Sword at Sunset (12 page)

My mind was so full of horses that I all but walked through the old man, who had turned aside very kindly on seeing me, to tell me that I need have no fear for the wounded, for they would be
well cared for, after we were gone.

I stared at him, scarcely understanding, for the moment, what he meant. ‘I am very sure of it; but, Brother Lucian, we are not yet saddling up.’

‘Na na,’ he said, smiling. ‘The day is yet very young.’

‘The day on which we ride out from here has not yet dawned, Brother Lucian,’ I said bluntly, and saw the startled look in his milky old eyes.

‘But surely – surely, my Lord Artos, you will wish to be away back to Lindum now that the work of your swords in this part of the Fens is done?’

They were not trying to drive us out, I realized that; it was simply that it had never occurred to these fools in their enclosed world that men and horses who have been at hard stress for many
days together must be rested when the chance offers. ‘My men need full three days’ rest, and so do my horses; today and tomorrow and the day after, we remain within your gates; and on
the day after
that
, we ride for Lindum.’

‘But – but—’ He began to bleat like an elderly she-goat.

‘But what, Brother Lucian?’

‘The stores – the grain – always there is shortage in the springtime. We had our own poor folk to feed, these past few days—’

‘But no longer,’ I said; for the country folk had for the most part scattered back to their own lives, with their dogs and their cattle, their ducks and their pigs, now that the
danger was passed over.

‘They ate while they were here,’ he rallied and pointed out, reasonably enough. I could see the thoughts scurrying among mouths and grain baskets inside his head. ‘There are
close on four hundred of you, with the grooms and drivers; even should you eat sparingly as we do ourselves, which – forgive me, my Lord Artos – is not to be expected of fighting men
– even should you eat as sparingly as we do ourselves, you will swallow up more than a month’s supplies, and your horses will graze bare the pasture that was for ours and our milch
cows.’

I broke in on him. ‘Brother Lucian, will you go now to the Abbot and ask him to receive me.’

‘The Holy Father is at prayer.’

‘I can wait while the prayer is done, but no longer. Go now and tell him that the Count of Britain would speak with him.’

The Abbot received me within an hour, seated in his cross-legged chair in the hall where last night our wounds had been dressed, the more senior of the Brothers ranged about him. His head might
have been that of a king on a golden coin. He rose to greet me, courteously enough, and then seated himself again, his blue-veined hands on the carved arms of the great chair. ‘Brother Lucian
brings me word that you wish to speak with me.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It seems that all is not clear between us as to when I and my Companions leave this place.’

He bent his head. ‘So Brother Lucian tells me.’

‘And so that the matter may be settled, and trouble neither you nor us with uncertainties hereafter, I come to ask your hospitality for today, tomorrow and the morrow after. The third
morning from now, when my men and horses are rested, we leave for Lindum.’

‘That also, Brother Lucian has told me; and that he made clear to you our position, our shortage of stores after the winter. We are not used to feeding four hundred men and as many beasts
over and above our own poor folk that it is our duty to care for.’

‘There is good pasture hereabouts on the Fen fringes. My horses will not graze it out in three days. Most of us are hunters and we can find our own meat. And as to the grain and
stores—’ I leaned over him; I had not begun to be angry yet, because I could not believe that he grasped the true situation, and I was trying to make him understand. ‘Does it not
seem to you, Holy Father, that the men who kept the roofs on the barns have earned the right to some of the grain in them? Many of us are wounded, all of us are spent. We must have three
days’ rest.’

‘But if the grain is not there?’ he said, still kindly. ‘It
is
not there, my son. If we feed you for the three days that you demand, we shall not have enough left to
keep us even in perpetual fast, until the harvest comes again.’

‘There is still grain to be bought in the Lindum corn market.’

‘And with what shall we buy this corn? We grow our own food; we are not a rich community.’

I was angry now, and I said, ‘Not so poor, either, that you have nothing to trade. Saint Alban’s foot lies in a goodly casket, even the bones themselves would fetch a good
price.’

He jerked upright as though at the prick of a dagger point, and his face purpled under his eyes, while the watching monks gasped and crossed themselves and cried ‘Sacrilege!’ and
swayed like a barley field in a flurry of wind.

‘Sacrilege indeed!’ the Abbot said in a grating voice. ‘Sacrilege worthy of the Saxon king, my Lord Artos, Count of Britain!’

‘Maybe. But to me, my men are a greater matter than a few gray bones in a golden casket!’

He made no answer; indeed I think he was beyond speech for the moment; and I went on relentlessly. I had meant to ask for the horses at a fair price, ill though we could afford it. But now I had
decided otherwise. ‘Holy Father, do you remember a certain saying of the Christos, that the laborer is worthy of his hire? Two days ago, I and my Companions saved this place from the fire and
the Saxon sword, and for that, our hire is three full days’ keep, and the four best horses in your pastures.’

He found his voice then, and cried out on me for a despoiler of the Church, and that I should leave such ways to the Sea Wolves.

‘Listen, Old Father,’ I said. ‘It might well have served me better to wait until the Sea Wolves had overrun this place, and taken them in the Fens farther westward, farther
from their ships. I might have lost fewer men and fewer horses had I done that. And why should I do as I have done, and then ride away, asking for nothing in return?’

He said, ‘For the love of God.’

It was my turn to be silent. And a sudden quiet came over the hall, so that I heard the drone of the wild bees that nested in the thatch. I had thought him grasping, without either justice or
charity in his heart, willing to take the lives of a score of my men and the sweat and blood of the rest of us, and give nothing in return; but I saw now that it was simply that for him the love of
God had a different meaning to the meaning that it held for me. And my anger died away. I said, ‘I also have loved God in my way, but there are more ways than one. I have never seen the flame
on the altar nor heard the voice in the sanctuary; I love my men who follow me, and the thing that we are prepared to die for. For me, that is the way.’

His face gentled a little, as though at the passing of his own anger, and suddenly he looked old and tired. But I did not relent; neither of us relented. After a few moments, he said coldly and
wearily, ‘We are not strong enough to persuade you to leave us until you choose to go; and if we were as many and as strong as you, God forbid that, remembering your blood shed for us, we
should deny you hospitality when you demand it. Stay then, and take the four horses for your guerdon. We shall pray for you, and it may be that our prayers and our hunger before next harvest will
soften your will toward another community at another time such as this.’

He sat back in his chair, signifying with one old thick-veined hand that the thing was over.

We stayed out our three days, encamped in the monks’ orchard while the horses grazed under escort in the marsh pastures, and Caradawg, our armorer, set up his field forge and was busy with
his mate, dealing with sprang rivets, beating out the dints in shield boss and war cap, and replacing the damaged links in mail shirts. We had a fair number of mail shirts by now, though they were
slow-gathering, since only the great men of the Saxons possessed such war gear and so it was only when a chief was killed or taken that we were able to add to our store. (And the winning of a war
shirt had become a matter for eager rivalry among the Companions, in consequence, who wore them as a hunter cuts a notch in his spear.) The rest of us took our turns of horse guard, and sprawled
about the fires mending here a broken sandal strap and there the gash in a leather tunic, and ceaselessly trapped and hunted for the pot. But there was no longer friendship between us and the
Brothers.

My lads did not take it kindly when I told them what had passed; Cei, I remember, proposed that we should fire the place as a sign of our displeasure, and some of the wilder ones were with him.
And when I cursed him and them into a kind of sense, he consoled himself by eating himself almost to bursting point at every meal, in order to make as big a hole in the grain store as might be. The
Brothers went about their own life, whether at prayer or at work on the farm, so far as possible as though we were not there, save for Brother Lucian and the boy Gwalchmai, who came and went in
their care of the wounded as before. I knew that, even as the old Infirmarer had assured me before the trouble started, I need have no fear for the wounded after we were gone. They were good men,
these brown-robed Brothers, though I longed to shake them until their back teeth rattled in their shaven heads. When, on the third morning, I ordered Prosper my trumpeter to sound for breaking
camp, and at last the pack beasts were loaded and all things ready, they came out with the Abbot to the place before the gateway, to see the last of us, without anger. The Abbot even gave me the
blessing for a departing guest. But it was done for duty’s sake, and had no warmth in it.

The horses, fresh after their days of rest, were trampling and tossing their heads. One of the pack mules tried to bite his neighbor’s crest and started a squealing fight. I turned to
mount Arian, and as I did so, met the gaze of Gwalchmai the novice fixed upon me, where he stood on the outer fringe of the Brothers. I have never seen any face so wide open, so completely without
defenses, as Gwalchmai’s that moment. The wind from the marsh was ruffing the fair hair on his forehead; he licked his lower lip, and half smiled, and then looked away.

‘Gwalchmai,’ I said, with the purpose scarce formed in my mind.

His gaze whipped back to mine. ‘My Lord Artos?’

‘Can you ride?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come then, we can do with a surgeon.’

I would have left him to follow with our wounded when they came back to us, but Gault and the rest would want for nothing in Brother Lucian’s care, and I knew that if I did not take the
boy now, I should not get him.

‘Stop! Are you not content with our four best horses, that you must take from among our Brothers also?’ the Abbot cried; and he made a strange gesture, spreading his arms like wings
in their wide-falling sleeves, as though to protect the huddled Brotherhood behind him.

‘The boy is but a novice, and still free to choose for himself! Choose, Gwalchmai.’

He took his gaze slowly from mine, and turned it to the Abbot. ‘Holy Father, I should make but a poor monk, with my heart elsewhere,’ he said, and came out from among the Brothers to
stand at my stirrup. ‘I am your man, my Lord Artos, for all that there is in me.’ And he touched the hilt of my sword as one taking an oath.

The Abbot protested once again, more vehemently than before, then fell silent, while his monks and my own Companions, silent also, stood looking on. But I do not think that either of us heard
what the old man cried out.

I said, ‘So, that is good, for I think there is in you that which we need among the Companions,’ and turned in the saddle to bid a couple of the drivers to bit and bridle one of the
monastery horses and fling a rug across his back.

While they did so, Gwalchmai, as composedly as though his leaving with me had been arranged for many weeks beforehand, set to tightening his rawhide belt and girding up the hampering skirts of
his habit.

‘Have you nothing that you wish to fetch? No bundle?’ I asked.

‘Nothing but what I stand up in. It makes for light traveling.’ He never looked at the Abbot, nor at any of the Brothers again. Someone gave him a leg up, and he settled himself on
the riding rug, and gathering up the reins, wheeled his horse among the rest of us. Man after man swung into the saddle, and we clattered and jingled out and down toward the fenland fringes and the
old legionary road that runs due north from the Glein crossing toward Lindum.

chapter seven

N
OT UNNATURALLY, THE
A
BBOT COMPLAINED OF ME TO THE
Bishop of Lindum; but the Bishop, though zealous, was a small man, shrill but
ineffectual, like a shrewmouse, and not hard to quell. Nevertheless, that was the start of the ill blood between myself and the Church, which has lasted almost ever since ...

Six years went by, and all their summers were spent in arms against Octa Hengestson and his son Oisc who was now of an age to lead men. Lindum, with its ill-kept roads radiating from it like the
spokes of a wheel, was the perfect base for the campaigning of those years, and there, in the old fortress of the Ninth Legion, made over to us by Prince Guidarius, we set up our winter quarters,
from which to strike out southward toward the Glein and the shores of the Metaris Estuary westward along the open sea coast, northward to drive the Sea Wolves back into the Abus River.

Meanwhile, I knew that Ambrosius had made his stronghold against the Dark and was taking his stand there against old and mighty Hengest and against a new enemy, one Aelle, who had landed with
his war fleet south of Regnum and made himself a sore menace to the British eastern flank. All that had nothing to do with me now; but nevertheless, I think that I would have abandoned Guidarius
for the time being, and left the work half done and doubtless all to do again, and ridden south to Ambrosius if he had sent for me. But he did not send, and so I went on with the work at hand.

They were hard years, and we did not always carry home the victor’s laurels but sometimes only our wounds to lick. But by the seventh autumn, Lindum Territory and the northern part of the
Icenian coast was almost clear, and so unhealthy for the Saxon kind that for a while their crazy war boats no longer descended on the coast with every east wind that blew. (We used to call the east
wind ‘the Saxon Wind’ in those days.) And we knew that when spring opened the country, and the time for the war trail came again, it would be time to strike north across the Abus
against Eburacum, where Octa and his hordes had made their new war camp in the old Brigantian country.