Witch 1. Introducing Hælend and Wulf. A magic wood and lo, a picta damesel

A Celtic witch? One never knows. Ophelia by the Victorian pre-Raphaelite
painter John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). Credits

Manius Quinto sal.

[…] I can finally tell you my tower is close to the sea, **** miles from Londinium, **** miles from Venta Icenorum, reachable from the Antonini Itinerarium. Now you know where I am. Please send me the area maps. […]

It's not the only reason I am writing. Horrible (and marvellous) things have happened and I do not know where to start.

I went into the woods with Hælend, my medium sized but powerful steed that Wulf my German friend gave me as a gift to celebrate our friendship - an amazing Angle, Wulf, he's teaching me the Ænglisc ways and his absolute truthfulness of heart has given me animus to rebel against cruel Fortune: being trapped in an alien land, bereft of properties, of slaves (only two I have bought at the Ænglisc market), of real defence and, most of all, of Clelia's deep love and warm presence.

'O Fortuna, velut Luna, statu variabilis ..'
O Fortune, like the moon, you always change ..
Depiction of Fortune at a much later age

But as Lucius Annaeus Seneca teaches us:

Fortuna opes auferre, non animum, potest

[Fortune can rob our wealth but not our courage]

Boldness, yes. But how can I describe Hælend? Well, at first was I disappointed: our horses look so much better and she appeared even worse than most German steeds (such horrible yellowish colour!) but I was so surprised when I saw how she could endure any strain with ease and could compete with, and often win over, even the nobler Roman breeds (this big German clan I've been kinda absorbed into possesses a dozen beautiful Roman horses btw) and yet she's also so amazingly mild (and weird; should I hide that?)

I'll tell you. Having received a bad blow by a towering German during a few sword fight exercises - a deep bleeding cut was showing on my left arm -, Hælend came close to me and (Aesculapius!) much to the surprise of the onlookers (Wulf was absent) she started to lick my wound with her long (and rough) tongue: sweet Queen of heaven I cried when I saw the wound healed in just two days!!

I digressed.

Roman soldier in colder climates

So while getting deep into the forest in search of game but armoured in the Roman way like I always do when I explore territory or hunt (one never knows), with Hælend scrutinizing the terrain with her non human senses – were she a woman she'd certainly be a Sibyl but I prefer her as my horse frankly, I had too many domineering sisters.

I was wearing a Roman helmet with a wolf's skin on top, German bow and arrows, my favourite gladius Hector, a pilum (or javelin) in my left hand plus two strange dogs Marius and Caesar (though adorable and surely Diana's favourites) which I bought from a very old & rich German woman being carried on her lectica, or litter, by 4 young and good-looking slaves of dubious race.

By the way - another digression - I was hit by her face, that was so wrinkled I couldn't see her eyes, and by a pair of showy gilded brooches she wore that fastened her embroidered wool tunic, with strings of beads hanging between them - an ornament oh you'll agree Quintus an Italian, Gallic or Romano British woman would never wear but that gave her this, hard to say, 'new look' I found attractive after all, kind of 'new British' you know.

It's as if this emerald island were perhaps timidly finding her own ...

Enough. I do hate this place.

Alglo-Saxon gilded saucer brooches "worn in pairs
at the shoulder to fasten a dress, often with
strings of beads hanging between them."
British museum (credits & explanation)

As I was saying, it's hard to tell how we got into a very incomprehensible place.

I mean while advancing forward in such beautiful wetlands rich with birds, eagles and wolves I began to realize the landscape was slowly changing and getting perceptibly moisture-less. It had basically turned into a weird wood which much to my surprise couldn't be too far from where my tower is located.

Moreover I vaguely felt the place familiar but also odd: shrieks were all around from crazy night birds - but it was day time Quintus!
 
And then I felt it.

["What the hell did you feel" - I'm sure you'll ask.]

Deep forest. Click for attribution

OK. I felt the magic of a new world that was familiar and strange as I said since unordered and yet almost invisibly arranged by some crazy intelligence - a bit like what is more evidently displayed in our Italian gardens, that reflect the arrangement of mathematical reason.

Trees plants flowers of many sorts with their colours and exhilarant perfumes (voluptuous spring was radiating her magic ...) and butterflies, insects, animals flying and jumping about, both night and day creatures all awake as if nature had confused her laws Virgo mea!

But this is not the point, friend.

["What on earth is the point now", you'll again ask you having always been the stereotyped practical Roman]

Well, the point being that this area showed, more distinctly than any landscape, to possess a soul. I clearly felt such place's divinity, id est plants, huge trees and living things all formed like a savage, and yet not unordered, world exuding a primeval anima or vital force that awesome Greek minds identified with the eternal and intoxicating goat-horned, goat-legged numen Πάν (now dead as they said) and old days' rustic Romans with Faunus (dead too).

Pan and Daphnis. Goat-horned, goat-legged deities were
many (male, female and unfortunately children).
Very unconventional they were, not far from Satyrs

I then couldn't but kneel down and whisper our Celtic bard Virgil's sacred verses:

Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra

formosam resonare doces
Amaryllida silvas

[You sit careless in the shade, o Tityrus,
and 'Amaryllis!'
(woods-wandering enchantress
& flute player),
you bid the woods resound]

Ah but I had to wake up from my dream since Hælend started to get very nervous. What was the matter?

We turned around and … the dogs were gone! Such gifted animals, can you believe that?

Vanished.

Why these premonitions? Which envious god desired to whack me?

My life was, is miserable. I live like a savage while I had properties & thousands of slaves. Now I dwell in a lousy tower and possess just two young women I bought from the Germani - not at all bad, right - but the one with exotic almond eyes is so small and half dead I have in truth only one and a half.

Along the left, longer side of such space - an almost perfect rectangle - there she appeared in my sight:

A beautiful woman standing on the green grass with glowing red hair, her skin white and so amazingly pale as a moon creature - something so exotic for a Roman.

Her flesh colour even paler than the German women's, she was wearing an equally pale wool tunica with a majestic white horse behind her (of Roman breed no doubt), calmly grazing the beautifully green grass, the princely animal's coat having the same incomprehensible pale snow colour.

I recognized her immediately.

This woman Manius had first met.
Why now she looks like a damsel?

It was that picta who had scared the hell out of me near my tower and was now disguised (very poorly I thought) as a lady.

Disguised as a lady? The idea railed me and I thought such savage needed a good lesson from a civilized son of Rome.

Yes, it was time for some revenge and fun why not?

You know Quintus this ancient grudge that Celtic - how can you know damn, you're 100% Roman - or half Celtic (especially from the West Alps) Romans such as I am - have, vis-à-vis Picts and Caledonii so darn allergic to Romanization.

A Roman slave auction as imagined by Jean Léon Gérome (c.1884). Enlarge

I recall this Caledonian slave locked in a cage at a slave auction in Augusta Taurinorum: a nice open air square surrounded by our white and monumental peaks all around. Her cage had been placed on a wooden platform, her attractive body all bluish from paint and tattoos.

Out of curiosity I got closer in order to touch her strange hair but she bit my hand fiercely.

Her master wanted to flog her publicly to set an example but although I gave him a few coins (to stop that, she was just a savage after all) I seldom forget when people hurt me.

Did she hurt me deeply? Well, OK, whatever my reasons in any case I definitely felt the beautifully pale lady needed punishment, Quintus, I don't know why.

Light punishment perhaps, I am not a bad man, all I needed, I now imagine, was just some relief from all the sorrows that plagued my heart.

ψ

I therefore advanced in her direction.

Chanting in an Ænglisc taberna

It is night in Monti (Subura). Massimo is at home before his computer screen

"20 minutes only and Deirdre would reach home" … So Massimo clicked the 'get mail' button on his Backtrack Linux box.

Giorgio's e-mail appeared on the screen.

ψ

"Ciao M,

The buds and the rest of the group are now in a marshy area the Anglo-Saxons call fani or fenne. I identified it as The Fens in East England, around the coast of the Wash where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire.

The Fens today. Click for attribution and to enlarge

The group is eating, drinking (and getting rid of dampness) in a village taberna crammed with local peasants. Their Latin is quite easy once you get used to their strange accent.

They look happy and finally relieved after a tormented journey.

As you will learn the ol' schoolmates are scions from Romano-Celtic clans from the West (Cadbury Hill and Castle, Somerset) and from the North (Banna, Birdoswald, at the west end of Hadrian's Wall), places where the language of Rome and Romanitas have survived though corrupted (or transfigured).

Greek is also fluent in many of them, uncommon in those days, together with their native Brittonic language of course which although terribly fascinating is as yet unintelligible to me.

Another landscape from The Fens area. Click for attribution

Their entrance into the taberna, if I may call it this way, had been unintentionally theatrical.

Despite their being dirty and exhausted they had appeared such an astonishing, colourful group to the country folks: the noble-breed friends (festive, attractive young men and women), Pavlos the Greek merchant, his mysterious ascendancy following him like a mantle, the refined (and provokingly dressed) Syrian ladies with their train of devoted female slaves and so forth.

Don't worry M, later I’ll describe all group members one by one (allow me to modernize their names in weird ways at first until my ears get used to their Celtic parlance).

Therefore, as soon as the taberna heavy main door had been opened for them to get in and while they were crossing its threshold, more than 200 pairs of eyes, ALL at the same time, couldn’t but stare at them totally wide-eyed.

Not that the group cared much. They were so ecstatic at the view of the large bronze braziers scattered here and there holding their wonderfully burning coals! Ahhh, it was as if blood were flowing again in their young bodies, grown numb by the cold.

A mid-20th century reconstruction of a Danish great hall and long house in Hobro, Denmark. Click for attribution and other examples of Anglo-Saxon-like buildings (450 CE to 1066)

Most unusually for a taberna, the place consisted [see image above] of a large timber long house that, to the local folk - a mixture of Angles and Celts coexisting peacefully? - served as a store house for farm produce, as tribunal, assembly, meeting and fun place (several cooks and servants were more than 'sociable' with generous customers), beer and eating house.

The powerful structure belonged to an earlier Celtic landlord - I overheard - who had been slaughtered together with all his family 50 years earlier during social unrest.

I checked in my books. It is time of migrations, M, of social change. Here in the East (but also in the West and the North) slaves revolting against (or refusing to work for) their landlords had caused the progressive decadence of big Roman-style villas and properties.

But while some scholars believe change had been far from dramatic and all had occurred almost drowsily, generation after generation, others instead, supported by a recent DNA research, think that some ethnic cleansing could have occurred.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that the Welsh could be the only true descendants of the Roman British since their genes seem entirely different. And secondly -
I am puzzled (and horrified) - chances are that between 50% and 100% of the Romanised population was totally wiped out Massimo.


Yes, it may have been so.

In any case.

In the year c. 420 CE - I learn -, a little more than one century before Manius' time (only yesterday I realized that my nightmares suggest Manius is living in 526 CE), there still "were people in Britain who had been born in a world shaped by the Romans", with Romano-Celtic material culture, mentality, Latin language. In 420 there were still "middle aged men and women who had been raised in heated villas" and whose "childhood dinners were served in pewter and glass", which can give an idea, I guess.

Model of a palatial Romano-British Villa at Fishbourne, West Sussex. Click for attribution and infos. Dug in the early 1960's the villa had ornate gardens, a large bath suite, mosaic floors, tessellated pavements, several guest suites, a spacious entrance-hall and even an audience chamber.

["15 minutes only and Deirdre would be home" Massimo thought with some nervousness]

Ah! His mentor had at last deduced the darn year of the strange Britannia events, something Massimo had grasped since the beginning. Giorgio's mind, it seemed clear, was not as sharp as it used to be - Massimo sadly reflected.

He resumed reading.]

ψ

"From c. 420 to c. 470 - Giorgio's narration continued - Germanic immigration in South East Britain had been like water dripping. Between 470 and a bit before 520 it had become a deluge, which was changing things very fast at least in the East of Britannia.

Soon after having kissed the sacred fatherland's soil the buddies had been progressively shocked by the extent of the cultural change occurring before their eyes. They had lived in Italy too long and their childhood memories of Britain were mainly from places that had retained a bit of the old world.

What was happening over there now, in the West and the North? And their families? And all their infancy friends? These were the fears that troubled the buddies' sleep since their first arrival in Albion land.
But now - youth smiling celestially, a warmed-up refuge, the food and the drink and the awareness of having escaped Neptune's wrath – both old and new friends drove away their preoccupations and gave vent to all their need to live.

Always resourceful Pavlos (his newly acquired servants had quick minds like his) making appear all sorts of music instruments - flutes, a Celtic harp, cymbals, a lyre and drums; the girls putting on their best make up (such ladies behaving so freely? You'll later learn why); not to mention the Syrian ἑταῖραι (hetaerae) or high class prostitutes if you will, being helped by their female slaves as well in order to appear more seductive then ever - ALL was soon ready for a sublime carousal the local folk would probably never forget. 

At the simple tinkling of a couple of gold solidi plenty of the 'real good stuff' - the one usually spared for important people - was in the meanwhile being served on their long table: savoury roasted game, an excellent dense ale, vegetables, idromele and fruits.

After an enchanting musical introduction from the Syrian hetaerae's languid flutes; from the strings of the melodious Celtic harp plucked with purest touch by sweet Chaerie’s delicate fingers; from pensive Pavlos' seven-stringed Greek lyre (a man who had wandered from clime to clime, "λύρα!" he had asked his servants; btw he and Chaerie proved to be excellent virtuosi); and finally with drums and cymbals providing the rhythm for the whole prelude ….

Now, dear M, read well my words: a ritual choral song among the most sublime ever conceived by man was about to vibrate in the air - something those simple peasants & warriors had probably never heard before.

Alicia Cundall playing a Celtic harp and singing. Click to enlarge and for attribution

It was first sung in Brittonic (to make sure a lot of them understood) and then in the Latin original.

(From the latter I could reconstruct the former, less concise but charming nonetheless)

At a signal (from Richardus and Qwil) the group's women blessed with the bloom of beauty slowly advanced towards the centre of the hall that had been cleared for the purpose.

(The Syrian ladies had preferred to remain at their table, busy with their flutes.)

ψ

Thus the female group began to chant:

Of Dian's praises, tender maidens, tell;
Well tell, tell well,
Oh tell, OOOOHH TTELLL!

(The last two words M were like a big female mystic cry!)

Now the men's turn, who had reached the girls (ALL the men except the slaves).

Exuding integrity the males thus continued the song:

Of Apollo’s charm, young striplings, sing;
Sing spring, spring sing,
Oh spring, OOOOHH SSIIIING!

(The last two words were this time like a powerful male mystic cry M!)


Finally both choirs - the women's and the men's, like fresh crop from the North, South & East combined - chanted in unison:

Of Latona their mother, oh sing
So beloved by our Heaven's King.
King, Lightning OOOOHH, FFLIIIING!

Oh God my friend (my words are so poor), this last two-word cry sung by both the men and the women was so majestic and piercing, was so hypnotizing and enchanting that all the audience lost control and stood up in a frenzy.

They reached such a state of confusion as if too much had been asked of them. They had never seen anything like that. Some began to sing, some to dance, some finally to hug and kiss (and insinuate intimate caresses with one another, the majority of both sexes being totally drunk).

Everyone, I mean, was so carried away by a madness which reached its climax when the choral song was rehearsed in Latin, a language still sacred to them although I'm sure not quite understood by most of the people who were crowding the huge hall.

(Btw M, no need to remind you that in the sacred Latin text below Apollo is named Cynthius after Mount Cynthus on the island of Delos where he was supposed to be born)

A Roman mosaic at Capua, Italy, with young kids as part of a sacred choir from the temple of Diana Tifatina. Click for attribution

Women (as pure as ever): 

Dianam tenerae dicite virgines

Men (as ethical as ever):

intonsum, pueri, dicite Cynthium

Men and women together (in all their chaste glory):

LATONAMQUE SUPREMO

DILECTAM PENITUS I-O-V-I-I-I!!

 ψ

[Massimo had tried to resist but was now vibrating. The whole scene had totally bewitched him.

Those Romano-Celtic youths, they were like angels!

With a pang he suddenly remembered his angel, how could he forget her? But, most of all, was she a real angel? 

"8 minutes more and Deirdre should be home" he thought. His anxiety was growing together with the sacred madness in Giorgio's tale] 

ψ

"The state of wildness reached by the peasants shocked the group of old and new friends - Giorgio's mail continued -. They had been so concentrating on their chant they hadn't realised what was actually happening within the walls of the huge building.

It all had been such a purification rite of joy, melodious and sober, but the public had interpreted it as excess, as mere intoxication. 

Well, nothing wrong with it, the friends' group liked intoxication as well (I overheard their comments). But they were confused since the reaction both in Italy and in the Britannic areas where they were born would have been quite different for such a rite: soul order, not disorder ...

This pure undebased song expressed by the words of Horace, Rome's sacred bard, words so cherished by any Roman pagan and respected at times even by the Christians (Richardus' and Philippus' words) ...

Germanic Jutes, Saxons and Angles are advancing from South East

They didn't mind much the peasants' reaction though. They kind of liked these Ænglisc, who probably needed to evolve, like the Romans, barbarians at first but then creators of the civilization they admired most and to which they felt they belonged.

The entire old and new friends' group was made of tolerant, open-minded youths who knew that what happened to mortals wasn't entirely controlled by the power of the gods.

That these Ænglisc were preparing a future for their fatherland, they deemed very unlikely and even the remotest idea of it troubled their heart.

But, they were disciplined Roman Celts, ready to face what the gods and Fate had preordained - and what the Christian deities eventually had preordained too (the Trinity and the Saints) - with brave hearts, pure souls and all their desire to live this life's joys - not the other life's joys - as much and as long as they could.

ψ

Now it is unfortunately time to relate, dear M, how a dark corner of the huge hall was also revealed to my deranged mind's eyes.

ψ

Sitting at a table, and drinking plain water, two black-clad monks (one with a hawk-like face) had been watching the whole performance attentively.

Their dark, circled eyes expressed deep, unquenchable hate.