The Lantern Bearers (book III) (34 page)

Ness shook her head. ‘He was a merchant of some sort and wanted to get on to his trading in the town. He said that the man who gave it to him said there was no answer to wait for. Should he have waited?’

‘No,’ Aquila said. ‘It was just that I thought for a moment it might be somebody that I knew.’ The wax was brittle with cold. He broke it open between his hands, and spilled his father’s ring into his palm.

For a little time he stood quite still, seeing it lying there among the creamy flakes and fragments of broken wax; watching the green spark wake and vanish in the heart of the flawed emerald as the firelight flickered. So the boy was safe among his own people again. He tossed the wax into the red heart of the brazier and slipped the ring on to his bare signet finger. It was good to feel it there again. Good to know that he was free now to take what he had done to Ambrosius and abide by the consequences. With long thinking about it, he had reached the stage of not knowing how right or wrong the thing was that he had done. He only knew that it had been inevitable, and that now Mull’s safety no longer hung on his silence, he must lay it bare to Ambrosius. Maybe tonight, after the banquet …

Ness’s voice broke in on him. ‘But it is your ring! Your ring that was lost! I do not understand—’

Presently he would tell Ness too. But Ambrosius first. ‘You shall, by and by,’ he said. ‘Not now. I am late enough as it is.’ He half turned towards the colonnade doorway, then back again, realizing that he would probably not see Ness again until after he had told Ambrosius. ‘You look so pretty in that gown. I wish this wasn’t an all-male banquet.’

She let the question of the ring go by. ‘I am sure that the Princes of the Dumnonii and the Lords of Glevum and the Cymru would be outraged if they found themselves expected to follow the Roman fashion and sit down to feast in the same hall with women, on such a state occasion as this!’

‘Your people,’ Aquila said, and was struck by a sudden thought. ‘Ness, do you see that it has come full circle? The Princes of the Cymru feast with their High King. Tonight Ambrosius will confirm Pascent as lord of his father’s lands and his father’s people. Tonight your people and mine are come together again!’

‘Yes, I do see,’ Ness said. ‘After twelve, nearly thirteen years.’

Aquila felt that he had been stupid in pointing that out to her as though it were a thing that she might not have noticed, when it must be so much nearer to her than it was to him. He wondered whether she had regretted the choice that she had made, almost thirteen years ago, but could not find the words to ask her.

And then Ness came and put her thin brown hands on his shoulders and said, as though she knew what he was thinking, ‘Have
you
regretted it?’

‘Why should I regret it?’ Aquila said, and put his hands over hers.

‘I’m not beautiful like Rhyanidd—’

‘You never were, but it was you I chose, in my rather odd way.’

‘And maybe I’ve grown dull. Contented women do grow dull; I’ve seen it happen.’ She began to laugh again, and this time with no mockery at all. ‘But at least I haven’t grown fat, as some contented women do.’ She gave him a little push, and dropped her hands. ‘Go now to this splendid all-male banquet of yours, before you are later than you are already.’

He went across the inner court, huddling his chin into his cloak against the thin, icy wind and the sleet that was turning to snow, opened the postern door under the damson tree, and passed through, letting it swing to behind him. In the wide court of the Governor’s Palace a lantern swayed in the wind, setting the shadows running all along the colonnades, and there was a great coming and going in the early winter dusk; young men gathered in knots by lighted doorways, cooks and servants and younger sons hurried to and fro; a man passed him with a couple of great wolfhounds in leash, making him think of Brychan in the early days. He turned into the north colonnade, weaving his way through the shifting, noisy throng, until he came at last to the ante-room where men stood on guard, leaning on their spears; and then he stood on the threshold of the banqueting chamber itself.

In the daylight the banqueting hall of the old palace was as shabby, crumbling and faded as the rest of Venta Belgarum. But in the warm light of many candles, the dim colours of the painted garlands on the walls glowed with an echo of the colours of living flowers, and cracked marble and blackened gilding lost their starkness behind the twined and twisted ropes of ivy, bay and rosemary whose aromatic scent mingled with the faint waft of wood-smoke from the braziers—for here, too, braziers were burning, though the chief warmth of the place rose from the hypocausts under the floor.

The hall was thronged with men seated at the long tables that seemed to swim in honey-thick light; men with clipped hair in the loose, formal tunics of Rome; men with tunics plaid and chequered in the deeper and more barbaric colours of an older Britain, with flowing hair, and river-washed yellow gold about their necks.

The first course of hard-boiled duck eggs and strong cured fish and little cups of watered wine was already being brought in, and Aquila, casting a quick glance among the boys and young warriors bearing in the great chargers, saw Flavian moving through the throng with an air of serious concentration as he tried to avoid spilling any drop from his wine-cups. In these days of shortage of slaves and servants, they had begun to use their sons and younger brothers as servers and cup-bearers, much as the Tribes had always done. Passing over his son, Aquila’s gaze went up to seek the High Table, where Ambrosius sat, with the faithful Pascent beside him, and big, clumsy Artos, whose wild-wind cavalry charge had done more than all else to gain them this first great victory; and the Princes of the Dumnonii and the Lords of Glevum and the Cymru, who had held back all these years, come in at last to swear their fealty to the High King. And suddenly he was remembering the first sight that he had had of the dark young Prince of Britain, by the hearth in a mountain fortress, with the salt mist wreathing beyond the door, and the same narrow gleam of gold round his head. They had ridden a long road since then, and the gold fillet was become the High King’s crown; and he saw with a sense of shock that Ambrosius’s hair looked as though grey wood ash had been rubbed into it at the temples.

Somebody brushed against him with a wine-jar, bringing him back to himself, and he walked forward between the long, crowding tables, up the hall. Ambrosius, who had been sitting half-turned to listen to a long-nosed princeling beside him, glanced up and saw him, and his dark, narrow face kindled as it always did at a friend’s coming. ‘Ah! Here he is at last! Why, man, you’re late; and tonight of all nights, when I must have my brothers about me!’

Aquila halted before the low step of the dais, putting up his hand in salute. ‘Let you forgive me, Ambrosius the King. There was some trouble down at the horse-lines, and it is so that I am late.’

‘I might have known that nothing but a horse would keep you away from me,’ Ambrosius said, with something that was half laughing and half serious in his voice and eyes. ‘Is all well now?’

‘Aye, all well now,’ Aquila said.

And at that moment Artos leaned forward, exclaiming, ‘Why, Dolphin, this is surely a night of fortunate stars! You have found your ring again!’

For a moment of time no longer than a heart-beat, but it seemed long to him, Aquila did not answer. He could let it go at that for now, and still go to Ambrosius later with the true story, with a fumbled and shamefaced explanation of why he had not spoken out now, in this moment. But to do that would be in a queer way to deny Flavia; to deny something more than Flavia, that had no name to it, a faith that all men must keep within themselves. He must speak out now, before these strangers, and before the men among whom he had grown great, or break some faith that he had not broken before, even when he went wilful-missing and let the galleys sail without him, all those years ago.

‘My ring was sent back to me,’ he said, his voice level and deliberate. And though the answer was for Artos, his eyes met and held Ambrosius’s across the gold-pooled candlelight of the High Table. ‘After our victory in the autumn, I gave it to a certain one of Hengest’s warriors, along with money and a pass to help him on his way, that he might send it back to me for a sign when he was safe among his own kind again.’

Never in his life had he been so aware of silence as he was in the few moments that followed—a silence that reached out and out all down the long room behind him, as men, caught by some sudden sense of drama at the High Table, broke off whatever they were saying or doing, and turned to watch and listen. Never in his life had he been so aware of faces: the faces of strangers and of brothers-in-arms, all turned full upon him. Yet his own gaze never wavered from the still, dark face of Ambrosius, who seemed to sit at the very heart of the silence.

Then Ambrosius said, ‘If the Dolphin, of all men, has had dealings with the barbarians, then it is in my mind that the reason must have been a strong one. Who and what was this certain one among the Saxon kind?’

Aquila stood braced as for a physical ordeal, his head up, his hands clenched under his cloak until the nails bit into his palms. ‘My sister’s son.’

Something flickered far back in Ambrosius’s eyes. ‘I never knew you had a sister.’

‘I—have not spoken of her, these past years,’ Aquila said. He drew a harsh breath. ‘The Saxons who burned my home and slew my father and all our household carried her off with them. In three years I found her again in Hengest’s camp while I still wore a Jutish thrall-ring. She helped me to escape, and I—hoped that she would come with me. But she was not free as I was free, who had only a thrall-ring to hold me. There was a child to bind her to her new people—and a man … So I came away alone, and did not speak of my sister any more.’

Ambrosius bent his head. ‘Go on.’

‘After our victory in the autumn, it was put into my hand to find her son among the fugitives of Hengest’s host. How the thing came about is no matter—I found him, and I did what there was to do, to send him back to her. My Lord Ambrosius, there is no more to tell.’

The silence closed in over his words, and in it Aquila felt horribly alone. Then the silence was broken by a sudden movement among the group of young men standing against the wall, and the Minnow thrust out through his fellows and came across the chamber to his father’s side.

Into the chill of his loneliness, Aquila felt a sudden rush of warmth. The Minnow, whom he had never properly known, who had disobeyed him to follow another leader in his first battle, had come running his neck into trouble to stand with him now. He felt him standing there, bright-eyed and defiant; felt the warmth of his loyalty like a physical touch.

‘Keep out of this, you young fool,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

The Minnow did not move, stubborn in his loyalty to his father and his determination to share with him whatever was coming. ‘It is only nothing to do with me because I did not know about it,’ he said, and the words were for Ambrosius as much as for his father. ‘If I had known, I’d have done anything—all that was in me—to help!’

Nobody said anything, but Artos made a small gesture with the hand in which he held his wine-cup, as though he raised it to drink with the boy.

Ambrosius was studying Aquila’s set face as though it were the face of someone he had never seen before. ‘Why do you choose to tell me all this?’ he said. ‘Your ring was lost, your ring is found again. Why not let it sleep at that?’

Aquila did not answer at once. He had not expected that particular question, and though his reasons were clear in his own mind, he had no words for them. ‘Because I have not broken faith with you before,’ he said at last. ‘Because I have done a thing, and I am prepared to pay the price. Because I—do not wish to carry shame under my cloak.’ There were other reasons too, reasons that had to do with Flavia; but they were between Flavia and himself.

For a long, long moment Ambrosius continued to sit studying his face with that odd look of questioning and testing and discovery. ‘A strange, and an uncomfortable thing is honour,’ he said reflectively; and then suddenly his own dark face lit with the old, swift warmth. ‘Nay, man, the years and the Saxons have torn gaps enough in the ranks of our Company. Let you sit down now in your own place, for I can ill afford to lose any more of my Companions.’

Aquila drew himself up still further, and made a small, proud gesture of acceptance and salute.

So it was done and over; no shame, no disgrace for Flavian to share with him—but Flavian hadn’t known that when he came out to share it. The boy was standing a little uncertainly now on the point of turning away. Aquila brought a hand down on his shoulder and gripped it in passing. ‘Thanks, Minnow.’ It did not seem much to say, but it covered the situation, and he was not very sure of his own voice just then.

The Minnow said nothing at all, but he looked at his father, and both of them were satisfied.

But it was Artos, thrusting Cabal farther under the table to make room, and pushing his wine-cup towards Aquila as he swung a leg over the cushioned bench and slid into place beside him, who spoke the last words on the matter, very loudly and for all men to hear: ‘I never had a sister; but if I had, I hope I’d be as true to her after twenty years.’

Much later that night, when the feasting was over, Aquila walked home with Eugenus the Physician. The snow had stopped, the thin wind had fallen away, and the sky above the whitened roofs of the old palace was full of stars; but the fresh snow in the lantern-lit courtyard was already becoming churned and trampled, broken up into chains of tracks by the crowding feasters heading for their own quarters in the city or in other wings of the palace. Eugenus had been asking questions—all the questions that Brother Ninnias had never asked. But Aquila found that they no longer made him flinch as they used to do; and there was freedom in that, too. Now, as they turned for an instant in the shadow of the postern doorway, and looked back, there was another thought in both their minds.