Gallicenae by Poul Anderson Read Free Book Online

“The same right back at you, Gratillonius! Let’s.” He lowered himself.
    The centurion rose in turn. “How about some wine to help our tongues along?”
    —The tale came out in shards. Sometimes Rufinus japed, sometimes he struggled not to weep. Gratillonius plied him with drink and questions, and meanwhile tried to fit events together in his mind. Later he would try to understand.
    Rufinus was born to a smallholder near the latifundium of Maedraeacum in the canton of the Redones, about twenty miles northwest of Condate Redonum. Albeit impoverished, the family was close-knit and had its joys. Rufinus, the youngest, especially liked herding swine in the woods, where he taught himself trapping and the use of the sling. Yet even before his birth, the vise was closing. The best of the land had been engulfed by the manors. Imperial regulation made needed goods costly when they were available at all. Such transactions were generally furtive, while farmers had no choice but to sell their produce openly, under strict price control. Meanwhile taxes climbed out of sight. Rufinus’s father more and more sought refuge in the cup. Finally, his health destroyed, he coughed himself to death one winter.
    Rather than let children of hers be sold into slavery for back taxes, the widow conveyed the farm to Sicorus, owner of Maedraeacum, and the family became his coloni—serfs. They were bound to the soil, compelled to deference and obedience, required to do labor for their lord and, after working for themselves, pay more than half the crop over to him. Their grain they must have ground at his mill and at his price. There were no more forest days for Rufinus. Thirteen years old, he was now a field hand, his knees each evening ashake with weariness.
    The following year his pretty older sister Ita became the concubine of Sicorus. She could not be forced, under the law. However, he could offer easements for her kin—such as not assigning her brothers to the most brutal tasks—and for her it was a way out of the kennel. Rufinus, who adored her, stormed to the manor house to protest. The slaves there drove him off with blows. He ran away. Sicorus coursed him down with hounds, brought him back, and had him flogged. The law permitted chastisement of contumacious coloni.
    For another year, he bided his time. Whispers went along the hedges and in the woodlots; men slipped from their hovels to meet by twilight; news seeped across this narrow horizon. It came oftenest on the lips of wanderers who had made their lifework the preaching of sedition. The Empire had rotted to worthlessness, they said; Frankish laeti at Redonum sacrificed human beings to heathen Gods; raiders harried the coasts, while war bands afoot struck deep in from the East. Meanwhile the fat grew fatter, the powerful grew ever more overbearing. Had not Christ Himself denounced the rich? Was not the hour overpast to humble them and take back what they had wrung from the working poor? The Last Day drew nigh, Antichrist walked the world; your sacred duty was to resist him. Righteous men had sworn themselves to a brotherhood, the Bacaudae, the Valiant….
    Ita’s death in childbed was the last thing Rufinus endured. After that, he planned his next escape carefully, and found his way to the nearest Bacauda encampment.
    —“We’re no saints, oh, no, no,” he hiccoughed. By then he was fairly drunk. “I learned that soon enough. Some amongst us are beastsof prey. The rest’re rough. I give you that. But the most of us, the most of us, we only wanted to live in peace. We only wanted to till our plots of ground, and keep the fruits of our work, and have our honor under the law.”
    “How do you live?” Gratillonius asked. He had matched the Gaul stoup for stoup, but he was larger and not half starved.
    “Oh, we hunt. What a pleasure that is, when we know we’re poaching! We raise a little garden truck in the wilds. We rob when we can, from the rich, like that futtering smug