Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (44 page)

‘If we are going to stay here all tomorrow,’ I said, ‘then I am not going to be idle, nor am I going to spend the day here at my own loss for the horses’ comfort. Let us away to the hut that you have taken for us, and get to work.’

‘Work?’ Pryderi wondered as he followed me. ‘Do not mention that word to me, that am a British gentleman. I do not mind a little usury, or profitable sharp practice, but not work.’

‘And you a sailor?’

‘Hauling at the rope, and straining at the oar, ten days together on the heaving sea, with not a drop of water nor a bite of bread to pass my lips, and often enough I have done it, why, that is not work. That is sport.’

‘Indeed, then, it is not work that we will be employed in here, but sport, tomorrow, and art today.’

I unrolled one of the bundles that I had brought with me on the packhorse. Pryderi looked at it with interest.

‘Leather?’

‘Leather, soft leather. Guaranteed the best soft Spanish leather from fighting bulls of the plains.’

‘Whose guarantee?’ He fingered the sheets like a connoisseur. ‘Not ten days ago this was baa-ing for its supper on the Rainy Mountains. You must realise, I have met Leo Rufus before.’

‘And I have seen leather before,’ I assured him. ‘Now, as we came through this town, there was something that struck me, and it was this. I saw that there was a lack, and a scarcity, and a dearth, of one thing only, and that was – shoes. Boots I saw, of the kind you wear ploughing, and for fishing in the river, but no dainty shoes of quality on the feet of men or women. Come to that it did not seem to me that the feet were moving very quickly or that anyone was in a mood to dance through the streets.’

‘And what did you expect?’ Pryderi was a trifle impatient. ‘Yesterday was the first of August, the day of the feast of Luggnasad, the end of shearing. There would have been a splendid time here, as indeed there was even in Londinium, if you knew where to go for it, and there is not a man, or a woman either in a country town like this who has not a headache.’

‘Headache? I never have them, however much I drink.’

‘Then lucky it is you are. But what you are going to do about this lack of shoes?’

‘Why, we are going to make shoes.’

‘Do we’ – I was glad that Pryderi was counting himself in with me – ‘do we know anything about that craft?’

‘We can try.’ I unrolled the leather. ‘Hold out your foot. We’ll do you a pair to measure first, and then some smaller and some bigger, as samples. Then tomorrow we’ll sit in the market place and make them to order.’

I cut, and Pryderi sewed. He did it very well, and I remarked on this.

‘Three months as regimental tailor to Aristarchos, and there is not much there is left to learn about clothing, or equipment, or how to make little economies which no one will notice till they have accepted the articles. Fit well enough, these do. Style is a bit odd, though?’

‘That’s the beauty of it. The women will all go for a new fashion.’

‘A bit plain though, they are. They go a lot more for decoration, I tell you, around here.’

‘I have thought about that.’ I delved into another bag, in which I had brought a variety of oddments which I knew would be hard to get out in the West, like the gallstone of an ass, and an ounce of powdered unicorn horn, the ashes of a boar’s pizzle, and the ground ankle-bones of a nanny-goat. Among all this were a few crystals of vitriol, which I dissolved in a cup of warm water. Then I added a few other trifles, and began to work with a piece of fairly clean rag. Soon the leather was a bright and striking blue.

‘Will that do?’

‘As long as it is fine tomorrow. But it is a foundation, and a ground, and a beginning. Allow me.’

Pryderi busied himself a moment with a few more of my little treasures. I was startled to see how much he knew. In a short while he had another cup full of a scarlet dye, thick, a paint rather. He took a hazel twig he had brought in from the hedgerow to clean his teeth with, and he dipped the frayed end in the paint. Then, in one clean flowing line, he drew on the toe of each shoe a fish.

We made many more pairs that night, and painted them in blue and in scarlet, and in a variety of other colours. I made the shoes, and dyed the leather, and it was Pryderi’s task to paint on the designs. I only painted one pair. I did that when Pryderi had made up several colours, so that I could spread myself, and then, on the toe of each shoe, I painted Aphrodite rising from the sea. And when I had finished I looked at the Goddess, and somehow I could not think where I had got that face from, because it did look familiar and not only because I had drawn it.

In the end, when our oil lamp had burnt too low to see, we had to go to bed. I had to abandon the ways of civilised men, and so I could not go to bed in my day tunic, but in the fashion of the Brits I stripped and put on a clean pair of trousers. Pryderi had so made fun of the style and the cut, to say nothing of the workmanship, of the pairs I had bought in Lutetia that I had relegated them to this use, except for a few pairs I had given to Pryderi, and I was half annoyed, half amused to see that he did, after all,
consider them good enough for wear during the day. But as I took off my shirt, Pryderi whistled and pointed to the great scar that runs under my arm on my right side.

‘That’s a bad one.’

‘I got that a long time ago, on the Amber Road. It was with my own spear he did it, too, you know the way things get mixed up in a mêlée. But I killed him, before the night was out.’

‘That was a head worth taking.’

‘No, I left it. There was nobody to play the head game against.’

‘Head game?’

‘Yes. You know, you throw the head up between two villages, and then wrestle for it, all in on both sides.’

‘The Germans do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘And a godless lot they must be, indeed. A head is too sacred a thing for that. Once you take a head, the thing is to carry it home, and vow it to the Goose God. And then if it is not an important head, or if it were easy enough to take, you may hang it up outside your house, but if it were the head of a great enemy or the result of a desperate deed, then it is to the Gods you give it, either hanging it up before a shrine, or casting it into some sacred place. When we get to the Summer Country, I shall show you some of mine. I have to keep a bit quiet about it here. The Romans don’t like it.’

I began to feel that I was travelling with a different kind of human being from myself. This man would be a suitable companion for Aristarchos. And yet, I felt I could sleep easy in his company.

Next morning it was a fine day. You may take it as given, that unless I tell you otherwise, every day I spent in that Island the sky was overcast, even if it did not rain. But that day it was fine. Pryderi went off and slipped a denarius to the man who allotted positions in the market place, and we settled down on quite a good pitch.

‘You’ll have to work hard to sell anything here,’ Pryderi warned me. I answered:

‘I’ve been selling all my life. There are plenty of men who can boast that in Alexandria they sold the Pharos to visiting Arab chiefs. I sold it there once to an Alexandrian.’

I stood up. Pryderi sat below me with a pile of half-finished shoes. I began to speak:

‘My friends, my cousins, my kinsmen! Here am I, Mannanan the Galatian. I have come across the Empire, out of my own kindness and goodness of heart, simply and solely to benefit you. And that I will do. Listen all to me.’

And early as it was, there were already a number who did stop to listen to me. I had several advantages, like a foreign accent which will always disarm suspicion, and my great fur cloak, which looked rich enough to dispel any idea that I could be wanting to make money, since I had so much already, and my one black eye and one sapphire.

‘You and I are brothers. We alone of all the world speak the language of the gods, who saw the foundation and the construction and the erection of the universe. And once, we were famous among all civilised nations for the quality, and the excellence, and the beauty, of our shoes, and our boots and our sandals.’ I bowed my head, and swept my hand in a great circle, pointing to their feet.

‘Those days, my brothers, are gone. Look at yourselves. Should we be proud of what we now wear? Should we want the
Romans to come and see us like this? How can you hold up your heads, unless it be not to see your feet?

‘I have not come, my brothers, to tell you Galatian stories, though I have some that would make your flesh creep. No, I have come to benefit you. I have come on a mission of pure charity.

‘Look at these shoes, ladies and gentlemen, especially you ladies, just look. Start off by inspecting the craftsmanship. Look at the cutting! Look at the stitching! Look at the patterns! Where ever did you see styles like these before? And no wonder. Here, my companion is one of the greatest Master Shoemakers of the Age.’ Pryderi stood up, bowed silently and sat down again. ‘Personal and private shoemaker he was to his late Sacred Majesty Himself. All the shoes of the Emperor’s Household he made, for all the ladies of the Court, as well as for the Emperor Himself. Why, his late Sacred Majesty was cremated wearing a pair of my friend’s slippers, and there in Olympus He walks today, wearing them, and it was His express wish. What better warrant of quality could you have but this? Who would like to wear the shoes of heaven?

‘Now for shoes like these, what would you say was a fair price? What do I say? Twenty-five silver denarii a pair? would that not be fair? But am I asking twenty-five denarii for a pair? I, who only came here to benefit my kinsmen? I who only came here to make you remember, and remember kindly, your brethren in Galatia?

‘Shall I ask you for twenty denarii a pair, then? Shall I even ask for ten denarii a pair? No!! I have come to invite you to share in my own good fortune, because I walk in such shoes every day of my life. Shall I ask for five denarii a pair, that would hardly cover the cost of the leather and the dye, and leave nothing over to reward us for our labour? No!!! All I need here is enough money in my hand to pay for the night’s lodgings for myself and my friend, and for a handful of musty hay for our horses, who are religious and given to fasting. All I ask is two denarii, just two little horses, for a pair of the most durable, the most comfortable, the most distinctive shoes you will ever wear.’

They sold like water in a city under siege. Long before noon we had sold almost all our stock, and I was already beginning to
reckon up my profit – I estimated that I had made three pairs for less than one denarius. All kinds of people had come to buy, first the market people themselves, and then farmers and their wives, and our greatest sale had, as always, been among the local lads buying what they hoped would get their girls into the long grass with them. But then as I looked at my last pair, a different customer arrived. There was a sudden thinning out of the crowd in front of me, leaving a space, and as I looked it was covered with a swarm of sparrows, hopping about and quarrelling for the crumbs and the grains of oats they found in the horse-droppings. And as I looked down, there appeared among the birds the feet of a Lady. It was feet and shoes I was looking at that day, and by the shoes this was a great Lady, the litter trade if ever I saw it. They were fine and dainty feet, and that was real Spanish leather that covered them, and dyed it was in a dye that would stand up to all the weather of the world. Dressed she was like a woman of the country. Not like the women of Pontes, who wanted to show how sophisticated they were and walked Roman fashion in tunics with a pallium to throw over their shoulders if the weather required it, which it always does up there.

I saw beneath her skirt of wool, fine wool, all woven in a check of light blue and dark blue and grey, there were a dozen petticoats. Each one was of a different colour. I raised my eyes to her apron, of fine linen, white, and embroidered with the flowers of the flax. This linen I knew, it had come from Egypt. About her waist was her belt, and this if not the belt of a queen was the belt of a queen’s daughter or of a queen to be, for it was of a dozen strands of chain, alternate links of Gold and silver, and at the front it was dastened by a buckle of silver, the size of both my palms, studded with garnets. I looked farther up, to the full bosom hidden, half hidden, by a blouse of silk, white silk, but embroidered in its turn with blue silk in a Pictish pattern of whorls and spirals. I looked up to her shawl, and this was of cotton, white again, and tasselled, and it was woven through and across with golden wire, and the wire ran out to stiffen the tassels. And under the shawl I saw hair of a light lively red, and it framed a face well known, well known indeed.

There she stood like a rich and splendid trireme, beating back
from a voyage to the Seres, all laden with silk and Gold and pearls and diamonds. Rich enough she was to buy up all the ocean, strong enough to beat off all attack. She stood before me with her flags and banners flying, her birds sang about her like a cloud of sail full drawing. And she spoke, in a voice that I surely had heard singing:

‘How much for shoes, Mannanan?’

At the sound of that voice, all my bones turned to water. Somewhere deep down inside me the merchant said, ‘Go on, tell her the tale, how they are dyed by a secret recipe known only to the ancients of Galatia, and how they would be cheap at a hundred denarii, and how you will reduce them for her, special for her, to a mere twenty-five.’ But I could not do it. I looked at that oval face, the straight nose and the firm lips, and I looked down to where it looked back at me from my own shoes, and all I could say was:

‘For you, my Lady, there is no charge. They are a gift. Take them as an offering to your beauty from your brethren in Galatia.’

She stood still for a moment. Then she called over her shoulder:

‘Pay him, Hueil.’

A man came forward from the crowd behind, and I saw that he was wearing trousers in the same blue and grey check as her skirt, and more, that he was one of a group, four or five. He came to me, and picked up the last pair of shoes, then shook his head and threw them back on the ground. Then he stooped to where I squatted cross-legged, and in one swift movement whipped the shoes off my feet, the shoes on which I had painted Aphrodite, and stuffed them into his bag. He tossed me, contemptuously, a coin, and followed his mistress into the crowd. I went livid, I felt it, and for a moment I almost threw the coin back after him, but the basic sanity that is the salvation of every merchant prevailed, and I bit it. It was Gold, all right, not lead. I looked at it more closely. This was not the head of any Emperor. Wafer thin, the coin was about the size of my thumbnail. On one side was a horse, with a human head. On the other was a name, in crude Greek lettering – the coiner, however well he could draw a horse on the face of the die, certainly could not read. With difficulty
I read it: Niros of the Treveri. Here, on a quarter of an ounce of Gold, this long-dead King of the Gauls still lived. But the coin, minted how many years, how many hundreds of years ago, was still new, and unclipped, and unworn. The outlines and the letters were as crisp as on the day when they were stamped out. This gold piece had never been carried in a purse to jostle its fellows and wear itself into dust. It was almost as if it had been carefully put aside against a day – against today.