by Joan Aiken
Cosmo softly opened the door and they went out on to the dewy lawn.
‘I am a slave because, though my father was a free Roman soldier, my mother is a Silurian slave-woman from Maridunum,’ Con said sourly.
‘Is she still alive?’ Cosmo asked with a pang of envy.
‘Yes, but her master is a magistrate and he has gone south to Isca, and I was sold to the Prefect here.’
‘What work do you have to do?’
‘Clean his house. Look after his horses and his hounds. And now I have to fight.’
‘Fight? What kind of fighting?’
‘This kind,’ said Con.
He picked up a three-pronged trident which lay at the foot of the walnut tree. ‘I am to be a net-and-trident man. I fight against swordsmen. My master will be betting on me, so I have to fight well.’
‘You’re a gladiator?’
‘Yes, yes!’ Con said impatiently. ‘A retiarius. I am to fight in the Games at Corinium. But first I have to practise. You are to help me. Come, hurry, fight, fight!’
‘Why should I?’
‘You are to help me!’ Con said again furiously. ‘Fight, man! Where is your sword?’
‘I haven’t got a sword.’
‘You have no sword? Although you are free?’ Con seemed terribly taken aback at this piece of information; also filled with unspeakable scorn. Cosmo began to feel that the other boy thought him a very poor sort of creature – perhaps he was?
‘I could use the net, and you could use the trident?’ he suggested diffidently. ‘Or the other way round? I believe they did it like that sometimes?’
Con looked doubtful.
‘Is it so very urgent?’
‘Of course it is urgent. Seven days from now is the day of the Games. Very well – if you truly have no sword – that is what we shall have to do. You may have the trident first.’
The trident was unexpectedly heavy – like a big, deadly toasting fork with sharpened steel points that could probably do horrible damage if stabbed into a vital spot. Cosmo found it quite hard to wield – his arms were still pretty stiff from hammering – also he did not want to hurt the other boy. Con had no such scruples. As they feinted and sparred and zigzagged across the lawn, Cosmo realized that, even if Con had not had much chance to practise this kind of fighting, still at least he must have watched a good many bouts; he used the net with a deadly sort of skill in dozens of different ways, whirling it, sometimes, spread open in the air above Cosmo, who had to duck and plunge to avoid it; sometimes swishing it, bunched together into a rope, along the ground, in a bid to knock his opponent’s feet from under him, so that Cosmo had to bound high to escape it. Well, at least, those boring games of dodgeball were useful for something, he thought dispassionately, leaping, then ducking, and somewhere in between the two movements managing to work in a lunge at the other boy’s ribs. The net was heavier and slower to wield; Cosmo’s advantage must obviously lie in nimbleness and dexterity, in making dozens of swift little feints and stabs; however, in spite of this planned intention he found that most of the time Con kept him on the defensive, whirling the net confusingly round Cosmo’s head like a matador’s cape, driving him back and back until he was up against the cart shed wall. At last by a cunning double swooping motion – down, then up in a fish-shaped curve – Con managed to entangle Cosmo completely, and brought him to the ground with a thud.
‘Habet!’ he panted. ‘One to me! Now we change weapons.’
At first Cosmo found the net wholly unmanageable. It was just a clumsy, loose, heavy, bulky bundle of material – how in the world could it be turned into a killing weapon? Whoever first had the stupid notion of fighting with a net, anyway? Twice Con jabbed him with the trident – before, suddenly enraged, he discovered the knack of sending the mesh whistling through the air like a cowboy’s rope. But Con – perhaps from his work of looking after horses – seemed absolutely tireless, unbelievably active and light on his feet, pivoting and bounding in and out. It was the despair of sheer exhaustion in the end – heaven only knew how long they had been fighting, but it seemed like the whole night – that gave Cosmo the idea for a feint with the net, shooting out one corner of it in a lightning-quick flip to catch his opponent’s eye on his right side, while keeping the main breadth of the fabric bundled into his own right hand, ready to fling out and drop as Con turned – ‘Got you!’ he gasped exultantly, as the heavy mass fell envelopingly over the fair tousled head.
‘That was a good trick you used,’ Con said with approval as he scrambled up from his knees. ‘I will remember that at the Games … Who taught it you?’
‘Nobody. I just made it up.’
Con looked at him wide-eyed. ‘Made it up? And yet you spend your life in idle play –’
‘Hey – here comes my cousin.’ Cosmo had seen the glimmering headlights of the Rolls, boring their way down through the dark shoulder of the wood. ‘We shall have to stop.’
‘I am tired, in any case,’ Con said simply. ‘We shall fight again tomorrow.’
He gathered up his net and turned, seeming to slither off sideways into a vertical crack in space.
‘Good heavens, Cosmo,’ said Eunice, stepping out of the car. ‘You haven’t been up all this time?’
‘No, I did go to bed … But then I got up and came out again. Did you have a good time with your Viennese professor?’
‘No! He was a thundering old bore,’ Eunice said cheerfully, shutting the heavy front door behind her. ‘His mind fossilized back in the 1920s.’ She gave a great yawn. ‘Goodnight, Cosmo. See you in the morning.’
When Cosmo fell into bed for the second time that night he was physically tired – absolutely bushed, in fact – but his mind was in a tingle of wakefulness. First, the fighting had been terrific – fast, skilled, exhilarating – he had no idea that a combat of that kind could be made into such a stylish, sparkling affair. Now that he had time to think about it, he had several more good ideas for feints with both net and trident – why didn’t they do that at school instead of those terrible games with beanbags? He was really looking forward to more practice with Con, towards whom his whole attitude had completely changed. Sure, Con was a bit surly and aggressive, but if you were born a slave and the child of a slave, what could anybody expect? ‘Will you always be a slave?’ Cosmo had asked at one point, jabbing with the trident. ‘No,’ Con panted, flipping the net expertly first to the left, then to the right – ‘Sometimes – if you fight well – and the crowd like you – the Governor may give you your freedom as a reward. But you’re more likely to get killed, of course,’ he added, matter-of-factly.
At another point – when Con had netted him and he was carefully freeing himself from the entangling folds – Cosmo had asked,
‘Do you remember helping me and my brother once damming a brook, long ago?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Con had answered.
It was no use asking him that kind of question, Cosmo concluded; his mind didn’t seem to retain events that were out of his own scheme of time.
But a very decent fellow on his own terms. Worth a dozen of Chris or Lot or Andy or Charley … Cosmo fell asleep.
Next day Cosmo was rather startled, coming downstairs, to discover Con stretched out asleep in a patch of sunlight on the brick floor, in the angle of the wall under the window. Lob knew he was there all right; he growled mutteringly from time to time as he chewed and worried at little bits of dirt and thorns between his toes, causing Eunice to look up from her coffee and newspaper to say, ‘What’s up, Lobby boy? Rheumatics bothering you today?’
Neither she nor Mrs Tydings could see Con. It was really peculiar; you’d think they’d be able to hear his slow, deep breathing and occasional sighs as he shifted position.
After breakfast Cosmo went and helped Mr Marvell with jobs around the farm. Presently he asked advice about the guard rail. ‘I should think what would be best for you,’ said Mr Marvell after reflecting, ‘would be a two-three fence bar, spli
t down the middle. You won’t want ’em too heavy, or they’ll be a nuisance to get up and a nuisance to fix; but, as you say, you do want ’em solid enough to do their job. I know where there’s just the thing for you. Look –’ and he showed Cosmo a stack of weathering ash poles about four inches in diameter. ‘Those’ll do you nicely; when all the work’s done, ’s evening, I’ll help you split as many as you’re likely to need. That’s an awkward job, no joke to do on your own.’
After thanking Mr Marvell, Cosmo decided to tackle his homework next; a thin drizzle had begun to fall, it seemed a good time to get school work out of the way. But later on the weather began to clear, and a watery sun shone out; Cosmo was able to raise his last two planks and fix them into place. Then, looking down, he saw Con climbing up the pitons.
‘This is a good lookout spot you have made,’ the other boy said, reaching Cosmo’s platform. ‘You would be safe from wolves – or even from armed men, if you had weapons.’
He surveyed the platform with critical approval. It now covered an area of roughly sixteen square feet, but had a very asymmetrical shape, governed by the splay of the big walnut branches: Irregular, Cosmo thought with a private grin, thinking of Flatland: ‘If a man with a triangular front and a polygonal back were allowed to propagate a still more Irregular posterity, what would become of the arts of life?’
He wished he could talk to Con about Flatland.
Instead he explained about the need for guard rails.
‘I will help you split them,’ Con said at once. ‘And then we can fight up here; this would be a fine place to practise.’
‘Fight up here?’
‘It would make us more nimble and more careful,’ Con said.
Cosmo didn’t care for the idea at all, but he could hardly refuse Con’s offer of help. The two of them climbed down and went round to the back of the big Dutch haybarn, where the poles were stacked, in the angle of that and another building that had once been a dairy. Mr Marvell had shown Cosmo where to find an axe, a mallet, and some wedges. Splitting, as Mr Marvell had said, was an awkward job; even with the two of them it went slowly, accompanied by some curses.
‘One cannot be a retiarius without fingers,’ Con said, snatching his hand away just in time on one occasion.
‘I don’t know what you could be without fingers.’
‘A scribe, and use the other hand. Or a clerk, and work on an abacus.’
It was true, Cosmo reflected, that you did not need fingers for mathematics; but he was more careful after that, and by dusk they had half a dozen poles split and hoisted up on to the platform.
‘Tomorrow we fasten them in place,’ Con said. ‘Tonight we fight on the grass again.’
Cosmo did wonder how Eunice would react to the sight of him apparently fighting nobody – if she should happen to look out; but there was a television programme about bible history which both she and Mrs Tydings wanted to watch. No objections were raised to his going out in the dark, provided he stayed away from the weir.
‘But tomorrow night you must be in early, as it’s school next day.’
School for me, he thought, and the Games for Con; which would I choose if I had the choice?
Fighting that night went better; went very well indeed.
‘You are a terrific fighter, Con,’ he said.
‘And you are none so bad yourself.’
‘Surely you’ll win all your fights and be given your freedom?’
‘Ah,’ said Con gloomily, ‘that depends on many things. They free only a few men at each Games; there may be others, swordsmen or sling-men, who are better than I. And they have very fine fighters at Corinium – the best men from all over the country, even from Gaul. No, I try not to hope for freedom. Hope is a bad friend; it can make your arm shake and your eye uncertain. It is best to keep one’s mind clear of hope. I just work to be a good fighter. After all, fighting is what we are here for, isn’t it? Besides –’ he paused, frowning down at the trident which he held, jabbing it into the grass.
‘Besides what, Con?’
‘There is a prophecy concerning my family,’ Con said uncertainly.
Cosmo felt as if a cold finger had been drawn across his midriff.
‘A prophecy?’
‘I had it from my mother; she, from my father. The eldest son always dies young, dies fighting … I am my father’s firstborn.’
‘Oh, but – That isn’t – Con, look here, you don’t have to believe that you are going to die –’
‘No?’ Con said, but he said it without conviction. ‘Come, let us fight again.’
Mr Marvell had been very surprised to find that all the fence poles had been split without his help.
‘Well, you are a worker,’ he said. ‘I can see you’ll be a big help come haymaking and harvest time.’ Cosmo felt something of a fraud. ‘Now you’ll want some four-inch nails for them, and a bit of wire as well, if you take my advice; you want them guard rails really firm. Nail them first, with the nails a bit countersunk, then truss ’em to the boughs with a good splicing of wire. Or that’s what I’d do if it were me.’
Cosmo thought this very good advice. The job of attaching the guard rails proved unexpectedly long and fiddling; the rails had to be tapered and notched to fit the branches that they met; doing this and fixing them in position took most of the day, interspersed with a few jobs for Eunice in the garden.
‘Now we fight,’ said Con, at sunset.
The light was already thickening. By now, Cosmo felt even less keen about fighting up on the platform, so many feet above the ground, even with the guard rails.
‘Well; okay,’ he said half-heartedly. ‘But only a couple of bouts – I vote we stop when it gets dark. Which do you want first – net or trident?’
‘I will take the net,’ said Con. He picked it up, shook it expertly into folds, and slung it over his arm. ‘Are you ready? On guard, then!’
But as Cosmo began to move cautiously across the platform with the trident, feinting a little this way and that, Con turned his head suddenly, alertly, listening.
‘Stop a moment!’
‘What is it?’
‘I hear my master calling. Curse it – I must go. Quick, give me the trident.’ He took it from Cosmo and dropped it to the ground, where it stuck quivering. Con made for the entrance to the platform, then turned to say, ‘You have been a good friend to me. I thank you for that.’
His bony right hand clasped that of Cosmo for a moment; he almost smiled; then seemed to glide into a crack of air, like a lizard between two bricks, and was gone.
For a moment Cosmo could hardly believe that he was alone. Con’s presence had been so real to him. He felt almost suffocated with mixed feelings, and among them regret was the foremost. Something about that handclasp had filled him with a certainty that he would not be seeing Con again.
‘Cosmo?’ called Eunice down below. ‘Are you still up in your eyrie? Don’t you think you had better be coming down before it is pitch dark?’
‘Yes, I’m just coming,’ he answered, and clambered carefully down the pitons.
‘I must say, it is a remarkably successful project,’ she said, waiting for him down below. ‘Mr Marvell is greatly impressed. Don’t you think you ought to invite somebody from school just to get the benefit of it?’
‘Oh no – not just yet,’ Cosmo said quickly.
He tried to imagine showing it to one of his enemies from Remove, Charley or Chris. They would probably think that Mr Marvell had done it all. Pampered little namby-pamby Cosmo. Or one of the girls, Tansy or Sheil. They would want to have a dolls’ tea party up there.
‘Not just yet,’ he repeated.
‘Well, you know best,’ Eunice said comfortably. ‘Friends come in their own time.’
5. Bun and Meredith
It seemed hardly possible to Cosmo that he was beginning on his fourth week of school. Only one more to go and then it would be the Easter holidays – wonderful thought! Four whole weeks of days spent doing w
hat he chose at the mill, or working with Mr Marvell, who had all kinds of activities planned – helping to break the young horses, Punch and Juno, and accustom them to harness, learning to plough, going to fetch some black-spotted lambs from Witney who would be about ready to leave their mothers by then, building a new pigpen … And Eunice had some plans too; she had suggested badger-watching in the wood one night – fishing – mending the two leaky boats that were drawn up in a boathouse on the island, turning the cart shed into an indoor tennis court and playing Henry V’s kind of tennis there. And he still had not explored the mill buildings …
With all that to look forward to, and Con to think back over, it did seem as if the week at school should be bearable enough. But where was Con now?
Did Con cease to exist when he slid back into his own dimension – as far as Cosmo was concerned? Or do I cease to exist for him? Cosmo wondered, getting out of the Rolls and waving goodbye to Eunice. Mr Falaise, who taught maths to the upper forms, and Latin to Remove, happened to be on the front steps at that moment. It seemed that he and Eunice had been to college together, and he said to her a little wistfully,
‘I don’t suppose you’d have time to come and talk to the Seniors one day, about relativity or something, would you? It would be such a nice change for them from all that dull stuff they have to do with me!’
‘I’ll see, Benny,’ Eunice said laughing. ‘I’m awfully busy at the moment – writing my book you know – but I’ll come along sometime, I promise.’
She had told Cosmo a little about her book. ‘It’s a kind of mathematical judo. Wriggling about, coming out in unexpected places. Trying to get the best result with the least effort.’
‘What are you going to call it?’
‘Not quite sure yet. Man and Measurement, perhaps. After all, when you think about it, man is the only animal who has taken to measuring. In fact, that seems to be one of the things we were mainly designed for – legs, arms and feet for measuring, toes and fingers for counting, minds for calculating – if we’d been whales, how differently we’d have turned out!’