Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  We talked on and on, and later when I lay in bed and remembered what we had said, I was horrified. I had agreed that somehow or other I would provide the means for a change of government in Ireland, which only could give us terms of trade. And what had I as working assets in this undertaking?

  First, I had one man, and now, when I could no longer see him, and was no longer overborne by his personality and the air of power and menace in his stout arms and his massive fists, he did not seem such a great asset. I did not even know his real name.

  And of Pryderi, my other asset, I knew nothing, except that he had found me the Setanta and that he only could help me to hire a ship that would face the winter on the Western Sea, for no Roman ship could float for long in the North except in the summer months, and then only in calm weather.

  But, in the ship? We had talked of money, but in the end it was not money that the Setanta wanted, or at least not very much. But he did want what he could not buy, weapons. And it never struck him that I could not buy arms either. I had a permit for a sword, and one sword only.

  I tossed in the darkness, and always in the night before me shone the Gold of Ireland, and I was frantic to think of it there, free for the taking, and not able to take it. And then, suddenly, I remembered something that Pryderi had said to the Setanta in one of the wrangles that had enlivened the evening. He had goaded the Irishman:

  ‘Why, we in this island will have thrown off the Romans and will walk in freedom, when you in the Island of the Blessed still lie beneath their yoke.’

  And it came to me then, that I had another asset. He did not stand seven feet tall, he only looked like it. And he had the ear of the Procurator.

  Chapter Five

  It took weeks of arranging, before Pryderi and I went off into the West. There was a lot of work, at the Office of the Procurator, because it was ruled that this was all a civil matter, and a financial one, and that the military were only there to obey. But whenever I could, at dusk, I would wander about in the streets by the river, looking for a cloud of seagulls and listening for a voice and yearning for a cloak of yellow and white and for a head of red hair.

  There was, however, one day I went back to the scabbard-maker. I must say that he had done very well. He had covered the beechwood sheath with thin plates of bronze, patterned in scarlet enamel, and the bronze between the enamel plated with Gold. Not a scabbard for use, a scabbard for show, as I had asked. This was not now a weapon I would ever carry into battle, even though the blade was better than any you will find within the Empire, a blade to cut down elephants. This now was a sword to be borne before me, sheathed, point up, on that great day when I would come before the High King of all Ireland at Tara to tell him the terms on which my family would deign to trade with him.

  I received the scabbard from the maker, and I looked at it. It was a real Brit pattern, all twisted lines and coils, but meaningless. I peered at it way and way about, and then I asked the maker:

  ‘What is this pattern?’

  ‘Why, bears. What else for you but bears?’

  I looked again, and sure enough, if you knew, it was bears all right. And I looked again at the X-shaped hilt, and now it was less clear whether it was more like a man or more like a bear. But how should the scabbard-maker, or, more curious the blademaker, have known that bears were so sacred to my family?

  Of course, when we left Londinium, I didn’t wear that sword, on the belt of soft leather from Cordoba all embroidered with flowers in gold and silver wire that I found in a dark corner of Leo Rufus’s warehouse. I didn’t tell him about it, I just took it over. I wrapped the sword in my sealskin cloak, because there was no wearing that in the summertime, even though Britain is always as they say, two tunics colder than civilised countries. I didn’t wear a tunic either, but I was dressed as a Brit, in blue shirt and trousers, good boots of soft Spanish leather dyed blue, and a jerkin of soft brown sheepskin to keep out the rain. It was raining, of course.

  We left Londinium at dawn, as soon as the city gates were open. I had been up early, shaving off my beard, or most of it. I was very careful about how much of it I did take off, and by judicious clipping of the hair either side of my mouth I was able to give myself a real British moustache which reached down to my nipples and made Pryderi so jealous he did nothing but grumble for miles.

  We each had a horse to ride on and another to carry our baggage, done up in bundles. I had quite a lot, because I saw no reason why I should not turn an honest penny on the journey. The horses were native ponies, and the less said about them the better. They were small, and very strong: if you don’t mind your legs hanging down so far that your spurs hurt your mother the Earth and not the beast, then you can ride one of these ponies all day without a stop. But not two days running. I would have preferred one of the cavalry horses the Army use, with the Parthian blood, but it would have been so conspicuous, and Pryderi was dreadfully concerned with not being conspicuous.

  Of course, I am disenchanted now with horses. I had one once on the Amber road, and he was a horse. He was a horse that would carry you a hundred miles in one day, and then again the next day, and then into battle on the third day, and in the pursuit on the fourth. He was a horse that understood the speech of man, and the very thought of man he would know unspoken, and obey. He was not got by any mortal stallion, I tell you that; he was by Divinity out of the Platonic essence of all horses. I rode him for three years, and at the end – I weep when I think of it. I killed him myself. I will not think of it.

  But we had our packhorses, and they would cover, if they had to, thirty miles in a day on the hard roads. We went out by the road on the north side of the river, which cuts out a great bight of the Thamesis. It was a very busy road. After we left the walls of the City, we found that we could count on meeting at least half a dozen travellers going the other way in every hour. Some of them were ox wagons full of vegetables, beans and carrots going in to the markets of the city, and looking at the poor innocent plants shrivelling away on the carts I began to understand why the food in Londinium was so bad. But we did come across one group that was different. It was a military convoy, the only troops we ever saw on the road. There were only a dozen of them, just enough to stop the Brits from stealing the oxen for meat at night, and to wait on the very junior centurion who was in charge. I recognised him, I had bought him wine at that inn north of Lugdunum, but he did not know me, hardly gave me a second glance, just another Brit on the road.

  Pryderi, though, nudged me to look at what was in the wagons. They were light, you could tell that from the way the cattle moved, and so the big baskets, the fisces, in them were empty. I knew those baskets, all right.

  ‘Silver?’ I asked Pryderi.

  ‘Party from the Second Legion, at Isca, going up for the salt money for the troops,’ he told me. ‘There’ll be enough silver going back, all in coin, next week, to keep a kingdom going for a year, and no more escort than you see now.’

  ‘Easy pickings for someone,’ I hinted.

  ‘When the time comes,’ agreed Pryderi. ‘You see, they know the south is quiet. There are no troops in the interior at all. Anybody who takes on a pay convoy risks having all the civil zone under military law again for years. It will have to be done at the right time and in the right place.’

  I said nothing. Perhaps there were comments I ought not to make, things I ought not to know. We pushed on. The road crosses the river at a place called Pontes, and in the little town we stopped for the night. There was an inn where Pryderi was known well enough to be asked no questions. Nobody asked about me, either.

  ‘It’s the blue,’ Pryderi assured me. ‘Wearing that, you are known as a Bard, and whatever you do, however eccentric, like wearing a fancy eye, or a sword for that matter if you want to, people will pass over without a question, as being natural to the poetic mind. Respected you will be, and as a foreigner they will answer questions and tell stories that will astonish you, because they all know that the mind of the poet does t
hrive on marvels.’

  I looked sideways at him. This is an island of deceit and duplicity and mists indeed, I thought, and if ever I hear the truth about anything, then it’s lucky I’ll be. It was easy already to fall into the Brits’ manner of speech, and after speech comes thought, and after thought comes life, and love. If you talk in Latin and think in Latin, you must be dignified, and think in dignity, because there is no short or easy or comfortable way of saying anything in that language. But in Greek, as we speak it all along the coasts of Asia and into Alexandria, from Massilia to Trapezus in the Caucasus, everything is easy and full of slang and comfortable ways of thought. And yet, in this unconventional tongue, it is always possible to say what you mean, and to know that it will only have one meaning to anyone who listens. But while the Brit’s tongue is also full of slang, it is vague and imprecise and soft at the edges, and behind the plain meaning of everything said you have to look for another hidden meaning. I decided to speak plain.

  ‘If we are going to stay here all tomorrow,’ I said, ‘then I am not going to be idle, nor am I going to spend the day here at my own loss for the horses’ comfort. Let us away to the hut that you have taken for us, and get to work.’

  ‘Work?’ Pryderi wondered as he followed me. ‘Do not mention that word to me, that am a British gentleman. I do not mind a little usury, or profitable sharp practice, but not work.’

  ‘And you a sailor?’

  ‘Hauling at the rope, and straining at the oar, ten days together on the heaving sea, with not a drop of water nor a bite of bread to pass my lips, and often enough I have done it, why, that is not work. That is sport.’

  ‘Indeed, then, it is not work that we will be employed in here, but sport, tomorrow, and art today.’

  I unrolled one of the bundles that I had brought with me on the packhorse. Pryderi looked at it with interest.

  ‘Leather?’

  ‘Leather, soft leather. Guaranteed the best soft Spanish leather from fighting bulls of the plains.’

  ‘Whose guarantee?’ He fingered the sheets like a connoisseur. ‘Not ten days ago this was baa-ing for its supper on the Rainy Mountains. You must realise, I have met Leo Rufus before.’

  ‘And I have seen leather before,’ I assured him. ‘Now, as we came through this town, there was something that struck me, and it was this. I saw that there was a lack, and a scarcity, and a dearth, of one thing only, and that was – shoes. Boots I saw, of the kind you wear ploughing, and for fishing in the river, but no dainty shoes of quality on the feet of men or women. Come to that it did not seem to me that the feet were moving very quickly or that anyone was in a mood to dance through the streets.’

  ‘And what did you expect?’ Pryderi was a trifle impatient. ‘Yesterday was the first of August, the day of the feast of Luggnasad, the end of shearing. There would have been a splendid time here, as indeed there was even in Londinium, if you knew where to go for it, and there is not a man, or a woman either in a country town like this who has not a headache.’

  ‘Headache? I never have them, however much I drink.’

  ‘Then lucky it is you are. But what you are going to do about this lack of shoes?’

  ‘Why, we are going to make shoes.’

  ‘Do we’ – I was glad that Pryderi was counting himself in with me – ‘do we know anything about that craft?’

  ‘We can try.’ I unrolled the leather. ‘Hold out your foot. We’ll do you a pair to measure first, and then some smaller and some bigger, as samples. Then tomorrow we’ll sit in the market place and make them to order.’

  I cut, and Pryderi sewed. He did it very well, and I remarked on this.

  ‘Three months as regimental tailor to Aristarchos, and there is not much there is left to learn about clothing, or equipment, or how to make little economies which no one will notice till they have accepted the articles. Fit well enough, these do. Style is a bit odd, though?’

  ‘That’s the beauty of it. The women will all go for a new fashion.’

  ‘A bit plain though, they are. They go a lot more for decoration, I tell you, around here.’

  ‘I have thought about that.’ I delved into another bag, in which I had brought a variety of oddments which I knew would be hard to get out in the West, like the gallstone of an ass, and an ounce of powdered unicorn horn, the ashes of a boar’s pizzle, and the ground ankle-bones of a nanny-goat. Among all this were a few crystals of vitriol, which I dissolved in a cup of warm water. Then I added a few other trifles, and began to work with a piece of fairly clean rag. Soon the leather was a bright and striking blue.

  ‘Will that do?’

  ‘As long as it is fine tomorrow. But it is a foundation, and a ground, and a beginning. Allow me.’

  Pryderi busied himself a moment with a few more of my little treasures. I was startled to see how much he knew. In a short while he had another cup full of a scarlet dye, thick, a paint rather. He took a hazel twig he had brought in from the hedgerow to clean his teeth with, and he dipped the frayed end in the paint. Then, in one clean flowing line, he drew on the toe of each shoe a fish.

  We made many more pairs that night, and painted them in blue and in scarlet, and in a variety of other colours. I made the shoes, and dyed the leather, and it was Pryderi’s task to paint on the designs. I only painted one pair. I did that when Pryderi had made up several colours, so that I could spread myself, and then, on the toe of each shoe, I painted Aphrodite rising from the sea. And when I had finished I looked at the Goddess, and somehow I could not think where I had got that face from, because it did look familiar and not only because I had drawn it.

  In the end, when our oil lamp had burnt too low to see, we had to go to bed. I had to abandon the ways of civilised men, and so I could not go to bed in my day tunic, but in the fashion of the Brits I stripped and put on a clean pair of trousers. Pryderi had so made fun of the style and the cut, to say nothing of the workmanship, of the pairs I had bought in Lutetia that I had relegated them to this use, except for a few pairs I had given to Pryderi, and I was half annoyed, half amused to see that he did, after all, consider them good enough for wear during the day. But as I took off my shirt, Pryderi whistled and pointed to the great scar that runs under my arm on my right side.

  ‘That’s a bad one.’

  ‘I got that a long time ago, on the Amber Road. It was with my own spear he did it, too, you know the way things get mixed up in a mêlée. But I killed him, before the night was out.’

  ‘That was a head worth taking.’

  ‘No, I left it. There was nobody to play the head game against.’

  ‘Head game?’

  ‘Yes. You know, you throw the head up between two villages, and then wrestle for it, all in on both sides.’

  ‘The Germans do that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And a godless lot they must be, indeed. A head is too sacred a thing for that. Once you take a head, the thing is to carry it home, and vow it to the Goose God. And then if it is not an important head, or if it were easy enough to take, you may hang it up outside your house, but if it were the head of a great enemy or the result of a desperate deed, then it is to the Gods you give it, either hanging it up before a shrine, or casting it into some sacred place. When we get to the Summer Country, I shall show you some of mine. I have to keep a bit quiet about it here. The Romans don’t like it.’

  I began to feel that I was travelling with a different kind of human being from myself. This man would be a suitable companion for Aristarchos. And yet, I felt I could sleep easy in his company.

  Chapter Six

  Next morning it was a fine day. You may take it as given, that unless I tell you otherwise, every day I spent in that Island the sky was overcast, even if it did not rain. But that day it was fine. Pryderi went off and slipped a denarius to the man who allotted positions in the market place, and we settled down on quite a good pitch.

  ‘You’ll have to work hard to sell anything here,’ Pryderi warned me. I answered:
/>
  ‘I’ve been selling all my life. There are plenty of men who can boast that in Alexandria they sold the Pharos to visiting Arab chiefs. I sold it there once to an Alexandrian.’

  I stood up. Pryderi sat below me with a pile of half-finished shoes. I began to speak:

  ‘My friends, my cousins, my kinsmen! Here am I, Mannanan the Galatian. I have come across the Empire, out of my own kindness and goodness of heart, simply and solely to benefit you. And that I will do. Listen all to me.’

  And early as it was, there were already a number who did stop to listen to me. I had several advantages, like a foreign accent which will always disarm suspicion, and my great fur cloak, which looked rich enough to dispel any idea that I could be wanting to make money, since I had so much already, and my one black eye and one sapphire.

  ‘You and I are brothers. We alone of all the world speak the language of the gods, who saw the foundation and the construction and the erection of the universe. And once, we were famous among all civilised nations for the quality, and the excellence, and the beauty, of our shoes, and our boots and our sandals.’ I bowed my head, and swept my hand in a great circle, pointing to their feet.

  ‘Those days, my brothers, are gone. Look at yourselves. Should we be proud of what we now wear? Should we want the Romans to come and see us like this? How can you hold up your heads, unless it be not to see your feet?

  ‘I have not come, my brothers, to tell you Galatian stories, though I have some that would make your flesh creep. No, I have come to benefit you. I have come on a mission of pure charity.

  ‘Look at these shoes, ladies and gentlemen, especially you ladies, just look. Start off by inspecting the craftsmanship. Look at the cutting! Look at the stitching! Look at the patterns! Where ever did you see styles like these before? And no wonder. Here, my companion is one of the greatest Master Shoemakers of the Age.’ Pryderi stood up, bowed silently and sat down again. ‘Personal and private shoemaker he was to his late Sacred Majesty Himself. All the shoes of the Emperor’s Household he made, for all the ladies of the Court, as well as for the Emperor Himself. Why, his late Sacred Majesty was cremated wearing a pair of my friend’s slippers, and there in Olympus He walks today, wearing them, and it was His express wish. What better warrant of quality could you have but this? Who would like to wear the shoes of heaven?