I have seldom heard legionaries laugh so much as they did during Vespasian’s speech. The lines swayed with merriment and someone dropped his shield in the mud. To punish him, Vespasian himself flogged him with a stave of rank borrowed from the centurion, which caused more amusement than ever. Finally Vespasian made ritual offerings at the garrison altar with such dignity and piety that there was no more laughter. He sacrificed so many calves, sheep and pigs that everyone knew that for once they could eat their fill of free roast meat, and we all marveled at the favorable omens.
After the inspection, he sent me to buy a live hare from a veteran who was breeding hares, as the Britons did, in cages for amusement. Vespasian thrust the hare under his arm. We three—he, Lugunda and I—left the camp grounds and walked far into the forest. He took no guard with him, for he was a fearless man and both of us were armed, as we had just come from the inspection. In the forest he seized the hare by the ears and handed it to Lugunda, who put it under her cloak with a practiced hand and began to look around for a suitable place. For no apparent reason she led us through the forest so far that I began to suspect an ambush. A crow flew up in front of us, but fortunately veered off to the right.
Lugunda stopped at last by an enormous oak tree, looked around once more, marked out the points of the compass in the air with one hand, flung up a handful of rotten acorns, looked to see where they fell and then began to intone an incantation for so long that I began to grow sleepy. Suddenly she snatched the hare from under her clothes and threw it up into the air, and stood leaning forward, her eyes black with excitement as she stared after it. The hare darted away with great leaps in a northwesterly direction and vanished into the forest. Lugunda burst into tears, flung her arms around my neck and pressed herself to me, shaking with sobs.
“You chose the hare yourself, Minutus,” said Vespasian apologetically. “This has nothing to do with me whatsoever. If I’ve got it right, the hare says she must go home to her tribe immediately. If it had stayed and hidden in a bush, it would have been a bad omen and stopped her going. I think I understand that much of the Britons’ art of predicting by hares.”
He patted Lugunda kindly on the shoulder and spoke to her in the Iceni language. Lugunda calmed down, smiled at little and then seized my hand, kissing it several times.
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“I only promised that you would see her safely to the Iceni country,” Vespasian explained, unmoved. “Let us now consult several other omens so that you need not go straightaway before you’ve had time to get to know my Druid prisoner. I’ve a feeling that you’re a mad enough young man to be able to appear as an itinerant Sophist collecting wisdom from different countries for your own sake. I suggest that you dress in goat-skins. The girl will bear witness that you are a holy man and the Druid will protect you. They keep their promises if they’ve made them in a certain way in the name of their own gods of the underworld. If they don’t keep them, we’ll have to think of another way of securing peaceful cooperation.”
In this way Lugunda and I went with Vespasian to the main legion camp when he returned from his tour of inspection. When we left, I realized to my surprise that many of the men in the garrison had become quite attached to me during the winter. They gave me small parting gifts, told me never to bite the legion’s hand that had fed me, and assured me that genuine wolf blood flowed in my veins, even if I did speak Greek. I was sorry to leave them.
When we arrived at the main camp, I forgot to salute the legion’s Eagle in the proper manner. Vespasian snarled with rage, ordered my weapons to be removed from me with ignominy and had me thrown into a dark cell. I was completely mystified by this strictness until I realized that in the cell I was to be given the opportunity of meeting the captured Druid. He was not yet thirty, but nevertheless was a remarkable man in every way. He spoke quite good Latin and was dressed like a Roman. He made no secret of the fact that he had been captured on his way home from western Gaul when his ship had been driven inland by a storm on a coast guarded by the Romans.
‘Tour commantler Vespasian is a clever man,” he said smiling. “Practically no one else among you would have noticed that I was a Druid, or even taken me for a Briton, because I don’t paint my face blue. He has promised to save me from a painful death in the amphitheater in Rome, but that alone won’t make me do as he asks. I do only what my own true dreams and omens tell me. He is unconsciously fulfilling a greater wish than his own by saving my life. I am not afraid of a painful death even, for I am an initiate.”
I had a splinter in my thumb and my hand became very badly swollen in the cell. The Druid took out the splinter without even hurting me, by pinching my wrist with his other hand. When he had poked out the splinter with a pin, he held my hot and aching hand for a long time between his own. The following morning all the pus had gone and my hand showed no sign whatsoever of the splinter.
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