The Circle of the Gods Read online

  Aritag raised an arm and the trumpeter lowered his horn and wiped his aching lips with the back of his hand. Aritag turned and went down the path to the great stone-flagged circle around which the huts were grouped.

  Inbar came to him, the tribespeople crowded behind him, carrying rush baskets and panniers, old cloaks and earthenware pots and bowls, throwing nets, anything and everything that could be used to scoop up the harvest of fish which now thrashed to creamy spume all the waters fringing the shore. This was a harvest which none could gather until Aritag should walk into the sea waist-deep and scoop the first cropping in the bowl of the hide-faced, bronze-bossed ceremonial tribal shield of the people of the Enduring Crow.

  Inbar handed his father the shield and Aritag, slipping his left hand through the thonged arm-crotch and gripping the short crossbar, began to walk to the sea, following the fall of the shallow river, while the tribe followed him in silence, watching the leaping waters ahead. Behind them came some of the youths, pulling the great wooden sleds into which the shoaling fish would be loaded to be drawn up to the drying and salting grounds about the village. Two good shoalings in the worst of poor corn-cropping years could hold off starvation, while more meant salt fish for bartering inland as far afield as the markets of Isca.

  Aritag walked into the sea, the spray and splashing of the shoal rising about him like a mist. Merlin, he thought, had said that he would see the shoaling again, but not how many. Merlin, he thought wryly, would probably say anything that came into his head that he fancied might feed his reputation. But there was something in the man that tied him to the gods. Some even said that he was the son of the great horned stag god, Cernunnos, born to a mortal maid in the far past. The edge of a smile touched Aritag’s thin lips. More than likely Merlin had spread the story himself.

  Waist-deep, he turned in the sea and faced his tribespeople who lined the strand. All about him was the clamour of the feeding seabirds and the hissing and seething of the sea as the shoals silvered it into a mad turbulence. Slipping his left arm free of the shield, he held it like a great bowl in both hands above the water. He dipped it into the water and raised it up full of the living, leaping, writhing fish. A great shout went up from the tribespeople.

  “The shoaling! The shoaling!”

  Then, as Aritag began to wade slowly to the beach, his back bowing beneath the weight of the shield and its living load, all the men, women and children rushed into the water and began to scoop up the catch, filling baskets, cauldrons, looped kirtles, tunic skirts, nets, and lengths of cloth. Between sea and shore they rushed, shouting and laughing, to fill the great wooden sledge. Aritag handed his shield to Inbar to empty and then walked up the beach toward the village without looking back, followed by the horn blower.

  As they breasted the steep path a spasm of coughing took Aritag. The attack was so severe that it made his head swim with a giddiness he could not control. Bada, the horn blower, caught him as he swayed.

  “Sit and rest,” said Bada.

  Aritag breathed deeply and fought the giddiness in his head, slowly forcing it from him. “No,” he said, “it passes.”

  He walked on. His time was not yet, he sensed. But it was not far away. This year there would be other shoalings. He would see them through. But the first shoaling of the year was the most important. Maybe the good god Nodons of the silver hand would give him time to see another.

  There were two more shoalings that year before summer passed and Aritag lived to see both of them, and the winter that followed was mild and there was no hunger among the people of the Enduring Crow. It was during this winter that there sprang up between Aritag and Arturo an affection which Tia found pleasing. Generally the children of the tribe were in awe of Aritag and came to him only when bidden. But Arturo, in his sixth year, had a boldness which in other children would have been greeted with a quelling look. Even when Aritag sat in a circle talking with the other men Arturo would work his way to his side and squat by the old man, listening to the talk without fidgeting or drawing attention to himself. And when Aritag walked the cliffs with Bada, Arturo would join them or, if the weather was too bad, slide into Aritag’s hut and squat across the fire from him, so that the time came when Aritag, growing used to his company, favouring him above all the other children because he was the son of Baradoc, would talk to him and tell him the tales of the people of the Enduring Crow and of the other peoples of Dumnonia, tales that went back over the years into the mists of past times.

  There were hundreds of these tales and Arturo began to learn them by heart, a frown or a disdainful spitting into the red heart of the turf fire by Aritag marking any deviation from the strict form of their wording. The boy had a quick mind and memory and learned easily. He had, too, a quick temper. If any of the other boys teased him about being Aritag’s favourite, calling him nose-wiper, toe-licker, he would waste no words but take to fists and feet no matter the odds against him.

  In Mawga’s hut Tia would scold him sharply for his quick temper, though her anger never lasted long. She was privately proud of his ready learning and quick mind and tongue. During the long winter evenings she began to teach him her own language; not only to speak it but to write it, filling a shallow osier basket with fine beach sand and tracing the letters with a stick. As Aritag gave him the history of his father’s people, so she gave him what she knew of the history of her people. Always, too, before he slept he had to be told—though he knew it all by heart now—some part of the story of the way she had met Baradoc in the far-eastern forest of Anderida in the land of the Regni and had journeyed with him to Aquae Sulis, and how she had finally married Baradoc and journeyed westward with him.

  “Tell me the bit about the bear and how Cuna helped to kill it. How big was it really? As tall as a rearing moor stallion? Like this?” Excitement building in him, Arturo would leap to his feet, arms stretched high above his head, brown fingers curved into raking claws, and prance around the hut like a pain-maddened bear, growling and roaring so that Cuna, sleeping by the fire with the other dogs, would leap to his feet and, barking furiously, would circle around him.

  There was, however, one part of the story of her travels to the people of the Enduring Crow which Tia had not told Arturo yet, knowing that he was too young to understand it fully. This was the story of the silver chalice, which she kept, wrapped in an old piece of doeskin, in the ash-wood chest which stood at the end of her bed platform. One day she would tell him of the good Christian hermit Asimus who had given it to her and of the prophecy he had made about it… but it would be many years yet she knew before Arturo would be ready for the tale. Sometimes, as she looked down at the boy as he slept, her longing for Baradoc would rise to a high peak, a longing now which was often—despite Merlin’s word—shadowed with a growing doubt about his return. Arturo showed only a little interest in Baradoc. His world was too full of the people and things around him to leave room for concern over a figure as remote as an unknown father.

  On a night of wind and rain toward the end of the year, Inbar, heavily cloaked against the storm, came into the hut where she sat by the fire thonging a small hide jerkin for Arturo, who slept in his bed. His entry set the flames of the oil lamps in their wall niches briefly wavering and guttering. Mawga and her mother were away for the night, death-watching one of their relatives in another hut. Inbar, she knew, was well aware of this. He stood for a moment smiling at her, his cloak rain-beaded, his dark hair rain-plastered to his head like a moleskin helmet.

  He said, “I come from the beach watch. There is a cold in me which fire and a beaker of mead will warm.”

  “Both of which you could find in your father’s house a spear throw from here.”

  “True … but he holds a council there, haggling with Ricat, the Prince’s horse master, and the elders over the tribute of young stallions from the moor.” He slipped the throat clasp open at his neck and dropped the wet cloak across the rough beechwood table. The flame from the wicks of the lamps steadied and t
he light lay across his bare brown arms, gleaming like polished bronze.

  Tia rose and went to fetch the mead jar from the storeroom at the far end of the hut. She passed close to him but he made no move to touch her. Coming back, she set the mead and a slab of goat cheese before him. He cut himself some cheese with his dagger, ate, and washed down the food with a draft of mead. When his mouth was free, he said, “Ricat and his men go tomorrow. It is known that he has asked you to join him, to keep his house in Isca. You go with him?”

  Tia shook her head. “No. My place is here.”

  Inbar shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. “Any woman of this tribe in your place would have gone.”

  “This is my tribe. But my blood is my own.”

  “And good blood, too. Proud blood. But Isca is a fine place even these days, and Ricat is an honourable man who has given all his love to his horses. So why do you stay? Baradoc will never come back and next year is the seventh of his going, and you know that the need in me for you grows stronger every day.”

  “Baradoc will return. I shall never be your bed-warmer, wife, or bearer of your children.”

  He finished his mead and then, shaking his head, laughed and said, “No other woman would ever dare say that to me.” He stood up and, reaching out suddenly, took her by the right wrist. With his other hand he pulled free from its sheath the small dagger she wore in the belt about her working shift. Still holding her wrist he held the dagger in the flat of his palm. “You would kill me with this on the night I took you?”

  “If not you—then myself.” Tia looked down at the hand that held her wrist, and said quietly, “Free me.”

  For a moment Inbar hesitated. Then he released her wrist. In a quiet, almost puzzled voice, he said, “Why should you not like me? When the seven-year term is spent I would come to you in honour to take you to wife. You would have silver and bronze dishes in your house, the finest furs for the sleeping couch, and silks and linens of the best from the sea traders … Aie, and gold torques and enamelled clasps for your robes, and a table that would never lack for food. My father is a rich man and hoards his riches to no point. After him I shall have his riches and would shower them on you like the windfall of hawthorn blossom in spring.”

  “You would be kind, no doubt. But there is no gift you could give me great enough to make me forget that once you hanged Baradoc high and left him to die slowly.”

  A smile suddenly flashing across his lean, handsome face, Inbar said lightly, “Then let it be understood that when the time comes I shall take you and tame you to my ways and my love.” He flicked Tia’s small dagger downward suddenly and it lodged, quivering a little, in the rough wood of the table. “And you will find that you have no heart for dagger work.”

  He reached for his cloak, flung it about his shoulders and left the house.

  Tia picked up the mead jar and the remains of the cheese and took them back to the storeroom.

  When she came back Arturo was awake, though still fogged with early sleep. He said, “I thought I heard Inbar talking.”

  “You did. He came for mead and cheese.” Tia paused and then, following a prompting suddenly alive in her, went on, “Do you like Inbar?”

  Arturo rolled over, stomach downward on the soft fleeces of the bed, and, resting his chin on his hands, said, “Only for some things. The things he makes me, like spear and bow, and the things he shows me how to do … like … well, using a stone sling and how the wind takes off line spear or arrow in flight.” He yawned. “Oh, yes … he’s good to me. But I would drop a boulder on his head from the cliff top if you told me to.”

  Tia frowned. “Why do you say that?”

  “You know why. All the boys know he wants you to wife if father comes not back and—” He broke off, turned directly to her, and grinned broadly.

  “And?”

  Arturo scratched at his tousled fair hair. “And that you do not want him.”

  “The boys know too much and talk too much.”

  “So do the girls.” He rolled over on his back and, yawning, rubbed his eyes. “So, when you want a boulder dropped, tell me. To kill your first man in your mother’s honour would be a great killing.”

  Suddenly out of sympathy with his precocity, Tia snapped, “Arturo—talk not like that!”

  Arturo made no reply. Eyes closed, limbs loose in returning sleep, he snored gently, yet although Tia knew that he could fall into sudden sleep, she was far from sure this time that his sleep was genuine. But she was sure that, despite Aritag and Inbar’s care, he needed the harder hand of a father. He was growing fast and overknowingly.

  Before Ricat left he came to see Tia. She was in the great cave in the hillside above the village where the rush panniers and earthen crocks of wheat and barley were housed and with three other women was labouring at the two large milling querns, grinding into flour the oven-dried ears. When he called to her she came to him at the cave entrance, her working shift looped up at one comer into her belt, her face flushed, her hands and bare arms powdered with flour.

  A short, stocky man with the wrinkled face of an overwintered apple, his belted tunic and gartered trews of the finest wool, the short red cloak of a chief servant of the Prince of Dumnonia open over his shoulders, Ricat laughed, and said, “If your uncle Truvius were alive to see you now he would not believe it.”

  “You knew Truvius?”

  “I did. He often when he first retired to Aquae Sulis came to Isca to buy horses and would have none of the moorland breed, only those still bred of the true cavalry strain, though few of those are with us now. Give a moorland stallion freedom and he will mount any mare he can find. You knew Truvius was dead?”

  “No. But I long since guessed it. The gods have gained good company.”

  Ricat nodded. “He once did me a favour that put me in good standing with my Prince. Aie, at a moment when I needed it. I would return that favour through his kin. I say again that there is now or at any time a place for you and your son in my house at Isca—and a safe passage there though you should travel alone if you show this token.”

  He reached to the scarlet fall of his cloak flap and unpinned from it a brooch, which he handed to Tia.

  “What is it?”

  “It is the badge of the Prince’s master and keeper of horse. Once you are over the River Tamarus and out of the lands of the people of the Enduring Crow, not even Inbar would touch you, and”—he smiled—“the headwaters are a day or a night’s march to the east from here. Show the brooch—there is none other like it—and safe passage will be given.”

  Looking down at the brooch, Tia, who over the years had learned much of the beliefs and customs of her husband’s people, said, “It is the goddess Epona.”

  Ricat nodded. “Truvius would have known that, too, as would any legionary cavalry commander in the old days.”

  On the bronze brooch, inlaid in silver gilt, was the figure of the goddess, holding in her arms a wide bowl full of ears of corn. Behind her stood an arch-necked horse. Around the rim of the brooch were set garnets backed by thin gold-leaf foil to give added luster to the stones. It was a beautiful piece of work, worth many head of cattle. Tia’s eyes misted momentarily at the thought of the man’s kindness and concern for her. To part with the brooch, his sign of office, would mean a lot to him.

  She held it out to him. “No. I cannot take it.”

  Ricat reached out and closed her fingers over the brooch. “Keep it. I need no such sign to mark my rank. Every man in Dumnonia knows my standing. An honourable welcome waits you in my house whenever you find the need for it. But I think you should come with me now. Put aside the pride which comes to you from your Roman blood.”

  Tia shook her head. Ricat eyed her for a moment or two and then, giving a little shrug of his shoulders, touched his forehead in salute and turned away.

  Late in the afternoon Tia carried up to Aritag’s hall a shallow, straw-plaited basket full of flat bread rounds. Pulling the leather drawcord thong to lift the hea
vy inner door bar, she went in to find the living quarters occupied only by Inbar, who sat sprawling by the turf fire from which a lazy spiral of smoke curled away to the roof opening. From one of the sleeping booths at the far end of the hall came the sound of heavy snoring. Beside the booth Bada, the horn blower, sat on a small stool, keeping watch over his master.

  As Tia sat the basket down on the long table Inbar slewed toward her and, smiling, said, “Ricat has gone.”

  “Yes. He is a man of great kindness—and honour.” Tia made no attempt to mute the edge in her voice.

  Inbar laughed. “I agree. I rode with him awhile to see him off the tribal grounds. He wore in his cloak a plain bronze brooch.”

  “So?”

  “So—you have the goddess Epona to give you safe riding to Isca should you ever need it.”

  “If I ever need it, yes.”

  Inbar shook his head gently. “Your eyes are the mirror of your temper. Now they are the bleak blue of ice under a clear winter’s sky. But then, who would want a woman whose eyes never betrayed her feelings? You will have no need of the brooch.” He nodded toward the far booth where his father snored in sleep. “When my good father dies you will come to me willingly.” He eyed her for a moment or two and, when she made no reply, turned slowly to the fire, resting his elbows on his knees, cupping his chin in his hands, and stared into the red heart of the slow-burning turves.

  Tia, as she left the hall and walked toward Mawga’s hut, felt for the first time the chill beginning of fear. This country and the world outside it, she knew from her own experience, and from the tales which came with the travellers and merchants from Gaul, was in a turmoil where none now knew the security which had marked the days of her father and even her own early days. For the first time, no matter what Merlin might have said, she faced the numbing fact that Baradoc could be dead; that the life ahead of her might have to be paced out without him. She could admit to herself now that she should have forsaken her pride and ridden to Isca with Ricat.