Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  The innkeeper seemed almost to expect us, or perhaps it was my fancy, and he gave Taliesin the same exaggerated respect as had the man in Calleva. Of course, beside the inn he had a farm, and his stacks of oat and wheat stood behind the house. He was ready enough to talk about the weather and the prospects of the harvest while his wife and servants bustled about, as if they were expecting a busy evening. Other travellers came in. There were the two middle-aged men and the youth I had seen in Pontes, and then a little man with a squint leaned over me, too close for my liking, and said:

  ‘There is one flock, and one shepherd: one vineyard and one true husbandman.’

  What that meant I had no idea, and so I only said back:

  ‘And a pretty small farm that must be, brother.’

  It seemed to satisfy him; at least, he didn’t speak to me again that evening.

  The dinner was good, nine-year-old mutton since the venison hadn’t hung long enough for the landlord’s taste, stewed, with onions and leeks and turnips and oat bread, and oat dumplings in the stew. We ate as only men can who have ridden all day in the summer rain. It was a warm evening, in spite of the rain, and as the inn filled with people, men and women, all in their dripping cloaks and sweating under them, the room turned into a good imitation of a steam bath, except for the smell, which was of bodies and not predominantly of scented oil.

  All the people present were Brits. Any Greek or Roman on the road would have taken one look and preferred the open road, which would in any case have taken him to a civilised tavern at Cunetio, where they would use oil to cook with. There were all sorts in the inn, and all free men and women, no slaves. If you go outside the Empire, or to these hardly settled places, whether among Brits or Germans, you find that there are very few slaves. A rich man may have a few women captured in battle or kidnapped by pirates, who are used for grinding corn and other heavy work in the house, but apart from that a free man, or woman for that, does everything for himself. That, of course, is just why these areas are so backward. A civilised man, if he is to live a full life, has to be backed by power not only to grind corn, but to cut and carry fuel and mine metals and smelt them. But the Brits, if they will not use slaves outside the household, are doomed to barbarism for ever.

  The room, as I said, became very full, but you can drown any discomfort in cider. We were busy denying any virtue to lifesavers, and singing a song popular in the neighbourhood called ‘Bran, the Bastard King of Mona’ – I noticed that Pryderi was not showing a single trace of black-and-yellow – when in at the leather door, out of the rain, there came six people, dripping wet, sodden, half-drowned, squeezing, water out of their hair, out of their shoes, out of their cloaks, weeping with relief to be inside, the tears running out of their wet eyes over their red chapped cheeks. Rhiannon it was standing there, like a wrecked barge, swamped, mast and spar sagging forward in a tangle of rope and splinters, and floating she was in her own private lake of fresh water that she had brought in with her.

  Her five followers, Hueil first, wetter even than she was, pressed behind her to help her off with her leather cloak and the leather overskirt in which she had ridden. She flung the garments behind her without looking, and scattered the flock of ducks which had waddled in after the Lady.

  The landlord went towards her, his eyes on her belt of hexagonal plates of gilded bronze, but whether he wanted to assure her most humbly that this was no place for such a great Princess as she, or whether he wanted to tell the five of them to go and hang themselves on lines till they had drained enough to mix with decent folk, I never knew. Rhiannon pushed him aside, and looked around the room.

  Her eyes fell on my face. She walked towards me as I sat in that booth behind the table. She walked like – have you ever seen a bireme of the Imperial Navy bear down on you all cleared for action? Cruel glitters the ram of iron as it cuts the swell, cruel beat the oars in time, cruel fly the flags. The sail is furled, that it shall neither take fire nor press the rowers. The gilding and the carving is stripped away, and black she is painted and not a man who is to be seen but has hidden his face behind a mask of brass. So Rhiannon came to me, her face a mask of anger, terrifying and awful. I looked about me in terror. On my right sat Pryderi, still as a corpse, his stern face held steady by an effort of his will. But on my left – Taliesin was no longer there.

  Before I could ask Pryderi, or even ask myself, where the Druid had gone, or where we could go, Rhiannon stood in front of us. I could have sworn that her red hair was itself on fire, sending as it was great clouds of steam to the roof. She bent down and wrenched off her shoes. She flung them down on the table in front of me with a bang. Shoes? You have never seen shoes in such a state. The blue colour had run and the Gold leaf had floated off. The threads that stitched the uppers to the soles had broken in some places, and in other places had torn through the leather to run three or four awl holes into one. The soles themselves were worn into holes the size of oyster shells.

  ‘Shoes,’ she said, spat, rather. She beckoned to Hueil.

  ‘Shield!’

  He held it up. It had been a good shield, once. The limewood panel had warped. The leather cover had split in some places and was peeling away from the curling wood, and in others it had blown up into great hollow blisters. And where, oh where, were my Thetis and my Peleus, my nymphs and gods and goddesses? All had run into one horrid brown-purple splodge, which even as I watched dripped dye onto the clean floor straw. It is a dreadful thing to see the work of a man’s hands spoiled by a woman’s stupidity in riding in the rain.

  Then ‘Saddle!’ she said.

  Hueil threw it at Pryderi, who was too terrified, or too dignified, to duck, and it bounced off his face and fell back on to the table in front of me. It was the worst of all. I could now remember what I had painted on the side which faced me. I had shown the lapith leading the she-centaur away captive, a rope around her neck. But it now existed only in my mind, and in Rhiannon’s. The wet, and the stress between horse and rider, had twisted the frame. And then with the heat between saddle and horse’s back, or between saddle and that lovely bottom, even through nine layers of skirts, the ripe seed heads of the rushes had germinated, and sprouted, and thrust through to cover all the surface of the leather with a dense green fuzz.

  Everybody in the room crowded round to see. I could hardly hear my own teeth chattering, as they did in face of Rhiannon’s fury, for the ‘Oohs’ and ‘Aahs’ of horror and disgust. Pryderi’s nose was bleeding, and though his dignity forbade him to move his hands he kept on trying to wipe his face on my shoulder, so I told him what I thought of that and it hardly helped to calm me. Rhiannon, having thus gained an advantage, proceeded to use it, and addressed the crowd in that lovely creamy voice of hers, and indeed it was the first time I had heard it properly without the twittering of birds, and now there was no other noise at all, because all the people were silent clustered in a semi-circle behind her and glaring with her at us.

  ‘Men of Britain!’ she said, and that miserable raggle-taggle of batteners on travellers and sellers of watered beer and tough mutton and of shelter under leaky thatch all straightened up as if the words meant something.

  ‘Men of the Isle of the Mighty! How long, I ask you, how long? How long will we allow foreigners to cheat us? How long will we be carried away by a curious accent, by charming infelicities of phrase? How long will we be put off our never-ending search for quality and true value and honest dealing by strange tales of the impossible and by the enchantments of Syrians and Greek pedlars? Are we always to be dupes? I call on you all to be witness.

  ‘These men have sold me at different times shoes, and a shield, and a saddle. The price was high, but the price they asked was higher. What profit they have twisted out of our brothers and sisters down the road I can only guess, but believe you me, their saddle-bags are heavy with Gold. Aye, I know what the law is now, “Let the buyer beware,” but I call on you to witness that there is an older law than that, a law of the Gods and no
t of the Romans. Even a merchant must speak truth, and the meanest and poorest buyer must know what to believe. Remember the great motto of the Blessed Ones who are now gone from us, driven from us. “The truth against the world,” is what they said. I call on you all at the last to stand for truth.’

  This was a new approach to business morality. How on earth can you proceed in the way of trade except on the assumption that the man you are dealing with is a liar, and that he is stating a case that appears to give you the maximum benefit while in reality it is himself that it profits the most? To suggest that a trader should ever speak the truth betrays ignorance of the whole basis of a merchant’s thought. In any case, it is obvious that the innkeeper, and indeed everybody else who tried to sell me anything in the whole Isle of Britain, would disagree violently with Rhiannon in practice whatever they might say aloud in her presence. But I was unable to break into the flow of her speech to put my point of view, because she never drew breath.

  ‘A saddle, and a shield, and shoes, they sold me. Warranted to last till the day of the transmigration of the whole earth they were. The colours were warranted fast and the workmanship good, and now look how much their word is worth. See what has happened to this costly merchandise after one shower of rain! See what they think to foist on us here in this land where rain is our daily portion!

  ‘My brethren!’ Her voice rose, and even I felt a surge of indignation against all dishonest traders, so persuasive was her speech, in manner if not entirely in content. ‘My brethren! What shall we do with these men who cheat us? What did we do by the old law?’

  Some of the people shouted, ‘Hang them,’ and others shouted, ‘Burn them living,’ and these last included Pryderi who prudently supported the larger party till I reminded him that it was likely to be himself who would be the first sufferer. They would, I was sure, keep the best bit to the last. He urged me:

  ‘Say who you are. Are you not a Citizen of Rome? Appeal to Caesar. Demand to be tried by a Roman magistrate. Such an appeal they will not resist, even in their anger. And once in front of a civilised court, as you call it, you are safe, for who would think of preferring the word of a pack of us miserable Brits.’

  And I ought to have done it, I should have done it, but there was something held me back. I said:

  ‘No. I have come into this country dressed as a Briton, and as a true Briton I will endure what must be. I will depend on my own unequalled skill and power.’

  ‘Then it is a Gesa you have taken on yourself,’ replied Pryderi. ‘A vow it is you have made on the presence of death that it is not on legerdemain nor on trickery nor on fine words that you will rely while you are in our country, but that what you have undertaken to do, that you will do yourself.’

  It was, I agreed, one way of looking at it. After all, I do trace my ancestry back through sixty noble warlike generations. And as we spoke, Rhiannon went on:

  ‘Thieves! Liars! Cheats! Men of the island of Britain, men of the Isle of the Mighty! Rise up, great nation in your wisdom. Judge these men for yourselves, judge them for me, judge them and execute judgement.’

  For a moment I would have thrown myself on the floor at Rhiannon’s feet, begging for mercy, but then I glimpsed Pryderi sitting there, arms folded, bleeding, and I caught my courage together and I stood up and I said:

  ‘Let no man be judged unheard, men of the Isle of the Mighty, descendants of Brennus. Here I stand, a Son of Lear, and I demand to know two things. By what law am I judged, and what is the penalty?’

  The landlord stepped forward as spokesman.

  ‘As for the penalty, that is simple. If a man sell short measure or worthless goods, then he is the property of the buyer, for the buyer to sell or to keep, to let live or to die, as it pleases him – or her. In olden days it was thought most fitting for the buyer to give such a man to be burnt as a pleasing offering to the Gods. But as for the law, why, we will go by the law of the country as it always was, and as it always will be when the Romans are gone. It is the nobles and the princes and the kings who administer it, and it is the most noble person in the room who shall pronounce judgement. And there is no denying who is the most noble person here, for who is more noble than a princess of the Brigantes, and even here among the Belgi we acknowledge that. As indeed we would acknowledge any prince or king, aye, even a king of Demetae. There is no judge greater than a king of the old line, except it be a Druid.’

  ‘Yes,’ said a clear tenor voice from the doorway. ‘Except a Druid.’

  Taliesin stood in the entrance. But not the Taliesin who had come with us, the ragged man in dirty brown, with muddy face and matted hair. Now he was wrapped in a robe of fine white linen that hid him from shoulder to foot, and I will swear that he had grown a head taller. His hair, red as Rhiannon’s, was clean and combed and sleeked down with water. Upon his head he wore a wreath of oak leaves. The leaves were fresh, and the broken ends of the twigs were oozing sap, but the acorns, now in early August, were already hard and dry and brown-shelled and ripe. In his left hand, thrust from beneath his linen shirt, he held an apple, and in his right hand he held a sickle of the rich Gold of Ireland. And on his breast, held by a Golden pin, were a pair of bright green leaves and between them on the stem two fresh white berries. Whenever did you see the berries of the mistletoe ripe and smooth and plump in August?

  It was late in the evening of a summer’s day. It was still light enough to ride, but in the inn the servants had long lit the torches. The rain had stopped, but we could not see the setting sun for the low grey cloud. The air was misty. The whole land smelt of the warm steam. The birds were silent. Outside even the rooks and the pigeons of the woods had ceased to call.

  In all that stillness, Taliesin the Druid walked through the filthy inn room. The floor was covered with straw littered with the bones and refuse of years of feasting. And I swear that I saw the straw move itself aside that his feet might touch only the sacred earth. The oak tables were stained with the spilt drink and gravy and littered with the fragments of the evening’s dinners, and I saw the table legs bend back as the wood shrank least Taliesin be defiled by the touch.

  The old men in the room knelt before Taliesin, and the young men held their hands before their eyes that they might not be blinded by the radiance of his brow and the glory of his face, for they had not seen a Druid before in all their lives. He came to Rhiannon, and she went down on one knee before him, her skirts spread about her feet. She drew her shawl over her glorious hair, for respect, and the fringes of her shawl before her face, for modesty.

  There stood Taliesin, walking as a Druid in a land where no Druid might walk abroad in freedom. He faced the rack and the cross and the fire, the lash and the salt mine and the beasts, and that for the sake – no, not for the sake of my life, nor of Pryderi’s, nor for that of friendship in the abstract. He came for the sake of truth. Courage is a kind of holiness. I knelt before Taliesin.

  He looked at Hueil. Hueil scurried around the room, and found the biggest chair in the place, one that stood in a corner, with arms and a high back. He lifted it on to a table, the highest in the room, and stood back. Taliesin still looked at him. Hueil looked puzzled, and then he began to burrow into one of Rhiannon’s saddle-bags. Out of it he brought my Lady’s cloak, that enormous garment of silk, shot yellow and white, shimmering Samite of Gold and silver. This cloak he spread over the chair, which thus became a glittering throne.

  In an instant, without seeming to move, and certainly not making any jump or violent movement, Taliesin was seated on his throne, his arms crossed on his breast, the apple at one shoulder, the sickle at the other, so that he looked like some ancient Egyptian King, carved in the red rocks of the Nile. And then in the silence of that crowded room – for the alley that had opened to let him through had closed up again and it was plain that every Briton for twenty miles had come to hear him and see the Druid – Taliesin spoke:

  ‘The truth,’ he said. ‘The truth against the world.’

  Rhia
nnon rose and stepped forward. I too moved and stood beside her. I was her equal in this trial, as I had not been before. I never doubted an instant that I should subject myself to Taliesin’s judgement, nor did I remember that he was my companion on the road. I never hoped for an instant that he would bend his rule to favour me. I only saw a Druid, and I bowed before my Judge. Rhiannon spoke first, as the plaintiff.

  ‘Master of Light,’ she said. ‘It is for truth I call, for truth and justice. From this man I have bought three things.’ And I accepted this new state of affairs, that the case was brought against me alone and not against Pryderi. ‘My Master, I bought of him a shield, and a saddle, and shoes. Not for a shower of rain did any of these last. I ask you for justice by our ancient laws. This man has said in my presence that he is not bought or sold. He says that he belongs to no one. Let him then, my Master, be given to me. Let him neither be bought nor sold, but confiscated and devoted to compensation.’

  She stopped. Taliesin did not look at her. Neither did he look at me, but I knew it was my turn to speak. I said:

  ‘My Master, I have sold this woman nothing. Thrice I offered her gifts, and thrice she refused my gifts. But the goods she took, and Gold she flung in my face. I have not spent it, the coins I have here still. I give them back.’

  I took the three old pieces of Gold from the fold of my shirt where I had twisted them. I tossed them gently across the room, one by one, and all present saw them shine in the air, saw Rhiannon catch them. And she opened her hand, and we all saw there, not three pieces of Gold, but three cockleshells. Easy enough to do, you will say, if you know how: but who did it?