The Lantern Bearers

The third and final installment of Rosemary Sutcliff's Roman Britain Trilogy is set in fifth-century Britain, during the collapse of Roman authority and the rising tide of Saxon invasion. The story follows Aquila, a young cavalry officer at the fortress of Rutupiae on the Saxon Shore, Britain's defended southeastern coastline, as he loses everything he loves and slowly rebuilds a life in service to the last hope of a crumbling civilization.

Aquila comes home on leave, reconnecting with his sister Flavia and their father Flavian, a blind former soldier. Flavian reveals his secret involvement in the cause of Ambrosius, a young prince of the old royal house hidden in the mountains of Arfon, in what is now Wales. A bird-catcher carries coded messages monthly to Arfon for those who hope to overthrow the usurper Vortigern and his Saxon allies.

Aquila's leave is cut short by a recall to Rutupiae, where he learns that Rome is withdrawing all remaining forces from Britain. Over agonizing days, Aquila realizes he belongs to Britain, not to Rome. On the final evening, he hides in the great lighthouse tower. After the fleet departs, he climbs to the beacon platform and kindles Rutupiae Light for one last night: a farewell and a defiance against the coming dark.

He walks home and confesses his desertion. Two evenings later, Saxon raiders attack. Flavian is killed, and Flavia is carried off by a fair-haired Saxon warrior. Aquila kills the Chieftain who slew his father but is knocked unconscious. Wiermund of the White Horse, the dead Chieftain's brother, orders Aquila bound to a tree as bait for wolves. The wolves do not come. At dawn, a young warrior named Thormod from a second raiding party claims Aquila for his grandfather Bruni because of the dolphin tattoo on Aquila's shoulder.

Aquila is taken across the sea to the Jute settlement of Ullasfjord in Juteland, in what is now Denmark, where he becomes a thrall, or enslaved servant, to old Bruni. A grudging respect develops between them when Aquila reads aloud from a plundered copy of Homer's Odyssey. One evening a trader brings news: Vortigern discovered the Roman party's plot because a bird-catcher carrying messages betrayed those involved. Aquila realizes his father's death was a targeted act of vengeance.

After famine strikes, the settlement migrates to Britain. Old Bruni dies on his feet, demanding his war gear one last time. Thormod hammers an iron thrall-ring, a slave collar, onto Aquila's neck and takes him along. At the camp of Hengest, the Saxon chieftain who holds Tanatus as Vortigern's key ally, Aquila finds Flavia married to the eldest son of Wiermund, with a small child. During a feast, she drugs the guards and provides Aquila with supplies and a file. He begs her to come, but she refuses: Her husband is her man now. She gives Aquila their father's emerald signet ring, and they part for the last time.

Exhausted on the mainland, Aquila finds the hermitage of Brother Ninnias, a monk who feeds him and files off the thrall-ring. Ninnias leads him to the bird-catcher's grave: The man escaped Saxon torturers, reached the hermitage raving of betrayal, and died nearly three years before. Robbed of vengeance, Aquila is left with nothing. Ninnias urges him to go to Ambrosius and reveals that he saw the last beacon fire at Rutupiae, the one Aquila kindled.

At Uroconium, Aquila meets Eugenus, a physician who serves Ambrosius. Eugenus tests him with the recognition password used by Ambrosius's secret network, and they travel into the mountains. At the hill fortress of Dynas Ffaraon, Aquila stumbles into a hut where a slight, dark young man traces a map of Britain on the floor, questions him, offers a sword, and reveals himself as Ambrosius, Prince of Britain. Aquila enters his service, finding in it a replacement for the love and hatred that have both been taken from him.

Vortigern's three sons, outraged by their father's marriage to Hengest's daughter Rowena and his vast land grants to the Saxons, defect to Ambrosius with much of the native British faction. At Ambrosius's order, Aquila marries Ness, the fierce younger daughter of a Celtic chieftain named Cradoc, to forge bonds between the Roman and Celtic parties. Ambrosius leads his combined forces against the Saxons and wins the first British victory at Durobrivae, where Aquila holds a bridge with nine champions while it is felled behind them.

During Aquila's absence at war, Ness bears a son whom he names Flavian after his father. Then Vortimer, the eldest of Vortigern's sons and linchpin of the Celtic alliance, is killed by a poisoned hawking glove almost certainly sent by Rowena. The Celtic party splinters and deserts. When Aquila tells Ness she is free to go with her people, she chooses to stay: "I belong to you now, I and the child." Her words echo Flavia's choice, and Aquila speaks his sister's name aloud for the first time in years.

Years of stalemate follow. Hengest's Treachery of the Long Knives, in which Saxon warriors murder over a hundred unarmed Celtic nobles at a peace council, extorts new land grants from the broken Vortigern. Aquila encounters Brother Ninnias among a column of refugees; Ninnias predicts they will meet a third time. Young Artos (Arthur), Ambrosius's bastard nephew, grows into a brilliant cavalry commander. Aquila struggles to connect with his son Flavian, who worships Artos with a devotion he never shows his father.

The crisis comes when Valarius, an old soldier who served as a hostage among the Saxons, staggers across the frontier with an arrow in his back, gasping news of an imminent invasion. In the great battle that follows, Artos's hidden cavalry shatters the Saxon shield-wall. In the press around Hengest's standard, Aquila glimpses a young dark-haired Saxon whose face is startlingly like Flavia's, then the battle sweeps them apart.

In the aftermath, Aquila seeks out Brother Ninnias, fulfilling the monk's prophecy of a third meeting. Walking through storm-wracked woods, they find a wounded young Saxon: Mull, Flavia's son, whose name means "half-breed." Aquila carries him to safety, guards him through the night, and when the boy wakes, tells him: "I loved your mother, my sister; that is all." He gives Mull money, a signed pass, and his father's ring to return as proof of safe arrival.

That winter, Ambrosius is crowned High King. The ring returns in a ball of honeywax: Mull is safe. Before the assembled leaders, Aquila confesses what he did, telling the story of Flavia publicly for the first time. Young Flavian pushes through the crowd to stand at his father's side. Artos declares: "I never had a sister; but if I had, I hope I'd be as true to her after twenty years."

Walking home, Eugenus compares their generation to the last beacon of Rutupiae: "We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind." Alone in the courtyard, Aquila feels a deep quietness. Ness has chosen him; Flavian has stood by him; through Mull and the dolphin, he has found Flavia again. He looks up at the old damson tree, and in the starlight, it appears to have burst into blossom along every bough.