Hollow Hills (21 page)

Then, when he was four years old, the time came when Ralf was to take him from the Forest's protection and seek Count Ector's.

The night his ship set sail from the Small Sea of Morbihan I was lying under a black Syrian sky where the stars seem to burn twice as big and ardent as the stars at home. The fire I watched was a shepherd's, lit against the wolves and mountain lions, and he had given me its hospitality when my servants and I were benighted crossing the heights above Berytus. The fire was stacked high with wind-dried wood, and blazed fiercely against the night. Somewhere beyond it I could hear Stilicho talking, then the rough mutter of the shepherd, and laughter shushed by Gaius' grave tones, till the roar and crackling of the fire drowned them. Then the pictures came, fragmentary at first, but as clear and vivid as the visions I had had as a boy in the crystal cave. I watched the whole journey, scene by scene, in one night's vision, as you can dream a lifetime between night and morning...

This was my first clear sight of Ralf since I had parted from him in Brittany. I hardly knew him. He was a tall young man now, with the look of a fighter, and an air of decision and responsibility that gave him weight and sat well on him. I had left it to Hoel's and his discretion whether or not an armed escort would be needed to convoy his "wife and child" to the ship: in the event they played safe, though it was obvious that the secret was still our own. Hoel had contrived that a wagon-load of goods should be dispatched through the forest under the escort of half a dozen troopers; when it set off back towards Kerrec and the wharf where the ship lay, what more natural than that the young man and his family should travel back to Kerrec with the return load — I never saw what was in those corded bales — using its protection for themselves? Branwen rode in the wagon, and so, in the end, did Arthur. It looked to me as if he had already outgrown women's care; he would have spent all his time with the troopers, and it took Ralf's authority to make him ride concealed in the wagon with Branwen, rather than on the saddle-bow at the head of the troop. After the little party had reached the ship and embarked safely, four of the troop took ship along with Ralf, apparently convoying those precious bales to their destination. So the ship set sail.

Light glittered on the firelit sea, and the little ship had red sails which spread against a breezy sky of sunset, till they dwindled and vanished small in the blowing fire.

It was in a blaze of sunrise, perhaps lit only by the Syrian flames, that the ship docked at Glannaventa. I saw the ropes made fast and the party cross the gangplank to be met by Ector himself, brown and smiling, with a full-armed body of men. They bore no badge. They had brought a wagon for the cargo, but as soon as they were clear of the town the wagon was left to follow, while out of it came a litter for Branwen and Arthur, and then the party rode as fast as might be for Galava, up the military road through the mountains which lie between Ector's castle and the sea. The road climbs through two steep passes with between them a low-lying valley sodden with marsh, which is flooded right through till late spring.

The road is bad, broken by storm and torrents and winter frosts, and in places where the hillsides had slipped in flood time the road has vanished, and all that remains of it are the ghosts of the old tracks that were there before the Romans came. Wild country and a wild road, but straight going on a May day for a body of well armed men. I watched them trotting along, the litter swinging between its sturdy mules, through flame-lit dawn and firelit day, till suddenly with evening the mist rolled down dark from the head of the pass, and I saw in it the glitter of swords that spelled danger.

Ector's party was clattering downhill from the second summit, slowing to a walk at a steep place where crags crowded the edge of the road. From here it was only a short descent to the broad river valley and the good flat road to the waterhead where the castle stands. In the distance, still lit by evening, were the big trees and the blossoming orchards and the gentle green of the farmlands. But up in the pass among the grey crags and the rolling mist it was dark, and the horses slipped and stumbled on a steep scree where a torrent drove across the way and the road had collapsed into the water's bed. The rush of water must have blanketed all other sound from them. No one saw, dim behind the mist, the other men waiting, mounted and armed.

Count Ector was at the head of the troop, and in the middle of it, surrounded, the litter lurched and swung between its mules with Ralf riding close beside it. They were approaching the ambush; were beside it. I saw Ector's head turn sharply, then he checked his horse so suddenly that it tried to rear and instead plunged, slipping on the scree as Ector's sword flashed out and his arm went up. The troopers, surrounding the litter as best they might on the rushing slope, stood to fight. At the moment of clashing, shouting attack I saw what none of the troop appeared yet to have seen, other shadows riding down out of the mist beyond the crags.

I believe I shouted. I made no sound, but I saw Ralf's head go up like a hound's at his master's whistle.

He yelled, wheeling his horse. Men wheeled with him, and met the new attack with a crash and flurry that sent sparks up from the swords like a smith's hammer from the anvil.

I strained my eyes through the visionary firelight to see who the attackers were. But I could not see. The wrestling, clashing darkness, the sparkling swords, the shouting, the wheeling horses — then the attackers vanished into the mist as suddenly as they had come, leaving one of their number dead on the scree, and carrying another bleeding across a saddle.

There was nothing to be gained by pursuing them across mountains thick with the misty twilight. One of the troopers picked up the fallen man and flung him across a horse. I saw Ector point, and the trooper searched the body looking, apparently, for identification, but finding none. Then the guard formed again round the litter, and rode on. I saw Ralf, surreptitious, winding a rag round his left arm where a blade had hacked in past the shield. A moment later I saw him, laughing, stoop in the saddle to say through the curtains of the litter: "Well, but you're not grown yet. Give it a year or two, and I promise you we'll find you a sword to suit your size." Then he reached to pull the leather curtains of the litter close. When I strained my sight to see Arthur, smoke blew grey across the scene and the shepherd called something to his dog, and I was back on the scented hillside with the moon coming out above the ruins of the temple where nothing remains now of the Goddess but her night-owls brooding.

So the years passed, and I used my freedom in travels which I have told of in other places; there is no room for them here. For me they were rich years, and lightly borne, and the god's hand lay gently on me, so that I saw all I asked to see; but in all the time there was no message, no moving star, nothing to call me home.

Then one day, when Arthur was six years old, the message came to me near Pergamum, where I was teaching and working in the hospital.

It was early spring, and all day rain had been falling like whips on the streaming rock, darkening the white limestone and tearing ruts in the pathway which leads down to the hospital cells by the sea. I had no fire to bring me the vision, but in that place the gods stand waiting by every pillar, and the air is heavy with dreams. This was only a dream, the same as other men's, and came in a moment of exhausted sleep.

A man had been carried in late in the night, with a leg badly gashed and the life starting to pump out of the great vein. I and the other doctor on duty had worked over him for more than three hours, and afterwards I had gone out into the sea to wash off the blood which had gushed thick and then hardened on me. It was possible that the patient would live; he was young, and slept now with the blood staunched and the wound safely stitched. I stripped off my soaked loin-cloth — that climate allows one to work near naked on the bloodier jobs — swam till I was clean, then stretched on the still warm sand to rest.

The rain had stopped with evening, and the night was calm and warm and full of stars.

It was no vision I had, but a kind of dream of wakefulness. I lay (as I thought) open-eyed, watching, and watched by, the bright swarm. Among that fierce host of stars was one distant one, cloudy, its light faint among the others like a lamp in a swirl of snow. Then it swam closer, closer still, till its clouded air blotted out the brighter stars, and I saw mountains and shore, and rivers running like the veins of a leaf through the valleys of my own country. Now the snow swirled thicker, hiding the valleys, and behind the snow was the growl of thunder, and the shouting of armies, and the sea rose till the shore dissolved, and salt ran up the rivers and the green fields bleached to grey, and blackened to desert with their veins showing like dead men's bones.

I woke knowing that I must go back. It was not yet, the flood, but it was coming. By the next snow-time, or the next, we would hear the thunder, and I must be there, between the King and his son.

I had planned to go home by Constantinopolis, and letters had already gone ahead of me. Now I would have preferred to take a quicker way, but the only ship I could get was one plying north close inshore towards Chalcedon, which lies just across the strait from Constantinopolis. Arrived here, delayed by freakish winds and uncertain weather, luck still seemed against me; I had just missed a westbound ship, they told me, and there was no other due to leave for a week or more. From Chalcedon the trade is mostly small coastbound craft; the bigger shipping uses the great harbour of Constantinopolis. So I took the ferry over, not averse, in spite of the need I felt for haste, to seeing the city of which I had heard so much.

I had expected the New Rome to surpass the old Rome in magnificence, but found Constantine's city a place of sharper contrasts, with squalor crowding close behind the splendour, and that air of excitement and risk which is breathed in a young city looking forward to prosperity, still building, spreading, assimilating, and avid to grow rich.

Not that the foundation was new; it had been capital of Byzantium since Byzas had settled his folk there a thousand years before; but it was almost a century and a half now since the Emperor Constantine had moved the heart of the empire eastwards, and started to build and fortify the old Byzantium and call it after himself.

Constantinopolis is a city marvellously situated on a tongue of land which holds a natural harbour they call the Golden Horn, and rightly; I had never imagined such a traffic of richly laden ships as I saw in the brief crossing from Chal-cedon. There are palaces and rich houses, and government buildings with corridors like a maze and the countless officials employed by the government coming and going like bees in a hive. Everywhere there are gardens, with pavilions and pools, and fountains constantly gushing; the city has an abundance of sweet water. To the landward side Constan-tine's Wall defends the city, and from its Golden Gate the great thoroughfare of the Mese runs, magnificently arcaded through most of its length, through three fora decorated with columns, to end at the great triumphal arch of Con-stantine. The Emperor's immense church dedicated to the Holy Wisdom sits high over the walls that edge the sea. It was a magnificent city, and a splendid capital, but it had not the air of Rome as my father had spoken of it, or as we had thought of it in Britain; this was still the East, and the city looked to the East. Even the dress, though men wore the Roman tunic and mantle, had the look of Asia, and, though Latin was spoken everywhere, I heard Greek and Syrian and Armenian in the markets, and once beyond the arcades of the Mese you might have supposed yourself in Antioch.

It is a place not easy to picture, if one has never been beyond Britain's shores. Above everything it was exciting, with an air full of promise. It was a city looking forward, where Rome and Athens and even Antioch had seemed to be looking back; and London, with its crumbling temples and patched-up towers and men always watching with their hands to their swords, seemed as remote and near as savage as the ice-lands of the northmen.

My host in Constantinopolis was a connection of my father's, distant, but not too distant to let him greet me as cousin. He was descended from one Adean, brother-in-law of Maximus, who had been one of Maximus' officers and had followed him on the final expedition to Rome. Adean had been wounded outside Rome and left for dead, but rescued and nursed back to health by a Christian family. Later he had married the daughter of the house, turned Christian, and though he never took service with the Eastern Emperor (being content with the pardon granted him through his father-in-law's intercession) his son entered the service of Theodosius II, made a fortune at it, and was rewarded with a royally connected wife and a splendid house near the Golden Horn.

His great-grandson bore the same name, but pronounced it with the accent of Byzantium: Ahdjan. He was still dis-cernibly of Celtic descent, but looked, you might say, like a Welshman gone bloodless by being drawn too high towards the sun. He was tall and thin, with the oval face and pale skin, and the black eyes set straight, that you see in all their portraits. His mouth was thin-lipped, bloodless too; the court servant's mouth, close-lipped with keeping secrets. But he was not without humour, and could talk wisely and entertainingly, a rarity in a country where men — and women — argue perpetually about matters of the spirit in terms of the more than stupid flesh. I had not been in Constantinopolis half a day before I found myself remembering something I had read in a book of Galapas': "If you ask someone how many obols a certain thing costs, he replies by dogmatizing on the born and unborn. If you ask the price of bread, they answer you, the Father is greater than the Son, and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you ask is my bath ready, they answer you, the Son has been made out of nothing."

Ahdjan received me very kindly, in a splendid room with mosaics on the walls and a floor of golden marble. In Britain, where it is cold, we put the pictures on the floor and hang thick coverings over walls and doors; but they do things differently in the East. This room glittered with colour; they use a lot of gold in their mosaics, and with the faintly uneven surface of the tesserae this has the effect of glimmering movement, as if the wall-pictures were tapestries of silk. The figures are alive, and full of colour, some of them very beautiful. I remembered the cracked mosaic at home in Maridunum, which as a child I had thought the most wonderful picture in the world; it had been of Dio-nysos, with grapes and dolphins, but none of the pictures was whole, and the god's eyes had been badly mended, and showed a cast. To this day I see Dionysos with a squint. One side of Ahdjan's room opened to a terrace where a fountain played in a wide marble pool, and cypress and laurel grew in pots along the balustrade. Below this the garden lay, scented in the sun, with rose and iris and jasmine (though it was hardly into April) competing with the scent of a hundred shrubs, and everywhere the dark fingers, of cypress, gilded with tiny cones, pointing straight at the brilliant sky. Below the terraces sparkled the waters of the Horn, as thickly populated with ships as a farm pond at home is with water-beetles.