Chapter 1 of "The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine"

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Monday, August 17, 2009

Chapter 1 of "The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine"

Chapter One of The Living Wood: Saint Helena and the Emperor Constantine (A Novel) | Louis de Wohl

There was fog in the channel.

The lone man, groping his way over the cliffs, was cursing softly as his feet slid over the wet grass, which was scarce, like the ugly tufts of hair on the bald head of a giant.

Rain came down through the gray atmosphere in a monotonous, hesitant, lazy drizzle. There was nothing refreshing or wild or aggressive about it; it was wet and queasy, an old man's rain.

A hopeless country, thought the man, wiping the drops off his face: a hades of a country. Mad idea to be out surveying this coastline.

Rufus had warned him, of course, and Rufus knew the country, for he had been stationed in Britain these last seven years, poor fellow. But he had not listened; instead, he had barked at him: "Very well, if you're afraid of getting wet feet, you can stay in camp and play dice. I don't need an orderly. I'll go alone!"

And Rufus had made his long-suffering service face and saluted, and he had gone out alone, like a fool.

Damn that grass. Damn the rain. Damn the whole god-forsaken country! What was the good of surveying this strip of coast, anyway? No one in his senses would try to invade a country like this, not even the Germans.

Service in any of the districts along the Rhine was sheer joy compared with this land of mist and wetness—to say nothing of Belgium, or Gaul.

It had looked quite different, when the news of his command in East Britain had come through, in the middle of an amusing time with the Fourteenth Legion at imperial headquarters in Milan. Or rather, at the former imperial headquarters. The generals had been taking it easy ever since the Emperor went east-to Egypt, for the campaign against that little Queen in Syria, Zenobia.

Among the younger officers there had been no doubt whatsoever about the purpose of Aurelian's campaign. Let the old warhorses of the staff gibber about the importance of Palmyra as the crossing of the great caravan roads to the east and the south.

Caravan roads! As though an Emperor would think fit to make war for the sake of a few roads! But Zenobia was supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and old Aurelian had always known what was good.

So it had been wine and women and an occasional bit of drill for the Fourteenth in Milan, and there wasn't much future in that for a man of ambition.

It was not bad to be a tribune at the age of twenty-seven; but it was better to be a legate, and you cannot be a legate at that age unless you get an opportunity. And Britain, after all, was an outpost of the Empire and not just the place where oysters came from.

By Pluto, he had actually gone so far as to pull strings in order to get transferred to this.

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