Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (49 page)

I ignored him.

‘Now, Lady, just look at this decoration, at this painting,’ and I looked at it myself and the more I looked at it the more I realised that the side of the saddle I had facing me showed the rape of a mare-centaur by a one-eyed lapith, and the centaur’s anguished face, turned back over her shoulder as she tried to unseat the unwelcome Greek who tried to mount her, was that of Rhiannon. I could not remember consciously trying to do this, and yet, how our actions betray our thoughts. I could not for the life of me remember what was on the other side, so great was my confusion now as on every occasion I had seen Rhiannon, but I hoped that it was nothing to give offence, as Hueil was bigger and nastier-looking than I was, and there were the four other men, and Pryderi and Taliesin had run away. I went on:

‘Here we have the peak of the painter’s art, born of a skill built up over years of practice and hard study. Twelve hours a day this painter worked, Great Lady, all the days of his life, for forty years and more, till he was able to produce such a scene as you can see here. And look at the leather, Lady, look at the leather, feel the quality, genuine Cordoban, double-tanned for durability, double-stitched for strength, double-stuffed for comfort, the ground just the right colour to match your shoes. Most Mighty Princess, how could you ever forgive yourself if ever you missed an opportunity like this, a chance to buy his gem, and at such a price, too. And what is the price? What am I asking for it? Do I ask—’

She cut me short.

‘Why do you talk so much, Mannanan? You know that you could sell me anything, even yourself.’

I looked up at her, for the first time at the Forks. Have you seen the fishing-boats come in to sunny Naxos, the low sun glinting on the white and purple sails, loaded down with tunny, octopus and cuttlefish, oysters and mussels and sponges from the deep? As you see the skipper, leaning on the steering oar, smiling in joy for wealth and hope to live another day, so I saw Rhiannon, smiling as she bent above me, as a spear-fisher smiles looking down upon his prey. There was a necklace about her neck, of mussel pearls on golden wires, and her head piled with its copper hair was bound in a coral wreath. Her white and yellow silken cloak parted to show her linen blouse, embroidered with sea anemones and the weeds of the shore. She was a sight to drive any man mad. But I remembered, I was a Greek, I know logic and how to think and all the rules of Nature, and I drew myself up and I told her:

‘I am a Citizen of Rome, and of another city older than Rome, and I am no man’s slave. I am not bought or sold.’ I shifted back the folds of my sealskin cloak, which I was wearing that day to look more the great and rich merchant which I told the passers-by I was, and which indeed I am, greater and richer than any in Britain, and I showed the jewelled hilt and the bronze scabbard of the sword Burn, so that Hueil could see it. ‘I give myself where I please, and for no price that anyone can pay. I do not give myself to anyone who asks for me. But I will give you, Rhiannon of the Brigantes, this saddle.’

And that was the first time I spoke her name. Hearing it in my voice changed her temper. She turned and spoke sharply:

‘Hueil!’

He bent and picked up the saddle, and threw a gold piece in the dust before me. I picked it up, and bit it, ostentatiously. Then I told them:

‘Beware, Lady. A gift thrice refused brings bad luck.’

She had the last word, of course. She called:

‘Tell me that again, in the Summer Country.’

And off she walked, her cloak billowing out in the wind like a sail, but her shoulders beneath it were shaking with – what? Rage? Shame? Laughter?

I went back to the inn, where I found Pryderi and Taliesin
already saddling up the horses. I tossed the gold piece in the air before them.

‘A fair rate of profit,’ I told them.

‘Count your money with care,’ Taliesin advised me. I looked at the coins. The first was struck by that old King in Gaul. The second – on the reverse was a tangle, dots and squiggles, not intelligible to any human being, not even to a Brit: it was just the pattern they always put on coins. But on the obverse was a head, crude, but recognisable: it was an attempt to draw a real man, someone who once walked the earth, and the artist had seen him, had known him. And above his head, some letters. With difficulty I read them:
Tascio Ricon
.

‘Tasciovanus, you would have called him,’ said Taliesin. ‘My ancestor, and Rhiannon’s, and even Pryderi’s. It was he, the great King, who defeated Caesar, and drove him back into the sea, never again to see Britain. That was in the days of glory.’

Like the first, it was new, crisp, unworn, unclipped, a marvel in a coin twenty years old, let alone nearly two hundred. But that the third coin, that I had received that day, should be in such a state was even a greater marvel. For a stater it was, a gold stater of Alexander, the Greek who conquered the world, and had he lived there would have been no need to call myself so often a Citizen of Rome as well as of my own city. And Alexander, remember, was not a Greek of those outworn cities of Attica, but a Macedonian, as far from the line of Themistocles or Solon as we of the old towns of Asia. But this stater – I looked at it. I knew the die well. This had been struck in the Old City, in my home, in my very house, by my own ancestor. These coins showed common ground between Rhiannon and myself. They were not choosen foolishly. I would not spend them easily.

We rode out of Spinae immediately, keeping our faces hidden as we went past the other inn, the one with a fine modern bath, for there, it was clear, Rhiannon would be staying. Beyond the Forks, we soon entered the Forest, and I began to wonder where we would sleep, because it was getting towards dark. But an hour’s ride west, Pryderi suddenly turned his horse off the road, and we followed him along a half-hidden path till we came to a hut, built, I suppose, long ago by some charcoal-burner. While I unsaddled the horses and hobbled them, and Taliesin fetched bundles of green bracken for our beds, Pryderi went into the hut. He came out again with, to my surprise, a hunting bow and a boar spear.

‘I feel like a taste of decent meat,’ he grunted and slipped into the woods. By the time I had lit a fire he was back, calling me, and I brought a packhorse and followed him to where he had killed a great stag. We got it back to the hut fairly easily, slung across the horse’s back, and there we did all the real butchering, burying the offal and hanging up the joints and the hide. We ate well on venison steaks broiled on sticks over the fire, and mushrooms Taliesin collected, of several different kinds which I had not seen before, but which he swore were harmless, and so they were, except that it was them, I suppose, that made me sleep so sound in the open air till Pryderi woke me to stand the last watch by the fire against wolves. Or perhaps it was the cider. Up till now I had drunk beer among the Brits, but my two companions had brought with them no beer but only a jar of cider, and then I began to realise what real ecstasy was. I will not hear a word said against beer, if that is what all around you are drinking. But if you have the choice, then cider is a drink for kings. I tell you this, once the Germans begin to taste cider, they will soon
forsake beer utterly and plant apple orchards where once they grew barley.

But it was cider and venison again for breakfast, and then we travelled on to a village a little way from Cunetio. We stopped eventually outside an inn, and this at last was a real Brits’ stopping place. The other inns where we had slept had all been possible, just possible stopping places for civilised men who weren’t too particular, but this was no place for anyone who was not native born. We had stopped in the middle of the day for a bite of cold roast venison and an oatcake we bought from a girl at a farmhouse by the way. All alone she was, and baking like a mad thing, for every other soul was in the fields at the last of the wheat harvest.

I remarked that I had already tasted enough of that stag to see me through a lifetime. Pryderi laughed.

‘And it’s more of him you’ll be having for your supper, but it’s depending I am on him to pay for our beds too.’

Sure enough, he was able to persuade the innkeeper that it would be just to take the carcase of the deer, and the hide and horns, to pay our bill.

Now, this was the first British house I had stayed in, that is to say, the first built in the British way. For all the nations of the earth build their houses with straight walls, and it is only the houses of their gods and their graves that they make round. But your Brit likes to build himself a round house, and simple it is to do. First of all you mark out a circle on the ground, and around this circle you dig holes two or three paces apart. In each hole you set an upright post, twice the height of a man. Then you join the timbers together with light rafters, and this you can thatch, leaving a hole in the middle of the roof for the smoke of the fire. Perhaps the house is not big enough for you. All right, then you draw another circle outside the first, and set there another ring of uprights, and thatch the roof between the inner and outer rings, and if you feel so inclined there is always room for another circle, because you have all the island to cover if you have a mind to. The walls you then fill in with basketwork well caulked with mud, or even with a few courses of stone. If for any reason you are not satisfied with one open hall to live in, then you can join
uprights together to make booths, and so this inn consisted of a great round house, with an open hall at the door, and a ring of booths at the farther circumference.

We exchanged our deer, then, for the use of a booth for a night, and glad we were to get into it, because the luck that had brought us dry, if not fine weather now deserted us. The cloud got lower as the morning wore on. The girl who sold us the oatcake was looking anxiously at the first few drops showing on the flagstone at her door, and awaiting the rush home from the fields. By the time we reached the inn, three hours after noon, the rain was falling steadily in a monotonous drizzle, not heavily, but thoroughly. I was tolerably dry myself, because I put on my sealskin cloak, and that shed the water like – well, have you ever seen a seal? The other two had their soft leather jerkins, but all the same we were all glad to get indoors.

The innkeeper seemed almost to expect us, or perhaps it was my fancy, and he gave Taliesin the same exaggerated respect as had the man in Calleva. Of course, beside the inn he had a farm, and his stacks of oat and wheat stood behind the house. He was ready enough to talk about the weather and the prospects of the harvest while his wife and servants bustled about, as if they were expecting a busy evening. Other travellers came in. There were the two middle-aged men and the youth I had seen in Pontes, and then a little man with a squint leaned over me, too close for my liking, and said:

‘There is one flock, and one shepherd: one vineyard and one true husbandman.’

What that meant I had no idea, and so I only said back:

‘And a pretty small farm that must be, brother.’

It seemed to satisfy him; at least, he didn’t speak to me again that evening.

The dinner was good, nine-year-old mutton since the venison hadn’t hung long enough for the landlord’s taste, stewed, with onions and leeks and turnips and oat bread, and oat dumplings in the stew. We ate as only men can who have ridden all day in the summer rain. It was a warm evening, in spite of the rain, and as the inn filled with people, men and women, all in their dripping cloaks and sweating under them, the room turned into a
good imitation of a steam bath, except for the smell, which was of bodies and not predominantly of scented oil.

All the people present were Brits. Any Greek or Roman on the road would have taken one look and preferred the open road, which would in any case have taken him to a civilised tavern at Cunetio, where they would use oil to cook with. There were all sorts in the inn, and all free men and women, no slaves. If you go outside the Empire, or to these hardly settled places, whether among Brits or Germans, you find that there are very few slaves. A rich man may have a few women captured in battle or kidnapped by pirates, who are used for grinding corn and other heavy work in the house, but apart from that a free man, or woman for that, does everything for himself. That, of course, is just why these areas are so backward. A civilised man, if he is to live a full life, has to be backed by power not only to grind corn, but to cut and carry fuel and mine metals and smelt them. But the Brits, if they will not use slaves outside the household, are doomed to barbarism for ever.

The room, as I said, became very full, but you can drown any discomfort in cider. We were busy denying any virtue to lifesavers, and singing a song popular in the neighbourhood called ‘Bran, the Bastard King of Mona’ – I noticed that Pryderi was not showing a single trace of black-and-yellow – when in at the leather door, out of the rain, there came six people, dripping wet, sodden, half-drowned, squeezing, water out of their hair, out of their shoes, out of their cloaks, weeping with relief to be inside, the tears running out of their wet eyes over their red chapped cheeks. Rhiannon it was standing there, like a wrecked barge, swamped, mast and spar sagging forward in a tangle of rope and splinters, and floating she was in her own private lake of fresh water that she had brought in with her.

Her five followers, Hueil first, wetter even than she was, pressed behind her to help her off with her leather cloak and the leather overskirt in which she had ridden. She flung the garments behind her without looking, and scattered the flock of ducks which had waddled in after the Lady.

The landlord went towards her, his eyes on her belt of hexagonal plates of gilded bronze, but whether he wanted to assure her most humbly that this was no place for such a great Princess
as she, or whether he wanted to tell the five of them to go and hang themselves on lines till they had drained enough to mix with decent folk, I never knew. Rhiannon pushed him aside, and looked around the room.

Her eyes fell on my face. She walked towards me as I sat in that booth behind the table. She walked like – have you ever seen a bireme of the Imperial Navy bear down on you all cleared for action? Cruel glitters the ram of iron as it cuts the swell, cruel beat the oars in time, cruel fly the flags. The sail is furled, that it shall neither take fire nor press the rowers. The gilding and the carving is stripped away, and black she is painted and not a man who is to be seen but has hidden his face behind a mask of brass. So Rhiannon came to me, her face a mask of anger, terrifying and awful. I looked about me in terror. On my right sat Pryderi, still as a corpse, his stern face held steady by an effort of his will. But on my left – Taliesin was no longer there.