The Circle of the Gods

by Victor Canning

  “They are indeed, and more so than any other gods.”

  “That is no uncommon thing among gods. Some are greater than others. So I am happy to worship your Christos and his father for they are gods and I, worship all gods. How else can a man live in grace and under heavenly protection unless he gives homage to all gods? From my mother and my teachers I learned long ago that all the gods the Romans worshipped were but our gods with a different name. Great Bellenus was their Apollo. Our great Credne, who made the silver hand for the god Nodons, was their Vulcan, and so with all of them to the highest. Our all-powerful Dis was their Jove. A name is nothing. There must be as many names for the gods as there are races on this earth with different languages. Have no worry, good Pasco. You can marry me to the lady Daria with a clear mind since I will happily worship this Christos and his great father.”

  Pasco rubbed his chin and sighed. To argue with Arto further was to invite a spreading of confusion and trouble. The lady Daria would have Arturo for husband for she loved him. For that, if need arose—since her faith was not well-tempered—she would unhesitatingly declare herself no longer a Christian. It was better, he gauged, to keep the sheep in the fold than lose it forever to a young ram from a strange flock. And was it not true that Christos often chose to bring the heathen by strange paths to grace?

  Seeing Daria’s eyes attentive on him and her hand holding Arturo’s in union which his common sense told him, since the season was spring and young blood was young blood, must soon be celebrated, he said, “Then I will marry you. But there is one small rite of the Christian god you must make.”

  Arturo smiled. “Aie … I know of that, too. You would have me stand in the fountains of the three nymphs and duck me under in baptism? So be it. Cold the water may be, but what could be colder than a heart denied its love? And know, too, good Pasco, that I shall take pride in being a follower of your Christos. Many of my men are such. Was it not the great Christian bishop Germanus who gave our people the miraculous Alleluia Victory over the Saxon and Pictish forces of the young Hengist when he first came to these shores?”

  So it was that, in a courtyard crowded with all his followers, Arturo, stripped to a loincloth, was baptized in the great stone bowl of the fountain of the three nymphs. The water which he had expected to be ice-cold seemed warm to him and he gave thanks, as Pasco spoke his ritual words over him, to the goddess Coventina for her favour.

  They were married and feasted and then taken in procession by torchlight to the bower in the water meadow, and as the first slip of a late-rising moon paled the sky the nightingales began to sing from the hazel beds. The next morning, when the two came out from the bower to face a morning lively with a fresh breeze from the south, Arturo was greeted by the sight of a tall lance fixed firmly in the turf. From it, its folds curling and uncurling in the wind, flew a red war banner which had emblazoned on its center the device of a rearing white horse, mane and tail flaring as though the breeze itself were giving the animal life.

  Daria said, “This night you have had my bride’s gift. This morning I gave you my first gift as your wife. May the gods protect you whenever you go into battle with it.”

  Arturo, putting his arm around her, his eyes fast on the waving banner, said, “If ever I bring dishonour to it or to you may all the gods desert me.”

  Three days later in the early afternoon came the high warning call of the horn of the watch guard on duty at the southwestern edge of the camp lands. The call was three high-pitched blasts which told of the approach of strangers. As the guard men of the day came running from their quarters and the companions working and training about the villa grounds began to muster to arms the horn called again. But this time it was the long, high sustained note which told that the strangers came in peace.

  Shortly afterward a small party rode into the villa courtyard, where Arturo and his men stood waiting to greet them. Arturo’s face lit up as he watched them approach. At their head rode his father, Baradoc, with his mother, Tia, at his side. Behind came three of Prince Gerontius’s men as bodyguards, followed by two youths leading heavily laden baggage ponies. They greeted each other affectionately and Arturo presented Daria to them as his wife and saw the quick gleam of pleasure and approval in his mother’s eyes. Tia, now in her fortieth year, had grown matronly. Time had not flawed her beauty, but the years had given her the noble bearing of a queenly woman. Her hair was still corn gold and her eyes quick and all-embracing as she looked around her. His father looked much older and there were iron-grey streaks in his russet hair. His sword arm had grown stiffer and when he embraced Arturo it was only with a clasp of his left arm around his shoulders. His face was stern but more now, Arturo guessed, from habit than mirroring any immediate emotion. But his directness of manner was still the same. Daria led Tia away to the women’s quarters, and the guard of the day took charge of the comfort of their mounted guard and baggagemen. Baradoc, left alone with Arturo, walked to the edge of the fountain basin and sat down. He accepted the cup of wine which one of the camp women brought to him. When the woman had gone, he said to Arturo evenly, “We stay not the night, for we are in Count Ambrosius’s country and that would be a discourtesy to him.”

  Arturo, smiling, answered, “This is my country—but I take no issue with you, Father. That you are here, and my mother, too, is a joy to me. But I would be foolish to think that you come simply as father to greet his son.”

  Baradoc nodded. “That is the truth. I would it were otherwise.” Then looking around him, he went on, “You have things well ordered here. Your horses in the pastures are a delight to the eye. The crops show fair, and your men walk and hold themselves with dignity and pride. You and your time here are wasted, though. You live in a dream of defiance.”

  “I live to make a dream come true. And the gods are with me.”

  Baradoc smiled and, rubbing his stiff right shoulder, said wryly, “You are as ever, I see, a familiar of the gods and enjoy their favour. Well, I will not argue with you about that. I come from Prince Gerontius on other business. He has entrusted to me a task of great importance—I go now, in fact, to persuade Count Ambrosius of this. For this task I would have one at my side whom I can trust. Someone to take the place of this.…” He half raised his stiff right arm.

  For a moment or two Arturo said nothing. From the companions who had come to him recently he had heard that Prince Gerontius planned to raise in the country of the Durptriges, west of Lindinis, an armed camp to be a bastion against any future westward move of the Saxons. Then seeing his father’s eyes shrewdly watching him, he said, “I have heard something of this work. But to me …” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, my father, it is one thing for a hedgehog to roll itself into a ball of spikes until the fox walks away. But Hengist and his Saxon kind are not to be so easily baulked. They will sit themselves down around your hedgehog and wait for it to starve to death.”

  Baradoc shook his head. “There is more to it than that. I would have you know it and work for it with me. That is why I am here. Prince Gerontius will withdraw the warrant of outlawry on you. When I have seen Count Ambrosius he will do the same—for in return he will get a levy of troops he thinks not to have. The Prince expects no humbling of yourself before him. You give him your allegiance truly. In return, you are free, and you come with me to help in this great work and you bring your men and horses and all your people as your command.”

  Arturo, tight-lipped, shook his head. “In a fashion he sues for my help. But now the wind blows from another quarter. I have men here who have only one thought in mind—and that is not to sit them down and protect the building of this great fort which you would raise. Nor have I such thought. Within a month I would have no men. They are hungry for war and defiance—and so am I. We begin small, true, my father. But after the flowering of one blood-red poppy who can count the seeds that burst from the pod? With the gods we can dare all. But sitting on our backsides about a great fort would invite their mockery.”

  Barad
oc shook his head and sighed: “You think too much of the gods. But, remember this, there are those they touch with madness in order to destroy them. Still, your answer is what I expected. Nor, in truth, would I have pursued it this far were it not for the urging of your mother.”

  Before the little party left, Tia walked alone with Arturo along the terraced plots below the villa, where now the young bean shoots grew high and the spring cabbage fattened, to say her farewell to her son. Another son she had and two daughters, but this one was the marked one. Her sole joy was to have seen him again and to know an increase in that joy in learning that he was married to Daria, to whom her heart had warmed so immediately that, putting aside any thought of a last plea that he should join his father, she said to him now, “The woman you have taken to wife pleases me. I know that she shares the dream you have. But remember this, Arturo, for I speak to you as a man and not my son, the constancy of a woman’s heart-troth for her man is no polished jewel to be untouched by time and absence. It is a living plant which can wither under the killing frosts of long absence while her lover dedicates himself to an all-consuming love for his country—or selfish glory.”

  Arturo took her hand fondly and said with a present honesty and passion, “I shall never cease from cherishing Daria, nor ever give her true cause to turn away from me. Do I not remember how it was with you during the years my father was away? Your virtue was a sword which went before you.”

  Tia made no answer for she knew that he spoke as he would want things to be and, knowing only the strength of his young manhood, had yet to learn how weak and barren the spirit and body of a woman could be who lived in loneliness.

  10. Under The Banner Of The White Horse

  After the feast of Beltine all sweethearts, wives and children left the villa, except for Daria and Ansold, who were to go to the nearest forest settlement when Arturo and his men left. Of all the men who had gone away to visit their homelands and their families only two never returned, and it was known much later that of these one had been killed in a drunken quarrel and the other had died of the slow sickness in his hometown of Ariconium, west of the Sabrina River. This sickness had been spreading now for over two years from the north. It came slowly and unevenly. It broke out in one village and left its neighbour unplagued, and turned one town into a desert while an other a few miles away went unscathed. It was no new thing. The oldest of men could remember it in their boyhood and held the memory of their father’s memories of it. It was accepted as the seasons were accepted, and this year it was being said that it was as bad as any could remember and was the cause of Hengist and his fellow chieftains showing no signs yet of moving their war bands westward across its direct path.

  Arturo gave it little importance. Disease was the lot of man and beast. A beast was at the mercy of the good keeping and feeding of his master, but a man was his own master. He should drink clean water, eat good meat and bread, and—in his camp—keep the privies clean and, except in the coldest of seasons, wash the body thoroughly every two weeks.

  Each day now was filled with preparations for the march eastward and, although he knew that it would be no great army he led, he was fired with the thought that from the exploits and daring of his handful of men an army would grow and, with its growth, the renown of his name.

  On the night before the morning of his leaving the camp with his company of comrades, he lay awake on the bed in their chamber at the villa with Daria. Holding her hand, he leant over her and kissed her and then said, “I say my farewell to you now. While I am gone, pray to your god for me, and know that everywhere I go I carry you in my heart. In my dreams I shall walk with you beneath the sweet yellow apple tree by the stream and there shall be no sadness in the voice of the storm thrush, or melancholy in the call of the blackbird from the bower of the white-blossomed thorn tree. I shall see your bright cheeks, red lips, eyebrows as black as a chafer and your teeth bright as the noble colour of snow.…”

  Daria made no answer, though she smiled at his words, knowing that with the comrades in his hall he had feasted and drunk the last of the over-winter mead. But her heart was full with her love for him and she needed no words to show it. She drew him down to her and when he slept she kept him harboured within her embrace.

  They rode out the next morning to leave the Villa of the Three Nymphs to the foxes and the birds, to the basking lizards and snakes, and their growing crops to the care and mercy of the surrounding settlements. At their head rode Arturo on the White One, wearing a leather war cap from which the red and white horse plumes swayed in the morning breeze. About his neck was knotted a red-and-white scarf and tight around his leather tunic a studded belt which carried sword and knife, his trews cross-gartered with braided deerhide thongs, his legs guarded by a pair of old bronze greaves. Over his shoulder he carried, as did all the companions, a small round buckler painted red with the device of the rearing white horse on it, and he held himself proudly, his head high so that the low sun set dull fire-flecks amongst the growth of the campaigning beard he had grown. At his side rode Daria’s brother, Lancelo, red-and-white-plumed and scarved, armed with shield and sword, and carrying high the war banner of the White One. Behind them came the companions, all plumed and scarved and armed and bucklered, but clothed for war variously. Some wore the clothes of the Sabrina wing from which they had come. Some were cuirassed fore and back with padded leather plates, and a few proudly bore old bronze cuirasses which had seen service nearly a hundred years before, in the days of Stilicho and Constantine.

  They mustered near sixty horse, and Arturo had divided his force into two troops of twenty-four horse each. The first troop was commanded by his closest friend, Durstan, with Garwain of Moridunum as his second-in-command. The second troop was led by the bearded, sweet-singing Gelliga from Lavobrinta, who had for his deputy the young fresh-faced giant-handed Borio from Deva. Behind them came the remount section of six horse, ridden by two other companions, the brothers dumb Timo and Marcos and the two young men—Barma and Felos—who had first come to the villa bringing tribute from the surrounding Britons. Behind them came a string of pack ponies, led and ridden by the priest Pasco and other workers who had attached themselves to the community of the companions over the months.

  It was a small force but a brave one, well trained and disciplined, and now fully aware of what was in Arturo’s mind. The only man who travelled unarmed was Pasco, and as the column rode out of the courtyard he intoned in a loud voice a prayer, to which for Arturo’s sake he added a few unorthodox touches:

  “O chaste Christ well-beloved, and all the native gods of this great country, to whom every verdict is clear, may the grace of the Seven-fold Spirit come to keep and protect these Thy servants.

  “Let neither sword nor spear restrain them, nor the enemy slip from their grasp like an eel’s tail, so that under Thy banner neither barbarian, bond, fortress nor bare waste can stop their course.

  “O powerful Creator, and Protector, rule our hearts, that Thou mayest be our love, and that we may do Thy will.”

  And so they went down the hillslope to the pasture and into the water meadows to follow the streamside which would take them by midday to the valley of the young Tamesis River. Here, they would turn eastward until they came to the ford which carried the Corinium road that ran to Spinis and Calleva and beyond into the heart of the wastelands waiting yet to be fully claimed and held by Briton or barbarian.

  High up the valley side, on their right flank and hidden in the woods, Inbar watched them move, sitting his horse which switched its tail lazily against the summer flies. He wore a long brown woollen cloak which hid the sword he carried from his belt. Across his back was slung a hunting bow and a plaited-straw sheath of arrows, and lashed behind him was a roll of baggage to serve him in the slow hunt which was now beginning. Only the gods could number its days, but he knew that it would be long.

  Two days later Arturo and his company rode into Calleva of the Atrebates. In their progress, riding along the
old road, its ditches rained, its surface broken and long despoiled in places, they had met no travellers. In the crop fields their fellow countrymen watched them from a safe distance, offering them no friendship, and the cattle minders, seeing the cloud of dust that rose about them, drove their beasts fast to distant safety. They trotted in over the old earthworks, the setting sun rose-tinting the ruined walls, and through the west gate opening, bare now of the great portals which had once swung close to protect the town at night.

  Except for a few old people, spinning out their handful of days in misery and hunger, the town was a place of the dead. There was nothing of value left. Here no man pursued his craft, no merchant his barter, no housewife her marketing. No children played and even the sparrows and kites had deserted the place. Between the Saxons of the east and the Britons of the west and north, the country was a No-man’s-land where safety lay in forest and river marsh or the openness of the high downs.

  They slept that night in the old, almost ruined mansio close to the south gate. The horses were quartered in the inner courtyard and the company either slept in the surrounding lodging rooms of this old official inn of Roman days or lay rolled in their blankets under the balmy night sky. A courtyard well held good water still for men and horses, Doing his rounds that night to the sentries he had posted, Arturo, his footsteps echoing through the ruins, could imagine the days when travellers and staging Roman officers and officials had made the place a hive of warmth and talk as they passed through on their way to new postings in distant legions or to fresh markets as far north as the Antonine Wall. His lips tightened as he thought of those ordered, prosperous days and of his country now. A country which was being torn apart by so many forces and made a ruin and a desert to offend the eyes of man and the hearts of the gods.