Titus Awakes

15

Among the Soldiers

A GALE, OVER life-size, limbered up on the two pathetic exiles. Their boat was tossed, they were sick. Titus lay weakened from hunger, wandering, cold, despair, but there is always a hope, hidden subterraneously. Hope keeps man alive amidst all horrors. Even in the worst of men there is a little weakness, a flicker of hope, whether it be stirred by the golden hair of a child, or the grey hair of age, or some long forgotten memory. It was one such harsh man who descended on the river and drifted silent and mysterious as any ghost.

Hearing the sounds – a rhythmic moaning – he trod gingerly in the direction of the river, pushing the mist away from him as though it were a gauze curtain. His voice, used to command, was tossed by the wind into a parody of a voice, until it reached Titus’s ears like the sound of frogs at night, insistent, harsh, removed from his experience.

Dog lifted his head painfully, alert to the new sound, so the croak drifted once more through the topsy-turvy mist, and Dog moved his right paw, and gently tapped Titus’s cheek.

The voice of the man reached Dog again and in reply he let out an unearthly howl.

It generated knowledge in both, and curiosity in both: who or what would find the answer first? The man had the advantage, in that he had no care for any living soul but his own. Dog had the advantage in that he had the care of a living soul and, in his tactile way, exhausted as he was, that living soul was more important to him than anything else in his small circumscribed world.

The man was a soldier, a man used to issuing commands and to being obeyed. Behind the mist were a group of men, rough and used to hard living, to all the elements that nature can devise. They warmed themselves and threw their untidy shadows across each other by a fire on which was stretched the body of a suckling pig.

Laughs and whistles, a song, a harsh command from one man to another broke through to the man in the mist. He knew the men he commanded. The vilest of them was putty to him. ‘Oh, let them sack and burn and prey – laugh, rape and be gay, but when the time comes and I say ‘‘stop’’ or when the time comes and I say ‘‘go’’ then they will. I have only to whistle to them and they will, like automata, rush to my bidding, but I want to discover the source of this sound, this nebulous lament. What I do with what I have found is of importance to no one but myself.’

Dog yelled. His voice eerie as a foghorn, reached the soldier, master of men. His howl broke through the darkness and the dim shape was silhouetted, black against grey with its jaws open.

The master of men clutched the silhouette in his mind’s eye and, forcing his way with blade on felt undergrowth, he ran with utmost clumsiness towards the howl.

He came to the sound – water lapping, a panting, both of fear and achievement – and the strong wind was enough to part the veil dividing them for the master of men to see a ghostly Dog. He leaned across the nettles and the eggs in nests to touch until the creature surrendered to the hand of man.

Dog was the first to perceive that if not a friend at least not an enemy was at hand. His howl became more frenzied, as he sought the voice that shouted in an unknown tongue. The man yelled orders to the men behind him to come – one or two of them to help him reach forward to waylay the wandering bark before it was lost in darkness.

Crude men who had dined off their suckling pig wiped their hands across their lips, until the grease dripped down their unshaven chins leaving a trail, like the silver line made by a snail on its slow peregrinations from one purposeful destination of its own to another.

They had heard the voice of the man who commanded them and had no wish to concede to his commands, but his natural authority forced them to draw lots in their own way, which was to order the two youngest members of their group to forge into the darkness towards the water.

They carried burning torches but made no sound, except that of heavy boots threading and treading their way uneasily over lianas and twisted boles, night creatures scuttled in every direction unaccustomed to the smell of humans. Furtive and frightened, the two young men didn’t dare make their presence known to the man who dominated everything and every person with whom he came in contact. Fear harassed them. Each could sense the pumping of the other’s heart. It wasn’t the quickening throb that a beautiful woman can induce; it was the same organ but a different song. Trembling with fear, the two untried youths walked towards their mentor.

The shrill and despairing yell of Dog sounded through the forest as far as the revelling soldiers, surfeited on suckling pig, who lay grossly, coarsely, lecherously around the dying fire and made its way into their scarcely alive subconscious. Then, having heard it, they relapsed into drunken inertia, and left to the chosen young all decisions as to how to find the yelps and cries for help.

At last they heard the voice of command and, because of their own lack of confidence, they ran, tripping, falling, swearing, once more towards authority.

‘Quick – my men – shine your flares, we are reaching the unknown.’ Dog’s throat, hoarse with its demand, almost made its last appeal – smaller and more pitiful as though buried under the debris of an earthquake, a voice that had almost given up hope, tiny and defeated.

The flare picked up unknown silhouettes, and the sounds coming from the moving hulk were diminishing in as eerie a way as footsteps, lone footsteps, in the silence of the night disappear and make themselves heard to new ears, passing into new silence and out again.

‘Quick – one of you hold both flares and the other one come to my aid.’

The command rang out and one of the young men hastened towards the voice, giving the flare to his companion.

‘Here, here, hold fast to this hulk.’ The sound of the water in the silence was mysterious and the man in command tripped over a liana, and as he fell he caught hold of one of the vines and almost fell into the river.

‘Come here, you fool – you idiot,’ and a string of obscenities followed, tracking its way into the dithering jelly of a youth who had no idea what to do.

‘Hold my legs – tell that jackass to give us light.’

Suddenly the flares picked out a body lying spread-eagled, arms outstretched and holding with all its strength to the sides of the bank. In the gory light of the flare, the face appeared ashen, with the lips moving – a somnambulist upside down, lost and sleep-talking, and as the goldness moved over the body, leaving it in darkness, it tracked its way to the poor whimpering dog – tongue hanging out, but still poised to protect to his last whimper the living being he was guarding.

‘Come on, you fools!’ shouted the commander, and as he shouted and pulled at the boat, one of the young men in his nervousness dropped one of the flares into the water and the sound of the sizzling awakened the sleeper who called out in an unknown language, but Dog understood and made his way precariously towards his master to assuage his fear.

The commander wrenched Titus ashore. ‘Go back, you fools, and bring a plank covered with your capes, and two more men and more flares. Take the only flare there is left now and leave us in darkness, but return using my instructions for warmth, and soup and shelter for whatever, or whoever we have here. And hurry, you fools!’