Sword at Sunset

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  ‘No, let me. You will set it bleeding again.’ He took up a knife and cut through the rag, eased away the stiffened folds and looked at the gash.

  ‘It is not much,’ I said.

  ‘Clench your fist,’ he ordered, and when I had done so, he nodded. ‘It is not much. You are fortunate. A nail’s breadth farther that way, and it might have severed the thing that bids the thumb answer to your will.’ He bathed the gash and salved it, drawing the edges together, and lashed it. His hands were less plump than the rest of him, very sure of their work, strong and gentle at the same time, with a gentleness that had nothing soft in it but could be swiftly ruthless if the need arose. Also they were the hands of a fighter. And I thought for the first time that it was a pity that the healing art should lie altogether with the Church; better the old way when the healer had been part of the world, when army surgeons had marched with the Legions. Somehow I could not see these hands as belonging to one shut away into sanctuary, their healing shackled always to the dictates of one religion.

  He fastened off the bandage and I thanked him and turned away, and in a little we went out, those of us who were still on our feet, to join the rest of the Companions, who had unhelmed and loosened off their war gear, and were kneeling about the candlelit doorway of the wattle church – there would have been room for less than half of us within – for it was the hour of evening prayer. The Abbot spoke the Thanksgiving prayers. His stately words meant little to me, but I remember that there was a late blackbird singing in the orchard, and the wind came siffling up from the marshes, and I had my own Thanksgiving prayer within me, because there was one less settlement of the Sea Wolves in Britain. Afterward they brought out and held up before us their chief treasure; some bones from Saint Alban’s foot, I think it was. The light from the open doorway woke colored fires in the goldwork and enamel of the reliquary, as the Abbot raised it between his hands; and I heard the soft awed gasp of the village folk, who lived, as it were, in the shadow of its sanctity.

  Then mercifully there was food at last. We made camp in the orchard, and ate there, for, like the church, the hall would not have held half of us, let alone the huddled refugees of the countryside. The brown-clad Brothers served and ate with us; and the Abbot served me with his own hands.

  We had a fire, well clear of the apple trees, and by the flicker of it I saw the young novice watching me, more than once. And late that evening, as I crossed the monastery garth toward the bothy where our sorest wounded had been housed, I met him coming from there, swinging a lantern in his hand and walking with that faint drag of the left foot that I had noticed before. ‘How is it with Gault and the others?’ I asked as we came together, and jerked my chin in the direction of the bothy.

  ‘I think that if they do not take the wound fever, they will do well enough. How is it with that arm, my Lord Artos?’

  ‘Well enough, also. You’re a good surgeon.’

  ‘It is my hope that I shall be, one day.’

  I would have gone on, but he lingered as though there was something he wanted urgently to say; and I found myself lingering also. Besides, he had been catching at my interest all evening. ‘Is that why you entered the religious life?’ I asked after a moment.

  ‘There is nowhere that one can learn or follow the healer’s craft outside the Church, in these days,’ he said; and then, speaking as though the words stuck a little in his throat, ‘That is a good enough reason for my choice of life, but lest it should fail me, I’ve another.’ He thrust forward his bare left foot from the thick folds of his habit, and glancing down at the sudden movement, I saw that it was turned inward, wasted and drawn up like the cramped claw of a bird, and the reason for his slight lameness became clear. ‘I am a younger son. I possess nothing of my own save a certain skill with wound salves and black draughts; I had the normal weapon training that all boys have, but as my father was at pains to make clear to me, I’d not be likely to find a lord overeager to take a fighting man as slow-footed as I am into his hall.’

  ‘I wonder if he was right,’ I said.

  ‘My Lord Artos is kind. I have wondered the same thing – now and then. But I expect he was.’

  ‘I am willing to believe, at all events, that you will make a better surgeon than you would have made a soldier,’ I said. ‘Why do you make this defense, as though I had accused you of something?’

  His eyes were bright and wretched in the lantern light, and he laughed a little drearily. ‘I don’t know ... I suppose because it is a time for taking the sword, and I would not have you think—’ He caught at the words as though to have them unspoken again. ‘No, that is presumption; it sounds as though I were fool enough to think that you – that you—’

  ‘Might waste my time thinking of you at all,’ I said, rescuing him from the stammer. ‘My way is the sword and yours is prayer, and both are good. It should not matter to you what I think of you.’

  ‘It will always matter to men, what you think of them,’ he said; and then on a lighter note, ‘Nevertheless, it is good to follow the healer’s craft.’

  ‘It is a craft not without its uses when men take to the sword, Brother ... What name do they call you by?’

  ‘Gwalchmai.’

  Gwalchmai, the Hawk of May; it was a piteously ill-fitting name, for he was built more like a partridge than a hawk.

  He hitched up the lantern and began to swing it. ‘It’s comic really, isn’t it? My Lord Artos, they have made the guest place ready for you – but they will have told you that.’

  ‘They told me. But I had liefer sleep with my men in the orchard. God’s night to you, Brother Gwalchmai.’ And we went our separate ways, I to see for myself how Gault and the other three were doing, and he, swinging his lantern in blurred gouts of light before him, on across the garth to the place where the novices slept.

  Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept a good sleep under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal’s flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound’s flank.

  Next morning ‘the bloom began to wear off the bilberries,’ as they say; and it was Brother Lucian the Infirmarer, in all innocence of heart, who first showed me that it was so. I had been down to the low pastures to look at the monastery’s horses – particularly those who were part broken ready for the autumn markets. There were four or five of them big-boned enough to be of some use to us, which might serve to fill up our losses; and I was considering in my mind the price to offer for them. I might be able to get the price out of Guidarius – after all, we were fighting his battles – or failing that, there was something in the war kist, for a few of us had lands of our own; we had sold off the poorer yearlings from the breeding runs, and the Saxon weapons and goldsmiths’ work that we took from time to time fetched a good price. It mostly went on horses, but not when I could get them in any other way, for I had always to keep something in reserve against the days when gold might be the only way there was.

  My mind was so full of horses that I all but walked through the old man, who had turned aside very kindly on seeing me, to tell me that I need have no fear for the wounded, for they would be well cared for, after we were gone.

  I stared at him, scarcely understanding, for the moment, what he meant. ‘I am very sure of it; but, Brother Lucian, we are not yet saddling up.’

  ‘Na na,’ he said, smiling. ‘The day is yet very young.’

  ‘The day on which we ride out from here has not yet dawned, Brother Lucian,’ I said bluntly, and saw the startled look in his milky old eyes.

  ‘But surely – surely, my Lord Artos, you will wish to be away back to Lindum now that the work of your swords in this part of the Fens is done?’

  They were not trying to drive us out, I realized that; it was simply that it had never occurred to these fools in their enclosed world that men and horses who have been at hard stress for many days together must be rested when the chance offers. ‘My men need full three days’ rest, and so do my horse
s; today and tomorrow and the day after, we remain within your gates; and on the day after that, we ride for Lindum.’

  ‘But – but—’ He began to bleat like an elderly she-goat.

  ‘But what, Brother Lucian?’

  ‘The stores – the grain – always there is shortage in the springtime. We had our own poor folk to feed, these past few days—’

  ‘But no longer,’ I said; for the country folk had for the most part scattered back to their own lives, with their dogs and their cattle, their ducks and their pigs, now that the danger was passed over.

  ‘They ate while they were here,’ he rallied and pointed out, reasonably enough. I could see the thoughts scurrying among mouths and grain baskets inside his head. ‘There are close on four hundred of you, with the grooms and drivers; even should you eat sparingly as we do ourselves, which – forgive me, my Lord Artos – is not to be expected of fighting men – even should you eat as sparingly as we do ourselves, you will swallow up more than a month’s supplies, and your horses will graze bare the pasture that was for ours and our milch cows.’

  I broke in on him. ‘Brother Lucian, will you go now to the Abbot and ask him to receive me.’

  ‘The Holy Father is at prayer.’

  ‘I can wait while the prayer is done, but no longer. Go now and tell him that the Count of Britain would speak with him.’

  The Abbot received me within an hour, seated in his cross-legged chair in the hall where last night our wounds had been dressed, the more senior of the Brothers ranged about him. His head might have been that of a king on a golden coin. He rose to greet me, courteously enough, and then seated himself again, his blue-veined hands on the carved arms of the great chair. ‘Brother Lucian brings me word that you wish to speak with me.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It seems that all is not clear between us as to when I and my Companions leave this place.’

  He bent his head. ‘So Brother Lucian tells me.’

  ‘And so that the matter may be settled, and trouble neither you nor us with uncertainties hereafter, I come to ask your hospitality for today, tomorrow and the morrow after. The third morning from now, when my men and horses are rested, we leave for Lindum.’

  ‘That also, Brother Lucian has told me; and that he made clear to you our position, our shortage of stores after the winter. We are not used to feeding four hundred men and as many beasts over and above our own poor folk that it is our duty to care for.’

  ‘There is good pasture hereabouts on the Fen fringes. My horses will not graze it out in three days. Most of us are hunters and we can find our own meat. And as to the grain and stores—’ I leaned over him; I had not begun to be angry yet, because I could not believe that he grasped the true situation, and I was trying to make him understand. ‘Does it not seem to you, Holy Father, that the men who kept the roofs on the barns have earned the right to some of the grain in them? Many of us are wounded, all of us are spent. We must have three days’ rest.’

  ‘But if the grain is not there?’ he said, still kindly. ‘It is not there, my son. If we feed you for the three days that you demand, we shall not have enough left to keep us even in perpetual fast, until the harvest comes again.’

  ‘There is still grain to be bought in the Lindum corn market.’

  ‘And with what shall we buy this corn? We grow our own food; we are not a rich community.’

  I was angry now, and I said, ‘Not so poor, either, that you have nothing to trade. Saint Alban’s foot lies in a goodly casket, even the bones themselves would fetch a good price.’

  He jerked upright as though at the prick of a dagger point, and his face purpled under his eyes, while the watching monks gasped and crossed themselves and cried ‘Sacrilege!’ and swayed like a barley field in a flurry of wind.

  ‘Sacrilege indeed!’ the Abbot said in a grating voice. ‘Sacrilege worthy of the Saxon king, my Lord Artos, Count of Britain!’

  ‘Maybe. But to me, my men are a greater matter than a few gray bones in a golden casket!’

  He made no answer; indeed I think he was beyond speech for the moment; and I went on relentlessly. I had meant to ask for the horses at a fair price, ill though we could afford it. But now I had decided otherwise. ‘Holy Father, do you remember a certain saying of the Christos, that the laborer is worthy of his hire? Two days ago, I and my Companions saved this place from the fire and the Saxon sword, and for that, our hire is three full days’ keep, and the four best horses in your pastures.’

  He found his voice then, and cried out on me for a despoiler of the Church, and that I should leave such ways to the Sea Wolves.

  ‘Listen, Old Father,’ I said. ‘It might well have served me better to wait until the Sea Wolves had overrun this place, and taken them in the Fens farther westward, farther from their ships. I might have lost fewer men and fewer horses had I done that. And why should I do as I have done, and then ride away, asking for nothing in return?’

  He said, ‘For the love of God.’

  It was my turn to be silent. And a sudden quiet came over the hall, so that I heard the drone of the wild bees that nested in the thatch. I had thought him grasping, without either justice or charity in his heart, willing to take the lives of a score of my men and the sweat and blood of the rest of us, and give nothing in return; but I saw now that it was simply that for him the love of God had a different meaning to the meaning that it held for me. And my anger died away. I said, ‘I also have loved God in my way, but there are more ways than one. I have never seen the flame on the altar nor heard the voice in the sanctuary; I love my men who follow me, and the thing that we are prepared to die for. For me, that is the way.’

  His face gentled a little, as though at the passing of his own anger, and suddenly he looked old and tired. But I did not relent; neither of us relented. After a few moments, he said coldly and wearily, ‘We are not strong enough to persuade you to leave us until you choose to go; and if we were as many and as strong as you, God forbid that, remembering your blood shed for us, we should deny you hospitality when you demand it. Stay then, and take the four horses for your guerdon. We shall pray for you, and it may be that our prayers and our hunger before next harvest will soften your will toward another community at another time such as this.’

  He sat back in his chair, signifying with one old thick-veined hand that the thing was over.

  We stayed out our three days, encamped in the monks’ orchard while the horses grazed under escort in the marsh pastures, and Caradawg, our armorer, set up his field forge and was busy with his mate, dealing with sprang rivets, beating out the dints in shield boss and war cap, and replacing the damaged links in mail shirts. We had a fair number of mail shirts by now, though they were slow-gathering, since only the great men of the Saxons possessed such war gear and so it was only when a chief was killed or taken that we were able to add to our store. (And the winning of a war shirt had become a matter for eager rivalry among the Companions, in consequence, who wore them as a hunter cuts a notch in his spear.) The rest of us took our turns of horse guard, and sprawled about the fires mending here a broken sandal strap and there the gash in a leather tunic, and ceaselessly trapped and hunted for the pot. But there was no longer friendship between us and the Brothers.

  My lads did not take it kindly when I told them what had passed; Cei, I remember, proposed that we should fire the place as a sign of our displeasure, and some of the wilder ones were with him. And when I cursed him and them into a kind of sense, he consoled himself by eating himself almost to bursting point at every meal, in order to make as big a hole in the grain store as might be. The Brothers went about their own life, whether at prayer or at work on the farm, so far as possible as though we were not there, save for Brother Lucian and the boy Gwalchmai, who came and went in their care of the wounded as before. I knew that, even as the old Infirmarer had assured me before the trouble started, I need have no fear for the wounded after we were gone. They were good men, these brown-robed Brothers, though I longed
to shake them until their back teeth rattled in their shaven heads. When, on the third morning, I ordered Prosper my trumpeter to sound for breaking camp, and at last the pack beasts were loaded and all things ready, they came out with the Abbot to the place before the gateway, to see the last of us, without anger. The Abbot even gave me the blessing for a departing guest. But it was done for duty’s sake, and had no warmth in it.

  The horses, fresh after their days of rest, were trampling and tossing their heads. One of the pack mules tried to bite his neighbor’s crest and started a squealing fight. I turned to mount Arian, and as I did so, met the gaze of Gwalchmai the novice fixed upon me, where he stood on the outer fringe of the Brothers. I have never seen any face so wide open, so completely without defenses, as Gwalchmai’s that moment. The wind from the marsh was ruffing the fair hair on his forehead; he licked his lower lip, and half smiled, and then looked away.

  ‘Gwalchmai,’ I said, with the purpose scarce formed in my mind.

  His gaze whipped back to mine. ‘My Lord Artos?’

  ‘Can you ride?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come then, we can do with a surgeon.’

  I would have left him to follow with our wounded when they came back to us, but Gault and the rest would want for nothing in Brother Lucian’s care, and I knew that if I did not take the boy now, I should not get him.

  ‘Stop! Are you not content with our four best horses, that you must take from among our Brothers also?’ the Abbot cried; and he made a strange gesture, spreading his arms like wings in their wide-falling sleeves, as though to protect the huddled Brotherhood behind him.

  ‘The boy is but a novice, and still free to choose for himself! Choose, Gwalchmai.’

  He took his gaze slowly from mine, and turned it to the Abbot. ‘Holy Father, I should make but a poor monk, with my heart elsewhere,’ he said, and came out from among the Brothers to stand at my stirrup. ‘I am your man, my Lord Artos, for all that there is in me.’ And he touched the hilt of my sword as one taking an oath.