Masters of Rome (16 page)

Yosef nodded. ‘You are right, my lord.' He pulled on a leather thong about his neck and brought out a pendant.

Vespasian saw with surprise that it was the same as Cogidubnus', a four-spoked wheel; but then he noticed the downward spoke had been extended so that it looked like a cross with a circle around its top.

Yosef held it up to Cogidubnus. ‘You may be surprised that I too have my own version of the Wheel of Taranis. I have adapted it to symbolise my faith and yet keep it recognisable to the people of this land whom I hope to convert to Yeshua's teachings of Judaism and bring them close to the love of the one true God.'

Magnus grunted. ‘I can't imagine that anyone here is going to be too keen to have their foreskin cut off.'

‘It's a small price to pay to come closer to God.'

‘You can keep your god and I'll keep my foreskin.'

Magnus' theological musings were brought to a close by the opening of the door; a handsome woman in her mid-thirties walked in accompanied by two children, a boy in his early teens, holding a lamb, and a girl a year or two younger. It was more than ten years since Vespasian had seen Yeshua's woman, Miriam; he had not thought about her once and could only vaguely recall what she looked like.

Miriam, however, recognised him instantly. She walked quickly across the room, knelt at Vespasian's feet and clasped his knees. ‘Legate Vespasian, every day when I look at my children I think of your mercy and how you saved their lives; every day I say a prayer for you.' Behind her the two children looked at Vespasian in awe.

Vespasian placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face. ‘Thank you for your prayers but I can assure you that they're not necessary; please stand.'

Miriam got to her feet. ‘I will always pray for you, legate, as I shall always pray for your brother who gave me my husband's body back. I have seen him, you know?'

Vespasian grabbed Miriam's hand. ‘When and where?'

‘A few days ago. Yosef sent me to the valley of Sullis once he was sure that you would be arriving soon. The druids allow people to take the hot water from the springs for medicine. They have Sabinus there in a wooden cage hanging from an oak tree in one of their sacred groves by the hottest of Sullis' five springs; he's naked and filthy but he's not without hope. I made sure that he saw me and he recognised me; he knows that someone is coming for him.'

‘He's always known that someone would come for him; that
I
would come for him.'

Magnus frowned, chewing on the last of his bread. ‘Let's hope that it's just Sabinus who knows that someone's coming and not everyone else in that valley.'

Yosef stood and walked over to Yeshua. ‘I'm afraid that is a vain hope; the druids will be expecting us. The very fact that they've made no attempt to hide Sabinus means that they want you to come.' He took the lamb from Yeshua and cradled it in his arms. ‘Tomorrow at dawn I shall offer this lamb and ask that God blinds them to our arrival and confounds their plan to capture you, Vespasian, and make a double sacrifice of two brothers, both legates. They think that will be very powerful; so you see, they've always wanted you to come.'

CHAPTER VI

V
ESPASIAN LOOKED DOWN
into the valley of Sullis from high on a hill to its southern edge. Thickly wooded with a river meandering through it, the vale's only sign of human habitation was a small pier on the north bank at the apex of a large dog-leg in the river's course.

‘The river is known as the Afon Sullis,' Yosef informed Vespasian, Magnus and Cogidubnus. ‘The ferry that operates from that pier is the only way across without getting wet.'

‘So we'll be getting wet then,' Vespasian observed, watching a small round boat being paddled away from the pier.

‘Yes, the river curves around behind this hill; we can swim the horses across to the northern bank out of sight of unfriendly eyes.'

‘Apart from the ferryman and his passenger I can't see any eyes, either friendly or unfriendly,' Magnus said, scanning the thick green canopy that covered the valley's floor.

‘There're plenty under there, you can count on it; and all very unfriendly. They'll be mainly around the five sacred groves that surround each of the springs. They're all within the curve of the river.'

Cogidubnus shielded his eyes from the low, late-afternoon sun. ‘Which one will we make for?'

‘If they still have Sabinus above the hottest one then it's about four hundred paces from the ferry and almost exactly in the middle of the curve.'

‘I'll have a couple of my men go and take a look once it gets dark.' Cogidubnus turned and addressed his ten followers in their own tongue, pointing to the area of wood indicated by Yosef.

‘We should aim to be there by the eighth hour of the night.' Yosef turned his horse and kicked it away down the hill.

Vespasian took one last look at the valley before following; it looked so peaceful and yet it was home to unspeakable horrors. And he would soon have to face them again.

‘My men should be back very soon,' Cogidubnus said, observing the progress of the moon across the night sky.

Vespasian shivered and wrapped his cloak tighter about his shoulders; the temperature had dropped with the sun and they had not dared to risk a fire despite still being damp from crossing the river. ‘Do you think that your god has blinded the druids to our coming, Yosef?'

‘The sacrifice was accepted this morning and we had no trouble on the journey here; Miriam and the children are praying for us and that will help me raise the power that I'll need. But only with a lot of luck will we escape detection altogether.'

‘Oh, so we do have to rely on luck, do we?' Magnus muttered, less than impressed. ‘I thought that all this religious stuff that you've been going on about, the one true god and all that, meant that we had a guarantee of divine protection.'

Yosef smiled benignly in the dim moonlight. ‘God cannot always do everything that is asked of Him.'

‘Then he's no different to any other god, is he? They seem to spend their time turning up with a little help whenever they fancy rather than when you ask them to. And if this god that you seem to be so keen on really was the only god then I'm not surprised to find him unreliable because he must be very busy.'

‘He is everywhere,' Yosef agreed as the soft rustling of leaves heralded the arrival of Cogidubnus' two scouts.

Cogidubnus spoke to them briefly and then dismissed them to wait with his other followers.

‘Well?' Vespasian asked.

‘It seems that Sullis is a powerful goddess; my men said that the closer they got to her springs the more they felt her presence.'

‘But what about Sabinus, is he still there?'

‘They could see a cage suspended from a tree but they could not get close enough to see whether there was anyone in it. There were druids close by.'

‘How many?'

‘More than a dozen.'

‘Any warriors?' Magnus asked, gripping the hilt of his sword.

‘None that could be seen; but that doesn't mean there aren't any. If there are, though, there won't be many as this is a religious place, not a settlement. They're not our concern; my men will deal with them. It's the druids and the goddess that we have to worry about.'

‘You look to the druids and leave Sullis to me,' Yosef said, tapping the leather bag slung over his shoulder, ‘and remember, she's not a goddess, she's just a daemon.'

‘As far as I'm concerned there ain't any difference,' Magnus stated. ‘She's a supernatural being who demands worship. Men worship her, therefore she's a goddess. Granted, she may not be as powerful as Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Donar or Taranis but that makes sense because there is a hierarchy to the gods, just like with men. Men can't be all equal and nor can gods. Which leaves us with the nice irony of you, Yosef, using the power of what you profess to be the one true god against a lesser goddess. I'd say your god's claim to be the only god is a little tenuous, wouldn't you?'

Yosef repeated his benign smile. ‘Perhaps you Gentiles attribute the word “god” too easily to forces that you don't understand. There are supernatural beings other than Yahweh; I would not call them gods but you would. Heylel or Lucifer, for example: he has power but less power than Yahweh; you would call him a god, a lesser god like Saturn compared to Jupiter, but Lucifer is just an angel who has fallen from grace. Then there are Gabriel and Michael, they are archangels who live with Yahweh; again you would call them gods, because they're supernatural beings.'

‘Do you worship them?'

‘No, but we honour them.'

‘Ah!' Magnus pointed his finger at Yosef. ‘What's the difference?'

‘When Yahweh revealed himself to the Jews he told us that we should not worship other gods, only him, because he would not give his glory to another.'

‘And yet you “honour” these archangels. You see, if he told you not to worship other gods, that implies that there are other gods, so I think you've got your argument the wrong way round: you Jews don't attribute the word “god” enough. You've got all these gods that you just pretend are something else to keep this Yahweh happy. Whereas if you just accepted that Lucifer, Gabriel and all the rest were gods then your religion wouldn't be much different from everybody else's and perhaps you'd find yourselves fitting in a bit more because you wouldn't consider yourselves so special.'

Again Yosef chuckled into his beard. ‘Magnus, my friend, I can't argue with your logic except to say that there is no other God.'

‘And yet we're just about to go and deal with one!'

Vespasian got to his feet. ‘I've had enough of this. Whether Sullis is a goddess or a daemon or an angel – whatever that is – makes no difference; we're going to have to defeat the druids that use her power in order to rescue Sabinus and I've asked for the protection of my guardian god, Mars, just as Cogidubnus is protected by Taranis and Yosef has his Yahweh. Whether they're all different or all the same but with different names is completely irrelevant to me so long as I feel the hands of a god being held over me – because having faced these druids once I know that's what I need.'

Cogidubnus heaved himself off the ground. ‘The moon will set in an hour; we should get ourselves into position.'

Magnus held his hand out to help Yosef up. ‘Whoever's right and whoever's wrong there is one certainty and that is we all need gods. I'm looking forward to seeing how yours proves himself to be the one true god.'

‘You'll never get proof, Magnus; you just have to have faith.'

Vespasian stayed close to Cogidubnus, only just visible a pace in front of him, as the two scouts led them towards the springs of
Sullis. The forest thickened as they probed deeper and soon the canopy was so dense that the stars were totally obscured and the gloom was complete. The air had become thick and heavy to breathe and had an acidic tang to it that grated in his throat. Sweat had begun to trickle down his forehead and he sensed the temperature rising steadily as they closed on Sullis' realm. A low-hanging branch brushed against his ear, startling him; he reached out to push it aside and felt it dripping with moisture.

‘I'll take the forests of Germania any day,' Magnus muttered from behind him. ‘At least they didn't make you feel like you were going into the
caldarium
with your clothes on. Wearing fucking trousers in the hot bath, who'd have thought it?'

‘I thought you were going to say: “it ain't natural”.'

‘Well, it ain't natural; but you're mocking me now, I can tell.'

‘Sorry, it's just to ease my nerves. I think that at the moment I'd rather be anywhere but here.'

‘Yeah, well, I reckon that's something that we can all agree on, even Yosef; and I expect that Sabinus is thinking exactly the same thing.'

‘I hope that he
is
thinking.'

‘We'll find that out soon enough.'

Vespasian collided with Cogidubnus who had stopped suddenly. Just beyond him the two scouts had gone down onto their knees.

‘What is it?' Vespasian whispered.

One of the scouts spoke softly to the King and indicated ahead.

‘He says that we're close; he can tell by the air, it's dense with Sullis' power.' Cogidubnus whispered something in his own tongue to the rest of his men behind Yosef. With remarkable stealth they fanned out in the dark with hardly a twig disturbed. ‘Now we shall have need of our gods,' the King muttered, pulling out his Wheel of Taranis from beneath his tunic.

Before Cogidubnus had completed the motion a shrill shriek off to their right pierced the heavy atmosphere, chilling their hearts despite the humidity. A score of torches suddenly ignited thirty paces away, their flames leaping up, bathing the underside of the canopy with a flickering glow and revealing a cage dangling
from a high branch. Vespasian turned towards the light, his hands clammy and his hair lank with sweat, and was shocked to see his breath steaming out before him as if he was in a snow-covered land.

And then he saw them.

Out from behind each column of flame appeared a long-robed figure; the druids walked a couple of steps forward and stopped at the edge of a steaming pool that bubbled at its centre. Again the shriek was repeated and Vespasian saw that a young girl, naked and no more than ten years old, was in their midst; the two druids to either side of her held her firmly by her long, golden hair. Tears streamed down her face and she screamed again in abject terror; urine squirted from between her legs. A vicious curved knife was put to her throat to force her head back and a ball of some sort of food was forced into her mouth. A hand clamped her lips tightly shut so that she could not spit and fingers pinched her nostrils together. Unable to breathe she swallowed and, an instant later, convulsed. Her mouth and nose were released and immediately emitted thick streams of blood; blood seeped from her eyes and ears and flowed free from between her legs. She tried to cry to the heavens but her voice was drowned by blood flooding in her gorge and she sprayed a thick mist of crimson into the air. Her knees buckled but she remained upright, supported by her killers. The druids chanted a short prayer and Vespasian recognised the word ‘Sullis' as they threw the still-twitching small body into the pool whose steaming waters turned red with the innocent blood.