“You have it?” she asked.
He held it up for her to see.
“You are an exceptional young man,” she said, cupping it in her hands as she might a small bird. “You have earned everything I promised you.”
Rufinius looked around, uncomfortable. He could make out the axe wounds in the rough flesh of the timber, home to countless things that burrowed and teemed.
“I don’t want it,” he said at last. He had been expecting the woman to show surprise or anger, but she did neither. She just watched him.
“I thought I was fighting to escape, but in the end I was just fighting. I wanted to beat them, to win myself a prize.” He shrugged. “Well, there it is.”
The woman was smiling, but it had none of the callousness of her former manner. “And what drives you to battle now the prize is won?”
“Honestly?” And he smiled himself. “It’s the only thing I’m good at.” He took a step back, towards the space and noise. “Enjoy the pendant.”
She laughed then and swept towards him, pressing it back into his unresisting hands. “I got the prize I came for,” she whispered, her lips at his cheek, her breath hot and stinging. “What need have I of trinkets?”
She forced her lips against his for an instant and was gone, the taste of earth and blood all that remained.
Rufinius stood there for a while, turning the pendant over and over, the single black eye winking at him. Then he slipped it round his neck and started back to the barracks, where the Centurions would be waiting. The flood waters would recede soon. There were battles ahead.
****
Afterword
I’m not usually a character-led writer.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate how vital a strong, multi-faceted character is to good story, but it's usually that first, tantalizing plot thread that fires my imagination.
‘The Trinket’ came to me back-to-front, when a particular sentence in the submission guidelines leaped out and grabbed me: “All stories must be set in the world of the Celts”. And there he was ― a grim-faced Roman legionary, knee-deep in Welsh mud while the freezing rain drummed a relentless tattoo on his helmet.
A bit specific, you might think, and hardly Celtic. But I grew up a pilum’s throw from Caerleon ― founded by the Second Augustan Legion about seventy-five years after the birth of Christ ― which still manages to feel as much Roman as it does Welsh. It was a Wild West town; the sharp edge of the empire, where civilization was imposed upon the wilderness that lay just beyond Caesar’s reach. It is a good place for a story to unfold and an excellent place for the Phantom Queen to do business.
My vague reservations about transplanting her from Ireland to Wales soon evaporated once the writing was underway. She didn’t seem to mind the journey ― she was having fun. And, very soon, so was I.
****
Biography
Peter Bell was born and brought up in Newport, South Wales; a handful of miles from the remains of Isca, where much of "The Trinket" is set. He left to study French and Spanish, living in the ancient Moorish city of Granada and operating roller coasters at Disneyland Paris before settling in Cardiff with his wife, Anna.
A keen writer since childhood, Peter is a member of the British Fantasy Society and is currently working on his first novel. ‘The Trinket’ is his second published short story.
****
Michael Bailey
The Dying Gaul
Oh! let that eye, which, wild as the Gazelle’s
Now brightly bold or beautifully shy,
Wins as it wanders, dazzles where it dwells,
Glance o’er this page, nor to my verse deny
That smile for which my breast might vainly sigh
Could I to thee be ever more than friend:
This much, dear maid, accord; nor question why
To one so young my strain I would commend,
But bid me with my wreath one matchless lily blend.
Such is thy name with this my verse entwined;
And long as kinder eyes a look shall cast
On Harold’s page, Ianthe’s here enshrined
Shall thus be first beheld, forgotten last:
My days once number’d, should this homage past
Attract thy fairy fingers near the lyre
Of him who hail’d thee loveliest, as thou wast,
Such is the most my memory may desire;
Though more than Hope can claim, could Friendship less require?
~ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
(To Ianthe)
****
On woolen sheets we lie, vulnerable and as white and bare as the stars against the black marble sky, placed by the hands of love gods in a triangle of three.
Ianthe: I cannot have her; she belongs to another in marriage.
Her wondrous beauty ― she is on her back ― stares upside-down at a set of rotten eyes that capture and hold her own as she is penetrated, moaning her fake moans, the tears welling on her cheeks from both pleasure and pain, while her quavering body creaks the bed underneath. A head is mounted high on the wall, held by an iron stake: a fallen barbarian whom her husband Cadmon had slain with much contempt ― a worthy foe. The pegged part of this dead man watches as Cadmon exits the luscious gap between her legs. He tosses her aside like spoiled meat and I, just a boy, reach for the silk flesh below her navel, but my wrist is taken and held at my back as he flips me around and pilfers me next, the fingers of my other hand only capable of caressing her thigh before they are guided away. Ianthe takes herself in one hand and her breast in the other. She cries out to the man on the wall and the sound is angels with clipped wings falling from heaven.
She is twice my age and I have known her half my life. Harold, my sweet, she calls me. She is my love, but I cannot have her; I can only be had for now, she tells me when we are alone. I am not yet of age, but I see the way she looks at me when the three of us are together or even when we are not. Her smile holds a secret. Her body smells of lust. Her touch is desirous, but cautious. We can never be together without Cadmon, she says, for I am not yet a man.
Someday I will join the battle and become a greater warrior than Cadmon could ever be. Someday he will die in melee and I will take his place inside my love. I will take her from the back, from the front, from the side, and she will cry out, but only because it pleases her and because it is me and not her joyless husband. There will be no pain as her body swallows my seed to bear a child. She will whisper my name: Harold. Together, we will melt.
****
For he through Sin’s long labyrinth had run,
Nor made atonement when he did amiss,
Had sigh’d to many though he loved but one,
And that loved one, alas! could n’er be his.
Ah, happy she! to ‘scape from him whose kiss
Had been pollution unto aught so chaste;
Who soon had left her charms for vulgar bliss,
And spoil’d her goodly lands to gild his waste,
Nor calm domestic peace had ever deign’d to taste.
And now Childe Harold was sore sick at heart,
And from his fellow bacchanals would flee;
‘Tis said, at times the sullen tear would start,
But Pride congeal’d the drop within his eye:
Apart he stalk’d in joyless reverie,
And from his native land resolved to go,
And visit scorching climes beyond the sea;
With pleasure drugg’d, he almost long’d for woe,
And e’en for change of scene would seek the shades below.
~ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
(from Canto the First)
****
I spy her through a silken shade. Ianthe dresses with patience and dignity, the white fabric draping over her shoulders and down like an ocean wave sprayed against the upper shore of her bosom. Her long brown hair is in braids, and it falls between the valleys of her back.
Her bare feet on the floor b
end against the cold, her toes dimple. Gold rings jangle from her ankles as she shifts balance and places more jewelry on the soft lobes of her ears. She looks back and sees my stare. I blush and so does she. A smile forms from the edge of her carved mouth as she turns back to her husband.
I see the red spider webs stretching between the yellow of Cadmon’s eyes as I part the shade that separates us. I had heard his stupefied drinking the night before as I lay in bed thinking of nothing but Ianthe and that sweet caress of her thigh. They had argued through the night.
Cadmon does not see me just yet. He sees the crescent smile on her face.
He brings the backside of his hand across her mouth and the smile is gone as quickly as it had formed. He stands a full foot taller and towers over her, his face flushed. He wears only a torc around his neck. His giant triangle of a chest reveals a pair of sweaty breasts larger than those of my love, strewn with crisscrossed battle scars. Bulging abdominal muscles mock his flaccid manhood; it hangs below them like the husk of a shriveled reptile. He stands before her like a giant with a wrinkled date wedged between his legs.
I desire nothing more than to see his head nailed above the bed someday, as Ianthe takes me in as her own. To see her struck fills my heart with a wrath that burns and rises within my throat. There is nothing I can do but swallow it back down, for Cadmon is three times my size and he would take my life. He could easily crush my throat with a single hand.
A single tear falls from her check. One falls from my own.
Ianthe holds her head and sobs as Cadmon leaves her. He takes his sword from against the wall and walks naked out into the cool morning air. He must train for battle. The tip of the sword scrapes across the floor.
As I part the silken shade further, I wait eagerly for the sound to disappear, meaning Cadmon’s absence. I quietly rush to her aid. She is bent in half, clutching her face. I pull a delicate hand away from her swollen jaw. Her lip is split and leaking red. She doesn’t want me to see her cry.
Her hand pulls back, but mine is stronger. I tell her I love her, but she pushes me away. She tells me to leave, that we can never be together for it would mean the death of us both, but I stay at her side. She shakes as I wipe the blood from her mouth and lift her head so that she looks directly at me. I kiss the wound, my eyes never leaving hers. I taste her blood on my lips.
Ianthe kisses me back and touches my tongue with her own. She quakes, as do I. Her sputtering breath is warm and smells like ripened peaches. She takes my palm from her cheek and this time she is stronger. She flattens my hand under her own and guides it down the soft skin of her neck, her chest, and underneath the fabric of her gown. The curve of her left breast leads to a mound of blissful heaven. The god at its peak trembles between my fingers. Her other hand finds a forbidden part of me.
Cold steel and sick warmth ends our connection. Cadmon separates me from Ianthe with his sword. As he pushes me back, the edge digs into my flesh. His blade at my neck, I only come to his chest. His eyes bulge, as do the dark veins on his brow. He breathes fast and raspy and I taste the hot drink on his breath. He looks down at me, ready to add my head to his collection.
My head is not worth your efforts, I tell him, but he doesn’t listen. He has taken many lives and many heads, all worthy opponents. I am nothing to him but a tighter hole of pleasure.
Ianthe cries out.
Cadmon turns.
Spare his life, she pleads.
Cadmon twists back to me, ready to slice the blade through my neck.
I close my eyes, ready to die, my last thoughts on Ianthe and our encounter, her soft skin against mine, her eyes to mine, her lips to mine. Her breast under my fingertips. I imagine for a moment my head nailed above their bed ― our bed ― watching her beauty forever.
Cadmon leans into me.
Banish him! She shouts and I open my eyes in horror.
Kill me, I say, unable to grasp the thought of exile.
He pulls the blade away.
Tears run the course of my cheeks as I look to Ianthe. She stares at the ground before moving her hands to her gown. She loosens the straps and lets the fabric fall from her shoulders to the floor, leaving us in her nakedness. The sight of her saddens me more. In all of her goddess beauty, it is the swelling purple of her cheek that draws my attention. I look to Cadmon’s sword, but I would try at my own life before attempting to take his.
Again he raises the blade. For an instant, I feel there is hope. But instead of dismembering my head, he uses the handle to strike me down.
****
The sun, the soil, but not the slave, the same;
Unchanged in all except its foreign lord–
Preserves alike its bounds and boundless fame
The Battle-field, where Persia’s victim horde
First bow’d beneath the brunt of Hellas’ sword,
As on the morn to distant Glory dear
When Marathon became a magic word;
Which utter’d, to the hearer’s eye appear
The camp, the host, the fight, the conqueror’s career,
The flying Mede, his shaftless broken bow;
The fiery Greek, his red pursuing spear;
Mountains above, Earth’s, Ocean’s plain below;
Death in the front, Destruction in the rear!
Such was the scene – what now remaineth here?
What sacred trophy marks the hallow’d ground,
Recording Freedom’s smile and Asia’s tear?
The rifled urn, the violated mound,
The dust thy courser’s hoof, rude stranger! Spurns around.
~ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
(from Canto the Second
****
A ship awaits my departure, but I look back to it with baneful eye. It is there to lead me to foreign lands, away from what most I desire. The hilltop provides an awful view of the flat blue sea to my back, the ship nothing more than a brown crumb dropped onto the water. At my front is a battle. Perhaps Cadmon will die this time, which would null my expulsion from this land. I could lay with Ianthe and we would not have to worry about hiding our love. As I sit clutching my knees to my chest, I hold a pile of rain-soaked soil and wonder how much blood has spilt on this land I have called home for the thirteen years of my life. I remember running up these hills as a child, and rolling down them on my sides. I remember the laughter, and it pains me to bring it all back, but I must, for it now amounts to nothing more than fallen memories as it passes through my fingertips.
A gray cloud looms over the battlefield, casting everything underneath in heavy shadow. The wind whirls cold.A crow lands near my feet and tilts its head to look to me with a beady black eye. I toss some dirt at it and the bird flutters.
Watch, it says as it dances. It shakes the earth off its wings and turns its neck toward the battle. It looks back to me and caws. Watch.
Watch what? I ask, and I know then it is Morrigan.
The crow doesn’t answer. It only looks at me with a crooked head and what I assume are distrustful black eyes.
The two sides of war below grow eager as they wait for the horn. From my seat they are nothing but riled ants merged together, angered and ready to attack the opposing threat.
Listen, says the crow, as if it were she starting the battle.
For a moment, there is nothing but silence. Both sides below take a shared breath. I listen as a distant horn croons death. And then a thunderous roar erupts from the crowd and I wonder if it is only thunder from the clouds reigning over them. Soon these separate armies merge as one, as shield and sword create a cacophony of music from a symphony comprised of metallic and wooden instruments.
The harmony of life taking death, says Morrigan. The crow dances once again, wings fluttering. The music is for her.
Drums pound. Cymbals crash.
The crowd below dances with her. Most fall.
If only he would die, I tell the crow.
Morrigan says, I guard your death, but nothing more.
As the sun moves directly overhead, it passes through a hole in the clouds, removing the battlefield from shade. It reveals a field of red as her music dies down.
Only the soft moan of fallen men remains. One side has won, but only a handful basks in the glory, if it can be called such a thing. Those clinging to life are either left for dead, or pierced one final time with a blade by the victor.
Morrigan flies to the ended battle, cawing, urging me to follow.
She leads me to the dead.
I walk through a maze of fallen barbarians, naked and covered in the life that once filled their hearts. They stare at me with hollow eyes. A hand missing its two smallest fingers grabs my leg before falling limp at my feet. I step over a twitching man, a blade pierced through his throat. He chortles blood and finally stills. Morrigan tells me to retrieve a blade. I choose a dagger and pull it from someone’s back. I pass once glorious men, now missing appendages. Those that cling to life, I ease to death, for that is what she tells me to do. I approach two men clutched together tightly in their nudity, arms wrapped around one another and moving as if making love, and I realize it is simply one man fallen over another; the end of a spear poking through one to his lover, binding the two in an eternal embrace. I cut each of their throats.
I cannot save them all, I tell her.
Our journey ends at a large granite stone, and it is Cadmon leaning against its base. One hand braces his body upright; the other rests on his thigh. He is alone, and naked except for the crimson torc around his neck, exactly as I remember him from earlier that morning. He looks to the ground. At first he appears untouched, only fatigued from war.
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