The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  One day Arturo watched a small party coming along the road, travelling eastward. A man walked at the head of a horse which was pulling an open cart in which sat two cloaked figures pressed close together against the bluster of wind and rainsqualls which were sweeping the moorland. Tethered to the rear of the cart was a milch cow and a spare horse. When the party was directly below Arturo, the cart lurched in one of the deep ruts and the sudden movement alarmed the tethered horse.

  It reared on its hind legs, tossed up its head and broke the halter rope. The animal galloped off the road and took to the moor ground in alarm. Faintly on the wind Arturo caught the sound of the shouts and cries of the party and for a moment or two he sat his pony, grinning at their plight. Before they could unhitch the cart horse to go in chase of the escaping animal it would be well away into the moor and an easy prize for him to capture.

  Impulsively he kicked his heels into the flanks of his pony and began to ride fast down the tor slope on a line to bring him to the escaping animal. Behind him, barking and losing ground, came Cuna. Excited now at the easy prize which lay before him Arturo, as a squall of wind and rain beat into his face, cried, “Aie! Aie! The gods give and Arturo takes!”

  Thighs and legs gripping tight on the pony’s sides, Arturo swung the animal around rocks and heather and gorse clumps and fast overhauled the horse, which had now dropped to a slow canter. On the far ridge of the tor Arturo drew level with the horse and, pulling the pony back to match its gait, he rode alongside, talking and calling to it until it dropped to a slow amble. Arturo leant over and caught the free-flying halter rope and drew horse and moor pony to a halt.

  Flushed with his prize, he sat back and looked down at the road party. The man was making no effort to unhitch the horse from the cart to follow him. But one of the two people in the cart had jumped to the ground and was running quickly up the long slope toward him. Arturo grinned as he watched. He had but to turn and canter away with his prize and none could stop him. Mischief rising in him, he waited, planning to hold his ground tantalizingly until the figure neared him before riding away. The runner was a bowshot away when the passing of the fierce rainsquall allowed him to see clearly. He saw that the pursuer had thrown off his cloak and now came toward him, wearing only a rain-damp red tunic, and carried no arms. Then, as the gap between them narrowed, he saw more—that the pursuer was no man or youth, but a girl with long black hair and that she ran faster than he had seen anyone run before and with the surefootedness of a deer. He was on the point of turning away with his prize in escape when the impulse to kick his pony into action died in him. He sat and waited for the girl to come up to him.

  She drew up before him and stood, squaring her shoulders as she took deep breaths before speaking. She was, Arturo guessed, little older than himself and more beautiful than any of the settlement girls. Her hair was as black as a raven’s wing and lay now plastered to her head and neck with wet like a sleek helmet, and the same rain had drenched her tunic so that it clung to her body like a skin, firming into bold prominence her apple-small young breasts. Her legs were bare except for light leather sandals, the thongs between big and second toes cross-gartered high up her bare legs. But more than the boldness of her young body, which Arturo covered unbashfully with his eyes, was the beauty of her face. Her skin had the soft, dull polish of a hoarded hazelnut, her eyes were a bright, clear, piercing blue and her lips were red as the wild rosehips which grew on the banks of the lower combes of the moor. Arturo had never seen a girl so beautiful and the sight made him clear his throat with a grunt as though his gullet were dry with sudden thirst.

  Her breath recovered, the girl stepped forward and laid her hand on the halter of the escaped horse. In an accent which told him that she had never been born or bred in Dumnonia she said, “I thank you, stranger, for catching our horse.”

  Tempted by some demon of mischief, Arturo answered, “And I say no thanks are needed since I do not mean to give him up.”

  The girl laughed and tugged gently at the loop of the rope that curved between horse and Arturo’s hand. “Then you must get down and fight for him—but watch as your feet touch the ground lest I fairly slit your gullet with this.” As she spoke she pulled up the long hem of her tunic and drew from a sheath held by the top-gartering of her sandals against her thigh a long single-edged knife. Seeing the look of surprise on Arturo’s face as he still sat his pony, she laughed and said, “I see you have no stomach for knife work!” With the last word she jerked the free end of the halter from Arturo’s unresisting grasp.

  Arturo, confused and suddenly no master of himself, said, “You are not of these parts?”

  “No, nor wish to be if it is peopled with horse thieves.” She spoke harshly and then as though from her mastery she had decided to be magnanimous, went on, “We come from Gaul and landed two days since in the bay which is named after the island of Ictis and we make our way to Lindum.”

  “Where is that?”

  The girl smiled. “To hear my father tell it—where every other spring flows wine instead of water, where the birds on the trees have golden wings, and the cattle grass grows knee-high and lush through winter. You want to leave your bog hut or beach shelter and come? You would be welcome, less for the company of yourself than the gain of your pony and the friendship of your dog.” She stooped and fondled the ears of Cuna, who sat at her feet.

  Arturo, slowly mastering the unusual confusion which had spread quickly through him, said with a return of spirit, “One day I will come to Lindum and seek you out. You shall see—when I am grown I shall come and woo you and we shall lie in the long grass, listen to the golden birds sing, and drink the new wine. This I promise you.”

  The girl laughed, shaking her head so that the raindrops sprayed from her long black hair, and said, “You have a boy’s build but a bard’s tongue. How will you ask for me since you know not my name?”

  Enjoying himself now, excited by her presence and the day’s adventure, Arturo grinned, then spat like a man over his pony’s neck and said, “I shall ask for one who has eyes like the blue bellflowers, lips redder than the thorn berry and hair like polished black serpentine.”

  The girl rubbed the back of her hand across her nose as the rain, which had begun again, ran down it and said, “There could be many such.”

  “Aie … so. But not any who can lift a tunic skirt to take knife and show a red birthmark like a swallow’s gorge on her thigh.”

  The girl was silent for a moment, then shook her head and asked, “How many years have you got, boy?”

  “Ten,” liked Arturo.

  She shook her head, and said, “I doubt the truth of that—but one thing is true, your tongue outruns your years.”

  As she finished speaking there came through the wind and the rain from the road below the high, winding sound of a horn.

  “Your father calls,” said Arturo.

  “Then I go. But”—she grinned impishly—“to save you trouble in the years to come I give you my name for I would not have you wandering the streets of Lindum lifting the skirts of every dark-haired girl looking for a swallow’s gorge birthmark. ’Tis Daria, daughter of Ansold, the sword smith.”

  She turned from him, as the horn blew again, leapt to her horse’s back, kicked him with her heels and set him at a canter down the slope.

  “And mine,” shouted Arturo after her, though the rain and wind drowned his words “is Arturo, son of Baradoc, chief of the people of the Enduring Crow and … and … and …” He spluttered into silence as a sharp squall burst into his face.

  He sat then, still on his pony, watching Daria rejoin her father, seeing the escaped horse retethered to the cart, and unmoving still sat on, watching, until the slow-moving party disappeared over a far crest of the moor.

  Two days later Tia walked the river path from the cave up to the long hall. She was smiling to herself because Arturo had returned from the moor that morning with Garmon and had come straight to her in the cave where she worked,
stuffed himself with two of the fresh-baked wheat cakes, and had insisted that she draw a map in the sand of the cave’s floor to show him where Lindum lay. But when she had asked him why he wanted to know he had been evasive and she had not pressed him. In the last few months, since he had spent less time with boys of his own age, and had frequented first the priest and then the herdsman, she had sensed a growing impatience in him, a restlessness of spirit and body, and a precocity which far from pleased her. When he slept at home now it was no longer to share her bed platform but to lie in the long-empty bed of Mawga’s father. The children of the tribe grew faster and matured earlier than the Roman and Romano-British boys and girls of her own childhood. Since most of the youths and maidens of the tribe moved about in the good weather half-naked it was a development to be expected—but it was an early ripening which, she felt, needed the control more of a father than a mother so far as Arturo was concerned. Had she a daughter she could have dealt with her, but Arturo was fast slipping beyond her grasp. He needed the firm hand and sharp tongue of a father to guide and school him. For a moment or two her heart was full of fierce longing for the return of Baradoc. By all the gods, she needed him for Arturo’s sake and for her own.…

  When she entered the long hall Inbar was sitting alone at the table, lashing the three-tined head of a fish spear into the socket of a new ash pole with waxed leather thongs. To one end of the table was set the customary mead jug and by its side two beakers. He rose as she came in, holding the door wide to let her pass with the great rush basket of new bread, and stood watching her as she carried it through to the storeroom. When she came back, without any word or greeting, he motioned her to sit at the table. He went to the door, glanced around as she sat with her back to him, then closed the door and with a flick of his fingers drew the leather latch thong inward through its hole so that none could open the door from outside. He came back around the table and sat, facing her. He lifted the jug and filled the two beakers and Tia saw at once that instead of pouring mead he was pouring wine. Seeing that she had noticed this, Inbar smiled.

  “There is a reason,” he said.

  “And for these, too?” Tia touched her beaker with a finger. Like the other it was not the usual earthenware beaker but two fine glass drinking cups each engraved with the snake-wreathed head of the gorgon, Medusa. Such glasswork, she guessed, could never have been made in this country.

  “For those, too,” said Inbar. “In his time my father traded for and hoarded much treasure. But he seldom used such things as these—unless someone as important as the Prince of Dumnonia or his high steward came this way.”

  “Then who is honoured today?”

  “You.”

  “Why?”

  “Because this is the day of my birth.” He smiled. “That is if Galpan, the priest, in his keeping of the calendar is to be believed. So I make you my birthday guest, and for this meeting plague you not about marriage, but ask in its stead that you pledge my health.”

  Tia smiled. When he was in this mood, despite all he had done to Baradoc, she could find herself easier with him. She took the glass and breathed in the bouquet. How many years had it been since she had last drunk a fine Falernian? Besides his treasures old Aritag had hoarded wine, too; wine bartered for in the peaceful days when the trading ships came coast-creeping all the way from the Mediterranean.

  Tia said, “In return for a truce to marriage talk, I drink willingly.”

  “You do me honour. ’Tis but a small glass, so drink deep.”

  As she put the glass back on the table Inbar raised his own glass.

  He said, “From this day I ask no more that you should be my wife, but wait only for the time when you shall look into my eyes and I shall know that the thirst I have for you lives also in the woman who for me is the woman above all women.”

  He drank, emptying his glass, and as he set it back on the table he touched its rim against the rim of Tia’s glass and a small, silvery note rang high and then died through the silence of the long hall. Then he stood up and moved slowly around the table to come to Tia’s side. As he did so Tia’s head began to swim and, smiling at the conceit, she fancied that suddenly there was not one but three Inbars who approached her, three that swam first apart and then merged into one and then broke again into three, and then, as almost uncaringly she began dimly to know what had happened, the middle Inbar came to her and lifted her from her seat. As he drew her to him, knowing now that the wine had been drugged, she tried to push him from her. His arms encircled her and his lips came down to hers and took them, and he held her until there was no resistance left in her.

  He lifted her from her feet and carried her, kissing her face and neck as he walked, to his sleeping booth at the end of the hall. He laid her down on the great white spread of bearskin, the pelt of one of the northern monsters which dwelt among the icebergs and frozen seas which only the Viking sea raiders knew, and rested her head on the red of the damask cushion stuffed with the nesting down of eider ducks. She lay there, breathing gently, with her eyes shut, and her fair beauty fogged his eyes with tears of joy.

  Yet to himself, as his hands began to unlatch the buckle of his deerskin surcoat, he said, the edge of regret in his voice, “A little more of patience and gentleness, good Inbar, and she would have come to you freely, tamed by her own desire. Now loving itself must be the shy mare’s gentler.”

  His belt dropped to the floor, but as he moved to slip free of his surcoat there came from outside the distant sound of people running and calling, the noise growing louder with each second.

  Then clearly through the still summer air burst the fierce, insistent clarion calling of Bada’s horn, beating and searing and wailing, as he heralded the first shoaling of the year.

  As the sound of shouts and racing footsteps came nearer and the horn’s clamour grew fiercer and fiercer, Inbar looked to the indrawn latch thong of the door and then down to Tia. Slowly a wry smile spread over his face. A man could plan, he thought, but there was no escaping the intrusion of the gods. As chief of the people of the Enduring Crow there was no escape from honouring the great gift from the sea.

  He picked up his belt, rebuckled it, and then went to the wall and took down the great shield. He opened the door as Bada and a gathering of tribespeople swarmed across the forecourt. Seeing him, they rushed forward and eager hands began to pull him away, across the court and down the valley while the horn blower paraded before him, waking the cliffs to wild echoes and setting the seabirds awing and awailing.

  Only one of the tribe loitered and turned back to the long hall. Mawga, before the opening of the door, had seen that the latch thong had been pulled inside. She went in and saw the wineglasses and jug on the table, and Tia lying clothed and untouched on the bed.

  3. A Chaplet Of Purple Vatch

  Inbar guessed that Magwa had helped Tia to escape. Two nights later he took her to the long hall, dismissed the old woman from the cooking quarters and the other house servant. Then he flung her on the bed and beat her until she confessed (which she did soon enough) that she had brought a moor pony to the long hall, set the partly recovering Tia on it and led her until long after nightfall across the dark upland until they had reached the Isca road. Here, recovering fast, Tia could manage the pony herself. Wearing the Epona brooch of Ricat, she had ridden off eastward.

  Four days later Inbar had married Mawga, and she, despite her weals, was well content. To Arturo he said nothing for long since there had been no lack of boys and gossips to tell him the story. But he took Arturo into his household and treated him as his ward. Arturo, behaving himself and docile, took advantage of being lodged in the hall as the ward of the Chief to avoid any task that displeased him. Within himself he nursed the promise that he would leave the settlement as soon as he had grown to self-sufficiency and, if chance could be wrought, would kill Inbar before he left for attempting the dishonour of his mother.

  In Isca, Tia was met by Ricat, the horse master, as she rode down in the
pearl haze of a summer morning to the shallow ford across the river. Beyond the river rose the great Mount of Isca topped with the long abandoned Roman fortress. It had been beyond the memory of most men since any Cohort Commander had made the night rounds of legionary sentinels, and the fortress now was slowly lapsing into ruin as the townspeople robbed it for its quarried stone, its well-wrought woodwork and the great red tiles which had roofed stables, barracks and officers’ quarters. Beyond the Mount at the foot of its slope was spread out the British town, a huddle of squalid reed- and straw-thatched dwellings. A haze of cooking smoke rose in the still morning air, cattle grazed in the water meadows, and pigs rooted and foraged through the middens that spread around the skirts of the lower town. Above all, flying from the topmost rampart of the old fortress, the scarlet standard of the Prince of Dumnonia hung from a stout pine flagpole like a lazy flame as the idle wind now and then unfurled it to show the Dumnonia symbol of a great oak tree.

  Ricat greeted Tia warmly and then, without asking her for any explanation of her coming, took her right hand and pressed it to his forehead briefly. “You are welcome, Lady Tia.”

  He took her to his house, which was stone-built and tile-roofed and stood at the side of the old Forum. Its entry was through a small courtyard where roses grew in red earthenware urns, and across its front straggled an ancient vine which held now small clusters of green grapes. He led her into the house and showed her around and told her that the top room, which was approached by an outside flight of stone steps, was hers. He handed her the key bolt to its great wooden lock, and said, “You shall do such work as you wish, but each day there comes Berna, an old woman from the lower town, who will help you. I am often away on the Prince’s business, but when I am, a night watch will keep the courtyard.”