The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  A great cry went up from the watching tribespeople. Baradoc, his body gleaming with sweat, unheedful of the blood that coursed down his sword, darkening the dull gleam of its blade, stepped forward and put his broad sword point to Inbar’s chest above his heart. Mawga turned away to find Tia’s arm wrapped around her and Tia’s hand pressing her face gently to the comfort of her breast. By Tia’s side, while the tribe sent up cry after cry for the kill, Arturo stood wooden-faced, watching, loath to move or speak or by any sign betray a strange shame for his father, who, despite his wound, must have known that he was always more than Inbar’s match and had played with him like cat with mouse and who now, in easy victory, would show no mercy for this humiliated man in whom much that was good outweighed the bad.

  Inbar, lying at Baradoc’s feet, opened his eyes, felt the small bite of the sword’s point against his chest, and saw the red-bearded, muscle-taut face of Baradoc above him, the deep-brown eyes still and dark as the darkest bog pool. Then with a slow sigh he said, “Aie … you have learned fine skills and feints in your wanderings. But before you press home the sword and send me to the gods I pray one charity from you. Take my wife, Mawga, into your house and treat fairly my sons who had no part in my doings.”

  Looking down at him as he spoke, Baradoc felt no pity for this man who would have left him to a slow death to make pickings for the carrion birds and the scavenging beasts. Behind him he heard the stir and low voices of the tribe and he said aloud so that all should hear clearly, “Though you would have dishonoured my wife, yours shall live under my roof in peace. Though you would have killed my son when yours were well set, your sons shall live and serve with the tribe without fear of me.”

  Inbar said, “I am content. So now, send me on my way.” As he finished speaking he closed his eyes and lay waiting.

  Baradoc stood above him and his hand firmed on his sword to make the thrust true and clean. But it seemed to him then as though some power beyond his control was slowly possessing him, staying his sword hand and, against his will, invading his whole mind and body. Through their dead fathers they shared blood, he and this man, and their fathers had only known love and comradeship with one another. Then, as though not he but some other voice new-lodged in him spoke, as though not he moved but some inexorable will commanded him, he knew himself to raise his sword point. He stepped back from Inbar to the close-by Bada and said, “I rest it in the hands of the gods who suddenly move within me. Let him make the cliff run, but if he have not courage for it, let him be stoned, for he is not worthy of my blade.”

  Almost before he had finished speaking, a great shout went up from the crowd. “The run! The run! Let him take the run!” While they still shouted Baradoc turned away from Inbar and moved through his people, seeing for a moment Tia’s face, her eyes moist with tears, and by her side Mawga, who would have moved to him but was restrained by the hand of his wife. He walked alone down the cliff path, hearing the shout of voices and the stamping of feet behind him as all was prepared for Inbar’s run. He climbed the streamside path to the long hall and, entering, called to an old, half-crippled woman servant to bring him water and cloths to clean and dress his arm wound. As he sat and was tended by her he heard distantly a great shout arise and he knew that Inbar had taken the cliff run. Once, as a boy, he had seen a tribesman take it and go to his death. In the living memory of the tribe out of a score of men to make the run no more than two or three had been known to live and escape to banishment from all the tribal lands of the Cornovii here or with their cousins in the far north of the country.

  Sometime later, when Tia and Arturo had returned to the long hall and Tia was insisting on redressing his wound after her own fashion with a salve of healing herbs and the whites of fresh eggs, he said, “He took it. I heard the great shout.”

  When Tia made no answer, Arturo said, “Yes, my father. He took it. But though we waited he did not show.”

  Tia, finishing his fresh bandaging, said, raising his right hand to her lips and kissing it, “I was glad in my heart that you found that mercy for him.”

  Baradoc grunted. Small mercy it had been and that never lodged knowingly in his own heart. He said, “Where is Mawga?”

  “Tonight she keeps her place with her children on the cliff to mourn Inbar. She will come here in full time.”

  That night, lying on his bed, the window slit above him unboarded to let the cool air in, Arturo lay thinking about Inbar. The crowd had formed a long open lane which led to the cliff’s edge. Inbar had stood at the end of it while two tribesmen stood a spear’s length behind him armed with the broad-bladed fighting swords. Once a man began to run along the lane to the cliff brink, from there to take the outward jump and the long drop to the sea below, there was no holding back except to be overtaken by the following swordsmen and to be hacked to death. There had been no hesitation in Inbar. He had run, outpacing the followers, and had leapt clean and far out. Arturo could see him now … dropping feet-first and then, as the wind took him, cartwheeling and sprawling while the dark sea rushed up to meet him and the cliff birds rose from their roosts in their hundreds, their cries drowning the shouts of the tribe as they lined the cliff and watched. Far below as Inbar had hit the water a plume of foam had spouted and been ragged and teased to nothingness by the wind. Inbar had gone under and had not shown again. Had he shown none would have helped or hindered him. The tribal law was that he must go where sea and tide took him, but seek the shore he must not until darkness came.

  That night, too, as Tia lay alongside Baradoc it was long before sleep came to her as she thought of Mawga with her children, keeping vigil on the cliff top. The grief which she knew clouded Mawga’s mind took from her the secret joy which she, herself, had come to know in the last few days. She was with child again. Although she had waited to be certain before telling Baradoc she knew that it would be many days yet before she would speak to him. He had been as merciful as tribal law allowed him to be toward Inbar and for that she honoured him, but she wanted no telling of her joy while Mawga dwelt in the first dark shadows of loss and despair from Inbar’s death.

  During the next two years Arturo never left the tribal lands. He grew in strength and height and in longing for the life that he had known at Isca. On the few occasions when Baradoc went to see Prince Gerontius he was refused permission to go with him. There were times when he sat alone on a cliff top staring out to sea, brooding over his grievances and the dullness of life in the settlement. Even the Scotti raids had now grown few and far between so that there were only rare times when, sword in hand, he could join the tribesmen in their stand on the beach at night or early morning to beat off the sea attacks. Sometimes he wondered whether Baradoc’s firm refusal to allow him to go back to Isca came from his own, though never expressed, bitterness at the loss of his fighting powers. The wound that Inbar had given him had refused to heal properly. It had festered and sent him into a fever for many weeks. Tia and Galpan had treated him, but when with the passing of the months the wound had finally healed it was only to reveal that the arm muscles had wasted so that he could no longer wield a heavy sword. Baradoc had made light of it, no matter what his inner feelings might be, and had trained himself to use his sword left-handed but with only a shadow of the dexterity and skill he had known before.

  A man so burdened, Arturo guessed, must always know bitterness or regret, and would want to keep a growing son, his heir, close to him, to fight at his right hand against the Scotti. Aie, he thought, watching a peregrine stoop from on high above the cliffs to take a rock dove, but what of the son? Each day here, except for the changes of weather and season, was the same as another and his body and mind itched for the excitements and adventurers of Isca and all the lands beyond.

  So it was that out of boredom and restlessness as he reached his seventeenth year Arturo began to find himself more and more in trouble with his father. He would steal out at night to meet a girl and then have to face an angry Baradoc. If one of the other youths spoke
to him carelessly he would waste few words but take to blows and then accept stoically a beating from his father for brawling. Once he stayed away for three days high up on the moors, hunting and roaming with only the now full-grown Anga for company. When he came back he stoutly maintained that he had been bewitched and held captive in a cave, and went on to invent some fanciful story which even made Baradoc secretly smile to himself. Of words and inventions to excuse or defend himself Arturo never had any lack.

  One day as he sat on the cliff, brooding over his pinioned life, Tia came to him. She sat beside him, holding in her arms Arturo’s sister, Gerta. Arturo leant back on his elbow and stroked her warm cheek and said, “She has your eyes, my mother, like the blue flower that grows among the corn, and your hair, brighter than the bunting’s breast. One day she will marry a great chief and men will sing about her beauty and her goodness.”

  “That she be a good wife to some man is all I ask,” said Tia.

  “And what do you ask for me?”

  “That you pleased your father more.”

  “So I would if he gave me liberty to do what I must. And if he does not give me that liberty then soon I shall take it, for the gods command more obedience than any father.”

  Tia laughed. “Now you begin to talk in your riddles again.”

  “No. I say only what has been said. In the cave where I was held on the moor by enchantment the gods spoke to me plainly.”

  “Arto!” Tia shook her head, smiling. “You dreamt with your belly empty from hunger.”

  “No. I have few night dreams. I saw and heard. The gods have put their mark on me and, when the time comes, I must obey them.”

  “And do they tell you to chase the maidens here and brawl with your companions and—”

  “No.” Arturo sat up. “They tell me only that when the sign is given I must go.”

  “And what is the sign?”

  “I shall know it when I see it.” He plucked a grass stalk and began to tickle Gerta’s nose, making her crow with pleasure. With a glance at his mother, he said, “You do not believe me? You think I am no more than a fledgling whose growing flight feathers begin to itch and make it long to take the air? No. It is more than that. There are things for me to do.”

  “What things?”

  “The gods will show.” He rolled over on his back and stared at the sky. “You have all power over my father. Ask him to give me leave to go … back to Isca and then when the sign comes to where the gods will.”

  For a moment Tia said nothing. She was thinking of the old Christian hermit, Asimus, who had placed the sacred silver chalice in her hands and told her that one day held by the right hands it would blush crimson within to show one—the words of Asimus rang clearly in her memory—who is marked for great and noble duties, someone whose name will live forever, to be praised by all true and just people … Often, since he was now grown almost to manhood, she had thought of telling Arturo this but had decided against it for it would have only increased his longing to be away from the settlement. Yet now that he had begun to talk of signs from the gods himself, and she herself had once seen the chalice cup blush pink as his baby hands held it, she wondered whether there was not a duty in her to tell him.

  Standing and cradling Gerta in the crook of her arm, she said, “Carry yourself patiently and keep from all wildness until the winter comes and I will speak to your father for you. But expect nothing from me if you once play the hellion or the bully or”—her lips tightened to hide an impulse to smile—“seek to frolic with any maiden in the bracken.”

  Arturo jumped to his feet, seized her hand and kissed it and cried, “I shall be as patient as the plodding ox, as forbearing as a priest … aye, and as untouched by any maiden’s charms.”

  So, through the rest of that summer and autumn until the first of winter’s gales pushed great curling combers far above the summer drift line on the beach, Arturo was of good behaviour, though sometimes to give ease to the pent-up longing and excess of natural spirits in him he would get leave to ride on herd duty on the moor. Then, with Anga at heel, he would set his pony to wild galloping among the tors, and sing and shout to himself like a madman. Also, when he was on the moor he would spend time with old Galpan and make him tell all he knew of their country and draw maps with a stick in the heath sand of all the tribal lands that divided it. There were times when Galpan, squatting with his back against a rock in the sun, would lose his words in a mumble and drop off to sleep. Then Arturo would lie back and stare up at the sky and watch the great clouds drift in from the west and, of all the places of which Galpan had spoken, his mind would go flighting northward to Lindum and he would remember Daria, the black-haired daughter of Ansold the sword smith. One day, he told himself, he would ride into Lindum and find them and Ansold would make him a sword that all men would fear. Then he would take Daria to be his wife and somewhere carve himself a domain and a kingdom so that all men should call her queen and bow their heads to him for permission to speak just as all men did to Prince Gerontius and that old windbag Ambrosius and to ailing Vortigern. Aie, and maybe the day would come when the long-kennelled Angles, Jutes and Saxons of the east would have their days numbered and be driven into the sea. That, at least, would give his father pleasure.

  On a night of hard frost when the stars seemed fixed like chips of ice in the sky and the winter grasses were so hoarded with rime that the cliff tops seemed snow-covered, Tia spoke to Baradoc about Arturo. She had chosen her time well. That day she had told him that she was certain that she was with child again, and also a messenger had arrived from Prince of Dumnonia, calling him to a council at Isca.

  Baradoc listened to her patiently, watching the firelight play over her face and draw sharp glints from her fair hair.

  She finished, “He has curbed his ways and shown all patience. To be a man among men he must now go from here. Take him with you to Isca and leave him with Prince. Things are afoot there and I ask nothing about them. That you show openly now little of your old hatred of the Saxon kind means only that your anger is now appeased by some great hope for the future. Make Arturo part of that future. Although I think he talks too easily of signs and miracles which live only in his imagination, maybe that is how the gods work. But with my own eyes I saw the water in his silver bowl turn crimson as he held it.”

  Baradoc smiled. “It was but the reflection of the red sunset.”

  “No. It was midmorning, and you know so for I have told you the story often.”

  “I tease you.”

  “Then please me also. Take Arturo with you.”

  Baradoc reached out and took her hand. “It was already in my mind. He shall go.”

  So Arturo rode to Isca with his father. But before he went Tia took him aside and told him of the silver bowl and the words of the good Asimus and how, as a babe, he had held it and the water had flushed with crimson from the blood of the Christ who had died on the Cross, and she gave him the bowl to take with him since it was rightfully his.

  Looking at it as he held it in his hands, he said his thanks and then added thoughtfully, “I would it had been one of our country’s gods.”

  “There are many in this country who claim him as the only god.”

  “So I know. But for my taste there is overmuch gentleness and forbearance talked about him unless, of course”—he gave her a quick grin—“he uses that as a cloak to hide his real strength and power. Aie … maybe that is it. He waits for the day when, perhaps through me, his true majesty and power shall be shown to all. Maybe, too, this is the sign the other gods have chosen to test me. Instead of Badb I have this Christos, for they know that one day he will be even greater than Badb.”

  When Arturo was alone he filled the bowl and cupped it in his hands. He held it until the silver was warmed by his palms but there was no flushing of the water. He gave a careless shrug of his shoulders, tipped the water to the ground, and then stowed the chalice away in the baggage pack he was making ready for his trip to Isca.
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br />   5. The Road To Corinium

  Arturo sat at a bench in the tavern courtyard, elbows on the rough table, staring at the sparrows that quarrelled over a scattering of scraps Ursula, the tavern keeper’s daughter, had just thrown out of the door. Spring sunlight filtered through the leaves of the ancient elderberry tree which grew against the courtyard wall. Anga lay in the shade under the table, snapping at the flies which teased his muzzle. Discontent and boredom showed plainly on Arturo’s face. If anyone, he thought, had told him almost three years ago when he came here that he would be tired of Isca soon, he would have laughed in his face. He was, he knew, out of favour with the Prince for his occasional bouts of brawling and outspoken comments on military affairs. The Prince, he felt, with all the men and horses at his command should have moved east long ago. The minds and spirits of the cavalrymen yearned for action, and being denied it they grew bitter and sullen—though not so outspoken with their discontent as he.

  Ursula came from the tavern and set before him a jug of beer and a beaker. She was a dark, tall girl of his own age, her cheeks the colour of ripe spindleberries, a strong, large-breasted girl who knew how to look after herself when the young men of the Prince’s household grew overbold from drinking. But with this Arturo she had never had trouble… more the pity for everything about him found favour with her. In his twentieth year, broad-shouldered and tall with a closely cropped beard and his pale hair fired with red glints—a young man to make any girl’s mind flower with romantic fancies—he had, it seemed, only two loves, the aging hound which lay at his feet and the horses of the Prince’s pastures.

  Arturo fumbled in his belt pouch and dropped a small silver piece on the table. It was one of the coins that the Prince had started to mint in the last year for the use of his household in Isca and the surrounding country.