The Lantern Bearers (book III) (14 page)

He thought about it coolly and carefully. He would go on westward until he was sure that he was clear of the Saxon’s reach, and get rid of the thrall-ring on his neck, and then turn back towards the barbarians again; because most likely, he thought, the little bird-catcher would be found clinging to the hem of the Sea Wolves’ garments. At any rate, a Saxon camp was the most likely place to get word of him. And word of him he would get, if it took twenty—thirty years.

Had he but known it, it was to take just three days.

A
FTER
a while he must have slept, for suddenly it was long past noon, and the sunlight fell slanting through the branches to dapple the brown of last year’s leaves. He got up, ate a little more of the food, and then, wrapping it up again, set off westward.

There were few roads through the forest, but next day he struck one of the native trackways that had been old before the Legions’ roads were thought of; and since it led in roughly the right direction, he turned into it for the sake of easier travelling and followed it along. By the evening of the next day it had led him into higher and more rolling country, an upland world of long, forest ridges, where the ground was sandy underfoot, and the trees grew taller and more cleanly than the damp oak scrub that he had left behind. The fine spell had broken and soft, chill rain was blowing down the wind. Aquila was wet through and blind weary, for he had scarcely rested since he set out westward; if he rested, the little bird-catcher might draw farther away from him; so he kept on—and on …

It was already dusk among the trees when, as he came trudging up the long slope of yet another ridge, he caught a waft of wood-smoke on the sodden, forest-scented air, and as he checked, sniffing, the warm saffron flicker of firelight reached him through the hazel and wayfaring trees that fringed the track. He must go to men some time and be rid of the betraying thrall-ring about his neck. Also he must have food. He had finished the last scraps in his bundle at dawn, and the emptiness in his belly drew him towards the fire. Almost without knowing that he did so, he turned to a gap in the wayside scrub, beyond which the faint gleam of fire-light beckoned.

Parting the hazel boughs, he found himself on the edge of a little clearing—in daylight it must be full in sight from the track—and saw before him a plot of what looked in the dusk like bean-rows and kale; and in the midst of it a knot of daub-and-wattle huts squatting under deep heather thatch, a wisp of hearth-smoke rising against the sodden yellow of the afterglow, and the fire-light shining softly through an open door. He hesitated a moment on the edge of the clearing, wondering whether he was yet clear of all shadow of the Saxon kind. Then he saw, hanging from a birch sapling close beside the huts, outlined against the fading daffodil light of the west, something that could only be a small bell. There would be freedom from the Saxons here, where a Christian bell was hanging.

He walked forward between two dripping bean-rows to the firelit doorway. The fine rain hushed across the clearing behind him, but within the hut a fire burned on a small raised hearth, with something boiling in a pot over it, and the warm, fluttering light flushed the little bothy golden as the heart of a yellow rose. There was a stool beside the fire, and a bench with a pillow of plaited straw on it pushed back under the slope of the roof. Otherwise the place was quite bare, save that on the gable wall hung a small cross of rowan wood with the bark still on it, and before it a man in a rough brown tunic stood with arms upraised in the attitude of prayer. Aquila wanted to say, ‘It isn’t any good, you know: God only laughs at you.’ But the rags of a gentle upbringing made him prop himself against the door post and wait, rather than interrupt the holy man until the prayer was done.

He did not mean to make any sound, but it seemed that the man before the rowan-wood cross had sensed that there was somebody behind him. Aquila saw him stiffen, but he made no move until he came to the end of his prayer. Then he turned and looked at Aquila drooping in the doorway. He was a small, thick-set man, with immensely powerful shoulders, and the quietest face that Aquila had ever seen.

‘God’s greeting to you, friend,’ he said, as though Aquila were an expected guest.

‘And to you,’ Aquila returned.

‘Is it food and shelter that you seek? You are most welcome.’

Still leaning against the door post, Aquila thrust back the shoulder folds of his wet cloak. ‘Those too, if you will give them to me: but firstly, to be rid of
this
about my neck.’

The man nodded, still without surprise. ‘So, a Saxon thrall-ring.’

‘I have a file. It isn’t possible to use the thing on oneself.’

‘That, I should imagine.’ The man had come to Aquila in the doorway, drawing him in, a steadying hand under his elbow as though he knew better even than Aquila himself how far spent he was. ‘Eat first, I think, and we will see to the next thing later.’

Aquila found himself sitting on the stool beside the fire, his wet cloak fallen at his feet, while the man in the brown tunic was ladling a mess of beans from the pot over the fire into a bowl of finely turned birch wood. And in a little he was supping up the scalding hot beans, with a wedge of brown barley bread dripping with honey-in-the-comb waiting on the floor beside him, while his host sat on the bench and watched him with an air of quiet pleasure, asking no questions. It was not until he was more than half-way through that he realized that the bean pot was now empty, and stopped with the horn spoon poised on its way to his mouth.

‘I am eating your supper.’

The older man smiled. ‘I promise you that in eating my supper you are doing me a kindness. I strive after a disciplined life, superior to the pull of the flesh. But alas! the flesh pulls very hard. It is good for my soul that my body should go hungry, but I fear that I find it hard to carry out that particular discipline unless I can prevail on some fellow man to aid me as you are doing now.’ His quiet gaze went to the bowl which Aquila had firmly set down on the corner of the hearth, and returned to his face. ‘Let you finish the good work, friend, so that I may sleep with a glad heart this night.’

After a long moment’s hesitation, Aquila took up the bowl again.

When the beans were gone, and the bread and honey also, the man in the brown tunic rose, saying, ‘I think that you have walked a long way, and you are far spent. Let you sleep now. Tomorrow will be time enough to be rid of that thrall-ring.’

But Aquila shook his head stubbornly. ‘I would not lie down another night with the Sea Wolves’ iron about my neck.’

The other looked at him searchingly. Then he said, ‘So be it then. Give me the file, and kneel here against my knees.’

It must have been close on midnight when the file broke through the last filament of metal with a jerk that seemed to jar Aquila’s head on his shoulders. The monk wrenched the thing open, and with a satisfied sigh laid it on the floor, and Aquila, lurching to his feet, stiff with long kneeling, drunk and dazed with weariness, stood swaying with a hand on the king-post to steady himself, and looked down at the small man who had laboured so many hours for his sake. The monk looked as weary as himself, and there was a red tear in his thumb, where the file had gashed it as it broke through. Surely his host might sleep with a doubly glad heart tonight.

The other man had risen also, and was looking at his neck, touching it gently here and there with square-tipped fingers. ‘Aye, the iron has galled you badly, here—and here. I was expecting that. Bide while I salve it; then sleep, my friend.’

And in a little, Aquila did sleep, lying on a bed of clean fern in a tiny wattle bothy behind the main one, that made him think of a bee-skep.

When he woke, the hut was full of sunlight that slanted in through the doorway and quivered like golden water on the lime-washed wall beside him. He realized that he must have slept through the night and most of next day; a sleep that was a black gulf behind him with nothing stirring in it, not even the old hideous dream that had woken him so often with Flavia’s screams in his ears. But he was never to have that dream again.

He lay still a few moments, blinking at the living golden water on the wall, while little by little the thoughts and events from across the black gulf fell into place around him. Then he sat up, slowly, and remained for a while squatting in the piled fern, feeling the galled places on his neck with a kind of dull relief because the pressure of the thrall-ring was gone. But it was time to be away, down towards the coast and the Saxon kind again, while there was still some daylight left for travelling, and before the man in the brown tunic could ask questions. Last night the man had been merciful and asked no questions, but now that his guest had eaten and slept, surely he would ask them; and everything in Aquila flinched from the prospect, with a physical flinching, as though from a probing finger too near a raw place.

He sprang up and went to the doorway of the cell. Yesterday’s rain was gone, and the still-wet forest was full of a crystal green light. In the cleared plot before the huts, the man in the brown tunic was peacefully hoeing between his bean-rows. Aquila pushed off from the door post and walked towards him. The beans were just coming into flower, black and white among the grey-green leaves, and the scent of them was like honey and almonds, strong and sweet after the rain. The man in the brown tunic straightened up as he drew near, and stood leaning on his hoe.

‘You have slept long,’ he said, ‘and that is well.’

‘I have slept over-long!’ Aquila returned. ‘I thank you for your food and shelter, and for ridding me of this,’ he touched the sore where the thrall-ring had pressed on his neck. ‘And now I must be away.’

‘Where to?’

Aquila hesitated. What if he said, ‘Back towards the Saxon kind, to look for the man who betrayed my father’? Doubtless this little monk with the quiet face would try to make him leave his search, say to him that vengeance was for God and not for man. ‘I am not sure,’ he said. And that was true, too, in its way.

The man looked at him kindly. ‘To journey, and know not where, makes uncertain travelling. Stay until you
are
sure. Stay at least for tonight, and let me salve your neck again; it is not so often that God sends me a guest.’ And then, as Aquila made a swift gesture of refusal, he shifted a little to lean more comfortably on his hoe, his gaze resting on Aquila. ‘I will ask you no question, save by what name I am to call you.’

Aquila looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Aquila,’ he said at last, and it was as though he lowered a weapon.

‘So. And I am Ninnias—Brother Ninnias, of the little Community that used to be in the woods over yonder. And you will stay here at least for tonight, and for that my heart rejoices.’

Aquila had not said that he would stay; but he knew that he would. He had known it when he told Brother Ninnias his name. There was something about this place, a feeling of sanctuary that stilled a little his driving restlessness. He would take one night from following his vengeance, and then no more until he found the bird-catcher and the debt for his father’s death was paid. But he would take this one night. He remained silent, staring along the bean-rows.

The little amber bees were droning among the bean-blossom, and at that moment one fell out of a flower, the pollen baskets on her legs full and yellow. She landed sizzling on her back on a flat leaf, righted herself, and made for another flower. But Brother Ninnias stooped and pointed a reproving finger at her. ‘That is enough for one journey, little sister. Go back to the hive.’

And the bee, seeming to change her mind, abandoned the bean-flower and zoomed off towards the main hut. Aquila, following her line of flight with his eyes, saw that against the wall stood three heather-thatched bee-skeps. ‘It is as though she knew what you said to her,’ he said.

Brother Ninnias smiled. ‘They are a strange people, the bees. I was bee master to our little Community before the Sea Wolves came. It is so, that I am alive.’

Aquila glanced at him questioningly, but the bargain to ask no questions must work both ways.

Yet Brother Ninnias answered the question as though he had asked it, none the less; and most willingly. ‘I was away in the forest after a swarm of bees that had flown away, when the Sea Wolves came. I was angry with myself for having lost them; but since—I have thought that maybe God meant that one of us should be saved. The bees smelled my anger; bees will always smell anger; and so it was a long time before they let me find them. And when at last I found them—just here, hanging on a branch of the oak tree yonder—and came back to the Community with them in my basket, the Saxons had passed that way, and it was black and desolate, even to the bee-skeps along the wall. Only I found the Abbot’s bell, quite unharmed, lying in the ruins.’ He broke off to pick a bee gently off his rough brown sleeve. ‘It was a common enough happening then. At least we do not see so many burned homes in these years; not in the three years that Hengest and his war bands have been squatting in Tanatus, eating from the Red Fox’s hand.’

‘It does not suit Hengest to have others despoil the land before he swarms out over it himself,’ Aquila said harshly.

‘Aye, I have often thought that myself. And when I think it, I pray; and when I have prayed, I go and plant something else in my physic garden that it may perhaps flower, and I may perhaps make a salve or a draught from it and heal a child’s graze or an old man’s cough before the Saxons come.’

There was a silence, full of the peaceful droning of the bees, and then Aquila said, returning to the earlier subject, ‘What did you do after you came back to the Community?’

‘I said the last prayers for the Abbot and my brethren, and then I took an axe that I found, and the Abbot’s bell, and my swarm of bees in their basket, and came away, back to this place where I had found my lost swarm. And here I built a skep for the bees, and hung the Abbot’s bell from that birch tree. And then I gave thanks to God, before I set to building my first hut.’