The Crimson Chalice (11 page)

At this moment Cuna barked sharply and ran in at the bear. He ran from the side, jumped for the furred throat of the animal, and got a grip on the side of her neck. The bear, pausing in her foreward movement, rose to her hind feet and with one sweep of a forepaw brushed Cuna from her neck like a fly. Cuna flew through the air, yelping high, and landed in the soggy ground around the pool. Then, as the bear still came on and the signal was moving from Baradoc to send Lerg in, the great beast swayed sideways, halted, roared to set wild echoes ringing around the clearing, and then dropped to all fours and collapsed on her side on the ground at his feet.

Baradoc stood unmoving. From the poolside Cuna barked sharply and then came limping toward Baradoc. Lerg went forward slowly and his great muzzle dropped to the bear's head. He stood, hackles risen, and then turned away. Baradoc knew that the bear was dead; the second arrow had done its work. Then, feeling Cuna rubbing against his leg, he bent and picked him up, fondled him, and then felt his limping leg and found that no bones were broken. Silently he thanked Cuna because but for the pause the bear had made to brush Cuna away he might have been crushed and mauled beneath the bear in her dying seconds.

He went toward the hut and Tia and Asimus came out to him. Tia ran to him and for a moment held his arm, anxiety still high in her.

“You are all right?”

Baradoc nodded. “But we have lost Sunset. The smell of the bear made her panic and she broke loose. It is growing too dark now to go after her. If she doesn't come back I'll search for her tomorrow.”

Asimus, looking down at the bear, said, “God give you good days for your courage.”

Baradoc said, “Those who hunt should always kill. To leave a beast alive and full of broken spears would mark the name of any of my tribe with shame. A man should fetch fresh spears, take the trail and finish the killing. But now the bear is dead it is your gain, Father. I will skin and butcher it and Tia can smoke the meat and fill your jars with bear's grease, and the skin you can use for a bedcover on winter nights. So do the gods arrange bad and good into their own patterns.”

Suddenly Tia said woefully, “Without Sunset I shall have to go afoot to Aquae Sulis. I give no thanks to the gods for that!”

Baradoc and Asimus, seeing the half-angry, half-rueful look on her face, eyed one another and then burst out laughing.

Asimus, chuckling, said, “Maybe your gods, seeing into the future, have their reasons.”

And Baradoc said, “Sunset did not break the tethering rope. The knot was pulled free from the hut post. Who was it that tied the knot?” He looked at Tia.

Sunset did not return and the next day Baradoc went with Aesc in search for her. He found her in a small valley under, the craggy face of a cliff that blocked its end, but before he saw her he knew that she was dead. When he was half a bowshot from the foot of the crag with Aesc well ahead of him a cloud of carrion birds rose into the air. Standing over the fly swarming carcass, Baradoc could guess that a hunting wolf—for the packs were broken now for cub raising—or a rogue band of dogs had driven her up the valley to make their kill under the crag. He left the halter rope length on her and when he returned to the clearing he told Asimus and Tia that he had found no trace of her. The lie was guessed at by Asimus but he knew that it was told for Tia's benefit. That Baradoc should have this consideration for the young girl pleased him and heartened the faith he had in the dream he had dreamt so many years ago, lying under the cold winter stars by the River Irmak.

A few days before Tia and Baradoc left Asimus two young men from the nearby village came to the clearing for news of the holy man. When they saw the great bear skin with the head still on it, pegged out on an upright frame of poles, the inside of the skin already three-quarters scraped clean by Baradoc and Tia, their jaws dropped.

After they had gone, Asimus, who had sat by as Baradoc had told the two the story of its killing, said, “Now the story will grow in their minds with every step they take toward home. So begins the rise of a legend. Baradoc and the bear. In years to come in Venta and Noviomagus … aye, and Calleva, there will be a drinking house or hostel called the Bear of Baradoc.”

Tia, running her fingers through the hair on the nape of Cuna's neck as she sat by the fire, said, “Here is the real hero, little Cuna. The drinking shops should carry his name, too. I take no praise from Baradoc, but Cuna should have his share.”

Baradoc grinned and said, “Give him no praise. It will turn his head. He is so foolish still that he thinks he is a Lerg. But when I tell the story to my people he shall have more than his full due.”

“You see that you do.”

Looking down at her, her short golden hair stirring in the breeze, her blue eyes alight with the pleasure she took in teasing him, the glow of the lowering sun touching her cheeks with the soft blush of a blooming peach, Baradoc said without thought, “If you doubt that I will—then journey west with me and do the telling yourself.”

Tia rocked on her heels with sudden laughter. “The gods save me from anything like that! No power on earth will get me farther west than Aquae Sulis!”

On their last evening with Asimus, after they had eaten, Baradoc and Tia were sitting by the low fire when the old man came to them from the shrine, where he had been saying his evening prayers. In his hands he carried a well-worn doeskin bag gathered at the mouth with a drawstring. He sat down with them and put the bag on the ground at his feet. Then quietly and without any emotion he began to speak to them.

“In this country, as you know, there are many people who are Christians. And in the old Empire which is slowly dying there are many, many more. Neither of you is a Christian. And, as I have learned while you have been here, you know little of the martyrdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified at Golgotha. Before He died a centurion of the Crucifixion guard dipped a sponge into a cup of vinegar and, sprinkling it upon a spray of the hyssop plant, put it to His mouth. And when He was dead, but to be sure of His death, the same centurion thrust a spear into His side and the life-blood ran from Him. The blood ran down His body and some of it dripped into the vinegar cup which had been put at the foot of the Cross. All this happened over four hundred years ago and the story changes in the mouths of men as they retell it, but the real truth never departs from it. It is said that as He hung on the Cross two black birds, common in the country and around its shores, perched on the Cross, and their feet were covered with the blood from His pierced hands. When they tried to preen the blood from their feet with their beaks, then they, too, were covered and the bloodstains have stayed with all their kind since. There are many such birds all around the eastern Mediterranean.” He reached forward and pulled back the opening of Baradoc's rough shirt and exposed the tribal tattoo on his skin. “You are marked with such a bird.”

“It is our tribal bird,” said Baradoc; “and it is the bird of our sea cliffs. We call them choughs, but there is a secret tribal name which I cannot speak to you. It means ‘the red crow of enduring.' To kill one is punished by death, for as long as the choughs lives so will our people.”

Tia said, “What is in the bag, Father?”

Asimus picked up the doeskin bag. “It is the gift I have promised you. It is the little cup or chalice which stood at the foot of the Cross, holding the vinegar. It is made of silver, now old and battered, and it has been lost and found many times, and by some is still much sought after. The good John Chrysostom gave it to me on his deathbed. It is said that, warmed in the hands of a man or woman who is marked for great and noble duties, someone whose name will live forever, to be praised by all true and just people, the inside of the chalice though now unmarked will slowly begin to glow with the crimson stains of our Lord's blood.”

“Have you seen that happen?” asked Baradoc.

“No. Nor have I tried it myself for I know my own worth. But it is my gift to you both, for that was the command I received from the good John in my dream.”

“You mean you dreamt about us … all those years ago?” Tia's brows furrowed with a frown.

“So it would seem.” Asimus smiled, knowing her skepticism. “My master's voice said that I would be in a wild place, in a country far to the north, and in a moment of great peril to myself there would come two people to save me. One would be a youth bearing the sign of the red crow and the other would be a fair-haired maiden dressed as a youth who wore as a fastener on her torn tunic a silver brooch bearing a design of clasped hands.”

“You really dreamt that?” asked Tia. “Before we were born?”

“If the good father says he did then he did,” said Baradoc sharply.

“But,” insisted Tia, “what's the good of giving it to both of us? We part at Aquae Sulis. To whom does it belong then?”

Asimus smiled and shrugged his shoulders and then handed the doeskin bag to her. “I do not know. You will find some way to settle that. I obey only the dream, and now tell you the last words of my master. The gift being made, the bag must not be opened before me, and the dream being told must not be told again until one comes to hold it and the inside glows crimson with the ghost of the Savior's blood.”

“Does that mean it won't glow for either of us?” asked Baradoc.

Tia laughed. “Poor Baradoc—did you want to be marked for great and noble duties, your name to be praised forever?”

Baradoc said stiffly, “For the work I have to do I need no magic chalice. One needs only—”

“Spare us!” cried Tia. “Father, by now you should know that he goes back to his tribe to be an important man, to do great things. And so I hope it will be—but I wish he wouldn't talk about it so much.”

Baradoc stood up. He was getting used to Tia's flattening remarks now, and could see, too, that they were often deserved. Though what could a man do if that were his nature and destiny? Then, with a warning look to Tia not to interrupt him, he said to Asimus, “Father, we thank you for your gifts and for your words. How the gift will be settled between us at Aquae Sulis I do not know. The gods will decide. But this I say for both of us, it will be cherished and protected until the right hands come to warm it to crimson life.”

The morning of their departure from the clearing a soft drizzle was falling, the slow swathes of fine rain swaying before a mild southerly breeze. From his hut Asimus watched them go, taking the narrow path around the northern edge of the rocky bluff and soon disappearing into the massed trees of the far-reaching forest. Both of them carried bundles over their shoulders, the heavy sword thumping at Baradoc's side, his bow tied on top of his bundle and in his hand the fish spear. Tia carried the light spear, and the cowl of her mantle was hooded over her fair hair against the rain. Asimus smiled to himself as he watched her ungainly walk. The soles of her light sandals had worn and Baradoc had repaired them with pieces of hide, stitched on with sinews taken from the dead bear. Cuna stayed at her heels, the two other dogs went ahead and, for a fleeting moment, Asimus saw Bran the raven, with the southerly breeze under his tail, swing high into the rain and disappear over the far crest of the trees.

Asimus turned away and went into his shrine to pray for them and for a safe journey to Aquae Sulis. As he knelt to the ground and bowed his head he saw at once that there was a new offering on the stone table. It was the arrow that had killed the bear, the head and part of the shaft brown with dried blood. Tied in a small bow just above the feather flights was a piece of bright braiding which he knew Tia must have cut from the loose end of the belt that she wore about the waist of her tunic. He closed his eyes and began to pray.

The soft drizzle lasted until nightfall. Tia and Baradoc marched through it, and their clothes and bundles grew heavier with the weight of water soaking onto them with each hour that passed. A quiet misery took Tia as she plodded along. But it was a misery she could carry with the same fortitude as she carried her bundle because with each step she told herself that she came nearer to her uncle. But marching was at first awkward because she had not become used to the weight of her new-soled sandals. Now and again she would trip and sometimes cursed aloud only to hear Baradoc give a soft chuckle from up ahead. At midday they ate cold meat and hard corn cake, washed down with barley mead that Baradoc carried in a small leather skin slung at his belt—a present from one of the young men who had visited the clearing.

Through the afternoon the country began to change a little. At times the forest broke away into bare heathland over the high tops and the path was overhung with tall bracken growths and drooping new-flowered switches of broom. Here and there were patches of long-stemmed foxgloves, the lower buds on their towering stalks already in bloom. Late in the afternoon they came to a main road. It was banked up on a small causeway. As they came up onto the road Baradoc stopped and Tia halted behind him. A bowshot to the left a man and a woman stood on the high agger crown of the road. In one arm the woman carried a child wrapped in a blanket and with her free hand held the halter of a small pony. Below the shoulder of the road, in the broad scoop ditch from which the material for the road had originally been taken, was a small two-wheeled cart lying on its side. Thinly through the drizzle came the cry of the child that the woman held.

Baradoc said, “Stay here.”

Tia dropped her bundle and sat on it, and watched Baradoc move down the worn surface of the road. It was, she knew, for she had seen many in her life, one of the old military roads. But it was many years since anyone had bothered to repair it. With Baradoc went Lerg. Aesc and Cuna sat at her feet and she fondled the stiff wet fur of Cuna's nape. She watched Baradoc go up to the couple and begin to talk to them. After a while he turned and beckoned to her. Tia plodded down the road, splashing through the puddles in its broken surface. No legions, she thought ruefully, would ever swing down this road again, the eagles carried high, the studded shoes of the legionaries thudding out their heavy rhythm.