miles and the roads safe to ride at night. Things aren’t so good now; we’ll get all that tidied up soon. But you’ll do it in a month. Or you might wait at Ratisbon and come on with me later. I shall know better in a day or two.”

  “And is—is Nish far from Rome?”

  “It’s on the way to Rome,” said Constantius. “Not directly, perhaps. One does not travel direct to Rome.”

  “They say all roads lead there.”

  “Mine does, by way of Nish.”

  The corporal-major reported for orders; Constantius left Helena’s side and she wandered forward and leaning on the bulwark studied the view, so like that which she had seen yesterday as she looked her last on her native shore, the taverns and warehouses of the waterfront, the smoky huddle of huts behind them, the ashlar walls of the citadel and the columned temple crowning all; so foreign, the gate to a new life, the starting-point of the road so smoothly metaled, so straight, so devious, that led to Nish, to Rome, and whither beyond?

  *

  They traveled fast, saddling before dawn, bivouacking for their midday meal at the roadside, sleeping where darkness found them at the nearest stage-post. Constantius eschewed the towns. On the evening they reached Châlons they spent the night at a rough little inn outside the walls and cantered over the bridge at daybreak before the town was awake. At the border-castle of Strasbourg Constantius had friends with the VIII Legion; they stayed in the commander’s quarters but Helena was sent early to bed and Constantius sat up all night talking soberly; next morning his face was paler than ever and grim with fatigue; he scarcely spoke until they were across the Rhine; then, suddenly, his hard mood relaxed. The change touched the men and through them the horses and they jogged along in the sunshine at ease, almost merrily. The troopers sang snatches of bawdy ditties; they halted early, unsaddled, turned the horses to grass at hobble, and lay full length while the smoke of their fire rose straight into the windless sky.

  “I’m coming with you as far as Ratisbon,” said Constantius. “I have the time. Then I m
ust go back to Châlons. I have business there.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “Not long I think. Everything is ready.”

  “What sort of business?”

  “Just something which has to be tidied up.”

  The road to Ratisbon lay along the Swabian wall; a rough ditch and palisade of timber, with frequent log-built blockhouses.

  “Our British wall is of stone.”

  “This will be stone some day. The plans have all been made. They keep putting it off, first for one thing, then another, a raid here, a mutiny there, a corrupt slave-contractor, a commanding-officer too old for his job, always something more urgent to be done, never the time or the men or the money for anything except the immediate task. Sometimes I feel as though the Empire were like an unseaworthy boat; she springs a leak in one place, you caulk it up, bale out and then before you can settle down to navigation, water comes spurting in somewhere else.”

  Thus on some days, desponding, when they had found the post-horses galled and ill-fed or the guards shabbily turned-out; when at their halts they had fallen in with grumblers and rumor-mongers, with ugly, disloyal tales about the higher command; but, in general, Constantius’s spirits rose as he rode daily deeper into the military zone; they traveled by easier stages now, unsaddled early in the afternoon, reported punctiliously at each Area Headquarters, talked at length and at ease to all they met.

  For Helena, the scene, unchanging from morning to evening, was devoid of interest; the metaled highway, on one side vine and corn and cantonment, on the other the wild lands, untilled, wasted by generations of border fighting, burned-back as far as the eye could reach, naked of corn; between them the fosse and the ramparts; but Constantius was exhilarated; the siting of the guard-houses, the problems of water-supply and victualing, the varying amenities of the garrisons—a cockpit here, a rough sports stadium there, the greater or less propriety of the gaming-houses and taverns; the shrines of the regimental deities, the gossip in the mess about promotions and superannuations, new training methods, tricks to prolong the life of old weapons, tricks to get new issues from the supply dumps; all which stirred Constantius and led him to the very brink of enthusiasm, fell flat for Helena; even the stables, regularly laid-out, uniformly equipped, began to pall; only here and there on the road, when they met a party of haughty, naked Germans who had come over the lines to barter; now and then at the halts when the conversation turned upon wolves and bears, did her interest quicken. Once she said: “Must there always be a wall, Chlorus?”