Bard I (25 page)

Ten days later, Felimid met Kyle in a place arranged. The horse-lord was his splendid self again. Felimid’s opportunities for grooming had been fewer, but he’d kept himself cleanly washed and shaven, and Kyle brought him the change of garments he’d been longing for, as a parting gift from Regan.

Rested and scrupulously looked after, the dun gelding cropped grass nearby. Felimid had talked very persuasively for a long while to win Kyle’s agreement that he should keep it.

‘Kyle!’ he said, gripping hands. ‘Glad am I you’ve come! This is a fine solitary place to hide, but any long sojourn in it is for earthworms or anchorites-and they’d be bored to chewing themselves alive! It’s a grim look you have with you. Did it go well?’

‘I was believed, if that’s what you ask. The news and seeming evidence of your death did placate the King, but barely. For all our sakes, it must not be so much as whispered that you live! My head would fall, Felimid. Gavrus and his brood would be meted like treatment. The best thing you can do for us all is ride away and not comeback.’

‘What makes it all so bad?’ Felimid asked in wonder.

‘Did Justin die?’

‘He’s worse than dead. He’s blind.’

The bard’s skin felt cold suddenly. Were he blind . . . well, he’d be a bard still, able to sing and make the harp speak strongly. . . there would be good things left. But even so, he’d find it unutterably dreadful to lose his sight.

What could Justin do? Hide himself in drink and purchased women? Uselessly rot? His brother would be the kingdom’s heir now, and Justin’s cronies would drip their slaver on those feet instead. It wasn’t pleasant thinking.

‘Forever?’

‘Who can say? But he maimed and blinded others happily enough, and he’d have made a bad king. You need not look sick. It’s wasted ‘regret and wasted time.’

‘Yes. I suppose it is.’

‘Nobody knows you breathe air yet but you and I and Regan, Gavrus, his family, and the dead. The secret’s not likely to be spread by any of those. How will you set about keeping it?’

‘I’ll ride to Hamo, and take ship out of Britain with the Jutes. Their plundering season is about to begin. Once across the Narrow Sea, I believe I’ll seek passage home to Ireland, for I’d like to achieve all seven ranks of bard before I die. Tell Regan I wish her all that’s good.’

‘I will. She sends you the same wish.’

‘Then fare you well, Kyle.’

‘Ah, fare you well, you madman! God sweeten your path!’

THE ATHELING’S WIFE

Who can open the doors of his face?

His teeth are terrible round about.

His scales are his pride,

Shut up together as with a close seal.

Job 41, 14-15

F
OR
ONCE
IN
HIS
LIFE
, F
ELIMID
MAC
F
AL
TOOK
THE
OPEN
AND
SIMPLE
WAY
. He’d lately had all he wanted of devious designs. They weren’t worth the trouble they caused. In the end a man found himself depending as much on luck as if he’d acted with no forethought at all. Honesty was best. In this incredible mood he rode south from the hollow husk of Venta to the burg of King Cerdic.

A conqueror pirate was Cerdic. Fathered by a Jute on an enslaved British woman, he’d risen from nothing to become a chieftain and take the isle of Vectis with five ships’ crews. For years afterward, he’d held Vectis against all corners while raiding widely himself. Then his long war-boats had raged up Vectis Water to sack Hamo in a bloody day and night. The local British king, Natanteod, had given battle at Charford. Defeat and death at Cerdic’s hands had been his portion.

Cerdic had married Natanleod’s daughter Vivayn to his own son Cynric. He’d been disposed to further mainland conquests, but the breaking of their great combined host at Badon had given the sea-wolves pause, and for now Cerdic seemed content to hold Vectis and his footing south of Venta Belgarum. He called his sword-won kingdom Westri. because no Jute or Saxon had yet conquered further in that direction.

Felimid had heard other things told and surmised of him, but those were the certainties. Now the bard hoped to find passage out of Britain with him.

There had been light rain. Odd masses of cloud were piled in the sky like shorn fleeces, dazzling above, purple, grey and dingy yellow below; between them arched the banded curve of a rainbow. The sea-wolves believed it was the bridge to Wotan’s hall. where the dead heroes bragged and sang and quarrelled as in life. and nothing was stinted. Maybe it was an omen that the bow appeared to end at Cerdic’s very door.

The river ran clear and the ford was shallow, free from obstruction. A swineherd in a louse-ridden hide came from the forest With his king’s grunting porkers, and turned a shaggy head to gape briefly at the stranger. A dull curiosity touched his mind; it passed at once, however, and he returned his attention to the swine.

The bard followed him across the ford, after shouting aloud three times as Jutish custom demanded. He could not now be accused of approaching by stealth.

Below the ford. the river widened into an estuary. The palisade of Cerdic’s own dwelling dominated a town of thatched, sunken-floored houses, built among the gutted ruins of a Roman port. War-boats with twenty pairs of oars apiece. new from their winter quarters, lay moored for fitting at timber jetties. There had been stone quays, once; the Jutes had destroyed them with immense labor, because they feared the Roman magic which might linger in them. Felimid knew better. The Roman way had been unalterably opposed to magic. Ten thousand butchered Druids said so.

The palisade’s gates stood wide open;four spear-bearing men in leather sacks and helmets guarded it. They looked curiously at the bard.

Lithe, smoothly shaven, he wore a madder-dyed linen tunic embroidered in Celtic patterns at sleeves and hem. His four-cornered cloak and cross-strapped knee-leggings were of heavy woolen stuff in which some threads were white, some brown. He carried a sword belted on his right hip, and its hilt and cat-headed pommel had the pure white glitter that belongs only to silver, while the grips were black staghorn. A harp rode on his back in a worn leather case. He went bare-headed to the cool moist air, although a woolen cap was tucked through his belt.

‘Britons don’t come here,’ said a grinning man with a barley-coloured beard, ‘unless they wish for slavery. Get down from that horse and we’ll oblige you.’

‘You ‘re kindness embodied,’ Felimid replied in the man’s own Jutish dialect, ‘but I’m neither wishing for slavery, nor a Briton; and that, I hope, will make a difference. Felimid of Erin am I. From beyond the sea and across the Cymraeg kingdoms I’ve been drawn by word of King Cerdic’s might and magnificence, and the welcome it is told that a roving scop or gleeman can find by his hearth.’

‘Wait, there-before you drown me in words! How did you learn our tongue so fluently? There are no Jutes in Erin.’

Another of the guards said with a snicker, ‘Not yet.’

‘I wintered a few years ago with a band of Jutish rovers, in the misty isles west of Caledonia.’ Felimid ignored the implication that Jutes would one day deal with Erin as they were dealing with Britain. ‘Maybe they’re known to you, as friends or otherwise. Bihtric Warenors Son and his brother Oss led them.’

All four shook their heads, speaking disclaimers. The bard wasn’t amazed, since he had just invented the Jutish rovers Bihtric and Oss. He had reasons for not wanting to say that he’d learned the Jutish dialect in Kent.

‘Hmm,‘said the man with the barley-coloured beard.

‘My lord’s not one to turn away a harper, true. I hope for your sake that you can play! Enter, then. You’ll wish your horse seen to. Some British thrall about the place will know how.’

‘I’ll see to him,’ Felimid said, amused by the warrior’s belief that such work was beneath a freeman. Except on ship’s timber the Jutes were not, decidedly not, a riding people.

‘And I’ll tell you something, for your health and betterment. See you the hall yonder?’

Felimid did. Although barely within the gates, he’d drawn rein to stare. When Cerdic had taken Hamo, he’d sworn to build a hall greater and more splendid than Othgar the Dane’s proud antler-gabled royal seat, Heorot. Felimid hadn’t travelled so widely that he could compare, but what he saw was awesome.

Huge timbers fitted together like the ribs of a ship formed the walls. The corner-posts had been carved in the likenesses of frowning gods; three men could scarcely have stretched their arms around any one. The roof was tiled with scales from a sea-dragon hunted and slain by the king. Each a foot across, they gleamed like beaten metal, green shading into grey at the edges.

Felimid might have ridden through the main doors on his tall dun gelding, and not troubled to duck the lintel. A companion might have ridden on either side of him. The doors themselves were sheathed in bronze, with silvered iron hinges, marvellously wrought. Those hinges were long as the bard was tall, nearly.

The naked white skull and jaws of the sea-dragon whose scales covered the roof, had been set up before the doors. Despite the double portal’s greatness, the dead beast’s gape encompassed it around. Teeth half as long as a man’s arm shone like royal salt. Bereft sockets under blunt bone ridges were caves of deep shadow. They seemed to glare with menace yet. Even as an image, the notion of riding under them did not enchant Felimid.

‘Well may you stare,’ grinned the warrior. ‘None may enter the hall without stepping between yon monster’s jaws, do you see? The skull is under an enchantment. Guest or stranger or king’s man, if that could be, whoever comes here with treachery toward my lord Cerdic in his heart, and treads between those teeth, causes them to snap shut–clash!–and there’s on less treacher alive.’

‘Right!’ added a warrior more heavy-set than the others. ‘You needn’t wonder if he’s spinning you a tale. I’ve seen it happen a time or two.’

‘I’m not worried,’ Felimid said, smiling, ‘except to hope that your king’s enchanted skull never makes a mistake.’

Despite his carefree words, he concentrated rather hard on innocent thoughts when the time came for him to pass that chilling test.

Once within the hall, though, he quickly forgot any apprehension the king’s fanged guardian had caused him. The women by themselves were enough to ensure that. Felimid’s eyes grew wide for a moment, and he whistled, very softly; and Felimid. although young, was no longer callow, and his standards of beaut y were high. So, manifestly, were King Cerdic’s.

British, Gaulish, Germanic, Spanish, they came from all lands within the sea-wolves’ reach except Erin, which hadn’t suffered their depredations. Some of these women had doubtless been captured on voyages of plunder, some given to buy Cerdic’s favor or extorted as tribute. and others bought as slaves. Proud or humble, merry or mordant, they all had a startling, sensual beauty.

The extravagant splendor was not confined to the women. Cerdic’s warriors wore garments of the best weave and dye; many sparkled with gold. A dragon’s hoard of it flashed on his
gesiths
, his sworn companions, who shared the king’s table. Forty or fifty scabbarded swords adorned the pillars.

The new rushes underfoot covered neat flagstones instead of trodden earth. Three mighty wrought-iron chandeliers hung by chains from beams as mighty. Branched candlesticks instead of smoky, flaring torches were bracketed to walls hung with gold-broidered tapestries.

(The candles were tallow dips, burning a sullen red-­orange. but Felimid had heard that Cerdic had lit his son’s wedding feast with a fortune in purely gleaming wax tapers-looted, he had also heard. from a Gaulish cathedral.)

A stone-lined trench for fire, with long hearths each side of it. ran between a double row of carved pillars. At scarred tables, King Cerdic’s men ate, drank and swapped stories, and every now and then fought without rancour. Not often was there damage. aside from a broken bone or two. Weapons had been hung out of reach or left in the foreroom.

The three people who most interested the bard were they who sat in the highest places of honor. King Cerdic was one. A broad, powerful man with tawny hair, he looked at the world with a steady, penetrating gaze from under great tufted eyebrows. His beard covered most of his chest. One broad hand held a drinking cup fashioned from a human skull. The thing had been painted scarlet. rimmed and lined with beaten gold, given teeth of gold in its jaws and gems of yellow amber to fill its empty sockets. King Cerdic seemed to have a predilection for skulls.

Second of the three was Cynric, the atheling or king’s heir, who sat at Cerdic’s right, his father’s younger image. had with equal magnificence, but less flamboyantly, be wore his beard short and drank from a beaker of purple Rhineland glass. The only real difference between them was that Cynric had grown up with wealth and power, while his father had had to take it. Some opined that Cynric would rather have enjoyed having had to take it for himself also, with no man to thank for providing it. He could have done so. By all accounts the raiding expeditions he led were as daring, adroit and ferocious as his father’s youthful ones had been.

Last of the trio was Cynric’s wife Vivayn, the daughter of that British king who had ruled from Hamo before the sea-wolves came in invading force from Vectis. She was outstandingly beautiful, even in the company Cerdic had provided. The bard’s eyes assured him of that, despite the smoky, fire-lit distance between them.

He’d been assigned a place not the lowest but certainly far from the highest. He didn’t object to that, for he wasn’t much concerned with rank or precedence and seldom felt the need to stand on his dignity, unless someone slighted it as a deliberate insult. The last thing he wanted just then was a great deal of attention; there were those who believed him dead, and for other sakes than his own must go on believing it.