The Lantern Bearers (book III) (20 page)

‘God’s Grace upon this house. The dust of the journey is forgotten.’ He made the customary reply with cold courtesy. ‘Is Cradoc the Chieftain here, that I may speak with him?’

‘Cradoc my father is out hunting, and the other men with him,’ the girl said. ‘Let you come in, and be most welcome, while you wait for his return.’

‘I will come in,’ Aquila said. ‘But since my business cannot wait for Cradoc’s hunting, it seems that I must tell it to you. Ambrosius, Prince of Britain, is on the road here, and sent me ahead with word that he will be on your threshold by dusk, claiming lord’s shelter for the night, for himself and eight of his Companions.’

The girl’s eyes widened. ‘Ambrosius? Tonight? Oh, then we must kill the pig.’

‘Must you so? You have my sympathy,’ Aquila said, with a flicker of contemptuous laughter.

The girl blushed scarlet, and he saw her gathering her dignity about her as though it had been an embroidered mantle. ‘We must indeed. But that need not concern you. Let you come in now, and I will bring you warm water, for you are dusty and must be weary besides.’

‘What of my mare?’ Aquila asked.

‘I will take your mare and tend her,’ another voice answered him, a harder and lower voice, and looking round, he saw that the other girl had gone to Inganiad’s head. He had forgotten about the other girl; a little fierce, nut-brown creature who seemed even browner by contrast with the kingfisher blue of her kirtle. Seeing his look, she smiled, but her gaze was challenging. ‘I am used to horses, and I promise you that I am quite trustworthy.’

Aquila’s hand tightened on the bridle. For the golden sister to bring him the Guest Cup in welcome, to bid him in and promise warm water after the dust of the journey, was no more than the duty of the mistress of the house towards the stranger within her gates; but, in some odd way, for the brown sister to take his mare and rub her down seemed a more personal thing.

‘Cannot one of the men take her?’ he said.

‘Did you not hear Rhyanidd my sister say that our father and the men have ridden hunting?’

‘All the men of the village?’

‘All who are not busy in other ways. Shall I call Kilwyn from his shoeing, or Vran from his own hut where he nurses a broken ankle?’

‘Ness, how
can
you?’ the elder girl put in in soft distress, but neither paid any heed to her.

‘I will take and tend her myself, if you will tell me where I may find the stable,’ Aquila said.

‘And let it be said that in my father’s house a stranger must stable his own horse at the journey’s end? This is so poor and outlandish a place that we must kill a pig to feed the Prince of Britain—though I daresay that pigs have been killed for him before—but at least no guest need tend his own horse.’

He realized that she was angry with him because he had laughed at her sister about the pig—no, not because he had laughed, because of the
way
he had laughed—and he liked her the better for that. Her hand was beside his on the head-stall now, and he had no choice but to let his own hand drop.

‘Then it seems that I can only thank you and give you your will,’ he said stiffly.

He stood a moment watching as she led the red mare away, then turned back to Rhyanidd. She was still flushed foxglove pink, and he wondered if she were going to make some sort of apology for her sister. But she did not. She said only with gentle dignity, ‘And now come you in and rest, while we make all things ready for Ambrosius.’ They were loyal to each other, those two.

At cow-stalling time, Ambrosius and the hunting party arrived almost together. And that night there was feasting in Cradoc’s hall, and next day they rode out after wolves—Cradoc was proud of the hunting in his runs—and brought home three grizzly carcasses to be shown to the women and hung up for trophies in the hall before they were flayed and the meat given to the hounds. That night, when the feasting was over and the time came for sleep, Ambrosius sent for Aquila to attend him, instead of his armour-bearer, who, being young and weak-headed and proud of his part in the wolf hunt, had drunk too much of the thin, heather-flavoured mead, and was asleep under one of the hall benches.

The guest place reminded Aquila of the little beehive hut of Brother Ninnias, where he had slept with the gall of the Saxon thrall-ring still smarting on his neck. Only there were fine roe-deer skins on the bed-place, and feather-stuffed pillows of blue and violet cloth; and someone had set a bowl of apples on the stool beside it; apples whose smooth gold was flecked and feathered with coral colour, and the scent of them mingled with the aromatic breath of the herbs burning in the white, honey-wax candle.

Ambrosius, sitting on the bed-place, had taken an apple from the bowl, and sat turning it in his hands, examining the delicate flecking and feathering of the skin. ‘What a beautiful thing an apple is. One so seldom notices … ’ He looked up suddenly at Aquila, where he stood against the central king-post, rubbing up the bronze boss of the light wicker hunting shield that his lord had carried that day. ‘Does it seem very strange to you, this life among the mountains, Dolphin?’

‘Yes,’ Aquila said, ‘but not so strange as it did a year ago.’

‘It is so familiar to me. The only life that I have known since I was nine years old.’ He had returned to the apple in his hand, turning and turning it. ‘It seemed strange enough to me then … I was brought up to wear a Roman tunic and read with a Greek tutor. I remember the baths at Venta, and the high, square rooms, and the troops of Thracian Horse trotting down the street looking as though all the world were a bad smell under their noses. It is an odd thing to belong to two worlds, Dolphin.’

‘But a thing that may be the saving of Britain,’ Aquila said in a moment of clear seeing. He breathed on the bronze boss and rubbed harder to get out a spot of wolf ’s blood. ‘A leader who was all Britain, or all Rome, would be hard put to it, I’m thinking, to handle such a mixed band as we are, when the day comes for fighting.’

‘When the day comes for fighting,’ Ambrosius said broodingly. ‘It is in my mind that next spring comes all too soon.’

There was a sudden silence. Aquila raised his eyes quickly to Ambrosius’s face, finding there a white gravity which startled him, after the harp song and the easy merriment in Cradoc’s hall. His hand checked in its burnishing.

‘Next spring?’

‘Aye, with the Saxons already beginning to hum like a swarming hive, we daren’t delay an attack any longer.’

Aquila’s heart was suddenly beating a little faster. So it was coming at last, the thing that they had been waiting for so long. But something that he sensed in the other man puzzled him, and he frowned. ‘Daren’t? Why do you wish to delay longer?’

‘I suppose I sound as creeping cautious as an old man.’ Ambrosius looked up again. ‘Dolphin, I am as eager to be at the Saxon’s throats as the wildest hothead among us. But I have to be sure. If Aetius in Gaul had sent us one legion, we could have done it; when Rome failed us I knew that it must be years before we were strong enough to take up the fight alone … I have to be sure; I can’t afford to fail once, because I’ve nothing in reserve with which to turn failure into victory.’

‘Have the Young Foxes not bettered things by coming over to our standard?’ Aquila said after a moment.

‘If I could be sure of them, yes,’ Ambrosius said. ‘Oh, I’m sure of the Young Foxes themselves, their personal loyalty. For the rest—I don’t know. I am seldom quite sure of my own kind; we dream too many dreams, and the dreams divide us … That is why we must make closer ties between ourselves and these new friends of ours.’

‘What sort of ties?’

Ambrosius set the apple back in the bowl with the air of coming to a decision. ‘Dolphin, let you take one of Cradoc’s daughters for your wife.’

At first Aquila thought it was a jest, and then he realized that it was not. Along with the rest of the Companions, he had been waited on by Cradoc’s daughters; he had spoken a few words with them, but that was all.

‘I have had no thought of taking any woman from her father’s hearth,’ he said after a moment.

‘Think of it now.’

There was a long silence. The two men looked at each other levelly in the candle-light.

‘Why should Cradoc give me a daughter from his hearth?’ Aquila said at last. ‘I am a landless man, owning nothing but my horse and my sword, both of which you gave me.’

‘Cradoc will give you his daughter if you ask, because you are of my Company, and because he would have died at Aber of the White Shells, if you had not turned the blow that was meant for him.’

Aquila said, ‘If it seems to Ambrosius good that there should be such ties between his folk and Vortimer’s folk, then surely it is for Ambrosius himself to take a wife from the hearth of some greater prince than Cradoc.’

Ambrosius raised his head slowly, and there was a look in his eyes as though he were seeing something at a great distance. ‘To lead Britain is enough for one man; with a whole heart and no other ties.’

Aquila was silent. Because of Flavia he wanted nothing to do with women, ever. They were dangerous, they could hurt too much. But he hoped that if Ambrosius had asked him to walk out of the candle-lit guest place to certain death, because in some way his death could help to bind Britain together and drive the barbarians into the sea, he would have done it. Had he any right to refuse the lesser thing?

Ambrosius smiled a little, looking into his eyes. ‘Rhyanidd is very fair—cream and heather-honey.’

Aquila never knew what made him say it, hanging the hunting shield from its peg on the king-post with great care as he did so. ‘Cream and heather-honey may grow to be a weariness. If I must take one, when I want neither, I’ll take the little brown sister.’

N
EXT
morning, with the bustle of preparations for departure already beginning to rise, Aquila sought out Cradoc the Chieftain and asked him for Ness, that he might take her with him for his wife when he rode north again. He did not quite believe, even while he asked, that Ambrosius had been right. But when he had finished asking, he found that Ambrosius had been perfectly right. There was no escape.

When he and Cradoc had done talking together, and everything was settled, he did not at once go to join the rest of the Companions. He should have gone, he knew; they were already gathering, the horses being walked up and down, but he had to be alone for a little. He turned aside into the orchard and walked to and fro under the trees, with his sword gathered into his arms. The gold was gone from the orchard, even the apples had lost their warmth of colour, and the branches swayed in the small, chill wind that turned up the leaves silverly against the drifting, sheep’s-wool sky. He turned at last to go back to the others—and found Ness standing at a little distance, watching him.

He went towards her slowly, and they stood and looked at each other. ‘What is it that you do here, Ness?’ he asked at last, in a tone as grey as the morning.

‘I came to look at you. I must be forgiven if I am a little interested, seeing that I am to go with you among strangers and live the rest of my life in the hollow of your hand.’

‘Cradoc your father has told you, then?’ Aquila asked.

‘Oh yes, my father has told me. That was kind of him. It makes no difference in the end, of course; but it is nice to be told these things at the time, not left to find them out afterwards.’ She looked at him with the cool challenge in her eyes that had been there the first time he saw her, but without the smile. ‘Why do you want to marry me?’

If it had been the golden sister, Aquila knew that he would have had to make some kind of lie for kindness’ sake, but not for Ness; only the truth for Ness. ‘Because unless we can become one people, we shall not save Britain from the barbarians,’ he said. It sounded stiff and pompous, but it was the truth, the best he could do.

Ness studied him for a moment, and there was a twitch of laughter at the corner of her mouth. ‘So it is by Ambrosius’s order! And to think that we killed the pig for him!’ And then, suddenly grave again, she asked curiously, ‘Then if it does not matter which of us it is, why me, and not Rhyanidd?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Aquila simply.

There was a little silence, and then Ness said, ‘I wonder if you ever will. How long have I, to make ready for my wedding?’

‘We shall be in the south upward of a month. Be ready to ride with me when we pass this way on the road north again.’

Ness took her eyes from his face for the first time since he had turned and found her watching him, and looked about her, back towards the thatched roof of her father’s Hall, up through the shivering apple branches to the dark lift of the mountains against the sky. And her look hurt him sharply with the memory of a valley in the Down Country with the trace of old vine terraces on the southern slopes.

‘I have known this orchard for sixteen years,’ she said. ‘And now there’s only a month left.’ But she was not talking to him.

Aquila realized that the prospect of the marriage must be far more overwhelming for her than it was for him, because for her it meant being torn away from all that she knew and loved. But he shut his mind to that thought quickly. Once he began to feel sorry for the girl the whole thing would become unbearable. And he also had been torn away from all that he knew and loved, and more harshly than this.

He heard one of the others calling him. ‘Dolphin! Hi! Dolphin! Are we to wait all day?’ and he turned without another word, leaving her standing under the dipping branches of the apple trees, and strode back to rejoin his fellows.

When Ambrosius and his Companions returned to their winter quarters at Dynas Ffaraon, Aquila no longer had his regular sleeping-place among the young men in Ambrosius’s Hall, but was lord of a turf-roofed bothy below the western rampart, where Ness spread fine skins on the bed-place and fresh bracken on the earthen floor, and cooked for him when he chose to eat at home, and spun wool by herself in the firelight, in the long winter evenings. Aquila was not often there. In this last winter before the great attack there was so much to do, so much to think about, that for most of the time he managed to forget about Ness altogether. She seemed as far away from him as though she had never ridden up from the south in the curve of his bridle arm; and he found it quite easy to forget her.