The Hallowed Isle Book Two (13 page)

“We've drunk up all our money,” Artor said clearly. “You'll get nothing but blows for your trouble.”

“Yon black-headed lad has a silver buckle, and you are wearing a ring. That's worth food and drink to starving men.”

Oesc squinted at the approaching shadows. They didn't move like starving men.

“Go to the palace if you are hungry, and they will give you food. You are breaking the king's peace and will be punished if you harm us here.”

As Artor was speaking, Cunorix whispered in Oesc's ear to watch out for the man on the right, who had a knife, while the others were armed with clubs or staves.

“Why should the king care what happens in the streets?”

“Believe me, he cares!” answered Artor. His laughter ceased as their assailants came on.

The robbers were five to three, and sober. Oesc drew a deep breath. “Woden!” he cried, as the first blow hit, and heard Artor calling out to Brigantia. The wine had blunted their reactions, but all three were warriors, trained to fight even when they could not see. With fists and feet they deflected the first rush and the second. When the third came they were gasping, but alarm and exertion had burned most of the alcohol away. What remained dulled the pain of the blows.

There were a few moments of furious action, followed by a pause while everyone stood gasping. One of their opponents lay on the ground, while another was holding his belly where Cunorix had kicked him. Oesc felt Artor straighten.

“Well, my friends, we have cleared the board a little. I think it is time for the king-piece to break out of the fortress!” Before they could object, Artor had sprung forward and scooped up a fallen club and was swinging it at the nearest foe.

Cunorix shrieked something in Irish, lowered his head and charged, and Oesc headed towards the third man. At last he was free to fight! The rage he had repressed during his captivity filled him with a new intoxication. He saw a stave whirr towards him, lifted his left arm to protect his head and heard a crack as it hit. The impact whirled him around, inside his opponent's guard, and his right fist drove towards the other man's throat. Something gave way with a sickening crunch and the man fell, gurgling.

Artor had felled his man, and Cunorix was grappling with the other one. Oesc drew breath to speak and gasped as the numbness in his arm began to give way to a throbbing agony. Artor held up one hand, listening.

More men were coming. But what they were hearing now was the ring of hob-nailed sandals and the jingle of military harness, not a footpad's stealthy tread. Cai had rousted out the city guard at last.

Oesc's broken arm healed slowly, though the tongue-lashing Artor received from his advisors when they returned to the palace no doubt left deeper wounds. Only Merlin, who had returned from one of his journeys shortly after, seemed to understand. Rumor had it that the reaction of Artor's mother, arriving for one of her periodic visitations, was more vigorous.

To occupy Oesc's mind during his convalescence, a priest called Fastidius was sent to teach him the language of the Romans, and the others involved in their escapade were encouraged to study with him, whether as a punishment or to keep him company was not clear.

“
Arma virumque cano
. . .” The words were intoned with the sonority of a man who loved the language and a clarity of accent that Oesc was already learning to recognize as being of another order entirely than the camp Latin many of the soldiers used. “And what, my child, do those words say?”

“
Arma
—that means weapons,” answered Oesc. This sounded much more interesting than the grammar the old man had been teaching them before. “Does
virumque
have anything to do with men?”

Through the open window he could hear the sounds of men and horses, and from farther off, a distant mutter of thunder. The heat wave had broken, and the air was cool and moist with the promise of rain.

“A man,” Fastidius corrected. “The object of the verb. And the
que
at the end of it—what does that mean?” His watery gaze fixed on Cunorix, who stared as if an armed man had sprung from the ground before him. In fact, thought Oesc, he would probably have faced a warrior with less fear.

Artor took pity on him. “It means
and,
does it not? ‘Of arms and the man I sing.'”

“Hmm,” said the priest, “you have studied the language before.”

“It was spoken in the home of Caius Turpilius, who fostered me,” answered the king. “But I have not had much practice in reading.”

“Ah . . . you will want to understand the messages you receive from foreign kings without depending on a scribe, and to make sure the messages written for you express what you want to say.”

It had never occurred to Oesc that a king could be his own interpreter, but he could see now that it would be useful. Certainly the priest seemed to understand. Fastidius was an old man, trained in the golden days before the Saxon Revolt when his namesake the bishop wrote letters of civilized amusement at the idea that sensible men could ever accept Augustinus's harsh doctrine. Their sufferings at the hands of the Saxons had made a belief in predestination more credible, but the old priest still behaved as if the purity of one's Latin were as important as the purity of one's soul.

Cunorix cleared his throat. “But what does it mean?”

Fastidius smiled, and without looking at the scroll, began to chant once more—
“Troiae ui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit litora
. . . Who from Troy by fate caused to flee came first to the shores of Italia and Lavinium . . . It is the story of Aeneas, who escaped the fall of the great city of Troy and became the founder of Rome.”

“I have heard of him,” Artor said slowly. “They say that the ancestors of the Britons came from there with Brutus, his great-grandson.”

But to Oesc it seemed that the story of this Aeneas must be very much like that of his own people, driven by need to seek a new home on a foreign shore. He pointed to the scroll.

“How did this Aeneas get to Italia, and what happened to him there?”

Fastidius smiled. “I thought that you might like the story. It is full of battles. Some of my brethren would say that you should study texts of the Holy Fathers. But it seems to me that you will learn better with something you find interesting, and also, Vergilius wrote much better Latin.”

“Even Cai, here, might learn something if it is about battles—” Artor punched his foster-brother playfully. “He was a very poor pupil to our housepriest at home!”

It did seem that with the
Aenied
for their text they made better progress, following the adventures of the Trojan hero around the Mediterranean in his search for a home. And when the frustration of untangling Latin declensions became too much for their patience, Fastidius could be tempted into regaling them with tales of British heroes, for he came from the isle of Mona, where memories were long.

When autumn arrived, the whole court followed the Tamesis upriver to the hills for a few weeks of hunting, and came back brown from sun and wind and pleasantly fatigued by hard riding, with enough wild meat to vary the menu for some time. It had been good to get out, but in some ways the city seemed even more stifling afterward, especially when the weather changed and the early winter rains set in.

“Do you know any stories about Londinium?” asked Betiver one day when the leaden skies wept steadily and damp draughts crept in under every door.

Fastidius set down the tablet on which he had been checking Betiver's lists of Latin verbs and smiled. “I have told you already how Brutus founded the city and called it Troia Nova, which was in the British tongue, Trinovantum, because the Trinovante tribe came to dwell there. They say that his descendent, Lud, built walls and towers and renamed the city after himself. But that was just before the great Julius Ceasar brought the Romans to these shores. The Latin histories tell us that Londinium was only a small river town which the Romans rebuilt in stone, so I do not know what the truth may be.”

“Buildings are not very exciting,” said Cunorix. “Are there no other tales?”

Fastidius's brows, which were white like his hair, and rather bushy, bent. “There is another story, that ends here. If you will take up your tablets and write out all the forms of
placare,
‘to soothe or calm,'
conloquor,
‘to negotiate,' and
agere,
‘to make a treaty,' then I will tell you a story from Pagensis, where the Ordovici ruled, about a king who was so great in stature that no building could hold him.”

“You think that we are so averse to using words of peace that we must be bribed to learn them?” asked Artor, laughing.

“I think that you are all young men, who believe that glory can only be won in war . . .”

Betiver had already picked up his stylus and tablet and was busily making marks in the wax. Grinning, the others began to work as well.

When they had finished and been corrected, Fastidius kept his promise.

“A long time ago there was a ruler of the Britons called Brannos, so great a king that men called him Blessed, and that became part of his name—in British, Bendeigid Brannos. He gave his sister Branuen in marriage to the king of Hibernia, but one of her half-brothers was angry because he had not been consulted, and he disfigured the horses of the Hibernian king, which was a great insult. Brannos paid compensation, and the girl went over the sea with her new husband, but the Hibernians still brooded on the insult, and presently they forced the king to punish his wife by making her a servant at his court. But Branuen had some magic of her own, and she trained a starling to carry the news of her torment to her brother in Britannia.”

Nobody looked at Cunorix, who had gotten rather red in the face, but Artor motioned to Fastidius to go on.

“So the princes of Britannia went to war, the warriors in ships, and Bendeigid Brannos wading across the water, and there were great battles, and greater treacheries, and in the end, the Hibernians were defeated, but of the Britons only seven remained beside the king, who had been wounded by a poisoned lance in the heel. When Brannos saw that the poison would overcome him, he gave certain orders. And then, as he had commanded, they struck the head from his body, and took it back with them to Britannia.”

“What were his orders?” asked Artor.

“What happened to Branven?” asked Betiver. Cunorix only glowered.

“The princess, remembering that because of her, two great peoples had been destroyed, died of sorrow. But the seven companions feasted for seven years in one habitation, forgetting their sorrows, and in another for seven again, listening to the birds from the Otherworld, and the head of Brannos was with them, uncorrupted. And when that time was done, they opened the door that looked towards the south, and then, as he had prophesied, they remembered everything.”

It was a strange tale indeed, as Fastidius had promised them. To Oesc it seemed as if for him and Cunorix it had more meaning, for their people still lived as the Britons had lived before the Romans came. Cai was staring out the window, bored, as usual, by anything that was not about fighting, and Betiver listened with a child's wonder. But what did Artor make of this story of an ancient king?

He was already taller than Oesc, who overtopped most men. But in the past year Artor's body had thickened to match the promise of the strong bones.
This is no longer a boy to be led about by old men,
thought Oesc,
I wonder when his advisors will realize that their bear cub has become a bear?
The cold illumination from the window lit one side of the king's face and left the other in darkness, eyelids half closed to hide his thoughts, mouth grim.
His father killed mine
. . . Oesc told himself, but some other part of his being wished only that Artor would smile.

He cleared his throat. “What did they do then?”

“They followed Brannos's orders. They carried the head to the White Mount, the sacred hill by the river in Londinium, and there they buried it, face set towards Gallia. The word of Bendeigid Brannos was this, that while his head remained there, so also would his spirit and his power, to ward Britannia from plague and destruction.”

“So, even in death a king may still watch over his people . . .” said Artor. His mouth was still grim, but there was a light in his eyes.

“It is so in the old Jutish lands,” said Oesc. “There, when a king's reign has been peaceful, with good harvests, they build a great mound over his bones and set out offerings, so that his name is remembered and he becomes one with the gods.”

“It is the bones of the saints and the blood of the martyrs that protect Christian lands!” said Betiver.

“Neither saints' relics nor a severed head seem to have protected the empire from the heathens,” growled Cai. “I prefer to trust to stout hearts and strong arms.”

“Perhaps Brannos's protection depended on a different kind of power,” said Fastidius placatingly, and unrolled the scroll containing his grammatical notations once more.

The winter drew on, cold and wet. In the north and the midlands, it was a cruel season, with storms in which both men and cattle froze. But in Londinium, the sleet never quite seemed to turn into snow. The high king's household struggled with the old hypocaust system, but even when they got it working, the warmth that came up through the floors was never quite enough to offset the cold drafts that came in around the doors. There were many times when Oesc missed Saxon farmhouses. Dark and odorous though they might be, they were warm.

But presently the days began to lengthen, and occasionally they saw the sun. The skies echoed with the bitter music of the wild geese as they winged northward. Messengers went out to call the princes of Britannia to council. In the midlands, the snow that had fallen on hill and dale was melting, and the Tamesis began to rise.