After Rome (28 page)

“That was then,” the man said.

“What has changed?”

“Everything.”

“I don't understand.”

“Where have you been?”

“In the high mountains.”

“If you're smart you'll go back there.”

Dinas repeated, “I don't understand.”

“Stay here much longer and you will.”

“I can't go anywhere right now, I have a badly injured man to care for first. Surely there is at least one healer around here.”

The tanner looked past him, scanning the area. “Anyone with you?”

“Only my horse. The injured man I told you about is back in my camp.”

The tanner gave a noncommittal grunt. Scratched his head. Blew his nose on his sleeve. Finally said, “There's an old fellow who lives in the bole of a tree in the woods over there, where I get my oak bark. If he'll talk to you at all—and he may not—he's the person you want.”

Dinas thanked the tanner and offered him a small copper coin, which he refused. “We still help,” he said. “But we have to be careful.”

The dry, rotted heart of the ancient oak was just large enough to house a human being. There was no doubt of someone's being there; Dinas could hear him breathing, but he did not respond to a greeting. After calling aloud several times and pounding on the tree trunk with his fist, Dinas was about to ride away.

Then the dark horse snorted.

A grizzled head immediately popped out of the aperture in the tree. The man regarded the stallion with his right eye. A greenish-gold eye as bright and glittering as a fox's. “I hear you,” he said to the horse.

“Are you Bryn the Healer?”

The man turned his head so he was looking at Dinas from his left eye. “I might be and I might not. Who's asking?”

“I am called Dinas.”

“I do not know anyone called Dinas. Who sent you to me?”

“He said his name is Rogan.”

“I know three Rogans. Which one?”

“Rogan the Tanner.”

“Ah.” Bryn gave Dinas the benefit of both his eyes. “That's all right then.” He stepped into the daylight. A wizened, graying individual with a ragged beard and skin the color of tanned leather. “What do you need of me?”

After Dinas explained the situation, Bryn asked only for enough time to pick the herbs he would need. “I won't say I can help the man, but I won't say I can't. A broken skull is not easily mended, but if the fellow's brains are showing I can apply a poultice of masterwort and oil of melilot. The bared surface will become firm in time, almost callused.”

“Will he still be in his right mind?” Dinas wanted to know.

The healer's eyes danced. “As much as he ever was.”

When they reached the camp Bryn gave Tarates a long and involved examination that included looking down his throat and tasting his urine. Dinas and his band watched curiously. “Is he a druid, do you think?” Cadel asked Bleddyn.

“I can't say, I never saw a druid.”

“You wouldn't know one if you saw him,” Bryn remarked over his shoulder as he prepared a poultice.

Iolo cleared his throat. “I think my father's father was a druid. He could whistle up a wind.”

“Why would anyone do that?” Docco wondered. “There's far too much wind already.”

“In the mountains there is,” Hywel agreed, “but if you were in a boat with a sail you would need wind.”

“I'm never going to get in a boat,” Dafydd said. “I'm a dry land man, me.”

Out of the corner of his mouth Dinas told Meradoc, “That's the very first man I'm going to put into a boat.”

Bryn continued with various treatments until sunset, when he changed the first poultice for a second and instructed Tarates to get some sleep. “I am afraid I will never wake up,” the injured man said.

“You will,” Bryn assured him. “And you will feel much better.”

Tarates reached tentative fingers toward the back of his head, now encased in layers of cloth and clay and herbs. “I feel … I think I feel a little better already,” he said with surprise. “You must be a sorcerer.”

“A druid, I told you!” Cadel hissed to Bleddyn.

“Druids and sorcerers are not the same thing.”

“Of course they are. Even the birds in the trees know that.”

It was taken for granted that the healer would stay the night in camp. After eating an inordinate amount of food for such a shriveled man, he regaled the others with an assortment of bawdy stories. For once no one asked for Pelemos to tell a tale by the fireside. He stood leaning against a tree with his arms folded, listening without comment.

Meradoc sat down beside Dinas. “Are druids and sorcerers the same thing?”

“How should I know?”

“You carry the blood of the Cymri, do you not?”

Dinas gave a faint smile. “Through my mother. Her mother was born on Mona, the sacred island of the druids.” The smile disappeared. “The Romans slaughtered every living thing they found on Mona and burned the sacred trees.
They
thought the druids were sorcerers and enchanters.” His nostrils flared with contempt. “It was not druid magic that frightened the Romans, though. It was druid wisdom, which in their ignorance they mistook for magic.”

Meradoc phrased his next question carefully. “Was your mother very wise?”

Dinas phrased his answer carefully. “My mother had all the gifts,” he said.

Later, pillowing his head on the neck of the dark horse, he whispered to the stallion, “Just like that and they are gone. Gwladys and Vintrex and Cadogan. And Ocellus too, if there is any justice left in the world.”

Closing his eyes, Dinas tried to picture Cadogan's face. One last time.

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

In the morning Tarates awoke with clear eyes. “The pain is gone!” he cried in astonishment. “That healer of yours has worked wonders, Dinas.”

When Bryn bent over him to feel the pulse beating in his neck, Tarates jokingly asked, “Will you marry me?”

The healer grinned. “I'm open to all offers.”

At his instruction the injured man was helped to sit up. He was given a cup of broth that he drained to the final drop, then he managed to eat three or four bites of hard cheese and a small piece of smoked eel. He lay down again with a satisfied sigh.

Watching him closely, Bryn said, “Are you dizzy?”

“A bit, but not much. I do not want to be any trouble.”

The healer turned to Pelemos, whom he perceived as a natural caretaker. “Feed him lightly for the next few days and give him all the water he'll take. Before I leave I'll show you how to make fresh poultices for his wound. You'll need to change them every two or three days until the exposed brain forms a film on the surface, almost like a callus. After that he should wear some sort of cover on his head for protection.”

“For how long?” asked Dinas.

“The rest of his life, I should think.”

Tarates turned ashen. Dinas did not look very pleased either.

After the healer had enjoyed a second hearty meal in the camp, Dinas offered him a silver denarius for his services. Bryn peered at the coin with his left eye, then handed it back to him. “That's of no use to me.”

Behind his hand Tostig whispered to Dafydd, “The old fool's holding out for gold.”

Bryn heard him. “Gold is no more use to me than silver,” he said. “It's all just metal. What I value are food and friends and fire and water.”

Aha. “Stay with us, Bryn,” urged Dinas, “and I can promise you all four. A man with your skills will be a valuable addition to our company. As for you, Otter”—he turned narrowed eyes on Tostig—“if you want to be one of us, never again call any man a fool. He might be dead tomorrow. Then you would have the rest of your life to regret your words to him.”

Tostig, embarrassed, stared at the ground.

“I might as well join you,” Bryn said. He sounded like a man accepting an unavoidable but not unpleasant fate. “My tree is going to come down in the next storm anyway.”

Tarates soon was fast asleep. A pale, wan sky loomed overhead. Grass was beginning to grow but the wind was still cold. The unspent day stretched ahead with no shape; no certainty.

Since joining Dinas, the young men comprising his company had grown used to being on the move. Immobility rested heavily on them. They slouched about the encampment, gnawing bones, throwing stones at birds, staring into the distance looking for something to look at. Before long a chance word excited resentment and the first fight broke out. Dinas promptly put a stop to it but he could feel their restlessness simmering under the surface. Like his own.

He took Meradoc aside. “We'll allow Tarates this one day, then we're leaving tomorrow at sunup. Heading south. Be sure the horses are ready.”

“But I thought we were going to…”

“The two people I needed to see are dead,” Dinas said bluntly. His face revealed nothing of his feelings. “We're on our own now.”

Meradoc looked puzzled. “I thought we always were.”

The problem of Tarates had to be faced. When Dinas tried to question Bryn about his condition, all the healer could tell him was, “That man feels much better than he really is.”

“You said he would be like this for the rest of his life. How long will that be, exactly?”

“Until he dies,” said Bryn.

“Can he travel?”

“Not on foot, and I wouldn't put him on a horse. He might get dizzy and fall off.”

Dinas hit his own thigh with a clenched fist. “Plague take the man! We can't leave him here, and from what he says, there is nothing left of Viroconium, so I can't send him back there even if I could spare a couple of men to take him. Meradoc,” he called out, “you'll have to rig up something so we can carry Tarates with us until I figure out what to do with him.” Under his breath Dinas added, “Perhaps he'll die along the way and we can bury him under a stone.”

He saw Pelemos watching him from across the camp. Although the other man could not possibly have heard what he just said, Dinas bit his lip.

Meradoc spent the rest of the day devising a litter. Hywel was dispatched to find and cut two long, straight saplings. Bleddyn and Iolo were put to work tearing every bit of spare cloth into strips and plaiting it into ropes. The others watched the process with a great deal more interest than they normally would have shown.

They had nothing else to do.

When Meradoc had finished, the litter was, everyone agreed, a triumph. He had constructed two sets of harness for the ponies. A hammock made of blankets stretched between the saplings was attached to the harness and slung between the ponies. Docco volunteered to try it out. Dafydd and Iolo led the ponies in a circuit of the camp, while Docco lay in the hammock, laughing and shouting bawdy encouragements. “It's the most comfortable way to travel in the history of the world!” he assured Tarates afterward.

“You have never ridden in a sedan chair, then,” said Tarates.

Meradoc asked, “What's a sedan chair?”

The following morning, when Pelemos and Meradoc mounted their ponies, they were careful not to dislodge the makeshift harnesses. For once the ride-and-tie technique was unnecessary; all would be kept to the walking pace necessitated by the litter. They broke camp shortly after dawn beneath a sky filled with clouds like clotted cream. “At least it's not raining yet,” said Cynan, who always had to comment on something.

“It will,” Bryn informed him.

Led by Dinas on his stallion, they headed south toward the valley of the Severn. The men on foot walked on either side of the horses. The allegedly Sarmatian horse, who had a tendency to kick, brought up the rear, behind the ponies and litter.

The clouds rode the wind but did not ride away over the horizon. Instead they thickened. Darkened.

Being forced to a walking pace upset the dark horse. He arched his neck and danced sideways until the strength of his rider's legs forced him forward. His discontent rippled down the line, infecting the others. Ears went back, heads were tossed, reins were snatched from the rider's hands. The animals balked or bolted, depending on their dispositions. The recruits cursed or cajoled, depending on theirs. Meradoc was frustrated in his attempt to call out instructions because no one was listening to him.

Dinas rode on ahead, his thoughts elsewhere.

The morning was almost over before he drew rein. “Halt here long enough to water the horses in the river. After that the walkers can ride for a while.” The walkers, who had been watching their companions struggle to control their mounts, were less than enthusiastic at this.

Dinas dismounted at river's edge and let the dark horse drink before he did. The stallion eagerly sucked up the water, swallowing in greedy gulps. Dinas looked around for Meradoc and saw him busy with the ponies, so he used the edge of his cloak to wipe the nervous sweat from his horse's neck. Then he slaked his own thirst and went to check on Tarates.

The injured man's first words were, “Where are we?”

“There's no point in asking, you wouldn't know the place,” Dinas said irritably. The injured man was costing them time and he was anxious to reach his destination. Thinking about it helped to block out the other thoughts trying to crowd in. But the dark horse could feel them through the reins Dinas was holding; could feel the tension gathering in his rider's body. When Dinas gave the command, “Forward, now,” the stallion almost shot out from under him.

Clouds as purple as a bruise began to leak rain. Fingers of lightning danced along the horizon.

When Dinas ordered his band to mount up, there was a sudden skirmish. Cadel took the Sarmatian gelding while several others tried to claim the gentlest horse. The horse in question panicked and tried to run backward. “Meradoc!” Dinas shouted, but the little man was fully occupied already. The lightning and subsequent crack of thunder had upset both ponies. Meradoc was afraid Tarates would be spilled from the litter.