by John James
‘But you can’t do it to me. I won’t have it!’
‘Nobody’s ever complained before.’
‘I’m complaining now. Get Taliesin!’
‘He won’t help you. He gets the best bit, as a Druid, you know.’
‘Tell him I want the consolations of my religion.’
Evrawc went off and left me to breakfast. How anyone could eat in such a situation, being fattened up like an ox! To treat me like this, Photinus, Votan Aser, to treat me as a piece of flotsam cast up on the beach and sell me off to the highest bidder, not even for cash but on some kind of credit arrangement. The porridge was better than usual, it had pats of butter floating in it. And sold for what? I was practically incandescent with rage. Not for the sake of my muscles which were in fair state. Not for the sake of my intellect, keener than any they had in the dun – the bacon had been too long on the grill – not for the sake of my store of priceless knowledge, or the dexterity of my fingers. Sold as a sexual chattel – the sausages were quite fair, why weren’t there any more – solely for some lewd woman’s pleasure. The night she danced, Bithig practically raped me. The indignity of it! Was that the last of the cheese? It should never happen to anybody. And when it was all over, to be thrown away, useless, missing all the fun, fit only for food …
10
Taliesin came with my lunch. It was quite a good one and would have been enough for two people if there hadn’t been two people, and one of them an ascetic vegetarian Druid.
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘You can’t go breaking up traditions like this.’
‘Your tradition,’ I told him, ‘not mine. Where I come from, royalty dies peacefully of old age and overeating.’
‘General tradition, my boy. The King must die for the harvest, we’ve got a good king, let’s have the next king’s harvest instead. Break the chain, and the world will come to an end, all starve.’
‘We won’t. The world will end in fire, and not for a long time yet.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I had a vision.’
‘Tell me.’ Taliesin was all professional interest. I let him have as much as was good for him of my nine days in the tree.
‘Now, if there won’t be a cataclysm at once, and if we can have enough pork in the pot, and one of the Germans too … I could get you as far as the grove tonight, and down south at the end of the week. But why should I? I mean, the festival is the only chance poor men like me have of tasting meat.’
‘You great solar hypocrite, sitting there with a leg of hare in your hand, my hare, that ought to go into fattening me up … and anyway, you get the best bit.’
‘I do not,’ he was indignant. ‘I only get the right thing, Merlin gets the right buttock, that’s the best bit.’
‘And Bithig? What does she get?’
‘What do you think? Anyway, we keep your head, look, up there. That one was your predecessor, a man from the outer isles, called Fergus. A bit salty, I thought. When we first saw you, we were on our way back from the ceremony. First of May, you know. But still you haven’t said, what’s in it for me?’
‘When I landed I had a waterbottle, on a strap.’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘Come round after dinner, and bring it.’
11
At least he did come after dinner, and gave me a chance to eat a meal for three men in peace. He gave me the bottle. I pulled out the bung, and offered it to Taliesin. He refused.
‘You might be going to turn me into anything.’
‘Then I shall.’
‘No! Who knows what powers it might not give you. I’ll call Morien. Any change there would be an improvement.’
I poured Morien four fingers of the Honeydew in a silver cup. He tossed it down, looked puzzled, and then stood up very straight and sang what I took to be several stanzas of the song about purity of heart. Taliesin looked interested.
‘It is a great deal of good that it has been doing to his versification. But as for the matter – there has been a developing, and an expanding, and a flowering of his imagination. In his own verses he has touched depths of depravity I did not think he has as yet plumbed, and he has reached heights of obscenity of which any man might well be proud. At some convenient occasion I will tell you of how I was consecrated, and initiated, and made secure against all the temptations of gluttony and strong drink.’
‘I’ve noticed the effects.’ I poured Morien a second drink. He finished it, and with a happy expression lay down by the fire, and went to sleep.
‘To think I had that, and wasted money on bribes,’ said Taliesin. ‘What does it taste like?’
I poured him some. He savoured it, and tried a few stanzas.
‘The effect on the flow of ideas is very good, and on metre, but alliteration is only slightly improved. Still, you can’t have everything. How do you make it?’
‘You start off with a mash,’ I began. ‘This is honey, but barley or apples will do …’ I went through it all carefully, once. Taliesin’s trade, mainly, was in memorising immense long poems, and he had the whole process of Honeydew off pat at one hearing. But I had no fear that he would ever be able to make it. Setting up the stills calls for a great deal of technical skill, and the most he had ever done was to cut mistletoe with a golden knife. He didn’t realise the difficulties.
When he had memorised the recipe, he said,
‘Let’s make the grove.’
‘Now you have the secret, how do I know I can trust you?’
‘I give you my word as the priest of the Unconquered Sun—’
‘Stop it,’ I told him. ‘We both know how much that word is worth.’
Silently he laid his hand on his mistletoe. That was good enough for anyone to believe.
I motioned Taliesin to leave the room before me. Before I went I took Morien’s belt, and his cloak fastener, and a few other worth-while trinkets. Then I followed the Druid along the long stone passages and through the courtyards. When we were in the last corridor and I could feel the air on my face, I saw Taliesin straighten up in the doorway. There was rather a nasty sound, and he fell down. Hit his head on the lintel, I thought, but the body in front of me suddenly slid quietly to one side. There were voices in Latin. The first was native, sibilant and adenoidal, and I could swear it was the cloth merchant.
‘Now look what you’ve done. It comes very expensive out here, killing a Druid.’
‘Well, well, Gwalchmai, there’s nothing you can do in this island that a couple of sheep for Cernunnos won’t put right.’ And this voice, too, was familiar.
‘Well, now I look he is not dead at all. An ox to Mapon will be best, and I can introduce you to a very reliable dealer, my second cousin.’
‘I’m sure that the transaction will be free of all trace of self interest. We can arrange it later. Now how do we find Photinus in this jumble of rooms?’
It was time to say something. I whispered very loudly in Greek,
‘If you have quite finished your theological speculations, I’ll show you where I live.’
I came out. It was the cloth merchant, and the other … well, who else, it was Aristarchos, and he only said,
‘I think you’ve met my troop sergeant-major. Now, Gwalchmai, what do we do with Taliesin?’
‘Easy. I take this jug of beer, which I providentially happen to have with me, and I pour it over him … so … and the jug in his left hand … so … and in his right this half-gnawed ham bone, which I brought in case I might be hungry in the night. And there is your abstemious vegetarian Druid, dead drunk on his own doorstep, and no one will ever believe a word he says.’
‘Back we go,’ said Aristarchos. ‘You ought to get away easy. I’ve got eight hundred men out here tonight, and by dawn every cow for twenty miles will be milling round in one enormous herd close to the Wall. It’ll take the Picts the whole summer to sort them out, and a generation to settle the blood-feuds. Peace in the north for thirty years, and not a single silver coin to Casnar. Tha
t’s where he got his wealth, subsidies not to attack the Wall. Let’s see how rich he gets on farming when he’s quarrelling with all his neighbours. By the way, there was no sentry on the gate of the dun, or in the village either.’
‘Taliesin bribed them to go away so he could get me out. You would pick tonight. What are you doing here, anyway?’
‘I’ve been raising a cavalry regiment. We’re off to the Danube next month, this is my last training exercise for them. At least it’s productive. Now, here’s the beginning of a path. Keep south-east on this for a mile and a half, and you’ll find something. Good luck.’
I made all the speed I could along the path. A mile and a half, I thought, and there’ll be one of Aristarchos’s patrols, or at least a horse holder, and then a night’s ride and I’ll be back in the Empire, safe. Nothing will ever tempt me to go back to the north again, good riddance to the lot. I didn’t want to see a Briton again as long as I lived, or a German either – somebody jumped on me. He wasn’t a very good wrestler and I was on top almost at once before I found he was swearing in Saxon; it was just in time to stop me putting Morien’s knife into his ribs. I got off him. Osbert sat up, and the other Saxons came sheepishly to me.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked them sternly. I’d had a severe shock.
‘There was a man named Gwalchmai, cloth merchant he was …’
‘Auxiliary sergeant-major, you mean.’
‘Well he did seem to have things organised. He woke us up one by one, and said that if we went two nights’ march to the south, and a night lying up in between, there’d be a boat to take. But when we got to these birches we’d better wait for something to happen. I suppose he meant you, but these Brits never say anything straightforward, and he couldn’t speak German properly anyway.’
Off they’d gone, straight for the coast, never a thought for me. Just selfish, that’s what, looking after their own skins, and never a thought for their brave leader who had brought them for his own purposes across the sea to this place of plenty and now had raised the whole Roman Army to send them safely on their way. I was shocked, and I told them so. They had the grace to look ashamed.
We lay up for a day on a hillside overlooking a valley with a cattle road. We’d found a havod, quite deserted, but everyone’s belongings still scattered about, so as well as blankets for the day we all found some stray trinkets to remember Britain by. We watched through the morning as bands of angry men, armed, came through hurrying southwest.
‘They look fierce enough to eat you, indeed,’ said Edward. ‘We did hear the nobles were going to eat you. The peasants don’t do that kind of thing, they say it’s too old-fashioned.’
No men came in the afternoon, so I started off before it was properly dark. We reached the shore, the banks of a big river really, about an hour after dark, with the moon coming up.
We were near a village. I took stock of the boats. There were a number of leather boats beached, two of them big enough to take us back to Germany, but I didn’t mean to do any more rowing, it was too much work, and too chancy. I pointed out under the moon and said,
‘We’ll take her.’
She was anchored out in the stream, too far for a spear to carry, but not too far for swimming.
‘The south-wester?’ said Edward. ‘Who’s going to sail her?’
For this was one of the big ships from the west of Britain, the kind the Veneti used to sail that gave Caesar so much trouble. She wasn’t a galley.
‘You take her,’ I said. ‘I’ll sail her.’
Oswy and Egbert were already stripped. They slid into the water and swam out without splashing. They might have been seals for all anyone could see. In a little while one of them was standing by the mast and waving. Osbert went around and slashed open most of the leather boats. We all got into the largest, and paddled our way out to the ship with our hands; of course all the paddles were hidden away. We were well afloat before anyone remembered the swimmers’ clothes, and we had to go back for them, giggling.
We heaved over the bulwarks on to the deck, Osbert remembering to slash a hole in the last leather boat. This ship had a deck, too, and a high poop, with a shelter under it full of things. She was oak built, great thick timbers, iron bolted, and a big leather lug sail on a mast stepped well forward. She was big enough, and roomy, three times as long as she was broad. None of the Saxons had ever seen a ship like her, let alone sailed in one.
I picked out the brightest, and stood them with ropes’ ends in their hands. The stupid ones I set to holding the standing rigging; they heaved away at the shrouds and backstays like mad and thought it was important, and it kept them out of mischief.
‘Edward, take the steering oar. Now all of you, listen. Edward as well. Listen to me all the time. When I tell you to do anything, MOVE! If you don’t hear your name called, stand still. Anyone who misses a call or pulls out of turn, I’ll kill him, I tell you, I’ll kill him. Now, listen while I call out what I’m doing.’
I was doing this for my own benefit as well as theirs. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
‘My sail is – lowered. My steering oar is – inboard. My wind is – light west-nor’-west. Now! My cable is – cut! Oswy – loose, my steering oar is – put her in, Edward – outboard, my sail is – pull, Edwy, let out the line, Egbert – set and … drawing. My wind is on the … port quarter, my heading is … a little south of east.’
When I was satisfied that Edward and Ethelbert could hold her reasonably steady, I called Osbert, who was the stupidest.
‘Hurry along there, you’re at sea now, not on your farm. How much water in the well?’
‘What’s a well?’
The Gods gave me patience not to hit him on the spot.
‘You remember about baling, I hope?’
‘I baled all the flaming way over.’
‘And you’ll bale all the flaming way back if you aren’t careful. There’s the bucket and this is where you do it. Let’s see. Not much there, keep it up till you have to use a sponge, and then tell me.’
‘What’s a sponge?’ but I left him.
I called Oswy Karlsson, who had had enough sense to make the halyards fast.
‘What else did you find – or miss?’
‘She’s in lead, big pigs with a mark on them.’
‘I thought as much, from the way she’s handling. Any food?’
‘In the shelter deck. Monotonous, cheese and twice-baked bread, and a bit of bacon. Plenty of water, in two big casks.’
‘Good. I was afraid we might have to raid for it. Anything else?’
‘There was a watchman. We knocked him on the head and tied him up on the lead. Where’s she from?’
‘In lead? from south-west Britain. We’ll find out for certain when the watchman wakes up.’
‘If he speaks German.’
‘But you speak Pictish, don’t you?’
‘No, why should I? All these Scrawlings understand German if you talk it loudly enough.’
And it was quite true. The King had taken great care that I should have no chance to learn Pictish. The Saxons had had every chance, and just never bothered.
12
By daylight, we were well out of the river mouth, and standing out to sea. Edward asked me when we would turn south-south-east to follow the coast, which, he pointed out, would bring us dead before the wind like a ship ought to go. I just told him to hold her steady.
There was a bit of grumbling among the crew as the coast slipped out of sight. I must admit that it is never very pleasant to be out of sight of land, but I had to take these men where they had no choice but to do what I told them.
First I had breakfast served, biscuit and cheese and a cup of water. When we had finished, I put Oswy at the steering oar, and brought her round almost due south. This brought smiles to everybody’s faces. They soon vanished. I gave them a couple of hours of sail drill, tacking about a point on either beam of the wind. After that, even the stupid ones realised what we
were about. Of course most of the Saxons were sick, the motion of that heavy ship wasn’t very pleasant, but they’d all been sick on the way over and they expected it.
When I was satisfied, I stood half the men down, and gave the oar to Edward. We had a talk with the watchman. In spite of a night tied up on the lead with an aching head, he was still glowing with rage, a crabby old man. He was obviously cursing us up and down in his own language, so we threw a couple of buckets of water over him.
He talked then, grudgingly, in very bad Latin. He told me he did come from the south-west. He seemed to be saying, as far as I could follow, that he came from a town in the water underneath a glass mountain, where the Druids supped from a sacred cup beside a tree that bloomed at the Yule. Serve you right, I thought, for hoping to get sense out of an angry man.
The wind held steady into the night. I felt enough confidence in Edward to let him steer in the dark, and I slept on the deck beside him. I dreamt again, of ghosts, ghosts of men who were yet to die. lots of men in great grey ships, in a lost battle launching themselves in a desperate charge to save a fleet. I woke out of a nightmare of smoke and steam and fire to find Edward shaking me and saying,
‘There’s something wrong with the ship.’
It was near dawn. There was nothing wrong with the ship, but the wind had come right round, it was the wind that had brought us to Pictland. It came from near the south, in the end; we watched it back all the way from west-nor’-west through west to a trifle west of south in an hour, but I waited till it steadied before I made up my mind.
‘Right, Jokuhai-inen,’ I thought, ‘you did what you liked to poor Saxons in a rowing boat. Now try a real man in a real ship. You bar me the way to the south? South I will go.’
I turned to my crew.
‘Duty watch,’ I called. ‘The rest of you get some sleep, you’ll need it. I’ll call you later. Duty watch! Now you’ll learn what work is.’
They did, too. I know you’ll never make a sailor out of any Saxon, but I did my best. I took my direction from the sun, and brought the ship’s head round as near south-east as I could and held her there.