Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS)

by John James

  But in those first days, in Ingwy’s Hall, I knew only the bitterness of defeat. I only knew that I lay a prisoner, and that I lived only by the will of my enemies, that I could not decide even my own death. There were Savage girls who looked after me. They turned me in my bed when I was too weak, and they brought me the bread on which we all lived, and they dipped it in the bitter beer when I could not even chew the crust. I was, they told me, days and days too ill to speak intelligibly in any language, days sweating and wasting, and I could remember nothing. The girls gave me brews of herbs the wizard had made to stop the sweating and bring down the fever. And they did all this as carefully and as gently as they looked after their own wounded. And some of us lived, and most of us died. Me, they made to live. I knew, if they did not, that this was my punishment, that I although a Bard had taken up arms, and fought and killed.

  Bladulf and Ingwy I saw daily, at sunset, when the one tallow dip was lit in the Hall. Then they came in, with all the other men from the fields where it was now too dark for work. Bladulf dressed like the meanest of his subjects, though who was the meanest no one could say, and he worked as they did. He would come in from the dusk, dropping with weariness, his shirt wet with the rain and sweat mingled, his face and hands thick with mud.

  When I was able to stand, and walk a few paces, I was allowed – I could easily have been prevented, and was not – to go out of the Hall. Then I found out where it was, because I had been carried there unconscious. It lay north of Cattraeth, being one of the farms we had not had time to burn on the day of the first battle, though we had seen it in the distance. But not a thousand paces away, Morien had fired the corn, and further from it, towards our line of march, we had blocked ditches. The fields were now flooded from the rain, which could not run off. The farms beyond had been burnt.

  Here it was that Bladulf worked, as one man among many, taking his part in clearing ditches, in building houses and barns anew, and raising fences. He worked with his hands. I saw him, himself, digging with a spade in a clogged gully, to let the water run down into the river. I saw him again, with axe and nails, setting together the framework for a house, a house for his people, not for himself. Nothing distinguished him from his people who worked around him, but that he did nothing to his own profit.

  That is why I would not call Bladulf a King, whatever his birth. It is not the place of a King to work with his hands among his people, or even to tell them what to do from hour to hour. The mark of a King, beyond birth, is wisdom, and after wisdom, wealth. And wisdom cannot be shown in the heat of the day’s work, nor wealth gathered there. The place of a King is seated on his Judgement Mound, robed and crowned, listening to his suitors and to his Judge, and, when he has weighed the particular case and the universal law and the precedents, deciding what is now to be done. But the place of a King is to do nothing himself. It is not even the place of a King to ride out to war. That is the task for the Captain of his Household, who may himself be a King some day, although that is irrelevant. If the Captain of the Household of the Kingdom is defeated, then it is no shame to the King, and he can always be replaced. But if the King were to be defeated, then the luck of the Nation is gone, and the Kingdom is at an end. There is no place for a King to die in battle, but on the steps of his own dun, as Evrog Hael did. That is why the Kings of the Island of Britain did not go out themselves against the Savages, until at last they could send all their Households out to war together, under the one Captain, Arthur.

  Bladulf, here, worked as a common man, leading his people and doing himself what he would have every man do. He sent his men miles with the ox-wagons to bring back timber from the hills, because they had long cut down all the trees nearer to where they lived. And he sent the women down into the river-beds to cut reeds for thatch, because we had burnt the straw they would have used. I saw how he made his people work from dawn till the dark came, cheering them on when he needed to, or blustering and threatening them when it was necessary. That showed me how far we had been from victory. Had we killed every man of the Savages but one, and that one Bladulf, then still we would not have had a victory. Had we killed Bladulf, and no other man, then all the Savages would have been scattered and destroyed. Oh, if only Bladulf had stood to meet Owain in the fight. It would have been no trouble for Owain to have killed Bladulf: he could have done it with his little finger. I watched him, and saw that he did not understand the essence and dignity of Kingship. But I saw, too, how he recovered much of what we had destroyed. His life was our defeat.

  How many poems have you heard when, after defeat, warriors forgive their foes, fall into sympathy with them, feel more comradeship with them than with those of their own nation who have not ridden to battle? It goes well in a poem. It does not happen in life: it did not happen to me. I watched Bladulf, and I grudged him his life, and I grudged every hour he worked to build his Kingdom new.

  Each day, I could walk farther to watch the Savages’ Kingdom rise again, stand longer with the Savage girls around me. Slim and delicate, with yellow hair like braided buttercups, their blue eyes mindless, empty, they sported like so many squirrels, so many fauns, and had no more thought for the future. They had nothing to do but attend me. The boys with whom they should have been flirting were dead, or died while we watched them. The corn they should have been grinding was burnt. The querns were silent and the looms were still. War had brought idleness to those who were too young, or too old, or too tender, to strain at raising timbers or digging in mud. These girls, Bladulf’s family or Ingwy’s, played with me, teasing and flirting, as if I were a toy provided for their pleasure; and indeed I might have been that in Bladulf’s mind, the only booty saved from the battle.

  Theirs was the only gaiety. There were no feasts in that Hall. There was no food or ale to spare, and every man took what he was allowed and tried to find somewhere to sit to eat it, among the great crowd of Savages, men, women and children, who filled the Hall at night. In that continual stench of unwashed wheat-eaters, in the never-ending clamour of shouts and groans, the wailing of children and the quarrels of their parents, I almost lost my reason and my voice. I only kept myself in a whole mind by repeating beneath my breath, the verses I had already made on the men of the Household, and the names of those I would sing if, when I came again to live among men.

  There were no feasts. Still, when Bladulf sat to eat, there was a moment of formality, and still, though he worked like all the others, he drank his ale, when there was ale, or his ditchwater when there was none, out of a silver-mounted horn. One night, then, in mid-September, he called me to him when he sat to eat.

  ‘Are you well now? Can you walk?’

  ‘I can walk,’ I answered him.

  ‘Then you must go. We can feed you no longer.’

  It was true. But it was no thing for a King to say, to a prisoner or to a guest. The excuse was good; but the violation of the laws of hospitality was gross. I was, however, in no position to rebuke him. The men in Cattraeth had bidden me live. How else were they to have any memorial?

  ‘I will go, then,’ I replied, and stood. It was dark, and far across the river the wolves were howling. Bladulf seized my wrist, and pressed me down again to sit beside him.

  ‘You must go, and take my thanks back to your King.’

  ‘Your thanks?’

  ‘My thanks.’

  ‘For what? Have we then killed the rival who would have supplanted you? Did you send him into the forefront of the battle, as David did among the Romans of old? Or have we thinned out for you a rebellious people who now have no more to do but follow you or die?’

  He remained calm, although I taunted him.

  ‘I send you back to thank your King for what he told me.’

  This was what I had heard from the Dwarf, but I hardened my face and looked at Bladulf blankly.

  ‘He sent a messenger, a wild man, an Irishman, to tell the men of Elmet to march north against us when you rode south. But that messenger he sent to me also. He told me w
hen you would come. To meet the onslaught of Eiddin and Elmet together we brought down all our people from across the upland moors, and even from Carlisle, that late we won. But we heard that Elmet would come first, and so we marched first against them. When we struck deep into their country, we found that they were not mustered for war. Then, when we were far away, we heard of your raid, and we marched back as fast as we could. We had not thought that so few men could do so much damage. We needed all the men from the uplands to hold you. If we had not marched to Elmet, we would have settled with you sooner: if we had not known you were coming, we could never have gathered, you would have ridden clear to York. For that we thank your King.’

  ‘But it was only treachery that won the day for you,’ I reminded him.

  ‘There is no treachery when a man fights for the life of his people, for the future of his Kingdom. Nor was there treachery to which we stooped as low as Mynydog’s, who told me that you came, and when. You asked me why I thanked him – ask him why he betrayed you.’

  Next day, I set out from Ingwy’s village to walk back into the hills. They gave me a spear in case I met wolves, and a knife, and a few loaves of wheat bread. I still had my own cloak. I went west, first, till I could climb up the edge of the high hills. I could look east from the edge of the moorland, into the valleys we had devastated. Where coming south we had seen a hundred pillars of smoke, now there were not ten. The valleys were laid waste. The trees would grow again, the deer and the duck come back, the fields would flood and merge and vanish as if the wheat had never grown. Our sons would hunt again over that land: Mordred hunts there now. But at what a price, I thought. I wept for the Household.

  I went slowly along the edge of the old road, where I could find it. When I came to a wood, I threw away the wheat-bread they had given me. I would not soil my mouth with it again. The wood-pigeons came to it, and I made a sling out of the edge of my cloak and a small stone. I killed two, and that was enough. I made a fire, and ate again as a free man, a civilised Roman, should; I ate fresh meat, game of my own hunting, my own killing, food gained not by sweat and labour of hands but by guile and skill. The fire I lit kept away the bears. It had stopped raining. The corn had rotted in the fields, where there were not enough Savages left alive to cut it and bring it in. Now, too late, the autumn had turned sunny and warm.

  A sick man, recovering from a wound, or a wounded man, cannot walk far in one day. What is shelter to the one is shelter to the other. On the third day, I came downwind to a copse, and stalked a deer, inch by inch crawling for an hour till I could cast the spear. Oh, I had meat that night, roasted to eat hot, and to carry away cold. I found a hollow to sleep in, well away from the rest of my kill, and I lit a fire in the dusk to guard me. In the morning I woke shivering, the dew wet on my clothes, and I looked round. On the far side of the hollow where I had not looked in the dusk, I saw a low heap. I went closer. The mail was rusty, the leather green with mildew. Still the bones had not been scattered by the beasts, the rotting flesh still clung to the jaws, the row of even teeth would have told me, even if I had not seen the shield. I wept. Then I sang for him, since there was nothing else I could do:

  ‘Tudvlch, driven from his farm – for seven days,

  He slaughtered the Savages.

  His valour should have kept him from harm:

  Now let it keep his memory alive.’

  He was the first I found. He was not the last. They were Cardi men, mostly, and a few Picts, who had struggled thus far, either alone or in a band, and had died as they marched. One or two had been buried, and I found the shields set upright to mark the shallow graves. Others had crawled, it seemed, into holes and crannies to die, hiding their pain from their comrades. There were two by the walls of Din Drei, their arms around each other, their swords drawn across their knees. One, by the blue on his face, was a Pict: the other, from the yellow and black of his shield, I knew to be from Menevia, though who I could not tell. Over were the days when I knew every man of the Household by sight, to tell him at a thousand paces. They had died sitting together, men from the opposite ends of the Island, come together to fight against the invader. Now, their backs to the Roman Wall, they still looked to the South, into the lost land of Bernicia. They were the last.

  I walked down from the Wall, to the Hall of Eudav the Tall, the Hall of Bradwen, the house where I had grown up, the paddocks where I had learned to ride, the woods where I had first gone to frame in solitude the songs I would sing in Kings’ Halls. The old house had burnt. A few weeks ago we had rebuilt it. Now, the work of the Household was undone and all was desolate again. No one lived there. The thatch had kept the house dry, but already the poles of the frame were rotting, since we had never tarred them. We had made it for Bradwen and the men of Mordei, and these last had never come. Would they ever come now? I hoped that they might still come, now that we of the Household had weakened the Savages. But I knew that the hope was in vain. We had not given them that freedom from fear which they had asked. I did not sleep in the Hall. I lay on the ground, under the eye of the stars. My back was to the Dwarf Stone, the friendly Dwarf of our youth, and I faced the dead wood beyond the Wall.

  The next day, I climbed the slope beyond, up on to the high ground beyond the woods. A little after noon, I saw before me the white sheep spread from horizon to horizon, a blessed sight, where there are sheep, there are shepherds. Before night I saw smoke, and I came to a hut of boughs. There I slept, as I had so often in my youth, and I had men of my own race, who spoke my own tongue, to look after me. I had returned from Cattraeth.

  19

  Beird byt barnant wyr o gallon

  Diebyrth e gerth e gynghyr

  The poets of the world judge those to be men of valour

  Whose counsels are not revealed to slaves.

  I walked the road between King Mynydog’s farm and the gate of the Dun. The road was silent. The smiths no longer worked at their anvils, except a man here and there who beat out the iron tyres for carts and shoes for the horses. The sword-makers were gone, the sharpeners of iron points, the men who hammered strips for shield-rims and helmet-brims.

  I passed the longhouses where the Household had slept. No longer were there little groups of men sitting at the doors, throwing dice or jackstones, playing on the pipes, drinking and telling stories, boasting of how well they rode, how well they fought, would fight. The time for boasting had passed. We had ridden. We had fought. The Household was dead.

  I walked between the houses. The children peeped out at me from the doorways, hiding behind the leather curtains. They were silent. No one came out to me with flowers to throw before my feet: Precent would return no more. The parents did not look at me. They turned their faces aside. Without singing the women bent at the querns; silent, the men swung the flails on the threshing-floor. The Kingdom was in mourning for the Household. I felt a dead man, sitting at his own wake.

  King Mynydog sat on his throne, on the Judgement Mound before the gate of his Dun. No man came now to seek his law. Clydno stood behind him now, as before. But how should any decisions be enforced without Gwanar? Mynydog sat alone and silent, and looked, for ever looked, towards the South, towards the notch below the Giant’s Seat where he had seen the Household pass away. I stood before him. I leaned on the Savage spear, and I spat upon his feet before anyone who cared to see.

  ‘Is there Peace?’ the King asked.

  I said nothing. I looked him in the face. I looked down the first. The Mynydog I had known had been a man in his prime. This man was old, his face lined, his hair streaked with grey. Clydno alone answered him, at last:

  ‘There is peace.’

  King Mynydog rose from his throne, and came down from his Judgement Mound. He did not offer to embrace me: a rebuff here, in the face of the sun, in the eye of all, would have been too brutal for him to receive, for me to deal. But how otherwise could I have acted? He led me through the gate of the Dun, across the courtyard, into the Hall, in silence.

  Dark
was Mynydog’s Hall. He sat alone at the High Table. Before him burned one tallow dip. The hangings were gone from the walls, to make cloaks for the farm people, to see them through the winter. The arms were gone from the pillars where they had hung; gone, lost at Cattraeth. There were no weapons in the Kingdom, and few on the Rock of Dumbarton. The Kingdoms were defenceless.

  Of the merry crowd who had feasted in the Hall through the summer, only Clydno remained. He sat on the side-table, at Mynydog’s right. I sat at the foot of the Hall, far from them. I, only I of all the Household, had returned from Cattraeth, to feast with the King who had sent us.

  ‘The mead is in the cup,’ said Clydno, low, his voice weak and broken with long weeping, ‘and the knife is in the meat. If there is anyone of pre-eminent skill, or anyone who has a tale of marvels to tell, let him speak now.’

  I said nothing. Mynydog’s cook put food before me, a true Roman meal: a manchet of oatcake, and porridge of oatmeal, salmon dried in the sun and venison roasted on a spit, mutton stewed with onions, blackberries and hazel-nuts and mushrooms, cheese and butter and heather honey from the mountain hives. I did not touch it, nor the mead in a silver cup. I watched the King eat. And when his third cup was poured, I asked him. ‘Why, my Kinsman and my King? Why?’

  He did not answer. He only looked at me in wonder, as if he did not know what I was talking about. I spoke again.

  ‘Why, Mynydog, why? There is a tale I could tell, of a great Household that was entirely destroyed. It was the Household of all the Kings of Britain, and every Kingdom sent men to serve in it. You spent all the wealth of your Kingdom on it, Mynydog, till there is nothing left, nothing left at all,and there is no more in your house than there is in the house of King Cormac in the empty North. You have ruined your Kingdom, King Mynydog, and all your subjects; and you killed all the men who trusted in you.’