The Crimson Chalice (10 page)

He smiled at her, waved her down as she started to rise, and then began to walk toward her, stiffly but steadily. He came and sat down near her, upwind of the thin fire smoke.

He said, “The smell of the broth gave strength to my legs.”

“You should have let me bring it to you.”

“No, it is time I began to fend for myself again.”

Tia filled a bowl of broth for him. He held it in his hands, blowing at it for a while to cool it, and then began to sup with an old horn spoon which Tia had found in the hut.

He said, looking at his garden which they had tended, “The beans have grown, and the weeds are hoed … all while I have slept and dreamt and found strength. You and the young man have been good to me at a time when there was little goodness to hope for in this land. Is he your brother or perhaps bethrothed to you?”

Tia laughed. “Neither.”

Asimus frowned a little. “There is no tie between you?”

“Only that we are now both making our way to the west. He goes back to his tribe and I to my uncle in Aquae Sulis.” Without emotion, for the recent past was a memory now imprisoned as surely as a fly in amber in her mind, Tia went on to tell him what had happened to her and how she and Baradoc had met. She finished. “When we get to my uncle, he will go on to his own people. I shall never forget him and my uncle will reward him well. But there is nothing between us.”

The old man shook his head. “You saved his life and now he guards you to your uncle. Such acts of charity put ties between people which can never be broken, neither by time nor distance. While I live there will be no day when my prayers will not include you both. Thus, you see”—he smiled gently and the dark eyes were soft in the bearded face—“you will always be linked together by me until the good Lord closes my days.”

Made a little embarrassed and uncomfortable with this talk, Tia asked, “Is it true that you have treasure hidden here?”

The old man finished his broth, set the bowl down and then, shaking his head at her move to help him, rose awkwardly to his feet with the help of his staff. He looked down at her, one hand slowly teasing his beard, and there was a slow twinkle in his eyes.

“You are a practical, forthright young woman. That is there for all to see. So to talk in riddles to you would make you perhaps impatient. Each day that God gives us—or that your gods give you—life and freedom to worship them is a treasure. Is that not enough?”

Tia, puzzled, shrugged her shoulders. “That kind of talk is beyond me. You know what I mean by treasure. The kind those people would have wanted to find. Silver, gold and jewels.”

Asimus laughed quietly. “Practical and frank. Then so will I be because a dream and a prophecy have come true. Yes, I have treasure here, treasure you could sell in the marketplace for a few gold coins. But their weight set in the scales against it would be nothing. You would need the whole weight of the world against it to make the beam tilt. But when you go, you and your friend shall take the treasure with you.”

Tia, feeling he was teasing her, grinned and, shrugged her shoulders, said, “Well, I just hope it won't be too heavy. We have to travel light.”

Asimus shook his head at her, giving her up, and then turned and began to make his way slowly toward the shrine.

From that day Asimus made an ever-quickening return to health and he would take no more personal service from either Tia or Baradoc. He gathered and pounded his own herbs and worts to make into salves for his burns and he kept his half-healed body wounds clean but refused all dressing for them, preferring to sit in the clearing by the fire, letting the air and the sun work on them. If Tia had not fought him over it he would have insisted on helping with the preparation of food and cooking. But she stoutly scolded him away from the fire and such tasks and he would retreat, chuckling gently to himself. At night, depending on the weather, they would sit outside the hut or just within the door to catch the last of the light, and talk.

Asimus was never without questions to Baradoc about his old master and the things he had taught him. His face would be masked with a grave, yet almost amused cast when Baradoc (who never lacked words or wild flights of fancy) turned sometimes toward the east in his excitement, shaking his clenched fist as though he held a sword in it and with one swing could annihilate the threat from the Saxons, who sought to swallow up the whole land, and, bursting with emotion, cried
“Aie!
their time will come!” And Tia noticed that he showed no shadow of his own thought, no sign of whether he agreed or disagreed with Baradoc.

It was this that one evening made her say quietly in a pause, as Baradoc stopped talking, “Master Asimus, these last nights you have turned us both inside out as though we were chests stuffed with trifles and odds and ends of our lives and opinions that serve only to brighten your eye like a magpie's or to raise a smile under your whiskers as though you were a cat who had been at the cream. Is your own chest empty?”

Baradoc said sharply, “Tia. That is no way to speak to a holy man.”

“No, no,” said Asimus, “she is not to be scolded. First, because I am not a holy man. Only an indifferent servant of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Also, too, it is true that I am like a magpie or a well-fed cat for the brightness and richness of your minds give me joy … aye, and hope. Though none of these can escape the shadow this world casts on them from time to time. So”—he smiled at Tia—“you would know what I have to show? And so you shall and so you should. I was born in Antioch. My father was a steward in the household of a general officer in the Imperial Army. Later, I worked in the household, too, and became the personal servant of a young son of the house. He was called John and was ten years younger than myself. He wanted none of the Army and studied law and I went with him when he left his father's house. But when he was little over thirty he turned from the law, became a Christian and joined the clergy in Antioch. I became a Christian, too. We had bad times and good times, and with the passing of the years my master became archbishop of Constantinople and people named him John Chrysostom, John of the Golden Mouth. And his mouth was golden always with words in defense of the needy and in condemnation of the intrigues in his own church. Aye … he had a mouth with a tongue of gold when he praised and preached the teachings of our Lord, and a tongue like the whip of a fiery lash when he faced wickedness.… I will not empty the whole of my chest for it would take too long. My master, the good John, died well over twenty years ago at a place you will never have heard of, near the River Irmak in Asia Minor, and I was with him at his death, which was a lonely one.”

“Then how did you come to this country?” asked Tia.

“Because of a gift he gave me the day before he died, and because of a dream he sent me after his death.”

“If all this happened over twenty years ago you must be very—” Tia broke off, suddenly embarrassed at her own impetuousness.

Asimus smiled. “There is no shame in age. I have seen far more than eighty summers. My only sadness is that I did not come earlier to the service of the Lord.”

Baradoc said, “I believe in dreams. But the understanding of them is often difficult.”

Tia said, “Bother the dream. Tell us about the gift first.”

“Tia!” Baradoc frowned at her.

Asimus smiled. “There is no call to scold her. She is the practical one. Things must be clear in the right order in her mind. It is no scolding fault. I will tell you about the gift when I give it to you, and then of the dream—but neither until the day you leave for Aquae Sulis, for that, too, was part of the dream and—”

At this moment Baradoc jumped to his feet. Turning his head toward the forest, he said sharply, “Listen!”

For a moment or two the three of them were silent, listening. The fire burned low like a small red eye. The feet of the trees around the clearing were lost in black shadow, and beyond the fire the three dogs were alert, facing away from the hut, watching the forest. Through the stillness of the evening came the sound of a low, long-sighing throat rumble from Lerg, and then Cuna whined sharply once. Then suddenly from beyond the stony, bush-clothed rise that held the shrine came a sharp, racking burst of deep roaring. There was a silence for a while, and then the spasm of roaring broke through the night again and this time it was much closer.

Baradoc turned to Asimus and Tia and said quietly, “Get inside the hut.” He reached down and pulled Tia up and then helped Asimus to his feet.

As they moved to the hut Tia said, “What is it?”

Asimus put his hand on Tia's arm and led her to the door, saying, “There is a time for questions—but it is not now.” Then he turned and said to Baradoc, “I have heard the sound before—twice. The only thing you can use is a bow. A spear would—”

Baradoc broke in impatiently, “I know. Now, into the hut.”

He went in with them and took up his bow and strapped on the belt with its quiver of arrows and went back into the clearing, closing the rough door behind him. Though the door, he knew, would hold no protection against the attack to come. That had to be met and held before the bear could move across the clearing to it. The racking, angry roaring split the still night again and the dark wall of trees sent back its thunder in searing, pain-filled echoes. Only once before, while hunting with his old master, had Baradoc ever heard the sound; but the memory lived with him and he knew that the beast that was coming their way moved now in a frenzy of pain and hatred for all of the kind who had lodged that pain with it. Somewhere in the forest recently, he guessed, a party of hunters, eager for meat, for the rich bear fat and the warm skin which would ward off winter cold, had attacked one of the last few of the great brown bears that roamed the southlands. Avoided and left to themselves, they were no threat to human life, content to live on honey from wild bees'nests, on leaves and forest fruits and grabs and insects. But attacked and not killed, escaping with broken spears and arrows in its body, such an animal turned killer, savaging with blind anger and pain-goaded fury anything that crossed its path, following the scent of homestead fire, of any human or animal body that came downwind, seeking only a berserk killing to assuage its own agony.

Baradoc went to the fire and stood with it between him and the rocky rise. He called the dogs to him. Only in desperation would he send them in against the bear, and then only to harry and not to attack for not even Lerg could stand against such an animal. He slipped two of the short arrows from the quiver, held one in his mouth and fitted the other to his bow. When the bear came over the rock rise, following upwind the smoke and human scent, it would be outlined clear against the sky. The bear would see him and come straight for him … and he knew that he would have to wait until it reached the foot of the rise before he loosed the first arrow at the farthest killing range.

Behind him Cuna whined gently and from the corner of his eye he saw Lerg stretch his great jaws in a slow, wide defiant gape and he knew that while fear ran in him, drying his mouth and lips, there was no fear in Lerg. One silent signal would send the hound in.

The bear roared and then appeared as though by magic on the crest of the rise. It stood for a moment on all fours, its great head weaving and swinging. Then it rose on its hind legs, raised its head to the sky and roared its anguish and fury. It stood almost twice as high as Baradoc and against the long line of its belly he saw the heavy milk-full dugs … a she bear, her cubs now killed to swell her fury… and from the right side of her thick, pelted neck stuck out the splintered shaft of a great spear, and another broken spear shaft showed in her left flank, the blood from the wound thickly matting her fur.

The animal, seeing Baradoc and the dogs, dropped to all fours, roared, and began to lumber down the slope. As she did so Baradoc saw that an unbroken shaft stood upright in her back. He raised the bow and drew it, sighting along the arrow, knowing exactly where it must lodge, through the long fur a hand's span in from the top of the left foreleg to smash through bone and sinew and find the heart. To shoot at her head would have been to shoot at a rock. As he covered the lumbering downhill approach of the bear the pony tethered to the back of the hut whinnied and neighed suddenly with fear and then Baradoc heard the thud of her hooves as she reared and bucked in panic. At the foot of the rise the she bear, hearing Sunset, stopped and swung her great head toward the sound. For a moment the beast's left shoulder was wide open to Baradoc.

He let the arrow fly, heard its hornet flight across the clearing and saw it bury itself deep in the bear's shoulder. The animal roared with pain, rose full height and, her jaws flecked with white foam, the red mouth gaping, the great teeth flashing ivory dull in the lowering sunlight, came, on in a lumbering run toward Baradoc. And Baradoc stood his ground, for there was only death in flight; and standing his ground, he cursed himself that he had not practiced more with the bow at close range. It pulled to the left but the nearer the target the less it pulled. All this swept through his mind as he stood, marking the spot which the bear must reach before he fired again; and, as he held the tensed bow, he prayed to the gods that they would put virtue and cunning into his hands and eyes to humour and direct the arrow in a true flight to the small target inside the left shoulder.

When the bear was two spear lengths from the fire, Baradoc loosed the second arrow, saw it find its mark, heard the heavy sound of its strike as the short length of shaft bore into the beast's body until the flight feathers were only a finger length from the rough pelt. The bear roared, dropped to all fours, and still came on. It charged across the small patch of garden and through the low-burning fire, scattering ashes, red embers and hearthstones, and Baradoc, as he fitted another arrow, knew that the gods had deserted him, for there was no time even to draw.