Baradoc had smiled and said, “What could my tongue say, Lady Tia, that could match what my eyes see? Can the beauty of a bird be told by counting the colours that paint each feather, or the silver glory of a salmon be known by the tally of its scales?”
Tia had laughed and, turning to Truvius, had said, “I should have told you, Uncle, that Baradoc is a poet as well as a warrior who one day dreams of sweeping the Saxons from this land.”
Truvius, handing Tia a glass of wine, had answered, “When a man sees beauty and cannot find poetry in himself, then he is a man, too, who finds no courage in himself when he faces danger.”
For the first time in his life—for not even in his old master’s house had this happened to him—Baradoc ate in Roman fashion, reclining on one of the three sloping couches set around the low table, waited on by the steward. Although Truvius showed little hunger, shifting often, too, in discomfort from his rheumatism on his couch, he and Tia did full justice to the stuffed olives and preserved plovers’eggs, the cold lobster—which had been brought upriver from Abonae—and the young broad beans and carrots, followed by slices of grilled venison, their appetite lasting right through to the dessert of dried figs and walnuts. Throughout the meal the steward had hovered round, refilling their wineglasses, bringing fresh napkins and water bowls for them to clean their hands, and watching always over the comfort of Truvius, ready to help him turn, prompt with a fresh cushion to ease his stiff body.
At the end of the meal Truvius, giving them a wry, humorous look, had said, “Twenty years ago I could have matched your appetite. Forty years ago, when I was still in service, after a day’s march I could have eaten and drunk you under the table.” Then looking at Baradoc, he said, “So—you go to the west to rouse your people? And why should you not, for my own have forsaken you? But remember this when you come of age to lead and fight.…” He coughed a little, shifted stiffly on his couch and sipped a little wine. “When Claudius sent General Aulus Plautius with the Second, Ninth, Fourteenth and Twentieth legions against your people, the Cantiaci, the Regnenses and the Atrebates, then man for man, courage for courage, there was no difference between defenders and attackers. There seldom is. But there was this difference in Plautius’s men—discipline, one leader and one plan of battle. He wins battles who makes the enemy fight on his terms, on his chosen ground. Your tribes must find a leader, just and severe, whom men will love, and he must find for himself new battle skills and tactics that these barbarian Saxons have never known.…” He had broken off in a fit of coughing and the wine spilled from the glass in his shaking hand, but when the steward came to him, he waved him away testily and after a while went on: “I would ransom my soul if such a thing were possible to be your age again, and to fight for this country, for it has been good to me and I have grown to love it more even than my native Etruria.… Aye, I would gladly fight without rank as a simple bowman or spearman if the gods would will it. But the gods give but one portion of life to each man. When his eyes close for the last time they wait on the other side of darkness to greet him with his reckoning and his reward or punishment.”
In bed now, hearing an owl cry by the river and catching the stir of Bran, who roosted on the ledge of the window, Baradoc could remember every word the man had said, and he knew that the memory would never leave him. One leader and each man disciplined, and new battle skills and tactics that the Saxons had never known. Then, driving those thoughts away, there came into his mind the picture of Tia, a young woman who stirred his heart but who, now that their journeying was done, was as far above him as the stars. Somewhere he knew there was a woman he would marry and make his own… but already she had been betrayed. … Aie! the heart was a house of many chambers and the doors of some once shut could never be reopened.
The next morning as he stood outside the kitchen quarters and saw to the feeding of the dogs and Bran, Tia came to him and when the dogs had eaten they walked down to the river.
With a brusqueness which he did not intend Baradoc said, “You are safe with your uncle, and this part of the country, too, seems settled. I must go on my way. Today.”
For a moment or two Tia was silent. Then she said sharply, “You cannot leave today.”
“Why not?”
“Because it would offend my uncle—and it would offend me.
Would you treat him as if he were an innkeeper? And myself as a … a sack of corn you delivered for the kitchen?”
“I meant nothing like that.”
“He is old. He has suffered two heart attacks in the last few months. His days are numbered, Son-of-a-Chief Baradoc. You will not shadow even one of them with the discourtesy of leaving so soon. You are a guest. We both owe you a debt of honour. That cannot be paid quickly as you toss a coin onto a tavern slab in return for a beaker of beer. And stop scowling. It puts ugly lines across your brow.”
Baradoc laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “I meant no rudeness. But you’re right to scold me.”
So Baradoc stayed on at the villa for the next three days. On one of those days Tia and her uncle travelled to Aquae Sulis and made their prayers at the temple for the spirits of her brother and his wife, and Truvius gave orders to a stonemason for a slab to be carved, commemorating them. When it was made he intended to place it in the wall of the villa overlooking the river. Baradoc travelled with them but did not go to the temple. Instead he wandered around the town. Many of the wealthier people had already left it and from the shopkeepers and working people whom he spoke to it was clear that there was a deep feeling of unrest in them, a shadow of the fear which clouded the east already. But their chief anxiety centered on the Cymric tribes beyond the Sabrina River, and the tales that each new traveller brought that the hill tribes were moving. The Silures, Demetae and Dobunni, who had never been truly under the old rule, saw the prospects of easy and profitable pillage, the pleasure of wielding firebrand and sword, and the prospect of slaves to sell or to work their mountain farms and herds.
As he sat with Truvius that evening in the courtyard, the dogs lying before them, the sun firing the plumage of the birds in their aviary, the steady movement of worker bees about the flower urns and beds, the old man said to him, “Sulis is a town of shadows, and many of the villas around here hold nothing but ghosts. The gods have called a term to the bright days of glory and now we begin to enter the darkness of a changing age. A man can do no more than to cherish his own honour, to fight for it and to die for it. I have lived by war, and would that! had died by war.…” His words trailed away, his eyes closed, and his head dropped to his chest. He had drifted away into sleep, maybe into a dream of the bright, hard days of his manhood. Then one of the birds from the aviary screeched loudly. Truvius’s head jerked up, his eyes blinking. He cocked a grey eyebrow at Baradoc and smiled. Nodding at Lerg, he said, “In my young days with the legions I would have given you a handful of gold for a dog like that. Aye, and I would rather travel with such a dog for companion than many a man I have known. My Tia was lucky to find you.”
Baradoc shook his head. “I was lucky that she found me.”
“You were both fortunate. She says that you must be well rewarded.”
“I want nothing.”
“This I know. But I make a gift from an old soldier to one who still has to face his first battle.” He raised his right arm, letting the folds of his toga fall away from it. On his wrist he wore a thin, much worn gold armlet. He slipped it off and handed it to Baradoc. “This is the first battle decoration I won… when I was little more than your age.… Others and greater came later, the torques and disks and silver spearhead. But this was the first for no great act of bravery, more a moment of youthful rashness. Wear it.”
Baradoc took the thin, worn armlet and slipped it on. For him it would always hold the memory not only of the old Chief Centurion but also of Tia.
Each evening they sat in the courtyard, talking, before the time for bathing and dinner came; the three of them and the three dogs and the steward bringin
g them cool drinks and small dishes of salted nuts and sugared fruits to eat. It was an oasis of well-being and peace—which was shattered on the evening of the day before Baradoc was to leave.
They were sitting in the courtyard in the shade of the tall sweet chestnut when Cuna sat up and whined. At the same moment Lerg and Aesc rolled to their feet and both of them turned, their heads toward their master.
Tia said, “Why are the dogs uneasy?”
Baradoc stood up. None of them were armed. He signalled the dogs to keep their station. As he did so there was the sound of footsteps from behind him. He turned and saw the steward and his wife and the house servants come through from the reception room to stand in a close group at the top of the steps leading down into the courtyard. From the room behind them six men appeared and ranged themselves along the face of the covered walk, six men with long hair and bearded or moustached, six men wearing belted tunics of skin or wool, the cloth crudely striped in greens, reds and yellows. All of them were armed with spear and sword and all of them were weather-browned and hard-muscled, short, wiry mountain men. Before the three in the yard could make any move or sound, the man beside the steward, taller than the rest, a bronze torque about his neck, raised a hand as though commanding silence and then pointed beyond them to the archway that framed the top of the steps leading down to the river.
Baradoc swung round quickly. A tall man stood inside the arch way, carrying sword and spear, a throwing axe thrust in his belt, a short cloak hanging from his shoulders over a finely dressed deerhide tunic, his legs bare of sandals or gartering. From behind him, rippling in like shadows, with out sound, like some flawless movement of a dream, came six other men in hillman dress. They split on either side of him in even ranks. Each man carried a heavy hunting bow, raised and arrowed, the bows partly drawn and each arrowhead pointing at the group in midcourt. For a moment or two it seemed that the invasion was part of a dream.
Cuna broke the spell. With a sudden, short bark he raced forward to the man in the doorway. Before Baradoc could stop him, he leapt up and seized the edge of the man’s tunic and hung on to it, swinging from its folds and growling. The man looked down at Cuna, then laughed, and putting his spear behind him against the archway wall, reached down and lifted Cuna by the scruff of his neck, pulling him free of the tunic skirt. Laughing still, he held Cuna aloft, yapping and growling.
Baradoc moved forward quickly, seeing the arrow points swing to follow him. He went up to the man who stood smiling with amusement at the suspended Cuna.
Baradoc said, “Put the dog down. He is young and bold and not yet fully broken to command.” Without thinking he spoke in his own tongue. The man, no smile on his face now, tossed Cuna to him, Baradoc fondled the dog’s ears for a moment and then dropped him to the ground, ordering him to go to Tia.
The man watched Cuna trot to Tia, eyed her briefly, and then turned to Baradoc and said quietly, “You speak my language, but not with a Cymric sound. You dress like a Roman landowner’s son, but your hands are marked with hard work and you have the gift of silent talk with your dogs. Tell the big hound to come to me in peace, but say it in words, words that only I know in my tribe, words that in all the tribes are only given to the few.”
From behind Baradoc the voice of Truvius came testily, angrily but bravely. “What does he say? What does the ruffian want? By the gods—that I should be so old and feeble …” He broke off suddenly in a fit of coughing.
Without turning Baradoc said in Truvius’s tongue, “These are hillmen from beyond the Sabrina. Their leader could be a man who prefers reason to force.” Then, turning briefly, seeing Tia holding Cuna, the old man bowed forward, head doddering, in his applewood seat, he spoke briefly to Lerg.
The great hound moved forward slowly, the sunlight sliding over his rough pelt. He went up to the man in the archway and sat back on his haunches. The man put down his hand and with the back of it gently touched the black wet nose of Lerg. Lerg sat unmoving. The man withdrew his hand and said to Baradoc, “What did you say to the old man?”
“That you could be a man who prefers reason to force, a man who does not use the sword or spear without true cause.”
“You speak their language well?”
“Yes. I served a Roman master as a slave for years.”
“And still keep their company?”
“I did them a service. I go home to my people beyond the River Tamarus.”
“Aie … now I know the strange notes in your words although they are mine. That you speak their tongue is good. You can speak for me and save the legs of old Machen, who nurses a mead-skin downriver with the rest of my men.”
As the man was speaking Baradoc studied him. He was taller than most hillmen and he had a full handful of years more than himself. When he smiled there was no guile behind the eyes, but when he frowned there was force and authority in him.
Baradoc said, “I will speak for you.”
“Good. But first I would know who you are.”
“My name is Baradoc. I am the only son of my father, the son of great Ruachan, chief of the tribe of the Enduring Crow.” He pulled aside the shoulder of the light tunic he wore and exposed the tattoo of his tribe’s bird. He went on, “I return to my people to raise them and all our kind against the Saxons and …”
“Enough!” The man cut him short. “Such talk is everywhere among the tribes but it is no more than the empty chatter of house-safe sparrows as the hawk flies over. My business is of today—and here in this villa.”
Anger was so strong in Baradoc that he had to hold down the words he would have spoken. Prudence alone moved him as he said, “I have named myself. Who are you?”
“I am Cadrus of the Ocelos.” The man touched his right shoulder. “I bear their mark here. We are from the hills beyond Gobannium, and Eurium. But this day we are from Abonae, which my people hold after crossing the Sabrina.”
“You go to Aquae Sulis?”
“No. We are not enough.” He looked around the courtyard, smiled and said, “We are content to take the straying goslings. The fat goose can wait until another time.”
Baradoc knew the joke had been made for him alone. The mark he carried on his shoulder was of the goose with the golden feet and bill, the Ocelos’tattoo.
“And from here? What do you take?”
“All weapons, save yours. All treasure and money. And some of the household for slaves. All this without force unless force is offered. Go to the old man and tell him this, and then stay with him and the girl while my men do their work. Who is the girl, his daughter?”
“No, his dead brother’s daughter. She came with me from beyond the Anderida forest. She lived with her brother and his wife. Their villa and homestead farm were burned and pillaged by their own people … the ones who, fearing the Saxon coming, turn in madness on their own kind. The brother and his wife were killed. She escaped into the forest and I brought her here.”
Cadrus nodded, and said, “Go tell the old man and then the three of you hold your place while my men do their work.”
Baradoc went back to Tia and Truvius. Cadrus began to give orders to his men. Four were left spaced around the courtyard, their bows held ready, while the others began to go through the house. Cadrus stood in the archway and as the house was sacked the weapons and looted treasurers were piled alongside him, gold and silver plate spilling onto the stones, small leather pouches of coins from Truvius’s room, a casket of jewels—nothing of good value was over-looked, down to the smallest bronze brooch, the tiny hand lamps of beaten copper—and amongst it all the silver chalice given by Asimus, which had stood in Tia’s bedroom.
Baradoc told Tia and Truvius what Cadrus intended. The old man heard him in silence until the end and then he raised his grey head and said, “So it must be, for the man who holds the sword and the spear is master. What they take from us is nothing. The years have made me helpless, and the times have made victims of the innocent. All my servants are free people. Now they go to slaver
y in some wild hill fortress.”
Tia said firmly to Baradoc, “The man is of your kind. He holds you in good faith. Go to him and ask him to spare the servants.”
Looking down at Tia as she sat on a stool at the old man’s feet, Cuna resting against her leg, Baradoc said nothing. But the shadow of unease that had been with him from the moment that Cadrus had glanced toward Tia was now grown blacker in his mind. Truvius lived now in a dream of old age. The world about him had long lost meaning. His life lay in the past, his days now were a crawling serpent of slow hours that wreathed about him and found him impatient for the final sting. But Tia was at the beginning of her days. Cadrus’s face had been unmoving as he had glanced at her, but his eyes had mirrored the quick stir of his emotions.
Baradoc said, “This is no moment to ask for a favour which will not be granted. The hillmen have no bellies for field or farm work. Fighting and hunting are their work. A slave is a high prize, to be put to the plough or the cattle folds, or to be sold to the coast traders from Erin.” But the more he could have said he kept to himself, for a woman slave who was fair in all men’s eyes was a treasure not to be passed by. Tia stirred angrily and began to speak. He broke in sharply and said, “Stay here and say nothing. One wrong word could put Cadrus out of humour.” And then, as Tia looked up at him tight-lipped, he saw her face slowly change and he knew that she had read his thoughts.
The Crimson Chalice Page 12