The Circle of the Gods (6 page)

Yet to himself, as his hands began to unlatch the buckle of his deerskin surcoat, he said, the edge of regret in his voice, “A little more of patience and gentleness, good Inbar, and she would have come to you freely, tamed by her own desire. Now loving itself must be the shy mare's gentler.”

His belt dropped to the floor, but as he moved to slip free of his surcoat there came from outside the distant sound of people running and calling, the noise growing louder with each second.

Then clearly through the still summer air burst the fierce, insistent clarion calling of Bada's horn, beating and searing and wailing, as he heralded the first shoaling of the year.

As the sound of shouts and racing footsteps came nearer and the horn's clamour grew fiercer and fiercer, Inbar looked to the indrawn latch thong of the door and then down to Tia. Slowly a wry smile spread over his face. A man could plan, he thought, but there was no escaping the intrusion of the gods. As chief of the people of the Enduring Crow there was no escape from honouring the great gift from the sea.

He picked up his belt, rebuckled it, and then went to the wall and took down the great shield. He opened the door as Bada and a gathering of tribespeople swarmed across the forecourt. Seeing him, they rushed forward and eager hands began to pull him away, across the court and down the valley while the horn blower paraded before him, waking the cliffs to wild echoes and setting the seabirds awing and awailing.

Only one of the tribe loitered and turned back to the long hall. Mawga, before the opening of the door, had seen that the latch thong had been pulled inside. She went in and saw the wineglasses and jug on the table, and Tia lying clothed and untouched on the bed.

Inbar guessed that Magwa had helped Tia to escape. Two nights later he took her to the long hall, dismissed the old woman from the cooking quarters and the other house servant. Then he flung her on the bed and beat her until she confessed (which she did soon enough) that she had brought a moor pony to the long hall, set the partly recovering Tia on it and led her until long after nightfall across the dark upland until they had reached the Isca road. Here, recovering fast, Tia could manage the pony herself. Wearing the Epona brooch of Ricat, she had ridden off eastward.

Four days later Inbar had married Mawga, and she, despite her weals, was well content. To Arturo he said nothing for long since there had been no lack of boys and gossips to tell him the story. But he took Arturo into his household and treated him as his ward. Arturo, behaving himself and docile, took advantage of being lodged in the hall as the ward of the Chief to avoid any task that displeased him. Within himself he nursed the promise that he would leave the settlement as soon as he had grown to self-sufficiency and, if chance could be wrought, would kill Inbar before he left for attempting the dishonour of his mother.

In Isca, Tia was met by Ricat, the horse master, as she rode down in the pearl haze of a summer morning to the shallow ford across the river. Beyond the river rose the great Mount of Isca topped with the long abandoned Roman fortress. It had been beyond the memory of most men since any Cohort Commander had made the night rounds of legionary sentinels, and the fortress now was slowly lapsing into ruin as the townspeople robbed it for its quarried stone, its well-wrought woodwork and the great red tiles which had roofed stables, barracks and officers' quarters. Beyond the Mount at the foot of its slope was spread out the British town, a huddle of squalid reed- and straw-thatched dwellings. A haze of cooking smoke rose in the still morning air, cattle grazed in the water meadows, and pigs rooted and foraged through the middens that spread around the skirts of the lower town. Above all, flying from the topmost rampart of the old fortress, the scarlet standard of the Prince of Dumnonia hung from a stout pine flagpole like a lazy flame as the idle wind now and then unfurled it to show the Dumnonia symbol of a great oak tree.

Ricat greeted Tia warmly and then, without asking her for any explanation of her coming, took her right hand and pressed it to his forehead briefly. “You are welcome, Lady Tia.”

He took her to his house, which was stone-built and tile-roofed and stood at the side of the old Forum. Its entry was through a small courtyard where roses grew in red earthenware urns, and across its front straggled an ancient vine which held now small clusters of green grapes. He led her into the house and showed her around and told her that the top room, which was approached by an outside flight of stone steps, was hers. He handed her the key bolt to its great wooden lock, and said, “You shall do such work as you wish, but each day there comes Berna, an old woman from the lower town, who will help you. I am often away on the Prince's business, but when I am, a night watch will keep the courtyard.”

Tia, her spirits still in slow turmoil from her escape from Inbar, took his hand and kissed it. As he stirred with embarrassment, she said, “You are good to me, Master Ricat. The day will come when you shall be rewarded for your goodness.” Then, unpinning the brooch, she held it out to him, saying, “I thank you for the loan of this.”

Ricat shook his head, smiling. “Keep it as a gift, Lady Tia. A gift to welcome you in my house.” Before Tia could protest he had gone.

Touched deeply by his kindness, she went up to her room and, putting the cloth-wrapped bundle of her few belongings on the low table which stood in the center of the room, she sat at the window and looked out over the untidy sprawl of the town beyond which the slow curves of the river shone like a silver ribbon. The thought of Ricat's goodness laid to beginning of a slow balm over the misery of her own feelings. Arturo stayed with Inbar, but she had no fears for his safety. Some strange god, she fancied, watched over Arturo. For herself, stronger now since she had known how close she had come to abandoning it, lived only one faith, one conviction—that someday Baradoc would return to her. Never again would her woman's body or weak woman's mind ever waver from that belief.

Ten months after her marriage Mawga gave birth to a girl-child, which was given the name Sabele. By this time Arturo was well into his ninth year and grown taller and thinner as though his strength and bulking were hard-pressed to keep pace with him. Inbar showed no impatience that the child had not been a boy. There was time and plenty for that. Eleven months later, when Arturo was into his tenth year, Mawga gave birth again and this time to a man-child, who was called Talid.

Inbar gave a feast in the long hall to celebrate the birth and long before he and the other men were too drunken to talk or understand sense he called for silence and then told the men of the tribe the changes he was going to make in the running of the settlement. He had now, he said, a son to follow him, and a man of wisdom and goodness had a duty to lay up not only treasure for the son's future, but a future which should be peaceful, industrious and well-ordered. This was the duty of all men. He then told them the changes which were to be made in the settlement life. All the middens were to be cleared away and one main midden set up on the beach verge where the high spring tides would scour it away periodically. The river would be rock-dammed at the foot of the valley beyond the last of the huts and there and only there should the women do the washing. There would be cattle and pig pens well-fenced for the winter folding. Crops and cattle were to be held in common and each family to draw meat, fish and flour according to their size and their standing. Every youth would be trained to arms for defense against raiders, but no man or youth was free to take leave of the settlement without his permission. If any did so his family would be punished in his stead. When traders came whether by sea or land then a council of elders from the settlement would negotiate the bartering and there would be a fair division of all the goods purchased. There was talk, he said, of war and raiding and the rise and fall of new warlords throughout the land beyond Isca and as far as the shores of all the Saxon seas, but such trouble was no concern of the people of the Enduring Crow. If such trouble did eventually come then the Prince of Dumnonia would call the levies from each settlement and lots would be drawn among those of fighting age to determine who should go.

There was more he said, but in truth few of the men paid much attention for not only had they heard most of it before, but they knew in their hearts that many of the things would not be done and that life would go on much as before. It was idle to speak against him and delay the moment of feasting and full drinking.

Some time after this Inbar's manner to Arturo began to change. When Arturo approached Inbar one morning, after the Chief had spent most of the night drinking, to ask permission to go out with one of the fishing boats Inbar refused him. Arturo began to argue and in the midst of the protest Inbar struck him and knocked him to the floor. Arturo, tight-lipped, picked himself up and left the long hall. He went down to the beach and sat on a rock, staring at the sullen grey sea of late autumn. He was no fool and knew that Inbar's changing manner toward him came from good reason. He was held now in the settlement always under the eye of one of the tribe be it man or older boy. He was allowed no more to the cattle and horse grounds on the moor, nor even permitted to visit to old Galpan, the priest. Although no one had ever said so, he was a prisoner in the settlement.

As he sat there, brooding, and watching a handful of black-headed terns diving for fry in the shallow water, Mawga came across the sands with two other women and, seeing him, left them and came to him. In the crook of one arm, wrapped in the loose folds of her gown, she carried her babe, Talid. The gown was of good stout linen, dyed blue and sewn with black beads around the hem and throat. Mawga now wore such clothes as she had never known in her life before. She gave him greeting and sat beside him.

After some idle talk she said to him, “Arturo, you are grown now enough to know better how to approach Inbar. When he drinks and after drinking is no time to ask him for favours.”

Arturo answered, “There is no proper moment for me to ask anything of Inbar. Every time he sees me he thinks of the shame he would have done my mother.
Aie
… and more than that. He sees that I am the son of Baradoc and the rightful one to be chief of this tribe when I reach full years.”

“Nay. There is goodness in Inbar. Speak him fair and hold yourself proper to him and one day he will name you to be chief after him.”

Arturo looked at her, his eyes widening a little, and the line of his lips slanted wryly. Mawga was good, but she was simple. He said with a nod to the babe in her arms, “You know not Inbar. He waits but to see that Talid grows into sturdiness and health.
Aie
… maybe he waits for more than that. For the time when you bear him another healthy boy-child. Then will come the thing he wishes for me.”

Mawga's face clouded with anger. “Speak not so. You are his ward. The gods would mark him if he harmed you.”

“'Tis a small point. He will not kill me himself—any more than he could boldly kill my father. But I can be killed by the chance fall of a rock from the cliffs. Or the mischance of a badly aimed hunting arrow.
Aie
… or from the sudden movement of a boat as I help haul the nets while fishing.” He leaned forward and placed the tip of his forefinger on the soft nose of Talid, and went on, “He is pink and soft and helpless like a newborn harvest mouse in a straw nest. And so, for the moment, am I.”

Mawga shook her head. “Your mind is full of black images. Inbar is a good man.”

“That you must say—for he is, to you. But if he is so good, then ask him for permission for me to go and join my mother in Isca.”

“That I cannot do for it is not my place to meddle in Inbar's affairs.” Then, seeing Arturo grin broadly, she went on, “Why do you smile so?”

“Because—and I do not blame you—you did not draw back from meddling the day you helped my mother. Tether me a pony in the thorn scrub at the valley bend and one night be careless with the lock key of the great hall. Inbar would never suspect you, though he might beat you for carelessness with the key.”

“You ask too much—and without reason. But for love of your mother what I have heard I have not heard.”

Mawga rose and walked away, and Arturo watched her without emotion. He had not expected her to help. Nobody would help him for none was rash enough to meddle in the affairs of Inbar. Raising his eyes from watching Mawga, he saw that on the high cliff behind him one of the older youths was sitting on an out jutting crag, looking down at him. So they watched, he thought, day by day, and the nights saw him safe within the long hall. Well, then he must use the cunning of the cliff fox, the patience of the fishing heron, and find his own way out, for to Isca he would go. He picked up a piece of dried bladder wrack and began to pop the black blisters in its strands. As he did so it seemed to him that suddenly the gods were speaking to him and giving him the sign which would show him the way to escape. He lay back on the rock, watching the grey scud of clouds sweeping eastward up the coast, and began to chuckle to himself. Yes, the gods had spoken and given their sign. Yes, he would go to Isca, but not to stay for long, since even the Prince might for his own reasons send him back. What matter that he had so few years? The years would come, and there were always travelling parties that would take him as horse or mule boy. He would find his own way, make his mark and when manhood was with him he would come back.
Aie! Aie!
… the whole world lay to the east and a man should see it before he came back to his own people to settle down.

That evening in the long hall Inbar was good to him, sat him at his right hand to eat and allowed him an extra beaker of mead, and Arturo showed a due gratitude and cheerfulness which he did not feel. He knew quite well that Mawga must have spoken to Inbar on his behalf and urged him to show more kindness to him.