The Circle of the Gods (3 page)

On a night of wind and rain toward the end of the year, Inbar, heavily cloaked against the storm, came into the hut where she sat by the fire thonging a small hide jerkin for Arturo, who slept in his bed. His entry set the flames of the oil lamps in their wall niches briefly wavering and guttering. Mawga and her mother were away for the night, death-watching one of their relatives in another hut. Inbar, she knew, was well aware of this. He stood for a moment smiling at her, his cloak rain-beaded, his dark hair rain-plastered to his head like a moleskin helmet.

He said, “I come from the beach watch. There is a cold in me which fire and a beaker of mead will warm.”

“Both of which you could find in your father's house a spear throw from here.”

“True … but he holds a council there, haggling with Ricat, the Prince's horse master, and the elders over the tribute of young stallions from the moor.” He slipped the throat clasp open at his neck and dropped the wet cloak across the rough beechwood table. The flame from the wicks of the lamps steadied and the light lay across his bare brown arms, gleaming like polished bronze.

Tia rose and went to fetch the mead jar from the storeroom at the far end of the hut. She passed close to him but he made no move to touch her. Coming back, she set the mead and a slab of goat cheese before him. He cut himself some cheese with his dagger, ate, and washed down the food with a draft of mead. When his mouth was free, he said, “Ricat and his men go tomorrow. It is known that he has asked you to join him, to keep his house in Isca. You go with him?”

Tia shook her head. “No. My place is here.”

Inbar shrugged his shoulders and grimaced. “Any woman of this tribe in your place would have gone.”

“This is my tribe. But my blood is my own.”

“And good blood, too. Proud blood. But Isca is a fine place even these days, and Ricat is an honourable man who has given all his love to his horses. So why do you stay? Baradoc will never come back and next year is the seventh of his going, and you know that the need in me for you grows stronger every day.”

“Baradoc will return. I shall never be your bed-warmer, wife, or bearer of your children.”

He finished his mead and then, shaking his head, laughed and said, “No other woman would ever dare say that to me.” He stood up and, reaching out suddenly, took her by the right wrist. With his other hand he pulled free from its sheath the small dagger she wore in the belt about her working shift. Still holding her wrist he held the dagger in the flat of his palm. “You would kill me with this on the night I took you?”

“If not you—then myself.” Tia looked down at the hand that held her wrist, and said quietly, “Free me.”

For a moment Inbar hesitated. Then he released her wrist. In a quiet, almost puzzled voice, he said, “Why should you not like me? When the seven-year term is spent I would come to you in honour to take you to wife. You would have silver and bronze dishes in your house, the finest furs for the sleeping couch, and silks and linens of the best from the sea traders …
Aie
, and gold torques and enamelled clasps for your robes, and a table that would never lack for food. My father is a rich man and hoards his riches to no point. After him I shall have his riches and would shower them on you like the windfall of hawthorn blossom in spring.”

“You would be kind, no doubt. But there is no gift you could give me great enough to make me forget that once you hanged Baradoc high and left him to die slowly.”

A smile suddenly flashing across his lean, handsome face, Inbar said lightly, “Then let it be understood that when the time comes I shall take you and tame you to my ways and my love.” He flicked Tia's small dagger downward suddenly and it lodged, quivering a little, in the rough wood of the table. “And you will find that you have no heart for dagger work.”

He reached for his cloak, flung it about his shoulders and left the house.

Tia picked up the mead jar and the remains of the cheese and took them back to the storeroom.

When she came back Arturo was awake, though still fogged with early sleep. He said, “I thought I heard Inbar talking.”

“You did. He came for mead and cheese.” Tia paused and then, following a prompting suddenly alive in her, went on, “Do you like Inbar?”

Arturo rolled over, stomach downward on the soft fleeces of the bed, and, resting his chin on his hands, said, “Only for some things. The things he makes me, like spear and bow, and the things he shows me how to do … like … well, using a stone sling and how the wind takes off line spear or arrow in flight.” He yawned. “Oh, yes … he's good to me. But I would drop a boulder on his head from the cliff top if you told me to.”

Tia frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“You know why. All the boys know he wants you to wife if father comes not back and—” He broke off, turned directly to her, and grinned broadly.

“And?”

Arturo scratched at his tousled fair hair. “And that you do not want him.”

“The boys know too much and talk too much.”

“So do the girls.” He rolled over on his back and, yawning, rubbed his eyes. “So, when you want a boulder dropped, tell me. To kill your first man in your mother's honour would be a great killing.”

Suddenly out of sympathy with his precocity, Tia snapped, “Arturo—talk not like that!”

Arturo made no reply. Eyes closed, limbs loose in returning sleep, he snored gently, yet although Tia knew that he could fall into sudden sleep, she was far from sure this time that his sleep was genuine. But she was sure that, despite Aritag and Inbar's care, he needed the harder hand of a father. He was growing fast and overknowingly.

Before Ricat left he came to see Tia. She was in the great cave in the hillside above the village where the rush panniers and earthen crocks of wheat and barley were housed and with three other women was labouring at the two large milling querns, grinding into flour the oven-dried ears. When he called to her she came to him at the cave entrance, her working shift looped up at one comer into her belt, her face flushed, her hands and bare arms powdered with flour.

A short, stocky man with the wrinkled face of an overwintered apple, his belted tunic and gartered trews of the finest wool, the short red cloak of a chief servant of the Prince of Dumnonia open over his shoulders, Ricat laughed, and said, “If your uncle Truvius were alive to see you now he would not believe it.”

“You knew Truvius?”

“I did. He often when he first retired to Aquae Sulis came to Isca to buy horses and would have none of the moorland breed, only those still bred of the true cavalry strain, though few of those are with us now. Give a moorland stallion freedom and he will mount any mare he can find. You knew Truvius was dead?”

“No. But I long since guessed it. The gods have gained good company.”

Ricat nodded. “He once did me a favour that put me in good standing with my Prince.
Aie
, at a moment when I needed it. I would return that favour through his kin. I say again that there is now or at any time a place for you and your son in my house at Isca—and a safe passage there though you should travel alone if you show this token.”

He reached to the scarlet fall of his cloak flap and unpinned from it a brooch, which he handed to Tia.

“What is it?”

“It is the badge of the Prince's master and keeper of horse. Once you are over the River Tamarus and out of the lands of the people of the Enduring Crow, not even Inbar would touch you, and”—he smiled—“the headwaters are a day or a night's march to the east from here. Show the brooch—there is none other like it—and safe passage will be given.”

Looking down at the brooch, Tia, who over the years had learned much of the beliefs and customs of her husband's people, said, “It is the goddess Epona.”

Ricat nodded. “Truvius would have known that, too, as would any legionary cavalry commander in the old days.”

On the bronze brooch, inlaid in silver gilt, was the figure of the goddess, holding in her arms a wide bowl full of ears of corn. Behind her stood an arch-necked horse. Around the rim of the brooch were set garnets backed by thin gold-leaf foil to give added luster to the stones. It was a beautiful piece of work, worth many head of cattle. Tia's eyes misted momentarily at the thought of the man's kindness and concern for her. To part with the brooch, his sign of office, would mean a lot to him.

She held it out to him. “No. I cannot take it.”

Ricat reached out and closed her fingers over the brooch. “Keep it. I need no such sign to mark my rank. Every man in Dumnonia knows my standing. An honourable welcome waits you in my house whenever you find the need for it. But I think you should come with me now. Put aside the pride which comes to you from your Roman blood.”

Tia shook her head. Ricat eyed her for a moment or two and then, giving a little shrug of his shoulders, touched his forehead in salute and turned away.

Late in the afternoon Tia carried up to Aritag's hall a shallow, straw-plaited basket full of flat bread rounds. Pulling the leather drawcord thong to lift the heavy inner door bar, she went in to find the living quarters occupied only by Inbar, who sat sprawling by the turf fire from which a lazy spiral of smoke curled away to the roof opening. From one of the sleeping booths at the far end of the hall came the sound of heavy snoring. Beside the booth Bada, the horn blower, sat on a small stool, keeping watch over his master.

As Tia sat the basket down on the long table Inbar slewed toward her and, smiling, said, “Ricat has gone.”

“Yes. He is a man of great kindness—and honour.” Tia made no attempt to mute the edge in her voice.

Inbar laughed. “I agree. I rode with him awhile to see him off the tribal grounds. He wore in his cloak a plain bronze brooch.”

“So?”

“So—you have the goddess Epona to give you safe riding to Isca should you ever need it.”

“If I ever need it, yes.”

Inbar shook his head gently. “Your eyes are the mirror of your temper. Now they are the bleak blue of ice under a clear winter's sky. But then, who would want a woman whose eyes never betrayed her feelings? You will have no need of the brooch.” He nodded toward the far booth where his father snored in sleep. “When my good father dies you will come to me willingly.” He eyed her for a moment or two and, when she made no reply, turned slowly to the fire, resting his elbows on his knees, cupping his chin in his hands, and stared into the red heart of the slow-burning turves.

Tia, as she left the hall and walked toward Mawga's hut, felt for the first time the chill beginning of fear. This country and the world outside it, she knew from her own experience, and from the tales which came with the travellers and merchants from Gaul, was in a turmoil where none now knew the security which had marked the days of her father and even her own early days. For the first time, no matter what Merlin might have said, she faced the numbing fact that Baradoc could be dead; that the life ahead of her might have to be paced out without him. She could admit to herself now that she should have forsaken her pride and ridden to Isca with Ricat.

The following spring came reluctantly. Cold winds and gale-raised seas lashed the northern coasts of Dumnonia. Leaf buds were salt-blighted by the fierce drift of spray on the high winds, the young corn blades were yellow-tipped and the inland pasture grounds were slow to growth so that there was no good early grazing for the over-wintered cattle and sheep. Of fresh fish there was little, for the sea was too fierce on most days for the small boats to risk a passage to even the nearest fishing grounds.

But the weather did not stop the spring raiding of the Scotti bands from Erin for they came in their large boats, indifferent to the rage of the sea, making their camps on the wild coast of Demetae across the Sabrina Sea, and also on Caer Sibli, and raided near and far for loot, slaves and food. Three times before the seas began to grow calm, the sun to find cloudless skies to pour warmth on the cold earth, and the first of the choughs to begin to brood a full clutch of eggs, the Scotti came to the settlement of the Enduring Crow and Bada's horn wakened the settlement to arms. The men and older youths sprang to their weapons and swept down to the beach and formed a barrier across the narrow valley mouth leading to their homes and cattle.

The first time, although the Scotti were beaten back, they took with them two youths as slaves. The second time the valley mouth defenders broke against their pressure and, before they could reform, the Scotti looted and then burned three huts and bore away the wife and young girl-child of Garmon the chief cattleman, who was away with his beasts on the inland pastures. The third time they came unwisely on a night of full moon and the cliff watchers saw them long before they landed. An ambush was set for them and a third of their force was slaughtered and one of their longboats captured. It happened that on this night Tia was one of the two women whose turn it was to sit at the couch side of old Aritag, who had fallen ill and could no longer look after himself.

Not long after the sound of Bada's horn had filled the valley with the sharp calls that signalled the retreat of the attackers, Inbar returned to the hall. His short cloak was thrown back and blood ran from a deep cut in his sword arm. He sat himself at the long table and called for water and cloths. The woman with Tia rose and went to look after him. As she began to clean his wound he turned to Tia and said, “This time the Erin dogs were mastered. Those who live will tell the tale and leave us free next year. Twenty now lie dead on the sands that are black with their own black blood. And we have a fine boat, planked and masterly built, which they must have plundered from some sea raider, for there is none in their parts who could make such a craft.” He smiled at Tia. “When the summer comes you shall ride in her on a down-stuffed silken seat and—”