The Circle of the Gods Read online

  His preparations complete, the bladders securely about him, he went to the rock edge, waited awhile to judge the surge of the slowly heaving seas, and then jumped as a great swell rose below him, keeping his arms stiff at his sides to hold from slipping the braided thonging that joined the bladders. He landed backside first and as he went under felt the fierce tug of the thonging cut into his armpits as the bladders dragged above him. Then he surfaced, riding high and comfortably, and the current took him and bore him away from the cliff point seaward, swinging him gently up and down in its long-paced swell.

  One night late, long after Ricat’s guests had departed. Arturo came to Tia. She had dozed off to light sleep when she awoke to hear voices in the courtyard. One of the voices was Ricat’s but the other meant nothing to her, dulled with sleep still. Then came the sound of footsteps on the outside stairs, a knock on her door, and Ricat’s voice called, “Mistress Tia, you have a visitor.”

  Throwing a cloak over her shoulders, Tia went to the door and opened it. Silhouetted against the star-strippled sky stood Ricat and Arturo.

  “Arturo!”

  Tia reached out her hands for him and Ricat with a chuckle pushed the boy forward and said, “When you have finished with him, send him down. There is food and drink enough on the table board still.” He turned away and clattered down the steps.

  Tia drew Arturo into the room and embraced him. Even in her joy she smiled briefly to herself, for he stood within the embrace patiently like a well-schooled pony and his lips only briefly and shyly touched her cheek.

  Their greeting over, she stood back from him, fetched a pinewood taper spill and from her bed light set the wall-sconce lamps to flame. Turning back to him, she asked, “You are well?”

  “Yes, my mother.”

  “Thank the gods for that.”

  “Aie … they helped somewhat. But we must not forget the pigs.” He said it solemnly, but the lamplights marked a familiar and brief ironic smile.

  “Pigs?”

  “Forget them, Mother. I am safe and sound and have been well fed these last five days since I came ashore.” Then, with a touch of maturity and command, he reached forward, took her arm and led her to the bed. “Sit down, my mother, and I will tell you all.”

  Tia sat down on the bed and Arturo straddled himself across a stool and began to tell his story. As she listened Tia had it borne into her that despite his lack of years, not yet in his twelfth year, he was fast outstripping boyhood. Close about him hung the shadow of the man to be, fairly set up, holding himself with quiet pride and sureness. Aye, she thought, maybe too sure, too proudful. His rough tunic and loose trews were torn and dirty and about his waist he carried a tightly buckled leather belt in which, without benefit of scabbard, he wore a short double-edged sword, its cutting edges keenly honed.

  Without hurry he told her the story of his escape and again, despite her joy in his presence, she hid a smile now and then as he fell victim to garnishing truth with fancy.

  “… So I was cradled by the tide and carried safely far up the coast beyond the Point of Hercules. As I went I ate crab apples and neat’s meat and the mermaids sang to me to while the night away and with the rising of the sun the pearl-bellied dolphins made a ring about me and amused me by their sports.”

  Coming ashore on the estuary sands close to the mouth of the Two Rivers, he had gone inland, walking the high divide between the rivers southward toward Isca, and had found no lack of food or friendship.

  “Most gave me food gladly for I told them that I had been taken for slave in a Scotti raid and had seized my chance to jump overboard to escape in bad weather. At other times, if I could not eat by charity, I filled my belly by theft, mostly by taking eggs from the hen roosts and sometimes a hen for roasting over the embers of a friendly charcoal burner’s fire. And one night, as I sat by a river pool, a dog otter came up from the dark waters, carrying a salmon. It killed the fish with a bite across the neck, feasted but briefly and left the rest for me. The taste of raw salmon curd and its red-berried spawning seed is in my mouth still.”

  “And the sword you carry—which here you must not wear for none of your age may openly bear arms?”

  Enjoying himself and genuinely glad to have arrived, for, in truth, his travels had been far less than comfortable, Arturo grinned and was momentarily all boy, the shadow of manhood gone from him. He asked, “Would you have the truth or some comforting fable, my gentle mother?”

  Delighted with his coming, Tia said, “No matter which I ask, you will give me the tale of your own choosing.”

  “Then hear the truth. Two forenoons gone I sat in the sun by the river and, lo, the same dog otter came from the water and laid the sword at my feet and for gift fee accepted one of my stolen eggs. And if you doubt there is enchantment about the sword see the finely sharpened, bright cutting edges. In a day and a night of rain they took no rust to mar their keenness. It is a sword of magic and shall ever be with me, awaiting the day when I shall cut the dog’s throat of Inbar with it and send him to the Shades.”

  “Arturo! Enough! Either tell me the truth or say nothing.”

  “I have told you the truth, but now I would eat and then sleep.” He stood up, reached for her hand and kissed it, and went on, “I will go down to Master Ricat.” Then for a moment or two he paused, his face slowly clouding, and in an uncertain voice asked, “When the Prince Gerontius knows I am here, will he take Inbar’s part and send me back to the, settlement?”

  “The Prince is a man of honour. Through Master Ricat he has given me sanctuary, and the same will be done for you—but you will get sharp punishment if you walk Isca carrying that sword. Give it to me.” As Arturo hesitated, she repeated sharply, “Give it to me. I will guard it until you are of age even though I shall never know the truth of your gaining it.”

  Arturo shrugged his shoulders and then, drawing the sword from the hanging loop on his belt, handed it to her hilt-first. Tia sat with it on her lap as Arturo clattered down the outside steps, whistling gently to himself. He needed, she knew, a man’s hand on him and a father’s authority to curb him for he grew too fast and fanciful despite his courage and mounting strength. He was built of dreams and fancies … liar she could not call him for she knew that a boy’s imagination was shaped of finer stuff than common deceit. The flushing of the clear water in the silver chalice to the soft pink of a swallow’s gorge, the pale stain of blood, had marked his destiny. Maybe, to achieve it, for it must needs be great if Asimus were to be believed, then the coming years would put him beyond any man’s control. There was no standing against the gods if they in their wisdom took one from so many to be their chosen instrument in this world.

  Though Inbar of the people of the Enduring Crow sued for the return of Arturo, Gerontius, the Prince of Dumnonia, refused to send the boy back and made Ricat—who had spoken strongly in his favour—his ward and responsible for his sober behaviour.

  But first Arturo was taken before the Prince and left with him in solitary audience. Arturo stood straight and manly before him and listened to his words with a serious face, though in truth he paid little heed to them. They held mostly only a due formality and, he guessed, had Gerontius a real friendship or need of Inbar he would have been sent back under escort. More interesting to him were the man and the room in which he stood.

  Once the audience room of the Roman commander of the Isca garrison, its floor was clean and cool with black and red tiling. A long window flanked by tall wall niches which had once held statues looked out from the castle heights over the town and river. The wooden shutters were wide open now and the fine kidskin curtains were drawn back to let in the light of the westering sun that slowly marked the dying of a mild late-autumn day. A long table held bowls of fruit and a silver tray on which rested a blue glass flagon of wine and silver drinking cups. A fresco ran round the walls in a running design of stiffly prancing and galloping horses.

  Gerontius sat in a high-backed throne chair. He was a man in his late
thirties, dark-haired and with dark eyebrows that merged with one another over the high bridge of his hawklike nose. His eyes were half-hooded as though burgeoning sleep sat waiting full capture of him. He wore a long tunic of fine white wool and over it an open toga of green linen, under the hem of which showed a pair of soft red sandals fastened with gold cord laces. He looked, Arturo thought, as though he had no interest in the world except to fall gently into sleep, a look which must be deceptive, otherwise in these times he would never be sitting where he was.

  The Prince, after Ricat had retired from presenting Arturo, stared at him for a while from half-closed eyes and then, taking a slow, deep idle breath, said, “You are?”

  Arturo said, for in truth Ricat had warned him of some of the Prince’s manner, “I am, my Prince, Arturo, son of Baradoc, chief of the people of the Enduring Crow.” He touched his left shoulder and went on, “And bear their tattoo mark here.”

  “Your father could be dead.”

  “Then, my Prince, I am rightful chief of my tribe and not my uncle Inbar.”

  Without any change of expression Gerontius said flatly, “Then why not thrust a knife in his gut and settle the matter?”

  For a moment or two Arturo was confused by the man’s sudden bluntness. As his face showed it the Prince chuckled slowly to himself. He rose from his chair and walked across to the table and poured himself a cup of wine. Behind Arturo’s back, he went on, “Don’t tell me that one who had the courage to escape as you did—though I gather the seamaids and the dolphins helped you and even the otters of the river provided you with fresh salmon and a fine sword—lacks the wit to use a knife in the dark?”

  As the Prince came back to the chair Arturo said, “It could easily have been done, my lord—but it would not have been fairly done, face to face. And more, my lord, if my father lives and returns it is for him to do. When there is no more hope of that and I am youth no longer then I shall do it.”

  The Prince nodded and asked, “You believe that your father still lives?”

  “It is enough for me, my lord, that my mother believes it and has the word of the wanderer Merlin for it.”

  “Ah, the words of Merlin are well known for being so cunningly shaped that whatever he prophesies comes true, though it is not always the truth that one has expected.”

  “Maybe so, my lord. But for my mother’s sake I pray that the words of Merlin about my father bear only one shape and one truth.”

  The Prince nodded, sipped at his wine and then said, “Well spoken. Now go to Master Ricat, who will set work for you. But for two hours each day before sunset you will come here and be tutored by the good priest Leric.” He waved a hand in dismissal and Arturo touched his forehead in homage and left the chamber.

  So began for Arturo a period of hard work and happiness that was to last until he was almost fourteen, and his eyes were lifted skyward each morning to seek the first sign of the returning swallows—the birds of his birth month—and, as he worked at the schooling of horses in the river meadows, his ears were cocked for the first notes of the cuckoo.

  Ricat and his overseers worked him hard and after a few months had grudgingly to admit that he had the true gift of the Epona-marked. When he sat a horse there were no longer man and beast, but one entity. Iron-thighed, gentle or masterly handed, he could bring the most wayward steed to obedience, and there were many horses which were so, for their bloodlines were long-mixed from the days when the first Roman cavalry units had come to the country. The old priest Leric (who worshipped horses a little less than his country’s gods, and seldom lost a wager on a horse match on fair days) explained to him (strictly in his history lessons) that the mounts of the cavalry wings of such units as the Ala Hispanorum Vettonum civium Romanorum, stationed as far back as the time of Trajan in Cymru at Brecon Gaer, and the Cohors I Nerviorum, mounted by Gallic auxiliaries, had often escaped; or badly guarded mares had been covered by the wild hill-pony to the high-blooded eastern mounts which many a young tribunus or praefectus had brought to Britain on his first cavalry command. The bloodlines were a maze which no man’s memory could now thread.

  Arturo was content with his work and his station. He was content, too, for the first time with the comradeship he found with the youths of his own age who also worked for the Prince. Like himself they had been hand-picked for one quality or another, though there was one trait—apart from their skill with horses—that they all shared and which often brought them a flogging or a week’s stay in a cell on bread and water. They knew no fear so could not resist a challenge which might put their courage or ribald sense of humour in question.

  For Leric—a lapsed Druid priest with tentative leanings toward Christianity, who had escaped from Gaul and been given sanctuary within the bounds of Isca by the Prince—Arturo had an odd mixture of high regard, occasional contempt and, rare for him, pity. Leric was far more learned than Galpan in the Druidical mysteries, far more widely travelled and educated in the Roman and Greek tongues, but he was plagued by doubts still over the religion he had abandoned and, too, over the one he lacked the courage yet to embrace fully. To escape this dilemma he often sought comfort in drink. From him Arturo learned more fully his mother’s tongue and adequate Greek to cope with the exercises that Leric set him. But of far more interest to Arturo were the lessons in the history of his own country which Leric gave him: a history going back far beyond King Cunobelinus and the great Queen Boudicca, and the days when the Emperor Claudius invaded Britain or the first Saxon shore fort was built on the island of Tanatus.

  As for Tia, she was well content with Arturo’s progress and paid not overmuch attention to his occasional lapses into bad behaviour because on the whole he worked hard and his company was a joy to her. On the day he was fourteen and the swallows and house martins had returned she gave him a hound puppy which had many of the markings and much of the build and stance of old Lerg.

  To her surprise, although he thanked her and showed pleasure as he stood in her room cradling the puppy to his chest, she could tell from the brightness of his eyes and a restlessness in him that his mind was far from presents. It was evening and still light and he had just come from his lessons with Leric.

  He said, “Put on your cloak, my mother, and come with me. Aie … I know well ’tis my birthday, but it is also a day of other importance. And ask no questions, for I give no answers.”

  They left the house and walked down the hill to the river and then took the road southward. A little outside the town the land rose. At the top of the rise stood an old oak, its branches blasted long ago by lightning. Arturo stopped at the foot of the hill, and said, “Go to the tree. There is one there who would speak to you.” His face which he was holding solemn broke suddenly into an impish grin. Then, without another word, he turned and left her, making his way back to the town.

  It was then that Tia knew the truth as surely as though it had been announced with a fanfare of trumpets and a proclamation by the Prince himself. She hurried forward through the growing twilight, her heart beating rapidly, her lips and mouth drying with excitement.

  A wiry pack pony was tethered to a bole sapling of the oak and a man stood by it. He was tall, with a lean, strong body, wearing a short-trimmed, tawny-red beard, his clothes dusty from travel, his belt carrying a scabbarded short sword and a dagger. For a moment or two he watched her coming. Then, the impatience in him matching Tia’s, he moved forward swiftly down the slope and, without word on either side in that first ecstasy of reunion, took her in his arms and kissed her.

  From a distance, Arturo watched them, his heart pounding with excitement and his mind active with speculation about this man, Baradoc, chief of the people of the Enduring Crow … his father, who, mindful of his own safety and the courtesies due to his Prince, had halted outside the town and sent message asking for a yea or nay to a free and unmolested entry to Isca. While Arturo had been at his lessons with Leric, the Prince had come into the room, told him the news and said, “Go now to your mother
and lead her to your father, and when their greetings are made tell him there is welcome here for him.”

  That night as Tia and Baradoc lay abed, the pale sky showing through the window cut with the erratic movement of hawking bats and distantly the occasional screech of hunting owls breaking the silence, Tia said, “Oh, my love, the moment you landed you should have sent a messenger ahead of you and I would have made a feast and a great preparation for you.”

  Baradoc, holding her in his arms, kissed her eyelids gently and said, “I came as swiftly as any messenger and for feasting what needed I more than to glut my eyes on your beauty and to feel beneath my hand the joy throb of your heart.”

  When she woke the next morning to find herself alone, but hearing his voice and that of Arturo as they spoke in the courtyard below, she found beside her on the old wax stylus pad she used for making household notes the same lines which Baradoc had written for her in the hut on Caer Sibli when he had been taken from her:

  The gods raise the door latch of night

  To let the silver morning in

  Sleep veils the brook-lime blue of your eyes

  The gay bird of love in my heart begins to sing

  Returning, I will lay a chaplet of purple vetch about

  your hair

  And, kneeling call you queen.