The Lantern Bearers (book III) (12 page)

All evening, too, he had been looking for a man he had seen only once before, the man who had given Flavia their father’s ring for a bride gift. But he remembered him as something horrible, something not properly human; maybe, after all, he only looked like a big, blond man—and there were so many big, blond men in Hengest’s Mead Hall, he could not be sure.

He still felt numb, and the numbness left him free to look about him, and watch with a kind of remote, hill-top clearness the scene before him: the long hall swimming in heat and smoky torch-light, the women moving to and fro with the great mead jars, the hounds among the rushes, the harper by the fire, the warriors sprawling on the benches with their drink-horns slopping. He saw Hengest’s hearth companions, and the darker, slighter, redder men who were of Vortigern’s company; Saxon and Briton mingling on the same bench, leaning on each other’s shoulders, drinking from the same horn; a joyful scene that sickened him. He knew who most of the great ones were. That big, broad-faced, broad-bellied warrior was Horsa, Hengest’s brother. That other with a white, proud face, carrying even in Hengest’s Mead Hall a hooded falcon on his wrist, was Vortimer, the King’s eldest son. But close behind him lounged a man in a tunic of chequered silk, who caught at Aquila’s interest, and to whom he could give no name. He muttered to the little, wizened thrall beside him, ‘Who is the man behind Vortimer—the man with a face like a dark dagger-thrust?’ And the thrall said, ‘A kinsman of the Red Fox, Guitolinus I think they call him. If you want no more of that beer, give it to me.’

Aquila passed the horn pot that he had been holding unconsciously on his knee, and his gaze went on from Guitolinus, whose name meant nothing to him now, though he would know it well enough one day, and returned, as it had done again and again that evening, to the two men sitting side by side in the carved High Seat, midway up the hall.

Hengest was a huge man, huge in more than body, so that to Aquila, remembering the scene afterwards, it seemed that his head was upreared almost to touch the firelit under-belly of the house-beam way up where the firelight ended and the smoky darkness began. A greying-golden giant, whose eyes, turned just now on the harper beside the fire, were the shifting grey-green of a wintry sea. He leaned forward, wide kneed, one hand curved about his drink-horn, while with the other he played with the string of raw yellow amber about his neck—an oddly womanish trick that somehow made him seem yet more terrible than he would otherwise have done.

Beside him, and dwarfed by him in every way, sat Vortigern the Red Fox, King of Britain; a long, lean, red-haired man with a thin beard, with rings on every finger of his narrow hands, rings set with jewels as brilliant as the dark eyes that flickered about the hall unceasingly as he talked with the giant beside him, never resting more than a few moments in one place or on one person. Aquila, looking at him with that coldly detached interest that had no feeling in it, wondered what he would feel if he knew that the son of a man he had murdered—for the murder had been Vortigern’s, no matter who struck the blow—was watching him from the beggars’ bench by the door, watching the place where the life beat in his long throat and thinking how simply it could be let out, with a little dagger, or even with one’s naked hands. He was probably a good deal stronger than Vortigern.

What were they talking of, he wondered, those two who were breaking Britain between them? What were they talking of under the song of the harper and the rising and falling surge of voices? What was the real meaning behind this great feast? Whatever it was, it could make little difference now, he supposed. The cause of Rome in Britain and the old Royal House was dead; it had been dead nearly three years; but all the same, he would like to know what they were talking of; what was passing in Vortigern’s mind. He was more interested in Vortigern’s mind than Hengest’s, because Hengest was only the enemy without the gates, but Vortigern was the traitor within them.

Vortigern was also wondering, a little, what lay behind this great feast; but not so much as he had done at first, because of the wine. It was difficult to get imported wines inland in Britain now, but Hengest’s wine was good, though they drank it like barbarians from ox horns. Probably it was the fruits of piracy, but still … He drained the gold-mounted ox horn so quickly that a little of the thick red wine trickled into his beard, and set it down empty on his knee. As he did so, the girl who had been sitting on the steps of the High Seat rose to pour for him again. A tall, red-gold girl, fiercely proud in her crimson kirtle and the fillet of twisted goldsmith’s work that bound her hair. The wine that was as crimson as her gown splashed into the ox horn, and the bubbles rose thickly. Vortigern looked up at her, seeing her through a faint haze; everything was growing a little hazy, but it was a golden haze, golden as the girl’s hair. One heavy braid swung forward and brushed his hand, and as she straightened from her task, she smiled at him, only with her eyes that were the same shifting grey-green as Hengest her father’s. Mermaid’s eyes, he thought, and was pleased because the thought was pretty—worthy of a poet.

The girl poured for her father also, and then seated herself once again on the step, setting the tall wine-jar down beside her, and Hengest raised his horn again.

‘Waes-hael! I drink to you, my King. May the sword of power never fall from your hand.’

‘I drink to you,’ Vortigern returned, and laughed a little. ‘Truly I think that it will not—now that the menace of Rome and of young Ambrosius is past.’ He did not usually like speaking of such things openly, but the wine seemed to have loosened his tongue.

Hengest laughed also, looking about him with an air of jovial and slightly drunken contentment. ‘For me, and for the men that follow me, that menace of Rome and Ambrosius has been a fine thing, and that I’ll not deny. This is a better and a fatter land than our North-folks’ territory; and here we are your household men. And yet—’

He let the end of the sentence drift into silence; but Vortigern pounced on it. ‘And yet? Man, what else would you have of me?’

‘Na, na,’ Hengest said hurriedly, and yet with seeming unwillingness, staring into his wine. ‘It was but that at times my mind misgives me as to the safety of the King’s northern borders. The King set me and my war bands to guard the door of the north against the Picts, and we flung back the Picts, and the Pict menace passed a little; and the King called us south to stand in the southern gateway, against another menace. But sometimes now, I think that if the Painted People should one day swarm in from the north again, there would be but a thin defence and no strong leader to withstand them.’

Vortigern was alarmed and wary. ‘What, then, is the answer? If I send you and even half of your war bands north again, the other danger may wake once more. While young Ambrosius lives among the mountains, he will always be a possible rallying point.’

‘Na, na.’ Hengest made a gesture as though to brush something away. ‘The thought was but a thought—such as men think in the dark of the night, when the evening meat sits heavy under the breast-bone …Yet it might be no bad thing to settle some other leader there with his war bands around him; men bound by loyalty, even as we are, to Vortigern the King whose mead they drink and whose golden ornaments they wear.’

Vortigern looked at him a moment, his nostrils widening, as though just for that moment he caught the smell of a trap. Then he said, ‘So? And if this leader were for you to choose, who would he be?’

Hengest stared, as though he had never given the matter a thought, until that moment. ‘Nay then, let me think. I should choose—whom should I choose? There is Octa, my son, of course. He has his own war bands, his own victories, across the Great Sea; but if the thing were made worth his while … ’ He broke off with a wide, impatient gesture. ‘Ah, but no matter. Forget what I said, Vortigern, my hearth lord. My tongue ran away with me—it is the fault of wine. And talking of wine—’ He frowned round at the girl in the crimson kirtle. ‘Hey! my maiden, you neglect your duty! Do you not see that the King’s horn is not full? Pour again for your guest and your father.’

She looked up quickly, then rose, taking up the wine-jar, and stooped again to pour for the red Celtic King. ‘It is not my duty that I neglect, but my heart’s pleasure. I crave forgiveness that I did not see my lord’s horn was empty.’

‘It is good to have the horn empty, so that it be filled by so fair a maiden,’ Vortigern said courteously.

She raised her eyes to his in a flash, then lowered them again before he could see what lay under her golden lashes. ‘My lord the King is most kind to his handmaiden.’

Hengest swung round to his gleeman sitting beside the central fire and strumming idly with the air of a man who knows that he is not being listened to. ‘Sing up, man, strike that harp and give us “The Battle of Goths and Huns”! What is a feast without harping?’

The man grinned, and flung up his head like a hound before it bays, then broke into the swift, fierce word-music of the old lay, beating out the leaping rhythm on the twanging strings of the little harp. The bright harp-notes flew up like the sparks from the fire into the rolling smoke-cloud overhead, and the man’s full, strong voice, half singing, half declaiming, filled the hall so that little by little men who had been arguing, talking, laughing, bragging against each other, grew silent to listen. Vortigern listened, leaning back in the High Seat, one hand playing with the horn on his knee, the other, elbow propped on the carved side-piece, cupping his bearded chin, his restless, brilliant gaze moving as always here and there about the smoky, crowded, firelit hall.

When the last flight of notes had thrummed away into the silence, and the ragged burst of approval that followed it had fallen quiet, Hengest turned to his guest and asked, ‘How does my lord the King like our Saxon harping?’

‘It is well enough,’ Vortigern said, ‘but to my ear harsh, and I can find no tune in it.’ He smiled as though to take the sting out of his words; he seldom smiled, and when he did it was a pleasant smile save that it showed too many pointed teeth in the thin red of his beard. ‘To every people its own music. I am of another people, and to me the music of my own mountains is sweetest.’

Hengest smote his knee with an open palm. ‘The King speaks truly; to every man the songs of his own people! Well, let the King but speak, and it may be that even here he will find singing to bring him the very scent of his own mountains.’

‘So? Have you then some Cymric harper among your household thralls?’

‘Nay, not a Cymric harper, but one skilled in the harp, none the less.’ Hengest made a small gesture towards the girl in the crimson kirtle, still standing beside the High Seat. ‘For see now, so deeply does Rowena my daughter long to please you that she has been learning a song of your people, from such a harper as you speak of, hoping that you will let her sing it to you. Say then, shall she sing? If she may give you any pleasure, you will make her very happy.’

Vortigern looked again into the mermaid eyes of Hengest’s daughter. ‘To look at her, singing or silent, is enough to make any man happy,’ he said. ‘But let her sing.’

T
HEIR
earlier talk, under the cheerful tumult and the gleeman’s thrumming, had been private to themselves, but this, spoken into the silence following the close of the ancient Saga, was spoken as it were before every soul in the great hall, and as Rowena, carrying her head as though the goldwork fillet were a crown, moved across to the fire and took the slim, black harp from her father’s gleeman, every eye in the place was upon her, even to the frowning gaze of the man on the beggars’ bench before the door, who sat with the hood of his cloak pulled so far forward that no man might see his face.

For a great lady to take a gleeman’s harp and sing before all her father’s crowded Mead Hall was a shameless thing, more shameless even than it was for a Saxon woman to appear with her hair uncovered; and yet Aquila, who had known that she was shameless in wearing no head-rail, forgot that she was shameless in this also. He only knew that she was beautiful, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, and that he hated her.

She sank down beside the hearth, settling the harp on her knee and into the hollow of her shoulder, and remained a few moments gazing into the fire that seemed to leap up to meet her as though there were a kinship between her and the flames, fingering almost silently the horsehair strings. She looked far remote, as though she had no need to be aware of the mead-flushed faces turned towards her, for she and they were in different worlds. She began to pluck the strings more strongly, conjuring up a strange music of long silences and single, singing notes that sprang up, each separate and perfect as some infinitely small silver bird that leapt up like a lark towards the smoky rafters, and hovered a little, and was gone. Gradually the notes spun closer together until the bright shadow of a melody began to emerge; and then suddenly, still looking into the fire, she was singing.

Aquila, watching her, had expected her voice to be hard and high and clear. It was clear, but with a clearness of depth, not height, a dark voice.

‘The apple tree blooms white in the Land of the Living:

The shadow of the blossom falls across my door stone:

A bird flutters in the branches, singing.

Green is my bird as the green earth of men, but his song is forgetfulness.

  
  
Listen, and forget the earth.’

British born and bred as he was, Aquila could speak the native tongue as easily as the Latin: and though this was a dialect unfamiliar to him, he caught the gist of the song, and his pulses stirred with a strange magic. And by the light of that magic, it seemed to him that the great firelit hall, the warriors leaning forward on their benches, even the two men in the High Seat were no more than a background for the woman harping beside the fire.