Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  When all the seventeen moves were played, Gwawl glared at me. He asked:

  ‘What then is it that you are wanting of me?’

  ‘That instead of giving me to Queen Maeve, you send me and my man here’ – because it was easier to pretend that Aristarchos was someone of no importance – ‘back alive to Cuchullain.’

  ‘That I will do,’ said Gwawl, because he was bound by his Gesa to respect his wager and to pay it, whatever other promise he must break. But there spoke a voice from the darkness beyond the fire:

  ‘That you cannot do.’

  We stood, and we all looked into the shadows, and it was Cathbad the Druid who stood there, and we knew him by the white of his robe and by his voice and not by his face, which was swollen with weeping for all the dead of Ireland that had fallen because I had come to seek Gold. He stood there, and he began to intone a poem, in the terse evocative style that was even now old-fashioned and dying out in favour of the complex rhythmical metres that imitated hexameters:

  The rain fell on the pastures at the end of the cattle drive,

  The cows lowed, the bulls tore the ground.

  All Ulster shouted to urge the beasts over the river –

  The Champion’s shouts, the heart’s sound.

  He rode in his Chariot, his eyes started from his head,

  The Grey Horse struck who ran.

  He thrust with his spear, they fell before him –

  Hero of Ulster, the greatest man.

  Blood was on Gold and on silver and on enamel,

  The mud dried on his face:

  Thirsty with death he looked for water and saw

  A pool in a reedy place.

  The Champion left his chariot and bent to drink:

  Beneath his hands, water is red.

  The reeds rustled, he threw his spear and saw

  The otter shield on the face of the dead.

  Three women cooked over a fire by dry thorns.

  They told him, ‘Take, eat!’

  True to his Gesa, he gnawed the bone, and asked:

  ‘Dog,’ they said, ‘this day is sweet.’

  At the ford, the last of the cattle are crossing,

  Erc says, ‘Give me thy spear.’

  True to his Gesa, the Champion hurls it.

  When did Erc know fear?

  On foot to the standing stone is the road of the Champion.

  His own spear pierces his shield.

  With a prince’s belt he ties himself to the pillar.

  Standing he cannot yield.

  The hosts of Callum urge the cattle over the river:

  Conchobar’s chariots mass beyond the ford.

  The host of Connaught dare not cross to meet them –

  The Champion holds his sword.

  Lugaid goes forward, brave, to deal the last stroke.

  The Champion’s head on the sand.

  The sword falls from his shoulder – beneath the pillar

  Earth receives Lugaid’s hand.

  The Hosts of Maeve roll forward into the river,

  At her pole, a head.

  The Champion’s hand they throw in the face of all Ulster –

  Emain knows Cuchullain is dead.

  There was a long silence. When we looked again, Cathbad was gone. I pulled myself together. Who was dead, was dead, I told Gwawl, as harshly as I could:

  ‘If you cannot pay your debts, King, then you must play again.’

  And this time, we sat down to the Fichel of fifty-one moves, the Game of Champions, the longest that is commonly played. It must be obvious to you, now, that the more moves the less chance there is that the king will live. Yet it is possible to play the game of the fifty-ones moves, if you play well, and not to lose, if you hold the king, and if you are wise and cautious and at the same time bold. And play well I did that evening, with the circle of savage warriors to watch us, breathing over me and watching my style with interest, because there was not a man of them but was fair mad on the game.

  After twenty-three moves, I killed one of Gwawl’s men, though now he had played me once before it was harder to catch him. After forty-seven moves, I killed another. And at the fifty-first move, when he thought he had me, I wafted the king gently out of his grasp, and that was the end, and all the Leinstermen who stood behind me saw it.

  ‘Pay your debts, King Gwawl. Let us both, my man and I, go to Tara, and let us stay there in the Plain and be fed by the people of the village till there come an Eagle to feed us.’

  ‘Aye, and it is a long time that it is that you will be waiting,’ Gwawl sneered at us, laughed at us. ‘What makes you think that the Eagles will ever come now?’

  ‘Now?’ I echoed.

  ‘Aye, now. Do you think that you are the only one to know that the Eagles follow trade? The nightmare it is that follows all the Kings of Ireland, and not the High King only, through all their waking watchful nights. That is our terror, the thought of a Roman in every village of Ireland, stealing all our poor pennies to send back to enrich your incense-filled temples in Rome. No that shall never be while there is an Irish King alive.

  ‘It was only by chance that I heard of it. If Cuchullain will go to Eboracum and to Londinium, to learn wisdom, I thought, why should I not go to Rome itself, and see for myself what made the oil-eaters so greedy? And so I did … And even there I should not have learnt what was going on if my Gesa had not driven me to gamble, and to meet that pretty fool with the Monopoly in his pocket. Ready he was to boast about it. I soon settled him. But you, Photinus, you were more trouble, and yet I would have done for you too, if not for Pryderi … If you had stayed in Londinium, I would have had you when the nights got dark. But I had no chance out there on the road, and in the Mere, with all his friends about you. Pryderi!’ Gwawl spat. ‘That two-and-a-half-obol king of a half-obol kingdom, and even that in pawn to the Roman, for all he is so proud of his crown and so careful of his people. Just because my young men have been raiding along the coasts of Dyfed, and how else shall they marry without heads to buy their brides with, and because the Romans have not been able to stop us as they promised, he takes it into his head to help any scheme that will bring down all the thrones of Ireland, and have us all in the same state that he is in. There was no hope of defeating him to get at you. But in spite of him, we knew all about you, we learned every detail of your plan and every change in your mind.’

  ‘That cannot be,’ I told him, and yet I knew it was true, that he did know everything, and I knew, and I would not know, and yet I did know, who it was that had told him, that had sat with Pryderi and me so long and so often by the fireside in the Mere, who knew all that Pryderi knew – and yet there were things she could not know, because I had not even told Pryderi.

  ‘Rhiannon told us,’ he shouted at me, in triumph. ‘She sent us news of everything you said, by this messenger or that, men or birds or spirits, how should you know or how should you care? And when she knew the time, then she came to me, and I brought her off safely into this land of all her kinsman. And then, there was nothing to do, but to wait till you and Cuchullain came to waste both the armies of the North and of the West. When that was done, I could come out myself and become High King of Ireland, and who better for it than I who had saved the Island of the Blessed?’

  ‘And what good will it do you?’ I asked him. There was no harm in talking now, he knew enough. ‘It is little comfort being the High King will be to you when the legions come. It happened to Vercingetorix after Alesia fell, and it will happen to you. A short walk in the Triumph, and then – into the Mamertine. Do you know it? A stone box, thirty feet square, with a spring in one corner, that keeps it always damp. But you will not feel rheumatism there, oh no, you won’t stay long enough. Four men to hold you and one to twist the rope, slowly … slowly … and your eyes burst out … and the noise in your ears … and then, into the Great Sewer with what is left.’

  He still laughed at me, strutting and threatening.

  ‘And what makes you think th
at the legions will ever come? How do you think they will sail now? Aye, we knew that they would come soon, who wouldn’t know, with the hammers and the axes going and the ships building in every creek? But the day that Cuchullain held the white mare for Conchobar to mount, that day Rhiannon did our business for us. That day she raised the Brigantes, that day she set all North Britain aflame from sea to sea. How can the Second and the Twentieth sail, if the Sixth is threatened?’

  Aristarchos spoke for the first time.

  ‘There are legions and to spare in Gaul and in Germany to hold down the Brigantes and let the others sail.’

  Gwawl went on.

  ‘Do you think we Barbarians are as disunited as politicians in Rome? On that same day, there was war from the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Danube. That very day, the Marcomen sacked Vindabonum, and now they are pressing to Aquileia. There are no reinforcements for Britain.’

  ‘Oh, my regiment!’ said Aristarchos. ‘Oh, my Rangers! To go to war, and I not there to lead you!’

  ‘The regiment you raised among the Brigantes? How else do you think Vindabonum fell but when they deserted? Mutiny against Rome to them was loyalty to Rhiannon. They will pass across the land of the Chatti and through the Friesians across the North Sea, and will fight against the legions before the harvest.’

  ‘I do not believe it,’ said Aristarchos. ‘It is not true. There is no rebellion. You are lying to make us despair.’ He did not say ‘Frighten us’; he did not know the word.

  Someone stepped forward. I knew him, stout and middle-aged. He had been the other of the two men with the Mouse. Now he had a sword cut on the face, his ear was hanging by a strip of skin, and the unwashed blood was black. He held a bundle on his outstretched forearms, a scarlet Roman cloak folded under and up and over what might have been a great dish. The cloak was a fine one. It was not what the quartermaster issues, but made to measure of close-woven wool, light and warm together, fit for a tribune, or for a very senior centurion.

  ‘This one died well. I killed him myself.’

  He turned back the edges of the cloak. It covered a shield, oblong and convex; the leather was hacked and gashed. In the hollow of the shield was a sword, legionary pattern, the edge gapped, the point turned. There was half of a staff of vine wood, snapped off. There was a bundle of Phalerae. I had seen them before. And black and woolly haired, the lips drawn back from the shining teeth in an awful grimace of rage and shame and pain, I saw the head of Caius Julius Africanus.

  ‘It is true. When the Primus Pilus carries a shield and fights in the ranks, the legion is all but lost.’ Aristarchos wrapped his cloak about his face, and wept. The middle-aged man went on.

  ‘Now there is no one to stop us in the Island of Britain. We have burnt every ship on the Western Coast. The legions will not come.’

  Now I knew why the army of Leinster had not come against us at Tara, why they had not been there to hold back the host of Callum the Hairy, so that their villages would not be burnt and their cattle not stolen. They had been at sea, saving Ireland, whatever the cost to Leinster, as Rhiannon had saved Ireland, whatever the cost to Britain.

  I had no time to weep, not for the hand of Cuchullain in the dust, not for Africanus, fallen in the front rank. I had no time to weep for the treachery of Rhiannon. It is the surest mark of love, that it betrays, and how could I ever think otherwise? I could only face Gwawl and tell him:

  ‘If you cannot pay your debts, King of Leinster, then you must play again.’

  It was well dark when we played our third game of Fichel, the Game of Kings, the game of a hundred and nineteen moves. The Leinstermen stood round with their flaring torches, that brought smoke as well as light to the gaming board, and they counted the moves, shouting the numbers.

  ‘Twenty-one!’ and the king moved away in his constant circling.

  ‘Twenty-two!’ and one man came to back another that would have been killed otherwise.

  The king turned and twisted, the eight men dodged and shuffled like wolves about an elk in winter, but I had too much of the wolf in my blood to die like an elk. Let me tell you this, it is easier to control one man on the board or on the battlefield than eight. It was late. Gwawl was tired from days of pursuit, by land and by sea, from battles and marches, from judgements and decisions. He played most of the time with half his men, he missed his chances.

  ‘Seventy-eight!’ and the men stood on three sides of the king.

  ‘Seventy-nine!’ and the king moved to threaten two men at once.

  ‘Eighty!’ and Gwawl saw the danger, but imperfectly, and moved one man back to where he was safe, when he should have brought a third man to guard them both.

  ‘Eighty-one!’ and the king struck, and a man rolled on the ground.

  This reminded Gwawl that he had four men he had hardly used at all, and he began to move them to where he thought they might be of help in containing the king, and soon he lost another. But now my eyes were smarting from the smoke of the torches and the fire, and the sweat on my face had little to do with the heat of the logs and turf. My king dodged and feinted and moved spasmodically from edge to centre and back again to edge.

  ‘A hundred and nine!’ and I erred, and the king was stopped, trapped, if only Gwawl had wit to see it, he was dead next move, and I had lost, lost for myself, what was worse, lost for Aristarchos.

  ‘A hundred and ten!’ and he had learned his lesson too well, and he was more eager to guard his own piece than to attack mine.

  ‘A hundred and eleven!’ and the king was away, and safe for another move.

  But there was still time. The six men pressed and pushed. The king was harried. Three moves left now, to each side, and he was too near the edge of the board for comfort or confidence. Two moves each side, and he was pressed back towards the corner. One move each. Gwawl’s last, and had he been more alert he would have seen his chance. But the very man he moved to block the king’s way exposed another to vengeance.

  ‘A hundred and nineteen,’ cried all the Leinstermen together. The king, in his last move, struck, and struck true.

  Gwawl sat rigid, looking at his board. Aristarchos sighed a long sigh. I could not move. We all three slept a little where we sat. I felt as empty as I had on the Night of the Thorn. The Leinstermen stood around us and watched, silent. Africanus stared at us from glazed, unclosing eyes. Suddenly, there was the sound of a cock crowing, the only cock left for miles uneaten, his neck unwrung. We all three blinked our eyes open into the new day. I said to Gwawl:

  ‘Pay your debts, King of Leinster. Give us a boat, sound and dry, and food and drink, that we two may return to whence we came.’

  ‘Go, then, to the Gods Below,’ he answered. ‘I give you the mercy you showed me at Rutupiae.’

  But he was more merciful. They brought us down to the sea-beach where we ate a scanty meal of stale barley bread, and mouldy beef, and water from the river, muddied and fouled by the crossing of great armies high inland. The corpses of men and horses bobbed past us into the salt water. The Leinstermen ate no better than we two did.

  They found us a big skin boat, and there was no saying it was not good enough, because it was in boats like this that the army of Leinster had crossed the sea to the Isle of Britain. More bread and meat they put in it, and a big jar of beer they found, the only beer for miles. They left us all we had, our weapons, and my bag with my spare eyes and my dice and other trifles. And then Gwawl came to me with my cloak, my sealskin, and he apologised that it was soiled, because he had had to kill the man who picked it up to get it back for me. And his own cloak, of bearskin from the edge of the Summer Country, he gave to Aristarchos.

  Gwawl and his men got into other boats. The middle-aged man took Africanus’s white shield, and stood on the beach. The Irishmen paddled out to sea, towing us with them. Far out beyond the ninth wave they took us, till, low as we were in the water, we could no longer see the white shield on the shore. All the boats but one left us. Only Gwawl remained, and h
e leant over to me. He shouted against the south-west wind: ‘One last thing. What was the answer to that riddle?’

  ‘What riddle?’

  ‘The one you asked me on the judgement mound of Arberth? What is both black and white and neither in earth or in sky?’

  ‘Oh, that,’ and I laughed, because it was such a little thing to remember through all the months of context and plotting and battle. ‘You’ll never be a Druid. Why, that was yourself, black hearted, white-clad, standing head in clouds on the mound above the Earth. And another thing, King of Leinster!’

  ‘What?’ He was drifting away now, towards the shore.

  ‘Give up gambling – you haven’t got the head for it.’

  Chapter Nine

  For seven days and nights we tossed on the seas, between the Island of the Blessed and the Island of the Mighty. At first we tried to head the boat eastward, across the south wind. We paddled silently, our teeth clenched in the bitterness of defeat, saying nothing because neither of us would admit aloud what we both knew, that we could no more paddle that boat to Britain than we could fly.

  And that boat could have flown. Light as a feather, wicker-framed and leather-covered, it hopped and bobbed across the wave tops in the hard wind. The seas broke beneath us. We could not be swamped, but we were covered in spray. Our clothes dried stiff and white. The barley bread was soaked in salt water, the dried beef was drenched in brine till it would have outlived a mummy. We drank mouthfuls of the beer. It was a diuretic which drained the water from our blood. Both Aristarchos and I had thirsted before. We licked the rain water from the bottom of the boat before the spray splashed in to pollute it. For want of pebbles we sucked spare eyes from my bag – he a ruby, I an amethyst, and that was a strange precaution, for how were we to get drunk?

  Only, before we shut our mouths against speech and thirst, Aristarchos said:

  ‘Already they sing their songs about Cuchullain: they will sing none about us.’