The Crimson Chalice (6 page)

Her left groin began to itch and she scratched at it, Aquae Sulis going from her mind. Fleas or lice for certain, no rough scrubbing with cold water killed them. Or maybe they had come from one of the dogs. Aesc was always scratching. Well, it was no good complaining. Baradoc would probably tell her that a flea had every right to take its living where it could.

Baradoc halted Sunset suddenly. Tia, engrossed with her thoughts, walked straight into the pony's hindquarters and was brought to the present by the sharp switch of its long tail against her face.

Without thought, she shouted, “Pluto take you! Why don't you give warning when you're going to stop?”

Baradoc turned, eyed her and said mildly, “Why don't you keep your eyes on where you're going instead of day-dreaming along? And shout a little louder, then if there's anyone around they'll get a real chance of knowing we're here.”

Cross with herself for her show of anger, Tia mumbled,

“I'm sorry.”

“That's all right.” He chuckled. “Nobody likes walking into the backside of a horse.” He patted Sunset's neck. “Luckily, she's good-tempered or she might have kicked out.”

He began to rearrange the bundles on Sunset's back into a saddle pack.

Tia asked, “What now?”

“It's getting dark. It's better that you ride. Up you get.” He bent down and made a cup of his clasped hands for her to mount. Tia climbed onto Sunset and made herself as comfortable as she could with her legs dangling behind the bundles, her hands taking a loose loop of the halter. She looked down at Baradoc through the darkening gloom and said, “There was a print on the path some while ago. Does that mean someone is close ahead of us?”

“No,” said Baradoc. “The print was not made today.”

“I had a feeling the star pattern meant something to you.”

“You're right. You have quick eyes. But for now, stop trying to read my thoughts and hang on tight.” He moved forward and Sunset followed with Tia swaying on her back.

The next few hours were mild agony for Tia. Baradoc set a good pace. The going was rough, up and down the forest and valley tracks, with the occasional switch of a loose branch flicking across Tia's face so that she had to pull the cloak close about her head to protect herself. Within a mile the inner skin of her thighs was chafed, all feeling had been bumped out of her bottom, and her arms ached from hanging on to the halter.

When the moon rose, long past midnight, they stopped in a small clearing where years before the trees had been chopped down and the ruins of a woodman's hazel-latticed shelter still stood.

Baradoc helped Tia down from the pony. As she stood bowlegged he smiled at her and said, “The stiffness will soon go. In a couple of days you will think nothing of it.”

He took the cold deer tack from one of the bundles and the last of their cheese and wheat cake, and they ate, lying on the ground with their backs propped against a moss-covered fallen tree trunk.

He said, “There's no water nearby. But we'll drink at the next stream we cross.” Then, as though she had asked him a direct question, he went on, “The star pattern comes from the sandal of one of the two who strung me up to the oak. He is of my tribe—my cousin—and journeys westward as I do. The other was a wanderer who had joined us. They could have killed me but that, because of the laws of our tribe, is forbidden to the wearer of the star sandals. So they strung me up to let death come without any dagger thrust.”

“Why is it forbidden?”

“Because I am the seventh son of my father. The last son, too. None of my brothers is living. The gods will give no gifts, nor long years to any who kills, except in fair fight, the seventh son of a family. But to leave me to die was different.” He grinned. “It's a nice point of morality. But when I reach home there will be a fair fight and a killing of my cousin—thanks to you.”

“So, I save one life in order that another shall die.”

“The gods have thrown their dice. They fell that way. The two ahead will soon take a different path from ours. I'll take you to your uncle and then my debt will be paid.” He smiled and rubbed his hand over his beard-fuzzed chin. “Maybe your uncle will give me the use of his bathhouse and the loan of a razor to smooth my chin. With my people no man may grow a beard or long moustache until he is married.”

“Is there a chosen girl in your tribe that you will marry?”

“No. My cousin and I were only twelve and gathering shellfish along the shore when we were taken by sea raiders and sold together as house slaves, first to a Phoenician trader and then to my master in Londinium, where he then lived.”

“Your people must think you are dead.”

“No—the word was passed many years ago. Nor did either of us miss our freedom, for we are much alike in many ways and knew there was much to learn and a sheaf of years ahead.”

“But this cousin—”

“No more of him.” Baradoc sat forward and tossed a piece of deer meat to Aesc.

Tia, not wishing to break their talk, said, “What are the girls of your tribe like?”

Baradoc laughed. “Like all other girls. Some fat, some thin. Some beautiful, some plain. At your age many of them are long married and having children. Sometimes I see in my mind's eye the girl I will marry.”

“Tell me.”

“How can I since the picture changes so often? Sometimes her hair is a dark flame, richer than the stag's coat when he stands in the full light of the morning sun. Sometimes it is blacker than the raven's wing spread against the year's first snows. And sometimes her skin is warm and polished, brown like a harvested hazelnut, or creamier than the finest goat's milk and blushing with the glow of a bright ember.”

Tia teased him. “Spare me. I've had enough poetry.”

“Aie
, that is true. But there's always room in each day for a little—otherwise living is as flat as stale wine. We're not barbarians, my people. We have our songs and our stories, and there's not one of our kind who doesn't learn them from first talk and pass them on. So, even with death, they are not lost. Their magic cannot die so long as men have ears.” He stood up, sucked noisily at a fragment of deer meat lodged in his teeth, and said, “It's time to move.”

He turned away from her abruptly and went across to the woodman's shelter. He came back after a while, carrying an armful of bracken which he had found there, the remains of a rough bed. He bound it into a soft roll within their piece of fish netting and then wrapped it in her mantle to make a large, soft saddle. Without a word he helped her to mount.

Riding after him, Tia was touched by his rough, silent courtesy. Then, thinking of his dream of some girl waiting for him, she was amused that he had given no place in his thoughts for a fair-haired girl like herself. Maybe there were no fair-haired women in his tribe, but she doubted it. Amongst the Britons of the south and east there were plenty. Strange Baradoc, rough and kind, withdrawn one moment, then easy with talk the next.

Early the next morning they made camp beyond the fringe of the forest in a small willow grove on the edge of a clear stream that flowed down from the distant line of the almost treeless uplands which rose away to the north. They ate and then slept while the dogs kept watch. When they woke, Baradoc went down to one of the streams pools and with willow stakes fixed their piece of net across the narrow gullet through which the stream fed into the pool. Then he called to her to help him, telling her to take off her long hose and sandals, and roll up the skirt of her tunic and pin it tight with her mother's brooch. Tia noticed that although he was concerned she should keep her leg hose dry, he seemed heedless of wet or discomfort. He just walked into the water wearing his leather short trews and his shirt. Rain or shine, wet or dry seemed to make no difference to him. A few paces abreast they waded up the pool, beating the surface with branches. The trout and grayling in it went upstream to escape through the gullet and some of them were entangled in the stretched netting. Baradoc pulled them out, killed them and tossed them onto the bank.

When they waded out together, Baradoc picked up the fish, strung them on a slip of branch through their gills and handed them to her, saying, “If you have not done it before, you cut their heads off, slit them down the belly and shake or scrape their innards out. The ones with the big fin on the back are grayling and smell of dried thyme. The others are trout. We'll eat them before we move off.”

“Women's work, my lord.” Tia said it with a straight face.

Baradoc nodded, unsmiling. As Tia took her dagger and started work, Baradoc went to one of their bundles and ferreted about in the pile of old rags he had found in the fishermen's hut. He sat down and laid out a long narrow piece of cloth before him.

Tia, her hands slimy and scale-covered as she gutted the fish, asked. “What are you doing?”

“Making a throwing sling. There are duck farther downstream which I can kill and Aesc will retrieve. The fish will serve us for today. The duck we can cook and carry for tomorrow.”

He rolled the long ends of the cloth into thin grips, binding them with pieces of catgut. The center of the cloth he thickened into a pad by sewing one on top of another three squares of extra cloth. Then he gathered a handful of smooth small stones from the stream verge.

Coming back to Tia, he dropped a stone into the padded loop of the sling and said. “Watch. The top of the far stake I set up for the net.” He swung the sling gently in a circle at his side to get the feel of the weight of the stone. “It was with such as this that the first of my coutrymen over four hundred years ago gave a welcome to the Great Caesar.” He whipped the sling around and let the stone fly.

“You missed,” said Tia.

“I expected to. With a new sling one must get the feel and the balance.”

He slung another stone and this time only narrowly missed the stake. With the third stone he hit it a hand's span from the top.

Tia clapped her slippery, fish-slimed hands and said mockingly, “O mighty Baradoc!”

Baradoc shook his head at her, smiling. “You should not be too pleased. When I come back you will have a duck to pluck and gut.” He tucked the sling into his belt, thrust a handful of stones into the front of his shirt and walked off downstream with Aesc following him. Sunset, tethered by a long headrope to a willow, cropped at the young grass. Bran flew down from a willow perch and took one of the trout heads. Cuna lay sleeping in the sun, and Lerg lay on the ground, head raised, watching the direction in which Baradoc had disappeared.

When Tia had finished the fish, she covered them with leaves against the sun and then washed her hands in the stream. She took off her tunic and spread it in the sun to dry. Wrapping their woollen blanket about her, she wandered around the willow grove collecting dried wood for the fire and gathered a small pile of dried leaves and grasses so that Baradoc should have tinder for starting a flame.

Half a mile downstream Baradoc crouched, hidden in the rushes with Aesc lying at his side. The river was broader here and ran in two channels around a long island fringed with mace reeds and low alder growths. Coming downstream, he had put up several pairs of mallard and teal, but with no chance of hitting them. This was the courting and mating season and he guessed that the island would be a favourite nesting place, for the weed-thick shallows around it made good feeding grounds. He and Aesc crouched, still and watchful, hidden in the rushes. A dog otter came upstream, rolled like a porpoise, sun and water silvering its flanks, and dived to appear in a few moments with a large trout in its forepaws. It lay on its back and let the current drift it downstream while it ate the trout. Beyond the river and the far grassland, the forest trees rose in long swelling waves of changing greens. Distantly, above the farther tree crests, Baradoc marked a thin plume of blue smoke coming from some solitary fire. He guessed it to be some hours' march away. Now and again the smoke thickened to a dark, breeze-ragged plume. Whoever, tended it, he thought, was well armed or foolish. These days men and women held close to their homesteads or villages for safety. The forest held only the spoiled or the spoilers. The dark face of Corvo came back to him and with it a quick stir of concern about Tia. He decided that if no flighting duck came in soon, or mating pair appeared from the island reeds, he would go back. Not even Lerg could protect her against some odds.

He smiled to himself as he thought of the way she teased him now about “women's work” and the flashes of angry spirit she showed from time to time. He guessed that she must long for the security and comfort of her uncle's villa at Aquae Sulis. That was her kind of life. She had lived sheltered and lived soft, her family wealthy and with servants to come to her call for all her needs. In his time with his master he had known many such families and households. These Romans, most of whom had never seen Rome, lived in the dying radiance of the empire's glory and called this country their own. And so many of them, even now, did not understand that it had never truly been their country and that even now the strong hand of another race was closing on it. Back in the east, now far beyond Tanatus and Rutupiae, spreading north and south of the Tamesis River, encircling Londinium, their eyes looking ever westward to the rich lands of the Atrebates, to Pontes, Calleva and Venta, were the Saxons, driving forward slowly, making serfs of common folk and culls of British chiefs, Romano-British merchants and town dignitaries, all those of power and wealth who had lived soft too long. Only among the men of the north and west on mountain and moor and wild clifftop and deep riverfronts the dream still lived of dominion over all the land. It lived with him, too, like a slow peatburn waiting only the right wind and the right season to start the hidden embers to flame.

Two heavy splashes brought his attention back to the river. A pair of mallards, duck and drake, had planed in, furrowing the water as they landed. Baradoc watched as the drake began to display to the duck. Beside him he felt the faint tremble of Aesc's body as the dog watched, too. Under the sun the drake shone as though it were a jewelled bird, yellow bill and glossy green head flashing as it bobbed and dipped, the great white and purple wing patches opening like a fan as it preened its wings and rattled its quills while the duck, head lowered, slid away pretending lack of interest, but never going far. Baradoc fingered the set of his stone in the sling and slowly stretched the length of cloth even, held in both hands at his side ready to throw when he rose.
Aie!
it was a pity to kill when the day was so bright and the birds moved to the dance of love. But an empty belly drove all thought of beauty and poetry from the mind. Taking a deep breath and holding it, Baradoc tensed himself for the move which would bring him upright with the long sling already circling to take the drake, his left hand already holding the second stone for the duck.