Dawn Wind (29 page)

A
FTER
the silent and forsaken cities of Viroconium and even Regnum that the Saxons called Cissa’s Caester but left deserted to its ghosts, Aethelbert’s capital had taken Owain completely by surprise. Maybe it was the unwarrior-like merchant side of this King of Kent that had led him to make his chief place in the old capital city of the Cantii, instead of in some royal farm among the Wealden forests. As it was, he seemed to have brought the farm with him and superimposed it on what was there already. The general effect, Owain thought, drifting up one street and down another on his way back from the West Gate, was of a colony of jackdaws’ nests built along the ledges of some once stately colonnade. The streets and many of the walls were the streets and walls of Roman Durnovaria; the reed- and bracken-thatched roofs and the middens that blocked the streets were the roofs and middens of Cantiisburg. Pigs rooted in the streets. Oxen lowed, and the smells were many and varied but mostly they were the earthy and animal smells of the farm-yard.

Standing on the corner of two streets, because he had for the moment nothing else to do, and watching the folk of Aethelbert’s capital pass about their daily affairs, Owain’s mind went back over the past few weeks, to the day that the King’s summons had come. It was better to think about that than about what had happened this morning.

The strange thing—at least it had seemed strange at the time—was that the summons had been for himself as well as Bryni. ‘For the British spear among my shield-warriors, seeing that he has not forgotten his mother tongue,’ the messenger had said, quoting the King’s words that he had got off by heart. Owain had puzzled over that, especially as they had been bidden to bring no weapon but their swords, and it did not seem that the gathering could be for war. Beside, the King had said that it was not for war, ‘not for war this time. There are other occasions than battle for which a King may need his household warriors about him.’

The reason for his summons had been simple enough, after all, when it was told to him three days later in the King’s Hall. Haegel himself had received a summons from Aethelbert of Kent—he must have known that it was coming, as far back as the boar hunt at winter’s end. The High King had sent out bidding the lesser Kings, who owned him as Overlord, to a Council at Cantiisburg at midsummer. Some question of law-giving, it seemed; tribal frontiers to be settled; Owain was not at all clear about it, even now, and nor, he gathered, was anybody else. The Princes of the Allied British Kingdom would be there too, though they owned no man for their Overlord; and since Haegel of the South Saxons had a Briton among his warriors who could tell him what they said and maybe help him to understand their ways of thinking, he might as well make use of him.

So when Haegel took ship for Kent with three of his councillors and a small bodyguard of his kinsmen and household warriors including Vadir, and Bryni carrying himself already with the stiff-legged swagger of the hero of a score of battles, Owain also had been one of them. That seemed a long time ago, for they had run into squally weather and between their sailing and the time when they had landed under the ruined Roman pharos at Dubris, his memory had hung a greenish veil of seasickness. There had been horses waiting for them, and after a night’s rest, during which the floor of the shed in which Owain lay had continued to heave up and down with a steep ocean swell, they had set out along the remains of the great double-track legions’ road that led straight as a spear-shaft through the Great Forest to Cantiisburg. Two days they had been on that last stretch of the journey, for the roads were not what they had been when the Legions marched them; but yesterday towards sunset they had ridden into Aethelbert’s capital.

Coel of Wessex and Coelwulf his brother were there already with their chiefs and champions about them, and Redwald of the East Angles had ridden in late that night, bringing his own harper in his train. All Cantiisburg was thrumming with their gathering, and the thrum would deepen and strengthen until the gathering was complete. Then, Owain thought, strolling on again, the Council would begin, and if Haegel really needed him, there would be something for him to do. He was not used to finding his hands empty of work, and felt lost because of their emptiness.

It was because he had nothing to do that he had wandered out to look at the King’s horse farm just beyond the West Gate. At least he had told himself that that was his only reason, because if he admitted to himself that he was going hoping for a glimpse of Teitri, he would have known that it was a stupid thing to do. Teitri was gone: let him go.

Well, he had had his glimpse, of a white stallion running among his mares, so far off that it might have been any white stallion—if he had not known by his heart rather than his eyes that it was Teitri. He wondered, if he sent the old shore-bird whistle down the horse-pasture, whether Teitri would remember anything at all; and knew that he must not put it to the test.

‘I’ve had the care of three God’s Horses in my time,’ said the horsemaster leaning on the fence-timbers beside him; a red-faced man whose voice grated on the ear, ‘but never one the like to that. If he doesn’t kill his man before he goes back to Frey, I don’t know the look in a horse’s eye. He came to us out of the South Saxon Lands.’

‘I know,’ Owain said, almost under his breath. ‘I’ve seen him before.’

He felt, rather than saw, a shadow beside him, and there was Vadir the Hault, his gaze also going down the long horse-pasture, following the flying shape like a white wind-blown point of flame. So he too, had not forgotten …

Then Vadir looked round. His cold bright eyes met Owain’s for an instant, then passed him by, and he said to the horsemaster in that silken voice of his, ‘Our friend has not told you it all. It was he who brought the God’s Horse into the world and he who gave him the training that is permitted. Before he came to his greatness and his terror, the God’s Horse would come to his whistle—like a little dog. Doubtless he has been wondering whether the old whistle would call him yet—if it were not sacrilege to whistle to a God.’

Owain had felt as though something precious and infinitely private to himself had been torn free of its covering and held up naked to a jeering mob. Vadir had meant that he should feel like that. Curse him! He had turned from both men without a word, not trusting himself to speak, and come away.

Still raging and miserable he rounded a street corner, dodged aside to avoid a half-grown pig that ran squealing across his path, and all but blundered into a man going the opposite way. For the moment, as he dodged him again, he saw no more than that he was a small old man and that his hair was grey. ‘Your pardon, Old Father,’ he said, and would have gone on. But in the next instant a hand gripped his shoulder with unexpected strength and swung him round, and he found himself looking down into one brilliant amber eye that blazed up at him past a great beaked nose. ‘It seems that my memory is better than yours,’ said the old man, ‘for I have not forgotten my British armour-bearer in the Saxon Camp!’

Owain stood looking down at him with an incredulous delight and an odd sense of being rescued, as the face of the stranger changed before his eyes into the face of Einon Hen. He brought up his hand to cover the old man’s on his shoulder. ‘Einon Hen, by all the winds of heaven! I did not expect to find you in Cantiisburg, and I was thinking of something else.’

‘It must have been a thought to hold you very deeply,’ said Einon Hen, ‘for I’ve a face not so easy to forget as most men’s.’

‘I was thinking of a foal I saw born a long time ago,’ Owain said. ‘Are the Princes of the Cymru already here, then?’

‘Not yet. Nor is the time yet come for me to seek my own hills again. Since the treaty it is well that our people should have an ambassador among the Saxon kind. Almost three years I have served the Cymru here in this place—and it is good to hear a British voice again.’

‘For me also,’ Owain said. ‘For me also, Einon Hen.’ The passers-by were jostling against them, two dogs had started a fight, and a child on a door-sill, bowled over by the pig as it wandered indoors, was howling dismally. He raised his voice above the tumult: ‘Is there some quiet place where we might talk? May I come with you?’

The old Envoy looked at him a moment, silent in the uproar of the narrow street. ‘There is a quiet place—one quiet place in all Cantiisburg.’ His face quickened into a smile. ‘I was on my way there now, and I should be most glad that you come with me.’

They went up one street and down another, Einon Hen leading the way and Owain following behind. Close beside the old Governor’s Palace, where Aethelbert had made his Hall, they came through a crumbling gateway from the street into a little courtyard full of the dappled shade of a mulberry tree. A door stood open in the far wall, between the broken columns of a small portico, and quiet seemed to lie on the place, as tangible as the shadows of the mulberry leaves.

‘What place is this?’ Owain asked, glancing about him.

‘The Church of Saint Martin. Come.’ The old man spoke as though it was so natural, that for the moment the younger one, following him across to the doorway, accepted it as natural too, that there should be a Christian church here in the midst of Jutish Cantiisburg—a Christian church that was not a ruin but still in use; for as they entered, the whisper of incense came to meet them, mingled with the smell of age and of shadows, and at the far end, beneath the glimmer of candles, the figures of three women were kneeling before a priest.

Einon Hen hesitated, as though he had not expected to see them there. ‘My Lady prays late, or the day is still younger than I thought,’ he murmured. ‘Let us wait here.’ And going quietly down the two steep steps he turned aside into the shadows just within the door, drawing Owain after him.

Standing aside, with the old man, Owain looked about him. The church was a very small one, and bare as a little white barn, save that on one wall someone long ago had painted Saint Martin giving half his cloak to the Christ-beggar. The colours had faded into the cracked plaster, but the soft buff pink of the Saint’s cloak that had once been the true warrior scarlet still seemed to glow with an inner fire. The murmur of prayers in the Latin tongue reached him in the quiet. It was the first time that he had known a Christian place of worship since the summer when his world had fallen to ruins. He remembered all at once the grey stone preaching cross in the hills, and behind all the silence of the service the deep contented drone of bees in the bell heather; he remembered, as he had not remembered them for years, Priscus and Priscilla, who would have shared their cloak with him … Slowly the sore hot places of his heart grew quiet within him.

A faint movement from the old man beside him recalled him to the present moment. The priest had gone, and he saw that the women had risen and were coming towards the door, two of them dropping back a little into place behind the third. And looking at the third woman, Owain knew who she was, for he had seen her last night from his place far down the High King’s Hall. Her place had been as high as his was low, and there had been many women gathered about her and the gleam of a Queen’s gold circlet about her head. She wore a plain gown now, and her head-rail was held by a circlet of blue silk. A woman with a face like a horse, but a very gentle horse.

She was at the foot of the steps when she saw them in the shadow of the doorway, and checking, she turned to them with a gesture of her outspread hands. ‘Ah, Einon Hen! God’s Greeting to you!’ and her voice made Owain forget that she looked like a horse. It was a beautiful voice, low-pitched and vibrant.

‘God’s Greeting to
you
, Madam,’ said the old man, bending his head.

‘And this? You have brought a friend to us?’

‘I have brought a friend. A Briton like myself, and his name is Owain.’

‘Owain,’ said the woman, in her low voice. ‘If this were my house, I would make you most joyfully welcome to it, as I would have made Einon Hen long ago. But it is God’s, and so the welcome is surely His.’ Her whole face was soft with joy, and suddenly she held out her hands to them, and to the women beside her, as though gathering them all in. ‘See, we are a growing company! There are six of us now, with good Bishop Lindhard my chaplain—and soon, so soon now, surely we shall be a multitude!’

And smiling at them like a mother, and gathering up the trailing skirts of her kirtle, she went on up the steps, her women behind her; and they heard the steps of the three across the courtyard, and a door which Owain had not noticed behind the mulberry tree opened and shut.

Alone now in the empty church with the altar candles out, Owain said, ‘I did not know that the Queen was a Christian.’

‘And has always been free to follow her own faith, here in Aethelbert’s Court. That was in the bond, when Aethelbert went asking for a Princess of the Frankish Kingdom, to be his Queen.’

‘And what did she mean when she said that soon we should be a multitude? I have seen no sign that the Jutes and Saxons are weary of their own gods.’

But Einon Hen did not answer directly; at least not then. He was still looking after the Queen, very kindly, as a man might look after a child he was fond of. ‘Poor simple woman,’ he said, and turned and led the way up the little church towards the sanctuary.

After they had made the morning prayer they went out again into the courtyard, and sat on the raised stone curb about the foot of the mulberry tree in companionable silence as though they had been friends all their lives. Presently Owain found that the old man was looking at him questioningly. ‘If you did not think to see me here in Cantiisburg,’ said Einon Hen, ‘assuredly I did not think to see you. Have I miscounted? It has been in my mind all the while that this spring was the time of your freedom.’

‘No, you have not miscounted,’ Owain said. ‘The boy turned fifteen before the blackthorn flowered.’

‘So you are free now?’ The question within a question was so quietly spoken that Owain could pretend not to have heard it, if he wanted to.