The Governor's Man by Jacquie Rogers (best beach reads TXT) 📕

to, with a decent job, and this was no time to act the hero. He stopped counting after number four.

An image he had seen as a mudlarking child on the slippery banks of the Tamesis thrust into his mind. He had been watching a fisherman with a mud-horse, catching shellfish and spreading the loaded nets carefully into the wooden sledge.

’See this ’ere mud horse, lad? It makes it safe for me to go out after the fish without getting stuck in the filthy mud. Spreads the weight, like.’ And Tiro had seen the point, even as a child. The wider the load was spread out on the sledge, the safer the operation would be.

He flung himself flat onto the cold stinking mud, calling back to Quintus, ‘I’ll get him, sir.’

He began to crawl, keeping his weight as spread out across the mud as he could. It was terrifying and disgusting in equal measure. Had he been able to look up he would have immediately retreated.  Drusus told him later that even as he wriggled his way onwards, Caesulanus had already sunk up to his neck. Tiro could hear the man blubbering, swearing and praying to Neptune. But he couldn’t see what Drusus had already spotted out to sea. He couldn’t hear the lad’s screams of warning over the sucking noise of the wet mud, either. At last he lifted his head to check direction. Only a couple of yards now from the drowning man. Then he heard Drusus’s desperate shouts.

‘The bore — Tiro, the bore’s coming in from the sea. You have to come back. Leave him, come back!’

Tiro didn’t like the sound of this at all. Craning his neck almost to breaking point to lift his head, he saw a dark line approaching on the river, silvered where the moon glanced off the leading edge. It swept in from the Severn Sea at horrible speed, racing up the river and growing taller all the time. Tiro tried to turn. His leading arm sank into the mud. He thought he would die of panic. He couldn’t draw breath. He remembered the awful choking sensation of being trapped in the dark in the hypocaust, expecting to suffocate at every moment. This was like that, but worse. He felt the air squeezing out of his chest, and waited for the cold slimy mud to crawl down his throat.

A calm voice, clear and commanding, broke through.

‘Don’t try to turn. Reach your right hand back towards me, carefully. As far behind as you can. Extend it fully. You’re within touching distance of Drusus’s spear. We’ll pull you out. Just lie completely flat and still, let us do the work.’ The broad iron head of the boy’s spear was pushed into his open hand. Tiro closed his freezing hand round it. He wriggled over to grab the shaft with his other hand. At once he felt a steady pull, gradually swivelling him round to face the shore. With gathering power Quintus and Drusus heaved on the spearshaft. Tiro was moving faster now and could help with some movement of his legs. The smell of the deadly sands was right up his nostrils and his eyes were watering with salty grit, blotting out vision. Drusus shouted, ‘Too late, Sabrina has him!’  Tiro shut his eyes, thought one last time of Britta, and waited for the tall wave to close over his head.

Before the bore reached him his feet abruptly steadied into firmer sand. He was washed waist-deep by rising silty water, but with feet down and firm he could release the spear. He stumbled onto the shore, and turned back to look across the estuary. He was dripping and shivering convulsively.

There was no-one there.

‘Where’s he gone, the prisoner?’

‘To Hades. Without telling us anything.’ Quintus sounded defeated, and turned away. Drusus had a lingering look of terror on his young face.

‘The river took him! The Goddess Sabrina in her wrath rose in a massive wave and rolled over his head. He just disappeared. It was horrible.’ The boy choked in apparent effort not to cry like a small child. Quintus was already climbing up the slippery river bank, back turned. Tiro pulled himself out of his stupor, cursing, and grabbed Drusus by the arm.

They trudged back to the port, cold and dispirited. They gathered the horses back together, retrieving their bags and cloaks. Caesulanus had been a villain all right, but Tiro had seldom witnessed a more disgusting death. He wrapped his dirty but welcome birrus round himself, and tried to steady himself.

It was probably only a few minutes’ wait, but Tiro was numb with cold by the time Quintus called out, ’Here they are!’ He heard the swift rhythmic beat of oars moving in disciplined momentum. A sleek double-banked naval ship swept along the river towards them, helped by the spring tide and buoyed up on the lingering  bore. It raced past them, appearing to swivel on a sestertius as commands rang out along the open deck. The mainsail was swiftly gathered in, and the ship hove-to alongside the quay, settling into position as if it had always been there.

A dark bearded man in the uniform of a naval officer leapt lightly off the bow calling, ’Frumentarius Quintus Valerius?’

Tiro groaned. A ship meant more waves, more water. And more danger, from the description Decurion Sorio had given them of the passage up the Severn Sea.

No time to waste then. Tiro hurried over to the ancient pillar where a tiny spring washed the Goddess’ stony feet. He reverently dropped a denarius he could ill-afford into the water, and prayed earnestly to the lady of the mighty western river for a safe passage. They bade farewell to Drusus, who grinned, saluted and leapt onto his horse with the ease of a boy who has lived all his life in the saddle. The last Tiro saw of him