The green gloom almost made them miss the raven that sat on a low branch, not far from the sunlit fields. Marcus froze as he saw it first and pressed a hand against Gaius’ chest.
‘Look at the size of it!’ he whispered, unwrapping his bird net.
They crouched down and crept forward, watched with interest by the bird. Even for a raven it was large and it spread heavy black wings as they approached, before almost hopping to the next tree with one lazy flap.
‘You circle around,’ Marcus whispered, his voice excited. He backed this up with circling motions of his fingers and Gaius grinned at him, slipping into the undergrowth to one side. He crept around in a large circle, trying to keep the tree in sight while checking the path for dry twigs or rustling leaves.
When Gaius emerged on the far side, he saw the raven had changed tree again, this time to a long trunk that had fallen years before. The gentle slope of the trunk was easy to climb and Marcus had already begun to inch up it towards the bird, at the same time trying to keep the net free for throwing.
Gaius padded closer to the base of the tree. ‘Why doesn’t it fly away?’ he thought, looking up at the raven. It cocked its large head to one side and opened its wings again. Both boys froze until the bird seemed to relax, then Marcus levered himself upwards again, legs dangling on each side of the thick trunk.
Marcus was only feet from the bird when he thought it would fly off again. It hopped about on the trunk and branches, seemingly unafraid. He unfolded the net, a web of rough twine usually used for holding onions in the estate kitchens. In Marcus’ hands, it had instantly become the fearsome instrument of a bird-catcher.
Holding his breath, he threw it and the raven took off with a scream of indignation. It flapped its wings once again and landed in the slender branches of a young sapling near Gaius, who ran at it without thinking.
As Marcus scrambled down, Gaius shoved at the sapling and felt the whole thing give with a sudden crack, pinning the bird in the leaves and branches on the ground. With Gaius pressing it all down, Marcus was able to reach in and hold the heavy bird, gripped tightly in his two hands. He raised it triumphantly and then hung on desperately as the raven struggled to escape.
‘Help me! He’s strong,’ Marcus shouted and Gaius added his own hands to the struggling bundle. Suddenly an agonising pain shot through him. The beak was long and curved like a spear of black wood. It jabbed at his hand, catching and gripping the piece of soft flesh between thumb and first finger.
Gaius yelped. ‘Get it off. It’s got my hand, Marcus.’ The pain was excruciating and they panicked together, with Marcus fighting to hold his grip while Gaius tried to lever the vicious beak off his skin.
‘I can’t get it off, Marcus.’
‘You’ll have to pull it,’ Marcus replied grimly, his face red with the effort of holding the enraged bird.
‘I can’t, it’s like a knife. Let it go.’
‘I’m not letting it go. This raven is ours. We caught it in the wild, like hunters.’
Gaius groaned with pain.
‘It caught us, more like.’ His fingers waved in agony and the raven let go without warning, trying to snap at one of them. Gaius gasped in relief and backed off hurriedly, holding his hands against his groin and doubling over.
‘He’s a fighter, anyway,’ Marcus said with a grin, shifting his grip so the searching head couldn’t find his own flesh. ‘We’ll take him home and train him. Ravens are intelligent, I’ve heard. He’ll learn tricks and come with us when we go to the Campus Martius.’
‘He needs a name. Something war-like,’ Gaius replied, in between sucking his torn skin.
‘What’s the name of that god who goes round as a raven or carries one?’
‘I don’t know, one of the Greek ones, I think. Zeus?’
‘That’s an owl, I think. Someone has an owl.’
‘I don’t remember one with a raven, but Zeus is a good name for him.’
They smiled at each other and the raven went quiet, looking around him with apparent calmness.
‘Zeus it is then.’
They walked back over the fields to the estate with the bird held firmly in Marcus’ grasp.
‘We’ll have to find somewhere to hide him,’ he said. ‘Your mother doesn’t like us catching animals. You remember when she found out about the fox?’
Gaius winced, looking at the ground. ‘There’s an empty chicken coop next to the stables. We could put him in there. What do ravens eat?’
‘Meat, I think. They scavenge battlefields, unless that’s crows. We can get a few scraps from the kitchens and see what he takes, anyway. That won’t be a problem.’
‘We’ll have to tie twine to his legs for the training, otherwise he’ll fly off,’ Gaius said, thoughtfully.
Tubruk was talking to three carpenters who were to repair part of the estate roof. He spotted the boys as they walked into the estate yard and motioned them over to him. They looked at each other, wondering if they could run, but Tubruk wouldn’t let them get more than a few paces, for all his apparent inattention as he had turned back to the workers.
‘I’m not giving Zeus up,’ Marcus whispered harshly.
Gaius could only nod as they approached the group of men.
‘I’ll come along in a few minutes,’ Tubruk instructed as the men walked to their tasks. ‘Take the tiles off the section until I get there.’
He turned to the boys. ‘What’s this? A raven. Must be a sick one if you caught it.’
‘We trapped him in the woods. Followed him and brought him down,’ Marcus said, his voice defiant.
Tubruk smiled as if he understood and reached out to stroke the bird’s long beak. Its energy seemed to have gone and it panted almost like a dog, revealing a slender tongue between the hard blades.
‘Poor thing,’ Tubruk muttered. ‘Looks terrified. What are you going to do with him?’
‘His name’s Zeus. We’re going to train him as a pet, like a hawk.’
Tubruk shook his head once, slowly. ‘You can’t train a wild bird, boys. A hawk is raised from a chick by an expert and even they stay wild. The best trainer can lose one every now and then if it flies too far from him. Zeus is fully grown. If you keep him, he’ll die.’
‘We can use one of the old chicken coops,’ Gaius insisted. ‘There’s nothing in there now. We’ll feed him and fly him on a string.’
Tubruk snorted. ‘Do you know what a wild bird does if you keep him locked up? He can’t stand walls around him. Especially a tiny space like one of the chicken coops. It will break his spirit and, day by day, he will pull his own feathers out in misery. He won’t eat, he’ll just hurt himself until he dies. Zeus here will choose death over captivity. The kindest thing you can do for him is to let him go. I don’t think you could have caught him unless he was sick, so he might be dying anyway, but at least let him spend his last days in the woods and the air, where he belongs.’
‘But …’ Marcus fell silent, looking at the raven.
‘Come on,’ Tubruk said. ‘Let’s go out into the fields and watch him fly.’
Glumly, the boys looked at each other and followed him back out of the gates. Together, they stood gazing down the hill.
‘Set him free, boy,’ Tubruk said and something in his voice made them both look