Novel 1984 - The Walking Drum (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  Days later, under somber skies, I rode into the barren solitudes of the Arré. It was a brooding land, a dark land, an ancient land of haunted hills, mysterious fens, of dark morass. Here the Druids held their weird rites under the oak trees, of which a few remained mingled with beech, fir, and pine. Here they had cut the sacred mistletoe from the limbs with a golden sickle, catching it in a white robe as it fell.

  The Elez stream flowed from the dreaded bog called Yeun Elez, trickling away to become, in a farther land, a merry, friendly stream that gave no hint of its origin at the very mouth of the nether regions. Here was the Youdig, a seething, sucking hole where anything dropped therein is sucked down. Many believed it the mouth of Purgatory or something worse, where we Bretons had cast witches and other malefactors. A treacherous quagmire supposed by legend to be unfathomable.

  Here one might see the dreaded Ankou, the death spirit, female and a skeleton, that we Druids knew to be the survival of the Death-Goddess of the dolmen builders.

  Where the Elez flows from the quagmire it was a dark and sullen stream, its banks haunted by black dogs with eyes of fire who rushed upon travelers who chanced upon the region unawares. Here were the haunts of werewolves and vampires, all manner of unclean things.

  No tracks saw I, either of man or beast except a lone raven who dipped a black wing at me with a hoarse cry of warning as it flew by.

  A gloomy, cloud-shrouded land where the soil was thin over rocks, and clumps of dark woodland gleamed with the eyes of teursts, those black and fearsome things, or of gorics, evil creatures only a foot high who guard treasures in secret caves or ruined castles.

  At each stream crossing I rode wary of night-washers who wash the clothes of the dead in streams at night, and who drag unwary travelers into the water to help them wash. If the traveler refuses, or attempts to escape, they break his arms and leave him to drown. Evil things they are, with hollow eyes that stare from black and empty sockets into one’s very soul.

  As a child I had been brought to this place by my mother’s uncle, himself a Druid, a priest, diviner, and magician, said to be possessed of all human as well as supernatural wisdom. It was said he could bring storms or illness, and I, who had been bred in the tradition, was taught some of what he knew.

  Darkness came, lightning flashed weirdly in the sky, and I came at last to the Youdig. Getting down from my horse, I unleashed the body of Tournemine and carried my grisly burden to the stone only we Druids knew, the stone that marked the only path to the Youdig.

  Thunder rolled among the sullen hills, and rain whispered among the dark pines and over the empty moor. Step by step I carried his body along the narrow way, each step taken by number, each with care until directly before me lay the pit.

  It was flat and ugly water, occasionally bubbling, rank with corruption. This was the heavy lip of the nether world. Holding Tournemine’s body high above my head, I held it so until lightning flashed, then with all my strength I heaved it outward, and it fell, landing with a splash on the dark, ugly water.

  The arms flailed loosely as it fell; the black body struck the surface lit green by lightning. It lay there, the rain falling upon the wide-open eyes, and slowly the body sank, the face upturned and last to submerge, dark water flowing into the open mouth and eyes.

  As it disappeared, one pale hand remained above the mud and water, seeming to clutch one last time at the life it left behind and to all things of this earth.

  “There, Tournemine, destroyer of homes, murderer of women, evilest of evil creatures, there by my promise you sink into the Youdig, swallowed by the morass of evil.”

  After a long moment alone, I stood, a dark figure amid the darkness, then I turned and picked my way back. My horses, frightened by this place, welcomed me eagerly. Mounting, I rode away down the faint track to the north.

  Not until long after did I know that a son and a nephew of Tournemine had fled the castle during the fight, going east to the forest of La Hunaudaye, where deep in a trackless wood, haunted by wild boar and deer, they built another castle that may be seen there yet.

  Westward lay my homesite, and that night rain fell on its roofless floors, its fallen stones. The house where I had grown up. Before our time it had been a Roman villa, and who knew what else before that. In Brittany all things are timeless, and whatever lies before is only a page in what lies before that and before that. I, trained in the ancient lore, knew history before history, where no beginning is, and no end will be.

  We know there are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond. We of the Druids know the lore we have withheld and kept for ourselves alone, passed down father to son, from times beyond memory. We few hold this knowledge in trust for those who can grasp the awfulness and incompleteness of time.

  Along the high trail, among the barren hills, along the lonely moors I rode with my two horses. Lightning flashed, then ceased, and thunder died rolling away to mutter among the far-off hills. The rain ceased to fall, and I drew up and removed my helmet to let the last few drops fall upon my head.

  I was empty now; Tournemine was dead. He who knows his enemy is dead feels a loss as much as he who buries a friend, and the thought of Tournemine had long haunted my memory.

  Nothing lay behind me now but the shell of a ruined house and the grave of my mother. The moors where I had run and played and hunted as a boy, they lay behind me.

  My way was eastward. My father might yet live, and if so he must be found, whatever the circumstances, whatever the cost.

  Now I could go as a warrior goes, with a debt paid, the blood of my mother avenged.

  Eastward.

  First, the caravan, the fulfillment of my duty to Safia.

  And so I rode from the vile sink of the Youdig, nor did I look back.

  Chapter 29

  *

  THERE IS A saying that one should “Trumpet among the elephants, crow among the cocks, bleat among the goats.” For a man traveling in a strange land it is good advice.

  Far to the north was the caravan with my goods, and with Safia. It was many days distant, and days add to miles. The people were strange to me, and I to them, and in many languages the words for stranger and enemy are identical.

  My armor was battered, my clothes nondescript, but my horses were of the finest, although disguised somewhat by their winter coats. My sword was of the best, and in my pocket there was gold.

  Yet a man is often betrayed by his heart, and lout that I am, I am often taken in by those who plead, by those who suffer. It is a wise man who tends to his own affairs, but who is wise always? One is betrayed by his own memories of hardship.

  There was a night when I arrived at an inn. Stabling my horses, I went inside.

  A fire blazed on the hearth, the bare board tables were wiped clean, and a few men sat about, not talking, looking downcast and beaten.

  When I entered they glanced up, then shifted their eyes quickly, for such as these had no good to expect from a roving soldier. The poor devils had been robbed often enough.

  The host brought, at my order, a loaf, a hand of cheese, and a haunch of mutton, good fare for the time.

  “Wine,” I said, “a flagon of wine.” My eyes went past the innkeeper and it seemed the sitting men were lean in rib and flank, hollow in the cheek. They stared hungrily, then averted their eyes. “Join me,” I said, “there will be a glass for each.”

  They came, willingly enough, accepting the wine and glancing hungrily at my mutton, so I cut a slice for each.

  “It is little enough we find to eat or drink,” one fellow said, “a gruel of millet and a carrot or two. They take our sheep and cattle, and today they took our honey which we planned to take to the fair.”

  “We are tenants,” another said, “but you would not believe it to see how we are treated. The maire,
the agent who presides over the estates, he takes all, and the lord never comes to see how we fare.”

  “The honey,” the first man said, “was from bees we hived of an evening, and the bees gathered nectar from the heather. The maire had no claim upon it, but it was taken, and you may be sure the lord will never see it.”

  After they had gone and I still sat, enjoying the fire, the host came over, and I invited him to join me, which he did.

  My host was a proper man with a proper gift of tongue, and he talked freely when drinking another man’s wine, although never a drink did he offer to buy himself.

  “Poor fellows! It is little enough they have and few who come this way offer to share, as you have. You noticed Jacques, did you not? He put his slice of meat in his pocket, and bread, too, all the while making believe to chew so you would think him eating? He will take the bread and meat to his wife and children and swear to them he ate his while here.

  “Jacques it was, and Paul. They hived the bees and hid them, planning the yearlong to sell the honey at the fair to buy clothing for their youngsters, and then the maire took it from them. He’s a skinflint, that one, you will never see such a hunger for money as his.”

  The fire was warm, and the wine had a fine body. Our glasses were filled once more, and my mind began to work, thinking thoughts of which I should be ashamed, and I should be ashamed that I was not ashamed.

  The thought of the honey, the maire, and the poor defrauded peasants aroused my ire, but thoughts of honey brought thoughts of bees. Now bees were something we had upon the moors at home, and I understood them well.

  “The maire is a skinflint you say? A lover of money?”

  “Aye, he would cheat his own mother, and willingly, if he could have a coin by doing it.”

  “He must have a store-place at the cour. Does he keep what he has in the house with him, or a separate place?”

  “You think to steal it? You’d have no chance. The storehouse is in his own home, his bed hard by, and the table where he eats sits at the storehouse door. He has ears like a cat. You’d have no chance. You may be sure Jacques has thought of it, he’s that desperate.”

  “The cour now? Is it the large building by the stream?”

  It was, indeed. Mine is a conniving sort of mind, and the men who shared my meal had been honest, hardworking folk. By Allah, I thought—and then realized I must stop thinking of Allah, as this was the wrong land for it—I would lend them a hand.

  “Tell Jacques,” I said, “to move his hives into the willows across the stream, and move them tonight, under cover of darkness. If what I plan can be made to work, he shall have his honey back.”

  Leaving the host to ponder on the sense of that, I returned to my horses and rode along the road to the cour.

  At the door I pounded angrily. Suddenly it opened, revealing the maire, furious. Much of what he had stolen from the serfs he had been putting behind his belt, which thrust out before him.

  “Here, here! What is this? Go away from here!”

  “What? You would send away a traveler with a gold coin? I want but a meal and lodging, and I could not stomach that vile inn.” I took a bright new gold coin from my pocket. “Put me up, good sir, and this gold coin shall be yours.”

  He looked from my rough clothing to my fine horses and took the coin from my fingers. He trusted me not at all, but the gold insured his hospitality. “Come in, then,” he said.

  Lucky it was that I had appetite, for I ate a second meal and drank a better wine.

  “My tongue has a taste for sweet,” I said. “Do you have sweet grass? Or honey?”

  “I have honey, but it is hard to come by.”

  “But the gold coin? When did you have such a coin for a night’s lodging?”

  He opened the door behind him, and there was the storehouse, a fine long room with louvered windows. He went to one of five large jars, at least a hundred pounds of honey, and dipped a taste for me.

  “You are free with your coins,” he said, staring at me from his mean, pig eyes.

  Refilling my glass from his bottle, I shrugged. “It is nothing. If others knew what I know, all would have gold. Look you—” From my shirt I took a leathern wallet and shook several coins upon the table, all bright, new, and shining. “This I have, but it is time for more. Gold is nothing for we who know, and blessed be the Good Lord we are so few!”

  He stared at me as I swept the gold into my purse and returned it to my shirt. I gulped another glass of wine and stared wisely into the glass. “I have been serving in the wars in Andalusia, fighting the Moor. Ah, those Moors! They are the ones who understand gold!”

  My glass was empty, and I filled it again. “Bright, is it not? Bright, bright new gold!” I winked at him. “If I had a place, a place to work for a few days, you and I might share a pretty thing.”

  “Of what are you speaking?”

  “Why, the Moors, and what one taught me to keep my knife from his throat.

  “He was there among those bottles and tables, working at God knows what, when I surprised him. As I would with any other Moor I intended to have his heart out. Then he showed me a piece of gold, bright, new gold.”

  “Gold?”

  “Gold. What is now needed is a quiet place in which to work. This”—I touched the wallet in my shirt—“is all I have, and I shall need more when I come to Paris. I need a place”—I gestured—“a quiet place such as this, and we would share, fifty-fifty.”

  Oh, he took the bait! He gulped it down so quickly I had to think rapidly to keep ahead of him. There was a room where I could work. He would get the necessary equipment. “One thing, there are plants I need which must be gathered in the dark of the moon. If I make haste—”

  It was quite dark, yet I remembered the plants needed were growing beside the road. When one has such training as mine, one cultivates habits of attention. When riding I was ever aware of what herbs grew along the way, and many grow along the ditches of Europe that are important medicinally.

  The one in which I was now interested was sometimes called the corn rose. The season was late, but the seeds would be there, and I had seen a few wilted blossoms. When spring is late the flowering will be late, but wild poppy grows along the roads where it is convenient.

  When I returned, two glasses of wine had been poured, and the bottle remained on the table. Had there been time I would have made a syrup, but there was none. I moved toward the table, then I paused. Why bother? The maire was out and the storehouse near.

  Swiftly, I opened the door, and although the room was dark, I knew where the honey jars were. Quickly, I uncovered each of them and opened the louvered windows a bit. Returning to the main room, I gathered my sword and gear.

  The maire hustled back into the room, and from the expression on his features I knew he had been up to no good. “Where have you been?” I demanded. “Up to some deviltry, no doubt.”

  “No, no!” he protested. “Household business, nothing more.”

  He stared at me and the bundle I had brought back from the ditches. “You found what you wanted? May I see?”

  “You may not. I no longer trust you.”

  We argued, and I became angrier; finally I said, “I do not trust you or this house! Come with me to the inn. If after two days all goes well, we will begin to make gold; otherwise, I shall have nothing to do with you.”

  He protested, argued, and I remained adamant. Finally, still protesting, he went to the inn with me. As we entered, I glanced at the host, and he nodded, ever so slightly.

  I would be delaying my trip, but not for long. I must keep the old man from his house for two days, perhaps a bit less or a bit more.

  “You locked your house?”

  “Naturally! There are thieves about.” He gestured at the shabby men tolerated by the innkeeper. “Such as these.”

  “If they are here, they cannot be stealing.”

  “Give them a chance, and they will steal.”

  “The honey tasted very
good,” I said. “Do you keep bees?”

  “They do, and what is theirs is mine. It is part of what they owe.”

  “And you send it on to the lord of the estate?”

  He shot me a suspicious glance. “I do.”

  “You have taken their honey, but if they now get more, will you take that, too?”

  He chuckled. “It is impossible! If they can get more honey this season, they can keep it, and sell it at the fair if they wish.”

  The next day was dull, for the maire was a narrow, bigoted, unhealthy man who thought of little but squeezing the peasants and no doubt robbing his lord. Despite his restlessness I kept him at the inn or in the fields, always with the peasants in sight.

  “We must watch them,” I insisted. “They might steal something you could not steal in turn.”

  “What was that?” His sharp little eyes stared.

  “I said they might steal as much as they feel they earn,” I replied.

  They did not steal, for we observed them carefully, and I, who am a curious man, did some other watching. Things, I decided, were going well.

  At a table in the inn I said, “Today the peasants stole nothing. Do you agree? They did not leave the fields?”

  “They did not!” The maire’s face was smug with satisfaction.

  “Bear witness,” I said to my host, “the maire states the peasants stole nothing, that they did not leave the field.”

  The innkeeper was puzzled, but the maire was staring suspiciously. I, being a sometimes evil and conniving man, enjoyed it all very much.

  “The gold? When do we begin with the gold?”

  “Soon,” I said, “I had to be sure the peasants were busy and not watching us. What we do must be done in secret.”

  It was dark before the maire returned to his home on the second day, and I was well pleased with myself and the inimitable ways of nature.

  Jacques came wearily to the inn, accompanied by Paul. “Wine! A flagon for my friends, the sellers of honey!”

  “You jest. What honey have we to sell?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “look to your hives. You will find them filled with honey.”