BooksBarbecue
Back Conqueror Save as PDF
Chapters (88)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. I
  4. I
  5. II
  6. III
  7. IV
  8. V
  9. VI
  10. VII
  11. VIII
  12. IX
  13. X
  14. XI
  15. II
  16. I
  17. II
  18. III
  19. IV
  20. V
  21. VI
  22. VII
  23. VIII
  24. IX
  25. X
  26. XI
  27. XII
  28. XIII
  29. XIV
  30. XV
  31. XVI
  32. XVII
  33. XVIII
  34. XIX
  35. XX
  36. XXI
  37. III
  38. I
  39. II
  40. III
  41. IV
  42. V
  43. VI
  44. VII
  45. VIII
  46. IX
  47. X
  48. XI
  49. XII
  50. XIII
  51. XIV
  52. XV
  53. XVI
  54. XVII
  55. XVIII
  56. XIX
  57. XX
  58. XXI
  59. IV
  60. I
  61. II
  62. III
  63. IV
  64. V
  65. VI
  66. VII
  67. VIII
  68. IX
  69. X
  70. XI
  71. XII
  72. XIII
  73. XIV
  74. XV
  75. XVI
  76. XVII
  77. XVIII
  78. XIX
  79. XX
  80. XXI
  81. XXII
  82. XXIII
  83. XXIV
  84. XXV
  85. XXVI
  86. XXVII
  87. EPILOGUE
  88. Afterword

And even if it were so, she thought now, was it possible that some of the Menologium’s stanzas could refer to her own future?

‘Dom, if the fourth stanza refers to Cuthbert, what does the fifth stanza mean?’ She read it out from her smudged copy:

The Comet comes/in the month of May.
Great Year’s midsummer/less nine of seven.
Old claw of dragon/pierces silence, steals words.
Nine hundred and twenty-one/the months of the fifth Year ...

Fear brushed her mind, like the smoke of fire breath far away. ‘A dragon’s claw? Can this be a warning, Dom? A warning for us?’

‘Ours is not to inquire,’ he said.

‘But the date - the midsummer of this fifth “Great Year” of nine hundred and twenty-one months, less nine sevens, which is sixty-three - you could work it out.’

‘That is not for you,’ he said firmly. ‘The date is in God’s mind, and mine. And there it must stay.’

IX

IX

After three days Macson submitted himself to the judgement of his priest and his peers, and his wound was judged to have healed well enough to prove him innocent. So he was free, and Belisarius kept his word.

They made their journey to the north in a hired cart drawn by two patient geldings and laden with Belisarius’s precious books. Aboard rode the three of them, Belisarius, Macson - and Caradwc, Macson’s father.

If Macson was around thirty, Belisarius judged, Caradwc must have been at least fifty. He rarely spoke. When he breathed his lungs bubbled, and he coughed up a spray of bloody droplets which Belisarius was careful to avoid. The Greek, armed only with his traveller’s rough-and-ready medical knowledge, had no idea what was broken deep inside the old man, still less how to fix it.

There seemed an unusually strong bond between father and son. But then in Macson’s eyes, Caradwc was more than just his father; he was the man who had bought the family out of slavery, after generations of too-well-remembered servitude. The old man’s dying was hard for the son.

The journey north was easier than Belisarius had expected. As Macson had promised they generally made good time along the old Roman roads. But the legionaries had been gone for centuries, and in long stretches the roads had been robbed of their pavement stones, making the going uncomfortable. At least they were not troubled by bandits. Just as Macson had promised, the reign of the ageing Offa of Mercia had brought something resembling a rule of law to the island.