He had a sudden longing, which wasn’t a bit like him now, though it was like the person he had been before the Saxons burned his home, to give Ness things; to bring them and heap them into her lap. New songs and the three stars of Orion’s belt, and honey-in-the-comb, and branches of white flowering thorn at mid-winter; not only for her sake, but for Flavia’s sake as well. [p. 154]
A novel of the end of Rome in Britain, and the British resistance to the Saxon invasion. It's the Roman aspect, and the turmoil of Britain after Rome's retreat, that captivated me as a ten-year-old: this was one of my favourite novels as a child, though I hadn't reread it for many years. As usual, I was surprised at how much I remembered more or less verbatim, and how much I'd completely forgotten.
In the latter category comes the uneven sense of time passing. The Lantern Bearers covers a period of twenty years or more: long enough for Aquila, who deserted from the army on the night the last Auxiliaries sailed, to spend three years as a slave in Jutland; encounter his sister, now married to a Saxon; find his way back to Britain, and his freedom; join the resistance movement led by Ambrosius Aurelianius, self-styled Prince of Britain; contract an arranged marriage, father a child, mentor the wild young warrior Artos, and be reconciled with his sister's fate. Yet much of that time passes in phrases such as 'the sixth summer since Hengest and Ambrosius had faced each other' or 'after twelve, nearly thirteen years' ...
Aquila, I now see, is badly damaged by the destruction of his home and family, the abandonment by the legions, the perceived fickleness of his sister Flavia. Though this is a third-person narrative, Sutcliff shows us the pain, the bitterness and the desperate loyalty beneath the mask of the emotionless warrior. I feel a lot more sympathy for Ness, his British wife, than I did before: he is clearly not a communicative husband, though he does warm to her after a while. ('some years ...')
Sutcliff's prose still stuns me with its vividness and clarity, especially when she's writing about landscapes: 'the twilight came lapping up the valley like a quiet tide, and the sky above the long wave-lift of the downs was translucent and colourless as crystal'; 'a flamed and feathered sunset was fading behind the Great Forest'; 'the beacon platform in the dead silver moonlight, the sudden red flare of the beacon'. That scene on the watch-tower at Rutupaie still hits me hard: lighting the beacon 'to hold back the dark for one more night.’
And I'm impressed, too, with the structure of the novel -- something that never registered with me as a child! -- and the triplets of relationship beats: three meetings with the priest Brother Ninnias, three scenes with Flavia or her representative, three chances for Flavian to show his loyalty ...
Rereading this novel awoke my long-held fascination with Roman Britain (initially sparked by Rosemary Sutcliff's books but much broadened by other novelists, non-fiction writers and classicists). But who writes like Sutcliff?
NB: Just discovered this fascinating article on the genesis of The Lantern Bearers, reproduced on a Sutcliff-centred Dreamwidth community.
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