The Crimson Chalice (14 page)

This, he knew now, was why his steps had been directed here. Never in all the years of his people had any of them made this sacrifice in the first morning light at the great stone henge, the temple made by the gods for men.… Over the levelled sword raised before his eyes, he called the prayer and then began to name the great gods so that none should be missed and work against him and his dreams—Father Dis; Taranis the thunderer; Tentates; Esus; Coventina of the sacred grove of Nemeton; Cernunnos the horned one; Epona the hooved one; Nonus the wise and forgiving one, who, when his wife deceived him with another, because he loved her, claimed the child for his own; Dagda; Nodons of the silver hand; Badb the goddess of battle, who had flown high above the chariots of the great queen; and Lug the fair-haired, who stirred the corn seed of life and set the blossoms of all flowering trees to swell into fruit.…

As the great rim of the sun began to wheel above the horizon, he reached down, took one of the ram's horns in his left hand, drew the animal's head back, and with one fierce slash of the sword cut its throat. The ram kicked in its death agony and its blood ran dark over its tawny fleece and moved darker still across the rough face of the stone slab. Baradoc watched the ram die. Then he stepped back and looked through the great stone archway at the linked twin circles of raised stones over and through which the swifts were screaming and hunting the insects raised to flight by the new sun; and he looked for some sign that the gods had heard him and were pleased with his offering.

There was a flutter of wings from the top of a small thorn that grew close to one of the far stones. Baradoc, catching the flash of red-wings and the blue-black head, saw that it was a shrike. The bird settled on a side branch of the shrub. In its mouth it held a limp, dead wren it had killed. As Baradoc watched he saw the butcher-bird with a quick stabbing twist of its head impale the wren on one of the long thorns to rest there among the dead beetles and bees of its larder until hunger should bring it back to feed. For a moment or two he was sure that this was his sign, but his mind had scarcely turned to the reading of its message when from the top of one of the far stones a bird, at first a slaty-blue shadow against the darkness of the stone, winged down fast. It streaked low over the sheep-bitten grasses toward the thorn, the sun metalling its dark wings with a high gloss and lighting the pale, rufous patch of its gorge with a golden glow. The shrike, seeing it coming, rose with a cry of alarm from the thorn and flew away, hugging the ground and swerving in and out of the thorn patches. After it in fast pursuit, swinging and turning, and fast closing on the shrike, went the other bird, and Baradoc watched, knowing now that this was the true sign, for the other bird was a merlin, the smallest of his country's falcons. Baradoc saw the merlin strike and kill in midair, saw a great puff of feathers spread in the air and then, as the merlin disappeared below the crest, heard its distant exultant killing call. The gods had spoken plainly to him. Was not the bloody butcher-bird the Saxon threat from the east and the swift, sudden killing of the merlin the vengeance and victory which would one day come from the west?

He turned away from the stones toward the shelter. He saw that Tia was standing outside, watching him, and he knew that if she began to question him, maybe to mock or tease him, then he would be hard put to hold his feelings back. These things had nothing to do with women.

Tia said nothing. She had seen him make the sacrifice, but the killing of the shrike had been to her no more than part of the morning stir of nature. As he came toward her she saw his face set brown and hard and the dark intensity of his eyes and she guessed that he moved with his dream of the future glowing and blood-stirring within him.

She gave him the morning greeting and then, while Baradoc began to strike their shelter and pack their belongings, went to their fire. Overnight they had banked the pile of red embers with new wood and dry grasses and covered it with turves. She pulled the turves aside and blew the slow embers into fire and fed brittle, dead thorn kindling on it. She put bear grease in the skillet and began to cook the last of the fish that they had caught the previous day. A wind eddy blew smoke into her eyes and mouth. Weeks ago it would have made her cough and her eyes water. Now she was hardly aware of it. All could be born because Aquae Sulis came nearer each day. At this moment Baradoc came to the fire, carrying their two wooden platters, and squatted down on his hunkers. He smiled almost shyly at her, as though there were only a few hours gone since they were strangers, and said, “We should travel well today. The country is open and we can keep to the ridgeways.” He nodded to the westerly sky. “I think, too, these parts are more peaceful. No scavenging birds, crows, ravens or kites wheel in the sky and the wind is free of rolling smoke clouds.”

Wiping her sticky, floured hands on a cloth, Tia, her words surprising herself, quietly said, “Since I've been with you it seems to me that my body and my brain have been wakened from a kind of sleep. Not so long ago I took my pleasant life and ways for granted. Other people were shadows that moved around me. I had no curiosity about them and little about myself. Now my mind is full of questions.”

“That is the way it should be. Without questions there are no answers. And without answers no truth, no progress, no future.”

“Then I am free to ask questions?”

“Why not?”

“If you choose.”

“You have a living dream to free your country. Once your forefathers had that dream and turned it against my people. Time has settled that struggle. Now your enemy is a new one … the Saxons.”

“And your enemy, too.”

“True. But tell me, why do you hate the Saxons with a hatred that is fiercer than a smith's furnace? Why do you have an anger in you that is harder than iron against them, so unbending that it must come from more than a love of your country and your dream for its future?” She leant forward and turned the frying fish in the skillet to brown their sides, hiding her face. “What did they do to you?” She looked up slowly after a while and saw his face unmoving, the mask set over it again.

Baradoc, each word a chip struck from an icy mass, said, “I had a father and was taken from him into slavery. I had a master and was his slave. But even while I was a slave he became my father. He taught me the arts he knew. He even taught me things about my own and other tribes I did not know. Everything I am and will be is forever marked by his wisdom and kindness. He gave me my freedom and understood, since I did not leave him at once, that there was more I wanted from him. And then the Saxons came. He hid me in the roof loft and, sword in hand, met them in the courtyard of the villa. I saw it all through a gap in the tiles. They ringed him and taunted him and baited him. Age made his movements clumsy. Slowly and savagely they speared and axed him. They made his dying long and a drunken sport. And when he was dead they hacked with their blades at his body, danced on it and kicked it, defiled and degraded it. That night I swore to the gods that I would take the sword against them so long as any rested in this land, and I made a vow that the first Saxon I ever killed I would dedicate to him.” He paused for a moment, the mask slowly faded from his face and the thin edge of a smile wreathed his lips as he went on, “So that is the answer to your question—and, Lady Tia, it is not one which I expected ever to come from you. From today the people around you will no longer be shadows.”

For the next two days, the country being open and untroubled, they travelled easily and finally reached one of the small branches of the headwaters of the Abona River. The valleys of the downland with their clear chalk streams held small settlements and farms. The southern slopes were worked with terraced strip fields, the greens of sturdy growths of wheat and barley and oats patch working the land. Now, too, they came across flocks of cattle and sheep herded and guarded by family groups who lived and slept under rough shelters on the downs. Sometimes they talked to these people and bartered the game that Baradoc killed for cheese and milk. Money none of these people would accept as payment. True value lay in barter, goods for goods.

With the days an easier relationship sprang up between Baradoc and Tia. Something had awakened in her which gave her understanding and a growing admiration for his character and strength of purpose. In him, too, grew an acceptance of her which discounted all her race and breeding. She was a travelling companion, the two of them bonded in a growing friendship. One evening as they sat beside the slow-moving Abona where they were camped for the night, she asked him about his cousin who had been made a slave with him and why he had betrayed him and left him hanging from the tree in the Anderida forest to die.

Baradoc said, “When he was given his freedom he left my master but he stayed in Durobrivae and worked there for a smith and armourer. He had a cunning in his hands as great as the cunning in his mind. And he heard from meeting travellers who came to the smithy that my father had died. At the moment his father is head of the tribe—but only until I return. What he did to me in the forest he did first for his father, and then for himself. With me dead then one day he would lead the tribe.”

“What's he called?”

“Inbar, and our tribal name is Ruachan. After the Saxon raid in which my master was killed he came to me with a friend and we all travelled together. Not until they strung me to the tree did he tell me that my father was dead.”

“And you mean to kill him?”

“We shall fight and when he lies on the ground with my sword at his throat his life will belong to me. Then I shall give it to his father, who is a good man, and he will choose whether the sword strikes or is sheathed.”

“And what do you think he will say?”

Baradoc gave a dry laugh. “Lady Tia, the questioner. How should I know? But if the word is to kill, then I shall kill him and he will be laid in the burial grounds on the cliff hill. But if the word is to spare him, then Inbar must rise and go from our lands forever. Whichever way the loss is great—for Inbar has many skills. With so much craft and cunning and courage it is a great grief that the gods at his birth flawed him.”

Tia lay back on the grass and stared at the evening sky. High above she could see the black shape of Bran wheeling slowly on a rising air current and then, suddenly in a moment of play, falling quickly, twisting and turning, the searing sound of the wind against his wings coming clearly to her. Cuna came and sniffed at her face and she raised a hand and fondled his muzzle. Tomorrow or the next day they would reach her uncle's villa and this episode in her life would be closed. But, although her meeting with Baradoc had sprung from tragedy, she knew that for her, too—even as the gods had flawed Inbar to bring her to rescue Baradoc from the oak—the gods had fashioned time and movement to give her this period with him so that her eyes should be truly opened and her mind truly awakened. In her reverie she heard the low, soft growling of Cuna as he played with a broken stick. Then she heard him yelp loud and Baradoc suddenly laughed.

She sat up to see that Cuna in play had attacked the loose roll of their fishing net, which lay near the shelter and was now tangled in its meshes. As he rolled and twisted she laughed, too. Leaping and jerking inside the web of net, Cuna lost his balance and began to roll down the slope of the bank. Before she could move he had gone over the edge and landed in the river.

Laughing still, Baradoc jumped up, took the long fish spear and lifted the netted Cuna out of the river. He held him up and Cuna yapped indignantly until Tia reached for him and, sitting down, began to disentangle him from the net. Free, Cuna shook himself, spraying her with water and then, as they both still laughed, began to race around in wild circles, leaping from one to the other in mock attacks, delighted with the attention he had brought on himself. While Lerg and Aesc looked on impassively, Tia caught Cuna and held him to her breast and calmed him down.

Baradoc, watching her and the dog, said after a moment or two, “Of the dogs he's the one you like best, isn't he?”

“Yes, yes, I do. He's so small, but so brave, and he makes me laugh.”

“Then when I leave Aquae Sulis he stays with you. He is yours.”

“Oh, no, I couldn't—”

“He is yours.” Baradoc stood up, his eyes turning away from her. “The gift is made. Now I will cover the fire against the morning.” He moved away to gather turves and grasses to damp down the fire.

The Villa Etruria was two miles to the west of Aquae Sulis. It stood on a gentle riverbank slope, well above the winter flood line. From the main arched entrance to the courtyard, stone steps ran down to a small landing place on the Abona. They had come to it by the road that ran west to the small port of Abonae, near the mouth of the river, reaching it in the late afternoon, the lowering sun striping its red tiles with black ridge shadows while the breeze rippled the branches of a row of mixed limes and poplars that flanked the slopes on either side of the building. Part of the bank had been cut away and the villa had been built into it. A covered way ran around the large courtyard, backed on one side by the kitchen, servants'quarters and storerooms. On the other side was a small bathhouse with the hypocaust that served it. Between these wings the main rooms of the villa faced square across the court to the river. In the center of the courtyard was a spring-fed well, encircled with a carved stone parapet and roofed with an ornamental canopy from which hung a large bronze bucket. A little beyond it, giving shade to the yard, grew a tall sweet chestnut tree, a tree, Baradoc knew, which the Romans had brought to his country in their early days. When corn was short the old legionaries had milled the chestnut fruits to add to their scanty cornflour issue.

As he lay on his couch that first night it was a long time before Baradoc could find sleep. Lerg and Aesc slept outside his door, and outside Tia's bedroom not far away he knew Cuna would by lying. When they had come down the river into the bowl of hills that held Aquae Sulis he had been surprised to see how small the town was. There had been no sign of trouble or past disturbance and although they had drawn some curious looks from people, mostly because of the dogs and Bran on his shoulder, they had been met kindly and given directions to the villa. But although the town was small he saw, on their way to the villa, that there were many more like it scattered along the Abona and on the hillslopes.