Winter's Blossom: The Seasons of Arthur

Chapter 44

I remembered watching the march back into Din Eidyn from my sickbed. Seeing the damp banners blowing on tired man as they marched through the quiet streets where people had come to watch their return in subdued silence.

Our return to Viroconium was different. The sun was shining like gold in a blanket bright blue sky streaked with a thin cloud that did nothing to dim the day. Although it was only a spring day, after the bitterly cold climate of the north the warm sunshine on our faces as we marched felt like the full heat of the summer so that I almost forgot my pain. I had insisted on marching with my men on my barely healed wound to try and rebuild my muscles and my legs. My exercises with Dirandon had done a lot to strengthen my leg but it hadn't prepared me for the miles of marching, still insisting on wearing my heavy mail and weapons. I was limping heavily, and every step was torture. It was worse knowing that I could simply get on a horse or a wagon, but I refused to. I had started this march and pride would not let me fall out now, and what is a man without his pride?

I straightened though as we came towards Viroconium, seeing the red brick and dark thatch of the city and the people bustling around it. Everywhere seemed rich after the rigours of the north, the herds seemed more plentiful, the livestock fatter. Those farmers and boys who looked after the livestock waved up to us as we marched by. Grubby children ran to us, yelling happily and calling for stories of battle, duelling each other with sticks as swords as they skipped alongside.

The children gave us a euphoric sense of what to expect as we arrived in Viroconium, and we imagine the triumph in which we would march through its streets. None of us would have to buy a drink for a week, we were sure, nor a woman as they gave themselves to such conquering heroes.

Oh how wrong we were! As we marched onto the streets were immediately met with irritation as riders had to clear the bustling roads for us to pass. Men and women glared at us as they were ushered out of the way, prodded, albeit firmly, by irritated cavalrymen keen to clear the road for we marching troops.

Had we really expected streets of thunderous applause? It seemed crazy all of a sudden to have believed that, for impossibly the people seemed to look at us resentfully as we marched through, interrupting the buzz of movement around the marketplace.

'The ungrateful bastards,' Bors growled bitterly. 'Do they not know what we've been doing for them?'

The answer, I realised, was probably now. While they had probably of the battles in Elmet and Gododdin, those battles were all now months old. It was unlikely they even connected us with them.

Some did though. Relatives pushed their way through the crowds, running for the banners they recognised as they scanned the ranks to look for their husband, father or son and would then force their way through the ranks of marching men to cling to them before being ushered back out. In the anti-climax of our return it was a heart wrenching moment of reunited love that made me feel that it was all worth it. Those feelings were questioned though as a pretty young woman, a young babe on her hip rushed to the front of the column to scan for her man matching past. The excitement faded to a stricken, uncertainty as more and more men marched past her with no sign of her man. Finally, sobbing and clutching her baby to her breast she ran back towards the wagons that followed us slowly with the last glimmer of what I expected to be a forlorn hope, knowing the men who were in there,

We may not have got the reception that we had hoped for in our route through the city but as we approached the barracks buildings by the hillfort. With the rumour of returning solders flooding through the mostly ambivalent city, those loved ones who had not been near to our march had run to the barracks, anticipating our destination. As we turned the corner of the street that ran next to the low wall of the palace walls, a cheer finally erupted. The soldiers on the walls yelled down at us, calling out the names of men they recognised. Serving girls joined them on the wall and they chanted the names their champions, the heroes they had heard sung and, amazingly, I heard my own ring out amongst the, much louder, cries of Lancelot and Owain, who I heard being called Arthursus as much as Owain. It was amazing, I thought, to think that such a nickname had travelled south ahead of us.