It was cool, early morning, and the fire had died to ashes. I shuffled over to benefit by what heat was left and stared at the recumbent figures distastefully. They might not look as savage as they had by firelight, but they looked a great deal fouler, especially the women. One, a hag at less than thirty, lay on her back not far from me, with a dirty breast swelling shapelessly from her torn bodice. A man from among a group of six rolled over and commenced copulating with the woman next to him. The little boy in the crook of her arm cursed the man for waking him and was smacked into silence.
I was appreciative of the causes that had contributed, but the fact of what they had become could draw no more warmth of pity than could a long-dead fish. They had become too alien and would so remain until law, if it ever did, should come again to restore a little of the pride in human dignity without which man is not. I spat and waited for Piers to wake.
Chapter
Eleven
WITH them it was gorge or go hungry. There was no ale left, and Piers, who had seen to it that there was no ale left, was much aggrieved. He kicked the cask, hurt his toe, then took vengeance for it by booting a little girl who had the misfortune to be passing. She did no harm to his foot and screamed satisfyingly.
After a grumpy breakfast he decided to move south in hopes of intercepting men straggling back toward the Loire with what possessions they had been able to keep out of reach of the Danes. I walked with him at the head of the mob, and as we reached the road I noted with relief that the girl’s tracks showed she had gone on.
That was the only thing I had to be glad of for three days more. I might, indeed, have escaped any one of the nights, but I wasn’t going to leave without my sword, and Piers was too sober to make its retrieving possible. It was not only that it would have been stupid to go anywhere alone without a weapon in the country, but I valued that particular sword. It was an excellent blade whose weight and balance exactly suited me, and I strongly begrudged its use to a mean, shiftless braggart.
He tried me to my limits of control by giving me what passes for friendship with such a man. That is to say he talked about himself continuously, and it was my business to chime in with applause at appropriate intervals. Volubility unalleviated by a sound worldly outlook, scholarship, or humor is a sin for which I have no charity. I don’t mind a man being a fool if he has but the grace not to rub it in. My chagrin was aggravated, moreover, by the fact that I could neither avoid his company nor voice any of the cutting remarks that crowded into my mind.
The other men were inclined to be sullen because I basked in the great man’s favor, and the women were inclined to be vulgarly arch for the same reason. The first I didn’t mind because I could pay no attention, but an aggressive wanton is harder to snub than a month-old puppy. Though not pure, I’m particular, and there was certainly no woman in that blowzy lot for whom I would have risked a quarrel. Two fellows did slash at each other to the delight of the young slut who had caused the contention. They left the loser unburied by the side of the road.
We never went more than a few miles in a day, for when nothing happened everybody got tired of walking. Then, too, they were living largely on game, and hunting took a great deal of time.
It wasn’t till the third day that they netted their first windfall. To my intense satisfaction as well as theirs, a group of their foragers had run across a wain loaded with wine casks. It wasn’t very good wine, but I was confident that Piers would oblige me by getting drunk on it. He started pouring it into himself at a great rate, and all but the youngest children followed his example. Drunkenness was attained all the more speedily for that they forgot all about supper, which had been in preparation when the wine arrived. I rescued a part of one joint of venison, but the rest of it was allowed to burn up.
In an hour the camp was a scene of rampant sordidness. No one sought privacy to urinate, vomit or fornicate, and there was much activity along all three lines. Men, women, and children in varying stages of inebriety and sickness fought and cursed according to their respective abilities. Of course, there was also considerable merriment in the form of songs, good-natured insults, and obscene practical jokes.
I kept out of trouble by playing my harp and staying close to Piers. Music has more power over the drunken than over the sober, and by playing gay tunes I was able to keep him in a good humor most of the time. As a result he was greatly pleased with me and shooed away any man or woman who showed an inclination to interrupt or otherwise annoy me. The drawback to the arrangement was that he kept filling my cup, and I did not, for once in my life, want to drink very much. Ultimately my only defense against his hospitality was feigning tipsiness on an amount I’d scorn to have affect me.
“Drink up!” Piers yelled, though I wasn’t two feet from him.
“Had enough,” I said thickly and yawned.
“Aw, you ain’t had enough to get a baby lit.”
“Haven’t had enough for you,” I said ponderously, “but I’ve had enough for me. I wish I could drink as much as you can, but I can’t.” I shook my head as if in wonder. “I never saw anybody who can drink as much as you can.”
He was delighted at this tribute to his prowess and immediately became sympathetic toward my frailty. “Everybody can’t expect to drink like I can.” He hiccoughed kindly. “Why don’t you go sleep it off?”
I rose falteringly. “Guess I will. Don’t see how you do it.” He laughed, and I made my uneven way to the edge of the firelight. Being on the opposite of the fire from the wine cask, the spot I had chosen was comparatively free from traffic. I sat down awkwardly, then sprawled to watch and wait.
It was some hours before Piers gave up, and I began to fear that he would drink the night out. He was, in truth, nearly as capacious a drinker as he thought he was, and he kept filling his cup as soon as it was emptied, which never took him long. Even in sottishness magnitude is awe-inspiring, and I half admired him as cup after cup found him on his feet, his zest apparently undiminished.
Eventually the only thing that could have helped me came to pass. All the rest had given in to the wine, but Piers and two fellows still worked at it, not certain of thought, speech or movement but undaunted. The smoke from the dying fire prevented a clear view of the cask itself, but I saw one of them walk toward it, then heard him swear plaintively.
“What do you know? The goddam thing’s empty!” Considering the enormous amounts that had been drunk, plus the quantities that had been wasted through tipsy clumsiness, I was not surprised. Piers, however, was outraged. “It can’t be!” he declared.
“Well,” the other presented his grounds for belief, “you turn the spigot, and nothing comes.”
“Maybe you don’t know how to turn a spigot right,” the third man said hopefully.
“Hell! I guess I can turn a goddam spigot as well as the next man. It’s empty, I tell you! Shall we start on another?”
I held my breath, but Piers saw an insurmountable objection. “It’d be too much work getting it off the wain. Besides, I’m getting kind of sleepy.”
“Yeah, I’m about ready to call it a night, too,” one of the_ others confessed.
Piers lay down about thirty feet away from me, and I gave him a half hour or so to find the depths of sleep. The wine’s victory was all the more complete for being belated, and I saw as I stood over him that nothing short of violence could rouse him. I looked around. Nobody was paying any attention to me, though one man nearby opened his eyes. The sight of me seemed more than he could bear, for he closed them again and rolled over.
In another minute I had unbuckled my sword from around Pier’s waist. It surely felt good to have a weapon, particularly that one, in my hand again after so many defenseless hours. In a great rush of relief I realized I was free of those graceless churls, free of Piers and his inextinguishable boasting, and free, best of all, to go my own way, I felt so good about it that I almost let Piers off, but just in time I remembered the little girl he had kicked. Drawing back my foot, I ga
ve him all I had. I didn’t hear any ribs crack, but he’d be sure to find them sore the next morning. At the moment, however, he only realized that something had waked him up.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, raising up on one elbow.
“Nothing,” I responded cheerfully.
“That’s good,” he said and went to sleep again. Humming to myself, I picked my way through the woods til I came to the road. The southern route was still closed to me, and by Danes perhaps as well as Chilbert, so I shrugged and stepped out north with humorous fatalism. I had become used to the knowledge that such things as where I myself wanted to go or what I wanted to do were now factors of negligible importance in my life. I didn’t like my predicament, but it hadn’t begun to pinch me yet, so there was no use in getting depressed about it.
I traveled briskly, thus keeping warm as well as putting distance between myself and Piers. I had little fear that he would bother to pursue me, as far as that was concerned, but there was no sense in making it easy for him if he should happen to. Two wolves, needlessly suspecting competition, looked up from the dead outlaw they’d been sharing and snarled at me as I passed; but otherwise nothing happened for several hours.
When the sun was high enough to give genuine warmth I sat down by a stream and finished the joint of venison, the remnant of which I’d taken the precaution of putting in my scrip. From that point on, I reflected as I tossed the bone away, I’d be living off the country. My immediate problem, though, was sleep, not food, so I followed the brook into the woods, looking for a likely place to rest. Not fifty feet in, but yet out of sight of the road, was a little open patch with the sun full on it, and I stripped happily.
“You should have stayed on Piers,” I told my fleas. “He would never have done this to you.” I dunked my greasy garments, scrubbed them with clay, rubbed them on a flat rock, rinsed them, wrung them, and spread them to dry. The water felt marvelous when I got around to immersing myself, and the clay took the grime from me. It was wonderful to feel the cleanness as I lay down, sunwarmed. I slept soon.
It was fine to wake as I did a couple of hours later, thoroughly refreshed and with the knowledge that for the moment, at least, everything was as it should be. I was in the shade by then, but the little breeze that ran over me from time to time was just the right temperature. The stream was casually musical and quiet about it, the forest was sultrily aromatic, and the trees individually were high-reaching and clean-cut. I was suicidally imbecilic thus to signal my presence in that pot of factions, but I started to sing.
After finishing the first song it struck me that I was in excellent voice, and others were rendered as they came to me. Finally I thought of a poem I’d written when I was quite a youngster, and out of pure, good spirits I boomed it forth at the top of my voice.
“I’m older than God, but gay and frisky.
I’ll never die,
Which may seem odd Till I tell you why:
I drained off my blood and put in whisky.
Yes, by damn!
Dram by dram
And likewise bottle by bottle,
I poured it in To fill my skin
Through an ever-ready throttle.”
It had been a long time, I reflected wistfully, since I’d had any whisky. It is strange that only the Irish and the Scotch have the sense to make that excellent drink.
“I had a young wife, both fair and frisky:
But what the hell!
A wedded life,
As you know right well,
Can play the devil with drinking whisky.
I was strong:
Wrong is wrong,
And surely duty is duty.
I ditched the hen,
For I scorn men
Who’ll scamp ideals for a beauty.
Death called for me. He was feeling frisky.
Sure of his kill;
But wait and see—
He guzzled his fill
And a whole lot more, of good, strong whisky.
Fool to think,
Drink for drink,
That he could better his better!
I watched him fold And, passed out cold,
Crouch at my feet like a setter.
Oh, what a head! Death didn’t feel frisky
When he came to.
‘Can’t I be dead,
Not feel like I do?’
He groaned—”
If I hadn’t been bellowing I would have had warning earlier. As it was they were almost on me before I heard the horses.
Having time for nothing else, I dove for my sword, and that was the nearest thing to a garment I had when the woman rode into the clearing. The dozen or so men behind her could have ridden me down if they felt like it; therefore I didn’t try to run. Instead I put my back against a tree and looked them over for enemies.
It was typical of the locale that I found one forthwith. The first man to range himself beside the woman was the fellow who had chased me off my road and into Conan’s life. A second later he recognized me.
“That’s a spy of Chilbert’s, Ann!” he told her. Then he looked at me, and I couldn’t imagine why I’d once thought he had a merry, likable face. “Will you hang peaceably or are you going to fight?” he inquired.
I had no answer for him in my despair. If they hanged me, naturally I was going to see to it that they hanged a corpse. But as I was considering rushing them to get it over with, the woman amazed me by interceding. “Wait a minute, Jean,” she said, and I saw to my incredulous relief, that she was in charge. I’d been giving all my attention to the men previously, but now I wanted to know something about her. She was as blonde as myself, a neatly but strongly built, sweet-faced woman who knew her own mind.
“Why don’t you put on your clothes?” she suggested.
“Are your dogs called off?”
“My men,” she corrected me. “For that long anyhow.”
My ragged garments weren’t quite dry, but I was glad to get into them. Clothes, even though they’re of no real use in a fight, make a man feel more protected.
She gazed at me searchingly when I had finished and was facing her again. “You were singing a song,” she reminded me.
Her unexpected remark gave me hope that we could conduct negotiations on the friendly basis I earnestly desired. “That’s right. Did you like it?” I asked, brightening.
“No,” she said.
“Oh well,” I shrugged, “it’s not a woman’s song.” It seemed to me that the conversation had reached a dead end, but she opened the way.
“My husband’s very fond of it.”
“Your husband seems to have good taste in all things.” Nevertheless, I was wildly searching for an explanation. That song, appropriate to its subject, had been written in Gaelic.
My puzzlement, I could now see, was giving her a great deal of amusement. “My husband can, fortunately, only recall snatches of it,” she teased me further, “but he sings it all the time. He says if was made by his best friend.”
Dumb with bewilderment, I was convinced that I was in reality dreaming. The other men couldn’t make any sense out of her words either and stirred restlessly. Not very hopeful that there was a rational explanation for the woman’s improbable statements, I began trying to remember on what occasions and with whom in France I could possibly have sung that song.
Promptly and stunningly it was clear that there could be but one solution to the problem. The song was the one I had been mumbling over and over during that last hour or however long it was, of the stand at the vault.
She saw I had the key and smiled. “You’re the man he was talking of,” she told me rather than asked.
“Why must I be?” I countered. “Once the song is made anybody can sing it. “
“Yes,” she conceded gaily, “but I don’t believe, as far as that particular is concerned, that anybody but the maker and my husband, who happens to like him, would bother.”
I laughed, as I could well afford to do, seeing
that enemies had turned out to be allies. She laughed back, and from that moment we were friends. Her companions were still mystified, naturally, and the man called Jean spoke for them. “What’s so funny about a song nobody can understand?”
“Oh, but I can understand it,” she contradicted him. “Conan studied in Ireland, and he told me what it means. Jean, this man you were going to hang if he’d be nice about it is Finnian who was with Conan in the fight at the Old Farms.”
I had been correct in my original estimate. Jean’s face could be very jolly indeed. He was off his horse in an instant, offering apologies and pledges of friendship, and all the others followed his example. Conan, it was understandably clear,’ was well liked by his men.
Being a little shaky from reaction, I didn’t have much to say in return, but I grinned amiably. After my experiences of the past few days it was good to be with people I could respect again.
“It’s my turn now,” Ann told them after a minute or so, and they drew aside to let her stand before me. Conan, as I would have expected, had used sound sense in choosing his woman. She was clear and honest and laughed when she could. Her face was very serious then, though, and she had great dignity as she looked at me. Beneath her scrutiny, perforce, I looked at myself and wondered what, if anything, there was for her to see. A man can feel very humble when a woman is considering him, and one corner of my mouth twitched down in self-derision.
She saw that and quite simply took my face between her hands and kissed me. “You’ll come with us, won’t you?” she asked, letting her palms fall to my shoulders. “Conan will never forgive me if I don’t bring you along. He’s away now, but we expect him back within the week.”
The Harp and the Blade Page 12