Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

For the rest of that year the fields around the dunon were to be prepared for sowing the following spring, and provisions like dried and salted meat were laid up for the winter.

Life continued to be harsh, with hard labor for all but the very smallest children. But Artorius had insisted they make time for such measures as the digging of proper latrines as one of the first priorities — and so they were spared the plague of fever that swept the countryside in late summer. And long before the season turned it was clear to all that they had amassed enough food to see them through the winter, even if some of it had been taken by force by Artorius’s soldiers. Regina could not deny the energy Artorius brought to his task, the great sense of loyalty and industry he instilled in others — including herself, she admitted — nor the great strides the new community had made by the autumn.

But Artorius was changing.

Artorius announced that from henceforth they would follow the old calendar of the Celtae, rather than that of the Romans. This was marked out by four main feasts: Imbolc at the end of the winter, when the ewes lactated for their lambs; Beltane in early summer, when the cattle would be driven between purifying fires to open grazing; Lughnasa at the start of harvesting; and Samhain in early autumn — the start of the new year for the Celtae, a time when the old gave way to the new, and the world could be overrun by the forces of magic. The next full year, beginning that Samhain, would be the first in which Artorius’s new kingdom would begin to find its feet, and Artorius announced that the Samhain would be marked by a mighty feast.

Regina listened to all this with some disquiet. But she kept her counsel.

Similarly she said nothing when Artorius began to abandon his old, much-repaired Roman armor and dress for a more traditional costume. He wore brightly colored braccae and cloaks, and when the weather turned colder a birrus , the hooded cloak that had always been associated with Britain. The effect was completed when he began to wear a handsome golden torc around his neck, looted by one of his officers from a Saxon raiding party. Though Regina spent much time in his company discussing practical matters, she never heard him refer back to his talk of starting a mint, or styling himself a magistrate.

Later, when Regina thought back, it seemed to her that the incident of the mass grave had been a turning point for Artorius: after that something hard and cold and old emerged in him, slowly becoming dominant. Or perhaps it was just the ambience of the ancient place they had come to reinhabit, their return to this old place of earth and blood, as if the age of the Roman peace had been nothing but a glittering dream.

Certainly, after that day, there had been no more talk of turning his country over to the emperors.

But none of it mattered, she told herself, so long as she and Brica were safe. The family: that was her only priority. Every night, as she lay down to sleep in the corner of the hilltop roundhouse she shared with Brica and several other senior women, she stared at her matres , carefully preserved across all these years, the three worn little statues perhaps older than this piled-up fortress itself, and said a kind of prayer to them — not to preserve her life, for she knew that was her own responsibility — but to grant her guidance.

On the evening of the Samhain, it felt like autumn for the first time, Regina thought. There was a hint of frost in the air, and her head was filled with the smoky scent of dying leaves. As she prepared to enter Artorius’s hall, she lingered in the open, oddly regretful to leave the last of the daylight behind — the last of another summer, now her forty-first. But it was Artorius’s feast, and she had no time for such reflections. With a sigh she entered his great hall.

The hall was already crowded, the torches of hay and sheep fat burned brightly on the walls, and she was bombarded by heat and light, smoke and noise.

Though even now there was much work to be done on it, she had to admit the hall’s magnificence. The centerpiece was a hearth, a great circle of scavenged Roman stone, on which a huge fire was blazing. The fire cast light and heat around the hall’s single vast room, and filled the noisy air with smoke. From an iron tripod twice the height of a man, a cauldron had been suspended, and she could smell the rich scents of stew — pork and mutton flavored with wild garlic, from the smell of it.

Already Artorius’s men were lining up to take their share of the meat. Artorius himself served it up, yanking joints out of the simmering broth with iron hooks. There was a constant jockeying for position among the subordinates, and there was nothing subtle about the way Artorius fished for the best cuts of meat to reward his favorites. He fumbled one serving, dropping the meat on the floor, and two of his soldiers began to fight over the honor of whom it had been intended for. The others didn’t try to separate them, but gathered around and roared them on.

Old Carausias was beside Regina.

She said, “What a display — grown men, squabbling over bits of meat.”

He shook his head. “But with such contests his lieutenants are working out their status — who is closer to the sun.”

“How savage.”

Carausias shrugged. “It’s a shame your grandfather isn’t here. I’m sure the legionaries in their barracks behaved much the same way. Anyway it’s their night, not ours.”

When the soldiers had had their share of the food, the other men and the women were allowed to approach the cauldron. Regina herself took only a little of the broth, and drank sparingly of her cup of wheat beer.

When Artorius took his place on the floor at the center of a circle of his men, the storytelling began. One soldier after another got to his feet, generally unsteadily, to boast how he — or perhaps a dead comrade — had bested two or three or five savage Saxons, each taller than a normal human being and equipped with three swords apiece. They all drank steadily, at first from a communal cup carried by a servant who moved to the right around the circle, and then, as the evening got rowdier, from their own vessels. It had been a heroic labor for the little community to produce the vast vats of wheat beer that would be consumed this night.

Then the iron maker Myrddin got to his feet and began a long and complex tale about giants who lived in magical islands across the ocean, far to the west of Britain: “There are thrice fifty distant isles / In the ocean to the west of us / Larger than Ireland twice / Is each of them, or thrice …”

“All true, all true,” murmured Carausias. He belched, and Regina realized that he was getting as drunk as any of Artorius’s soldiers.

As the beer continued to flow, the talk and horseplay became more raucous, and some of the soldiers and younger men started mock-fighting and wrestling. Regina sat stoically in her corner beside a dozing Carausias, wondering how much of this she could endure.

There was a touch on her shoulder. Startled, she looked up.

Artorius was beside her. She could smell the beer on his breath, but unlike his men he was not drunk. “You are quiet,” he said.

“You should go back to your men.”

He smiled, glancing back. “I don’t think they need me anymore tonight. But you … I know what you are thinking.”

“You do?”

“You are remembering your mother. The parties she gave, in the villa. The glittering folk who would come, the expensive preparations she would make. You’ve told me as much. And now you must put up with this .”

“I don’t mean to judge.”

He shook his head. “We are all prisoners of our past. But the present is all we have. Those men wrestling over their beer are as rough as sand — but they will give their lives for me, and for you. We must make the best of the times we live in, what we have, the people around us.”