by John James
‘The only thing to do with this end of the town is to burn it,’ I murmured to Pryderi, not too loudly, in case anyone might overhear me who was proud of the place.
‘We’ve done it often enough, from one end of Londinium to the other, and the last was in my father’s time,’ Pryderi replied. ‘The Lily is all right, though. That’s where our man is waiting for us.’
It was fairly clean, by waterfront standards, and not too crowded. Pryderi called for cider – I had to pay, of course – but I wanted beer. I mean, there’s good wine, and there’s bad wine, and in a miserable place like Londinium it’s nearly always bad wine. But beer – why, there’s no bad beer, only better beer and worse beer. When I think of the time when I didn’t drink beer – but I was back in practice now, and I drained the first pot at one gulp and called for another.
A little man alongside me dipped his finger in his pot and wrote on the counter:
R O T A S
O P E R A
T E N E T
A R E P O
S A T O R
It was clever enough, reading the same way up and down and back to front, but it didn’t mean anything to me.
‘And the same to you, Comrade,’ I told him – I was feeling in a friendly mood. ‘Weren’t you drawing fish in every tavern in Bonnonia the other night?’
He squinted at me in alarm, and then rushed out into the night, like a frightened hare. I turned to Pryderi who was complaining about the cider to the landlord.
‘Muck, this, proper muck. All you can say for it is that it is wet. I suppose it is cider – it must be, because it isn’t beer or mead, and it doesn’t taste good enough for ditch-water. How they have the face to bring it into the country I can’t think. Not your fault, I suppose: you have to sell what you can get. You ought’ – this to me – ‘to try some of my grandmother’s elderberry. You will, too, as soon as we get down into the Summer Country.’
He said this last sentence very loudly and distinctly, and the landlord, who had been standing with his back to the counter and taking no particular notice of his customers, so that I had had some trouble in getting my second pot of beer, now turned sharply round and snapped:
‘If you don’t like this, then go you back to the Summer Country where you belong.’
And I suppose this must have been some kind of password, because Pryderi immediately asked:
‘And where is he now?’
‘In bed with Elaine, the front-room barmaid. You can see him when – hey! You can’t go up there now! a man’s entitled to some privacy.’
‘We’re going up,’ Pryderi told him, and went on muttering something about nobody spotting an old sweat from the Danube Rangers – Dredgers, the landlord told him, more likely – Hadrian’s Own, that had seen more bloodshed than any man in the house. I slipped the patch off my eye and looked at the landlord with it. I had the garnet in, and somehow that carving always put people off, Hercules taking off the shirt of Nessus, delicate work, you could see the veins going into the kidneys and all the tubes of the lungs hanging out. And he saw the knife in my belt, and my stick, and Pryderi’s, and so he stood back politely and let us go up the ladder to the top floor.
‘Old sweat, indeed,’ I said to Pryderi on the landing, ‘and I know very well you’ve never been a soldier.’
‘Indeed, and I was a regimental tailor for three months, and then they wanted to send the whole regiment back to the Danube, so I … left.’
‘Deserted?’
‘Well … not really. My cousin came back. I only took his place for experience while he went off to see a man who had seduced his cousin. Lovely head it was, too, when he took it, and dried a treat, very decorative. You see, for all the way old Aristarchos used to talk, one Briton looked just like another to him. Now, this ought to be the door. Do you think we ought to knock, or would it spoil the surprise? Let’s go straight in and see how he’s feeling.’
So in we went without any warning, but Pryderi was disappointed, because either the Irishman had just got out of bed with the barmaid or he had not yet got in. He was ordering his supper, and when he saw me with Pryderi he made no other comment than:
‘Make it three times, Elaine, and the same for yourself.’
She was a big slattern, and I couldn’t see any man of taste going after her. I suppose that I must have shown my thoughts in my face as she went, because the Irishman said:
‘And is it thinking you can be of a better way of getting a room to yourself for a few hours? She only costs six coppers a time, for the house, but of course I always tip her and she gets a meal out of it.’
He did not bother about greetings. It was obvious he was expecting us. He and Pryderi showed for each other neither affection nor dislike, merely the attitude of two men who find it advantageous to work together, but who have otherwise nothing in common. I looked long at him, the first Irishman I had seen, I thought, though I was wrong about that.
He was a big man. He had long hair, down to his shoulders in the Irish fashion. The Brits wear it that way too, but while Germans cut their hair short, except Vandals, and wear long beards not cut or curled but combed, the Irish wear their beards long and neither washed nor combed but matted; the Brits are quite different, because they are unique among men in shaving off their beards and letting their moustaches grow, hanging down as long as possible on either side of their mouths. Pryderi’s moustache was very fine, almost to his collarbones.
But the Irishman not only wore his hair long, he had combed it back and plaited it up on top into a ridge like the mane of a horse all ready for a show or parade. He had stiffened his hair with grease, and before this he had dyed it a bright yellow so that no one could tell what the original colour had been. It would have been most distinctive in Rome, but here in Britain men dress so fantastically that no one gives it a second thought.
The Irishman was dressed as an Irishman, in a way I had not seen before. I know that if your life has been passed in the centre of culture, then you will believe that all Barbarians wear trousers and that to let your legs go bare is the mark of civilisation. This is not true. The Irish go bare-legged, but no one could call them cultured. This man had taken a length of cloth, about fifteen yards long and two wide. This he wound two or three times around his waist, and then he drew the end up over his left shoulder at the back and across the front of his body down to his waist again at the right. The cloth was fastened with two big cloak pins of silver set with pebbles, of good workmanship but too flamboyant in design for my taste.
This Irishman had, however, made some concessions both to fashion and to decency, not to mention the climate, and he had on a fairly good linen shirt under the cloth. He had not changed it for some weeks, that was plain, but under the dirt I could make out that it had once been the colour of a Spanish orange, if you know the fruit, embroidered with a variety of flower motifs in bright green. The cloth itself was all of one colour, a dirty saffron, but I saw later that some of the Irish in the far north were beginning to weave their cloths in complex patterns of many colours like the Picts, from whom I suppose they learnt the art. Elaine came back with the supper, big plates of food of all kinds fried in butter. The Brits do not use oil, professing not to like the taste of it or the smell, though I think this is a way of hiding the fact that they are too mean to pay for it. They fry things in butter instead, which to us seems disgusting, since it is plain the Gods intended it for use only as a cosmetic.
‘Can’t eat this at sea,’ said the Irishman, with his mouth full. ‘It turns my stomach.’
I knew just what he meant, and said so, and finding that I knew what I was talking about in discussing ships he became more communicative. Then Pryderi asked:
‘Anybody like my black pudding? I can’t eat it.’
‘You don’t like it? We’ll share it.’
‘No, I like it, but it’s a question of religion. All my family are descended from the great Black Pudding of Gabalva. I’ll tell you some time. My house began in a fev
er of lust and greed, with a tradition right from the start of filial neglect, and I cannot think of a better way to power.’
‘And you?’ I asked the Irishman. ‘What can’t you eat?’
‘What no one is likely to offer me.’ He grinned. ‘Dog, I can’t eat, because when I was a child I killed a big dog, and so I got my name.’ He paused, as if expecting me to say something. I kept silent. After a little he went on. ‘And it is very considerate of you, and shows that even if you are a Greek, you are a noble born, and makes me ready to trust you, that you do not ask me my name. For if you did, I would not tell you, and if you asked me a second time, then I would kill you.’
He smiled again, very engagingly. I have known several men in my time who would kill for nothing at all but the whim and the enjoyment of it, Aristarchos, for instance, and they all smiled that same dreamy smile.
‘Can you tell me your Clan?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. I am of the Sons of Mil, the noblest of all the houses of the Kings of Ireland. And I am of the nation of the Setantii, and I myself am the bravest and the strongest and the cleverest of all the Setantii of Ireland and of Britain and of Gaul and of Galatia. So it is the Setanta that I am, and so you may call me till you hear my name called in victory on the holy soil of Ireland.’
Obviously, he could not risk anyone’s using his real name while he was in the land of his enemies, because it would then be so easy to cast a spell on him. But he had said something interesting, and I went back to it.
‘My mother is Galatian.’
‘Why, useful that will be, indeed. For it is raising a fianna I must first be about. There is not a man will join me if it is thought I am in league with a Roman, and a Greek is not much better, though it is hating the Romans you must be as much as we are.’ (I wondered where he had got that strange idea from.) ‘But if it is a Galatian I am consorting with, then it might well be my own cousin within seventeen generations.’
I looked at the Setanta and dismissed that idea in horror.
‘What is a fianna?’ I asked him.
‘Why, a band of brave fellows that will follow me to the overthrowing of the High King?’
‘But why cannot you go back to Ireland and raise an army in Ulster?’
‘For the same reason that I am in exile here in the Island of the Mighty. I could not bear to stay in an Ulster that the Connaught men had ravaged from end to end, and disarmed utterly so that there is neither sword nor shield nor horse trained to war in the whole Kingdom. No, it is here. I must raise a fianna, and arm them, and find weapons enough to fit out an army. I have been thinking over it for a year, and I know the very day that I must land in Ireland again. Now, you with all your connections can find weapons enough for an army. And if it is only a little matter you want in recompense, like all the Gold in Ireland, then it will be easy enough to let you have it, I promise you that. But, meanwhile, there are arrangements to be made, while I spend the winter in the rainy hills with Howell, and they will cost something in silver. But it will only be a trifle.’
‘I can arrange that through Pryderi,’ I told him.
‘But then there is the question,’ the Setanta went on, ‘of getting the arms, when you have them, into Ireland, and for that you will need a ship.’
‘Pryderi will see to that too,’ I told him.
‘I cannot,’ Pryderi put in. ‘There is a limit to my discretion, and I cannot here and now divert a valuable ship from the honest and peaceful trade it is now engaged in. Besides, I would not like to see it lured ashore and looted and burnt on the coast of Ireland, as has happened before.’
‘But you promised—’
‘To help. I will help all I can. You must come with me, Photinus, and ask the Master of the Western Sea yourself. I will help you all I can, but I cannot promise.’
‘You give and then you take away again,’ I said bitterly. ‘If one of you does that, then the other—’
‘I have my Gesa.’ This was the Setanta in his pride.
‘Your Gesa?’
‘Every man of noble blood has his Gesa. It would not be just, or right, or morally praiseworthy, for a Son of Mil and a cousin of kings to exert his full strength against an ordinary man. It would be more honourable for me to contend with one hand tied behind my back. But that is undignified, and therefore I have taken on myself an obligation, that I must always obey, even if it be to my disadvantage. My Gesa is this, that I must never refuse to take what is offered to me, nor to give what is asked of me. And I have given what you asked for, all the Gold of Ireland. But if it is thinking you are that this is an easy burden to bear, then it is little you are knowing about it. And think, too, of the Gesa laid on my cousin and my enemy the King of Leinster. The Badger King may never refuse a wager, or a bargain, or a challenge once offered, however disadvantageous it may be.’
I hope, I thought, that one day I will meet this obliging monarch. But now I knew that the Irish were all mad, for no Greek would so bind himself. It was only necessary to find a man’s Gesa, to see a way to destroy him. Pryderi snorted.
‘Easy it is for them to take on a Gesa, and to think it so meritorious to accept odds. They are still a free people. If ever they are conquered, they will realise that victory is the only thing that matters. And then it will be too late. But come you down with me into the Summer Country, Photinus, and ask the Master yourself for a ship.’
I hesitated. Perhaps as far as that, but no farther. And quickly, so that I could get back to the Old City before the end of the summer, before the baby was born. And no farther. That was tempting. And I would not make myself any promises. I had told Uncle Euthyphro that I would see the trade started, and if it meant a month or two extra in Britain, then I would bear with it.
‘Now, if it’s there you’re going,’ warned the Setanta, ‘it’s not as a Roman you can go. You can be a Galatian if you wish, because you speak British with a strange accent.’ This annoyed me: I was sure that no one could have guessed I was not born and bred in the island.
‘With a new name,’ Pryderi added.
‘No, no,’ corrected the Setanta. ‘Clan first, name after.’
‘All right, Clan then,’ agreed Pryderi. ‘Now, do you know your ancestry on your mother’s side?’
‘Not very far,’ I warned them. ‘Not more than twenty-one or twenty-three generations.’ And I recited it, going back in the male line only but of course naming all my grandmothers as they came and inserting their fathers too. My two companions listened with care to my pronunciation of these outlandish names, now and again correcting me. And when I finished, the Setanta said:
‘Plain, isn’t it?’
‘Obvious,’ agreed Pryderi. ‘Son of Lear, he is.’
‘What does that mean?’ I asked.
‘Oh, a great house it was once,’ Pryderi told me, ‘and ruled all the island of Britain, but few are they and rarely met with.’
‘But in the Isle of the Blessed,’ added the Setanta, ‘it is an O’Leary you will be, and plenty of them there are and eager to welcome any kinsman from over the sea, especially if he is rich.’
‘But what is it I can’t eat?’
‘Swan, of course.’ They both answered together. I felt rather disappointed, because there is nothing I like better than a nice roasted swan. It is nearly big enough to serve as a dish for two, but if you are giving a party I advise you to cater on the basis of one swan per guest, since this avoids disappointment. Then Pryderi, in a doleful voice:
‘This is all nonsense. There is no possibility, Son of Lear or not, of taking you down into the Summer Country as if you were one of us. It would be better, Photinus son of Lear, if you stayed here in Londinium and let me do all the work for you in the Summer Country.’
And let you have all the money to control, I thought. Not on any account. But I could hardly sound as distrustful, so I answered as ceremonially as I could:
‘I come of a great and ancient House. Beside it your House of Lear is young and of little account. And I
have sworn to all the heads of the House that I would go as far as the port for Ireland and bring back the Gold of Ireland. You talk of a Gesa which binds you. I also am bound. I can no more turn back from this journey than you, Son of Mil, could refuse me your cloak if I asked you for it.’
‘Asked for it you have,’ said the Setanta. ‘And have it you shall.’ He stood up. He was a head taller than Pryderi and me, and well built, though not gross or corpulent like Gwawl. He was, indeed, the kind of man I would have been pleased to have as Mate on any voyage. He went to the cupboard in the corner of the room, stepping gently over Elaine who had long since sunk into a drunken sleep. He turned to me again, his arms full of fur. ‘Take my cloak, Photinus, that I cannot refuse you. And I will take what I think you have offered. You have offered me the head of the King of Connaught, to hang on the pole’s end.’
I took the cloak, a splendid garment of blue-grey fur, strange to the touch and warm, lapping me from neck to heels, and hooded. This is what every sailor who can afford it wears in thunderstorms, for there is nothing that wards off lightning like seal fur. I turned to show Pryderi. He knew, as the Irishman knew, that I had no more suspected that such a cloak was in the room than I could fly. And that is why Pryderi looked at the cloak with open mouth.
‘There is no further we need be looking for a name. Seal cloak asked unknowing shows that you are Mannanan.’
‘But he is a god of the sea,’ I objected.
‘And is it not meeting him we all have been at some time or another?’ asked the Irishman. ‘And what is the loan of a name between kinsmen?’
For I had forgotten that it is the Brits alone among all the nations of the earth who are so bold as to take the names of their gods and goddesses to themselves, and you must always be careful in telling stories there to make it clear exactly who or what you are talking about. And I remembered too all my grandfather had always taught us about the essential nature of every name.
‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘I will be Mannanan the Son of Lear, on sea and on shore in this island and in the other.’