She tried to tell herself she was safe with her father, but she had never believed that even as a small child. He simply didn't pay enough attention to you to make you safe.
Isolde's mother had died young, and even as a young girl she had seen how unworldly Nennius was. Respected thinker and monk he might be, famous for his friendship with the great theologian Pelagius, but there were mornings when he couldn't put his own trousers on the right way round. In fact Isolde grew up thinking of herself as the adult in their relationship.
Isolde had briefly escaped when she married a young man called Coponius, of ancient Roman stock. But his good looks had belied a sickly nature. Only a month after Isolde found out she was pregnant he had been carried off by a nasty little plague, one of a series that had nibbled at the population of Rome in recent years. So Isolde had had no choice but to return home to her father, a widow at nineteen, and carrying a child. Nennius was not uncaring; Isolde knew her father loved her. But with his head forever filled with one dream or another-and now stuffed with his determination to make this extraordinary journey across the known world-there was no room for Isolde.
The boat landed at a place called Rutupiae, where a grim-looking fort loomed over a good natural harbour. The fort had seen better days. Its elaborate earthworks were clogged with rubbish, and the facing stones of its massive walls were crumbling away under the assault of the caustic sea breeze. In places they looked as if they had been robbed, quarried out.
Nennius was excited, for it was here, he claimed, that Roman invaders had, centuries ago, first set foot on the island. The only Roman from such incomprehensibly ancient history Isolde had ever heard of was Julius Caesar, and when it turned out not to have been him who had conquered Britain, she lost interest.
Anyhow there were no emperors here now, and the place swarmed with Saxons. Living in clusters of small wooden buildings outside the fort's earthworks these Germans handled the sparse trade from the continent. They used this old fort, built to repel their own piratical ancestors, as a storage depot, and just as in Gaul the only tongues you heard were Germanic.
Isolde and her father found a small timber-built church set on the fort's north-west corner. It had a pretty baptismal font, made of reused red Roman tile. They said prayers of thanks for their safe passage this far. Then they returned to the small wharf and stood together uncertainly while the trader unloaded his boat.
The Saxons looked extraordinary to Isolde. Many of them were blond and blue-eyed. The men shaved the front of their heads and let the hair grow at the back, an effect that made their faces look long, like a wolf's. There were plenty of kids running around the wooden-hut settlement. Perhaps their fathers had been pirates, but these were clearly immigrants and had no plans to go anywhere. But every adult wore a knife at the waist; even some of the older children carried weapons.
Isolde was relieved when a young monk came pushing through the throng to greet them. He dressed as Nennius did, in a plain robe of heavy brown cloth, tied off with a belt of rope. He was young, perhaps not much older than Isolde. But his tonsure, severely cut, looked rather old-fashioned to Isolde, though she was no expert on monkish modes. His name was Damon, he said. 'I bring greetings from the bishop of Camulodunum, and I come to escort you there.'
'Oh, how kind, how thoughtful,' Nennius burbled. 'The exchange of letters I have already enjoyed with Bishop Ambrosius has been delightful, and I am sure the gift of his hospitality will be most welcome…'
Damon guided them to a carriage, crude but covered and serviceable. He had a man with him, a rough-looking servant too surly to be a slave; he hauled the visitors' baggage from the wharf to the cart. Damon went on, 'The bishop asked me to stress that the honour is all his. Any friend of Pelagius is welcome in his palace.'
Nennius nodded. 'Britain has become something of a refuge for we Pelagians, I fear. But then Pelagius was born here; he is one of our own.'
Damon said cautiously, 'Perhaps you haven't heard the most recent news.'
'About Pelagius's excommunication by Pope Zosimus? Quite a victim for Augustine and his crew!'
'Bishop Ambrosius comforts us that truth and goodness will prevail in the end,' Damon said mellifluously.
They walked to the carriage as they talked. Isolde felt tired, bloodless, even a little giddy, but her father was oblivious to her, of course, and so was Damon, the young monk, and nobody helped her.
The Saxons, going about their own business, ignored them as they passed. The shoulder straps of the women's gowns were fixed with brooches, they had sleeve-clasps around their cuffs, and around their waists they wore belts from which dangled odd metal good-luck charms like large keys. Isolde thought the style was rather attractive, and the quality of the metalwork looked good. She wondered if they would stop at any markets where she could do some shopping.
II
It would take two days' travel to reach Camulodunum. The three of them set off in Damon's carriage, with the servant walking silently, leading the horses.
To get out of the harbour area they had to pay a toll, in Roman coin, to a fat, hairy Saxon. Isolde wondered who the toll was being paid to, and the young monk explained that the governments of the four provinces of Britain still functioned, and still collected taxes-though nothing on the scale of 'the old days', as he called them, before the British Revolution and the expulsion of the diocesan tax collectors, a revolt that had occurred when he, Damon, had been about fifteen.
Beyond the harbour, it wasn't an easy journey. The road they travelled was one of the first Roman roads ever built in Britain, her father proclaimed. That might be so, but that must make it very old, and it was so tatty! You could see where cobbles had been prised out, the holes never filled in, and so the road was full of potholes that shook Isolde painfully. Once the servant had to calm the shying horses. He said curtly that there was a body lying in the clogged drainage ditch; flies rising from the decaying corpse had spooked the animals. Isolde looked away and tried to breathe shallowly.
The country itself was quiet. It was a landscape of farms, of stone-walled fields and small wooden buildings. There were even some grand farmhouses, tile-roofed, enclosed by bristling walls. But many of these were evidently empty, shut up or even burned out, and many of the fields were clearly abandoned, their rain-eroded furrows strangled by weeds. It was rare that Isolde saw anybody working the land.
Nennius remarked on this to Damon.
'It's the Saxons,' said the young monk. 'Too many of them around here. So people are packing up and going off to the towns, or to live with relatives further west or north, or in Gaul. Even the rich have sold up, if they can, and cleared out.' He murmured, 'The Saxons are pagans, you know. They don't mix with us.'
Isolde wondered what tensions were concealed behind those simple phrases.
They came upon Camulodunum in the evening. The city itself sat within massive walls; it looked more like a vast fortress than a town.
And in the rolling fields outside the town and beside the river there were more Saxons-many, many of them, warriors with their horses and wives and children, camped out in tents or in clusters of small wooden huts, some of them set up in the bowl of a disused circus. The travellers picked their way uneasily through this loose camp, along the old Roman road. It was almost as if the Saxons were besieging the city. Damon reassured them there was nothing to fear; the Saxons were mercenaries and had been hired by the townsfolk for their protection. Isolde had no doubt that these fierce-looking warriors would be useful to have on your side. But she wondered what might happen if the money to pay them ever ran out.