The Queen's Brooch by Henry Treece

Author:Henry Treece
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Childrens
ISBN: 9780140304008
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 1966-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

[15]

Under the Oak Boughs

There was a sudden stirring throughout the woodland, as though all the trees were sighing and groaning and shifting their deep roots to gather as a great army and to come to a meeting before battle. Or as though all the creatures - the foxes and wolves, the deer, the sullen bears, the wild dogs, the sly lynx - were on the move, seeking pasture or berries or prey.

Marcus felt the hair standing up on his neck. His eyes darted to left and right, and at first he saw nothing in the dimness of the thickly-columned woodland. Then, like the figures in some horrible vision, lit by torches, he saw what was coming into the trodden glade where he and the others lay bound.

Men in the stiff painted leather masks of hawks and eagles, their feathered cloaks floating behind them, came first, flapping their wings and shrieking out as though they poised for the swoop. Then came devil dancers, their thin bodies daubed with white clay, their faces hidden by long shield-like masks of dark wood. Behind them swayed forty young men, dressed as for war, swinging bone bull-roarers in a surge that pained the ears. They came on like men in a trance. Then came the young girls, their long hair white with ashes, their faces blackened with soot, their eyes ringed round with blood-red. Each one carried a skull in her left hand and a short spear in her right; and with every step each one beat on the skull with the spear-blade, as though on a drum, setting up a ghastly clacking counterbeat to the bull-roarers.

Tigidius said grimly to the Tribune, ‘For this we Romans have wasted our lives over a hundred years. Only for this.’

Marcus drew in a deep breath, the pain of his arm stabbing at him again, and said, ‘They have gone back to the childhood of their people. They have forgotten all we have tried to teach them. If anyone is to blame it would be two fat men - called Decianus Catus and Nero. Now we are reaping the crop they sowed, and the bread it makes needs some chewing.’

Cynwas was sitting with his head bowed and his eyes shut. His shoulders and legs were shuddering. His lips were moving all the time, like those of a man praying to be guarded against evil spirits.

Then all at once Marcus saw what came next, and turned towards the Celt and said, ‘Look, brother. Look!’

Cynwas raised his head and opened his eyes. Less than a hundred paces away, well lit by torches, six young men dressed in green cloth and wearing headgear made of oak and alder and ash leaves carried a wattle-hurdle on their shoulders. Sitting on it, her arms and legs bound with thongs, was Aranrhod. Cynwas saw the ash on her head and the black streaks down her face. He saw the white linen shift they had dressed her in, even the Roman medallion that still hung round her slender neck.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.