Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (63 page)

‘If you spurn the throne of the Brigantes,’ she told me, ‘and will not be turned from trade, then stay here with me in the marsh. Here we will eat and drink in plenty, since it seems there is nothing you think of except eating and drinking. We shall have venison and hare, wild duck and moorhen, carp and salmon, oysters and mussels, snails and milk-caps and horns-of-plenty, And I will be kinder to you than you to me. I will let you go out and
trade, wherever you will, up to the Picts and across to the Land of Norroway, anywhere.’

I looked narrowly at her.

‘But not to Ireland?’

‘And what cause is there for you to go to Ireland? You have no need of trading there.’

‘I have no need to go to Ireland. All I want done is done by others. I have used the weapons that I know, money and persuasion and planning, to make a hundred men each work at what he thinks he wants the most, and none of them even knowing the others exist, and by all that to bring about my desire. My work is done. All will now come about whether I go or not. I will only be an encumbrance. I need not go. We can leave now, Rhiannon, we will be home by the end of the spring, by the hot blue sea, listening to the first cicadas among the flowers in the grass, listening to the shephered boys piping. Come, Rhiannon, let me take my own.’

‘You are not going to Ireland?’

‘There is no reason why I should go to Ireland?’

‘There is no reason why you should seek the Gold in Ireland. You have been telling me of all the wealth you have. What more can you add to that?’

‘I must bring it back. I told my family that I would bring it. You will understand this, Rhiannon. This is my Gesa, that what I have said I will do, that I will do, and neither the love of women nor the fear of men will deflect me; no, not for all the Gold in Ireland will I break my word.’

And then Cicva spoke:

‘And it would have been well if there were Brigantes who had taken that Gesa, for it was the Brigantes who said they would not submit, and then they submitted and the great castle of Stanwyck they surrendered without a blow struck.’

She spoke with venom. I had not realised that Cicva hated Rhiannon so much, that she envied, from here in the Mere, hiding from Roman eyes, this princess of a surrendered house. Rhiannon at least could ride across all the island unchallenged. But Rhiannon did not hear her. Staring at me, she shouted:

‘Then take their Gold back to them,’ and at my feet she threw
three coins, three coins I knew well. I stopped to pick them up as she went by me, and then I followed her out.

She ran across the grass, round Cicva’s house, towards the fence of the paddock. Hueil was there, acting as guardian of the Mere in Pryderi’s absence, and he was preparing to go boar-hunting in the thickets of the Deer Moors. He had two horses saddled there, and Rhiannon ran past him and swung up on to the one saddled for her. I could not think where she was going. Half I remembered the ritual chase when we had caught Cicva four months before: half I hazarded that in fact she had nowhere to go, she just wanted to run away, to escape, to flee from me anywhere.

I rushed to the fence and swung up on to the other horse. Hueil, who had only just fastened the girths, looked at me in surprise. Then he grunted:

‘You never know,’ and before he slapped the horse on the rump he handed me up the boar spear.

The horse twisted to bite me, and I recognised him. It was Taliesin’s evil-tempered brown again, a horse I hated. But it was the only one ready, and I belaboured his flanks with the butt of the boar spear and prepared to see if he would go.

Go? Oh, yes, that brown horse would go. You can forgive anything to a horse that
will
go, that will run his heart out the day, the one and only day, when he must. There was only one horse I ever had that went better, and he was dead, long dead. Rhiannon looked back and saw me following.

At first she thought she could play the old game, and keep just out of reach till my horse tired, while hers was still fresh but it was hardly a furlong before she saw that if once she hesitated, if once her horse pecked or stumbled, then I had her. She set her horse at the paddock fence and cleared it. Jumping is not something you do lightly if you have only one eye, but by now I was in such a state of suppressed anger and excitement and general rage with the whole world that I just pointed the brown at the fence and let him go, shutting my eye in case I lost courage. Every fence and hedge we came to the black jumped, but the brown, stupid blundering, marvellous brute, went through as often as over, and where the black cleared a stream, the brown went in and I was soaked. And this did not soothe me.

We left the edge of the Mere, and climbed the hill up on to the open moor, where there were no sheep at this time of year, but only deer and wolf, and the chance of bear or boar in the woods. It was into the woods Rhiannon went, seeking a twisting path. The brown did not care for paths. He went into the scrub all right, but he galloped straight as an arrow. Very soon my clothes were torn to pieces by the thorns, and I was glad that I had flung my sealskin cloak to Hueil as I mounted. It was a wonder that the horse did not run head first into a tree, or that I was not brained on a low branch, but by cutting corners we stayed with Rhiannon as she went, went north-west towards the sea, away from the Mere. Did she choose the way on purpose, or by the accident of its giving us a firm path? I did not know. I followed. We were in sight of the sea now, a paler grey line under the line of the grey clouds. There was a thicket ahead of us, and Rhiannon made for it. I saw a disturbance there, and I thought ‘boar’ and then I saw men and I still thought ‘hunting party’. Rhiannon vanished into the thicket, and the nearest man was close to me, running towards me with a spear. I had scarcely time to think, ‘Funny kind of spear to go after boar with,’ when I was close to him, and I knew him. It was one of Gwawl’s friends, the older of the two middle-aged men who had escorted the Mouse from inn to inn. He came at me with his spear, and as he lunged, I pulled the brown horse round and down we came, knocking the middle-aged man flying. I fell clear: I wouldn’t have done that if I had been using one of my own saddles with a strap for the toes.

I rolled away from the threshing horse, still holding the boar spear, and got up just in time to receive the charge. I sidestepped the spear point, and the shafts crossed as we pushed against each other, sweating and straining for the advantage. Suddenly, we both gave together and each went staggering back. He was quicker on his feet, for all his age, and came back at me with the spear levelled. There was only the one thing to do, and if it did not succeed I would never know it. I poised the boar spear, regretted briefly that it was not very well balanced for the job, and that I had no chance to find another, and threw it, with all my might, when he was barely two yards away.

His run carried him past me. He fell on his side. The point of
the spear stood out two fingers from his back. That, I thought, is the end of you, and who knows …? I bent to take his spear from his hands, and someone jumped on to my back from behind. There were a number of them, filthy men, smelling of dirt and fat, but of salt and the sea beside. They held my arms and turned me round to face the thicket.

Gwawl stood before me. He wore still his black and white shirt, and a pair of trousers he had bought in Lutetia and Cicva had won from him and given to me, cheating the Berts, and I had given Pryderi and Gwawl had stolen back. He stood there and laughed in my face.

‘That was fair,’ he said, jerking his head to the body on the ground. ‘When a man armed meets a man armed, then there is neither blame on either for seeking blood, nor on the victor for drawing it. There is no call for vengeance here.’

‘Where is Rhiannon?’ I asked him.

He ignored the question. He went on:

‘By every law of my people, I ought to kill you now, and save all the trouble that will come. But there was an oath I swore, and a bargain, and I must keep them. I may not kill you, Mannanan, in this land I may not kill you. So I must leave you.’

Someone had unsaddled the sweaty brown horse, which had remained standing cropping the grass and watching the fight unconcerned. After all, what concern was it of his? They flung the filthy saddlecloth over my head, and wrapped me in it, and tied my arms to my sides under it. Then they spun me around, and someone, Gwawl I think, struck me half a dozen blows across the face, not hard, but sharp, contemptuous.

I staggered about, trying to wrestle my arms free, trying not to breathe the sweat on the blanket, hoping that I would not step badly and break my ankle. I wrestled and struggled as if it were Gwawl himself I was fighting, and in a way it was. I wrestled as if it were Hercules I was faced with. Then suddenly, dimly through the blanket, I heard more hooves and shouting, familiar British voices, and in a few moments, someone was cutting through the rope and letting me breathe again.

Madoc asked:

‘Who were they?’

I rinsed out my mouth with the cider someone gave me. I said:

‘I don’t know, except that it was Gwawl.’

Hueil was kneeling over the body.

‘Irish,’ he called. ‘Wicklow man here, I think. Nothing of value, though, except his knife.’

They brought me the brown horse again, and handed me my bloody boar spear. Someone asked:

‘What, doesn’t he want the head?’ but I ignored that. We set off again, through the thicket, where we found Rhiannon’s cloak, of thick yellow wool, on the ground, and then down a steep narrow valley onto the coastal flats. The way was clear, with the marks of hooves and broken branches. The beach here, I knew, was shingle, with a bank above the sea. We could see a group of something on the bank and made for it. When we came closer, it was a group of horses. We reached them and went up the bank into sight of the water.

Far out across the bobbing waves we could see the skin boats, a dozen of them, big ones, already setting the lug sails that they too used, all paddling hard.

‘Too late,’ said Hueil.

‘Wicklow men,’ said Madoc. ‘If you wish, we can be at sea in six hours. I will find a crew here, and we will pick up warriors in Pryderi’s country. Or we could wait for Pryderi, but I do not know how long he will be. Then we can raid the coasts of Wicklow till we find her.’

I looked into the setting sun. Somewhere out there, on the leaden water, being carried across the February sea in a basket covered with a little leather, was Rhiannon, the glorious Rhiannon, that was worth the greatest ship that ever was just to carry her across a little stream.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I will see to it myself. I
will
go to Ireland and find her, at the proper time.’

Two mornings later, I stood on the bluff above the Dark Pool, where Rhiannon’s hut lay in ruins. I stood looking into the waters. To whoever dwelt there, to Those Below, I vowed, in bitterness, the whole of the Island of the Blessed. And as an earnest, to Those Below I gave, first, Gold. Three Gold coins, ancient but unmarked, I threw into the water, one by one, in order of age. And then I plucked the eye from my head and cast that in too. Not my real eye, you must understand, but my most expensive one, of diamond, carved with a scene of the judgement of Paris.

And then, quietly, Pryderi too came to the waterside. I had never seen him like this before. He was armed. He had on a short mail coat, to the waist, and an old-fashioned helmet, plain and unornamented, round and setting close to the head. The long sword, too, at his side, so long that he almost tripped over it, was plain-hilted and in a plain leather scabbard. A man who goes into battle wears no Gold or jewels. And Pryderi had been in battle. His forearm was caked with clotted blood.

He carried a big leather bag. He put it on the grass. From it he took a cloak of scarlet wool. Next, he took out handfuls of silver, dozens, hundreds of silver denarii, and piled them on the cloak. Plainly, though, there was more, much more, in the bag. Last, he brought out a head. His fingers sank deep into the close cropped black hair. The face was that of a man in his late twenties. He had had neither beard nor moustache: I thought it was a Thracian face if ever I saw one, but it was, I was glad to see, no one I knew. The look on the face was of surprise, nothing more, just surprise.

Pryderi laid the head on the cloak among the silver coins. He turned up the ends of the scarlet cloth to form a bag, and tied the mouth with a leather strap. Then he swung the bag backwards
and forwards once … twice … and the third time, he let it go and it sailed out and fell into the deepest centre of the pool. Weighted with silver, the head went straight down to Those Below. And I have no doubt it pleased them more than Gold or diamonds.

When the time came, Caw and Pryderi saw me into Madoc’s ship at the river mouth.

‘Don’t lose the ship, whatever you do,’ Caw warned me. ‘We won’t ever be able to build another without a pattern.’ So that was settled in his mind, I thought. He had never said anything about it before. But all Pryderi told me was:

‘If Cicva has a boy, I’ll name him after you.’

Which name of the many, I thought, as we swept her out through the channel and into the shallow Severn Sea. We came between the islands and made the mouth of the creek at dawn on the second day.

There was someone on the wharf waving a red cloak. We tied up and Madoc’s crew put down a gangplank. I went ashore and greeted Africanus. He had come himself, he said, to be sure that there was no treachery. Talking of that, I asked after the Legate. Africanus laughed:

‘He’s gone. There’s a rumour he went bankrupt soon after you were here. True or not, he went back to Rome in a hurry last week, and he took young Peach-bottom with him. I’m glad of that, too – sets a bad example to the Brits. We haven’t had a replacement yet, and with luck we’ll be without one for the rest of the year. Of course, old ox-head would have commanded both legions when we go, but now it’ll be the Legate of the Twentieth. He’ll be all right. You can put too much store on regimental loyalties.’