Nicanor - Teller of Tales | Page 6

happiness, and said:
"He is a wise man, with goodly store of wealth. Also hath he been in
far strange countries, and seen right marvellous things. And he will
take thee to learn of him, if so be thou wilt say thou art son to
Rathumus and Susanna his wife. And so wilt thou become great, and
very wise, and loving."
So in the end, Nicanor started off alone in the world, with his parents'
blessing, which was all they had to give him, to find out whither this
Fate of his had called him.
III
Thus it was that Nicanor left his home in the gray northlands, up by the
rolling hills and the barren moors which lay under the great Wall of
Hadrian; and journeyed down the long road which led ever southward
to Londinium. Past Eboracum, on the Urus, that "other Rome," where
the Governor of Britain dwelt, famous as the station of the Sixth
Legion, called the Victorious, the flower of the Roman army, which

men said had been there for upwards of three hundred years. He
crossed the wide river Abus, and thought it the ocean of which he had
heard tales; he stole at stations and begged at farms, and drank in all
that he could see and hear.
Over hills and through valleys the great road ran, straightaway for
league upon league, turning aside for no obstacle, invincible as its
builders, ancient and enduring. It crossed rivers, it clove through
darkling woods, it traversed wide and lonely wastes, and led past
walled towns, worn by the feet of marching legions, scored with the
grooves of wheels. And even as across the world all roads led to Rome,
so here did all roads lead to Londinium, and therefore to Thorney on
Tamesis.
And Londinium was no longer the collection of mud huts filled with
blue-painted Britons, of which dim tales were told. For under Roman
rule fair Britain had cast half off the shroud of her brutish early days,
and blossomed into a civilization such as she never before had known,
and would not know again for many hundred years. One passing
glimpse of light she caught--even though it had its shadows--before the
veil shut down once more with the coming of the Saxons. For, though
Roman rule in Britain was said to end with the fourth century, Roman
influence, Roman customs, Roman laws, survived and were paramount
during the years of independence which followed, until throttled by the
slowly tightening hand of Saxon barbarism. Then the old dark times
returned.
The Romans were hard taskmasters, but the task they had was hard.
They were often merciless, but those beneath them had been wild
beasts to tame. They were in power supreme and absolute, and they
lived in ease and plenty upon the toil of native serfs and bondsmen.
Fair villas, stately palaces, costly foods and fine raiment--all the
luxuries those old days knew were theirs. Under them was the mass of
the native population, staggering beneath their burden of taxation,
bound to the soil, often absolute slaves, who spent their lives toiling in
brickfields, in quarries, in mines, and in forests, living in
straw-thatched cabins upon the lands of masters who paid no wage.

When there was rebellion, these masters knew how to deal punishment
swift and sure; when there was submission, they gave kindness and
reward. Had Rome not been as strong as even in her decline she was,
Romans could not have held Britain as long as they did. For on sea and
land, on the verge of the civilization they maintained, were restless
tribes, Scots, Picts, and Saxons, seizing every pretext, every moment of
unguardedness, for encroachment and disturbance.
So that their stern discipline was necessary, and not without results
which went for further good. Under Roman rule all the surface of the
land was changed. Great towns, walled and fortified, rose on the sites
of ditch-surrounded villages. Marshes were drained, bridges were built,
and rivers banked; forests were cleared and waste lands reclaimed.
More than all, the land was tilled and rendered productive, so that
Britain became the most important grain province of the empire.
Romans found in Britain a scant supply of corn, grasses on which the
cattle fed, wild plums, a few nuts and berries. They brought to Britain
fruits and vegetables from many lands beyond the seas; from Italy
gooseberries, chestnuts, and apples; walnuts from Gaul; apricots,
peaches, and pears from Asia. Paved roads webbed the island, wide and
well-drained, by which bodies of troops could be massed at any given
point with incredible rapidity. Fortifications were built and in the north
walls of solid masonry were thrown across the country from the
Oceanus Ibernicus to the Oceanus Germanicus, for the determent of
common foes.
That upon which