The Crimson Chalice (17 page)

Tia rose. Of all that had gone on between Baradoc and Cadrus she had caught only a few of the words she had come to know of their language. They gave her no grasp of the trouble between them, except that her own instinct and her knowledge of the ways of tribal raiders told her that there was some argument about slaves and herself. She went with Machen across the yard and up to Cadrus. He looked at her boldly, his gaze moving over her from head to foot, and she saw his mouth tighten, his shoulders tauten as he drew sharp breath and a sudden glitter fired his eyes. From her deep woman's instinct she knew at once that in some way she was a prize that Baradoc had disputed with him.

She stood at the foot of the semicircular steps rising to the archway and Machen stood with her, translating for her the questions that Cadrus made in their own language, and all the time Cadrus spoke and then Machen translated, Cadrus kept his eyes on her.

Machen asked her, “Cadrus would know how you met this young man.”

“In the forest of Anderida after my brother and sister were killed and making my way to Aquae Sulis.…” There was a nervousness in her which she held down; but not entirely could she keep its note from her voice as she described how she had cut Baradoc down and they had then journeyed together.

“For how long have you travelled?”

“A month or more.”

“Cadrus and our people have made this raid for weapons, treasure and slaves. He takes two of your good men and also he would take you.” Machen paused, expecting some quick response or outburst from her. Women spoke or cried out before thought or common sense could govern emotion. This young woman said nothing. Her forehead slowly creased and her mouth tightened into a thin line. When she said nothing, he went on, “This man of the tribe of the Enduring Crow disputes his right by tribal law. He says that you are betrothed to him. If this is so then you cannot be made slave. Speak truly—are you promised one to the other and one by the other?”

With the question Tia, although she could not see him fully from where she stood and there was no sound or movement from him, knew the full reading of Baradoc's mind. It came to her now as it came from him to Lerg and the others, not words, not direct sense, but wholly in a magic that by its force turned the body and the brain to paths of understanding.

She said firmly, “It has been a secret between us which I was to tell my uncle this night. Yes, we are betrothed.”

Machen turned to Cadrus and said, “She says he speaks the truth. They are promised to one another.”

Without emotion Cadrus asked, “Does she speak the truth, my machen? Tell me and swear it by your faith, by the gods of the sacred oak groves, by the white purity of the tree-suckling mistletoe, and may your soul shrivel and there be no afterlife for you if you swear me false.”

Machen without hesitation said, “I swear that she speaks the truth which is in her.” But to himself, because the mead was still warm in him and there was a respect in him for the girl's bold and quick-witted response, he had no fear of imperilling his soul and his life hereafter. There were truths that grew between people which they could not know themselves until some sharp moment of destiny brought them to light.

Cadrus, his face suddenly softening to a smile, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, Machen of the mead-breathing mouth, may the gods rack you if you lie because of her gorse-bloom hair and pretty forget-me-not eyes.”

“I speak not falsely. There is no truth that lies so deep that my ferret mind cannot unwarren it.”

Cadrus said, “Ask her if she knows what it is to marry a tribesman. She comes of high Roman blood. She knows only one way of life. This—” He waved his hand around the yard. “It is in me that she had deceived you, good Machen.”

Machen turned to Tia and said, “Cadrus doubts you. Aye, he even doubts the truth in me. Answer now his question.” He put to her the demand that Cadrus had made.

Tia, confidence growing in her, speaking as though some outside power and intelligence answered for her, replied, “I would marry him because I love him and he loves me. I would go to his people and their hard life because this country which my uncle and my father and all their kin before them helped to create now falls apart in misery.”

She stood watching Machen and Cadrus as they spoke together, no more than an odd word of their talk having any meaning for her, and she kept her eyes from Baradoc, who stood wooden-faced with Cadrus's sword still at his breast. Then as Machen turned to her to speak again, she saw Cadrus lower the sword and slide it into the leather-and-wood scabbard that hung from his belt.

Machen, now smiling openly at her, said, “Cadrus, whose heart can be softened by a woman's ready wit as mine by good mead, salutes you. He accepts my word that you speak with a frank and true tongue. Now do as I say and he wishes. Go to the treasure which we take with us”—he nodded toward the piled weapons and household loot which lay heaped on the top of the broad archway step—“and choose any one thing you value and bring it back here to me. Go now.”

Tia walked across to the piled loot and looked down at it. What of all she possessed was of great value to her? What of all the life she had until now was dear to her? Her family were all gone except Truvius and his days were few. These hillmen would go and the house would echo like a shell as she moved about it and the day would come when she would be alone in it. Baradoc would have gone to the west, and the lie she was living at the moment would have gained her only an empty freedom. Tears misted her eyes and almost without knowing it she bent and picked up the silver chalice and walked back to Machen. She gave it to him and he passed it to Cadrus.

Cadrus stepped up to her. He raised the chalice, touched his brow with it and then handed it to Tia. “Tell her,” he said to Machen.

Machen, the dying sun threading his beard with copper glints, looked Tia deep in the eyes and said, “There is a long skein of kinship between the Ocelos people of the mountain and the people of the Enduring Crow. Before the wedding kinsmen bring gifts. This is Cadrus's gift to you. If times were different we should stay and make feast after the marriage. Now we stay only to make the gift and to join the ceremony. I am a priest whose power and authority no tribe, not even in the far north or the west, not even over the sea with the Scotti or beyond the first of all the great walls with the Picts, can question. Take now the hand of this man and go both of you to your uncle, and stand before him for his blessing so that I may join the hand of husband to wife.” Then with a quick flicker of laughter in his eyes, he added, “This must be so because the good but still-doubting Cadrus to know truth to be true would see it sanctified in deed.”

Cadrus turned to Baradoc and, his eyes now friendly, said, “Go now—take your Roman filly, but think not that she will be easily schooled.”

Without a word Baradoc moved to Tia. And Tia, with a nervous shiver as though her body moved in the spell of a vivid dream, turned and took his hand. They went across the courtyard toward Truvius and the tribesmen with lowered bows and rested weapons watched them. Long evening shadows striped the paving and flower beds. The aviary birds took the last of the paling light on their enamelled wings, and the sound of the worker bees about the shrubs by the running springwater of the well made a heady droning. They walked, neither looking at the other, and behind them came the three dogs and from the end of the red-tiled roof Bran, his sable plumage lacquered with the sun's last glow, sat still and graven like a carved corbel. They stood before Truvius, who sat, his head sunk on his chest in sleep, his old vine staff resting across his knees. Tia reached out a hand and touched him. Slowly he raised his head and blinked the weight of sleep from them, then smiled and said, “What has happened? What is it, my Tia?”

Tia, her hand in Baradoc's said, “We come to you, my dear uncle Truvius, for your blessing.”

Tia woke just before first light. As she lay in the darkness she heard Cuna whine gently from the foot of her bed. She spoke quietly to him and he was silent. About her the ravaged house was still. She saw the eyes of Cadrus on her as she had faced him. There was good and bad in the man. Her body shook with a spasm of remembered fear as she thought of the life which would have been hers had she had to follow him as a slave. Baradoc had saved her from that, but she could not guess at what cost to himself, to his pride and his deep sense of tribal customs. True, Machen—who for some hidden reasons of his own had taken her part—had guided and shielded her as she stood before Cadrus, and then had carried out the simple pledging ceremony in the courtyard, joining her hand with Baradoc's after Truvius had given them his blessing. Dear Uncle Truvius … sometimes she wondered whether there were not, as well as his true lapses into senility, also times when he pretended them either to cloak his own helplessness or from a deep wisdom which compensated for the vigour and mastery of his old days. And Baradoc? By his quick thinking he had saved her, had stood by her while Machen joined them, his face giving no sign of any emotion he felt. Strange Baradoc … with his burning dream of the future. As he took her hand, he would have been already rejecting the picture of himself leading a Roman woman into the homecoming gathering of his people … their wild and noisy greetings turning to silence as they eyed her. Well, he need have no worry. He had saved her from slavery. She would not nor could not make any claim on him. When he got back to his people he could say that she had refused to follow him, refused to be a wife, and one of his own holy men could with a few words break the tie that bound them.

Cuna whined again, louder. In the silence that followed Tia heard two sounds, the brief protesting
cark
of Bran from somewhere in the courtyard and the sharp note of metal momentarily striking against stone. Cuna whined again, a low muted note, and swiftly there was an understanding clear and vividly all-embracing in Tia. Baradoc was going. Sword or fish spear had swung against the stone parapet of the courtyard well as Bran, from the ironwork canopy over it, his favourite nighttime roost, had hopped to his shoulder; and Cuna had whined because … poor Cuna, who had been pledged to her, sensed that the others moved away and longed to go with them.

Tia got out of bed, wrapped a cloak about her shoulders and went barefooted from her room into the open corridor. Part of the yard lay washed in moonlight as pale as the underside of a willow leaf and the chestnut's shadow was dark as a thundercloud over the archway that led to the river. Baradoc, Bran on his shoulder, the two dogs at his side, dressed now in his rough clothes, the old sword at his side, his travelling bundle slung over his shoulder from the head of the fish spear, stood in the tree shadow at the foot of the archway steps.

She walked down the corridor, past the aviary where the bright birds were now, as they roosted, dark, strange-shaped fruit on the shrubs and twisting creepers, and out onto the uncovered terrace by the archway. Baradoc heard her, and was still as she came up to him. They stood in the tree shadow and their faces were stiff masks as though they wore them like the theater players of some high drama.

Tia said quietly, “So you go?”

“Yes.” Baradoc's voice was thick as if some inner anger half strangled it.

“At night and without farewell?”

“Because of what has been and the way it has been, yes. I come from a different world. There is no place in it for you even if we truly loved one another.”

“You would be ashamed to bring a Roman before your people as a wife?”

Baradoc was long in answering. Then he said, “Be content, Lady Tia. What was done was to save you from Cadrus. Not to gain you for myself. When I reach my people the priest will set all aside.”

“You do not answer my question.”

“No, I would have no shame before them. Our paths no longer lie together. I take the ford across the river and the mining road west to the hills.”

“Then you shall take Cuna with you. I give him back.”

Baradoc hesitated briefly and then, with a small shrug, he said, “If you so wish.”

With an abruptness that surprised Tia, he turned sharply and moved through the archway, his bundle swaying on the spear, the dogs at his heels. When he was gone from her sight she went back into her room and lay in the darkness, seeing him moving through the night, the dogs around him, and Bran on his shoulder. What had been done had been done to save her from Cadrus. There was nothing more between them. He had his world and she had hers. …

When morning came, as she had done every day since she had arrived, she gathered flowers from the courtyard and went to Baradoc's room after the servant had cleaned it to refill the small earthenware jar on the table by the window. She knew that, until some new guest used the room, she would do so every day because this until then was Baradoc's room and much of him lingered there for her still.

As she arranged the flowers and stepped back to look at them she saw on the end of the table one of her uncle's flat ivory writing tablets, and she knew that Baradoc must have taken it from the reception room, where her uncle kept it at hand to make notes of household affairs. She picked it up and held it under the light from the window. The smooth wax bed was stylus-scored with writing in her own language. She read the words and at first there was a confusion in her mind through which they slipped, almost avoiding capture. Then she read them again. This time, although her eyes were slowly touched by tears, nothing of the message was lost to her.

I would have built for you a house with a roof of green rushes and a flower-pied floor. A thousand seabirds would have greeted the golden girl with a brow like a lily, the young queen who rode the perilous paths without harm or hurt.

And as she stood there Truvius, leaning on his staff, came into the room. She turned and ran to him and he put an arm around her and held her as she wept.