Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “You will demand a ship of Caesar?”

  Tros laughed. “As well demand a fat lamb of a wolf! But you are not Caesar. I would ask a debt of you, and you would pay it.”

  “If I thought I owed it, yes,” said Caswallon. It was evident that he liked Tros finely. “I will give you a ship now, if you have need of it.”

  But Tros shook his head.

  “What is the matter with my ships?” Caswallon asked him. There was challenge in his voice.

  “You forget. My father is a hostage. I must set him free before I play my own hand.”

  “Yes. A man should do that. You want me to help you set your father free?” asked Caswallon, lowering his eyebrows. “How could I do that? My men would laugh at me, if I talked of invading Gaul! The druids would forbid it. Fflur would say no to it. Besides, I have never seen your father. Has he a claim on me?”

  “No claim,” Tros answered. “None. But Caesar says he has a claim against you.”

  “He lies!” remarked Caswallon.

  He himself did not look like a man who dealt in lies.

  “And he will invade your island to levy tribute.”

  “It is I who levy tribute here!” Caswallon said slowly, scratching a dog’s back with his foot.

  He stared at the fire for about a minute, frowning.

  “If you resolve to oppose Caesar, will your men obey you?” wondered Tros.

  “They have had to hitherto. I am the chief. There have been a few disputes, but I am more the chief than ever,” he answered.

  “Are you over-confident?” asked Tros. “Caesar’s method is to send his spies who promise big rewards and make atrocious threats, thus undermining a chief’s authority.”

  “I have kept close watch on Commius.”

  “No doubt you have,” said Tros. “Nevertheless, this night a woman offered me your kingdom if I would play Caesar’s game with her.”

  At that Caswallon suddenly threw off his thoughtful mood and laughed boisterously, hugely, spanking both knees with his hands so thunderously that the dogs yelped and Fflur came in with her wrists all white with meal to learn what the joke might be.

  “Fflur — hah-hah-ho-ho-hoh! — yah-ha-ha-hah! Fflur, have you heard the latest? Britomaris’ wife offers our kingdom to this man! What do you think of that?”

  “I mentioned no name,” said Tros.

  “No! Hah-ha-ha-ho-hoh! That is a good one. Haw-haw-hah-hah-hoh! She hasn’t a name worth mentioning! Hah-hah-hah! What say you, Fflur? Shall I put her in a sack and send her for a gift to Caesar?”

  “You know she is dangerous,” his wife answered.

  “She!” laughed Caswallon. “If she had a man like Tros here, she might be dangerous, but not with Britomaris! And if she were truly dangerous, she would have poisoned both of us — oh, years ago! I will let her try her blandishments on Caesar.”

  “You are always over-confident,” said Fflur, and left the room again, adding over her shoulder, “it is only thanks to me you are not poisoned.”

  Caswallon chuckled amiably to himself and shouted for some more mead. A woman brought two tankards full, and, as if it were a joke, he made her taste from both of them.

  “She lives!” he laughed. “Tros, at the first sign of a bellyache call Fflur, who will give you stuff to make you vomit.”

  Tros laughed and drank quickly, for he was anxious to have more serious speech before Commius should arrive.

  “Caesar prepares a fleet and plans to sail for the coast of Britain before the equinox,” he said abruptly.

  Caswallon stiffened himself.

  “How many men can he muster?”

  “Many. But he has not ships enough for all, and he must also hold down the Gauls, who hate him. I think he will come with two legions, and perhaps five hundred cavalry.”

  “I laugh!” said Caswallon. “I will gather dogs enough to worry his two legions! Nay, the sheep shall chase him out of Britain!”

  “Your lips laugh,” said Tros, “but your eyes are thoughtful. My face is sober, but I laugh within. A deep plan pleases me. You have ships, but how big are they? And have you sailors for them?”

  “I have three longships,” said Caswallon, “that are rowed by twenty men, and each can carry fifty. Now and then they go a-fishing, so the crews are always ready. But do you think I will fight Caesar on the sea? Not I! I went to sea once, as far as Gaul, and I vomited worse than Fflur makes me when she thinks I have been poisoned! I will fight Caesar on dry land!”

  “Where Caesar will defeat you unless heaven intervenes!” said Tros grimly. “However, you could not fight Caesar with three ships. Where are the ships?”

  “In the river, by the marsh edge, well hidden from the North Sea rovers.”

  “Could you send those ships, unknown to any one but you, around the coast, to a point that you and I will choose as the most dangerous landing place for Caesar, and hide them near by at my disposal?”

  Caswallon nodded, but the nod was noncommittal, not a promise.

  “It is a long way by sea,” he said slowly, as if he doubted that such a plan was feasible.

  “Because, if you will do that,” said Tros, “and if the crews of your three ships obey me, I believe I can wreck the whole of Caesar’s fleet and leave him at your mercy on the beach with his two legions. I can do it! I can do it! If I can only find a man who knows the tides.”

  “Ah!”

  Caswallon sat bolt upright. Then he summoned his wife with a shout that made the dogs wake up and bark. She came and sat down on the seat beside him, her jewels gleaming in the firelight, but not more brilliantly than her eyes.

  “I like this man. I like his speech,” said Caswallon.

  “He is good,” said Fflur, looking straight at Tros. “But he will not obey you. He has the eyes of a druid and a brow that is harder than bronze. He will never be a king, because none can serve themselves and make him take the blame. Nor will he ever be a slave, for none can tame him.”

  “He is like the wind that blows; if he blows your way, you may use him. He will tell no lies. He never thinks of treachery. But if he blows away from you, you can neither hold him nor call him back.”

  “So, Tros, now you know yourself,” said Caswallon. “Fflur is always right.”

  Tros smiled, his lion’s eyes half closing.

  “I would like to know what she says of Commius,” he answered.

  “She says that he will surely betray me.”

  “If you let him,” Fflur added.

  “Mother of my sons, I will not let him!”

  Tros smiled within himself and Fflur saw the change in his expression. She was very lovely when her gray eyes shone with hidden laughter. Suddenly, as if ashamed of a moment’s mood, she put an arm around her husband’s shoulder and nestled close to him.

  “What is it I should hear?” she asked.

  Tros repeated what he had said to Caswallon about the ships, and Fflur listened with her eyes closed. Her husband signaled to Tros to wait in silence for her answer. She sat quite still, with her head against the woodwork, hardly breathing.

  “I see blood,” she said at last, shuddering. She was not seeing with her eyes, for they were shut. “I see men slain — and doubts — and a disaster. But there is brightness at the farther side of it, and a year, or longer, but I think a year — and then more blood; and I do not quite see the end of that.

  “There is another way than this one you propose, but it would lead to failure because of rivalry. This way is the best, because it gives the victor’s crown to no man, yet it will succeed. But you—” She opened her eyes slowly and looked straight at Tros.

  “You will suffer. You will not return to Samothrace, although you will attempt it. In a way you will be a king, yet not a king, and not on land. More than one woman shall bless the day that you were born, and more than one woman shall hate you; and those that love you will come very near to causing your destruction, whereas those who hate will serve your ends, though you will suffer much at the
ir hands.”

  Conops stirred by the hearthside, prodding the fire with a charred stick, seeming to thrust at pictures that he saw within the embers. That was the only sound, until Caswallon spoke:

  “I envy no man who shall have a kingdom, that is not a kingdom, on the sea. Fflur is always right. If you should suffer too much, Tros, Fflur shall find you a way of relief. I am your friend, and you are welcome.”

  “After a while he will go away, and he will not come back,” said Fflur.

  CHAPTER 5. A Prince of Hosts

  The Law is simple. There is nothing difficult about it. Why ask me to peer into your souls and say ye are good or evil? Judge ye for yourselves. Ye know your own hearts. Whoever could betray his host or his guest; whoever could misuse hospitality by treacherous betrayal of the secrets learned beneath a hospitable roof, that one is lower than any animal, he is capable of all treasons; he is vile, and virtue is not in him. He to whom hospitality is genuinely sacred, whom torture could not compel to yield the secrets learned by hearth and broken bread and mead, that one has manhood. He is capable of all the other virtues. He will be a god when his lives on the earth are finished.

  — from The Sayings of the Druid Taliesan

  THERE was a great shout at the gate and a thudding of hoofs on soft earth. The dogs awoke and barked with glaring eyes and their hair on end, as the other chariot brought Commius the Gaul. Some one struck the door three times with a sword-hilt and opened it. In strode Commius with his cloak across the lower portion of his face, and paused a moment, blinking at the firelight. He seemed annoyed at the sight of Tros, but let his cloak fall and contrived to smile.

  He was followed into the room by all the armed men who had been standing at the gate; they stacked their weapons in a corner after lifting their right hands one by one in salute to Caswallon.

  “So this is your palace?” said Commius, glancing about him and assuming admiration.

  Caswallon laughed.

  “This is where we will eat and rest,” he answered. “This belongs to Britomaris and Gwenhwyfar. Since they can not speak to me civilly, but pay me tribute nonetheless, they play the host from far off. They always go when I announce my coming. After I have gone, they say I stole the furniture! Yet they accept the gifts I leave. Be seated.”

  “Where is your palace?” Commius asked, taking the seat beside Tros after bowing with grave dignity.

  “I have none,” said Caswallon. “I have a home that Fflur keeps, where I give judgment.”

  “Where?” asked Commius, but Caswallon did not answer. For excuse he found fault with the men, who were carrying in a long table and arranging it on trestles opposite the hearth. They worked clumsily, being evidently men of rank, not far below the chief himself in station, laughing when the women made fun of them.

  When the table was set, and a heavy cloth laid on it, they dragged up a bench before the hearth and as many as could sat down on it, while the others sprawled on the floor between their legs.

  Two of them were short and swarthy, but the others were tall, with long hair carefully combed and oiled; one man’s hair was golden, and another’s like spun flax. Not one but wore beautifully made brooches, and their arms were all covered with devices painted on with blue woad; they wore woolen breeches, and their legs were enclosed in leather stockings, cross-gartered to the thigh. Clean men, all of them, and courteously dignified, but thirsty and not at all retiring.

  “Mead!” they shouted. “Where is the mead?”

  And the women brought it in great brimming tankards.

  They pledged the health of Fflur and of Caswallon; then, sending the tankards back to be refilled, they drank to Tros and to Commius, courteously wishing them a dozen sons apiece:

  “Which will keep the good-wife busy,” as one of them remarked. “Aye,” said another, “a childless woman is a restless curse, so drink we to the midwife! If there were a son or two to this house, Britomaris would have more reason to call his wife his own! Hah-hah-hah-hah! Guest Tros, they saw thee track Gwenhwyfar to the herdsman’s house — so says the charioteer who just brought Commius. Does he lie? Nay, out with it! All know her.”

  “They know more than I, then,” Tros answered, and Fflur glanced approval. “My man Conops here attended that tryst. Let him answer for me.”

  “He has but one eye! Hah-hah-hah! A dozen pairs of eyes can watch Gwenhwyfar, and she will give them all the slip! Ho! Caswallon, what say you to it?”

  “That you lack manners!” Caswallon answered. “I can throw the man who insults my guest as far as from here to the paling. This is Tros, who broke the ribs of Erbin. If I give him leave, he can break thine.”

  “Oh, well, I will save my ribs for another purpose. Let him have Gwenhwyfar! Whoever takes her from Britomaris does us all a service, for he will kill her very soon when he has found her out! And besides, without her Britomaris might become a man! Ho! I drink to the Lord Tros of the yellow eyes, who stole his shoulders from an oak tree, and who keeps a one-eyed servant lest the fellow see all that is happening in herdsmen’s houses!”

  “Ho-hah-hah-hah!” they chorused, and drank deep.

  The women had to leave off loading food on to the table, to fill up their tankards, and they made so much noise that the children woke up and had to be bundled back to bed again behind a painted ox-hide curtain that cut off the far end of the room.

  Then the meal was declared ready and they all fell to, Fflur sitting on the chief’s right hand and Tros on his left hand, next to Commius, the other women serving and the dogs alert for bones or anything that anybody threw; for they cut the meat with their daggers, and tossed to the floor whatever they did not care to chew. There was a thunderstorm of growling underfoot and dog-fights most of the time, but no one took much notice, except to kick occasionally when the fighting was uncomfortably close.

  There was bread, beef, mutton, pork, butter and cheese, onions, and a sort of cabbage boiled in milk, but no other vegetables. Conops received his food on a bench beside the hearth, and the women helped him to enough for three men. The Britons ate too steadfastly to do much talking, but Tros, possessing the Mediterranean temperament, had time for speech between the mouthfuls, and Commius had no appetite; so they exchanged words.

  “Did Gwenhwyfar speak of me?” asked Commius.

  “Aye, and of Caesar.”

  A long pause, during which Tros listened to such sporadic conversation as passed between the Britons — mainly about horses and the scarcity of deer. One man, with his mouth full, urged Caswallon to summon all the able- bodied men to a wolf hunt.

  “I will lead you to a wolf hunt soon enough,” said Caswallon. “I will give you your bellyfull of wolves.”

  Then:

  “When do you return to Caesar?” Commius asked.

  “Soon,” said Tros.

  “You return with Caius Volusenus?”

  “If he waits for me.”

  Caswallon did not appear to catch that conversation, but Fflur was watching Commius intently, and it may have been that second-sight involved the corollary of second-hearing. She glanced at her husband, making no remark, but he read some sort of warning in her eyes and nodded, looking then steadily during three slow breaths at Commius, slightly lowering his eyelids. Fflur appeared satisfied.

  A moment later Caswallon left the table, muttering something about seeing whether the serfs were being fed. He strode outside and slammed the door behind him.

  “He is forever thinking of the serfs,” said Fflur. “That is why he is a great chief and none can overthrow him. Some of you think more of horses than of men and more of hunting than of other people’s rights. And some of you are very clever” — she looked at Commius again— “but your chief is wiser than you all.”

  To please her, they began telling stories of Caswallon, pledging him in tankards full of mead as they recalled incident after incident, adding those imaginative touches that time lends to the deeds of heroes, until, if one had believed them, or even they had believed t
hemselves, Caswallon would have seemed not much less than divine. He was a long time absent, and the glamour of him grew each minute.

  Commius took advantage of the roars of laughter — as one man told how the chief had trapped a Norseman’s ship that came a-raiding up the Thames, and how he had killed the pirate and enslaved the crew — to resume a conversation in low tones with Tros.

  “I pledge you to keep this secret,” he began.

  But Tros was a man who made no rash pledges, so he held his peace.

  “Do you hear me?” asked Commius. “Caesar has a high opinion of me, and I of you. I trust you. I am minded to warn Caesar that he will prod a wasps’ nest if he sails for Britain. I have seen and heard enough. I will advise against invasion.”

  Tros’s amber eyes observed the Gaul’s face thoughtfully. He nodded, saying nothing, and helped himself to gravy, mopping it up with bread from the dish in front of him.

  Commius waited for another roar of laughter, and resumed:

  “I must go in haste to Caesar. One of us should stay here. If I could say to Caesar I have left you here to watch events and to spy out the strength and weakness, he would excuse the haste of my return. If you permit me to return with Caius Volusenus in your place, I will use my influence to set your father free.”

  Tros kept silence, munching steadily. After a minute Commius nudged him, and their eyes met.

  “You agree?” he asked. “I pledge myself to set your father free, and to warn Caesar not to invade Britain.”

  “If you heard a man warn the winter not to come; and if you heard him promise to pull Caesar’s teeth, how much of it would you believe?” asked Tros.

  “Then you prefer not to trust me?”

  “Oh, I trust you. A man is what he is. I trust you to work for Commius. But if I should trust you with my father’s life, I should be a worse fool than even you suppose.”

  Commius’ face darkened.

  “I have influence with Caesar,” he said grimly.

  “And I none,” Tros answered. “Yet I will play a bolder hand than yours against him. Each to his own way, Commius!”