XIV
BREAD AND SALT
The children who had come to the Square Hill learned to know one another very well in those first years of the colony. There were about a dozen of the older ones who were nearly the same age, and they shared more responsibility than children do in a more settled community. When the river rose suddenly, and [pg 162]all the animals had to be hustled at a minute’s notice to the highest part of the hills out of the way of the waters, Marcs the son of Colonus, and Mamurius the son of the metal worker Muraena were old enough to be treated almost as if they were men. They sat together that night and watched the moon sail grandly over the flood, and talked of all the things that boys do talk of when they begin to look forward into the future.
It was a wild and lonely scene. The rising of the flood had covered the plain for miles, although in many places the waters were not deep. The seven hills stood up like seven islands in an ocean, and although neither of the boys had ever seen an ocean, they knew that it must be something like this. The hill where they had driven their scrambling goats was high and steep and rocky and had been partly fortified. It was a natural stronghold, standing up above the group as the head of a crouching animal rises above the body. All the hills were crowned with circles of twinkling fires, and on the highest point of each was a beacon fire which was used for signals. Each had signaled to the others that all was right, and now there was nothing to do but wait for the morning.
The smaller boys who had helped were very [pg 163]much excited at first, and danced around the fires gleefully, and ate their supper with a great appetite; but they went to sleep quite soon afterward. The two older lads were the only ones awake when the moon rose, and it seemed as if they were the only people awake in the whole world. In the safe and orderly and protected life of their childhood they had never seen anything like this, or been given so much responsibility. For some hours no one had known how much farther the waters would rise, and all the boats had been kept ready, and the men had made rafts, to save what they could if the river should sweep over the last refuge. But evidently it was not going to do anything like that. It had stopped rising already. Faustulus the old shepherd, who had lived among these hills ever since he was a boy, said that once in a few years they had a flood like this, but that it never in all his recollection had gone more than a few inches higher.
These two boys had always been good friends, for they were just unlike enough for each to do some things the other admired. Marcs was like his father, square-set and strong and rather silent. Mamurius was a little taller and slenderer, and very clever with his hands. He could invent new ways to do things when it was necessary and when the old ways were impossible. He had [pg 164]never built a boat before he and Marcs made theirs the summer before, but he had shaped a steering oar that was better than the one he copied. On this night they found themselves somehow closer together than they had ever been before, and they promised each other always to be friends, to work and fight for each other as for themselves as long as they lived.
The girls also had their responsibilities, which made them rather more capable and sure of themselves than they might have been if they were not the children of colonists. After the flood went down it left things wet and unwholesome for some weeks, and a fever broke out, of which some of the people died. Mamurius’ mother, and Marcia’s two little brothers, and two girls in the family of Cossus died of it, and at one time hardly a family had more than one or two well persons. Marcia was watching over her mother, who was very ill, when Mamurius came to the door with a basket of herbs and gave her a handful. He said that he had asked Faustulus whether he did not know of some medicine for the fever. Faustulus told him that there were certain herbs in his hut which his wife used to prepare in a drink, and this drink helped the fever. Mamurius had brewed the drink and given it to his father, and taken some himself, [pg 165]and it had done them both good. The old shepherd stood in considerable awe of the colonists, who knew so many things that he did not, and he would never have thought of suggesting anything to them himself.
One night Muraena the metal worker came to the house of Colonus, and sat down with the head of the house under a fig tree by the door and talked with him. The two had been friends for many years, and now, he said, the time had come to make the friendship even closer by an alliance between the two houses. He had long observed the goodness and dutiful kindness of Colonus’s daughter Marcia, and it was his wish that now she was come to an age to be married, she might be his own daughter. He had reason to believe that his son would be glad to marry her. What did Colonus think about it?