As the Raven Flies

By Colin Sidney-Wilmot

AS THE RAVEN FLIES by Colin Sidney-Wilmot tells an extraordinary tale of 5th century Britain that was to mould modern America and England, and the English speaking peoples. It was in this crucible of Saxons, Celts and Romans that the modern English, our laws and language were born. Through the story of Wecta, invented nephew of Saxon rulers Hengist and Horsa, we enter a world of warriors, battles and pillage amidst a collapsing Roman empire. Sidney-Wilmot is famed as a founder of Bussana Vecchia, about which a British documentary arts film is currently in production and many articles have been written, in papers as diverse as the New York Times, London Daily Mail, Express and the Independent. Since the restoration of his house in this historic village overlooking the Mediterranean, Sidney-Wilmot has spent the last 5 years researching 5th century Britain. This recreation is based on that work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483413679

Book preview

Bussanello.

CHARACTERS

AEGIFU Daughter of Nicodemus and Hilda.

Sister of Hector and Nicola.

AMBROSIUS AURELIUS Son of Constans and leader of pro Roman party.

AMBROSIUS AURELIANUS Son of Ambrosius Aurelius.

ANNOWRE Wecta and Regan’s daughter.

BAUTO A cavalryman from Sisillius’s squadron.

BRIGET Mother of Cadvan. Stepmother of Regan. Niece of Vitalis.

CADVAN Great nephew of Vitalis.

CYNEGYTH Oisc’s wife.

DONNE Romano British officer.

EBISSA One of Hengist’s sons.

EDGAR ‘flat nose’ Also known as ‘mucking in Edgar’ Thanet man who left and made a settlement on the Thames called Mucking.

EMMA Ebissa’s Frankish wife.

GETA Ebissa’s steward.

HECTOR Eldest son of Nicodemus and Hilda.

Brother of Aegifu and Nicola.

HENGIST Saxon leader. Descended from the God Wotan. Mercenary in the service of Vortigern. Father of Ebissa, Oisc and Hrothwina. Wecta’s Uncle.

HORSA Hengist’s brother and second in command.

HROTHWINA Hengist’s daughter. Ebissa’s sister.

Sister of Oisc. Cousin of Wecta.

Wife of Vortigern. Horsa’s niece.

HILDA Nicodemus’s Saxon wife. Mother of Aegifu, Hector and Nicola.

KATHI A slave girl.

KINARIUS Chief of the Catuvellauni.

KEREDIC Kinarius’s brother.

LUCIUS A scribe.

MADDAN Chief of the Cantiaci.

NENNI ‘the cart.’ A carter. Originally from the Durotriges tribe.

NIAM Girl in Armorica. Wecta falls in love with.

Later his wife.

NICODEMUS Greek sage. Friend and servant of Vitalis. Hilda’s husband and father of Aegifu, Nicola and Hector. Tutor and mentor of Oisc and Wecta.

NICOLA Nicodemus’s youngest son.

OISC First Saxon King of Kent. Hengist’s son.

OCTAVUS (EYDAF the truthful) Naim’s father.

ORDOVICUS Father of Vitalis.

REGAN Briget’s adopted daughter.

Cadvan’s stepsister.

Vitalis’s adopted great niece.

THOMMASO Romano British of Roman stock, settled in Britain in the first century. Childhood friend of Hector. Who because of his love for Aegifu, breaks with the pro Roman faction and sides with Vortigern.

TOGGODUS Commanding officer of British Saxon regiment.

THE ROE BUCK (Idwal Iwrch) Chief of the Regini.

SISILLIUS (Saessyllst) Romano Briton in Armorica.

One of Ambrosius Auralius’s Senior commanders. Friend of Octavus, Niam’s father.

SARDOINE Hengist’s daughter. Married an Angeln Aethling.

ULF ‘Bilge rat’ A member of Horsa’s crew.

VITALIS Romano British Senator. Prince of the Dobunni.

Vortigern’s war leader.

VORTIGERN Ruler of Britain who summoned Hengist and Saxons to fight for him as mercenaries.

WECTA Nephew of Hengist and Horsa.

Cousin of Hrothwina and Oisc.

Whose story this is.

ENGLISH NAMES OF SOME ROMANO BRITISH TOWNS

TIME LINE

447   Sardoine marries Angeln Aethling.

449   Hengist, in his late thirties arrives from Frankish Gaul, with 3 boat loads of followers, his brother Horsa, Oisc, his youngest son and his nephew Wecta.

Wecta becomes Nicodemus’s pupil. Oisc begins to learn to read and write. Designs and starts building British boats and begins training British boats crews.

Central section of Hadrian’s wall retaken. Commando raids against the Picts disrupt invasion build up putting them on the defensive.

450   building of first Saxon settlement on the Thames south of London. (Crayford)

451   Osic stationed at Durobrivae. (Rochester.)

452   Attila attacks Franks. Ebissa joins his father Hengist in Britain he brings with him his Frankish wife Emma & Hrothwina, Hengist’s daughter.

452   Maddan chief of the Cantiaci taken prisoner and his lands taken over by Vortigern who later gives them to Hengist.

Ebissa brings 16 boat loads of Saxons from Angeln (modern Schleswig Holstein) Via Sardoine’s marriage to the Angeln Aethling and Jutland. More non Latin non British speaking Saxons settled on the island of Thanet. Some sent north to the wall.

Saxon population in Britain too many for the British to maintain.

Horsa takes a fleet to raid Irish. Scots and Picts. Destroys Scots settlements on British west coast.

Wecta ceases full time studies. Goes on his first raids with Horsa and meets Cadvan and Regan in Dobbuni tribal lands.

452   Hengist with remaining Saxons. Toggodus and the British clear Picts from northern Britain south of Hadrian’s wall and raid across it. Many northern tribes come over to Vortigern. Exstensive use of Vitalis’s heavy cavalry. Saxons begin to man the wall in large numbers. Ebissa shows himself an able and courageous commander and begins to have a following amongst the younger Saxon warriors. Particularly the new comers.

Horsa and Wecta attacked in London. Kill 4 of their assailants. Refuse to be held in custody by palace guard. First rift between British and Saxons, who will not subject themselves to what they see as an unjust system.

Hrothwina’s betrothal to Vortigern announced at his Christmas feast. Most British show little enthousiasm for the match.

Wecta discovers he has made Regan pregnant. Regan is step daughter of Briget, Vitalis’s niece. Goes to Glevum to see Regan and Vitalis and arrange marriage. Regan refuses, not wishing to live amongst Saxons nor to leave Dobunni tribal lands.

453   Vortigern and Hrothwinna married. Hrothwina officially British queen. Many Britons fearful of the rapid growth of Saxon power and influence, take the first steps to curtail it.

Cantiaci lands pass to Saxons. Hengist and Horsa given titles and position as relatives by marriage of the King.

Preparation to attack Ambrosius in Armorica put in hand. The attack carried out in the late summer using most of the combined British and Saxon fleets. The attack is partially successfull but not on the same scale as the similar raid against the Picts in 449, when the element of surprise had played a crucial role. This is fundamentally a Saxon enterprise. The British contingent, only a third of the force, found it difficult to be enthusiastic when attacking fellow countrymen. With many of the Saxons and Vortigerns soldiers occupied in Armorica his opponent combine to try and bring him down. Nicodemus is taken hostage.

453   Vitalis attacked. Flees to his Dobunni stronghold. Holds out there gathering his forces. Cadvan shows marked qualities as a cavalry commander. Regan, with Wecta’s child and Briget with him.

Wecta captures Niam. Falls in love and runs away with her. Is captured and escapes. Makes his way to Britain alone. Horsa, Hector with Thommaso and Oisc leave Armorica to protect Saxon settlements in Britain, rescue Nicodemus and re-enforce Vitalis. Weakening the not overmanned attack on Amorica.

Nicodemus’s house in Veralumium ransacked and burnt. Hilda and Nicola killed.

Attack on Ambrosius in Armorica broken off because of beginning of autumn storms. Has been partially successfull. Supplies and transport destroyed. Invasion build up disrupted and delayed. Ambrosius succedes in defending a proportion of his transports and supplies.

Horsa halts Regini attack on the Saxon settlements by hit and run attacks on them and seaborn raids on Regini Dun but suffers losses. Does not manage to kill or capture the Roe Buck, chief of the Regini.

Hengist returns. Holds Crayford, Thanet and strengthens London. Re-establishes Mucking which has been attacked and its women slaughtered.

Increasing insularity amongst Saxons. Their trust of the British is Broken.

454   Vortigern stretched containing dissidents. Losing revenue supplies and the use of their fighting men and having to find and pay extra soldiers to defend himself from them. With a lack of grain because it was burnt by both sides in the Summer fighting. Cuts Saxon’s rations, and money gifts. Growing dissatisfaction amongst Saxons without land at quantity and quality of rations. Particularly those who arrived with Ebissa, camped on Thanet or serving on the wall.

454   Ebissa increasingly dissatisfied with his prospects and growing number followers advocates break with the British and seizure of rations and land. Contained by Hengist and Horsa who think there is more to be gained by maintaining status quo.

Some jealousy between first comers now well settled on the land and late comers who were unable to build their homes and plant or do not have land yet. Saxons dissatisfied and hungry begin foraging in force when their supplies are late, taking anything of value as well as food.

Isolated Saxon settlements come under attack in Kent again and in the North.

455   Meeting with Vortigern about rations and pay. Hard pressed he has nothing to offer.

Thanet Saxons in open rebellion Hengist and Horsa and their original followers are outnumbered by them and Ebissa and many of his men agree with them.

Vortigern by marrying Hrothwina, sees himself as King of the Saxons in Britain, orders Hengist to crucify ring leaders and quash the Thanet revolt. His orders are delivered by a stupid and arrogant commander of the Londinium garrison who threatens the Saxons without sufficient forces to back up his threat, causing them to break with the British, take land in the south east and set up their own independent kingdom.

456   Ebissa makes contact with the Picts and hammers out an alliance. The Picts cross the wall allowing the Saxons to concentrate their forces in the south. The British alarmed at the loss of much of southern Britain, Londinium [London] and the Picts crossing the wall, turn to Ambrosius who crosses from Armorica to the lands of Dumnonii. These negotiations conducted by and the landings planned, by Niam’s father, and his friend Sisillius. Wecta, on the way to Amorica in Bedu’s boat, runs in to them and agrees to broker a pact with Ambrosius, for safe passage of his soldiers across the channel. He is blown of course by a storm and having found out where Niam is, goes to her.

PROLOGUE

S ome time after the Battle of Hastings, after William of Normandy had crowned himself and taken possession of the Godwineson estates, he had Harold’s mutilated body, brought back to Bosham. Where Canute, when he was the King of England, had proved that the tide did not obey Kings and had buried his infant daughter.

To prevent Harold becoming a martyr and source of revolt, William had Harold’s body interred near and masked by her tomb in Bosham church, which was now part of his private estate.

Whilst this hiding place for Harold’s body was being dug out, part of a buried vault collapsed revealing several large glazed terracotta jars sealed with bee’s wax. They contained well preserved rolled parchments written with fifth century Roman characters, but not in Latin. They were preserved in various monasteries until they became Crown property under Henry VIII. It was not until quite recently that they were rediscovered.

What follows is what was written on those scrolls.

SCROLL I

A s Delling, the red Elf of dawn, mounted earth’s rim, we sweated in our war gear. We climbed towards a ruined tower, with an ancient earthwork crouched in front of it, like the Nidhog Dragon at the root of the World Tree. The wings of the war host were forced in on those in the middle, so there was no room for weapon wielding. The grass was trampled to a mud that made those at the back’s progress uphill, as uncertain as toddlers trying their legs amongst the hounds, before a fireplace in winter.

As the rising sun’s rays bloodied crumbling stonework, we heard the clear notes of a single trumpet, like the strident call of some metallic bird that winged its way into the morning sky.

Before we could dress the shield wall, on either side of the small valley that hemmed us in, the skyline was filled with British tribesmen. Shining Mane, bearer of light, faltered in his daily gallop across the heavens, lost in the darkness of so many arrows and spears that rained down on us.

While we could neither lift our shields nor move out of the way, heavily armoured horsemen, rode out of shadow and scattered trees behind the ruined tower. The last thing many of our people saw, in this world, was the horsemen’s unfurled standard, with its embroidered Imperial Red Dragon. Our enemy’s symbol, transformed into an implacable reality of dragon scales turned into fighting men, that ran to form a dense triangular wedge.

At a trot the armoured horsemen formed a line, at a canter, couched their lances and overtook the tortoise wedge of infantry, with its spears of varied lengths, held level with head, chest and waist, so that it moved within three shimmering triangles of pointed iron. At a full gallop they crashed into our disordered front ranks, some of their long spears driving through two of our people at a time. So closely packed together were we. Where lances failed, trained warhorses’ hooves wreaked havoc, opening the way for the spear wedge that drove deep into our helpless close pressed ranks, where the dead found no room to fall, and hindered the living.

The shining silver notes of the trumpet cut through the sound of weapon striking weapon and the screams of the hurt. The spear throwers and arrow shooters slipped and slid down the scarps to join the killing. They had a harder time of it, than the heavily armoured horsemen and wedge of infantry. The wings of the war host scrambled up to meet them. It was not a line of shields that clashed, shield upon shield, but untidy and ragged knots of struggling spearmen striving to stay on their feet.

Though our people nearest the British, by climbing to meet them, made room for us to let the dead slip to the ground, parry thrusting spears and swing long handled axes at the horsemen, that split shields like so much kindling, or left pole axed horses lying in a welter of their own blood, the sour taste of defeat was in our throats. We had let ourselves be herded like cattle to this slaughter, so certain had we been that we could outfight the British.

As long as any of us there that day could remember, Ambrosius had never succeeded in getting the tribal leaders to stop bickering amongst themselves and obey his war leader Arthur, and it had looked as if he never would. Yet, that we died at British hands, as they had under Hengist’s, so many years ago, was dismal proof he had at last found a way to make them sink their differences.

Short blasts of the war horns urged retreat. It began a pace at a time. The many dead and wounded impeded the horsemen, as did the trampled soil, on which horses slipped and a few fell, as their riders urged them on in pursuit of some of the war host, who, not chosen by Urd’s maidens, and shy of the Gods Judgement Thingsted, had taken to their heels.

With some of our people singing their death song and stepping out of the shield wall, the rest of us doggedly went back the way we had come. Gaining elbow room, as we left the wounded and dead where they had fallen and won free of the confining escarpments. Long blasts on war horns and the war host stood its ground, while the warriors on its wings disengaged and ran to the rear, to form another shield wall, making a living stockade of men facing outwards, several ranks deep. Faced with this new menace, the horses shied. The best horsemen or those with the most courage, came in reach of our long handled axes and were cut down, as they forced their mounts forward with lance butt or the flat of a sword blade, until the morning air carried once more the clear silvery notes of the trumpet, calling them off. At their going, the heart went out of the armoured infantry and the tribesman, who had come down from the scarps, found caution more to their taste than headlong attack.

The fighting slowed. The British, wearied by so much killing, pulled back and stood panting like spent hounds. Glad of the respite, we grounded our shields and wearily supporting ourselves on shield rim, or spear shaft, gazed at them with more curiosity than belligerence, as we gasped great lungfulls of air.

There were Britons in the war host; they or their fathers had followed Oisc, when his father Hengist had broken with Vortigern. Some were recognized by their fellow countrymen who shouted insults at them. But they gave as good as they got, and anger revived, we set to again.

The afternoon sun gave no warmth to the soil we had trodden in the wake of the horsetail standards, as we retreated to where the forest met a shallow river. So thickly was it strewn with the maimed, the dead, and exhausted men, stumbling and falling where they were. Too weak from loss of blood, to get to their feet. The remnant of the war host like a shattered pot, its shards small groups of driven men, splashed across the river to seek refuge in the forest.

Hallooing and a trumpeter sounding ‘the chase’ the Ambrosian forces followed. But horses stumbling with fatigue and their weary riders were at a disadvantage in the thickets. Desperate small groups of us, hiding in the undergrowth, angered and shamed by defeat, turned on them, ham stringing the horses and cutting their riders’ throats. So at the end of the day, the hunted, savaged their hunters and some saved themselves.

I was one of those who lived to gain the safety of the trees. I have heard tell, there are Bards who sing of a Red Dragon spreading its wings, to carry their crucified God’s mother against us. At a place their priests call Mons Badonicus. I saw no Dragon mounted Goddess, but a Harpist who told of things as they are, would win little gold and go hungry.

Ambrosius’ scribes are a different matter. They have written we broke faith. That is an untruth. It is the duty of all scribes to make an honest record, Nicodemus once told me. He was the adviser and friend of Vitalis who ruled Britain with Vortigern, and in my youth, my teacher. He taught me to read and write the Roman way and their speech.

I can stagger little further than the shadow cast by my rooftree, after the wound I took at the end of that bloody day, so, as I can do little else, I am making this writing of what I know and saw to set against their lies.

I have seen more than most, being of the blood of Hengist and Horsa, and have had a part in shaping what I tell of. Hrothwina, who married Vortigern the High King, was my cousin, as is the Bretwalder Oisc, King of Kent.

I am Wecta and though I set down the events of my life, awkwardly and in a clumsy hand, I have been a warrior not a scholar. I write of the birth of a new people, who will be like a great oak, that will leave no part of this world undappled by its shade. Regan, a servant of the Earth Mother, who foretold me many things that have come about, and who bore my daughter Annowre, has told me this.

My thoughts come to me in my own tongue and I find trying to clothe them in ill-fitting Latin tiresome. I am making an ‘Englisc’ writing, so that my children’s children and their grandchildren, will have but to learn their letters, to understand what I set down, using the alphabet Nicodemus taught me so many years ago.

I was wounded among the trees trying to unseat a horseman with his own long spear. A trick taught to me by a flat-faced Hun, who told me he was weaned, where there is no God but the sky and the grass stretches away from the eye, as flat and endless as an inland sea. He had been a slave, captured when Aetius defeated Atilla on the Catalaunian Plains, but growing tired of being sold on, had killed his last owner and found his way to us. He showed me how to stand and face a horseman who is about to ride you down, catch his spear in both hands and push its point into the ground. The forward movement of the horse, with the spearhead stuck in the turf, drives the rider from its back. I caught hold of the spear, but was too slow.

My people pulled the armoured Briton from his horse, before he could free his lance from my leg. They knocked off his helmet and one of them took a handful of hair forcing his head back to cut his throat, much as you would butcher a calf.

He was but a youth and no doubt she who gave him life weeps for him still. As I grieve for my grandson spitted, with another on a horse soldier’s long spear. Dark haired he was, merry, and a dreamer. Better the three sisters had broken my thread intead of his.

He was not much oIder than I was when my uncles, land hungry and weary of other’s hearths, brought me here. It was one of those watery sunshine spring days when the sun peeps out shyly, but like a maiden, should you catch a glimpse of her, hurriedly ducking behind a curtain of windblown cloud.

We beached the boats at Ebbesfleet, it had another name then, but those who knew it were of the Cantiaci and are no more. We took our shields and those who had mail put it on. Not because we thought to fight, but to make a brave show. We were paid fighting men and we wanted our employer to see his money would be well spent.

Leaving a small party to guard the boats, we started inland. We had not been walking for long when we saw sunlight reflected on the polished helmets of a party of mounted men. They disappeared in a fold of land and a little while later came cantering up the gentle slope in front of us. The leading riders holding up their right arms, their hands open, towards us. When they were quite close, they reined in and walked their horses forward, repeating the gesture to indicate they came in peace. Hengist and Horsa went forward. One of them spoke our tongue and explained that we were to return to our boats, make our way to the estuary and row up river. They accompanied us back to the boats and the Saxon speaker, with a couple of the horse soldiers, who left their mounts and reluctantly, their shields and spears with their fellows, came aboard to show us the way.

We rowed up river all afternoon and towards evening, moored by a pleasant meadow for the night. The next day we rowed further upstream until about midday, when we tied up and putting on our finery again, left the boats and following our guides, went to meet Vortigern.

They were strange people, dressed more like women than men, oiled and perfumed beards, elaborately curled hair, with earrings, necklaces and a ring for every finger and thumb. Some had even painted their faces, so they looked unreal, with crimson lips, scarlet cheeks and eyelids of gold or green. They fluttered about us cooing and lisping, giggling between themselves at some arch remark one or the other had made.

Their jewels were magnificent and the stuff of their gowns so fine, it was if they were clothed in sunlit morning mist. Like mist they flowed around their escort, which was it seemed, what kept them earthbound and prevented the light breeze from wafting them into the tangled twigs of nearby trees.

We stood with our eyes wide with astonishment, feeling drab and forgot the subtle colours our womenfolk wove so skilfully into our thick woollen cloaks. Which when it was cold, would keep us much warmer than these plundered rainbows of gowns. Our massive and intricately wrought cloak pins and fine arm rings were suddenly tawdry, beside the gold and gems of this Romanised British elite. Walking and mincing between us. Some of them stood for a moment, with a hand on out thrust hip, the other beneath the chin, as if to support its great weight, while they looked at us in mock awe. A small group gathered around me, where I stood with my cousin Oisc.

We were with the warband, to learn the warrior’s skills and in part as proof of good faith. War Chiefs, who carry their nephew or son, still in childhood with them, when planning treachery, are few. They fingered my cloak testing its quality and examined my Anglian sleeve clasps of silver with great interest. I don’t think they had seen the like before. It was odd they had not, we weren’t the first men of the north to come here, as farmers or fighting men, but may be they hadn’t seen any Angles.

I would not let them touch my Seax, from which most of the northern tribes got the name Saxon. ‘Those of the stabbing sword.’ It was my most cherished possession. A gift from my uncle Horsa. Its pommel was of silver, in the shape of a finely crafted horse’s head. An animal we hold sacred. In the old tongue, ‘Horsa’ can mean ‘Proud or Brave Horse.’ So this gift is a lasting token of my uncle’s affection. More precious to me now he sits, as kinsman to the God, in Wotan’s Hall.

With smiles and mime, for I could not understand their words, they tried to persuade me, to let them play with it, but I would not. Tiring of me, they flounced away like so many exotic birds. I was both repelled and fascinated by them. They were so arrogantly careless as to be almost Godlings, yet trivial and vulnerable as well.

In stark contrast the men of their escort wore breeks like ours, but had not bound them with thongs around the legs.

There was a small group holding themselves apart, in what I learned later, was old Roman armour. It was made out of separate strips of metal, one overlapping the other, a bit like the planks of our war boats. At the shoulders, reminding one of lobster tails and moving in much the same way. They carried large inwardly curving oblong shields and short, weighted, throwing spears. Hanging from a strap going over their left shoulders, so that it hung high on the right, the hilt almost at chest level was a short double-edged Roman sword. About the same length as our sharply pointed single edged seax. They stood relaxed and alert, while the rest of the party eddied around them. The way they wore their swords surprised me. We wear our’s low on the left side, finding it the quickest way to pull a sword from its scabbard.

A few days later, I tried wearing my seax as they wore their swords and came near to losing my right eye, as I tried to draw it from its sheath. Fetching myself a cut from temple to eyebrow. My uncle Hengist laughed so much, he got ale in his windpipe, when I told I him how I had injured myself. None the less, he had told me it is just as well to know how others fight and why they wear their weapons in a different manner. So the next day I tried again. I found I could unsheathe my seax quickly and easily from my right side, with my right hand, if I twisted my hand so that my thumb pointed to the ground. Grasped the hilt at chest level and pulled the seax, down in front of me and away to the right, as it slid out its sheath. Later, when I had outgrown this childhood seax, but loath to be parted from it, I continued to bear it with me, slung high on my right side.

Hengist and Horsa went forward and bowing to a man in a white toga of the very finest of lambs wool, with a broad purple border, after a few words turned and motioned Oisc and I to join them. Going down on one knee, we were presented to Vortigern. He was a tall thin man, in his late forties, with a face made hawk like by the nose. His dark hair greying about his ears made his blue eyes come as a surprise. He was cleanshaven and around his head wore a circlet of gold. He welcomed us saying, via an interpreter, he hoped we would be happy in his service. We were then dismissed and went back to stand with the men. A few minutes later we were ordered to return to the boats.

Just before we moved off, it was decided that Oisc and I should stay with Hengist who had been invited to travel with Vortigern, while Horsa brought the boats up river.

Although everyone around us appeared very affable, we were in effect hostages. It had been neatly contrived. Vortigern in doing us the singular honour of coming to meet us, had provided himself with a quite legitimate excuse to have a sizeable body of men at arms at hand. The inclusion of Hengist, his son and nephew in his travelling entourage, ensured the good behaviour of the three boatloads of fighting men under Horsa, while they made the passage up river.

This is of course, a thought that occurs to me with hindsight. At the time, I was only aware of the great honour done to us. Not so Hengist. In spite of every civility, I could see he was very much on the alert, but youth like, did not think to wonder why.

Fortunately, we were given mounts and spared having to ride in the painted carts. That is Oisc and myself. Hengist was invited to ride with Vortigern in sort of gilded and draped hut on wheels. He tried to decline, saying he would be happier on a horse, but this was brushed aside.

Oisc laughed, and said it was probably overpoweringly perfumed within and would sway and jolt in such a way, as to make a man prefer to be in an open boat at the height of a winter storm.

The man who had shown us the way upriver rode with us. He spoke our tongue, because he had married a woman of our people long settled here. He sang her praises, partly to show us friendship, our being of her race, and because he was clearly fond of her and proud of the children she had born him. Telling us of them, he showed us how different our lives would be.

We passed a great villa surrounded by an earthen dike. Neatly laid out vineyards, rectangular fields, smaller than we made ours, tenderly green with the first shootings of wheat and barley. As we rode past the immaculate fields of this self-sufficient well ordered domain, behind its walls and holding itself aloof from the surrounding countryside, I felt a vague sense of oppression. It was as if the land itself was imprisoned behind those walls and made obedient.

I found myself looking hopefully for a rebellious shrub or tree, spreading its branches in defiance of this docile symmetry.

The road began to get busy with great lumbering carts, pulled by teams of oxen, pack trains of mules, smaller carts pulled by donkeys or mules and single riders, as well as many on foot. Catching a glimpse of the river, I thought of the others with Horsa, rowing up stream. With the armoured soldiers swinging along at our head, the rhythmic crunch of their boots, heralding our approach, we were not unlike a boat ourselves, as we parted the other road users, leaving them to ripple along our flanks as we passed them by. We breasted a hill and below us, in the distance and curve of river, was Londinium.

A strong place. Walled, towered and massively gated. I sat my horse amazed. It seemed impossible that men had built it. Its walls curved away on either side as far as the eye could see. I looked at Oisc. Although he was trying to hide it, it was clear he was as dazed as I, and had never seen anything like it. Nicodemus, that was the