by Talbot Mundy
He did not see Tros. He was too busy talking with Fflur and his three children and laughing at the antics of the hound that wriggled and yelped in front of him.
At the threshold a young girl gave a golden cup to Fflur, and he accepted it from Fflur’s hands, drinking deep and murmuring a few words of ritual before striding into the hall. There all was horse-play and pandemonium in a minute, as the servants lighted the torches in the sconces and the guests swarmed in to jockey for the best seats at the two long, laden tables, some shoving each other backward off the benches and wrestling on the floor, laughing as they held each other’s wrists to keep the little daggers out of play, until a master of ceremonies pulled them apart and placed them at table arbitrarily, threatening to feed them on the floor with the dogs unless they acted seemly.
“Ye are not drunken yet — not yet,” he scolded.
The hall was splendid with woven hangings and stags’ antlers. Great gold pitchers, marvelously chased, stood at the chief’s end of the table. There were silver and golden goblets, and many of the trenchers on which meat and cakes were piled were of solid gold. When they had dragged the throne chair to the table-end Caswallon led Fflur to a smaller chair beside it, everybody standing while the women poured mead into the goblets and every man raised his goblet high, waiting for the chief to give the word to a High Druid to pronounce the blessing.
It was then that Caswallon saw Tros, ten places down the table on his right hand, and paused, almost setting down his golden cup. But Tros shook his head and raised a hand, smiling, requesting silence, catching Orwic’s eye next. And Orwic nodded to the chief.
So the sonorous chant of the druids began, and none drooped his head, but raised it because the hymn was of Mother Earth, who uplifts, from whom all human life emerges and to whom full reverence and loyalty and love is due.
There was chant, and response led by Caswallon, until the great beams rang to the refrain and they tossed the cups high, drinking deep to Mother Earth and to the gods who had sent the Romans sneaking back to sea at midnight.
“For let none doubt,” Caswallon said, thumping down his golden goblet on the table and following that with a blow of his fist that made the rafters ring, “that the gods sent a man to preserve us! I pay honor to the men who died. I swear fellowship with them who fought and did not die.
“I say that but for the gods who sent a storm, and a true man in the midst of it to harry Caesar’s fleet and break it, we were all dead men this day, or worse, with our wives at the Romans’ mercy and our homes destroyed.”
He sat down, and there was a little murmuring, because the men who had not fought were at least as proud of British heart and muscle as those who had. Let the druids praise the gods. Themselves were there to toast the men who fought, to eat beef and venison and to drink themselves drunker than the drunkest Roman who ever coveted in vain a good land fit to stay at home in.
Piety — good in its proper place, of course — struck a flat note at a banquet table, and a few men at the far end began a song about the stout hearts of Cair Lunden and the Northmen they had vanquished in the Thames.
Then the women took away the goblets — for they were precious — and put beakers in their place, made of a dull metal that the Britons knew how to blend of tin and iron, and the feasting began in earnest, each man’s mouth too full of meat and mead and cakes, and anything else he could reach, to talk at all.
For a while there was no other sound but munching, and the laughing of the girls who poured the mead and took fresh trenchers of hot food from the serfs to the table — for no serf touched the tablecloth or poured a drink. It was Orwic who was first to speak above a murmur, three places down the table on Caswallon’s right hand with two rosy-cheeked maids in very close attendance on him.
“We have thanked the gods, who are no doubt gratified,” he remarked. “Shall we forget the man?”
Caswallon glanced at Tros and raised his fist to beat on the table for silence, but something in Orwic’s eye restrained him. The chief stroked his long moustache instead, caught Fflur’s eyes beside him, and waited.
“Skell of Pevensey,” Orwic went on, nodding with a dry smile toward a heavy-shouldered man, red-bearded and rather white-skinned, who sat exactly facing Tros, “has been telling me how he destroyed Caesar’s fleet with the aid of a man, who, says Skell, was a pirate. Should Skell not tell that tale to all of us?”
Skell’s mouth at the moment was too full for speech, and, it might be, there was a lump in his throat beside; when he tried to wash the stuff down with a draught of mead it made him cough so that the man beside him had to thump him lustily between the shoulderblades.
There was plenty of time for Caswallon to meet Tros’s eyes again. Tros laid a finger on his lips. But Conops, acting serving-man behind his master — to the annoyance of the girls, who would have enjoyed the sport of serving both of them since any foreigner was good to giggle at — leaned over his shoulder, pretending to reach the meat, and whispered:
“Look to yourself now, master, before the mead brews madness. Flout that liar to his teeth before they are all too drunk to understand.”
But Tros thumped him in the belly with his elbow, being minded not to let a servant do his thinking for him and aware of how much mead he could drink safely. By that time Skell had finished coughing.
“Skell shall tell us,” said Caswallon.
So Skell squared his shoulders and stood, after quarreling a moment with the men on either side, who did not want to let him push the bench back — it caught him in the knees, and a man can’t boast to advantage with his knees bent forward between bench and table.
And the tale he told was an amazing one of storm and daring, better by far than what he had told Orwic, because he now had a gallon of mead beneath his belt.
He spoke of himself standing in a British ship’s bow — he had stood at the helm when he told it to Orwic the first time — sword-slashing at the cables of the plunging Roman ships; but he said nothing of Caesar’s campfires streaming in the gale, or of the shouts of the Roman legionaries drowning in the surf as they tried to haul the smaller ships up-beach, as really happened.
He spoke only of himself, and once or twice of Tros, the lees of a neglected intuition keeping him from some liberties he might have taken with the name of the man who really had done the work.
His egotism stirred by mead, but not yet to the point of actual drunkenness, he told his tale well, when no facts hampered him and he reached the account of his swim from a broken ship to the rockbound shore of Vectis, in a gale that he had already described as the worst that ever rocked the cliffs of Britain. He described the swimming stroke he used, and how the crew of his broken ship cried out to him to save them:
“But sailors never can swim,” he went on, “so the fish had their revenge. But I was sorry for them. When I reached the shore at last, and lay exhausted, I bethought me of that fellow Tros, and for a while I prayed for him to the gods who loose the winds and hurl the lightnings, that I might meet him again and shake him by the hand.”
“By Nodens,” said Caswallon drily, “your prayer was granted. Tros—”
But Tros had already made excuse to leave the room and was standing in the porch outside the great front door, filling his lungs with the clean night mist, and watching the yelling crowd downhill burn Caesar’s effigy in chains.
It was not usual for a host to leave his place at table before all the courses had been tasted, but Caswallon called his oldest son, Tasciovanus, to take his place and followed Tros out to the porch.
And first he embraced him silently, then looked him in the eyes in the light of the horn lantern that hung from the porch beams.
“Tros,” he said, “my brother Tros, if it had not been that Fflur received you and made you free of this, my house, I would not have sat still. I would have had you at the table end beside me, next where Fflur sits. But Fflur whispered of the gold, and it lies in her bed, where none but I dares go.
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�She spoke of Caesar’s galley. My men shall bring that ship and all that it contains to Lunden. She whispered of what she had heard Skell say to Orwic. And you know Fflur, but you do not know Skell. Her gift I know. She has a second-sight, that forever leads me wisely when I heed her, but I find it strange that you should have sat so still while Skell stole for himself the glory that is rightly yours.”
“How is it strange?” Tros answered. “There is nothing for nothing in this world, and I am in dire need. If Skell desires that glory, he shall pay for it, unless you beg me to release the debt, for I am your friend, and I will not make trouble for you.”
Caswallon laughed.
“Brother Tros, if you lack anything,” he answered, “you have me to look to. But I would rather see Skell put to honest use than receive three favors from the gods.”
“Then leave him to me,” Tros said, stroking at his black beard, grinning like an ogre.
Caswallon grinned, too, pulling at his long moustache. Like all Britons, he admired guile, as long as it observed unwritten rules.
“He is yours — as the gold is yours — and the galley is yours,” he answered. “But I warn you: Skell has a dark spirit that is too much even for the druids. He is a doer of evil, a thief of reputations, a crafty coward, whose lies are as bold as his deeds are treacherous. And yet, by promises and what-not else he always has enough friends to keep him out of danger from the druids or from me.
“Four months ago he made believe to uncover a plot to poison me. He struck the goblet from my lips and slew the serf who brought it. I think he poisoned the mead with his own hand, but now he boasts of having saved my life and how can I deny it?
“I sent him to Gaul on an embassy, hoping Caesar would pack him off to Rome, perhaps. But Caesar gave him presents, and now Skell boasts he has more influence with Caesar than an army of a thousand men. If I had killed him for acting as Caesar’s spy, there are plenty who would rebel against me — for Caesar sends money now and then, some of which Skell distributes.
“Skell was in Hythe when I went there to raise men, and when you put to sea in the storm to break up Caesar’s fleet; but he did not see you, because he did not want me to see him. There was a doubt in his mind then as to whether the Romans might not make good their foothold. No doubt he saw what happened, from the cliffs, and doubtless he believed you drowned, as I did, as we all did, until the beacon told of another Northman in the Thames and Fflur set out to fight an enemy and found you.
“Skell knows I can not swear he didn’t put to sea in one of those ships from Hythe, for the one you took, you smashed, and another is missing. It is likely Skell sunk that other one to lend truth to his boast that it was he who did the work that night. It will be hard to prove, for he covers his tracks well sometimes. But what can you want, Tros, with such a fanged louse as this Skell is? He will fasten to you like a limpet to a rock. He will suck you dry.”
“He seems even a worse rascal than I hoped,” Tros answered. “My father, who is Caesar’s prisoner in Gaul, might not like to come free, if a good man were the victim in his place.”
“I had forgotten your father,” Caswallon said awkwardly.
“My father may be in chains, and I must make haste,” Tros replied. “If Caesar should learn it was I who smashed his fleet, my father would be made to pay the penalty. Skell seems sent by the very gods.”
“You shall speak with Skell.”
Caswallon clapped Tros on the shoulder and returned into the house. Tros stood watching the bonfires that had been heaped in midstreet at fifty-yard intervals all the way up the hill. Wild figures like demons danced around them, yelling, with long hair streaming, some waving torches, some holding hands. The mist was crimson with the bonfire glare, distorting things, making men and trees seem nearer than they were, but the din seemed very far away, because the mist refused to carry it.
Tros watched until Skell came out alone and, closing the heavy door with a thud behind him, stood eyeing him in silence.
Very slowly indeed, almost inch by inch, Tros faced him, conscious of his sword-hilt but avoiding any semblance of a move toward it.
“You touch your dagger. Why?” he asked.
Skell blinked at him. His eyes, perhaps, were not yet quite accustomed to the fog-dimmed lantern light. But his throat moved too. He had a face that looked strong rather than crafty, except that the mouth was thin-lipped and a bit irregular. His red moustache was bushy, instead of drooping as most Britons wore theirs. His hair was shorter than the ordinary, and his neck was like a bull’s.
“Speak!” he commanded, still clutching at the dagger-hilt. “Why did you not name yourself to me? I am a dangerous man on whom to play such tricks.”
The snarl and the sneer in his voice were icy cold. He was a calculator of men’s fears, but not so Tros, who liked to turn strength to his own use.
“So I tricked you?” Tros answered.
His voice was almost friendly. There was a laugh in it. He even turned a little sidewise, as if off guard, being able to afford that because he could see the blade of Conops’ knife.
Conops had found another way out of the house, a good manservant being better than the best dog, and was crouching in the shadow where the honeysuckle had been blown through the open porch side by a recent wind.
Skell sneered again, his thin lip curling until one side of his moustache pointed almost at the corner of his eye. He said something in a low voice and had to repeat it, because a salvo of applause and laughter in the hall echoed under the porch and drowned his words:
“Do you think you can make a fool of me?”
Tros’s amber eyes grew narrow as he judged his man.
“I have heard men lie for many reasons,” he said, smiling, and again his voice was almost friendly. “When I tell a lie, it is to save my skin, or possibly some other man’s. Boasting gives me no amusement, because I have found I must pay for it sooner or later. Do you pay like a man, or do you bilk your creditors?”
Skell’s hand was on his dagger hilt, but he relaxed and leaned against the door, with his head to one side, trying to read Tros’s eyes by the lantern rays.
“I supposed you were drowned,” he said at last. “There was no harm in taking a dead man’s credit. You should have made yourself known if you wanted—”
“Ah-h-h!”
Tros interrupted, with a sudden gesture of his right hand that made Skell almost draw the dagger.
“Does a trader want the skins he sells? Because he does not want them, does he give them without price?”
“Money?” Skell asked him, sneering.
“My price — at my convenience,” Tros answered.
And at last he stood square up to Skell, and drew his long sword six inches from the scabbard. Skell did not move, because Conops came out of the shadow then and slapped a blade on the palm of his left hand.
“I am able to care for myself,” said Skell, “but I will listen to your proposal.”
His heel struck the door behind him twice.
“A third time, and when they open they shall carry you in feet first!” said Tros. “For if I should run a sword point into you, none could blame Caswallon for that. If I should say that I did it, is there a Briton who would blame me?”
“Speak your proposal,” Skell answered, “and make haste.”
He spoke on the intake of breath, for Tros had drawn the long sword, taking one step backward. Skell’s angry eyes recognized a man who knew his own mind on land as well as sea, and knew how not to tell his mind, which is a sign of great strength.
“I have spoken it,” Tros answered. “There was no price named when you took my credit for your own gain. Now the credit is yours, for I have no use for spoiled goods. But the price of it is mine. Do I deal with a thief, or with a man who pays willingly?”
“I pay,” said Skell, “if you are reasonable.”
“Skell,” said Tros, “I am so reasonable, I would not give a drachma for your promise, at sword’s point or before a t
housand witnesses. You shall plight a pledge. Thereto I will add persuasions, since a thrashed horse runs slowly unless fed.”
“Pledge? I have neither money nor jewels by me.”
“I have money and I have jewels. I would let both go for a friend’s sake,” Tros retorted. “You would forfeit yours to vent your spleen. Nay, Skell, you shall give a pledge that you will risk all to redeem.”
“I think they will come for us soon,” said Skell.
He was growing nervous. He could no more stand his ground against a strong will and uncertainty than a bull can face the whip.
“I am cornered; I yield,” he said, trying to say it proudly.
“You shall come with me into the hall,” said Tros, “and you shall say this: that you have wagered you can bring my father safely out of Gaul, or wherever else he is Caesar’s prisoner. And the stake is your life against Caesar’s galley that they are now towing up the Thames.”
Skell made a gesture of ridicule, but Tros continued, speaking slowly:
“They will ask why you made such a wager, for they know you, Skell, and they will doubt your word. You will answer, in terms of what you have already said without my leave, that you and I did a venture together against Caesar, whereby we are pledged to mutual esteem, but that I seized plunder, and you none, concerning which an argument arose between us, you claiming a share in what I seized, but I dissenting.
“They will believe that tale readily enough. So you will tell them that, you, knowing Caesar and being fond of daring exploits, proposed this wager to me, and I agreed. Thereafter, Skell, I think it would be dangerous for you to play me an act of treachery, for these Britons are strict about wagers and bargains and the treatment of a guest — I being their guest, remember.
“They will watch me, and they will watch you, so the temptation will be very small to stick a knife into my back, which if you should do, or if another should do, they would instantly suspect you of having done.”
“I neither know your father nor where to look for him,” Skell answered. “The thing is impossible.”